Hey, all. Out of the loop a long time.

Has there been any sort of improvement to the hair room with Poser 12? What passes as the gold standard for realistic hair in Poser these days?

The only thing is a new principled hair shader node for superfly

Thanks, RedPhantom. That hair room needs serious work (or a rebuild from scratch).

I totally agree. I keep hoping, but I think there are other priorities.

Hair Room really hasn't been improved since it started in Poser 5. So far as I can tell, the only changes have been to make the hair props that come with Poser lower-res, so Poser handles them better.

There's a lot of improvements they could make (Kirwyn and Tiny have done some nice stuff with dynamic hair), but they haven't.

TBH, I think hair is worse in Poser 12. Superfly hair shaders just aren't that great at this point.

One snag is much hair is so hi-poly. I used to adapt DS hair, but file-sizes became outrageous...

There's tricks for lowering the poly count. In the Poser Hair Room, I mean. I know nothing about dForce hair. Because of the way the Poser hair room works, a low-res skullcap is better than a high-res one. You can increase the hair density without bogging down Poser as much. Poser 5 skullcaps had 2000 polys, and that just killed Poser. They cut it back to 200 polys in Poser 6, and that worked a lot better and looked just as good.

But other than that, they haven't done much to improve the hair room. Though at this point, they may want to dump the current hair room code and go with something entirely new.

When draping, high density hair or high verties hair can bog down poser. And never check the show populated, except for quick checks. That will bog id terribly, even on lower density hair. For renders, it's not bad, and with superfly, it renders faster than transmapped.

Thank you.

I still think that Poser should consider selling itself as a modular application. You'd have the main application, but then each feature would com in a modular attachment. As for the customers, they'd only have to buy the features that they use most, and Poser would have a continuous source of income. The features that are used the most would get the bulk of the attention when it came to improvements. And except for a few core features that came with the original application, the cost of Poser would or should, go down.

But how would each modular application be maintained?  Would there be different software providers contributing to the further development of the parent software?  And what happens if the modular component becomes completely obsolete or the parent provider refuses to develop it any further?  Or better yet, goes out of business?  It might drive down the initial cost, but users will complain if they want to shell out more money for a feature that was once bundled into the core software.

"... a modular application..."

Getting off topic, but I'd happily pay for an add-on FBX importer that reliably handles 'open source' rigged figures such as those from Blender.

And, yes, the variant 'Make Human' FBX format, which would seem a neat way to get 'NPC' figures that are neither 'legacy' M4/V4 nor premium Hi-Poly LF/LH...

Sadly, 'open source' FBX rigging does not yet fully conform to Autodesk format, as met in eg 'Rigged in Maya', so results range from 'mildly posable with care' through 'flock of sub-rigs' to 'splat'...

Snag is reliably importing 'open source' FBX rigs opens the flood-gates to SFM, XPS, PMX etc etc.

Potential DRM and licensing issues abound...

I think the modular option would hurt content sales and consequently development. There would be plenty that would say, gee I'd love to have that dress, but it's dynamic and I can't afford to add the module. (And that's in addition to those who say I won't use it because it's dynamic.) And you can substitute any feature that might become modular, superfly, the fitting room, the setup room, etc.

In addition, with other products that have both modular, I've noticed that the cost of buying the base and all the modules incrementally usually ends up costing more than if you buy the full product at once.

"... a modular application..."

Getting off topic, but I'd happily pay for an add-on FBX importer that reliably handles 'open source' rigged figures such as those from Blender.

Snag is reliably importing 'open source' FBX rigs opens the flood-gates to SFM, XPS, PMX etc etc.

"Reliably", you mean, like you have now?

hborre posted at 7:50 PM Wed, 22 September 2021 - #4427878

But how would each modular application be maintained?  Would there be different software providers contributing to the further development of the parent software?  And what happens if the modular component becomes completely obsolete or the parent provider refuses to develop it any further?  Or better yet, goes out of business?  It might drive down the initial cost, but users will complain if they want to shell out more money for a feature that was once bundled into the core software.

It would depend on whether Bondware or some third-party is the developer for that module. I would "prefer" Bondware maintain the development of the modules, but I wouldn't kiss off a third-party if their feature was good. Price would be set by the developer, so if they price it too high, no one will buy it. Poser, meanwhile would maintain the core application much as it does now. All third party developers would have to broker through Renderosity. And no more threatening to have to rewrite poser from the ground up.