I'm sitting here geeking out while watching a large Poser 8 render churn itself out before my eyes. When you use indrect lighting it starts with a kind of pointilism version of your image with red dots covering everything like a light brite illusatration. It's almost like an art work unto itself. Then line by line the render comes down from top to bottom, replacing the red dots with your final render. And holy cow does it look good!!!

Also, I find I am able to build much more complex scenes in P8 than previous versions without the dreaded out of memory error. Pretty cool so far.

LOL, that actually sounds cool.  You have a screenshot?

Is poser 8 a released product?

What about the Pro version with 64 bit render engine and export to OpenEXR?

P8 hasn't been released yet.  Greybro is on the testing or developing team (I forget which).  It's also been stated that PPro is waaaaaaaaaaaaay down the pipeline, and not to get your hopes up on it for a while.

"PPro is waaaaaaaaaaaaay down the pipeline..."

That is not smart of them. Really makes me hot, unless the next version of pro is far far far more advanced and not just a little kick up from Poser 8. Like a whole new hair module and soft-body physics and the entire thing 64-bit and a least give us a tangent on the animation splines for goodness sake.

So, in Poser 8, no 64-bit FireFly and no export of renders into OpenEXR format?

SM should give a free upgrade to Poser8 to all, like me, who have Poser 7 and Poser Pro licenses.

::::: Opera :::::

Just offering my opinion here but I think it's a major improvement over previous versions and it comes with a tremendous amount of built in content!

See the attached file for the effect I was referring to for indirect lighting.

Attached Link: http://poser8.smithmicro.com/index.html

As for the upgrades...I can't see that happening at all.  Sorry, I doubt they're going to give you a free upgrade just because you own the previous version and the previous Pro package.  A discount, yes.  Free, no.

Quote - I'm sitting here geeking out while watching a large Poser 8 render churn itself out before my eyes. When you use indrect lighting it starts with a kind of pointilism version of your image with red dots covering everything like a light brite illusatration. It's almost like an art work unto itself. Then line by line the render comes down from top to bottom, replacing the red dots with your final render. And holy cow does it look good!!!

Also, I find I am able to build much more complex scenes in P8 than previous versions without the dreaded out of memory error. Pretty cool so far.

That sounds like an irradiance map being generated.  About time Poser got some decent lighting!

That's really sweet, Greybro :)  Is it like that permanently, or are you able to change the preview settings?

Quote - "PPro is waaaaaaaaaaaaay down the pipeline..."

That is not smart of them. Really makes me hot, unless the next version of pro is far far far more advanced and not just a little kick up from Poser 8. Like a whole new hair module and soft-body physics and the entire thing 64-bit and a least give us a tangent on the animation splines for goodness sake.

So, in Poser 8, no 64-bit FireFly and no export of renders into OpenEXR format?

SM should give a free upgrade to Poser8 to all, like me, who have Poser 7 and Poser Pro licenses.

::::: Opera :::::

Dude, if you want high end features then you are going to have to pay high end prices for it

Hey dude back off and slow down

I am not asking for a PERMANENT POSER PRO-2 or -8 or whatever they are calling it license.

Just an upgrade for free from Poser7 to Poser 8 while waiting (since the word was this is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa long time from now) for the Pro upgrade, for which I will gladly pay, just as I have paid for all upgrades, Mac and PC, since Poser 4.

So don't call me dude. It is rude.

::::: Opera :::::

To clarify I am on the testing team and my production team Devil Dog Studios consisting of myself Brent Bowers, Wanye Martell (midnight_stories), Chris Haidgood (Mestohaples) and Vic Sorensangbam (sorensangbam or Vik3D) contributed the figure  picture here which is named Creech in honor of the film that inspired him.

My apologies. I'm taking this to SM as suggested by Jen.

It's going to have to look a lot better than that before I lay my change down. They still haven't fixed the bugs introduced in previous versions, will stick with poser 7 and pro until I see a real improvement.

@ operaguy

Quote from bagginsbill in another thread: 

**"There will be some amazing news from SM tomorrow. Existing Poser Pro users will hear something really good, so don't fret about a side/down-grade here - you're going to be taken care of, and I mean that in a good way."
**

thank you ziggie!

I see good things in that render, especially the light on the plant at the left. If it is also fast, then Whoopie!

::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: Muticia Makes A Friend

those red dots look pretty much exactly like what C4D does when it's calculating the irradiance cache for a GI render - this is a very good thing IMHO, it means much less faffing around trying to get lighting to look right.  Even though I just use Poser as a stage for Vue import, I'm getting tempted !!
(or at least I would be if Vue 8 weren't due out soon :biggrin: )

Thanks for posting that image! Now I know that's how a GI is supposed to look like when it's in progress.

one of many different ways a GI render can look :biggrin:  VRay looks totally different

Hi what was the render time & machine specs please??
Just curious.

Cheers

Quote - one of many different ways a GI render can look :biggrin:  VRay looks totally different

HERE
is how the GI Engine in Cinema4D looks
one sky object with HDRI render time 3.32 secs

Cheers

Attached Link: Muticia Makes A Friend

For the attached scene which is a bit more built out I'd say 7 -10 minutes off the top of my head.

Personally, I wish they just plug in a 3rd party render engine, V Ray, Maxwell, final render, Brazil, mental ray, or whatever. The results are so much better, and so much faster. 

The Global Illumination solutions that are apparently new in Poser 8 have been around for at least four or five years in the leading render engines, for example.

In my experience, when you see a really stunning render with Poser content, 9 times out of 10 the improvement comes from exporting the model and rendering in something more capable-- that's what I do, anyway. The world is knee-deep in first class third party engines, you can render from Sketchup in Vray, for instance.

let's see now.

V-Ray, standard price, around $1000
Maxwell Render - $746
Final Render - $1000 (about. no one price for the basic)
Brazil - $905
Mental Ray - No Direct Price LIsted.

so. taking into account say bulk prices etc... you really want poser to jump in price by at least %100? (thats a base price of $249 for poser, and taking into account V-Ray for trueSpace was marketed at $299 so roughly %100. (yes I know it's a little over lol))

sorry mate. I'll take it at $249 and use another render engine I can get for FREE like Kerkythea.

Quote - let's see now.

V-Ray, standard price, around $1000
Maxwell Render - $746
Final Render - $1000 (about. no one price for the basic)
Brazil - $905
Mental Ray - No Direct Price LIsted.

so. taking into account say bulk prices etc... you really want poser to jump in price by at least %100? (thats a base price of $249 for poser, and taking into account V-Ray for trueSpace was marketed at $299 so roughly %100. (yes I know it's a little over lol))

sorry mate. I'll take it at $249 and use another render engine I can get for FREE like Kerkythea.

Quoted for agreement

Also they are usually implemented Via A plugin/extension built by makers of these third part engines.
NOT the Makers of the host App
(Smith micro, Maxon, Autodesk etc.)
They only port their renderers to Pro Apps  for use in professional pipelines(movie& Television)

and there are third party solution for poser if you are willing to Do the work to get your poser content into them
such as "poseray" And "yafray"& indigo Via Blender.

Few people are willing to do the work however.

BTW My $60 version of VUE 6 easel
with GItakes poser content natively Still and animated and frankly looks heaps better than any of the poser-8 GI renders Ihave seen thus Far,
(*No offense to bagginsbill ,stewer andnco.
but I gotta be honest here.)

Cheers

Quote - let's see now.

V-Ray, standard price, around $1000
Maxwell Render - $746
Final Render - $1000 (about. no one price for the basic)
Brazil - $905
Mental Ray - No Direct Price LIsted.

so. taking into account say bulk prices etc... you really want poser to jump in price by at least %100?
(thats a base price of $249 for poser, and taking into account V-Ray for trueSpace was marketed at $299 so roughly %100. (yes I know it's a little over lol))

Absolutely. I own Maxwell -- purchased for $495 if memory serves. Maxwell's got plugins for all sorts of applications . . . but not for Poser. Hell, I even forked out money for Poser Fusion to be able to host scenes in other applications (too bad it works so poorly). There's a big market here, and Smith (or Daz) needs to wake up.

If Smith Micro wanted to do something for users, they'd strike a deal with one of the many quality 3rd party renderers. You should remember that the pricing you cited is for professional installations with renderfarm support-- one of the many applications would presumably be available to a consumer application at a reduced price-- the educational pricing should give you a sense of what they'd be willing to sell to a non-professional (and very large) market (eg $100 to $200).

Quote -
sorry mate. I'll take it at $249 and use another render engine I can get for FREE like Kerkythea.

Bottom line for me: Smith Micro wants to sell me something that's worth paying for an upgrade, Global Illumination -- which is five year old technology-- ain't it.

To take one very common capability that would dramatically change the experience of using Poser for most people: Instancing. Poser cries out for instancing, which is a feature in every modern render engine.

This is going to bite me square in the ass, but, how is it Smith Micro's fault that Maxwell doesn't provide a plugin for Poser?

I'm not sure but I'm not biting on this anymore....

Quote -

Absolutely. I own Maxwell -- purchased for $495 if memory serves. Maxwell's got plugins for all sorts of applications . . . but not for Poser. Hell, I even forked out money for Poser Fusion to be able to host scenes in other applications (too bad it works so poorly). There's a big market here, and Smith (or Daz) needs to wake up.

If Smith Micro wanted to do something for users, they'd strike a deal with one of the many quality 3rd party renderers. You should remember that the pricing you cited is for professional installations with renderfarm support-- one of the many applications would presumably be available to a consumer application at a reduced price-- the educational pricing should give you a sense of what they'd be willing to sell to a non-professional (and very large) market (eg $100 to $200).

Bottom line for me: Smith Micro wants to sell me something that's worth paying for an upgrade, Global Illumination -- which is five year old technology-- ain't it.

To take one very common capability that would dramatically change the experience of using Poser for most people: Instancing. Poser cries out for instancing, which is a feature in every modern render engine.

But you must remember that most of the third party render engine use their Own shader Language.
try telling poser users they have to Dump ALL of their many texture Sets for V-Chick and redo everything from scratch using Vray or mental ray shaders and watch the reaction.

Quote - This is going to bite me square in the ass, but, how is it Smith Micro's fault that Maxwell doesn't provide a plugin for Poser?

Jen..It absolutely is NOT the fault of smith Micro.

Quote - > Quote - This is going to bite me square in the ass, but, how is it Smith Micro's fault that Maxwell doesn't provide a plugin for Poser?

Jen..It absolutely is NOT the fault of smith Micro.

That's what I figured. 

Quote - This is going to bite me square in the ass, but, how is it Smith Micro's fault that Maxwell doesn't provide a plugin for Poser?

Very simply: No API

Instead of trying to play catch up to the state of the art minus a decade, were Smith or Daz to produce a documented API, you'd see one of the render apps for Poser in no time.  Any render engine needs an API to "talk to" a host application. No API = no way to talk to the application.

This is how the entire 2D and 3D graphics industry works: plugins get written because the host application has an API to write to. That's why 3D Studio supports a dozen different high quality 3rd party renderers. That's why there are a million plugins for Photoshop.

And here we have a case of a giant user base, which really likes working with this application's content, and is willing to pay for connectivity to quality renderers, and is ignored. Instead, they're trying to add features that were old news five years ago, and get you to spend your bucks on that.

Its frustrating, its bad business, and as a user (since Poser 3), my message to Smith is: if you want me to spend money on your product, just make it talk to a quality renderer. That's worth money to me.

So, COLLADA export is in no way a viable option?

Let's see, all this demand for big-boy render engines...

...wouldn't that be for animation? After all, for stills you just crank up all the FireFly settings and render your final overnight or while out at the kid's soccer game.

So.......for animation....

What good is a mighty render engine with the current animation controls in Poser? And no soft-body physics? And problematic hair?

:::::: Opera :::::

"Also they are usually implemented Via A plugin/extension built by makers of these third part engines." 

In the case of VRay for C4d, it was neither Maxon (C4D) nor Chaos Group (VRay), but an independent developer. Perhaps the Poser 8 api will be open enough to allow someone to build some kind of pipeline. With PoseRay, there's not a lot of work involved in getting Poser scenes into POVRay or Kerkythea. Taking advantage of the facilities of those renderers is where the work comes in IMO. Hardly ever mentioned is the fact that going back to at least Poser 4, you could export .rib format to a Renderman style renderer. Again, the transfer process is the easy part. Actually translating the shaders between render engines is rare as far as I've seen, but you're probably better off redoing them in the target engine anyway.  

I have to agree that Vue is very cool.

Quote - So, COLLADA export is in no way a viable option?

Well......Collada is an option
but is implemented as a file exchange  format between entire Suites
I can use the free Daz studio& export
V4 to Cinema4D animated and all and render her in AR3or V-Ray, or Maxwell, happily
splashing in water from Realflow4 but I still had to buy C4D and Realflow4 $6000 USD alone, not counting if I actually got Maxwell Etc.

Cheers

From what it sounds like, what is wanted is a plugin option...so, why isn't Collada export a viable option instead of a plugin?

Quote - From what it sounds like, what is wanted is a plugin option...so, why isn't Collada export a viable option instead of a plugin?

Because you cant buy Vray, launch it as a stand alone, just  and throw a collada file "into" it or MaxWell, Mental Ray etc.
the 3rd party renderer has to be implemented from within a $$host$$ program(MAX, MAYA Softimage,C4D etc) just as one cant export a blender scene straight to poser "Firefly" it has to properly come into poser itself first.

@ OperaGuy : Well  John we both know its obvious S/M cares naught about improving Character animation in poser.

Cheers

Quote - Very simply: No API

Instead of trying to play catch up to the state of the art minus a decade, were Smith or Daz to produce a documented API, you'd see one of the render apps for Poser in no time.  Any render engine needs an API to "talk to" a host application. No API = no way to talk to the application.

You can write integrations for 3rd party renderers. I wrote one for 3delight and one for yafray as hobby projects years ago. In fact, the yafray exporter is licensed under the GPL and anyone who wishes to extend or modify it or use it as a base for an exporter of a render engine of their choice is invited to do so. Go write that Kerkythea exporter, please. I'll be happy to help wherever I can.

3delight: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=1364391
yafray: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=1811598&ebot_calc_page#message_1811598

at least give me a tangent!

Quote - [
You can write integrations for 3rd party renderers. I wrote one for 3delight and one for yafray as hobby projects years ago. In fact, the yafray exporter is licensed under the GPL and anyone who wishes to extend or modify it or use it as a base for an exporter of a render engine of their choice is invited to do so. Go write that Kerkythea exporter, please. I'll be happy to help wherever I can.

But how would one go about writing a  Direct poser integration plugin for a proprietary non-open source engine like Maxwell from next limit or Vray from Chaos Group??

Quote - at least give me a tangent!

....and soft IK

Quote - But how would one go about writing a  Direct poser integration plugin for a proprietary non-open source engine like Maxwell from next limit or Vray from Chaos Group??

1. Get an SDK for Maxwell or Vray.
2. Use SWIG or any other of the many tools available to generate a Python wrapper for that SDK.
3. Write a Poser->Maxwell or Poser->Vray bridge in Python by iterating over the scene elements in Poser (cameras, lights, materials, geometry) and passing them to the render engine SDK.
4. Use wxPython to build a nice GUI for Poser 8.

Quote -
But how would one go about writing a  Direct poser integration plugin for a proprietary non-open source engine like Maxwell from next limit or Vray from Chaos Group??

Works the other way 'round. The host application needs the API.  When it comes time to render in, say, Lightwave, the plugin is invoked and via the Lightwave API, the renderer gets "told" what polygons they have, how they're textured, lit and so on.

So Smith needs an API, for Poser, and Maxwell or Chaos would do the work to hook their render engine into it. There's enough experience to know that "if you write the API, renderers will come" -- but you have to write the API. In just the past year, you have the experience of Luxology's Modo . . . they took the trouble to write an API, and Maxwell immediately did a plugin for it. Writing a plugin is not a major chore for a render app, so long as the API is there.

By my lights, Smith (and the long string of prior owners of Poser),  have gone terribly wrong, expending scarce development resources to duplicate what's been done better long ago by lots of folks. Spend your developer resources to give a modern render engine access to the thousands of dollars of content and hundreds of hours of experience I've invested in Poser.

The part of the process that only Smith can do is to alter their code to support an API -- anyone else doing that would be "hacking" -- decompiling or otherwise modifying someone else's code is a DMCA violation.

@Wolf359

Quote -
But you must remember that most of the third party render engine use their Own shader Language.
try telling poser users they have to Dump ALL of their many texture Sets for V-Chick and redo everything from scratch using Vray or mental ray shaders and watch the reaction.

Ah, this is the beauty part. Poser textures are incredibly simple, even if they're expressed in an awkward way (eg, transmaps have the unique property that no matter how many time you invert them, they're always wrong)

A Poser texture is rarely anything more than

1. transparency
2. texture
3. bump

Those three maps cover %99 of what I've ever bought from Rosity or Daz.  There is no complex BDRF, no emitters, very rare use of SSS . . . basically a Poser texture set converts easily, so long as it "plays nice" . Maybe there are a few folks doing exotic things with complex procedurals in the Materials tab, but that's very rare.

There is no renderer that has any trouble with a bump, a texture, and transmap, so long as they're output correctly-- which is what an API does, so with a decent API, there's no problem of texture conversion, in fact that's the whole point of the thing.

http://my.smithmicro.com/win/poser/index.html

You all can try it out for yourself!

""Maybe there are a few folks doing exotic things with complex procedurals in the Materials tab, but that's very rare.""

croc, you do know BB is reading this thread, right?

Seriously, for anyone caring about skin, even without "true" SSS, the material node system of Poser is critical. If moving your scene with human skin prominent into another program or engaging another render engine means ditching the handling of the Poser nodes....yuck.

::::: Opera :::::

DS already has the Renderizer plugin that will allow you to render using Pixie (free), the full version of 3Delight ($0-$1500) or PRMan ($3,500).

I can see kind of  crocodilian's point about resource allocation but they really haven't been reinventing the wheel, they simply bought Pixels3D's wheel along with any limitations it may have. As Stewer says, it would be possible to add support for other render engines but from a profit standpoint, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. I tend to doubt that adding MentalRay support would bring droves of Max or Maya users into the Poser fold from the high end and probably not many Poser users would shell out for MentalRay from the low end. From the renderer devs POV, API or not, Poser integration probably sounds like marketing a Ferrari engine for a Kia sedan - not a real big market.

Ironically, many if not most of the people who have the skills to take advantage of a high end renderer are the ones who are clamoring for more power from Firefly. That makes sense - who wouldn't prefer an all in one solution at a much cheaper price and without having to start from scratch?

Either way, I think neither superfly group nor the Mental/VRay group represent the vast majority of Poser users, notwithstanding the prevalence either may have in the forums here. Poser needs to satisfy the majority while preventing the minority from defecting. And where would they defect to at that, since many don't seem to be keen on DS and apart from perhaps Carrara or Vue, they'd have to give up their nodes and dynamics. At this point, it sounds like Poser 8 will do a pretty good job of satisfying most people and Poser 9 will probably be owned by the Chinese or the new GM anyway.
 

"Poser textures are incredibly simple." 

Croc, if all you want is basic map support then you should look at PoseRay's Kerkythea translation. In a couple of minutes you can have your Poser pz3 loaded into a render that supports GI, Maxwell style MLT and all kinds of goodies, albeit probably only for for still renders. Other than the current options for Carrara, Vue, Kerkythea, C4D, yafray and POVRay, or the Renderman path via DS, I don't imagine we're going to see anything else in the forseeable future unless AutoDesk buys Poser.

Path to MODO with MDD/point cloud exists. no nodes, but maps yes. Even Poser dynamic hair guide hairs, which Modo can then expand to full hair!

No rigging once you get the point cloud over but the camera is animateable.

http://www.vuescripts.com/_A/index.php?id=1,0,0,1,0,0

:::::: Opera :::::