I've read the descriptions, but I'm still not sure what they do. There are four products, two each for P5 and P4/PP. The person who made them is someone named "P.C. Bos." Do I need these?

I was wondering that also...then decided that I'd managed without them for this long so............... ;-) Gill

Gill

       

Er, what are these products, please?

I'm not sure what they are. But they're in the DAZ store, in the "published artists" section. Sort by newest first, and they'll be right on top.

Do I need these? Look good, like they could be some really useful tools unfortunatly they are to expensive for my budget.

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Also rather confusingly labelled. What does "works in Poser 4 sr3" actually mean...? (This was one of the Pro Pack tool sets)

sr = service release. They want you to have the latest patches/updates from Curious Labs installed. It may be that it requires something that was fixed in the service release 3 or that they don't have any way of testing it with earlier releases so they won't claim to be compatable with anything earlier.

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That's what's confusing -- P4 doesn't have any sr's, just AFAIK the one update to 4.0.3. It's P5 that has (and needed) all those sr's. Maybe (yet another) case of DAZ not properly proofreading the supplied product blurb...?

ProPack definitely did have SR's, and you need to have the last one (4.2.1.179) if you're going to run any Python scripts at all. Previous SR's would "pretend" to run Python but give all sorts of strange errors.

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Ah, confusion solved. It should have said "ProPack sr3" not "Poser 4 sr3". Thanks, Ockham.

Zoom Tools, I believe, has been around for awhile. I don't see a need for them myself. I am always leery of any Poser Programs/Utilities until they've been around awhile and had some good reviews. Too many seem to be lacking. This quote from the product description of Pose Tools for Poser 5 looks rather weird: "- give Vicky the feathers of the Great Tit or make the Great Tit have Vicky's Eyes.: The Great Tit?!

Message edited on: 12/31/2004 11:31

"The Great Tit?!"
I belive a Great Tit is a bird, but then again a bird in England is a girl, but I don't know if thay means they have great.......
Never mind, going back to sleep now

Message edited on: 12/31/2004 11:53

Daz has(or had) a bird called the Great Tit in their store.

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Jeff

Renderosity Senior Moderator

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Uh, you think they would have reconsidered the name of the bird, since they're supposed to be a "family store."

It's a bird name. If people are immature enough to get their panties in a knot over "bush tit", (the name my mother called a tiny bird that swarmed our property), then they should probably still be in diapers. ;)

There is also a bird in America called a Titmouse, and another one called a Dickie-bird.

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Jeff

Renderosity Senior Moderator

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Got to love good old American style ;O) we've got a weird name for almost everything!

Hey, the Brits have a steamed pudding called "spotted dick". We come by it honestly. ;)

Well America is known as the land of the prudes, and we're often reminded that this is a Family Site, and nudity is not appreciated, along with certain "adult language." On the other hand, the good ole tit is just dandy.

Why do you think my gallery is gone, Bobbie? ;) Viva la tit!

I haven't seriously looked at galleries for a year or more, and have only posted one submission in the past year. Yes, viva la tit!

What's really weird is although the Tit bird has breasts it doesn't produce milk.

I read that the word "rooster" came into use because folks didn't want to say "cock."

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Same with "rabbit" which replaces coney or cunny. In the same way, the word "pussy" is heading for oblivion from polite society.

Hey get back off topic about the galleries will yuh? Don't go gettin off topic about language. That will get the post moved to another forum. :)

Judging from the responses, I'd say either no one bought the utilities, or no one cares. I just haven't been too impressed by the Poser utilities found at DAZ or Renderosity. PBooost, CorrectReference Pro, Injection Pose Builder and The Tailor are the only ones that were useful.

I hardly ever use The Tailor or PBooost any more (I prefer to use external Runtimes, and Poser 5's sub-directories, rather than all those Banks for PBooost) There is really no tech support for The Tailor. You either know it or you don't. You can get tech support for CorrectReference Pro. The best bet is to visit hogwarden's web site on a regular basis.

Beyond the products listed, I've wasted lots of money on Poser Utilities that just don't seem to do the job, and get lackluster support at best.

Message edited on: 01/02/2005 07:42

Message edited on: 01/02/2005 07:43

Attached Link: http://www.pcbos.nl/3D.htm

Hello all, Don pointed me to this thread, and I had some fun with this Tit thing, I must say. But of course, it is the name of the poor bird, and I can't help that. About my Tools, the POSETools and the ZOOMTools, recently released by DAZ: they can do an awful lot, so it's no wonder you didn't quite get what they can do, at first reading. I fully understand that, but I want to be as specific as I can in describing to the user what he or she can expect. In short: the PoseTools allow you to save MAT-Files, true P5 or P4, save multiple figures all together in one pose file, apply parts of any poses from any P3-P4 or P5 Pose file, apply parts of any MAT files P4 or P5, apply texture to props, save poses from props as if they were figures; lots of options to include Body-, scale,or XYZ data in the Pose file, or to posefiles apart, a file browser with short cuts and so on, and so on. You can think of the ZoomTools as a sort of Swiss knife for views. Even if you never need the zoom function (which I like, because I work a lot with imported models), you might enjoy it's functionality in the setup room, or the fact you can save unlimited views in a practical, databasy sort of way. You can think of the ZoomTools as a Large Bag of Camera buttons, except for the fact that the views are unlimited in number, and that you can give each view a name, and order them the views in groups that you can give a practical name; export and import functions for the views are also in- well,I could go on. If you're interested, you can go to http://www.pcbos.nl/3D.htm There is a full manual available on the POSETool's pages, as well as on the ZOOMTools' pages there. Cheers, Paul Christiaan

Attached Link: http://www.pcbos.nl/3D.htm

Unfortunately your response merely repeats what is already in the Product Description. And that description left us with more questions.

The web page link brought me to a page with a title, and no way of proceding beyond that. Message edited on: 01/04/2005 13:27

Message edited on: 01/04/2005 13:28

Attached Link: Must have missed a button on the referring page

Hi Bobbie, You use IE I suppose? the page refers to the Poser page, and has buttons in case you can't be referred- you must have missed those. Try http://www.pcbos.nl/Poser_Website/Poser_Web.html to get there. What my response concerns: the Tools give so much flexibility, that less is almost impossible, and would most certainly become blurblike- which I hate doing. But here it is, in a nutshell: the POSETools can do anything to and with poses, also the things that were quite impossible before; the ZOOMTools can do anything with views, including stuff that was quite impossible before, and will save the serious Poser user quite a LOT of time. Cheers, Paul Christiaan

What I don't understand is why I would want to do all these things. I can already apply any texture to anything I want. I have P5-MAT writer to make MAT files. I can't save the poses of a hundred figures at once, but why would I want to do that? I couldn't ever render it. I mean, why not just save the pz3, instead of a multiple pose? If I wanted to apply that pose, would I have to load up 50 Vickies and 50 Mikes first? That doesn't seem like it saves much time.

And I couldn't see anything on your front page, either. No buttons, no nothing. I use Firefox. If I can't even get your Web site to work, I have to wonder how I'll fare with your software...

I also use Firefox, and have found that there are certain sites that it just doesn't play well with. Doesn't make the site bad. Doesn't make Firefox bad. I use Paul's Environment Creator and can tell you that I have faired quite well with it.

Well, yeah...but it doesn't work in Firefox, and it doesn't work with IE. That sort of screens out an awful lot of customers, wouldn't you say?

I used the original link, and apparently got two different screens opening. OH, you're doing pop-ups or "pop-under" screens. No wonder I couldn't load it before. I block that stuff with Firefox, and IE. Oh and then I get a message about needing some new plugins. Sorry. I won't go there. Good luck with your product.

Thats Odd, Randym77. It worked for me in IE.

I copied the link below while I was there and it seems to work in both IE and Firefox.

http://www.pcbos.nl/Poser_Website/Poser_Web800.html

(Sorry, I do too much lurking and not enough posting, so didn't know how to format that link. But it should get you in with Firefox and I think you'll see that it is far from a rinky dink web site.)

Attached Link: http://www.pcbos.nl/3D.htm

I used the original link as indicated in this message. I don't have time for web sites with all the fancy stuff, or web sites that rely on popups or pop-under screens.

Is your version of IE updated? The last security patch from Microsoft blocked Active X, so if you have that stuff on your site, anyone who uses XP's "automatic update" function (or anyone who manually updates their copy of IE regularly) will not see your buttons. Or whatever it is that's there.

Personally, I prefer "rinky-dink" web sites. Plain ol' HTML for me. Java, Flash, ActiveX, etc., are usually just annoying. If they actually do add functionality, fine, but to use them for the sake of using them drives me nuts. Heck, that's why I hang out here at Rosity. They keep Java, Flash, etc., to a minimum.

I dont have these tools, cant really afford them, but i do see their uses

I can already apply any texture to anything I want.

this appears to allow you to selectivly apply them. i.e. just to the body if you want or just to the arms etc.

I have P5-MAT writer to make MAT files.

is that the one by netherworks? i dont mean to knock that one but it is a bit of a pain to go thru and select every material zone before you run the script.

and i imagine this program also allows you to make (and apply?) mats for the props without having to manualy attach a null figure (correct me if im wrong)

I can't save the poses of a hundred figures at once, but why would I want to do that? ... If I wanted to apply that pose, would I have to load up 50 Vickies and 50 Mikes first? That doesn't seem like it saves much time.

I dont know about you, but i use more than naked vickies and naked mikes in my picts ;-) . I dont think i got anywere near 100 figures in anything i do, but if i got a program like this it would be nice to know it could do more than i will ever possibley ask of it.

geez I'm begining to sound like an advertisement for this product i dont even have :-P

By the looks of this stuff, the things it does are not imposilbe to accomplish without the program. the program just makes it a heck of a lot easier and faster to accomplish.

In my opinion it comes down to either save some time by spending money, or save some money and spend some time.

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this appears to allow you to selectivly apply them. i.e. just to the body if you want or just to the arms etc.

But that's the way the Material Room works...isn't it?

is that the one by netherworks? i dont mean to knock that one but it is a bit of a pain to go thru and select every material zone before you run the script.

So far as I know, there's no way around that if you're using P5 nodes. Even Hogwarden's new MAT writer requires you to select every material zone in order to create P5 MATs. If this utility has found a way around that, then it might be worth checking out. But I'd have thought it was impossible, because of the way Poser 5 handles shader nodes and such.

But that's the way the Material Room works...isn't it? Material room only applies to one material zone at a time. there isnt a way to apply to multiple zones at the same time with the material room. MAT files apply to all zones that were writen into the MAT file. with this program you can apparently apply materials selectivly to multiple zones. and (given the tit example) you can apply MATs to figures they were not intended to be used on. so for example you could take a MAT that was written to apply a texture to David's Milluium mapped ultra bodysuit and apply it to M3's hips, body, nipples and legs to give him a short sleeve second skin body suit without having to write a new MAT or go into material room and apply the texture to each zone one at a time. as for the p5 mats, i guess we'll have to ask paul about that. i get the impression that it will work.

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I'm just really skeptical about the P5 support. The descriptions for the PP and P5 versions don't seem much different. And I remember when I bought Material Manager from DAZ last year. It claimed to do many of the same things this does. It also claimed to be Poser 5 compatible - but it wasn't. Not only did it completely ignore any shader nodes you were using, it didn't even change material colors correctly, because of P5's habit keeping material settings in memory. (I think that was the first product I ever returned to DAZ for a refund.)

Personally, my money is scarce, and I won't take a chance on any more Poser utilities at least till several people have already bought and reviewed the utilities. And I need to hear more that just a repetition of the ad.

I don't have a lot of money to put into utulities or poser addons, so I always listen to the reviews and look for examples of work done with them (the promo pics posted by the one selling it don't count) before I'll part with my money.

---

Jeff

Renderosity Senior Moderator

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FWIW, the site (original link) works fine for me in IE6 with Google's pop-up blocker running. I didn't get any prompts for plug-ins or other strange behavior. It loads fast and I'm on dial-up. Regrading the features, most of them sound beyond my modest needs with Poser 4. I can see the value of being able to apply selectively MATs to a figure with parented/conformed props/figures. PZ3s are notoriously large and prone to corruption. If you can save the pose data in a smaller file and apply it, it would be faster to just load up the figures and apply the pose(s) rather than mess with the PZ3. If you can pick and choose parts of poses, from one source, it would be nice--an arm pose from here, a hand from there etc. It sounds like there is a lot of potential here that is perhaps hard to grasp without specific examples. Also, there seems to be a lot of doubt based on other products. That's fine but this is a different product and should be judged on its own merits.. I'd say the best bet would be for him to create a demo version if possible. Also, I do think Daz offers a money back guarantee-does that apply to this product?

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Well, that's what we're asking - what does this really do, and why do we want it to do that? We already read the product description; we want to know more than that.

My doubt is not based on other products so much as on the realities of Poser 5. You have to click on each material zone to create P5 MATs, because P5 creates its shaders dynamically. If someone really found a way around this, I would expect them to be trumpeting it from the rooftops. I would also expect them to be prepared to offer proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that.

Yes, I could buy them and return them if they don't do what they say. But these products look complex enough that I might not be able to learn to use them in 30 days. And I don't want to waste my time learning new software that I might not keep. I'm trying to figure out if these products are worth my time.

I understand what you're saying. Sometimes though there's no substiture for using an application. You can read the features list and not reallg know how you might use those features without hands on experience. If I can't figure out in the first few days if I want something, it's probably too complex or not something I don't really need. Perhaps it's a waste of time but I guess I can think of plenty of other things that are equally or more of a waste yet I do those too. At least you have the trial option which you don't with many things. That's just my experience. As they say, your mileage may vary :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

I've eagerly looked at many Poser Utilities in the past few years, and unfortunately, I've been disappointed by many of them. I need to look beyond the product description, and need to know that the author will be interested in 2-way communication and support. Unfortunately, it is not a good sign if the author merely repeats the product description. I've had a few utilities where the author shows an apparent unwillingness to respond, or barely responds at all. In some cases, I haven't been informed of product updates, and that failure has cost me dearly. I'd rather read the opinions of people who buy the utility in question. Usually I have a good idea whose opinions I can trust. Then, if and when I get the money, I'll consider a purchase. In this case, I also need to compare the price of the utility to other things on my "wish list."

Yeah, I'm hoping someone else buys it and reviews it. :-)

And I have to say...the Web site may be what I find most off-putting. Maybe it's unwarranted. Maybe someone else did the Web site. But that Web site is so poorly designed that it's really scared me off the software.

Unfortunately, all too many merchants just don't get the idea when it comes to web sites. Maybe they think fancy stuff will sell. I prefer simpler web sites.

Looks like we have a classic chicken and egg scenario here. Too bad you can't get Mikey to try it first, but then Mikey will try anything. We've gone from past disappointments to the way the website looks. Next I suppose it will be reading goat entrails, chuckle. Whatever folks. Pcbos2, I suggest that if you had any beta testers, you trot them out to give testimonials otherwise, FUD is going to strangle your product in the cradle. Feel free to give me a copy. I'm certainly not the best person to try it but I'll waste a few hours and not hold a grudge :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

A Web site is a sort of software, so yeah, I think it's very relevant when the product you're trying to sell is software. Organization, functionality, and communication are the most important elements of a Web site, and they are what I look for in my software, too.

Two different skills IMO. I consider myself a fair country programmer, been making a living at it for a long time but I can't design or code webpages to save my life--one reason you usually have coders to code and designers to do websites. I won't argue with you though, rather play with my new V3 :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Heck, I don't know "web site coding," but I have a good tool (Dreamweaver) to handle the drudgery for me. I also have a very simple approach to web sites: no flash in the pan stuff, no introductory screens, etc. Just go to the site and get the job done. Poser is a great program, but obviously there are some areas that are enhanced with other software. PBooost, CorrectReference Pro, P3DO Explorer, MAT Pose Edit, Tailor, UV Mapper, are some very good examples of great Poser utilities. And there are others that aren't so great. The DAZ Poser tools might be excellent, but many of us won't know unless we hear good reviews from others.

And I have Poser, doesn't mean I can design. Some great tools have crappy websites--most programmers aren't great at UI design but the point is moot. Wait 'til you get your reviews or he redesigns his website. I'll leave you folks to it.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Attached Link: http://www.pcbos.nl/3D.htm

Hi everybody, I'm glad the discussion is getting serious again :-) About the P5 functions: yes, POSETools can write real P5 mat Files, and you can apply them with either a doubleclick, or apply parts of them - to anthing, props included- via the pz2 Analyzer. The fact that the P4 and P5 Versions have as much the same capabilities as possible has taken me many, many hours of work and testing. It sure hasn't come easy. The difference between the two is that the P5 Version has extra, Poser 5 specific functions, which Poser 4 simply cannot have. I'm sorry some of you don't seem to like the website, but I suppose there is also the question of different tastes out there:-) The site should be approachable with more or less any browser, but it turns out that Win XP Sp2 can make for some difficulty. I will check it out once I have the WinXP SP2 running. But to those of you who didnt like the site: sorry. Another thing: yes, of course the program is pretty complex- don't forget it does a multitude of VERY difficult things. But this is why each module has a number of tutorials. In principle, if you take the trouble to keep the tutorial next to the module, and do the steps that are described in there, you should be able to write/read your first multiple poses / mats in something like five minutes. Cheers, Paul Christiaan

I'd gamble that my script is quite a bit simpler than what Paul has written. Basically, it writes a temporary poser file from the object in Poser and then loads that and takes out the parts that aren't needed in a MAT file then resaves it. You might be thinking... why write a temporary file first? Well, the problem is that Poser Python is incomplete. It will not write settings like multiply through object color, multiply through highlight and so forth using only Python commands. The reason that you have to use the material room and click on each material first is because that it appears that Poser 5 writes node information "on the fly" as it opens each material - I mean this specifically in regards to opening a P4/PP created object or figure in P5. In the cr2, that node information is not natively present, so P5 builds it. It may create that information when doing a Firefly render - I haven't investigated that - but it doesn't build node information upon loading a P4/PP file. Case in point - if you use the script on an object that has 6 materials and you only click on 3 of them in the material room before running the script, guess which 3 don't get node information written (remember it's writing a full poser libary file then parsing that into what it needs). Now, if Paul has done this in a more clever or complete fashion within Poser, I think his scripts would be definately merit a closer look :) MAT Pose Edit is also another possibility to look at as it does provide batch conversions from P4 to P5 MAT files - though I'm sure by it's very nature that it isn't perfect. Nothing "automated" is always going to get things right - maybe even a good bit of the time, but not always :)

.

Attached Link: http://www.pcbos.nl/3D.htm

Hi Netherworks,

you're right, P5 handles materials in a pretty involved way!

If you use P4 MAts, things will get even more complicated than usual. It took me many, many hours of hard work to find a way around this; you might like to take a look at the Tutorials page of the POSETools for a way of converting P4 into REAL P5. A new update is on it's way to deal better with especially this problem- many Users still have their old P4 Figures- myself included. Very interesting stuff though!

I was intrigued by your Firefly remark, so I checked the Firefly angle out with the Figures I used in development of the Tools- gave me a good comparison. From what I've seen, I deduce that it Firefly DOES simulate the nodes as if they were P5- but, and this won't surprise you: you won't get any extra out of this.

The only way to create Materials that make use of all the new nodes in P5, is to go into the Material Room itself.In dealing with P4 Mats, the PoseTools, like Firefly, analyse the model and then create a P5 file from the result of that study. This "making an analogy" works pretty well for about 95% of the time, except that the POSETools may sometimes decide it would be better if a "Gradient Bump" became a real P5 bump file (for instance, when a very high value is set there, which is better expressed in P5: as I'm sure you've noticed, P5 bumps are about 15 times more powerful in changing looks than the standard P4 bump implementation); and the User may not agree with the decision. But for writing math nodes and so on, your Figure or Prop must have proper P5 mat. If it does have one, POSETools will write the real P5, and not try to figure one out.

By the way, I think it's a pretty cool that your MAT Pose Edit provides a batch conversion, now WHY didn't I think of that?:-) Good on ye mate!

Cheers,

Paul Christiaan

I agree about the material differences, then if you get into displacement mapping, there are even more options there too :D Something else I also noticed recently... Ambient color can vary greatly between P4/PP and P5 - and not Firefly rendering - I noticed this with the legacy renderer. I needed to simulate candlelight for a project and my solution made use of flooding the ambient channel a bit. What worked perfectly in PP needed adjustment in P5.

.