"Pro Pack adds powerful functionality to Poser 4. LightWave 7.0b and 3D Studio Max 4.2 can host Poser scenes, and you can create custom PoserPython scripts for even greater control of Poser. Pro Pack also exports 2D Flash and 3D Viewpoint animations." (taken from CL's website...in fact, this is ALL I could find about the product there) So, besides reading JPGs instead of BUMs for bump maps, (not that THAT's much of a reason) what's the reason for buying this product?

Well, you also get the Setup Room and an interesting lighting bug. :)

...and you can get rid of every .rsr...

yeah....that's why I've never purchased it....

1. python scripts run in pro pack. that's a big help with things like assigning materials and what have you. some scripts come with it; some you buy as add-ons 2. propack gives you the option for multiple view ports so you can look at your picture from the side and top at the same time as the front, etc. 3. it saves the library preview images as png's instead of rsr's, so you can look at them in thumbnail format from a windows explorer window (in xp anyway). Handy if you like to rearrange your libraries a lot and want a bit more flexibility than you get with P3DOExplorer (which is a great free app, by the way). 4. it does away with the .rsr geometry caching feature from poser 4, so you don't have an extra copy of all your geometries. This, in addition to the jpg-not-bum thing, saves hd space 5. there's also a plugin for cinema4d 7, which works well on the pc side. I can't vouch for the mac side of things. All in all it adds some good functions and fixes some irritating problems, and when combined with the python thing it increases the potential of the app. It just makes life within poser a little pleasanter. If you live your life mainly outside of poser, you won't see that much of a difference, but if you're a heavy poser addict it's probably worth the price. I'm very happy with it--I'm a c4d user and I rearrange my libraries a lot, and I'm always trying to control the runaway runtime-size thing. So it's worth it. And the flash animation export is pretty cool.

Everything that Canary 3d said, plus I'd also like to mention that you get a set of cartoon character figures. If you like working with cartoon types of models (they are similar to the Daz cartoon kids) it's an added plus. They also come with props and animations.

Pro Pack also supports animated materials. A rather limited feature compared to P5's impressive animated-material capabilities, but more than P4 alone provides.

And 2D motion blur.

The Setup Room is a wonderful tool if you're going to build Poser figures from various kinds of pieces. Fast and easy! I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't discover it until just yesterday......

Thanks for the info. I've been exporting to Lightwave6.5b ALOT. IT takes a long time-and is inconvienent. Especially cause my slow computer (Mac G4 533) takes minutes to open the V3 character I use most-maybe its time to Un-inject! :-) Anyone make it work on Mac OS9.2.1 and LW 6.5b? I think Wolf359 uses that or did? I would like to animate this attached scene and am not sufficiently adept at adding bones other than for basic motions. Thanks !Eric WARNING SILLY PIC ATTACHED!

I appreciate the info. I think the price @ CL is $189. Seems a bit steep for a "putzer" like me. I'm curious, though (pardon any pun), Tomsde mentioned some extra cartoon characters...does it do any cell shading that's worthy of note?

No better than Poser 4 alone; just the Cartoon and Cartoon w/Lines display modes. Those are actually pretty good, though, if you're willing to live without textures, bump maps, and transparency. Snowsultan has a tutorial on creating a cel-shaded effect using Cartoon w/Lines and postwork.

Tks, LD. Yeah, hehe, I printed snow's tutorial out figuring the ink was worth it. Hope it wasn't any violation to do so for my "Tutorial Binder". I experimented a bit with what you mentioned...the results didn't give me warm fuzzies, but perhaps with some work...grin. Tks again, guys.

I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. Seems to me that the more Pro youare, the less you really need Pro Pack.

Well, despite falling in love with P5, I still find myself occasionally using P4/PP with the DAZ stuff. Seems to load faster and the morph injections with V3 don't need quite the workarounds with P4 that are required in P5. But that's one specific model. Its not like Bryce 5/4 where 5 completely replaced any need to use 4. Chuck, I though you were a poser user? If I thought wrong, then here's what I would consider in making a decision between 4/pp and 5... If you are new to Poser, or only have 3 and below, then pencil out the upgrade or purchase price differences and weigh them against just a handfull of things.... If you use LW or one of the other modelers that work with the PP plug ins and feel that is important, weigh the P4/PP heavily now as there are no plugins (yet) for P5. If the plugin is not an issue, then you get all the other advantages of the PP plus a TON more with P5. Also, if you are like me and export to Bryce for work, then P5 has only slight advantages over P4/PP. I gotta say, the dynamic hair (which is not exportable) and the face room for Don/Judy (which doesn't work with any of the DAZ stuff but is exportable) is phenominal. In short, I love P5, but occasionally use P4 for speed on the puter when the features of P5 are not needed.

Actually, when it came out and allowed me to take things into LW, have multiple views, export to Flash, and the other features, it was a step up toward Pro. If you've got P5, it's not as much of a deal. Of course, some of us Mac users still haven't got P5 yet...

Chuck, I happily upgraded to ProPack a couple of years ago. The multiple viewpanes alone made it worthwhile. (Sorry Eric, I was going to use this example before I scrolled down far enough to see your image.) If you have a dragon crumpling a scroll, then it doesn't matter if his talons go though it as you move things around. If you have Vicky crumpling a love-letter, being able to have a main view for overall position, AND a view for her hands so that the fingers don't go through the paper, AND a view of her face to be sure that her eyes keeping tracking the letter no matter how you pose the hand... ALL visible at the same time? Yes! The Setup Room alone made it worthwhile. I could build things out of props and primitives and put bones in them (I was designing an animatable corporate logo this way before my employer went down the tubes). You can move bones from one figure to another and tweak, or do it from scratch... but either way your model is off and running and it doesn't take a week to do it either. The python scripts alone made it worthwhile... and this was before Ockham started pushing their boundaries. Most of what I collected was simple useful stuff, like making a character completely White to his toenails before applying texture maps? Delete all lights? Render to BMP? Zero out all morphs? Any of these with a click?!? These are all little things but they save time and hair (a lot of hair in my case). I ignored the cartoon people, that isn't my style. I didn't get to the point of exporting to the other programs because the other artist was using Maya and that plugin didn't yet exist, but tested a couple of them while we were deciding upon art paths. There are undoubtedly features and functions that I still haven't explored and exploited, but mostly because I haven't needed to. However, there is enough good stuff that any one of the major features presents a convincing argument for an upgrade. It runs fine on my G4 under OS9.0 with only 384 megs of RAM. If you are on a PC go directly to Poser 5 unless you needed the plug-in ability yesterday. If you are on a Mac, take another look at the ProPack. Carolly

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=ernyoka1&Topsectionid=0

If you want to see some of the cartoon people, then go to my Free Stuff (link above) and have a look at the 2 animations with Hemlock (Hemlock's Halloween 1 & 2) It features 2 of the cartoon characters. I had Poser. Got the Pro Pack demo and was instantly hooked. Those multiple view windows are GREAT! And Python.. I love it. Can't get the Poser-to-Max to work though but I do my renderings INSIDE Poser anyway, so it's not that important :o)

this isnt really on topic, but i saw a comment about being able to do away with .rsr's in pro pack, my question is, is that all the rsr's? can i delete them all safely with no ill effects?

There are 2 kinds of .rsr files. (The name might allude to the "resource" fork present in Mac files since Poser was originally a Mac application.) There are "rsr"s in with the Geometry files. Don't touch them unless one gets corrupted. There are also .rsr files present in the Libraries for characters, lights, props.... They replace the shrugging guy with little pictures of the desired object. When you install ProPack it automatically goes in and converts all of those .rsr files to .png files as each library is opened. If you see a character folder which has .cr2 .rsr and .png for each character, you can delete all those .rsr files. Don't delete them unless they have been replaced. I did mention two types of .rsr file. If you use the DOS command line and delete all .rsr in Runtime, you'll remove too many. Don't do this! Think first!! Only remove the ones which have .png's in the folder next to them. You wouldn't think that a few thumbnails would take up that much room on your hard drive. People here brag/complain about how many gigs their Runtime occupies! If you are tight for space, or naturally tidy, you can free up a lot of space for something better than redundancy. And in case you are wondering, .png is a standard cross-platform, non-lossy, really neat file format so converting is a good idea. Carolly

I didn't think Pro Pack used geometries rsr's either?

And anyway if they ARE deleteable, in case one of them gets corrupted, why not just delete the whole lot and let Poser create them again, one at a time, when they're needed.

The only .rsr that may NEVER be deleted is the one and only POSER.RSR!. So in case you ARE planning to do a dos del *.rsr DO remember to write protect - or better - rename your Poser.rsr to something like Poser.tmp when deleting. After it's done rename it back to Poser.rsr.

You're correct, ernyoka1. Pro Pack doesn't use the geometry rsr's. It doesn't even make them.