Going on from Jim Burton's idea about an improved Poser 4, here are some thoughts about what could be called Poser 4.5. The concept is that this would be a revamped Poser 4 without many of the irritations of the present program, but which would be easy and cheap for CL to produce, and would be suitable for those who don't want the burden of Poser 5. It could be a sort of commercial patch, that could be sold from the CL web site, and therefore wouldn't need expenditure on packing, shipping and so forth. I have some suggestions for what could be changed from Poser 4 to make Poser 4.5. The concept requires that all these be things that would take very little effort to implement - a day's work or less per topic. But the cumulative effect of all these improvements would make Poser 4 a nicer tool to use. So here is my plan for CL to work from. 1) Sensible import behaviour. At present if you want to import a figure from another pz3 file, the import dialog picks a random file filter. When did you last ever want to import from a pp1 file? It should just default to pz3. Likewise, if you ask to import a 3ds file, it should give you the 3ds filter, not "all files". 2) Learn the user's file structure. Why is it that whenever I want to load a morph I have to steer the program the same route to the directory where all the morphs are kept? Why doesn't the program just make itself a little note that this is where the morphs are? 3) Customisable keyboard shortcuts. The lowliest computer game always lets you pick your own control keys! 4) Orthogonal cameras that work properly. Not ones that zoom in at the slightest mouse movement and are near-impossible to pan. 5) Better object selection. I'm tired of moving the mouse round and round hoping that eventually the thing I want to select will be highlighted. Ctrl-click should give a pop-up with all the objects the mouse might be pointing to. 6) The possibility to have nothing selected. 7) The body parts menu should have all those finger joints put in a sub-menu. 8) The ability to copy textures from one object to another. 9) The ability to duplicate an object without having to go through the business of saving it to a library. 10) The choice of rotating an object in world or object co-ordinates. 11) Support for nested library folders. 12) Stop making the thumbscroll in the library system shrink to a tiny pinhead. 13) Better support for loading props and figures that were saved in Propack. 14) A menu option to control which groups of channels are displayed, so you could choose not to display shape morphs and just have the twist/bend/front-back channels and the scale channels visible, and so on. Whose bright idea was it to have the channels you want to change most often at the BOTTOM of a long list? 15) In the Windows version, make dialog boxes behave in a standard Windows way. There we are - fifteen ideas for simple improvements, some of which would require no more than a line or two of code. Taken together, they would make a useful update for Poser 4, particularly for those who don't use Poser as a renderer, and therefore have no use for many of the features in Poser 5. I've deliberately avoided some things which would be nice to have but are apparently difficult to implement, like better undo support. Now, what other features should be added to the list?

I agree with everything except: "all these be things that would take very little effort to implement - a day's work or less per topic" What you described is a big effort.

Some of these items I know are not a big effort, because I've done similar things myself. How many lines of code does it take to set a minimum size for a scroll bar? Others, I admit I'm guessing.

Copying textures from one figure to another (as long as they are comparable - not from Vicky 2 to Cube primitive ;) and Copy/Paste to duplicate an object shouldn't be very difficult. Just call the same procedure that they call when you want to change a figure, but don't delete the original instead. P5 supports nested library folders. Don't know why it was such a big deal to implement. Should've been done with ProPack. I totally agree about the directory thing. It seems that P4, P4PP, and P5 all retain only one single lowly directory entry for everything - scenes, imports, exports, textures, images, whatever. As a seasoned and tasty programmer, I know from direct experience that it isn't that much of an issue to retain a "set" of directories as compared to one directory. What? You need a variable array instead of a single variable. As for object/group selection, I also agree. The method of popping up a selection menu or dialog when there are multiple choices in this situation is standard procedure. Although one of my 3D apps didn't implement it, it would've been a simple matter to do so. Something else that irks me, personally, is the color selector. Once you've decided to (i.e.: made the mistake to) change a color, even if you change your mind immediately, you must select something or get whatever your cursor was last over as the new color. They should have removed it for the OS standard color chooser or better years ago. All I can say is this: DAZ Studio? :)

What they need to do is simply fix these problems in Poser 5. I can't think of one good reason for them to step backward to Poser 4. I don't think there's a single case of that happening in the history of computers. Good Poser 5 Fix list though.

I second every one of these. And fix the buggy file-open dialog. Many of these things, and the bug, could be fixed all at once by just building a single file-handling routine that follows normal Win app practice. And I agree that it would be better (and faster and SAFER) to fix them inside the P4 framework. Whatever is wrong with the loosely modular P5 will only be made worse by every little change.

[[ I can't think of one good reason for them to step backward to Poser 4. ]] How about the LARGE number of people who are not about to sink ANY $ into the very-flawed P5, but find P4 fairly suitable for their needs (many of whom do their renders in other, much better rendering programs such as Bryce), and would find such improvements make the program even more suitable for their needs? With the number of people who spent $$$$ on P5 and got burned, there's a lot of folks who will never really trust it now, now matter what "patches" are issued. ***** Other things that need to be changed in ANY version would be stuff like the scroll-bar leaping out of control when you try to load a new material, and the way Poser deletes the last selected figure if it can't load something you are trying to load.

As everyone knows, there are many problems with p4/pp that should have been fixed in 5 but weren't. In fact, nothing was fixed except the library system (and even it still has its problems). I agree with both volfin and Allen9. But they have to at least fix 5. If they put those fixes in 4 and not 5, Poser 4 would be the better, more advanced program. Can't have that. Although, in many ways, P4/PP is better than 5 right now. When I bought p5, I thought I was getting a "brand new program, built from the ground up." With all the P4 bugs gone. That isn't what I got. I hope the new CL makes good on the old CL's promises.

I have P5, and with the Service releases, it now works perfectly fine. Nobody got burned. Singed, yes, but not burned. There is nothing P4 can do that P5 can't. And P5 adds a lot of capability. Believe me, I was VERY unhappy with P5 at first. But to be fair, it's not that bad (now). Of course, they have a lot of things to fix, including everything on Phantast's list and then some.

Just have Curious Labs put 2 computers real close to each other. Then the 1 programmer that's left there, can work on Poser5 and Poser4.5 at the same time. One hand for each.

volfin, yes, there is something that at least P4PP can do that P5 cannot yet do: allow importation of Poser scenes into the major 3D apps out there (Maya, 3DStudio Max, LightWave, Cinema4D). They say that it's being worked on, but with no release date. That could mean six weeks or six months or ...

Sorry but if CL were going to fix Poser4 they would have dome it a long time ago, Poser5 is what we "ALL" should focus on now.

Well I, and I think a lot of others, don't agree. P5 is bulked up with a lot of stuff that I have absolutely no use for. And performance takes a hit for that very reason. Whereas P4.5 would suit my needs very nicely, and perform a lot better than P5. That's the one thing P4 can do that P5 can't - run faster than P5. Oh and I left out: 16) Add the last four opened files to the bottom of the Files menu, like any other self-respecting app. Definitely not a big task.

I am hoping that CL continues to market and promote P4 rather than pushing people, MSpig-style, to the latest and far from greatest. I think there is a market for "Poser Lite" that they should keep addressing.

"There is nothing P4 can do that P5 can't..." Not true. Aside from what's been mentioned, P5 can't: 1) handle more than 3 or 4 mil characters & textures without bogging down, 2) switch rooms quickly and smoothly, 3) be used all day without locking up or needing a restart, 4) render as fast with the P4 renderer, 5) etc.

Why a 4.5 version? Real, real simple- is anybody buying Poser 5 that doen't already use Poser 4 or PP? Poser needs NEW BLOOD! CL needs a cheap intro version of Poser, to get NEW people to try it. Dare I also mention that new users must be intimidated by Poser 5, and many, many people who have Poser 5 still use Poser 4 and would purchase the upgrade. And the "easy to fix things" only should be in it. What better reasons do you need? They could wip this up in far lest time than the next P5 bug fix, and it will earn them far, far more dollars! Let me also suggest- Selectable interface colors (increasing the contrast would be a big help reading all them tiny dials)(as mentioned before) Selectable font size on dials (as mentioned before). One click conforming- "Conform everything present to the selected figure". I would really like to see improved import/export, and the learn the file system that have been mentioned, too, in fact all so far sound great! Lets officially drop the requirement I suggested for an improved renderer, but an optional (later, for purchase) 100% perfect export plugin to Bryce would be so, so nice! I'd guess Bryce can do things that even Poser 5 can't, as well, even if it isn't the easiest program in the world to use.

Actually, the export to Bryce is already pretty good once you have it set up right with Grouper 1.4 to post-process the obj file. People say they would like to be able to export all the textures straight into Bryce, but that would never really work because the Bryce texture engine is so much better than the Poser one. Whatever Poser exported, one would still need to tweak the results once they came into Bryce to take advantage of fine control on specularity, ambience and so on.

Why stick with P4? Well, as it is now, P5 is pretty much useless for my needs. Since all of my poser work is intended for rendering in outside programs, and none of the "new" features of Poser 5 will export (hair, cloth, etc,) then I can't use it. And if I can't use it, I don't need it. It's that simple. I'm sticking with Poser 4 and ProPack because they DO work for what I need to do. Heck, I've even taken P5 off my machine since it's useless to me. Need the space for other things.

A 4.5 for the Mac OSX is probably tons easier to do than a P5 conversion too. It sounds like a great idea!

I would be far more interested in 4.5 than P5, going on all complaints I've read since it was first released.

i am sooo glad i didnt get poser 5....i was sooo close in purchasing it but what really stopped me is the stupid ass shipping and handling charges to canada........but i do think poser 4.5 idea is worth lookin into.... nnuu

----------------------------- "There is nothing P4 can do that P5 can't..." Not true. Aside from what's been mentioned, P5 can't: 1) handle more than 3 or 4 mil characters & textures without bogging down, 2) switch rooms quickly and smoothly, 3) be used all day without locking up or needing a restart, 4) render as fast with the P4 renderer, 5) etc. -------------------------------- Funny, I have never had any problems with any of these. Of course #4 is funny to me because I can't imagine why anyone would want to use the P4 renderer when Firefly is 10 times better and only slightly slower. And reason #5, well, that's a hell of a reason! *8-) Maybe it's your system. I'm running on a P4 2.53Ghz with 1 Gig of DDR RAM and 2 40 gig drives set to RAID 0. A good system is important.

Oh yes, I forgot. ALL the p5 problems are either peopoles' computers or the people themselves. Silly me. Firefly only slightly slower than P4's renderer? Now THAT'S funny! System: Dual 1.7 xeons, 1gig o' ram, 100gig hd. And yes, I know the brand new Poser 5 doesn't use the dual chips.