I downloaded the Trial Version today and I am not impressed. I loaded a scene I loaded a 153MB scene. The render engine with the same settings for Poser 12 using an RTX3060 12GB GPU took a minute longer to render. Also errors were returned in the message log about textures on one of the figure's outfit. That possibly means a lot of work removing nodes in the Materials Room. Maybe in time all the bugs will be ironed out but after the trial period I won't be buying Poser 13. Also, Poser 13 crashed three times when I tried to move the camera. Eventually Poser 13 settled down.

My PC is only three months old and has the following and is suited for gaming although I don't use it for such purposes...

Gen 12 i7 12700F with 32GB ram and an NVidia RTX3060 with 12GB. The SSD is a PCI version which is leagues faster than a standard SSD

Were the textures reported missing?  If so you may need to add whichever runtime folder they are included in as an external runtime in Poser 13. 

No, textures are there. The render engine doesn't like certain nodes from the looks of things...here's part of the report.

I have added all my old Poser Runtimes. I have been using various Poser versions since 2002 so I might have a vague idea of what I am doing. I'm not being sarcastic here.

That texture thing sounds like the same sort of sheet show we have with Poser 12 when using products we have previously purchased.

My guess is they upgraded cycles without caring that it breaks older content. Again. It should check the materials when they are loaded and provide the option to fix/change them to ensure backwards compatibility imho. 

I've not tried the trial yet, and as a second-class citizen (Mac user) I won't be until they release not only a Mac version, but a Mac version that is native Apple Silicon and supports GoZ for ZBrush 2023.

On that subject, the new posing features (proxy posing) in ZBrush 2023.1 mean that where I have been taking sculpts back to Poser for rendering I am more likely to just ditch Poser now. In ZBrush I can quickly and easily pose and animate figures that have millions of polygons. 

First feelings:
Con: can't have Poser12 and Poser13 at the same time: the independant library fails on the second Poser launched
 -> so easy to avoid this by selecting another port but...

Pro: THIS!

It used to drive me crazy that Poser12 insists on putting the render cache folder on an automatically synched folder. Now we can change this.. 

I will do further tests later, once my job is finished... Can't wait 

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I have a lot of old stuff and when I took the plunge to get Poser 12 in late November 2022 there were no issues for me whatsoever.  You are probably right about backward compatibility.  The textures were in the render but looked slightly darker compare to the P12 render.  I can change what Cycles doesn't like easy enough and hopefully it is only for a few things that I have but I doubt it.  Perhaps some of the shader scripts may have warning errors as well as they are heavy on nodes that Cycles may not like. The only way for anyone to find out is to the Trial Version and see what doesn't work.  :)  Gotta run. I need to be somewhere else.   Have fun or frustration with the new toy... :)

@ Y_Phil:

The path is already set for for Temp13

enigma-man posted at 12:01 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4459995

@ Y_Phil:

The path is already set for for Temp13

On my installation it was on a temp in the profile folder, and I don't want that there, as on Windows, the profile folder tends to explose in terms of number of files and folders.
Cleaning programs do a good job but there's no reason not to use another SSD, a dedicated place, that's how I work since.......

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Loads faster than Poser12
And new splash screens

Guess who's coming home, virtually...

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Much faster rendering and much improved copy of morphs and weight maps.

Much more stable.   

I am happy with Poser 13  

enigma-man posted at 11:11 AM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4459976

No, textures are there. The render engine doesn't like certain nodes from the looks of things...here's part of the report.

This shader uses the Poser Surface node for the root, and as far as I can see all of the nodes used are also older Firefly nodes.  Was this product created before SuperFly was added to Poser? Also did you try to render it in FireFly?

I don't know what's going on - but my SuperFly render is taking about 30X longer than it did in 12.

In 12 and previous - I could see the render use the 32 hyperthreads - each had it's own bucket to render (CPU Render)

But this version doesn't seem to do that, and it taking a lot longer to render 1 bucket.

I came, I rendered, I'm still broke.

Check your render settings. Sounds like you use CPU render with GPU render settings.

sturkwurk posted at 1:17 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460011

I don't know what's going on - but my SuperFly render is taking about 30X longer than it did in 12.

I haven't used Firefly in a long time, but I have just tested it in P13. I have enabled Cast Shadows, Raytracing, Irradiance Caching, and Indirect Light, and rendered with a bucket size of 32 (rather small). The FF render was practically instant, much faster than P11 or P12. However, we have to consider render times depend on what's in your scene. If you have scenes with lots of transparency maps and SSS, that will drastically increase render times. For example, a character portrait where a big transmapped hair dominates the scene will likely kill FF rendering performance, no matter what CPU you have. But all in all, Firefly was super fast in my P13 test. Depending on what's in your scene, your experience may vary. 

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One scene: 2'21 down to 45.86 seconds, same settings: wow

With another scene that was computing correctly with Poser12, now makes Poser12 AND Poser13 crash... gulp...
Not sure if it's related but just in case: my scene has a dynamic necklace, with beads and a material item labeled "Default".
With a pure Firefly setting, it crashes in RTX mode. Added  a simple setup and Poser13 rendered fine.
The weirdest: the scene had been setup and rendered a few days ago using Poser12, and I had to do the same modification to render it with Poser12, which could mean that now Poser12 and Poser13 could be sharing something more than just a few settings and runtimes.

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Some shader nodes have changed in P13, mostly the ones related to Cycles materials, and the team did their best to handle the backwards compatibility. If you find a particular material that crashes in P13, please report it to tech support, so they can fix it. :)

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Ken1171_Designs posted at 2:28 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460046

Some shader nodes have changed in P13, mostly the ones related to Cycles materials, and the team did their best to handle the backwards compatibility. If you find a particular material that crashes in P13, please report it to tech support, so they can fix it. :)

I'm still not sure.
And in this case, it was a firefly-base setup 
But yes: if I find something that's sure, I will submit a ticket

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Y-Phil posted at 2:30 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460049

And in this case, it was a firefly-base setup 

We have to consider that even Firefly materials also have to work with Superfly (which is amazing), so Firefly nodes also went through some changes. The dev team has ironed out some combinations that could cause crashes, but if you find something they have missed, make sure to report it. ^__^

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I guess if the shader nodes are different, it would be hard to run benchmarks for render times.

I'm finding the ground prop disconcerting. The default is invisible now. And if you make it visible, it's black.

randym77 posted at 2:51 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460060

I guess if the shader nodes are different, it would be hard to run benchmarks for render times.

I'm finding the ground prop disconcerting. The default is invisible now. And if you make it visible, it's black.

The shader nodes have been adapted to work with the latest CyclesX rendering engine, which was entirely redesigned from ground up to get rid of the original design that imposed hardware limitations and software setbacks. That's why Superfly is so much faster in P13. In my tests, I got renders as fast as 10X the P12 render speeds, depending on what's in the scene.    

As for the GROUND prop, I use a custom default scene in my Poser launch, where P13 has a new feature that not only allows saving your preferred scene, but also launch to your preferred UI settings, which wasn't possible before. If you look at the Settings dialog, that's a new feature. ^^

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Ken1171_Designs posted at 2:41 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460056

Y-Phil posted at 2:30 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460049

And in this case, it was a firefly-base setup 

We have to consider that even Firefly materials also have to work with Superfly (which is amazing), so Firefly nodes also went through some changes. The dev team has ironed out some combinations that could cause crashes, but if you find something they have missed, make sure to report it. ^__^

I've retrieve one of the scene, sent to the support near the end of september, in 2021, this one was making Poser12 crash, and now it renders correctly, and fast.
Which is normal as they get rid of nasty hiding bugs by rewriting the whole

Yay or the crew: they've done an AWESOME job, even though bugs may still play hide'n'seek with us 

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For me the purchase, download and install was no trouble.  I then had a senior moment and got myself tied in knots while adding runtimes and my first attempts at rendering.  All down to me and nothing to do with the program.  I then thought I had a problem with textures until I realised if I started with an empty scene from the launcher it was indeed empty.  Once I realised I needed to add a light my texture problem disappeared, see how confused I can get.

So now up and running.  Renders are indeed very much faster and the program releases the render when complete very much quicker.

I used the Superfly GPU high for my test render that includes my character, hair with the Ghostship hair shaders and the CKV01 outfit, all of which would figure in a lot of my renders with them, all working it gets me off to a good start.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

@ Y-Phil:

I tried rendering the scene in P13 Firefly and nothing was reported back in error.  It was really quick but looked like hell. As for the outfit I have no idea how old it is but likely before Superfly. I'm doing a webcomic and the Lovelace Halloween outfit was on sale last week and exactly what I was looking for.  I haven't had time to try other scenes as of now but I won't like it if I have to edit a lot materials.  If that is the case, I will pass on Poser 13.  Poser 12 Superfly suits my needs and P13 is a trial version. I will use it for the remainder of the trial but won't plunk down $300 Canadian dollars for it. I don't expect any software regardless of what it happens to be or who created it to be perfect out of the gate. For a new splash screen and some fancy effects and slower render times in Superfly, Poser 13 ain't for me.  For all you Poser users on the fence, it's your money so if you think it's worth upgrading then do so. Can't wait to see 1000 renders in the gallery using the "bloom" effect. Actually I won't. I don't look any longer...

If you download the P13 HWDawn zip from Poser 13 included you'll get updated shaders for her. Same goes for Dusk

hornet3d posted at 3:26 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460074

So now up and running.  Renders are indeed very much faster and the program releases the render when complete very much quicker.

Every time I go back to P12 to do something, I am instantly reminded of how SLOW it renders compared to P13. It was the same with P11 and 12, where 12 rendered many times faster than 11. One of my favorite new feature in P13 is how we can now save a preferred UI state, in addition to the preferred state scene. Before this, Poser would save its UI state every time we closed it, and use that in the next launch. Now we can save a fixed UI state and launch to it in every launch. Awesome!

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Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

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Y-Phil posted at 3:39 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460080

Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

I believe the Poser Surface Shadow Catcher only works with the default Poser ground, but I could be wrong. I never use it with something else, so I don't know. 

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enigma-man posted at 3:36 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460077

@ Y-Phil:

I tried rendering the scene in P13 Firefly and nothing was reported back in error.  It was really quick but looked like hell. As for the outfit I have no idea how old it is but likely before Superfly. I'm doing a webcomic and the Lovelace Halloween outfit was on sale last week and exactly what I was looking for.  I haven't had time to try other scenes as of now but I won't like it if I have to edit a lot materials.  If that is the case, I will pass on Poser 13.  Poser 12 Superfly suits my needs and P13 is a trial version. I will use it for the remainder of the trial but won't plunk down $300 Canadian dollars for it. I don't expect any software regardless of what it happens to be or who created it to be perfect out of the gate. For a new splash screen and some fancy effects and slower render times in Superfly, Poser 13 ain't for me.  For all you Poser users on the fence, it's your money so if you think it's worth upgrading then do so. Can't wait to see 1000 renders in the gallery using the "bloom" effect. Actually I won't. I don't look any longer...

Gwt the GoPhysical script from Ken1171_Designs. Converts old textures to Superfly Physical with one click seamlessly. 

Of course, ignore me if you are still on Firefly.

Here's Dawn with the P13 skin shaders that come with Poser 13.  It uses Cycles root node and Principled BSDF shader. Note that it will preview gray but it renders beautifully.

Ken1171_Designs posted at 3:41 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460081

Y-Phil posted at 3:39 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460080

Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

I believe the Poser Surface Shadow Catcher only works with the default Poser ground, but I could be wrong. I never use it with something else, so I don't know. 

Nah it also works with Poser's RoundGroundPlane, in the included content.
I've just create another test, with another HDRi.

Looks like the scene I was using has something wrong.
But it works.

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DCArt posted at 4:05 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460088

Here's Dawn with the P13 skin shaders that come with Poser 13.  It uses Cycles root node and Principled BSDF shader. Note that it will preview gray but it renders beautifully.

Looks great indeed 

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my own P13 Cycles skin shader.

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ghostship2 posted at 4:11 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460092

my own P13 Cycles skin shader.

Was hoping the master would pull some rabbits out of his hat 8-)

DCArt posted at 4:18 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460094

ghostship2 posted at 4:11 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460092

my own P13 Cycles skin shader.

Was hoping the master would pull some rabbits out of his hat 8-)

It's a really simple shader using PBSDF and a couple other nodes.

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Yeah same with mine, I used the KISS principle. Mainly a PBR type shader is all.  But REALLY glad you're jumping in too!

The Principled BSDF node was my personal request to the dev team, and I am glad we can use it in Poser. Using native Cycles shaders can bring materials to the next level, though we can still get away with the simpler Physical Surface root, which is also based on native Cycles shaders. The Physical Surface has been improved and expanded in P13 to include additional controls for SSS, and a new "Walk" SSS method that is much better than what we had before. I believe "Walk" is now the default SSS method with the new P13 Physical Surface root node. 

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Uhhh... This thread is about if you are satisfied with Poser 13, Start your own threads about other topics not relating to the topic you are posting to...

The main issue other than the materials thing is Poser 13 Superfly being slow. The image below was rendered in both P12 and P13 using the exact settings in Superfly for both. P12  did this is 31.94 seconds. P13  did it in ( not impressed ) 239.17 seconds and both use the Optix option. This is far from an improvement. As I mentioned before, this is a complex 153 MB scene.

@enigma-man did it sound like I was unsatisfied with P13?

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@enigma-man You might try bumping up your bucket size to 512 or larger. Experiment. I was using 256 on P12 and get faster renders in P13 using 512. Other users have even larger bucket sizes with those 3xxx cards

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@enigma-man: I do not recognise your observation of Superfly in Poser13 being slower than in Poser12. During the beta phase I have extensively used the thing and from my observations I can only confirm what others have already reported: Poser13 has much higher render speed than Poser 12 had.

Maybe you best contact technical support with details of your scene. There may be certain details/settings in there that adversely affect performance when rendered in the new SF and can  better be arranged in a different way.

 

I will give it a try with a bigger bucket size.

Bucket size of 512 with the same settings is and underwhelming  219.61 seconds. Still no damn good...

@FVerbass: My scenes never consist of a single character. They are complicated and if Poser 13 can't render the scenes as I want to make then what good is it to me ? Maybe the developers missed something or assume that everyone only make simplistic scenes.  The scene as shown has two V4/G4 hybrid characters created by my in fairly simple clothing. They are in a 2 person submarine with an undersea setting with a video animation as background footage.  The image was to show the characters who are not seen in the short 500 frame animation. To make a 500 frame animation with Poser 13 would take 3000 minutes or  50 hours. Same thing with Poser 12 would take around 4.5 hours. Not acceptable for me so I'll wait until it goes on sale near it's end of life, maybe. :)

Rhia474 posted at 3:46 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460084

enigma-man posted at 3:36 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460077

@ Y-Phil:

I tried rendering the scene in P13 Firefly and nothing was reported back in error.  It was really quick but looked like hell. As for the outfit I have no idea how old it is but likely before Superfly. I'm doing a webcomic and the Lovelace Halloween outfit was on sale last week and exactly what I was looking for.  I haven't had time to try other scenes as of now but I won't like it if I have to edit a lot materials.  If that is the case, I will pass on Poser 13.  Poser 12 Superfly suits my needs and P13 is a trial version. I will use it for the remainder of the trial but won't plunk down $300 Canadian dollars for it. I don't expect any software regardless of what it happens to be or who created it to be perfect out of the gate. For a new splash screen and some fancy effects and slower render times in Superfly, Poser 13 ain't for me.  For all you Poser users on the fence, it's your money so if you think it's worth upgrading then do so. Can't wait to see 1000 renders in the gallery using the "bloom" effect. Actually I won't. I don't look any longer...

Gwt the GoPhysical script from Ken1171_Designs. Converts old textures to Superfly Physical with one click seamlessly. 

Of course, ignore me if you are still on Firefly.

I recently converted a Kitbash collection for Blender to work in Poser and the GoPhysical script made it so easy, it worked like a dream every time.  The make Metal function is the icing on the cake.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

@enigma-man You prob have some material that is stuffing up your render. What mat do you have on that cockpit window?

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@hornet3d  Good to know.

Okay here's my last update :

I removed the video footage and rendered again. It went up from 219 to 223 seconds. I removed both characters leaving only the props and it rendered for a time of 169.7 seconds. Something isn't right in the render engine. If Poser 13 works for you in the scenes you make I'm glad to hear it. For what I want to do Poser 13 can't even render obj props in an acceptable amount of time.  Case closed. No Poser 13 for me.  Adios.

We have to take into consideration that the new CyclesX used in P13 was a total rewrite of the Cycles engine. Some things have changed on the rendering parameters. There are new parameters. Some of the parameters use different values, or perhaps values in a different scale. Some of them I don't even understand yet - it's a new engine after all. But in my own renders with an RTX 3090 24GB, I use MUCH larger bucket sizes. I easily go to 1200 or higher, depending on the image size. That alone affects rendering times significantly.   

As a comparison, using bucket size of 512 on a 30XX card is like spoon-feeding an elephant. One thing you can do is to test how far you can push this value, depending on how much VRAM you have. Your goal is to match the larger dimension from your image size. For example, if your render size is 900x1200, try setting the bucket size to 1200. That will allow Cycles to render your scene in 1-pass, instead of several. Give it a try and see how far you can push bucket size based on your scene contents, and how much VRAM your GPU has. 

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There is no mat at all on the window. It only a light blue colour with the transparency set to .97  so it's not that.  The sub has Cycles nodes for reflections that were duplicated from a Bondware tutorial. 

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Did someone ask for bloom?

Sarcastically, I mentioned it a few hours ago. Looks good and for sc fi images a definite bonus.

I appreciate the OP for starting this discussion - and I appreciate all the contributions in the replies thru the whole thread - as it will save a lot of time understanding where P13 is at. I'd recommend to OP to try to revamp to a dual 3060 GPU on MB that supports dual GPU set up - I did this last summer and it was literally double the performance - and then some. 3060 alone is not enough for pro graphics. My other CPU has a 3090. It's not too costly for dual 3060 and you'll also need a bigger power supply, over 800W - it is comparable to my 3090 solo system... Best wishes.

@ enigma-man, your transparency bounces seem high. Is it that high in 12?

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I found out what caused the slow render times. It never dawned on me until I looked at the number of pixels selected. The lower the number the faster it renders but according to the Poser manual quality is not as good at lower pixels to sample. Here are some render times based on pixel sample size.

10 pixels - 9.13 sec             16 pixels -  24.82 sec         24 pixels - 52.54 sec   32 pixels -  90.26       The higher the pixel number the longer it takes. With Poser 12   I was using 128 pixels and .002 and it was fast compared to Poser 13 with the same settings which took six times longer.  Well, that solves the render time dilemma. The texture issue comes as warnings but the scene renders okay so I will ignore the warnings because it's too much work to edit older content. Still not going to buy P13 but that is my choice.

@RedPhantom: As I posted earlier the settings for both Poser 12 and 13 are identical. It's the pixel sample size that affects render times as seen above. 

My Issues with Poser 13 Old Projects New build Library copied I open something I'm working on It can't find textures or other files I Have the Library exactly how I've had since I even point the dialogue box looking for the missing file right at it ok I think it remember it Hit render and it pops up with same missing file I showed where it was at that's My first launch issue Any how that My rant I'm fixing it by coping each file to it's proper location in the Library and other folders and verifying it's there. other than that I to had that slow render issues forums info on that fixed it starting to think this was a 300.00 mistake windows 11 and poser Hmmm 

Posted By Mikro

Render preview is supposed to be resizable, but only the surrounding window is - the actual render preview stays small.

enigma-man posted at 9:57 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460155

I found out what caused the slow render times. It never dawned on me until I looked at the number of pixels selected. The lower the number the faster it renders but according to the Poser manual quality is not as good at lower pixels to sample. Here are some render times based on pixel sample size.

10 pixels - 9.13 sec             16 pixels -  24.82 sec         24 pixels - 52.54 sec   32 pixels -  90.26       The higher the pixel number the longer it takes. With Poser 12   I was using 128 pixels and .002 and it was fast compared to Poser 13 with the same settings which took six times longer.  Well, that solves the render time dilemma. The texture issue comes as warnings but the scene renders okay so I will ignore the warnings because it's too much work to edit older content. Still not going to buy P13 but that is my choice.

The number of pixels will clearly be a balance between time to render and quality but Adaptive Sampling will also be a factor and this was improved in Poser 13.  When I did my first renders I used the High GPU preset it has Adaptive sampling set at 0.001 where as in Poser 12 the ultra preset I used had it set at 0.002.  The big difference though was that the Poser 12 preset used 50 pixel samples but the Poser 13 used 25 and thus is notably quicker.  I have also notice that the render is available almost immediately on completing where Poser 12 had a sizable delay.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Looking at those parameters, I'm puzzled. My 11.3 often does wide-screen scenes, 64 or 96 pixel-samples, progressive, superfly, usually to suppress low-light fuzziness.

IMHO, you have a lot of 'max' bounces, while the 'vol' bounces seem low. I found that 'vols + buckets' seem to prefer same size, as 2^n, so 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024...

FWIW, in the end, #12's new facilities --Versus removed-- did not impress me enough to buy, and I'm deferring  #13 until eg #.2. (Would be half-price due points stash...)

I'm liking that the renders now move around without scrunching up and distorting when viewing larger sized renders.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Consider me insane if you wish, but is your reality any better?

If there is no upgrade price from Poser 11, then no sale.

There's no incentive for me to get Poser 13 - even assuming it will run on my Mac!

I can't get mine to install.  The installation just stops at the installation selection box.  Maybe I need to run .exe as administator?  Any and all help greatly appreciated.  I want to play, too.

I played around with security settings and running installer as Administrator on my lap top and finally got Poser 13 to load. My persmissions have been messed up ever since I last upgraded Windows 11.

Just a Helpful Hint - don't use your cap lock when you enter your serial number into the software.  Just use lower case letters.  You do need the - marks.

A_Sunbeam posted at 11:31 AM Fri, 31 March 2023 - #4460198

If there is no upgrade price from Poser 11, then no sale.

^^^ 100% agree

shannonhoppe posted at 4:30 PM Fri, 31 March 2023 - #4460232

A_Sunbeam posted at 11:31 AM Fri, 31 March 2023 - #4460198

If there is no upgrade price from Poser 11, then no sale.

^^^ 100% agree

Sad really because I think there are some out there that will not be able to justify the cost of a full purchase who would consider moving up to Poser 13 at the upgrade cost.  I don't really see how they would lose out as it is extra revenue and the more users you move onto Poser 13 the better.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

This release still feels like a second service release for the PP2014 .5 Upgrade aka Poser 11.
Right now everything seems to be about to make the Poser renderer a more complete cycles renderer, which would be nice, if there were other benefits.

Right now, I could just get cycles for free with Blender.
I miss a hair room upgrade. More realistic looking hair, faster calculations.
Same for clothes. 
What has been done, to work against the skating effect in figure animations?

I too am disappointed there isn't a reasonably priced upgrade path from Poser Pro 11.

I do a lot of animation so was interested in upgrading to P12 but the P12 Queue  Manager constantly fails because it can't find some bom file.  So I hoped P13 would give me the faster render times that P12 did while providing a functional Queue Manager.

Unfortunately it appears I cannot test the P13 Queue Manager functionality because it asks for a license number when I send a movie render to the Queue Manager.

I would be far more impressed with P13 and likely to buy it if--

(1) I could verify through the trial version that Queue Manager worked 

(2) I could run my huge collection of P11-compatible Python scripts in P13 (or there was a clear, available methodology for updating the scripts)

(3) there was a reasonably priced upgrade path from P11 Pro

I'm impressed. So far everything has rendered really fast for me. I also like how it renders the whole scene at once instead of the panels. At least that's how I think it works. I can't see the whole render. Some of it is off screen. With older versions, it used to start in the lower in the lower right quadrant and render panels. It would have to render 2 thirds of it, before you could see anything. And when you did see something, you noticed a problem you didn't spot before you started the render. And that was usually a half hour or more after you started the render. Maybe there's a way to preview the whole canvas as you render, but I haven't figured out how if there is.

>>>  Maybe there's a way to preview the whole canvas as you render, but I haven't figured out how if there is.

There is. Choose Render > Render in Background instead of Render > Render. 

The render will take place in the Render window, and you can pan around the scene while it's rendering. 

>>> I also like how it renders the whole scene at once instead of the panels.

That happens when "Progressive Refinement" is enabled in the SuperFly render settings. It will render the whole scene, starting off at lower quality but gradually refining it until the render is complete.

I have to say I am impressed so far, the trick with Superfly appears to be lower the samples, and increase the bucket size and leave Progressive Refinement ticked.  May not work in all cases but using the high GPU preset gives me samples at 25 (in Poser 12 it was 50), Adaptive Sampling threshold at 0.001 (in Poser 12 it was 0.002).  I have then increased the bucket size to 2048, in Poser 12 I had 128.  The renders just flies and appears to between 2 and 4 times fast with the same quality I used to get.  Poser also appears to let the render go a lot faster than Poser 12 did.

I also like the Launcher so you can start in a recent scene, pre prepared scene or empty scene and so on, I think that is a nice touch,

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

So I take it Poser13 doesn't render faster after all, it just has lower quality presets resulting in shorter render times?

If you set pixel samples to 2 it will be even faster lol.

i.e. if the pixel samples, bucket size and adaptive sampling threshold etc. settings are exactly the same the render time difference is what exactly?

I might have to fire up Poser13 in a virtual machine to see for myself. 

ader posted at 4:35 AM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460462

So I take it Poser13 doesn't render faster after all, it just has lower quality presets resulting in shorter render times?

If you set pixel samples to 2 it will be even faster lol.

i.e. if the pixel samples, bucket size and adaptive sampling threshold etc. settings are exactly the same the render time difference is what exactly?

I might have to fire up Poser13 in a virtual machine to see for myself. 

My experience is that the preset that come with Poser 13 have the pixel settings much lower that in Poser 12 and the adaptive sampling threshold is also lower.  This give a faster render than Poser 12 but the quality is at least as good if not better.  If I then increase the bucket size the render is even faster and the quality is maintained.

I know there was work done on adaptive sampling because the release notes state that, but I read somewhere that the render engine works differently.  With a multi threaded computer in Poser 12 each thread worked on a separate bucket where as in Poser 13 all the threads work on the same bucket.  I cannot be sure on this as it is something I read but I certainly do not see the multiple blue edged boxes I see in Poser 12. 

What I am sure of is you cannot just use the same render settings in Poser 13 and expect massive changes,  I now render with progressive refinement set and a high bucket count and that seems to be the way to go, for me at least.

   

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

i'm not really impressed, hasn't they said something about a new female figure based on a new unimesh that would come with poser 13 ? i mean, updating the renderer is a nice gimmik but the biggest issue is still the lack of good base characters. LaFemme/Homme aren't really competitive, not even against the old V4/M4. why do they still hold on to it, i can't understand it ...

In my environment, when the Pixel Samples value is 100, a threshold value of 0.001 in Poser12 is equivalent to about 0.5 in Poser13, and 0.002 is equivalent to about 0.7. However, that may depend on the Pixel Sample value and scene content.

For that scene I tried, with a threshold value of 0.002, P12 computes about 3000 samples before processing the next bucket. P13 computes all 10000 samples, so it takes a very long time.

* Confirmed by watching the rendering progress bar

I seeked for a threshold value that cuts off the computation at about 3000 samples on P13, and it is about 0.7.

The result is similar quality with slightly faster render times.

Also, "with a threshold value of 0.002, P12 computes up to about 3000 samples" for that scene, so if the Pixel Samples value is 50 or less, P13 renders faster even with a threshold value of 0.002.

stachelzelle posted at 7:32 AM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460477

i'm not really impressed, hasn't they said something about a new female figure based on a new unimesh that would come with poser 13 ? i mean, updating the renderer is a nice gimmik but the biggest issue is still the lack of good base characters. LaFemme/Homme aren't really competitive, not even against the old V4/M4. why do they still hold on to it, i can't understand it ...

There will be a new female figure, but it's not being released for a few weeks.

I don't think it will be unimesh, because they announced that Poser 13 won't have the promised unimesh. I assume they had some technical difficulties.

Unimesh: not yet indeed, but it seems to be only a question of time, as state here.
Excerpt:

> A key goal for this release has been to simplify content creation for Poser by supporting single-mesh figures that remain in memory and are not broken into smaller segments internally by the software (aka unimesh).  We are still working toward that goal  but, with this release, we are proud to announce the delivery of updated tools for content developers that greatly simplify common tasks such as the creation of conforming clothing for Poser figures.  This focus on tools that streamline content creation will be an on-going theme for Poser development going forward.

𝒫𝒽𝓎𝓁

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(っ◔◡◔)っ

👿 Win11 on i9-13900K@5GHz, 64GB, RoG Strix B760F Gamng, Asus Tuf Gaming RTX 4070 OC Edition, 1 TB SSD, 6+4+8TB HD
👿 Mac Mini M2, Sonoma 14.6.1, 16GB, 500GB SSD
👿 Nas 10TB
👿 Poser 13 and soon 14 ❤️

The old render system gave each bucket to a core.  And if you had a very compute intensive area you would see a core or two working and working while the rest finished and just sat there doing nothing.  The new system puts all the cores to work on the same area so that intensive area will get more processing power to complete faster and you don't have 14 of 16 cores doing nothing.

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

There is also a time value you can set on the renderer so that after 20 seconds (or 2) it stops that bucket and moves on to the next. Of course that was using the old bucket system and not progressive mode.  I haven't tried the timer since they put the new progressive mode in.  But I did put in a request for a detailed log setting to allow you to see what settings gave what results.  But again this was before the new progressive mode.

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

The lower upgrade price from 11 to 13 would be to buy poser 12 then Poser 13 saves you $50.  How much lower do you think it should be since a lot of people bought Poser 12 and paid more then the current price of $99?  Of course I could complain that I bought Poser 5 and they don't give me an reduced price to upgrade.

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

stachelzelle posted at 7:32 AM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460477

i'm not really impressed, hasn't they said something about a new female figure based on a new unimesh that would come with poser 13 ? i mean, updating the renderer is a nice gimmik but the biggest issue is still the lack of good base characters. LaFemme/Homme aren't really competitive, not even against the old V4/M4. why do they still hold on to it, i can't understand it ...

If you are looking for a new figure then i can see why you would not be impressed by Poser 13.  If I change the figure I use in the short term it would be to Dawn 2, when available, so the lack of a new Poser figure does not have any impact for me.  What I do know is that a lot of us are having fun with Poser 13 (have a look at the Poser 13 renders thread), the shorter render times encourages you to experiment more.  I already have a lot I want to experiment with and I have only being playing with it for two days.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

That's for the bit of clarification folks, I still don't see how this new no-buckets thing is different to the old progressive mode, but maybe there was some core wastage in progressive mode they got rid of?

In p12 sometimes I use bucket renders and sometimes I use progressive, and saw no time difference in render time with them previously. I did however a few times see a visual difference in the render when the same exact scene was rendered in progressive mode versus not in progressive mode - this may have been a bug that has been fixed?

I still think it seems disingenuous to try and compare render times of P12 with P13 if the render settings (pixel samples and adaptive sampling thresholds) are different. Comparing apples to oranges basically. Are the render times different with CPU renders or is it just GPU renders that have benefited?

 

So are you looking at the speed that a certain set of values performs or are you wanting a better end result picture?  If you want the same image quality then P13 can use lower values.  Kind of like I can paint a board in 2 coats but I was told to use 10 coats, the extra time does not result in a better covering just more time spent.

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

Richard60 posted at 12:45 PM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460517

The lower upgrade price from 11 to 13 would be to buy poser 12 then Poser 13 saves you $50.  How much lower do you think it should be since a lot of people bought Poser 12 and paid more then the current price of $99?  Of course I could complain that I bought Poser 5 and they don't give me an reduced price to upgrade.

I started with Poser 3 in 1998, and upgraded either every release or every other release.  I recall always getting a decent price to upgrade even if I had skipped a release, as I've skipped Poser 12 (esp due to problems with the Queue Manager).  $200 is more than I've ever paid for an upgrade (even adjusted for inflation).  

I think an upgrade price from P11 Pro that was in the range of $140-150 would have been about right, and I would pay that if it meant faster renders than P11 Pro and a functioning Queue Manager

ader posted at 4:20 PM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460545

That's for the bit of clarification folks, I still don't see how this new no-buckets thing is different to the old progressive mode, but maybe there was some core wastage in progressive mode they got rid of?

In p12 sometimes I use bucket renders and sometimes I use progressive, and saw no time difference in render time with them previously. I did however a few times see a visual difference in the render when the same exact scene was rendered in progressive mode versus not in progressive mode - this may have been a bug that has been fixed?

I still think it seems disingenuous to try and compare render times of P12 with P13 if the render settings (pixel samples and adaptive sampling thresholds) are different. Comparing apples to oranges basically. Are the render times different with CPU renders or is it just GPU renders that have benefited?

 

There seems to be this assumption that lower pixel samples directly equates to render quality, while is is certainly true that more samples should improve the quality for a given render engine I am not sure it is valid across different render engines.  While Poser 12 and Poser 13 both are able to use Superfly the implementation is different.  To my eyes the quality of a 50 pixel render from Poser 12 is, as far as I can see, identical to a render with 25 pixels in Poser 13.  I also know that changing the bucket size does change the speed of the render.  I ran two renders last night with the same pixel samples and adaptive sampling but one with a bucket size of 1028 and the other 2056.  Both showed the completed render would have 625 samples.  Not only was the update on on each progression faster with 2056 each progression was two samples while the 1026 was a single sample in each case.

Now I am sure someone will be able to take my descriptions and use them to prove something very different but all I know is that the quality does not look massively different between Poser 12 and 13 but the renders do take less time.  If I try and run the the same scene in both versions with the same settings the Poser 13 looks wrong, the lighting generally looks blown out and the render times in Poser 13 seem to be longer.

That said a lot of that is subjective, what I find of good enough quality will be very different to someone else's.  My goal is to generate renders that look good enough in print as I have a photobook created each year, or at least I have done for the last eight years.  Renders for the book have a dimension of 3508 X 2480 at 300dpi which work for a good quality printed A4 page that I can push to A3.  Some of the renders are  7016 X 2480 and 600 dpi as I generally create books that are fold flat so that it will take a double A4 sized landscape render.

This is a Poser 12 render but shows the idea.

 

Not surprisingly my renders can take a while but if I go back to when I first started having books printed most of the renders were overnight jobs, by Poser 12 they were down to a couple of hours and Poser 13 appears to be on track to complete most in under an hour.   The end result is I am more than happy with Poser 13 for the work I use it for but, not only that, I am finding it fun as well.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Thanks, DCArt! I didn't know about the Render to background. Tried it today and I like it!

Thx hornet3d& Richard60, I guess I'll have to give it a whirl and see what I think for myself when they release a native Mac version. 

MeInOhio posted at 7:07 PM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460562

Thanks, DCArt! I didn't know about the Render to background. Tried it today and I like it!

You can render to Queue Manager on a local machine also.

Are there any realistic renders of people using 13 floating around that someone could point me to? Thanks

There are some at the P13 render thread over on the P13 forums. Some, mind you. Not everyone in Poserdom does photoreal.

Has anyone tried rendering through the Face camera? I ended up with a black render, but it may have been because I was using an infinite light and only the Main camera seems to  "see" the older Infinite lights. I also tried rendering through the other support cameras and they picked up my Area Light but not the Infinite.

I want to add that I really liked how Firefly works in P13, it goes so fast and looks great. But P13 Superfly to my eye will need new skin shaders, as it seems to render them with a graininess that I don't care for.

I've rendered through all cameras without any problem.  Double-check that there isn't any obstruction in the way that blocks the camera's view when rendering.  You may need to reposition the camera.  

And yes, old skin shaders need to be modified for them to work correctly in Superfly.

When was FBX import introduced (I'm way behind the times still running PP2014) and do such files retain their rigging when brought into Poser?

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!

hborre posted at 12:47 PM Tue, 4 April 2023 - #4460748

I've rendered through all cameras without any problem.  Double-check that there isn't any obstruction in the way that blocks the camera's view when rendering.  You may need to reposition the camera.  

And yes, old skin shaders need to be modified for them to work correctly in Superfly.

Thank you for the info! I figured I would hold off a month or two before upgrading since there may be small service releases that come out, but the new speed of firefly kind of makes me want to blow the dust off my old models and play again :)

Interesting. I hadn't realized there had been improvements to Firefly as well as Superfly.

You know how calculating the subsurface scattering was always sloooow? It's not slow now and the images just look ..nice! Firefly has always been a capable renderer and it can look super if you don't mind a softer look. Superfly to me has always been about the shiny, glittering hard surface and while I am all about that, I love how Firefly makes people look good.

@redfern, I think (could be wrong) it was introduced in poser 11,  as far as retaining rigging.. hit and miss unless it's been improved in 13.  Some things import in fine, others not so much, both in 11 & 12.  Not tried in 13 yet.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Consider me insane if you wish, but is your reality any better?

bwldrd posted at 11:30 PM Tue, 4 April 2023 - #4460825

@redfern, I think (could be wrong) it was introduced in poser 11,  as far as retaining rigging.. hit and miss unless it's been improved in 13.  Some things import in fine, others not so much, both in 11 & 12.  Not tried in 13 yet.

Thanks for responding!

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!

hborre posted at 2:57 PM Mon, 3 April 2023 - #4460643

MeInOhio posted at 7:07 PM Sun, 2 April 2023 - #4460562

Thanks, DCArt! I didn't know about the Render to background. Tried it today and I like it!

You can render to Queue Manager on a local machine also.

Thanks, hborre!

For those comparing Superfly parameters between P12 and 13, please note that CyclesX is a completely redesigned rendering engine. It is said to be completely rewritten from scratch to free Cycles from the old architecture that imposed hardware and software limitations. This is why the new engine is so much faster than the old Cycles, BUT... the parameters have changed. For those expecting to simply reuse parameter values from P12 to 13, it's not that simple. 

We have new parameters, and the values used before won't work the same in P13. I am still getting used to the engine, getting to know what values work better with it. This is all rather new, and I will need more time to figure things out. I see some people claiming SF is slower in P13, but it might be just because they are simply comparing based on reusing P12 parameter values in P13, which makes no sense considering the parameters and values have changed. We will need to spend more time figuring out what values would be comparable - but frankly, I can already see P13 being so much faster that I just don't care for P12 anymore - I am not going back. 

The Physical Surface PBR root node in P13 has been expanded, presenting a new SSS calculation method that resolves many of the artifacts we previously had in P12 SSS, and it has become the new default setting in P13. This means we can no longer compare SSS rendering between P12 and 13 because we now have a new way to render SSS that P12 doesn't have. I can also confirm that Firefly renders have become faster in P13, and I was surprised because I wasn't expecting it. 

BTW, people have been asking me a lot if my P12 scripts will work in P13, and the answer is yes, they will. The "MAT Edit" general materials editor had to be patched to support the changes on the shader nodes, so the current version is now fully compatible with P13. My other P12 scripts should work fine as they are. ^____^

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randym77 posted at 1:21 PM Tue, 4 April 2023 - #4460759

Interesting. I hadn't realized there had been improvements to Firefly as well as Superfly.

I timed a few Firefly scenes in Poser 11 and Poser 13, and rendering times were reduced by around 40%.

That's enough for me to actually upgrade.

JoePublic posted at 8:02 PM Wed, 5 April 2023 - #4460913

randym77 posted at 1:21 PM Tue, 4 April 2023 - #4460759

Interesting. I hadn't realized there had been improvements to Firefly as well as Superfly.

I timed a few Firefly scenes in Poser 11 and Poser 13, and rendering times were reduced by around 40%.

That's enough for me to actually upgrade.

Thanks, that's probably enough for me to actually start using Poser 13. Even if I have to run scripts in Poser 11 first.

When I saw the feature list, I was not impressed. In fact, I was skeptical. After trying it, I'm in awe. It renders insanely faster, and the renders look so much better--and I haven't even started tweaking my materials to suit the changes to the updated Cycles. I really think the promotional materials are underselling Poser 13.

Until you try it you really won't know how much has been improved.  During testing I must have done several hundred images.  The speed increase made it that much nicer to play with.  I did a test animation and was getting about 3 frames a minute with image quality that would have passed the movie making course at the college.  Using Poser 12 to get the same quality it was running about 7 minutes a frame.  

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

I still use Poser 11 pre-renderocity build for animations because late builds all crushes if I just go back and front at animation UI. I got Poser 12 and it has all the 20 years old work rooms which are still not working or useful as something.. 20 years old.. We are at AI age and you need to fight against Poser to do something at every corner. 

I tried some renders at Poser 12 and the results are worse then a game engine. Shiny eyes, stupid shadows. I should not be a pro to fix all those every time. I just want my program to render something properly on it's own. And we got Poser 13.. everything is nearly same. Patch notes from 12 to 13 is maybe less then a little update. It looks like a hobby solo dev project at this point. 

My Favorite version still is Poser 11.1 as all is working the way it should, absolutely not impressed with later versions. Getting complex renders in Firefly in less then a minute resulting to have a artistic look, all my assets work that I got since the beginning of Millennium. When reading all the upcoming issues with materials it seems to me that most of the sold stuff in the store either should be removed or fixed as there not compatible anymore for poser 12 up. It is as if you buy a 10 year old battery for a new cellphone and the seller tells you to fit it in your self.

yes there are some issues with older poser here and there but they can be fixed in no time, like Poser 11.1 the other day giving a Token error on line 8 witch is a fast fix by just adding a line in your host file blocking the old dead link that was taking records of your poser usage. 

vopehov506 posted at 5:39 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461423

My Favorite version still is Poser 11.1 as all is working the way it should, absolutely not impressed with later versions. Getting complex renders in Firefly in less then a minute resulting to have a artistic look, all my assets work that I got since the beginning of Millennium. When reading all the upcoming issues with materials it seems to me that most of the sold stuff in the store either should be removed or fixed as there not compatible anymore for poser 12 up. It is as if you buy a 10 year old battery for a new cellphone and the seller tells you to fit it in your self.

yes there are some issues with older poser here and there but they can be fixed in no time, like Poser 11.1 the other day giving a Token error on line 8 witch is a fast fix by just adding a line in your host file blocking the old dead link that was taking records of your poser usage. 

I can understand your viewpoint but it is heavily influenced by your commitment to Firefly, not only is that not the case for all of us, there is a line of thought that says there are far fewer challenges in standing still than trying to stretch your skillset. 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

hornet3d posted at 7:25 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461431

vopehov506 posted at 5:39 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461423

My Favorite version still is Poser 11.1 as all is working the way it should, absolutely not impressed with later versions. Getting complex renders in Firefly in less then a minute resulting to have a artistic look, all my assets work that I got since the beginning of Millennium. When reading all the upcoming issues with materials it seems to me that most of the sold stuff in the store either should be removed or fixed as there not compatible anymore for poser 12 up. It is as if you buy a 10 year old battery for a new cellphone and the seller tells you to fit it in your self.

yes there are some issues with older poser here and there but they can be fixed in no time, like Poser 11.1 the other day giving a Token error on line 8 witch is a fast fix by just adding a line in your host file blocking the old dead link that was taking records of your poser usage. 

I can understand your viewpoint but it is heavily influenced by your commitment to Firefly, not only is that not the case for all of us, there is a line of thought that says there are far fewer challenges in standing still than trying to stretch your skillset. 

True that standing still is not bringing you anywhere. As a creator my self there is a huge conflict with this new system. First of all it is a incredible additional work getting the materials correct that is ending up to be more work then creating a standalone articulated figure. there are huge issues getting a correct setting for a good quality render. This whole issues will increase the need of support for sold products, ending up with high risc that customers will not be very happy with there purchases. Customers do expect a fuilly working product for there investments, they do not want to fix it passing day's on it and figuring out a working material setting with 100 ++ of nodes and  digit settings for just one asset. Sure it is ok having optionally allot of possibilities ( Optionally ) but with this whole upgrading they probably forgot that mostly these products are sold and have to be produced to a reasonable price, I bet you do not want having to spend over 100 - 1000 $ for a single asset like offered for professional programs. For Creators ... keep it simple, nice, functional and cheap. Sure now you get a super fast rendering but you forget to add the day's you will spend on finding the correct material setting for your render so you probably Increased the production time by 10'000 % just to do one render. your render instead of 10 min for older poser versions takes you now a whole day just to get the right setup. That is sure not what customers want!

Comes to it that over 90% of the Poser store products are no longer compatible, I mean that is almost all what has ben built since poser exists and for the first time a full clean out. I just do not want to imagine Daz pulling down all poser stuff including V4 just because they can't be sold any longer due compatibility issues, piles of refund, and angry customers. You just can't sell stuff that is not working any longer. And if Daz pulls down the Millenniums for poser then Renderosity will be forced pulling down all the Conforming stuff for these models as the base is no longer existent. As a Vendor how would you explain that it ain't working ? just telling him, sorry but Bondware changed the program so I'm not in charge that it ain't working right anymore. 

There are just two different aspects between a customer and a Creator. So no Creators, no customers, ending up with no Poser.

With some experience you might still be able making a great render in Poser4 . Older promo's for products made in Poser in the early 2010 - 2015 are way ahead of what is presented and created now, with this top notch superfly engine and high end gpu's, so this is making me wonder if all really Improved or if there is rather a big loss of quality for higher speed.

vopehov506 posted at 9:37 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461443

hornet3d posted at 7:25 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461431

vopehov506 posted at 5:39 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461423

My Favorite version still is Poser 11.1 as all is working the way it should, absolutely not impressed with later versions. Getting complex renders in Firefly in less then a minute resulting to have a artistic look, all my assets work that I got since the beginning of Millennium. When reading all the upcoming issues with materials it seems to me that most of the sold stuff in the store either should be removed or fixed as there not compatible anymore for poser 12 up. It is as if you buy a 10 year old battery for a new cellphone and the seller tells you to fit it in your self.

yes there are some issues with older poser here and there but they can be fixed in no time, like Poser 11.1 the other day giving a Token error on line 8 witch is a fast fix by just adding a line in your host file blocking the old dead link that was taking records of your poser usage. 

I can understand your viewpoint but it is heavily influenced by your commitment to Firefly, not only is that not the case for all of us, there is a line of thought that says there are far fewer challenges in standing still than trying to stretch your skillset. 

True that standing still is not bringing you anywhere. As a creator my self there is a huge conflict with this new system. First of all it is a incredible additional work getting the materials correct that is ending up to be more work then creating a standalone articulated figure. there are huge issues getting a correct setting for a good quality render. This whole issues will increase the need of support for sold products, ending up with high risc that customers will not be very happy with there purchases. Customers do expect a fuilly working product for there investments, they do not want to fix it passing day's on it and figuring out a working material setting with 100 ++ of nodes and  digit settings for just one asset. Sure it is ok having optionally allot of possibilities ( Optionally ) but with this whole upgrading they probably forgot that mostly these products are sold and have to be produced to a reasonable price, I bet you do not want having to spend over 100 - 1000 $ for a single asset like offered for professional programs. For Creators ... keep it simple, nice, functional and cheap. Sure now you get a super fast rendering but you forget to add the day's you will spend on finding the correct material setting for your render so you probably Increased the production time by 10'000 % just to do one render. your render instead of 10 min for older poser versions takes you now a whole day just to get the right setup. That is sure not what customers want!

Comes to it that over 90% of the Poser store products are no longer compatible, I mean that is almost all what has ben built since poser exists and for the first time a full clean out. I just do not want to imagine Daz pulling down all poser stuff including V4 just because they can't be sold any longer due compatibility issues, piles of refund, and angry customers. You just can't sell stuff that is not working any longer. And if Daz pulls down the Millenniums for poser then Renderosity will be forced pulling down all the Conforming stuff for these models as the base is no longer existent. As a Vendor how would you explain that it ain't working ? just telling him, sorry but Bondware changed the program so I'm not in charge that it ain't working right anymore. 

There are just two different aspects between a customer and a Creator. So no Creators, no customers, ending up with no Poser.

Once again I can certainly see your point of view, it is early days yet, but my experience with old content so far has been that most of it works with Superfly in Poser 13.  Some do cause an issue using the GPUfor rendering but it has always worked for me by switching to CPU.   The odd problem I have found has been down to the vendor creating materials in the past that seem not to comply with good practice.  That is not to knock the vendor as there could have been a good reason why they did it that way.  It is also true that I am using the Go Physical script to enhance materials that a have been in my runtime for a good few years and save me time in doing so.  Yes it is an additional cost over and above that of Poser 13 but if it allows me to continue use content that is that old, I see that as a small price to pay.

I also think that creating new materials should be easier than before whether it be for Firefly or Superfly, the issue appears to be converting old Firefly materials to Superfly 

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

vopehov506 posted at 9:37 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461443

hornet3d posted at 7:25 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461431

Customers do expect a fuilly working product for there investments, they do not want to fix it passing day's on it and figuring out a working material setting with 100 ++ of nodes and  digit settings for just one asset. 

Among customers, there are exceptions. I just don't know how much, but probably since Poser 9, I use the original material settings only when I'm  really lazy or if the vendor has made a fantastic job (and some are really good at this exercise)
But for what concerns the human figures, and the hairs: I've almost never used  any original settings (there's one exception: Aphrodite Ohki)

I'm really used to buy stuff because I can't model anything, and I just need the bitmaps. 

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Y-Phil posted at 10:13 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461540

vopehov506 posted at 9:37 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461443

hornet3d posted at 7:25 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461431

Customers do expect a fuilly working product for there investments, they do not want to fix it passing day's on it and figuring out a working material setting with 100 ++ of nodes and  digit settings for just one asset. 

Among customers, there are exceptions. I just don't know how much, but probably since Poser 9, I use the original material settings only when I'm  really lazy or if the vendor has made a fantastic job (and some are really good at this exercise)
But for what concerns the human figures, and the hairs: I've almost never used  any original settings (there's one exception: Aphrodite Ohki)

I'm really used to buy stuff because I can't model anything, and I just need the bitmaps. 

I am of the opinion that if it's a brand new product,  I expect a material that is working in the latest iteration of the program it was made for, that is, Poser. 

If it's an older product, of course it's nice if a vendor releases as update, but in Poserverse that is bloody rare, pardon the language. Some vendors release updates for the *other program* side of things, and Poser materials still linger in five-eight years behind.

Now what i would like to see is scripts updated for Poser 13, even if I have to buy them again. I don't have time to faff with twenty times twenty nodes updates for my hobby and am willing to pay someone for a product that does it for me as a customer.

Unfortunately, there is no standardized way to set up shaders that will work for all lighting situations.  And given that there are perhaps dozens of permutations that result in the same outcome, you will hard pressed to be satisfied all the time.  Vendors want to put out new content as often as they can and they don't want to go back and recreate updates for outdated products.  Believe me, some vendors simply don't know their way around the Material Room and are stuck in the same outmoded method of production.

Hmm. I view this as a serious issue with Poser's ecosystem then. 

Rhia474 posted at 1:00 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461560

Hmm. I view this as a serious issue with Poser's ecosystem then. 

You could be right, trouble is I am not really sure how big an impact it is.  I rarely use the materials supplied with a product for a number of reasons, firstly I want my version to be different from everyone else's (probably for the same reason I don't dress in designer clothing).  Secondly I have been surprised over the years just how often it is easy to improve on the default textures particularly when I do not regard myself as an expert in Poser or the material room.  Lastly my choices limit the availability of content, I use Dawn SE so the clothing for her is limited but then I am into Sci fi so that limits things still further.  The end result is I kit bash a lot of the time and I have to play with the textures to get outfits to look consistent.  OK, I know not everyone has those limitations but looking at the gallery here at Rendo, I don't think I am alone in not using the default textures

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Oh, I kitbash too. Textures improved dramatically with the use of GoPhysical when it came out. 

Poser documentation that is *supplied with the program* may need a wee bit if attention. Just one example. DcArt suggested for me to try a tutorial for how to do PBR using a pre-made example from the online manual. When I try to follow the manuals instructions, the very first link I am supposed to download tutorial files from *is broken*.

That is sloppy and discouraging.

I don't think we are asking for too much, people who dint make models or do expert things in material room but would like to use Poser to have fun. From what people say here 'just do your own and leave vendors alone' is the consensus.

That will not win sales for anyone.

To clarify:

What I just said is in no way a bashing of those generous members of this community who donated countless hours to test, amend, edit and fix before the new version came out. Neither is it a critique of those who offered free help to those of us (myself included) who were having issues with the new release. I have the utmost respect for you and apologize if what I said came across as a personal attack.

The problem is that of a chicken and egg situation.  Vendors don't want to make new stuff that is only usable in the newest version since it will cut out some possible sales.  Therefore, trying to find stuff to use in the newest version is hard to locate so people stick to the old version which makes vendors say see everyone uses the 12-year version, so there is no need to create for the new version.  Me, I make everything in the latest version and if it happens to work in a prior version great, if not oh well.  Of course, I do it for the fun of it and not to make a living.  The nice thing about the last couple of versions is that you don't need a massive number of nodes in the material room to make something look good.  That along with the fact that you can now render without any lights and get good results in a short amount of time gives me a bit more time to work on fixing OLD materials to make them work in Poser 13.  

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

Richard60 posted at 3:26 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461591

The problem is that of a chicken and egg situation.  Vendors don't want to make new stuff that is only usable in the newest version since it will cut out some possible sales.  Therefore, trying to find stuff to use in the newest version is hard to locate so people stick to the old version which makes vendors say see everyone uses the 12-year version, so there is no need to create for the new version.  Me, I make everything in the latest version and if it happens to work in a prior version great, if not oh well.  Of course, I do it for the fun of it and not to make a living.  The nice thing about the last couple of versions is that you don't need a massive number of nodes in the material room to make something look good.  That along with the fact that you can now render without any lights and get good results in a short amount of time gives me a bit more time to work on fixing OLD materials to make them work in Poser 13.  

I'd venture to guess that there is hardly ANYONE left that is using any version of Poser prior to Poser 9/Pro 2012 or 10/Pro 2014.  To continue to support earlier versions won't get you many additional sales.

DCArt posted at 5:32 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461605

Richard60 posted at 3:26 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461591

The problem is that of a chicken and egg situation.  Vendors don't want to make new stuff that is only usable in the newest version since it will cut out some possible sales.  Therefore, trying to find stuff to use in the newest version is hard to locate so people stick to the old version which makes vendors say see everyone uses the 12-year version, so there is no need to create for the new version.  Me, I make everything in the latest version and if it happens to work in a prior version great, if not oh well.  Of course, I do it for the fun of it and not to make a living.  The nice thing about the last couple of versions is that you don't need a massive number of nodes in the material room to make something look good.  That along with the fact that you can now render without any lights and get good results in a short amount of time gives me a bit more time to work on fixing OLD materials to make them work in Poser 13.  

I'd venture to guess that there is hardly ANYONE left that is using any version of Poser prior to Poser 9/Pro 2012 or 10/Pro 2014.  To continue to support earlier versions won't get you many additional sales.

Well from the 1'200 ++ members I have, 80% are still using poser 2012 - 2016 that is a pretty high amount and not to be compared to the active Poser members here in the forums. So the voices of the few in here could not be presented as a reliable average statistic. 

My experience shows that it is best to keep things simple when creating figures, not talking about material doll character extensions. So a Creator might be on the secure side just using the basic texture nodes. It grants a fast render and users can extend the material settings to there preferences. Important is that it loads correctly in the latest releases and prior ones . For now majority from the ones I know are still using the old versions up to the times of SM sticking on there older Investments. And even these " Old " still Improve from month to month.

End users are mostly using poser as a Relaxing Hobby, after a hard day of work letting them selves fall into that creative fantasy world, they do not really want to spend hour's of figuring out how to setup a material, most do not even enter the material room. they have no Idea about the morph tools, they want it simple just the way poser was built for. Posing some finished models for there little own worlds " To call it a day " 

The poser tech's in here are lifting it to much on the few in here that want more and more making it complicated removing the simple addons that were given, forgetting about the silent majority that really is using poser for there fun.

And Nop these do not want to jump on a Blender to make it better they just want the simple Poser to pose what they purchased, and no they do not want to mess with technical stuff as they want it to be a relaxing toy for there obscure fantasies.    

In my Poser career I got to know many Writers that use poser for there fan fiction covers, yes that was really surprising, other ones that also used the simple posing system in poser with all these offered assets for there work presentations, some even make renders pretending on expo's that these were painted :) and guess! these do not want to mess with tech stuff, they are not cyber junkies they need a good app to load the stuff they purchased and make there covers and little presentations fast cheap and reliable.

So to make Poser big , Keep it simple, for the simple people, build in creation improvements for the figure creators in background, else these simple users will be confused loosing the fun of it, do not forget that these users even have a hard time to know the difference between Conforming and Parenting a figure outfit. Making Poser a mix between Blender is not the solution, the solution is the simple users. Already the removal of the "simple" Material room was a wrong step. why not keep the complicated stuff behind the scene for the creators. Sure Poser can be extended as stuff needs to be created, but not right in your face, the simple users will run away witch is majority. else these might as well start using Blender, but this group does not want to use a Blender, exactly because of the simple alternative, A Blender would just rise over there horizon.

The simple light Poser is the best concurrence to the others that make it complicated 

Richard60 posted at 3:26 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461591

The problem is that of a chicken and egg situation.  Vendors don't want to make new stuff that is only usable in the newest version since it will cut out some possible sales.  Therefore, trying to find stuff to use in the newest version is hard to locate so people stick to the old version which makes vendors say see everyone uses the 12-year version, so there is no need to create for the new version.  Me, I make everything in the latest version and if it happens to work in a prior version great, if not oh well.  Of course, I do it for the fun of it and not to make a living.  The nice thing about the last couple of versions is that you don't need a massive number of nodes in the material room to make something look good.  That along with the fact that you can now render without any lights and get good results in a short amount of time gives me a bit more time to work on fixing OLD materials to make them work in Poser 13.  

After playing with Poser 13 for slightly more than a week I have to say that my procedure so far is to load in my Poser 12 scene, fun everything through Go Physical, delete of switch off all the lights and then see how good or bad the scene will render.  In almost all cases it has rendered much better than expected and I am having fun making my old Poser 12 scenes work with no lights or, on on rare occasions, no more than a single light.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

vopehov506 posted at 7:02 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461614

So to make Poser big , Keep it simple, for the simple people, build in creation improvements for the figure creators in background, else these simple users will be confused loosing the fun of it, do not forget that these users even have a hard time to know the difference between Conforming and Parenting a figure outfit. Making Poser a mix between Blender is not the solution, the solution is the simple users. Already the removal of the "simple" Material room was a wrong step. why not keep the complicated stuff behind the scene for the creators. Sure Poser can be extended as stuff needs to be created, but not right in your face, the simple users will run away witch is majority. else these might as well start using Blender, but this group does not want to use a Blender, exactly because of the simple alternative, A Blender would just rise over there horizon.

The simple light Poser is the best concurrence to the others that make it complicated 

Once again I find myself agreeing with what you say but having a slightly different opinion on the way forward.  Keep it simple, sure, and I think the dev team have tried to do that with the inclusion of so much content with scenes set up almost ready to go.  I am all for that but I do not think that Poser is ever going a be a program where all you need to do is find the make art button.  All computer art software is going to take time and effort to get the best out of it, the learning curve will vary from program to program.  I have nothing against trying to make the learning curve for Poser a shallow one, but given how powerful it is, it is never going to be that shallow. 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

While I agree that end users may not want to muck around in the material room, they still want great looking renders. Having basic shaders won't give that and will necessitate them having to spend even more time in the material room. If a couple of image maps would make them great, then there would be no need for all the changes and upgrades to render engines to allow for all these fancy shaders. And as a writer who not only makes covers, but also illustrations, I don't want mediocre. I want awesome. And if I'm not getting it, it's not because of the tools, but the user.

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I use Poser 13 and win 10

I sort of have to disagree that you can not get good renders with basic shaders, because I do it all the time.

Here is a perfect example.

There is nothing fancy about this shader at all. No SSS, etc, because it really isn't needed in a scene like this. 3 control nodes and 3 texture nodes, that's it....

Simple shaders, and an hdri for lighting on the background node (no Poser lights in the scene). Many times, simple is far better with Superfly.... Educate people on how to get far better renders, versus preaching about bad results from P4 mindsets.... What a concept..... I don't mean to offend anyone, but learning the software to get really good renders is not that hard at all now. Don't expect point and click to always work, because it obviously wont or we would not be having this conversation..... The first thing most will notice about the render is that I did not subdivide the hair..... Yep, I forgot to do that....... That totally makes it look like a crappy render, doesn't it..............

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Still loving your sculpt, Scott!

Educational details for the rest ... Two key points to be made in Scott's shader that help elevate the skin detail. 

1) Skin bump was not created from the color/diffuse map. The skin details were created by hand in ZBrush, using high quality skin detail alphas and textures. After sculpting, they were exported as both Bump/Displacement (grayscale) and tangent space Normal maps.

2) A roughness map was generated from the hand-detailed Normal map. Physical Surface node and Cycles/Principled BSDF nodes do much better with roughness maps than specular maps. 

The skin bump, normal, and roughness maps are provided with Poser and can be found in Poser 13 Content > Included > Runtime > Textures > RPublishing > LaFemme.

I've been debating creating simliar bump, normal, and roughness maps for other figures. Because they really do make a difference in SuperFly. With simple PBR shaders, the textures do most of the heavy lifting, as Scott's simple skin shader demonstrates.

Here's another example of a simple shader that relies solely on PBR textures. In addition to color, normal, and roughness, there are also Emission and metallic maps.

The beauty of creating PBR-compatible maps is that they can be used in both Poser SuperFly (La Femme on the left) and DAZ Studio iRay (shown on the right). with fairly consistent results. Main difference here is in lighting, not the shader itself. 

You need good PBR mats to do PBR, and there is basically no way around that. Many material sets are not PBR, they are just converted from the diffuse as D mentioned.

You could use generated maps like EzSkin can set up, but that is very limited in what will get out of it simply because all you get is the same thing everywhere on the map. That never looks right on skin that has many different textures in different areas of the bump on the skin. Think of the differences from your nose to under you eyes. Those areas are completely different, and right next to each other on the same maps.

You will also run into issues of maps being saved at a certain gamma setting, and you really need to use them at another setting. I have all the grayscale maps in that shader set to 2.2 versus at 1 as they load in the render I posted. You can easily adjust grayscale maps with the gamma setting. Gain, lift, and center contrast are a function of gamma and you can use that to your advantage in Poser without adding any additional nodes. Just keep in mind that the gamma setting is map usage wide. If you need to use different gamma settings with the same map on a different material, you will have to resort to a gamma node to change it on one material and have it be a different gamma setting on one material.

I almost always scrap the specular map on skin as well, because it is rarely needed. Yes you can assign different areas of the skin to reflect more or less with a specular map. But doing that can make the shader incredibly light and environment sensitive right off the bat because that is exactly what the roughness map (combined with the bump effect) is already doing. There is usually no need for a specular map on a skin shader. There are certain exceptions to this, like metallic makeup, etc. But that is a bit different thing to address.

The biggest problem people will run into with content is the burned in specular/bump/shadows/etc and grayscale maps that are not PBR at all....

And sadly that describes a large portion of Poser content.....

Close enough, and just fake it, doesn't work well in PBR....

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Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

shvrdavid posted at 1:01 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462354

𝒫𝒽𝓎𝓁

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(っ◔◡◔)っ

👿 Win11 on i9-13900K@5GHz, 64GB, RoG Strix B760F Gamng, Asus Tuf Gaming RTX 4070 OC Edition, 1 TB SSD, 6+4+8TB HD
👿 Mac Mini M2, Sonoma 14.6.1, 16GB, 500GB SSD
👿 Nas 10TB
👿 Poser 13 and soon 14 ❤️

Y-Phil posted at 3:18 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462361

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Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

No, it won't render.