Well this just got interesting in a mad hurry, didn't it?

I recently posted something over at SM, apologizing for my silence. Like I said there, there's literally nothing to tell, mainly because I have been doing nothing but catching up for lost time making comics since the release of PE ONE.

Also, I didn't really see much of a future in PE since PE is a complex figure that Poser can barely support without serious investment and training of vendors on my behalf. Everyone, including me, ran into the JCM wall. I knew this going in, but I had stupid faith that 'if you build it, they will come'. There were options and solutions I proposed to SM, some that could have really worked, but SM did nothing. And considering Poser had the momentum of a aged snail these last few years, I just simply couldn't risk it. Project Evolution was a big fat statement to Smith Micro basically telling them that THIS IS WHAT POSER CAN DO!!!! But it was like Smith Micro either had their hands tied, or didn't give a crap. In that post I said:

"I will admit I was naive about the whole thing. I thought just by making a good figure, things would snowball from there, given how fanatic the Poserverse is. But PE pushes Poser to the limits of what Poser can support, and Poser is barely supporting itself these days, so it basically means that the onus is on me to have to push for her to succeed. I simply don't have time for that at the moment, and I cannot do that alone.

Basically, PE is currently not suitable as a commercial Poser figure, its a specialist figure. To make her accessible to the majority of Poser vendors and users, we need to make tools that support her.

I am obviously grateful for all the support PE has enjoyed over the last few years, but I hope everyone remembers that I did this as an artist (like most of you) taking a detour to try help solve a problem, not start a franchise."

But that was then, this is now. Guys I am excited about this development. Even though I might have messed up my relationship with Rendo during the PE release, which I doubt I can repair, I think this development can finally be the thing that Poser needs. For thwt it is worth, I am very willing to hand over my scripts and perhaps even more just to get Poser working again. Not only will my comic work profit from it, but every Poser artist could.

Rendo has many advantages SM did not. Rendo is packed with fanatic artists and vendors, lots of contacts in the ACTUAL CGI art world, and they have lots of hands-on experience with art in general, and also other related software. Also, since Rendo also dips their fingers in DAZ content, and they are a no-nonsense business, we might finally see some overlap between the two platforms, what people have been craving for years. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but you never know.

Now I'm not going to make any promises just yet, I have lots of other things that I desperately need to do, but if Rendo is for real, I might be able to revamp Project Evolution. If the Rendo developers can address the bending issue with either features that support JCMs or an alternative to JCMs, like a new rigging system, or improved WM-based features, I might be able to re-rig PE.

Even if nobody is interested in PE, this is still a great thing. An organization rooted in art and successful content distribution, can only be good for Poser... and therefore for me too.

Anyway, before this development, I had decided instead of moping about Poser, rather get the most out of it while Poser is still live. I stand my my view that Poser is brimming with unexploited potential, and I feel the longer its ignored, the more it will turn stale and just be forgotten, if its not too late already. Rendo can absolutely turn this mofo around. I know that this is a very subjective opinion, but from my side of the world, in the world of CGI, gaming and god forbid DAZ Studio, Poser was pretty much dead in the water, which is a damn shame. Rendo, you have my full support. I don't want to switch to another platform.

In the meanwhile, I developed a number of scripts and put them all together over the course of the last year or two, into this almost steampunk like interface. I haven't shown it to that many people because I don't want to get people all excited for nothing. I am not ever going to release this myself, I might hand it off to someone else (Rendo developers, email me, I'll send it all). Debugging this thing would be a nightmare and will detract me from making comics, and moreover I feel that any of these features should actually be part of Poser by now, and therefore its not my job to do that. I can see that some might think that this is specifically tailored for me and wouldn't be of use to the average Poser user, but that is not entirely true.

In addition, these scripts are relatively easy to make. They were developed over the course of 2 years but all the hours combined perhaps a month? I'm not even a professional developer, just imagine what a paid developer could achieve, given the right instructions?

Anyway, sorry for the blackout. I was embarrassed that I had such confidence. I had high hopes for PE, I really hoped it would have inspired SM, I couldn't do it without them. Maybe things might finally change now!

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

PS: nudity. Sorry.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

I added the Nudity advisory for you on the Original Post.

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Renderosity Senior Moderator

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wheatpenny posted at 4:41PM Fri, 21 June 2019 - #4353880

I added the Nudity advisory for you on the Original Post.

thnx!

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Hey, Ero! I use Evo all the time, alongside Sasha-16, Dawn, G2F, and Pauline. I’m just starting to work La Femme into my projects. I personally am grateful to have Evo. Having a variety of looks and characters is awesome! (I can almost always tell a G3 or G8 female image by the nose.) I’ve never found the JCMs unduly burdensome for conversions in the fitting room. In fact, I now convert all clothes or shoes to Evo first because it turns out her proportions make further conversions to other figures, including La Femme, easy instead of laboring with an obj all over again. Your dress mannequin is particularly useful and I converted it to functional use for Pauline and La Femme, though with more conforming clothing appearing for the latter, I probably won’t use it very often.

Whatever Poser development brings, I’m glad you had a vision and turned inspiration into product. Cheers.

RobZhena posted at 4:53PM Fri, 21 June 2019 - #4353882

Hey, Ero! I use Evo all the time, alongside Sasha-16, Dawn, G2F, and Pauline. I’m just starting to work La Femme into my projects. I personally am grateful to have Evo. Having a variety of looks and characters is awesome! (I can almost always tell a G3 or G8 female image by the nose.) I’ve never found the JCMs unduly burdensome for conversions in the fitting room. In fact, I now convert all clothes or shoes to Evo first because it turns out her proportions make further conversions to other figures, including La Femme, easy instead of laboring with an obj all over again. Your dress mannequin is particularly useful and I converted it to functional use for Pauline and La Femme, though with more conforming clothing appearing for the latter, I probably won’t use it very often.

Whatever Poser development brings, I’m glad you had a vision and turned inspiration into product. Cheers.

Thanks Rob. Your support (and that of others) has been fantastic. But what I like more about what you do is that you're on your own plan. This is not about me, or supporting me, but about you and what you want to make. PE is just a tool that you can use. Poser and Poser figures should always have been there to help you with that. PE was always a statement to show people what Poser can actually do. All it needs is some determination, stubbornness, and a fanatic company behind it that actually has a clue. Rendo might just be that thing.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

If I ever get making renders again, PE is a figure I'll use, along with many others.

As for Renderosity, I hope they really pick up the ball and run with it, in all aspects of Poser, its development and future.

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SamTherapy posted at 5:44PM Fri, 21 June 2019 - #4353888

If I ever get making renders again, PE is a figure I'll use, along with many others.

As for Renderosity, I hope they really pick up the ball and run with it, in all aspects of Poser, its development and future.

cheers man.

I'm just happy that a company with a VESTED interest in Poser is now running Poser. We'll see if this amounts to anything, but at least there's hope again. I confess I lost all hope in Poser and I was just desperately trying to salvage what was left and cranking out as many comics as I could while Poser was still valid. This has absolutely peaked my interest again.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

This is actually... pretty damned cool.

I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on the SM forums because it reflected how I felt about PE and SM before the announcement:

I'm glad to see you're still considering PE after your comics. At the same time I'm sad to see that it won't happen until after your comics, but if that's how you support yourself then that's what needs to be done.

PE is my go to figure in basically everything I do in Poser, nothing has been as versatile and easy to pose realistically as PE. The fact that there's only two pages of stuff for PE is killing me. Yeah it's all really top notch stuff, but LaFemme had double that the day she came out on the market.

Speaking of LaFemme, she's a great figure for sure and it's very easy to get great poses and renders with her but I just can't get her to look how I want and that's why I prefer PE's aesthetics and realistic proportions. PE is the every day woman while LF is the endurance athlete at the Olympics and for my purposes I don't need an elite athlete in 90% of my renders.

Even if you aren't working on PE atm, I would really love to see some more vendors putting out support for her that are more than clothes. Even if it's just fit morphs for already released hairs. I think the OOT hairs for LF look fantastic and I really wanted to use them on PE. I site mailed OOT on rendo asking if they would sell a fit morph for PE but they never responded. There's also the skins from 3Dream that really look amazing, I would love to see these for PE. Biscuits has some really nice face morphs and there were a number of great free face morphs released, but besides the one from Biscuits, there's no others on the market iirc. There's also the severe lack of shoes for PE on the visible marketplace, as with the face morphs, there are free ones but if you don't know where to look, you'll never find them.

As far as Poser, yeah it doesn't look great and even though they said they were possibly developing the next version, it's probably in development hell right now. The lack of any communication or updates or... anything is really telling that SM are not the company that should be handling Poser. I've been using Studio a bit more lately and getting better at the GUI and it's becoming much easier to get what I want out of it. The fact that Studio, iray, Cycles and everything else are continually getting updates while Poser is stagnant is pathetic. Poser's version of Cycles is a dead end that can't be updated, and while it was great when it was first released, they dug a ditch for themselves and now they're screwed.

I think I'm ranting a bit too much, so I'll just say that I'm glad you're doing ok and hope the best for ya and for the future of PE.

This news does change things, drastically! If there was hope for Poser becoming a relevant contender with all the latest features, this is it and with figures like PE and LF leading the charge I am really hopeful that Poser will start to see the increase in use it deserves.

JohnDoe641 posted at 6:58PM Fri, 21 June 2019 - #4353923

This news does change things, drastically! If there was hope for Poser becoming a relevant contender with all the latest features, this is it and with figures like PE and LF leading the charge I am really hopeful that Poser will start to see the increase in use it deserves.

Funny how things can change so quickly eh?

I'll be flat out honest, as I feel I can do this now without accidentally burning bridges with Smith Micro, man I had already lost all hope well into PE's development. I was ready to give up back in 2016 when I saw how powerless some of the folks at Smith Micro where, they were f*ing clueless, but I couldn't mention anything, and I didn't want to be yet another artist that promised stuff and then cop out. I wanted to complete it at least. I'm thankful that I finished PE. But that was about it. I was done with Poser and to some extent CGI itself too. If it wasn't for my comics, i probably would have gone back to working in wildlife parks.

Chuck Taylor was Poser's last hope with Smith Micro. Even though I didn't agree with everything he decided, at least it was moving forward and he WAS listening and he did have a clue. Had SM given him another year or two, he might have actually managed. But I don't think SM could beat out this new opportunity with Renderosity. The sheer outreach of this company, its affiliations with other more relevant CGI organisations such as the magazines and software they connect with, gives me much hope for Poser now.

They really need to focus on Poser's strengths, her UI, her simplicity, the cloth room, the animation tools (in particular the animation layers), and of course the figures. While La Femme is certainly the best Poser figure that Poser has officially supported, I still insist that they look to Project Evolution for inspiration as to how to approach realistic CGI figures in Poser. If they choose to develop a new figure instead of going with PE, that is fine by me, but as long as it is a realistic looking figure. PE was my attempt and I am sure that other can do better, but please, no more beating around the bush. Rendo, make it happen.

Regarding PE, the only thing standing in the way of PE and a wider adoption, is accessibility in terms of making content for her easier to make. This is just a matter of bashing heads regarding Poser's rigging features. The clothsim already provides features that can be used to automate JCM creation, and subdivision can help refine morph transfer. But there could be other options instead of JCMs. That's just the tip of the iceberg of what Rendo can do provided they find some fanatics to develop for them. They could also go down the route of DS/Dual Quaretnion/ maya/max/C4D interoperability but they need to make sure that they develop the right tools and maintain Poser's accessibility, otherwise the spirit of Poser is kinda lost. I believe they could do it. Let's give them time. I am all ready to support them, even if I clashed with them at some point. Its worth it, I believe.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Thank you Ero, these are wonderful!!

Boni

---

"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork

Now I'm not going to make any promises just yet, I have lots of other >things that I desperately need to do, but if Rendo is for real, I might >be able to revamp Project Evolution. If the Rendo developers can >address the bending issue with either features that support JCMs or >an alternative to JCMs, like a new rigging system, or improved >WM-based features, I might be able to re-rig PE.

What are the "bending issues" that poser11 has with Lafemme??

That figure was purpose built based on poser 11's current state of technology and I have not seen a single complaint about her having "Bending issues" in poser 11

For what logical business reason would renderosity create a new rigging system in poser to accommodate Your "project" that would very likely render Lafemme unusable, when Lefemme is clearly the new default poser female and clearly on the path to supplanting the decrepid Daz Vicky4 in the poser content market.

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wolf359 posted at 3:35AM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354058

Now I'm not going to make any promises just yet, I have lots of other >things that I desperately need to do, but if Rendo is for real, I might >be able to revamp Project Evolution. If the Rendo developers can >address the bending issue with either features that support JCMs or >an alternative to JCMs, like a new rigging system, or improved >WM-based features, I might be able to re-rig PE.

What are the "bending issues" that poser11 has with Lafemme??

That figure was purpose built based on poser 11's current state of technology and I have not seen a single complaint about her having "Bending issues" in poser 11

For what logical business reason would renderosity create a new rigging system in poser to accommodate Your "project" that would very likely render Lafemme unusable, when Lefemme is clearly the new default poser female and clearly on the path to supplanting the decrepid Daz Vicky4 in the poser content market.

Ah and you were one of the ones suggesting I didnt have any talent. Ero was treated disgracefully here when Evolution was released. The developers of La Femme were happy for other native figures to be developed for Poser. Ambient Shade has Orion and Venus, and you must be aware that we have Dawn 2.0 in development to take advantage of new technology. I'd say it's all to play for.

Thank you ero. This looks fantastique. Amazing script. The story with PE is indeed a very sad thing. She is absolute amazing. But like you said, vendors come on their limit with content for her. I try very hard to rig for her complex outfits and I also failed with the JCM's.I am hoping so much that now Renderosity catch up a few stuff and we can produce for PE more serious stuff.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

thanks @ qaz and Ladonna :)

Making content for PE is something that could be done, but it just needs certain tools to help automate the process. These tools would also benefit content creation for La Femme and Dawn, since they too also suffer from similar issues. JCMs are just very demanding and make the need for such tools imperative, but even without JCMs, these proposed tools are still useful. I have already made a start, but since I do have other responsibilities, it would be great if more dedicated developers can take this on.

If anyone wants to know what kind of tools I am talking about, I can post it here. But its a lot of dry detail.

As I alluded to in my original post and in the other reply, I don't necessarily need PE to succeed if they can come up with a better solution for the bending. PE was just a showcase for a proposed bending tech that did the trick. And I'm not going to go down that same endless subjective discussion about what bends good and what bends okay etc etc (which is part of the reason I don't post in other forums anymore because the discussions are absolutely pointless and childish). It should go without saying that this is all up to the artist and if La Femme is ok for you then I have no issue with that obviously. We've made due with V4 for over a decade and I've seen great renders with Dawn, so La Femme should be a piece of cake. But some artists want a little more, like squishy calf and thigh flesh, buttocks that even out and even squish sideways, elbows... and perhaps proportions that are realistic. There are quite a few artists out there that really do want/need this.

At the end of the day, like I said before, CGI's overarching end-game is most definitely realism, be it through characterization (Toy Story) and/or physical representation (Pretty much most Hollywood blockbusters these days). And since humans be squishy things, especially if they do a squat, or ball their fist, or do yoga or arm-wrestle, it should speak for itself that the ability to laterally displace flesh is... kinda important. If that remains ignored, then Poser figures will always remain... 'Poser figures'. That's obviously fine, but some of us want to take it to the next level. I proved its possible. I'm not saying PE was perfect, but it was a start. Its up to them now.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Ero I hope really that tools for rigging and handling JCM's better get further development. I love PE , because she bends awesome.She is the most realistic figure I see for Poser so far. As for private usage ,I have no problems with some errors in my rigging, but for the store they have to be "bulletproof" . Where I fail btw. Still don't give up hope and still search for some kind of shortcut for more easy JCM'rig on her. Maybe the new team jump in cross fingers.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

Ladonna posted at 1:07PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354080

Ero I hope really that tools for rigging and handling JCM's better get further development. I love PE , because she bends awesome.She is the most realistic figure I see for Poser so far. As for private usage ,I have no problems with some errors in my rigging, but for the store they have to be "bulletproof" . Where I fail btw. Still don't give up hope and still search for some kind of shortcut for more easy JCM'rig on her. Maybe the new team jump in cross fingers.

Thanks Ladonna. Your patience and persistence was one of the things that inspired me with PE ONE.

We'll see what comes of all this. I feel a lot more energized with this new development, and even if Rendo doesn't address the JCM issue, I now at least have hope that Poser might actually get her just due development. I have options and tricks for the JCM thing, but they all cost time and energy to make, and I didn't want to risk sinking myself further down into SM's quagmire. But like I keep saying, with this new development, I might actually bite the bullet and get it done myself one day.

Commercially, PE is not dead, she's just on hold until I can get the tools made (I would prefer if Rendo did it though, then I can get on with my comics :D )

I'm signing off for now, gotta get back to work. I'll try to check in more often now.

Once again sorry for the blackout.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

erogenesis posted at 8:32AM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354068

At the end of the day, like I said before, CGI's overarching end-game is most definitely realism, be it through characterization (Toy Story) and/or physical representation (Pretty much most Hollywood blockbusters these days). And since humans be squishy things, especially if they do a squat, or ball their fist, or do yoga or arm-wrestle, it should speak for itself that the ability to laterally displace flesh is... kinda important. If that remains ignored, then Poser figures will always remain... 'Poser figures'. That's obviously fine, but some of us want to take it to the next level. I proved its possible. I'm not saying PE was perfect, but it was a start. Its up to them now.

I've seen a few tech demos of skin/fat/muscle displacement from siggraph a few years ago, I thought it was freaking awesome. I always thought that the next version of Poser would include it but then PP2014 came out and it didn't happen, thought the same thing with Poser 11 and well, didn't happen then either. I know it's been talked about quite a bit over the last few years, it's one of the last steps Poser needs to take to really elevate itself as the premiere tool for realism in 3d figures in the consumer/hobbiest sector.

Commercially, PE is not dead, she's just on hold until I can get the tools made (I would prefer if Rendo did it though, then I can get on with my comics :D )

I'm glad you're back Ero, PE is the only reason why I stuck around and started using Poser again. And up until LF's release, PE was the only reason why I used Poser and didn't go full time with DAZ. Now instead of starting up DS 90% of the time it's Poser 100% of the time.

Ambient Shade has Orion and Venus, and you must be

aware that we have Dawn 2.0 in development to take

advantage of new technology.

Indeed new technology that currently exists in poser 11 Not some future version of poser dictated by a third party.

Neither ambient shades figures nor your custom

Lefemme Characters, were contingent upon Bondware creating a new JCM scheme or a new rigging system to conform to YOUR figures&characters Standards.

You sir, Blackhearted ,Shawn(Ambient) and Hivewire have taken the correct course,and made poser native figures for posers current state of technology If the core technology advances it will be incumbent upon YOU to redo your figure to advance with the core program.

Making some exotic figure based on your own standards ,no matter how advanced,( and PE is quite advanced), and expecting Smith micro or Bondware to re-engineer poser to take advantage of your exotic approach is not the correct course as history has laid bare.

Is this not the exact same argument Daz has made for nearly a decade with Genesis .

"our genesis figure is uber advanced!!, you guys need to fix your old broken&busted poser app to work with our figure tech.... Oh and soon as do so we will introduce "Genesis X" and break your patches to send you on the fanciful chase for compatibility all over again in two years"

No thanks.

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Glad to see your back Ero! I fell off the face of the CG world myself shortly after PE was released. My Dad passed and within 6 months my mom too. I had a lot to deal with and I just wasn't in the mind set to deal with people, CG, or anything I would have remotely called a hobby.

I'm slowly getting myself back together and entering the CG world again, albeit slowly. I pretty much am lurking around the sites/forums, and the beginnings of render idea's are coming to me. I hope to be in the hot seat before long, learning everything again and attempting my own comic at some point....man, do I have some stories to tell. My only undecided factor is to make them traditional or visual novel?

Woah, totally when off on a tangent there. Back to the topic! I'm glad you are back. Love what I'm seeing in your scripts and hope some of it might make its way into Poser. I also think Rendo has the ability to take this in the direction it needs to go and I'm looking forward to the journey. I myself would like to see better strand based hair (like I've seen in blender) with physics for animation. Also, I think (and this is my opinion) that soft body physics would fix a lot of the bending issues people have seen and add a whole new level to our renders/animation. Last thing that really irks me, add render passes to Superfly. You can mask everything and render each individually in Firefly but not Superfly....that was always felt kinda dumb to me.

Welcome back Ero!

wolf359 posted at 1:25AM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354151

Making some exotic figure based on your own standards, no matter how advanced,( and PE is quite advanced), and expecting Smith micro or Bondware to re-engineer poser to take advantage of your exotic approach is not the correct course as history has laid bare.

So we must just make due with the pinata paper-mache figures and shut up and accept their mediocrity? Ok I admit its a subjective thing, but that's not how we progress towards something better. Like what JohnDoe said, the potential of adding detailed anatomical muscular-skeletal features into a Poser rig has been around for years now, in fact just today I looked at Poser 4 renders from 2000 and I I honestly think that Posette in that render didn't look that much worse than some Poser figures today. How far have we honestly progressed in Poser since then? I made Lali's Bits JCMs back in 2012 on V4, Miepe did their Perfect Bends, and people loved all of it. Guys, this was freakin over 8 years ago almost.

Look I could have also just sat on the sidelines and complained like most other Poser artist, but I had the privilege of having the skill to make a figure like this, so, also on their behalf, I made this figure to prove that it can be done. I gloriously messed up the marketing side (hey, I was focused on the figure), but PE's philosophy still holds. If you know programming, then you know that what I am asking for (and what many other artists are asking for) is just a matter of determination and planning. It CAN be done. Its no biggie, it just takes time. I can do it, but I just don't have the time.

I guess your angle is arguing from a point of 'who do you think you are?' and I suppose in some sense you might be right. But lets answer that question: I am an artist that knows that Poser can do better, and Poser CAN support it. I feel i proved it. I will argue that point to my dying day, mostly because the rest of the world of CGI is doing it. Why must Poser, and Poser customers, settle for 'the current state of technology' when in fact this 'current state' is WELL AHEAD, its been like that for years. Must we settle for mediocrity, out of nostalgia or laziness? Then I ask, what is the point of the cloth room? We can also just model that in zbrush. What is the point of Superfly? We could also just buy a camera and ask some girl to pose in an elven outfit. Why bother improve anything at all in Poser? DAZ are obviously wasting their time with their amazing products... right?

The current state of technology is on the horizon my friend, its going down with the sun fast, DAZ is running after it like crazy, and Poser is still wondering around aimlessly in the shadows... and I'm feeling the urge to run after it desperately. And you know me, I am a staunch supporter of Poser, but I'm also feeling the strain.

Rendo can do this, they have the contacts, the people, the fanatics, but they really need to look forward.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Lotharen posted at 1:52AM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354176

Glad to see your back Ero! I fell off the face of the CG world myself shortly after PE was released. My Dad passed and within 6 months my mom too. I had a lot to deal with and I just wasn't in the mind set to deal with people, CG, or anything I would have remotely called a hobby.

I hear you. Life sucks balls and we just need to find a way to get through it in a fun way. Don't worry I've had my fair share of this misery too, I understand.

I'm slowly getting myself back together and entering the CG world again, albeit slowly. I pretty much am lurking around the sites/forums, and the beginnings of render idea's are coming to me. I hope to be in the hot seat before long, learning everything again and attempting my own comic at some point....man, do I have some stories to tell. My only undecided factor is to make them traditional or visual novel?

honestly, with the way things have been going with Poser, I've also been fantasizing about just opening Word and just typing away. I've done it before, I loved it. No software tribalism, no dependencies on companies, trends, or technologies, just you and your keyboard. In fact all my comics start out on pen and paper, and if it wasn;t for my comic characters, I would have stopped a long time ago. I'm sick of arguing the obvious. This should be about art, perfection, glamour, inspiration, excitement and fun!

Woah, totally when off on a tangent there. Back to the topic! I'm glad you are back. Love what I'm seeing in your scripts and hope some of it might make its way into Poser. I also think Rendo has the ability to take this in the direction it needs to go and I'm looking forward to the journey. I myself would like to see better strand based hair (like I've seen in blender) with physics for animation. Also, I think (and this is my opinion) that soft body physics would fix a lot of the bending issues people have seen and add a whole new level to our renders/animation. Last thing that really irks me, add render passes to Superfly. You can mask everything and render each individually in Firefly but not Superfly....that was always felt kinda dumb to me.

Welcome back Ero!

Rendo have a fantastic opportunity here and they CAN do it. They do need to be careful not to promise too much, but if they just focus on Poser's qualities, refine them, they should be on the right track. Although dynamic simulations such as cloth and soft-body is obviously attractive, not many Poser users will have the processing power to facilitate such features on a daily basis. For my comic work it would be hell on earth. They would do better to combine those technologies to make and bake morphs that achieve the same thing but then more efficiently.

But I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to adopt age old-tech and have to refine it, but Poser as it was isn't bad. If they just refine what is already there, they can pay the bills for a future total reprogramming. I think that is kind of inevitable.

Thank you for the kind words, and I hope life for you goes better from now on!

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

erogenesis posted at 6:29PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

Rendo have a fantastic opportunity here and they CAN do it. They do need to be careful not to promise too much, but if they just focus on Poser's qualities, refine them, they should be on the right track.

Agreed, but they don't have a whole lot of runway to work with... Poser is barely earning enough to keep a very small dev team going (3-4, tops), so they're going to have to either donate some extra cash from the store profits (which will be a bit tight for now, given that they probably have a bit of debt to pay down from purchasing Poser... unless they saved their pennies and paid cash?), or put the feature requests through a very tight-meshed priority filter and pick what will have the most positive impact.

You do kick-ass work (though the blonde up there looking like a very tall version of my ex-wife is creepy as hell), and your concepts look cool on the surface (and I like how you think),BUT... you do realize that world+dog is sniffing around trying to push Rendo to do X or Y (and yeah, often to prefer their products or favored products, but c'est la vie.)

So, well, keep all that in mind.

Although dynamic simulations such as cloth and soft-body is obviously attractive, not many Poser users will have the processing power to facilitate such features on a daily basis. For my comic work it would be hell on earth. They would do better to combine those technologies to make and bake morphs that achieve the same thing but then more efficiently.

Kinda. I find myself not liking DForce all that much on the DAZ side... not for the tech (it's real kick-ass for what it does), but because now I gotta toss in simulation time into the workflow, and that can often rack-up to be as long as (and sometimes longer than) the render times. Collision Detection, well, I have a strong loving bias for that one in DS (for my own reasons), and all these years later, I still enjoy watching it respond in quick-time in most instances. :)

So, yeah - kinda agree with what I think you're shooting for. BUT (you knew there was a 'but', right?) You can have the best of both worlds - draping and collision detection off to the side that can be turned on and refined by those who want it (they're already there and can be altered/incorporated as advanced features that can be turned on), but maybe by default lean more towards a hybrid 'make-art-button' sort of happy medium that doesn't turn CPUs into butter.

But I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to adopt age old-tech and have to refine it, but Poser as it was isn't bad. If they just refine what is already there, they can pay the bills for a future total reprogramming. I think that is kind of inevitable.

To be fair, they would have had to refine what's there... now the day will come where the underlying engine is gonna need an overhaul, but don't expect miracles. Real-life example? Outside of CG-land, I worked with updating/upgrading a product that rakes in $1.5bn/yr. It had comments dating back from 1997 (I wish I was kidding.) There had to be at least six different languages involved, two differing databases built-in (PICK in a VM, and a bastardized fork of Postgres). Most of it was Spaghettified all to hell. Took 20 of us nearly two years just to overhaul the underlying packages, while a handful of others re-worked the UI into something useful. Both QA and C-level armchair eyeballing were omnipresent and brutal (it always is when you're modernizing the company's main money-printer.) The three months of migrating all of the customer installs (each of whom wrote rather massive checks for the thing) was even more brutal. In spite of that, there were a number of things I (and the others) hated, but simply could not touch, let alone rip out and replace... not without a radical change in what the customer(s) expected and demanded (in performance --see also PICK-- in responses, in UI layout...)

The point is this - even on Poser's scale, upgrading/improving/evolving is going to be a long and painful process. DAZ has the advantage (well, a few) in that it was built from the ground up to be free from 1990s tech (especially Kai), to be sufficiently modular that pieces and parts can be ripped out, reworked, and improved, without any degradation or compromise elsewhere. Poser is a bit more monolithic, I believe (though I hope they changed that over the years), so it's likely not as simple as you think it is.

Then again, I think we both might end up pleasantly surprised.

erogenesis posted at 9:46PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

Wow, that's amazing. Is that a Poser render? Are they all PE?

erogenesis posted at 10:33PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

honestly, with the way things have been going with Poser, I've also been fantasizing about just opening Word and just typing away. I've done it before, I loved it. No software tribalism, no dependencies on companies, trends, or technologies, just you and your keyboard. In fact all my comics start out on pen and paper, and if it wasn;t for my comic characters, I would have stopped a long time ago. I'm sick of arguing the obvious. This should be about art, perfection, glamour, inspiration, excitement and fun!

I hear you! I used to get lost writing short stories and fan fiction. Have a complete world and several books waiting to be written. It's basically what I've been thinking of doing the comic on using 3D. I use a wonderful program called Scrivener, for both PC and Mac.....doesn't take the place of Word for the finished product but helps a great deal with planning. It's even great for comics, screenplays and blogs!

Was just going over my old posts at the old Poser Forum and found several of the ideas to make Poser better and how to improve the program, at least for animation. I really doubt that Renderosity buying Poser is somehow going to make Poser a better program. Looking at the discussions about layers Poser 9 had some problems but 10 made things worse after they put in collapse layers, which never worked and would add the prior frame to the value of current frame making the figure move off scene fast. With 11 it got even worse. The new team fixed a couple of the smaller issues so it was a little better but no where usable without a lot of work arounds. So in the last 2+ years was the new team able to fix a lot of the bugs and never got to put out a service update waiting to put it out as Pose 12. The last two updates showed just how bad making small changes are very hard to do. Part of the updates was good however they lost the send to render queue function. When it was brought to their attention the response was that that function caused errors due to other errors being fixed. They finally got the button back but it took them a while to code out a new version. So if something as simple as a send to queue button has convoluted code paths what about the rest of the program? How long is it going to take to get a new team up to speed on the code and actually make the improvements that are needed? Not to be negative but I had hopes the last team would be able to fix some of the issues so that real improvements could occur

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

Penguinisto posted at 3:25PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354241

erogenesis posted at 6:29PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

Rendo have a fantastic opportunity here and they CAN do it. They do need to be careful not to promise too much, but if they just focus on Poser's qualities, refine them, they should be on the right track.

Agreed, but they don't have a whole lot of runway to work with... Poser is barely earning enough to keep a very small dev team going (3-4, tops), so they're going to have to either donate some extra cash from the store profits (which will be a bit tight for now, given that they probably have a bit of debt to pay down from purchasing Poser... unless they saved their pennies and paid cash?), or put the feature requests through a very tight-meshed priority filter and pick what will have the most positive impact.

Yesm I'm pretty sure its going to be a big risk for Rendo, so they must not beat around the bush. The absolute first thing they need to do is address the figure support issue. Without a good figure and tools to support it, there's nothing to Pose, therefore Poser is kinda pointless. I obviously recommend PE, go big or go home. But ok if they prefer LaFemme, then that will have to do, as long as they start refining tools to support figures. I would almost suggest they take the DAZ route, and absolutely tailor Poser to support at least one set of figures with autofit that actually works. My mannequin idea really does work and Verbaas thought up a coockiecutter compartment-like system to autogroup the figure. This cookiecutter system will minimize stray polygons and with a simple algorithm to absorb other stray polygons. Also, using philC's wrap technique, you can temporarily clingfilm the garment to the figure to transfer weight maps and JCMs to the garment, then replace the mesh with the original shape again. Or, use the tech behind the cloth room (or ask the creator of VWD to help) to help make JCMs in the garment, but then forcing it to stick very closely to the host figure to assure proper vertex alignment. Morph and WM transfer needs to be refined and they could use subdivision tech to do this (Nerd3D probably knows what I mean). There are many little tricks available to Poser right now, they just need automating.

Whatever they do they must absolutely get guys like Nerd3D, Larry, ColorCurvature and perhaps even shvrDavid on the team, since they really do know what is going on in Poser. I would also be willing to give advice.

You do kick-ass work (though the blonde up there looking like a very tall version of my ex-wife is creepy as hell), and your concepts look cool on the surface (and I like how you think),BUT... you do realize that world+dog is sniffing around trying to push Rendo to do X or Y (and yeah, often to prefer their products or favored products, but c'est la vie.)

Hehe thanks. I've kindof withdrawn from the Poser scene, completely focusing on comics, and I definitely don't expect SM or Rendo to listen to me and do as I say. My pov can be very limited and this is made harder with the lack of communication and feedback from SM. So essentially I have no clue of the state of things behind the scenes regarding Poser. But I do expect them to want to turn Poser into a killer app and make them lots of money. And so I figure since I do use poser quite intensely, on a daily basis, made a complex Poser figure, write scripts to streamline Poser's workflow, and thereby kinda proving that everything I suggest is probably achievable, I do still make an effort to make my opinion heard, because at the end of the day it will benefit the thing I like the most: making comics. It in my own interest to want to urge these ideas, and probably in their interest too, since I would assume that they would recognize some of what I do as something of value for Poser, and perhaps Poser's community... even if I am not the most reliable vendor, and kindof an impulsive hippie :D

So, yeah - kinda agree with what I think you're shooting for. BUT (you knew there was a 'but', right?) You can have the best of both worlds - draping and collision detection off to the side that can be turned on and refined by those who want it (they're already there and can be altered/incorporated as advanced features that can be turned on), but maybe by default lean more towards a hybrid 'make-art-button' sort of happy medium that doesn't turn CPUs into butter.

Yes that's kind of what I was saying. Using cloth room tech to make morphs, or even add a cloth room gadget into the morph editor, much like the sag brush, have the drape brush, or just drape on frame. In any case, I think the cloth room can provide a useful solution to automatically building and baking JCMs.

To be fair, they would have had to refine what's there... now the day will come where the underlying engine is gonna need an overhaul, but don't expect miracles. Real-life example? Outside of CG-land, I worked with updating/upgrading a product that rakes in $1.5bn/yr. It had comments dating back from 1997 (I wish I was kidding.) There had to be at least six different languages involved, two differing databases built-in (PICK in a VM, and a bastardized fork of Postgres). Most of it was Spaghettified all to hell. Took 20 of us nearly two years just to overhaul the underlying packages, while a handful of others re-worked the UI into something useful. Both QA and C-level armchair eyeballing were omnipresent and brutal (it always is when you're modernizing the company's main money-printer.) The three months of migrating all of the customer installs (each of whom wrote rather massive checks for the thing) was even more brutal. In spite of that, there were a number of things I (and the others) hated, but simply could not touch, let alone rip out and replace... not without a radical change in what the customer(s) expected and demanded (in performance --see also PICK-- in responses, in UI layout...)

The point is this - even on Poser's scale, upgrading/improving/evolving is going to be a long and painful process. DAZ has the advantage (well, a few) in that it was built from the ground up to be free from 1990s tech (especially Kai), to be sufficiently modular that pieces and parts can be ripped out, reworked, and improved, without any degradation or compromise elsewhere. Poser is a bit more monolithic, I believe (though I hope they changed that over the years), so it's likely not as simple as you think it is.

Then again, I think we both might end up pleasantly surprised.

You are totally right. I expect it would be a drama, but if they take it step by step with relevant updates and refinements, eventually Poser can become killer again. Poser's advantage over other apps is her UI, her ability to load scenes that are absolutely stupid in size, render using the GPU, and all the essential tools to make it all happen. They all just need refining for now, especially the figure support system. With clever people like Nerd and co, without the legislation BS of SM, Poser might have a future again.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

randym77 posted at 4:00PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354243

erogenesis posted at 9:46PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

Wow, that's amazing. Is that a Poser render? Are they all PE?

thanks yes that is Firefly. The girls are all Erogirl which shares the same joint centers and topo as PE, but different mesh, textures and morphs.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Lotharen posted at 4:04PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354246

erogenesis posted at 10:33PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

honestly, with the way things have been going with Poser, I've also been fantasizing about just opening Word and just typing away. I've done it before, I loved it. No software tribalism, no dependencies on companies, trends, or technologies, just you and your keyboard. In fact all my comics start out on pen and paper, and if it wasn;t for my comic characters, I would have stopped a long time ago. I'm sick of arguing the obvious. This should be about art, perfection, glamour, inspiration, excitement and fun!

I hear you! I used to get lost writing short stories and fan fiction. Have a complete world and several books waiting to be written. It's basically what I've been thinking of doing the comic on using 3D. I use a wonderful program called Scrivener, for both PC and Mac.....doesn't take the place of Word for the finished product but helps a great deal with planning. It's even great for comics, screenplays and blogs!

Yep I have scrivener too, I used it to pieces for the DD3 and Sen's comic. I push myself every day to write something, even if its a small snippet.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Lotharen posted at 4:04PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354246

erogenesis posted at 10:33PM Sat, 22 June 2019 - #4354233

honestly, with the way things have been going with Poser, I've also been fantasizing about just opening Word and just typing away. I've done it before, I loved it. No software tribalism, no dependencies on companies, trends, or technologies, just you and your keyboard. In fact all my comics start out on pen and paper, and if it wasn;t for my comic characters, I would have stopped a long time ago. I'm sick of arguing the obvious. This should be about art, perfection, glamour, inspiration, excitement and fun!

I hear you! I used to get lost writing short stories and fan fiction. Have a complete world and several books waiting to be written. It's basically what I've been thinking of doing the comic on using 3D. I use a wonderful program called Scrivener, for both PC and Mac.....doesn't take the place of Word for the finished product but helps a great deal with planning. It's even great for comics, screenplays and blogs!

Yep I have scrivener too, I used it to pieces for the DD3 and Sen's comic. I push myself every day to write something, even if its a small snippet.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

She looks really good. Is Erogirl going to be released to the public ero? eg sold here in the MP? Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

Richard60 posted at 4:06PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354249

Was just going over my old posts at the old Poser Forum and found several of the ideas to make Poser better and how to improve the program, at least for animation. I really doubt that Renderosity buying Poser is somehow going to make Poser a better program. Looking at the discussions about layers Poser 9 had some problems but 10 made things worse after they put in collapse layers, which never worked and would add the prior frame to the value of current frame making the figure move off scene fast. With 11 it got even worse. The new team fixed a couple of the smaller issues so it was a little better but no where usable without a lot of work arounds. So in the last 2+ years was the new team able to fix a lot of the bugs and never got to put out a service update waiting to put it out as Pose 12. The last two updates showed just how bad making small changes are very hard to do. Part of the updates was good however they lost the send to render queue function. When it was brought to their attention the response was that that function caused errors due to other errors being fixed. They finally got the button back but it took them a while to code out a new version. So if something as simple as a send to queue button has convoluted code paths what about the rest of the program? How long is it going to take to get a new team up to speed on the code and actually make the improvements that are needed? Not to be negative but I had hopes the last team would be able to fix some of the issues so that real improvements could occur

You may very well be right, but I see it this way. Who are more suited to tailor Poser to the needs of the Poser community? SM or Rendo? I am inclined to say Rendo, purely because of their deep connection with vendors and artists. SM have more experience with developers perhaps, but so many decisions made for Poser left me wondering if they had any clue what Poser was actually getting used for. It should be no secret by now that many of the developers that worked on Poser, themselves never used Poser, and I strongly feel that the Poser Team was being shielded by a lot of poser conservatives and that much of the real criticisms never got through to them. That might not be true though. So anyway, Rendo might blunder a few times with the programming, but I they have more potential to head Poser into a more relevant direction, if you know what I mean.

Do you mean animation layers? Oh don't get me started. That in itself is such a crying shame how it fails. If they had fixed animation layers, they would have had such a POWERFUL animation tool in their hands. I've been dreaming of making an animation of a girl playing drums, and being able to use layers properly, with copy pasting and no weirdness with underlying keyframes getting deleted, would be phenomenal. The wobble of her torso, the one arm with its own track, the other with yet another track, the feet their own track, her head and expressions with another track. Man the prospect of having that fixed... ohhh!

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

estherau posted at 4:22PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354292

She looks really good. Is Erogirl going to be released to the public ero? eg sold here in the MP? Love esther

Thanks :)

Unfortunately no. Erogirl has bits and pieces of V4 in her so I'd land into trouble with DAZ if I released her. Also, the's assymetrical and her JCMs are far worse of a deal than PE's. Also, the number of dials in the girl are ridiculous. If PE is a Cessna, then Erogirl is the Space Shuttle, lol.

However, since Erogirl and PE were developed parallel to each other, they share many features. If I ever get to upgrade PE, she will get an extra control system like you can see in the pic below. Erogirl's external controls allow me to customize certain controls and restore them all with a simple Ctrl+E since it has its own animation track. I use it to pieces.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Could you make her some sort of injection into V4 and sell the injection? so people could reconstitute her maybe? Like Sasha?

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

This thread did a 180 real quick.

What started off as an apology for conning Rendo staff and vendors that volunteered their help by pulling a bait and switch and then pulling the EJECT lever once you cashed your paycheque... to yet another shameless marketing thread for PE and bashing other figures ?

There is nothing revolutionary about adding hundreds of JCMs to a figure. We've been able to do that for decades... the reason we don't is because there's always a compromise between JCMs, their interactions with each other, and the clothability, morphability and flexibility of a figure. How would Rendo support your figure if you can't even do so yourself?

"go big or go home" -- I spit coffee out of my nose at that one. You really have some nerve, I'll give you that.

estherau posted at 4:50PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354305

Could you make her some sort of injection into V4 and sell the injection? so people could reconstitute her maybe? Like Sasha?

It would be a very complex injection because it would involve assembling the OBJ on the spot. I thought about it when making mesh4, making V4 a requirement, for example. But there were too many ifs and buts. Trust me, PE is a way better option than Erogirl, she just needs more texture options and content. I hope one day that can still come.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

PE is awesome!! I would use PE as the main character in my comic, if she had a more cut look with muscles and wrist tendons and more subcutaneous muscle definition. Love esther

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

estherau posted at 5:05PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354314

PE is awesome!! I would use PE as the main character in my comic, if she had a more cut look with muscles and wrist tendons and more subcutaneous muscle definition. Love esther

Thanks I hope one day I can continue making things for PE. I just need to get my comic work properly back on track first.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

@ Ero I wrote this before, and here it is again: Each and every JCM costs possible content creators/vendors.

Especially if these JCM's are in the figure to correct a rigging error.

it is far better to spend a few days on proper weight-bulge map paintings, then to add a JCM.

And you can add muscle movements in the bulge maps too, no JCM's required for those either.

And if you don't get there? Adapt the obj file to get there.

But, I know, this takes time, lots of time.

Remember; All solutions are better then to add rigging correcting JCM's. All of them.

tonyvilters posted at 5:40PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354319

@ Ero I wrote this before, and here it is again: Each and every JCM costs possible content creators/vendors.

Especially if these JCM's are in the figure to correct a rigging error.

it is far better to spend a few days on proper weight-bulge map paintings, then to add a JCM.

And you can add muscle movements in the bulge maps too, no JCM's required for those either.

And if you don't get there? Adapt the obj file to get there.

But, I know, this takes time, lots of time.

Remember; All solutions are better then to add rigging correcting JCM's. All of them.

hehe hallo vilters you old legend! how are you? Regarding JCMs, respectfully I disagree, but we've had this convo before. My breakdown is in PE's manual.

Have you seen the latest blender beta, 2.8? What do you think of it?

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

You may very well be right, but I see it this way. Who are more suited to tailor Poser to the needs of the Poser community? SM or Rendo? I am inclined to say Rendo, purely because of their deep connection with vendors and artists. SM have more experience with developers perhaps, but so many decisions made for Poser left me wondering if they had any clue what Poser was actually getting used for. It should be no secret by now that many of the developers that worked on Poser, themselves never used Poser, and I strongly feel that the Poser Team was being shielded by a lot of poser conservatives and that much of the real criticisms never got through to them. That might not be true though. So anyway, Rendo might blunder a few times with the programming, but I they have more potential to head Poser into a more relevant direction, if you know what I mean. <

Most of the "real criticisms" were voiced in the forums, where posts get buried and lost, and devs have to wade through a lot of unnecessary commentary to get to the posts they really need to see. SM had "official" channels in place to communicate issues, and they are more apt to be noticed if those channels are used instead of posting in forums.

It also helps to keep the communications focused to one issue at a time, and to keep the explanation as brief as possible to start. If more info is needed to reproduce the issue they will ask.

And, for the record, there were at least six people on the original dev and support team that I can think of who actually used Poser. Unknown on the new team.

Deecey posted at 5:50PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354323

Most of the "real criticisms" were voiced in the forums, where posts get buried and lost, and devs have to wade through a lot of unnecessary commentary to get to the posts they really need to see. SM had "official" channels in place to communicate issues, and they are more apt to be noticed if those channels are used instead of posting in forums.

I have no doubt that it must have been hard to fish out relevant criticisms, but to me it feels that their construction didn't really work, considering the situation now. I often had contact with people on the inside, but I was craving feedback of some sort. I have no doubt I will have overstepped my bounds several times, but without knowing where I could help, its easy to just shoot off in all directions. Now obviously, who am I to expect those busy guys to take time to respond to me? I just feel that making a details figure and running into some mad issues, some which really did affect Poser and actually affected change, does kind of warrant some kind of ongoing dialog, and it would have helped if they had flat out told me to back off and stop wasting their time. I don't think highly of myself, I just really give a sh-t (still kinda do).

It also helps to keep the communications focused to one issue at a time, and to keep the explanation as brief as possible to start. If more info is needed to reproduce the issue they will ask.

Absolutely, but there were just so many issues that were interconnected, as you probably already know. it was hard for me to stay focused on one thing, regarding what needed fixing in Poser. This is also something I had to learn the hard way. I may spout all kinds of ideas, but at the end of the day this is something that management would have to organize.

And, for the record, there were at least six people on the original dev and support team that I can think of who actually used Poser. Unknown on the new team.

I'd have to take your word for it because I heard very differently.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Regarding criticisms: I have no doubt that it must have been hell on earth for the Poser Team to keep up with demands, but from my side, all my collegues and friends who have all switched to DS, things were different, we wanted different things, things that should be kind of obvious, and what bothers me is how the Poser Team somehow missed this. And I'm not talking about erotica, erotica has always been something that adapts to whatever is made available. I'm talking things that are considered normal in CGI.

Like I said before, CGI in its essence kinda has the same theme running throughout it: render something awesome. Now the rendering was dealt with, namely Superfly (although that is also subject to much debate) but the 'something awesome' was not sorted. IMO that kinda trumps the rendering part. Now we can have endless discussions about the subjective idea behind which figure is actually awesome, but there is a reason why many people switched to DS and its not because of DS itself. Several of my friends don't like DS's UI and other aspects of it, they would much rather switch back to Poser. They switched because of Genesis and all its options. Sure its statistically questionable, but I see a fairly consistent argument even outside of my circle of friends. Now I know there are some people that think that DAZ's success was all because of cut-throat business practices, but while that might be partly true (and like that is an excuse really, these days) its kinda insulting to assume that these professional artists cannot decide for themselves what works better for them. I'm a Poser fanatic but even I am feeling the temptation.

The general direction SM should have taken Poser is something they should have picked up from places like CGSociety and Hollywood movies. Complaints in the forum are just for details, workflow and bugs.

But again, I could be wrong, but looking at the world around me, it stumps me how SM could have missed the obvious. DAZ started from scratch, and they nailed it.

So, I say again, I think Rendo might have a standing chance. I hope they succeed, they have my support.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Regarding criticisms: I have no doubt that it must have been hell on earth for the Poser Team to keep up with demands, but from my side, all my collegues and friends who have all switched to DS, things were different, we wanted different things, things that should be kind of obvious, and what bothers me is how the Poser Team somehow missed this.

Therein lies the difficulty, ero. Everyone has different needs and priorities. And there is a delicate balance between implementing new features and fixing old bugs that comes into play. Priorities not only have to be weighed against the features that are most in demand or the most needed, but also have to consider the amount of time it would take to implement the requested enhancements or fixes. It doesn't necessarily mean that feature requests are getting ignored, but more a matter of "we have to fix x before we do y."

As several have said here, this is going to be a big effort and it will take time. Allow Rendo the time that is needed to make Poser shine again. It needs TLC.

Deecey posted at 6:43PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354333

Regarding criticisms: I have no doubt that it must have been hell on earth for the Poser Team to keep up with demands, but from my side, all my collegues and friends who have all switched to DS, things were different, we wanted different things, things that should be kind of obvious, and what bothers me is how the Poser Team somehow missed this.

Therein lies the difficulty, ero. Everyone has different needs and priorities. And there is a delicate balance between implementing new features and fixing old bugs that comes into play. Priorities not only have to be weighed against the features that are most in demand, but also have to consider the amount of time it would take to implement the requested enhancements or fixes.

As several have said here, this is going to be a big effort and it will take time. Allow Rendo the time that is needed to make Poser shine again. It needs TLC.

Oh yes for sure. Lol Rendo has a big job before them and they should absolutely take their time. I'm just very happy that something is happening.

And yes you are right about priorities, and my recommendation is basically: look to the big picture, CGI in general. I think they should derive their priorities from there, and make it Poser-friendly. Good figures, good animations, good renders. Edit: it sounds very basic, but I think its that simple. Its basically the idea behind PE. I'm not going to let technology slow me down. Technology is there to facilitate our whims, we must adapt the tech, not adapt _to _the tech. That was the first lesson I learned with CGI. I don't think there's one solution, I think any approach would work, as long as its exciting and relevant to CGI artists.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Oh yes for sure. Lol Rendo has a big job before them and they should absolutely take their time. I'm just very happy that something is happening.

Most of us are, I think. SM really wasn't the right fit for Poser. Rendo's acquisition makes PERFECT sense.

Deecey posted at 1:29PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354340

Oh yes for sure. Lol Rendo has a big job before them and they should absolutely take their time. I'm just very happy that something is happening.

Most of us are, I think. SM really wasn't the right fit for Poser. Rendo's acquisition makes PERFECT sense.

SM was a horrible fit for Poser. SM was a corporate faceless entity. Who were they? I didn't know a single SM staff members name on the new team except for that one guy who rarely posted an update but then completely stopped a few months ago.

Here it's totally different, we know names and we know the people. The experience is already different and imho better just because for many of us, this is our Poser home.

Hey Dee, whaw, I completely agree and would/could not find a better statement then yours : Fantastic words you wrote; Poser needs TLC.

That is exactly what it needs.

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On your second remark? I have worked with big companies before, and I can tell you here and now that the CEO of Bondware is not going into Mantis, read, test, and evaluate, all bug reports and enhancement requests either. Neither will they show up or post.

Correct, we know some of here around, but the boss of the boss stays in his seat checking his wallet from time to time. That's all that matters, and if the numbers go down, the department goes out. Pretty simple actually. Bosses of bosses evaluate on income, that's all that matters. There are no friends or enemies, only good and bad departments.

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Waves to Ero. Welcome back mate! Don't listen to these egotistic trolls with their infighting. You do what you envision to do and we'll support you!

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Whaw, what a nice respons. Greatly appreciated.

@ Ero Any figure that requires a manual to operate is dead at birth. => As I wrote, the "home alone end users" want to load, pose and render, and go to bed with a smile.

And that goes for all figures : See? With the most recent figures you get the same +/- 10 content builders building some stuff, running into a hard workload for a limited return, and going back to what has been known as "the standard".

What I think about Blender 2.8 can be answered with a simple task : Bake us an AO map, and bake us a Vertex color map.

Deecey posted at 10:20PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354340

Most of us are, I think. SM really wasn't the right fit for Poser. Rendo's acquisition makes PERFECT sense.

100%

JohnDoe641 posted at 10:21PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354341

SM was a horrible fit for Poser. SM was a corporate faceless entity. Who were they? I didn't know a single SM staff members name on the new team except for that one guy who rarely posted an update but then completely stopped a few months ago.

Here it's totally different, we know names and we know the people. The experience is already different and imho better just because for many of us, this is our Poser home.

Exactly my point, Rendo is far more rooted in this stuff than SM. They absolutely have the right mind-set from the get go. Not sure about the development side, but like with me, I knew jack about python or rigging 4 years ago. With some determination, the sky is the limit.

JVRenderer posted at 10:23PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354355

Waves to Ero. Welcome back mate! Don't listen to these egotistic trolls with their infighting. You do what you envision to do and we'll support you!

Thanks my man. I'm just an artist like anyone here, I just want to make comics and I will stop at nothing to make it happen. Considering people like what I do, I thought I might try to let people profit from it a little. I'm not perfect, I was a little in over my head, but I'm happy I made PE. Like with the development of PE, it was a start-stop affair, because I do need to keep my sanity grounded somehow. it needs to stay fun, but it also needs to stay exciting.

tonyvilters posted at 10:28PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354362

@ Ero Any figure that requires a manual to operate is dead at birth.

If that was true, then Blender wouldn't have come this far. hehe but I know what you mean and you are kind of right, except that PE herself in a scene is relatively easy to use. Its the rigging that's harder than other Poser figures. Of course if we use dynamic clothing, its not a problem, but that's not where the money is, is it? I was hoping this would excite SM that they would refine some of the already existing tools a little, and making content for PE would have been much easier already... but yeah.

What I think about Blender 2.8 can be answered with a simple task : Bake us an AO map, and bake us a Vertex color map.

huh? is that missing from blender? I think the UI is a vast improvement.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

erogenesis posted at 1:23PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354329

But again, I could be wrong, but looking at the world around me, it stumps me how SM could have missed the obvious. DAZ started from scratch, and they nailed it.

To be fair, DS took 5 years before the public ever saw it, and they did have the advantage of seeing what did and did not work: Not just with Poser, but with Lightwave, Modo (which acted as a very nice UI model to take design ideas from), 3DS Max, Maya, Mirai (another bit o' inspiration). They were also blessed in that they weren't limping from one fiscal quarter to the next - they had full and unequivocal support, and more than enough of an investment to make it happen.

Poser on the other hand was dead, then came back to life, then nearly died with a really crappy upgrade from P4/PP, but then got bought and was beat to crap as it passed from company to company throughout the dot-bust era... I'm kind of surprised that it's still alive

So, I say again, I think Rendo might have a standing chance. I hope they succeed, they have my support.

Ditto.

Penguinisto posted at 11:41PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354379

erogenesis posted at 1:23PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354329

But again, I could be wrong, but looking at the world around me, it stumps me how SM could have missed the obvious. DAZ started from scratch, and they nailed it.

To be fair, DS took 5 years before the public ever saw it, and they did have the advantage of seeing what did and did not work: Not just with Poser, but with Lightwave, Modo (which acted as a very nice UI model to take design ideas from), 3DS Max, Maya, Mirai (another bit o' inspiration). They were also blessed in that they weren't limping from one fiscal quarter to the next - they had full and unequivocal support, and more than enough of an investment to make it happen.

Poser on the other hand was dead, then came back to life, then nearly died with a really crappy upgrade from P4/PP, but then got bought and was beat to crap as it passed from company to company throughout the dot-bust era... I'm kind of surprised that it's still alive

Yeah, and there might also be a lot of other things that went on behind the scenes that we didn't know about. I'm sure they did their best in the way they could, I felt that P11 was actually getting somewhere. I do feel bad for being so harsh sometimes, but I cannot lie about how I sometimes feel, and I'm not the only one that feel this way. I hope that they did understand that I only ever wanted Poser to keep going and get better, because it really still is a very fun app to use. SM do need to get credit for much of what Poser has become, its just a shame it didn't work out..

I am going to do my best to temper myself with regards to Rendo, because this must be super exciting and scary for them. I've experienced the full enthusiasm of the Poser community and it can be very overwhelming, and that was just a figure. Maybe it might take them a few years, so be it. I am very curious.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

While I have no doubt the some of the old team used Poser they did not use it very far off of center values. As an example open Poser 10 and put two cubes in the scene. Actually could be anything but a cube is simple. Now there are at least THREE different ways to move the cube. Grab it in the Posing window and move, open the parameter palette and dial a value or open the graph editor and adjust the graph line. All 3 will make a key frame and move the cube. This is the basic single layer not much off of what Poser starts as. Now the fun part, add an additional layer to the mix and change it to ADD mode. With two layers (Base and layer 1) you can move the cube in the base layer with any of the 3 options above. however going to the new layer Layer-1 you can only move it with the Pose window and dials. The graph gets locked up. If you add another layer Layer-2 then the Layer-1 dials no longer work and neither does the graph. The basic problem best as I can work it out at least for the dials is that you move the dial and it tries to add in the value of the dial (which should be Zero to start), however since a couple of other layers have values they are all added together and it skyrockets. And it is easy to get lots of layers as every time you apply the walk designer t askes if you wish to put it on another layer and of course that really is a good idea so it makes it easy to delete and retry if it turns out wrong. But as soon as you have the extra layers trying to make adjustments on anything other then Base or Top most layer becomes difficult at best. Work around is to move the layer to the top or select replace mode and Current Layer Only, however that results in figures moving to different locations if you use a layer as a setting point (which I do). Or it makes the other figures stay frozen as their layer is not included in the playback.

As I said earlier Poser 9 had a couple of problems 10 got worse and 11 was even further messed up. And I did file reports on the issues I had and a couple of the problems were fixed like the Black and Red lines being reversed. But beside that the main point I am trying to make is that the code in Poser is so convoluted that there at least THREE paths to change the value of a channel and they each use different code paths so that you may fix one path but break the other two. So a lot of the further enhancements requested will probably conflict with other code currently in Poser and rewriting that code may break someone's favorite thing and cause a mass up roar of Poser Users.

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

I think we also posted about this subject on the SM forums, about the copy-paste bug and some other issues. And yes I do recognize some of the things you mention there. Its a damn shame because its such a potentially powerful feature.

Regarding convoluted code, its my experience that no matter how byzantine the code, there's always a way to fix it, even if it just takes a lot of time. The only thing that is needed is good management and a solid game plan... hint hint. I need to be careful because I don't want to sound like an arrogant know-it-all, but I just see so many possibilities, and whenever I choose to do something, I'll manage somehow, even if it costs me dearly. Where there's a will, there's a way. And I'm just one guy. I think Rendo is very much in the right zone to put Poser back on track. They have the motivation and the people. Let's just hope its not too late.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Well, no matter how it tuns out, it's kind of nice that Poser ain't dead.

Watching it slowly sink (and even this forum slowly drying up) was kind of sad to see. Hopefully Rendo can put things right, and maybe get up a bit of marketing to get a bit of excitement out there again.

Why, you ask? Because competition is always a good thing, and a sign of a healthy segment of the CG industry (us lowly Consumer/Prosumers who just want to make crappy nude chicks in temples waving big swords around, n' stuff. I'm kind of serious about this one... I remember back in 2012, I got my chiropractor to mess with DAZ Studio, with Mike with the Muscle-Map textures, all so that he could give a presentation at some convention he went to. Seeing his eyes light up when the potentials hit him was freakin' awesome, to say the least. I want stuff like that to keep happening...)

I am hopeful that with this development new life can be breathed into Poser. As Ero said it's a program with a lot of potential, and I would like to see it flourish.

To that end, I would encourage those with the skillsets to make something of this to bury the hatchet, and make poser the best it can be.

The strong do as they can while the weak do as they must.

fyi I've just started uploading some free evolution content in the freebie section, however I can only upload 3 per day. There's a fourth but it might get deleted. In total there are 9 (nine) zip files. Tomorrow I'll continue. If you cannot wait, you can go to shareCG, or the site I usually sell at, its all there!

shareCG link: copypaste link into browser address bar (mod pls remove if I cannot do this)

https://sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=erogenesis

Here are the current freebies at Rendo. More uploads tomorrow. I'll post more information later today!

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."

Penguinisto posted at 4:11PM Thu, 04 July 2019 - #4354379

erogenesis posted at 1:23PM Sun, 23 June 2019 - #4354329

But again, I could be wrong, but looking at the world around me, it stumps me how SM could have missed the obvious. DAZ started from scratch, and they nailed it.

To be fair, DS took 5 years before the public ever saw it, and they did have the advantage of seeing what did and did not work: Not just with Poser, but with Lightwave, Modo (which acted as a very nice UI model to take design ideas from), 3DS Max, Maya, Mirai (another bit o' inspiration). They were also blessed in that they weren't limping from one fiscal quarter to the next - they had full and unequivocal support, and more than enough of an investment to make it happen.

Poser on the other hand was dead, then came back to life, then nearly died with a really crappy upgrade from P4/PP, but then got bought and was beat to crap as it passed from company to company throughout the dot-bust era... I'm kind of surprised that it's still alive

So, I say again, I think Rendo might have a standing chance. I hope they succeed, they have my support.

Ditto.

5 years? Really? You sure about that?

EClark1894 posted at 7:20PM Thu, 04 July 2019 - #4356035

5 years? Really? You sure about that?

Could've been 4. it started during all the uncertainty that Curious Labs was emanating, and the demands from CL that DAZ pay licensing fees to have Vicky work with certain new features in the then-upcoming Poser 5. DAZ wasn't having any of that noise, and when Poser 5 started flopping hard (before Curious Labs itself flopped and EGISys showed up), development went from a POC to full-bore commitment.

Addendum: It was around the time Poser 5 came out, because I'd first seen the (semi-working) POC when I first showed up at Draper - around the time I first got and installed Poser 5 (and it takes awhile to write a decent engine, so DS had to have been in development for at least a year to 18 months before I saw it). Anton Keisel was also there at the time, if I recall correctly (...or did I meet him the 2nd-3rd time I went down there? Can't recall offhand.)

I was wondering, I've been trying to use Apollo Max for the first time in years, but for some reason the right shoulder pec and arm seem to be screwed up and rolls up by his neck. This is happening with every single shirt coverall or upper body Item I have tried. I tried to download him again fur all my links seem to be dead. Any suggestions?

Odd choice for a thread for this question about AP. Have you tried to change the conformation options like follow origins etc?

If all else fails try to copy the joint setup.

JVRenderer posted at 7:02AM Sun, 01 December 2019 - #4354355

Waves to Ero. Welcome back mate! Don't listen to these egotistic trolls with their infighting. You do what you envision to do and we'll support you!

Agreed wholeheartedly. I read the thread and it reminds me of Kevin Costner trying to get backing to make "Dances With Wolves"

FVerbaas posted at 7:10PM Sun, 01 December 2019 - #4371882

Odd choice for a thread for this question about AP. Have you tried to change the conformation options like follow origins etc?

If all else fails try to copy the joint setup.

From what I can remember from Antons website and his instructions - the clothing made by Anton for Apollo was't designed to be conformed to Apollo. Instead you load and pose Apollo then load the clothing and apply the same pose as Apollo to the clothing. But it's been many years so I could be mistaken

FVerbaas posted at 8:19AM Tue, 03 December 2019 - #4371882

Odd choice for a thread for this question about AP.

I think it showed up in a keyword search since I'd mentioned Anton (albeit in a different context.)

But yeah - what adzan said, though I'm not sure if Anton fixed that in later revisions or not. Been way too long.

Welcome back, Ero! While you're here, would it be too much to ask you to maybe create an injection morph to fit V4 hair to PE? I have so many V4 hair figures and props and it's a royal PITA to manually fit them to different figures like Dawn, Pauline, Miki 4, and others. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would appreciate having something like that made for PE as a time-saving feature. TIA! And keep up the great work. PE is one of my favorite figures. In my opinion, she's probably the MOST realistic of all the Poser figures I have in my runtime, especially when it comes to facial expressions and so on. She ROCKS, thanks to your hard work!

There is a content development kit for PE available on the site with a similar name as this one, where they also sell the 'X' version. Rated USD5.- it is a beta version and it comes with development versions and a set of instructions how to refit V4 stuff to PE, and also a morph for V4 to PE shape. You inject the morph into V4, zero V4, apply the hair to V4, and copy the morph from V4 into the hair.

Also there is the Prefitter-cr2 available in the store here, and a PE injection morph (sold separately).

FVerbaas posted at 11:32PM Sat, 07 December 2019 - #4371882

Have you tried to change the conformation options like follow origins etc?

Just checked. That is the trick. Make sure the options are checked, in particular'follow end points!! They are off by default.

if you leave 'follow end points' unchecked, this is what you get: