(1) Let there be a sort of 3-dimensional texture which contains a Python script, which, if called with a set of 3 variables (X,Y, Z) set to the coordinates of any particular place in the 3D texture, returns to Poser a set of 3 variables (R, G, B) giving the color of the material at that point. Also perhaps the script may return the transparency etc at that point.

(2) Keeping water out of a boat. If a user (as I do) uses the Ground Plane as water surface, let there be an ability whereby the (material which is the inside or the outside of the boat) can tell Poser not to render the Ground Plane inside the boat. That will get rid of much awkward fiddiing about with making two renders (one with the water surface showing and one with it hidden) and then fiddly manual cut-and-pasting between those two renders to make the final image.

For example, a user could write such an "ambient color" texture Python script called walnutwood.py, which would make the object render looking like realistic walnut wood on all of its surfaces.

(1) Sounds like Matcap + PBR. Matcap ('MAterial CAPture') gets the base colour, with the intention of automatically applying a new material to match it. In your case it sounds like the script applies a matching PBR material. We don't yet have Matcap, but I'm fairly sure I heard in the official Poser 12 launch webinar that PBR can be done in Poser 12, now the new Cycles nodes are in there. And quite easily too, from what was said.

(2) Yes, that would be useful. There's a ToonID script on ShareCG which will let you pick the color. You'd make the boat interior's ToonID bright green, render to Firefly PSD with the auxiliary ToonID render label checked. Then you'd at last have a clean Photoshop mask for the boat interior.

(1) With my hypothetical walnutwood.py, my method would result with all faces of the object's outside automatically showing grain patterns compatible with their position and attitude on the object. For example, if the Python script was for a cylindrical set of layers, like annual rings in wood, automatically the end surfaces would show the annual rings pattern and the side surfaces would show parallel grain, and a diagonal surface would show elliptical annual rings, and the layers would meet correctly at all edges.. And more complicatedly, if the Python script was for.more a complicated grain pattern such as a crotch piece. Walnut carpenters like "crotch figure" (see Youtube videos https://www.youtube.com/user/mcremona/videos by Matt Cremona), and the Python script could be programmed to imitate walnut crotch figure.

(2) That soulns line chromarky (spelling?). .If Poser's renderer could e.g. be told not to render the object seasurface.obj when it was inside the material boatoutside of the character or object Boat.04, that would automatically not render the sea inside the boat.

(2). I chose the example of a green colour at random, not because it could then be used with Chromakey software. Could have been white, red... getting a Toon ID render of the scene with false colours, it just means you have a clean shape for the Magic Wand tool to grab onto and make a clean selection.

To implement keeping the sea out of the boat: Poser would work out the line where the outside or inside of the boat crosses the ground plane. Then the part of the ground plane inside that line is not rendered. I have written software to handle .OBJ CGI objects, and it is quite easy to divide all faces of an object where a particular plane crosses them.

Also, I must lose the sea inside the boat, but keep the sea elsewhere.

Sorry, typo above :: "soulns line" should be "sounds like".

Recompile the thing. It needs it. No matter what computer resources you throw at it, it's slow. I know renders take time, but the cloth room? What's it doing calculations with an abacus and a monkey? It needs to use EVERY core and thread you have available. The preview room should do a better job even if it's faked somehow. What you see is not what you get. Some of the tools I've purchased should be part of the program. If you don't make it easier, new adopters will go elsewhere, to Free Daz, Iclone, blender or Unreal. I know you are trying, but I don't want Poser to die.

Threads are useless for most calculations in Poser beside of rendering. Most often the next point zo compute depends on the previous one. And: The clothrooms core is pretty old. Recompiling will not help. It shoulld be replaced (but then older clothpieces wouldn't work anymore).

Thanks. That's unfortunate, but the world moves on. There are other programs and I hate to lose Poser, but if they work better and faster, poser will fade away. :(

How many users actually use the Cloth Room with clothing? I'd forgotten it was even there. If only a small number, then it's unlikely to impact the future of Poser.

I use the Cloth Room and I don't find it slow. It is not fast, but not slow either. It was really struggling a few years ago before I got my current, not even particularly powerful computer. I don't want to argue that it is really system-dependent because I'm not a hardware expert, but I find it non-tedious to use it at all, and get good results when I use dynamic clothing that is well built.

I realize one person's testimony is anecdotal. I realize the Cloth Room is a mystery to many. But I used it since the Poser 7 days and didn't find it more tedious than fitting conforming clothes to morphed figures that are nonstandard--so I wanted to put this out there.

Like Rhia, I've been using the cloth room for a while. My system is 10 years old and was far from the top of the line then. Some clothing is painfully slow, others are surprisingly quick. I find that it's dependant on the density of the mesh and if you have an intersection you shouldn't. The setup isn't difficult once you know how. I think the biggest problem is having too short of a simulation. People either try to get the cloth into a pose in too few of frames and it whips around too much, or they don't give enough time for the cloth to settle once the character is in the pose.

I find it better for getting conforming clothing into certain poses. I've never seen a long conforming dress with a sitting morph that looked anything like the figure sitting, even just a basic sit in a chair feet flat on the floor type pose.

Thanks. I wasn't using the cloth room with clothing, it was with a dish towel for a bar scene.

I have been fortunate to have a fast system, and it doesn't make any difference in speed. I didn't realize it was mesh dependent, but still, if Poser can send out portions of an image in a queue to be rendered on numerous computers, it should be able to do the same for a piece of cloth mesh to multiple cores.

I'm not knocking Poser, I really like it and want it to succeed. It's just that I see other programs like Iclone rendering FAST, in 4k. I don't use Daz and its free so they have work to do, but their models are fantastic. The two companies don't play well together and I'm sure they have their reasons.

Unreal is free for home users and their textures are literally unreal. I have no idea how fast it is, that's a learning curve I don't want to tackle, yet. I was surprised to see Poser going with Anime characters as their main advertising on the splash screen. I'll bet they render fast, but I have always wanted more realism, not less. And, Iclone 8 is coming out soon. No idea what bells and whistles they have to offer but their animation beats poser's hands down. I want Poser to succeed, but they will have to throw a lot of resources at it. IMHO

You are not allowed to discuss other software in the poser forums!?

wolf359 posted at 9:54AM Wed, 04 August 2021 - #4424432

You are not allowed to discuss other software in the poser forums!?

Yet you seem to do it all the time. :) Yet I will say this about Poser's Cloth Room. I think it's old and using old tech. It seriously needs to be revamped... or replaced. Or better yet, as i once opined, merged with the Bullet Physics module.

putrdude posted at 3:39PM Wed, 04 August 2021 - #4424417

Thanks. I wasn't using the cloth room with clothing, it was with a dish towel for a bar scene.

It seems like you're doing something pretty wrong. I don't have a better picture at hand right now, but here is a part that is noodled through in the clothroom with 2-4 seconds per frame.

Even with more complicated poses

putrdude posted at 3:54PM Wed, 04 August 2021 - #4424417

Thanks. I wasn't using the cloth room with clothing, it was with a dish towel for a bar scene.

I have been fortunate to have a fast system, and it doesn't make any difference in speed. I didn't realize it was mesh dependent, but still, if Poser can send out portions of an image in a queue to be rendered on numerous computers, it should be able to do the same for a piece of cloth mesh to multiple cores.

I'm not knocking Poser, I really like it and want it to succeed. It's just that I see other programs like Iclone rendering FAST, in 4k. I don't use Daz and its free so they have work to do, but their models are fantastic. The two companies don't play well together and I'm sure they have their reasons.

Unreal is free for home users and their textures are literally unreal. I have no idea how fast it is, that's a learning curve I don't want to tackle, yet. I was surprised to see Poser going with Anime characters as their main advertising on the splash screen. I'll bet they render fast, but I have always wanted more realism, not less. And, Iclone 8 is coming out soon. No idea what bells and whistles they have to offer but their animation beats poser's hands down. I want Poser to succeed, but they will have to throw a lot of resources at it. IMHO

I would love to see you work with the Cloth Room once. I have found over the years, that most people create their own problems when dealing with the cloth room. Even when it is something simple like draping a blanket across a bed or a person in the bed. In most cases, the mesh is in contact with something it is not supposed to be and it hangs the simulation.

putrdude posted at 7:33PM Wed, 04 August 2021 - #4424417

Thanks. I wasn't using the cloth room with clothing, it was with a dish towel for a bar scene.

I would say: The wrong tool for the job. Cloth-Room is made for cloth. For a simple towel use Bullet. There are easy to follow videos made by Renderosity how to use a towel (or any sheet of fabric) in Poser.

I only meant to help Poser to succeed. If talking about the competition's features is prohibited then it's already over. A simple Google search for 3d programs brings up the same information.

adp001 posted at 7:20PM Thu, 05 August 2021 - #4424566

putrdude posted at 7:33PM Wed, 04 August 2021 - #4424417

Thanks. I wasn't using the cloth room with clothing, it was with a dish towel for a bar scene.

I'm going to disagree. The Cloth Room is the right tool. The Bullet Physics module is faster, but it has a steep learning curve. As I said in an earlier post, getting what you want out of the Cloth Room is really a matter of positioning. I think the real secret is to make sure your "cloth" never actually touches any other object in the cloth room. Or at the very least, minimizes any contact. The moment contact is made between objects, it throws the computers calculations off.

The Cloth Room is software licensed from a company that left the industry years ago. It isn't going to be rewritten to take advantage of multiple cores.

I've used it to good effect since it's inclusion in Poser way back when. People make it way more complicated than it really is. It uses real world physics simulation on a piece of "cloth" geometry. Grams per square centimeter. Every setting uses real world numbers that you can easily look up on the internet. Stretch, sheer and all the rest.

I spent my years in real life, before retirement; as a manufacturer of ladies intimate apparel, swimsuits, and cruise wear. Victorias Secret and that type of establishment. I have used the cloth room to work out literally thousands of product simulations for my work. That was using standard office computers not particularly set up for graphics design. I just wish there had been something like Marvelous Designer around at the time that would have allowed me to use the actual clothing patterns to replicate the cloth design.

Polygon density makes a difference. Lower is usually better. Higher is more likely to cause intersection problems. The most efficient poly type are Delaunay-Tris. Drape complex items before you sim them and never scale your cloth to fit the figure before you sim. Real cloth does not scale. You need more or less of it for a particular garment. You are simulating woven strings. Stretch them and they break.

The wayback machine may provide you with information regarding all this from discussions on Smith Micro's old site or possibly try and find the old thread here from years ago that discusses the whole thing. Must have been at least 20 or 30 pages if I remember correctly.

Oh; and for settings try this from the old manual. I just looked at the current one. It seems to have been rewritten at some time over the years and I don't see these. https://web.archive.org/web/20080706020126/http://my.smithmicro.com/tutorials/2313.html

Thank you! I very rarely have issues with the Cloth Room and its usually caused by high poly intersections. There is a new script on the Marketplace for cloth presets for P11 and P12 that are very helpful. I wish the cloth room would get as much marketing and new items than the other software's dynamic items. And better promo renders.

ATM, the presets are on sale and it seems to be worth the price.

I was just perusing some of the past newsletters from Poser and ran across this one about the Cloth Room. If anyone is interested in reading it: https://www.posersoftware.com/article/468/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-posers-dynamic-clothing?utm_source=not&utm_medium=0603&utm_campaign=blog

Thanks for the link, very nice tutorials. Regarding Simulations with the cloth room, I made an EasySimulation Script that is in the Renderosity market place. The script is more for dynamic clothing vendors so that they can make ready to use simulation files for user. It allows the users that purchases those clothing to simply load the clothing and hit a simulate icon in Poser to run the simulation.

You can see a video how the script work here: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/gallery/easy-simulation-script-generator/3008847/

at 4 :25 you can see how the user will finally uses the generated file with the dynamic clothing.