Monday, February 1st, 2021 Posted by Jim Thacker

Bondware ships Poser 12


Bondware has released Poser 12, its first major update to the veteran figure-posing and animation software since buying it from previous owner Smith Micro in 2019.

The release updates SuperFly, Poser’s physically based render engine, adding support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on Nvidia GPUs, and render denoising via Intel’s CPU-based Open Image Denoise.

Users also get a new post effects palette, updated material management, and searchable HTML-based help.

The Windows version of Poser 12 actually shipped late last year, but was officially in early access until the release of the macOS edition last week.

Support for RTX-accelerated ray tracing and CPU denoising in the SuperFly renderer
The release is the first major update to Poser in over five years, Poser 11 having shipped in 2015: the previous release, Poser 11.2, ported the software to Bondware’s licensing system.

Most of the changes in Poser 12 affect SuperFly, the GPU-acclerated render engine based on Blender’s Cycles renderer that was introduced in Poser 11.

The release moves SuperFly to Cycles 1.12, originally rolled out in Blender 2.83 last year, and brings with it the new features added to the renderer by the Blender Foundation to that point.

Key changes include support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on Nvidia’s current-generation RTX GPUs, adaptive sampling, and render denoising via Intel’s CPU-based Open Image Denoise (OIDN).

In addition, SuperFly now includes two features not implemented in the original release: background transparency and a shadow catcher to help composite rendered objects into photographic backgrounds.

Interface updates and workflow improvements
Other new features include a new Post Effects palette, although it provides access to a comparatively limited range of effects: denoising, exposure and saturation.

Workflow improvements include a new material management tab in the software’s Material Room, making it possible to drag and drop materials from the library to a character.

The release also introduces a searchable HTML-based help system and automatic installation of all of the content included with the software, including legacy assets.

New bundled content includes human, cat, dog, horse and gorilla figures originally sold by Poser content store HiveWire 3D, which officially closed earlier this year.

Poser’s Python scripting has also been upated to Python 3, after Python 2 was deprecated last year.

Available as a single version with the features of the old Pro edition
Unlike Poser 11, which was available as a $129.99 base edition and a $349.99 Pro edition, Poser 12 comes as a single version, with an MSRP of $249.99.

It includes features from the old Pro edition, many intended to make it easier to use Poser content in production pipelines, like FBX and Alembic export and polygon reduction.

The old base edition of Poser 11 hasn’t been available online since Bondware acquired the software in 2019.

Pricing and system requirements
Poser 12 is available for Windows 10 and macOS 10.15+.

A new licence costs $249.95, although it’s actually possible to get it for just under $230 by buying Poser Pro 11 – still available in the online store at the time of writing – and upgrading.


Read an overview of the new features in Poser 12 on the product website
(Functionality listed as ‘Returning Features’ was available in previous releases)