okay, i'm getting ready to pony up for a full version of p5 and was wnating some feedback on whether i should also spring for the pro pack as well. is there any benefit for the xtra, or should i save & spend on more worthwhile things? also, has the pro pack been incorped into v5 or ...? thanx, kt

As far as I'm aware, Pro-pack has, in effect been incorporated into P5. (I jumped straight from P3 to P5, but so far everything that has been labelled "P4-pro-pack" has worked perfectly in P5)

I don't think there's much point in getting both. The only thing PP has that P5 doesn't is support for other programs, such as Max - and plugins for P5 that support other programs are being developed. In fact some are out already. I'd just get one or the other. P5 has a lot of cool new features, but it's also a lot slower and doesn't handle large scenes very well, so which one you want really depends on what you plan to do with it.

I'm not even sure the propack works with P5

thank you both. i kinda figured that p5 would incorporate pp, seemed logical from a software dev standpoint, but wanted to hear from someone else just to be sure. what i had planned on doing was using p5 strictly for animal/human (... i see the semantics on this one coming) modeling and importing into bryce. call me insane ... jax, do you know how well poser exports to bryce? i've heard that it's possible, in a round about way. any insight? kt

Poser exports to Bryce quite well if you know the tricks and you're prepared to spend some time on it. There are some things you really need to know to decide on your Poser version though. The new Poser 5 procedural materials don't export to Bryce (and most people would say those are 80% of the reason to have P5, so if you mostly want to render in Bryce, you just lost a lot of incentive to get P5). The new P5 dynamic hair doesn't export to Bryce either, though I can see possible ways of doing it. However, I'm not aware of anybody having built a tool to do it as yet. The new P5 dynamic cloth does export to Bryce, but only for still pictures. (Are you planning on animations or mostly stills?) Dynamic cloth is great for flowing robes, cloaks etc. If you don't plan on using that sort of clothing, you don't need it. The P5 face room allows you to alter faces of the default P5 humans. Those can go to Bryce easily. Some people think the face room is cool, some think it's a not very useful toy. Most Poser users buy Vicki and Mike from DAZ as their primary human models and the face room doesn't work for them, just for the P5 humans. Moving stuff from Poser to Bryce is a matter of exporting an obj format model from your scene and importing it to Bryce. Some Bryce users use free tools like MeTaL fixer to get Bryce to import Poser's 2D texture jpgs and keep materials intact (as I said, that doesn't work for the P5 procedural textures). Other Bryce users say they want Bryce materials rather than Poser ones, so they just import the obj without materials and do all of the materials in Bryce. Curious Labs has so far been very non-commital on whether there will be a specific Bryce plug-in for Poser 5. They haven't ruled it out, but I wouldn't hold your breath. I don't expect to see one ever. You might look at Poser Artist (the new name for Poser 4), which really has just as much to offer a Bryce user as Pro Pack does but at a lower price. Also, if you hang on until December you'll be able to get DAZ Studio for free. Nobody knows too much about the exact features of DAZ studio yet, but provided it can export obj format, it should be able to offer you just as much as Poser in terms of preparing things for Bryce. The catch is that DAZ studio ships with no included models, so you would have to buy your human and animal models separately, but all of the best ones are sold separately anyhow and many Poser users wind up buying them rather than using the models that are provided with Poser.

Its is possible, if you understand both the P5 shaders and Bryce textures, to successfully emulate a Poser5 material in Bryce. Except I think Bryce's procedural materials are better grin

okay, that helps. here's another curve ball. is it possible to export a bryce scene as an obj to use as a bacground in p5? or am i getting too technical? also (as a shortcut), what's the link for DAZ studio?

Attached Link: www.daz3d.com

Here's a link to DAZ. If you go to the products menu you can get to the most recent press release on DAZ Studio (saying it will be out in December). There are some things you can export from Bryce in obj format and some you can't. Off hand I think only terrains and sym lattices are exportable. If you can get it out of Bryce in obj format, you can get it into Poser. You would probably want to re-texture it in P5 afterwards, since the texture maps Bryce exports aren't as good as the procedurals it uses internally.

Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com

let's try that again....