AcePyx opened this issue on Apr 10, 2023 · 140 posts
AcePyx posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 5:07 AM
Hey guys, after a solid week of work, I have finally uploaded my Poser 13 review
I think the program has lots to offer, but it is not without shortfalls and many bugs. See the full review here:
Whether you like it or not, I hope you find it accurate.
hornet3d posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 7:23 AM
Not a lot I can argue with.
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.
AcePyx posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 8:06 AM
Thank you hornet!Not a lot I can argue with.
Y-Phil posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 9:56 AM
5 minutes and I stopped the video.
Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring.
it's been years that unimesh has been talked about, it's been years that people talk about it and want to make it available, if it hasn't been done yet, it's because it's much more complicated, an dit would have been even worse to give up with any legacy support. Especially when you inherit a past demolished by the companies that bought the product thinking they could make money by keeping their feet crossed on the desk.
SmithMicro made a huge step and then stopped, they give up. Bondware had to catch up with a huge backlog, my thanks to them.
As far as I'm concerned, a huge amount of work has been done and starting a review with this kind of criticism is not cool. I even think it's disrespectful for the technical team behind it: going from Python2.x to Python3.x is not changing neighborhoods or countries, it's changing the planet.
Just a little patience.
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AcePyx posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 1:33 PM
5 minutes and I stopped the video.
Good to know you gave it a fair chance then. I'm sure your opinion will be invaluable.
*I* wasn't the one, who just a couple of months ago was advertising the inclusion of unimesh figures - Bondware was.
They CHOSE to bring it to the tabel. Don't get snarky when I point out that they failed to deliver. If they had not mentioned it, nor would I.
"starting a review with this kind of criticism is not cool"
What's not cool is tolerating undelivered marketing promises.
"Just a little patience."
Yeah, because 15 years is not long enough. With each day, Poser gets more and more outdated, and here you're carrying water for them?!
Nevertrumper posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 1:54 PM
5 minutes and I stopped the video.
Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring.
…
Always same unsolved problems gives the always same criticisms
AcePyx posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 7:31 PM
Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring.
hornet3d posted Mon, 10 April 2023 at 8:53 PM
Two sides two the same coin, yes it was advertised and yes it was pulled. On the other side it was made clear a few weeks before, by newsletter and other means, that this aspect had been pulled. I was not interested personally but even I knew it had been pulled and it was also made clear this was an early release with updates to follow. No one should have purchased Poser 13 expecting it to be other than what is was. A far cry then from SM's performance when they quietly introduced the deactivation feature in Game Dev where users only found out six months after purchase when their copy of Poser stopped working.
I stated earlier that there was little I could argue with in the review and I stand by that. It is certainly not a trashing of Poser and many parts of the review it is very complementary of both Poser and the development team. So heavily critical, yes. Fair, maybe, a complete downer on Poser 13 not as far as I can see.
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.
blackbonner posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 2:43 AM Online Now!
Just as a reminder, AcePyx is the only one on YouTube who's promotion Poser. He does something Bondware should do in the first place. At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.
Sure, he has his own view on things and I don't agree with everything he says but in general he's trying to make his points by having good and reasonable arguments. He's definitely not a cheerleader but that's why I think his content is valuable. I would love to see more people like him creating tutorials and software reviews especially for Poser on YouTube and similar platforms.
hornet3d posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 3:41 AM
I think the Tech team are great and the have a thankless task in trying to please everyone with Poser in the state they inherited it. I do however feel the criticism of the marketing strategy to be very accurate and to the point.
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.
lsauvage posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 5:47 AM
As a software developper i know it's not easy to make a product evolve, keeping the backward compatibility. They must make some choices and it's hard to fight in this jungle where very good software can be free. The review is fair and balanced.
I bought the upgrade, i'm happy with it, also it's not perfect yet, but definitly some progress.
Keep going and don't give up!
Nevertrumper posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 8:49 AM
blackbonner posted at 2:43 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461667
True, and nothing improves by just cheering on it.Just as a reminder, AcePyx is the only one on YouTube who's promotion Poser. He does something Bondware should do in the first place. At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.
Sure, he has his own view on things and I don't agree with everything he says but in general he's trying to make his points by having good and reasonable arguments. He's definitely not a cheerleader but that's why I think his content is valuable. I would love to see more people like him creating tutorials and software reviews especially for Poser on YouTube and similar platforms.
Poser has always worked like a religious cult, that is bad in taking criticism and demonizing it as trolling, instead of taking it seriously as a chance for improving.
This has been going on since Poser 5 times.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 8:57 AM
I couldn't agree more. Nothing but respect for the support they have provided over the past 2 years.I think the Tech team are great and the have a thankless task in trying to please everyone with Poser in the state they inherited it. I do however feel the criticism of the marketing strategy to be very accurate and to the point.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:02 AM
At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.
Thank you. Yes I work for free out of a desire to raise the program's profile, and enthuse people. This review took a solid week, and it wasn't even spare time ;-)
"He's definitely not a cheerleader"
No, but that was a conscious decision. Whether people agree or not, they can trust that I'm *trying* to present a balanced picture.
I don't hate the marketing team, but nor do I think they are serving the program particularly well.
Rhia474 posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:05 AM
Absolutely agree, both the tech staff and the volunteer testers are beyond great, dedicated, professional and helpful. <3
The marketing of Poser is ... something else. As a primarily content broker site, Renderosity and Bondware probably has to walk a razorthin line between the software they own now and the other software most of their revenue on this site would come from in providing content. While I understand that, the way Poser is marketed and presented should be miles better. Right now it's the redheaded stepchild, the 'poor cousin of shiny renders' the 'this is what people stuck in the 1990s and early aughts use' vibe am getting if I look at what's there, with very few exceptions.
I have high hopes for Poser 13 ( and again, repeated kudos for the dev team and the testers), but it needs some help.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:08 AM
Absolutely spot on, and I don't get it. I would give honest criticism of my best friend to his face if he asked for it, for his own good, let alone an underperforming program I paid money for! I think people confuse their passion for the program with a misplaced need for loyalty. I get that if everyone just bashed it, Poser would die, but it can't be immune from criticism. The ironic thing is, I suspect the technical guys are pretty prosaic about the program's strengths and weaknesses, as well as its place in the market. It's just the marketing guys who have to fabricate a false enthusiasm.blackbonner posted at 2:43 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461667
Poser has always worked like a religious cult, that is bad in taking criticism and demonizing it as trolling, instead of taking it seriously as a chance for improving.This has been going on since Poser 5 times.
blackbonner posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 12:54 PM Online Now!
To find myself being part of a religious cult is quite bad news for me as a live long atheist.😂
Jokes aside, I think this is not the right analogy. Poser user seems to be loyal to the software, yes. But they have no say in the development of the software whatsoever. The once who are making the decision for the development path of a software usually don't engage in public discussion about the pros and cons of the software, let alone trying to covert people who use other programs. I think there is a correlation between a loyal user base who isn't very critical and a development team that's is bond to an owner who doesn't care. A situation we had in the past with Smithmicro. Bondware seems to be an owner with a plan and good intentions for my favorite software.
Nevertrumper posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 2:32 PM
Maybe the key problem is, that Poser has never been a chatacter animation and render program, but just a digital Woody pose and sketch it program.
It is just mind blowing to see so many fatal decisions made, that dropped Poser as the once nr 1 consumer character app behind DAZ Studio and IClone.
Poser can neither compete anymore with DAZ content, base figures or render quality, nor IClone‘s animation tools.
It was a big step up for Poser to introduce the hair and cloth rooms in 2003. Why haven’t they ever been updated and improved since then? What has benn done about the skating effect in animations?
Where is the right in your face improvement on shaders?
Why do even Renders by the cheered stars of this Poser community look like from back in 2006?
I went through the „Show Your Poser 13“ threat and those renders have no potential to be a purchase argument.
Have you ever noticed, that neither Bondwsre nor any other previous owner had come up with renders as a marketing argument, but always like this time with heavy photoshopped graphics, that were based on Poser scenes?
Why can‘t Bondwsre cannot produce one single mindblowing advertisement render?
Furthermore, the feature list, that makes an upgrade worth an upgrade has become so poor since PoserPro 2014.
Only those, who are still on Poser 10 and lower really benfit from going up to Poser 13.
Anything starting with Poser 11 feels just like Service updates.
It seems like Bondware has no motivation to bring back Poser back into the pole position, but rather milking their „loyal“ fan base.
Of course, you can accuse me of trolling, but it could be a win-win, if you just could prove me wrong.
Y-Phil posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 2:47 PM
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👿 Mac Mini M2, Sonoma 14.6.1, 16GB, 500GB SSD
👿 Nas 10TB
👿 Poser 13 and soon 14 ❤️
Rhia474 posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 2:54 PM
'Heavy photoshopped scenes', lol.
Afrodite-Ohki posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 4:15 PM
It was a big step up for Poser to introduce the hair and cloth rooms in 2003. Why haven’t they ever been updated and improved since then?
This specific part has been explained ad infinitum. Poser's cloth and hair engines are proprietary of companies that no longer exist, and whoever owns Poser can't change anything in those engines. The only thing they'd be allowed to do is REPLACE the engines, thus breaking former content.
I've been asking for them to replace them and find a way to make a conversion tool for older content for YEARS, but you know how scary it is to talk about breaking old content for Poser.
- - - - - -
Feel free to call me Ohki!
Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.
Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.
Afrodite-Ohki posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 4:18 PM
It seems like Bondware has no motivation to bring back Poser back into the pole position, but rather milking their „loyal“ fan base.
I highly doubt it's a motivation issue - I feel like it's much more of a budget issue. Bondware is a relatively small company.
- - - - - -
Feel free to call me Ohki!
Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.
Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 7:08 PM
Nevertrumper posted at 2:32 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461765I could ask YOU the same thing.Got anything else constructive to say?
Nevertrumper posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 7:36 PM
AcePyx posted at 7:08 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461829
Y-Phil posted at 2:47 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461771And guess what:Nevertrumper posted at 2:32 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461765I could ask YOU the same thing.Got anything else constructive to say?
nevertrumper has accurately identified a number of issues that many Poser users would like addressed. All you've done is shoot the messenger repeatedly. How is YOUR approach leading to a better program?
I bet, that in that unlikley case, Bondware would address every issue, I pointed out,
none of the „Poser loyalists“ would protest against it.
ChromeStar posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 7:39 PM
Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.
Y-Phil posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 7:46 PM
I NEVER criticize the work of others, at least not in public: if I have something to say, I address the company, the developer, the person.
When you give your opinion in public, you have to accept to be criticized in turn. I don't mind at all to be criticized for being annoyed in public for a criticism that comes back for the 1'000th time this year.
Daz and Poser are not the same applications since a long time, they are not comparable because they do not have the same purpose.
That's the life online.
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Nevertrumper posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 8:09 PM
So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
AmbientShade posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:08 PM
Is there somewhere that shows a list of all the additional content that's included in Poser 13?
It's not even mentioned on the product page in the store, but I've seen a few folks render some scenes that I got the impression are included.
That alone could be a selling point for 13 if the additional content is appealing enough.
I only downloaded the trial mainly to test out the new rendering and the content creation tools and I noticed that the trial comes with basically nothing, which is rather odd.
I realize they don't want people getting the trial just to swipe the content (tho that could be curbed with encryption, like reallusion does), but I don't think Andy is inspiring enough to attract new users.
At the very least, a comprehensive list of all the content you get with the purchase would be helpful, or highlight the best of it. Something.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:12 PM
I NEVER criticize the work of others, at least not in public: if I have something to say, I address the company, the developer, the person.
"Praise me in public, criticise me in private" hmmm?
This is the manipulative request of every manager and company, that wants their shortfalls addressed in private where they cannot start a contagion of others criticising, but I'm sorry, if you want your praises in public, then you must risk the counter side as well.
"I NEVER criticize the work of others," Oh really, so telling someone "5 minutes and I stopped the video. Always the same criticisms, it becomes tiring." is not a criticism? Of course it is, and it's an arrogant one at that. You are implicitly saying "I am so bored by hearing this criticism that Poser's owners have not addressed after decades, that if anyone raises it, their work is beneath me to listen to."
Frankly, the opinion of a single woefully misguided and irrational person is trivial to me, but please, spare me the sanctimony. Your method of addressing the issue accomplishes almost, if not literally zero unless you have some particular leverage with Bondware that you are not mentioning. Changes happen when companies are incentivised to do so, not when fangirls or boys, blow smoke up their backsides.
"they are not comparable because they do not have the same purpose."
Daz and Poser are competing in EXACTLY the same creative space. Don't think that DS's advanced functionality places it in a different category.
AmbientShade posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:17 PM
Y'all are gonna get this thread locked if you don't tone down the argumentative tone.
Just sayin.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:21 PM
The speed was a game changer, but a hugely belated one. Principled came in 70% through 12's lifecycle. It was welcome, but simplified the technology that already existed. The material assignment thing didn't do much for the way I work, but perhaps that's a negative reflection on the way I work ;-)Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:22 PM
Thanks for the heads up...Y'all are gonna get this thread locked if you don't tone down the argumentative tone.
Just sayin.
AcePyx posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 9:25 PM
Is there somewhere that shows a list of all the additional content that's included in Poser 13?
I commented upon the lack of a list in my review. I did endeavour to click through much of the content though. It's bookmarked on the vid. Far from ideal, but possibly better than nothing?
ChromeStar posted Tue, 11 April 2023 at 10:23 PM
AcePyx posted at 9:21 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461856
ChromeStar posted at 7:39 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461836
The speed was a game changer, but a hugely belated one.Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.
So... the updates to that point were not sufficient, and Poser 12 was the one that delivered the important thing? That's the opposite of the claim above.
Principled came in 70% through 12's lifecycle. It was welcome, but simplified the technology that already existed.
I never felt like Superfly was accessible to me before Poser 12. Yeah, it was there, yeah, I tried it, but it was too complicated to pick up easily and too slow to be worth spending that effort. Both of those things changed in 12. Maybe I could have done everything in 11, but maybe I could also have invested in a nice set of colored pencils and learned to draw.
It has been stagnant, that's absolutely true. And Poser 12 is when that started to change. Cycles was updated, and then updated again in 13. Python was updated (for all the good and bad).But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?
The claim above was:
Only those, who are still on Poser 10 and lower really benfit from going up to Poser 13.
Anything starting with Poser 11 feels just like Service updates.
And that's just the opposite of my experience. I went from 11 to 12 and it was a huge step forward. It was the earlier updates that felt slow and incremental. There is plenty left to do, and there is a limit to how quickly they can iterate based on the available budget, but I feel like the progress they are making is a big deal.
hornet3d posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 4:51 AM
ChromeStar posted at 10:23 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461866
I had great concerns when I first heard Bondware had purchased Poser, considering the income that must come from marketing content for a rival product I had fears that it was being purchased just to let it freeze to death. Not that this was just a Bondware thing in that I would have had the same fears no matter who purchased it, I had seen some very good and useful programs die from lack of interest and upgrades over the years so I felt the fears were valid.AcePyx posted at 9:21 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461856
ChromeStar posted at 7:39 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461836
The speed was a game changer, but a hugely belated one.Poser 12 felt like a pretty significant upgrade to me. The speed improvements alone were worth the price of admission. Improvements in material assignment. The addition of PrincipledBsdf. Those are things I take advantage of every time I use the software. It's also been pretty interesting to see functionality added over the course of the release cycle. That increased visibility about what the team is actually working on is what does not match up with the comments above.
So... the updates to that point were not sufficient, and Poser 12 was the one that delivered the important thing? That's the opposite of the claim above.
Principled came in 70% through 12's lifecycle. It was welcome, but simplified the technology that already existed.
I never felt like Superfly was accessible to me before Poser 12. Yeah, it was there, yeah, I tried it, but it was too complicated to pick up easily and too slow to be worth spending that effort. Both of those things changed in 12. Maybe I could have done everything in 11, but maybe I could also have invested in a nice set of colored pencils and learned to draw.
It has been stagnant, that's absolutely true. And Poser 12 is when that started to change. Cycles was updated, and then updated again in 13. Python was updated (for all the good and bad).But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?
The claim above was:
Only those, who are still on Poser 10 and lower really benfit from going up to Poser 13.
Anything starting with Poser 11 feels just like Service updates.
And that's just the opposite of my experience. I went from 11 to 12 and it was a huge step forward. It was the earlier updates that felt slow and incremental. There is plenty left to do, and there is a limit to how quickly they can iterate based on the available budget, but I feel like the progress they are making is a big deal.
With the benefit of hindsight I can see the purchase was the opposite, the devolvement team have breathed new life into a program that was struggling to survive. Even the initial signs were good, doing away with the pro version was long over due, and offering the Poser 11 free to many current version users a nice touch. I purchase Poser 12 as soon as it was available knowing full well I was buying early access and just a promise of progress and updates in the future. It was a purchase I never regretted and, from my point of view, the development team delivered on their promises. Which explains why I was so keen to the continue the process with Poser 13 at the earliest opportunity, what I have at my fingertips today justifies the price of the upgrade alone and there is still the promise of more.
I have been playing with Poser for over twenties years and reading it would be dead in the near future for every one of those years. While I knew it was struggling I never gave up hope and the last few years have proved I was right to hope. Poser's future is brighter now that it has been for most of those twenty years and it has delivered so much fun to me since Bondware purchased it. I have so much respect for the team and what they have done.
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.
DCArt posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 8:08 AM
>>>> But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?
This does not mention the fact that Smith Micro laid off the entire original Poser team in 2016, and replaced them with a team that was almost entirely unfamiliar with the application. This was a "cost cutting" move, not a performance move. In the three years between the layoff and the time that Bondware purchased Poser, there were only two very minor updates to Poser 11 (11.1 and 11.2, both released by the replacement team). The only "major" feature released in those two versions was a paths palette, that didn't really work as well as it should.
Bondware purchased Poser in June of 2019 and the first initial release was to fix that the Smith Micro releases "phoned home" to an authorization server that SM has shut down. After that Bondare started working on Poser 12, and included some of the original developers on their team. That was a step in the right direction.
Has Poser lost ground? Yes, it has. But that finger points to the previous owner that nearly ran it to the ground. Not to Bondware, who is at least moving it forward.
DCArt posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 8:25 AM
I should also acknowledge that Bondware added two new code warriors that are entirely capable and dedicated to Poser as much as the original team members.
Nevertrumper posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 8:50 AM
Speeding up rendering times is nice but far away from being worth called a full upgrade.
hornet3d posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 1:04 PM
Speeding up rendering times is nice but far away from being worth called a full upgrade.
That might be true but the fact is there is more, the changes to Superfly not only speed is up but has a major impact in other areas such as lighting. It is now much easier to light HDRI scene and possible to light a scene by nothing else in the sphere itself.
There is the Launcher, which seems small but it does give some good options on start up. I am confident there are even more positives with lots more to come.
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 Wed, 12 April 2023 at 3:01 PM
DCArt posted at 8:08 AM Wed, 12 April 2023 - #4461895
Allowing my self to make some corrections on your comment.>>>> But a commenter on my vid made the observation that the underlying technology has been stagnant for a decade, and by and large, I don't much disagree with that notwithstand superfly in 2015. Innovations rather than streamlines have been awfully thin on the ground wouldn't you say?
This does not mention the fact that Smith Micro laid off the entire original Poser team in 2016, and replaced them with a team that was almost entirely unfamiliar with the application. This was a "cost cutting" move, not a performance move. In the three years between the layoff and the time that Bondware purchased Poser, there were only two very minor updates to Poser 11 (11.1 and 11.2, both released by the replacement team). The only "major" feature released in those two versions was a paths palette, that didn't really work as well as it should.
Bondware purchased Poser in June of 2019 and the first initial release was to fix that the Smith Micro releases "phoned home" to an authorization server that SM has shut down. After that Bondare started working on Poser 12, and included some of the original developers on their team. That was a step in the right direction.
Has Poser lost ground? Yes, it has. But that finger points to the previous owner that nearly ran it to the ground. Not to Bondware, who is at least moving it forward.
SM last update was Poser Pro 11.1 11.2 was the first release of bondware, this release already messed up the Python engine as they literarily changed the version number length causing most scripts not to work any longer. Only fix was a Py that you need to launch with poser from a third party getting these to work correctly.
Concerning the activation of Poser SM had a permanent activation and a permanent offline activation for poser 11 that was removed by bondware the SM offline activation server was still online for almost a half year after the purchase of Poser from bondware, the moment bondware got aware of this still running activation server they forced SM to take it also down.
The next thing came right up by sending out a killer to terminate any Permanent running Poser to obligate the trusted users to use the Latest Poser 11.2 release from bondware. this got send by the integrated producturlsupport.com periodically to make sure that any legal registered Poser 11.1 license gets killed removing every permanent licence.
Bondware removed the offline activation and Permanent activation replacing it with there new weekly renew version that throws a new script into your C Drive every week, actually not a Piracy protection as this system only controls the honest clients and only these who have a legal licence can be reached with this system.
meanwhile also the killer producturlsupport.com got taken down removing any trace of the act as there is no more need after 2 years chasing the honest customers killing there permanent poser activations.
So the intention, or lets say excuse, SM made this activation that could not be removed was never true. they made it even worse then it was before by force. Not even intending it to be against piracy as this could not be stopped. It all was intended to catch every client and previous honest Poser buyer by force sending them a little notice " Hey your poser id dead " you need to come to us to get it running again. Right in there face on the Desktop
vopehov506 posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 3:21 PM
So do you think this was a honest move towards honest Poser users ? I personally thing NO it was NOT , but it is the passed, some accepted the happening others did not. The ones who accepted all of this, jumped onto newer releases, the others just keep the older versions running until they die then change to another optional hoppy. As simple as that.
Personally and also from many discussions with my community members, majority did not find a good acceptance about this whole doing, sticking on older poser versions or just jumping to DS. Allot of trusted users gotten hurt with this business affair " Sure understandable " so in silence they go.
You might call all this a full new start, the old ones will be forgotten, and may be fresh blood will be attracted in the future that never had anything to do with poser the past decades, also removing any dependence of a V4 or older poser stuff that is no longer supported. Like you always mention Poser can't be stuck on all this old stuff and needs to Improve so the old literarily needs to be replaces. All the old stuff for Poser never will be supported again as these creators are long gone! So the only way is a cold Start and if this does not work because of wrong managing and marketing, if no new creators or customers appear, well then you might figure out the answer your self. But all this " The Plan " is not including us old users that stand short before our retirements with already one leg in the grave.
hornet3d posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 6:15 PM
Considering the deceitful way SM introduced the deadly deactivation feature with Game Dev I struggle to see how SM did Poser users any favours then or after they sacked the dev team. I am much happier that Poser is in the hands of Bondware than being left under the ownership of SM.
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 Wed, 12 April 2023 at 6:35 PM
hornet3d posted at 6:15 PM Wed, 12 April 2023 - #4461963
Well this brings us to the big question. Who is the owner of Poser ? Is Bondware only owner of 11.2 up or is Bondware owner of Poser ? You might have to think like a businessman, so who did really hit the kill switch after the contract have been signed? Not only Game DEV but also Poser 11.1 ... has there ever been a statement from either side, or were all these just assumptions of users? If you have a little Knowledge of functionality about these activation features, checking a little the way poser is programmed, fallowing the Links then these will lead you to the culpid.Considering the deceitful way SM introduced the deadly deactivation feature with Game Dev I struggle to see how SM did Poser users any favours then or after they sacked the dev team. I am much happier that Poser is in the hands of Bondware than being left under the ownership of SM.
The contract was clear it was not only a purchase of a Application but it included all costumers including there information there accounts there purchases. This is how business runns. If a hacker can remove that kill switch the day of P13 release, why is it so hard for the owner removing it him self ( Talking about the actual ) not the one who had it before. So who do you think is in charge and how easy would it of been keeping poser DEV active. The one who sold the rights is not in charge for this happening, the decision was taken by the new owner and no one else. Luckily Previous poser had no built in Kill link in the EXE else you can only imagine what would of happen.
vopehov506 posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 7:01 PM
It is how business goes, This is the way most application owner act at the moment, as long as customers play that game. The future might not get any better, considering that every new created poser asset that you will purchase for future poser versions will depend on the Poser activation, no matter if you made the purchases from independent creators of poser. If such a decision would be taken again it would include any of your investments no matter where you got them from that you use in Poser. This basically already is causing fear to the customers making any Investments as they could lose it all. Same for Creators all there efforts there creations for future poser versions depending on Bondware ( A real motivation killer ) ain't it ?
It is not only me that thinks this way many other poser users have the same fear for some others it is just subconscious hoping that it never will happen, but see it realistic, it will, else where would be the gain. It is where our Industry leads to the way of business, not just Bondware, one started with this system other realized that with this controll system you can generate money and fallow the system. once the money stops to flow you just cut, giving some excuse and obligate customers to make all new investments for a new version. Or just sell it the new one kills it and takes over all customers for he's Nr version change letting you use some of your Investments for a while.
ChromeStar posted Wed, 12 April 2023 at 10:46 PM
The future might not get any better, considering that every new created poser asset that you will purchase for future poser versions will depend on the Poser activation, no matter if you made the purchases from independent creators of poser.
That seems a little detached from reality. The vast majority of content I've bought would transfer just fine to DS, some of it to other applications as well. There's a much smaller proportion that is only suitable for Poser, like python scripts, dynamic clothing, and superfly shaders. "Every new created poser asset" is at best a gross exaggeration. I don't know the details of the licensing issue, but when I put these two sets of claims side by side, frankly, making statements like this one destroys your credibility on the other.
Afrodite-Ohki posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 6:34 AM
Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
- - - - - -
Feel free to call me Ohki!
Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.
Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 9:02 AM
Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006
Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
Just put it like this:
Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.
Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.
Show me those „Must Have“ renders.
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 9:44 AM
I agree 100%. SM's ownershp of Poser was a disaster in the long term. I was a journalist at the time, and I could tell you one or two stories about my interactions with them, but frankly, I don't want the potential legal hassles. Suffice it to say, I NEVER respected the company. For a while, Steve Cooper over there was one of the good guys, but my opinion of him underwent a radical revision just before he left.Considering the deceitful way SM introduced the deadly deactivation feature with Game Dev I struggle to see how SM did Poser users any favours then or after they sacked the dev team. I am much happier that Poser is in the hands of Bondware than being left under the ownership of SM.
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 9:53 AM
There has been a short period of time, where I actually thought, that SM is finally doing the right thing.
Introducing weight mapping, making the morph brush useful, reverse deformations on morph target creation and giving us more control over morphs with the dependencies editor.
It just feels like, they‘ve lost interest in Poser after the PP2014 release.
DCArt posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 9:53 AM
Nevertrumper posted at 9:02 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462015
Afrodite asked a legitimate question. You made an accusation that one of the Poser 13 splash screens was "heavily photoshopped." She asked which one. You are deflecting the question by now asking to "show me these awesome renders."Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006
Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
Just put it like this:
Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.
Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.
Show me those „Must Have“ renders.
What if that render that you claim is "heavily photoshopped" is one of those awesome renders you seek? How are we to know which render you claim is heavily photoshopped unless we know which one you are talking about?
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 10:04 AM
There has been a short period of time, where I actually thought, that SM is finally doing the right thing.
Introducing weight mapping, making the morph brush useful, reverse deformations on morph target creation and giving us more control over morphs with the dependencies editor.
It just feels like, they‘ve lost interest in Poser after the PP2014 release.
Absolutely correct. SM abandoned the program. When they bought it, it was the second most pirated software in the world after Photoshop according to their marketing guy. By the end, even the pirates didn't consider it worth copying.
But let's try to be positive and look to the future. Smith Micro's appalling treatment of the program bears no relationship to Bondware. I think that they genuinely have good intentions for the program, but it lost so much ground to Daz Studio and iClone, that they cannot invest the money it really needs until it starts to sell a lot more copies, but it won't sell more copies until it becomes a lot better...
In that context, I can appreciate the moves that they are making, and the speed that they are working, even though I desperately wish they would move faster.
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 10:35 AM
DCArt posted at 9:53 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462023
I am talking about this red and black couple promo for Poser 13 all over the place, here.Nevertrumper posted at 9:02 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462015
Afrodite asked a legitimate question. You made an accusation that one of the Poser 13 splash screens was "heavily photoshopped." She asked which one. You are deflecting the question by now asking to "show me these awesome renders."Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006
Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
Just put it like this:
Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.
Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.
Show me those „Must Have“ renders.
What if that render that you claim is "heavily photoshopped" is one of those awesome renders you seek? How are we to know which render you claim is heavily photoshopped unless we know which one you are talking about?
https://posercontent.com/3d-models-for-poser/poser-13-upgrade-from-poser-12
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 10:51 AM
AcePyx posted at 10:04 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462024
Nevertrumper posted at 9:53 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462022They didn‘t even solve their low on money problem the smart way.There has been a short period of time, where I actually thought, that SM is finally doing the right thing.
Introducing weight mapping, making the morph brush useful, reverse deformations on morph target creation and giving us more control over morphs with the dependencies editor.
It just feels like, they‘ve lost interest in Poser after the PP2014 release.
Absolutely correct. SM abandoned the program. When they bought it, it was the second most pirated software in the world after Photoshop according to their marketing guy. By the end, even the pirates didn't consider it worth copying.
But let's try to be positive and look to the future. Smith Micro's appalling treatment of the program bears no relationship to Bondware. I think that they genuinely have good intentions for the program, but it lost so much ground to Daz Studio and iClone, that they cannot invest the money it really needs until it starts to sell a lot more copies, but it won't sell more copies until it becomes a lot better...
In that context, I can appreciate the moves that they are making, and the speed that they are working, even though I desperately wish they would move faster.
Instead of wasting money with half ready shaders and a ripped off render engine, they‘ could have come up with a solid Blender link and work on those things, that are directly important for an app, that deals with 3d figures.
That is the reason for Reallusion‘s success. They have worked on their core segment.
(BTW: DAZ Studio is free and it includes a render engine, that costs about 300$, if you‘d buy it separately.
Poser costs 250$ and it includes a ripp off of a render engine that comes free with Blender.)
Am I really the only one here, who thinks, that Poser is milking his loyalists in an dishonest way?
Afrodite-Ohki posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 10:53 AM
Nevertrumper posted at 9:02 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462015
I'm not pretending shit. You're the one making accusations without knowing.Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006
Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
Just put it like this:
Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.
Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.
Show me those „Must Have“ renders.
Go to the "show your poser 13 renders" thread. Check the FIRST post there, by myself. That's the RAW render of one of the p13 splash screens, that I made and rendered in p13.
Or perhaps by "heavily photoshopped" you mean "added the poser 13 logo to the render in Photoshop", then sure.
- - - - - -
Feel free to call me Ohki!
Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.
Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.
Afrodite-Ohki posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 10:59 AM
Nevertrumper posted at 10:35 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462027
How exactly do you think that's photoshopped? Poser could render like that since a bunch of versions ago. You only need to know how to set up materials to do that.DCArt posted at 9:53 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462023
I am talking about this red and black couple promo for Poser 13 all over the place, here.Nevertrumper posted at 9:02 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462015
Afrodite asked a legitimate question. You made an accusation that one of the Poser 13 splash screens was "heavily photoshopped." She asked which one. You are deflecting the question by now asking to "show me these awesome renders."Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006
Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
Just put it like this:
Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.
Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.
Show me those „Must Have“ renders.
What if that render that you claim is "heavily photoshopped" is one of those awesome renders you seek? How are we to know which render you claim is heavily photoshopped unless we know which one you are talking about?
https://posercontent.com/3d-models-for-poser/poser-13-upgrade-from-poser-12
By now it feels to me like you want the program to have automatic buttons "make me a render like this" without learning how to use the thing.
- - - - - -
Feel free to call me Ohki!
Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.
Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:07 AM
Nevertrumper posted at 10:51 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462029
Instead of wasting money with half ready shaders and a ripped off render engine,You've repeatedly called Cycles engine "ripped off." It is not - it is open source, which means it's free to anyone to utilise. It was VERY intelligent way for Smith Micro to add physically based rendering to Poser, using a popular, well respected engine, to Poser. It provided Poser users with a vast resouce of tutorials, broad compatibility, and good PBR results. I really don't understand your hostility towards it.
Poser costs 250$ and it includes a ripp off of a render engine that comes free with Blender.)Am I really the only one here, who thinks, that Poser is milking his loyalists in an dishonest way?
No, I do not think Poser/Bondware is milking loyalists. Even if speed was the only improvement in Poser 12, it was worth $99. In Poser 13, the content is easily worth the asking price (although I would have liked more substantive upgrades).
We all want to see Poser thrive, and I have PLENTY of issues with Bondware, but off the top of my head, I'd say ripping off the Poser loyalists is not one of them.
Rhia474 posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:13 AM
I appreciate the balanced and calm approach you have, @AcePyx in your review and throughout this discussion.
DCArt posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:15 AM
Count me in as one who is not interested in using Blender. I have other 3D apps that I prefer instead.
nevertrumper forgets that Blender development is funded by some major corporations and donors so that Blender users can get it "free."
Cycles is open source. But it is not a "plug and play drop it in and it just works" deal. It took development time to get it integrated into Poser.
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:29 AM
Great Cycles is open source, but Poser users have to pay for it?Count me in as one who is not interested in using Blender. I have other 3D apps that I prefer instead.
nevertrumper forgets that Blender development is funded by some major corporations and donors so that Blender users can get it "free."
Cycles is open source. But it is not a "plug and play drop it in and it just works" deal. It took development time to get it integrated into Poser.
DCArt posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:45 AM
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:48 AM
Afrodite-Ohki posted at 10:59 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462031
Alright, let‘ s talk about YOUR render.Nevertrumper posted at 10:35 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462027
How exactly do you think that's photoshopped? Poser could render like that since a bunch of versions ago. You only need to know how to set up materials to do that.DCArt posted at 9:53 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462023
I am talking about this red and black couple promo for Poser 13 all over the place, here.Nevertrumper posted at 9:02 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462015
Afrodite asked a legitimate question. You made an accusation that one of the Poser 13 splash screens was "heavily photoshopped." She asked which one. You are deflecting the question by now asking to "show me these awesome renders."Afrodite-Ohki posted at 6:34 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462006
Nevertrumper posted at 8:09 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461842Oh come on. Please do not pretend to be clueless.Which one of them?So this Poser 13 splash screen is a straight render?
Just put it like this:
Show me links or pictures of realist style Promotion renders, that can convince people to purchase or upgrade Poser - please.
Show me those awesome renders, like any other 3d app would use in order to bait customers.
Show me those „Must Have“ renders.
What if that render that you claim is "heavily photoshopped" is one of those awesome renders you seek? How are we to know which render you claim is heavily photoshopped unless we know which one you are talking about?
https://posercontent.com/3d-models-for-poser/poser-13-upgrade-from-poser-12
By now it feels to me like you want the program to have automatic buttons "make me a render like this" without learning how to use the thing.
First: Well done, without a doubt.
Second: Which is a good and a bad thing at the same time, I doubt, it could have done any better.
If I had seen this render in any other 3d art gallery, without knowing Poser, I would ask what post filter you have used.
Hard to describe.
Open an empty scene in Poser with default settings and look at the empty editor.
It looks like this collar pattern you can see there is still present with every render. Some more, some less.
It gives every Poser render this „brownish“ flatness.
Back in the days of PP2014, I purchased the Octane render plug in to avoid that tint.
So obviously, it is not just a firefly problem, but a superfly problem as well.
Check it out yourself, if possible.
I don’t know, what other softwares you are using, but export your scene to any other app of your choice. Recreate light and camera and render again.
I bet it will be mindblowing.
Rhia474 posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:50 AM
Collar pattern????
And why would you use default settings in a production render???
Nevertrumper posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 12:03 PM
Rhia474 posted at 11:50 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462041
That is not, what I said. Don’t do the Strawman here.Collar pattern????
And why would you use default settings in a production render???
This is the collar pattern, that seems to overlay every Poser render as if it was a post render filter.
It even makes Poser render in the Renderosity gallery detectable.
Rhia474 posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 12:05 PM
Ah, I see. Carry on then.
DCArt posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 1:21 PM
When you create an empty scene, that color you initially see in the window is the background color.
You can change that color to anything you want. For example, here it is changed to black.
The second color chip in the lower right corner sets the background color.
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 1:37 PM
Thank you so much so much Rhia.I appreciate the balanced and calm approach you have, @AcePyx in your review and throughout this discussion.
JoePublic posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 1:51 PM
Inertia.
I'm using Poser for 23 years now, and I spent most of that time creating highly customized content which would be very time consuming to transfer to other apps.
I also thankfully don't need to worry about Superfly, as I'm perfectly happy with the results I can get with Firefly.
*
But to be frank, I think Poser is completely obsolete now, at least for new users.
Have a look at Blenders "Human Generator" plugin. It's basically a "How Poser could have been in a perfect world", but right inside Blender with full use of it's modelling capeabilities.
(And yeah, this plugin also makes Studio completely obsolete IMO. They will be able to hold on a little longer due to the sheer mass of their content, though)
So, if a newbie / hobbyist 3D artist would ask me what program to choose, I'd say BLENDER, BLENDER, BLENDER! :-p
*
But for me, I don't really need photorealism and I'm too old and tired to loose 23 years of "muscle memory" I've built up with Poser and Wings 3D.
I was actually content with using Poser 11, but it would feel wrong bitchin' about Poser and not actually owning the latest version. ;-)
So I shelled out the $200 (Poser 12 upgrade + Poser 13 upgrade) to "see".
Firefly is faster now and Superfly can even recognize my GFX card. (Though it's still not as fast as CPU Firefly is!)
Some new Python 3.0 scripts are available that can finally replace a few of my most beloved Python 2.0 scripts, so that's not that much of a problem, either.
As for the kill switch, well. it would be a real trust building move to ditch that, but when push comes to shove, I still have a copy of PP-2014 installed.
And as for the newer versions, well, "Ve haf vays to make you...continue renderink!" ;-)
*
So, while I'm not exactly hopeful for its future, I still find a few things I can enjoy in Poser 13.
And while I couldn't recommend it to a novice 3D artist (GO Blender!), I'd still say that if you already own another version of Poser and don't really feel like changing programs, you should download the Poser 13 trial and see for yourself if it's worth the upgrade price for you.
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 1:59 PM
Some new Python 3.0 scripts are available that can finally replace a few of my most beloved Python 2.0 scripts, so that's not that much of a problem, either.
May I ask which scripts you are referring to? EZ Skin and EZ Dome have sadly both stopped working on both P12 and 13 for me.
Rhia474 posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 2:06 PM
EzSkin has a version that works perfectly in P12 and well in P13 (runs in P13 just fine, may need manual adjusting ). If you look at the thread here with Snarlygribbly announcing their return, the link is in their sigline to the site with all the free scripts.
Rhia474 posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 2:07 PM
Oh. Here.
https://cobrablade.net/snarlygribbly/poser.html
JoePublic posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 2:10 PM
I don't use EZ Skin or EZ Dome that much, as I usually make my own skin shaders.
(I like to optimize my shaders for both speed as well as a nice looking preview. I also use a 3.50 Gamma, as I like the darker shadows it provides)
But I use Magnet Mirror, an old Ockham's Bungalow script quite a bit.
(I know how to use the MorphBrush quite well, but sometimes using a magnet simply is the more straightforwad option)
And Ken1171_Designs "Mags Master" seems to be able to recreate that ability (Plus a ton of others)
Also his DUF scripts will probably simplify importing Studio assets for me.
Afrodite-Ohki posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 4:09 PM
Nevertrumper posted at 11:48 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462040
Color space.Alright, let‘ s talk about YOUR render.
First: Well done, without a doubt.
Second: Which is a good and a bad thing at the same time, I doubt, it could have done any better.
If I had seen this render in any other 3d art gallery, without knowing Poser, I would ask what post filter you have used.
Hard to describe.
Open an empty scene in Poser with default settings and look at the empty editor.
It looks like this collar pattern you can see there is still present with every render. Some more, some less.
It gives every Poser render this „brownish“ flatness.
Back in the days of PP2014, I purchased the Octane render plug in to avoid that tint.
So obviously, it is not just a firefly problem, but a superfly problem as well.
Check it out yourself, if possible.
I don’t know, what other softwares you are using, but export your scene to any other app of your choice. Recreate light and camera and render again.
I bet it will be mindblowing.
A while ago, Blender Guru made a video about it, how Cycles back then had such a limited color space it was worse than that of a real-life disposable camera. With that video, he also advertised a free blender plugin that allowed cycles to render in filmic color space - in other words, the range of light captured by professional cinema cameras. Soon after, they added that to base Blender.
I've been begging Poser devs to bring that to Superfly ever since, but thing is: Poser renders in high-dynamic range, and that range is limited by the format you save out your render to. I've published a tutorial on how to grab the HDR raw render, load it in Photoshop and adjust it to similar to filmic.
Poser 13 doesn't require that anymore. The new post-render options have gamma, contrast etc sliders so you can do that color space and color correction inside Poser.
I just didn't want to apply post effects to the render. I wanted it raw for the splash image.
Anything else you want to nitpick in the attempt to save face or are you gonna accept that you were wrong to accuse everything P13 if being "heavily photoshopped" already?
- - - - - -
Feel free to call me Ohki!
Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.
Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 4:14 PM
But I use Magnet Mirror, an old Ockham's Bungalow script quite a bit.
Oh wow - LOADS of useful scripts on that site!
AcePyx posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 4:15 PM
Glorious! Thank you.EzSkin has a version that works perfectly in P12 and well in P13 (runs in P13 just fine, may need manual adjusting ). If you look at the thread here with Snarlygribbly announcing their return, the link is in their sigline to the site with all the free scripts.
ChromeStar posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 10:43 PM
Have a look at Blenders "Human Generator" plugin. It's basically a "How Poser could have been in a perfect world", but right inside Blender with full use of it's modelling capeabilities.(And yeah, this plugin also makes Studio completely obsolete IMO. They will be able to hold on a little longer due to the sheer mass of their content, though)
So, if a newbie / hobbyist 3D artist would ask me what program to choose, I'd say BLENDER, BLENDER, BLENDER! :-p
I'm less persuaded by their website than you are. I see a bunch of tools for using some preexisting content. But, hey, suppose what you said was true? I don't mind, because Poser has taught me how to make Cycles shaders so I am halfway to already knowing Blender.
JoePublic posted Thu, 13 April 2023 at 11:22 PM
"I see a bunch of tools for using some preexisting content."
But isn't that exactly what Poser and Studio are about? Use pre-existing content so casual users don't have to create everything from scratch by themselves?
*
This is the closest native Blender plugin I've seen so far that is directed at hobbyist / casual users.
Yet, you still can harnish all of Blenders modelling and rendering power if you want without having to switch apps. Once they establish a decent content catalog, there is no need anymore for Poser (or Studio).
Already the models look way better than any current native Poser figure and are easily on par with Genesis 9.
The main difference is the "easy to use interface", using sliders just like Poser and Studio.
This is in stark contrast to all the other Blender items that are usually aimed at professionals / very advanced hobbyists.
*
OTOH, AI is already capeable of creating realistic human 3D meshes from a single photograph!
They are untextured, unrigged OBJ files only ATM.
But how long will it take before a fully textured, fully rigged photorealistic human can be generated with just a few mouse-clicks?
*
I love Poser, I really do. But the only market niche left I see for it are longtime Poser users who for various reasons are unwilling to switch apps.
*
Poser is the past. But that's OK with me, as I'm the past, too.
I had lots of fun with it, and I plan on continuing having fun with it as long as I can.
But the real future are Blender and AI.
IMHO.
;-)
AmbientShade posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 12:42 AM
Poser and studio come with a crap-ton of ready-made content, Poser even moreso than studio at over 20 gigs. They've added a bunch more with 13 so it may be closer to 30 by now. All of varying quality and age but most of that can be improved with updated materials.
Human generator is rather pricey and from what I've seen most of the options all look pretty much the same. And if you want to use it in anything commercial, like creating comics (a big thing in poser-verse) it will cost you $128. That's a lot more than the cost of most Poser and studio figures, and you still have to find content or build your own to populate your scenes (and none of them are anatomically accurate - the girlies don't even appear to have nipples).
And all of that is aside from the steep learning curve Blender requires. It's UI is nowhere near as newbie friendly as Posers or even studios. I use blender pretty extensively, I even went to school for 3D animation and even I have issues and frustrations with blender's UI. It is far from artist friendly and requires a lot of getting used to. So I don't put it in a class for total newbies.
Human generator is an alright product for someone who needs to create generic humans to populate power point presentations and similar projects but it's definitely not a replacement for the plethora of uses Poser has.
For that matter you might as well suggest folks to use UE's meta human. It's free, it's been around for a while, produces near life-like humans with an unlimited set of combinations and ethnic variety, yet Poser, iclone and DS are all still selling because, like Blender, UE isn't for the casual hobbyist that just wants to load, pose and render.
And the forums really are not a good way to gauge Poser's appeal. If it wasn't still selling well then they wouldn't be putting out new versions and updates. In the time Bondware has owned it there is now 2 new versions, not including all the refinement they did to 11. That's more than SM did in the same period of time.
AmbientShade posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:03 AM
As for AI art: there are several lawsuits working their way through the court systems right now, with more to follow, regarding copyright infringements as none of the AI generators could produce the "art" they're producing without the use of existing work, most of which is unauthorized. So depending how any of those cases turn out the ai art craze may disappear or change pretty significantly in the near future.
JoePublic posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:43 AM
As I said, unlike other Blender plugins, Human Generator has a simplified UI, very similar to Poser and Studio, so it is targeted right to Poser / Studios former core audience.
*
Myself, I have no interrest in it, as I still have enough fun using Poser.
But I stopped "believing" into Poser's continuing success the moment DAZ issued a figure with Studio only features (V4), but my fears were summarily dismissed.
And while the community was busy playing with V4, actually nurturing their own downfall, none of the past and current owners Of Poser were willing to put any significant resources into developing their own high quality figures.
*
There was "some" continuing improvement, yes, but hadn't I started to develop my own figures, basically doing what the owners of Posers had been paid to do for me, I would have stopped using Poser by the time Poser 7 or 8 was issued.
Sorry, but I find the native Poser figures since Poser 6 COMPLETELY unuseable. Some of them I made "beareable" with a lot of work (I've even managed to "un-ugly" Alyson), but for the most part they aren't worth my time.
Yet this all could have been avoided, as Poser is perfectly capeable to support high quality meshes with it's rigging system.
*
So, unless I see a really professionally made native Poser figure, I continue to just "use" Poser because of, well, yes "inertia".
But I don't "believe", or better said, "trust" in it anymore. Sorry.
JoePublic posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:54 AM
Really, I don't regret upgrading to Poser 13.
If you are Poser users and have the $$$ lying around, download the trial and give it a try.
*
But neither the program itself nor the included content make me "exited" in any way, shape or form.
It's a "point upgrade", as others said.
Hopefully a few more bugs will be squashed.
(I had it crash to desktop while playing in the Material Room. Something I remember Poser 11 would do, too, in the beginning)
But that's really all I'm expecting.
AcePyx posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 5:48 AM
Poser and studio come with a crap-ton of ready-made content
And all of that is aside from the steep learning curve Blender requires. It's UI is nowhere near as newbie friendly as Posers or even studios. I use blender pretty extensively, I even went to school for 3D animation and even I have issues and frustrations with blender's UI. I
This is the story in its totality. I pay for 3D studio Max each year, and I STILL use Poser. There are tens of thousands of users, just like me, who want to get from idea to scene as quickly as possible, without having to go through weeks or months of additional, unrewarding effort. I consider modelling (and worse so, UV mapping, rigging, lighting and developing clothes), to be the equivalent of a pianist spending long boring hours practicing scales - a tedious means to an end, with the real goal being to make music/art.
I get so bored with people constantly raising their nose at Poser/DS and saying ""Just" learn Blender!" I can make a great outdoors scene in Poser right now. To do the same in Blender would entail at least a year; maybe even several, to attain the competence to do so. My art is mediocre at absolute best, but I consider Poser scenes to be a sketchbook of my ideas, not a perfect reproduction of life. Yes, that would be great, and Bondware can DEFINITELY do better, but I want to go from idea to reality quickly, and in the background, I can plug away at learning other software.
And while we're at it, why are all the Blender people wasting time with that program? "Just" learn 3D Studio, and those 3D Studio people - wasters - learn Maya, and why aren't the Maya people writing bespoke 3D programs! I'm being facetious - Blender is a wonderful program that has democratised 3D but you can always use that elitist argument upwards can't you?
AcePyx posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 6:04 AM
But I stopped "believing" into Poser's continuing success the moment DAZ issued a figure with Studio only features (V4), but my fears were summarily dismissed.Good post. The downfall of Poser actually happened sooner. It all came down to arrogance. Poser was on the second iteration of Face Room. At the time, it only supported native figures but they wanted to support DAZ figures. They offered DAZ the opportunity, but they wanted a ridiculous fee to do so. DAZ declined, and that was the cause of a terminal rift between the two companies. DAZ was already uncertain about Poser's future because they saw that the company was being run by morons (Smith Micro), so they had already started working on DAZ Studio as a vehicle for their multi, multi-million dollar yearly figure sales. Unlike Bondware, they had the wisdom to recognise the program for what it was - an engine to drive sales.Sorry, but I find the native Poser figures since Poser 6 COMPLETELY unuseable. Some of them I made "beareable" with a lot of work (I've even managed to "un-ugly" Alyson), but for the most part they aren't worth my time.
So, unless I see a really professionally made native Poser figure, I continue to just "use" Poser because of, well, yes "inertia".But I don't "believe", or better said, "trust" in it anymore. Sorry.
Rhia474 posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 8:08 AM
I am so with you on the marketing, especially since it's so visible on this site that they would have to market against their own biggest asset sakes and it is super obvious they aren't doing that.
Buying Poser was a double edged sword. I am happy with what they ate doing on the technical side but frustrated by the constant bugs, cheering for the dev team but appalled by the utter lack of basic promotion anywhere but on their own site. And even there, why can't someone use a basic algorithm so I don't get 90 percent promo offers for studio assets I never bought? Why is Poser segregated to the very last tab of their top page ribbon like a literal redheaded stepchild? Why isn't QA enforced for asset promo pictures compared to Studio? The list goes on.
AmbientShade posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 10:48 AM
The downfall of Poser actually happened sooner. It all came down to arrogance. Poser was on the second iteration of Face Room. At the time, it only supported native figures but they wanted to support DAZ figures... but they wanted a ridiculous fee to do so.
Smith Micro overvalued inclusion in Faceroom, and while it was perhaps fair to request a reasonable contribution towards their costs with the now defunct Faceroom, the amount they wanted was enough to fund development on the whole program for a year.
Face room existed long before SM acquired curious
labs/e-frontier. Iirc it was licensed from a 3rd party (like most
everything else in Poser), and that's where most of the fees to add
additional figure support came from. Also don't forget that Apollo Maximus had faceroom support, one of the only 3rd party figures to do so, and I highly doubt his creator paid such an exorbitant fee for it, just to later turn around and give the figure away. I'm more inclined to believe Daz declined the faceroom support because it would have (potentially) impacted sales of their morph sets.
Bondware is in the best position to know what Poser needs to move forward, probably more than any of its previous owners. They've been selling content for it for over 20 years so they know what the customers want. I think the biggest issue at this point is budget to make it happen.
I certainly don't trust that Bondware has the business nous and especially not the marketing savvy, to guide Poser, although the tech guys seem to be in a pretty good head space. Sadly the devs are financially constrained in what they can do.
vopehov506 posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 12:05 PM
Guess there is not a very high risk with that Investments Bondware made. Calculating a low support of 1000 + buyers would already be a 2'000'000 $ gain if the average sale is 200$ that already would be a good budget for updates.
Most if not all content provided is either old or sponoring by artists, so at no cost, support like they tell on Posersoftware 7/7 24h is directed to these forums also no cost. As far as I seen there were no additional assets from Poser 12 to 13 they remained the same, materials probably updated by the original owner that sponsored the assets. again very low cost.
Poser is mainly supported at no cost for the owner with the exception of the updates, allot is offered free by community members and users. This lowers the risk highly that Bondware ever could make a loss with Poser. Allot of users in here offer full free support, test the poser for free, make suggestions for free, some in here even spend more time then they would on a 8h job for free. Even publicity is made for free. Allot of sites place a link to renderosity for free to point at the program that is needed, a thing that renderosity never would allow to be dome for free. So Poser probably throws more cash then we ever could imagine as small artists ... all at a amazing low cost. A artist has a good heart and is no businessman so he will never be the one who will drive the Ferrari.
AcePyx posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 12:17 PM
AmbientShade posted at 10:48 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462155
AcePyx posted at 6:04 AM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462139Smith Micro bought Poser in 2008 and released Poser Pro and Poser 8. Faceroom was introduced in 2010 - Poser Pro 2010.Face room existed long before SM acquired curious labs/e-frontier. Iirc it was licensed from a 3rd party (like most everything else in Poser), and that's where most of the fees to add additional figure support came from. Also don't forget that Apollo Maximus had faceroom support, one of the only 3rd party figures to do so, and I highly doubt his creator paid such an exorbitant fee for it, just to later turn around and give the figure away. I'm more inclined to believe Daz declined the faceroom support because it would have (potentially) impacted sales of their morph sets.
Bondware is in the best position to know what Poser needs to move forward, probably more than any of its previous owners. They've been selling content for it for over 20 years so they know what the customers want. I think the biggest issue at this point is budget to make it happen.
I certainly don't trust that Bondware has the business nous and especially not the marketing savvy, to guide Poser, although the tech guys seem to be in a pretty good head space. Sadly the devs are financially constrained in what they can do.
AcePyx posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 12:22 PM
Buying Poser was a double edged sword.
I completely share your ambivalence. I am actually very fond of DAZ 3D, and not so much on Bondware, but I LOVE Poser far more than Studio, which I find almost wilfully inscrutable.
I'm glad/sad that I am not the only one experiencing a multitude of bugs. Plenty of hard crashes, loads of weird program states, etc. I feel that Bondware pushed this software out of the door with indequate testing. If just I alone, can catalogue perhaps a dozen or more program breaking bugs in a week, I can't help but wonder how thoroughly it was beta tested.
AcePyx posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 12:24 PM
Guess there is not a very high risk with that Investments Bondware made.
I didn't think of it like that, but lots of good points.
DCArt posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 12:29 PM
@Acepyx:
>>> Smith Micro bought Poser in 2008 and released Poser Pro and Poser 8. Faceroom was introduced in 2010 - Poser Pro 2010.
Correction here.Ambient Shade is correct. Face room, Hair room, and Cloth Room were introduced to Poser in Poser 5.
ChromeStar posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:03 PM
Most if not all content provided is either old or sponoring by artists, so at no cost, support like they tell on Posersoftware 7/7 24h is directed to these forums also no cost.
There are many reminders on this forum asking people to submit questions to Poser's technical support and not just discuss them in the forums.
Poser is mainly supported at no cost for the owner with the exception of the updates, allot is offered free by community members and users. This lowers the risk highly that Bondware ever could make a loss with Poser. Allot of users in here offer full free support, test the poser for free, make suggestions for free, some in here even spend more time then they would on a 8h job for free.
That's a funny way of saying "Poser has a helpful and supportive community of users." But I guess you can spin anything to make it sound bad.
Rhia474 posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:07 PM
I remember using Face Room and Hair Room in Poser 7 ( and being utterly frustrated by both, hehe), so it definitely wasn't P10, indeed.
JoePublic posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:10 PM
"California Dreaming" (or: The Halcyon Days of Poser)
https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/769814/california-dreaming?page=1
*
I miss that exitement...
(And many of the people, too) :-(
AmbientShade posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:23 PM
As far as I seen there were no additional assets from Poser 12 to 13 they remained the same, materials probably updated by the original owner that sponsored the assets. again very low cost.
There are several prop/scenery assets that come with P13 that didn't come with P12, at least as far as I'm aware. Pretty sure I've downloaded all of P12's content and I don't recall seeing any of these sets. They're mostly from the RPublishing catalog from what I can tell. I haven't downloaded it all but I did a brief survey of what I have downloaded and found the sets in the store. Just 4 or 5 of them if bought from the store would cost more than an upgrade. That doesn't count the additional content for LF/LH that didn't come with 12.
There is also a bunch of new cycles materials that weren't included in 12.
DCArt posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 1:53 PM
JoePublic posted at 1:10 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462169
Fun find!"California Dreaming" (or: The Halcyon Days of Poser)
https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/769814/california-dreaming?page=1
*
I miss that exitement...
(And many of the people, too) :-(
And yeah, I miss it too 8-(
vopehov506 posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 2:31 PM
ChromeStar posted at 1:03 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462166
vopehov506 posted at 12:05 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462159Actually not meant to be something to sound bad, rather positive, as without all this free support, poser could not stand and we would not have these discussions. So sure a positive aspect all this sponsoring.Most if not all content provided is either old or sponoring by artists, so at no cost, support like they tell on Posersoftware 7/7 24h is directed to these forums also no cost.
There are many reminders on this forum asking people to submit questions to Poser's technical support and not just discuss them in the forums.
Poser is mainly supported at no cost for the owner with the exception of the updates, allot is offered free by community members and users. This lowers the risk highly that Bondware ever could make a loss with Poser. Allot of users in here offer full free support, test the poser for free, make suggestions for free, some in here even spend more time then they would on a 8h job for free.
That's a funny way of saying "Poser has a helpful and supportive community of users." But I guess you can spin anything to make it sound bad.
" Our largest Platform for selling electronics had a fantastic idea after catching over a million negative comments about the products they were selling, at trust pilot they fell right to the ground, They were beating all the records of negative comments and unhappy customers ! So what did they do to use all this support from clients that sure were not positive ? They simply published the really bad comments on tv making clips out of the situations the customers had with the experiences of the purchased products. This system sure did not cause customers running away and stop buying there stuff NOOO exactly the opposite, People even more started to buy there stuff and so they grew to be the largest in the country . All this with the unhappy comments of there customers about crappy stuff they were selling making short movie clips for tv on how unhappy Customers reactions were. "
So see there is always an advantage on any situation, no matter if positive or negative, but what sells most is for sure real Drama ! The how cute how nice or beautiful is skipped as there is nothing that needs to be changed. You just say How Boring, so action sure sells better then a fat ass on a chair.
AcePyx posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 2:54 PM
@Acepyx:
Correction here.
Ambient Shade is correct. Face room, Hair room, and Cloth Room were introduced to Poser in Poser 5.
I stand corrected. I was going by the wikipedia entry.
DCArt posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 5:30 PM
No problem, AcePyx, I wondered where you got that from. Yeah Wikipedia appears to be incorrect there.
DCArt posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 5:52 PM
dlfurman posted Fri, 14 April 2023 at 9:08 PM
blackbonner posted at 2:43 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461667
Re: the above quoted, BOLDED textJust as a reminder, AcePyx is the only one on YouTube who's promotion Poser. He does something Bondware should do in the first place. At least to my knowledge he does it in his spare time and for free. He's putting out content on a regular basis. That's more anyone else here does and I think he deserves a bit more respect for what he does for the Poser community.
Sure, he has his own view on things and I don't agree with everything he says but in general he's trying to make his points by having good and reasonable arguments. He's definitely not a cheerleader but that's why I think his content is valuable. I would love to see more people like him creating tutorials and software reviews especially for Poser on YouTube and similar platforms.
Hmm. There a Renderosity YouTube channel.
As of me typing this the last content dropped was 3 hours ago.
Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis?
"Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than that of what others are saying, and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak." - Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Intel Core i7 920, 24GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1050 4GB video, 6TB HDD
space
Poser 12: Inches (Poser(PC) user since 1 and the floppies/manual to prove it!)
vopehov506 posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 3:49 AM
Bondware could actually publish " a sort of counter " on how many copies are sold of Poser, usually it is a pretty profitable system and propaganda for a product. This could also attract new creators, naturally depending on the amount of sold copies. For creators it sure is more motivating to see 1000, 10'000, 100'000, 1'000'000 sold letting them estimate if it is worth supporting the app. Ok if it is just 100 then they might not even bother to make new assets.
From my side I noticed almost a 95% drop down of poser support since the beginning of 2023 might be even more, this brings it to a point to think that already spending time to publish a Item even if it was made is not profitable in any way. Sure still creating but then all the work to publish, packing, making good promos ending up not to be very motivating if the creations just lays there as a Dust-catcher in the net.
It all might be due the actual financial situation that happen globally, but when I see how much interest there is for DS then I rather doubt that this would be the main reason. This brings a creator to a point changing the application as with the knowledge for 3D is normally good enough for other programs, considering that these other Programs need to be used to create poser assets, poser is mainly just the presentation tool for the finished Item.
hornet3d posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 5:52 AM
The trouble with quoting facts and figures about a software program is that, in a lot of cases, no source is given for that information. Information drawn from forums is rarely valid as most users do not visit forums and included in those are many that remain in lurk mode. Other sources may have an agenda of their own to promote so working out how accurate information may be is difficult if not impossible. Comparisons are often invalid because they are compering apples with pears in many cases. Information from 'those in the know' is highly suspect as most people who are really in the know would not be allowed to share the information (unless you are a 21 year old working to intelligence apparently).
Then there are those how can see into the future, such as all those that have seen the death of Poser for every one of the 22 years I have been using it. Like the hypochondriac who had 'Told you I was ill' written on their grave stone, the soothsayers will be right at some point.
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.
DCArt posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 6:50 AM
@hornet3d says:
>>The trouble with quoting facts and figures about a software program is that, in a lot of cases, no source is given for that information. Information drawn from forums is rarely valid as most users do not visit forums and included in those are many that remain in lurk mode.
This is true. And over time, all of the speculation posted in the forums becomes the basis for "alternative facts" that perpetuate on and on and on.
blackbonner posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 9:28 AM Online Now!
@
dlfurman, you must be joking, right?
Renderosity's YouTube Channel is promoting... Renderosity.
I was talking about a guy who does Tutorials, Content and Software reviews and critisism, almost entirely decicated to Poser.
Poser is a sidekick on Rendos YouTube Channel more or less.
If you want to misrepresent my posings and intentions, be my guest.
But don't expect me to let something like this slide.
Your argument is paper thin.
blackbonner posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 9:36 AM Online Now!
@Nevertrumper, I would like to know what collar pattern (I asume you meant Color) you talked about.
This Image is rendered in P13 and was not touched by PHotoshop, Gimp or even color corrected in PostFX.
It would be nice to know if you can point out the color pattern you mentioned above.
I'm always willing to learn something, so please go ahead...
AmbientShade posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 10:08 AM
Sorry, but I find the native Poser figures since Poser 6 COMPLETELY unuseable. Some of them I made "beareable" with a lot of work (I've even managed to "un-ugly" Alyson), but for the most part they aren't worth my time.
Yet this all could have been avoided, as Poser is perfectly capeable to support high quality meshes with it's rigging system.
Most any figure Poser comes with can be customized to whatever extent
you want to take it, often without a whole lot of effort. People used to do that all the time but creativity seems to have left the building and it's become more fun to criticize every aspect of the program and its content instead of being artists and making it your own, which is what the primary purpose of any figure actually is.
I turned Roxie into something I preferred, mostly just using body scales to adjust proportions and a bit of zbrushing on her face. It took all of a couple hours back in PP2014. I've adjusted things off and on since then, and the other day ran across her again so decided to experiment with converting her default skin to cycles. She borrowed Miki2's hair and P13's copy morphs tool snapped her bathing suit right to her new shape once I converted it to an FBM - which has just been a cluster of scales and zbrush up until that point - and applied one of Alyson's poses. Sure, her shoulders and fingers could still use some work and I'm not crazy about her face but it's 99% a test project anyway so imagine what someone who actually knew what they were doing could produce if they bothered to try.
JoePublic posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 11:29 AM
This is a nice render of Roxy, and I actually like her face very much. Her proportions also seem pretty realistic.
*
But, as for creativity, well...
This is Posette (NEAena) :
This is Posette, too:
This is the P4 Dork (AprilYSH remap):
This is V3:
More V3:
M3 vs David:
My most recent sculpts based on Don & Judy are in my gallery
JoePublic posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 11:43 AM
Then there are my weightmapped V3, David, M4 14K and V4 14K.
And pretty much hundreds of other custom sculpts and hybrids I made but have never shown.
*
So, I think after 23yrs of mostly modifying, improving Poser figures, I can tell a "good" Poser figure from a "bad" one with some authority. ;-)
*
The point is, I shouldn't have NEEDED to do anything of this.
Sure, back in the Poser 4,5,6 days, we simply didn't have the technology to make a figure bend in a realistic manner. (Allthough I remember early attempts adding JCM's to Posette even back then)
But realistic sculpting, realistic expressions, a nice looking default face and proper mesh topology are not hard to implement into a figure from the get go with a little effort.
Also rigging these days is really not that hard, anymore.
*
And pretty much ALL of the current native Poser figures are severly lacking in several of these aspects.
And yes, DAZ figures have their shortcomings, too.
Genesis 3/8/9 have wonderful face sculpts and expressions, but the mesh topology is sorely lacking.
I wouldn't touch Genesis 9 with a 10 foot pole. She might be fine to be sculpted into monsters in ZBrush, but for the hobbyist user, V3 or V4 are a way easier to handle option.
So, yes, Genesis 9 is COMPLETELY UNUSEABLE to me, too.
(But I'd kill for a native Poser figure with V9's face sculpt and expressions) ;-)
vopehov506 posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 1:55 PM
These shots, Renders, Are Shocking! Does not fit to the 2023 technology at all
There seems to be allot to be fixed to get things right
Hope that Poser 13 is not to be blamed for these qualities and if then lets hope that Poser 14 will be better, but my guess is that poser artists have allot to catch up. Remembering times of great renders long before Poser 13
vopehov506 posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 2:08 PM
A " Déjà-vu " of Pablo Picasso ..... with some luck they might be successful one day :)
Rhia474 posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 2:53 PM
DCArt posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 3:17 PM
shvrdavid posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 3:21 PM
This is LaFemme............... Nuff said........
Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store -> <-Freebies->
DCArt posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 3:25 PM
@JoePublic
>>> And pretty much ALL of the current native Poser figures are severly lacking in several of these aspects.
DCArt posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 3:25 PM
This is LaFemme............... Nuff said........
VERY nice face, Love it!
blackbonner posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 3:30 PM Online Now!
@Rhia474, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what he's talking about. It seems to be a theme, everytime one of this "critic's" appears and they get pressed to back up their claims with evidence, you get nothing. We posting our work, exposing ourselves and they have nothing better to do than take a dump on our work. Thanks for nothing.
JoePublic posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 4:01 PM
shvrdavid posted at 3:21 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462274
This is LaFemme............... Nuff said........
Yes, that is a great render and a great face sculpt.
But the face is not the problem I have with LaFemme.
(Although I find L'Hommes default face a lot more realistic)
*
It's her rigging that irks me. Tons and tons of unnecessary JCM's and a very complicated control matrix in her cr2. And a severe lack of muscle topology.
How do you do a character like this by using LaFemme without a ton of subdivision?
That's the original Stephanie AKA "The Mystery Figure", who was based on the Michael 1 mesh.
She's just 34636 polygons, because all that muscle detail is built right into the mesh.
THAT's what I call a "good" Poser figure.
Of course you don't NEED to use all that detail if you don't want to.
One flick of a dial, and she's just as "smooth" and feminine as all the other meshes.
MazinkaiserDX posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 4:13 PM
First, I'd like to say I've never used Poser and I've been using Daz for 8 years, and yeah, making "adult" content. I say this so those who think that makes my opinions here moot can just ignore the rest of my somewhat lengthy post.
Basically, I haven't used it but since Bondware got Poser I have been following it. Personally, I'd love for Poser to compete at Daz level, I think that competition would make both programs better and I wouldn't mind also owning Poser if it did. Sadly, it hasn't imho, at least for my needs.
The issue isn't the app itself, Superfly might not look as good as Iray (imho and at the moment; being based on Cycles and seeing what Blender can do, it could get much better in the future) but it still allows to make decent physically based renders while not being limited to using Nvidia cards. The issue is the content. Or lack of it. They claim you get so much content for the price but the truth is much of it is reeeally old stuff that is unusable (at least if you want to make realistic renders with decent quality). You can probably salvage some of it but it's going to take work, and that means time. As they say, time is money, so you could just buy a better one. AcePyx mentions on his video that Daz content is expensive, having to spend around 100$ to get one figure with hair and fully clothed. This isn't true. Same as this site or other sites selling stuff like online courses, you never buy the stuff at the base price. There are always huge sales and things like the Prime Membership or Daz+. Just as a reference, Daz released Julia 9 this week and I was able to get her "gamer bundle" which includes the figure, 2 clothes, 1 hair, make up, props and an environment for something like 15$.
I know some people get annoyed by the unimesh talk but that's just the way it is. I don't know the specifics of what it would break but afaik it's old stuff. I personally think Poser needs to start thinking more on the future than on the old stuff. Sure, Daz has managed to still let people use old content but they don't really support it anymore. If Bondware doesn't have the money to invest in a figure that can actually compete with the Genesis or the CC4 base figure, then I'd honestly just try to make the Genesis figure their main figure too. I doubt Daz would have an issue with it considering how they are making and sponsoring all sorts of ways to send their content to other apps, and I'd hope there isn't anyone still holding on old grudges from both sides. It'd mean Poser would get instantly a ton of more content, Bondware doesn't have to find a way to make artists create stuff for their figure instead of Genesis (which they won't because that's where the money is at) and Daz would just get more people buying their content.
Even Reallusion with their awesome figure and way more expensive apps put a lot of effort on making them usable with all sorts of external content. And that's really it, imho. Poser seems to want to compete keeping itself in a bubble of outdated content while not having the money needed to actually do that. At the very least I really doubt going all in with the L'Femme/L'Homme figures is the way to go.
Anyway, again, this is me hoping for Poser to get better, not trashing it. I sincerely congratulate Bondware on keeping Poser alive and I imagine they have had to make difficult choices and surely will have to make more in the future. I really hope they can get Poser to give Daz its run for their money one way or another so they also get off their asses and make better improvements (I mean, we have been waiting for Daz 5... for quite a while now xD)
shvrdavid posted Sat, 15 April 2023 at 6:26 PM
Personally I don't care what the topology and rigging of a figure is like, because all of them have downfalls. When I did production figures, every scene used a different figure for a reason. And that reason is that one size all, doesn't exist. Pick the mesh you need for the scene, and stop thinking that there is a figure somewhere that can do everything, because there is no such thing....How do you do a character like this by using LaFemme without a ton of subdivision?
Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store -> <-Freebies->
parkdalegardener posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 5:18 AM
I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread. This thread does make for good entertainment each morning while I drink my morning coffee; but has no direct impact on my upgrading from P12 or switching to DAZ. I've watched these amusing threads for years but I still use Poser. Silly me.First, I'd like to say I've never used Poser and I've been using Daz for 8 years, and yeah, making "adult" content. I say this so those who think that makes my opinions here moot can just ignore the rest of my somewhat lengthy post.
hornet3d posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 6:08 AM
That is also true, I remember when I moved from using V4 to Dawn SE there were any number of threads stating the Dawn and Dawn SE did not work in Poser, clearly all posted by people who had not tried. That went on for years although I have not seen such a thread in the last couple of years, I guess they are all keeping their powder dry to start all over again when Dawn 2 is released.@hornet3d says:
>>The trouble with quoting facts and figures about a software program is that, in a lot of cases, no source is given for that information. Information drawn from forums is rarely valid as most users do not visit forums and included in those are many that remain in lurk mode.
This is true. And over time, all of the speculation posted in the forums becomes the basis for "alternative facts" that perpetuate on and on and on.
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.
MazinkaiserDX posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 10:35 AM
I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread. This thread does make for good entertainment each morning while I drink my morning coffee; but has no direct impact on my upgrading from P12 or switching to DAZ. I've watched these amusing threads for years but I still use Poser. Silly me.
No idea about the kind of work that you do with Poser but if you are happy enough with it and the current state of Poser, great for you. Can't speak for others here but at least my goal wasn't trying to stop you from upgrading to P13 or switching to Daz, if that's the impression you got then I feel you didn't get the point. As far as I can see, myself included even though I haven't used Poser yet, the whole point is wanting Poser to be better. That you are content with its current state doesn't change the objective facts that Poser is nowhere near as popular as the other similar apps out there. If you think that's fine because it works for you, you are probably wrong. Sure, Bondware released P12 and P13 but for how long can they continue supporting Poser in its current state or if it keeps getting worse? And it's a fact you can see just by the amount of content made for it, specially figure-wise because people making things like props and environments can simply "double-dip" making it for Daz and Poser. The amount and how much it actually sells what actually gets made.
And yes, not having used Poser I definitely can't speak about the upgrades the app itself needs or doesn't, but it really doesn't matter if it doesn't have the content to back it up anyway, which is why I think they need to do something about that first. I haven't used Poser but I do use Renderosity quite a bit so I believe I can talk about the vast difference there is in content made for Daz vs Poser.
AcePyx posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 12:21 PM
I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread.
I respectfully disagree. If Bondware wants to Poser to grow, MazinKaiser is EXACTLY the kind of user they need to appeal to (as they made it clear with 13 that they are not really doing much to satisfy the hardcore user. Mazin articulated his (gonna assume a male) wishes for the program, from the perspective of someone using a rival program. He recognised that vibrant competition is good for both programs. Any company hoping to attract new customers, who ignores those potential customers when they articulate their desires, is missing a great opportunity for intel about the direction the future program should go.
Rhia474 posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 12:25 PM
I agree what was said about the content and quality thereof, but the issue goes deeper there, intothe question of 'why', and 'how easy it is to create content ' on which am not qualified to speak, being simply an end user.
JoePublic posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 5:24 PM
I don't see a reason why a Poser figure should "NOT" have a well designed mesh topology, so it could be morphed into a variety of different ages, genders and body types?
This is V3, again:
(Actually it is V3RR, hence the blockiness of the head. But the render was made long before Poser featured subdivision)
*
This is the original THE GIRL:
Why can't a Poser figure be The Beauty AND The Beast?
"It's better to have and not need, than to need and not have!"
JoePublic posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 5:38 PM
IMO, if they REALLY want to compete with more modern apps like Blender or whatever, they'd probably have to re-invent Poser from the ground up.
That means no legacy content anymore whatsoever. No Firefly, no spherical falloff zones, no eliptical falloff zones, not even legacy weightmapping.
That of course would mean to me that 23yrs of sculpting and rigging work as well as countless hours developing Firefly materials and lightsets would all go down the drain.
IF (A big IF!) they would supply 100% perfect (Or at least near perfect) conversion tools, perhaps I might do that switch.
But I'm 58yrs now. I can't invest another 23 years to redo everything again from scratch.
I'll probably then just stay with any version of Poser that still works with my content and let you do that journey without me.
vopehov506 posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 6:25 PM
Rhia474 posted at 12:25 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462349
Creating content is no big deal now day's, it goes fast, it is easy, poser supports Simple skinning, means that a fully Articulated figure can be generated in less then a week. To understand what simple skinning means, what you so call unimesh in new terms is a fast and simple way of rigging a figure up to almost perfection. This can be done with a type of universal bone structure " If you Have it " this system also has been used in Nexus mod or in game models. Actually not far off a game model. Poser users just look way to far even if it is right in front of there nose. This is caused due the lack of knowledge. Not meaning to offend anyone, but I mentioned already quiet a few times that all is already there for a good and fast creations.I agree what was said about the content and quality thereof, but the issue goes deeper there, intothe question of 'why', and 'how easy it is to create content ' on which am not qualified to speak, being simply an end user.
The why, this is not happening, well it is because allot of users in these forums like you say are just end users, most if not all have no Idea about getting a High end model done, especially when it comes to rigging. Most are limited to the old way it was made, never even reached the full level of Weight Mapping.
This naturally caused large conflicts with users that were trying to help, users that had the knowledge, the real knowledge. Due a lack of attention this forum allot of times misinterpreted there purpose trying to help, so for most they stopped to bother, allot of these even got into great conflicts with these forum members that rather of real know how, had a attention disorder. This caused that allot of valuable members and creators gotten banned from renderosity, or they just left !
Bringing us to the point, that it is going to be really hard getting new creators, creators that have the knowledge to bring up new ideas and Improvements for model creations. Bringing back old creators? No Way , they are pissed, and they will rather take there knowledge and improvements into there grave then to share it here again.
Once Renderosity was a great community of creators and artists sharing there Ideas on model creations in Forums but exactly on this point it failed, Renderosity just got rid of the wrong users, they just made the wrong decisions in there forums.
It is to understand as Creators artists can be quiet a little impulsive at times, this is a known fact amongst Art especially if they have some know how ... but so many rules and Laws on a site blocked this part that is making an Artist what he is so that these just end up with a red flag on there accounts getting hunted so that they never could come back.
I do not know if meanwhile something has changed, I do not know if it is to late, what I know is, sharing great ideas to a community that acted this way for several years now is going to be hard as trust needs to be earned back, so that these would share there know how without fear getting ripped of. They might forgive but will never forget.
AmbientShade posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 7:02 PM
Simple bone single skin is not optimal for a Poser figure. It basically just converts the rig to be exported to other apps. You get one weight map for each body part and you're essentially back to the rigging used in Poser 1, just with a weight map instead of a falloff zone. That means you're using JCMs for each and every joint rotation unless you like that bent straw look on shoulders and elbows.
This isn't a bad option for mechanical type figures that don't have fleshy stretchy bits, but otherwise, it's a big nope.
I've experimented with numerous 3rd party figures that tried to reinvent the wheel when it comes to rigging. Some were much more interesting than others but ultimately all of them failed because most users weren't interested or found them too complicated to work with.
ssgbryan posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 7:18 PM
Nevertrumper posted at 10:51 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462029
Cost isn't the hill you want to die on, Nevertrumper.(BTW: DAZ Studio is free and it includes a render engine, that costs about 300$, if you‘d buy it separately.
Poser costs 250$ and it includes a ripp off of a render engine that comes free with Blender.)
Am I really the only one here, who thinks, that Poser is milking his loyalists in an dishonest way?
To reach rough feature parity, you will drop around $600 dollars in 3rd party scripts.
That number wasn't picked out of a hat btw, that is what I spent trying (unsuccessfully) trying to make DS my daily driver.
There are a number of things that are simply not possible with DS - like multi-GPU render support out of the box.
Then there are the initial design compromises that crippled DS from the very start.......
MazinkaiserDX posted Sun, 16 April 2023 at 8:31 PM
Rhia474 posted at 12:25 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462349
I agree what was said about the content and quality thereof, but the issue goes deeper there, intothe question of 'why', and 'how easy it is to create content ' on which am not qualified to speak, being simply an end user.
Creating content has never been easier, but creating good quality content is a different thing, not only creating the content itself but the whole time involved in getting good enough to do it. It is also a very competitive market. So artists wanting to make a living out of it have to make the most of each piece created which means going where the money is, and the money is where the most popular stuff is. And what's popular? Genesis stuff, and even more specifically, sexy female stuff. It is a common complain around the Daz forums how there is so much more good content for the female figures than for the males.
JoePublic posted at 5:38 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462390
I don't think it's expected of Poser to compete with Blender, it is a different beast. It's more about competing with Daz or CC4/IClone. In that regard, I don't think Poser has to eliminate things like Firefly or being able to use old figures. Daz has managed to keep 3delight (their render engine before Iray) and V4 in there, they simply don't update them anymore and artists rarely make anything for them, if ever. I could be wrong, I don't know the inner workings or the differences between both apps, but that's just how it seems to me.IMO, if they REALLY want to compete with more modern apps like Blender or whatever, they'd probably have to re-invent Poser from the ground up.
That means no legacy content anymore whatsoever. No Firefly, no spherical falloff zones, no eliptical falloff zones, not even legacy weightmapping.
That of course would mean to me that 23yrs of sculpting and rigging work as well as countless hours developing Firefly materials and lightsets would all go down the drain.
IF (A big IF!) they would supply 100% perfect (Or at least near perfect) conversion tools, perhaps I might do that switch.
But I'm 58yrs now. I can't invest another 23 years to redo everything again from scratch.
I'll probably then just stay with any version of Poser that still works with my content and let you do that journey without me.
ssgbryan posted at 7:18 PM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462401
I don't know what kind of scripts you are talking about and what kind of features you need to make DS your daily driver, but I just wanted to point out that DS has had support for multi-GPU render for a while now, out of the box. I used to render with a RTX 2060 Super and a GTX 1070, then I had a dual 3060 setup for a while before getting a 3090. Unless you mean that the VRAM of the cards don't get added up. And still, afaik you can do that if you use cards compatible with NVLink.Nevertrumper posted at 10:51 AM Thu, 13 April 2023 - #4462029
Cost isn't the hill you want to die on, Nevertrumper.(BTW: DAZ Studio is free and it includes a render engine, that costs about 300$, if you‘d buy it separately.
Poser costs 250$ and it includes a ripp off of a render engine that comes free with Blender.)
Am I really the only one here, who thinks, that Poser is milking his loyalists in an dishonest way?
To reach rough feature parity, you will drop around $600 dollars in 3rd party scripts.
That number wasn't picked out of a hat btw, that is what I spent trying (unsuccessfully) trying to make DS my daily driver.
There are a number of things that are simply not possible with DS - like multi-GPU render support out of the box.
Then there are the initial design compromises that crippled DS from the very start.......
Nevertrumper posted Tue, 18 April 2023 at 4:45 AM
Quote:@Nevertrumper, I would like to know what collar pattern (I asume you meant Color) you talked about.
This Image is rendered in P13 and was not touched by PHotoshop, Gimp or even color corrected in PostFX.
It would be nice to know if you can point out the color pattern you mentioned above.I'm always willing to learn something, so please go ahead...
Nevertrumper posted Tue, 18 April 2023 at 7:41 AM
There seems to be no way around a proper JCM set and custom expression sets for every character. Although G8 is my preferred figure to work with, the expressions are still horrible.Then there are my weightmapped V3, David, M4 14K and V4 14K.
And pretty much hundreds of other custom sculpts and hybrids I made but have never shown.
*
So, I think after 23yrs of mostly modifying, improving Poser figures, I can tell a "good" Poser figure from a "bad" one with some authority. ;-)
*
The point is, I shouldn't have NEEDED to do anything of this.
Sure, back in the Poser 4,5,6 days, we simply didn't have the technology to make a figure bend in a realistic manner. (Allthough I remember early attempts adding JCM's to Posette even back then)
But realistic sculpting, realistic expressions, a nice looking default face and proper mesh topology are not hard to implement into a figure from the get go with a little effort.
Also rigging these days is really not that hard, anymore.
*
And pretty much ALL of the current native Poser figures are severly lacking in several of these aspects.
And yes, DAZ figures have their shortcomings, too.
Genesis 3/8/9 have wonderful face sculpts and expressions, but the mesh topology is sorely lacking.
I wouldn't touch Genesis 9 with a 10 foot pole. She might be fine to be sculpted into monsters in ZBrush, but for the hobbyist user, V3 or V4 are a way easier to handle option.
So, yes, Genesis 9 is COMPLETELY UNUSEABLE to me, too.
(But I'd kill for a native Poser figure with V9's face sculpt and expressions) ;-)
JohnDoe641 posted Thu, 20 April 2023 at 3:33 PM
parkdalegardener posted at 5:18 AM Sun, 16 April 2023 - #4462326
MazinkaiserDX posted at 4:13 PM Sat, 15 April 2023 - #4462285The point of his post isn't to stop you from upgrading, he actually wants Poser to improve because competition really is what Studio needs right now. Yes I'm using Studio exclusively but before I switched over I was a dedicated Poser user having used Poser 4 - 11, I was active on this forum and both RDNA and the SM forums before they shut down, I also left the Poser ecosystem with thousands of dollars worth of content collected from 20+ years. You can take a look at my gallery here, it's not that great and I hate everything I render but I do have some stuff up dating back to 2011.I read it; but will happily ignore everything else you have to say. You have never used the software and thus your post on the function of Poser, and how to use and improve it; are completely useless similar to many of the other posts in this thread. This thread does make for good entertainment each morning while I drink my morning coffee; but has no direct impact on my upgrading from P12 or switching to DAZ. I've watched these amusing threads for years but I still use Poser. Silly me.First, I'd like to say I've never used Poser and I've been using Daz for 8 years, and yeah, making "adult" content. I say this so those who think that makes my opinions here moot can just ignore the rest of my somewhat lengthy post.
Having said that, I disagree 100% on what he said about Poser and Genesis. The solution isn't making Genesis the main Poser figure, that would never work and speaking as a former Poser user I wouldn't want that to happen anyway. I don't know what the solution is but I can tell you what my problem were and what pushed me to make the leap to Studio.
My biggest problem was content, not old content but new content for the more recent Poser figures. What really killed it for me was when Rendo took over publishing Poser from SM I thought that there'd be in influx of content for LF but there wasn't and I saw so much stuff being advertised for G3/G8 that it was overwhelming most of the time. I had to scroll ALL THE WAY down the product list to find anything for Poser native figures that aren't v4 and if I was having such a hard time getting to Poser content as a daily Poser user, I can't imagine how very casual users had the patients to find a single thing. Not only was the content hard to find the promos for the items usually weren't very good so if I did find something I might be interested in I usually was turned off to it by image three.
There's also the Poser GUI, I never cared for the big goofy playschool buttons style that followed Poser since the beginning but it's what we had and I got used to it. Later on I bought all the scripts and tools I could to replace as many elements as possible, like the Netherworks Scene Toy Pro and Cam Panel Plus that would start up when the program did so I'd never see certain Poser panels again. When I made the switch over the more modern interface of Studio was such a nice change, a bit confusing at first but I quickly figured it all out and the times I went back to Poser to do something the more I regretted opening up the program.
I also am not a big fan of LF, BH did an amazing job with her but she just isn't what I was looking for in a figure, I also think the bends are bad with wonky shoulders and at the time it was very hard to un-LaFemme LaFemme. Now, going back to my point on the heavily advertised G3/G8, they were everywhere on this site, heck G8.1 still is sitting at the top banner right now on my screen with three different products... but the promo characters looked so good and realistic, it's what I wanted to achieve and if Rendo was going to spam me with G8 products I might as well try them out. So I did and with my very first render I was more impressed with g8 than any figure I had ever rendered in Poser and that was that.
I've browsed the entire P13 gallery thread, jura made some nice architectural renders and some others posted some decent shader examples but I didn't see anything that would make me want to come back to Poser, once the figures are in the renders it all falls off very quickly for me. The version of Cycles that's in P13 should absolutely be able to rival iray in Studio, the problem is that with so many people using older content that's not designed for Cycles a render done with content from 2008 is still going to look like content from 2008 now matter how new the render engine is. If Bondware is hoping for a flow of new users it's certainly not going to get them by having renders that look like they were outdated ten years ago.
I don't hate Poser and I'm not bashing it, I'm just saying some of the reasons why I eventually left and made the switch to Studio. I'd love to come back because this was my home for a very long time and I miss seeing a lot of familiar names here, but I need a reason to start using Poser again and so far I haven't found it.
Nevertrumper posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 1:30 AM
@ JohnDoe641 :
You've nailed it.
It is not about bashing Poser. It is the anger about Poser falling behind and refusing to do anything about it.
Once Poser has been nr. 1 in this segment, now it is far behind DAZ and Reallusion.
Part of the problem is also, that most Poser users are acting like cult members.
Just by praising Poser, the software will never get better. There has to be strong demands for improvements.
hornet3d posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 2:30 AM
Nevertrumper posted at 1:30 AM Fri, 21 April 2023 - #4462924
There is certainly a lot of truth in that but, demands need to be worded in a way to show that people making those demands are actually doing it to try and improve Poser. Acting like cult members ? Maybe but don't forget Poser users have, to my knowledge, been told for over twenty years that the program they use is about to die mostly from people that never use it. True there has been constructive criticism over the years but that has been overwhelmed by those with a scarcely hidden agenda to move everyone on to DS. In years past there have been massive flame wars on the subject resulting sadly with many knowledgeable and helpful users, and vendors, not moving to DS but leaving the computer art community for pastures new. Happily such flame wars are a thing of the past but even today there are people knocking Poser, Poser 13 and Superfly with information that is presented as facts that are clearly nothing of the sort. This results in Poser users just ignoring such posts and, sadly, some good nature discussion on the future of Poser in the process.@ JohnDoe641 :
You've nailed it.
It is not about bashing Poser. It is the anger about Poser falling behind and refusing to do anything about it.
Once Poser has been nr. 1 in this segment, now it is far behind DAZ and Reallusion.
Part of the problem is also, that most Poser users are acting like cult members.
Just by praising Poser, the software will never get better. There has to be strong demands for improvements.
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.
blackbonner posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 2:57 AM Online Now!
@Nevertrumper
I asked you a specific question about this color pattern you can spot in "all" Poser images.
I did not asked for artistic advice and the topic of my post was also not related to anything surrounding the LaFemme Figure.
The picture I created for this post was made with the purpose to show you that Poser does have the capabillty to produce realistic images without an unavoidable color tint.
I did not used the rule of thirds, I also did not mess with the camera settings to set up a perfect portrait or put any affort into the material shaders.
My single goal was to use everthing out of the box exept for the lighting situation to create an decent looking render.
But I did a second render in Daz Studio with similar settings regarding the lighting, which was composed of an HDRI and a single point light in Poser 13.
I used a Genesis 8 female without morphs, the default skin, a short hair prop also shiped with Daz Studio. I chosed a similar pose and put her in the bra which also came with the Program.
In order to take the bluish color, you noticed in my Poser render, into account, I went to the Enviroment tab and gave the enviroment tint a slightly blue touch.
I think we can all agree to the fact that Daz Studio uses HDR Images for the Dome, so I left everything as it was by default.
Here is the result.I like to ask you which lighting and color scheme do you prefer.
Remember, I'm not talking about the figure, skin shader or the lack of foldings in a clothing item, just the colors of the picture.
In lack of a better english word, I would call it atmospheric mood.
Anyways, have all a great weekend and happy rendering, regardles which program you prefer.
Nevertrumper posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 7:02 AM
Your first render was not realistic at all.
This second DS render looks so much better in pretty much everything.
Let's see, if you can recreate that quality in Poser.
blackbonner posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 9:35 AM Online Now!
@Nevertrumper, why should I recreate such an inferior render result? I could probably post a photograph of a female in open sunlight and you will complain that it isn't realistic. I honestly doubt you know the difference between real and realistic.
If you look at my Poser Render, you will clearly see that the light behaves realistic. It bounces of the fabric of the swimsuit and skin of the figure and creates some indirect light and edge lighting as well. This is done with one light and a light emitting SkyDome, just as it was set up on DS
Go and search for this lighting in my Daz Studio render. It's not there! I have work with DS, C4D, Blender, Poser, 3DSMax and every Renderengine they had to offer, including VRay and I'm doing it for two decades now.
Nevertrumper posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 11:08 AM
Well, fine then. What ever you are happy with.@Nevertrumper, why should I recreate such an inferior render result? I could probably post a photograph of a female in open sunlight and you will complain that it isn't realistic. I honestly doubt you know the difference between real and realistic.
If you look at my Poser Render, you will clearly see that the light behaves realistic. It bounces of the fabric of the swimsuit and skin of the figure and creates some indirect light and edge lighting as well. This is done with one light and a light emitting SkyDome, just as it was set up on DS
Go and search for this lighting in my Daz Studio render. It's not there! I have work with DS, C4D, Blender, Poser, 3DSMax and every Renderengine they had to offer, including VRay and I'm doing it for two decades now.
blackbonner posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 12:48 PM Online Now!
You should have stopped after the first sentence and then following your own advice.
Everything after that is your own opinion. You are unbelievable arrogant.
RedPhantom posted Fri, 21 April 2023 at 2:22 PM Site Admin
since this thread is no longer a productive discussion but has devolved into name calling, it's being locked.
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