Due to stupidity on my part, I just finally got my pre-ordered Poser Pro 2012 over the weekend.  It's easily the most polished release of Poser, and everywhere I look things seem to be receiving proper attention.  But after a few days of use I am seeing a couple of recurring issues and have noticed a few things that could quickly be improved. 

Neither "Save Render Settings" nor "Set Preferred State" remember the shadow depth bias.  It constantly defaults to the setting ideal for nVidia GPUs, and has to be set for ATI users.

I getting weirdness with materials as well.  It may have to do with missing or replaced materials, but things will often turn a shiny black for no apparent reason.  Changing parameters in the mat room often produces little poly artifacts for a moment.  A figure I loaded a few hours suddenly lost all skin colour in preview.  I had to save it and reload into a new scene.

And I swear, something has changed with the navigation "hands" since the last version I used.  I have no doubt that on several occasions the move"Y and Z" hand moved the camera along the "X".  Has it been compacted for space and I am just not clicking it precisely enough, or is there actually something wonky about it now?

I love morphing multiple parts, but there should now either be be a way to morph with symmetry live as you go, or restrict the brush's effect to one side of the figure only.  Spend enough time with it and you will see what I mean...

Speaking of morphs, I somehow corrupted one and when I tried to reload the figure was told something about missing or corrupt morph deltas and was advised to save and start a new scene.  So I did that and got the message again.  I managed to find and delete the offending morph, but I could see that being a real pain if I had modified several parts of the object.  Maybe asking if the corrupt morph should be deleted would be a better option.  I like the morph copy function, if it's not new I never saw it before.

Maybe a few more morph brushes would be nice.  I'd especially like to see one that has fall-off at the edges and in the center; a ring-type brush.  While you're at it, maybe a line or uniform stripe brush would be nice.  Not trying to turn Poser into a sculpting program, just think more brushes would be nice.

Will we ever get grow/shrink selection in the grouping tool?  It would be such a time saver when trying to deal with areas like nostrils and ears.  I find it easier to select the entire head and then deselect around the nostrils when giving them a separate material.  Surely there's a better way...

I don't expect bump or displacements before the next full version, but I do hope we get them eventually.  Would also like to see a few different shadow projection types, shadow softness, and maybe even a few more types of AO/SSAO.  (But I also want depth of field in preview and iCLone style post-effects...)  I am very happy with the new preview.

(Is there any easy way to control preview depth cueing?  It's either too strong or barely visible.  And it would be nice if the fog colour wasn't simply set by the background colour.  Maybe it has to be, I do not know...)

The new preview is also the reason for my last request.  Three tracking types are no longer sufficient!  I find myself switching to smooth shading whenever I need to use the morph brush or have high-poly/numerous figures loaded.  I would really like to have smooth shaded, or shadowless texture shaded tracking as options.

Surprisingly, that's about all I would care to see improved.  Great job, Poser team!

I recomand that you go over to RuntimeDNA and add this to the list. Smith-Mirco has their eye on the ball there.

Yep, what outa said :)

Laurie

Done, credited, and slightly extended.