Poser sold to Rendo

[Hornet3d]

Current confusion aside CI I personally think that Poser's transition to Renderosity is the best possible outcome for Posers future. I think that you are in a similar situation to me as far as content is concerned. I have used Poser for a long time and over the years, I have purchased an awful lot of content. That has it's downside in many ways in as far as finding new content becomes harder to find for the simple reason that I have already bought most of what is available as far as my particular interest is concerned. There are however content creators old and new producing content for Poser. For example, Jack Tomelin (over at Daz) and Merlin are both notable for quality. In fact, I was recently able to save myself over $98 on JT products after my daughter pointed me to a 50% off sale he had. Elsewhere too there are new vendors coming up and Rendo recently featured some of them as being noteworthy. Then, of course, there is Hivewire who I would hold up to anyone for their quality and unique output. My only concern is in the range of clothing for our characters and the preponderance of slut/skimp wear out there. V4 is encumbered by vast amounts of the stuff and unfortunately LaFemme is falling to the same dilemma and I would ask those content creators if they really believe that a figure needs to be constantly presented in garments which barely cover her groin (if that) or would it not benefit the market if they looked into the other periods for clothing which there have been many throughout history. Again, I would cite LaFemme whose sole garment of any note from history is one medieval dress. Yes! One and I bought it which effectively removes LaFemme from any image I might come up with which is anything other than current fashion. Its a simple equation: Lack of product I'm looking for = no purchase = lost sale opportunity. That doesn't help anyone and hopefully its something Rendo can address in future. As for those content creators who have left Poser, including one notable for their unfortunate virilence on the subject I have to ask myself, what sort of response would they receive from a staunch Poser support base notable for its long memory. Some, of course, would be most welcome whilst others perhaps would be wiser to remain a thing of the past! Regards!

I have also benefited from the Jack Tomalin sale and the sale of some of Stonemason's old Poser stuff. Also have a lot of Merlin content and, as I am into Sci-Fi, most of Petipet's products. One good thing out of this is those that still provide Poser versions are some great vendors providing quality content.

 

[eclark1894]

I had the odd feeling they were trying to cover up the very existence of standard Poser 11, by not mentioning it in any way. Apart from the official announcement they made later on, none of the posts inquiring about it were ever directly answered. There was then, with a full day's delay, a statement pretending the upgrade option from regular Poser 11 had always been there, indirectly suggesting we've all been blind. Whatever policy is behind that; I think it is a bit strange. Apart from total newbies, everyone knew about regular Poser 11, especially those who, like me, had actually bought that version.

Hmm, never got that feeling at all. In fact, I could tell immediately that they were simply folding all the Posers into one version, pretty much like it was before Poser Pro debuted. Although to be honest, in the future, I expect them to drop the "Pro" portion of the name entirely.

 

[Hornet3d]

Hmm, never got that feeling at all. In fact, I could tell immediately that they were simply folding all the Posers into one version, pretty much like it was before Poser Pro debuted. Although to be honest, in the future, I expect them to drop the "Pro" portion of the name entirely.

I think you are right but I wonder if they will also stick to the naming convention, will it be Poser 12 or something else entirely?

 

[Ken1171]

In my case I have received Poser 11 Pro for free when I joined the SMS beta testing team. Since then I have submitted several pages of bug reports and feature suggestions, some of which have been implemented in the short while when Chuck Taylor was the product manager. Nearly all of the service releases were released in that short period. So I have a valid serial number, but I don't have a purchase registered in their store. I am also not sure if Rendo will keep the existing beta team and their "Poser Ambassador" and "Poser Insider" programs (I am a member of both), though I know they will preserve Mantis after transferring the data to their own server.

Just before the original dev team was disbanded, one of the biggest concerns would be if Poser 12 would [finally] be able to support Unimesh geometry. They claimed that would require rewriting the Poser core from scratch, which would affect everything else. This alone can break content creator's workflows as described by LadyLittleFox's article she posted right after RDNA was closed. I had my own share of the consequences when creating my products for the HW store. This also affects our ability to create DS versions of Poser products, since all exported meshes are invalid in DS.

I suspect only the original team would be capable of doing this huge undertaking, because they know what's under the hood and what needs to be done for that to happen. I fear that if another team does it, Poser may become something else we may not recognize since it will have to go through deep, dramatic changes on its very core. Conversely, what are the chances the original team would accept coming back after this long? They have probably moved on anyway.

So there are 2 possible outcomes for Poser 12 - either it becomes another set of patches over the old broken core, or it gets rewritten from scratch to finally support Unimesh geometry. On top of that, the outcome will depend a lot on who does it. Those are the things that concern me.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

None of my Poser purchases show in my Renderosity account either. Hopefully, they will get the orders input before any of us need to redownload and reinstall Poser.

Crossing fingers, tossing salt over shoulder, avoiding ladders.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

It's a rarity in a lot of professions for people to stay with the same employer for years. Most people find they can get better salary increases by changing jobs than by staying with the same employer. I could have seen a $20k or more salary increase by changing employers any number of times over the years. But ... I don't like change all that much, and I hate job searching and interviewing even more.

Actually, the only time I changed jobs was when a company repeatedly contacted me, each time offering me more incentive to work for them. The third time they got me. They finally made me an offer I couldn't refuse :wink:

 

[Mythocentric]

A final update:

I have just received a reply from Jann Blake in response to my Support Ticket regarding whether or not purchasing Poser 11 Pro via the non-members link will appear in your Renderosity purchases page in your account (actually within five minutes of my previous response to her so I can only assume that they have her chained to her desk!)

The answer is that it will not! She is however, looking into it to see if it can be sorted out.

 

[Miss B]

Good to know they'll at least consider adding it to your account.

 

[Darryl]

Yeah, Ken, I think the first chore is going to be to roll back the latest update (build 35540) to Build 35510. The Portugal programmers screwed up conforming in that 35540 build.

Frankly, their updates were a complete disaster.

I wonder if that's what's been causing me issues lately. I'm not near my computer to check and I made the mistake of upgrading the app directly rather than downloading individual patches so I can roll it back myself.

 

[Ken1171]

There is now a new discussion with Jenn concerning ex-SM Poser beta testers, whether Rendo will keep them or not. The reason being that Mantis will be ported to Rendo servers, where all the posts and reports were submitted and signed by the former official beta-testers. Jenn is usually quick with replies, but we are still waiting to see what will happen. Personally, it would be odd if they would keep Mantis but disband all of those who were created the actual data.

 

[Glitterati3D]

I wonder if that's what's been causing me issues lately. I'm not near my computer to check and I made the mistake of upgrading the app directly rather than downloading individual patches so I can roll it back myself.

If you are having issues with conforming clothing, by all means, it's likely you have the bad version.

 

[Ken1171]

Davit has replied to my question today, regarding whether or not Rendo will keep the existing beta testers. He said that will be decided after Mantis transitions to Rendo servers. Then, SMS has deleted all posts from the thread, leaving only the announcement that if you have any questions, ask Rendo. I suppose this is what will happen to all Poser threads at SMS, which I believe will be a big loss to the Poser community. That's so many years of Poser forum threads that will be threaded, to include my popular Dawn renders one.

 

[Willowisp]

I guess it's time to make sure threads are saved on the Wayback machine..

 

[Hornet3d]

Davit has replied to my question today, regarding whether or not Rendo will keep the existing beta testers. He said that will be decided after Mantis transitions to Rendo servers. Then, SMS has deleted all posts from the thread, leaving only the announcement that if you have any questions, ask Rendo. I suppose this is what will happen to all Poser threads at SMS, which I believe will be a big loss to the Poser community. That's so many years of Poser forum threads that will be threaded, to include my popular Dawn renders one.

That would be a big loss, there is a wealth of information locked up in those threads and, much as I love Poser, it is not the easiest of programs to use it is very difficult to get the best out of it. In the nineteen years I have been playing with 3d art I have gain most of my knowledge from forums, despite the books and dvds I purchased on the subject. My most frequent need of the forums was when I tried to get my head around Superfly and without the helpful people on the forums I would almost certainly have abandoned Superfly long ago.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I still haven't got my head around Superfly!

 

[eclark1894]

I still haven't got my head around Superfly!

Superfly is easy. It's FireFly that's an enigma.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Superfly is easy. It's FireFly that's an enigma.

That's in your opinion, Earl. Can you respect that others feel otherwise?

I happen to love Superfly and only render with it. The only time I use Firefly is to test textures for something going into the store.

But that doesn't mean that my preferences are the only correct ones.

 

[Semicharm]

Superfly is easy. It's FireFly that's an enigma.

I have issues with both.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Earl, you've lots of experience with Blender and cycles. I have none.

I find it rather easy to setup materials for Firefly. Granted, that was after reading lots and lots of forum posts and explanations of all those nodes and what they do. But even after reading post after post on setting up material for Superfly, and enough math to fry a brain, I have little to no success with Superfly skin.

I've even tried loading two Dawns side by side, one with my textures, one with a Superfly skin, and copying node by node how that Superfly skin was set up, I get washed out skin. While the other Dawn renders just fine. I don't even get good skin and get crap eyes when I try EZSkin 3.

Most definitely, Superfly hates me

 

[Miss B]

Not totally Satira, as I've had that issue more than once, and I've been using SuperFly for a while now.

I find the most important thing is the lighting, as there are some light sets set up just for Superfly, and I have fewer problems when I use them.

EZSkin3 also takes some getting used to, especially for the eyes. I've gotten to the point where I often remove any Glossy, Blinn and/or Anisotropic nodes altogether, or at least fiddle with them enough so the eyes aren't so bright. Also, depending on which direction the light is coming from, I sometimes change the angle of the light, especially if it's a mesh light, and that helps some as well.

There's a guy on the now defunct SM Poser forum who has a bunch of SuperFly related goodies at ShareCG , you might find very helpful. Just search for bpmorton777. Brian knows what he's doing. I had posted on the SM Poser forum when I first had issues with the eyes, and he came up with the Eyes shader (NOT the one for Project Evolution), and now I don't have so many issues with them.