Poser on borrowed time?

[McGyver]

I didn't want to mention this when I asked the question... But...

Wha... W... Waa... Why the hell not? *

I also didn't want to mention that I always just assumed it did, but since I never really thought to use it, I never really checked that.
I'm actually kinda shocked... I really assumed it wasn't such a super sophisticated feature.

I can see where that could be a deal breaker for someone making content for Poser.
It kinda sucks, because the reason I'm asking about it is I'm thinking of working on an old model of an island fortress kinda set I made... I abandoned/put it off, because it was way too heavy as it was...
Think of something like a nicer Orc-free Isengard, but on a small island with a small perimeter forest surrounding the walls.
Then I thought about instancing some of the architectural details and trees.

I knew DAZ does it, so I figured poser would too...
Ouch...
I guess I'll have to make that one a DAZ only model.

But then again at the rate I was working on it, Poser will either be dead or up to 15 by the time I finish it.


*I'm so shocked I'm using emojis... I never use emojis!

 

[McGyver]

No, Poser doesn't do instancing natively.

I don't know if it will help, but Snarlygribbly has a Particles script here: orphans.basicwiz.com (Particles3)

I'll look into that... But even if it isn't good for instancing, it's still good for something.
That is a super great link, especially with the weight mapped V4 stuff!
Thanks!

 

[McGyver]

I'm so totally baffled by this.
So I figured that if it wasn't native, maybe it could be a script, either paid or free...
There are three...
One by the late DraagonStorm, "Send in the Clones" for Poser
And GardenTime Landscape Generator by i13/f68...
Send in the Clones seems to have some decent controls, but no "drop to surface" feature...
The other seems random.
The third one is Eco for Terradome, by Semidieu... That sounds pretty good, but I can't find it anywhere and it seems that when RDNA closed, Semidieu went off the grid.
Well, probably just stopped selling stuff... "Off the grid" sounds like they are hiding inside a hollow log in the mountains of Colorado.

I'm now pretty sure I know why I thought Poser did instancing... I probably read one of the promos for TerraDome and noted there was instancing at play and didn't realize there was a separate script needed.

But I'm still baffled that there aren't a few more comprehensive plugins or scripts available to do this...
How do you do forests, or libraries or grocery stores... Or armies in Poser?

What the hell SM?

I've heard that sometimes scripts get broken with version changes... Could that be why this wasn't really something anyone really wanted to bother with?

 

[Hornet3d]

How do you do forests? Good question, and the simple answer for me is, I don't, not in Poser. If I want a forest I drop my Poser figures into Vue but there are many times I would not need to do that if Poser had proper instancing.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

I have some more concrete information about Smith-Micro and Siggraph 2017 (Los Angeles). I'll be in their booth Tuesday, August 1st (the day the exhibition opens), demoing from 10:30am until 12:30pm.

The setup is not too formal, I'll be simply creating imagery with a runtime full of my products and showing off the features of Poser. Feel free to drop by, say hello and ask some questions.

All this should start appearing on their social media feeds towards the end of this week.

 

[ben]

It's half backed that's for sure. Object and texture files were originally placed in the geometry and textures folders as we were told that Poser would only load them into memory once but in practice this doesn't really work as expected, plus smith micro no longer save their obj file to the geometry folder and places them with the character folder - - and if you save your scene to a pz3 file it will write the same information multiple times for the same character and textures used more than once in the scene, which is completely nutty lol

 

[McGyver]

How do you do forests? Good question, and the simple answer for me is, I don't, not in Poser. If I want a forest I drop my Poser figures into Vue but there are many times I would not need to do that if Poser had proper instancing.

Yeah, that was a wrong way of saying what I meant...

How does Smith Micro expect people to do forests, libraries, stampedes of wild chihuahuas, store shelves, traffic jams, armies or crowds?

I'm sorry if I'm harping on this, but I'm really bummed out.
The other thing I realized is (which might be wrong), even if I purchased a script, since it's not a native feature, I would have to make some sort of a preset, and anyone using the model would probably have to own the same script or plugin.

That's how it seem to be with Eco for Terradome.

 

[Ken Gilliland]

Yeah, that was a wrong way of saying what I meant...

How does Smith Micro expect people to do forests, libraries, stampedes of wild chihuahuas, store shelves, traffic jams, armies or crowds?

Poser has one built in feature I wish DS had (without having to buy extra plug-ins)... it's "Duplicate" and found under the "Edit" Tab... it will duplicate anything and everything that is parented to it. I use this feature all the time.

 

[Hornet3d]

Yeah, that was a wrong way of saying what I meant...

How does Smith Micro expect people to do forests, libraries, stampedes of wild chihuahuas, store shelves, traffic jams, armies or crowds?

I'm sorry if I'm harping on this, but I'm really bummed out.
The other thing I realized is (which might be wrong), even if I purchased a script, since it's not a native feature, I would have to make some sort of a preset, and anyone using the model would probably have to own the same script or plugin.

That's how it seem to be with Eco for Terradome.

I knew what you meant and it is a good question I just answered it badly. Basically you can's hence my use of Vue.

Traffic jams and crowds are possible to some degree, Powerage do the MOM Crowd and MOM traffic generator but it a sort of cheat rather than instancing, still very clever and useful for all that. Then again a lot of Poser is built around 'cheats' and most the improvements in renders in the past view versions is trying to make things work real world, hence Superfly, but there were things like SSS before that.

 

[Alisa]

Poser have one built in feature I wish DS had (without having to buy extra plug-ins)... it's "Duplicate" and found under the "Edit" Tab... it will duplicate anything and everything that is parented to it. I use this feature all the time.

I'm with you on that! I love that feature.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Love Duplicate too.

Does Send in the Clones work in PP2014+/P10+?

 

[Miss B]

I'm with you on that! I love that feature.

WOW, now how I have I missed THAT all these years. Of course, I haven't really had a need to duplicate anything in Poser, but how easy is it to just select it and go to Edit > Duplicate, and it states what you've selected. Hmmmm, I see a new toy I'm going to be playing with.

 

[eclark1894]

Yep, i used to use Duplicate all the time...

Those are all the same cop.... just duplicated.

 

[Miss B]

I'm definitely going to have to play with it now.

 

[Glitterati3D]

WOW, now how I have I missed THAT all these years. Of course, I haven't really had a need to duplicate anything in Poser, but how easy is it to just select it and go to Edit > Duplicate, and it states what you've selected. Hmmmm, I see a new toy I'm going to be playing with.

I use it all the time, especially on Luna when I want a boy and girl in the same scene! Just put a skirt on one of them and pants on the other and you have instant twins! And if you have the HW face sets for Luna you can just morph the faces too!

 

[RAMWolff]

Poser have one built in feature I wish DS had (without having to buy extra plug-ins)... it's "Duplicate" and found under the "Edit" Tab... it will duplicate anything and everything that is parented to it. I use this feature all the time.

You mean like this?

 

[eclark1894]

You mean like this?

View attachment 28005

no, not like that. See my post.

 

[Miss B]

I use it all the time, especially on Luna when I want a boy and girl in the same scene! Just put a skirt on one of them and pants on the other and you have instant twins! And if you have the HW face sets for Luna you can just morph the faces too!

I guess I just haven't had a reason to do two of the same character, but I'm certainly going to be thinking about it.

 

[Miss B]

You mean like this?

No in Poser you can duplicate any character, prop, light, camera, etc. From your screenshot, it looks like DS only duplicates "nodes", which in Poser means the materials setup. Don't have the latest DS, so not sure what "nodes" are in DS if they aren't part of the textures/surfaces setup.

 

[RAMWolff]

Nope, in DS a node is the object. I use that all the time to duplicate Dusk or what ever to test various skin settings and what not