Before you purist and rules lawyers start spouting, let me say, I am well aware of the "requirements" of the software companies to supply upgrades, patches and corrections to their screw ups,... i.e. there isn't any. I am also well aware of what CL said they'd fix in SR3. All that said,... is anybody still buying their garbage?? SR3 simply didn't fix anything that I could see that needed fixing. Is it so hard for them to get the clue?? The software has basic, core issues. Patching the periphery nonsense such as the cloth room and the web browser ain't feedin' the bull dog!!! Fix the frikkin' file open routines!!! Correct the memory leaks!!! Fix your texture handling routines!!! None of this was improved or fixed in SR3 (despite corporate claims to the contrary, if any). In fact, I 've noticed I've picked up an irritating render error in the Firefly render engine. Seems at apparently random times, the render engine looses entire sections of objects. Didn't happen before. So whazzat??? SR3 has done nothing to fix these core problems with Poser 5, and has apparently introduced more. If this is a carefully diguised attempt at getting people to buy other software, they're succeeding,... in droves. Is anybody else fed up with these people but me?? When do we storm the castle gates with pitchforks and torches?? I think its time Dr Frakenstein burn at the stake for his hideous creation. (Meanwhile I go back to working on my latest Poser project since there simply isn't anything else out there for the masses to use,...) sigh

Think happy thoughts about Daz Studio, which will be perfect and have no problems and will make everyone happy. Really. The Wizard told me so.

Plenty of peeps were fed up by SR2....if you're just now fed up, I think you have the patience of Job...:>)

Patience,... nah,.. desparation, foolishness, stupidity,... no money,... never patience. If DAZ studio behaves like a real 3D render engine, and allows for animation/posing of DAZ figures,... and handles memory with anything approaching competence,... and is completely backward compatible with all my old pz3's, pzz's, and cr2's... and takes out the trash and feeds the dog,... and gets me a date with Danni Ashe,... well, I didn't think so either.

When do we storm the castle gates with pitchforks and torches?? Uh... That happened right after the release of the product. You're a little late on that one I'm affraid. Now there are only about 6 CL soldiers to hunt down and kill. Have fun...

According to the original timeline for DAZ Studio, the public beta was to start when Mimic 2.0 was released. The new timeline does not state anything about Mimic 2.0 And, animiations will not be supported in Studio until the release of the second beta.

The product page also states that DAZ has a goal of 1 million downloads for Studio in 2003. If it is still a goal, then they might want to start the beta soon.

Looking at history... Poser 4, Pro Pack... Poser 5 is working just as it should, at this point.

I just think that, as good as Daz Studio no doubt will be (and I have no doubt it will be an excellent product) that it will manage not to meet the needs of everyone. No product does. Is Poser 5 perfect? Of course not. Does it work well for some peopel and not for others? Indeed, yes. The main problem with Poser 5 is not the software, in my mind, but the lack of support given by the new owners of Curious Labs to the software and to their customers. This is the one area where I think Daz will shine...their customer service is first rate. I may not be enthusiastic about all their products, but I have a great deal of confidence in their personnel and their attempts to make customers happy. Well, except on weekends when they take deserved time off and I am left tapping my foot until Monday. But that's a minor thing, in my mind. I just hope they don't release Daz Studio on a Friday afternoon. :(

well Talon it's your opinion that SR3 didn't fix anything. I for one am very happy with the extra Python commands that were added. Anyway it's not like your life depends on it working perfectly, you're not going to die because it crashes in the middle of a render are you? Considering the computer using community has been fobbed off with buggy software since the day it all started I would class Curious Labs a small offender compared to Microsoft or Apple. I have no doubts in my mind that Daz Studio will have bugs hidden away somewhere in it's code ready to jump out & bite the unwary user but in the end they'll be squashed just like the poser bugs are being exterminated.

Ok, I'm ready to go hunt down the six soldiers that are left...been playing all those Tom Clancy games in preparation. No Mercy!!!! lol Marque

Hehe, you can hire me too, I have plenty of Unreal Tournament experience. ...Headshot!

ooooohhhh UT! Love it and Q3 too. My husband always tells me to play them when I'm stressed, he says go kill, get it out of your system....heh Marque

Hire? Oh no... You don't get paid. It's a beta! LOL

Blah Blah Blah - Tired Tired Tired!!! If the software realy stinks as bad as some people report - then everyone should be having just as many problems. It appears to me (having been in the computer field for a bit - before PC i.e. the good old CPM days.) the search for a cause starts from within. A few suggestion 1) Dump those freeware app/games you love. 2) Protect from Viri. 3) DON'T "tweak" your system. 4) Don't EVER let the neighborhood kid tweak your system. Try this start fresh on your system. Wipe it all out. Install Windows, Install Poser. RUN POSER TO DEATH!! TEST IT HARD Are you still having issues. No? gee I'm shocked. Now One buy one put you favorite little programs on - RUN POSER AGAIN. Having problems? Add the next app. RUN, add, RUN add. Wheres it break??? Ohh that wonderful little shooting game I got from downjunk.com - Hummm?? I Run Poser 5 (rendering in firefly), Surf the WEB (IE) in one window, Download (IE) from another window, Use Photoshop working on texture maps BIG some are up to 240MG, Run OUTLOOK (Not Express) plugged the Exchange Server at my office. AND POSER CRASHES NOT!!! Then again maybe I'm just LUCKY, ya think?? There now that I've vented I feel better. Blah-Blah-BLAH!

Hmm... well I agree with the Viri and Neighborhood kid points. Concerning the freeware stuff - not sure it's particularly good advice to tell people to dump it all. I use quite a bit of open-source and freeware stuff along with paid-for applications and It all works harmonously here. Morph Manager, P3DO, Cr2Editor and MAT Pose Edit are good programs. I am picky and read through things before I download too. Nothing wrong with tweaking stuff either as long as you a) get a general idea of what you're doing and what benefit it will be and b) backup your registry and precious files. Apart from all that blather, I don't even have P5... I just volunteered to do headshots. ;)

I've been okay with the upgrades, least they are trying. I am disapointed in the extras that were promised and we don't get word of. animal models, plugins etc that was promised. If I have to pay for a upgraded poser 5 propack to get a lightwave plugin for poser 5, I'm gunna get pissed. One of the advertisings said that Poser 5 included the features of Poser 4 pro pack. Now it seems that those plugins are extra cost now. I'm not holding my breath from anything from CuriousLabs, if something comes great, if not, I won't be suprised. Daz Studio is where I'll send my money.

Now Availalbe (not as yet shipping): TheWizBangApp. SOLVES EVER AND ALL computer issues no matter what it is, improves your love life and will make you RICH (... richer than that Bill even), the media will flock to your home, just to talk with you when ever YOU have a brief moment to spare, Jay, Opra and Dave will want you as a guest on every show cause your BRILLIANT. You in-laws with sudden LOVE you. Order yours copy NOW..... Send a blank signed check or a CC# and we'll process it take the dollars and send TheWizBanAPP as soon as available. Now everyone tell everyone else that this one program will be perfect with out flaw and never ever have and problem WHATSOEVER... and if enough people believe it is just gotta be true. Blah-Blah-Blah

ceba, Just because you are not having problems does not mean that other people have not encountered bugs in Poser that you have not. I was having a problem with project, so I installed Poser 5 on my pc at work and tested it there. And guess what? I still had the same problem. Imagine that? I just might have uncovered a problem in Poser. And other people with a good amount of experience with computers have reported problems to CL.

Could be Windoze...... I've neer had a problem with it on my Mac, 'course it would help if I could GET IT for my Mac!!!

Try this start fresh on your system. Wipe it all out. Install Windows, Install Poser. RUN POSER TO DEATH!! TEST IT HARD Are you still having issues. No? gee I'm shocked.<< Ceba, You are so VERY wrong. I have P5 installed on a completely vanilla machine. THe only thing on it is P5, Win2k, and the drivers for the CD ROM and Monitor. No virus software(unconnected to the net) No active desktop, no extra cards, the machine is as PLAIN as you get. Guess what? I still get crashes, lockups, frozen screens, problems with the hair room, etc. So you little assertions are absolutely incorrect.

Ok taken. Now What OS are people running are all the available fixes applied. How much RAM, whats the processor, whos processor, are the drivers certified, Whats vram settings. whats whats whats. Who video card (just to note I had a Nvida G4 then replaced with and ATI 9700, THEN I had rendering issues freaze up, incomplete renders - they just stopped all around rotten. Well anywho at my plant we run a pretty intensive CAM/CAD app and in the process of upgrading to the latest and greatest. In preperation for this we were purchasing new systems. Ran the spec's by the software vendor and the only thing they didn't like was the ATI, seems that user with this card experiencec problems while rendering - HUM! So I pulled the ATI put in the Nvida G4TI and no problems- Now belive me I @#$# Poser for this, @#$@ at CL and cursed the SUN, I knew it wasn't my cool 3.0Ghz system with the 2G RAM, and hot beverage service and bun toaster. OH NO!!! oopps! Rule #1 look inside. Yes I did overstate in my post. The point to be made is Noting is PERFECT - BUT all can be fixed. SO spend less time @$@#$ and more time resolving. Given for some Poser works Great others it STINKS. But instead of complaining and blaming. Put energy in to resolving issues, its better for us all. But then again, as the say in the military the only HAPPY soldier is a B***H'N solder. Or at least - lets start a Bash the Poser VX forum and leave this forum for questions that are seeking answers. ceba Blah-Blah-Blah.

Ceba, If you aren't interested in the subject of people being upset with the current SR of a very broken piece of software, the resolution is SIMPLE. Don't read the thread, don't participate. Your problem is solved. Those of us that HAVE a problem are VERY much interested in others who are having similiar problems for the very SIMPLE reason of trying to FIX the damn thing on our own. We have th right to express our dissatisfaction without you chiming in and implying that we are idiots because the software doesn't work on our machines. I've VERY offended at your thinly veiled accusations that the problems are somehow MY fault. How about you exhibit a bit of maturity and stay out of posting flames at those of us who are still very upset the software doesn't work for us, Hmm?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1275955

Ceba, (others may also be interested too!) In your first message, you mention (in amongst other things) that you render in Poser with Firefly. Are you rendering still images, or animations? If you check the thread I've linked, you'll see that I and at least a few other folks are having no luck whatsoever with rendering animations with Firefly (the Poser 4 renderer in P5 works fine, as do all other rendering modes including still images with Firefly). I've tested on my "normal" system (i.e. lots of stuff on it) and on a completely vanilla, nothing-but-opsys with current patches system. Same result on both. And as yet, I've been unable to find A SINGLE PERSON who reports success with animation rendering using Firefly. If I could find a few people for whom it works, I'd be happy to try to work out what the problem is (config, bad installs, whatever) and share that with the community and CL. Could easily be a problem on my end (and the other authors in the other thread), but I can't root it out if I can't find someone who has it working to compare notes with.

I often have Poser5 running with Photoshop7 and/or 3ds max. Along with aim and icq. PcCilin is always running. I agree with Ceba all the way and his assertions/ suggestions in those 5 lines of type are the best ones I have read in the totality of the pages on this topic. There is no way to properly asertain poser5's influence on your (specific) system without first understanding what your (specific) system is capable of and by way of running the application, what else it is processing. Clearing it all and installing fresh (with all your updated drivers) and adding apps 1by1 and trying it out by far makes the most sense. It's too bad all Poser5 users weren't capable of doing this, I bet we would see a whole lota people running this program on a computer that can't. If poser crashes right off the bat, after freshly reinstalling your system then it is obvious the problem resides in your hardware. And yes it can be something as simple as a bad partition on your hd. Or your video card or even your processor or ram... bad cable... (pick one) not enough power (cpu dependant) The ATI issues are typically with 'powered by ATI' cards. (of course they are good cards but i dont use them anymore) The issue is not necissarily with the ATI chipset but with the actual card and in most cases the inability of your mainboard bios to function with a crappy card which usually translates into system instability. That to would make it a hardware conflict. Flash your bios, I dares ya! Alos, Hisminky. To take you literally, if all you loaded on your 'vanilla' machine was what you stated, no wonder poser crashed. Come back and post when you've installed all your cpu, gpu, via, bios, etc...etc... drivers, updates and patches... Poser5 is expecting your system to be up to date. More so if your running sr3, so get out there p5's and get your updates. just my opinion.

And as yet, I've been unable to find A SINGLE PERSON who reports success with animation rendering using Firefly. * sighs and raises hand * I've rendered Firefly animations over 1100 frames in length, at 640x480 resolution, with raytraced shadows and refractive effects, and don't ask me why it works because I have no idea. I often use the P4 renderer if the animation doesn't take advantage of P5's advanced features, but I haven't had any serious problems with Firefly itself.

Me too. I posted this in the other thread as well. I render out just fine. Even with an avi or a pic as the bg. I havent rendered over 211 frames yet but I suspect I won't have a problem doing that. My guess is it isnt poser. You should be trying to get in touch with the people for whom it does not work rather than the people for whom it works. You might find some kind of common spookyjuice with them. Hey, the FBI do it.

P5 crashes if it can't find the textures. This has been documented on a multitude of systems. I have a recovery rate of about 50% - meaning 50% of the time I can get P5 to ask me where the texture is. I've waited over 10 minutes some times to get P5 to recover so I didn't lose my work, so it's not a matter of impatience and End Tasking too early. The P5 hair frizz has been confirmed over and over again - I can't remember anyone posting that they haven't seen the problem on occasion. The lights issue has been confirmed over and over again. Thank goodness agiel created a python script to reset all the lights so the light conflicts don't occur. (Actually, thank you in general to the python scripters like ockham who've made the program far more usable!) We have compared system specs, exact steps taken to cause problems, etc. and we haven't found a cause-effect relationship yet. (If CL has, they certainly haven't shared it with us.) As you've read, plain vanilla computers have puked while people with hard drive brimming with software have had few problems. (There is a long list of known, seemingly universal issues, but some people have more additional problems than others.) There's a good number of programmers and computer techs who are members here, so please do not assume that those of us with lots of P5 problems are computer newbies with virii laden 386's. Thanks, Cres Secretary of the EVM (Extremely Vocal Minority)

To take you literally, if all you loaded on your 'vanilla' machine was what you stated, no wonder poser crashed. Come back and post when you've installed all your cpu, gpu, via, bios, etc...etc... drivers, updates and patches... Poser5 is expecting your system to be up to date. More so if your running sr3, so get out there p5's and get your updates<< My system IS up to date. Please don't make assumptions about my hardware.

Thanks, Little_Dragon (we've e-mailed) and 3ncryptabl3_lick (for responding here and in the other thread). I guess that last post of mine did sound a little paranoid ... or at least ill-thought ("Hey, everyone who's not here, raise your hands!") At least now that I know it works for some folks, I can concentrate on what's wrong with my system and the other folks who are having problems and stop hunting for conspiracies. I'll keep it over on the other thread for sanity's sake. ;-)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1275955

AVI render problem solved! Thanks for the push, guys (esp. Little_Dragon), something finally connected in this little brain of mine. I reset the color depth on my video card from 16bit to 32bit, now the AVI renders just fine. No clue why this would matter (shouldn't the render be a straight computation process, no video involved?) ... but it clearly does and now that the problem's fixed I can go screw up something else. :-)

Just guessing here, but some video codecs don't work well at a colour-depth of 16 bits (DivX, for instance). Then again, some were designed to work only at 16 bits or lower (Microsoft Video 1, for instance), or with a YUV colourspace instead of Poser's RGB. And still others have resolution limitations (width and height must be evenly divisible by 2, etc.).

The bottom line is that all sorts of things can cause problems when you're rendering to .avi, and should Poser crash midway through the operation, the entire .avi is corrupted, whether it was creating the output correctly or not. For these and other reasons, I moved on to image-sequence output, and create my .avi files from the images through third-party utilities. It gives me far more control over each stage of the process.

And I'm glad that what little information I provided was useful.

Cresent, The hair frizz issue? The only thing that comes close to something like that for me is when a strand is coliding with a body part after styling. If you calculate, that hair will vibrate and get all frizy and be locked in place while the others (which were not coliding at calculation) rest and flow just fine.(based on setting) I have goten some very nice results although I have not extensively testing this feature. I have had poser crash on me while looking for object or texture files but I blame myself/the self extracting .exe for not correctly installing it to the right path. Do people often make calls to textures that are somehow nested on another drive 5 folder down in a dump directory then delete/rename/move it later only to forget to change the path in the poser file and hit ctrl-r? b r e a t h - Well I'm not waiting for p5 to fix that bug. And I'm certainly not holding poser responsible for crashing out. Though a less finiky program wouldn't have batted an eye to it. Now I do get pretty pissy when I get the white screen. Anyone ever get the white screen? Or how about the header for the document tools not being near the tools anymore. Or the changes in textures not showing (although properly applied and renderable) until you leave said object then reclick it...? Thats just annoying. Sure sometimes the cancel button freezes or my window wont update but I deal with it. For 200bucks, I bite the bullet (a small one at that) and take what poser can give me. Which in my opinion, was and still is more than my moneys worth. And with this new 3dsplugin, I'm golden baby, GOLDEN! I really wish there was a list of bugs we could work from. I mean, if some of us can get all fired up about this, could we not direct our energy toward gathering information and compiling a bug list from !users... ? We could spend our time and brainpower working through them one by one here instead. dreaming I'm just one of those s**t or get off the toilet kinda guys.

Let's face it, some problems with Poser 5 are bugs, some are hardware related, some are software-incompatibility related. I just reinstalled my entire WinXP Pro system today because LightWave 3D 7.5c Modeler was freezing my computer, which it hadn't done before. System specs: Intel 845G chipset, 533FSB, P4 2.54GHz, 1G DDR PC2100 RAM, GeForce4 TI 4600, 30 GB OS drive, 2 80GB drives, and so on - always the latest firmware, BIOS, drivers, patches, updates, etc. It's a nice beefy system. So it was not a hardware problem. LW was working nicely previously, so it was not a bug. It was definitely incompatibility or corruption with drivers, software, dlls, who knows. Hard to flush out a problem with lots of installs of various types and no dump (since the entire OS was freezing). Reinstallation seems to have eradicated the problem. Wish it didn't require such drastic measures, but there was no possible way to trace the problem - anyway, Windows gets cruddy very quickly with lots of apps installed. ************ Now, for the guy who says install only the OS and then Poser, well, you must have a rather simplistic computer setup. I have Poser PP4, Poser 5, LW 3D 7.5, Cinema 4D 8, UV Mapper Pro, Adobe Photoshop 7, Premiere 6.5, DVD Workshop 1.3, RecordNow DX (for writing data DVD archives), XP Office Pro, WinZip, StuffIt, Norton AV 2002, Real One, QuickTime 6 Pro, CyberLink PowerDVD, and many other minor software and drivers for all hardware and peripherals. And I use these all on a regular basis (3D CG, DVD video creation, animation/video editing, among other activities). No games, no Kazaas, no cutsie applications. Everything installed on my system has a direct purpose for being there. It'd be great if we could each afford three or four identical systems to isolate our main body of applications, but that would be ridiculous. You're electric bill would be catastrophic, the wires would take over your home office, you'd need a nice expensive KVM switch (or ten monitors, extra mice and keyboards), a network administrator, and more than one copy of any software that is needed on more than one machine (if you want to stay legal). ********** Poser has bugs, has inadequacies, nuances, and structural problems just like many other apps. Why the endemic problems weren't sorted out from 4 to 5 is beyond me (despite knowing their desire to shove a product out the door asap). As has been pointed out and hinted at, complex interactions of hardware, drivers, dlls, and software are impossible to predetermine. The best thing to do is make sure to have good, functional, non-flaky hardware with lastest firmware installed, avoid software that is known to interact poorly with your main applications, and don't install, uninstall, reinstall, install other stuff, uninstall, reinstall, etc. This is a sure way to cause havoc on your system. The registry will be a massive mess of non-existent dependencies. Also, get rid of all of that automatically run system tray crap. Real One, QuickTime, monitors, and cutsie quick run stuff like that just eats up valuable memory, bandwidth, and yields more potential for crashes than almost anything else. BYS

AAWWESSOOOMEEEEEE!!! Now we're make'n headway. Kick'n PROBLEMS ars .. YEA!... Now don't we all feel better. Ah - You can have the soapbox back. BTW - Way to to Spaghead. Post some of your AVI or link'm so we can all share.. Remember - Focus Luke Focus. ceba :)

I tried SR3 again the other day. Still set to 1600 x screen resolution, which I don't use. So I went back to 2.1 again. You'd think they would get at least that right. Well, onward ho, we can still make some stuff and have some fun. After all, its a home app, not a pro app.

EricofSD whats set to 1660 x screen resolution? Working to resolve.

Just for the record, I did try the nothing but OS and Poser 5 - twice. System is very clean, patches, drivers, etc. Run Video Editing hardware/software which is VERY intolerant of OS and/or harware setup errors. OS is W2K with EVERY possible performance robbing billware "effect" turned off. Net result for my efforts - nothing, neit, nil, nada. Exactly the same problmes with every software app there and with only P5 there. Dials slow/non-linear/changing after released. Memory leaks - what a surprise non-existance of other programs in system do not impact memory leaks :-O Focus jumping everywhere and/or getting lost. Lockout of OS for long, long periods of time. Limited capacity for models due to memory resource problems. Etc, etc, etc. I have tens of years of software application testing up to and including operating systems, BTW. But as I've reported before here (and in the callously deleted P5.2 "Beta" Forum) I HAVE reproduced every problem exhibited in Poser 5 in Poser 4.03!!! Yes, every single d*^# bug in features that are common between P4 and P5! It's tedious, exacting but not very dificult. Push Poser 4 to the limit of it's memory resources, and you can get it to (mis-)behave JUST like Poser 5 does... So I put it to you that the problems exhibited by Poser 5 are thus a) latent (i.e. present in prior releases), b) triggered by poor/bad/non-existant memory management, and c) known and ignored by CL when producing Poser 5. The latter seem to strong a statement? Then why else did they come out with the blantant lie that Poser 5 was a re-code? It's not as if the lie would not become exposed pretty quickly. But without it being said, would enough people have bought it to satisfy whatever irrational goal was being set internally for sales numbers? The only fix for P5 would be a rewrite of the underlying memory manager, user interface handler, OS interaction API's for a current, modern, NT-based one. Chances of that happening, slim to none unless CL have been forced to do similar for Mac OSX compliance. But with 6 staff, at least 1 of which is the head honcho, 1 is Sales/Marketing, that sure doesn't leave many for coding and testing even if they have no accounting, administration or legal staff... And finally, it has to be said: CL's attitude towards Quality seems to be well, poor. Even Poser 4.03 (note this was at least the 4th release of 4.x) should never have been left as it was for even a few months let alone 4 years. And history (written by senior staff at CL in many cases!) seems to show that every release has been much the same, buggy, fixes which added bugs as well as fixing some, and finally leaving it as "good enough" even with very visible apparently trivial to fix bugs. The ONLY rationale I can assign to this is that either it's deemed "good enough", or CL never ever understood that bug-free code can be developed, and most certainly can (and should) be strived for. Let's not forget that Poser 5 was shipped in the full knowledge that there were problems. (Source of that was the then CEO himself.) Long time member of EVM, and user of Poser 4.03 :-( P.S. EricofSD, to overcome the 1600x1200 screen setup snaafu CL added to SR3 (again) reset to factory default (both options on that page). Exit Poser and then reload, reset UI the way you had it, and changing settings back from launch to factory defaults. Exit and reload again, and you should be OK. Worked for me, anyhoo.

CL never ever understood that bug-free code can be developed, and most certainly can (and should) be strived for? What are you? Retarded? (thats a question not a statement) Have you picked apart the P5 code? Then how do you know it isn't a recode? They said it was, just becuase there are similarities between p4 and p5 issues the same code it doth not make. waves arms But of course they must BE lying! You cannot compare p4 tp p5, if you do then you are already beyond rational thought. To do so would only undermine what p5 is doing (not trying, IS doing) and all the hard work that cl has done (then, now and in the future) So I put it to you that the problems exhibited by Poser 5 are thus a) latent (i.e. present in prior releases), b) triggered by poor/bad/non-existant memory management, and c) known and ignored by CL when producing Poser 5 DUH!? Why not type go retype some tutorials, they need to be rehashed too. I can't have Layingbacks post be the last word.

Have you picked apart the P5 code? Then how do you know it isn't a recode? While I appreciate that you're a relative newbie, I'm afraid it's pretty obvious to most of us, who have a lot more experience of Poser and 3D, that P5 is most definitely not a recode. And I honestly don't think your going to find many (or any insiders from CL) who are going to back you on this presumption. To be frank (and from a technically far more advanced and experienced standpoint than your own), any credible recode of the Poser core would have given us a substantially better program than we got with P5. Don't throw insults around, especially from a position of technical ignorance, it just makes you seem foolish. To clear up the "hardware incompatibilty" issue; there just isn't one. Poser is a pretty basic 3D application. Apart from the now defunct Interlok issue and ensuring that the virtual memory is set up properly on a reasonable (ie. NT based) 32 bit OS, Poser really doesn't need to use (and neither seems to) any but the basic (and standard) OS services. The display graphics are vanilla GDI and the codecs are MDI, and only really come into play post rendering. "Hardware incompatibility" is often just used a convenient excuse for poor programming standards. All of the functionality is strictly deterministic, if a scene won't render on one machine then it won't render on anyone else's either. But what's also apparent from the start is that people use Poser at very different levels. In many of the screen shots of folk who are still suffering crashes the application memory use is above 1.5GB, whereas many others (including some I know personally) rarely create scenes that require more than a couple hundred MB. And yes, I have sat at the desk of someone who swore blind that they had a "bug free" installation (pre-SR in fact) and demonstrated that their "version" is every bit as problematic and buggy as CL's most ardent critics. The difference is in what people are trying to achieve. What has pushed a lot of people over the edge is that P5's higher memory footprint (with no improvement in the memory management) means that people at the high end are getting even less mileage from the program than previously. Bill

I am just suprised at how many people are concerned with how good DAZ studio is going to be rather than looking at what WAS and still is a very good mid priced 3d application (Poser in case you were wondering) What is going to happen then? Is everyone going to dump Poser for daz studio? Maybe the only time you may see poser again will be in a museum! Why rebuild something that was not broken? Add more to it, better rendering engine etc.. Problems now start due to inherited old/bad code practices. Build it from scratch, anyone here willing to wait 2 - 5 years for the new version? Give them a chance to put things right (although I can say I have not experienced the sorts of problems people have been posting in these forums) I think they would have been better concentrating on the modeling and posing side of things and have a 3rd party develop plugin renderers. These are my personal views and I DO NOT expect to be shot down in flames over what I believe.

williamshell, that's just untrue about rendering on machines. I have read plenty of posts on Poser and other 3D apps where someone could not render, sent the exact file to others, and they said things like, "rendered fine on my machine", etc. Of course, when talking hardware, we're talking about stability, firmware, and drivers. Although firmware is software, it's not software installed on your hard drive and executed by the OS - but into an EPROM (or similar). This is, AFAIAC, hardware. And, although single program execution is primarily deterministic, the entire set of software (drivers, dlls, threads, processes) running on a computer is somewhat chaotic. You're talking about the interaction of hundreds or thousands of them, each going through the same pipe, in somewhat arbitrary or indeterministic time intervals (determined by priorities, user interaction, external and internal triggers). Since the essence of chaotic theory is that slight variances lead to majorly different results, this accurately explains the problems with most computers today. The best that can be done is to code with the strictest standards, using as much stable code (OS dlls, for instance) as possible. Still, I agree with you totally concerning whether or not Poser was "recoded". It certainly was not. It was revamped and had code modules added - sometimes poorly. BYS

I have P5 and Windows XP- I have no problems, I repeat no problems, rendering animations. I find P5 much better than P4 and SR3 fixed the AVI texture problems which was my only real complaint. Sorry TalonGE, I suspect there's something wrong with your system, not Poser 5- and I think you should follow ceba's advice. Wipe your system, reload Windows and then Poser 5 and see if it works. If it doesn't, flame away! I suspect Poser 5 runs for the majority of people who bought it, whom you don't hear from because they are happy with it. By the way, have you told CL about the problems you are having. I did that with the AVI texture problem, they asked me to send them an example, which I did, and there was a fix for it in the next release.

Give it up, it's not worth the headache (or the flammage :) accept that if it works, it works, and if it doesn't it isn't likely to in the near future either. Personally I think it may have been recompiled, but I doubt P5 was re-written, unless they re-typed the source from hard copy :) But it's a moot point for me, P5 still isn't half the app that P4 is, and while I'm willing to admit "it may be me" I've been using a computer for 20+ years, I'm a sysadmin by profession, and geek by right of passage :) I spend almost every waking hour in-front of one keyboard or another, and my PC, while no longer cutting edge, far exceeds the stated spec in every regard. Had I not pre-ordered it, (a first for software) I'd have uninstalled it long ago, (and depending how much bigger my P4 runtime gets I may yet... :) But I digress, "move along, move along, nothing to see here..." :) later jb

Poser 5 is Poser 4 with some new stuff piled on top. The core engine is the same 1999 program we've been using for years and even that was/is buggy. But instead of fixing the underlying structure like they promised, CL focused on adding frills. So P5 users are driving a Model T with air conditioning, CD player, and power windows. IMO, P4 works better and faster on the same engine because it doesn't have the added weight of the new "features." Want proof P5 is P4? Simple...it has the same bugs we've been bit*hing about--and CL's been promising to fix--since 1999. What coder in his/her right mind would rewrite a program but make sure the exact same problems were included? Even things that should have been easy to fix weren't fixed. Until they fix the old, crumbling foundation, Poser will never be what it could be (or what was promised). Even if it works.

Yes, and as OS, memory, video card, and cpu structures advance, Poser is looking older and older. Soon it'll be a stagecoach will AM radio and a fan. ;) From what I've read from the initial press-release of Poser 5 up until now, it appears that the one determining factor is that CL promised to once and for all correct problems endemic to the application from its inception. The fact that they mentioned "from the ground up" rewrite of the code shows that this was their claim. Instead, as you said, they made a couple of minor modifications and piled on bells and whistles while leaving the bugs intact. This is what has caused the most unsympathetic voices to be heard. With the long wait and promises, the results were demeaning to both CL and its users. One issue that I take personally is what they call an "undo" feature. There are programs out there for free, written by teenagers with better undo/redo support. I've written better undo/redo feature support in my own programs - one programmer. Seems to me that the programmers at CL don't actually program but just tweak the founding code a little here and there. Compare the feature/stability of Poser from 1999 and 2003 against any other continuing 3D application from 1999 to 2003 and you will see what I mean. BYS

Why is it that people tell me I have a POS program, when it runs perfectly fine for me? Why is it that people complain about the core of the program, when I have no problems at all, not even memory leaks? Why is it that I have no problems with it in the first place? I simply don't know the answers. But I still enjoy my P5.

What SR3 DID fix for me was pretty much all of the remaining issues with the dynamic hair that I had (I don't animate dynamic hair so I can't speak to those issues). What SR3 did NOT fix was the problem with the program's priorization of tasks. It puts rendering and draping at the top of the food chaing and dumps user inputs and OS inputs to the bottom, making it SEEM as if the program locks up, especially on slower machines. This also makes it impossible to tell if it HAS locked up or not because there is no way to know if it's just ignoring messages from the OS and mouse or is locked in a tight loop where it will never see them. Generally, it DOES respond to the high priority EXIT NOW message from the OS, so it's probably still running. But there's no way to see progress because the display of progress is not updated until the high priority draping/rendering task lets a few cycles loose. When I braced them on this, CL claimed that Poser is "not written for multitasking." They're right about that!!! The trouble is, our OPERATING systems ARE and if you ignore that in a program it looks really clunky, as P5 does. Like many others here, I'm waiting for two things. An SR4 that deals with the real issues and streamlines the code as much as possible and DAZ Studio which will provide a basis for comparison of functions.

Speaking of multitasking ... I've found that the rest of the system (NOT Poser's interface!) works much better if I use the Windows Task Manager to lower Poser's priority just one notch while it's rendering. That enables me to surf the web, check e-mail, etc. with relatively good performance while the render is taking place - and on the flip side, because web browsing and reading e-mail aren't compute-intensive (some CPU while you're clicking the interface, then back to idle), the render time on Poser isn't adversely affected either. Of course, this only works if you're not running some other CPU-burner ... obviously running video editing or another renderer with the priorities skewed like this is going to stop Poser in its tracks. So will an overly-agressive screen saver ... A "reduce priority while rendering" option might be a nice feature for Poser.

After reading all this, it seems that P5 is very picky who it shares the computer with! Thank the stars I fought off the urge to buy it the first week. After that, I read all the complaints...and am still reading them. Saved myself some dough.

Don't get me wrong. There are things about P5 that I love and I generally run P5 rather than P4. But some aspects are frustrating. Probably, for me, the MOST frustrating is the slowness of hair draping and collision detection in general and the way it locks everything else out until it's good and ready to give up a few CPU cycles. But even that aspect of the program is actually working well, if it would just do it in the background instead of hogging everything. Hey, maybe if I got a 6ghz P6 machine with 4Gb of RAM...do you think???

Ming you should buy it and try it before you judge. You might be plesantly suprised. I would suggest though, you make sure your computer can handle it. I knew mine could and it does. They used the same code as p4? I don't know if they did or not, do you know if they did or not for a fact? Did they use the p4 cloth room? or the p4 hair room? or the p4 material room? Sure they reused the gui. But you can't add all those 'frills' without rewriting the core. Any who feels the need to push their supposed years of psudeo-techno-geekdome in order to justify to the readers that what 'they say' is word above practicle experience needs some rethinking. I have practicle P5 experience and that makes me an authority over you and anyone who gave up on it. Thats a fact. Another fact is, regardless of what 'you' think is wrong with it, I use it to it's fullest and I know P5 'IS' better than P4 and i don't have to be a p4 user to say that. P4 doesnt have hair, cloth or the mat-lab p5 does. If the issues people using p4 are also experienced in p5 then it doesnt mean it is the same comde at all. p4 code was writen too long ago to be of any practicle use in p5. With newer cpu's, gpu's, os's and periferals p5 can and should only exsist with a newer machine that is properly updated and functioning at it's capacity. (is this a flaw? who cares!? I have a newer machine and it works fine) My p4 2.4 w/512 of ram does an amazing job of pushing p5, ps7 and 3ds at the same time. All you ram junkies can get off your pedestals now. If you have a comparable machine running win2k and it doesnt work for you then you got a problem that doesn't sit on poser5's shoulder.