No upgrade from  11? I'm going to be flat out as blunt as I possibly can--I skipped 12 because I could use Blender to accomplish most of what 12 offered in conjunction with 11--I still run 11, and I'm not about to pay a full price for 13 when I can use Blender for free, and I can. 

 At this point it would be simpler for me to  just move my entire workflow to Blender than to pay $250 for something that isn't even close to the capability of what a free alternative offers. I don't know if you guy realize it or not, but you're shooting yourself in the foot here. The only reason I keep Poser around is the simplicity of the toon renders(literally that's the only render engine I use)--and in case you missed the memo your two largest competitors(DS and Blender) are both completely free.  

Don't get me wrong, I love Poser, long time user, but it's no longer worth the asking price--not to downgrade anyone involved with its production, but look around you--there's now a limited amount of high quality models that are compatible, and those models have very limited clothing/accessories, and if I'm going to have to jump over to Blender to  create clothing and accessories, I might as well just stay in Blender and save myself the return trip. 
 

randym77 posted at 12:06 AM Thu, 16 March 2023 - #4458635

For some reason, Anim8or made sense to me, in a way none of the others did.

I have tried Blender, but I couldn't even figure out how to rotate an object. I basically use it to convert Sketchup stuff to OBJ for use in Poser. I do plan to try some actual tutorials soon. That rocket tutorial looks interesting.

And what do you mean, my grandmas? Get off my lawn! I know how to sew with patterns (and even had a class in making my own patterns, because my mom made me).

One thing I would like to figure out: how to make dynamic clothing with thickness. Some people do it, but most don't. Conforming clothes may not drape as well, but its edges have thickness, and so look better.

I've made dynamic clothing to  use in Poser with an all over thickness,  not just  the edges, set it up  to  use self collision to  keep it from sagging.  You've got to  fiddle with the settings a bit,  and it won't always work--trial and error....

....but if you're familiar with  following a pattern and sewing up  some clothes(I'm an old fart too),  then that's very much analogous,  to making clothes in Blender.  Once you get used to  the using keyboard shortcuts to  accomplish everything it really is pretty simple to  get around,  and if you haven't used it since 2.8, you might be very surprised to  find out they've totally changed the interface. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdbXSPN_VUc

 

randym77 posted at 2:13 AM Tue, 14 March 2023 - #4458382

The only software I had any success with was Anim8or.

There's a name you don't see often, and when I'm working in 3D I use it on almost every single project.  Is it a top  notch program with  all the latest features? Nope,  not even close.  In fact it hasn't evolved much in 20+ years, but it's quick, simple, and efficient. 

With that said, making clothes in Blender is a breeze. Literally follow an actual clothing pattern(like you grandmas used to use),  tie everything together non filled edges(that will  become the thread),  and apply cloth with sewing and shrinking, adjust a few settings and run it.  It will  sew your clothing together and shrink it right down to fit your model. 

I can  make clothing items all day long and use them in the cloth room, I have the hardest time rigging them though.  

RedPhantom posted at 8:22 AM Thu, 2 June 2022 - #4439479

okay, I did manage to do it. Having the light well in front of the fly and pointing almost directly down did it. Try changing the location or angle of the light

It's not just  this file, or this lighting angle.  Shadows have disappeared from  the preview render across the board(every file,  every  model,  every ground type,  every  light type,  every  setting on those lights, every time),  and it happened when I upgraded from  Poser 10 to Poser 11,  this was about two years ago  now. 

I assure you lighting angle has nothing to  do with it.  I have files from  years ago that have shadows in the renders(I have the renders--they have shadows),  I can open the files up,  not change a single setting,  but they no longer have shadows, not in  preview,  not in the preview render.  They  simply stopped working in preview when I upgraded to Poser 11.  I am  seriously thinking it's a hardware issue,  as none of the settings I have tried have produced shadows. 

I appreciate you trouble shooting this,  but I'm really-really leaning towards the fact that  something in Poser 11's preview  is not playing well  with the graphics card on this older PC. 

https://live.cdn.renderosity.com/forum/comments/4439460/agGhKaESWPslbfaIVz8rEXySHejkIC70IjYpdZHz.pnghttps://live.cdn.renderosity.com/forum/comments/4439460/agGhKaESWPslbfaIVz8rEXySHejkIC70IjYpdZHz.pnghttps://live.cdn.renderosity.com/forum/comments/4439460/agGhKaESWPslbfaIVz8rEXySHejkIC70IjYpdZHz.pngprimorge posted at 9:09 PM Wed, 1 June 2022 - #4439448

...Also please post a screenshot of your preview render settings.

See above...

...repeated below:

JoePublic posted at 10:32 AM Wed, 1 June 2022 - #4439404

Poser 11.3.818 here.

2yr old Acer Nitro 5 Laptop with a Geforce GTX

Windows 10, up to date.

One infinite light with shadows. (Plus one IBL and another Infinte "Fill" light without shadows)

Both Hardware and Ground Shadows work fine.

Preview settings:

Thanks for the screen shot,  but toggling hardware ambient occlusion, and/or back facing polys, isn't helping,  neither is setting the shadows bias all the way up to 150...


...again I ask,  could this be a hardware related issue? I have Poser 11 currently on an older Dell Optiplex 9020 with an onboard graphics card. 

1 area light(all light types refuse to produce shadows) shadows on,  light in OpenGL preview,  OpenGL on everywhere...

....no shadows. 

I've gone back to old files where the renders have shadows, open up  the file, untouched,  and no shadows.  Everything shades just fine, but nothing casts or catches shadows. 

Could this be a hardware issue? I know it happened when I switched from  10 to 11--I remember catching it early on, and thinking it really wasn't important, because I wasn't using the comic book  render very much, if at all,  but I use it a lot now, and it's becoming a serious time waster having to  render shadows separately and then  combine them in Photoshop. 

NikKelly posted at 7:31 PM Mon, 18 April 2022 - #4437365

IIRC, I managed to beat a pesky bunch of superseded but persistent textures by deleting the now-orphaned nodes that had called them.

Probably means I'd done something clumsy during material editing...

...sure enough there was image node way down  below the main material.  Deleted it, resaved, problem solved. 

Thanks. 

randym77 posted at 6:20 PM Thu, 10 February 2022 - #4434655

I cannot get this to work. I'm trying to hide the wireframe lines on a hair figure (Donna hair from DAZ) they just won't go away. It works with other figures, but not for this one. Is there a lock or something I have to turn off?

Try it on figure style if the hair is a figure and not prop.  

Again this drove me nuts forever,  and the solution was so simple, and honestly in retrospect,  should have been obvious. Just  go through and set everything, document, object, and figure style to texture shaded.  

randym77 posted at 7:59AM Fri, 30 April 2021 - #4418045

Like you, I prefer a comic or illustrative style to photorealism. I hope future versions of Poser make comic style renders easier and more customizable.

...I would pay for that. I would also pay for added features to the cloth room(shrinking mainly), and better hair, I would also love to see some kind of particle physics- smoke, fire, water etc...

If I'm being 100% honest here, the vast majority of what I render is from the preview renderer, and by majority I mean it's not even close- 90+%, and the rest comes from Firefly. I don't think I've ever used a render from Superfly on a paying job-ever-I have used it, and love the way it handles light, but as far as my day-to-day uses go, it's an afterthought at best. What I mainly need is exactly what this program began as(and I've been around long enough to remember its beginnings), a program that allows me to pose models as an artist reference for further work in other programs.

Nevertrumper posted at 4:45AM Fri, 30 April 2021 - #4418033

the upgrade from Poser 11 to 12 is an expensive joke.

...honestly, that's what I am seeing when I look at new features, but if they've got the search function working good enough to actually find my content then it might just be worth it.

I use Poser mainly for comic book style toon renders(think Brian Haberlin)--though not exclusively.

I hardly use Superfly at all, in fact the way in which it(Superfly) approaches displacement maps makes it fairly useless in my workflow. If I'm doing a realistic render I need those displacement maps, and I don't want to use them on a surface so sub-divided that it slows my machine to a crawl--seriously if I need to subdivide the surface that much, I'll model it instead, and smooth shade it--so much simpler and more effective.

Before the release of 12 I saw a lot of talk about getting it up and ready for the new NVidia graphics cards, and that's cool, but if I could afford a $2000 graphics card, then I'm likely not going to be using Poser, and will opt for something a bit more robust.

What I'm mainly worried about is that the developers have lost sight of what the users actually want, and in doing so have shot themselves in the foot, and financially killed a good program by adding niche features to an upgrade that is literally a make or break step in the programs development, and that this might be the last version of the program we'll ever see, because if people aren't buying it then there's no reason to develop it, and I'm honestly having a very hard time justifying an upgrade at this point, and I don't think I'm alone here.

....went smooth, all runtimes in the list, preferences intact, recent files populated, even recent renders thumbnails visible.

randym77 posted at 9:16PM Sat, 05 September 2020 - #4398726

weiesnbach posted at 8:47PM Sat, 05 September 2020 - #4398723

...and I'm with you on the huge runtimes, I have files dating back to the first free version of DAZ Studio somewhere around 20 years ago.

Hah! I have stuff dating from before DAZ Studio was even a gleam in Dan Farr's eye. And I still use it. Even the old, low-res models can be useful for background figures, for toon type renderings, or with new textures.

I agree fully on the older models, I use Vicky 2 and 3(Michael too), and the P5 nude woman a lot more than I would like to admit.

Right now I'm working on building some clothing for LaFemme in Blender because I've got a little bit of downtime, and caught that newer version notification, and was wondering if it was worth the trouble of upgrading or not.

I think I'll give it a go, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

randym77 posted at 8:13PM Sat, 05 September 2020 - #4398720

You should have the option to keep your preferences when you install an update.

I have a bunch of yuuuuuge runtimes, and it doesn't seem to slow Poser down. I do have indexing "refresh on launch" turned off.

This thread might be helpful:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2941889

Thanks for the input, reading that thread now...

...and I'm with you on the huge runtimes, I have files dating back to the first free version of DAZ Studio somewhere around 20 years ago.

Rhia474 posted at 8:11PM Sat, 05 September 2020 - #4398721

Regarding the search, it only displays the first 15 results, and will refresh if you switch back to the Library tab and then back to the Search tab. I do it 2-3 times, it eventually shows everything.

I figured that out a while back, but even so it's a serious time waster and a real hassle. It needs a re-thinking.

Key words from your statement " ...it eventually shows everything..." ...'eventually' shouldn't even need to be there, it should just show everything when used, and I shouldn't have to learn a workaround to get it to function correctly. Again that is my only real complaint with 11, but it's a very-very real complaint and cuts to the heart of functionality. I still keep 10 installed just to use the search function, it not only works quicker, but it finds more, even after multiple refreshes.