Some additional Poser 12 information has been released by Renderosity, include a hint at the release-window.
* “The Blender Cycles (Superfly) render engine updated”.
I suspected they would do that. If they go to the latest version then that should mean faster rendering times.
* Python updated
As previously announced. I assume they will go to the latest stable version, and then keep it stable rather than trying to keep pace with the latest .point versions. A number of PoserPython scripts may have to be updated for Poser 12, but that’s quite usual for a new Poser version and forum people are already working on that. A few forum freak-outs are happily proclaiming it’s the end of the world and that Poser is about to burn to the ground, as usual. But as usual… the useful scripts will get fixed by hard-working people who roll up their sleeves and do the required work, rather than crying doom! on the forums. The only real uncertainty is DAZ’s DSON Importer plugin, which brings in DAZ-format props and also G1 and G2 figures.
* “Post Render Effects, to speed or embellish renders for single frame or animation renders”.
Interesting, if they’re useful and not just a half-dozen cheesy filters. I wonder if Poser 12 will plug in something really powerful, like G’MIC, somehow? Just my guess.
* FBX import/export improvements. … Unimesh support features sprinkled throughout the code base.
Yes that would be needed for export to the Unity game engine, which is not in the list but which was effectively a feature announced in the recent call for beta-testers. Will this prevent the usual “exploding FBXs” which so hamper use of the FBX format for clothed characters? Will we be able to get clothed and posed FBX’s out of Poser, rather than T or A-pose? We’ll have to wait and see.
* “Material Room overhaul, with material-assignment power tools”.
Excellent. Anything that makes materials stripping / swapping / tweaking easier will be welcome. It would be nice if this was integrated with the Comic Book Mode, by enabling what the animation industry calls “MAT capture”… which means that Poser looks at the colours of the underlying diffuse and its texture, computes and averages them, then strips them out and replaces them with a newly generated flat toon material… of the same colour shade. Ideally you’d then get a quick pop-up colour wheel appearing next to the character and carrying all the new colours on it, thus enabling the user to make quick micro-refinements.
* Poser Reference Manual in HTML as well as PDF.
Nice, and it would enable search engines to get into it. Which might lessen the helpdesk and help forums burden by perhaps 20%, at a guess.
* Deprecated features will include: Face Room (better third-party tools exist); Path Palette (ill-conceived); Kinect support (unsupported); Flash support (obsolete).
Path palette was for animators, and probably only about a half-dozen people have even heard of it. The required Microsoft Kinect hardware can still be had from eBay, but you’ll need to be targeting an earlier version of Poser to use it. Fair enough that it’s going, and I think it was fairly bad at face capture anyway and only good for bodies. It will be interesting to see if there’s real-time face expression/animation capture via a webcam in Poser 12, which would give Poser 12 some parity with other software, but that’s just my guess. As for the Face Room, it is at least free and I’m always loathe to see still-usable free stuff vanish. Will it be pulled entirely, or just left as is and no longer supported at the helpdesk or poked at by the techies?
* “There is a strong likelihood of a 12.1 release in Q1 of 2021 with more unimesh support and new content options.”
Super, so that sounds like we can presumably expect the Poser 12 release between now and Christmas. Which was the expected release window. That would make sense, targeting the “back to school / university” university crowd while they still have some budget or grant money left, and also prepping Poser 12 to be picked up in the Black Friday spend and the Christmas gift market. Start saving double-hard in your PayPal balance for Black Friday, and with the Poser 12 upgrade price factored in, seems like good advice. One way for users of older Poser versions to prepare would be to pick up Poser 11 Pro now for $80, and thus unlock the Poser 12 upgrade price.