Quote - "I enjoy kicking back and actually reading tech documents/manuals while NOT sitting in front of the computer.

It looks like I'll get more use out of my netbook if leaving out manuals is going to be the norm. Netbooks are portable enough, and have a battery life of up to 10 hours, to be used in more cozy settings than in front of a computer. The downside is that a hard copy manual is easier to flip back and forth to dig up info.

Quote - Hmm, I agree wholeheartedly JAG. Be very carefull though, I recently  said things here along verry similer lines and got slated from certain quarters....it was even suggested that maybe I should go back to using Poser1 if I just wanted to do "simple renders"

Right with you JAG

You post wasn't anything at all like JAG's. You were complaining about how things should remain the same as Poser was originally intended. You also complained about how old Poser's Code was in the same post. You can't have it both ways. You have a new Poser with New Code and you bitched because it didn't do the old things like the Poser 4 renderer and RSR conversion. You basically said Poser should remain what it was originally and that was just a tool for real artists to pose figures that they could draw or paint from as models. That's a far cry from what JAG has complained about here.

i went from Poser 4 to Poser 6, not stopping by Poser 5 not even to say hi... by the looks of it, I'll be jumping from Poser 6 to Poser 9 whenever the time comes...

I use Poser for a living, and so far, version 6 with the latest SR works like a charm for me... just my 2 cents...

Well, P5 worked for me right out of the box, one of the lucky ones. Never went back to P4 except for testing.

Then P6 happened and I could not go back to P5. then it was P7 and pro. Again never looked back to P6.

Now it's P8 and it has improved in many ways in perfomance and I can't go back to P7.

My point is, every version has improvements and I think P8 has taken those improvements a step farther. Sure ther will be the odd bug depending on your system but over all, it has been a pretty stable, out of the box version, for me.

Just want to thank everyone who posted in my defense on this matter and I apologize for angering up certain individuals yesterday.  I never figured I'd be attacked for complaining about software.  I'll post a fuller review later next week.

Generally ,I think it is getting more and more aggressive in poser forums which is a pitty. People just giving their opinions and they may do that .So no need for a attack or feeling attacked.

Have you guys read the manual? half the back is straight from poser 4. At least they could have replaced the pictures.

and you two guys fighting, funny... classic thread

I totally sympathize with your frustrations JAG, but as software evolves it changes. Beleive me I wish I had all the money back that I'd spent on software that didn't work properly over the years, if I could I'd have one hefty chunk of change.   That having been said there is absolutely no reason you can't have 2 versions of a program you love on your computer.  At least with Poser you have that option, with E-ons Vue for instance, you can't have a prior version of Vue Infinite your computer concurrently with the most recent one.  As I said above I had Poser 4 Pro Pack and Poser 5 on my computer at the same time for a long time; I had to.  I may end up installing an older version of Poser on it this time too; I'm not sure if Vue imports will work with Poser 8.

I think that it is a shame that people can't get a refund when software can't meet their needs.  With anything else if the product doesn't work as described you can bring it back, but once you open the seal of a software package you're screwed.

Quote - The Poser Reference Manual is 565 pages.

Did you  look at the section on the library? I think you would be disappointed.  Hopefully they will fix it as part of SR1

Quote -
I think that it is a shame that people can't get a refund when software can't meet their needs.  With anything else if the product doesn't work as described you can bring it back, but once you open the seal of a software package you're screwed.

In general that's true, but Smith Micro is at least allowing refunds, even for digital downloads. I'd have no idea how many refunds they've made, but I know of at least one, posted by the guy here last week.

Well that really good to know :0).  I'm keeping mine, but there has been other software that I've gotten from other companies that I never got to work right.  

I think an examination of the Poser Manual will reveal that it's virtually the same as the preceding versions.  It should be easy to copy the pages from the PDF via inject that describe new features and throw them in a binder without it costing a lot of money from a printer.

Seriously though, I would reccomend Practical Poser 8 as the preceding books of the series were very well done and give a lot of useful information.

*"You basically said Poser should remain what it was originally and that was just a tool for real artists to pose figures that they could draw or paint from as models."

*I don't believe I ever said that I wanted Poser to stay just the way it was, nor did I either call or imply myself to be a "real" artist  What I did was stated the simple truth as to my own particular use for Poser  and that Poser after all was, and is, made for  simple posing and rendering among other, more serious things (read the advertizing matter " easily create 3d charachter art and animation"..."EASILY")   I made the unfortunate missuse of capital letters in part of my post which you decided  must be an act of aggression...? far from it, it was actually despair!  So, i'll put it again ; the only thing that  "I" ask is that when I buy a new version of Poser, or any other software for that matter, I believe  that it's reasonable for me to expect the most basic part of it to work?  I have no Idea as to how ambient occlusion and such like works and I have the utmost of respect for those that do. I did not complain about RSR conversion (don't even know what it is!) I simply said i would like to see larger thumbs in the library..Oh, I did come to the aid of thomasrjm and state that I didn't see why someone who's just bought poser 8 should have to resort to the use of  Poser 7  (which they may not even have) to enable them to use it!  I did not ever mention the Poser4 renderer, indeed, since Poser 5  i've never used it! 

At the begining of this post I basically sided with JAG in my dissapointment of this release of Poser  and SM (in my particular case the last 3 releases) although my reasons may be different   I made in this and other posts perfectly valid and reasonable complaints, as have all else here. For some reason LostinSpaceman you missenterpret everything I say...I have obviously in someway, somewhere offended you? I do appologise.

To everyone else here I also sincerely appologise If I have in any way unwittingly caused offence

Quote - 2. WHERE THE -BLEEP- is my P4 render engine???????  Am I nuts, or does the included paperwork in my DVD case show a distinct lack of the P4 engine tab on the rendering options?

I think your review was critical, well-thought out, and nicely written, so I think that shows you're definitely not nuts.

But, yes, SM did remove the P4 render engine from P8. The official reason is that it's not supported by their new architecture. I'm pretty sure this means they don't want to spend any more development time trying to re-write the P4 renderer so it works with 64-bit operating systems.

To answer the question about why people are missing the P4 renderer: because it renders a scene in a fraction of the time it takes to render it using the Firefly renderer, simply because the P4 renderer doesn't show the procedure-node shader effects.
Even when I set Poser 7 to the most optimized Firefly settings, a scene still takes 2 to 3 times longer to render. Now, sure, for finished artwork, I want Poser to take its time and render everything nicely. But when I just want to see how the scene looks, I don't want to wait 15 minutes when the P4 renderer will give a good preview of the scene in about 30 seconds. I don't need ray-traced reflections and depth-mapped shadows when I'm looking to see if the character's eyes are looking the right way or if a pose is causing a person's arm to poke through the shirt.

Yes, I can fiddle with the bucket size and rendering threads and ray-traced bounces and so on, but for simple, fast previews, the P4 renderer can't be beat.

It's sad to hear that they're no longer sending out thick, printed manuals, but I think this is typical of the entire software industry. How many other programs ship in small jewel cases instead of big boxes? This reduces shelf space in stores, reduces the shipping weight of the product, and lowers the cost of the product since all those manuals don't have to be printed.

And I wonder if the SM techs finally listened to all the complaints in the forums where people said they only used the Poser manual as a doorstop.
Let's face it: most people will post a message in the Poser Forum instead of opening the manual. And after the initial replies of "read the manual", they'll get answers to their questions that aren't even covered in the manual.

Wait, once again people are describing requirements in terms of how it should be delivered instead of the requirement.

You want a fast preview render without shaders. You do not actually require the P4 engine. You just want an option to ignore shader trees, so you can get a 2 second test render instead of an 8 second test render.

That's a test I just did in Poser Pro - single figure with my usual complicated shaders, single light. Rendered in FF 8 seconds, P4 7 seconds (with shaders) and P4 2 seconds without shaders.

So you don't really want the P4 shader, you just want another option to make FF faster for test renders. That's a much more reasonable thing to do than to keep maintaining the entire P4 render engine code base.

there's been in-fighting like this with the new release of every version since P5.  it dies down after about 3 mos., hence no worries.  there wasn't any of that when they released P4 because:

• it had no bugs IIRC, only user error at first (we still see signs of that in gallery here)
• only one forum was extant at that time, and it was ruled with an iron fist

I may be wrong on this, but I think the main "speed advantage" of the P4 engine is that it does not need to create a seperate database, but starts to render instantly, using Poser's own data structures as a base. To speculate even further, that may be the reason because it's gone. If big parts of Poser were rewritten, it's likely that the P4 engine does not work with that anymore, at least not without data conversions - which would spoil the speed advantage.

Firefly can render really fast, if you set the render options to low quality. I, for my part, don't miss the P4 engine - I like Ray Tracing and using Shaders way too much. Yes, P4 can give you a fast estimate, but what's that worth if I cannot preview lighting and shaders properly? 

I know there are people out there who still render with the P4 engine, for speed reasons or because it's more crisp, or because it's not that complicated. I don't think it's some evil thought by SM to remove it, but simply a question of priorities - the new light effects only work with Firefly, including the P4 renderer would have taken more time and could have made the final product more expensive. Business decisions can be hard sometimes. 

Quote - there's been in-fighting like this with the new release of every version since P5.  it dies down after about 3 mos., hence no worries.  there wasn't any of that when they released P4 because: - it had no bugs IIRC, only user error at first (we still see signs of that in gallery here)

• only one forum was extant at that time, and it was ruled with an iron fist

Actually P4 was at 4.03. There were updates for the early version.

IIRC from what I saw the forum was a bit more slack, less rules. I've watched all the rule changes for many years now.

I wonder if it's possible to write a wxPython widget that would "turn off" the shaders and simulate the P4 renderer.

Hi,

I thinking about Poser 8.
Do anybody know, if I save in Poser Animation sets (I work very often with partial posings), can I save this to different Figures know??

In Poser 7 it is only the figure, which is selected when saving the Scene, where the animation sets are saved to. This makes it hard to work with partial savings and more than one figure in the scene!!
Maybe somebody has already Poser 8 and could test this, please.

I can give some instructions, if there is a problem in testing.

And is it possible to control with the "dependent paramters" from one figure to an other figure dials, rotation, trans - parameters???
I mean, normally the body morph and parameters is skilled to each figure.
Only with python I can controll between figures or that one figure controll the next (I don't mean parenting here).

I have asked both also SmithMicro, but I think a usergroup is more familar to all this features.

Thank you very much for any help here.

Best wishes and good rendering,
roger

I just checked cgtalk and they may be loosening up, now that P8Sr1 is coming out:

"Q: Can I use Poser, Daz 3D or pre-fabricated models?

A: Yes. This is no different from using your own pre-built models or the parametric models now availble in most 3D systems. However you should add significant creative input to make the models and results unique?"

I left in the typo, syntax errors and the final question mark that they added, almost like they're not really sure anymore if the medium is more important than the message.

p.s. somebody'll re-enable some kinda 90s renderer once enuff users demand it.