Attached Link: http://www.smithmicro.com/default.tpl?group=news_full&id1=433&id2=13

Quote - That is all. Begin.

Ooops, I checked before I posted, I didn't see your post.

Ohhh well.

Hey. Aren't you alowed to talk now?

Seems as if the rigging system has been updated. Are real subdivision surfaces included too?
Haven't seen something about those, but if Collada works....

Ok, it's there, but how desperate do I need it?

:b_confused:

Can I be the first to say:

 200$ to Upgrade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????

Quote :*"Seems as if the rigging system has been updated"                                                                       * Really,where do you know? That would be at least a small reason to upgrade.                                   Anything about new content?

According to the release it states "*Smith Micro Software's Consumer Group Releases New Poser Pro For Professional 3D Artists".

*I guess that rules most of us out of it then!

You can import rigged Collada models in Pro Full. Since Collada don't use Posers own rigging system, Poser should have support for Collada's system too. By the way, they wrote something about an "up to date rigging system" in the text too - and you wouldn't call the Poser standard system up to date, if you know what you write.

Yes, they wrote something about four new mendium-res figures with face room support. No names, no pictures yet.

$200!
I don't think so.

Quote - Can I be the first to say:

 200$ to Upgrade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????

You get network rendering for that, and a 64-bit renderer too. BB already hinted that they removed some bugs from firefly. You can export your pictures as hdri, so you can correct the lighting afterwards. Collada support for rigged figures isn't a small feature too. At least for me, there is improvement visible.

Seriously, which price did you expect?

Think about this one ... when we all got Poser 7 most of us got an "upgrade" price of $129 because we had already bought P6.  E-Frontier then insulted us more by giving the people who bought P6 from them P7 for free.

So, $199 isn't such a bad deal for a major upgrade.  I paid that to sidegrade my Vue from Pro Studio to Infinite.  I'll be looking at this one seriously just for the 64-bit render engine as that's the next upgrade on my computer in 2 weeks.

Same for me. I was thinking about upgrading to P7 (i have P6) for $129. Now there is an upgrade to PP from P6 for $199. It makes me thinking...

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but if you don't render in Poser, is there really a need for Poser Pro?

4/29/08

There is also a side grade to Poser Pro Basic for $149.99 (USD), as promised.

LMK

Quote - You can import rigged Collada models in Pro Full. Since Collada don't use Posers own rigging system, Poser should have support for Collada's system too.

Where did you find the information about the rigged collada model import?
**
This is from SmitMicro's Poser Pro page:
**COLLADA
Poser Pro offers Data Exchange with the industry-standard COLLADA format. Gain maximum flexibility by transporting Poser content to applications such as Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended.
Import: Geometry, Textures, Cameras, and Lights
Export: Geometry, Textures, Cameras, Lights, Morph targets, Bones, Shaders, Animation Data

Quote - By the way, they wrote something about an "up to date rigging system" in the text too - and you wouldn't call the Poser standard system up to date, if you know what you write.

On poserpro.net is a tutorial for rigging in Poser Pro.

I just stumbled across this url in the Daz Forum.[

http://www.poserpro.net/New_Index_9000.html](http://www.poserpro.net/New_Index_9000.html)

Ok, I got it wrong. The rigging tutorial on PoserPro.net looks exactly like rigging in P7 to me.

Stormy, i don't know if your question is general or addressed to me. I still render in Poser. I create Poser content, so i need Poser rendering. Though every Poser version would give me Poser rendering, i need the version that could save me the most time to be able to create more products instead of waiting my renders to finish.

Sorry Vince, I was generalising, I wasn't addressing you. I understand if you need to work in Poser the importance some of these new features will offer.
My question regards people who use Poser just for creating scenes & then importing to another app, ie Vue.
I know alot of people will appreciate the Collada feature.

Somebody who knows what they're talking about (on this subject it is not me) can correct me.

I believe the main point of Pro is to better integrate with other apps, where you intend to render. No?

In other words, if you DO render in Poser, you don't have much need for Poser Pro.

If you DO NOT render in Poser, this is supposed to make it easier to move your content, no?

For me, the neat new feature of Poser Pro (if you are rendering with it) is built-in gamma correction. Click this link for Poser Pro info on gamma correction. Open the "rendering" menu.

For ages I have pondered why Poser renders look wrong. I blamed the lighting model. I was wrong. It is because of the need for gamma correction.

Ever notice how you have to put in a ton of lights to light a scene, or use IBL to provide lots of "ambient" lighting to cover all the surfaces at all angles? Well in large part that is not the fault of lighting. Its the fault of your monitor. You are not seeing the true colors. You're seeing severely darkened surfaces. If a surface is "lit" at .5, you're actually seeing it at a level at .21. If you're surface is lit at .2 (for which you should be able to see something) your monitor displays an energy level of .029. This is pretty much invisible to you.

As a result, all the "shadows" look way too dark. All the reddish skin tones look gray.

Compare these two quick renders. I'm using a very low IBL (at intensity 20%) and a single infinite light from the side at 45%. On the left is without gamma correction. On the right is with gamma correction.

For years we've been adding lights, cranking them up really high, and messing with shaders to compensate. This created a very unnatural look, and skin often gets the yellow blowout effect. The reality is the images need to be adjusted to view them on a computer monitor.

When I looked at renders from other programs, it always seemed, particularly in an outdoor scene, that they had more "presence" - a sense of natural lighting and 3-D - that I just wasn't seeing in Poser renders. Anyone using PPro and built-in gamma correction is going to have to re-learn how to light a scene. I've been playing with it for a few weeks. This test render is nothing to be impressed by.

Of course if you're rendering in some other program, this is a moot point.

What I don't like is where it states "For extreme realism in rendered images".
It's a good selling point but how many people will be capable of achieving it?

Ok, guess I can talk now.

If you get poser pro, and have a 64 bit OS, make sure you use background rendering.. this uses the 64 bit renderer. SM claims that only "some" speedups are in place, but on my system here, I see render times about twice the speed of P7. Could be ram use, could be optimisations, all I know Is things are much faster!

I still need to set box picking to "1" in the poser ini due to ati's crap latest drivers.. May's driver supposedly corrects vista opengl issues. (I see similar issues in lightwave as well.)

Poser Pro's displacement bugs are finally squashed, and displacement is as good as anything else out there. Best quality setting in the rendering advance options are pixel samples=8, shading set to 0

All the warcow's promo renders were done in poser pro, because I could just do them so much faster then in P7.

my system:

dual core athlon 5000+, 4 gig ram, visat 64 ultimate, ati x1950 pro 512 with the latest drivers.

I understand if you render in Max, Maya or Cinema4D then this will be an asset.

Quote - What I don't like is where it states "For extreme realism in rendered images".
It's a good selling point but how many people will be capable of achieving it?

Poser content is getting better every day by quality vendors, and achiveing better renders is becoming easier and easier.

And many poser users have been buying advanced 3d applications to increase render quality.. vue6I, carerra, ect. If yo ujust stick with base settings, and lower quality freebies, no, yer not going to see much improvement, but if like most of us, you've been learning all along, you skills will just get better and better in poser pro.

Quote -
Best quality setting in the rendering advance options are pixel samples=8

I was always under the impression it was best to have pixel samples to a ratio of 3?

There's no doubt some people have produced incredibly good renders with Poser. As for realism, that's another matter.

Quote - > Quote -

Best quality setting in the rendering advance options are pixel samples=8

I was always under the impression it was best to have pixel samples to a ratio of 3?

I'm actually quoting info from poserpro.net, and from the poser pro developement team.

Quote - For me, the neat new feature of Poser Pro (if you are rendering with it) is built-in gamma correction. Click this link for Poser Pro info on gamma correction. Open the "rendering" menu.

Without decent GI support you wont get much 'HDR' in an HDR render. With IBL you will but that limits you to only what lighting you can find. And yes rendering in HDRI is very very useful as it lets you do all sorts of neat tricks in postwork. However this requires an unbiased 'raw' HDRI you can tweak in Photoshop and the like. Can that 'in built gamma curve' be turned off or is it always applied ? Also can you render to HDR formats like .hdr or .OpenEXR ? 32 bit tiffs ?

Quote - Poser Pro's displacement bugs are finally squashed, and displacement is as good as anything else out there. Best quality setting in the rendering advance options are pixel samples=8, shading set to 0

Does it support float displacement maps now ?

You can choose to use Gamma Correction or not. You can also turn it off per image node.

Quote -
Without decent GI support you wont get much 'HDR' in an HDR render. With IBL you will but that limits you to only what lighting you can find.

That depends on how much work you're willing to do. I can make an IBL probe image from any Poser scene. Put a mirror ball in the scene, zoom in on the ball, and render the reflections from the ball. You can then use that render as an IBL probe, just as if you had actually photographed a mirror ball.

And since Poser Pro can save the render to an HDRI exr format, that mirror ball probe you just made has full dynamic range built into it.

Quote - And yes rendering in HDRI is very very useful as it lets you do all sorts of neat tricks in postwork. However this requires an unbiased 'raw' HDRI you can tweak in Photoshop and the like. Can that 'in built gamma curve' be turned off or is it always applied ? Also can you render to HDR formats like .hdr or .OpenEXR ? 32 bit tiffs ?

When you do HDRI rendering, final gamma correction is disabled implicitly. The resulting image is an unbiased linear representation. SM demonstrates this on the poserpro web site. Similarly, when you use an HDRI as an input component, PoserPro assumes it is linear, and does not pre-compensate the image, as it would for LDRI.

And yes you can render to .hdr or .openexr. I'm not sure about the 32 bit tiff.

Quote - > Quote - Poser Pro's displacement bugs are finally squashed, and displacement is as good as anything else out there. Best quality setting in the rendering advance options are pixel samples=8, shading set to 0

Does it support float displacement maps now ?

 
It always did. Its just that the 8-bit images people use for displacement maps are integers 0 to 255. Poser 7 introduced the ability to read 16-bit and (I think) 32-bit TIFF files. Those produce much more precision on displacement. You can also use HDR or OpenEXR as input for displacement maps.

Since Poser 5, I have been producing displacements using procedural nodes, particularly math nodes. They have always been smooth and continuous, without any stair stepping. Internally, all shader math, including color math or numeric math, is floating point. But if you drive an algorithm with integers, such as with an 8-bit gray scale displacement map, then you get quantization.

So now that it's out, can those who are a bit more familiar with the new features comment on which are noteworthy? So far, a few lighting and rendering changes aren't enough to sway me.

Also what about the new content?

Garee - What about Lightwave and Poser Pro?  That's my only reason to even consider Poser Pro at this point and nothing has been said for some time about lightwave plugin etc.

If Lightwave and Poser are your main applications is their any benefit yet to upgrading?

I'm still on XP 32 bit, Intel 4, 3 Gb ram, and the over all performance of PP is a faster and more stable IMO. I've mostly (so far) worked with the hair room and for example is the calculating of dynamics faster.
Renders with fur looks better too.

Has anyone tested the Setup Room (ever?)

Quote - That is all. Begin.

Count me in. 

$199 ain't bad at all, IMO.  In fact, it's a lot cheaper than most appeared to be expecting.  The usual weeping & wailing which accompanies every new release will go on, anyway -- but it's just so much background noise.  I plan to enjoy myself.......I'll leave the misery up to others.

Wasn't there suppose to be some sort of built-in version of Quidam for character setup?

 
Well, it comes with a few low-poly figures. I suppose they're useful for arch vis or something where you need to put dozens of figures into a scene. You're supposed to be able to use the face room on them. I haven't tried that yet to see what it does.

Here's a render of two of the mid-res male figures. It comes with two "shaders", if you can call them that. The one in the back is the default, just using his color map. The close one has the "better" shader loaded. This one uses a toon node to make some attempt at a skin shader.

Weak.

Does the Poserfusion plugin work on 64bit?

VSS is a soon-to-be-release freebie I'm making that works on any figure. I got this by doing one click.

Click for full size.

Quote - Weak.

Hmmmm.  That is weak.  Good thing that we still have the DAZ figures.

I rarely use the default Pose figures, anyway.

Good 3rd-party figures work for me, too.  Like Rikishi.

Thanks, bagginsbill ...

Looks like I'm out on this one. 8-(

I tried to copy the pose from the male. But the IK-positioned hands didn't carry over.

Oh well. I'm not going to spend any more time on these figures. You get the idea.

It was a useful test for my shaders though!

I'd be concerned if I made a regular habit of using the default Poser figures.  But since I don't: I'm not........on that score.

 I think if you are concerned about keeping working, then Poser Pro is a must! The Queue Manager allows you to send a frame or movie(image sequence) off to the Render Queue Manager and continue working on your scene or another one in Poser Pro. To me this is the shiznitt!  Garee mentioned background rendering, which I think is handy for  doing some test rendering of lighting and such, Then I keep the Queue going with Image sequences or still renders WHILE I CONTINUE WORKING! its Awesome!
No more toe tapping and waiting around. I would pay $200 just for the Render Queue!
Time is money after all.

Quote - Garee - What about Lightwave and Poser Pro?  That's my only reason to even consider Poser Pro at this point and nothing has been said for some time about lightwave plugin etc.

If Lightwave and Poser are your main applications is their any benefit yet to upgrading?

Since newtek is screwing around totally rewriting all their import export codes, SM will have to wait for newtek to provide them with up to date sdk info in order to poser pro to support lightwave.

(With lw 9.5 beta, I can;t even tell if I'm saving a lwo object, or a wavefront object! I've only been using lw 9.3 32 bit since the latest round of newtek9.5 betas, since they are so screwed up on load and save.)

The afforementioned enhancements have made me totally shift my work over to poser pro, and I've only used poser 7 for compatibility testing since about January. My only poser pro issues now are really with ati's screwed up drivers since december last year, and supposedly the may upcoming drivers fix the reimaing vista opengl issues.

It didn't look at all like that in the faceroom preview. You have no idea what you're going to get. The mouth got really messed up.

Quote -
Since newtek is screwing around totally rewriting all their import export codes, SM will have to wait for newtek to provide them with up to date sdk info in order to poser pro to support lightwave.

I don't think that's really the point. SM hasn't said diddly-squat about anything having to do with Lightwave and Poser Pro. Nothing like "We're working on it" or "It will be working when Newtek provides us with the proper SDK" or anything. As it stands officially - meaning we know nothing and SM ain't talking about it - a Poser Pro with LW import export capabilities is not in the cards.

If they tell us it WILL happen, then perhaps I and others would upgrade. Ignoring us won't help and only leads us to believe that SM doesn't care about LW users. Simple.

Quote - Tried the faceroom on the female. Yikes!

It didn't look at all like that in the faceroom preview. You have no idea what you're going to get. The mouth got really messed up.

Did you turn the Head: MouthClosed morph to "0" it is set to 1 be default and when using  the Low res figures in the face room this will sometimes mess with your results.

Quote - > Quote -

Since newtek is screwing around totally rewriting all their import export codes, SM will have to wait for newtek to provide them with up to date sdk info in order to poser pro to support lightwave.

I don't think that's really the point. SM hasn't said diddly-squat about anything having to do with Lightwave and Poser Pro. Nothing like "We're working on it" or "It will be working when Newtek provides us with the proper SDK" or anything. As it stands officially - meaning we know nothing and SM ain't talking about it - a Poser Pro with LW import export capabilities is not in the cards.

If they tell us it WILL happen, then perhaps I and others would upgrade. Ignoring us won't help and only leads us to believe that SM doesn't care about LW users. Simple.

Steve Yatson (spelling?) blog stated that Lightwave plugin for PoserPro was going to be delayed on shipping version of PoserPro.  They did say soemthing.

Since Lightwave is my main thing + Poser 6 when I need it I'm interested in how well the PoserPro lightwave work together.

Newtek is/has been updating their Lightwave SDK at each beta release so I'm not sure that is really the problem, only SM knows.

Quote -
Did you turn the Head: MouthClosed morph to "0" it is set to 1 be default and when using  the Low res figures in the face room this will sometimes mess with your results.

Probably not, but who cares - she's ugly anyway regardless of the mouth behavior. :) She's uglier than my favorite alien, P6 Jessie.

Well there went my one and only reason for upgrading to the pro version! I don't have any need for Coladda, better rendering, or network rendering and if that's what they're calling content now. I'll stick with Dork!