Poser sold to Rendo

[Robynsveil]

Just spent the last - however-long-it-took - to read the entirety of this thread. Whilst I did that, I upgraded my Poser 10 copy on my Mac to PP11. The $99 deal was attractive, even though it comes to AUD$150, and nurses in Oz don't earn more than their counterparts in the US, dollar for dollar. So, the upgrade was a good deal, but not as great as my US colleagues would have enjoyed.

Never mind: worthwhile, even so. I've been far more active in Blender these days when doing anything 3D, but I still feel somehow keen to create content for Poser users as I edge towards retirement from nursing, hence the upgrade. Call it an investment.

My own start was with DS when it was still in perpetual beta, as I found Blender 2.32 simply too hard to create anything nice in. Content creation was not Daz Studio's strong suit at the time, which led me to Poser 5 - briefly - then Poser 6, which was... marginal, and finally a solid product: Poser 7. Saw Poser move ownership from Curious Labs to eFrontier to Smith-Micro. I'm actually quite keen to see what Bondware/Rendo do with it: the cloth room needs a lot of love, something I use Poser for more than anything.

My workflow is typically: Pose in Poser, render in Blender.

 

[Ken1171]

@Robynsveil I share some of these things with you. I was first introduced to Poser coming from 3DSMAX, and that was 10 years before DS existed, so that's how I became a Poser guy. The first 2 versions of DS were not very usable, but version 3 was strong enough to compete with Poser. I only started creating native contents for DS in version 4, though. In a way I was lucky, because file formats have changed many times between versions 3 and 4.5. Not only file formats, but also the rigging systems. There are some things I like best in DS, but others I can't go without in Poser. When creating contents, I now use both programs, trying to make the best out of what each of is better with. Unfortunately, none is the better in everything.

But lucky for you, Poser has adopted Blender3D Cycles as its PBR rendering engine. Maybe you don't have to render in Blender if you don't mind the old Cycles version that never got updated. The materials room in Poser is excellent for creating all kinds of shader nodes, and SMS has integrated Poser RSR and native Cycles shaders, so we can use them together and make materials that work in both FF and SF. That can't be taken for granted, since Poser materials are incompatible with all other rendering engines, like Lux, Octane or I-ray. My biggest grudge is with the lack of micro-poly displacement and a native shadow catcher in SF, but those will eventually be added. There is a way to get a shadow catcher with the free EZDome script for Poser, but still no micro-poly displacement.

 

[AllenArt]

*waves at Robyn*

I use DS these days, but it's still nice to see you return to the hobby once again . I'm trying to get a DS to Blender workflow myself as I prefer Cycles over Iray (plus I can just model what I want for a scene if it doesn't currently exist. LOL). Eevee is also a draw and I'll keep my eye on it's development...

Welcome back!

Laurie

 

[AnimaGemini]

*waves at Robyn*

I use DS these days, but it's still nice to see you return to the hobby once again . I'm trying to get a DS to Blender workflow myself as I prefer Cycles over Iray (plus I can just model what I want for a scene if it doesn't currently exist. LOL). Eevee is also a draw and I'll keep my eye on it's development...

Welcome back!

Laurie

The new Blender is awesome. Eewee has still some glitches but I already love it. My husband and me ,we switch both to Blender a while ago. He an die hard former 3DSMax user ,me LW. Never looked back since the switch.
I also switch to DS for now. I will watch how the Poser development continue,but it has to be a major update that I will go back.
And it has nothing to do with the lack of content why I leave Poser.

 

[Miss B]

Welcome to the world of Blender AG. I've been a long time Blender user, but haven't upgraded to 2.8 yet, mainly because the OpenGL on this puppy isn't high enough. When I get a new laptop, then I'll play with it, though I doubt I'll be totally switching over. I'm so used to UI I've been using since version 2.52, that the new UI will take too long to get used to. That said, a lot of naysayers are now using it, because the new UI is easier for them to use, and the more Blender users we have, the better it's going to continue to get.

That said, I most definitely hope you don't leave Poser behind for good. I like your Poser content too much to lose yet another Poser vendor completely to DS,

 

[AnimaGemini]

@Miss B
We move to Blender when my husband was looking for a solution to replace 3DSMax. He is just an hobby modeler, (a very good one ,but still he do this just for fun) and the Autodesk cloud was for him just to much. So I suggest him to download Blender. After a while he give Blender a try and since this he is hooked. I move also to Blender so we can learn from each other. Sure he was always superior against me in modeling ,so I had the benefit to learn from him . Blender is great and I never thought that this software would evolute in such a huge way.

It was a very hard decision for me to drop Poser for now. I will for sure watch the development very close .For now I can not say if I go back or not. There are a few stuff which are for me important that they got a huge update like the clothroom, missing shader nodes for cycles, camera and lights.
Also the Cycle render engine .Rigging system. I hope for the best.

 

[eclark1894]

@Miss B
We move to Blender when my husband was looking for a solution to replace 3DSMax. He is just an hobby modeler, (a very good one ,but still he do this just for fun) and the Autodesk cloud was for him just to much. So I suggest him to download Blender. After a while he give Blender a try and since this he is hooked. I move also to Blender so we can learn from each other. Sure he was always superior against me in modeling ,so I had the benefit to learn from him . Blender is great and I never thought that this software would evolute in such a huge way.

It was a very hard decision for me to drop Poser for now. I will for sure watch the development very close .For now I can not say if I go back or not. There are a few stuff which are for me important that they got a huge update like the clothroom, missing shader nodes for cycles, camera and lights.
Also the Cycle render engine .Rigging system. I hope for the best.

You could always use Poser as part of your work flow. You have to test your models in another program anyway to see if they work and look right.

 

[AnimaGemini]

@eclark1894
I don't think it is really necessary to test in Poser when it is not made for Poser.
In the past when I was creating stuff for Poser ,I also never test in Daz Studio . I look how it looks in the modeler , in Substance Painter ,if the UV is okay.
I don't want to make my live more complicated as it is.

 

[eclark1894]

okay.

 

[carmen indorato]

hoping to update poser after mandatory update notice went out. followed the stupidly simple instructions to download this and that and all the other stuff (which took for-freaking-ever due to all the darn time-outs on the site but now that I got everything I have no idea how to upgrade? do i unzip everything and manually drop the updates into their right folders? how do i upgrade the actual app...see no installers in the stuff i downloaded?
Reminds me of the last darn upgrading i did for Poser Pro 2014 when i broke Poser and could never get it to work again. Had to delete everything even the 2014 Runtime folder because I could not get it to work. Real pain in the heinie all this forced obsolescence/upgrading stuff. dead head just can no longer get through it all it seems.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Install Poser 11.exe installs the update for Poser 11.

PoserSupport.exe creates the Poser 11 Runtime and installs basic content (such as the primitives)
I renamed my existing Poser 11 Content folder to Poser 11 Content Smith Micro before running the PoserSupport.exe.

The second download content page has the zip files that install the bonus HiveWire and Renderosity content.
I actually created an additional runtime (named Bonus Premium Content) for the content in these zip files.

Extract the zip files as you normally would or or drag and drop the contents of those zip files (which is what I do).

The HiveWire zip files contain HiveWire product zip files. The HiveWire Product zip files contain the ReadMes and Runtime folders and the HiveWire 3D Eula.text file. Install/extract from those Product zip files the same way you would install any HiveWire product zip file. Since I use Windows 10, I use File Explorer to drag and drop from the zip files to the appropriate Runtime (in this case my Bonus Premium Content runtime).

The Renderosity zip files (La Femme_BonusContent and the PoserPremiumContent) contains a "Poser Premium Content" folder that has the Documentation and Runtime folders. Install/extract from the Poser Premium Content folder the same way you would install any Renderosity zip file.

The AdditionalContent_Ghostman-AfroditeOhki zip doesn't have the Poser Premium Content folder, so just install/extract the Runtime in that file the way you would install any Renderosity zip file.

I didn't download the additional executable content files that were below the Zip content files. From what I understand, that's the old Poser 11 content (Smith Micro and before). Since I didn't delete my Smith Micro Poser 11 Content Runtime, I didn't see a reason to download and install those content files. I also haven't really installed the HiveWire content (other than Dawn to check something) since I already have the HiveWire content installed in other Runtimes.

My Poser Runtimes now look like this:

Where ...

• Poser 11 Content (which is the content installed by PoserSupport.exe)
• Poser 11 Content Smith Micro (the old Poser 11 Content from Smith Micro)
• Poser Premium Content (the HiveWire and Renderosity content)
• Poser Pro 2014 Content (which is the Runtime installed by Poser Pro 2014 and is basically everything that was also installed by the Smith Micro Poser 11.)

 

[Hornet3d]

I ran the Poser installation.exe and it prompts for the old version to be uninstalled, which I let it do. I then ran the install selecting 'use existing preferences' . After all the install I still had my preferred default screen and all my runtimes were in the library the only difference to the library otherwise was the edition of a Poser 11 runtime that had the primitives and a lot of other content, Bondware states there is $800 worth of content and having looked at the runtime I have no reason to suggest this is not accurate.

 

[Miss B]

I haven't run the Install Poser file again, but probably will in the next day or so. From what I understand from Jenn Blake, they'll be doing updates about once a week for a while, as they're just getting into familiarizing themselves with the software and what, if anything, needs updating.

As for the content zips, I unzipped them, and then chose which products I wanted to install, and where to install them. I manually install all the time, so even though it's time consuming, this is the way I'm used to doing it. This means I don't have "everything" installed, especially since I have the "Pro" version of La Femme, so wouldn't want to overwrite the files with the basic version they've included. There are also a lot of items I would never consider buying, because I have no use for them, so doing it the way I usually do, I wound up with about 18 items to install. The main download files are all on my external hard drive so I could always go back and grab something, if I change my mind.

 

[Semicharm]

Look like some of the new content zips changed from the original release on the 19th. For one, the LaFemme zips were a mess. Looks like they've got them sorted into 2 zips now. I'll dig into it when I get more time.

 

[Miss B]

Yes, I found them quite messy the first go-round. In fact, I didn't even look to install anything in the first one. Glad to hear they're cleaning up the content zips as well.

 

[RobZhena]

Mac users should not install the 9/23 update, which caused Mac-specific UI problems like stuck floating pallets. That is being rolled back, per Bondware.

 

[Miss B]

I saw some comments about that on their forum. Thanks for the update Rob.

 

[eclark1894]

Mac users should not install the 9/23 update, which caused Mac-specific UI problems like stuck floating pallets. That is being rolled back, per Bondware.

I don't think I'm going to update either, even though I'm on Windows. My computer's working fine as is.

 

[RobZhena]

A new Mac version is out, 11.2.289.I had the registration box appear and prevent launch the first two times, but the third and fourth times everything was OK.

 

[Semicharm]

From what I can tell so far:

• some items were removed from the LaFemme set and some new/updated hairs, along with a random piece of furniture, were put in their place.
• HiveWire3D_DuskBaseTextures.zip has all of the zip files now.
• ZLegacyContent_Poser_Paul and Pauline.zip is not only a duplicate copy of Paul and Pauline, it's incomplete and possibly unusable. I'm not sure if the other required files were included with the Poser install.
• one item was removed from PoserPremiumContent_3DScenery_01.zip and a small update to the home economics classroom
• some items were removed from PoserPremiumContent_PropsAndTransportation.zip

Until the dust settles, these bundles are going to be a bit of a crapshoot.