I agree , it is a priority at this moment to move forward
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WIP RigControl for Dawn 2.0
unreal
Noteworthy
That will be so sweet. I can see the priority. Probably a lot of "Poser doesn't/can't do X" has to do with that.Micro-poly displacement for Superfly has been in my request list from the very beginning. The thing was that Blender Cycles didn't support it when Poser adopted it, and even a year later, it was still in beta\experimental mode. The dev team is now concentrating on making the unimesh Poser version, which is quite a challenging project. Chances are that not much will be happening until they get it done (small team), and I am rooting for them on this.
Is there a line for that beta?
I could make a reasonably long list of things Poser has to loose for not supporting unimesh internally, but since that is by now often called "the old problem", it suffices to say that Poser is not competitive in this market without that bare minimum requirement. As opposed to what some may claim, this is not a "bug", but instead a design flaw due to the time period when Poser was created, when unimesh was not a thing. So much that to this day, Autodesk 3DSMAX and Maya still don't support unimesh - and consider they are industry leaders in the 3D market. It comes to me as a surprise that Poser will overcome this before Autodesk does.
The first thing that comes to mind is Poser integration with Reallusion CC3 and iClone, which DS already had for years, but Poser was dead in the water because that would require unimesh support. Since Poser 9, the content creation tools were already reaching their limits without unimesh support, and in version 10 it has reached a critical point of no return, were some content creators just gave up on it and moved on elsewhere. Some cumbersome workarounds were introduced just before SMS gave up on Poser, but Rendo wants to put an end to this nightmare and fix this design flaw right now - before any more effort is put into mending and patching this mess.
This means redesigning how Poser works internally, which leads to rewriting the core from scratch. All the "Room" tabs in Poser will be affected by this, which means everything else needs to be redesigned as well. This is why all other companies who have owned Poser this far never wanted to touch this. It's too much responsibility, and a huge technical task - nothing to be taken lightly. Last time I talked to Larry Weinberg (original Poser's creator), he said he wanted to do this in Poser 12, but his team was disbanded while still in the times of SMSI's version 11, so it was never put into practice.
The good news came from a Bondware announcement made last month, when they claim Poser unimesh will have a working version "sooner than we expect", likely meaning still this year. The dev team is likely to be working in 2 Poser versions concurrently, since Poser 12 keeps getting periodic updates, and the unimesh Poser is still being worked on as we speak.
Since unimesh Poser means rewriting nearly EVERYTHING, I believe this will be implemented in stages over time, and not everything at once. Chances are that we might see a partially unimesh Poser release still this year, with incremental updates until everything becomes unimesh. I am guessing here, but having worked in the software development industry for years, this is a reasonable assumption.
To put things in perspective, I believe Poser simply has no future trying to compete in this market without internal unimesh support, where Bondware was the FIRST company to own Poser in the last 20 years who decided to face this challenge head on. Even though I believe most Poser users don't even know what unimesh is, everybody will directly or indirectly benefit from Poser finally becoming more competitive in this market. It's an exciting time to be a Poser user and content creator.
I really hope they take a practical road to this Ken. Imagine doing things TOO incrementally and having content creators having to go back redo things on newly released products as these updates filter out to the end users and content creators. It just can't happen that way. It will doom Poser even more as this will be a straw that breaks the proverbial Camel's back! I'm hoping they release as much of it as they can with little, unnoticeable fixes that will NOT break newly created products that need a solid Unimesh code to work.
Not really Rich , first of all you can still use old products , you can still load old stuff in DS even if it is not unimesh , I still do models that are not unimesh for DS sometimes . First of all it affect less the content creators , but it give them more opportunity to create more stuff for both programs without the extra work . Nobody will need to go back and redo anything . It will open the doors for Poser so it can reach new world , since now it is the most outdated and isolated software to date . Without it it gonna be death sonner as you think , as free programs already offering more to the people of interest .
We still don't know how Rendo will handle this, buy I am happy enough they are doing it, because nobody else even tried in the last 20 years, which led to Poser lagging behind, pushing content creators away. One classic example was the article LadyLittleFox wrote after she left Poser development back in Poser 10, explaining how she got stuck while creating JCMs for her products - that was before SMS came up with the workaround (not a fix), which only happened in Poser 11. I remember I got stuck as well, and not everybody could wait until the next full point release to release their new products.
The problem was with the Morph Tool, which was designed to only work with unimesh geometry, which Poser itself doesn't support. The SMS workaround allows avoiding the spike outs and general mesh explosion, but it also makes the process even more tedious, forcing us to keep switching between pre and post pending modes when creating and testing JCM. If we forget to convert back before testing, the mesh deforms incorrectly and we may loose all our work. Not to mention the conversion process takes time.
There is no fixing this because Poser doesn't support unimesh, and the Morph Tool requires it. A lot of other tasks require it. This has been pushed from one company who have owned Poser to the next, and 20 years have passed. THIS is what has been pushing content creators away. I have been creating all sorts of workarounds until now, but other people are not as patient.
I have been requesting SMS to fix this since Poser 7, and when they finally agreed to give it a try, the dev team was fired like 3 months later. Poser was forgotten in the limbo with no active development for 2 years after that, and it would be dead by now if Rendo haven't decide to save it.
Having all that said, I am rather thankful to Bondware for both saving Poser from extinction, and also for finally taking care of the unimesh issue that has plagued Poser until now. There is no future for Poser without this, and we have to be patient a little more. It will be worth it.
The problem was with the Morph Tool, which was designed to only work with unimesh geometry, which Poser itself doesn't support. The SMS workaround allows avoiding the spike outs and general mesh explosion, but it also makes the process even more tedious, forcing us to keep switching between pre and post pending modes when creating and testing JCM. If we forget to convert back before testing, the mesh deforms incorrectly and we may loose all our work. Not to mention the conversion process takes time.
There is no fixing this because Poser doesn't support unimesh, and the Morph Tool requires it. A lot of other tasks require it. This has been pushed from one company who have owned Poser to the next, and 20 years have passed. THIS is what has been pushing content creators away. I have been creating all sorts of workarounds until now, but other people are not as patient.
I have been requesting SMS to fix this since Poser 7, and when they finally agreed to give it a try, the dev team was fired like 3 months later. Poser was forgotten in the limbo with no active development for 2 years after that, and it would be dead by now if Rendo haven't decide to save it.
Having all that said, I am rather thankful to Bondware for both saving Poser from extinction, and also for finally taking care of the unimesh issue that has plagued Poser until now. There is no future for Poser without this, and we have to be patient a little more. It will be worth it.
unreal
Noteworthy
It was JCM creation that finally frustrated me so much that I just went to Blender to do something totally different (Sculpting and 3D printing). Of course, then I was like "omg, if there was a good back and forth workflow, this could totally complement Poser. Poser is still easiest for... well posing. Which, to be fair, is what it was designed for, right?
I keep coming back to Poser because of that. When I'm in "making art from stuff mode", Poser is the tool. I just need it to play nicer with the "making stuff to make art from" tools
Because I'm the sort of mental case that likes to do both.
In any case, since Poser 7, dude? You have more patience/stubbornness than anyone I know. Including myself. You would impress my mother.
I keep coming back to Poser because of that. When I'm in "making art from stuff mode", Poser is the tool. I just need it to play nicer with the "making stuff to make art from" tools
Because I'm the sort of mental case that likes to do both.
In any case, since Poser 7, dude? You have more patience/stubbornness than anyone I know. Including myself. You would impress my mother.
Once the unimesh Poser comes out, creating JCMs will be easy again. It's not hard as it is, but it's tedious due to the required pre/post pending transforms conversion workaround, and the likelihood that the mesh may spike out in the process. Those will be a thing of the past, finally.
unreal
Noteworthy
Those are the things that drove me away from Poser. The tediousness. Tediosity?
It's weird. I never set out to make 3d stuff. I never do. I started on a mainframe at my father's office (way back before home computers). To give mom a break, dad would babysit me by taking me up to his lab in the long winter evenings. Sat me in front of an HP terminal, gave me a tiny 3m cassette and a manual and said "I have work to do, not a peep." So I learned how to create a 2d graph of an equation, then a 3d graph, generating topology. Because I had to kill time and it was fun making the computer to that sort of thing. It looked cool
Fast forward 25 years to a graphics start-up in San Francisco's dot com boom. I was head of biz sys dev and one of the production guys knew I tinked with stuff so he gave me his unused Poser 4 diskettes. I set them aside until the inevitable dot com crash and in the "what do I do now" time, I thought "Hmm, I wonder if I can use this to make some desktop wallpapers". And I did. Through Victoria 2 on.
I've been playing with it off and on since.
And now I'm barely able to contain myself waiting for Victoria's great great (great) and looking great grand-daughter.
But I'm hopeless. I set out to make some art using the hidden Poser "Make Art" button, then I run up against some bit that just doesn't do exactly what I want, then I go on a tear through Poser, Python, Blender, Designer, Etc, (in a misguided "shiny object" distraction way) to do something that probably doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme. But, but by <deity> it will do it exactly the way I want.
I wonder if therapy would help. I'll be happier when lockdown is over, my shoulder is healed, and I can row again. At least I can take out my frustration on the Harbour. Now, back to Discworld
It's weird. I never set out to make 3d stuff. I never do. I started on a mainframe at my father's office (way back before home computers). To give mom a break, dad would babysit me by taking me up to his lab in the long winter evenings. Sat me in front of an HP terminal, gave me a tiny 3m cassette and a manual and said "I have work to do, not a peep." So I learned how to create a 2d graph of an equation, then a 3d graph, generating topology. Because I had to kill time and it was fun making the computer to that sort of thing. It looked cool
Fast forward 25 years to a graphics start-up in San Francisco's dot com boom. I was head of biz sys dev and one of the production guys knew I tinked with stuff so he gave me his unused Poser 4 diskettes. I set them aside until the inevitable dot com crash and in the "what do I do now" time, I thought "Hmm, I wonder if I can use this to make some desktop wallpapers". And I did. Through Victoria 2 on.
I've been playing with it off and on since.
And now I'm barely able to contain myself waiting for Victoria's great great (great) and looking great grand-daughter.
But I'm hopeless. I set out to make some art using the hidden Poser "Make Art" button, then I run up against some bit that just doesn't do exactly what I want, then I go on a tear through Poser, Python, Blender, Designer, Etc, (in a misguided "shiny object" distraction way) to do something that probably doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme. But, but by <deity> it will do it exactly the way I want.
I wonder if therapy would help. I'll be happier when lockdown is over, my shoulder is healed, and I can row again. At least I can take out my frustration on the Harbour. Now, back to Discworld
Creation tools in Poser are far far behind what you can do in other programs. IF you know your way around Poser and you have a technical mind it's not that big of a deal BUT there are folks, like myself, that are artists first and tech mind is not wired into our brains as it is for others so we get stuck getting allot accomplished. I can actually get things done faster in DAZ Studio but the issue is that the rigging is different and the CR2 export from DS these days seems broken or hobbled as I can't get anything exported and have it actually work correctly in Poser afterwards. One example was I wanted to export my SuperSuit I made for Dusk 1 a long while back and wanted it for Poser. Set it up, exported it as a CR2 and then the pop up asked for the obj, I pointed the dialog to that and it was saved out. I opened up the suit in Poser, it's there but it's not there, there is nothing visual there but the program is telling me it's there. So there was something that wasn't quite right. I opened up the raw OBJ in Poser it's there. Even if the CR2 didn't have the proper groupings I would think the suit would have shown up but it didn't. Maybe with Unimesh on the horizon that might change? So then that brings up an improvement idea for Poser it would be nice to have a way to point the file to the obj directly from within Poser. In DS when unwanted issues happen there are always ways to get MOST issues solved by being able to browse to files and update things to correct. In Poser I think I've been told you can just point the cr2 to the obj and then restart the scene file and it should be fixed. NOPE! Not in my attempts and to have to restart the scene file is annoying and time wasted!
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I made video on exporting Cr2 to Poser for use with Dawn in 2014, I will send you a link via PM as I don't want to disturb Ken's thread , you can check if you missed something.
What you can do , open DS go to Poser runtime where you saved the cr2 and load it in DS, if it open then you did all things OK if not you missed something on the way.
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@RAMWolff Some people have been reporting issues while exporting from DS to Poser, like there is a new compatibility issue going on, but I have not been following that. I doubt DAZ is interested in fixing this to increase Poser compatibility, since it has been long since they lost interest. I usually look into the CR2 to manually fix it using the PFE. In your case, I would suspect there is something wrong with the OBJ geometry and/or grouping, which in Poser tends to result into invisible meshes.
However, there were a couple of occasions when something really SILLY happened. DS exported to Poser with transparency set to max, so the geometry seemed to have disappeared, when in reality it was just the materials that were set to 100% transparent.
However, there were a couple of occasions when something really SILLY happened. DS exported to Poser with transparency set to max, so the geometry seemed to have disappeared, when in reality it was just the materials that were set to 100% transparent.
Well I never experienced any issues before , but with Poser 12 the materials may be not well translated , the cr2 exporter in DS is for Poser 9 version .However, there were a couple of occasions when something really SILLY happened. DS exported to Poser with transparency set to max, so the geometry seemed to have disappeared, when in reality it was just the materials that were set to 100% transparent.
@RAMWolff The CR2 format is about to get a new update for the unimesh Poser version, so DS would eventually become incompatible with it anyway. The way it is now stores geometry data by group, while in unimesh, it will all be 1 single thing. Nobody knows exactly how this new CR2 will be, so we will have to wait until it comes out - but I can already tell in advance, DS will only be able to export to the old formats. I believe unimesh Poser will have no choice but to break backwards compatibility when we save things to the library, just like DS has already done a couple of times in the past.
We could still save to the old non-unimesh formats by keeping an older Poser version, but that will also suffer from all the non-unimesh issues we currently face, so what would the point be with that? The only reason DS has been able to keep exporting to Poser is because Poser has a loooong history of keeping things backwards compatible - but that is about to change, and there is no way to avoid that. With unimesh Poser, the way data is saved to a CR2 will have to change.
We could still save to the old non-unimesh formats by keeping an older Poser version, but that will also suffer from all the non-unimesh issues we currently face, so what would the point be with that? The only reason DS has been able to keep exporting to Poser is because Poser has a loooong history of keeping things backwards compatible - but that is about to change, and there is no way to avoid that. With unimesh Poser, the way data is saved to a CR2 will have to change.
This means divorce for good .. you will be no more able to load the new cr2 into DS, but I am sure they will keep backwards compatibility other way it would render all early products not usable at all.
But think if DAZ update their exporter, or make plugin for Poser , since their unimesh will be welcome without any hustle. This could be a huge change for all.
But think if DAZ update their exporter, or make plugin for Poser , since their unimesh will be welcome without any hustle. This could be a huge change for all.
Maybe not divorce for good, since there is nothing keeping people from using an older Poser version to make contents. After all, people are still selling new contents for grandma V4. I understand unimesh Poser will be able to load all old contents, so if we do it in the current P12, it should still work everywhere. Chances are that many vendors might do just that.
I know , but that will not helps Poser moving forward , there are not enough people yet that moved to Poser 12 ... number 13 was always my lucky number .. I wonder how it will work out for Poser 13
I know, I was born on the 13th! ^___^