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Amen brother.

points what he said. and a really cheap upgrade price, I know it costs to program, but your gunna be competing with free here soon. I know D|S isn't ment to replace Poser but if I can use poser 5 the way it is and throw stuff in D|S and then get a plugin cheap for Lightwave, CL ain't getting my upgrade money. the survey is going to be interesting. my 2 cents.

Open GL. Nerd

Just ONE wish: JUST MAKE THE DAMN THING WORK!!!!!!!!!! Is that too F*$@%#@%king much to ask?

Software: Daz Studio 4.15, Photoshop CC, Zbrush 2022, Blender 3.3, Silo 2.3, Filter Forge 4. Marvelous Designer 7

Hardware: self built Intel Core i7 8086K, 64GB RAM, RTX 3090 .

"If you spend too much time arguing about software, you're spending too little time creating art!" ~ SomeSmartAss

"A critic is a legless man who teaches running." ~ Channing Pollock

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If this IS a bug fix for Poser 5 then those of us who paid out 300 odd quid for it better get it practically free!

SR's have been free so far. But I agree that if all P6 is is a working version of P5, it should be close to free for all who bought P5!

I hope....Sharen

No matter what they eventually charge for P6, someone will argue that it's too much. Example: Right now, the upgrade to P5 from P4 Pro Pack is $89. How many of you feel that would be an equitable price for the P6 upgrade from P5? A show of hands/paws/tentacles/hooves/whatever, please. Those of you without limbs can send in your answers on a postcard.

Well, kudos to them for daring to issue a survey anyhow... They must surely know it won't make pleasant reading. And unless they operate on the 'sucker born every minute' principle, they must realise that if they repeat the P5 fiasco and issue a hopelessly broken product, they may as well just shut up shop, because it will be the end of what customer loyalty they've managed to hang on to. Plus they know that Daz Studio is looming (which people keeps saying is free, but I'll be interested to see the total dollar cost of the various plug-ins that will be needed to make it actually do as much as even the still-flawed P5 will do.)

Well, y'all could always ask the president of e-frontier. :-) He, too, issued a statement that Poser will be further developed and integrated with Shade. http://shade.e-frontier.co.jp/en/poser.html

-- erlik

#1 on my list: plug the memory leak!

I think $89 is a fair price to upgrade from 5 to 6. I would like to see them use the renderer from Shade. My wish list: -- Render farm support (Windows and Linux). Not a complete interface, just render engine daemons that I could network together to share the rendering load. -- A Linux Version. -- SMP support. I have a couple dual pentiums I'd like to fully employ for rendering. -- AMD 64-FX support. I'm building a new AMD system with a 64FX cpu. We need a 64-bit version of Poser ;-)

I just want P5 to work so I can upgrade to that :O

If it offers genuine extra features then sure, the price should reflect that. But I do feel that Curious Labs owes it exsisting Poser 5 customers a serious break - we did the bug testing on it for them! When I first had it I nearly went off my rocker coz of all the crashes, freezes and bits that didn't work. Even now, with SR3, it is still not 100%. Don't get me wrong, I do love it - in general - but I still feel that it was very expensive for something that was so faulty. I await Studio with bated breasts.

Oh, poo! I did mean bated BREATH, my breast are perfectly fine, thank you, and not at all interested in Daz Studio.

lights lights lights....

Top of my list are: 1) Easier/better dial control, a la Ratteler above. Let me use the Arrow Keys for precise incremental moves! 2) Plug the memory leak!! (Amen, randym77!) 3) Better movement within the Libraries palette - remember where I was instead of going all the way to the top every time I move back a step! 4) A 64-bit version to take advantage of my Athlon 64 FX-51. 5) Get rid of the Content and Face rooms, or make them optional features at install time. - Drew

Mine are more humble requirements : - Fix the search for missing obj/textures. How hard would it be to keep a list of texture folders provided by users when a texture is missing and use them for additional missing textures ? why does poser 5 hang when you chose to 'not' search for missing textures ? - Reduce startup time. Not only I have to to get a coffee and drink it while poser 5 is starting, but god forbid I start another application while it is starting or poser will invariably hang. - Better tracking of visited folbers in the library... or even better, how about a tree based system ? or a separate list of favorite folders in the library ? - Add an option to clean up unused lights. Ever tried multiple lights setting ? You end up with dozens of useless lights that are turned off. I made a python script to do this but it would be nice to see this function as part of the application. And by the way, poser 5 hangs automatically if you render, change lighting extensively and render again without restarting the application. I guess I will stop here and keep the rest for the survey :)

agiel - www.linfa.net

I must add :) make a Spanish version of poser :) Well was asking for this from long time ago, so I think this is not as good Idea as I must think. On the other hand I'm agreed with all! :) Make the thing work!!

SAL9000 - Hello Dr. Chandra, Will I've dream?

Am I the only one who likes the face room? :( I just wish it worked on more models.

To get face room-like tools for other models, use the morph putty tool from the pose room and a morph randomizer (e.g. the one I uploaded to my freestuff recently).

Along with the above... I want better python modules to allow access to everything in a poser character. I'm still hacking away at poser, and python to allow me to change the joint parameters on the fly. IE, the problem with morphing M3 into The Freak, and having the hands problem. I just picked up a dissassembler, and started looking at the poser exe file, and the python22.dll. Looks like everything is written in "c" now if I can get a good c decomplier but I'm not spending a $1,000.00 for salamander. OUCH!

I think lightwave support is WAY overdue. It makes VERY little sense, that inorder to use poser properly with lightwave, that you have to downgrade to the older version! Lightwave support should have been a standard feature in poser 5, since it was already available in poser 4 And I second that about incrimental changes with the arrow keys.. dials ara pain in the butt sometimes!

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

This seems to be a change of direction by CL again. When the CEO came here he said that Poser 6 would not include new features but just make Poser 5 work. (Which caused a few "should be free then" type of comments.) So question is, is this survey for new features INSTEAD of oft-promised fixes, or additional? If the former (which is same ol', same ol' for MetaCreations/Curious Labs) then they owe us an SR5 (there's just not been enough wall clock time for SR4 to have fixed everything ;-) And if it's new features as well as fixes it'll mean even looooonnngeer before we have a working product :-( Interestingly the link to CL's CEO visit here disappeared from the top of the Poser Tech/Python forums just this past week... Re the dials-as-bad-as-my-golf-swing comment, this would mean re-implementing the Poser 5 parameter dial panel as part of the Poser interface again (a la P4) rather than a separate Windoze task. The "throttle lag" is due to Windows interprocess communciation - which was never designed to handle full real-time interprocess communciation when requires a x-windows feedback loop! This 'bolt on window' was an OK solution on MacOS and OSX where it's all treated as part of the same task by the OS, but a dumb design for Windows. (BTW, if you haven't removed Content Parasite, this can help - but not cure - this lag.)

I just picked up a dissassembler, and started looking at the poser exe file, and the python22.dll. You can get the source code of python22.dll at www.python.org, no need to decompile.

My suggestion:

Replacing missing textures, like Lightwave: if a texture is missing, ask the user to find it... and don't search the entire drive, either! And, when the texture is selected, use that folder to look for the other textures. Stop asking for the "MilBody.jpg" file when I've already found it 10 times already.
Platform-specific versions. Enough with the "we wrote it to be translated on Windows and OSX" bs. Write it proplerly for Windows to take advantage of the Windows Dialog Boxes (where the OK buttons are always in the same place). Stop re-inventing features to be "cool" or to take the "easy" way out.
I don't care if P6 includes the latest 3D atmospheric Phong-Z native-mesh rendering render engine if the program crashes whenever I click in the Face room! Fix the bugs THEN add new features.
Put back all the plug-ins that came with Pro Pack, but were lost in P5: Lightwave, Vue, etc.
The long startup time issue: why does Poser take so long to start. If I start Lightwave, it's opened by the time I finish reading this sentence. What makes "lowly" Poser take so long to open? Let's see what happens when the Poser Sux survey comes out.

Oh, dang, a Freudian-slip typo. I meant to say "Poser Six", not "Poser Sux". It was an honest mistake, really. The U and I keys are right next to each other. Yeah, that's it. Really.

Thanks Stewer, I'll give it a shot.

"Bated Breasts!" "Poser Sux!" Hahahaaaaaa you guys is funny. As the gentleman psychoanalyst said to the lady psychoanalyst when he spied some lace sticking out - "Er, your Freudian slip is showing." - Which reminds me of a really old one: Two male astronomy students sitting during a lecture admiring the very attractive and shapely female astronomy professor up front at the blackboard. One says to the other, "Oh man, she has an AMAZING parallax..." :] Fish (I'll go 'way now...)

Poser 5 has been pretty damn stable for me here, and the new features have more than returned the price of the software in increased productivity so I am not all that upset about it at all. It will be interesting to see how P6 plays out with any Shade integration... a cool possability.

Well, i didn't get P5. So, i'm clueless as to what i would think of it. I work a lot in AutoCAD, MAX & C4D. All very stable apps that do exactly what they advertise. I just use Poser to "pose". LOL Me thinks that maybe they tried to make Poser into something more then what it's been since it's first version: a tool to aid artists like the "Wooden Dummy". ;-) So, my 'wishlist' is simple: Keep Poser simple, Fast & efficient at posing & animating characters. FishNose, you made my day with those Jokes... :-) Well, back to counting polygons. Marco

agiel and JohnRender Missing Textures I hadn't read your comments, and I've just expressed a very similar wish in a thread above.

... just a further comment re: the missing textures. In my experience, Poser already does indeed remember the location of a folder, if I've directed it there just once before to locate a missing texture? I never have any further issues with missing textures again, if they are contained in the same already used folder.

-memory leak fixed -OpenGL, including DualPlanes -FaceRoom for all characters -Export to, Import from C4D, LW and Max included -completely revamped interface that makes it a real app instead of twisting Barbie's arms and legs -Dual processor support ( Hyperthreading inclusive) etc etc

I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now I'll be mad. (Rumi)

High Res Face Room

We'll see what will be "fixed" in SR4 Poser 5 SR3 is choking on P4 (3GHz HT 800MHz FSB) with 2GB DDR 400 (dual channel), XP Pro. Maybe we have to wait for P5 5-8GHz (I think I read somewhere that itll come out Q1 or Q2 :) to get Poser loading in reasonable 5-10 seconds time! Im really disappointed by techsupport@curiouslabs.com reply to my 2 questions: Intel HT or dual cpu and net. rendering support. Hello, These will not be in the update. Kind regards, Steve Rathmann Curious Labs Technical Support Great! Curious Labs will wait till P4 is like 12MHz 286 these days, to add dual cpu support @$@#$%^!

Well I dont know about the rest of you, but top of my wishlist for SR4 is the ability to export dynamic hair as a 3D object. When I first realised it wasnt possible I was in total disbelief that CL had marketed a product that could create figures, dynamic clothes and hair, and then after youve worked on something for hours, you finally discover that your figure and dynamic clothes can be exported, but your dynamic hair cant. For crying out loud CL, whats the point in that. If I could get a refund I would. Theres NO excuse for this feature not being available, and to prove it get this: After a recent search on the internet, I found a tutorial by someone who has discovered a way to get dynamic hair into C4D. So what! you might say. Well heres so what... The person who wrote that tutorial goes on to explain that the reason dynamic hair cant be used like a normal object is because Poser 5 exports just the vertices and not the facets or polygons. So come on give your excuse because as far as Ime concerned its either a programming bug or its an unfairly deliberate omission. Ime hoping it was a programming bug, and that you will include this INCREDIBLY EASY fix in SR4. Because if you dont I for one will certainly NEVER buy poser again, and know of others who feel the same. It might not sound like it, but I am if fact a big fan of Poser, and happen to think CL have made very worthy additions to the program since they aquired it. But its all pointless if you can only export 99% of everything you create with it, after all its a 3D program and should be able to do this, its as simple as that. It would be nice to hear comments from others who agree with me on this point!

I just want dynamic hair to work at all, export or not. The collisions on dynamic hair are so fried that it is useless as an animation tool. I'm still using prop hair with magnets for animations in Poser. Sad Nerd

I'll second you on that nerd. It was much improved in SR3, but it's still not working as advertised.

nerd, I know exactly what you mean, let`s just say some of my hairstyles turned out looking like the aftermath of an electrostatic discharge. Ouch!!!

Just read this thread to see what all was said, and... Dynamic hair collisons are a major pain in the butt, and still dinnae work right. There are other issues, as well, that prevent the hr2 files from working correctly when used on a system other than the creators. I found the problem, will have a tute on it next week up at rdna. P5 hair doesn't export polygons because, my understanding, it doesn't technically have any. It's strictly extensions of the vertices themselves. (Please correct me if I am wrong) Seems similar to many of the special effects found in other comparably priced packages. Not certain that would be an easy fix, though. I'm currently running P5 on an Athlon 2400 withonly 384MB of RAM and rendering even complex scenes (with 2 V3, 3 M3, and seven P4 figures, as well as a fullly decked out retail store scene) and having no problems. Even have a bolt of dynamic cloth, lol. As an animation (ok, it does take a day to render, but I can live with that), no less. I've said it before, I'll say it again: DAZ has never said that D|S would be free. They have said the BETA would be free. Pretty tight distinction there. I think it's interesting how in some points one can ask for some rather interesting new features, and then say don't add them. Gist of it all: 1 - memory leak fix (ie, stop searching for files) 2 - Open GL support 3 - scrap the interface (although I like it, darn it!) 4 - Improve what's currently in it before adding 5 - make it cheap. It was noted that the survey will likely be filled with some very negative commentary -- assuming that it's in a format allowing for text entry. I'd just like to point out that if I were the person who had to compile all those survey responses, the ones I would be LEAST likely to pay attention to were the ones that contained vitriol. For one, it makes me ill to read it, and for two, it's simply rude. I would hope that the level of passion displayed translates well when the opportunity arrives -- no CS person is paid to be yelled or cursed at, and often times have permission to simply hang up. Far more flies with honey and sh*t, not quite as many with vinegar and piss

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

oh yeah! I'll go with you there -- move that damned body part selection thingy. And context menus would be nice (hell, even Bryce, which uses the same core interface elements, has context menus). I'd like to see some things change, for sure -- I just hate the thought of losing the method for moving things around in poser -- bulky as it is and all, I finally got the hang of it! lol I just ask that they don't take the lead of Photoshop in interface design. I do so dislike that. Workflow has never been a Poser strong suit -- look at the wishlist for Poser 4 and you'll see that most of it was workflow related as well. And dang it -- they could at least recognize the developments of the existing format and make allowances for them! MATs, MORs, ERC, all that good stuff. I'd like to be able to make my own library sections, not be limited to the core ones. My workflow runs along the lines of stage design -- set gets built first, the the costuming, then the play. But I do use all sorts of hints for each of them along the way -- so access to them immediately would be great -- I hate being told that "this" is the only way to do something when it comes to creating (could be why I hate scriptwriting so much). Boy -- that wishlist can't come soon enough for this girl!

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

"Poser 5 SR3 is choking on P4 (3GHz HT 800MHz FSB) with 2GB DDR 400 (dual channel), XP Pro."

Works like a charm on my 2.8, you might want to look into other causes.

"the reason dynamic hair can`t be used like a normal object is because Poser 5 exports just the vertices and not the facets or polygons."

The is extremely common in high end hair renders plug ins. Generally speaking the hair is handled as an effect based on hair splines (in poser it is a vert chain). Hell, in Maya even today the hair and fur cannot be rendered in mental Ray - a rendering engine included with the packadge.

Hair is not your "normal" set of polygons in most applications... poser included.

That being said.... BodyStudio imports them into Maya and Max :)

"Works like a charm on my 2.8, you might want to look into other causes." Ditto. I found it a bit slow on my previous machine (1.6GHz, 1 Gig ram, Win XP home), but on my present computer I can't really complain about the speed at all (2.8GHz, 2 Gig ram, win XP home). In fact, on this machine P5 consistently gets stuff done faster than P4PP on the previous machine. I was one of the people who did a lot of cussing and ranting about P5 when it first appeared (and I still think it deserved it back then). But now, at the SR3 stage (and with SR4 coming) it is a heck of a program. Still far from perfect - but so was Poser 4. And there's nothing else of the same quality remotely in the price range. I'm a convert! Morph

Poser 6? Oughtta be free to all of us who purchased Poser 5 if it's just a working version with no new features. MIGHT be willing to concede 20$ to cover box and disc production costs, but that's it. Wish list for fixes? DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR HORRIBLY MESSY FOLDER SYSTEM!! As a DAZ platinum club member for quite a while now, I have a LOT of stuff, most of it impossible to find. I would like to see an organization system that branches from figure model... IE. if you put Victoria 3 in a scene and have her selected, all associated folders for her are shown on the folder list... morph injections, textures, figure specific clothing. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO GO THROUGH AND CREATE SEPERATE RUNTIMES FOR EACH CHARACTER JUST TO BE ABLE TO FIND THINGS! Organizing models into a usable folder system should be the program's job, not mine. Also, improve load and render times. If DAZ's studio can load in mere seconds, Poser has no excuse.

In response to the post by ynsaen on the subject of exporting dynamic hair, I searched the net again and found the very tutorial (listed below) I mentioned in my first posting. To be fair, Ime not sure who is right, you or I, but if you read this tutorial I think you might agree with my frustration because it becomes obvious that it is indeed possible, the proof is clearly visible in the first picture that appears. So, there you have it! If this guy can work it out, then surely CL have the ability. The question is, will they fix it so that we dont have to go through such a long time consuming method. Just think about it everyone, if they fix this, well all be able to render our figures with proper-looking hair in any .obj compatible renderer. Oh well, here`s that tutorial: http://segartmedia.tripod.com.mx/tutorial/

I'd already seen that tutorial, and I'd like to note that part of it involves making a change to the object file -- IE changing the object's contruction. Those letters actually change the way the object is "created" -- which is why the results of the export are both Huge (it's forcing a change to a standard polygon, which the hair is not properly composed of) and rather ugly (by forcing the change, one creates all sorts of nasty little new things in there). Body Studio does translate dynamic hair -- something that was made clear at the CL site from the very start was that P5 would include Plug-ins for export of the newer features. Vue also can translate dynamic hair (and via a much better job than that tutorial), although it does require some hoop jumping. As for organizing the models as per the previous post -- in order for that to happen, there would need to be a set and establised method for marking not only what a figure was, but also what went to that figure -- which would be fine going forward if the spec is made clearly available, but will still leave you with a gazillion odd folders from what you currently have to mess around with. Which leads me to something I've rolled around in my head regarding this: perhaps a database style CMS would be useful for poser -- although it would require several more steps in the install process when adding new third party content (I'm not foolish enough to ask a company to support something they didn't create). Something like, for example, the way that Outlook handles data types. (now don't shoot me for that, all, Outlooks data system is pretty darn good. It's the rest of the proggy that drives ya bonkers, lol)

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

"Just think about it everyone, if they fix this, we`ll all be able to render our figures with proper-looking hair in any .obj compatible renderer." I can already render it in Max and Maya... so all is well :) BTW - I read the page you pointed at - what a messy way to do this. For anyone who doesn't want to wade through it, the instructiosn take the little bit of data they can glean from an .obj export and use it (with a copy, shift, spline step and a whole lot of other trickery) to sometimes generate valid tube like geometry. They then duplicate and deform this till it looks kind of like hair. The end result has very little in common (other than basic shape) with the Poser hair you started with and maintains none of the settings and actual hair density of Poser native hair. Its a cute hack that will sometimes get you something that looks like hair - but to say that this means it is a "simple" step for Curious Labs to build in doesn't fly - because if they DID build it in I would expect the result to have much more in common with the Poser hair than that page results in. It's a little more complex, and your instructions indicate this :)

Ide just like to thank those who responded to my banter on exporting dynamic hair. Ime thinking, hey meybe it wasnt such a bad idea to bring up the subject in this forum, because at the end of the day youve kinda solved my problem for me! At least now I, and others, will know how to get that hair into another program. Its just unfortunate for me that I cant afford MAX/BODYSTUDIO or MAYA. However, I think I will download a demo of VUE and see how good that one handles the hair. Thanks!!!

Attached Link: http://www.nstk.com

My wish list for poser 6.

Better memory management. I don't care how long it takes to render. I just don't want to find out that 300 frames into an animation it ran out of memory and crashed. Come on I've got 2GB of dual channel memory and it still can't handle some of my renders.
A walk designer where you can add some body bounce. Take breasts. When a woman walks her breasts will bounce slightly, so will arms and belly(if it's big enough). Also the walk designer needs to do more than walk. How about walk, jump, fall and get up again etc.
Better Runtime management. Let's say I own 20 different buildings. I should be able to have a folder called buildings and in that folder would be the runtimes of each of my 20 buildings.

4)Why would I "what" dynamic hair for pass through my characters body during an animation. I can't think of one example where I'd want that to happen, yet I have to set collisions for each body part, Set "Do collisions" in the hair room and turn on collisions for poser in general. Why? Collisions for hair should be the default. And then with all of that set the hair will still pass through the body.

Like hair, breasts, belly, shoulders etc should be effected by gravity and motion. When the character is walking every time a foot hits the ground that should send a shock wave through the body, just like in the world.

About computer requirements.

I don't think any computer has got that it takes to deal with poser 5. I use a rather slow machine to do development work on, 1.7AMD w/1.5gb ram. I wouldn't dream of trying to render with it. To render I have two other systems with 3.0 P4 and 2GB of dual channel memory. They're both water cooled (Thermaltake AquariusII) with 4 seventy-five watt Peltier chillers on the water holding tank. I have the Mother boards (ABIT IC7-MAX3) overclocked to the max and still there are some scenes that the rendering machines can't handle. What make it really sad is, half way through a 600 frame amimation rendering poser 5 will throw in the towel and lock up. And you just wasted 24 hours of computer time to get nothing. CL really needs to address how is renders animations. So if you're thinking about upgrading your machine for Poser 5...don't. Wait until CL learns how to write a program or better yet maybe CL programers should have to "use" Poser 5 and post their work on Renderosity. To tell you the truth, it's almost like the poeple who write Poser don't use it. If they did it would be easy to use.

FYI, long anination + smaller bucket size = sucess. If you are doing a long sequence render with a bucket size of 16 or less. Further render to image sequence, then if something blows after 2 day of cooking you can just pickup where you left off. Nerd

Fixing the displacement shadow bug would make me (almost) happy.

Attached Link: http://www.nstk.com

Hi Nerd, Sorry, I'm new to Poser and do not know what bucket size means. ninasteel

In the Render Options there is a setting called "Bucket Size" It effects how large an area Poser renders in one bite. The bigger the bite the faster it works, BUT the more likely it is to have memory problems (These are supposed to be fixed in SR 4, fingers crossed). So, when you are rendering a long animation, especially unattended you should set the bucket size to aroung 16. This will greatly reduce the chances of it render getting stuck. Nerd

"Like hair, breasts, belly, shoulders etc should be effected by gravity and motion. When the character is walking every time a foot hits the ground that should send a shock wave through the body, just like in the world." What your asking for is not available automatically even on systems like Max + Motionbuilder (a total cost of almost 5,000$). While it would be nice, and useful - it just plain isn't goign to happen in this price range... nor would many take the time to do the complex setup that woudl be neded for a less automatic system (liekt he ones Motionbuilder uses). Most people don't event ake the time to learn dynamic cloth - and Daz hasn't taken the time to learn to support it.

My wish list:

Fix all extant memory leaks.
Augment the cloth modeler's particle engine to allow all objects to have mass assigned to their vertices, spring constants to the inter-vertex edges, and similar force fields to the edge angles and possible edge torsion angles as in molecular mechanics. This would allow "body bounce" as mentioned by several posters. "Mass maps," "Softness Maps." and "Elasticity Maps" would be needed to parameterize bounciness and fleshiness.
Evolve cloth simulator to allow much finer-grained cloth models to allow realistic draping, folding, and wrinkling, and to avoid the strange tearing of coarser cloth models.
Evolve the walk engine into a scriptable motion and gesture engine. Perhaps using XML, users could write scripts to define complex behaviors on a scene by scene basis. Such XML scripts could reference other scripts to define simultaneous movements, facial expressions, and gestures within a single figure, as well as simultaneous movement of different figures. Time points could be set to ensure precise coincidence of motion.
Improved physics engine for above.
Provide a GNU/Linux version, e.g. use wxWindows or QT KDE or something for the GUI?
Open source the basic Poser engine so that the above improvements can be made in a reasonable amount of time without Curious Labs or Poser users needing Hollywood blockbuster budgets. Curious Labs could make money selling additional content, behavior scripts, maps for bounciness and fleshiness for existing figures, training videos, and other products. If DAZ wants to invade Poser's turf, CL will have to invade DAZ's.
Add compatibility with POV Ray, or better yet allow its use as some kind of a plug-in renderer. It is much better and more versatile than Poser's. POV Ray scene files are human-readable, and fantastic scenes can be hand-coded. It is easy to generate and manipulate elements with macros and external programs written in any programming language. If Poser scenes could be written in POV Ray format, a huge amount of resources would be made available. PoseRay can do a lot of that already.

"Open source the basic Poser engine so that the above improvements can be made in a reasonable amount of time without Curious Labs or Poser users needing Hollywood blockbuster budgets. Curious Labs could make money selling additional content, behavior scripts, maps for bounciness and fleshiness for existing figures, training videos, and other products."

Some of the other suggestions are interesting... but I don't see this one as practical or useful for CL.

Despite the protestations of much of the OpenSource community, the final result of something like this would be the complete and utter destruction of most of the value and competitive advantage that Curious Labs possesses.

The disadvantage (the complete loss of control over their intellectual property and the sum total of all the effort and investment it represents) will never be offset by any profit in selling maps and so on - Daz barely makes a living doing this kind of thing already, and the Poser market isn't nearly large enough for two such companies at the moment.

Curious Labs is in a good position at the moment to hang on to their intellectual property - they have the resources of e-frontier on board and their would be competitor is finding out that building a tool like this is much harder than they thought it would be. In other words, there isn't one good reason to give away the source code.

The theoretical idea that they would gain a large development base, let alone one that could make significant and useful contributions to the code base is not born out by most of the OpenSource projects in the world - the vast majority of them fail to garner any useful level of developer interaction and event he few that do usually get most of their core features from a development group no larger than the one they would have had commercially.

The case of Curious Labs is, to me, a great example of when NOT to OpenSource. They intellectual property has great value as it is mostly unique, the customer base is fairly large and retail distribution is in hand. They have recently acquired access to dramatically larger resources of both money and technical support (e-frontier) and the chance to mingle technology with a product that has significant features to add (Shade). Why would they give all that away now to become a company selling weight maps.

"Add compatibility with POV Ray, or better yet allow its use as some kind of a plug-in renderer. It is much better and more versatile than Poser's."

Before Firefly this might have been important, but Firefly is an extremely competent renderer - there isn't anything to gain by using POV.

Sorry, soulhunter, but POV has many features that poser is lacking, and their development staff isn't aware of. It handles radiosity much better, and there is no param of the media that you can't control. I won't go as far as to say textures are easy, but when you control every aspect of them, getting what you want may be time consuming, but not all that difficult. Making a front end that would interface the two might be the best thing CL could do. Letting poser do nothing but generate and pose characters, then leave the rest for POV, and 99.9% of my frustrations with poser would disappear. Most of my frustration comes from posers abysmally lousy light control, and a generally screwed up light system to begin with. Many programs already export to POV, and many are proud of it. It's probably the most versatile and powerful rendering engine available.

"It handles radiosity much better"

My mistake, it seems that recently POV has added a form of photon mapping and that is something that as far as I know Firefly doesn't have.

But I wouldn't trade that for the lack of micro poly displacement (POV doesn't mention it, but then there isn't a complete feature list I can find on the website). I can simulate radiosity easily enough... but displacement mapping is too cool to live without these days.

"It's probably the most versatile and powerful rendering engine available."

Surely you meant to qualify that with the words "free and open source" (even that isn't something I would grant with total ease). Clearly POV, while cool, isn't really in the same league in either features or speed as the big engines (Renderman, Mental Ray, Brazil, VRay and so on).

I think you are confusing the engine and the interface. With the exception of Radiosity, I don't know a single feature POV supports that Firefly lacks.. and I know of at least one that apparently POV doesn't have that Firefly does. It's pretty much a toss up.

If you don't like the lighting in Poser that's certainly understandable - but don't think POV is the answer, because it isn't the rendering engine that is the problem. Slapping POV ray into it isn't going to change anything as very few Poser users will be bothered (nor should they) hand coding a scene.

While I am sure a Poser->POV converter is cool and interesting and useful, I just don't see it as something CL should spend their time on when they have both Firefly and potentially the excellent Shade renderers available to them.

Ummm, Well. Here's a quickie fer ya. to the left of the vertical column in the sorta middle,is the actual image. To the right is a reflective plane, nothing else. Mayadoll rendered "no_image" the shiny post rendered "no_reflection" the sphere endered "no_shadow" Some pretty good reasons for mixing the two. Light is one point source, the "walls" and "floor" are only infinite planes, had them textured with nice stone, but the .jpeg was like 260k, so the textures had to go. Didn't use radiosity or media, at 1500 X 1200 it might be done tomorrow if I had.

I can come up with all sorts of ways to test the odd edges of render engines ... the issue is do they matter for the use most users will put them too :) Let me put this a simply as I can. Micropolygon displacement is far more important to me and those I work with than being able to selectively show or hide items in reflections. I am also not at all sure that it isn't something that can be done in Firefly :) However, if such abilities become important then I am sure they exist in the Shade engine :)

Ummm, sorry, but I didn't hide the reflection of Mayadoll, you see that clearly, and you see her shadow. It's her reflection that you see. ====================================== However, if such abilities become important then I am sure they exist in the Shade engine :) ======================================= If they are, the price of shade is going to be too much to pay for those three keywords. Working on another render, inside four walls with a ceiling on it, one point light, not a (giggle, snort) spotlight. "Full house" render, media, radiosity, maybe by tomorrow.

"her reflection that you see."

Ah, I see. Cute. Doesn't change anything :)

"If they are, the price of shade is going to be too much to pay for those three keywords."

But it won't be too much to pay for a good rendering engine that is superior to POV and comes with an actual user interface, full on modeling and animation functions and all the rest of it. WHiel the PD front ends for POV are interesting in their own way, like Blender they simply fall far short of what the commercial folks put out in even the mid range.

Hey, if POV does what you need then more power to ya, go forth render and multiply. It's a moderately competent render engine that while somewhat behind the current state of the art is still serviceable... especially for the price. You even have utilities that will let you use Poser files with it.

What I am unsure of is why it would be important or useful for Curious Labs to take on the support problems of having to write a converter and do customer support for it when they have access to better technology that they can control, as opposed to an open source project that would not in any way put much priority on their needs.

What, exactly, would be the business advantage of switching to POV? They lost capabilities that are are the moment in extremely high demand, they lose their ability to direct the development of the renderer and they have to then support it.

There is absolutely no upside for CL that I can see.

"Working on another render, inside four walls with a ceiling on it, one point light, not a (giggle, snort) spotlight. "Full house" render, media, radiosity, maybe by tomorrow."

I must be missing something, is this render (or the features you list) supposed to be an advocacy for POV? The features that POV has are far from unique or particularly impressive... and they fall far short of those included in the high end systems that are the next logical jump up from Shade and Firefly.

I LIKE POV. I played with it a long time ago and I still check in on it from time to time... but my urge to use it as the wonder tool for all things rendered faded when I saw what a real 3d integrated application can do for me.

A common problem of some Open Source advocates is that they fail to realize that it is rarely a good idea for a company to open all it's code and that in specialized areas with high R&D costs (like 3D) the OSS community simply isn't usually the best way to get the code done.

The one thing that stops most folks from using POV is the lack of a decent interface. Make that, an easy to use interface. Something simple, because most people like to think about what they are making, not how to do it. It is not a "better" engine than firefly -- it's just different. Each of them supports certain functions that the other does not, and, as noted, if they work, cool. I like Poseray, but I've used it less and less with what firefly offers me. I do a lot of special effects and stuff, and you know, the scripts to do what I do take forever to create, forever and a day to render, and still don't look as good as the stuff it takes me 15 minutes to setup in firefly or the old p4 renderer. The lighting, however, is much better. When someone creates an interface for POV that lets me use my 3000 pixel textures with a preview and the ability to modify them without typing in some pretty damned arcane math forumlae, I'll be thrilled (provided it can render faster -- POV is slower than firefly on the same images). And I have asked for a POV exporter. I think it would be cool. But do I want it in poser? No. Not at all, not in any way. As well, based on the licensing for it, neither do the folks developing POV, since CL is a for profit company, and really, really unlikely to opensource their hard work. Open source is not a viable business model for them at this time. If they open source the core aspects of Poser, they lose the ability to license it, since the programs primary file formats are entirely text-based. Training videos at this point would do them no good -- they can't lock the market there, and anyone willing to put in the time at present can learn about every single feature of poser 4 simply by reading whats been collected and created already. Invading DAZ's turf through open source isn't wise. DAZ is not making D|S open source. Claiming the higher ground will simply allow the competetion -- which is still developing at this point -- access to the very core elements that they are trying to mimic -- gee, does that make reverse engineering easier or what? About the only way right now CL will make money from content is if they hire the best and the brightest from the shops that currently exist. They have been trying to set up the system for it, but it seems folks really, really hate the uselessness of Content Paradise. You are right, they need to invade back, and, in true business wisdom, leverage what they do have already up so that they can gain a foothold in a market that they have not been involved with. This is pretty serious stuff, mind you -- it will require them to create stuff that is not just the same old same old and takes advantage of very specific features within Poser. This is Not easy to do when the bulk of the "names" aren't real fond of you, lol. side note: Content Paradise was the first step CL made. Was it before or after D|S? hee hee Also, I'll note that the lighting system in poser itself would not be fixed by POV incorporation -- anymore than it was by adding firefly. No, that's an issue that requires reworking internally within poser. And I agree -- the things I wish for most are lighting based. Oddly enough, firefly has a lot of lighting based aspects to it, and Shade (which, btw, has all of the features of POV and almost all of of firefly, and is better, and runs, in "pro form" about 1500 bucks) has the lighting system that I would like to see. (puts on thinking cap. Gee, licensing costs just went way down) lastly, just cause I gotta after all this, I wanna say that I really, really want a point light.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

"Rebuild the code base from scratch you like you said you would for Poser5" Where did they say that? And who said it? Metacreations stated that, and they went off and sold all the parts off. I've never seen CL say that. Not once. I would like to see that.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

One more try, and see if renderslowcity times out again. Rhino, Amapi and some others incorporate POV export, what's the problem? Once you have the scene file, minus lights in POV, adding a light is only clicking a menu item and telling it where to put it. If you want to change the color, no big thing, falloff and intensity are very easy to control. You can even add radiosity, media, fog, and many other effects with little or no problem. Some just a click, others, a click and change the few numbers. Doesn't matter, my rendering engine is POV, and poser is only a way to pose a figure, that I use damn seldom anyhow.

"Once you have the scene file, minus lights in POV, adding a light is only clicking a menu item and telling it where to put it." That sort of type/render/fix problem? I have better things to do with my time. I want previews of my lights as I place them... and light cameras to adjust falloff and so on. It works for you, thats cool... but it isn't a genrally useful solution :)

It works for you, thats cool... but it isn't a genrally useful solution :) ============================ It's far, far, better than what poser and firefly offer. Some here have done pretty well with posers lights, but I'm willing to bet that they took more time screwing with the arcade game dials to get them than it takes me to set up a light in POV. It doesn't take long, and one soon becomes aware of the general behavior of light, and setting falloff is something I usually only have to do once for each scene. IF it didn't work right, then it was the result of the way I was thinking of the light, and where I was wrong is evident before the render is even half done. With POV, I stop the render and start over, with poser, I have to stop the render, jump through all the hoops, control-alt-delete, run scandisk, then reboot poser. Something there, in either poser or firefly, is definitely screwed, and nobody is inclined to fix it.

" I have to stop the render, jump through all the hoops, control-alt-delete, run scandisk, then reboot poser." Then something is seriously wrong with yoru installation, and I would look into it further. Me? I hit "cancel", move the lights or adjust the params and re-render. But liek I said, if you seriousl consider a text file to be the most useful way to set up a complex 3D scene then your welcome to it :)

(Me? I hit "cancel", move the lights or adjust the params and re-render.) And then you wait until poser finally stops, and wait more until it will clear the screen so you can do something else. The problem is either with poser or firefly, everything else I have runs just fine. While you're at it, move a point light inside a closed building. Assign that light to come from any given object. I often assign the light sources to come from objects, such as light bulbs, candle flames, lamps, but then, one would expect the light to come from such objects. Neither poser or POV are going to replace the other, I can't see any reason that poser can't support a POV output as many of the much more expensive and capable programs do. Were poser to offer such a thing as a point source light, I might find it useful for more than just posing figures. as it is, I do not.

"While you're at it, move a point light inside a closed building. Assign that light to come from any given object. I often assign the light sources to come from objects, such as light bulbs, candle flames, lamps, but then, one would expect the light to come from such objects."

The issue is not whether sometimes abilities are needed that Poser doesn't have - there are. The issue is this sort of odd belief that POV ray is a significant rendering engine for Curious Labs to support.

It isn't.

Much better for CL to continue working with Reiss-Studio to improve support for serious applications that their users can get some mileage out of. Long before it is important to give Poser users the ability to start mucking with text files it makes sense to let them use Max, or Carrara or Shade or Lightwave. The renderers are better than POV and the interfaces beat the heck out of a text file.

Had the suggestion simply been "help support the Poser->POV scene conversion project" I would not have objected. But it wasn't, it was this statement...

"It's probably the most versatile and powerful rendering engine available."

POV is many things, but it isn't even close to "the most versatile and powerful" rendering engine. Not even in the same league really as the big players in that technology. That's my contention here.

That and the other suggestion that somehow CL would be better off open sourcing their codebase.

Would point lights be good? Yup. IS Open Sourcing Poser and using POV as the renderer the answer? Heck no. Working to support the Shade renderer and the Shade interface into the Poser workflow is the right way to do this for CL.

Open source poser? I don't think so, just some way of allowing others to write plug-ins other than "poser Python". If some of the higher buck programs can boast that they support POV-Ray output, what is so strange about wanting the bottom of the line program to do it? Would Rhino support it if there wasn't a good reason? Or Amapi? I don't think so.

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: SR4 due out in January/February