I sort of asked about that in my question. :( The fact is that they don't SEE it. They don't understand the NEED for it. Poser 4 as Poser Artist is just a way to make a buck. Whereas Poser 4.5 needs some development time but would give them more than a buck. But no. They keep their Poser 5 blinders on. Heaven forbid they should set P5 aside for an instant to work on a Poser 4.5. Instead we wait for a Poser 6 with all the extra paraphernalia that a lot of us don't even want. We need a Poser 4.5 NOW, not in two years and full of bugs and unnecessary features.

Dave-So, it's no suprise that Corel got sold since they been bleeding money for two years. It was pretty much a case of sell or die. My only comment on P6 is that if it don't support graphic cards and Open GL it will be DOA and they may as well not even bother starting to development on it.

I saw Spit's question and it made me sad how clueless the response was-- if this were Katherine, or god forbid anyone from Daz, this thread would be seriously and attentively read and acted upon. But it's not going to be. I just for a moment forgot. I can believe is six impossible things before breakfast but I have a hard time believeing in Poser 6. On the other hand, I thought they were gonna tank the Mac version and they didn't. Shoot, the library problem is already fixed-- port it backwards-- couldnt be too hard since the core of Poser remains the same. giveitup Emily

With CL's current state of affairs P6 wil show up on Feb 30 (u pick the year :-) )

sandoppe: Check the Vue forum and E-on's site. The 4.2 patch of Vue 4 -will-enable P5 import into both Vue and Mover. Right now people are waiting for it's release. That info has been out there for the last 2 months, and it's E-on doing the work, with tech support from CL. Daz Studio looks like it has the potential to be a nice tool....hopefully. But keep in mind that DAZ has also started to release Service Paks (read: bug fixes) for their mesh models; something they have been doing for -years-, and presumably are very experienced with. We also don't know the pricing schedule of the plug ins that will be -needed- to make DS actually useable. It could easily equal or exceed what those of us who pre-ordered P5 paid, and for the same functionality...or less. No one knows, and despite stated intentions, no one -will- know until an idea of the work and time involved are realised. Those are the determining factors on plug-ins, and if the time needed for an animation suite dictates a price tag of $200 =just= to recoup costs... As for CL. They aren't content creators, and no doubt when things went Tango Uniform, whoever was contracted was also let go. As for the ease of 'fixing things'. Poser is a cross platform app that started with the original Mac code base, was ported to Win3.1, then 9X in its 3 iterations, then NT in it's 3 iterations, as well as Mac through several generations and a few OS changes, one of them to Jaguar. The wonder is that the bloody thing works at all! As Poser Artist is P4, I would suggest that this will be the break point; PA will maintain the legacy support, and any new iterations of Poser will be recoded for the current state of the art OS's, namely 2kXP (possibly 98, as MS seems unable to convince people to upgrade) and OS-X. Doing so will allow them to scrap large swaths of code that were needed for legacy compatibility. P4's executable is 5.44megs (with pro pack). A total rewrite of =that= much code is not a simple endeavour, as anyone who knows code should be aware of. P5's is 10.2megs. That is 5,440,000 and 10,200,000 individual hex characters of -compiled- code. What the size of the actual source is is anyone's quess (unless LDLD knows?). That also applies to actual service packs; fixing a bug is usually easy(actually finding the little bastard is another matter entirely); fixing the things the bug fix broke can be a lot harder. And no one who has not actually seen and tried to work with a specific piece of source can say how easy adding or fixing something is. That is pretty much like saying that because you can work on your Piper Cub (or your Learjet), you're qualified to cross the tarmac and tell an E-7 how to work on a C-130. The only question is whether the E-7 calls the MP's or decks you himself. Marc -was- pretty vague. But there is a real probability that he simply didn't know about the technical issues. If they are working on SR-4, as stated, things would be in flux. Then there's the warm, loving reception that Kupa, Larry, and several others got. Make no promises, and no one can call you a liar. This is a community of artists...and unfortunately, too many artists let their passion get the better of their common sense, and their experience. P5 was hailed with refrains from The Heavenly Choir. Then it was shipped in an unstable form, and was suddenly The Antichrist to many. Now DAZ Studio is the Second Coming. But it is just a program, and one that =will= have bugs in it, will refuse to run on some people's machines, and all those other things that programs do, and I don't even want to think about the issues with video cards and OpenGL compliant drivers (or lack thereof) for same. Do we really want to go through another hurricane of this kind again?

I don't have any more information than anyone else about what "Artist" will be, but I certainly can't see it as being just Poser 4 with a different name. If that were the idea, they would be better off ditching the "Poser" part completely and calling it "Figurama" or something. If anything, I think it will be a "Poser Lite." The name "Artist" would seem to imply no animation support. Stripping out the most unused parts of the application, grouping, magnets, phi editor, 3d import/export, etc. would leave something that would seem to be more appropriate for folks who simply want to do still images with standard characters. Of course, that's all idle speculation. If it were me, I'd be thinking, Poser 4 sales have peaked out. Poser 5's reputation is irreprably damaged. Poser 6 is a long way off and will require a fundamental refactoring of the application. Studio is looming. How do we survive to ever be able to do Poser 6? The only answer seems to be trying to capture new group of users. It's really just the opposite of the ProPack strategy The problem with ProPack is that it really appeals mostly to Poser users who wanted to move up, a limited number, since most of us can't afford, justify or even want to use Max or Maya. Those using just those products generally seem to disdain Poser as a toy, so no big gains there either. If you start with the (relatively) stable Poser 4 base, trim the fat and add things like multiple views and jpg bump maps from ProPack that are useful to everyone and sell it for well under $100, that's a product that might sell.

Well that's the problem. They don't see that! Hell, I would BUY a Poser 4.5, but the Poser Artist thingie is just Poser 4 in a new box. The guy kept repeating that.

DaleB

I supported myself as a programmer for many years!! I know the problems involved. I also know that no matter what the client asks, how impossible it might seem, it CAN BE DONE and within spec and mostly within deadline.

Except for rewrites...they always go over deadline.

Poser 4/Propack code is pretty solid as to crashing bugs, just a bit rough around the edges on some interface issues. Taking that code base and working on expanding the library capabilities and making the parameter dials READABLE without adding fancy stuff, would not be impossible nor even that difficult.

They just don't see that as a viable thing to do..they are concentrating sooo hard on Poser 5 and going from there. They have a cash cow under their noses and are totally ignoring it. :(

I bought P4 when it was sold by Metacreations, so I don't owe CL anything.

Spit; I wasn't trying to bust your chops; as you said higher up in the thread, you have coded for a living. But a lot of people haven't, and haven't got much of a clue of the plethora of issues. I've had to explain that size issue with an executable too many times before...and how large the source for same can be....as I'm sure you have. And since the interface is XML, I believe, CL could very well be doing just what you suggested..once they get SR4 out the front door. Because the ceo doesn't know about it doesn't mean it isn't happening. If this had been an Q-A session with the actual development team, that would be a very different matter. But Marc is not a code monkey to our knowledge; he's a businessman. I agree that a tweaked out P4 could be a nice revenue source. I don't think that CL is going to tell us everything, anymore than I think that DAZ will.

Who ever said animators aren't artists? . Poser Artists is Poser 4 reboxed, cheaper (legally) to APPEAL to a new market of people with less cash (or more sence) than the rest of us. At $99 US (so probably 249.99 UK) it should be affordable enough for a bunch more people to buy. Since it seems they're not going to cripple it by removing functionality, that COULD be a "good thing" - if DAZ|Studio doesn't get there first, cheaper. I'm woefully underwhelmed by the obvious attitude that past promises mean nothing. I realise it's probably because they (as a company) simply cannot afford to deliver what they (as a company) have promised, but saying "We've got cash, we're AOK and not going under" in the same thread as (HEAVILY paraphrased) "We're only doing minimal damage limitation - you want even a bit more than that you'll need to pay for an upgrade". I for one am sick "up to here" with "Oh, that bug is fixed in the next version - you have to upgrade for $caching$ for that to work properly". Is it me, or do people even now seem to hope for a complete rewrite? Marc SEEMS to say, repeatedly, that P6 is basically intended to be a fixed version of P5. No (or few, if any) new features and no new content, just fixes to the code to improve speed and memory usage. Personally P5 actually works FAIRLY well for me now, with SR3 - and has never been as bad here as the worst tales people have to tell... but I've already been sold P5 once. To be sold P5 again, as P6 "but this time it really works" the upgrade price is gonna hafta be impressive. To me, not CL. My favourite scenario? Larry (perhaps) gets together with Dan Farr and they bitch-slap each other around until they have a mutual cameraderie thing going (like in the movies). Then they buy out the CL and Poser names and dump the suits, rename DAZ|Studio to Poser 6 and include the Poser 5 feature set (hair, cloth, the new materials editor! Libraries, yadda yadda). Because although the DAZ page says that the program supports .PZ3 files and all subsets, I have a horrible feeling they mean Poser 4 .PZ3 files... I'm not pinning any hopes on DAZ|Studio and certainly not on Poser 6, especially after this little Q&A session. But I rather suspect that, once it's actually ready for public consumption, DAZ|Studio is at least going to make a nice addition to my toolkit.

A "fixed" version of P5 and a complete rewrite may not be mutually exclusive. If indeed P4 bugs still lurk within P5 then to some degree it must still be based on the old P4 (or even P3) code. If they hope to compete then at some point they are going to have to bite the bullet and start clean. They might have stumbled along as long as they had no competition but with even a half decent Studio to compete against... I'm don't agree that absolutely any unreasonable set of requirements can be accomplished on time and on spec. You simply can't will working software into existence, especially when you consider other factors besides time and specifications, like Budget and Morale. The best programmers in the world can't be real productive when they're spending half their time surfing jobs.com and fearing that every email is a layoff notice. I like your scenario who3d. The Germans might be willing to sell cheap right now too. Since it sounds like a lot of the new stuff in P5 was bolted on anyway, they could just as easily bolt it on to Studio and maybe even use the right bolts. The whole P5 bugs issue is probably just a trans-Atlantic metric vs standard thing.

I for one don't want D/S tainted by anything from P5.

There seems to be a lot of talk in this thread about 'fixing bugs' in future Poser 4/5 code rewrites. All very well up to a point. But quite frankly, I could live with a few bugs if CL would only make some sensible basic changes to the interface. My question to Marc (unanswered) was along the lines of 'In poser 4, can we ever expect to see multiple undo, user-selectable fonts, precise imp/export options, proper libraries, etc? (and a few other things which I forget now). We all know poser 4 is buggy, but we've handled it for years. P5.... well, that seems to be a whole new batch of gremlins, but I could care less about them. Give me a poser 4.5 that is usable, with the basic improvements we've all been screaming for for years, and CL can have my money. If CL had paid any attention to the Poser 4.5 thread in this forum months ago, they wouldn't need to waste time doing any f**king surveys. They'd know already what we all want. mac

"...basic improvements ..." Yep, those are the usual suspects, though I don't recall hearing much clamor about the import/export options. I'm not defending CL, just trying to figure our a credible software engineering issue as opposed to sheer indifference and incompetence on their part. These issues existed even during Kupa's benevolent reign and didn't get fixed. How difficult is it to change a font? Not very in Windows or, I imagine on the Mac, if you're using OS native tools, but they're not. AFAIK, Poser 4 was developed using some hybrid, cross-platform development tools to acommodate both targets. Maybe, just maybe, what would be a simple change to a completely Windows or Mac application involves a whole lot of ripping and tearing and breaking with their system to implement the Poser 4.5 wishlist. Maybe not. Maybe they are just stupid and arrogant and lazy, but not having walked in their coding shoes, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless you can find some of their programmers and get them liquored up enough to talk, we'll probably never know for sure.

Yes, but they aren't listening, are they? Or using the program, because if they were using it every day like us, they'd WANT to see those bugs fixed. As for stripping things out of Poser 4 to make Poser Artist a lighter version - well, stripping out all the animation code would actually be WORK. Easier not to bother. Is that playing "the sucker market"? Maybe it is.

And it was the wrong answer! I asked if Cl would follow thorugh with the commitment by Kupa when he was pres of CL to provide new animals, Marc said that people wanted other improvemnets and that the promised content would not be delivered. Breach of promise is the legal phrase. Another one is fraud. I'll never buy from CL again, and if someone sues, I'd join. I'm frankly tired of their double talk, lies, and broken promises. I'll try not to comment on any way about CL anymore here - UNLESS - they come and spin again. Then they're fair game.

Yup. I noticed he answered it. About 10 days ago or something, wasn't it? Then he didn't answer any more Qs. I've been checking the thread from time to time looking for more, but he seems to have given up. And now I no longer see any link to that thread. It's gone from the header. Looks like he's had it for now. mac

I would guess that he's not the only one who's had it! :)

LMAO! Too right! mac

Dunno what pages you guys are looking at, but the front page still has a link to the CL Q&A. As for MArk and/or CL - while I'm no fan of the apparent double-talk and lack of commitment at times, I can sympathise a bit. After all - include extras (Don, Judy, Atmosphere room) and get blasted. Don't include extras (new animals etc.) and get blasted. Given that one takes time, effort, and money - while the other doesn't, I know which one I'd do in his place. But seriously - did anyone ever actually see Kupa PROMISE specifically new animals etc.? I ask because this is another one of those things I've only ever seen 2nd hand reportage (griping) on - never "the real deal". Not that I wouldn't greatly approve of some new animals - and I'd love to know exactly what it was that Kupa was gonna "give us" P5 users as a thank-you.. AND I miss the "about spring/summer-time" network rendering function :(

Yes who3d, Kupa promised here in a thread.

Well, the link IS on the front page (I haven't seen that page for years), but the thread is effectively over. He hasn't answered a Q since Aug 19th. mac

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=815371

Actually, he answered questions up to 22/8.

can any one tell me where the thread was moved to??

It wasn't a thread in the Forum,it was a special section linked from the front page and the Forum header. Can't see a link at the moment - it may be gone.

curious to know if they answered a friends question about the two buggs lights a single sided planes

Doesn't sound familiar.