Ok... so now that y'all have had the chance to play around with P5.. how do you like it ? Is it worth the upgrade from P4 (which I purchased this past summer 2002) or get the P4 Plus "add-on" (forgot what its called)? or even wait and see what DAZ's poserlike thingie might be ? regards, bob

My vote is no thanks, i don't see any big deal with the "firefly render", and all the extra rooms are useless, unless you are a computer and 3D guru, but for every day people, all the extras are useless, the hair looks like wire, cloth room could have been made a lot easier to use, making something so simple a royal pain in the but.

I hate it. The things I'm doing now for images using P4 would really be a royal pain in P5. Were P4 renders these still life images at a pretty good rate (just a few minutes), P5 takes all night.

Well, I'm a techno idiot, and I like Poser 5 overall. I agree that the dynamic hair is a pain...I find it slows up rendering too much to use...but I can deal with the cloth room pretty well, and and the material room is very cool. I would never say it is a perfect system, but it works fine in general for me. I suspect most people will say that if you haven't invested in Poser 5 yet, you might as well wait a little longer for Daz Studio. What concerns me about Daz Studio is that the base unit will be "free" and then it will have addons that are going to prove to be expensive in the long run, but they may allow more flexibility too so I'm going to reserve judgment until I see more. I haven't seen a software program yet that was a 100% to my liking so perhaps my expectations are lower than the people who have been so disappointed in Poser 5. Of course never knowing what I'm doing probably helps too.

How large a processor do you have and how much memory? If you have over 1.7G proc, osXP or another os that can use All your memory and at least 1G of RAM and a lot of scratch space, then and only then is the Upgrade, only, worth it. Oh, don't even think of trying animation. You also need a whopping amount of patience, and a love of small intimate pictures. I had it, didn't install it, got V3, installed it, loved it-- a lot, I'm one of the people who really likes firefly, then liked it, now am struggling not to hate it and to keep it from crashing a lot. I love the dynamic hair as long as I don't have to make it-- there are good cheap versions out there, mostly at Rdna, that render well and don't look like wire, look at my gallery if you don't believe me. I have never figured out the cloth room, too much effort to get one dress on one figure in my opinion. I love the material room even though it still drives me nuts occasionally. Short version, worth the upgrade marginally in you don't do animation and have a machine that can work it to it's peak. Which ain't all that much of a peak. I'm gonna get the Environment Creator at Daz and see if those lights improve my experience in P5. They might. or then again. . . . Emily

All in all I'm pleased with Poser 5 and the FireFly rendering engine. Actually, I've uninstalled P4 and I've never used the P4 rendering engine over FireFly. I'm not saying that I haven't had my fair share of issues, but I've usually found work-arounds. Now, a lot of people don't like work arounds and that's fine, but like I said, I like P5 so I'm will to find the work arounds.

The cloth room, with some of the amazing dynamic cloth products available here, is awesome. And it really isn't that difficult to get good results. Actually hmann's Dynamic Clothing Pak had an excellent tutorial on how to get great results. Also, PhilC has excellent tutorials available for the cloth room.

The hair, on the other hand, has some room for improvement - well at least the "sculpting" part of it. It's still a bit out of my reach, but I'll admit I haven't spent too much time in that room.

From what Ive read in the Beta forums, if youre running a Win 9x or ME operating system, youre more susceptible to errors, and I think that has a lot to do because of Posers and Windows memory management (or the lack there of). Now, there were some people that have had great success with the Win 9x series, Im just giving you a little heads up. My set up is a P4 1.6 with 1GB RAM and yes, RAM does make a huge difference in rendering time.

I guess it all comes down to the simple question "Do you have the patients to learn the ins and outs of Poser 5? If you do, I think youll be pleased if not Id go for the P4 Pro-Pack. And from my understanding of DAZ Studio (and yes I am dying to get my grubby little hands on it) the initial beta is going to have limited functionality. So, youre still going to have to rely on Poser for a while. Now, DAZ Studio is going to have many huge advantages the one Im really waiting on is Open GL support!

Anywho Ive had way too much coffee today and Im just kind of rambling now, so Ill end it here. I hope this has helped you in some way. Again, I'm pleased with my purchase, and I would recommend it. You can take a look at my gallery to see some P5 renders. There are a couple of renders in there that have some post work, but that's something I'm still learning, so for the most part they are straight FireFly renders.

Queri, if you get ECII do you think you could pass me some feed back? I'm really interested in it and I've added it to my shopping cart a couple of times:) but I'd like to hear a little more about it. Thanks:)

I haven't used Poser 5 too much yet because I've been busy with other stuff, but I really like the Cloth Room. My OS is Windows ME and I have 512 MB RAM but I haven't had a lot of problems.

I love it. A bit slower than P4, and many lights crash, I can't do the P5 hair at all... but the rest of it, like nested folders and reflections, more than compensate for what I need it to do. Working with an Athlon 1700, 256 megs, WinXP Pro.

If it worked like advertised it would be great. It doesn't.

I like the way you wrote this question, unfortuently would take you or I a little longer than this to expect a free handmedown, fo P5, in magazine or something... P5 is definatley an improvement, with substantial gains toward many "Modelers." Its collision detection is a very powerful feature...(Not many peopl mentioned that because it is something new to learn...) The Setup room is another "Modeler" like advancement, I'm not sure it it is much more than P4, but now Grouping(A key feature in making your own poser characters,) has it's own "Room" dedicated. The face room is also a big help, you can randomly make as many faces as you need now. And then there are all the Pro Pack features that have been transfered like Multiple windows, and Python Scripts that are both a must for serious attention givers! I'm not %100 proof posotive the new Firfly Render Engine is a success, but it ai'nt bad, and I hav'nt heard hardly any negative feedback...Though I think many people, like myself, were really expecting a dramatic improvement in any engine change...maybe like that to the quality of Bryce/Vue or better. Allthough that may not be all together true as Some improvement may have been necessary just to keep up with the new Collision Feature. = )

I have had no problems with it at all. I love the new features, especially the Material Room and the Cloth Room, and especially the multiple runtimes. Cheers!

If they used an external company to put the face gen plugin, then why they did't ask to Worley labs for the sasquatch plugin for a better hair... (Ascii trows that question and runs fo cover) ...

Although I no longer use it, i have not deleted it. Having followed all the suggestions of CL and other users. I can say that with all the current patches the application runs and renders well. However, I also found that if I had or used figures and or props that called for bum files or files that were not included in zips P5 would freeze and or load but run very badly till the pz3 was saved the application closed and the system rebooted, then the pz3 opened. I found my 1 gig memory 1,4 gig processor while running multiple figures running far slower and choppier than it's P4 cousin. It really had gotten so bad that unless i knew exactly what i wanted to do an image of, that opening poser was a waste of time. So I moved back to P4 with pro pack and now I can do images and make props and basically have fumn again. Should CL adress these preformance problems and isssue a reliable fix I'm afraid to say that P5 will rarely be used and then only for the render engines. and cloth options.

I love it! The Materials room is fantastic - fur effects are so easy at last! The hair room takes some practice but is great. The ray-tracing is superb and I love doing reflections. I am so glad I got it, I know that some people have had a lot of problems but I am lucky and Poser 5 and I are inseperable!!!

The best thing would be if there was a demo for people to download and see if it works on their machines. I guess there is still no demo at CL's site? I haven't been there in a while. Another thing I like that elgyfu's comment about fur effects reminded me of is the displacement mapping. That's really cool.

It's only half-baked. Material room is nice. Hair room is too confusing and the results are too wiry. Haven't played with the face room because it only works on Don or Judy, not even with the kids as far as I know. The thing is, the program is freaking slow! 1.7Ghtz, 512 MB of RAM, and it takes several seconds to switch to and from the Pose room, up to 30 seconds. Light sets crash it. God forbid P5 can't find a texture! The nested libraries are wonderful, but P5 is slow and pokey just to bring up the libraries, let alone load something from them. The parameter dial is nice, but it is buggy as well. If there was a 3rd party program that allowed me to keep the nested libraries I have and use P4, I'd switch back in a heart beat. (I know that there are programs that allow you to switch folders in and out, but I want to keep the folder organization as is and just have it frickin' work in P4.)

I really like P5. I unisntalled P4 and won't reinstall it. I'm on Win 2000 Pro, 500 Mb RAM, 1.5 GHz pentium. With the new patches it doesn't crash more often thant P4 did. T he pose room, libray manager, set up room and procedural materials are well worth the price. The hair room is best left for animations. The face room is cool but only works with Judy, and I am a Vicky addict. The cloth room looks promising. I'll try it when I have mastered the material room. The firefly renderer is slower, but there are workarounds. The first one is to use procedural textures and not texture maps, something Poser 4 users are not used to. Firefly is not perfect, but at least it is definitely better than Poser 4 renders, especially for close-ups (if only because it can smooth polygons, even if it sometimes gives strange results). All in all, I'd buy it again (but I'd wait for all the patches to be released before I give away my bucks). Compiler

It's a better product for the same functions as P4 and runs faster with a better render BUT the text files MUST be better managed (use CorrectReference) OR go nuts not so quietly. The first render of a scene takes about as long as P4, but subsequent renders go like a bat out of hell ... and that's with the firefly renderer with shadows. I don't use the face room, or cloth room ... a bit over my tolerance level. The ability to stack and rack the library is a very big Plus, as I have a very large library of stuff. Like the P-38, the widow maker of WW2, it's initial entry into service was a bit rough ... but I think that it's spiffy.

I like it , and use it. Hope Cl keeps the updates coming, it could be better. Niles

After reading the posts here, decided to check galleries to see what people are doing in P5 bit, most people that have answered this post have very little in their gallery or nothing at all.....so, the question is....what are you using P5 for or where are you posting images you've done with P5?

Well, I may not have much in my gallery but I have been using Poser 5 since its release and I have posted graphics all along in the gallery and in the forum. If you run a search on Poser 5 in the galleries, you'll find 35 webpages of graphics at various levels of expertise and artistry.

P.S. I ran my search on all galleries so I could pick up the mixed media graphics as well. Not all Poser 5 generated graphics are in the Poser Gallery.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=raven

this is one reason i didn't buy it,, most of the users complain about it and how it screwed up there systems, and if they ( CL) ever does come out with a OSX version,, i doubt i would buy it. i'll wait for the DAZ Studio. at least they are folks who you can rely on when it comes to tech questions or any other information you may require. CL is like a COLD DEAD MAN when it comes to help,ask them anything and all you get is TBS..( tech Bull shit). but to those who love it,, way to go glad you got it working and many happy renderings:)

For me, Poser 5 is huge improvment over P4 and well worth its price. The material room alone is reason enough for me to never start P4 these days. I love the hair room (for stills, not for animations, unfortunaly that does not work jet) and just start to explore the cloth room. Stefan

short and simple for me. all the reasons have been hashed.. I would not buy it again... well.... let me expound a bit..... I do not like the hair room...difficult to use...the rendering takes forever and longer. Cloth room...tried it a few times...very confusing and complicated... Materials room...I guess this is ok, although i think its much more difficult to apply textures to portons of the figure...quite a few mat files do not work....well, they were made for p4, why should they ? Face room...big disappointment to me, although I've seen some work done in it that is very good...the resolution of the resulting texture is 512x512....there are not enough points IMO to sculpt the head exactly... Rendering...don't bother using that smooth polygon setting... The new characters...I like Mike and Vic... The one thing I like a lot...I can now read the parameter dials...and the library structure is very good compared to P4.... but other than that... Did I say I wouldn't buy it again ??? OH...lest I forget...displacement mapping is very cool

forgot...I haven't used P4 since I installed P5...back when it was first released...p4 is still installed...I've tried it a couple of times, but I don't like using it anymore... I'm trying to like p5, I want to like it, but I still don't...and now I'm hoping DAZ Studio can replace it.

I have P5 on my underpowered Win98 laptop and haven't had problems. Of course, the most ambitious thing I've done is some fun experimentation with changing settings on the built-in hair styles. I still do my multi-figure animations in P4ProPack on my Mac - but I get SO irritated with the lack of nested dial groups and library folders and really miss P5's professional materials handling. So I'll be at the head of the line for the Mac version of P5. Of course, I'll probably also buy Daz Studio.

My bet is that when Daz Studio comes out, there will be people who love, it swear by it, wouldn't live without it; and then there will be people who can't get it to work, are disappointed that it doesn't do everything they wanted it to, and are sorry they bought; and then there will be people who don't buy it but take sides anyway. It's just human nature. Poser 5 works for some of us. Not all of us. And, frankly, it would surprise me very much if Daz Studio wasn't the same. The difference will be made in the company commitment to both the product and the people who purchase it. So far as I can tell, Daz has a very good track record in both areas. At this point, I wouldn't be buying the newest and greatest software...I would be buying customer service and responsiveness. My two cents, which I can't give away these days.

poser 5 rocks ,yea I had some problems with the initial release , but after the 2.1 patch it is well worth it , I think alot of problems come from the steep learning curve of some of the advancements it took me awile to get used to the nodes such ,and I'm still not there yet but I'm willing to learn , and be patient I built my own system with a 1.3 gig duron ,256 megs ddr ,win xp, and one thing I did notice win xp has a ton of programs running in the background and after I turned some of them off my system as a whole ran much faster including poser 5. I'm not sold on DAZ Studio its not here, not tested so I'm sure there will be bugs in it ,as there are in all programs but I cannot consider DAZ Studio the savior of poserdom when all I've seen are cool screen shots. DAZ did a smart thing by making it's core free , thereby making sure it can run on as many systems as possible without and fix any problems before modules are released ,it also gives them less accountabilty when something goes wrong ,because it is free and public beta material.

I really do appreciate all the useful comments... AND ALL WERE CONSTRUCTIVE !!! I guess I shoulda mentioned my computer specs. AMD 1800+ with 1GB ram, so I guess horse power isn't too much an issue. From what I read, the hair and cloth/material room are ummm.. "over the top for the casual user" .. yes ? which is the group I'm in. I don't have a lot of time or the attention span to sit and fiddle with them to get the results than can be garnered from them. They do sound like very detailed options and one can get great results... again with time and effort. (I guess the same can be said of any program..huh ?) I did view some of the galleries and was stunned by what I saw, some very good results.. far more lifelike than earlier versions of Poser. I guess I'll hold off for now and see what happens with both CL and Daz. Give CL a year on P5 and see how things look then, and also see what Daz's product looks like. As my mom would always say "if you had cake you'd want pie, if you had pie you'd want cake and if you had both, you wouldn't want either" LOL I do appreciate the time y'all took to respond to my inquiry. Mostly I use Poser as a supplement to things I make with Rhino and/or Bryce, it isn't my "primary" program so I'm not in a rush to move to either P5 or Daz. again thank you for your help, regards, bob

CL has to get in touch with their customers again. I think it will be harder for them to do this, with all the layoffs and downsizing... DAZ has GREAT customer service at the present time...can they continue this??? Over the years, I've seen the following scenario over and over....a NEW software developer has great rapore with its customers...the folks doing the beta work, planning, etc...the initial purchasers...all stays pretty good for a couple of versions....then when the product becomes mature, they seem to start pulling back...they get distant....as they grow, their customer commitment shrinks... One of the things that drives this is the fact the software may become popular, the income flow is pretty constant..then other producers decide the company would make a good takeover product...and wham...crapola time. dialyn is correct in her assessment of human nature, I think :) there have already been threads complaining about DAZ Studio features and it isn't even in beta yet...plus the tons of kudos on how great it is or will be...again..it isn't even in beta yet :)

I love it. Before buying I tried to get some feedback in this forum about system requirements. My system at the time was well above the recommended. But I've since had to increase the processor, ram and HD (the HD was a long time coming but the other two were not anticipated). I'm finding P5 a bit slow with V3, but otherwise, P5 is great. The potential for the program is still way beyond me though. I've used the face room a lot with Judy and experimented happily with the hair room. The material room concepts I understand but have not played much with the procedurals. Only tried the cloth room once and need to learn a lot there. Setup room is same as P4/pp setup room from what I see. Don't know jack about python though. Its definitely a program that I will be growing into over time and I'm spending way more time in Poser than in Bryce these days.

I was really thrilled by Poser 5, and so eager to learn it. However, Poser 5 has been a huge disappointment. The manual is no better than previous manuals. I've yet to find any good tutorials that explain all the new-fangled Poser 5 rooms, so that I can understand them. I don't use them. I have an older computer which is most likely too wimpy to do anything effective. So I'm back to using Poser 4 most of the time. The only positive postscript I can add is that I didn't experience many bugs.

A lot of new features, some of them good, like materials, structured directories, and strand-based hair (I bought some geat hair from RDNA). Some which don't work, like collisions. Many that are worthless, like dynamic cloth (simulation too slow), content room (I already have a web browser), face room (P5 only), P5 "Lost-in-Space" characters. And a new problem -- performance. CL should have solved the clothing poke-through problem and implemented hardware rendering first. I thought P5 was OK, but now I feel cheated since I heard about DAZ Studio. I think CL rushed P5 because of their new competition.

I've never owned Poser 4, so I have very little to compare with. However, if I had waited about a month longer I would have purchased the Poser 4/Vue Bundle as I have Vue and really wanted to use the two together. I have a 1.7ghz processor, run Windows XP Pro and have 512 mb of ram. I don't use the hair room.....way tooooo slowwwww....way tooo much work! I suppose if I was creating hair for a living, it would make sense, but..... When I compare it to Bryce 4 and Vue for ease of use.....well....Poser is NOT "drop dead easy to use" :)Renders are slower than they should be (the P4 renderer is actually faster). There's the problem with third party lights, and it's behavior is unpredictable. For example, you never know if it's really going to save your file or just "fake it". I've lost entire creations when the damned .pzz didn't save correctly. I now save a .pz3 and a .pzz....really annoying, as well as a waste of space. And I've upgraded with all the latest patches! The material room is probably the best feature of the entire program. One really good thing about it, is that it has given me a whole new appreciation for the proficiency of Vue and Bryce 4! :) If I were as lucky as you and had P4, I would not spend a dime on P5. Frankly, I can't think of any reason to justify making the switch. The vast majority of product releases are being made for the DAZ products which are designed for Poser 4/Pro-Pack or for original creations. Poser 5 "proprietary" content is not that great and if you look around, there isn't much being created for "P5 content". The only really good content is what you'll find on the CD and created by DNA and other third parties. Poser 5 seems to be a program whose features are not quite good enough or reliable enough to be attractive to professionals, almost too difficult for new users and certainly not anything you would want to try on any computer that does not have substantial power. The idea that you can run this on a 700mhz computer with 256mb of ram is almost laughable, unless you are prepared to turn off everything else while using it, get rid of any eye candy on your desk top and tweak your memory resources and whatever else you'd need to tweak to get it to handle the resource needs of the program! I can't imagine using P5 on a Windows 98 or ME machine! I'm waiting for DAZ studio. If it proves to be fairly reliable, the day they come out with a plug in for Vue....P5 is off my computer.

What if it's only used for the cloth, gravity and collision detection? Also... can more than one file be rendered at a time? does it need more than 384mb of DDR ram? and could DAZ with their DAZ 3D be responsible for this whole mess? (Ps - having read this far, please answer only questions 1 to 3, not the last one)

Hi. I moaned and whined and complained about P5 quite a bit, and frankly, the program as initially released deserved it. Since the service releases, it's still not perfect, but it's NOT the piece of junk that some people (some with vested interests) would have us believe. I think that part of the problem may have been that the first release WAS so trashy that people who just didn't know how to use the new controls got weird results and yelled 'BUG!' I know I did this once or twice. I find I'm now starting to spend less and less time in P4PP and more and more in P5. And liking it. Two other things I'd like to say... In a lot of the CL bashing, we've been treating CL as if it was a single person - but I presume that it has divisions - I mean, do you think the programmers themselves would have been happy to release P5 in its initial form? I seriously doubt it - most programmers I know take a genuine pride in their work. I presume that there are administrators and money guys who said 'We want the program out, YESTERDAY!' Or perhaps not. I don't know. But I'd like to thank the programmers who made the program (even if 'CL' has dispensed with with the services of some of them). I've been looking at all sorts of other 3D software recently, and IMO, P5 - even with the faults that remain - still represents by far the best value for money in software of this type. And while I'm still happy to blow a rasberry at the CL admin, I REALLY hope the company doesn't go under. I for one would hate to see a situation where DAZ had a monopoly on the market. Competition is good for us, the customers. (I'm gonna get eaten alive for posting this stuff, aren't I? But I wanted to get it off my chest.) Morph

Forgive me for "hi-jacking" this thread, but it is a very closely related question I'm introducing, so it seems better placed in this thread than one of its own. If we look beneath the specific apps and tech stuff, I think all Poser users have two essential wishes : ease-of-use and realism. P5 increased the realism at the cost of ease-of-use, as a LOT of existing Poser stuff became less useful. A somewhat un-wise move, IMHO, much as I admire the Poser people. DAZ studio seems to be meant to rectify that situation, for obvious reasons. However, DAZ appears to have decided that this no-backwards-compatibility is nevertheless OK, as V3 seems to be less-than-compatible with much of the existing Poser stuff. Again, increased realism, at the cost of ease-of-use. It's none of my business to speculate on what I think CL and DAZ ought to have done, but I'd like to hear the opinion of all you Poser USERS out there. Both DAZ and CL have a fine track record of listening, so it's always worth one's while to express an opinion. So my general question is this : specific apps aside, what are your preferences? Would you like future Poser apps (DAZ, CL or any other) to be backwards-compatible first and foremost, even if it means that any new functionality must be built on top of the existing, sometimes problematic basic structure (such as only being able to pose dresses/cloaks/capes properly via extra handles and "ghost" bodyparts, and having to use much the same principle for trans-based, non-dynamic hair, etc.) ? Or would you prefer future Poser apps to incorporate totally new functionality, such as in P5, even if it means getting a whole new "fleet" of Poser figures and stuff to be able to use the new functionality ? As you've probably guessed, I'd prefer backward compatibility, even at the price of delayed new functionality. I think that existing Poser functionality could have been extended A LOT, as seen in the ground-breaking stuff made "within the envelope" by people like Anton, Hmann and others. New functionality would have to come at some point, but I'd have welcomed a focus on backwards-compatibility, and I'd like to push DAZ and CL towards that attitude as much as possible.

I have Poser4 and Poser 5 I do use both. I find I will create in Poser4 and then will do finishing touches in Poser5. I have narrowed down my problems to the amount of lights used. I got the Environment Creator for Poser5 and so far I am very happy with it. I still have the light issue if I want to use DOF; but the control over the lighting is wonderful plus you can delete all the lights with a click of a button. Over all I am happy with my purchase(the upgrade price made all the difference to me)and I have had alot less problems than I had with WinXP. I run win 2kpro, 768 ram AMD 1733+ chip and an ASUS 7v333 motherboard and a geforce 4 mx440 videocard. Marge

Thip: I don't think your new question will get the answers you are looking for here. This is already a very long thread. Human attention spans have their limits! :) It's a good question.....I would hope you'd repost and start a new thread! :)

Sandoppe - you're right. I've reposted in a new thread : http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1093650 Thanx for the advice.

I pre-ordered in Europe, installed it, and used for an hour untill my first crash. Subsequent patching, (beta by beta) made it more stable but no faster. Even when I upgraded my memory and GFX card. I never read the manual, (I never do) people are always better than a manual, they answer back :) I use Global lighting all the time, and while firely is more subtle in places it's not as good in others, it all comes down to the individual shot. I tend to use P4 exclusively these days, it's just faster, in almost all areas. Real hair and cloth are nice things to have, but not when they take ages to learn and implement. If I really cared I could probably fake them just as well in postwork, not that I ever do any :) later jb