P12
Welcome to a page dedicated to listing and linking selected free Python scripts, for use in the new Poser 12 software. The scripts or utilities are known to work in Poser 12. They should also run on Poser 13. After download and un-zipping, the Python script is usually manually installed to:
C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 12\Runtime\Python\poserScripts\ScriptsMenu.
Some will likely not work in Poser 11 or earlier. The new Poser 12 moved to using the modern Python 3 scripting language, and thus broke many older Python 2 scripts.
List updated: 14th December 2023.
Latest: 26th July 2022: Added “Duplicate & Scatter for Poser 12” | 20th August 2022: Added “Scene shadow blurring scripts” | 7th September 2022: “AniBlocks” | 19th December 2022: “Hampelmann and mover-script” | 26th January 2023: “Octane plug-in-advice” | 2nd May 2023: “Nerd3D’s Rain Tool” | 18th September 2023: Fixed ADP scripts links | 24th September 2023: V3 to V4 pose converter.
REPLACE THE XA TOOLBAR:
You currently have two free choices to replace this vital, but now defunct, UI utility.
* P12 Script Starter. A nice panel for pinning scripts to, or render presets.
* Poser 12 helper scripts & perma-palette. Old-school Python Scripts panel in perma-mode, with eight sample pinned scripts that work in Poser 12.
OBJECT MOVERS:
* SnapTo for Poser 12. Easily move prop to prop, or prop to figure. Does not work for figure to figure.
* Move any figure or prop to the centre (0,0,0 co-ordinates) of the scene. Can also be hacked to move things far back, by a fixed amount.
* Move both eyes of a figure at once, with a non-rendering controller.
SCATTER and RAIN:
* New Duplicate & Scatter for Poser 12. An easily tweaked script by BagginsBill to scatter a cloud of low-poly props. Here a school of fish. But could be pollen floaters, floating seeds, an explosion debris cloud, asteroid belt etc. Now for Poser 12.
* New Nerd3D’s Rain Tool works for Poser 2014 through Poser 13, it’s said. Including animation. It was on the old HiveWire store, and it’s now (May 2023) sold at Renderosity for $15.
LIGHTS:
* Delete Selected Lights for Poser 12.
* EZDome. “Creates two domes that enclose a Poser scene, providing both a backdrop and a source of light for the scene.” The inner is a 360-degree backdrop image, while the outer provides the HDRI lighting to the scene.
* Change Shadow Intensity of Selected Lights, working in Poser 12. Not the intensity of the lights, the intensity of the shadows they cast. Useful for lifting overly-hard shadows, for comic production etc. A setting of 0.5 halves the shadow intensity.
* New Scene shadow blurring scripts for Poser. Automatically have all scene lights use soft raytraced shadows, without having to fiddle around with them one-by-one.
SKIN:
* EZSkin updated for Poser 12. Get both .ZIP files, to also have the required presets and extras. A couple of clicks nicely converts old Firefly skin and eyes to SuperFly. Poser already ships with SuperFly presets for regular and strand hair. Most older props don’t need conversion, as they don’t use SSS and other fancy skin tricks.
HAIR ROOM:
* Copy Hair Room “Hairiness” Settings from One Object to Another. Potentially allows the creation of a library of Hair Room ‘fur’ presets. (See comment on page, for download link to Poser 12 version).
The Material Room now has an ‘apply to all’ feature, so there is no need for a script for that. This means that things like old hair can have SuperFly hair shaders quickly applied (Library: ..\Materials\Superfly\SuperFly Basics\Advanced Hair Shader\ though piece-based ..\Strand Hair\ is not treated as single unit).
MATERIAL ROOM:
* Node Tidier. Tidy up cluttered node tangles.
* Automatically set all ToonIDs to a random high colour. The resulting Firefly .PSD auxiliary render layer can help with making selections in Photoshop, for postwork. Also useful for quickly making old-school ‘colour flats’ for comics, using the paint-bucket.
* Disconnect all bump maps in a scene. Bump maps are 98% of what cause a Firefly ‘line-art only’ render to look like a speckled mess between the lines. Scripts for P11 and P12, and Firefly presets for making ‘line-art only’ renders.
CAMERAS AND FX:
* Easy DoF (Depth of Field). Poser used to ship with a DoF calculator script, but it’s no longer in Poser 12 and this appears to be the much better replacement.
* Camera facing billboard script for Poser. Works in Poser 11, 12 and 13. Load a normal square plane prop from your Primitives folder. Select it, run the script, and the plane will now always automatically turn to face the camera. Use in combination with my revival of the old Magic Billboard setup. This is the only auto ‘billboarding’ script I know of.
ANIMATION & POSING:
* New The DAZ ‘AniBlock Importer for Poser’ script is reported to work in Poser 11, but requires the free AVfix to be running first. Theoretically, a saved aniBlock animation sequence there could then be taken from Poser 11 to Poser 12, and it would work on the same figure?
* New A free Poser 12 version of Hampelmann is now available, Hampelmann 1.7 for Poser 12. This also needs the free 1.6 from Renderosity since that has the configs and figure profiles. The 1.7 just has the updated scripts. There is also a Poser 12 mover-script for Hampelmann which finds the panel (if hidden under other UI items) and moves it. I also have a new 1.7 install and quickstart tutorial with screenshots.
* New Pose transfer from the old V3 to V4 can be done in a roundabout way, via DAZ Studio. Tutorial, using two free DAZ scripts and the Poser Format Exporter.
* .BVH mo-cap file import is unchanged in Poser 12.
EXTERNAL LIBRARY:
* There are two options. 1) Detach the regular Library panel, set up your dual monitors, and drag the panel over onto a second monitor. It will drag-and-drop across the monitors. 2) Use Poser 2014. P12 can run simultaneously with Poser 2014, and 2014 had the nice Air External Library. This Air Library can then drag-drop content to the P12 stage in the usual way, even from a second monitor. Air is very fast, stable, and can be tweaked to look much nicer than its rather ugly default state. It also offers thumbnails on folders. The Poser 2014 Air external library may thus be the best choice for having a free floating Library over on a second monitor. On a big monitor it can even be run side-by-side with PzDB (no longer sold, but still working for buyers), for a second option and a nicer “see it all” view of the search results.
WRANGLING WITH BIG SCENES:
* Parent Lister. What is parented to what, in your big scene? Get a handy list.
* SnapTo for Poser 12. Easily move prop to prop, or prop to figure. Does not work for figure to figure.
* Scenefixer for Poser 12. I’ve never used it, and can’t find any description of it. But people seem happy it’s been updated for Poser 12.
RENDERING:
* Render each figure or prop separately, to time-stamped .PNG cutout renders.
* New When using the third-party Octane rendering plugin with Poser 12 on Windows, you may need to change the Properties of Poser 12’s main .EXE to run in Windows 8 Compatibility Mode and also set it to launch in Administrator Mode. (Not tested by me, this a forum tip I’m passing on).
* Make a fully automated real-time z-depth (“depth cued”) render from Poser.
EXPORTERS:
* Fixed The im_export.py script. For… “import/export of Poser figures in .OBJ format. Figures are exported posed and morphed as they appear on screen.” Possibly useful as a replacement for the ‘Poser to Clip Studio’ automatic export script that was working in Poser 11, if for some reason you can only use Poser 12. Found on ADP’s Python Page (scroll down). Update: ADP’s site appears to be down, so the backup is here as im_export.py.
Also useful, but $5, is the Blender to Poser automatic converter Python script. This Python runs in Blender and automatically exports an .OBJ just the way Poser likes it.
* Poser 12 to Vue needs no script or plugin. Each knows about the other (apart from some very complex new Cycles shaders). The only real change is that Poser 11 also needs to be installed on your PC, alongside 12, for a Vue import of a Poser scene containing content from the Poser 12 runtime.
WRITING SCRIPTS:
* Fixed Fake_poser. This was kindly updated for Poser 12 by adp001 in July 2022. 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++). This Fake_poser3a.py runs inside Visual Code and helps you with the PoserPython bits.
Update, September 2023: The latest Fake_poser3a.py can also be found on this forum thread.
COMPILERS and DECOMPILERS:
* EZCompile. Makes a .PY Python script into an obfuscated .PYC file, so buyers can’t read or tinker with your code. That said, elsewhere there are de-compiler utilities too, which (so forum gurus say) can work.
ASSIGN A KEYBOARD SHORTCUT TO A SCRIPT:
* How to run a Python script using a keyboard shortcut. Working in Poser 12.
Still required, replacements for:
* Scene Toy. Though there are sort-of commercial replacements at Renderosity, though note that these will not install on Windows 7. The same is true of a replacement for the old Send in The Clones block-builder/scatter script.
* Rust-icator. Though the new Cycles / SuperFly nodes can probably now do see-thru overlays on existing textures. Also, even old-school overlays on existing textures are not difficult to set up by hand.
* The official Poser to Clip Studio export script. Although see im_export.py as a replacement, listed above. If you do this a lot, it’s probably just easier to have Poser 11 running alongside Poser 12, and do the export in Poser 11.
* The DSON importer. Use Poser 11, where it still works to import Genesis 1 & 2. Note however that having DSON importer stuff in a runtime that’s seen by Poser 12 can cause problems. If you accidentally click on a DSON DAZ item in an indexed DAZ runtime and Poser 12 tries to start DSON, you will get an impassable Python error… and you will then need to terminate Poser 12 with crtl-alt-del. Best to keep DAZ-only runtimes out of Poser 12, and only have them indexed in Poser 11.
* Of course, having modern replacements for even older P6+ scripts would also be nice (emitter particles, mixed render-type multi-pass, and various advanced utilities).
* PzDB. Not a script, but a fine external Library and search for the Windows desktop. No longer sold, but still working (for now) for those who purchased it. May die in the future, if the ‘phone home’ registration-checking server fails.
Also useful for scripters and script installers is to know where Poser 12 keeps stuff. Poser has multiple hidey-holes for custom files…
C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 12\Runtime\Python\poserScripts\ScriptsMenu (where you install Python scripts) (first-time users, after spending time installing the initial scripts, should not make the mistake of thinking that C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 12\Runtime\ is where the content also goes. It doesn’t, it goes to the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 12 Content\Runtime folder).
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 12 Content\Runtime (default shipping content – you may want to install all La Femme freebie content here, rather than your regular runtime, to make it easy to find).
C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 12\Runtime\prefs\RenderPresets (default Firefly, with a SuperFly sub-folder).
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Poser\12\RenderPresets (your custom render presets for Firefly and SuperFly).
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Poser\12\SketchPresets (your custom Sketch render presets).
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 12 Content\Runtime\Libraries (default content that ships with Poser. You may find that a dozen or so custom light presets end up here, for ease of access).
Tip: It’s good practice to append _p12 to scripts you download for Poser 12, to prevent later confusion with older scripts. For instance, my_new_script.zip would become my_new_script_p12.zip and my_new_script.py becomes my_new_script_p12.py and so on.