• Welcome to the Community Forums at HiveWire 3D! Please note that the user name you choose for our forum will be displayed to the public. Our store was closed as January 4, 2021. You can find HiveWire 3D and Lisa's Botanicals products, as well as many of our Contributing Artists, at Renderosity. This thread lists where many are now selling their products. Renderosity is generously putting products which were purchased at HiveWire 3D and are now sold at their store into customer accounts by gifting them. This is not an overnight process so please be patient, if you have already emailed them about this. If you have NOT emailed them, please see the 2nd post in this thread for instructions on what you need to do

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Oh I liked the software, in fact I was on both beta teams for version 3 and 4. I just got annoyed when Genesis 2 came out, and we would have to purchase new versions of clothes and such we had for every version of Vicky since V3 because Autofit wasn't that good back then. Enough was enough. Besides, except for a handful of items made ONLY for DS, 98% of my DS 3A Runtime is filled with Poser compatible products. I only gave up on P5 because it kept crashing on me, but I had a feeling it was my old Win98 SE OS that was causing the issues. I had DS 2 on my old laptop at that time, so continued with that instead.

I still have both DS 3A and DS 4P installed on this laptop, and use them when I'm inspired to do so. I had decided to get back into Poser, so didn't see the necessity to continue updating DS 4.x I'm not a content creator, so it never seemed necessary to me.
 

Rae134

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
I'd love to have a go, but for iClone and CC3 it would cost me approx. $555.00 after conversion from USD to Aus (and paypal conversion is always more than the going rate so would prob end up being more) :(

Cant wait to see what others do tho
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
The servers at Reallusion have been swamped with people downloading CC3 and whatever else they purchased last night. It was like a stampede, and some people couldn't even connect to the forums because of the extraordinary traffic. I have been a member of Reallusion for years and I don't remember seeing something like this. So we weren't the only ones excited about the CC3 release last night - it was a real door buster! ^^

Now I assume people will have questions regarding the HW figures combo pack. For once, those who already have these figures probably don't need to buy them again for CC3? I saw the conversion videos, and it seems like simple enough to do with the new CC3 Transformer? Would there be an advantage to buy them from Reallusion, besides the conversion process? I mean, I assume they are already converted.
 

RAMWolff

Wolff Playing with Beez!
Contributing Artist
I'd love to have a go, but for iClone and CC3 it would cost me approx. $555.00 after conversion from USD to Aus (and paypal conversion is always more than the going rate so would prob end up being more) :(

Cant wait to see what others do tho
WOW and I was balking at the prices for some stuff for just US dollars. I really hate that folks that live in other areas of the world have to pay upwards of even DOUBLE what we pay here. That totally sucks rotten eggs! :mad::(:mad:
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Great stuff there Ken. It's so good to see you out and about and connected in this manner. Kudos to you for keeping an eye toward the future, and to your support of HiveWire products as well.

I think the people at Reallusion are wizards actually. They have so much available, and their software is so feature rich. Smith Micro and Poser could learn a great deal from them, as to what software could and should be doing for the customer. The folks at DAZ already get it, and are on a solid trajectory with both software and their content in general.

I honestly think Poser could be saved. I just don't know if Smith Micro is the company that can save it anymore. Honestly? I can't even put forward a valid argument that they WANT to save it.
 

Chris

HW3D President
Staff member
Co-Founder
I honestly think Poser could be saved. I just don't know if Smith Micro is the company that can save it anymore. Honestly? I can't even put forward a valid argument that they WANT to save it.

The reality for Smith Micro is that they don't have any true developers for Poser anymore. They let them all go a couple years ago at the same time they fired Charles Taylor. Before that, Steve Cooper became disillusioned and burnt out and left from being Product Manager. Since losing Steve Cooper, Smith Micro has gone thru 3 more product managers, those being Steve Yatson, Charles Taylor, Raffeal Torrez (I always misspell his name). Now they have a fifth one in a 2 year period with Davit Davitian who was made Graphics Product Manager earlier this year. Just one of his responsibilities is Poser. I can't speak for Davit, but from speaking with past PMs, I know that other Poser product managers did not have the support needed to be completely successful with Poser.

There is much more that can be said about the current climate that Poser is in, but I'm going to save those comments, because this is not the thread for that, and also I would like to remain positive that Davit and his managers and team might be able to pull something out of their hat. I know they have a strategy and we'll do our best to support that and watch things unfold. I've certainly given them an ear full, over these last several months.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
The reality for Smith Micro is that they don't have any true developers for Poser anymore. They let them all go a couple years ago at the same time they fired Charles Taylor. Before that, Steve Cooper became disillusioned and burnt out and left from being Product Manager. Since losing Steve Cooper, Smith Micro has gone thru 3 more product managers, those being Steve Yatson, Charles Taylor, Raffeal Torrez (I always misspell his name). Now they have a fifth one in a 2 year period with Davit Davitian who was made Graphics Product Manager earlier this year. Just one of his responsibilities is Poser. I can't speak for Davit, but from speaking with past PMs, I know that other Poser product managers did not have the support needed to be completely successful with Poser.

There is much more that can be said about the current climate that Poser is in, but I'm going to save those comments, because this is not the thread for that, and also I would like to remain positive that Davit and his managers and team might be able to pull something out of their hat. I know they have a strategy and we'll do our best to support that and watch things unfold. I've certainly given them an ear full, over these last several months.
Yes, I spoke briefly with Davit, myself. Which is why I was somewhat surprised by the sudden closing of Content Paradise.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
WOW and I was balking at the prices for some stuff for just US dollars. I really hate that folks that live in other areas of the world have to pay upwards of even DOUBLE what we pay here. That totally sucks rotten eggs! :mad::(:mad:

I hear such things happen, especially in Europe, and I don't understand why the pricing is so different when the products are digital and require no shipping expenses. I suppose it might be related to the software being made in America, and European countries tax it extra for not being part of the European Union. Like some kind of penalty for buying from outside the EU, perhaps? That sounds like it could be a reason, but I am just guessing here.

I honestly think Poser could be saved. I just don't know if Smith Micro is the company that can save it anymore. Honestly? I can't even put forward a valid argument that they WANT to save it.

I have been a CP vendor for over a decade, and I was not surprised when they announced the Rendo merge. Historically speaking, SMS never wanted CP when they acquired Poser, but it came along and they had to deal with it. They didn't have a separate team to work on it, so it ended up being ran by the Poser programmers, which as we know now, didn't go very well. Most people here agreed that it's best to get rid of CP so SMS can spend more time making Poser better. Even though I will loose my CP store, I still endorse that idea. If some bad things come for the better, this is one of them.
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Most people here agreed that it's best to get rid of CP so SMS can spend more time making Poser better.
Well, I happen to think that's a big IF, because we don't know for sure SM will actually spend more time developing Poser.

I also remember the comments about them not wanting CP when they obtained Poser, and it sure took them a long time to decide enough is enough. If they were so dead set against CP, why didn't they dump it years ago? Why did they wait until now?
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
If they were so dead set against CP, why didn't they dump it years ago? Why did they wait until now?

For once, CP was making them money, so except for stressing the Poser dev team, SMS was still getting something out of it. However, customers noticed the stagnation at CP, which affected sales over time. People also complained about some of the policy changes under SMS, which also affected sales. Having that said, I understand SMS has resigned to milking the cow until it died. Even the recent CP face lift didn't do much to help because it wasn't addressing the issues people have been complaining about for years. It was more like a superficial gimmick, and it obviously didn't take long for people to see through it. All of the above have contributed for the end of CP, which as I keep saying, was inevitable since there was obviously no investment from SMS on it. They have literally milked the proverbial cow until it died. How long it took to die depends on what amount of revenue SMS would consider enough to justify it.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
For once, CP was making them money, so except for stressing the Poser dev team, SMS was still getting something out of it. However, customers noticed the stagnation at CP, which affected sales over time. People also complained about some of the policy changes under SMS, which also affected sales. Having that said, I understand SMS has resigned to milking the cow until it died. Even the recent CP face lift didn't do much to help because it wasn't addressing the issues people have been complaining about for years. It was more like a superficial gimmick, and it obviously didn't take long for people to see through it. All of the above have contributed for the end of CP, which as I keep saying, was inevitable since there was obviously no investment from SMS on it. They have literally milked the proverbial cow until it died. How long it took to die depends on what amount of revenue SMS would consider enough to justify it.
Sadly, the same may be said of Poser. Please, don't get me wrong. I WANT Poser to survive. I'm just not certain how SMS feels about it. Don't forget, that SMS is a Software company, but they're not a developer. I've said the same thing about why they couldn't compete with Genesis. They literally don't have the expertise for it. Which is why my suggestion to them has always been to join forces with someone who has that experience... Hivewire. I don't know why they couldn't come to an agreement with Chris, and if Chris wants to tell us that's up to him.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
@eclark1894 I believe SMS will come back to Poser at some point - they just don't have enough people to do it now. Like Chris said above, there is no Poser dev team at the moment, but remember SMS let CP go so they can concentrate the effort on Poser development. This is a positive thing, all things considered.

My bet on why HW couldn't get to an acceptable agreement with SMS is due to a conflict of interests. As you said, SMS is a software retailer, so they want to sell things, not make them. As it has been repeatedly proven in recent events, SMS' inability to position Poser in this market comes heavily from that. They have failed to realize the importance of content to keep Poser moving forward. This far they have only looked at the technical features, and skipped the contents the best they could get away with it, like it was with Paul and Pauline when Poser 11 was released. Remember they wanted to showcase Paul when he didn't even have rigging at release time? That's the kind of lack of commitment to the importance of contents that they seem to have such a hard time to understand.

I guess the bottom line is that for as long as SMS fail to recognize the importance of QUALITY contents for the future of Poser, it will remain difficult for them to understand the value of it. Poser didn't fail to compete with Genesis - it has failed to recognize the value of it to the customers. They thought that if they added shiny new features to Poser, people would overlook the lack of contents. That sounds a silly idea to us, but it seemed to make sense to SMS at the time. Like I said, it's a conflict of interests. When I claimed above that SMS doesn't understand this market, I wasn't saying it lightly.
 

Rae134

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
I hear such things happen, especially in Europe, and I don't understand why the pricing is so different when the products are digital and require no shipping expenses. I suppose it might be related to the software being made in America, and European countries tax it extra for not being part of the European Union. Like some kind of penalty for buying from outside the EU, perhaps? That sounds like it could be a reason, but I am just guessing here.
In my case its just the conversion of the AUS$ to the USD$ that's a killer (no extra taxes etc)
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
In my case its just the conversion of the AUS$ to the USD$ that's a killer (no extra taxes etc)

Oh yes, there is also currency exchange rates.

In response to my own question about not being able to locate Iray in iClone after the release of CC3, I have cleared that issue at the Reallusion forums. I seem to have missed the part where they have announced that only CC3 would support Iray at release time. The official claim was that iClone would get Iray support in version 7.3, which is the current, but that was a mistake. It will do it in version 7.4, or something like that, and this is why things got confusing. I was following the ads, not the forums.

The reality is that the "Iray Render plugin for iClone and CC3" has already been released, but iClone doesn't support it at the moment. You can imagine how confusing it was when I had it installed, but it wouldn't show in iClone. It's rather unusual to release a plugin for a program that doesn't support it, but that was the case here. They claim Iray support will come in the next update later this year.

One thing I can already tell from my experience with Iray in CC3 is that it renders faster than in DS, in good part thanks to Reallusion adopting the latest state-of-the-art artificial intelligence noise reduction (AI-Denoise) to speed things up, so we need way less samples to clear the noise (faster renders!). There is also a "background Iray rendering" that can work as a separate process, so you can keep working as it renders.

Below is an Iray test render with CC3's native Dawn with only 30 samples, with AI-Denoiser enabled on the right. Can you see the difference? We don't have this option in DS (longer renders).

AIDenoise.jpg


So today I have found Dawn, Dusk, Baby Luna and the HW Gorilla present in CC3 by default. I just had to dial the Dawn shape to get the above, and she can wear all of the CC figure's clothing, morphs and materials. Surprisingly, Mec4D's Huntress outfit was included by default. Dawn for Poser/DS ships with her "Base Morphs", while the CC3 version ships with CC3 morphs instead. The same is valid for Dusk, Luna and Gorilla, where the HW base morphs are not included, but the standard CC3 ones can be used instead. I am not sure, but it appears that the Base Morphs were merged with the CC3 Started Pack.

I believe this is where the CC3 Dawn Starter Pack comes in (sold separately). It seems to be the equivalent of the Dawn Starter Stack sold here. The first difference is that the Starter Pack includes the figure at HW, while in CC3 it's already provided by default. I am not sure if the contents match exactly, but it's generally the same things included. Some extra contents were added, such as low and high poly versions of the clothing and hair. This is critical when you want to make scenes with many characters, where in Poser/DS we only get the high poly version. Even in the CC low poly versions, we can subdivide them in renders, using way less memory and rendering faster.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
@eclark1894 I believe SMS will come back to Poser at some point - they just don't have enough people to do it now. Like Chris said above, there is no Poser dev team at the moment, but remember SMS let CP go so they can concentrate the effort on Poser development. This is a positive thing, all things considered.
Yeah, well, we'll see. I'm not as optimistic about that move as you are, however. After all, It's not like CP was costing them a lot of money. They weren't doing much with it. And as you say, they didn't want the store anyway. Honestly, unless working on CP was compulsory for them, they should have had plenty of time to work on Poser.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
@eclark1894 I believe SMS will come back to Poser at some point - they just don't have enough people to do it now. Like Chris said above, there is no Poser dev team at the moment, but remember SMS let CP go so they can concentrate the effort on Poser development. This is a positive thing, all things considered.

My bet on why HW couldn't get to an acceptable agreement with SMS is due to a conflict of interests. As you said, SMS is a software retailer, so they want to sell things, not make them. As it has been repeatedly proven in recent events, SMS' inability to position Poser in this market comes heavily from that. They have failed to realize the importance of content to keep Poser moving forward. This far they have only looked at the technical features, and skipped the contents the best they could get away with it, like it was with Paul and Pauline when Poser 11 was released. Remember they wanted to showcase Paul when he didn't even have rigging at release time? That's the kind of lack of commitment to the importance of contents that they seem to have such a hard time to understand.

I guess the bottom line is that for as long as SMS fail to recognize the importance of QUALITY contents for the future of Poser, it will remain difficult for them to understand the value of it. Poser didn't fail to compete with Genesis - it has failed to recognize the value of it to the customers. They thought that if they added shiny new features to Poser, people would overlook the lack of contents. That sounds a silly idea to us, but it seemed to make sense to SMS at the time. Like I said, it's a conflict of interests. When I claimed above that SMS doesn't understand this market, I wasn't saying it lightly.
I do have to say though, that I just haven't bought into that "content is king" thing yet. I'll explain later, though.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Okay, so why I don't believe that "content is king". I believe that the Poser marketplace is like a recipe. Every ingredient is important, but on it's own not so much. Poser, without content, is just a software program with nothing to manipulate. Content, without Poser is just virtual statues. Put them together an you really have something. So I don't believe that content is any more or less than the software. Kind of like vegetable soup. Which ingredient is more important, the vegetables or the water?

Anyway, I'm way off topic, so I'll shut up now.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
Ok, I have been quiet for a while, learning some CC3 and iClone functionality. The very first thing I wanted to know was how hard it would be to convert my Poser/DS contents to it, and in the way, I have discovered a number of other things. So yes, it's easy to convert morphs, materials and clothing. Actually almost too easy! Below is the CC3 figure with Body Type-6, Skyla face and textures, HW string bikini + pumps, and Genesis Aven hair. Looks just like the Poser/DS version, but note this is NOT Dawn - it's a completely different mesh and rigging. More about this below.



What Reallusion did here is some kind of sorcery. In theory, we shouldn't be able to use Dawn's morphs on a different figure because it's a completely different geometry. When we look at the render above, it looks like it's Dawn because that's how she looks in Poser/DS with these morphs and textures. However, the CC3 mesh is of a lower resolution, so some of the Type-6 details seem to be missing here. The CC3 figure has a different mesh density and topology, so not all morph details can be transferred.

With this particular morph, I can see the loss of fidelity on the missing abdomen details. When it comes to topology and rigging, the CC3 figure's shoulders look different from Dawn's. Nonetheless, the Skyla face is quite recognizable here, and her materials look awesome in both the default PBR render and I-ray, so hats off for Reallusion! Material conversions were never easy in Poser/DS, but here it was done with a button click. All automatic.

Just think of it - we cannot transfer V4 or Genesis morphs to Dawn. If we could, I would had been doing that for years. Even Texture Transformer has issues converting textures between different figures, especially when it comes to rebuilding the Poser shaders. In my experience, it does a decent job converting the textures, but the Poser shaders it creates are a mess.

With CC3 "Transformer", this all happens with a button click - it converts the morphs, the textures, and refits the clothing. Converting the textures is optional with a checkbox that is unticked by default. To my surprise, Auto-Fit was having trouble fitting the string bikini to the Type-6 body in DS. The bikini bottom ended up twice as large as it should be to fit Dawn. In CC3, it fits perfectly as seen above - even better than it does in Poser. And consider Type-6 is a rather extreme morph.

All in all, it's rather easy to have any HW or DAZ figures in CC3, to include their morphs and materials. I still haven't figured out how to create custom morph dials in CC3 yet, but when I do, that would allow interesting things to happen, such as mixing morphs from Dawn with a morphs from Genesis (any of them), or even V4. This would be impossible in Poser/DS.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
Even though the purpose of Poser/DS and iClone are more or less the same, there are essential differences in how things work. The most evident is that in Poser/DS we can keep manipulating the figure's morphs at any point, while in Reallusion programs, we can only reshape the figure in CC, and then animate/render them in iClone. This might come as a surprise to the unsuspecting Poser/DS user. It's like the morph dials are in a different program.

So the process would still be the same, except that we have to define the character first, instead of later. However, iClone has a button to resend the character back to CC at any time to edit the morphs. It's just that we, in Poser/DS, are used to being able to edit the morphs at any time, and with iClone that is done in another program. The integration between CC and iClone seems pretty seamless, though, but it's important to know that this is the way things work.

Once the character is in iClone, things are a bit different to pose it. In Poser/DS, we can click on a body part and pose it with either dials or with a direct manipulation gizmo. In iClone, we don't click the figure to select parts to pose, but instead there is a special panel where we can select the body part, and them use the usual gizmos to pose them directly on the figure. Clicking directly on the figure to select things is more convenient and intuitive, but it can also be confusing, especially in Poser, because we can select the clothing instead of the figure, or some parts can be very hard to select depending on the pose and camera position. Having that said, I find the iClone panel rather convenient to select body parts, because there is no doubt about what is being selected. I just wanted to point out that in iClone we don't select body parts directly on the figure, because that's how we think in Poser/DS.

Another major difference is that ANY hair and clothing can be turned dynamic in iClone, but it doesn't use the same methods we are used to in Poser/DS. That is, it doesn't use the usual cloth simulations. Instead, it uses either the Bullet physics engine, or the nVidia's PhysX engine (default). iClone can use physics to drive either bones, or the mesh itself to animate in real-time. It's a mix of soft and hard body dynamics, where one collides with the other. In either cases, we have to define primitives for the mesh to collide against. This is something completely new to Poser/DS, even though we could do the same in Poser with the built-in Bullet engine. The bottom line is that the dynamic cloth and hair do not collide with body figure's body, but instead against simpler objects of collision we define, size and place. The CC3 figure already ships with these collision objects, but depending on how we reshape it with morphs, we may have to adjust their size and position.

Dynamic cloth and hair is defined by a greyscale map that is created over the UV template, pretty much like we do when painting textures. White areas will become fully dynamic, grey areas define different degrees of "softness/hardness", and black areas become fully static. If you know how to paint a bump map, you know how to make dynamic cloth and hair in iClone. It's very simple, but tends to be finicky, requiring some experimentation to get things right. Even if we mess up on the greyscale map, iClone allows dynamically editing it with brightness/contrast sliders to make fine adjustments when necessary. If you know the Bullet and PhysX engines, all this will be animated in real-time. There is no waiting for things to calculate. In the Skyla/Type-6 character shown in the previous post above, I had no issues making the Genesis Aven hair dynamic by just painting a greyscale map. Of course, if the hair has 10 MAT zones, things can get more complicated, but the process is always the same.

One major thing in iClone is that all characters use a more advanced IK system we don't have in Poser/DS, which automatically detects feet and hands contact with things. Those can be enabled/disabled at any time. The most useful is feet contact with the floor. I believe this has the same functionality as the Autodesk Human IK used in 3DSMAX and Maya, which is an industry standard. Whether you are posing or animating the character, this is the most useful feature because we will never accidentally have the characters floating around or going through the floor. Forget having to spend hours adjusting the feet so they stand on the floor. In iClone, this happens automatically. Needless to say, this is a HUGE time saver if you make animations. Here again, I am pointing this out because it's something we don't have in Poser/DS. Poser actually has floor contact detection, but it will slow your scene to a crawl. In iClone it happens, you guessed it, in real-time.

So these are a few workflow differences between Poser/DS and iClone. Hope this will be useful to new users. :)
 
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