The Hi-Res web site has been updated and a demo version of the program made available. The site is a little sparse at the moment, but should provide enough information for people to understand what it does. Of course, feel free to download the demo version for a more hands-on feeling of what it can do.

Hi-Res Home page

As mentioned, the site is a little sparse at the moment, but there are several additions in the final stages of testing and a couple permission slips to be gathered :) So the site will expand substantially over the next few to several weeks.

The program is due to be released through the Marketplace in the very near future, so in the meantime I hope this demo version will help answer some of the questions people have been asking me.

Downloading now. Looks very cool! Can't wait for the release. -Tim

Your server is painfully slow ... you might want to think about another provider. Slow performance can cripple potential sales. Just a friendly tip.

Yeah, sorry about the dl speed. I live in a tiny, rural village and my personal internet access is through a multi-plexed line - if you can even believe such things still exist in this day and age :) So I'm pretty accustomed to slow dl's and not sure I even noticed this ISP was that slow :) Thanks for the heads up.

Sure. Actually, it started out OK (not great, but acceptable) then slowed down, and finally timed-out. Has happened twice now, so I still don't have it. Just pinged your site and it is timing-out like crazy. I would definitely make your hosting provider fix this ASAP. You're paying for it, you deserve better service than this.

hmmm. Just tried it myself and had no problem, so perhaps it's something to do with the routing connections. The demo zip is less than a meg so can easily email it. Will message you with my email address, (or you can just grab it off the website,) and you can let me know where to send it.

I got it in 2min 35sec on a 56K connection. I get the time outs on ping also but the page and the D/L link Don't seem to have any speed problems.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Is there any advantage to this packadge for those of us already running higher end apps like Truespace or Max or Lightwave?

Well I don't have the several thousands of dollars to have copies of all those apps :) so I can't do an in-depth analysis of the differences between what Hi-Res does and how those apps handle subdivision surfaces. I haven't seen the latest Truespace, and Max is WAY out of my price range, but from what I understand of the Lightwave implementation it's fairly decent. On the other hand, some of the other mid-range apps don't support subdivision surfaces at all, so for those cases the $30.00 (or $22.50 at the current sale price,) is a fairly cheap alternative. Hi-Res supports three different subdivision methods: the standard Catmull-Clark method for quad-based meshes; the Loop method for triangle based models; and a proprietary SurfaceCurvature method. So you can check if the above apps support the first two methods. I can guarantee that NONE of the apps support the SurfaceCurvature subdivision method, since I invented that one myself :) It's not as mathematically concise as the other two official methods, but it does have it's uses. So it may be useful if only for that method, even if you want to just consider it a toy. For that matter, the last time I bought a toy for one of my kids it cost me more than $30.00 :) The best bet would be to go to the site and download the demo version. Then you can try it out exactly and see if there is any extra features that would make it a worthwhile investment for you. I can also guarantee that version II of the program will have a number of Poser-specific features that these other apps do not, and all version I user's will get a very good deal on the upgrade. Guess I'm starting to sound like one of those evangelists for those high-end apps :) so I better stop there. I will be posting up a feature list for version II, (and a user wish list page,) in the next couple weeks, but since it just came out today, I'd like to hold off until enough people have tried it to even have a wish list :) (The link to the site to download the demo is up in the first message to this thread.)

My appologies to this forum and all it's user's for posting this inappropriate message thread. I just realized/found out about the new(ish) Product Showcase forum, and after a bit of asking around realized it was totally inappropriate to have posted this thread here. I will contact the moderator's poste-haste and ask them to move this thread to the proper forum, or at the very least to remove. Again, my sincerest appologies. I appreciate the fact that that no one took occassion to yell at me for my bad behaviour :) Although a 'gentle' poke in the ribs would have been OK :)

I had no problem at all with the demo download. I also really like that it doesn't take any registry entries. -dg

In speaking of Poser specific features, my question is what utility would these hi-res figures have inside Poser itself? I'm assuming that one can't simply pump up the polygons and continue to use the figure in Poser.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Well, there's two main ways to use it to enhance Poser scenes, and specifically regarding Poser figures and/or props. The quick, easy, and painless way, is just to create your scene in the normal way using the normal resolution figures and props. Once the scene is laid out nicely, the figures and poses tweaked, and all the texture, bump, and trans maps tested, then you can use HiRes as a last-second tweak before your final render. At that point, just export any foreground figures or props, or anything that is close enough to the camera for the resolution of the item to be noticeable, and then convert just these temporary objs to a higher resolution. Finally, hide the original item in Poser, import the new Hi-Res version, set the texture information, and go have a coffee while the final render runs :) For a quick example/results of doing this, have a peek at the second set of images in the Hi-Res Gallery: About The galleries a little sparse at the moment, but I've been answering people's questions instead of rendering pictures :) This approach has several advantages to it: 1) It's quick, easy, and painless 2) You can use exactly the same scene creation process you do now 3) You do the scene creation using the standard low(er) resolution models, so it's obviously faster than it would be if you were using high-resolution models throughout the whole process 4) You don't need to muck about converting cr2's to reference higher resolution objs and morph targets 5) You only convert those exact items that are close enough to the camera for it to be required. 6) You only need enough free disk space to store a few high-resolution models at a time, and only temporarily. 7) You don't need any in-depth, technical knowledge of Poser cr2's/pp2's/pz2's/etc. All you need to know is how to export, import, and apply textures. So even the newest user can use this approach and get the full benefits. 8) It's quick, easy, and painless :) This is actually how I use it most of the time. The Hi-Res conversion really is quick and easy: a) Click the Import Toolbar Button b) Click the Subdivide Toolbar Button c) Maybe Click the Subdivide Toolbar Button again or a few more times d) Click the Export Toolbar Button I suppose if you had a busted clicker-finger it could be painful, but it's usually not. :) Whew! You'd think I was writting a long-winded tutorial here :) Mind if I use your question as an entry in the FAQ? It's a pretty good question, and even one I have a decent answer to :) The second method is to go whole-hog and convert the figure/prop/etc into a clickable Poser object, and then you can use that throughout the whole process. Converting them isn't that complicated, but it can get a bit tedious. Doing it does have some significant advantages though: 1) You only ever have to do it once for any figure or prop. In fact there's a good chance that you wont even have to do it. I've already created the Hi-Res cr2 for Posette, and once I get it cleaned up a bit, will be posting that as a free dl on the website. You will still need the program to create the initial high-resolution version of the orginal obj, but given you have that, I will be posting whatever cr2 conversions I get time to do, and if other user's want to share or swap their own high-resolution cr2's/etc. that would reduce the overall effort on any individual person. 2) The higher resolution version offers some significant opportunities for adding much more detailed and realistic morph targets. For example, adding individual ribs to the standard resolution models is virtually impossible due to the large polygons, but if you double the polygon density then it becomes much more feasible. 3) If you are doing a lot of animations then this is probably the way to go. You definately don't want to stop between every frame and do the conversion, so the time invested in doing the conversion would be well spent. Well I hope I haven't bored you :) and/or put anybody to sleep. I can just hear somebody thinking "(scroll, scroll, scroll)... When DOES this answer end?!"

Thanks for the info. Regarding method 1, I'm wondering if you had a figure with a "blown" elbow or knee due to the pose, woud the hi-res version cure that. This is basically a more severe instance of the jaggies you illustrate in your images. For method 2, the cr2 exchange type of idea sounds great. I'm assuming that you'll be providing instructions on doing the necessary conversion. Ideally, if it's a rote process, perhaps it could be automated - but that's probably too much to hope for :-) One idea that occurs to me is that it would be nice if there was an option to increase the resolution of selected groups and vary the resolution between groups. I don't know how practical that is but being able to increase the resolution of say just the chest might be all someone needed in a particular instance and would avoid the overhead of upping the entire figure. One other issue is morphs. I've used an increased resolution figure before, Mobius hi-res woman. To use existing morphs it was necessary to use the same conversion, pnurbs in Max in that case, on morphs. I imagine the same would be true here. You'd have to export the morphs as obj's and hi-res them as well for method 2.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Hi lmckenzie For the blown elbow thing, it wont really 'fix' it. The subdivision process will start with the poly's where they are, so it wont do any collision testing to fix those up. It will make the seam a lot smoother, but in general it would be better to have a joint controlled morph that compensated for the way Poser bends it. Fortunately that's another project that I'm part way into :) So will get posted to the web site once it's cleaned up enough. Instructions and a mini-tutorial about converting the cr2's is almost ready, and the coming week is scheduled exclusively to adding some of these advanced uses information. The selective subdivision (by groups, materials, or manually selecting polygons,) is one of the main enhancements for the version II release. I don't want to start yapping about version II just 3 days after the version I release :) but it is being actively developed. Likely there will be a interim version 1.5 release, that will be an upgrade to add some of these most-requested features. In the meantime, you can still do your chest-only example simply by exporting just that part. Since you're going to export it to do the subdivision anyways, just uncheck all the parts that you don't need the high-resolution for. You're correct to assume that you would convert all the morphs to obj's, increase their resolution, and then load them back in. It's more tedious than difficult, but fortunately you only ever have to do it once. Better, only one person has to do it once, assuming they are willing to share the converted cr2 with others. And if I'm that one person, I can guarantee that it will be freely available :) So don't waste your time doing Posette, since the Hi-Res version of her will show up on the web site in the very near future. As for having it do the whole thing automatically, that is also something 'planned' for version two. It will require reading/parsing cr2's/pp2's/hr2's/etc, and I'm not sure exactly what difficulties I may encounter, but it is certainly something that is being actively pursued. Especially since I'm the one doing many of the cr2 conversions, so am intimately familiar with how nice it would be to have it all happen at the click of a button instead :) So it's very high on my own personal wish-list, and I have a great deal of pull with myself on getting it included :)

Outstanding!

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

I bought the software, but was really disappointed I could no longer use the morph dials on the figure after replacing the old .obj with the new one. I read your post(s) above, but I have no idea what you're talking about. I just need my figure to work properly in Poser AFTER the sub-division. You mention "Method #2" but don't explain how to do it. Is there a tutorial forthcoming? (I needed it, like yesterday!) ;-) -Tim

As far as I know the figure simply will never work with Morph targets after you replace the .obj ... morph targets depend on exact polygon counts and positions - the one thing a subdivision is guarenteed to change. You would need to morh your figure FIRST, export the .obj with the morphs applied and then sub-divide. These subdivided figures are not replacements for your Poser figures. NOTE: I didn't write poser of this utility so I might be wrong, but I don't think I am.

I think you're exactly right, Soul. DKE: I feel like a numbskull, but I can't even seem to do method 1. I export the figure (in this case a cow) as an OBJ and your program refuses to import it properly. I ahve tried different checking off various settings, etc. ... nothing seems to work. PLEASE post those tutorials soon. Thanks, Tim

Hi Timoteo1: Soulhuntre is correct in that you can't just create a new obj and have morph dials from the previous model work - Poser just can't figure out the differences. So to get the morph targets to work with the higher resolution version you need to convert them as well. If the morph dials were created using magnets, then they can be re-created on the new figure using the same magnets. If they just came in a cr2 then you need to export them, convert them to the higher resolution, and then reload them as morph dials in Poser. I AM definately working on that exact tutorial, and it will be the first Advanced Tutorial released. In the meantime, email me and I can get you all the info I already have, and will go through process with you to get it working. Not sure which model you were trying, but if it's Posette I can get also get you the current beta version of her cr2 with all the standard morph dials (and some extra ones,) converted. As for not being able to import something, that would be very strange ndeed. I have yet to find anything Poser could produce that HiRes wouldn't import, and that includes those little tree/hair things Poser makes. Although it won't display or convert them to rel polygons just yet, but trust me that it does know they are there :) The only times that it appeared HiRes didn't import them properly was when they were accidentally exported at either a size much larger than the Poser norm, or offset some distance from the center. The same thing has happened to me a lot in Poser when importing 3DS models, since they can be all sorts of sizes, and it seems like a lot of those people don't like to create them in the middle of the scene :) So it looks like it didn't import them, but they are actually just way to be or off screen So please email me direct and I can get the whole thing solved for you. dke@sk.sympatico.ca Bruce ps: One other thing I just realized late last night as a possible morph conversion assistant, is that Tailor program. I havn't wanted to talk it up to much since I was working on exactly the same type of thing with my DMesh program, and so was a little annoyed when he beat me to the market with it :) So I put that portion on hold for a while and went with this HiRes rogram instead. But he did honestly beat me up to bat first, and from some of the comments I've read it would seem quite a few people have it, but not sure if you do. This is not an endorsement for the program since I don't have it myself, but just a possible suggestion if you do have that program.

Sorry for my terrible spelling there! I should know better than to start typing up answers before I've had at least one morning coffee :) Just wanted to quickly ask if you were using Bryce for the rendering and you exported it from that program? One of the cases I had of it not showing up was from a Bryce export, and it was quite a ways off the screen. The other thing that Bryce did was to create a number of two-sided polygons and this resulted in a few error messages during the import. It also had an adverse effect on the subdivision once you did get it into view. Not sure what Bryce uses these two-sided polygons for, but it was suggested they might have something to do with the texturing. So just curious if that's what happened, and thought I'd briefly mention it for any one else reading this thread.