Which Poser version is best at this point in time?

[Glitterati3D]

For content creation I have tried staying with PP2014 for as long as I could, for like you said, the earlier PP11 release had a lot of issues. I frankly believe it was released before it was ready. But it was said above, SMS has been working really HARD on splatting bugs, and even adding some new features, like the new Rotation brush in the Morph Tool. Personally, I am not a fan on the new HTML5 library, and it still has some issues, but after working with it for months, I am getting used to it.

All in all, I think PP11 is a much superior tool for content creation and general rendering than PP2014. As for the new rendering engine, I like what SMS did with the materials comparing to what DAZ did with iRay. In Poser we can use the same shader nodes in both Firefly and Superfly, while we have to create 2 separate sets of materials for 3Delight and iRay. There is also the multiple root nodes in the Material Room, which allows us to create a single material with multiple versions, and Poser automatically picks the right one depending on what rendering engine you use. Let's also remember that Superfly is a physically-based renderer (PBR). while Firefly is still old school "light faking" that is bound to unrealistic results. Creating lighting and materials with PBR is much more predictable because it's based on how real light works in the real world.

I still have PP2014 installed, but after PP11 SR-4, I have never used it again.

What he said! I agree with everything in this post, though I have not had enough time to play with the rigging tools much since I am in the middle of getting a product out the door. But, I rendered this for a promo last night using Superfly.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I'm not totally happy with the PP11 library, but I suppose in time I'll get used to it.

What sent me running back to PP2014 was that after creating materials setups in PP11, some of those zones rendered invisible in P9 and PP2014 when rendered. I'd have thought it was something to do with the order of nodes or the type of nodes I was using, except other material zones with the exact same setup rendered as expected. Even more puzzling, was that when I copied the material setup from those that worked to those that rendered invisible ... all was good.

I'm going to try PP11 again during the summer since I take Fridays off as my vacation. If it's the only thing I accomplish, it will be a good summer :wink:


I'm not sure I got PP11 SR-4 yet. So, I suppose I should before I start playing in PP11 again.

 

[RAMWolff]

Library is a bit buggy but it works. Like Ken I do love the multi rendering engine material setup's. My metals work great in both and give just about the same results which is all sorts of cool. If DAZ3D could figure out this sort of setup for 3DL and iRay it would make content creation on that side so much easier!

 

[Lyne]

hmmm I always WAIT for a product to be out for at least a year or two... so the "public beta testers" can finish helping...
and too, PP 2014 is VERY backward COMPATIBLE until if and when SM fixes a lot in P11.... !

Just my OWN PERSONAL OPINION....

 

[Ken1171]

I used to love PP2014 because it "mostly" works - until I found all the stuff that doesn't. In a way I was forced to move on to PP11 since SMS will not fix stuff in older versions. But perhaps one thing in PP11 I just can't go without is the native support for body scaling, which has NEVER been properly supported in Poser before. If you just rig a conforming piece in PP11, it will automatically support body scaling. PP11 SR-4 has also introduced the other half of "animatable origins" that was missing since P9. That is, end-points are finally animatable now, which avoids some glitches with constraints when using morphs with animatable origins. The bottom line is that P9 and 10 have loads of critical bugs on the content creation tools that can be real showstoppers.

 

[RAMWolff]

Yup, all the shapes I've made and imported and applied to Dawn work without a hitch. Then you can get clothing to conform to that shape very easily. Amazing advances. Once again Poser pulls ahead of the race of who's better in allot of ways. LOL

 

[Ken1171]

I really miss the Morphing Tool when I am in DS. It does so much and so well.

 

[HadCancer]

My 2 cents, I also have a Titan X card. I assume with that card you would want to do a GPU render. My big bitch with Superfly is when I do a Superfly render It pretty much makes the computer unusable till the the render is finished and a render of any size still takes a few hours, while the firefly renders are much much faster. I finally tried DAZ 4.9 for realism and was pleasantly surprised that it uses both my Titan X but my i7 6 core as well and the computer is usable for Netflix and simple games, and render time is comparable, so if realism is what you want then Poser Pro 11 is the better of the 2, but a lot of your old stuff just will not come out usable. I have not bought any products to correct for this difference.

 

[Ken1171]

It's important to remember that rendering times depend a lot on the rendering settings. Personally, I think the Superfly presets for both CPU and GPU rendering are way too high, and tend to take WAY too much longer than actually needed. I usually render at 900x1200, and my Superfly rendering times have never exceeded 10 minutes, even in CPU mode. To take advantage of the multicore CPU rendering to its best, the idea is to keep all cores busy for most time. We can control that with the "bucket size", where I tend to keep it at 32 or, in some cases 64. The larger the bucket size, the more likely CPU cores will end up idle sooner than they should, which makes the render take longer. Over here I have 6 physical cores, which means 12 logical cores with Hyperthreading. Another critical factor with Superfly is the "Pixel Samples". It's important to realize that this is a multiplier that increases rendering times exponentially. It's better to just tweak the Branched Path Tracing (BPT) parameters individually as needed, instead of just increase the multiplier. And if you increase it, then you can lower the BPT params to compensate.

One of my biggest gripes with Superfly, though, it that we cannot use BPT with GPU rendering, which makes rendering at least 10X slower. I have a GTX 980 Ti, and I cannot use it with Superfly because without BPT, we have to increase the multiplier to absurd values to compensate, and then rendering times become equally absurd. I have tried enabling BPT with GPU rendering over here, and 2 things can happen:

1. It finishes the render in seconds instead of minutes.
2. Windows gets a Blue Screen of Death and reboots. After rebooting, the Poser scene files is completely corrupted, so all work is lost.

I have called SMS, and they said this can't be helped because Superfly has incompatibility issues with NVidia's drivers, which cause Windows to explode. It has been half a year, and that still happens. Besides that, it's great.

 

[phdubrov]

One of my biggest gripes with Superfly, though, it that we cannot use BPT with GPU rendering

In my experience can but only on 2 or more cards setup, with screen card free from SF.

 

[Rick]

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for all the great feedback! I really appreciate it & it has been extremely helpful! Its really great to see you all again! I've really missed digital art. Been away for the past 6 months. Have a great week everyone!

 

[Lorraine]

You have a swell week too, Rick

 

[Mythocentric]

And I'll add to that from Sunny Morecambe! Have fun!

 

[Gadget Girl]

My 2 cents, I also have a Titan X card. I assume with that card you would want to do a GPU render. My big bitch with Superfly is when I do a Superfly render It pretty much makes the computer unusable till the the render is finished and a render of any size still takes a few hours, while the firefly renders are much much faster. I finally tried DAZ 4.9 for realism and was pleasantly surprised that it uses both my Titan X but my i7 6 core as well and the computer is usable for Netflix and simple games, and render time is comparable, so if realism is what you want then Poser Pro 11 is the better of the 2, but a lot of your old stuff just will not come out usable. I have not bought any products to correct for this difference.

Well Ken already added some great tips about Superfly render settings. I understand what you mean about not being able to use the computer for other things when using the GPU rendering. But I think this is more a video card thing. My understanding is that unlike a CPU, a GPU can't say, oh, here's another thing I need to do, let me take a few resources and do that. So basically when you are doing a GPU render, it can't just easily draw other windows on other screens.

That being said, I don't often find that my renders take very long. I've learned through lots of trial and error where to tweak my settings and sometimes it might take half an hour, but rarely more than that, unless I've got a huge number of things in my scene. That is one other things about Superfly. It figures tries to determine if everything in the scene is effecting the render, not just what is obviously in the camera view. Actually my avatar took a long time to render, because even thought you can't tell, the thing behind her head is part of a dragon. It was originally meant to be a massive scene, and when I decided to do a close up, it still wanted to consider everything else in the scene.

 

[RAMWolff]

Great to see you here again Rick. Welcome back

 

[Miss B]

Welcome back Rick. Good to see you again.

 

[Rick]

Thank you all so much! I'm still haven't decided which version to install. It will probably end up being Poser 11 Pro in the end. Since my main drive is an SSD, I don't want to be installing both versions. Also have Vue Infinite2015, Zbrush & Keyshot & PSP. ITs a lot of writes on an SSD drive.

Aside from the new EZskin script, do most of the add-ons that worked with Poser Pro 2014 work ok in Poser 11 Pro?

 

[phdubrov]

Netherworks: mostly yes. MAT Writer Panel does not save Superfly nodes (but copy SF mats ok) and does not see imagemaps in nodetrees not connected to PoserSurface.
Shaderworks: LM2 worked, bot not shure about last SR. Material manager doesn't work.

 

[Ken1171]

Wow, good to know. I have been using MAT Writer for everything, though I didn't have any issues with SF materials so far. Probably because I usually share texture maps between the root nodes.

 

[Rick]

Netherworks: mostly yes. MAT Writer Panel does not save Superfly nodes (but copy SF mats ok) and does not see imagemaps in nodetrees not connected to PoserSurface.
Shaderworks: LM2 worked, bot not shure about last SR. Material manager doesn't work.

Thanks so much phdubrov