Why Poser? (serious question from a DAZ Studio user)

Fightingwolf · December 2013

the price of software will be very very insignificant to the huge investment you will probably end up with content purchases... where the real money is made by DAZ.

Oh this is so true. It also reminded me that It's easier to find free 3D content for Poser than for DazStudio, which makes it easier to build up a decent collection of 3D content and that helps to save on how much you'll actually spend on buying 3D content. But the longer you are in the world of DazStudio and Poser the greater the chances will be that you'll spend far more money on buying 3D content than buying the software for it. At least for me the price of Poser is nothing compared to the total price for all of the 3D content I've purchased. I passed the $2000 mark a long time ago

Allegra · January 2014

I'm a longtime Daz user and recently added Poser 9 to my selection of tools.....and I'm loving it! The material room is pure heaven and although dynamics are a bit of a hit and miss at this stage, I'm really enjoying it.

It is a very different setup and at first it was frustrating trying to find all the things you know and take for granted in Daz until you get your head around it.

Now I'm a few weeks in, I find I'm using both programs as each has it's strengths and weaknesses.
Good luck with your journey:)

Dino Gramps · January 2014

SickleYield said:
Dino Gramps said:
On system stability -
Based on my experience with two computers and three graphics cards I believe that it has to do with your graphics card. I could not use DS on computer #1 until I replaced the graphics card.

Could be? Additional data, then:

I've never had one that was bleeding edge, nor a "workstation" card (can't afford them), but usually whatever was in the $300 - $400 range at the time of purchase (since DS in 3Delight renders with the CPU).

My PP2012 frustrations happened on my current Nvidia HD 4500 on my main machine; DS works fine with the on-board Intel graphics of this laptop, but I've never tried Poser on it.

My problem has always been with the on-board when using DS. Any graphics card I have replaced the on-board with has worked for me, currently Nvidia GTX260. Haven't used laptops, haven't used Poser in a long time.

Seems like my problems are the reverse of yours. Poser always worked, DS did not. It was a much earlier version of Poser, though.

Satira Capriccio · January 2014

2. Lights:

I can see where the new light being randomly placed would be frustrating to someone who was used to lights being loaded at the center position. However, it's simple to both locate and move the new light to the center position. I never could get a handle on DS lights, so this didn't bother me when I switched from DS to Poser years ago.

Poser switches the Parameters to the new light, so just scroll down to the Transform dials and set the Rotates and Trans to 0. Your new light will then be in the center position. The new light will always be a spotlight, and a new light camera (shadow cam lite) will be added for the new spotlight. If you switch your camera to the new light camera, you can then position the light by looking through the camera.

If there is not already a Light 1, the new spotlight will be named Light 1. Otherwise, it will be the next incremented number. The new shadow cam lite will be the next incremented number based on the existing shadow cam lites.

For example, the default scene for Poser Pro 2012 contains 4 lights. Light 1 is a Diffuse IBL, Light 2 and Light 3 are spotlights, Light 4 is an Infinite. The light cameras are Shadow Cam Lite 1-4. If I add a new light, it will be named Light 5 and the camera light will be named Shadow Cam Lite 5.

Also, you can add a ball primitive to the scene, you can set your spotlight to point to that primitive, then move the primitive to position where your light will point.

3. Loading content:

Are you using DSON? If so, it will be incredibly painfully slow to do just about anything. If you're using Poser content and loading content is that slow, something is wrong.

5. Rendering:
Yeah. It can be daunting to figure out the best settings for rendering. RDNA's Render Studio / IDL Studios are rather helpful in that aspect. The pdf guides that come with those products give you example draft, high, and very high render settings. The products more than pay for themselves in helping to get you familiar with lights and render settings. Especially, if you are interested in indirect light, which I'd recommend. Otherwise, you can google for Poser render settings and find any number of suggestions for free.

Ah, I see that you returned it. But, I'll leave the information I've written as it might be helpful to someone else.

XoechZ said:
Hello again!
Since I have started this topic, I think I should tell you my impressions of Poser 10.

1. Cameras:
In Poser you are forced to always look through a camera. There is nothing like the "Perspective View" in DAZ Studio, where you can simply navigate and jump around in your scene. You always have to select a camera, which I found a bit strange at the beginning. But after a while I got used to it.

2. Lights:
Awful! Ok, Poser supports IDL by default and the stock lights (infinite, spot, point) have a few more options, but placing a light in Poser is nothing than pure pain. After loading a light, I first had to search for it in the scene. Poser does not place a new light in the center, but anywhere in the scene. I dont know who finds this useful. Then, after finding the light I tried to place it. This is also painful. You cannot look "through" a light as in DAZ Studio, so you have to place your lights by looking through a scene cam only. This makes it hard to place them precisely. Setting up a simple 3-point spotlight scene took me more than 15 minutes.

3. Loading content:
Compared to DAZ Studio, Poser is loading really slooooow. No matter if it is a figure, a prop or anything. After double clicking something in the library, you can really go for a cup of coffee until it is loaded completely in your scene. Oh, and I have a modern and fast PC with lots of RAM :-)

4. Materials:
Ok, the material room in Poser is more powerful than the Surfaces Tab in Studio, but I simply cannot get comfortable with the node system. Doing something simple, like adding reflections to a surface is much more complicated in Poser. In Studio, you just have to move a slider.

5. Rendering:
Posers Firefly render engine has much less options than Studios render engine. So I thought it should be more easy to get high quality renders. But it is not. I fiddled around a lot with the settings, but I never got a satisfying result.

Maybe there is some more that should be mentioned, maybe there are some points where Poser has some true advantages, but I did not find them out. After more than 2 weeks of testing, trying and missing DAZ studio, I uninstalled Poser and returned it. For me it was a real step back compared to DAZ Studio.

juve_satriani · January 2014

Im one of DAZStudio die hard user ;) But recently i`ve been trying POSER PRO 2014 sr 2.2 in my 64 bit laptop system to make old figure with ERC designed for poser working smoothly . One thing that surprising me .. My scene render faster even with Maximum render setting . Something that i`ve never achieved with PP2012 . You should try download the demo and see yourself .

Here my things :
1 . DAZ Studio had so many hidden Gems like Tool UI ,AniMate puppeteer ,transfer utility or auto fit . But its hardly to find good and popular video tutorial about it .Personally i think they should had one special page in here like we found in GoFigure Animate website . Youtube channel its okay but not everyone understand about how to use youtube playlist .

2. I believe DAZStudio offer easy way to create pose or scenes than Poser IF you intend to making from scratch , not just load preset pose and go . Puppeteer offer you advance type of Poser UI/Pose/Camera DOT . They can save and load independently for use in other scene .

3. I believe Poser offer easy solution when you plan to create material from scratch . Shader Mixer is powerful but its for advanced user . Sadly user couldn`t get benefit of two worlds . You should choose , Do you need create material from scratch or not ?

4 . UI and Library . No one would feel OK if their daily preferences changed . These two are mainly reason why POSER user refuse to trying DAZ Studio or otherwise . DAZ Studio library actually work like windows/mac explorer . You can put your files everywhere , even those files not supposed to be in same folder . But for easy migration from Poser User , DAZ and every good content developers always making structural folder contents like we saw in Poser .Poser started using same methods in their favorite folders .

5. AniMate and their NLA concept is awesome !!! If they upgrade/refine their UI , AniMate woud be best tool DAZStudio ever offering for us .Meantime we could refine our Animation with easy exporting in Poser . Though DAZ Studio offer FBX to exporting animation in other 3D app . But those facilities only good if you decide to render in Big Boys 3D software , not for editing keyrame etc . So if your purpose is animation , having Poser besides DAZStudio is worth it .

6. Render Speed . I dont wanna talk about quality renders because everyone had different perspective in this area . But like i said before , PP 2014 in my experience ( and in my systems ) had faster render speed . But I`l go to DAZStudio if we need Toon Renders style .PwToon /VisualStyle/Toon SSS is awesome and easy to edit or setup .

7. Contents . Gen4 and earlier contents mostly work in DAZ Studio but if you really depend on complex tweak tools ( ERC fix etc ) which created before DAZ Studio era , Poser is way to go . For Genesis nothing better understand him/her than DAZ Studio ;)

8. Smart Contents is cool , but we still need better video to explain how to convert user/old contents shown up in Smart contents

So .. I think worth it or not depend on your purpose . Thanks

dannyboy101 · January 2014

it rocks----> .

Lissa_xyz · January 2014

If I could bring 1 thing into Poser from DS it would be the visual component of working with cameras. I hate Poser's little DOF crosshair thing. Sure I do photog stuff irl, but having a visible plane for dof and such in DS is so handy.

I enjoy Poser's SSS more, and Firefly is a faster renderer.

XoechZ said:
Hello again!
Since I have started this topic, I think I should tell you my impressions of Poser 10.

1. Cameras:
In Poser you are forced to always look through a camera. There is nothing like the "Perspective View" in DAZ Studio, where you can simply navigate and jump around in your scene. You always have to select a camera, which I found a bit strange at the beginning. But after a while I got used to it.

I use the Aux Camera in Poser for this purpose. You can also go to Object > Create Camera and just make a new one.

Kerya · January 2014

Vaskania said:
If I could bring 1 thing into Poser from DS it would be the visual component of working with cameras. I hate Poser's little DOF crosshair thing. Sure I do photog stuff irl, but having a visible plane for dof and such in DS is so handy.
...

http://www.runtimedna.com/Advanced-Lights-and-Camera-Guides.html

Lissa_xyz · January 2014

Kerya said:
Vaskania said:
If I could bring 1 thing into Poser from DS it would be the visual component of working with cameras. I hate Poser's little DOF crosshair thing. Sure I do photog stuff irl, but having a visible plane for dof and such in DS is so handy.
...

http://www.runtimedna.com/Advanced-Lights-and-Camera-Guides.html
Holy crap you really are the queen of links. I should've known it'd be one of Semidieu's, and I have no idea why I haven't seen this sooner!

Into the wishlist, thank you!

Fisty · January 2014

XoechZ said:
Thanks for the answers so far. What I want to know is:
- is Poser worth the money? (compared to DAZ Studio which is free)
- is the worflow in both programs the same (setting up the scene, camera framing, lightning, rendering)?
- is Poser rendering faster or slower than DAZ Studio?
- is it easier to get high quality renders in Poser or is it harder? (compared to DAZ Studio)

I'm late to the party but I thought I'd chime in.. I started with DS, I had to learn Poser to make my products compatible. I use both on an almost daily basis though I am more comfortable in DS, it's only slightly. I would consider myself well skilled in Poser and very well skilled in DS.

- is Poser worth the money?
If you have to have it to make products or freebie compatible, yes. If you don't.. really tough call.

- is the worflow in both programs the same
Basically, with the exception of lighting and cameras being way more annoying in Poser, and surfaces being easier in Poser (cause with V4 stuff at least it just works right out of the box and you don't have to touch the material room nearly ever)

- is Poser rendering faster or slower than DAZ Studio?
Depends entirely on what you're rendering. DS renders reflection and refraction through transparency MUCH faster, Poser utterly chokes on it. Poser renders AO on lighting much faster. The main benefit of rendering in Poser is it doesn't take your computer hostage, you can set it to render in the background and still be able to, you know, move your mouse in real time or watch a video while it's doing its thing.

- is it easier to get high quality renders in Poser or is it harder?
No answer to that, both programs take about equal amounts of time to learn to use well.. and the skill sets are pretty much the same, it's just learning the specific nuances that are different. And a lot of things that seem different on the outside are really the same when you look at them more closely. They're in different places and named slightly differently but they do the same things, once you know the conversion rate, if there is one, then it's not hard to figure out how to get a similar result out of the two programs.

Ken OBanion · January 2014

XoechZ said:

2. Lights:
Awful! Ok, Poser supports IDL by default and the stock lights (infinite, spot, point) have a few more options, but placing a light in Poser is nothing than pure pain. After loading a light, I first had to search for it in the scene. Poser does not place a new light in the center, but anywhere in the scene. I dont know who finds this useful. Then, after finding the light I tried to place it. This is also painful. You cannot look "through" a light as in DAZ Studio, so you have to place your lights by looking through a scene cam only. This makes it hard to place them precisely. Setting up a simple 3-point spotlight scene took me more than 15 minutes.

I'll grant you one, but I have to call you on the other.

The grant: You are right; when you add a light in Poser, the program places that light pretty much wherever it damn well pleases, which I find immensely annoying. However..., (and you just knew there was going to be a 'however', didn't you?) every time I place a light, I immediately go to the parameters panel and zero out the transformation dials (translation and rotation), which places the light at {0, 0, 0}, with an orientation of, again, {0, 0, 0]. Problem solved.

As for positioning and orienting....

You can, in fact, look "through" a light. (In fact, that's how I position and orient my lights in Poser.) The 'Shadow Cams' in the Camera Controls dropdown represents the cameras that look "through" the lights. (Well, except for point lights, I'll admit; then again, the very concept of looking "through" a point light is kind of at right-angles to reality, anyway!) I just select the light I want to work with, select the corresponding Shadow Cam, and I'm off to the races!

icprncss · January 2014

Python scripting. One of those little things that get overlooked but most users end up not being able to live without.

If you want control over every aspect of FireFly, go to scripts and pull it down. You will find the render script by Dimension 3D will give you as much control over render options as you want.

If you need a python script for something chances are it's already been written and posted to one of the forums. The Rendo Poser forum or RDNA's the Node Cult are the best places to look.

If you can't find it, ask. It's also likely someone will write one for you if you ask.

Richard Haseltine · January 2014

Well, DS has scripting too so that isn't really a difference - there are quite a lot of scripts already available too.

marble · March 2014

Right now, another store has Poser 10 on sale at $69. I have Poser 9 but it crashes constantly on my Mac. Also, I have not been able to get clothes to fit my morphed V4's - anything other than out-of-the-box V4 seems too much to cope with. In DS I can just click on Smoothing and the garment clings nicely. A bit of tweaking the poke through using the V4 morphs and I'm ready to go.

Now I read that Poser 10 has a better morph tool to make clothes fit better and PP2014 has a fitting room (but that upgrade is way above my price range). Also I like the idea of a dynamic cloth that is actually possible to use - no matter how I try, I can't understand the Optitex Control Plugin, nor get it to do what I want. I usually end up with a pile of cloth around the ankles.

Lastly, the inclusion of physics - bullet and soft body - is tempting. I just don't know whether to upgrade my Poser 9 to 10 or to forget it. I wish they would set a reasonable price for PP2014. Seems like a lot extra just for the fitting room, no?

Kerya · March 2014

Ehm ... as far as I know the "Copy morphs from figure" to make clothes fit better is PP2014 only too ...
http://poser.smithmicro.com/tutorials/basics/CopyMorphs.html

marble · March 2014

Quick question following my comment about physics. Would it be possible to set up fully clothed V4 in DS and then export it to Poser to animate with the SoftBody physics? Poser Format Exporter? Any ideas?

WandW · March 2014

One can simply load V4 in Poser and clothe her there, as she's a native Poser figure...

Kerya · March 2014

WandW said:
One can simply load V4 in Poser and clothe her there, as she's a native Poser figure...

Well ... marble has problems with clothes fitting a morphed V4 - and up to PP2014 you either had to buy D3D's Morphing Clothes or rely on the creator of the clothes to build the morphs you want into those clothes.

Chohole · March 2014

Kerya said:
WandW said:
One can simply load V4 in Poser and clothe her there, as she's a native Poser figure...

Well ... marble has problems with clothes fitting a morphed V4 - and up to PP2014 you either had to buy D3D's Morphing Clothes or rely on the creator of the clothes to build the morphs you want into those clothes.

Or use Cross dresser to inject the morphs

Kerya · March 2014

chohole said:
Kerya said:
WandW said:
One can simply load V4 in Poser and clothe her there, as she's a native Poser figure...

Well ... marble has problems with clothes fitting a morphed V4 - and up to PP2014 you either had to buy D3D's Morphing Clothes or rely on the creator of the clothes to build the morphs you want into those clothes.

Or use Cross dresser to inject the morphs

Or Wardrobe Wizard ...

WandW · March 2014

Kerya said:
WandW said:
One can simply load V4 in Poser and clothe her there, as she's a native Poser figure...

Well ... marble has problems with clothes fitting a morphed V4 - and up to PP2014 you either had to buy D3D's Morphing Clothes or rely on the creator of the clothes to build the morphs you want into those clothes.

I got the impression Marble wanted to use Poser's dynamic cloth. Here are some tutorials on converting conforming clothes to dynamic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zej7ORwS1ZQ

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/?tutorial_id=868

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/tutorials/poser/poser-rigging06

Keep in mind there can be issues with bits like buttons and pockets falling off if they are not welded.

This search will get you some free dynamic clothes at ShareCG...

http://www10.sharecg.com/search/index.php?ps=15&q=dynamic+V4&ps=15&m=any&wm=wrd

marble · March 2014

Perhaps I should explain (though I thought I had). I bought Poser 9 and loaded my V4 figure. As is my habit, I played with the parameters and gave her generous proportions - just using the dials, not some she-freak morph. I then tried to clothe her and to my dismay, could not get anything to fit. I seem to remember asking questions on one of the Poser forums and being advised to spend more money on either Wardrobe Wizard or upgrade to the newly released PP2014 which has a fitting room.

Firstly, it beats me how anyone can sell a product which enables me to create all sorts of wonderful body shapes and also encourages people to buy content to clothe those shapes and not be able to fit the clothing to the figure until this latest 2014 upgrade. Perhaps I have been spoiled by DAZ Studio's Smoothing Modifier which is quite effective at getting clothes to fit oddly shaped bodies. Not perfect but not bad and not an investment of $500 either.

I have been looking on the Poser forums today on RDNA and it seem to me that one is not allowed to say anything remotely critical of Poser which is why I returned here. I have plenty of gripes about DAZ Studio too but I've never been called a troll here for mentioning them.

Nevertheless, Poser has some nifty features which are attractive at the right price: physics and dynamic cloth/hair being the main attractions. One of my complaints about DS is the awfully complicated Dynamic Clothing plugin which I cannot make sense of. Poser can, apparently, convert conforming clothing to dynamic (and vice-versa??) and the user is able to make dynamic clothing from scratch.

So, one of the reasons I posted today was to see if I could get a clue as to whether it is worth buying Poser 10 for my iMac to replace the frequently crashing Poser 9 I already have. I can get P10 for around $70 whereas even an upgrade price for PP2014 comes to a whopping $300. Huge difference for a fitting room that is meant to do what DS does for nothing, it seems to me.

I am very open to corrections to my opinions, however.

WandW · March 2014

Do you have the latest service release for Poser 9? The latest Poser 9 version is 9.0.3.23027, which can be seen on the welcome screen or on Help>About Poser. The update can be gotten here...

http://poser.smithmicro.com/poser9-updates.html

As far as the Clothing Morphs go, I feel your pain. I bought D3D's Morphing Clothes before either Studio or Poser had any fitting capabilities, so it's part of my workflow.

The Poser 10 morph brush is improved over 9, plus 10 includes Gamma Correction, so this might make the upgrade worthwhile; Gamma correction would for me....

marble · March 2014

WandW said:
Do you have the latest service release for Poser 9? The latest Poser 9 version is 9.0.3.23027, which can be seen on the welcome screen or on Help>About Poser. The update can be gotten here...
http://poser.smithmicro.com/poser9-updates.html

As far as the Clothing Morphs go, I feel your pain. I bought D3D's Morphing Clothes before either Studio or Poser had any fitting capabilities, so it's part of my workflow.

The Poser 10 morph brush is improved over 9, plus 10 includes Gamma Correction, so this might make the upgrade worthwhile; Gamma correction would for me....

Yes, thanks - I checked I had the latest service packs just a few days ago. I found a few grumpy posts about frequent crashes on Macs but then, I've also seen the same complaint about the latest versions. I have developed a good habit of saving my DS Scenes regularly because it crashes at least once per session. Poser 9 crashes about four or five times as often, in my limited experience.

I guess my point about whether to buy P10 is this: does the morph brush make up for the lack of a Fitting Room by any stretch of the imagination? And, if so, are the results comparable to what I can achieve with the DS Smoothing Modifier? Most of my figures are V4, not Genesis, because I have a large collection of clothing and add-ons for her and very little for Genesis (and I can't see that changing in the near future).

WandW · March 2014

I did a bit of playing around; this is the Optitex free Boyfriend Sweater, available here:

http://www.optitex-dynamiccloth.com/FreebieDownload01.php

I loaded it into Studio, exported it as an .obj and brought it into Poser as a prop. I positioned it to fit a zeroed V4, and fixed a couple of poke-throughs with the Morph Brush. I then set up a cloth simulation to collide with V4, apply the Stephanie Petite morph and proportions and apply a pose. I left the cloth parameters at the default settings, ran the simulation, and this is the result....

WandW · March 2014

A light bulb just came on; There are two things you need to do in Poser that you don't need to do in Studio with conforming clothes on V4; .

1 Make sure that , in the body actor of each clothing item, Include Morphs and Include Scales is checked.

2. To each piece of clothing (well, not shoes, although you might on high boots) apply the appropriate Magnetize pose ( unnumbered to a single Gen 4 figure in the scene, number corresponding to the order they are added if more than one) found in the Magnetize Clothing folder in the DAZ's Victoria 4 folder. This allows V4's magnets to influence the clothing...

marble · March 2014

Many thanks for your experiments - interesting and much appreciated. However, I feel I'm not getting my rather simple point across, which is this: is it worth my while to buy Poser 10? (Although I did ask earlier about exporting V4 clothed from DS to Poser in order to use the soft-body physics, so I appreciate your experiment may have been prompted by that).

I'm aware of, and attracted to what it can do with Dynamic Cloth (even to the point, as you have demonstrated, of being able to import and convert Optitex cloth into Poser Dynamic Cloth) and also aware that it has bullet and soft-body physics which are both desirable. But my main concern is that, without the expensive additional feature of the Fitting Room, it will be difficult to fit conforming clothing to non-standard V4 shapes.

What happened when I tried Poser 9? I gave up trying to fit conforming clothes because DAZ Studio, with the smoothing modifier, is so much better at it. Is that still the case with Poser 10? Ideally, PP2014 should come down to a reasonable price. Even more ideally, DS could learn from Poser and include a user-friendly Dynamic Cloth and Physics engine.

WandW · March 2014

marble said:
Many thanks for your experiments - interesting and much appreciated. However, I feel I'm not getting my rather simple point across, which is this: is it worth my while to buy Poser 10?

That's something only you can decide, as everyone has their own needs and priorities. For me Gamma correction was what made it worth spending $120 to upgrade from Poser 8 to PP2010 several years ago. I have PP2014, and have used the fitting room once. What I use on tight fitting clothing is Morph Transfer, which does what Morphing Clothes does, but integrated into Poser. I also often use Weight Mapped V4, but that's another story.

Have you been doing the steps I noted in my previous post when conforming clothing?

Kerya · March 2014

I did the jump from P8 to PP2012 because of 64bit ... more RAM!!!
After having crashes with a simple portrait and IDL in P8 and having to do it in area renders I wanted 64bit.

marble · March 2014

WandW said:
I have PP2014, and have used the fitting room once. What I use on tight fitting clothing is Morph Transfer, which does what Morphing Clothes does, but integrated into Poser. I also often use Weight Mapped V4, but that's another story.
Have you been doing the steps I noted in my previous post when conforming clothing?

Well, what you say here does help me understand a little better. The fact that you use the morphing tool (which is available with Poser 10) instead of the Fitting Room is highly significant to me. Just to be clear though - is morph transfer the same as the morphing tool? I don't know what morphing clothes are - I just thought that the vendor included a whole lot of V4 morphs in the garment. Many of the garments in my V4 collection have lots of those morphs.

I'll have to look up Weight Mapped V4 - I've heard of her but not in any depth. I gather that's a Poser only figure, right?

Have I been doing my homework? Sadly, no :( To be honest, I got so fed up with all the crashing that I hardly ever go near Poser 9 now (which is one of the reasons I want to know whether 10 is more stable on a Mac).

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