ShareCG is closing, which is very sad. “Important Announcement from Internet Business Systems, Inc.” (28th March 2025).
My Poser 11 scripts and Poser 12 scripts links-pages have both been updated today, and former ShareCG links now point to new Archive.org backups (not Wayback, the actual Archive.org).
I am in the process of creating a larger backup destined for Archive.org, but ShareCG is vast and this will necessarily be selective.
Poser 13 has been released for Windows. Available now at Renderosity. There’s also a 21-day free trial.
Upgrade from Poser 12 is $99, full-price for 13 is $250. Poser 12 is still on sale at $150. There doesn’t seem to be an upgrade offer from Poser 11 to 13, curiously. But I imagine that anyone who wants to has already done the Poser 11 to 12 upgrade.
Poser 11 is still on sale thankfully… but is now hiked up to $150 at Renderosity (was $52 for a long time). However, note that Neowin still has it for $80, an ongoing roll-over offer officially approved by Poser’s parent company Bondware.
The “Windows 10” system spec probably doesn’t mean much, since Poser 12 and now 13 run fine on Windows 7. But note that Windows 7 users can’t install Ken’s store-purchased Python utilities due to lacking the encryption needed. Note also that ZBrush 2022.7 or higher is now required for GoZ round-tripping to Poser 13.
A Mac version of 13 is also set for release, soon-ish… “We expect the Mac version to follow the Windows release in a few weeks as a free update for Poser 13 license holders.”
Also due is “an exciting new figure” but this is still “in the works for Poser 13”. The existing free 25Gb content bundle is the same, but it seems it’s now split into more manageable download bundles.
Installers for 11 / 12 / 13 are now all available at the posersoftware.com site.
As usual, expect any new version to break a few Python scripts, because Python “knows nurthing” about any ‘Poser 13’ version. There is one forum report that EZSkin 3 won’t run on Poser 13, for instance. But there’s already a fix for the script. However, the dev team also quickly posted a “new installer” that may fix this without the need for the new fixed script.
Also as usual, new users of a vanilla Poser 13 may have to tweak their rendering settings to get the optimum configuration for their particular hardware setup. There’s a lot to digest there, several things have changed with the new Cycles/SuperFly, and it will pay to study the new settings for a few hours.
Ok, so… new items for Poser 13 which caught my eye in the list were:
* The “latest open source Cycles engine” from Blender, which in Poser is branded as SuperFly. Not all Blender Cycles nodes are present. It’s a slightly cut-down version, plus some Poser-specific nodes. The new version in Poser 13 gives much faster rendering, especially on animations and complex scenes… “GPU renders of complex scenes benchmark at under half the time required for the same scene on Poser 12.” Also works on CPUs, I hear. Also has “Improved adaptive sampling for faster renders” and an “Updated animation rendering system for better productivity [when] rendering movie sequences.” The new “GPU rendering on remote nodes” can speed things up even more, if you have the kit and ability to pay the electricity bills and can wire up a local render farm.
* “Updated Walk Designer and Talk Designer, for better compatibility with all figure types and support of imported libraries.” Again, animators will likely be happy at that.
* New ‘Post FX’ post-render options… “denoise, exposure, saturation, gamma, brightness, contrast, bloom, blur and pixelate.” Nothing you can’t do in Photoshop, but nice to have. Bloom may be interesting. If it looks good, is consistently controllable, and has enough light spillover to become ‘glow’.
* Improved Intel Open Image Denoise (OIDN) module. One of the best features of Poser 12, and now also in Poser 13. Good to see they’ve integrated a more recent version, though no version number is given. It works wonders on either CPUs or the GPU, which suggests it is indeed the latest version (previous versions were GPU-only).
* “Improved morph and weight-map copying system makes creating clothing easier.” Clothing makers will no doubt welcome that. (Update: Two bug-fix releases to 13.0.287 focused largely on these features). PoserPython scripting now “includes Match Centers to Morph, Joint Order, and Copy Morphs From”.
* Downloadable full PDF manual. Useful for those who locally index and search an archive of PDFs and forum-captures, using full-text desktop search software such as dtSearch or Docfetcher. The manual is not quite up-to-date. For instance, the new Enhanced Shadow Catcher in P13 does work with SuperFly, though the manual says it won’t.
There are unconfirmed forum reports that the Preview viewport / rendering “has improved”, but no comparison screenshots. For this reason, it may be unwise for those in mid-project on a Comic Book Preview rendered animation or comic-book to switch to Poser 13 because they assume that the Viewport / Preview rendering will look exactly the same. It may not.
So, overall it looks like a big must-have upgrade for 3D photoreal animators. It’s also a must-have for those who have a new fast RTX NVIDIA graphics card and want the latest greatest fast software to pair with it. Costly, true, but if the user has the cash for a big shiny new card then they also have the cash to get Poser 13.
I imagine clothing makers may well stick with the workflow they know for now, unless the improvements in 13 are dramatic (I’m not qualified to judge such things).
Overall, the team is to be congratulated. They’ve done enough to justify the version upgrade, and have given 13 a clear focus on animation and a big boost in render speed. There are genuine and useful improvements here.
Of course, it would have been great to see a version that focused on non-photoreal and some Python tweaks to help it (e.g. having Python able to address the Post FX box and plug in any .8BF Photoshop filter at that point in the render process). But that’s a much smaller market than photoreal/animation.
In the meanwhile, don’t worry… the world-leading non-photoreal stuff is still in there: Firefly (with Photoshop auxiliary render layers if required) inc. outlines, real-time Comic Book, Sketch.
Onward to Poser 14!
Install test:
* As expected, Poser 13 installs without overwriting previous Poser versions or runtimes.
* Content directory created at C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 13 Content
* No .PDF manual in the install, as that’s now a download.
* Poser 11.x and 12.x still launch after install of the 13 Trial version. Import of a Poser 13 scene to Vue 2016 and the latest Vue both work, is Poser 11 is told where the 12 and 13 runtimes are.
* As usual, the new Poser user will need to fix the ever-accumulating light presets problem by tweaking a setting in Preferences.
* Yes, Blender’s Cycles X (here branded as ‘SuperFly’) happily renders on CPUs. There’s no nonsense at install time about “your graphics card is not worthy, so I’m not even installing”, as there is with Blender.
* The new version of the Intel OIDN Denoiser is packaged as a .DLL, so I can’t find what version number it’s now at in Poser 13.
* Checks how many threads Poser is using on a multi-core PC. Poser 13 defaults to 12 threads for me, but in Edit / Preferences I tell Poser 13 I have 24 threads available for its use (12 Xeon cores = 24 threads) in CPU rendering. And if you have that much power, don’t accept Firefly and Sketch render presets that use the old minimum 32 buckets. Tweak this setting up to 128, for a vastly improved rendering speed. Superfly renders are a whole different ballgame, and you’ll need to study and test to get the best for your PC.
* You add your previous runtime to the Library by targeting ../content/ not the ../content/runtime/ folder. When you’ve done this, your old saved scene files should load fine — because Poser 13 will know where to load the content from.
One-click to improve your scene render in Poser! Poser Python scripts to instantly switch your scene lights to use softer ray-traced shadows, or to switch back again to the default Depth-map shadows. Working in Poser 11 and 12. In just one click, they save you having to fiddle around with each of the lights to turn on softer shadows across a scene.
Note that you can also soften shadow intensity manually, with the dial found on Light / Parameters / Shadow.
In both scripts the shadows are softened from the defaults (defaults = 0.0 for Ray-traced, 2.0 for Depth-map). Here the softening is increased to 6, but you may want to go to 12 or so. The free PASS Poser watercolor shaders on ArtStation Marketplace work best with even higher shadow blurring.
Change the script’s “(6)” to the shadows softness setting you want. If you want a full reset script, just set the “(6)” on the second script to the default (2) setting.
Set Ray-traced Shadows:
Set Depth-map Shadows:
Especially useful for soft indoor “old masters” type portraits, not so useful for hard-edged sun-baked beach scenes.
Posted in Companion software, Freebies, Poser, Poser 12, Python scripts
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adp001’s Fake_poser is now updated for Poser 12. His Fake_poser3a.py “supports editors while writing Python scripts” for Poser. See the free Digital Art Live #56 for a short practical plain-English tutorial on getting the free Microsoft Studio Visual Code editor installed (a good replacement for Notepad++) and then this Fake_poser3a.py installed to run in it and help you with the PoserPython bits.
Also, my P12 scripts page is now many times larger than it was at launch a few days ago. Also my Technical Search tool has grown further as I’ve found older Poser 12 relevant pages, tutorials, scripts etc.
If you want to run a Python script in Poser using an assigned keyboard shortcut, you can.
1. The script must be in the software’s ScriptsMenu folder or sub-folders…
C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 12\Runtime\Python\poserScripts\ScriptsMenu
2. Rename your target script filename in the following format…
my_fabulous_script###Alt+C.py
Use of Ctrl or Shift and Alt are permitted, as are capital letters. Capital letters correspond to a lowercase key-press: e.g. C = c.
3. Close and reload Poser. Try your new keyboard command to invoke the script. Tested and working on Poser 12, and once done you see the shortcut on the drop-down if you look there…
With this in place you can now also use mouse-gestures, tied to a keyboard shortcut… which in turn invokes the script.
It appears that Poser can easily memorize and restore several things using Python scripting commands. Such as lights, camera, figure etc. But not the user’s current render setting dimensions.
Here’s a demo of how to do that in a script. Working in both Poser 11 and Poser 12.
Copy and save as Store_and_Restore_Render_Size_Settings.py
A useful basis for making a script that does a quick 600 x 450px test render, without affecting your main render dimension settings.
You could probably tweak this to save/restore other settings within a scene.
Now that this blog is self-hosted I can display Python and other code rather better. After trying a half dozen possibilities I settled on the free WordPress plugin Urvanov Syntax Highlighter. Works with the Classic editor in txt mode, and has none of that Blocks nonsense.
Embedding in a post is via a form, or more simply via a blog code snippet…
It has a very large range of display colouring options. Doesn’t mess with the Python code, so if the plugin fails the code is still valid in plain-text. Doesn’t mess with stuff in existing code tags.
Copy-paste, save as a .py Python script. Make sure the ” ” are not fancy curly quotes. They need to be straight quotes… " "
Yous custom Sketch presets are found at:
C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Poser Pro\11\SketchPresets
or
C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Poser\12\SketchPresets
A small script to select the BODY in Poser 11. Should work in nearly all cases, re: figure types. Buttonize it on the XA Toolbar, for a one-click BODY select.
Save as a .py script.
You can also tweak the script, to select any body part you regularly need to select on a figure over and over again.
Actually Poser already has the BODY select built in, though. Press 2 on your keyboard to instantly move the figure selection from the currently selected body-part up to the main BODY. So the script is only for those who don’t want to be constantly peering down at their keyboard to find the “2” button, and prefer to have everything in front of them in the UI.
Alternatively you could use a mouse-gesture software, and assign a ‘B’ gesture to Press 2 on the keyboard.
A useful Poser colour-code chart for Python coders, at LaTeX Color Definitions. You can see how the colour chart allows you to translate a colour to the three RGB values in a format needed for a PoserPython script. For instance, the chart’s Amethyst purple…
{amethyst}{rgb}{0.6, 0.4, 0.8}
This becomes in PoserPython, with spaces removed…
nodeInput = root.InputByInternalName(‘AlternateDiffuse’)
nodeInput.SetColor(0.60,0.40,0.80)
A mid grey, useful in toning down neon-like Preview colours arising due to a Scatter node plugged into the Alternate_Diffuse, would then be…
nodeInput = root.InputByInternalName(‘AlternateDiffuse’)
nodeInput.SetColor(0.70,0.70,0.70)
Note that some nodes need a _ and some don’t. I’ve no idea exactly why, but perhaps it’s the ‘internal/external name thing’ that Poser has. Thus you’ll see Alternate_Diffuse in the Material room, but it has to be AlternateDiffuse in the script. If one such name doesn’t work in a script, just add or remove the _ and try again.
Possibly there is some colour-wheel freeware somewhere that offers something similar to the chart, but the chart is a nice friendly solution. If saved out as a PDF it can be indexed by your PC’s local keyword search.
Until today I’ve been a clueless newb when it comes to finding and loading/running the Python scripts that shipped with Blender 2.79. I knew Blender could run Python, but had no idea where to find that in the folders or the UI. Here’s what I learned with Blender 2.76, an older (2016) version needed to access many older free assets in .blend files. All this assumes that you don’t have a weird custom UI embedded in the .blend file you downloaded, which unfortunately is perfectly possible to set up in Blender’s utterly vile UI. In which case you may never find the following items.
Anyway, in Windows a set of free helper (‘template’) scripts are installed to…
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.76\scripts\templates_py\
Then in a sensibly set up normal Blender UI, you can find these at…
The Animation UI also has access to the same “Templates” menu-item, but it seems the other UI panels do not.
You can also paste your own .PY Python scripts in the above folder, and they will also show up in the UI via the same method. If you only have a few (you’re likely just being forced to use Blender to export from some free .blend files for DAZ or Poser use) then you probably want to prefix their name to get them to the top of the list (e.g. AAA-my_script.py).
Note that you don’t need to re-start Blender after pasting a new script in there (as you do with Poser), in order to see it on the list.
The above then appears to be the somewhat trickier-to-find equivalent of Poser’s Python scripts folder…
C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Poser 11\Runtime\Python\poserScripts\ScriptsMenu
And of Poser’s rather more obvious Scripts drop-down…
The other and more ‘console-like’ temporary way to test an in-progress script in Blender is to go into Scripting or Animation, as seen above. But then…
1. Click on Text menu label.
2. “Create a Text Block” (Crtl + N).
3. You see an empty panel. Here you paste in the script from a plain text editor such as Notepad++.
4. Slide the infernal UI out the way, as it’s likely hiding the ‘Run Script’ button over on the right.
5. Run script (Alt + P). You can also do this by going back into the Text menu, where it is the top command.
Here are some links that may possibly useful as a quickstart for the Poser 11 to Poser 12 leap, and the need to tweak PoserPython scripts so they conform with Python version 3.
1. The official 2to3 – Automated Python 2 to 3 code translation.
2. Futurize calls in 2to3 and uses it to do automatic conversion of Poser 2 to Poser 3…
The futurize script passes Python 2 code through all the appropriate fixers to turn it into valid Python 3 code, and then adds __future__ and future package imports to re-enable compatibility with Python 2.
3. Python-Modernize also calls in 2to3 and uses it to make…
a very thin wrapper around lib2to3 to utilize it to make Python 2 code more modern with the intention of eventually porting it over to Python 3.
What breaks?
* It seems that the command print is handled differently in Python 3 scripts. So are strings. The way that iterated lists are done also seem to have changed. There’s a comparison page here.
* Standard library Python ‘packages’ or ‘modules’, of the sort called in by a simple name placed at the top of some scripts, have been moved or renamed or lower-cased. There’s a list on which Tkinter is now tkinter, and SimpleDialog is now tkinter.simpledialog. Tkinter is only relevant for Windows users, as Apple bans it from the Mac. It’s used in PoserPython to make user interfaces for scripts. I don’t recognise any of the others.
* Not only will Tkinter scripts need to have their in-script Tkinter ‘module call’ lower-cased to read tkinter, but on Poser 12 we may also have to download the latest Python and “then copy the tkinter directory, and the tcl8.6 and tk8.6 directories to the runtime/python/lib directory” of Poser 12.
* Some ‘packages’ or ‘modules’, of the sort seen being called in at the top of some scripts, have been dropped altogether from Python 3. Canvas and user are the only ones that look vaguely familiar to me from my looking at various PoserPython scripts. I’m not a ‘write it from scratch’ coder, just a code-hacker and tweaker and grafter who can bash something together and test it until it works. Proper coders may have more to add on the practicalities of getting a broken script from Python 2 to 3 — and thus to Poser 12.
* Apparently you can’t mix tabs and spaces in scripts, in version 3.