No one's tried harder than E-On to make their software compatible with Poser. Of course, its pretty much been a one way compatibilityfrom Poser into Vue. This has always made sense, given that Poser's render engine is video game quality while Vues render engine would be considered Pro quality. However, the imminent release of Poser 5 has got me wondering about a few things.

From what Ive read Poser 5 seems to be less export friendly. By that, I dont mean that it doesnt support all the different export formats, rather that some of Poser 5s new features seem to be optimized for use in Poser only. For instance, Poser 5s new hair function is a strand system that adds thousands of polygons to a figure. Poser 5s new rendering system seems to be optimized to handle is without much trouble (much like Vue is set up handle its own Solid Growth vegetation), however, Im wondering if Poser characters using the hair function will be so polygon heavy that they become close to unusable in other programs such as Vue.

Poser 5s new Firefly renderer is supposed to be micro-polygonwith subdivision surface rendering of polygons. As far as I understand, this means that low polygon objects are subdivided during the render to make them look like high polygon objects. This opens up a whole new area of low polygon props and characters that look great when rendered in Poser 5 but look bad when rendered in any other program such as Vue.

The Firefly renderer uses something called Displacement mapping, thats different from bump mapping in that it actually alters the objects geometry. (much like Vues terrain mapping) Its doubtful the Vue or any other program will be able read these displacement maps.

Poser 5 will now include Procedural textures. (materials) Ive yet to find one single program capable of reading another programs procedural material, so unless E-On has made some sort of very special arrangement with Curious Labs, its doubtful if Vue will be able to read Poser 5s new Procedural textures.

Given all these new problems, its very doubtful well be able to get a Poser 5 scene into Vue intact.

Since its going to be hard to get Poser 5 into Vue, why not make it easier to get Vue into Poser 5? How about something like the Ozone plugin for Poser 5? Only make it more comprehensive. Maybe use Poser 5s Displacement mapping to get Vue terrains into Poser 5? Maybe even some way to get Solid Growth vegetation into Poser?

I dont know about anyone else, but if Poser 5s Firefly renderer is as good as advertised, Id be willing to pay as much for a comprehensive Vue plugin as I would for Vue 4 itself!

Anyone else have any thought on this?

-SMT

I'd rather stay in my lane than lay in my stain!