P11--more than one machine, anyone know?

[Minyassa]

I bought Poser 11 at Renderosity a few months ago on sale. I have not downloaded it yet because I don't yet have a computer capable of using it. My father is building me one. Here's what we need to know: Can I download and install Poser 11 onto HIS machine so he can test it and see what will be needed to run it efficiently so he knows what he needs to build me? Is that allowed? I looked through their entire write-up and read the readme file (totally useless readme, looks like an ad for the product, sheesh SM) and could find nothing about what my purchase allows me in terms of installations.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Yes, you can install on multiple machines, but you can run only ONE copy at a time.

 

[English Bob]

Poser allows a maximum of three installations to be activated at once (see page 34 of the Poser 11 manual). There's an option in the Help menu to deactivate the license, so you can use more than three installations at the expense of some faffing about.

The hardware requirements are detailed here: Poser Pro – Mac & Windows System Requirements – Smith Micro although they're wildly optimistic as these things usually are. Poser is demanding on CPU and RAM, so the more of both of those you can afford the better.

 

[Minyassa]

Awesome, thank you very much. We're working on building something that will let me do Superfly renders in less than multiple days. xD

 

[English Bob]

We're working on building something that will let me do Superfly renders in less than multiple days. xD

For Superfly rendering, you can also make use of the power of your graphics card. Previously, this wasn't important for purely Poser use, but if you want to play games, or use modern renderers such as Superfly, LuxRender or Iray then a good graphics card is a must.

I don't have a good graphics card so I'll leave that to others to recommend... It may well be the case that the optimum card may not be the same for each renderer, so let us know what you plan to use if you can.

 

[eclark1894]

I bought Poser 11 at Renderosity a few months ago on sale. I have not downloaded it yet because I don't yet have a computer capable of using it. My father is building me one. Here's what we need to know: Can I download and install Poser 11 onto HIS machine so he can test it and see what will be needed to run it efficiently so he knows what he needs to build me? Is that allowed? I looked through their entire write-up and read the readme file (totally useless readme, looks like an ad for the product, sheesh SM) and could find nothing about what my purchase allows me in terms of installations.

There are times when I don't think SM has an actual Marketing team.

 

[Gadget Girl]

So as others have said, you can definitely have it on more than one machine. I mainly use it on my laptop, but I also have it installed on my desktop which has all the power. Although the truth is, usually I don't use it there. Unless I'm doing really complicated scenes with lots of figures. I mostly work on my laptop, then if I'm doing a hefty render, offload it to my desktop via the Queue manager, and then happily go back to working on my laptop.

 

[Nod]

As others have said, you can run it on more than one machine, just not at the same time.
Poser 10 & 11 will actually run at a lower res than stated. I run 9 & 11 on my laptop which can only display 1388x768. I also run 11 on my mega beast, which uses an HD tele as a monitor. The only real difference, is that the icons are smaller in the higher res.
SM should allow for the fact that a lot of laptops still don't run in 1920 x 1080.

 

[Minyassa]

As others have said, you can run it on more than one machine, just not at the same time.
Poser 10 & 11 will actually run at a lower res than stated. I run 9 & 11 on my laptop which can only display 1388x768. I also run 11 on my mega beast, which uses an HD tele as a monitor. The only real difference, is that the icons are smaller in the higher res.
SM should allow for the fact that a lot of laptops still don't run in 1920 x 1080.

Good, I should hope so. I mean, what if you don't LIKE higher resolutions? I'm sitting about 2 feet from my 20-ish" monitor, with an old glasses prescription, and if I turned it up to anything higher than the current 1280x720, the icons would look like little dots and I'd have to lean in and take my glasses off to read anything. I feel like tech companies get caught up in this mindset that more extreme is always better, without really thinking about the practicality.

 

[Nod]

Well this is it exactly. I put Poser 11 onto my mega beast with a 32" screen running at 1080p, and I've no idea what the icons say.

 

[Miss B]

My laptop runs 1600x900 resolution, and the only time I have problems are with my browsers, but that's easy to fix. I just click Ctrl and the Numberpad's + sign. Unfortunately, that doesn't work with software other than browsers.

I used to complain constantly when I was playing in Carrara years ago, because the menus were very long and the menu items were squished together. IOW, not much spacing above or below each item (in a word processor it's called leading). It used to drive me crazy. Unfortunately, software manufacturers don't take into consideration their customer's age, and any eyesight problems they might have.

 

[seachnasaigh]

On Win7Pro/Ult, at least, you can change the size of desktop icons without changing the overall screen resolution. Right click on an empty piece of desktop, and from the drop-down menu, look at the icon size choices. Or, you may be able to click/hold on an empty area of desktop and use the mouse scroll wheel.

I make a lot of icons on transparent backgrounds -you only see the logo shape, not an opaque square- and I always include sizes up to 256x256.

 

[Minyassa]

seachnasaigh--Cool, thank you! I'll be putting 7 on my new machine.

Miss B--Right?! Computers are for younguns, or so they think. Nevermind that some of us older folks helped teach the younger generations how to use 'em! xD

 

[Miss B]

Ain't that the truth.

 

[Miss B]

On Win7Pro/Ult, at least, you can change the size of desktop icons without changing the overall screen resolution. Right click on an empty piece of desktop, and from the drop-down menu, look at the icon size choices. Or, you may be able to click/hold on an empty area of desktop and use the mouse scroll wheel.

Nice, but it doesn't change the size of the text. I only have a few folders on my desktop, so the text is how I identify what each folder is for.

 

[seachnasaigh]

Nice, but it doesn't change the size of the text. I only have a few folders on my desktop, so the text is how I identify what each folder is for.

I also have a lot of shortcuts to folders on my desktop. I replace the generic default icon with distinctive icons to make them easy to identify. A bit of text can be incorporated into the icon itself so that the text enlarges along with the pictogram.

Windows has a feature to do this.
Left-click on the shortcut to select it. Right-click to get the drop-down menu.

From that menu, select properties. When the UI window opens, click the change icon box, and browse to wherever you have the custom icon stored. Then apply and OK.

You can also change the icon of the target folder itself, so that that folder appears distinctive when browsing in Explorer. If you then make a new desktop shortcut for this folder, the shortcut will use the same custom icon.
This is my downloads runtime:

This is my downloads\runtime\textures:

Example shortcuts to 3D project folders:

More folder shortcuts:

Would you like to try this? Do you have Windows or Mac? I can make icons for each.

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I'm familiar with the Properties option, but I've never thought of making my own thumbnails/icons. I may just have to try that.

 

[seachnasaigh]

Icon sampler pack (mostly Windows; a few Mac)

 

[Miss B]

Thank you Seach, that's very generous of you.

 

[seachnasaigh]

Didn't cost anything but a little time.

A few more icons