I've read some hints that it is coming soon.  Any word ... on this?  Poser fanatics want to know!!

https://www.posersoftware.com/article/659/announcing-poser-132-release Says they’re going to start on 14 in 2024. Not sure how long it takes to do. The article also says more information should be coming soon 

Ah, That's where I read that!!  Coming months.  Gives a little insight. :)

We are loving creating in Poser 13.2 
More details on Poser 14 were released in this weeks newsletter https://www.posersoftware.com/article/689/poser-13-savings-poser-14-development-update

I just saw that post. Sounds promising.

The dev team has identified the following focus areas for Poser 14:

 

• Replacing venerable Cg shaders with GLSL shaders for Poser Preview
• Adding Subscription Option in Addition to Perpetual Licenses
• Revisiting Cloth Simulation Library/UI
• Revisiting Lip Sync Library/UI
• Tesselation for Better Morph/Weight Copy
• Incremental Steps Toward Unimesh
• Other smaller features and bug fixes

Seems  like unimesh is proving to be more difficult than they thought. Didn't they announce it would be included in Poser 13?

I'm looking forward to seeing what the cloth room changes will be. And I'm always interested in what's included in the "other smaller features". Some of my favorite improvements come from there, like the improved hierarchy menu and other lists and the inclusion of some of the missing cycles nodes. 

And a better preview would be nice, unless it slows everything but the most powerful computers to a crawl. I only just recently got a computer that can handle having the preview shaders displayed.

Unimesh (not the Daz gen 4 unimesh) was planned to be in 13 but they weren't able to implement it.

This is what my current Poser 11 preview looks like:

I maxxed out preview shadows and preview texture size. And use some "preview friendly" lights. (Once you found a basic set-up that works, it's easy to build on that)

Basically the final render adds better, more complete shadows, multi layer transparency for the hair, subsurface scattering, (real) displacement, some (subtle) skin-shader "magic", and of course subdivision / HD-Morphing if necessary.

(The preview can display subdivision, too, but it can quickly slow down your machine. Especially if you need to to do lots of subdivision because the render engine of your choice can't do "proper" displacement)  ;-)

I only use well designed meshes, so I have not much need for subdivision, anyway.

(Thats 21 year old Stephanie 1, AKA "The Mystery Mesh", BTW: Mesh from my mesh)

*

Seriously, I would be pleasantly surprised if Poser 14 could do better, but somehow I doubt it. They probably try to improve the horrible, horrible Superfly preview, while probably messing up the current Firefly preview.

And they'll probably find some other legacy functionality they can mess up or disable while doing so.

My conclusion:

I treat Poser 12 and 13 (and Poser 14) like Ghostbusters (2016) or Star Trek's Kelvin Timeline.

Just pretend it was a bad dream and never really happened.  ;-P

I went back to Poser 11, back to simple but well designed meshes, and back to making the most of what I have and what I spent 23 years to learn inside and out.

KI already has made any "hand-crafted" computer graphics completely obsolete.

Rendo's Marketplace is 99,9% Genesis, but DAZ will very soon feel the repercussions, too.

Who in their right mind would want to mess with rigging and sculpting and shaders and hour long render times if he can directly animate a photograph of an actual human being?

'

Anyway, have fun getting all exited over "new and improved" Poser 14.

I'm too busy playing with Vicky 1 and Posette.

:-)

I skipped Poser 12 and 13 for their tiny upgrade values, after Poser 11 just p*ssed already me off for the same reason.
Maybe Poser 14 could count as a full upgrade from Poser Pro 2024.
Quote:
"Other smaller features and bug fixes"
Can anybody tell them, an upgrade is not for fixing bugs? That's what updates are for.

Quote:
"Rendo's Marketplace is 99,9% Genesis, but DAZ will very soon feel the repercussions, too." Very true. Poser once got run over by DAZ Studio, and now DAZ Studio itself is much likely to be run over by IClone and Character Creator. "Those, who are late, will be punished by life." Gorbatschov

Yes, it's Superfly preview I would like to see improved. SF materials often don't look the same at all once rendered.

Usually, I have hardware shaders turned off so this is what my preview looks like

If I turn it on, it becomes this

And everything that's not set up for superfly glows. And it's not just the skin shaders. I'd love to see reflections work in preview, doesn't matter if it's firefly or superfly, neither work in preview and it makes setting up mirrors to show the correct thing difficult.

And even without the advances in superfly, I wouldn't want to give up Poser 13. There are so many little tweaks that improve the use of the program, it feels cumbersome when I go back to 11.

Poser 14 already? I saw the newsletter mention this to my disbelief as I only got Poser 13 near the end of last year.

Oh well, as long as a displacement for Poser Surface nodes and Physical nodes are all good in a Poser 13 update sometime soon, I won't complain. It's not like I'm being forced to buy every Poser version... it has just worked out that way so far.

Please, please, please, give us a decent Superfly displacement that works without subdividing the everloving sn*t out of the mesh. I miss fur and decent brocade. Thank you.

Please, please, please, give us a decent Superfly displacement that works without subdividing the everloving sn*t out of the mesh. I miss fur and decent brocade. Thank you.

Who in their right mind would want to mess with rigging and sculpting and shaders and hour long render times if he can directly animate a photograph of an actual human being?

Where's the fun in that?
Greetings

Usually, I have hardware shaders turned off so this is what my preview looks like

Same thing for me, except that the lazy me preferred to write a small script to switch between Firefly and Superfly as current default render.
In addition, I keep both material settings, the switch let me guess what it will looks like

Not perfect but still manageable, except when I forget to switch back to Superfly at render time... 

I skipped Poser 12 and 13 for their tiny upgrade values, after Poser 11 just p*ssed already me off for the same reason.
Maybe Poser 14 could count as a full upgrade from Poser Pro 2024.
Quote:
"Other smaller features and bug fixes"
Can anybody tell them, an upgrade is not for fixing bugs? That's what updates are for.

Quote:
"Rendo's Marketplace is 99,9% Genesis, but DAZ will very soon feel the repercussions, too." Very true. Poser once got run over by DAZ Studio, and now DAZ Studio itself is much likely to be run over by IClone and Character Creator. "Those, who are late, will be punished by life." Gorbatschov

Yep generally in software project management versions are set by marketing as new capabilities/changes in scope while interim releases are scoped by developers to fix/improve an existing capability, efficiency and stability based on QA testing and user feedback.    Its not set in stone, version features are the merchandisable component of the software and therefore specified by marketing.

I think the list of new capabilities since P11 is rather impressive, frankly its about as much as the competition has produced.  Much of the industry has been grappling with platform and business model transition, at least Bondware has not gone subscription or thrown the baby out with bathwater post acquisition as did much of the industry.   Even DS which is one of the few 3d applications that has not changed hands stagnated somewhat and only - what went from 4.5 to 4.9 with rather little substantive improvements.  

Meanwhile the Bondware Poser team added this sweeping list since the acquisition:

• Content automatic installation of all included content, including legacy content.

• New version of SuperFly render engine based on Blender's Cycles 1.12, new shadow catcher, background transparency and Adaptive Sampling.

• Nvidia Optix support

• Intel OIDN denoising system.

• Python 3 scripting.

• Material Management tab.

• Content type icons on library thumbnails.

• Post Render FX options for rendered images including: denoise, exposure, saturation, gamma, brightness, contrast, bloom, blur and pixelate.

• Animation create panel now to include Audio Track option and ability to save output to new subfolder.

• GPU rendering with your LAN render farm

• Poser startup panel scene and template launcher

• Walk Designer and Talk Designer updated for latest figure compatibility.

• HDRI environment rendering for SuperFly.

• HDRI environment support in shadow catcher including 360 spherical

• Morph and weight map copying enhancements.

• Integrated Poser/Renderosity Store purchase library

• Searchable HTML Help system & full PDF version of the manual

@ dreamcutter: thank you for the list, when you look at it like that it should be an eye opener for many.

Where Poser falls short right now is content. Look at the other software's store: I want decent fantasy clothing with detailed armor and not much skin, check. Do I want fantasy with skin, check. Do I want sci-fi armor and critters, check. Do I want monsters,  check. Do I want great props with details and different shaders,  check. Do I want to import figures from a game and render them? Check. 

Now check the Poser store for the same. For its own figures.

If Poser' s owner wishes to move in a different direction with what content it commissions, distributes etc., that's their privilege. But it will lose despite the fact that the software itself is better. 

A large part of it also will be how their Poser content is presented and marketed in sharp contrast to the other side of the store.

Content marketing should get a bit less anemic whi.le the software is improved.

I used Poser since oh, let's see, 2007 or so I think, so while not as experienced as other here, i am a purely end user and want to see it succeed.

That is a very short and incomplete list of things added since Bondware bought Poser......

Agreed, a broader and deeper content selection would be great for Poser, however it actually does have a very robust and easy figure creation capability as some of its greatest hinderance has been resolved since P12 (save figure with option to either preserve/overwrite geometry).  I forgot that very important feature in the above list.  Anyways combined with its pioneering SM legacy and the continued stake by user$ and Bondware in Poser development will be a signal to 3d content creators that Poser will be here for the long term.  Who knows how long DAZ can support development without charging for Studio or overcharging for content, skimpware can only take you so far.

Please, please, please, give us a decent Superfly displacement that works without subdividing the everloving sn*t out of the mesh. I miss fur and decent brocade. Thank you.

That would have to be implemented in Cycles first, so it's mostly out of the hands of the Poser team.

For fur, I think fiber primitives would be much better than displacement, so that's basically strand-based/dynamic hair territory. I haven't played with that stuff for ages, so I'm not sure how hard it would be with the current Poser to add nice strand-based fur to a character or item of clothing. But anyway, making hair/fur and similar features work better in Poser would be a separate feature request.

For things like brocade, adaptive subdivision might help a bit, which Cycles seems to support, but last I looked it was flagged as an "experimental feature". If I understand correctly, that means the amount of subdivision that's actually applied to an object for rendering will depend on how close it is to the camera.

Furred Critters are technically easy, but it's quite a lot of work to set up the hair parts correctly.

This is Tiny's furred MilCat:

And some variations:

A kitten sculpted by me

And a Lynx created by Lyne's Creations:

Who knows how long DAZ can support development without charging for Studio or overcharging for content, skimpware can only take you so far.

dreamcutter posted at 6:08 PM Sun, 21 January 2024 - #4480653

Who knows how long DAZ can support development without charging for Studio or overcharging for content, skimpware can only take you so far.

I don’t think you’ll have to worry about them charging for Studio since they already tried that. DAZ Studio 3 Advanced was their paid version that they locked features like 64-Bit support behind. Was a flop and it’s all free since then. That’s how DAZ burnt me, that much needed 64-Bit was coming soon for the Mac version and they never released it. So don’t know what the heck I paid for in the end.

I love working with Poser 13 and I now have Poser 13.2 which is very different from the versions of Poser I have used in the past.  About 5 years ago I had a windfall and used some of the cash to build my ideal Poser machine but even with that renders could take three to fours hours to complete.  These days few of my renders go as far as an hour and that is using a mini-PC that cost a tenth of the price of my bespoke unit.  Not only that but the quality of the renders out strips any of the renders I was doing on my expensive custom built machine.

To my mind Bondware have done a remarkable job of improving what SM left them and I shudder to think what Poser would look like now if SM had remained in charge.  I can't wait to see what this new team can come up with when they have the freedom of delving a lot deeper to build a new version of Poser rather than an update.

dreamcutter posted at 6:08 PM Sun, 21 January 2024 - #4480653

Who knows how long DAZ can support development without charging for Studio or overcharging for content, skimpware can only take you so far.

I don’t think you’ll have to worry about them charging for Studio since they already tried that. DAZ Studio 3 Advanced was their paid version that they locked features like 64-Bit support behind. Was a flop and it’s all free since then. That’s how DAZ burnt me, that much needed 64-Bit was coming soon for the Mac version and they never released it. So don’t know what the heck I paid for in the end.

Better dynamic hair would probably be first on my list. (Including shaders that look good in Superfly, though I guess that might take forever to render.)

I love Tiny's furry cats, but I know it took him a lot of work to set them up. I don't know why, but dynamic hair tends to have "strays" that ruin the render. Tiny tried to explain what the problem is -- something about strands at the edges of polygons or something -- but I've never been able to fix it myself, except with postwork.

Dynamic hair actually renders faster than transmapped hair, especially the stuff with more layers.

Don't know what you mean by strays. I can think of a few different things with different causes and fixes.

By "strays," I mean random hairs that don't appear to be attached to anything, but if you delete them, all the hair in the group disappears. I'll see if I can find an example.

This is what I'm talking about. The dynamic hair is grown on primitives hidden inside the head. But there are "strays" not connected to the object they are growing on.

I talked to Tiny about it years ago. It was a problem he encountered while creating his furry cats. He said it had something to do with strands at the edge of polys, or something like that. I think he fixed it by making sure there were no strands at certain places.

I was afraid that was the one you were talking about. That's some kind of bug where the hair group gets corrupted. And once it gets corrupted, you can't fix it, you can only redo/replace it

Rhia474 posted at 10:23 AM Sun, 21 January 2024 - #4480639

@ dreamcutter: thank you for the list, when you look at it like that it should be an eye opener for many.

Where Poser falls short right now is content. Look at the other software's store: I want decent fantasy clothing with detailed armor and not much skin, check. Do I want fantasy with skin, check. Do I want sci-fi armor and critters, check. Do I want monsters,  check. Do I want great props with details and different shaders,  check. Do I want to import figures from a game and render them? Check. 

Now check the Poser store for the same. For its own figures.

If Poser' s owner wishes to move in a different direction with what content it commissions, distributes etc., that's their privilege. But it will lose despite the fact that the software itself is better. 

A large part of it also will be how their Poser content is presented and marketed in sharp contrast to the other side of the store.

Content marketing should get a bit less anemic whi.le the software is improved.

I used Poser since oh, let's see, 2007 or so I think, so while not as experienced as other here, i am a purely end user and want to see it succeed.

And someone please consider adding full multi-core support to the entire program rather than just rendering. Moving the cameras when building a scene with lots of characters quickly becomes an exercise in frustration.

The problem with having content is who is gonna make it. There aren't a lot of us Poser content creators left. Though I see some new ones, which excites me....

That is what worries me. Why is Poser not attracting content makers any more? Is it something much more difficult to create for than the other program? If you look even on this marketplace,  the difference is staggering. I would like to understand why, because without content the future is grim.

Rhia474 posted at 4:00 PM Thu, 1 February 2024 - #4481081

That is what worries me. Why is Poser not attracting content makers any more? Is it something much more difficult to create for than the other program? If you look even on this marketplace,  the difference is staggering. I would like to understand why, because without content the future is grim.

Sure you can use notepad++ to edit and change Poser files.... You can also paint your car with a brush, but that is not very efficient......................

Then there is the issue of groups of people claiming the will buy something if it is made, then basically no one buy's it after it is released. Vendors can see that, very easily...

You can only do that to a vendor so many times before they make a change. Most of the vendors I have known over the years don't make content at all anymore, for various reasons. Vendors will only make what sells, what is easy for them to make. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg why that is the case. Only Poser can make Content King again.... 

So content creation tools are what would help? Or content creation manuals?

I was wondering. How is it easier on the other side? Is there a better way, better documentation of the process? There must be a way why a lot of creators who used to create for Poser now only create for the other software.

Rhia474 posted at 4:57 PM Sat, 20 January 2024 - #4480622

Please, please, please, give us a decent Superfly displacement that works without subdividing the everloving sn*t out of the mesh. I miss fur and decent brocade. Thank you.

Forever seconded.

Rhia474 posted at 4:00 PM Thu, 1 February 2024 - #4481081

That is what worries me. Why is Poser not attracting content makers any more? Is it something much more difficult to create for than the other program? If you look even on this marketplace,  the difference is staggering. I would like to understand why, because without content the future is grim.

And by "Unimesh", I don't mean "DAZ Genesis Unimesh" support, I mean in Poser's core, all posing figures are dependent on individual actor groups. DAZ Studio works differently. 

Here's a big example. When you save a rigged figure (CR2) to the Poser library, Poser creates an OBJ file in the same location as the CR2 file. If you open this OBJ up in a modeler, you'll find that it is split apart at the body part groups. This later presents a challenge if you want to morph an OBJ file that is split apart at the seams, because they aren't welded. THe other problem is, some third party apps, such as zbrush, weld the OBJ together which will make a morph useless because the vertex count is different. Because DAZ uses "unified meshes" (AKA unimeshes) that don't rely on individual body part groups, you don't have this issue when you save a character to the library.

So, to work around that, what I usually do is the first time I save the CR2, at least for clothihng, is that I open the split apart OBJ in a modeler, and weld all of the seams together. Then duplicate vertices have to be deleted as well. After I clean the OBJ up, I change the two references in the CR2 to point to the cleaned up object, which I usually put in the Geometries folder for safekeeping. Then I reload that "good" CR2 into the scene, conform to the figure, and copy the morphs and joint parameters from the figure to the clothing.

It's a bunch of little things like this that eventually add up over time and make it take longer to create clothing for Poser vs DAZ Studio. 

The other alternative is to take your original ungrouped clothing OBJ into Mark DC's Auto Group Editor and copy groups from figure to clothing. It will still be welded but will have the groups. Then point the CR2 to that welded OBJ with groups.

Appreciate the deep explanation here, sounds like unimesh will absolutely be crucial as  many suggested.

I am still a bit flabbergasted that there are no good process descriptions for how to create co tent for Poser that are available for the beginner/ public.

It is the lack of tools, the procedures, and the claims unimesh will magically fix it in the future.

Unimesh is not going to change much. I'm sorry, it is not... It changed very little in any program that added it, at first. Unity, Blender, etc, etc, etc.... Adding unimesh to those programs did not fix the tools in the program, in any way.... It made it far worse until corrected.... At this point, all it will do is add another system where everything uses the same toolset already there. Adding unimesh support will not address making content, period. Adding unimesh and then adding everything content creators ask for years, might.....

People have asked for years for these thing to be addressed, and not just content creators. We have gotten some of the things asked for, but at the same time it is still miles from what you don't have to do in other programs when making content. 

I can't tell you the last time I had to edit any Studio content I helped with. I have to edit every text file Poser spits out, every one of them. Yes you can batch edit some of it, but at the same time you could code it so that was not the case at all.... A lot of it can not be batch edited, and turns people off from making that type of content. There used to be tools to do some of this automatically, scripts, PFE, etc. Now that there are none available and Python broke all the scripts, it is all manual unless you have the programs and an old version of Poser 11 that doesn't know how to do everything in the current version....

I'm sorry, I am very tired of the UNIMESH SUPPORT WILL FIX EVERYTHING.... We can't even get the support on what we have now.... What makes you think we will magically get it with unimesh.... Some high end Autodesk programs don't have unimesh support... That is how important unimesh is......

I do my best to get things changed, added, updated, etc. But there is little I can do when the Unimesh kool-aid is served up as a reason for not having the tools and proper saves for content creation......

Some of the difficulty here is "unimesh" is a broad term and everyone interprets it differently.

So in my case, here's my "interpretation."

What I mean by "unimesh" is ... if I start with a piece of clothing that does not have groups, and I bring it into Poser to create a conformer that follows the pose of the figure, I want the end result to have the same vertex count and vertex order as the OBJ file that went in in the first place. 

No breaking apart into body part groups in ANY case of resaving or exporting the OBJ so that morphs don't explode. No needing to manually edit the file path, get prompted to save the location of the OBJ file so it doesn't later get accidentally overwritten. 

I don't care how it gets there or what it is called internally, that's basically all I want to see in whatever "unimesh" ends up being or however that is implemented. That's all. 8-)

So... sigh. What I am hearing as an end user here is... no hope for more decent  content anytime soon because creators don't like creating for Poser as it is too complicated and no in-sight fixes for the process of creating?

Not having working scripts for processes that had scripts for earlier versions is an ongoing gripe of mine and am still not understanding why older scripts cannot be rewritten.

This program lingered for so long in development limbo, and it still seems like it's not a hundred percent supported. I am reaching the point where I almost never buy new content but older ones that need shader rework but at least are made well and are solid. New content made for Poser is very rarely in the genres I work with.

I know new content is made, but... who buys it? And is that Poser's future direction?

One of the biggest issues with old scripts are the rights to them. If they were not released as creative commons, gpl, MIT license, etc. People can not just re write them and publish them if they were not released that way. Some of the people that wrote them quit, some died, and very few have taken their place. And if those rights went with them, they are gone and can not simply be re written to Python 3.7.9.

It now appears to come down to what Poser does to help the content for Poser, since others have given up doing so for them.

Content was going to be King, remember that? Now is the time to actually show that..

Gotcha, yes, I remember well.

One of the biggest issues with old scripts are the rights to them. If they were not released as creative commons, gpl, MIT license, etc. People can not just re write them and publish them if they were not released that way. 

I'm still wondering. I mean..

If the original copyrights owner is dead and nobody legally acquired them, then it should be authorized to upgrade them to an environment in which it will never run, as that would means "no unfair competition".
Same for people's code still alive but that clearly refuse to port their gem to a new environment: protected against taking ownership under Python2 is clearly ok, but we are  in a new world: Python3

And I'm clearly thinking to a real upgrade, not just adapting the existing code. Especially that I now know that I will retire in a few months, I will have enough time to do this.

Even if rights allow, the job of updating a script is difficult to plan or schedule. You do not know until you start whether the job is easy or tedious. A wide range of programming styles, was applied and some appear even obfuscated by design.

Then, it is not just the Python version. Also changes in OS environment and Poser organisation are to be catered for. Writing user data in the Program Files folder are a big NONO now. The capabilities of Poser have enhanced greatly over time and a lot of the hoops that had to be carefully jumped at the time are now not needed anymore, or the functions are provided natively in Poser.

No surprise there's little interest to do an update job.

I've acquired a lot of budget 'fantasy' wear and accessories from eg Xurge, though mostly for M3/V3 & M4/V4...

I find many free 'Fantasy / SciFi' props, scene-sets and pre-clad, rigged figures / monsters on eg DA and BowlRoll, albeit in XPS, FBX, PMX or SFM format. As Poser_11 can usually manage to import FBX --I'm told _13 is better-- converting to OBJ props or rigged FBX from such 'native' formats via eg free XNA/Lara and free Noesis can supply a  lot of useful stuff. Downside, a clad FBX figure often arrives as many subsidiary rigs. Some will be clothing or hair options, safely deleted. The rest must be promptly parented to first / primary rig lest over-cluttered Poser Hierarchy 'falls over'. Oh, and if FBX does not correctly (*) auto-load materials, that's your evening gone...

*)  Pathing can be problematic: FBX permits both absolute and relative calls to material textures; If absent, set to artist's X: drive and/or deep, deep into folder tree, Ick... 

Even if rights allow, the job of updating a script is difficult to plan or schedule. You do not know until you start whether the job is easy or tedious. A wide range of programming styles, was applied and some appear even obfuscated by design.

Then, it is not just the Python version. Also changes in OS environment and Poser organisation are to be catered for. Writing user data in the Program Files folder are a big NONO now. The capabilities of Poser have enhanced greatly over time and a lot of the hoops that had to be carefully jumped at the time are now not needed anymore, or the functions are provided natively in Poser.

No surprise there's little interest to do an update job.

Rhia474 posted at 6:33 PM Thu, 1 February 2024 - #4481094

I was wondering. How is it easier on the other side? Is there a better way, better documentation of the process? There must be a way why a lot of creators who used to create for Poser now only create for the other software.

Just to name a few.

And after you've made your files, you don't have to edit them outside of the program anymore. Program sets everything for you, even product categories, content creator name etc. And it's not as prone to bugging on your face and corrupting your creations like Poser. In the other hand, I've lost many a progress thinking that I could save the scene to save steps of what I was doing, but it turned out that library files were getting edited while I was working, not only the scene - so you gotta relearn the entire progress of creation. And every little morph tweak you gotta send to an external modeler because it doesn't have morph brushes like Poser. There are good things, and bad things.

From my small experience on the other side, I'd say that Poser creation is more straightforward but dependendant on other tools, and DS is more convoluted and full of steps but more reliable and with more content options/features.

Don't forget that the current version of Python used by Poser is no longer maintained........

Blender dropped 3.7.9 and switched to 3.1 last year. And there are some things that need changed to go to 3.1.....

That does basically nothing for a user that doesn't program and has a script that no longer functions because of those changes in 3.1 thou......

Any script that relied on automatic conversion of float to integer, for example, will fail......

P13 does create well.  These Giraffa figures developed ENTIRELY in Poser 13 (sculpted in Z-Brush) by hand without any scripts or third party utilities. Traditionally grouped and rigged, poses achieved through parametric JP's converted to weightmap.