Since there's some discussion of Poser 5 at the moment, I'd like to contribute a few thoughts. (Which may be too late, or repeat what others have said, I can't say; anyway, here goes). I see wish list items as falling into two categories: things that really constitute advancements for Poser 5, and things that ought to have been fixed in Poser 4. List 1 is the relatively hard stuff. In some ways List 2 is more interesting, as it shows failure of the design process rather than a question of not meeting technical challenges. Items in no particular order. List 1 A) Models that don't crack up in relatively simple poses. Posette can't drink a glass of water without severe injury to her elbow. B) Clothes that conform without ripping to shreds in anything other than quite basic poses. C) Clothes that automatically conform to the morphed form of the underlying figure. D) A more flexible camera, positioning and lighting system like the one in Bryce. E) A better render engine. That should be enough to be going on with. List 2 F) A more sensible system for selecting body parts than the silly little drop-down menu which disappears off screen because it is bulked out with every single finger joint. Relegating finger joints to a separate sub-menu would, you might have thought, been an obvious design decision. G) Better dialogue boxes. The existing ones are not only ugly, they lack the expected ability to tab from one control to the next. H) Better indication of what element is selected. For instance: you adjust a light with the light control, and then try to do something with the figure, and it doesn't work. Why not? Because you have Light 1 selected, which is shown to the bottom right of the window, but on the left it says Figure 1 is selected. But Light 1 is nothing to do with Figure 1, so it shouldn't show this at all. I) Sensible undo. Make a change to a pose; you can't see the effect properly, so you rotate the camera a touch. Now you see you don't like it - select undo and the camera change is undone, not the pose change. It would be much better either to have separate undos for scene and camera, or remove camera changes from the undo list. There are also far too many operations that can't be undone. J) Better terminology: it is a bit confusing the way the term "figure" is used. Any artist talking about the "figures in a picture" means the number of humans, not the number of humans plus the number of clothes. This causes unnecessary confusion. K) Better handling of morph targets. You can add a morph target, but you can't remove it or even rename it - why not? All right, you can if you get Morph Manager, but it ought to there in the program. L) I won't go into the grouping tool, but it is not very good that if you select one face too many you have no way to deselect it. Coding a better way is not exactly hard. M) Sensible directory handling. Why can't Poser remember which directory I keep morph targets in? If I want to add a whole bunch of morphs, I have to drill down the directory structure for every one. Again, this is so easy to code and saves so much time and effort in operation. N) Automate obviously repetitive tasks. How many times have you had to go through the same drill in the materials box for transparency? Change object colour to white; change the rest to black; set transp max to 100%; set the others to zero - why not one button to automate this common procedure? Isn't the job of computers to make things easier? I see there is now a python script that someone has written to do this in PPP, but it's the sort of thing that ought to be basic program design. O) Copy and paste. There are copy and paste elements in the Edit menu but I've never found anything they do. Poser must be the only 3D app where you cannot easily duplicate an object. There is a non-intuitive and cumbersome way to do it by saving as a prop and recreating from there and then deleting the library entry, but why not a simple duplication command? P) Better 3D axes. Nine times out of ten if you want to move or rotate an item, you want to do so in relation to the world co-ordinate system, and usually rotate with respect to the item's centre. Poser insists on using the origin position and axes of the object, which frequently get screwed up, and for a figure are not alterable, which can make exact positioning far more of a pain than need be. I won't mention copy protection again. It's so 80s.

Phantast Several items you can do in Poser. F) You can click on the body part to select it. K) You can do get rid of a morph in Poser by going into the hierarchy editor select show all parameters, select the morph and hit your delete button on your key board. L) You can deselect a poly by holding down your ctrl key and left clicking on it with the mouse. o) You can duplicate easily an object by using the grouping tool. Ron

Phantast, also for letter O)... the copy and paste lets you copy the dial values for one item and paste it onto another item. Lets say I have a cube and a sphere in my scene and I want them to share the same place...I select the cube, copy, select the sphere, paste, and now my sphere will share the trans, scale and rotation values of the cube.

To add to your list:

Q) a toggle for each material that will let you decide whether or not you want an item with transparency to display as solid or dithered. I don't mind the dithered look when working with clothes or items like glasses, but for transmapped hair, I'd rather it look solid until it has been rendered.

Here we go again! Every time one of these comes up I add to my list and contribute everything I have read on this topic. You never know when CL might actually be listening to us as opposed to dictating to us. I'm too tired to figure out if a particular suggestion is a 1 or a 2. By the way Phantast you have given my a few new ones to add! Allow a name change to a figure on the Current selected figure button. Better design and organize the current selected element pop-up display. Use submenus such as leg/right/thigh. Allow the current selected element to change based on arrow keys. Up/Down moves superior/inferior on body, Left/Right changes to the contralateral side. When you add clothes to a figure the clothes should integrate into the figure so that when I click in the foot region I don't get the shoe, I get the foot (which is what you actually move) Support for the right mouse button and scroll wheel on the PC. Just because Macs are antiquated doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer. Flexibility in the organization of the items on a Palette. Easier to setup and change Memory dots. File structure memory that remembers where you last saved or opened so you don't have to keep clicking to get to where you want to be. Allow you to default to where you want to save files. An easier way to transport .pz3 files. Perhaps an export button that will save all elements that will be required of the .pz3 when you try to load it and open it on another computer. Those little mouse popup windows that tell you the name of what it is you have the pointer on. Allow you to click on the title of the Parameter dial to change your currently selected element. A .pz3 (jpg) preview on the file open selection screen. Multiview (Come on, don't make people buy the Pro Pack just for that one feature) Auto resize of clothes to conform to the body. Save poses so that when you select a previously saved pose your figure is not moved all over the place. Use of correct names for body parts. This program accesses segments, not joints. It's called the upper arm, not the shoulder. A body selection button similar to the hand and face selection button. (I usually work with multiple figures and I wish to be able to easily go full screen on the one figure that I am focusing on. A better, less confusing file structure. I have no idea what I have and where it is at this point. Better detection (and prevention) of body breaking through clothes. Collision detection Faster escape from renders On a pose save providing a window that will allow you to specify what to save and then on save making those things not saved invisible

just a thought...but, ummm....you can rename morph targets by double clicking on the name above the dial....

and you can rename figures very easily. Oh in Poser! Ron

Allow changing of texture name during pz3 loading if a specified texture isn't available. Currently chosing to ignore the file hangs the system for several minutes (on a PII 350 with 192 mb RAM).

AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AMEN to just about everything everyone listed, and a TRIPLE-AMEN on a good number of them. I'm going to compile all of these suggestions and mail them to the right person at Curious. Tmech: That's a problem with your system. Poser pauses for less than 2 seconds on my system(s). Not sure what it could be ... could be a lot of things though. -Tim

One thing i would like to see in Poser 5 is a touchmap. This thingie would make it easier to place objects on ex. a body and the skin bends like it does in real life. For ex. When you place a finger on a real body you can push it in a bit but not to long couse we all got bones that stops us from turning inside out :) How about making this for poser 5 for this feat you must make the body Solid so when object hit the body they doesn't pass trough they bouns at the body anf you can see the skin bends when it hits. This would make the figure more realistic in everyway... This was all from me

Please make CR2 file language more compact!!! For example, my aqualunger's CR2 file contains the line max 100000 3181 times! I found by experimenting that a CR2 file could be shrunk to a third or a quarter (ignoring morph delta lists and embedded .OBJ matter) simply by replacing all the repeated-ad-nauseam value settings by a "default actor" and "default channel" that contain default settings for these values.

Attached Link: http://www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/temp/shortcr2.txt

I was wondering if some of my list would be "there but hidden". I could never find any reference to ctrl-click deselect (shift-click would be more in keeping with convention). Yes, you can select a body part by clicking on it, but this can be very difficult if it is covered by clothing and totally impossible if visibility is switched off. Poser has a very idiosyncratic view of what the mouse is clicking on; you can move the pointer all over the place until the item you actually want is highlighted. Using the grouping tool to duplicate an object is real sledgehammer-walnut stuff. In any other app you either Ctrl-C Ctrl-V or better still, just Ctrl-D. You can rename figures so that a jacket become Jacket and not Figure2, but Poser still treats it as a "figure" e.g. in the menus, and if you have it accidentally selected instead of the real figure, and apply a figure pose, Poser will not say to itself "hang on, this ain't right" it will go ahead and screw the jacket up, usually without an undo.

I would love to be able to save a material library, such as one can do in other programs. Then all one would need to do would be to select what you are wishing to apply your material to, and apply it from the library, instead of the long tedious way we now must set up each material for each part for each model.

Oh YES, a material library will make working so much easier! The big, flashy advances get your attention first (and make you reach for the plastic), but as you work, you come to love the little touches too. A small example in ProPack is the color-coded names on some of the morph dials. Right now only a couple standard dial types have colored names. It would be great to be able to assign at least one color to those special dials that you use a lot, so they stand out when you want to give them a quick tweak. Also nice to have unassign capability. Not sure how body part sub-menus for the dials would work. It's such a challenge to make best use of limited screen space - and still give us flexibility to set up the interface in a way that fits our work style and a particular project's needs. One thing's certain - there are people out here who are using the software in unpredictable and unique ways that will soon produce a wish list for Poser 6!

I know. I have tried, or ehard from otheers, of these features that have cautght Poser out nand fount it faulty:- - Smart characters, e.g. I tried it with my flamethrower. My Poser 4 jammed up when I deleted the smart character from the stage. - A prop file containing a dagger and its sheath, anth objFile lines instead of embedding the geometry, and the dagger is parented to the sheath, and the sheath is smart. When I saved the assemblage and reloaded it, it couldn't find the geometry files of the dagger and of its sheath. - Text-editing in extra Weld commands (Bloodsong's idea); it causes a rendering fault. - Parenting a prop to the end segment of a curve chain; it caused a bad deformity of the segment until I set the segment's Curve parameter dial to 0. (The chain was a breathing set harness strap and the prop was a pressure gauge pouch.)

I would love to see a "shadow matte" option. At least allowing you to make the ground plane invisible but still able to recieve shadows.

Sbertram I second the lighting. If they could do something with that it would be awesome. Ron

- A prop file containing a dagger and its sheath ... Sorry, I typed quiickly. A prop file containing a dagger and its sheath, with objFile lines pointing to .obj files instead of embedding the geometry, and the dagger is parented to the sheath, and the sheath is smart. When I set up a scane containing two divers, and I loaded the dagger and sheath, it sppeared on the currently selected figure's right shin as wanted. But when I saved the scene to .pz3 and later reloaded it, Poser couldn't find the geometry files of the dagger and of its sheath although their .obj files were present and correct ast the places that Poser said it couldn't find them at.

I always have to use the dials when I want to bend a joint or move it side to side, because if I use the preview window, I have no way to stop the joint from moving forward or backward as well as left or right. Something simple like holding down the Alt key to constrain the movement of the joint to the plane of the window would be most appreciated. -SMT

The "shadow matte" option is something they are quite aware of, and my sources at CL have told me it is something they definetely want to see happen in the next release. In other words, they have been "bugged" about it quite a bit. This is key for those of us doing animation work, it would be a huge blunder for them not to include it. -Tim

I nearly always use the parameter dials, anyway. The only time I pull at a part on the stage is when its joint is "stuck on a dead center" with the middle rotation at around 90

BETTER LIGHTING!! OMNIDIRECTIONAL LIGHTING!! AAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!! I HAVE BEEN SCREAMING MY HEAD OFF ABOUT BETTER LIGHTING SINCE VERSION 3!!! Davo

Is this where I can sign up to echo the requerst for better (at least more easily-controllable) lighting? Put me down for one (1) request for more realistic lights.

This really brings up the whole processor speed and memory issue, as does the fact that we want to use multiple high-poly models with high-resolution texture maps. You're going to have trouble with these things on an average computer. If Curious keeps the ProPack distinction, it should not be in terms of "professional" versus "amateur", but simply about features that only work well on high-end machines. I would hate to see new versions of Poser not be usable by people with average machines, and also hate having innovation hobbled too much by having to accomodate lower-memory and processor speed computers. So maybe some of the things on this list should go in a pro version - one that they can really pull out the stops on. That might be Poser 5 - if they continue to sell Poser 4, or maybe a tweaked, but not too demanding upgrade of P4.

... Posette can't drink a glass of water without severe injury to her elbow. Curing that would need an ability to set the elbow's "bend" blend zone more complicated than merely the red and green angle lines. The blend-limit planes on one side would have to curve to properly delimit the olecranon process of the ulna. Next time you have a full shoulder of lamb or mutton for dinner, look at the bones afterwards.

Bugs to be cured:- - Rendering faults if the CR2 file contains extra Weld commands text-edited in. - In a "tail" of parts with the curve property, gross distortion of the end segment if I parent a prop to it. (In my case, the "tail" was a breathing set harness strap and the prop was a pressure gauge pouch.) - Unpredictable movements of the goal of an IK chain when I switch that chain from IK-on to IK-off. Among other things, that makes it impossible to make any movements in a movie that move any joints in an IK-circle, as somewhere in Poser during each frame of the movie that IK-chain is automatically switched off and on again.

I even got the "dislocated IK-parenting joint" bug when I made an AVI movie of my rebreather diver swimming with his breathing bag inflating and deflating. The inflating and deflating happens by changing settings on a morph on the part "rebrbody" of his rebreather set. That part is part of the IK-circle "chest, neck, mask, breathing tube segments, rebrbody, chest", but the inflating and deflating does not move any joint angles; merely touching an IK-circle during a movie was enough to make my Poser 4.0.2 switch that IK-chain off and on again and thus activate this bug. (It also happens when I move his head as he swims, and that does change joint angles in that IK-circle.)

I have to agree on the better export function. I see lots of great characters but unpacking them is like getting a tooth filled. Why can't I have a folder with all the peices that go with a character and let that be one "default" when loading. If it can't find it in the home directory of the pz file then start looking elsewhere. I have my poser installed on my d drive, nothing ever unpacks and is ready to play with.

For my own purposes, I would like to see more flexibility with the background image function - zooming and scaling linked to camera position and the ability to create a 360 seamless background.

My little list: 1. Nurbs. 2. Faster and more optimized user interface. 3. Ability to select more than one body part. 4. Nurbs. 5. Material libraries. 6. Completely new joint system. 7. Nurbs. 8. Built in raytracing engine. 9. Nurbs. 10. ehhh... Nurbs. /Ohman

Nurbs mean models with 1e9999999999999999999999999 unnecessary polygons. What I want to see is the ability for any "doohickie" to have the abilities of all doohickies. That is, abolish the distinction among "figure", "prop", "hat", etc. in regards to what one can do with these things. But my ALL TIME NUMBER ONE desire is DOCUMENT THE FILE TYPES and do so in a complete manner. Let's have a complete and comprehensive and PUBLISHED documentation of the .cr2, for example.

It's coming Dog ... Anthony Hernandez at Curious said he was going to release a free PDF book very soon. Looks like it will be VERY comprehensive.

Dogface, True nurbs support means models with 0 polygons.

Dogface, True nurbs support means models with 0 polygons. Dogface is likely referring to the polygon count of the file resulting from outputting the model as .OBJ .

Yes of cause, i must be tired. Sorry Dogface... That's exactly what i want to get rid of. After spending hours with rhino creating the perfect model of something i hate having to reduce the level of detail to make it usable in polygon based apps. Heck, i have made models of furnitures that had to have more than twice the polygon count of Vickie or Mike to look good. More than that is that i think nurb characters would allow a much more flexible (and maybe natural) joint system, but then we all need a completely new collection of base characters :o( /Ohman

(1) A quicker way to un-hidden x/y/zTran dials than having to ferret about in the CR2 file with a text editor. (2) An explanation of when and why x/y/zOffset parameter dials appear and when they don't appear. (3) There is a mode "joints local". When I switch to it, the figure stays as it is, but all the Tran and rotate parameter dials go to 0, and the names of the rotate dials bcome plain ordinary x/y/zRotate. After that, all moving and rotating is relative to the screen's X Y Z. When I go out of "joints local" mode, the resulting new position and attitude of the current part is converted back to the usual coordinate system (4) When a part is the goal of an IK-chain, and that IK is on, display its rotate parameter dials with names x/y/zRotate. E.g., with a hand which has been set IK-on and IK-parented to a two-handed weapon or tool, the rotation parameter dials are now with respect to the tool or weapon and not to the man's forearm, and the dial names "twist, bend, side-to-side" become inappropriate and confusing.

Eliminate crosstalk. Eliminate crosstalk. Eliminate crosstalk. I've got a feeling that a NURBS-based Poser would not be a new version of Poser. I've no doubt that the result would be superior, but this would have to be a program written top-down from scratch. Might as well not call it Poser for all the work it would be. Here's the rub: How much do we want to pay for this? If enough features (and price hikes) get ladled on top, I might as well lay down the umpty-zillion needed for Maya, a badass teraflop design and creation machine, and my own rendering farm.

Please don't force it to have multiview ... I can't stand it personally. Takes up too much room and is annoying. Right button? See no use for that but I am on the "antiquated" Mac system (yeah right). Still have never found a use for it. Oh well. Not gonna get intot he whole PC versus Mac junk though. I agree about transparacies. It is hard to work with at times. I would also prefer a better renderer. Other than that most things are covered or whatknot, though some are already there and some are frankly impossible.

(1) DON'T give it that silly muy estupido software lock!!!!! (2) A property whereby I can make a part display as semi-transparent (not invisible) in the quick render while posing but opaque in the final full render.

Ability to make a model's parentage, or an IK-goal's IK-parentage, change during the run of a movie sequence. Give the businessman and the casual man the same head as the nude man, so they can use each other's head / face morphs.

{C) Clothes that automatically conform to the morphed form of the underlying figure.} That may not be UNIVERSALLY feasible - HOWEVER, it SHOULD be possible for the clothing prop to "read" the corresponding morph dials on the model and accept the same adjustments, if it was made correctly. This may be an extension of the JCM technique that occasionally surfaces here... {E) A better render engine.} Personally, I kind of LIKE the Poser engine for most things, and when it's not enough for what I need, I export to Bryce (or did before I had to uninstall Bryce and found I'd lost my serial number!)... Otherwise I agree with the initial list 100% A collapsible "part listing" would be a GREAT tool for posing and selecting body parts... {Sensible directory handling. Why can't Poser remember which directory I keep morph targets in? } This MAY have something to do with the fact that it's written to run on TWO OSses. The Mac and the PC appear to handle directories very differently from comments I've seen.

{C) Clothes that automatically conform to the morphed form of the underlying figure.} I think it would be a better idea to use the collision detection feature that will be implemented in Poser 5 combined with some sort of "elasticity map" that defines where and how much the clothing shall deform. (Please correct me if "elasticity" isn't an english word :o) The JCM technique is wonderful but it is a huge task to make all existing clothes fit all possible body types. Imagine the work reproduce all Victoria 2 body morphs for all P4 and Vickie cloths. /Ohman

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=292794

Imagine the work reproduce all Victoria 2 body morphs for all P4 and Vickie cloths. We need a way within Poser to quickly auto-copy all the relevant joint settings at once from the conformee to the conformer.

My dream is something that works like the ClothReyes plugin for max. The cloths automatically falls down and forms around the character (or whatever object you use) and produces very realistic result. The plug also calculates very realistic movements. The problem is that it takes a lot of calculations for every frame. Maybe thats to much to ask for in a low price product like Poser, but i think it should be possible to make a usable workaround using the new collision detection feature. Imagine a dress that automatically floats down and wraps around the legs without any any joints at all to deal with. That day i would be in heaven :o) But as the situation is today we definitely need a tool to copy joint parameters between figures. I've played with changing the obj file reference in the existing cr2 to point to the new cloth mesh and then delete the non-wanted bodyparts. It almost works for me but it always creates some very strange problems. /Ohman