As a part of the beta program behind Poser, I’ve gotten to see the cool new toys coming for a long time. Still, I’ve had my wishlist for at least that long, and while a lot on that list has been added inch by inch, there I haven’t always been as impressed with the advanced made in new versions of Poser. With Poser 10/2014, however, there is some serious maturity coming to play that I’m very excited about. With that in mind, I’ll be adding information to the blog here from time to time leading up to and past the release of Poser 10/2014 that is meant to illuminate and explore some of what the latest version has to offer, beginning with one of the most impressive new additions, their inclusion of the Open Subdiv architecture from Pixar.
Most Poser users at this point are aware, at least to some degree, of the availability of subdivision surfaces inside Poser by way of the “smooth polygons” option in the renders settings, though from my interaction with users it seems that the meaning of this option is still rather unclear. In simple terms, what it means is that by checking “smooth polygons”, any objects in the scene which also have smooth polys checked in their parameters will have their poly count multiplied by a factor of four and somewhat relaxed at render time to produce a smoother, more organic look. To date, Poser users have been stuck with one degree of subdivision and while that allows a certain extra level detail, by embracing the OpenSubdiv Architecture in the newest build of Poser, users will now not only have the option to subdivide at render time, but to see the results of subdivision in the viewport plus being able to dial in as many degrees of subdivision as they like. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for those of us creating content and the users of Poser alike, and I plan to go into some of those in a future installment. For now, however I’ll leave you with a link to the official pages at Pixar detailing the nuts and bolts of just what Open Subdiv Architecture is. Be forewarned: this is the deep stuff when it comes to 3D but it’s very interesting and I think, kinda cool to understand the deeper workings of the software we’re using to do this crazy art form of ours. -Les
