May I rigg some of the next models?

Thank you MikeJ for so elloquently saying what I was trying to think with a  headache last night!

Quote - May I rigg some of the next models?

< THAT is the best idea I've heard YET!  Get Bagginsbill to do shaders and some lights and just there, you'd have a kick-ass product!

You know what I'd love to see? A fully fledged SDK available to independent developers.

I completely agree.  HOWEVER, complaining at Steve in this thread isn't going to get bupkis done.  HE is playing it safe with what he can and cannot tell us.  Most likely due to an NDA.  So, we can rail him, which isn't fair to him, or we can complain where it'll do ANY good.  Which isn't here in this forum thread.

Quote - > Quote - Well, the 3D business, regardless of what the program is used for, is a VERY competitive business.  Heck, even content creation is competitive.  

Business stays good when you do what you're best at, and don't market what you're doing before you can deliver.  I know a couple companies (no, not mentioning names) that constantly market what they're up to, and promise it months BEFORE they can deliver.  That's not good business sense, either. 

Jen, this is Poser we're talking about here. You know, the program which has been shuffled from one company to another and offloaded again as soon as the money or the love ran out...
Somehow I've never been able to equate Poser with Good Business Sense. Every company which has owned it has taken what could have been an AMAZING program and sold it short to keep it the hobbyist niche app it is.  And then just plain sold it.
The result has been that instead of it being on a par with 3ds max, XSI and maya (which it COULD HAVE BEEN), it is something of a laughing stock among the professional 3D artists in the industry.

What did Smith-Micro pay for it? Seven million, right? It should have been ten times that amount, and it might have been if it weren't for the fact that it seems to be barely hanging in there. Poser is the 3D world's dark little secret - some Pros use it, but will rarely admit to it; you can barely mention Poser at places like CG Talk without getting laughed out of the place.
Why is this? Like I said, because they have always played it safe and appealed to the hobbyists. Even their marketing positively SCREAMS "Hobbyist!". All that talk about all the ready-made content and all, and even a ridiculous tab within the program to get online to buy stuff - the entire core of Poser has been built around the idea of using other people's stuff, and very little attention has been paid towards using it as either a professional production tool or a content creation tool. Its animation tools, for example, though workable, are a joke. I could eventually chisel a hole in a concrete slab with a fork, but I'd rather use a jackhammer.

So, is playing it safe Good Business Sense?
The questions seem to indicate they're not really sure which direction they're heading in, but seem to lean towards keeping it more or less the same, maybe adding some halfway-functional stuff in along the way.

I can appreciate the suggestion for people to write to SM directly, and that's a good answer, but to try to quiet down people who are saying what SM needs to know just because you don't want someone's feelings to get hurt is kind off anti-productive. We know Steve Cooper is at least reading this - that's more than you can say for a thoughtful email just tossed out there into cyberspace... who knows who ever sees it?

Quote -
So, if they were, let's say, throwing around the idea of adding the ability to swap heads at the click of a mouse...but nowhere near even finishing the logistics of it...mentioning it here would be tantamount to promising it, and they'd never hear the end of it. 

That's more of a reflection on the immaturity of a large portion of the Poser user base. You are, of course, right. But... so what? If they outright promise something, they should be prepared to deliver. If they suggest or imply something and don't deliver, the more mature people will recognize it wasn't an actual promise. Sure, the kiddies will yell and scream bloody murder, but... who cares? They'll get over it.

This whole thing began with a survey some of us thought was poorly thought out and/or poorly implemented, filled with what we see as irrelevant questions. And while we had the opportunity to KNOW our opinions were being heard, we took it. Steve is well aware of the Poser community, and I doubt very much ANYTHING, no matter how ludicrous, insulting or bizarre someone might say, would surprise him or put him off.

Poser, as it stands, probably does more good for the creators of content than it ever has done for the actual owners of the company-of-the-year which happens to own it at any given time.
Not good.
Sure, maybe CP has profited some, but it's done DAZ and various websites and private individuals probably even more good than it's done for itself.

What I want to see is for SM to come out and say, Look, we're going to make Poser what it could be, and should be. Followed by offering a direct line into their thought process - an official thread for suggestions would be a good place to start. It would convince ME at least, and probably many others, more that they're sincere, as opposed to some half-baked survey which screams MARKETING! at the top of its lungs.

The impression I got from the survey is they're equally (or more) interested in helping Content Paradise as they are Poser, which, to me, is not a good sign much is going to be changing for the better for Poser anytime soon.

Since it wouldn't be attacking, probably not.  I WOULD, however, roll my eyes a lot. 

Quote - I wasn't busting anyone's chops, and I don't think anyone here said anything unreasonable.
Besides, if S-M sends someone in under the guise of "family", they should expect to get a "family" response, no?

What if, instead of making the responses we did, we had put on some sickening fanboy display....
"Yeah, way to go Steve!"
"WOOHOO, u guyz ROCK!"
"Best survey ever!"
"Smith Micro is sooo kewl!"

Would you have felt the need to try to put an end to that, Jen? :-)

Quote -
So, we can rail him, which isn't fair to him, or we can complain where it'll do ANY good.  Which isn't here in this forum thread.

I don't see where he's been either "railed" or "attacked", Jen.

But it doesn't matter anyway. I've said all I intended to say and even more, and have virtually zero interest in getting into an argument with you about it, or with Steve about Poser and Smith Micro.

When you render in queue (poserPro), poser throws off a file to work from. Do the same for the cloth room. IE: Like render in background...clothify in background. Throw off a file of some sort and bring it back into the scene when done. I would use dynamic cloth a bunch more if it didn't take me offline while I wait for it to complete. Like with a floort lenght gown on Sydney into a sitting position can take a long time vs a simple short skirt in a standing pose.

it's normal for them to wanna grill any of the poser developers who post msgs here.
kupa has been around long enuff not to take it personally AFAIK.  we welcome any
comments here by him or the others in regard to poser 8.

So. It seems SM intend to develop Poser and need to know which features are most needed / desired: what they should be spending most time & effort on. You might want kick-ass animation tools, I don't care. I might want a properly sorted FireFly renderer, you might be happy with the Poser 4 thing.

Whatever Poser 8 turns out to be, it won't be exactly what any of us wants. I think the idea is to get it as close as possible to the ideal of the largest number of users. The better SM do this, the happier everyone will be.

It therefore makes sense to ask as large an existing user base as possible for their opinions. So they have.

What's the problem? That they asked how much you earn / how old you are? These are questions that are frequently, er, posed  in a social context, and in those situations I have no qualms about answering... though I might exaggerate a little. I really don't mind SM asking and I really don't mind answering.

I seriously doubt whether SM care what you, as an individual, earn. Or when you were born, or what sex you are. I think they're interested in the bigger statistical picture. This talk of tracing you via your ISP and CP cookies... that's just paranoia.

I still say the vast majority of that poll was centered around the idea of how they can make CP more profitable, not how they can make Poser, itself, the application, better.

From one end to the other, with the exception of a few questions regarding Poser's core application, the theme is "Content". Meaning, of course, Content Paradise. And, IMO, all but maybe two or three questions could be interpreted as trying to find how people want to use CP purchases within Poser.

I found the questions themselves unsatisfying, to say the least. Let's hope this isn't ALL they're considering for how to improve Poser.

Consider this:
There was a question regarding if the interface should be more "traditional". The interface - let that sink in for a minute. That would be a huge undertaking!
Many people over the years have requested a more traditional interface, and on the surface it would appear they may be considering granting that request.

However, many, many people over the years have also asked for even rudimentary modeling tools within Poser, yet I couldn't help but notice there was no question about that.
Why? If they're considering a whole new interface, putting some polygon creation/editing tools in there would be a relative stroll through the park. Every 3D code monkey and his brother could write a simple 3D modeling program, so I'm sure SM could handle it.
So, why not ask if we want 3D modeling tools inside Poser itself?
That answer is simple - the less easy it is for people to make their own stuff, the more likely they will buy other people's stuff, namely CP's stuff.
Or maybe they'll be encouraged to buy Shade....

One might suggest question number ten is along those lines: "How important would it be to customize characters by creating your own morph targets?"

But then again, we already CAN do that. Are they considering removing that functionality?
Or is that just a question sloppily added as filler by someone with marketing on the brain?

That's just one example from the conspiracy theory department. ;-)

This was largely a CP poll masquerading as a Poser poll. I believe they realize new versions of Poser will continue to be bought as long as they make at least minor improvements. I also believe they realize that there's FAR more money to be made in supplying Content. I almost believe future versions of Poser might be limited to using only Content Paradise content...
I believe the vast majority of their efforts will be spent on improving the add-on Content they want to sell, and the way in which future Poser deals with said Content.

Yeah, I said I was through adding to this thread, but...

Quote - Yeah, I said I was through adding to this thread, but...

It's a Poser survey.  About Poser. Content comes with Poser. 'nuff said.

For the conspiratorialists, here's an interesting site that uses Poser content:
zapatopi.net/afdb/

Signing out.

Don't know about anyone else but getting tired of the whingers here (sorry Mike but staring at you). Yes we all know about the stresses we've all had with poser but at the very least SM is actually willing to listen to our thoughts. Sure there's a bunch of things which do annoy us ( i was recently working on an animation for 6 hours straight and Poser decided to crash without a save). But at the end of the day all I want to say is let's give them a chance to make things right. Don't just rip shreds off them for the way they did the survey or the probs we have with Poser at the moment, It's counter productive.
All I'm saying is give them a reason to make it a better product. If you've got a problem with a certain area give them a reason and a solution to make it right, simple cause and effect. Get behind them, don't attack them. Give them something they can take back to their superiors and say "hey we've got this problem, but if we do this, this and that we can solve it". We're all working for the same goal here people. They want to make money by making a good product, we just want a good product which works well, we all want the same thing.
We know Poser is the hot potato of the 3d animation world but it doesn't have to be. All I'm asking is we stop attacking the very people who are here to potentially solve our problems, give them a chance to prove themselves with productive solutions, to help us and them to make a better product.

Just my two cents worth :0

Not whining at all, just pointing out some things - things which I didn't start, btw.

SM listens to our thoughts? Do they? And you know this how?

I am giving them a chance to "make things right". For all you know, if enough people challenged them in the way I have, perhaps they'd be even more inclined to make things right. If you're concerned about them feeling insulted or anything, don't be. I'm sure they can handle the criticism.
And if you're suggesting nobody should challenge them... well, I don't know what to say to that.

Counter productive? How's that? Counter productive would be somehow sabotaging their efforts. Criticism delivered sincerely is never counter productive.

Give them a reason to make a better product? How's that again? Their reason should be profit and that should be reason enough. So, I can't give them a reason to make a better product. If I have to, something is seriously wrong there. I can, however, give them suggestions towards making a better product, which I have, and many others have as well.

Get behind them? Why? How long have you been using Poser for? I've been since late 1999, and have seen it change hands four times since then with at least two flop releases surrounded by major controversy - the original Poser Pro Pack and Poser 5. Other, more successful releases have been buggy and haven't brought anywhere near enough to the table to take Poser too terribly seriously. Their improvements, while many have been steps in the right direction, always feel incomplete and have been fraught with problems.
Even their plugins for getting Poser into other apps like max have been half-assed: the plugins are always for an obsolete version or two years behind, in spite of being released when current versions of the current relevant SDK's are available.

I'm not "attacking" anyone, as I see it.
If they come here with something like this, they have to expect some sort of a reaction. That's all there is to it. I'm not going to apologize for stating my opinion. As I wrote earlier, I knew we had their attention in this thread, and I decided to use that to get my thoughts about it out.
I'm also not going to be a mindless fanboy and just pussyfoot around them because I feel that they're really just here to help us and we should give them a break. They're a business. They want to sell us software. We don't owe them any kind of a break - they owe us good, usable software.
Don't kid yourself - they're not part of the family, not part of the community. While there may be employees of theirs who are, Smith Micro is a business, plain and simple. They make cell phone software and for some odd reason decided to buy Poser.

I can give SM the benefit of the doubt, but their first release of Poser since they bought it is far from impressive. It has some cool new additions, but is still faaaarr from what I would call "Pro". Just like the original PPP in 2000 was. If more people challenge them, maybe their next release won't be yet another in a long string of tragedies and half-assed, half-broken releases.

And maybe their next poll will be a little better thought out.

Quick question about writing the SM CS team: would it do anything?  I know for a number of companies working with CS is a herculian effort just to get noticed, much less get something done.

Anyways, at the least P8 will need:
-Better lighting (glowing objects without gather, area lighting, gamma correction, etc)
-A better rigging system
-To stop hanging everytime I try to do anything
-A little faster rendering
-Less crashing or file corruption
-Hair room improvements
-Cloth room improvements

And I'd like to agree with opera guy on two things.  The first is I feel that was a marketing survey.  Now they might emphasise a feature their target audience wants, but I'm thinking they were looking for how to sell it most of all.  The other thing is the base characters should have as close to average looks as possible with this qualification: the models need to be rigged (and hopefully with all the morphs included) to make it as easy as possible to create the character you want.

Quote - the plugins are always for an obsolete version or two years behind, in spite of being released when current versions of the current relevant SDK's are available.

False.

But thank you for the perfect opening to today's news:
Poser Pro SR1.2 with updated 32 bit & new 64 bit Poser Fusion plug-ins

Quote -

But thank you for the perfect opening to today's news:
Poser Pro SR1.2 with updated 32 bit & new 64 bit Poser Fusion plug-ins

Well there you go, that's a step in the right direction. Kudos to SM for paying attention.
I'm not your enemy, Steve, I just would like to see Poser become all it can be - and should have been by now.
But as I said, a step in the right direction. Next thing you guys need to do is start working on a true "pro" version of Poser that eliminates the need for the Max's and Maya's of the world.
You don't have to exclude the hobbyists, casual pros and those who don't need all the bells and whistles in the process, you know.

Quote - Quick question about writing the SM CS team: would it do anything?  I know for a number of companies working with CS is a herculian effort just to get noticed, much less get something done.

Anyways, at the least P8 will need:
-Better lighting (glowing objects without gather, area lighting, gamma correction, etc)
-A better rigging system
-To stop hanging everytime I try to do anything
-A little faster rendering
-Less crashing or file corruption
-Hair room improvements
-Cloth room improvements

Just wanted to let you know that they do listen. I offered a solution a couple of days ago which would address all your (and my) issues mentioned. They responded within a couple of hours promising to pass it on to the software engineers. I am still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Now as to whether they will do something about it remains to be seen, but willing to hold on to that faint glimmer of hope i guess :)

Quote - > Quote - they could match up IP addresses to CP users if they wanted to.

We are only be using the IP addresses to remove duplicate submissions from a few overly enthusiastic respondents.

Your honest answers in the demographics area are extremely helpful to the future of Poser.

Thank you!

Uh, that might be me :)
Had some browser/connection issues taking the survey. Hopefully you got the key responses from me.

Ah the passion of the Poser user!

Quote - > Quote -

From my experience, Autodesk excels on integrating useful features.  Their Bonus Tools (which are often written by users) tend to appear as new, fully supported features of future releases.

Yes, I know. I was only kidding.  :-)
But what I meant was you don't see them pretending to take requests then not deliver. And you also don't see them releasing the same thing year after year with only minor changes to the same theme.

Quote -

Sorry I can't engage on any potential feature discussion. It's too competitve a landscape to reveal ones hand

While I can understand you not wanting to discuss features or plans, I don't think that's correct reasoning for not doing so. Poser has no competition, really. No program does what it does and does it so quickly and so well. maybe DAZ Studio, but that's a free program - they're gonna be competition no matter what as long as the price is zero.

Uh...QUIDAM2 perhaps??? And who knows what DAZ may decide to do.
DazStudio Pro with key plugins (features that match POSERs built-in and for a competitive price?

But aside from that, the "biggies" in the 3D world announce what they're up to. We know what cool new features the next version of 3ds max, maya, Lightwave, Vue, etc. is going to have, well ahead of time. Mudbox is attempting to overtake ZBrush right now and seems to be having good success at it, and Autodesk was making people aware of what was on the horizon for quite a bit ahead of time.
If anything, it's those complete 3D packages which have real competition to worry about. Somehow I can't see the makers of Quidam saying to themselves one day, "Look, SM is gonna put real functionality into Poser - quick call in the programmers!". ;-)

All it will take is some critical mass. With this world, you never know....
And you don't think there is functionality in Poser?

Actually I wish Poser had more real competition than it does. I wish it  didn't have this hobbyist stigma attached to it and y'all were more concerned with making it actually compete in The Big Market. It could be so much more if you had that competition and desire to see it through to what it could be.

I'll tell you another thing I would like to  see, FWIW. I'd like to see a $1500.00 Poser which can stand on its own and not need badly-implemented plugins just to get it into more capable apps.

Great to see you back, kupa!

Jay Button from Santa Cruz
Who now lives in Boulder, Colorado

Actually, I did miss the text field in the survey for -my- most favored request; getting the Poser-Vue Infinite functionality hammered out once and nearly for all  (I know new features tend to break things....). That particular combo is one of the better low end pairings for one man studio's, and the issues with dynamics not loading have been a real pita, and the stopping of just about any serious work. If the native import can't be hammered out due to architectural changes, then what about collada? If it's a choice between sacrificing texture imports and getting the dynamics back, well, better to do you texturing and shading in your final renderer anyway. But the two apps are made for each other, and smoothing out that native import one way or another would be a blessing.

Quote - There are a few improvements that the survey didn't cover:

• Fix the reversed normals issue. It wasn't a problem in Poser 4. It's frustrating that the problem remains three versions after creating it.
• Realistic lights. It's frustrating having lights that don't act like real lights. I've had times where adding a light darkens an image and when moving lights had the opposite of the intended effect.
• Better selecting. I've never understood why I can click on something large in the foreground and wind up selecting a small object, that cannot be seen, in the background.

What they said ^

I think you could tell from the questions what they are thinking about doing for the next Poser release, and this was thier way of asking the users how well they would be recieved. I think that's great, and what an awesome way to run a company, asking the customer what they want before making the product.

I did have an issue with the demographic details though. Shouldn't they be focusing on what ALL Poser users want, instead of dividing us up into male and female, rich and poor... I mean, are they going to to drop a feature because only 22% of girls under 20 liked it? I know that's how marketing works, but does anyone else find that bizarre? And what's with asking us our income? How does that define us as a poser user? I always lie and put in the lowest option on that question for  I feel what they're really asking is, "how much can we charge you?"

if SM were to sell poser to some 3d software company, which could add a new rendering
engine to the basic package as the only major change (other than new content), then that
might cut down on costs enuff so that the upgrade to poser 8 would only be $169.99 american.
  discount for students, but whether one is earning $2 per hour or one is a 90-yr.old millionaire
in afghanistan would not matter in regard to sales price.  some might suggest that this is a bad
time to sell poser, but it might be a good time for some 3d software company to buy poser.

Or at least make it possible to use a 3rd party render engine as a plugin, such as Mental Ray or V-Ray.

 This is what poser needs( And i dont have POser 7 , i'm still on 6):

ability to render 1000 frames full render with antialiasing in 5 SECONDS!!!

That would be great

Okay Vocal, I'll try contacting them as well.

Another thing I'd like to see fixed is this problem with poser hanging on me all the time.  I've reinstalled now but every time I try to do something (import an object, conform some clothing to a figure, etc) poser starts to hang on me for a few minutes.

No one has mentioned yet that this survey looks a lot like the one that was put up before Poser Pro was released, what was done with the results of that one?

They decided the name Smith Micro needed to be at the top of the interface. Also, apparently  what people REALLY wanted were two more characters, male and female, that were even fuglier than anything prior, by a great degree of magnitude. ;-)
And they also answered the need to make it where all your cores were being used at all times when rendering. Wait, no, scratch that last one.

Well, maybe they added some free ringtones in there somewhere, although I have yet to find them.

Just my two coppers:

I understand the survey.  However, it's not a technical survey.  It's a marketing survey.  They want to ask Joe and Jane Userbase what they're focusing on when they use Poser.  They want to know what they feel is important about subjects that a regular user is going to be familiar with.

There are plenty of things I think Poser needs improving on but, almost none of them have to do with what Joe and Jane Userbase is concerned with.

One thing they need to do is to increase the tools that content designers can use in order to provide better content.  Particle effects would be nifty, wouldn't they?  Joe&Jane Userbase would go nuts if Poser 8 had real particle effect ability.  They don't know what that means but they DO know that all sorts of new and exciting content would be flooding the shelves of the Poser E-Stores.  THAT is what is important in the longrun and it's those types of improvements, which put additional tools in the hands of creators in making Poser content, which will mean the most in the longrun.  (Other "tools" like advanced mapping features of new engines could significantly increase the quality of content without subsequent overburdening of the engine itself.)

One thing I DO NOT WANT to see is ANY interoperability with an application search for content and "teh intrawebz."  There is absolutely no reason at all that I, as a user, want to use Poser to browse the web for content.  That is just a marketing scheme and much too much invasive for practical use.  I don't need another connection from my box searching for its intranwebz garbage.  It's just a way to obtain a captive audience for marketing, that's all it is.

What SM should do is focus on making the overall Poser application more rebust and more full featured from a content creator's point of view.   Content is king in anything.  Without content, the best application in the Universe would end up in the "discontinued" aisle.  But, if content is king, good content is Emperor-For-Life.  People do a lot with what they have to work with in Poser's repetoire.  The steps people have taken to make Poser do what it is they want it to do are sometimes awe-inspiring.  And, "awe-inspiring" is what sells boxes like nothing else.  If they want to sell Poser, they need to be looking to these people for help.  (I wonder if content creators have received their own versions of a product-development survey?  If not, then Smith Micro would be making a hugely stupid mistake in not approaching the people that actually create content that keeps them in business.)

Poser's rendering, Firefly or not, needs to be reworked.  Like it or not, the best content in the world looks like crap if it is rendered with crap.  I would hazard a guess and say that 99% of the people dissattisfied with Poser who have stopped using it have done so simply because they can't hit the "Create Art" button because 1)Doing good quality renders in any application is NOT easy and 2) It takes monumental efforts to get very high-quality renders out of Poser.

So, they need a "create Art" button for Joe&Jane Userbase who don't know the first thing about rendering 3D objects.  That can be done by making some default settings that actually mean something and with SM Created and supplied lighting that doesn't look like garbage.  For more knowledgeable users, they need to ask them what it is they want to see as far as rendering-engine components go.   I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough to comment on that.

I like Poser.  I think it's a pretty powerful application when combined with certain other tools.  But, what it needs is not application specific garbage focused on Joe & Jan Userbase.  It relies on content to stay alive, it relies on good content to sell boxes and it relies on content creators to stay in business.  These are the people that SM should be catering to.  Joe & Jane will be very, very happy if good quality content creators are happy with the ability to use better tools and take advantage of advanced concepts.

I think those wishing for the $1500 Poser will have better luck praying for world peace. Take a look at SmithMicro's product line. Does anything suggest that they have either the financial or technical expertise to pull off a high-end professional 3D application? That's not a knock on them, just reality IMO. Most people seem to acknowledge that what Poser needs is a complete clean slate rewrite. To create a product that would be able to compete at the lever people seem to want is a daunting task. During that lengthy process, development of the existing product would probably be minimal unless they had the money for a whole new development team. I don't think that anyone throughout Poser's long odyssey, with the possible exception of e-Frontier, has had the resources to even seriously contemplate such a move. Poser's best chance for such a development probably dies when Corel picked over MetaCreations catalog and decided to pass on our beloved application. The only realistic prospect remaining in that direction would be for AutoDesk to look behind their sofa cushions and come up with the pocket change to buy Poser. But why would they do that? They'd have to rewrite it anyway so all they'd be buying is the name (which they probably wouldn't use) and a vocal user-base who are, to put it politely, are probably not within their preferred demographic. I also tend to disagree that such an acquisition would not mean the end of the "hobbyist" level Poser. Sure, they have student versions of their products and limited, non-portable file format versions of their pricey applications but AFAIK, they done tend to have sub $300 consumer priced versions.

Poser has always been a hobbyist level application which some people have used for professional purposes. That has been and will probably continue to be the sweet spot for profit. Advanced rigging schemes and more professional animation tools are all well and good but I doubt that they are what a good 90% of users want. How many users have achieved a good degree of competence and comfort with dynamic hair and cloth? The continued robust sales of conforming hair and clothing suggest to me not that many. It's not that those aren't great features but they seem to be implemented with a degree of complexity similar to their counterparts in high-end 3D applications. Maybe that's the way it has to be but I've long advocated for a multi-level interface with oodles of presets and wizards for the masses and number crunching for the more geekily inclined. I think this is essentially one of Morkonan's points though I'm not sure that Poser itself should be focus on development tools - that should probably be done in a full-fledged SDK developer's version. More easy to use ZBrush style figure sculpting tools might be good and Poser could certainly learn something from Daz Studio's dForm tool and their new AniMate plug-in. The first cut questions for any improvements should be,' Will it be easy to use?' and 'Will it be fun?' Those aren't the criteria some would prefer but if they're not met, the vast majority of folks won't use them. More importantly, if DS implements something similar that does meet them, guess what?

Poser can and should improve its ease of integration with applications that can supply the advanced functions that exist in abundance at every price point. Poser itself should stick to what it does best, providing a fun and easy way for the masses to pose their Vickies and create what to them at least is art. The vast barely tapped market today is in the virtual world of games and online universes where people are probably eager to have their "custom" characters and avatars. Put a make Second Life or GTA button next to the Make Art button and you'll sell far more copies of Poser than adding GI with a rocket scientist interface. And yes, selling content is an integral part of making enough to keep the application alive. If SM stops hawking CP then look for Poser to be seeking another home. That just may be when Microsoft comes looking for a way to populate their TrueSpace worlds. Did you know they actually owned XSI at one time :-)

That's all well and good, lmckenzie, and I agree with you for the most part.
The thing is, Poser will have to be developed further. All software companies need to release new versions, or else the public gets restless, or other apps fill the void. D|S for one, Quidam for another, are willing to fill that void.
So what kind of improvements can future versions of Poser implement if not something more advanced and better? You know, just working with what they currently have isn't going to cut it.
And even if they put all their effort into CP and forget about updating Poser entirely, CP is only a retail outlet for Poser content. I can't see it as being any kind of intelligent business move to let the app stagnate while working on better content, just as I can't see it as good to only make minimal advances to the program itself.
Where else is there to go but up? Well, "down" or "nowhere" would be alternatives, but would only result in Poser losing everything it's gained as a program.

I agree 100% that they can't rest on their laurels or let their technology languish. I don't follow Quidam much but DS has already begun to come up with some more innovative ways of doing things. My whole point is that in incorporating advances - it'll be interesting to see how their cloth solution works, they should not lose sight of the ease of use and accesibility that has enabled their success.  Bolting on more gee whiz stuff that the majority of the user-base will find overwhelming will mean that they will defect to DS and I doubt that the gains among more sophisticated users will make up the difference. If they can manage to add complexity under the hood while enabling people to accessa good portion of it without a steep learning curve then everyone will be happy and they will sell beaucoup uints to boot.

As an example, everybody and his brother it seems had written a renderer. They all seem to take it for granted that you have to endure learning the ins and outs of irradiance chaches, photons and who knows what to get a decent render. I'm a programmer but I couldn't write line one of a raytracer so perhaps I'm naieve but I have to believe that there's a better way - it's simply that heretofore, noone has seen the need to create a more accessible solution.  If Poser wants to continue to serve its mainstream audience while advancing with 3D, they need to be the ones to make that leap IMO.  It's a win-winproposition but it will take the resources and commitment that none of Poser's owners has yet shown. Now maybe if SM and Daz cooperated. . . 

I had heard that Poser was going to be sold to Autodesk, if this is true perhaps they will put something in to upgrading Poser to a more advanced state.

If that would be true, it's more likely Poser will become part of 3DS or so...... I've heard that rumor also, but I do doubt it's true. 

They just bought XSI so there's not much left for them to buy save Poser. Why the would though I don't know. I doubt for the code and the name is not exactly admired amongst their typical market and I don't think they'd want to support the consumer market. Vickie sure would seem out of place with the $500 basketball mesh crowd but who knows. We have a Kenyan-Kansan President to be named Hussein so AutoDesk Poser? Yes We Can, You Betcha!

It would be nice to be able to see whats in a file without having waiting for Poser to load.
It would nice to have property node for characters, props and scenes
  as to the textures used, the figure type or obj file, any external references. and place to hold comments and notes. 
-A  scene thumbnail creator that could create a thumbnail appear  by right clicking  on the file from the open dialog  or with windows explorer  outside the application

P3dO's "InDepth" view will give you much of that info with a hierarchical list of figures, textures, geometry files, etc. for figure, prop and scene files.  It would be nice to have that available in Poser itself though. It did sound like they might be looking at better file organization and management so maybe...

On a side note, www.3dlinks.com/3DNews.cfm, looks like the Quidam folks are announcing something new "N-Sided announces the launch of its offer for avatars creation dedicated to Virtual Worlds" I still think this is going to be the big market for3D in the next few years.

Quote -

  I still think this is going to be the big market for3D in the next few years.

I don't know about that. The whole avatar/VR thing been trying to take off for a decade now, but always failing to meet with any real, lasting enthusiasm aside from its relatively small group of dedicated fans.

But back to Poser - I really can't see Autodesk buying Poser. I would love to see it happen though, for many reasons, not the least of which being the hilarious shitstorm that would ensue. ;-)

However, I predict that Poser 9 - at the latest - will see its unveiling at the hands of a company which isn't Smith Micro. It wouldn't at all surprise me if it were sold even before Poser 8.

I hope Autodesk doesn't buys Poser.  They bougth Kaydara Motionbuilder just a year after promoting the Motionbuilder Freelance Artist version which was a very powerful package for animators at a similar price point of Poser.  I invested a lot of time learning that software because of its power and price range.  Once autodesk bought it the first thing they did was cut development of the Freelance artist edition and hike the price to $4000.  Oh and we the owners of the Freelance artist edition were given the option of upgrading to the Pro version for the incredible price of $2000.

Now, what Poser really need above everything else is better animation tools (animated constraints, keyable parenting and circular IK-double solving) and perhaps integrate Particle Illusion as an FX Room.  Just that and improving the code all around and make it full 64 bit would guarantee a succesful upgrade in my eyes.  I love Poser, it is a wonderful application at an incredible price point I want it to stay so.

Yes P3Do's is nice but I would like to have it work inside of Poser and from Explorer.  You can do alot of this in Poser but the information requires several steps and wading through files uses kludgy scrip menus,And there is no place to put comments, Maybe they could include it
the property node with a text box for comments

"I don't know about that. The whole avatar/VR thing been trying to take off for a decade now..."  True. Most of these things happen so gradually that one day you look around and they've quietly become commonplace. It'd probably more accurate to expand the definition beyond avatars and games to include all advertising & the whole range of 3D internet content. Things like the Microsoft Agent characters were a primitive attempt at combing AI and interactive characters. People have tried similar thing with animated website hosts as well. Meta Creations sold off Poser and their other apps to do the Viewpoint thing though I think they were a bit premature.

I see 3D animated human content as too compelling not to be huge - eventually - both for business and entertainment. What has been lacking is the infrastructure in terms of bandwidth and processing power. Those are being solved. The other big limitation has been IMO, the content creation tools have been too expensive and/or too complex. I think that most Poser users don't do animation, not because they wouldn't like want to - who doesn't want to make a movie - but rather because it's been too difficult. Studio's AniBlocks are a cool attempt at making things a bit easier & a move in the right direction I think. That's not to say there isn't a need for the more technically oriented tools - there's a place for both.

One of the things not mentioned yet: scripting!
Incorporating Python into Poser was arguably the best move ever made in the history of the app. Smith Micro can't predict everything users want, there have always been those weirdos that use Poser in unusual ways, but if everything that Poser can do is also accessible via well-documented Python calls, there will always be a Python scripter that'll build the desired functionality.
So what I want most in the next version of Poser is that EVERYTHING is scriptable via Python.
What would be even better: Poser as a Python library, so that it can be automated from the outside. Then it would be possible to script Poser into an automated 3D workflow.

I'm not really interested in content provided with Poser itself. I buy the content I like at CP (animals), Renderosity (clothing and hair), DAZ (human figures, environments) and RDNA (human figures and environments). Morphing tools? The Morphbrush is nice, but I prefer to build my morphs using a full fledged modeler and import it back into Poser - I've written a couple of nifty Python scripts to assist me there.
Rendering? Yes, I'd love to see some improvements in the Firefly engine. Rendering a decent water surface, reflecting metal or glass is sort of hit-and-miss magic with Firefly, while it's a breeze in Bryce, Vue or Carrara. I'd also love to be able to render more complex scenes - the full 64 bit renderer in Poser Pro is a step in the right direction, but I still can't render a crowd of medium to high-res people with clothing, hair, and a believable environment - which is easily doable in Vue.

The Hair Room. In fact, it's not bad at all. Easier manipulation of the hair for styling would be a big plus - named selections would be great. Better than hair groups, since named selections can be created on the fly, while hair groups must be planned in advance.

Cloth Room: I love it. In fact, I like it better than 3DS Max Cloth.
But it sure can use some improvements.

• easier selection of vertices (I'd love tools like "grow selection" and "shrink selection" comparable to 3DS Max subobject selection tools). Would be great for polygon selections too.
• multiple constrained groups, specifying WHAT object they're constrained to;
• multiple choreographied groups that can be keyframed independently;
• multiple soft decorated groups/rigid decorated groups, where one can specify what dynamic group they should follow;
• rigid decorated groups that are truly rigid (I haven't had much luck with those, buttons and the like tend to deform despite being designated as rigid decorated).
• pre-stretched cloth (think elastic bands);
• dynamic rope!!!! Would be a MAJOR plus.
• keyframed group switching: think buttons being undone and redone, think hanging a towel on a hook, think putting on/off a coat, knotting a belt, etcetera).
• last but not least: thickness of the cloth. Collision offset and collision depth specify the thickness for the simulation, but I'd love to see this same thickness in the render.

Setup room: please, please make it possible to let the first child bone have its origin at a different location than the parent bone's endpoint. And a precision of 3 digits in the numerical fields just is not enough. For precise manipulation you need at least 5 or 6 decimals.
Working with spherical falloff zones is also a regular pain in the neck. They always start out FAR too large and in a non-logical position. It would be better to spawn the zones right around the joint you're editing, with the inner mat sphere having a radius half the length of the current bone, and the outer mat spere having a radius equal to the length of the current bone. Those are far more sensible starting values.

Useful in more than just the setup room: a grid in the orthogonal views that can be snapped to. The grid units should be customizable to the units Poser recognizes (Poser Native, feet, inch, meter, centimeter, millimeter) with sensible subdivisions that appear when zooming in (and disappear when zooming out). A "snap to grid" toggle would be most helpful.

A "drop to underlying surface" button would also help. The current implementation of collision detection is far too slow, probably due to the insane amount of vertices/polygons that have to be included in the calculations.  (On a side note: "drop to underlying surface" can be implemented from Poser 5 upwards using Python. I've made a start, but I just haven't got the time to finish the script).

What else? Oh hes, the "more traditional user interface". If that means getting rid of the space consuming palettes and buttons in lieu of dockable toolbars/palettes, I'm all for it! And a hierarchical scene graph that allows grouping of multiple objects - much like the Hierarchy editor already does, but one that's more stable and responsive - would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and don't forget the documentation. The current documentation is fairly hopeless. Yes, I understand that the "Bias" dial on a material node adjusts the bias. Putting that in the documentation is a waste of paper/screen space. What I want to know is what it DOES. What are sensible values? What effects does it have on the node? The primitive basics of Poser - those that haven't changed since version 3 or so - are laid out reasonably well, but the newer features are truly horribly documented.

My suggestions for what they are worth would be:

1. an auto save feature
2. a foot cam
3. better lights control
4. those little up and down arrows for fine tuning the the posing
5. mouse controlled camers movement (like the scroll wheel for zooming in)
6. Better documentation
7. Having a preveiw window in the open file window
8. not having to turn my video card inside out to get poser to work with it
9. having the porgram be as powerful as maya ( or anyother pro lever software you want) be super easy to use and cost less than $200.00

ok I realize #9 isn't going to happen but if you're gonna wish why not wish big?

Quote - A "drop to underlying surface" button would also help. The current implementation of collision detection is far too slow, probably due to the insane amount of vertices/polygons that have to be included in the calculations.  (On a side note: "drop to underlying surface" can be implemented from Poser 5 upwards using Python. I've made a start, but I just haven't got the time to finish the script).

I would kill for this feature or a decent script to do it!  I never understoond why Bryce had it and Poser didn't since I bought both when Metacreations owned them both. Of course I understand now that they didn't originally own both of them, but hey, back then I was a newbie.

I'm with Svdl about the interface.  The current set of buttons and widgets are kind of silly and take up too much room.  I do use the widgets but Parameter Dials are way, way, more important.  Having IK accessable right on the interface, I think, would be an improvment.  Using the menu for this feature is kind of clunky and interrupts work flow.  The application IS Poser.  Support for model creation is great but the core application, at least for poor modelers like myself, is posing and animating finished figures.  Easy click IK would be great.

That and I wish Poser would wash my dishes ...

-Rªnce

AHA! (or is it EUREKA!)??

More types or, alterable Magnetic Zones. The Sphere is nice, but how about waveform type envelopes or squares, or influence over multiple zones, if we are stuck with spheres?

An upgraded or enhanced render engine would be nice. (I still like Firefly. Have the programmers really tapped its abilities? And if another render engine is available, have it plugin.)

Of course, (an most important) we want to keep the price reasonable.

Forgot something about the Python scripting: more UI widgets for the Poser 6 style dialog interface! The textbox is sorely missed, and a listbox (both standard and hierarchical) wouldn't go amiss either.  Dials would be nice too, so would a progress bar.
As for the dropdown buttons, it would be very nice to be able to set a default value.
Encapsulating those widgets in easy to use Python objects would be nice. It has been done (kudos to Poserworks for pzrXml30!), but it would be better if it came with Poser itself.

Quote - ... more UI widgets for the Poser 6 style dialog interface!

Hopefully they'll just expose the underlying wxWindows to Python rather than implementing more of their own controls.