Discussion about Poser Rigging and DS Rigging etc

[eclark1894]

I realize that people can't always afford the newest version of Poser. It took me six months after P11 came out for me to afford to upgrade. But seriously, Poser discounts a lot on sale. I bought my copy of PP 11 for $125. Not long after that it was on sale for much cheaper. Almost made me wish I had waited a month or two.

 

[Hornet3d]

I realize that people can't always afford the newest version of Poser. It took me six months after P11 came out for me to afford to upgrade. But seriously, Poser discounts a lot on sale. I bought my copy of PP 11 for $125. Not long after that it was on sale for much cheaper. Almost made me wish I had waited a month or two.

Your right Poser 11, both versions, have been on sale more than once and I have been tempted a few times. Trouble is it is not only the price that has stopped me upgrading, the automatic disable feature is a big bug bear with me, yet I don't get wound up with the lack of free downloads at Content Paradise, strange how what is acceptable and what is not can be very personal. It is not the only reason though, there are scripts that I use in Poser 2014 that will not work in Poser 11 and I would really miss them. I am not trying to knock SM or do Poser 11 down it is just the price I have to pay for the upgrade do not outweigh the benefits for me and when I say costs I am not talking purely of finance.

Somewhere down the line there will be a point when the upgrade price is too good for me to refuse or my outlook changes but I suspect when I do I will continue to use Poser 2014 and only use Poser 11 when I need Poser 11 only features such as Superfly. In that respect it will replace Game Dev rather than Poser 2014 because that is exactly what I do at the moment with the Game Dev version.

 

[eclark1894]

I haven't had any issues with the automatic disable feature, and I was in the hospital for a month, without using Poser. And they do have a way for you to get a permanent key to keep Poser working for people who aren't always coonected to the internet.

 

[Glitterati3D]

I will say, Hornet, I did the permanent activation over a year ago and never had any issues

 

[Hornet3d]

I will say, Hornet, I did the permanent activation over a year ago and never had any issues

Well that is good to hear and, giving SM credit they did come up with that solution which was not available when it was introduced with Game Dev. I am firmly on the fence at the moment, loving the Superfly renders I see but also knowing I would miss some of the scripts which I have used so long they just seem part of the standard interface. Of course the other factor is I would rather spend my hobby funds on buying good content than the update so you are sort of partly responsible for me not upgrading as there is always something of your in my wishlist.

There are also cases where I made products that were supposed to work in P9, but during testing it wouldn't work for inexplicable reasons. I did everything to make it compatible with P9, but it still wouldn't work - and what's worse - I don't know why. I have heard this from other CAs as well, and there is a chance there might be a bug in Poser 11 that causes that. And like Alisa said, I don't have P9 and neither do my testers.

SMS has fixed a TON of bugs in Poser 11, more than in other versions before it, but these many changes might have compromised backwards compatibility with P9 in some cases, so to the best of my ability, I simply don't know if things will work there nowadays, and I can't test it.

Coming from that, this might be a move for the better.

There was a discussion way back at Rendo suggesting that there were some changes to the way Poser 11 worked but it was a bit too technical for me. While I understand the aim of backward compatibility I also feel there should be some limits. Taking it to an extreme I don't see why those that have paid out to upgrade to Poser 11 should be held back because some users are still on Poser 4. It is my choice to stick at Poser 2014 at this point and in doing so I have to accept that I will not be able to use the latest and greatest features. That said even if I had Poser 11 I could not make use of the iRay materials that come with some of the poser stuff I buy elsewhere so there will always be limitations. If I was creating content or trying to photorealist renders the equation would be very different.

 

[Ken1171]

Poser is internally trying to move away from non-unimesh geometry, and that has caused some rather serious internal issues with weight map rigging in Poser 11. Last time I've talked to Larry Weinberg, I have reported the issues, and he understood how serious they were. He said SMS couldn't fix this with just an update, but he came up with a workaround in SR-5 to allow me to finish my product. It doesn't "fix" the issue, but it at least lets me finish the rigging - the part where we create and adjust the JCMs.

Larry said that fixing this would require rewriting most of the Poser core functionality, and nobody wanted to do that because it could easily cascade into affecting everything else. So this workaround was Larry's last contribution to Poser before the team was disbanded. This means Poser 12 would have to be literally reinvented to finally work with unimesh internally. One of the immediate benefits of that, besides more stable rigging, would be that figure OBJs exported from Poser would remain in 1 piece. This means the end of broken figure OBJs, and instant morph-level compatibility with DS.

I can't be sure, but there is a good chance that this part of Poser 11 rigging might cause incompatibility with Poser 9 because P9 was created before unimesh skinning was introduced in Poser 10.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I have Poser Pro 2014 as well as Poser Pro 11 on my computer. I don't know whether I will ever switch to using PP11 exclusively as I did with PP2014 when it was released. Though, I do rigging in PP11 rather than PP2014.

Unless I'm trying to setup Superfly materials, I prefer PP2014 for setting up materials.

I'm a firm believer in avoiding or limiting stress. So, I'm taking my own sweet time in switching over to PP11.

 

[RAMWolff]

I only develop for the current version of DAZ Studio and if I developed for Poser it would be the same. So if DAZ Studio 4.10 is the current version you can bet your sweet bippy I've upgraded and so then it's DAZ Studio 4.10 I'm working in and saving out presets for, if they work in DAZ Studio 4.9, great but I make no guarantees. There is no way to have two versions of DAZ Studio on the same hard drive and quite frankly with the introduction of D-Force I'm not about to pass that up. No way Jose! lol

 

[CWRW]

I know what you mean Satira- I was SO glad I was able to take my timae switching over to P11 since I had P10 too. But at this point I've been using P11 for 2 years now and other than doing my Firefly MATs in P10 I don't use P10 or P9 anymore. P11 is a lot faster on my machine. But then again LOL I am just a lowly texture artist I'm not trying to rig or anything!

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Rigging is SOOO much easier in PP11! Things almost rig themselves in PP11.

Well ... I wish. But anytime I'm having problems with rigging, it's because I forgot to switch to Poser Pro 11.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Rigging is SOOO much easier in PP11! Things almost rig themselves in PP11.

Well ... I wish. But anytime I'm having problems with rigging, it's because I forgot to switch to Poser Pro 11.

I agree Satira. Every word.

 

[Ken1171]

Rigging is SOOO much easier in PP11! Things almost rig themselves in PP11. Well ... I wish. But anytime I'm having problems with rigging, it's because I forgot to switch to Poser Pro 11.

Couldn't agree more. Knowing all the content creation bugs that were fixed in P11, and that still exist in P10, rigging in P11 is a breeze in comparison. Not to mention P11 is the ONLY version that adds smooth scaling groups to your models when you rig them, and also the only one that copies the bulge maps. Huge time-savings.

I am not sure why some are claiming that P10 is faster then P11 to create materials. The only thing that annoys me in P11 is that pasting materials create duplicates of all existing nodes. For reasons that are beyond me, SMS claims this is the "correct" way. But besides that, it takes me the same time to create materials for FF in either P10 or P11. It appears to have the same performance to me.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Couldn't agree more. Knowing all the content creation bugs that were fixed in P11, and that still exist in P10, rigging in P11 is a breeze in comparison. Not to mention P11 is the ONLY version that adds smooth scaling groups to your models when you rig them, and also the only one that copies the bulge maps. Huge time-savings.

I am not sure why some are claiming that P10 is faster then P11 to create materials. The only thing that annoys me in P11 is that pasting materials create duplicates of all existing nodes. For reasons that are beyond me, SMS claims this is the "correct" way. But besides that, it takes me the same time to create materials for FF in either P10 or P11. It appears to have the same performance to me.

I think clothing materials can be created in P11 for Firefly, but I found I had to go to PP14 for Firefly materials for my Dawn character that is in QC now. I just got tired of fighting with P11 for Firefly, and it was a fight.

 

[Rae134]

I am not sure why some are claiming that P10 is faster then P11 to create materials. The only thing that annoys me in P11 is that pasting materials create duplicates of all existing nodes. For reasons that are beyond me, SMS claims this is the "correct" way. But besides that, it takes me the same time to create materials for FF in either P10 or P11. It appears to have the same performance to me.

I find if I'm copy/replacing I need to select everything I want copied and then everything I want gone and use replace instead of paste and its fine. (don't know if that's what everyone is having problems with, I know sometimes I forget to do this and it just adds everything and I have to delete the old and its a pain )

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I had the same problem when I first started playing with PP11, mostly because earlier versions of Poser didn't have the Replace command, so I wasn't used to it, or how to get it to work correctly the first time.

I'm better at it now.

 

[Deleted member 325]

My issue with P11 is currently insurmountable. It is that my main workstation is Windows XP64 - and Poser 11 will not work on it. I do have machines with Windows 7, but they are not set up as workstations - and I have software I need/Use in other projects that will not run past Windows XP (I have tried to install on 7). So I am currently at an impasse.

 

[Ken1171]

I find if I'm copy/replacing I need to select everything I want copied and then everything I want gone and use replace instead of paste and its fine. (don't know if that's what everyone is having problems with, I know sometimes I forget to do this and it just adds everything and I have to delete the old and its a pain )

I have been using "replace" to avoid the duplications, but there is no shortcut for it, so it's extra menu fumbling for me. But mind you, it wasn't always like this. When P11 first came out, it didn't have a replace option, and pasting would replace instead of duplicating. It was months later that SMS stepped back on that decision, and it ended up like it is now. I have tried to talk them out of it, but they were convinced this was the "right" way.

 

[Miss B]

Ohhhhh I didn't realize it was "correct" in the first instance of PP11. I suspect their reasoning is, folks might realize they shouldn't have deleted everything after they replaced a setup. Of course, Ctrl+Z always saves the day.

 

[eclark1894]

I only develop for the current version of DAZ Studio and if I developed for Poser it would be the same. So if DAZ Studio 4.10 is the current version you can bet your sweet bippy I've upgraded and so then it's DAZ Studio 4.10 I'm working in and saving out presets for, if they work in DAZ Studio 4.9, great but I make no guarantees. There is no way to have two versions of DAZ Studio on the same hard drive and quite frankly with the introduction of D-Force I'm not about to pass that up. No way Jose! lol

Purely a hypothetical question for you Richard, but what if 4.10 broke ALL of your legacy content? Would you still use it?

 

[Glitterati3D]

Purely a hypothetical question for you Richard, but what if 4.10 broke ALL of your legacy content? Would you still use it?

I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, Earl. After all, there came a time when users couldn't even open .dsa scene files from DS3 and that didn't slow them down. DAZ has pretty much already done that several times before DS4 and after.

I think that Poser places too much emphasis on backward compatibility, hobbling new features because of it.