Not bad, really.
Man I'd love to see you get into Lightwave. I bet you could make some nodes and even entire plugins that would blow people away. You definitely seem to be getting far more out of Poser than anyone else ever has, probably even more than the developers themselves can do.

Quote - > Quote - Here is a tall cylinder.

yes yes yes

i need this . when is SP1 going to be realesed?  lets say month. november? is november a realistic date? 

Don't quote me or hold SM to this, but I'm thinking September.

Quote - Not bad, really.
Man I'd love to see you get into Lightwave. I bet you could make some nodes and even entire plugins that would blow people away. You definitely seem to be getting far more out of Poser than anyone else ever has, probably even more than the developers themselves can do.

Me too. Tell them to give it to me, like SM gave me Poser 7 and Pro, for free, and I'd probably become a very vocal advocate.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Here is a tall cylinder.

yes yes yes

i need this . when is SP1 going to be realesed?  lets say month. november? is november a realistic date? 

Don't quote me or hold SM to this, but I'm thinking September.

nice

I'm not sure if it's that easy. ;-)
But hey, you never know. I think I might just email them and show what you've accomplished with Poser so far. They're developing a new LW called CORE, a rewrite from the ground up right now and might be looking for some talented development types.

Quote - > Quote -

Yeah something is definitely wrong there, I have the same concern (slow behavior in the materials room).  Has anybody reported this "officially"?

Just curious here. I've read at least three reports of overall slower display performance as compared to Poser Pro and Poser 7. Document display, that is, but this could tie into it, I imagine.

This concerns me considerably, because Poser has traditionally had far better display performance in OpenGL than every other 3D app out there, at least as far as moving high poly stuff around goes. I'd hate to think they've degraded it any.

How is your display speed with a large scene in OpenGL, with large textures and transparency maps?

I guess your question got snowed under by all the technical mambo jambo from the last few pages. This topic has drifted so far that It's almost time for me to check out.

When opening a scene for me it takes much longer for everything to show up in P8 then it does in Poser 7 Pro. Once everything is shown both behave about the same, but initializing OpenGL preview at the beginning a scene takes a lot longer, even up to 20 seconds or more for a large scene. Small scene no difference, but large scenes definitely slower.

Who thought there would be zero problems with the initial release, with regard to OpenGL? Anybody? Anybody think that SM was able to test the thousands of possible combinations?

There's nothing here to discuss. Poser 8 uses more OpenGL features. For many people, the preview in P8 is running much more effectively than before. For some people, it isn't. Among those, there are quite a few who don't have updated drivers. Not saying everybody is out of date, but a lot of the complaints were that the drivers from two years ago worked fine with Poser 7 - it should work with Poser 8, right? Sure, if Poser 8 had nothing new about it. But P8 is using features of OpenGL that it didn't used to use.

So there are some kinks to work out. We can't work them out here in the forum. Report your configuration, video card, driver version, etc. to SM.. The more reports they get, the more patterns will appear, and they will sort it out.

BRTS with adjustable samples is a brand new feature, like only 3 days old, so my first impressions fit perfectly with the theme of this thread.

Quote - Who thought there would be zero problems with the initial release, with regard to OpenGL? Anybody? Anybody think that SM was able to test the thousands of possible combinations?

There's nothing here to discuss. Poser 8 uses more OpenGL features. For many people, the preview in P8 is running much more effectively than before. For some people, it isn't. Among those, there are quite a few who don't have updated drivers. Not saying everybody is out of date, but a lot of the complaints were that the drivers from two years ago worked fine with Poser 7 - it should work with Poser 8, right? Sure, if Poser 8 had nothing new about it. But P8 is using features of OpenGL that it didn't used to use.

So there are some kinks to work out. We can't work them out here in the forum. Report your configuration, video card, driver version, etc. to SM.. The more reports they get, the more patterns will appear, and they will sort it out.

BRTS with adjustable samples is a brand new feature, like only 3 days old, so my first impressions fit perfectly with the theme of this thread.

Oh, oh.... someone's in a bad mood today.

Quote - Check it out.

nice. now we only need better specular hightlights and we have a win.

because the specular looks now extreme fake compared to realistic shadows and color bleeding.

If some one else would like to form some first opinions about Poser 8, but they don't qualify for the upgrade price, I notice that it is presently discounted at CP.

LMK

Quote -
Check it out.

Looks like someone's kid has been hiding crap under the coffee table. ;-)

Specular is probably always going to be a bit of a nag, but at least it's pretty easy to control (create one or more lights with black Diffuse color).  You can even do a specular-only pass (or multiple passes, if you want), just turn off all the other lights that have non-zero Diffuse and turn off any Ambient materials.

Whether somebody is confused about how shadows work, or confused about how business works, or confused about how software works, or confused about how product managers do their jobs, if I think I have a better understanding than is indicated in a post, then I reply. As I did here.

The only logical thing to do about OpenGL problems is to work with SM to solve them. The quote you quoted actually began with an illogical question: Has anybody reported them officially? Obviously the right answer is: If you have this problem, YOU should report it. The answer then is yes, it was officially reported. Then maybe ask here if somebody else has the problem and has found a solution.

Moreover, if you read the feature list of the product you bought, it says quite clearly:

OpenGL Preview Improvements
Real-time preview engine improvements in Poser 8 now display lights and their accumulated values more realistically, sorted by intensity. The light properties control allows the user to select each light they wish to illuminate the scene preview. Mip Map support has been enabled for enhanced performance when previewing large textures. Together, these real-time preview engine enhancements let the user view larger textures and offer more complete scene previewing when setting up lights.

See that? View larger textures, more complete scene previewing. That means more data stuffed into the card, and more horespower needed from the card to display the higher quality preview. You even said it - simpler scenes, no real difference. More complex scenes, it is slower. Duh. Of course it is.

Also, there are settings you can adjust to tailor the preview rendering, in case your card or driver are not up to the task of what P8 demands, even if they were good enough for P7. Have you looked at any of these? I'm guessing probably not. In particular hover over Preview texture resolution. It says: lower settings = better performance.

Quote - guess your question got snowed under by all the technical mambo jambo from the last few pages. This topic has drifted so far that It's almost time for me to check out.

If you had elided this part of your post, I never would have felt it necessary to say anything at all. Were you to claim this isn't provocative, I'd simply conclude you're being disingenuous.

Mambo jambo is the name of a restaurant and a song. I assumed you meant mumbo jumbo.

From wikipedia:

Mumbo Jumbo, or mumbojumbo, is an Englishphrase or expression that denotes a confusing or meaningless subject. It is often used as humorous expression of criticism of middle-management and civil service non-speak, and of belief in something considered non-existent by the speaker (ghosts, supernatural phenomena, superstitious beliefs, etc.).

Quote -
The only logical thing to do about OpenGL problems is to work with SM to solve them. The quote you quoted actually began with an illogical question:

How was that illogical?
Alikema quoted my quote, in which I only mentioned a few people who have made comments about display speed slowdowns. All I asked was if pjz99 was seeing anything like that. I made no accusations or assumptions or anything like that

hey as long as I'm thinking about it, what's the difference between hardware accumulation buffer and software accumulation buffer?
Sounds to me like the video card RAM will be used  more in hardware accumulation, but software accumulation...
I have no idea what those settings do.

Time to really unsubscribe. Bagginsbill, I'm getting tired of having to read all of your in-depth explanations and corrections. I didn't ask for them, I don't want them. You don't have to go through such an ordeal each time someobe says something about Poser 8. You're starting to behave like an annoying school teacher having to defend, correct and explain each little comment made and each word said.

I answered a simple question, I stated P8 OpenGL is slower on larger scenes, that's a fact, you confirmed it. You could have said yes, it's slower and saved yourself the typing. As soon as you come with your lengthy explanations why something in P8 is the way it is, I don't even read it. I don't care. All I know it's slower and I can live with it.

If I do have a real problem with P8 I will contact support, as I have done on various issues, this isn't a problem or a bug.

Still this thread is snowed under..... the OP asked first impressions, you're not giving first impressions anymore, you're starting to sound like an in depth technical manual for Poser 8. You're posts are way beyond first impressions.....

Now where did they hide the ignore button?

Quote - hey as long as I'm thinking about it, what's the difference between hardware accumulation buffer and software accumulation buffer?
Sounds to me like the video card RAM will be used  more in hardware accumulation, but software accumulation...
I have no idea what those settings do.

An accumulation buffer is generally used for things like antialiasing, motion blur, and depth-of-field effects.  I can't tell you much more than that, unfortunately.

I really should run a few tests sometime, alternating between hardware and software modes, to see if there's any significant impact on preview performance.

Quote - hey as long as I'm thinking about it, what's the difference between hardware accumulation buffer and software accumulation buffer?
Sounds to me like the video card RAM will be used  more in hardware accumulation, but software accumulation...
I have no idea what those settings do.

I'm sorry, Mike, if i answer your question, it will involve technical "mambo jambo", and aeilkema will have to stop threatening to unsubscribe and actually unsubscribe.

Little Dragon, I've tried tests with Poser pro, using both settings and I can't see a difference. Might be because my video card has a gig of RAM and I have 8 gigs system RAM, so maybe either mode is just as efficient in a capable and powerful system. Just a guess, really.

I'm all up for the momba jamboree, Ted, I can take it ;-)

OK.

Little_Dragon is right, the accumulation buffer is used to accumulate and combine multiple images, to perform various effects using interesting cheats.

The soft shadows I was demonstrating with blurred ray-traced shadows is an example of something that can be approximated much faster with an accumulation buffer, instead of casting multiple rays.

A pure ray-tracer has to do a lot of work in order to produce smooth real-life effects. The shadow samples we were discussing is an important parameter in such a case, allowing us to find a good balance between speed and quality/realism. By casting more rays, and averaging them, we get smoother results, but it takes longer, When pure speed is of the essence, such as real-time preview rendering for posing purposes, or in a real-time game, other techniques are better, even though visually inferior.

The accumulation buffer is used to do multi-pass rendering. For example, depth-of-field can be reasonably simulated by rendering multiple copies of the scene, but from slightly different viewpoints, and then combining them. Using the OpenGL hardware accumulation buffer, one can actually get a decent real-time rendition of DOF. The renderer repeatedly picks a camera position slightly different from the specified camera position, renders that, and merges that into the accumulation buffer. For soft shadows, the renderer can generate a soft shadow map by rendering from the point of view of a light source, but multiple times from slightly different positions, and merge these using the accumulation buffer.

Basically, techniques involving the accumulation buffer are like combining multiple layers in Photoshop. These are 2D operations, and sometimes they are way faster without being too bad in quality.

If you use the hardware accumulation buffer, but your hardware isn't able to provide enough RAM for a big scene, then you run into trouble. For example, you end up having to swap textures in and out a lot.

On the other hand, if you don't use the hardware accumulation buffer, then you have to copy each intermediate render out of the video card into the main computer memory and merge the results there with the other renders. All that copying costs time, too.

Depending on the scene complexity and texture sizes, the hardware accumulation buffer may or may not be faster or better than main memory. There's no single right answer.

But it begs the question - why does Poser care? I don't see it doing DOF or soft shadows in preview. About the only thing I could see it using the accumulation buffer for is antialiasing, or maybe toon line drawing.

For examples of the effects that can be produced this way, see:

http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/sp05/cs419/accum/accum.html

http://www.opengl.org/resources/code/samples/glut_examples/advanced/advanced.html

I forgot to mention if you have 1 GB of video memory, you probably want to use the hardware accumulation buffer.

Suppose you were doing a full-screen preview, 1920 x 1200. The HAB needs to be 18 megabytes in that case. When video memory was 64 MB total, that was a big fraction. But out of 1 GB that's nothing.

However, if you were to do 4x oversampling for anti-aliasing, that's 292 MB. Now you might think twice.

Ah OK, thanks.That would explain why I don't see a difference when using Poser. I haven't paid any attention to any differences during a render though. Being that it's under the display options I had assumed it was a real time display thing.

Yeah, I do have it set to hardware accumulation. I always use anything that has hardware options in all programs.

Quote - Ah OK, thanks.That would explain why I don't see a difference when using Poser. I haven't paid any attention to any differences during a render though. Being that it's under the display options I had assumed it was a real time display thing.

It's not involved in Poser scene software rendering. It's only used for the pose room, or if you're using the preview renderer for a fast animation.

I didn't realize anybody had asked me (specifically me) a question - in general I don't notice any change in OpenGL preview speed i.e. moving the cameras around, but it's always been much greater for me than 30 fps except in very extreme circumstances in previous versions anyway.  The interface though, particuarly the materials room interface, that's got a speed problem.  Pretty sure this has been reported and is being worked on.

Just finished my impromptu test.  I rendered the same animation (640x480, 924 frames) twice, using the OpenGL preview engine, with antialiasing and 2D motion blur enabled.  I noticed no significant change in performance.  Both renders took just over 50 minutes.

Admittedly, my system is hardly a powerhouse (Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 2GB system RAM, with a GeForce 8400, 512MB video RAM).  Your accumulation-buffer mileage may vary, depending upon your hardware.

Quote - Specular is probably always going to be a bit of a nag, but at least it's pretty easy to control (create one or more lights with black Diffuse color).  You can even do a specular-only pass (or multiple passes, if you want), just turn off all the other lights that have non-zero Diffuse and turn off any Ambient materials.

this is my approach now.if i use studio lights then they are all round. so i render first out everything only specular with one specific settings on blinn. then i change every blinn and render again. that way it gives the illusion that one light is bigger then the other.

if only we could use an image map to tell the light what kind of shape it is. not for diffuse. but for specular. like in this paper from pixar:
forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php

are DM shadows faster in poser 8?
i am asking because i think the 1024 map generates faster then before. i have the same computer so  so it could only be the software.

Quote - are DM shadows faster in poser 8?
i am asking because i think the 1024 map generates faster then before. i have the same computer so  so it could only be the software.

It's hard to tell. I use a script to do timed renders, but it is no help determining how long the shadow calculation takes. In the couple tests I did, Poser Pro and P8 seemed to take about the same time to do the shadow map, but the PPro render overall was 15 seconds and the P8 was 11.

i am looking at the window where the blue lines goes on the right.
when using DM shadow its now almost jumping on the right.

plus now that we have the square law i can set 5 lights so fast. its really great.

I have installed daz content in poser 8. Much of the installed content has no thumbs/images in the library, can anyone provide insigth to this issue. It's kinda hard to use the content when you can't see previews. Please help. 

No more RSR icons, for very old content.  There is some conversion utility out there that can convert them to PNG format (google).

P3DO Explorer will do it. It's free if you Goggle for it.

I think there was some discussion about P8 not handling the capitalization of extensions correctly. Try lower casing them.

Whichway

I'm curious. If the new library is using IE, how much of the library is IE? Is that why it can't convert RSRs? 

Quote - I'm curious. If the new library is using IE, how much of the library is IE? Is that why it can't convert RSRs? 

It can't convert RSRs simply because SM decided to remove the code that looks for RSRs, not because they couldn't be converted.

This is a complex subject and actually requires additional information about the future plans for the library that I cannot discuss.

The simple (and limited) argument is they don't want the software looking for RSR and PNG files - it wastes time. The code to convert RSR to PNG could have been left in and the GUI could show them, but if the software won't even LOOK for RSR files, then there is no point in showing them, since none will be found.

There is nothing preventing the creation and release of a free tool to convert all RSR to PNG in one click. I don't have time to write this, but others have/can/did/will - including perhaps SM.

Oh, none of the library is in IE. The library is HOSTED by IE, on PC. In Mac it is hosted by the native Mac browser.

The library is written in Flex/Flash (visible parts) and C++ (invisible parts).

Nothing is written in IE.

IE is part of the Windows operating system, just like True Type Fonts is part of the Windows operating system. The Indexing service used by the Search engine is also part of the Windows or Mac operating systems. More and more of Poser is using built-in OS features, instead of rollling its own.

Much of the installation and compatibility problems is stemming from the fact that there are like 8 different variations of Windows out there: XP, XP SP1, XP SP2, XP SP3, Vista, Windows 7 Beta, etc. etc.

A lot of people think Windows is Windows is Windows. Nope.

"IE is part of the Windows operating system,"

serious question. with IE not being installed as standard with Windows 7 in Europe, will P8 work with other browsers?

 There is a donationware piece of software for the Mac that does the RSR to PNG conversion quite nicely.  I used it on my 39.53 GB Runtime folder and it took care of everything in a few minutes.

The app is called RSRConv and can be found here:
http://braintrigger.com/software/RSRConv/

The only issue I had was the trademark symbol in the Poser folder name containing my primary runtime.  Once I renamed the folder, the thumbnails appeared in the library.

Quote - "IE is part of the Windows operating system,"

serious question. with IE not being installed as standard with Windows 7 in Europe, will P8 work with other browsers?

Honestly, I don't really understand that part. Poser uses wxWindows to load and embed something called WebKit, which embeds IE, which embeds LSMGUI.HTML, which embeds Flash, which embeds LSMGUI.swf. I wrote the last part in that equation, that's all.

On Mac, somewhere in there IE gets replaced with Safari, I think. It's all magic to me, and I lose interest quickly when it is discussed.

well due to EU restrictions Windows 7 sold in Europe won't have IE included in the install. so I was wondering if P8 would have a problem on that version of 7.

It doesn't really use IE, it uses a browser component that happens to be the same as used by IE. Is that IE? If you transplant my heart into another person, is that me anymore?

I don't think government can order Microsoft to leave out a built-in HTML browser component, any more than the government can order MS to leave out a search engine component, or leave out font support, or the ability to use a mouse or speakers, or the ability to view a JPG image.

But - whatever. I'm sure the users in the EU will sort it out. The future is that most applications will be linked with web-based technologies. That's not the same as saying it must be connected to the Internet. I just mean that Flash is not only for Internet apps anymore, and HTML is not just for Internet documents anymore.

Any PC that doesn't come with a way to run Flash or view an HTML document will be like buying a TV without a tuner in it - that's called a monitor, not a TV and you have to buy something else to watch TV on it.

erm Bill?
they did under the anti trust laws..... look it up mate. it's been in the news a lot.

You didn't read what I said. I'm not disputing that the program IEXPLORE.EXE is banned.

Poser does not use IEXPLORE.EXE.

It uses a component that renders HTML and interprets Javascript. This component is not IEXPLORE.EXE.

LOL I just read this article:

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/06/windows-7-to-be-shipped-in-europe-sans-internet-explorer.ars

If it is to be believed, the following points are important.

* MS is removing IE voluntarily from W7 for EU, not under govt. order, but in anticipation of trouble

• Computer makers and OEM's are free to bundle whatever they want with W7, including IE
• If you buy W7 yourself, you have no browser and no FTP client with which to download the browser of your choice. LOL!!! You will have to get additional software and install it via CD.

They talk about the success and acceptance of the EU version of Windows without Windows Media Player. I think the reaction to having NO built-in way to access the Internet might be a bit different.

Note that nowhere in any of this is the loss of HTML componentry promised. There have to be ways to render HTML content within an application, regardless of whether IE is installed or not.

Attached Link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752085(VS.85).aspx

The EU haven't agreed to a resolution of the case yet, and MS just keeps changing what it says will happen with Win7-> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/03/microsoft_ditches_windows_e_plans/

.....you know a simple yes itll work just fine` would have been so much easier.....

bagginsbill,  so when you say  it uses a browser component, would that explain why after rendering something in P8, when I delete browsing history in IE, it takes forever, like I have been surfing the internet for weeks without ever clearing my history? Reason I say this is If I haven't done anything in poser and I go to tools in IE and delete browsing history, it takes only seconds to delete, but the other night I did a render that took all night, and then when I went to tools, and deleted the browsing history it took over 5 minutes to delete! This only happens after I have used P8.

I have P3DO. I have no idea how to use it to convert the rsr's to png's. I hate to be so needy by I had rather be creating than editing and manipulating content. Could I get a little more directions on how this program works, or direction to infomation that would help me save the 50+ gigs of older Daz product.

Thanks,

BiggD.