Friday 25 January 2013

Quick Update


Hey fans, 3D artists, 

Due to the magnitude and complexity of Lali's Bits, and the unsupported and inconsistent concept of the pz2 file format, I do not dare make any estimates or promises anymore. All I can say is Ken and I are doing our best with what we can find. 

We're actually finished, in a way. Testers are saying its perfect, provided you have the latest of the latest updates for Poser 9 and Pro. But we cannot give an injection that completely kills all your groups. So it can be done tomorrow, or over a week... I just don't know what Poser / pz2 is going to come up with next for us to have to sort out. One thing I can say is: I am sick to death of it and wanna get going on some new comics. So I want it out the door just as quick as you :) so we are thinking up some very inventive workarounds.

Thank you to all the testers for helping to isolate issues; thank you to all the people at the DAZ 3D, RuntimeDNA and ShareCG Forums for their tips; and that you my fans for your support and patience!

cheers!
E.

to back my opinion of the pz2 format, and not to sound like just a bag of hot air: I have discovered a number of issues that make pz2 very had to work with. I'll name two: One issue would be when I accidentally add an obselete FBM name somewhere, or even a reference to a non-existing morph, the injection process for some reason attributes the wrong morphs to it, which is completely strange because it shows that Poser doesn't double check if the names actually correspond. Apparently they work with load order or something (bad programming IMO). This gets very difficult when you have 150+ morphs and zillions of interconnected dependencies. These errors have found their way into the injection and it takes time to iron these out. 

Another issue is how the group injection doesn't follow suit with the rest of the injection style. Generally pz2 replaces (or adds) anything you put in the code, provided it is the same hierarchical structure as the figure being injected. But with groups that doesn't work, even though the structure is exactly the same. Beyond the element "Groups" its end of story and everything gets replaced. Only with the latest updates of Poser Pro and Poser 9 did they bother to sort that out. 

A third issue is that the only specification of the CR2 format is an unofficial one owned by some Japanese dude (who does nice work mind you). How the fuck is that possible when injections are big business? I maintain I find it strange that they do not provide more support for making injections, especially since half of the figure content is supplied as an injection! And as far as I know, injections have been around for quite a while.

Think about this, forget Lali's Bits for a moment: imagine you're a Poser artist, and you have your custom figures saved in your library, but then you think of some very cool JCM system. So you create it, program it in a clean figure until it is perfect. And you do this all in Poser. Ok now you're happy and you wanna apply it to all your custom figures. How the hell do you do that in Poser? You need to resort to 3rd party software to do it... and that's just half the work. Is that allowable for a $500 application?

I tend to compare it to Microsoft Word, where you can cut and paste anything you want, and export whatever format you wish of the things that you create within Word, whether it may be the text you type, the formatting, the templates, the preferences, headers, etc... everything that Word touches is accessible and more importantly, it supports everything that is programmatically involved with it. Poser does not have this accessibility for a key part of its capabilities, and it makes no sense to me that you need 3rd party software to deal with something you create in Poser, 3rd party software which will always be a few steps behind.  Am I the only one to find that strange?  If you have an application called Pro, I'd expect it to be up there with Photoshop CS6, 3D Studio MAX, Microsoft Word. That's how I would run a development team.

Yes I am a rebel :) I even made posters and movies for the political opposition parties here when we were trying to oust our dictator in the country I live in. I also managed to initiate a organisation the software development of the Geological Survey I worked at within a year of working there as a junior! So yeah, Smith Micro isn't going to get mercy from me haha... especially if they dare to call their product 'Pro'.




12 comments:

  1. I understand your frustation. the point is Poser has not been designed to be a figure animatin 3d programm. It has been set up to be as 3d replacement for those woody poser models to put on your desk and study lights and pose. Later users "misused2 it for spicing up their 3d- scenes mostly in bryce. this has been during the ninties. I don't know enough about coding, but is has been said that the sourcecode and everything that result from it never changed. Mayby tooexpencive, timeconsuming, whatever. During the Years lot's of progresses we have seen in Poser were done by the diehard-users who were excellent with hacking cr2 or pz2 files. It actually was smith micro as the so felt-like-1200th companie owner who got rid of that childish Kai Krause UI, giving us the possibillity to create morphs in Poser itself and to intrduce weight-maps, which has been considered as immpossible before. Poser has been way streched to its limits I think, renember with what in mind it once was created ... and when. Therefore Poser has allways been a lovehate relationship. I cannot live without, but I still keep ripping my hair off. ;-) It's okay to kick SmithMicro's butt, but still They did the most for Poser comparing to other owners before. I think the core-crew that's working on Poser has allways been the same. so don't be to hard on them. Looking foreward to Lali, Lalibits and Lali adventures. All the best. :-))

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    1. hehe thanks. I'll definitely drop a note over at SM in their "Feature Request" section, I think that's the best I can do. Its all fun and games what they're doing, and yes it is still amazing what you can do with it... but even Microsoft wouldn't get away with saying: sorry, we're not supporting PDF export... and that's it.

      I think the main problem is that I've been spoiled by megaprofessional packages like, Vulcan, Petrel, 3DMax... and I also developed software for a long time. So now I've become very critical with software, no matter how great it is. And you think I'm hard on Smith Micro? You should see my review on zBrush... hahaha :D

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  2. I think you should try reaching out to Xameva on renderotica, or Ironman13 over at Renderosity & see if you can pick their brains on the troubles you're hitting. Both have created refit morph packages to redress some horrid shortfalls with V4 geometry, and both sets of their products are pretty much phenomenal across the board.

    Otherwise, good luck, and good coding out there!

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    1. hhe that is EXACTLY what we're doing :) they're going through python but we've possibly found an easier way (that could also benefit DAZ users). thanks!!

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    2. Great to hear. Hints of revolutionary ideas are never a bad thing either!

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  3. Well, I can understand the frustration to some extent but not most everything.
    I still believe your contribution will revolutionize Poser, in a ways that you'll look back, and think; that was a huge load of shit, but I couldn't have imagine seeing hundreds of thousands of people using my creation to help further perfect their creative works.
    it always seems difficult head on, but looking back was anything worth it ever easy looking ahead?

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    1. that is true, once we have this sorted out, future injections will be a lot easier.

      And also, judging by the comments and very supportive remarks people are making everywhere, this thing could potentially become HUGE and that is also why I wanna make sure everything is tip-top 100%. If some mistake creeps in, an update will probably be even harder to make, and the pressure will be even higher because people already have it, and paid for it.

      Sometimes it does weird me out a bit... is it really what people say it will be??

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  4. I can certainly understand your frustrations, bubba. Just the little bit of text editing on posefiles (such as expressions that remove or reset all existing morphs) gives me an idea of what you're going through. I'm glad you're in touch with Xameva and Ironman, and the cheers and huzzahs over at AoD should allay some of the pain. You're Numero Uno, lad, and Lali just leaves one speechless. Thanks for all your hard work; time for a beer!

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    1. YOU... are most extremely welcome, my good man! I gladly deliver my services in proportion to your wants, wills, and needs; in such a way that your life improves with subtle yet intensely erotic increments :D .. you know what? we should have a beer sometime!

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    2. Crack two, and I'll be there in a heartbeat! According to my research, we can have a half-dozen each of Castle Lager, Zambezi, Windhoek, Three Horses, or even Dr. Livingstone's. As long as it's cold and wet, and you'll let Lali sit on my lap, count me IN!

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  5. It just occurred to me that, as we say in Texas, you've been busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest! :D

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Hey, because of a sudden influx of spam, I need to moderate comments from now on, unfortunately. I'll try find a work-around in the meanwhile. Cheers!