Quote - Yup. Oh...if you want to hear my totally nerdy voice, check out the preview videos for Manga Studio's features on the manga studio site. lol.

He he. Cool, I will check it out ;)

If I were to release new figures I would begin with a clean slate.  I would take any negative feedback from the previous ones and turn that around.  I would also look at what made the V-line successful (yes, merchant support, but on a design level primarily).  I would also see what would make new figures different, interesting or clever to use.

I'd shoot for something pretty/handsome but leaning towards average rather than supermodel/amazon.

I'd pay close attention to the neck, shoulders, elbows, thighs, knees, feet, both in how they look physically and how they bend.  These are always problem areas.

I'd give the mesh clean cuts across bodyparts to easily facilitate creating a bodysuit, etc. from material zones.  If it's possible to do this, why not?

Certainly I'd Weight-Map them, in whole or in part.

I'd look closely at ease of use AND ease of support.  If the figure is a PITA to make stuff for, there won't be much.

• Are the legs so close together at default pose that pants are impossible?  Are the thighs/hip cut in a way that making pants is not problematic?  (same with collars and shirts/tops)

• Are the UVs reasonable and logical for texturers?  Are there enough material zones but not too much? Do the names of the materials make sense?

• Are the figure .objs welded, particularly the head/neck?

• Settle with one kind of joint-assiting technology.  Embedded Deformers or JCM, not both.  I would personally rather a small bit of JCM (and let the WM do more of the work) given the choice and the fact it can be handled in zBrush with GoZ or using the layers system, regarding clothes.

What interesting can be brought to the table?  WM... okay, check.  How about extra bones for facial expressions (maybe with handles...  If so, EASY ways to hide them, set them up to not render in raytracing, etc).

You know, stuff like that.

Oh and I hope that Poser continues to tweak how Dial Grouping works.  The last SR helped but it's still destructive when you add new dials (morphs, etc) to a figure.  It needs streamlining and python support.  Maybe a groups manager interface/utility.

And make it look human :P

Laurie

Yes, totally agree.  We can work on Star Trek aliens at a later point :D

William the Bloody, I love you man, but you have been away for a while and the current Poser/DS community isn't what you remember.

By and large, the Poser/DS community doesn't "roll their own" anymore.  The days of building your own content because there isn't any available for purchase is long gone.  (And a "Make Art" button is in a Python script.)

The Poser/DS community is buying content, loading it, conforming it, and "making art."

Clo3d type capability?  That would be used about as much as the setup room.  99% of us don't have the skill sets to become a fashion designer (nor do we have the interest, for that matter.)

Those of us that have moved away from NVIATWAS are doing workflows (right tool for the right job) to "make art".  I don't have the time to learn yet another skillset I have no interest in.  This is a hobby, not a life-style.

**Lich-ware? ** What version of Poser are you looking at?  Seriously.

Poser 8/2010 removed a lot of the cruft that had accumulated from Poser 1 to Poser 4. That "decrepit foundation" has mostly new plumbing.

What is left is an acknowledgement of the user base.  The reality is that a significant portion of the current Poser/DS user base would actually be happy with Poser Debut.  They DO NOT want to learn new features, they just want to load, conform and "make art". 

For the most part, Vendors have standardized on the Poser 4 standards.  They are still making .pz2s instead of .mc6s so they can also sell to the DS user base as well as the Poser user base.  I am still seeing .rsr files in 2012.  Vendors go with the user base they have, not the one they want.

Updating the cloth & hair rooms aren't a priority because most of the user base ignores them.

The problem with the cloth room isn't the software - it is the users inability to get Steve Cooper and the rest of the Poser team to understand that the ONLY people who understand the documentation as written is the coding team.  This also applies to the new lighting system. 

For example:

There are simple, easy to understand examples of infinite lights, point lights, and spotlights - then there is this:

Diffuse Image Based Lights (IBL)
Diffuse Image Based Lighting (Diffuse IBL) takes a light probe, which is ideally a 360 degree light distribution map captured in a single map, and illuminates the scene using that map.

This doesn't come with a translation for those of us without a photography background.  And the rest of the documentation on the new lighting capabilities is just as illuminating - see how many light threads there are both here and on other Poser boards. 

As far as the hair room -

"Hair contains many polygons that require hefty computing resources."

SM isn't kidding on that.  Trying to use the hair room from Poser 5 to Poser 7 caused me to move from a G3 tower to a G4 tower to a MacPro.  The Hair room needs a lot of horses on the hardware side and better written documentation on the software side.

On the other hand, I can make a grassy knoll.....

Each major item that is shoehorned into Poser adds another layer of complexity that will be ignored by a majority of the user base and potentially break the product.

Even if SM decides to add a major new feature (like Clo3d capability or the ability to generate .psd files, or a modeling module, etc) - how many interations will it take to fully bed it in and how many people would actually use it?

In a perfect world, each of these modules would be multi-threaded and not hanging of the main thread - the problem is that not that many programmers know how to write multi-threaded software (Thanks Microsoft!).

As much as I love Wardrobe Wizard, I hate the fact that SM added it to Poser.  Why?  Because like everything except the rendering engine it is on the main thread.  I start a WW conversion & I am at a stand still until it is done. That can take up to an hour or longer - on a MacPro.

The good news is that with the rewrite of the Poser codebase in Poser 8, adding or moving modules off of the main thread is now possible (See Reality 3 for Poser).

Quote - Yeah, like some completely missed my X,Y,Z, joke. :-)

to be a joke.. it would have to be funny.... or we talking "funny" like the show "the office" is funny?

Quote - As much as I love Wardrobe Wizard, I hate the fact that SM added it to Poser.  Why?  Because like everything except the rendering engine it is on the main thread.  I start a WW conversion & I am at a stand still until it is done. That can take up to an hour or longer - on a MacPro.

The good news is that with the rewrite of the Poser codebase in Poser 8, adding or moving modules off of the main thread is now possible (See Reality 3 for Poser).

I'm quite happy the Wardrobe Wizard plugin is bundled. I'd like to see more plugins to extend and improve things, for those in the user base that want it.

Having some of those bundled adds a lot of value. Certainly for anyone prepared to invest in the Poser Pro product.

But, yes, hopefully more plugins will start to take advantage of the capability to run background / in a separate process.

Maybe SM's focus should be largely just on better facilitating such plugins, and perhaps sponsoring, assisting the development and marketing of the good ones, the ones that boost Poser's prosumer kudos...?

...Reality3, Poser Physics, Octane Render bridge...

...EZSkin3... :)

...something else, on the material generation front, ideally written largely by BB ;)

...plugin front-ends that offer pro results, without the hair-tearing... pre-loaded with expert heuristics. Sorry, may have mentioned those expert heuristic things already.

But beyond that, you've surely got scope for plugins that extend the geometry-based functionality (like Snarlygribbly demonstrated with his subdivider)?

...a plugin for generating fibre mesh hair...

...a "Marvelous Designer" type plugin...

...a fluid dynamics plugin...

So the people that are interested in having those facilities, within Poser, can have them... without the core app being bloated and overpriced for those that don't wish them.

This is the way I'd go with it, I reckon...

;)

When I talk about Clo3d I'm not talking about being a fashion designer, I'm talking about the environment of the program.  A 3d space with real-time gravity and wind affecting polygons on the screen colliding with a base object(s).

You could feasibly recreate this environment in a "Hair Room" or "Cloth Room" where poser would switch into a real-time mode and you could load your Marketplace dress, and Pose your figure.

Even better with the hair, you'd be able to see what you're doing when you're adjusting things.

Also, there is a plugin for max which takes hair splines and turns them into poly strips, so ideally we'd figure out how to do that too and start having great hair that looks real.

I submitted Edmond and Barbara, from Cage's "Peedy Adventures"...

Quote - > Quote - :D

Okay, how about Darren and Samantha?  A bewitching combination, perhaps?

That's a fun one. Hehehe.

Someone would have to give Samantha a nose wiggle morph too. :3

Yeah, I like that one too :)

Quote - I've always felt that if Microsoft walks away from Desktops, Linux will step in. :)

Um, Linux actually is stepping in, as a lot of software developers are beginning to realise. But because of the FUD machine and because - mostly - the Linux user doesn't represent any sort of measurable "market share" the analysts can tabulate and quantify, it's all happening under the radar. Which is fine, since the GNU community is very, very strong and highly motivated and continue to support and build on their products, which I use almost exclusively.

Indeed, the only reason I still boot into Win7 is to run Poser 2012... to create scenes, which I then export to OBJs to play with in Blender3D with Cycles.

One can dream: perhaps SmithMicro will see a reason eventually to port Poser to Linux. I'm pretty sure modo will be ported, since Foundry bought it and it has Linux ports of its apps.

Linux community has gotten amazingly better with cross compatiblity the last few years with mainstream versions like Fedora and Debian and their respective varients.

I'm also sitting here wondering what Poser X will bring. I've got my own mental list of things I need that I'm keeping to myself. Poser Pro 2012 is so good I wonder what they think needs to be added next.

Like WTB, I've been away for a while, but not because of Poser. I invested in Windows 7 licences for my systems, only to watch the inevitable slow-down of all my computers. I grew increasing frustrated with waiting for my computer to be ready for me. And what was worse: all the really cool stuff happening in Blender wasn't being ported to Windows fast enough to suit me. I was making more and more coffee waiting for an excessively slow system and it sort-of just got to me.

So, I was actually compiling my latest svn-builds from trunk of Blender for a while, enjoying the latest bug-fixes and new cool features for Cycles and OSL... in Linux Mint. Now, I just get builds from ppa automatically... very current, much more so than Service Packs, certainly. And in Linux: no slow-downs, no waiting. No crashes. Intuitive, easy quick networking not just with my other Linux boxes but with all my Windows boxes here at home as well. I was working again, creating again, doing what I want to do, not what MS required me to do. Photoshop? I run in VirtualBox/Win7 (with almost all service turned off, so it actually runs like an OS should - sandboxed, it's fine).

The only reason I still dualboot is for Poser 2012, which I love and will upgrade when the new version becomes available. Poser requires hardware acceleration which VirtualBox still doesn't manage well.

What I find interesting is that in no uncertain terms, Poser's strength is the community. The 3rd-party apps. The fact that it isn't some monolithic "all-you-will-ever-need-is-already-built-in" program. This is actually something this proprietary software shares with the open-source world: the ability to massively extend and enhance the original product far beyond what the developers could have ever dreamt of, or would have the resources to develop if they did indeed dream of it.

How many are on the SM team? How many can you think of that have written brilliant add-ons (for pay or for free) that make Poser what it is today?

I'll submit that this extensibility is the main attraction of Poser to me, to the extent that it is extensible. To the degree it isn't (Firefly and the current limitations of one render engine natively) Poser does still use an open format (OBJ) for mesh and because overall the "Pose" bit is reasonably easy to use makes Poser a great initial part of workflow that does include the use of other apps to generate a final image.

Yep, I've been playing around with it a lot lately.  I think I like Mint with KDE the best - but that's the cool thing, like you said, the modular approach.  You can go Cinnamon or MATE or whatnot for the desktop.

I'm not fully entrenched yet but I easily could be.  I leave Linux as a very important option for myself for the future.

I agree with mylemonblue that the driver compatibility is amazing now, along with the ease of use and familiarity of it all.  With most distros you can figure it out very quickly because it has similarities with the Windows Desktop.  I'd venture to say that Cinnamon is probably the most familiar (but with the least amount of options exposed).

I am running Windows 8 primarily and was kind of forced in because I built a new rig and needed 'doze for a few things, mainly Poser :)  After gutting it out, it runs beautifully here :D  Ultimately, I wish it was more like XP so depending how MS evolves will determine which OS I choose in the future.  But that doesn't have to be for a long time yet.

Isn't there a lot of command line stuff in Linux? I am SOOOOO over that stuff. LOL

If there wasn't the command line thing (which I always hated - I fight the programs enough that I don't wanna fight with the OS too), then I might give it another look ;).

Laurie

I'd like to see SM start by porting Queue Manager to Linux.

I've been using Linux in one form or another since the late 90s. But server-side. All command line (or vi or pico, etc). Transitioned from AIX and SCO unix, kind of...

The various Linux graphical desktop flavours are certainly getting pretty slick these days though...

Quote - ...I agree with mylemonblue that the driver compatibility is amazing now, along with the ease of use and familiarity of it all.  ...

I'm pretty much stuck on Cinnamon because it is so (older)-Windowslike, a UI that made sense, was not in your face, didn't require a lot of time getting used to so I could focus on stuff I wanted to do.

Just to share: a port of Poser to 'nix would not be trivial - probably for a number of reasons - from what I appreciate Blender's challenges are currently with Cycles: the ATI manufacturer's reluctance to share core aspects of their graphics drivers with the OSS community. NVidia (despite Linus's disaffectation with this mob) have actually done a better job, which is why we can use CUDA in Cycles renders, and why Octane has a Poser export thingie as well. Which, really, is ATI shooting themselves in the proverbial foot, since once you close yourself off to a number of users for any reason, those users will make desisions based on hardware flexibility when they upgrade and will pass on your product, no matter how price-attractive it may be.

With Steam now on Linux, ATI really need to have a closer look at their decision to be Windows-centric. I don't believe any particular year will be the year of the "Linux Desktop" simply because it is happening in such a quiet way that none of the big corporations appreciate the shift away from MS, but given the rocky economy and the need to put shoes on kid's feet and braces on their teeth and keep up the supply of toilet paper at home and petrol in the car, people are more and more going to re-think the advisability/necessity of upgrading dodgy software that is inherently insecure and will seek solutions that don't cost them an arm and a leg.

It's not a question of being a cheapskate anymore: it's a question of survival for us battlers.

Saying that: I WILL upgrade Poser when the new version comes out. There is still a budget for that, just not for Win8 or Office 365 ... :blink:

Quote - Isn't there a lot of command line stuff in Linux? I am SOOOOO over that stuff. LOL If there wasn't the command line thing (which I always hated - I fight the programs enough that I don't wanna fight with the OS too), then I might give it another look ;).

Laurie

The only time I bring up terminal (like, the DOS window in Windows) is when I have stuff I can copy and paste from a TRUSTED website... the only thing I've done this with is the Shinsuke Irie ppa for Blender. 99.9% of everything else I do in Linux Mint is graphical.

Mint/VirtualBox/Windows/Photoshop CS3... fast and clean and all graphical - caveat: you might want to see if your tablet responds as well in VBox... I have it on good authority that there are still issues, so if you use a graphics tablet, you might want to dual-boot if that's the case.

Everyone has a slightly different special-case scenario for OS choice... for some of the more eclectic users, I wouldn't necessarily suggest changing, but if your workflow is mostly internet, a bit of word-processing, some modelling (Blender or Wings3D have Linux versions)... stuff like that, you'll find yourself more productive and less struggling with an insecure OS.

Interesting sidenote - WindowsAndroid runs Android without emulation on Windows 8

Yanno, I never even had an urge to run Android on my desktop, just like I've never had an urge to run Windows on my tablets. Another reason why Windows 8 is something I'll never get (I will go to Linux first) - the right tool for the right job and an OS is not an all purpose thing when it comes to desktops. And my desktop is something I don't intend to give up anytime soon ;).

BTW, this thread has gone WAAAAY off the rails. LOL

Laurie

Just for shits and giggles, I installed Lubuntu to a usb stick and am booting to it. I must say, I have NEVER had renderosity load so fast. Ever. LOL.

I don't like the look of Ubuntu, so I settled for Lubuntu - I like the familiar look of it :P.

Anyway....back to the derailed thread...lol....

Laurie

Yeah, Laurie it's all graphical now.  You can still get at the bones of it if you need to though.  I think most Windows users would like Cinnamon.  That doesn't mean the others don't have a desktop - they all do (at least all the Ubuntu-based ones), it just means that some are more windows-like and some have different ideas in there.

I'm okay with Mint + MATE and Mint + KDE.  To me, they have more options and I like getting under the hood a bit.

The really super-cool thing about most Linux distributions is that you can try them out totally before you commit to installing anything.  In other words, you can burn them to a CD and boot into that and run the distro right from the disk.  If you don't like a particular flavor, try a different one :)

@Robynsveil: I thought the big thing holding back Poser 8 and higher was the AIR/Flash library (at least under WINE).  In that case I read that you could just use Semi's Library replacement or whatnot.  I wouldn't know for sure though.

I would think that it wouldn't be all that hard to get Poser ported.  The scene is rendered in OpenGL and just about everything they have put in has been open-sourced so it's just finding the right combination of things.  I guess it's really going to rely on how much moving to Linux the overall computing world sees.  If Linux only has 1% of the market share and Mac has 7% or whatnot, we know what the priority is...

Personally, I would love to see it ported and it would certainly have me on Linux almost full-time because I have liked what I've seen.  I use LibreOffice and similar applications already and I've even installed some of the Linux apps under KDE for Windows (I'm a big fan of Kate, a notepad replacement).  The only thing I'd go back to Windows for would be the few games I do play.  I don't think Guild Wars 2 does that well under Linux. :)

Quote - Just for shits and giggles, I installed Lubuntu to a usb stick and am booting to it. I must say, I have NEVER had renderosity load so fast. Ever. LOL.

I don't like the look of Ubuntu, so I settled for Lubuntu - I like the familiar look of it :P.

Anyway....back to the derailed thread...lol....

Laurie

I don't even know what Lubuntu is.. I'll have to check it out.

I've tried various builds of MINT, Bodhi, Ubuntu, and a few others I can't recall at the moment. :D

Quote - @Robynsveil: I thought the big thing holding back Poser 8 and higher was the AIR/Flash library (at least under WINE).  In that case I read that you could just use Semi's Library replacement or whatnot.  I wouldn't know for sure though.

I just tried PP 2010 in wine 1.5.22 and the embedded library worked, although the thumbnails weren't showing up.  I may have an old version of WineGecko installed, which is the IE replacement for Wine.

I don't use Wine much as I keep a seperate Windows 7 machine for Poser, but do my actual work on an openSuSE machine.  I've tried Ubuntu in the past, but I'm too used to having an actual root account...

Well, as for command line stuff I did have to use it to make both my monitors show a separate image (it defaulted to both monitors showing the same thing). That said, it was easy enough to find how to fix it ;). I'll have to have a look at Cinnamon....I don't recall that one coming up when I did a search for "Best Linux distro for Windows user". Heh.

Won't install Blender or Wings tho...says I need some Ubuntu whatever among other stuff I have no idea what. LOL.

Laurie

Oh, I'm sure the Linux "market share" is way more than 1 %.... at least, if you believe Steve Ballmer.

But getting back to the original topic: what would really be exciting to see is what they've done in the material room. Just wondering how hard it wou.d be to integrate OSL into Possr... wow, can you imagine what BB could/would do with THAT!! :biggrin:

It's hard to say since we can't use sales to gauge the number of desktop users.  A conservative guess is just over 1%.  A healthy guess is 2.1%.  If there are 1.2 billion desktop users, that's significant.

There's another way to look at it though.  A linux version of Poser is likely to bring in Linux users and might spur some kind of friendship with Blender - at least I could see the likelihood of bridging more into that application.  I think (desktop) Linux would be a good frontier to tap into, personally, that has matured and become stable over the last 10 years.  It's also a good idea to bring more technical users into Poser.

I started writing "desktop" because technically we are all Linux "users" as a lot of telecom infrastructure runs on it. :)

So... the original topic.  Poser!  Yes, Poser!  It needs a Linux port! :D

It need a Blender port more then a Linux port :-)

Not everybody had the $$$ for Zbrush.

vilters, I agree.  Python is also common ground there.  I don't see why something couldn't be done.  Blender can do a lot of the sculpting and such and a lot more, right? (I've only dabbled with it).  Why not embrace more of these open sourced initiatives...

Quote - It need a Blender port more then a Linux port :-)

Not everybody had the $$$ for Zbrush.

I agree with that. Zbrush in all it's awesome is not affordable for me either. Add to that as often as I've had hardware issues I'd be contacting them for re-ativation more than actually using it.

Blender 3D is much more merciful and affordable.

Quote - But getting back to the original topic: what would really be exciting to see is what they've done in the material room.

If they don't make it less laggy, I'm going to rage.

I have often wondered, over the years, if there is a very minor conspiratorial agreement amongst software producers that the best toys only be in the hands of the establishment.  We get, at our "street" level, horrible rendering engine, figures that don't quite look real, and if you make them real, they no longer bend, and if you make them bend, they no longer conform to clothing, etc, we get a hair room that produces flax and takes forever to do so, etc.

All of these problems are solvable with current technology and programming know-how, I am sure.  I wish I knew how to do it, but I know there are people who do, they just aren't working on Poser.

Add to that the street-level user base who insist on backwards compatibility, and you've got something that's just lurching forward and succombing to entropy, like Darth Vadar crawling out of the molten lava, on fire.

At the end of the day, we ask "Does Poser (Or Even DazStudio) do what we want it to do?" assuming our wants and needs are reasonable, and I think the answer was "yes!" when Poser 4 came out, and on the decline ever since.  They've been taking the premise of Poser 4 and trying to make it better ever since.

They have not re-evaulated what it is people need and want. 

I seem to be alone on this, which really suprises me. 

Quote - ... Won't install Blender or Wings tho...says I need some Ubuntu whatever among other stuff I have no idea what. LOL. Laurie

For Blender and CUDA (NVidia), you will need the CUDA toolkit if you want to do Cycles, which, if you have a graphics card that will do CUDA, you'll want to do.

For Blender: I'd be going to SourceForge and getting Irie Shinsuke's ppa - only the teeniest-tiny-eeensie-weensie bit of Terminal stuff in that - and then, you'll always have the latest/greatest bug-fixed version of Blender when you do your system updates, since Linux also updates your software, not just your OS.

I'd love to see a greying of lines between Blender and Poser: there's a lot that can be done in both directions. As in: create a scene in Poser, render in Blender. Create stuff in Blender, pose and render in Poser.

I would name new figures Frazer and Wendy.  Or not.  :unsure:  Boris and Natasha.  Umm.  Dunno.

Did I blink, or were there some non-hints-as-hints about the next Poser posted somewhere in the middle of this thread?

speaking as the great Linux Killer... seriously, I once installed linux on a box 47 times in one weekend cos I kept killing it dead and there was NO documentation to help me.... then there was installing Linux on this box and trying to get the GFX card working right... god a waste of frigging time that was! was a base if you get it wrong GFX mode to hard for linux programmers to add in? hmm? you know like "oh your card cannot do this, here's 640x480" windows can do it!!! nope. I got the entire screen in 1 line.. and oh.. whats the key combo to get back to the command line? research 34 pages all giving differing information much of which is out of date.... oh add in a user in a "help" chatroom who thought it was "funny" to give me the command to erase my entire install...

I'll stick to my Windows. now to make one thing plain.. I've used DOS 3.3, 4, 5, 6, Windows 1,2,3,3.2,95,98,NT3.51,4,XP,Vista,7, Novell Netware 2.2, 3. and I've found.. me and Linux do NOT get along.. I am poison to it. WIndows has NeverEver played me up and damn do I abuse it... but it just works. I don't get the issues such as bluescreens, etc..

Quote - I have often wondered, over the years, if there is a very minor conspiratorial agreement amongst software producers that the best toys only be in the hands of the establishment.  We get, at our "street" level, horrible rendering engine, figures that don't quite look real, and if you make them real, they no longer bend, and if you make them bend, they no longer conform to clothing, etc, we get a hair room that produces flax and takes forever to do so, etc.

All of these problems are solvable with current technology and programming know-how, I am sure.  I wish I knew how to do it, but I know there are people who do, they just aren't working on Poser.

Add to that the street-level user base who insist on backwards compatibility, and you've got something that's just lurching forward and succombing to entropy, like Darth Vadar crawling out of the molten lava, on fire.

At the end of the day, we ask "Does Poser (Or Even DazStudio) do what we want it to do?" assuming our wants and needs are reasonable, and I think the answer was "yes!" when Poser 4 came out, and on the decline ever since.  They've been taking the premise of Poser 4 and trying to make it better ever since.

They have not re-evaulated what it is people need and want. 

I seem to be alone on this, which really suprises me. 

You're not alone. I feel exactly the same way, maybe to a lesser degree on some things, but in agreement generally. LOL

I'm another one that wouldn't mind all that much if they didn't maintain backward compatibility if it meant much better results. But the SM powers that be cater to the people that will cry a river if they can't use their 13 year old figures in the new version.

I don't have much faith that we'll ever get decent standard figures again unless the project is sent outside of SM to someone that really knows what they're doing.

As for the material room. I don't think I wanna even get started unless I want to be pulling my hair out any time soon ;). Suffice it to say I think it's a dog and there's no hope for it other than to throw it out and start over. Make it more in line with the ease of the rest of Poser. Make it WYSIWYG so that the majority of folks who use Poser (usually not 3D nerds, but just end users) can use it without crying. Take a look at Vue's materials. Enough said ;).

I'll repeat what I said farther up the thread: we'll get the same dog of a material room with nodes that no one understands, except now there will just be more OF them.

Laurie

the material room is a half baked idea poorly done

they over estimated the users. we are not math professor programmers. we are, for the most part, ordinary users who have enough trouble converting ingredients for recipes or balancing the family accounts.

so far, only ONE user we've seen can use the material room consistantly. ONE. thats a HUGE FAIL.

Quote - the material room is a half baked idea poorly done

they over estimated the users. we are not math professor programmers. we are, for the most part, ordinary users who have enough trouble converting ingredients for recipes or balancing the family accounts.

so far, only ONE user we've seen can use the material room consistantly. ONE. thats a HUGE FAIL.

yup yup yup.

I always come back to Vue's materials and I know I sound redundant, but Vue had/has a dynamite shader system, relatively easy to understand, even before they added "hidden" nodes. Enough for Poser users certainly. What you saw WAS what you got and looked damn good as well. The material room's gotta go and I'd leave Poser in the dust completely and move to another program like it if there WAS one. The only one that exists has an even worse material system than Poser. I've despised the material room from day one and it and I have had a long hate/hate relationship ever since. LOL

Actually, don't even think hate is a strong enough word.

Laurie

Quote - the material room is a half baked idea poorly done

they over estimated the users. we are not math professor programmers. we are, for the most part, ordinary users who have enough trouble converting ingredients for recipes or balancing the family accounts.

so far, only ONE user we've seen can use the material room consistantly. ONE. thats a HUGE FAIL.

Hey, that's not true... BB can use it too!

he's the one I'm referring to. note the word consistently. as in, getting the required result everytime without outside help.

*if we try.. we normally have to ask HIM for help. that's not good.. it means most of your users can't actually use your product to it's fullest potential.

That says more about us then about the product. But, I agree it could be more user friendly.

Before Poser8 and PP2010, a lot was "faked" in the material room.

Poser8/PP2010 brought IDL and GC. Poser9/PP2012 brought SSS.

Unfortunately, most end users continued with their older material room  ***"faking habbits".

Plus all products they bought before Poser8/PP2010 had those "faking materials" inside.

Now they render in newer Poser versions, try IDL and GC and SSS, with all those OLD AND FAKED material settings, and THAT simply does not work.
If you use an older product, you have to adapt it to the newer Poser versions.
It is as simple as that.

The only thing you need in the newer material rooms is the diffuse texture.
All the rest from Specular over Blinn, to Bump and Displacement can be build inside the math room, as some of us have been showing over and over again.

When you load a product build before Poser8/PP2010, the fist thing you should do is clean out all the "old and obsolete faking" in the material room.

=> But, that is NOT an error SM made.
=> That is not a Poser error either.
=> Do not blaim the pianist.

Every older product that includes "older material faking setups in the material room" needs to be adapted to the newer material room and render settings.

Happy Posering
Tony

Quote - he's the one I'm referring to. note the word consistently. as in, getting the required result everytime without outside help.

*if we try.. we normally have to ask HIM for help. that's not good.. it means most of your users can't actually use your product to it's fullest potential.

There are many more who know their way around the material very well..... no I'm not refering to myself, I know the basics and little of the advanced stuff, but that's it. But I know of others who know their way around and creatr some pretty cool shaders with it..... which I'm enjoying very often and more users do. Perhaps you know only one person, that may be true and BB sure is very good at it, but if you've been around as long as you and I have, you should have noticed the others.... they go way back.

The thing is, we may not realise how good they are, since they're not prominent in this forum, but if I browse my library for shaders, I find 2 or 3 made by BB, at least which I'm certain of, but I do find hundreds of other shaders made by a couple others, like Olivier, just to name one. How about Colm, Semidieu, Cyllan and let's not forget Mapp, he may have made more shaders then all of them combined......

Problem with all of them is that they keep most of their secrets to themselves and that's a real shame. If the majority wants to reach full potential in the material room, then good and understandable tutorials are needed..... and those lack big time.

Let's not forget that most users don't even want to spent time in the material room and others, like me, know enough to get done what they want to get done. I've made some pretty nice shaders using nodes and know how to get some cool results. Why I get the results, I don't know as long as I get them. That's all I need to know and I really don't want to get into all the details there are, I don't care about them. I'm not the only one. But there are others who would love to know more, but can't go anywhere. That's the problem with the Poser community, everyone uses his or her knowledge to make content and tutorials are overlooked a lot.

I've recently started using Vue again, after 5 years or so. So much has changed..... am I lost? No way, there are tons and tons and tons of great trainings and tutorials around. Even the most respected members share their secrects (free or for a price). Now imagine doing the same in Poser..... going from P4 to Pro2012, you'd be lost and not too many places to turn to for help. It's a shame.

It's almost like the material room gets made and people say "now don't DARE release any real information about it. Let's keep them in the dark" LOL

Of course, if I want better materials I can always use Luxrender...lol. However, most people just do this shit in the evenings to unwind and be creative. They don't give a damn about the math lessons you need to understand the material room. Not when there are alternatives out there that produce as good, if not better shaders in an easier fashion than the cluster**** that is the Poser material room.

Laurie

Quote - It's almost like the material room gets made and people say "now don't DARE release any real information about it. Let's keep them in the dark" LOL

Of course, if I want better materials I can always use Luxrender...lol. However, most people just do this shit in the evenings to unwind and be creative. They don't give a damn about the math lessons you need to understand the material room. Not when there are alternatives out there that produce as good, if not better shaders in an easier fashion than the cluster**** that is the Poser material room.

Laurie

Right.... they just want to have fun and isn't that what Poser is all about?

Quote - the material room is a half baked idea poorly done

they over estimated the users. we are not math professor programmers. we are, for the most part, ordinary users who have enough trouble converting ingredients for recipes or balancing the family accounts.

so far, only ONE user we've seen can use the material room consistantly. ONE. thats a HUGE FAIL.

I have to disagree with this. I think the material room is very well thought out in Poser.

It allows anyone from a novice to a programmer to use the same room and share settings extremely easily. It also allows you to work around many of the issues present in the Firefly engine as well.

One of the most expensive and advanced 3D programs on the planet uses a very similar system for not only the material networks, but just about everything else as well.

Networks of nodes reduce limitations, that's why they are used in so many 3D programs. Dumbing it down with another system would limit what it was capable of.

If anyone thinks they can come up with a better system, by all means do it.

I am sure that you could retire the next day.

Autodesk, Side Effects, Maxon, etc, etc, etc: Would all be fighting for the rights to replace the node network system that is in use now.

They have not come up with a better way of doing it in years...

I must add to this...

It's capable of what? Not much. It has to contend with Firefly, probably the worst render engine I've used, other than the version of 3Delight in DS. Needs a huge overhaul as well. THEN I may agree that the material room as it stands capable of much.

Sounds like I hate Poser, doesn't it? LOL. I don't, but there are parts of it that frustrate the hell out of me ;).

Laurie

LaurieA:

What I meant was the interface. The limitations of firefly are another issue entirely.

When people talk about the material room needing an overhaul, I just assume they mean network shaders in general.

There are a lot of programs out there that have simplified material editors that leave a lot to be desired, simply because you can't do certain things because they are not in the interface. Doesn't really matter if a render engine knows how to do something if you can't tell it to do so. And there are a lot of those examples out there.

I just wonder why you are that frustrated but stick with it?  If I was that frustrated with figures, technologies, materials and rendering engine (at least it appears that way), I would.  Not trying to start anything, honest, just curious :)

Quote - It also allows you to work around many of the issues present in the Firefly engine

This is the sort of apologetics that drive me up the wall.

Why should we design a room to work around a faulty render engine???

Why not throw away firefly altogether? 

Why did anyone ever consider firefly a good idea in the first place?  It was balls from day one, IMO, not much better than Poser 4 rendering engine. 

Arg.

Quote - he's the one I'm referring to. note the word consistently. as in, getting the required result everytime without outside help.

Er, I know you were, Kai... I was trying to make a funny. Fail, I guess. :blink: I don't hold an almost extinguished flickering candle against his nuclear fission wattage (amperage?)...... ..... ..