I always wait until the bugs get shaken out before buying. I remember seeing SR3 patch a short time ago. I've also seen some great new features like reflective surfaces, the cloth room, etc posted in the threads. Just wanted some opinions. Is poser 5 stable enough that I should upgrade now?

That really depends on your system, and unfortunately, we haven't found a commonality to say "yes" or "no" for any given computer. Some people have had little to no problems with p5 and others have lots of issues. Personally, I'm considering getting a third party library management program and going back to P4. (I have a ton of folder files.) Others will tell you that P5 rocks. And, no, they're not lying. It's the luck of the draw. Prepare for a lot of responses, good and bad, about P5.

I've had no problems yet with SR3, but I haven't yet had time to go through All the features - just still renders so far. Personaly I have found P5 more stable under Windoze than P4 overall, howerver it does require more muscle to run ;p

In my honest opinion, save your money and wait for Daz3d Studio.

It aint ready. Igohigh, where have you been? A bunch of us have problems with SR3 and I even posted how to go about reverting back to SR2.1. Seems the interface for SR3 is set to 1600x something instead of the old default we are used to. Its a boo boo that was made before and Kupa fixed it right away. Its been quite some time since SR3 came out and now in the post kupa days, there doesn't seem to be any interest in fixing it.

I like P5. It's not perfect, but the cloth and face rooms alone make it worth it.

so will daz 3d studio have all ther features of poser 5?

studio 1 is just yer average (well, for DAZ, probably exceptional for anyone else..;) try-before-you-buy-no-saving package. Looks like a lot of fun, and it's free. Sometime after that, a version which does save, and maybe even export (? Now yer talkin'..;) will come out before the end of the year, and it's supposed to be free too. For a nominal fee..(ain't it always?..;) they're supposed to have a version with more bells and whistles. They hope to have a million copies out there by years' end (of which 100,000 will probably be downloaded by me, I keep getting dupes..;) There's a news item on their site, which is what I read a few weeks back..already fading into middle-aged memory..hack hack..;)

EricofSD; actually I have been back on s-l-l-o-w-w-w dial-up, not getting through the forums the way I used to. Can't even get more than 2 or 3 pages to load at PoserPros before the routing simply locks up (same issue with 3D-Arena, some conflict with the way earthlink routes their POPs - or should I say POOPs)

Attached Link: http://www.poserinstructionalvideos.com

I am one that thinks P5 Rocks. I am a little partial as my company has been working on instructional videos for P5. I can tell you that P5 is still a little slow and lacks open GL but other than that you can not even come close to the same value in any other 3D package. The material room is based on Renderman, the same type of material node set up that Pixar uses. Endless possibilities.
The cloth and hair dynamics would cost you thousands of dollars in another package.
The new properties and parameters pallet is worth the upgrade itself, giving you so much more control over your dials.

P5 has so much to offer that unfortunately gets buried by all the bad press from Curious Labs mistakes of release a buggy program. I would say that 95 percent (or more) of those bugs are fixed and if you are wondering if it is worth the upgrade, I say hell yeah.

Christian

I'm one of the lucky ones who haven't had many problems with P5, but I agree that it still appears to be something of a crapshoot. It'll either work reasonably well on a given system, or prove to be a source of endless frustration.

I'm not so sure it's luck, I suspect those with problems are running Win 98 or ME. I find it runs great on Windows XP and I prefer P5 to P4. I should add, however, that I have not used many of the new features. I love the new materials room and the ability to use AVI files as textures. DAZ studio is currently only vapourware- vapourware always sounds good. I predict it won't run well on Windows 98/ME either plus it will need a decent Graphics card which Poser doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to it's release but I think it's wrong to assume it will be better than Poser 5 as soon as it's released. From what I've read, it will only do a fraction of what Poser 5 can do but will expand in modules. It will take time for it to equal Poser 5 in functionality.

I'm running Win98. First Edition, no less. Although I do have a copy of XP sitting on my shelf now, waiting for me to work up the courage to install it. I'm not looking forward to reinstalling all of my apps and drivers.

So it's luck then :0)

I have never used any other version of Poser. I started with Poser5 when it came out and stuck with it through it's service releases AND bugs. Yes it still is slightly testy if you don't compare it to the way it was. It is a definate improvement if you do. (p4 2.6 @512 w/64ddr video) It would be great if Poser5 had support for video cards. I'm sure this would lighten the load on some processors and ease the crashability/lockability on those finicky machines. But as it stands right now, It does what Poser4 does (not pro-pack as I understand pro-pack has plugin support or something, I don't know... and maybe im wrong, like I said I have never used it, I'm going off what I have seen in screenshots and what I have read in the posts here) BUT P5 has the added bonus of a nice Cloth room and Hair room which are both very powerful. The face room is fun if you are using Don and Judy. The Material room is unbeleivably easy and powerful. I saw a screenshot of the P4 material dialog-box. Scary. That alone keeps me pushing P5.

Oh yes, forgot the P5 hair, I love the hair.

Just be sure you have the latest SR's and patches installed. The latest one is Sr3.12.343r54.32 Oh, wait, it's 10:30am. The latest one is SR3.22.33.44 Oh, wait, it's 11:30am. The latest one is SR3.33.44.55 Oh, it's been a while since CL was releasing service packs every few hours, but still... The issues that is still unresolved is why P5 works fine for some people, but not for others. If you want to take the gamble and try it on your computer, you may be happy. Or, it may crash every time you use it and you'll be in the "Why am I such a sucker for buying this?" camp. Personally, unless you REALLY, REALLY need the advanced features of P5, you should stick with P4/ Pro Pack. In fact, if you're a Lightwave or Vue user, stick with Pro Pack- there is NO similar import/export feature in P5 yet... CL said that this will be sold separately, later,,, possibly as "P5 Pro Pack".

I agree that it's probably not the best choice for those who do most of their rendering in another application, like Max, Lightwave, Cinema, or Vue. But for those of us doing everything in Poser, the new material features, render options, and animation tools beat P4 claws-down.

Let's see you make a grass skirt do this in Poser 4 ....

Video clip (hi-res, MPEG format, 871KB)

It's a lottery, it works for some, not for others, I'm one of the "not's" YMMV

"""DAZ studio is currently only vapourware"""" While this is true. If you have Mimic 2, you get a bit of a preview of what Daz Studio's open GL Preview, and it is Speedy! In the past I've defended P5 quite a bit, but lately I have to say I'm slightly less inclined to do so. I had to reinstall Poser 4, because Truepose doesn't accept PZ3s saved in P5. So when using both side by side the speed difference becomes quite obvious. I had gotten used to the sluggishness of P5 so I didn't really think it was all that bad. Oh well. I use both now. I still Like P5. I think the interface and Mat room are huge advancements over P4. Cloth is a pretty cool thing to. As is hair, but IMO It is still a broken feature. With Daz Studio not to far off, I'd wait.

While I agree it "works" for some and not others, it can't really be a lottery. Yes you could write a program to do that, but it would be hard - and childish - to write a normal application so that it turned out that way. Computer software execution is decidedly repeatable, bad software coding not withstanding. So it HAS to be down to a root cause; question is what is it? NT vs Win9x - probably not. It has memory problems (whoa, does it have memory problems) and NT-based OSs are better at managing the impact of the symptoms, but not curing the effect. Memory, real or Virtual - no. More real memory helps, and up to around 512MB the help is very tangible. Virtual memory helps up to a point too, but again not enough to explain work-vs-not-work. User expectations - absolutely, but not to the point of explaining everything. I use parameter dials not mouse movements exclusively and the time delay effect here makes it unusable to me. Research into human factors of computers shows there is a big variation in what's acceptable in terms of response - and expectation is a big component of that. But there are still fundamental limits to this, and so when I cant get the dial to respond correctly at all in repeated tries, then something is wrong. So user expectations still can't explain work-vs-not-work entirely, IMHO. CPU/Memory/Disk speed - no. A red herring. Only real way to compare P5 to P4 is on the same system. But faster versions of the above will obviously cover up glaring performance issues. But not everyone can have upgraded systems when they went to Poser 5, so again not a root cause. CPU make/Chipset/Motherboard probably not. As verified on video cards, Poser 5 and 4 code is stuck in a time wrap based back in Poser 3 development days in terms of exploiting the hardware (theory is that its probably due to a cross-platform technology adopted back then). So the execution subtleties of the (small) differences in hardware systems these days are again not enough explain Poser 5 work-vs-not-work. Underlying PC System Stability no. Many of the EVM (Extremely Vocal Minority for those who didnt follow Poser 5-2 Forum) never had Poser 5 crash myself included. If it crashes, yes there is a problem that needs a fix. But here were really talking about how it works (not if it works) when it does work. So something else, has to be something about how people install, use, etc. Only other thing I've seen explored recently here was Runtime size, but a few reports of "it works for me and I have 20+GB" seem to debunk that. And I tested the other extreme a long time ago. Need some more data points. How about this? Those installing V3 in Poser 5 using their existing Poser 4 Runtimes appear to have got nowhere. I have no experience of this, but enough Poser gurus around here have said that you need to put V3 in the real Poser 5 Runtime, that there must be some sort of Poser 5 problem with accessing secondary Runtimes. And we know that changing from one Runtime to the next is very slow. And the (admittedly always poor in terms of error handling) Poser texture search feature initially went horribly wrong when using a secondary (Poser 4 Runtime) and still can't handle a cross-Runtime mix properly. So an hypothesis in need of bunk/debunk based on user feedback: That those who feel they have Poser 5 "working" are using the Poser 5 Runtime, and those who feel it will never work are using a secondary Runtime (i.e. their existing Poser 4 Runtime). The underlying theory being that the access code for cross-Runtime is not well designed, implemented, or more likely integrated, with existing Poser 4 code. And that accessing across the Runtimes is an "on every access" kind of thing, with commensurate impacts across the board. On one hand this seems too simple a theory to stand up to scrutiny, because surely if true CL would have soused it early, and put out some guidance. But OTOH I have noticed that a significant number of Poser-5-is-great posters extolling the virtues of the new library structure, so maybe... And I dont recollect anyone saying that they have moved their converted-to-Poser-5 Runtime back to a Poser 4 one But honestly it's too much effort for me to test this hypothesis myself, and to be honest I have so little faith left in CL's Poser 5 that I can't make the effort to free up enough disk space. So I'm interested in hearing other experiences... If true, this is still inextricably linked with user psychology of course. :-) Those who jumped in as believers probably merged their Runtimes to gain all the benefits possible. Those longer on cynicism - (guilty as charged!)- Probably erred in favor of being able to go back to Poser 4 easily and so linked their P4 Runtime in and, if this hypothesis is correct, were hoisted by their own petard. It still doesn't explain everything - or let CL of the hook. But it's an interesting line of inquiry: to determine the root cause for work/not work. And if it isn't this, then it MUST be something else. Any other theories? Or is it really just user expectations as I originally thought?

I don't think the cross runtime theory holds up. When I reinstalled Poser 4 I Copied the (Non P5 specific) runtime files over to P4. Uninstalled P5, and did a fresh reinstall, and Patched it to SR3. I have had Zero problems using the P4 Runtime nearly exclusively in P5, and though I didn't do much with her in P5, I did Open V3 in P5 (installed in P4 Runtime.) with no apperant problems.

P5 works ok i guess. You just need to know how to handle it a bit..it has its own personality somehow. When you select/click, don't do it in fast sucessions one after another. Click and wait a slight bit before doing something else. Also if you are gonna do something intensive such as render, create a new figure, add a new figure/prop etc, make sure after executing the command, don't switch to another app to do something else. Seems p5 is picky wity cpu timeslices. If you do it, you might be greeted with a P5 White screen which might refresh soon...or not. If you do keep on switching apps etc or especially run another cpu intensive app, you might just see P5 respond with "Poser 5 is not Responding" error and only a CTRL-ALT-DEL to terminate it might work. Well that's been my experience with it. Might not be everyone's but i'm pretty sure some others experience the same thing. Bottom line, be gentle with P5.

I'm a user who started fresh with P5, having not used Poser since version 3 in the Metacreations days. I'm also a pretty avid PC gamer, and I tend to do fresh O/S installs about every 8 months or so (i.e. wipe the system clean and reinstall). I check all Drivers for updates at least monthly, which is really pretty safe now that WinXP has those nifty system restore points. I do not leave my machine running when not in use, so long-term memory management foibles in WinXP are not an issue. I manage my Startup items pretty carefully and keep the crap in the system tray to a bare minimum. All that said, I have never had Poser 5 crash on me. It comes across as a very stable piece of software. I have definite complaints about some of the "ergonomics", especially about the size and finicky "feel" of parameter dials, but I also suspect that I don't know all the tricks yet. I also rarely have anything particularly taxing running alongside Poser, I'm not much of a multi-tasker. I'm currently running an Atlon XP 2800+ (Barton) on an Asus A7N8XD with 1MB PC2700, O/S is WinXp Home. Just based on years of experience with software releases, patches, etc. in the gaming world, I'm betting that people's problems with P5 are going to be as individual and varied as they are. Usually, the biggest problem is that the software developer low-balls their "minimum system requirements" in order to keep the broadest possible potential customer base. Given the functionality of Poser 5 and comparing it to the prices of other 3D programs out there, I can't help but believe this is some pretty good bang-for-the-buck. - Drew

layingback -- to add some more to your fine collection of data, I don't have many problems with P5, and I am using the P4-linked runtime folder for everything, including V3. I think that's another red herring.

Hmmm. So in summary it seems: Poser 5 is slow (relative to P4 on same system). How slow - and certainly how big an impact that has on user satisfaction - seems to be user specific. A hunch here: those who use still use P5 and P4 together see Poser 5 slower than others simply due to the ongoing comparison, rather than letting the "speed" of Poser 4 fade from their wetware memory banks. So "all" CL can do to address this is to rework the memory management and/or user interface code. Unlikely as a patch. Only slight hope is that they have to do this for the OSX version, and then port it back to Windoze. Lotsa ifs.