Sorry if this has been asked many times, i checked the faq. I want to get into 3d with poser, just to expand my digital art. Ive tried demos from all the top programs, and it seems from all the great work ive seen here, that poser is what i will have the most fun with. But i see that you can still buy poser 4, and the pro pack, and then there is poser 5. Ive heard that there is some problems with poser 5. So im not quite sure what to go with poser 4 w/pp or poser 5. I also want to use alot of the cool models and etc from here, rdna, daz3d, etc. Im also aware of the Dz studio, but that will be a while before it comes out, so if i can get one of these now, and then later go to that. Any help and info would be great. Thanks

Search for threads here in this forum... many many to choose from. It has been discussed and cussed many times. It rally depends on what kind of art or images you want to do. If you like to postwork and Photoshop it, maybe P4 and PP. It also depends on you Pc... Processor and ram. I have P4 and P5 ... my 2cents... P5 hands down over P4.

yeh i searched the forum, but that can take hours, and for some reason renderosity loads real slow, even on dsl. As far as computer goes, i have a amd 2600+, 2 gigs ram. So i think thats enough. Mainly i just want to make images, yeh some photoshop, and maybe even later on down the road, shorts animations, if i had to give an idea of what i wanted to do. David Ho, i really like what he does, i dont want to copy, but that kind of art.

David Ho, good choice! Your machine should be fine. More and more people are using P5 and more tips,tricks, and work arounds are posted here. As for me I have tried P5 on 3 different Pc, and tried XP pro, xp home, and win 2000. I have not had that much trouble with any of them. On one machine I have yet to install sr3... still running sr2.

There's advanages to both, but I defiantely like P5 better. The material room in P5 is much more advanced with more features but that also makes it more complicated so P4 is much easier to learn with. If you allready use other 3d programs then you might not have any problems with P5 because it will be easier for you to pick up than if you didnt know anything about texuring. One thing I really like about P5 is the ability to make subfolders in the different libraries, P4 got so cluttered.

Since you have the computer to run it, I would go with P5.

I purchased P4 Pro Pack some 2 years back, and upgraded immidiately when P5 came out. My eperience is that P5 seems to be a bit slower to work with (a tad slower on responsetime) than P4 PP did. I haven't installed SR 3 yet, though, and that should supposedly optimize the speed of P5. I really dig the materialroom of P5, I have yet to learn the cloth room (though it does seem to have some potential). The faceroom only works with the P5 characters (and they are not quite up to the V3 standard, though they are useful characters even if they do need hard work). The hairroom does not produce good results as far as I'm concerned (if somebody disagrees with this, please point me to a good P5 Dynamic Hairpiece that is convincing without slaying the machine). The Firefly rendering engine is better than the crappy P4 engine. I'm not sure what the current prices are, and how much cheaper P4 PP is over P5, but if the price is no issue to you, I would recommend that you go with P5. I still have P4 PP installed, but haven't run it once since I installed P5. Regardless what other people think (and there are huge disagreements over P5), I've been quite happy with it. But then again, regardless which version you'll end up purchasing, I promise you this: You'll be very glad you made the buy, Poser will steal what sparetime you have! :) -Hanz

lythron,Your responce to Niles' question about what kind of art your interested in, shows you have a good idea of what direction you what to go.Daivd Ho and other artist that work in that style really use Poser to create human like elements for use in Photoshop(David Ho uses Poser,Bryce,and Photoshop). Working in that genre you'll probably find little use in the "specialty" features found in Poser5. So what it boils down to is....whichever one you get the best price on,should meet your needs. SWAMP

Depends on much cash you have... Most of the images in the gallery are done with A Daz3d charcter called Victoria (currently V3) she'll set you back a bit for all the bells and whistles. So if you've not got much cash buy P4 and Vicky + stuff. If money is no object, buy P5, (or P4 +Propack) and Vicky + Stuff. If you're coming at it clean P5 has more rendering bells and whitles, but it's a steep learing curve. P4 however is simplicity itself for 75% of the time. If you just want to render naked chicks I'd get P4... :P later jb

Cool thanks for all the help. I do have a good idea of what i want to do. I grew up doing photography, and there is just some scenes i know will be too difficult to pull of without doing so in 3d. I kind of see David Ho using poser and etc, like a virtual photography studio, bryce being the backdrops he creates, poser the models, and photoshop for post, like real photography. Im not really gonna go crazy with the nudes, some of them look amazing, but usually its the quality of the image i like, not a naked 3d model. Metaphorical scenes, more or less is what i want to create. Im not really worried about the learning curve, so far ive learned about 30 music programs, and write articles and tutuorials for some of the more popular ones. Free time taken away like stated is and issue, but not like i have any deadlines, and art should be fun first.

Oh sorry i forgot to add, for swamp, how did you find out David Ho uses bryce? Ive been looking into something like that as well, like the virutal scenes i described, im not sure if poser can do that. And im sure if it can it still would be easier in a program like VUE or Bryce. But then its hard to see bryce vs. VUE, ive read so much on that. Price is no issue, just the least troubles to get across what i want to. I heard bryce doesnt do shadows good. But after playing with the demo, both are intuitive, and easy to get started.

Actually the works of David Ho is what drew me to useing Poser. About a year and a half ago,I saw a sampleing of his work in one of those CG art type magazines(which blew me away),and they listed "softwear used". And yes,useing either Bryce or Vue is going to do a much better job at creating virutal scenes/enviroments than Poser.I have them both,and while you can get great results from either...it is much easier to bring Poser people/scences into Vue,than it is with Bryce. One big drawback with Vue or Bryce,is if you are like me and you work with large file sizes(for print,not web use),your render times will be in hours not min.For that reason,I tend to use manipulated photos more often for the enviroment. SWAMP