The Principled BSDF node was my personal request to the dev team, and I am glad we can use it in Poser. Using native Cycles shaders can bring materials to the next level, though we can still get away with the simpler Physical Surface root, which is also based on native Cycles shaders. The Physical Surface has been improved and expanded in P13 to include additional controls for SSS, and a new "Walk" SSS method that is much better than what we had before. I believe "Walk" is now the default SSS method with the new P13 Physical Surface root node. 

Y-Phil posted at 3:39 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460080

Does someone knows how to have the shadow catcher? I thought the the PoserSurface's Shadow_catch_only checkmark was enough?

I believe the Poser Surface Shadow Catcher only works with the default Poser ground, but I could be wrong. I never use it with something else, so I don't know. 

hornet3d posted at 3:26 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460074

So now up and running.  Renders are indeed very much faster and the program releases the render when complete very much quicker.

Every time I go back to P12 to do something, I am instantly reminded of how SLOW it renders compared to P13. It was the same with P11 and 12, where 12 rendered many times faster than 11. One of my favorite new feature in P13 is how we can now save a preferred UI state, in addition to the preferred state scene. Before this, Poser would save its UI state every time we closed it, and use that in the next launch. Now we can save a fixed UI state and launch to it in every launch. Awesome!

As far as I know, it is still possible to simply export Genesis 1 and 2 straight from DAZ Studio by using their free CR2 exporting plugin. It hasn't been updated in ages, but neither have Gen1 and Gen2. As for G3 and 8, they use a different rigging, and bringing them to Poser is harder. There were tutorials here at the Rendo forums on how to do it, but I think Gen3 required special tools.   

However, I personally think it's no use to bring Genesis to Poser, because we lose everything the platform offers. If I want to use Genesis, I do it in DS where she has all the bells and whistles. Remember - Genesis is not a figure - it's a platform. They had to create a new DS version from scratch just for her, and it won't work in any older DS versions. They even introduced a new DUF file format (JSON) just for Genesis support. Genesis 1 and 2 use traditional TriAx rigging, while 3 and 8 use "Simple Bone" game engine rigging, where ball-joint joints need to have 2 bones to compensate for the single weight map per joint limitation. This is why Gen1 and 2 are easier to export to Poser, and 3 and 8 are not. That's it in a nutshell.   

For those who keep asking Genesis to work in Poser, that would be the quickest way to get sued by DAZ for IP infringement. Poser cannot legally use or support any of it without infringing copyright law. Anyone who makes a figure that looks like the same shape as any of the DAZ figures would also be sued pretty quickly by DAZ. It has happened at least twice in the past that I know of. So asking Poser to support Genesis is silly. 

randym77 posted at 2:51 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460060

I guess if the shader nodes are different, it would be hard to run benchmarks for render times.

I'm finding the ground prop disconcerting. The default is invisible now. And if you make it visible, it's black.

The shader nodes have been adapted to work with the latest CyclesX rendering engine, which was entirely redesigned from ground up to get rid of the original design that imposed hardware limitations and software setbacks. That's why Superfly is so much faster in P13. In my tests, I got renders as fast as 10X the P12 render speeds, depending on what's in the scene.    

As for the GROUND prop, I use a custom default scene in my Poser launch, where P13 has a new feature that not only allows saving your preferred scene, but also launch to your preferred UI settings, which wasn't possible before. If you look at the Settings dialog, that's a new feature. ^^

Rhia474 posted at 2:38 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460052

Your Make Physical script is an absolute game changer for material room for idiots like me to convert old textures. It should be IN the program imo, but at least this way you get compensated accordingly. :)

Thanks for the feedback! I made the "Go Physical" script to automate what uses to be a very TEDIOUS and repetitive process, skipping straight to the FUN part, which is editing it. ^^

randym77 posted at 2:42 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460058

I wouldn't be installing it in the same folders. I use multiple runtimes, including different runtimes for the included content for each version of Poser. Hopefully that will be okay, because I don't want to delete any of my old runtimes.

And thanks for the news about the new figure. I was wondering if Andy was it. :-D

Poser will keep each installation contents separate, unless we manually change the locations during installation, which in this case, I don't recommend. Since P12, Poser will install its bundled contents into P12's own "Included" runtime, and it's the same in P13, which has its own "Included" runtime location. Now we only mix or merge runtimes if we want to. ^___^

vopehov506 posted at 2:39 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460054

Tuff for the ones that have an organized external runtime finding all the files to be removed, I mean allot have single runtimes with all the stuff they like and they sure are not small. Meaning you need to create a new separate runtime and hope that some of the double files are not accessed through the main external you also have loaded

Every Poser installation (since P12) now installs the included contents in a separate "Included" runtime, so if you just use the default settings, I assume it will keep the new and old bundled contents separated into their own runtime folders. They would only merge if we manually tell it to do so by changing the content installation folder. The same is valid for any contents you install directly from the embedded store. By default, it will use the P13 "Purchases" runtime, which is not the same location as you have in P12. 

One easy way to have them both available in P13 WITHOUT merging is to simply add your P12 runtime as an external runtime in P13. This way you can keep both without making a mess. :)

Y-Phil posted at 2:30 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460049

And in this case, it was a firefly-base setup 

We have to consider that even Firefly materials also have to work with Superfly (which is amazing), so Firefly nodes also went through some changes. The dev team has ironed out some combinations that could cause crashes, but if you find something they have missed, make sure to report it. ^__^

hornet3d posted at 2:28 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460045

Thank you for the tip.  As an aside the first thing I did was install all of the scripts I have of yours, quite painless and they all launch so it looks good.  i will check them out when I have some content to work with.

Some of my scripts will need an update to accommodate the changes in P13, like there were plenty of changes on the Cycles materials nodes, and some other changes. This directly affects the "MAT Edit" script, since the Physical Surface shader root node has been changed. I already have a new version that handles it, but I couldn't release it until P13 was out, which has just happened today. I will sent it out to the store, which Rendo may take some time to update it (I cannot do it myself).

Due to the extensive changes in P13, it's hard to tell if it may break other scripts I made for P12. This will be an adaptation period, so please let me know if you find anything that breaks my scripts in P13. :)

Some shader nodes have changed in P13, mostly the ones related to Cycles materials, and the team did their best to handle the backwards compatibility. If you find a particular material that crashes in P13, please report it to tech support, so they can fix it. :)

The materials and folder organization of the new included contents have changed. It is highly recommended to remove the previous contents before installing to avoid mixing new and old files that use different materials and folder structures. If you just overwrite the old included contents, it will make a mess. 

sturkwurk posted at 1:17 PM Thu, 30 March 2023 - #4460011

I don't know what's going on - but my SuperFly render is taking about 30X longer than it did in 12.

I haven't used Firefly in a long time, but I have just tested it in P13. I have enabled Cast Shadows, Raytracing, Irradiance Caching, and Indirect Light, and rendered with a bucket size of 32 (rather small). The FF render was practically instant, much faster than P11 or P12. However, we have to consider render times depend on what's in your scene. If you have scenes with lots of transparency maps and SSS, that will drastically increase render times. For example, a character portrait where a big transmapped hair dominates the scene will likely kill FF rendering performance, no matter what CPU you have. But all in all, Firefly was super fast in my P13 test. Depending on what's in your scene, your experience may vary. 

I have to agree with hborre on this - the reason we don't have the Blender color ramp in Poser is because it relies on Blender functionality Poser doesn't have. However, I have seen people using the existing color ramp node when the only thing we need from it is a color gradient. For that, it serves the purpose. 

Maybe you could simplify much of the giant shader by collapsing each copy as a composite node? You can expose only the parts you want to change, and then duplicating it to reuse it in all other copies, with only the rotation as a parameter. Also, remember these rotations are in Radians, not degrees. :)