Hey all! I bought a new computer for X-mas (thanks Grandma!). I will get it pretty soon, but I have a few compatibility questions. This computer is a high-end system. 3.05GHz with hyperthreading technology (i.e. the 1 physical CPU looks like 2 to the OS which is new from Intel), nVida TI4800SE graphics card, and I already have a Wacom tablet. I have been reading in this forum that there are issues with the any nVida chipset and the Wacom tablet. Does the latest SR 2.1 fix those problems or should I just stay with P4 and get the Pro Pack. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks Tankred

I am not sure about the Wacom tablet,,,, I run an XP machine with Poser 5 and a W2K machine with Poser - both machines have Nividia T4 and both work great. Poser does not support Open GL so unfortunately Poser won't be taking advantage of the power of your new card. Regardless of the open GL though your new card will help on the redraw rate and being able to support millions of colors, which will be very beneficial. In addition your new card will probably support dual monitors. This is will make a huge difference as you can move most of P5 interface windows around. The only annoying factor is P5 has some of the menus (i.e. "are you sure you want to delete") that are programmed to pop up in the middle of the screen, these windows will show up between the two monitors even if you set your Nview settings to display windows on a particular monitor. Besides that - I am sure that you have read tons of criticism about P5. P5 still has some small issues that are lingering but as a program P5 Rocks. P5 has an incredible new material room that is based on the same system the Pixar uses. The New Parameters and Properties pallet make it so easy to move, delete and organize all your dials. The new editing tools make a huge difference in how fast and accurate you can pose your figures. The cloth room is very easy to simulate draping cloth and wind blown flags, I have not quite mastered dynamic clothing yet but I am sure it rocks as well. Same goes for the Hair and Face room. With the new FireFly ray trace render mixed with a 3.05Gig you will love it. Lately I use P5 three times as much as I use Maya, that's how cool it, is.

I am running Poser 5 on a Pentium 4 1.5 ghtz machine with 526 megs ram with Windows XP. I have an Nvidia graphics card, but there are no Poser related issues. I have a grapphire tablet, no problems there either. As to whether to buy Poser 4 with Pro Pack or Poser 5, I'd carefully compare features. P5 has more bells and whistles, but is much more complicated with a higher learning curve and poor documentation. I've tried to do some things with the new strand based hair, but to be honest I perfer the old Daz hair props. The materials room in P5 is enough to drive me to drink, it was much easier to change texture maps in P4. P5 does have procedural textures and gels, atmospheres not available in P4. So if you want more simplicity go with P4 w/Pro Pack, but if you must have atmosphere, dynamic hair and cloth, and procedural textures get the new version.

I have a Dell 2.4Gprocessor, 2GRam, 120ghard drive, Wacom tablet, and Nvidia 4 something. You are making me very jealous with your puter speed.;) I run Poser 5 exclusively. I have so much stuff it was taking me over an hour to move stuff in and move stuff out of libraries just to work. Now I have it all at my fingertips. Caveats: I don't use the face room, just learning the Materials room, use almost exclusively dynamic hair-- pre-built,the Rdna ones that are made to render fast and they do, I'm having problems with my old transmapped hair nad could use some help getting it compatible-- looks too flat. I also don't use the cloth room yet, one learning curve at a time for me. I've been using it-- a week and a half. The learning curve, if you've been keeping up with all the info in the forums-- here and at PoserPros-- is not quite as steep as I thought. Raytracing for reflections and water are next on my list to learn. Then Atmospheres/ volumetrics. Clothifying sounds like a pain, but it may be a good way to fit clothes on V3. I'm waiting for the perfect tutorial. Vicki 3, so far, eats the most memory-- Vicki 2 renders are very fast. But I think you have enough to take her.:)) I won't go back to the mish mash of Pro Pack, which was more stable than P4. I crashed every day on every project in ProPack--work two or three hours, it would crash, plus all the librarie headaches. Only crashes in Poser 5, so far, have involved trying to cancel a render-- you can't, don't try. I haven't run into the lights that crash P 5 yet but I suppose I will, and I'll remove them as I find them. Other than that, I love the program. Emily

*"Clothifying sounds like a pain, but it may be a good way to fit clothes on V3. I'm waiting for the perfect tutorial."* I've been working with Billy T's P5 China Dress and V3 for the past couple of days. I'll share what I've learned so far later on tonight. Don't mind the colors or low image quality. This is Firefly default draft, and I'm changing the material colors and lighting, but you get the basic idea: V3 can probabley wear any P5 dynamic clothing.

I did some renders last night with both P5's Firefly renderer, and the old P4 renderer, just to see what the difference is. Though the P4 render might be faster, it doesn't hold a candle to the Firefly render engine's raytracing, distortion maps, reflective surfaces, motion blur, etc. Add in the materials room, and you can get gorgeous effects not possible with the P4 engine. I always use the Firefly engine for rendering, even drafts.

The only issue is : for those of us who don't have a rich Santa Claus on hand, P4 rendering of a 800X600 scene is 5 minutes at worst, while firefly render takes between 1 hour to a full night (at least for the pics I do, which usually involve 2 to 5 characters, their clothes, the background and a bucket of props). I have seen portraits made with Firefly which are absolutely great (a good example above), but I'm just a hobbyist and I don't have a couple of days to spare to work on an image. For the kind of pictures I do, P4 rendering and half an hour of post-prod are enough. On the other hand, I very seldom post anything here because I feel exposing my poor work would be insulting to those great pics. I'd just advise to keep P4 renders for "quick and dirty" works, but firmly commit yourself to Firefly if you have enough time. The rare times I have done really paid off. Plus it would be a shame not to use your brand new computer to the fullest, wouldn't it ? :-) Compiler

Thanks guys and gals. All of the comments plus the really great pic above is making me lean closer to the P5 end of things. Thanks, Tankred

I didn't mention it in my first post, but Poser 5 comes with both the Firefly and the Poser 4 render engine, so you can go for quick and dirty, or clean and smooth at your discression.

How much ram ya got? I'd put at least a gig in that box and more if you can. Your vid card will run Pandromeda's Mojoworld just fine and your chip will be great with Bryce. I can't say for winxp and p5 though (I'm assuming its and xp box), but P5 seems to be fine on my win2k machine.

Mine's XP home and a Dell, which people turn up their noses at-- it works great and very few hour renders-- some, I'll admit and I haven't used more than one character yet, though I loadup on hires textures and props. V2 is fast-- my dedgirl in the gallery was an 8 minute render without raytracing, V3 no, at least 30 minutes. And I render fairly huge 3000 by something. Momcat, your china girl looks great. Someone did the same thing with Xena's Egyptian dresses by clothifying them at PoserPros. I gotta learn how, but it will take assuming I'm blonde to teach me. If you're blond, I apologise profusely.:)) Emily