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Netherworks - FAQ and Q&A
- Thread starter Netherworks
- Start date
Hello again everyone!
I just wanted all of you to know that I'm still on target to accomplish the goals that I've outlined before. To tell the truth, I haven't been keeping up very well with things over the last few weeks - emails, product updates, new releases, restored "old" releases and so on. I fell into some depression, artistic ennui and just a general lack of focus. I am, however, one of those kind of people that sometimes (but rarely) hits a low and then bounces completely in the other direction, like a bungy cord.
I do apologize for this and I feel now like I'm getting my feet planted back on the ground. I don't want to lose your confidence or respect because I do think highly of all you, all over the Poser (and DAZ) communities and I want to be the kind of artist, vendor, friend and associate that you can place trust into to keep up with these kinds of things.
Yours truly,
Joe
I just wanted all of you to know that I'm still on target to accomplish the goals that I've outlined before. To tell the truth, I haven't been keeping up very well with things over the last few weeks - emails, product updates, new releases, restored "old" releases and so on. I fell into some depression, artistic ennui and just a general lack of focus. I am, however, one of those kind of people that sometimes (but rarely) hits a low and then bounces completely in the other direction, like a bungy cord.
I do apologize for this and I feel now like I'm getting my feet planted back on the ground. I don't want to lose your confidence or respect because I do think highly of all you, all over the Poser (and DAZ) communities and I want to be the kind of artist, vendor, friend and associate that you can place trust into to keep up with these kinds of things.
Yours truly,
Joe
Hey Joe, good to hear from you.
I for one would never lose respect for you, as I'm a huge fan of your work, as are many others in the 3D communities. As far as falling into a funk, we all have those days/weeks/months, and then snap back, and I know lots of folks here have been anticipating your products in the store.
You made a big change in your life when you left RDNA to try something different, and now you've had another big change getting back into producing 3D products, so it's understandable it hasn't been a quick process.
Take your time Joe, I know a lot of folks here will be happy to see more of your products as they get done.
I for one would never lose respect for you, as I'm a huge fan of your work, as are many others in the 3D communities. As far as falling into a funk, we all have those days/weeks/months, and then snap back, and I know lots of folks here have been anticipating your products in the store.
You made a big change in your life when you left RDNA to try something different, and now you've had another big change getting back into producing 3D products, so it's understandable it hasn't been a quick process.
Take your time Joe, I know a lot of folks here will be happy to see more of your products as they get done.
What they all said.
Yeah, I hit a bad funk. Thanks for understanding!
After leaving Rooster Teeth (we did part ways amiacably), I just kind of felt a bit... lost. RDNA went down (sold or what-have-you) I have to admit that I was rather shocked. I felt very uneasy about the further widening gap between the DS and Poser folks, while I do realize that having a common ground and civility regarding that has always been a goal at Hivewire. I also felt, and still do to some degree, a lot of pressure to re-tool a lot of products, just in terms of doing ads and stuff again, some of which I don't have master psd's for and lately I've been finding a few issues here and there, which I'll get to shortly (in a couple of posts). So I'm planning on finishing up with a lot of reworks and also trying to release some new things that I had been working on.
After leaving Rooster Teeth (we did part ways amiacably), I just kind of felt a bit... lost. RDNA went down (sold or what-have-you) I have to admit that I was rather shocked. I felt very uneasy about the further widening gap between the DS and Poser folks, while I do realize that having a common ground and civility regarding that has always been a goal at Hivewire. I also felt, and still do to some degree, a lot of pressure to re-tool a lot of products, just in terms of doing ads and stuff again, some of which I don't have master psd's for and lately I've been finding a few issues here and there, which I'll get to shortly (in a couple of posts). So I'm planning on finishing up with a lot of reworks and also trying to release some new things that I had been working on.
Okay, answers for questions...
@ RobZhena:
There is no method to remove a material zone from a figure, either python or natively in Poser. Maybe in some limited, workaround ways like using the grouping tool to spawn a new prop but it wouldn't be that intuitive.
@ Glitterati:
Spawn 2014 should be able to spawn new morphs from existing ones, even across body parts. It has the option of building new morphs quickly and also creating a full-body morph from them.
The only injection pose builder I have is via Poser's PMD injection (Creator's Toybox). It is likely outclassed, in terms of allowing you to pick specific morphs, by Poser 11 Pro's "Export, Morph Injection" feature.
@ Dreamer:
Dial Manager currently writes out version 6 for Pose files, which just makes it universally work in the last, I don't know... 15 years of Poser versions. It was just done that way to be backwards compatiable. Usually, we just kind of lower the number on Pose files so that there isn't a warning box for customers and users when you load a pose file but if you'd like to make a case for having a version number entry box or somesuch, I would entertain it
@ mj007:
I don't know if it's too late for what you might be working on but I can get the toon figures up sooner that later. Before the end of the month. Really the time is redoing the ads and reworking ad text to be suitable/sensical.
@ RobZhena:
There is no method to remove a material zone from a figure, either python or natively in Poser. Maybe in some limited, workaround ways like using the grouping tool to spawn a new prop but it wouldn't be that intuitive.
@ Glitterati:
Spawn 2014 should be able to spawn new morphs from existing ones, even across body parts. It has the option of building new morphs quickly and also creating a full-body morph from them.
The only injection pose builder I have is via Poser's PMD injection (Creator's Toybox). It is likely outclassed, in terms of allowing you to pick specific morphs, by Poser 11 Pro's "Export, Morph Injection" feature.
@ Dreamer:
Dial Manager currently writes out version 6 for Pose files, which just makes it universally work in the last, I don't know... 15 years of Poser versions. It was just done that way to be backwards compatiable. Usually, we just kind of lower the number on Pose files so that there isn't a warning box for customers and users when you load a pose file but if you'd like to make a case for having a version number entry box or somesuch, I would entertain it
@ mj007:
I don't know if it's too late for what you might be working on but I can get the toon figures up sooner that later. Before the end of the month. Really the time is redoing the ads and reworking ad text to be suitable/sensical.
Good to hear, and I hope 2 things I've been waiting for, HCS presets for Dusk and Luna, are on that list of "new" things. I've used your Dawn preset successfully many times, so look forward to adding Dusk and Luna to the mix.
Upcoming updates...
Unfortunately, I've found some issues where Poser 11 isn't playing well with Creator's Toybox, regarding how Libraries are handled. It also may reach to some other products, which I am investigating.
In a nutshell, Poser's new library now writes a new Library xml file that is completely 0% backwards compatible with how it was done before. This botches up trying to detect the current runtime that the user might be in. So, I've designed an alternate method of allowing the user to (easily) pick a runtime to start in. I have a customer looking at the change for me. You'll now get a menu of your existing Runtimes in File Optimizer when you press a button. It will still try to go to the last area used in that runtime just like before and I think it's as fluid, without the ability to make a mistake by trying to figure out where you are at currently.
Speaking of the new Library, I'm just not along with it. I know they are trying to make changes to it so that it is better but there are just so many plusses by loading up the old AIR library, which I can do at least to load content. That's probably a discussion for another time.
Also, there are some problems on how MATWriter Panel 2014 is handling compression and I think it was working fine before Poser 11. I've had to rewrite how it functions and I'm still testing it and seeing if I need to change it across any other scripts, oy. This only might be an issue if you have compression enabled in Poser, which I feel is a valid setting to support. I don't personally care for it as a developer because unzipping content is yet another thing I have to do to open a poser file in Notepad++ but I realize people use Poser differently than I might and that's quite okay.
So, I think, this week is getting my duckies in a row and getting some fixes out there for things I've re-released, moving forward, being positive and being productive.
Unfortunately, I've found some issues where Poser 11 isn't playing well with Creator's Toybox, regarding how Libraries are handled. It also may reach to some other products, which I am investigating.
In a nutshell, Poser's new library now writes a new Library xml file that is completely 0% backwards compatible with how it was done before. This botches up trying to detect the current runtime that the user might be in. So, I've designed an alternate method of allowing the user to (easily) pick a runtime to start in. I have a customer looking at the change for me. You'll now get a menu of your existing Runtimes in File Optimizer when you press a button. It will still try to go to the last area used in that runtime just like before and I think it's as fluid, without the ability to make a mistake by trying to figure out where you are at currently.
Speaking of the new Library, I'm just not along with it. I know they are trying to make changes to it so that it is better but there are just so many plusses by loading up the old AIR library, which I can do at least to load content. That's probably a discussion for another time.
Also, there are some problems on how MATWriter Panel 2014 is handling compression and I think it was working fine before Poser 11. I've had to rewrite how it functions and I'm still testing it and seeing if I need to change it across any other scripts, oy. This only might be an issue if you have compression enabled in Poser, which I feel is a valid setting to support. I don't personally care for it as a developer because unzipping content is yet another thing I have to do to open a poser file in Notepad++ but I realize people use Poser differently than I might and that's quite okay.
So, I think, this week is getting my duckies in a row and getting some fixes out there for things I've re-released, moving forward, being positive and being productive.
The only thing I'm worried about with Luna is an offset issue. I'll try and explain. If you are doing a "Full" conversion, it actually moves the OBJ in space and creates a new one, so there's no issue. However, if you do a simple hair prop conversion using the partial method (a morph that moves the hair), Poser still "sees" the hair, with the morph active, as being in the original position, so it could be hard to select the hair. Again, doing a full conversion, would be the better choice here. Dusk is likely not that far off from Dawn to be a real issue with a partial conversion - there's some offset but it's not as noticeable. Since Luna is, what, 1/5th the size of V4/Dawn/whatnot, it's more pronounced. Hope that makes sense.
Just wanted to say I think we all hit lows from time to time and I so totally agree with Miss B. As someone who still struggles with Poser I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have without access to your products.
Thanks all.
Yeah, sadly, the compression issue in Poser 11 and python is kind of problematic. For camera files, which are written by Camera Panel Plus 2014, Poser's python is writing compressed files with the uncompressed extension. It also needs to read them to generate camera presets. If it gets a compressed file with an uncompressed extension, it "thinks" it can read them but actually just returns something that is is empty. So tonight I had to devise a way for it to test them, which wasn't really straight forward. Technically, I have to test a file, whether compressed or not and see if I can "decode" the first line. If it can be decoded, it is not compressed, lol. This definately needs to go on the bug report tomorrow, but I'll be implementing the fix anyways.
Yeah, sadly, the compression issue in Poser 11 and python is kind of problematic. For camera files, which are written by Camera Panel Plus 2014, Poser's python is writing compressed files with the uncompressed extension. It also needs to read them to generate camera presets. If it gets a compressed file with an uncompressed extension, it "thinks" it can read them but actually just returns something that is is empty. So tonight I had to devise a way for it to test them, which wasn't really straight forward. Technically, I have to test a file, whether compressed or not and see if I can "decode" the first line. If it can be decoded, it is not compressed, lol. This definately needs to go on the bug report tomorrow, but I'll be implementing the fix anyways.
Snarlygribbly
Member
Joe,
There are some people who have contributed so much to the Poser community that they deserve all the time and support they need.
You are one such person.
If there's anything I can do to help, in any way, just let me know?
Cheers, and best wishes for your future endeavours,
Snarly
There are some people who have contributed so much to the Poser community that they deserve all the time and support they need.
You are one such person.
If there's anything I can do to help, in any way, just let me know?
Cheers, and best wishes for your future endeavours,
Snarly
An alternate method of picking a runtime to start in sounds like it will help me a lot.
File Optimizer has problems detecting my current development runtime in PP2014. File Optimizer does remember the last place I was in my runtimes that are setup normally, like my Figures runtime. So, if I want to run File Optimizer on a bunch of files in the Figures runtime, it works brilliantly. But if I try to run it on a bunch of files in my development runtimes, it defaults to the last place I was in say ... the Figures runtime, and I then have to browse to my development folder and then to the folder with the files I'm working on.
Since my development runtimes have an extra level in them compared to my other runtimes, it's rather obvious (now) to me that the extra level is causing the problem.
My Runtime structure is
3D Content Drive
While in my Development Runtime, it's
3D Content Drive
The extra level doesn't cause any problems in Poser, with my runtimes appearing in the Poser library as:
Figures
Nature
Architecture
The Gardener Clothing
etc.
Um ... that's rather a long winded way of saying I like the solution you're working on for the PP11 File Optimizer!
One day I'll fully transition from working in PP2014 to PP11. Clearly ... since I'm dragging my feet with PP11, I've no problem with it taking a bit of time for you to get things working as brilliantly in PP11 as they do in PP2014.
File Optimizer has problems detecting my current development runtime in PP2014. File Optimizer does remember the last place I was in my runtimes that are setup normally, like my Figures runtime. So, if I want to run File Optimizer on a bunch of files in the Figures runtime, it works brilliantly. But if I try to run it on a bunch of files in my development runtimes, it defaults to the last place I was in say ... the Figures runtime, and I then have to browse to my development folder and then to the folder with the files I'm working on.
Since my development runtimes have an extra level in them compared to my other runtimes, it's rather obvious (now) to me that the extra level is causing the problem.
My Runtime structure is
3D Content Drive
Figures
ReadMe's
Runtime
Templates
Runtime
Templates
While in my Development Runtime, it's
3D Content Drive
Working
The Gardener Clothing
ReadMe's
Runtime
Templates
Runtime
Templates
The extra level doesn't cause any problems in Poser, with my runtimes appearing in the Poser library as:
Figures
Nature
Architecture
The Gardener Clothing
etc.
Um ... that's rather a long winded way of saying I like the solution you're working on for the PP11 File Optimizer!
One day I'll fully transition from working in PP2014 to PP11. Clearly ... since I'm dragging my feet with PP11, I've no problem with it taking a bit of time for you to get things working as brilliantly in PP11 as they do in PP2014.
Glitterati3D
Dances with Bees
You know, Joe, some of us (pointing at myself) don't even have Toybox and MatWriter installed in P11 and never even noticed.
See, I use P11 and P14 extensively in every product I release. I have to test in the software, so it would be silly not to use it, right?
Anyway, my workflow is........Rig in P11 (because ALL the morphs behave properly in P11) then go to P14 for testing and cleanup. Once I get to P14, I use Toybox to repoint the object file and set the proper version numbers first thing.
I still do all my texture work in P14 using MatWriter Panel, then go to P11 for testing and Superfly material changes.
So, what I'm saying is I never even bothered with installing Toybox or MW into P11 because they just fit in my workflow in P14.
So, really, give yourself a break and understand that your users aren't sitting here in limbo waiting for you. Most of us have several versions of Poser installed.