"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 :)