Thanks Rich! This Poser plugin is a gamechanger! You will see what I mean once you start playing with it. This brings Poser figures to a whole new level. ^___^

trained on logos, which are typically copyrighted things, and signatures?  ok, but where did these 'training' tools come from?  companies and organisations just agreed to have their logos used in the 'training"?

The training materials come from data sets used for AI training in research groups in universities and the industry in general. These data sets have been used for research and development for decades, but only became known to the general public after AI became popular (somewhere around last year). These data sets were obtained under the "fair use" legal requirements. Nothing was stolen, or else there would have been lawsuits all over the place decades ago. 

@Giana: Let me try to explain this in simple terms. The reason AI-generated images may sometimes contain what appears to be signatures is simply because the images used in the training contained logos and signatures. The AI simply doesn't know these things are not part of the artwork, and that's why it attempts to replicate them in generated images. Conversely, when a human artist learns art from the works of others, we KNOW their logos and signatures are not part of the art, so we will not replicate them in our own art. Therefore, this is a deficiency on the AI learning process, and has nothing to do with stealing. It's as simple as that. It's a common misunderstanding conclusion people tend to jump to because they don't know how AI is actually trained. 

Hope this helps. :)

When it comes to artistic styles, here is the law: artistic styles cannot be copyrighted, and as a matter of fact, basically all artists were influenced by artistic styles from one or multiple artists. What we now know as the Japanese manga style started off by importing many of the looks from Disney style, and later developed into their own very recognizable style. Later on, Disney itself, and both Marvel and DC comics then imported manga style into their own art, and the cycle keeps rolling. It doesn't matter who grabs a brush or a stylus - artistic styles cannot be owned by anyone. That's the law. 

@Byrdie: From the plugin I have created for Poser, you will no longer need to try so many times when it comes to camera framing, character proportions, and pose. You establish all of these in Poser using your preferred figure, and the plugin exports a preprocessed OpenPose file you can drop into ControNet OpenPose, and whatever you prompt will be in that pose, proportions, and camera framing. You can find a good number of results I've got from this pipeline in my gallery, and the feedback I've got from social media has been massively positive - even from people who don't even know what Poser is. 

It's a pipeline that starts in Poser (3D), then goes to Stable Diffusion (AI), and ends with postwork in Paintshop (2D). This alone has silenced all of those haters who claimed that images entirely made with AI had no merit because no human was involved. Back in the early 2000s, haters were claiming that anything made with Poser was "not art", and before that they claimed anything created with Photoshop was "not art", and before that they claimed that photography was "not art". Having that said, it comes to no surprise that now, anything created with AI is "not art". Some things never change, but my Poser plugin has already changed that perception in social media when I showed the results from this 3D-AI-2D pipeline, where AI is just part of the work. 

Trends show that in the future, every human activity might be AI-assisted, so AI doesn't have to be everything, but it will be part of it.

What Gillbrooks said is correct. The claims that AI "steals" images from other is indeed a myth spread by misinformed people. AI learns by repeating the same task over and over again, until it gets good with it. Sounds familiar? That's how humans learn. So, if humans practice over materials created by others, and that is not stealing, then why would the same process have a different meaning when done by AI? This is the part some people have trouble understanding, or perhaps refuse to understand for personal reasons. For the record, I have 2 degrees in Computer Science, and I have worked in academic AI research, so these are the facts, and remain facts no matter how people may feel about it.

@parkdalegardener: Thanks for the support and feedback. Not only this QAV is taking longer than usual, but I didn't get any notification from QAV that the process has started, which is definitely not normal after this long. If Rendo has something to say about it, they didn't tell me. But this AI ban happening at the same time of my submission leaves me wondering. I hope it's just a huge coincidence, but this sudden ban will certainly affect my product. And to think I am doing this to help Poser to get more users... I really feel betrayed.

The way I see this, AI has revolutionized the way people create art in more ways than people may realize. All major paint programs have adopted it, and even 3D programs have added AI generation to their tools arsenal. Some have already listed some of the applications in this thread, but there are many more. As time passes, I am sure even more creative applications will be explored. 

On my side, I have spent a lot of time and effort to develop a workflow to integrate Poser with Stable Diffusion AI. I have created a plugin that allows 3D artists to pose the and frame the character in Poser, and export a preprocessed OpenPose-compatible pose reference that can be loaded into the ControlNet extension to customize and render it in Stable Diffusion. I have been showcasing this workflow in social media for over a month, and people who had never heard of Poser are now interested. I have provided links to the PoserSoftware page to those who had never heard of Poser before. They look at the results I have been presenting, and asked me what Poser is, and where to find it. 

So, for those claiming AI cannot bring money to Poser, think again. With the explosion of popularity AI has brought into the community, this alone could bring plenty of new users to Poser. However, I have submitted the plugin to the Rendo QAV last month, and got not a word from Rendo ever since. I don't know what's happening, or why, but I wonder if Rendo's decision to ban AI was related to it, since it has happened in the same week my plugin was submitted to the store. 

Whether or not those are related, this decision to ban AI may backfire on Rendo once my plugin gets released. Pushing customers away at a time when Poser cannot afford to lose even more customers will have consequences, and might also defeat my efforts to bring more attention to Poser, taking advantage of this explosion of AI popularity. After all the time and effort I have put into this project, I feel betrayed. Rendo has pulled the carpet from under my feet in the same week I am releasing my Poser plugin to bridge it with AI. 

One thing to consider is that AI is already integrated into people's lives, and it's becoming more so every day. A few have hopes that they will wake up one day, and AI will just magically go away, but that's not how the world works. As proven in past history, those who fight technology will be left behind. Disney is the prime example of it - they have strongly opposed 3D in their studios for over a decade, until they were left behind and ran after their losses. Their claim was the same - "3D is not art". Studio Ghibli from Japan went the same way, banning 3D from their studios until they realized that was a grave mistake. Now we all know a studio cannot compete in the market without 3D. Pixar Studios had already established that way before, but some decided to swim against the tide. The end is always the same. 

Back in the early 2000s, I have suffered great prejudice and discrimination because I was a 3D artist, and some in the community insisted that "3D was not art", and wanted 3D artists banned. I have suffered all kinds of flaming for YEARS because of it, and then when it finally subsided, new 3D artists who join the site will never know the hell I went through because now everybody is welcome. A few professional photographers from dA told me it was the same with them before 3D, with claims that it was "not art". As usual, photographers went through flaming and humiliation for YEARS until everybody now understands and accepts it. That's the burden we carry.

And now, hold and behold, "AI is not art". Here we go again. 

You guys would be surprised how many times I have seen people in the forums saying no scripts for Poser were ever made since Poser 12 was released. This probably happens because none of my script releases were advertised on the Rendo newsletter since 2020, and products get quickly buried on the store pages after a day or two, never to be seen again. 

I posted here because I was told by another user that someone here was saying Poser doesn't have a script for scattering objects. I don't usually read the forums, so I took their word on it, and showed my solution for those who are interested - I didn't mean to intrude. Every now and then somebody points me to a forum where someone is asking for a specific script, and I show them what I have.

I find it both shocking and disappointing when customers can't find what they want in the store, and assume it doesn't exist. Happens quite often - especially when it comes to scripts. Seems like FINDING products at Rendo leaves something to be desired. Just wanted to put things in perspective before you guys jump to conclusions about why I posted here. I apologize if it seemed like an intrusion. 

Isn't this what the "Scatter Tool" does?

You can scatter 3D or 2D objects over 2D or 3D surfaces with or without surface alignment. It can create entire forests using billboard trees that use only 1 polygon that can render super-fast, and won't slow Poser down.

All of these examples were scattered over the default Poser GROUND plane.

Here's an example of scattering over 2D and 3D surfaces with surface alignment.

Surface alignment can be calculated even over morphed 3D objects.

You can even scatter figures of you like, with or without surface alignment. 

The interface is very simple. Below is the new version for Poser 12 and 13, which added some new features, like scattering over custom areas we can PAINT with the Group Tool. 

More examples of scattering in Poser 12.

Here's how you paint scattering areas with the Group Editor directly on the surface:

Create real-time CROWDS with billboards:

Each person is a single poly, so Poser won't even notice there is a 100 people on the scene. They auto-follow the camera, so they are always facing the right way for renders. 

There is an older version for Poser 11 (Python 2), and a new one for Poser 12 and 13 (Python 3). 

Hope this helps. :)

Thank you for updating your MAT Edit :)  

Hi Robert.

All the scripts I made for Poser 12 will work fine in 13. Some had to be modified to handle changes in the new Material Room, because the Physical Surface root node has been changed (new "Walk" SSS method and inputs). I believe that's the most noticeable change anybody can see, though there were internal changes as well. But don't worry - my scripts have already been patched, and support the changes introduced in P13. At least on my side, you are covered. :)

Hope this helps,

--=Ken

Anything that makes life easier is worth sharing! ^____^

@Rhia474 When you convert Poser Surface materials to Physical Surface using my script, it has an option to "Use Image Maps Only", which means it will bypass all Firefly shader nodes and use only the texture maps. I believe this option is enabled by default, but if it's not, give it a try.

Having that said, this has a catch: some materials use procedural textures (shader nodes) instead of textures. In this case, the option above will result into blank materials. If that happens, try disabling the option and try again. If the render is still black, it means the Firefly shader nodes are totally invalid in Superfly with Physical Surface, and might need some manual editing.

It is important to remember that "Go Physical" is meant to create a PBR base material out of Firefly materials - it is not a FF to SF material converter. It does its best to automate the process as much as possible, but some cases might need some manual editing. It cuts a lot of time on the tedious part, and lets us go straight to the editing fun. :)

For those comparing Superfly parameters between P12 and 13, please note that CyclesX is a completely redesigned rendering engine. It is said to be completely rewritten from scratch to free Cycles from the old architecture that imposed hardware and software limitations. This is why the new engine is so much faster than the old Cycles, BUT... the parameters have changed. For those expecting to simply reuse parameter values from P12 to 13, it's not that simple. 

We have new parameters, and the values used before won't work the same in P13. I am still getting used to the engine, getting to know what values work better with it. This is all rather new, and I will need more time to figure things out. I see some people claiming SF is slower in P13, but it might be just because they are simply comparing based on reusing P12 parameter values in P13, which makes no sense considering the parameters and values have changed. We will need to spend more time figuring out what values would be comparable - but frankly, I can already see P13 being so much faster that I just don't care for P12 anymore - I am not going back. 

The Physical Surface PBR root node in P13 has been expanded, presenting a new SSS calculation method that resolves many of the artifacts we previously had in P12 SSS, and it has become the new default setting in P13. This means we can no longer compare SSS rendering between P12 and 13 because we now have a new way to render SSS that P12 doesn't have. I can also confirm that Firefly renders have become faster in P13, and I was surprised because I wasn't expecting it. 

BTW, people have been asking me a lot if my P12 scripts will work in P13, and the answer is yes, they will. The "MAT Edit" general materials editor had to be patched to support the changes on the shader nodes, so the current version is now fully compatible with P13. My other P12 scripts should work fine as they are. ^____^