Quote - > Quote - It's the exact same attitude towards Poser users that was repeatedly voiced by CP Forum moderators time and time again. "Oh, they're just Poser users, a whiney childish bunch!" whenever there was the least bit of a complaint that something wasn't working or that a promised item wasn't being released. Well thank GOD for Rosity, where people are allowed to dissent as long as they don't break the TOS as you've been known to do, by getting personal with attacks.

As an old timer in these parts, I feel I have to comment. It used to be that the forums in the various communities were a place where people shared information. The noise ratio was a lot lower back then. And yes, the Poser and DAZ folks even popped in once in a while and were not only welcome, they were more a part of the community back then as well. That is no longer the case because something has definitely changed along the way. There is WAY too much "dissent"  and it now appears to be fashionable to bash on Smith Micro and DAZ at any available opportunity.

I might be wrong ... but if something doesn't work, what good does it to do complain about it in a forum?  The way I see it is you go to a forum to find out if someone else might be having a similar problem and to see if they found a solution. If your problem is confirmed and no one has yet found a solution, it won't do any good to continue complaining about it in the forums ... the best thing to do is let the appropriate software company KNOW about it so that they can fix it. Anything else is a complete waste of time and energy.

Amen.

Quote - So yeah, I like Poser A LOT. I just don't like how the people who created it come across in public some times like calling their customers unfair whiners, either directly or via implied remarks.

You and I have some things in common. I love Poser so much, I (along with the whole of the Poser team) have dedicated my professional life to it. Really. But what irks me? Blanket statements, such as the one above - "complete disregard for our customer base". That is neither accurate or fair, but unfortunately seems to be the kind of aspersion that sprinkles without regard from a few customers.

Perhaps if there were a little more civility all around, Rendo would be an easier place to participate in.

Coop, I don't know who you're quoting but I never said "complete disregard for our customer base". I did remark on your statement about Rendo users and what BB said it implied about us all being whiners.

Quote - Coop, I don't know who you're quoting but I never said "complete disregard for our customer base". I did remark on your statement about Rendo users and what BB said it implied about us all being whiners.

Actually LIS - I was quoting you...

Quote - This shows a complete disregard for their customer base!

:-)

Cheers,

Coop

Quote - The problem with that point of view Deecy is just this. SM had forums at CP where problems were brought to their attention and instead of resolving them or attempting to resolve them, they closed their forums.

Companies usually have forums so the users can help each other not to do support via them... For support they have email addresses (like e-frontier had, when they had the CP forums) or a ticket system as SM now has. So I doubt you brought anything to anyones attention via the CP forum, if it wasn't for one of the support guys there to forward you problem...

Ok yeah, I said that about getting sales calls a couple posts back. I still say calling customers to sell them something they've already bought from you shows exactly that. In anycase, I'm done. I don't need this crap right now. Nor do I need to buy anything else from CP or SM.

@ to ALL

STOP
I live in Belgium, pay 42 dollars + tax a month, for INTERNET

This was about SR 2 ( i thought )

Quote - You see that little line at the very top of the screen here that reports the number of users online here?  Most times that I come in here, the number is WELL OVER 3000 people at a time.

Now ... whenever I found my way to the Content Paradise forums I took a look at the number of users online there at any given time.  Usually it was somewhere between 30 and 60 people. I think the "most users online" was a figure under 500 if I remember correctly (and that either related to a software release, or some skuttlebut about Apollo Max LOL).  BUT ... if the average amount of traffic there was only one or two percent of the traffic here, would it make sense to keep it open?

Those figures are based on counting people who have clicked within the last n minutes, and I think Renderosity has a larger value of n than most phpbb boards - at DAZ I think it was stated to be 5 minutes, while at the time that was said Renderosity was said to use a 30 minute window. Presumably adding minutes to the window doesn't add active members at the same rate, since active posters will contribute one to the count on both the 5 and 30 minute samples, but it does mean you can't necessarily compare the numbers directly.

**:::... and Now
WE RETURN, BACK TO OUR REGULARlY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING::::
**

Happy to report on my iMac, that SR2 has made considerable improvements!

No Longer Crashing on the Library reloads,
No Longer Crashing in the Material Room,
IDL is MUCH quicker & does not "Lockup" 80% of the way through a render anymore
(well so far anyway ;))

I must have to look into replacing my mouse/tablet, the camera still does goofy things while try to directly manipulate within the preview window. 

Overall I am a happy camper with SR2

my .02

Oef, some good news finally.
Thanks.

Well, SR2 didn't solve my problem. I still cant finish a render unless its preview quality. FFrender  stops working after 10 minutes every single time I enable raytracing or IDL. Its very frustrating because I so want to see what its capable of.
So I'm stuck with good old poser pro until 2010 pro is released.

Every time? No matter what the content or settings? I had a user yesterday tell me that IDL takes 10 hours on her machine. Turns out she had the settings at completely ridiculous values, now it renders in 12 minutes.

Quote - I still cant finish a render unless its preview quality. FFrender  stops working after 10 minutes every single time I enable raytracing or IDL. Its very frustrating because I so want to see what its capable of.

Had sort of the same problem. You can try to reduce the bucket size. Helped me in some cases.

Quote - Well, SR2 didn't solve my problem. I still cant finish a render unless its preview quality. FFrender  stops working after 10 minutes every single time I enable raytracing or IDL. Its very frustrating because I so want to see what its capable of.
So I'm stuck with good old poser pro until 2010 pro is released.

Sebd us a capture of your render settings, may be we can help you !

The LEFT Figure:
THE SAME texture is connected to:  (BB, rest seated, it's just a KISS experiment)
There is NO other texture used, just and only the figures texture! (body + head + standard Maria eyes and laches)

Diffuse 0.8 ==>
Specular color base color white ==>
Specular value 0.25 ==>
Highlight is at 1.000, ==>
Reflection color base color white ==>
Reflection value 0.1 ==>
Bump 0.005 ==>

The Middle figure:
Diffuse 0.8 ==>
Specular color base color white ==>
Specular value 0.1 ==>
Highlight is at 1.000 ( no tex )
Reflection color base color white ==>
Reflection value 0.2 ==>
Bump 0.005 ==>

The right figure
Diffuse 0.8 ==>
Specular color base color white ==>
Specular value 0.25 ==>
Highlight is at 1.000  ( no tex )
Bump 0.005 ==>

have to reduce bump for close ups. (texture a little too scharpened, but OK for distance shots)
Anyhow, it was a morph test!

Oh, yes, before I forget:
Collars X to 102
Shoulders X to 110
Forearms X to 120

Render Settings
CShadows ON
Raytracing ON
Bounces 2
IC 10
Indirect light ON
Pixel samples 3
MSR 0.1
Rendered full screen, reduced till below 200K to put here 

But, when i try to render at IC 100, my PC is often on his / her knees...

Past 03 Am now, bedtime.
have a nice day.

Quote -
(by thinkcooper)
Perhaps if there were a little more civility all around, Rendo would be an easier place to participate in.

Well really, what do you expect? Have you spent much time reading non-Poser forums? Lack of civility is more often than not the general rule on internet forums, particularly where a product is the topic. As I'm sure you're well aware, you can't please everyone.
But it is by far not just Poser that has this situation. There are probably far more unhappy Max, Maya and other high end 3D users out there and you can find the same "uncivil" behavior on may forums devoted to those and other products.

But you also have to consider you haven't exactly gone out of your way to endear yourself or your products to the community. The Poser 5 fiasco is one example, and while maybe not quite as bad, now Poser 8, too. All the other versions seemed more or less fine, but those are two striking examples of why there might be a good deal of animosity towards the ever- traveling band of Poser developers.
Poser 5 was rush released when you guys were all but broke and out of business. You foisted an unfinished and probably rather untested version upon this community you love so much, with much ado and fanfare, just to get some cash flow.
And Poser 8 - released just on time, immediately after the presentation at SIGGRAPH, bugs and all. Bugs that you knew were there, as you were already working on a SR1 and already had a hotfix even as the raw version was going out the door. But I imagine it would have been kind of late (and expensive) by that point to have all those DVDs replaced...
And while there were a whole lot of people jumping up and down for joy over it, there were also quite a few people for whom it wouldn't work, and even now still won't. Sure, you have the refund deal, but that's not really a solution. People wanted to buy it and use it, not have a refund.
And then there's the matter of all the IDL hoopla. Says on your site "photorealism". Uh-huh. But everybody who tried it couldn't get jack out of it at first, because you neglected to mention that half the settings were hidden away in an undocumented script. Not to mention that the hotfix was supposed to be included in the download, but wasn't.

And that poll, asking people how much money they make, for one, not including a suggestions field for another. (You could at least have made a token gesture and just ignored the hundreds of suggestions you would have received, you know.)
But instead you came jollypopping along like your poll was the best thing since sliced bread and then seemed surprised when it wasn't as well-received as you'd have liked.

But to recap:
Poser 5 : Tragic release just to bring in some cash, figuring the community loved you so much they would understand.
Poser 8: Wasn't even ready for release, but I imagine you were pressed to make that deadline for right after the SIGGRAPH presentation.

I could go on and on about Poser's problems, but I'm trying to stay civil here and see no real point in it anyway as that's not the subject here, but I will at least mention there are still many long time bugs and issues that haven't even been touched. Things like that also make customers unhappy.

But to go back to your statement, i.e., "Perhaps if there were a little more civility all around, Rendo would be an easier place to participate in."

That does sound whiney. I mean seriously, as "the face of Poser", do you really expect to be greeted everywhere you go like some kind of well-loved king or something, considering your history?
Or are you saying you choose not to participate as much as you'd like because there isn't enough back-patting and fawning as you'd like and too much meanness and animosity for you to be able to function?
The days of Poser as a cult app and you as its Reverend Jim Jones are long over. A decade ago when this place was Poserforum.com and you were being worshiped as the can-do-no-wrong Poser God by the likes of Willow and Grey are over, never to be seen again. Poser got kind of big somewhere along the way, and in spite of all your inadvertent attempts to ruin it, has prevailed, but only because there was always someone else willing to bail you out and fix it up good enough for another version.

I'm sure you're a great guy, and sincere about your love for Poser. I have little doubt about that. But if you're surprised why Poser and yourself are greeted with so much recurring animosity, maybe you are just a little too detached from your user base. And if that's the case, maybe you ought to hang out only in places where you are not questioned or challenged.

For the record, I think you guys are on the right track for Poser's development, and I think Pro and 8 both have some really great qualities. I hope to see you guys eventually bring it up to its full potential. There is no other app that comes close to Poser for what it does, and it would be great to see you guys stop dicking around with it and just do it up right, and for once have a major release that doesn't work for only half the people and needs 6 months and 5 patches to live up to its hype.

I was so satisfied about my morph, my sharpened texture experiment,
and then you get the above;

Right or wrong,
This is not the time,
nor the place,
Thank you.

Word! What MikeJ said!

Quote - I was so satisfied about my morph, my sharpened texture experiment,
and then you get the above;

Right or wrong,
This is not the time,
nor the place,
Thank you.

But yes it is...   This is a thread about P8 and SR2 NOT textures..  It is great to know that things are working better than before.  But We still need to see the warts and scars associated with making this program what it is..

I definitely agree with the issue on the library scroll bar.  I did suggest it be wider or moved to the left but that suggestion was ignored.  How about the ability to customize the width of it.  It is very difficult to grasp it with the mouse pointer.  As a college professor told me once "working with the mouse is like working with a brick."  That is so true.

I think it is great the people behind poser product even come on the forums. You don't see that with most products. I had an issue with a monitor a month after I bought it, I could not email anyone from the company, send mail, or talk to anyone on the phone. The closest I got a was a call center in India with some dolts who wouldn't know the difference between a CRT or LCD monitor, and wouldn't let me speak to their boss. At rendo I have seen posts from the poser team who have tried to help with technical issues or give heads up.

Having and issue with something and complaining, are not the same thing.

Quote - Every time? No matter what the content or settings? I had a user yesterday tell me that IDL takes 10 hours on her machine. Turns out she had the settings at completely ridiculous values, now it renders in 12 minutes.

Yes every time. I tried different settings. When I render the poser screen is black with tiny red dots. I'm assuming that when poser calculates the IDL. Depending on the scene it takes cca 30 minutes but when it actually starts the real render FFrender stops working.

Quote -

Sebd us a capture of your render settings, may be we can help you !

Quote - > Quote - Every time? No matter what the content or settings? I had a user yesterday tell me that IDL takes 10 hours on her machine. Turns out she had the settings at completely ridiculous values, now it renders in 12 minutes.

Yes every time. I tried different settings. When I render the poser screen is black with tiny red dots. I'm assuming that when poser calculates the IDL. Depending on the scene it takes cca 30 minutes but when it actually starts the real render FFrender stops working.

Quote -

Sebd us a capture of your render settings, may be we can help you !

Thanks for posting this..  I have copied these settings and My render time has REDUCED from  >90 to <20mins..

Thanks Again..  When You're in town I'll buy you a beer or ten..

You're welcome NoelCan. That setting is from vincebagna btw.

It would help lots of people who are new to poser 8 (like me) if people here would post their render settings. The more we experiment the better.

mousso put the Irradiance cache to 0 not the IDL and your shading rate to 0.2.

Check the "Use own process" too .

Wow, the library is nice and quick, now.

Time to read Pose library: SR1: 5min 15sec. SR2: 35sec...

Whoever fixed that: T H A N K   Y O U !

:D

Quote - mousso put the Irradiance cache to 0 not the IDL and your shading rate to 0.2.

Check the "Use own process" too .

I did and still no luck.
As a last resort...I'll do an OS install on the weekend. Who knows, maybe its vista or some driver problem. Its not the first app I cant run on this OS.
Time to move on to windows 7 anyway.

It sure helps when problems with the software are presented in a reasonable and informative manner without mud-slinging rants and general animosity. I'm interested in learning where the problems are, but not at all in how angry this makes anyone.

For the record, I've found that SR2 does seem to have improved IDL render times at least some of the time, but it also seems to produce slightly brighter renders for the same settings (I generally start at IDL RT: 3, IC: 25, ILQ: 3, PS: 3, MSR: 0.5) than SR1.

SR2 has not fixed the way "Save" sometimes remains greyed out after Material Room changes are made, and mimimising Poser while it is rendering still doesn't always work properly.

(All these based on Poser 8 running on an iMac with OSX "Tiger".)

(Edit: remove quote from deleted post.)

Quote - > Quote - Every time? No matter what the content or settings? ...

Yes every time. I tried different settings. When I render the poser screen is black with tiny red dots. I'm assuming that when poser calculates the IDL. Depending on the scene it takes cca 30 minutes but when it actually starts the real render FFrender stops working.

No matter the content? You didn't answer that part.

I'm trying to get at the boundaries of the problem. Does it even lock up with just a couple primitives and a ground plane? If so, we go in one direction. If not we go in another.

Obviously there's something wrong with Poser if you can't render a sphere and a box with IDL. But if you can, then we need to understand the nature of the scene contents. For example, if you're using RDNA's Terradome with the big transparency sheets for atmospheric effects, this will appear to hang, but it is actually just incredibly complicated to render and could take hours before you see even one bucket show up.

In the absence of any data, I can't figure out what to suggest as the next step.

Everybody's talking about those lights and renders and what about the frame indicator - it still doesn't update (refresh) the frame number when in graph window:)

And one suggestion:
List of actors in Animation Palette could be adjusted to the right not left - woudn't it be better?

Hi,
my 2 main issues with P8 and SR1 had been:

• reliable crash of Poser when refreshing the library after new content has been installed
• incredibly slow render times with displacement materials and IDL

Both have been fixed in SR2, I'm very happy now!

Best regards,
   Michael
 

Question, if one accidently downloaded the wrong version (Mac instead of PC, if one has a PC), will the downloaded application sense that it is the wrong version?  Here is how I downloaded it::  I did it within Poser 8 and it took me to one page with just one SR-2 upload and the SR-2 readme file.  I downloaded those two and everything appears to be working fine.

The only thing I experimented with so far is the IDL speed and it  does run faster.  As for the library, hadn't experienced any problems with SR-1.

Now for the person that  stated that SM is the only company that actively participates here, that appears so and my hat is off to  Steve, Ted and the rest of the SM gang for doing it..

Now Steve, when are you going to post more of  Alyson, Maria, etc in the Sticky and when is that  SM gallary going to open?  Jan

 quote from BB
"And this skinny scrollbar isn't just in the library - it is also in the parameter dials, and has the same issues. If I change it in the library, you still have a problem with parameter dial scrolling, or heirarchy tree scrolling, etc."

The reason the parameters scrolling isn't such an issue is we can undock it and stretch it and see most of the things we need without too much scrolling, unlike all the scrolling i need to do with my really really really bloated multiple external runtimes.
I would like all scroll bars wide of course, but I'll settle for the libraries one if I have to choose just one!
Love esther

The 'all white render' bug is still here but this time i have found how several PoserSurface nodes can be created, reported to SM

rjjack,

I do not understand what you're showing.

You show two Poser Surface nodes in the same mat room. Impossible.

What am I to understand from this?

The one on the left is an example of a bad shader. You have a very bright color in both diffuse and specular, and the maximum specular value + diffuse value is way over 1. This is your typical nonsense shader made by Poser users and you get exactly what you asked for there.

If you think the appearance is a bug, it isn't. That's what it is supposed to look like if you program it to go nuts like that.

Quote - rjjack,

I do not understand what you're showing.

.

yes it's possible to have two poser surface, i have made a special PZ2 file who create 4 poser surface, a bug in the material room, reported to SM with the pz2

the shaders are not importants they are just here to show the problem, on the preview i see the texture but on the render i got the white surface

Just out of curiosity, can you explain what you did to create an extra Poser Surface node?

very easy, here is the picture and next post will be the file, a damaged pz2 file can probably trigger the bug too, if some are missing or don't match

the preview show always the last poser Surface clicked, but the render engine use always the first found

There's no need to post the file, what I am interested in is what you actually did to create multiple Poser Surface Nodes. Is it something that actually happened WITHIN Poser, or did you manually edit the PZ3 file to make it happen?

The reason I ask is I am curious to see if I can reproduce it (and that will be one of the first things that Smith Micro will ask as well, is how can they reproduce it?)

Quote - There's no need to post the file, what I am interested in is what you actually did to create multiple Poser Surface Nodes. Is it something that actually happened WITHIN Poser, or did you manually edit the PZ3 file to make it happen?

This is a problem in the material room, if you apply several pose files to a figure or a prop  and in all these poses the PoserSurface node is named "PoserSurface" you don't have the problem, but if in one pose inside the lot someone renamed the PoserSurface node you may got an extra PoserSurface node.

The attached pose file include 4 PoserSurface for the same material with differents names showing immediatly the problem, but in a normal use of Poser i have see this problem only twice since i have Poser8.

Yeah ::: Really great for the multiple material zones

Hi.

Could such a thing as the multiple Poser surfaces be used for material stacking on the same piece of geometry?

I know very little about materials, but here was my thinking. I know you can have multiple sub groups for the same piece of geometry as long as it does not have a named bone, the sub groups can use the same geometry. In UV mapper you should be able to asign each subgroup to a separate material, yes? Could each different Poser surface be asigned to the multiple material zones?

I might be showing my material room ignorance here. 

this happened to me in poser pro. but only on an Apollo figure skin shader.

 but if in one pose inside the lot someone renamed the PoserSurface node you may got an extra PoserSurface node.<<<

That might be the problem, then ... I've seen nodes renamed, but the main issue here is that the Poser Surface Node was renamed as well, which as far as I know isn't possible within Poser itself because the Poser Surface Nodes are named that way by default.

So it seems to me that the "bug" is in the pose files, and not Poser.

Quote - >>> but if in one pose inside the lot someone renamed the PoserSurface node you may got an extra PoserSurface node.<<<

That might be the problem, then ... I've seen nodes renamed, but the main issue here is that the Poser Surface Node was renamed as well, which as far as I know isn't possible within Poser itself because the Poser Surface Nodes are named that way by default.

So it seems to me that the "bug" is in the pose files, and not Poser.

Content creators often rename the nodes, i have plenty of samples in my runtimes, usually it's copyright message, i don't have checked if they rename the PoserSurface node .

If Poser can handle only one PoserSurface by material but can create several of them, the bug is in Poser, the pose file is just here to show it,

Poser must warn the user as soon it read the second PoserSurface definition or take only the first in account and don't create the superflous

Or maybe SM is preparing the multilayered material room ??

if one wants to stack one material on top of others on the same poser surface, my vote would be to use a psd texture file.  those extra posersurfaces aren't gonna render AFAIK. rrjack's images may all be preview screens.

Thanks Miss Nancy,

Just wondering. Multi layering would be a nice addition to the materials IMHO.

I have been discussing multi-layer materials with SM, specifically with Stefan Werner. Very interesting idea.  It is not implemented yet, and if Poser is allowing it, even in a perversely (spelling?) built material, that is a bug.

P.S.: I am drunk todya.