OH YEAH !

Well ...

I (used to) hate P5 ...

... 'till I started playin' with it.

You are correct ... IT IS AWESOME !!!

... and so is your pic! ;=]

Thanks for taking the time to post it.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Wow, that rocks, biggert!

That looks great. I think most of the hate was due to the early release before SR3. I waited till then to buy P5, so very little problems so far. I only use P4 to build my charactures, props and scenes, so they work in all versions of poser. Then straight into P5 for bones and morphs. I love the cloth room.

Very impressive effect. The material room rocks in the hand of a creative user. It, and the cloth room, is the main reason I would never go back to Poser 4. Stefan

Poser 5 hasn`t crashed once on my computer since I installed sr3.

I don't hate P5, my computer does. Still waiting for the next service release and crossing my fingers. Doug

I'm with Doug. Can't deal with the problems switching rooms, lockups on missing textures and general sloooowness of P5, etc. Still waiting for SR4.

1. yes 2. yes 3. yes Cool, biggert! :-) Seriously: P5 is a great program. I couldn't live without the material room (ok, maybe I could). There are still some anoying bugs (displacement shadows!), but since SR3 it has become quite fast and stable. And the most features are still sleeping and waiting for a creative artist (like you) to explore. I'm looking forward to more creative works to come! :-)

Only lockup I've had was when I set things wrong in the cloth room. It's never failed to find a texture for me. And the math functions in the material room are very cool. Plus the production render quality is very good, even though it'a a bit slow.

I've gotta say that's one stonking image. I've had P5 for about a year, since b4 the first SR pack and I've never had any serious problems with it, and it's been re-installed after a hardware upgrade and everything was hunky dory, I'm glad to see others warming to it I've always thought it's had serious potential if a little flaky, glad to see the SR packs are wooing more people to give it a shot. :o)

P5 is good, but litle buggy.

ey man....maybe your guy can duke it out with my guy....see who wins eh? =) lets call your guy (above) P4 lets call my guy P5 THE FIGHT OF THE MILLENNIUM!! P4 vs P5 tickets: senior citizens get $2 off, kids free NO PETS ALLOWED IN ARENA!

PS: Nice images. well done.

I love P5. I couldn't live without the material room now.

Sorry, but that sort of thing has always been possible with Poser 4. You just need to export the model to another rendering app and apply your procedural materials there. The problems with Poser 5 lie in other directions.

yes yes what he just said. The cripes are mostly with stability.

I've been lucky enough that the ONLY lock ups I've seen with P5 in the time I've been using it are in the cloth room when I mistakenly start a simulation with the cloth touching part of the collision figure. Other than that, it seems pretty rock solid on my machine at least. Been using it for many months now.

Hm. Ive had P5 for months now, and my only experiences with it are of continuous frustration; it is the most utterly unintuitive software I have encountered yet (and yes, slow too). So if I use it it is to pose a figure, export it to ZBrush (where, btw, an image like the one above is made in a matter of minutes), and edit it there. Meanwhile I keep trying to find out how I can put a pair of pants on my figure instead of merely replacing the figure by the pants ;-) But thats probably just stupid little me...

"Hm. Ive had P5 for months now, and my only experiences with it are of continuous frustration; it is the most utterly unintuitive software I have encountered yet (and yes, slow too). So if I use it it is to pose a figure, export it to ZBrush (where, btw, an image like the one above is made in a matter of minutes), and edit it there. Meanwhile I keep trying to find out how I can put a pair of pants on my figure instead of merely replacing the figure by the pants ;-) But thats probably just stupid little me... " Yeah its stupid you. LOL. YOu need to read the manual. When loading an additional figure, say...pants for micheal, you need to click the double check mark. If you only click the single check mark, you are asking the pants to totally replace the currently selected figure(micheal). Upon the pants loading you then need to slect "conform to" from the file menu and then selct the figure you want to conform to. In the case of people charcters it will be "Figure "#" " usually.

Hey, Pjanak, well thanks, that helps (lots more than the totally impossible manual). Still, it also proves my point: in a better world, I would simply be able to drag and drop the pants where I want them, wouldnt I? Ill just keep trying. If I can get a PhD, I must be able to do this too....

Concerning stability: My personal experience is: A lot of scenes done with P5 SR2 loaded in P5 SR3 are causing trouble. P5 locks when rendering, the scenes can't be resaved without destroying them, the material room crashes etc.... I don't have this problems with scenes created with P5 SR3. So my guess is, P5 SR2 did a big mess when saving scenes? Did anyone notice the same?

Haven't noticed those scene saving probems, but P5 locking while rendering can be remedied by reducing the bucket size - in big complex scenes I fire it down to 10 or so - it takes longer to render the image but at least it doesn't lock. :o)

this thread isnt about whether software other than P4 can do these effects!! of course if you export scenes from P4 and take em to say Carrara or ZBrush then DUH of course you can make the those P5 effects!! its about whether P4 itself can do P5 effects! no more no less! read....read... PhD....PSHH!

That's just daft biggert. If you want to compare P4 effects and P5 effects then you do so on a level playing field - use the P4 renderer in P5. Utilising Firefly as a comparison against P4 is not any more fair than if I was to post the result of my render in Cinema 4D... which would be a fairer comparison considering the grandiose claims made for Firefly. Same with the materials room. In P5 you can layer materials, in P4 you cannot. Apples and Pears. It's not about whether P4 can do P5 effects, it's about you answering your desire to prove P5 superior. That's not a challenge, that's a joke. Now, if you really want to test Firefly, then I suggest you DO take it up against Bryce, Carrara, Shade and other software. Let's see what it can do against a REAL 3D renderer, not the poor little preview render engine in P4 - although it can compete after a fashion.

Questor, that's exactly his point. P4 is not P5. P5 can do a bunch of things that P4 can not do without adding extra programs. It is apples and pears, and that's exactly his point. If I was comparing Lightwave 7 to Lightwave 1.0 I wouldn't limit myself in LW7 to only the features that LW1 had. I would be trying to show that LW7 is more advanced and better, so would show what IT can do, not that it can still do what LW1 did. This is the same. He's showing that P5 has a bunch of new features that P4 just doesn't have.

The cloth room is a great feature of poser 5 and it is not in poser 4 or propack in any way.

Yes Daverj I realise his "point" is that p5 can do things p4 can't, but so far other than a post from him with cloth I haven't seen anything that proves it to me. Cloth, hair and procedural shaders don't make it for me, I have far superior capabilities with Cinema 4D and while the CL import plugin is disfunctional I can use Cinema for everything. I don't "hate" P5 but until there's something shown that proves it really IS better than P4 I'm not convinced. Why "should" I buy P5? A question that applies to a lot of people who use other software. Poser 4/Pro Pack supports export/import filters for major applications, something that costs a fair chunk of change extra with Poser 5. So what does Poser 5 offer that I can't get in Cinema, Lightwave, Max, Carrara etc.? Even the "procedural" shader shown here can be replicated after a fashion in Poser 4, if I do the same thing in Cinema (and Firefly is touted as a premium render engine) it's far superior. So, rather than combative posts and thread titles, and there's been more than a few of those from biggert, maybe some real effort to show what P5 and firefly can do would be a better direction than trying to trash other software?

If you have all of those other programs then P5 probably has nothing you need. But there are a lot of people that are using only P4. Combative? I believe this thread was started as a response to comments in another thread by people who don't use P5 who seemed to think P4PP had the same features as P5.

Attached Link: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119679

Ah well if it's in response to that then I apologise for my accusation. Poser 5 might be ProPack with toys bolted on but it is sufficiently different to make it different. Cloth, hair, materials all are hugely different to propack or poser 4 (or Poser Artist as they're now calling it). I admit I may have misjudged here but it just struck me as a bit odd, I've seen a number of posts from biggert all of which carry much the same theme. If he's just responding to "P5 is no better than P4" fine, I withdraw, except that honestly, P5 isn't much better than P4 except if it's the "only" app you can have - and assuming you're lucky to have a computer it likes. :)

Micropolygon displacement? What's the big deal here? ZBrush does it better than P5 if I needed that. All the other apps do displacement. Micro poly is great for low polygon modelling (primarily games oriented) otherwise it's of no consequence except perhaps for animators and Poser 5 is most certainly NOT an animation solution - as the micro poly tool doesn't reflect across to superior renderers it's kind of negated. As an intro tool it works great but it's certainly not a production tool. Face room? Oh yes, at 512x512 mapping and morphs that look like you just hit yourself with a sledgehammer... hrrm. Strand-based hair without extra plugins? That (looking at the galleries and examples) looks more like someone ironed out a brillo pad. Have you "seen" what can be done with Shave & A Haircut compared to Poser 5? I know what "my" choice would be A reasonable price? Got me with that one. :) Although the investment I've made in Cinema thus far has not been wasted, the tools and plugins are professional and stable and that is a big plus in my book. Not to mention the overall results which P5 can't get near. But that's "my" point. What does Poser 5 offer that I and other owners of more expensive apps don't have? Seriously. I can understand people being interested in something a bit more versatile than Poser 4 but my own recommendations would be to save up and buy a higher level more capable application. I would feel differently if Curious Labs had fixed the workspace, the lights, the cameras, the joint interpretation etc etc. but they didn't. Now allowing that ProPack, integrated with plugins to affordable if expensive applications is far superior to Poser 5 where's the incentive to upgrade to Poser 5? The hair isn't exportable (except by spending more money) Nothing is integrated (except by spending a lot more money). The face room is hysterically useless, the cloth room unstable. They did well on the materials though, that I think was in the right direction at least. Not to mention the complete lack of precision in the interface and workspace. Poser 4 and/or ProPack at least is functional and integrated. Damn, now I'm coming out bashing Poser 5 and that wasn't the intention. Ah well, c'est la vie As an introductory application I would still recommend Poser 4/Pro Pack over Poser 5 because it's easy to learn and stable (well more so). As a mid level app there are better alternatives but none that offer easy posing of pre-made human/animal models. For any other purposes people need to consider something with a bit more meat on it's bones. Poser "is" used in commercial industry, but mostly as a pre-visualisation tool, not part of a production pipeline. Of course it has advantages over high-end pro level apps. Ease of Use being the one that would be most attractive, I just don't see Poser 5 as filling the gap that Poser 4 filled so well.

Micro poly is great for low polygon modelling (primarily games oriented) I'm afraid you are misunderstanding micropolygon rendering. It's certainly not a "games" thing, as to my knowledge there isn't a single game engine on the planet that does that. In contrast, micropolygon rendering is widely used in feature film production with Pixar's PRMan. That (looking at the galleries and examples) looks more like someone ironed out a brillo pad. YMMV. Have you "seen" what can be done with Shave & A Haircut compared to Poser 5? S&H alone costs more than P5. What does Poser 5 offer that I and other owners of more expensive apps don't have? P5 is aimed at a completely different target audience than the "big" apps, that's why such comparisons don't work.

In contrast, micropolygon rendering is widely used in feature film production with Pixar's PRMan Yes I know that, but Firefly and Poser 5 doesn't tie in very well with that so the comparison isn't entirely valid. Poser 5 just doesn't fit in with a movie production pipeline - because the tools it offers are already present in that pipeline. So we're both off track here as it would be aimed primarily at a different market. Or in other words, not offering much that can't be achieved with other apps, and better in ZBrush anyway. :) Games engines, yes there is there are two but please don't ask me which ones because I can't remember. Read about them in 3DWorldMag recently if that means anything. Target audience. It was my impression following comments made by Curious Labs staff that Poser 5 was intended to break them into the pro-level market. Yet they went out of their way to shoot themselves in the head for that (lack of plugin support). So I'm not entirely certain what their target audience is intended as. For home user and amateur users it's probably ideal - if you're lucky to have a computer it likes. For mid range to pro/am it's useful, for pro-level it's "almost" useless. Don't get me wrong Stewer I'm not trying to make out that Poser is a pile of crap that should be shuffled off and hurled into the sun. I use it a lot myself because of it's "simple" nature and the ready made human models. It would take me months to bone just one of those for cinema and I don't "want" to spend that much time doing it. None of what I do earns me money so it would be time wasted from having fun. I just don't honestly see it as a solution, except for people who have no intention of ever using anything else. Nothing wrong with that purpose, there's some great images around from people who just play about with Poser, but it's not "enough" if you catch my drift.

"Utilising Firefly as a comparison against P4 is not any more fair than if I was to post the result of my render in Cinema 4D..."

So when comparing software we should make sure we don't unbalance the comparison by using the features? How does that make sense?

So if I am going to compare my current PC to my old Atari 800 I need to put in a CGA video card, rip out the hard drive and only leave in 64K or ram??

Of course it is useful to include Firefly, the Cloth room and other new features in P5 when comparing it to P4, how could it possibly be otherwise? P5 ships with Firefly, it is a built in component of the basic package. There is simply no reason to ignore it during a comparison.

"Now, if you really want to test Firefly, then I suggest you DO take it up against Bryce, Carrara, Shade and other software."

I'll happily put P5 up against the renderer on Bryce without a qualm... the Bryce renderer has always been a slightly backward version of a stock normal ray tracer.

Personally I have always felt that most of those who spent so much time and effort complaining about P5 were simply unable to see the potential - and almost a year later it is turning out to be so. Once the hue and cry died down people are starting to realize that hey there is some power here.

It's too bad Daz has decided not to support any of the new features but instead are betting the farm on the Daz Studio takeover bid... but that will just make it all the more interesting :)

"So what does Poser 5 offer that I can't get in Cinema, Lightwave, Max, Carrara etc.?"

Well, if you are a Max, Maya or Lightwave user then maybe there isn't much to be thrilled with about Firefly. Though to be fair I run a Max 6 and Maya studio here and I still use Firefly for pre-production, prototype and pre-viz renders for clients and for internal use.

But lets take your argument and pretend that if you have Max when firefly is useless to you. 3DS Max 6 (the current version) has a retail price of $3,495US. So I guess if you are a Poser user with an extra 3K to spend, then you don't need to worry about P5 as an upgrade to get your hands on Firefly. Of course the other features still make it worthwhile :)

Lightwave? Well Lightwave 7 has a stree price of around $1,395. I suppose if you want to buy Lightwave and you are a Poser user, then you don't need Firefly.

Carrara is more reasonable at $395, I suppose you could simply buy that if you had P4 and skip P5 entirely for rendering purposes... but there would still be multiple runtimes, hair and cloth to make P5 useful.

So ok... if you are a P4/Propack user, have a supported external application and a few thousand dollars to spend (Max/Lightwave) AND you don't care about hair, cloth or multiple runtimes then you have me... there isn't a single reason to move to P5.

Of course, if your the kind of user who has a package like Max that you spent multiple thousands of dollars on you probably do this for money - and as such you bill for your time. When the features of P5 save you an hour or two a week it pays for itself pretty much right away :)

So on the one hand, we aren't supposed to use Firefly to compare with poor little P4, but we ARE supposed to compare Firefly to the Mental Ray renderer in a $3K+ system like Max? Ok :)

"What's the big deal here? ZBrush does it better than P5 if I needed that. All the other apps do displacement. Micro poly is great for low polygon modelling (primarily games oriented) otherwise it's of no consequence"

Actually, Zbrush doesn't do it "better" - Zbrush simply does it. Zbrush is a cool tool for modeling and making maps, but it doesn't have some magic hold in displacement :)

As for the "no consequence" comment, no offense but this directly contradicts my experience with mid to high end production studios - as well as all the general industry sense from the places where the high end guys hang out. Displacement mapping is sending serious ripples through the high end 3D world as more and more packages use Mental Ray and similar tools that handle it well. One of the reasons Zbrush is gaining so much attention is because it is such a useful tool for making displacement maps.

Even with an almost unlimited polygon budget, it is dramatically more effective and flexible to use displacement mapping for model detail as it makes changes much faster and allows more of the artists work into the pipeline much, much earlier. Taking the burden of modeling fine detail into the mesh away from the modeler and allowing the art/texture team to work on it is a major step forward even in the feature film studios.

Micro poly displacement is not just for games by a long shot... it is fast becoming a crucial tool in the pipeline of every major 3D house around. The fact that Firefly can let those in the Poser low end work with those tools is a major win, and not something easily dismissed.

"Of course it has advantages over high-end pro level apps. Ease of Use being the one that would be most attractive, I just don't see Poser 5 as filling the gap that Poser 4 filled so well. "

And I do. Especially for those of us that work in higher end systems most of the time Firefly is a big win. Main reason? Because I don't have to change the way I think. When I am prototyping a render in P5 (and I proto there because I want to be able to easily adjust pose and so on) it is incredibly useful to be able to use the same type of shader network I will wind up using in the final product.

In the higher end does P5 make any waves? No. But then again P4/Propack never made any either. These days the weapon of choice for human animation and rigging is Motionbuilder... and nothing in the Poser world will ever come close.

My recommendation to someone just starting? Poser 5. Why learn a backwards, limited renderer when you can have Firefly?

My recommendation in the mid range? Poser 5. It will save you from having to spend money on Propack AND a rendering system. put the extra $$$ in the bank and save up for a real tool (Maya, Max) - what you learn on Firefly will be directly and immediately useful.

My recommendation on the high end? Poser 5 (if you want Poser at all) for prototyping and pr-visualization them Max 6 and Motionbuilder for your final work. Toss in zbrush for making displacement and other maps.

"Yes I know that, but Firefly and Poser 5 doesn't tie in very well with that so the comparison isn't entirely valid. Poser 5 just doesn't fit in with a movie production pipeline - because the tools it offers are already present in that pipeline. "

This also contradicts my experience. Thanks to Firefly P5 ties in very nicely. For those places that use P5 AT ALL 9and there are few of them that I know of) they use it as a prototyper or pre-viz tool. IT makes perfect sense to be able to re-use the displacement maps back and forth between P5 and the final render tool. It sure makes a lot more sense than using an app with no such tool at all.

The closer your pre-viz tool is to your final tool the better. This will never change. When BodyStudio allows you to preserve all your shader network into both Max and Maya it is a dramatically more productive thing to have the Firefly materials available than the ones in P4.

"Or in other words, not offering much that can't be achieved with other apps"

Well, it is and always has been obvious that P5 doesn't offer you anything you can't find in Max + Motionbuilder (or Character Studio)... but then other than this one guy in the Daz Studio forum who keeps telling us D|S is a better render tool than Mental Ray I haven't seen anyone make the comparison.

There isn't ONE advantage to using P4+Pro pack over P5+Bodysudio. Lets not talk about price cause the $200 for Body Studio is trivial when you spend $600 on Shave and $3495 on Max :)

"It was my impression following comments made by Curious Labs staff that Poser 5 was intended to break them into the pro-level market. Yet they went out of their way to shoot themselves in the head for that (lack of plugin support). So I'm not entirely certain what their target audience is intended as."

In my experience Poser 5 HAS taken them further into the high end. Body Studio is available to provide the import - but importing Poser scenes was never really important on the high end. Because no one on the high end would actually use Victoria in a big $$$ production render anyway... nor would the use Poser's props or other content most of the time.

Poser's real usefulness for high $$$ production is as a quick and dirty pre-viz and prototype tool. For that purpose the add-ons in P5 have dramatically improved it's utility without sacrificing anything that Body Studio doesn't provide.

It's a full on win win all around, except possibly for someone in the cash strapped low end of the mid range.... and you can't please everyone :)

"Now, if you really want to test Firefly, then I suggest you DO take it up against Bryce, Carrara, Shade and other software. Let's see what it can do against a REAL 3D renderer, not the poor little preview render engine in P4 - although it can compete after a fashion." I hope you're not trying to suggest that Bryce and Carrara are top of the line renderers. That would be misinformation. Bryce is probably the slowest render engine in any software I've seen, and Carrara is limited only to phong shading. The plugin renderers for 3dsMax would blow either of those out of the water, and so would Cinema4d for that matter. I don't know about Shade, because I don't think it's distributed in the US, only Japan.

"So what does Poser 5 offer that I can't get in Cinema, Lightwave, Max, Carrara etc.?" If you can afford these high(er) end apps, what are you doing in a Poser Forum? I'm sorry but from what I know of these High End apps, P5 isn't really able to compete across the board. And from what I can gather it never really was meant to - if it had been a bucket load more development and a higher price tag would have been put into it. I don't mean to be rude of confrontational but seriously - you're talking way different leagues. I've installed P5 on what constitutes as two diff machines and have yet to encounter a serious issue. I like P5 for what it allows me to do. I chose P5 coz I had the cash to spend and thoguht it looked like a good investment over P4/PP Poser whatever version fits nicely into a niche alongside Bryce, Vue and others in that price range, and because of that it holds its own - P5 is not perfect, but it's got new features to offer over P4 - but show me an updated/newer version of a software package regradless of price tag that doesn't offer newer, shineier, better features.

thanks for the info. :)

Ok how did you do that?

Poser 5 just doesn't fit in with a movie production pipeline - because the tools it offers are already present in that pipeline. I think exactly that's the point - Poser 5 offers a low-budget easy to use production pipeline. (There are other low-budget tools to get that, like Pixie and Blender, but they certainly aren't as easy to use.) Or in other words, not offering much that can't be achieved with other apps, and better in ZBrush anyway. :) Do you have any links about that? I know that you can use ZBrush to create displacement maps, but I haven't seen any hint on the website that ZBrush actually is a micropolygon renderer. Games engines, yes there is there are two but please don't ask me which ones because I can't remember. Read about them in 3DWorldMag recently if that means anything. Are you sure it's not just vertex displacement? There's a huge difference between micropolygon displacement and vertex displacement.

Zbrush doesn't have micropoly displacement. You have to keep subdividing areas of the mesh you want to paint in more detail to. At least in the version I have. You CAN export normals maps to use for displacement in other apps like 3dsMax or one that has a good micropoly displacement modifier.

great pics, biggert & raven. Well, I just spent 30 minutes typing into this darn window and lost it all. Ah well... lol I'll sum it up quick and come back later (After ya'll jump on me, lol) P5 is stable as of SR3. Or, more precisely, it is as stable as ProPack, or Poser 4, and I'll daresay moreso. All three versions have the same ongoing issue: if the file reference in the (typically) 3rd party content is wrong, Poser will "hang" while it searches. Slowly. This is a big annoyance, but one that's been around forever. (it's also often called a memory leak, but this is not a leak. Nor is it a logic loop. It's just looking until it gets to the end of the runtime, and then it waits. It eats ram because it stores the info of where its been. Not a leak. Also not poser's fault, although it would be better if it worked differently.)(much better)(Tons better) The only major issue, other than that one, that I know of that is P5 specific is the damned shadow.light.xxxx.tmp file thingy where they pile up in one of your runtime folders (usually imageIOplugins) that's been limiting me to 150 frame animation sets if I set up my own lights instead of accepting a default. The workaround for this one is to simply check for those when poser misbehaves, delete them, and try again. Now, any other stability issues, in SR3, I would like to know about. Most of the ones I've seen called "Stability" have come from 3rd party content that use conventions developed specifically for P4 & PP files -- ie ERC, MAT, MOR, and other developments (that I love, mind you) that make use of stuff discovered about the Poser 4 file formats -- before all the new stuff was added to all of them for P5 (shaders, dynamics, and so forth). Those aren't P5 stability issues, those are things that were developed independently and are not part of the P5 file system. Truth is, that they work at all is a joy. I wonder what folks would do with all their content currently in use if P6 does go to a different file format -- no guarantee that it will support those things. (I know that I, for one, will be a tad bit upset about having spent an awful lot of money on stuff that's non-compat with a new file format.) So, those caveats made -- what was that about stability?

I own Lightwave3D 7.5 Cinem4DXl 7.3.3 and 8.2 and poserpropac4 I was very skeptical of Poser5 but i must admit that the Mac OSX release has been very stable even on my way under specced Mac G3. I still boot over to OS9 and user poser pro4 to animate characters for import into my older seat of cinema 4Dxl 7.3.3 to render. but I can tell you for a fact the the poser 5 cloth simulation feature is faster and better implemented than cinema 4DXl's $500 "dynamics" Module. :-( and if you dont beleive me just pop over to the cinema4d forum at Cgtalk.com and ask about Clothing simulation. I still use C4D for all of my final renders but poser is a great for previs and real time character animation. And when I get a new G5 soon I will play more with poser5's cloth system. and firefly renderer.

P5 is stable as of SR3. Or, more precisely, it is as stable as ProPack, or Poser 4, and I'll daresay moreso.

However P5 does everything at a much higher default/minimum memory footprint. And given that Poser has an excessive memory use, this means that for exactly the same scene, Poser 5 is already much further up the lack-of-memory induced instability curve.

All three versions have the same ongoing issue: if the file reference in the (typically) 3rd party content is wrong, Poser will "hang" while it searches. Slowly. This is a big annoyance, but one that's been around forever. (it's also often called a memory leak, but this is not a leak. Nor is it a logic loop. It's just looking until it gets to the end of the runtime, and then it waits. It eats ram because it stores the info of where its been. Not a leak. Also not poser's fault, although it would be better if it worked differently.)(much better)(Tons better)

Hmm, the invalid file reference and memory leak - or rather leaks - are very different things. Poser 5 has them both, in fact it has all those of Poser 4 plus a few more. The term memory leak referes to a program requesting additional memory allocation from the system, using it, finishing with it (i.e. writing it off witin the program), but forgetting to tell the system, to return it when it's done with it, so it is never recovered (garbage collected) for reuse, by the application or system - until the task ends. Poser 5 adds a monsterous new memory leak of ~4MB per render!

The "hang" following a file reference problem is twofold. It searches the entire Runtime for the missing texture, meaning every single directory, including those that have no right to ever hold a texture. And this means that the textures folder isn't even visited until a huge number of other folders have been pointlesly scanned. But wait, that would just make it slow not fatal, however as Poser (4, PP & 5) open each folder to search the filenames, it conveniently skips the required process of closing them behind it (unless it finds the texture in that one ;-). So the reason it sometimes hangs up indefinitely and sometimes eventually returns to respond to the user, depends entirely on how overstressed the memory footprint was before this texture search cum "let's see how many folders I can open", process started. If you're lucky Poser can survive it, otherwise it'll drive the OS's memory management one huge step closer to an irreversible end (a reason that Poser appears more stable on NT-based OS's - the memory management threshold is higher).

Ok, good info. :) However, how is this a new stability issue -- even counting the larger footprint, it's still the same issue as before. You state excessive, but it's no more so than previous versions -- simply a greater amount because of the greater feature set. You can't possibly be saying that a larger memory footprint makes a program more inherently shaky. If so, lord knows how bad the programs noted earlier are (all of them have footprints comparable). But you are not -- you are merely resating (and more exactly than my "common man style") what I said while correcting impressions about memory leaks. (I've never had a memory leak on the XP systems or 2k systems I have, but it's been a long long time since I've run it on 9x -- I find it interesting other folks do.) So, something other than the same stuff P4/PP has. Anyone?

"If you can afford these high(er) end apps, what are you doing in a Poser Forum?"

Well I continue to use Poser for a number of reasons...

• It's fun :)
• It's nice to have a large library of content available
• As a prototype or pre-visualization tool it has a lot of advantages
• The Poser market is one worth keeping an eye on

"Do you have any links about that? I know that you can use ZBrush to create displacement maps, but I haven't seen any hint on the website that ZBrush actually is a micropolygon renderer."

The next Zbrush version is heavily focused on the displacement mapping system. There is a large thread on the topic at CGTalk with a lot of renders from the beta.

Well, all of you have good points. I've been compiling a list of pros & cons for buying P5. And the scaled just tipped today in favor! :-) And yes, i own C4D & MAX. But, i never bought those expensive plug-Ins like S&H, etc... So, i use those solely for modeling. Poser, to me as been mainly for posing figures. But, i'm a kid through & through(Even with my grey hair). And i love thinkering with new toys & overcoming challenges. So, it seems that P5 is full of new toys & has a few challenges in the form of "undiscovered possibilities"... Great! Seems like FUN! Which is the primary reason that i Love 3D! I even enjoy my commercial work, the money is just an added bonus. So, a big thank you for the info! Was a Veteran of P4, now a Newbie again! Yippie! See you out there... Marco

"Well I continue to use Poser for a number of reasons... It's fun :) It's nice to have a large library of content available As a prototype or pre-visualization tool it has a lot of advantages The Poser market is one worth keeping an eye on " That's the sort of response I was hoping/looking for when I made such a blunt point. I didn't mean to cause anyone any offense :o) I guess as someone who is simply not in a postion to afford the high end proggies, I get a little narked when people (not aimed at anyone responding here, just people in general) slag off Poser. I often wonder if the people that do have ever really had a go at using Poser to see what can be done. It is fun, a hell of a lot of fun and does have practical industrial uses - 3D World Mag have highlighted such uses on occasion. At the end of the day I'm not a modeller - I've tried using Wings3D and just can't get my head around it. Poser allows me to by pass that aspect and use the content available. Content wise Poser is great, there's a lot out there - I've yet to be stuck for content for an idea I have. I'm in it for the fun and learning experience, for me it's a means to persue a rewarding hobby.

I echo your thoughts Nevermore! I myself would never pass for an 'Artist'. I mostly like thinkering. I use Poser a lot for "Pre-Visualisation" when i do commercial projects. Like Questor mentionned, "Boning" in High-End 3D apps is too time consuming to be worth the time & effort. So Yes, "poser-Ready" content comes very handy for those. Is Poser perfect? No, but no app is(Even High-End ones). And i would never state that C4D or MAX are the best. I simply know them well enough to get the most out of them. And that is true of any app. The tools help a lot. But, in the end it depends on how much time you're willing to invest in trying out all the buttons in your apps. Just Have FUN doing it, is all... :-)) Later! Marco