Hi all, Is poser 5 really worth all the headaches I read about? I keep kicking around the idea of going from poser 4 to 5 but hear so many folks having trouble with it. I just don't know anymore*** holds head in confusion**** I mean this firefly rendering engine sounds so cool...don't know about the face, hair and cloth room. I don't think I'd be using those. I just want to render stuff....LOL! What do you all think? I promise I won't ask again...scouts honor! *** holds up right hand displaying scouts sign*** Ehem....do they still have Boy scouts these days?

Attached Link: http://www.philc.net/tutorial5.htm

• Go to the link....
• Look at the images.......
• Download the tutorial......
• View the animation....
• Clean drool off keyboard.....

And then and only then walk away and say .... Naghhh I don't want Poser 5 :)

I tried running P4 the other day and realised how much I like P5. I personally find more bugs in Poser 4 than Poser 5 where the two overlap in functionality. If you are running Windows ME or 95, then I wouldn't recommend it. You need at least the minmum spec machine and Windows 2000 or Windows XP. You may want to wait for DAZ's new rival software, but when (if?) that arrives it won't match Poser 5 for functionality for quite a while. In my opinion, the real plusses of P5 is the material editor and the firefly renderer. I can't use displacement maps enough, they so beat bump maps!. I have tried using the face room but I couldn't get anything decent out of it, but it may be I need to spend more time on it and I haven't touched the cloth room yet. The hair looks great but it's not exportable to other 3D apps.

Hi Sealtm2, i would say get P5, im running P5, and its a dream, it just the best, Im running it on a AMD 1.1, 500+ ram, with Win Xp, i can not really say a bad thing about Poser 5, and im allso useing all the SR. Man the Material room is so cool, u can do so many things in there, well wish you all the best with what ever you try, cya and take care...

If you "just want to render stuff" stick with 4 or get the Pro Pack. If it loads and doesn't lock up afterwards, P5 is good for: Making hair (not easy and very slow to render) Dynamic clothing (also very slow) Playing around in the material room Making funny faces Stay away from P5 if you make scenes containing more than three or four mil figures. It slows to a crawl after that. I can get 10 to 15 in a scene with P4/ProPack. Also stay away if you work long hours in Poser. P5 will eventually clog up and require you to exit and restart. It might even require a reboot. I've worked all day in P4 without that trouble. I have not seen a whole lot of improvement in renders with Firefly, but it is a lot slower. Of course, all of this is just my opinion/experience. You may have a much more pleasant one...or much worse. I have a dual pentium 4 xeon 1.7 machine with a gig o ram and a 100 meg hard drive.

If you are quite certain that all you want is the renderer, I would suggest going with Cararra 2.0 instead. The renderer of Carrara 2.0 is faster, more stable, and offers global illumination. Dale LaRoy Splitstone

Don't run P5 on a machine lower than 1 gig memory or processor speed. I haven't used mine since I pre-ordered it because I had an 800 MHz, 512MB Pentium III that just wouldn't run it without crashing. The program wouldn't even load some times. With a Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz, 1 gig memory it runs just fine so far, but I still prefer Poser 4 and Pro Pack since I've been using it since it came out. Poser 5 has a lot of new features and has to be relearned again, so I'm waiting until I have more time for that. If you create large files like I do (3-5 characters in one scene), stick with Poser 4. Poser 5 is scary to me too. It looks like you have to be a mathematician to understand it and I never was good at math. If Poser 4 does what you want and like, I would stick with that. Maybe one day when you want to switch to 5 (or 6), it will have all the bugs worked out.

FireFly is a huge improvement, but you need to learn how to use it (and the material room). It will not make your old Poser 4 scenes look better with a single button click, but it can do a lot of new tricks that Poser 4 can't do.

The dynamic cloth and hair features, as well as firefly, make it worthwhile. I agree with whbos about the need for a fast processor and a lot of memory. I am using a Pentium IV but have only 512 MB of memory. Poser gets real slow with some of the functions. I am thinking about getting more memory.

"Don't run P5 on a machine lower than 1 gig memory or processor speed. I haven't used mine since I pre-ordered it because I had an 800 MHz, 512MB Pentium III that just wouldn't run it without crashing. The program wouldn't even load some times." I don't think low RAM or CPU speed causes the infamous P5 crashes that many people are getting. Been running P5 on a 700Mhz AMD Athlon with 256MB RAM and it didn't even crash once. But I agree that you have to be very patient running P5 on a system like mine.

Adolesence (sp?) can be scary - Poser is growing up :) Now if DAZ would commit to a release date for DAZ Studio... but they (probably wisely) don't, so Poser 5 is the current game in town (unless you consider really REALLY 3rd party software - Lightwave etc.)

Strange mixed accounts here!? Running Win98 850HzPIII 512Meg Ram P5 seems to have less issues than P4 on my machine. P4 freezes my system for a long time when exiting (especially if I render anything). P5 does not (even after dozens of renders). My P4 will simply stop working after a couple hours of working on a scene (again, especially if I test render any) P5 has gone all day and into the night - however too many entries into the material room did lock it up, before SR3. I guess there both different on each machine, considering all the other variables of Windoze I guess.. Perssonally I like P5 better but still keep P4 on board cuz it's more familiar. But my P5 loads up much faster and gives less hangs (and so far No crashes except when trying a HEAVY render - high count hair, many lights, etc. See my gallery, even P4 has to do most of my stuff in 3 or more segments to reassemble in Photoshop)

Sealtm2,if you "just want to render stuff"...think about Vue d'Esprit. You put togeather what you want in Poser..save it..then open it in Vue.You get far more control over lights,material settings,and render options than in Poser4 or 5. It doesn't cost alot,it's not hard to learn,and it opens up more creative possibility than just getting another version of Poser. SWAMP

If you need the money to buy food for your family then forget it .... other wise listen to the experiences of other people..... Open Poser 5... Load Vicky 3... Poser 5 crashes and locks Windows... Reboot... Open Poser 5... Load Judy... Play with Face Room... Click on "wrong" pixel... Poser 5 crashes to desktop... Poser 5 won't re-open... Reboot... Open Poser 5... Load Judy... Load Don... Apply MAT pose to Don... Render... Status Bar freezes and locks Poser 5... Force-quit by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del... Poser 5 won't re-open... Reboot... Decide that making a scene isn't worth this much trouble... And then and only then walk away and say .... Naghhh I don't want Poser 5 :)

Double ouch! The machine I use is has an AMD 1800 processor,1GB of DDR 333 Ram, a gainward GeForce 3 Ti-450 128MB all on a MSI K72N Nforce motherboard. Most of what I hear is the slow performance in multi figure rendering and the reboots and locking up troubles. I just don't know if it is worth all the trouble just for the firefly rendering engine. Me thinks this reqiures a little more thought. ****** walks away pondering**** Thanks everyone for you insight and comments! ST2

Read this post again. You got 2 people who recommended another renderer ifd you only wanted a better renderer. You got 4 negative replies and 8 positive replies. Do you need a pie chart?

I must admit that, having read Sealtm2's system specifications I assumed "Windows 2000 or later" and almost commented that it seemed almost designed to cope with Poser 5 - but, well, each of us must make up their own mind. Me, I wish I hadn't bought Poser 5 when I did - I'd rather have paid $140 or less at amazon.com... but I'd still have bought it, it's head and shoulders above Poser 4. For me.

Do I need a pie chart?? Hmmmm let's see.... ah no. But thanks for the offer there cowboy. smiles Most likely I will advance to Poser 5 just as I did with Poser 2-4. I wanted to hear other opinions about the program. I had more concerns over performance and that question has been answered. I feel my machine is more than capable to handle the program. Most of my renders consist of a single mil character and props ( chairs, tables, etc). I don't think I'll be doing heavy renders with the hair room and such. I must admit I like what I see in P5 and as with anything there are pros and cons. Again, I thank all of you for taking the time to reply to my post. It has cleared up a lot! ST2

Four negative vs eight positive replies is actually pretty horrible for a program that's in its 5th version and that version is on its 3rd service release. Not to mention there are many with negative experiences who don't even bother to read these threads any more, and others who don't even come here any more.

{Not to mention there are many with negative experiences who don't even bother to read these threads any more, and others who don't even come here any more. } Not to mention the people with negative comments that stopped posting their issues and problems because they were tired of being called "bashers". But, if we only go by what has been posted here: 14 comments total: 8 positive comments or 57.1% 4 negative comments or 28.6% 2 comments to use a better renderer or 14.3% So, out of all the comments posted, in this thread only, less than 60% are positive. Kind of makes you think.

Not to mention the people with positive comments that stopped posting how well Poser 5 works for them because they keep getting harranged... yes, IMHO the arguments really did get silly enough that people have jsut switched off responding to these threads, which have a tendency towards becoming less about constructively answering people's honest questions and more about scoring points against "the other side" :( We're an odd bunch, at times... do some loverly pics tho

But JohnRender, by your own statistics, less than 30% are unhappy with Poser 5 and two-thirds of the people who bought Poser 5 are happy with it. What I think is sad is that those who have purchased Poser 5, assuming they have purchased legal copies, and can't get it to work, don't seem get their money back or get any decent support from Curious Labs. Unless, of course, anyone here knows different....

Well, I'm a new P5 owner; also have P4Pro. I installed P5 on the same machine, but on a different HDD. I just gotta say, that Firefly renderer is pretty good, compared to straight P4 rendering. I have a Millenium figure with some velvet material. I loaded a P4 version straight into Vue, then an OBJ version that came out of P5, into the same scene. The velvet, plus expected fabric wrinkles along the legs came out INCREDIBLE! when compared to the P4 figure, right alongside of it, in the scene. You couldn't tell what kind of material it was, and it just came across as a solid blob of red, in P4, with maybe a hint of the folds (or wrinkles). One strange side effect, a small portion of the chest showed through the P5 version, which was not the case in the P4 version. And this was a conforming clothing item from Renderosity. Easily fixed, but still showing the difference in "interpretation" - for want of a better word, between the 2 versions. One P.I.T.A. problem with the P5 OBJ in Vue though: It asked me where all those materials were, and I had to navigate for each one. I gotta take care of that. But maybe the upcoming Vue update will erase the need to do that. I sure wish the upcoming Vue update would work with the Materials Room settings, though. Those are nice! Overdue, in fact. Norm