hi guys.....i just have to say that i expected SR4 to come with goodies like GI, caustics, radiosity.....can you believe that S**T? well maybe i got spoiled with SR3 when CL surprised us with extra goodies ike Vol lighting and atmospherics....so i thought maybe theyd make up for their bungles with extra stuff... but then again um spoiled.... i wonder if P6 will have these features...... :::::drifting into a trance::::::::

Just for you they will build a trance mode into P6. A small animated Buddha in the top right corner softly humming mantra's and gentle twirling fractals as a background. They can't promise GI, but will a free GI Joe action figure do?

Nobody really expects that stuff. If they added all that, they would have to jack the price up an additional $300 - $500, and lose most of their customers.

I don't think they will lost most of thei customers.. I think thye get more customers when they prepare excellent stuff.. the poser cusromers spend more that $500 per year for other stuff they buy around the net for using with poser..

I'm blown away at what did make it in. I'd gotten used to most of the bugs, but that memory leak was the killer. I can always tell where the anims have been joined. It seemed as if the lights always changed slightly, or maybe I could just never get every option set the same twice in a row. I'm surprised caustics and GI are in such demand. I suppose I'd use them too but never thought they were so urgent as to be in a bugfix.

what is GI?

By the way, there is no such thing as true caustics on a computer, true caustics only happen in reality ;)

GI is Global Illumination in the 3D world. Something everybody wants, some people have, some are willing to pay for, and some expect it as standard. In the GI Joe sense, it means Government Issue, meaning that the soldiers equipment was all marked Government Issue, and the joke was that they were also just government issue.

Sheesh. Actually, I prefer IBL to most of the GI schemes I've seen, and While I'd love caustics, I can be patient. Sometimes, in posts about these things, folks get all excited when they dream about cool new features. Sometimes these dreams get turned into expectations -- didn't happen here, at least, lol -- but the downside to that is what actually happened when Poser 4 came out, when ProPack came out, and when Poser 5 came out. Folks started getting really mad that "their" ideas didn't make it into the cut, and became very vocal and very negative about things in general. What's nice is the sense of humor here. That's rare -- we need more of it. And ya know, with the fixes they did do, I'm a heck of a lot happier -- and I was pretty happy with it already :)

I will be happy to see the all features that Poser5 have already in the work of other users.. how many people use everything? ok some bugs fixed so we can play with until the next new features coming out.. SR4 is not a new version of Poser but patch ..so I am happy for now what I have :)) "if you buy the best photo camera it will not make from you the best photographer"...

... and if you don't buy a camera, you will never be a photographer. I am happy with Poser 5. All I want now is for the next version of Mover to transfer the material settings from the material room to Vue. And I want a small cement mixer. And maybe a bridge. (you never know when there will be a river to cross)

xantor --

GI also stands for "gastro-intestinal".

hee.....hee.....hee.....

1. i still want the whole enchilada...and a side order of nacho chips with cilantro salsa....... 2. if CL included a free action figure of Optimus Prime G1 then maybe i'll forget about their bungles...lol.... until then.....ill fantasize about these features while in a trance mode...in my parents cold basement...

I knew the government issue one.

If you want the high end stuff like GI, HDRI, cuastics etc, you'll have to invest in a high end rendering engine. Sorry, but that's the way it is right now.

I don't think Poser should become a "everything but the kitchen sink" application - it's specialized on characters, and should remain that way. I don't think Caustics are necessary for character animation, and radiosity is also more useful for architectural renderings than character animation (photon mapping is way better than radiosity anyway). I think a full subsurface scattering implementation for realistic skin rendering would be much better suited for Poser, or deep shadow maps for better hair shadows. Don't get me wrong - I am as fascinated by the features that modern renderers have as you are. But I think Poser should remain focussed on it's core functionality and I think the engineering effort would be better spent on features like improved IK, NLA or soft body simultation than on radiosity or caustics.

Grr. Where's the edit button when you need it?

I think caustics are a bit useless anyway, a lot of the time when you see glass objects there are no caustics and even in water there is no caustics at times.

I'd glad CL didn't try to add GI or caustics or other fancy stuff. It's bad enough that some P5 bugs are still not fixed in SR4. We don't need them mucking up the code by adding new features... which may cause existing features to fail... which will result in a SR4.1 fix... which fixes issues in SR4, but still doesn't address the original issues. And while we're at it, is the keyboard (no) shortcut issue fixed yet? Can I hit Ctrl-M while on the Parameters palette and have it actually switch to the main camera? Or is there still a "focus" issue bewteen the palette and the Poser application? And I know this was asked before, but: who thought that a floating palette was a good idea? (Hmm... large/ takes up screen space, keyboard shortcuts/ Alt-menu doesn't work. Sounds good to me. Put it in.) And why the hl was this focus issue not f***ng tested when P5 was first released?!

Nope, the focus problem is still there :( But it appears they finally fixed multiplying magnets :)