Poser 12 release-window announced

There’s a bit more specific news on Poser 12, and an official announcement of a release-window in the first week of November. So they’ve only slipped by a week, from the expected 31st October, which is pretty good for a big software package and a small team.

“The Windows version of [Poser 12] will be available to Early Access customers in the first week of November. The Mac version of Poser 12 will be released in early December.”

“Early Access” presumably being (this is just my guess) some sort of download sign-up gate for existing users, that may warn with something like… “I am an experienced Poser user and understand that this is a .0 release barely out of beta, and some features may be incomplete or missing, and old scripts may not work, and I promise not to moan and rant in the forums…” etc.

My further guess would be that an ‘all-comers’ public Windows version would be out and ready a week before Black Friday, which in 2020 is 27th November. It looks to me like the sensible in-depth reviewer should hold off until January or even February 2021, and ideally wait on the first patch.

Now there’s a fairly firm release-window, even if a bit staggered, I’d imagine that we should have the complete feature-list announced by next week?

On the public marketing, I do hope they have decent demo pictures/video for the Comic Book Mode this time. Smith Micro used to choose the most awful possible figure choices. Such as the rather naff Barney with his black hair and a grungy plaid shirt, representative of a very rough patch in Smith Micro’s stock character design. Or the earlier and even more horribly grungy Creature from the Black Lagoon figure. Even on the back of the retail box they made it look crap. What were they thinking of?

Show the public the free-with-Poser SAK Robo-kitty figure being tooned in relatively flat lighting, would be my suggestion, or the old Poser Star! figure might be an attractive toon choice, or some of the Nursoda figures. The free-with-Poser Maisie can also toon up surprisingly well and pleasingly, with a bit of work, once you abandon the photoreal in which she looks so ugly. She’s obviously not meant for photoreal.

What about the Python scripting language, which is vital to many scripts? The new post focuses on this and we get a version number: Python 3.7.9 is what will be in Poser 12, which will update from the old PoserPython 2.7 version. We also learn that the important EZSkin is being fixed for Poser 12 by the author, and that…

The dev team is working on a way to easily download, install and protect Python scripts that are purchased from the Renderosity Marketplace. We are also looking for vendor partners to create new scripts for Poser 12.

Interesting. You can already create a .PRC encrypted Python script, or at least you could in the previous version of Python and Poser. That’s not ideal, though, as it makes fixing old un-maintained scripts impossible.

So it sounds to me like Poser 12.1.x may have a built-in secure script ‘encrypter/decrypter’ module. I can see how that could encourage commercial $20 script-makers and thus boost the Renderosity Marketplace. It would also enable easy ‘unlocking’ by the owner of Poser, if the family of a deceased coder wished to give away the scripts for free, or sell them on to another developer.

Also, it’s now known there will be a “free trial up to 21 days”, as before with Poser 11. And… “We do not plan to invalidate Poser 11 licenses that are used to upgrade to Poser 12.” It sounds like you should be able to run both on the same PC, meaning you can try a trial version of 12 alongside an existing install of 11. That said, you should probably back up vital presets before installing 12.