I am looking into purchasing Poser and using Daz Characters. The advice from Daz is to use Poser 4 and Propak instead of Poser 5, because of compatability problems with Poser 5. I have been learning Daz Studio with characters and props that I purchased from Daz, but I want to do more. If any one of you knowledgable people can lend me some insight into which Poser software you would recommend, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank You!

I've yet to see a compatibility problem with milfigures and P5 and I've had them both since release. P5 is very stable now and offers a world of new special fx. I'm not yet in the "know" but, I cannot see any comparison. I've got DS too and that will take some time to catch up...

This question is asked and answered at least once a week. In the interest of brevity: I recommend Poser 5. No there is no serious compatability. Beyond that, why not read the previous threads?

Poser 5....why go back in time...must keep moving forward :)

The only real problems you'll run into with P5 are the crosstalk fix (some of DAZ's conforming clothing takes advantage of P4's crosstalk bug) and certain material settings (bumps and ambient materials will usually need tweaking to look their best). And you might need to disable polygon-smoothing on certain items.

Other than that, it should be smooth sailing, and P5's additional features more than make up for such inconveniences. The library-management bugfixes/enhancements alone are probably worth the price.

Since DAZ is building what they see as a competitive product, they will not encourage you to buy Poser 5, but stay in the quicksand until DAZ|Studio is final and then charge you for all the additional modules you'll need to make it do half of what P5 already does. (That is if you could ever get Studio to run... it won't on either my PC or Mac.) DAZ refuses to support P5 and have publicly and often stated so. However, if they are going to keep selling figures into this market, they will have to ensure some basic compatibility. There are other figure makers. Carolly

Poser 5

In my opinion, DAZ made an unwise move by biting the hand that feeds it. Take away Poser, and you take away DAZ's major reason for content. Yet DAZ still decided to distance itself from Poser and Curious Labs over 2 years ago and announce its own product. Many people immediately decided to abandon Poser 5, and wait for DAZ|Studio. I played with DAZ|Studio for awhile just because I can't resist the newest toy. Then I decided I don't need it. Maybe I'll try it again when DAZ releases the final version, and shows exactly what we'll get for "free." On Crosstalk, it's ironic that people created products that rely on a bug, which was finally eliminated. I'm glad Poser 5 killed Crosstalk. Now Poser content providers have had 2 years to make sure their products worked properly, rather than relying on "dead bugs."

"There are other figure makers." Exactly. I haven't touched a mil figure literally in months, since I got EJ.

I usually only use M3 and V3 for product testing (Aiko's ok, though), and my favorite figure is EJ.

P5, beyond a doubt. If you're completely new to Poser you won't have to unlearn the stuff you got used to with P4, so you may as well jump in at the current incarnation. The Material Room offers tremendous options and the Firefly renderer is miles ahead of the standard P4 renderer. Most models will work flawlessly in P5 and for the few which don't there's a workaround to hand. Library handling is better (IE, it actually works) and believe me, you'll really be glad of that once your Pose library gets beyond 256 folders. Lighting - or rather, Light management - still bites in P5. There's a ridiculous "Light Globe" system at work, which is really useful for dead basic lights but bugger all use for anything beyond that. Poser's light management is just about the worst in this part of the galaxy, but at least the lights in P5 render quite nicely. Just don't expect the preview to give any useful help, in P4 or P5. If you go for P5 - and I hope you do - make sure you download the latest patches for it. P5 still ships as the basic version so you will need the updates/patches/bug fixes/service releases, no matter when or how you buy it. IMO P5 has so many advantages that I could not in good conscience recommend P4 to anyone.

I wanted to thank all of you Poser users for your input. It is through your opinions and experience that I can make an educational decision. The Poser 5 seems to be the favorite choice. Again, thank you very much!

You're welcome. I promise, you won't regret buying P5 provided you have a computer with a reasonable processor and around 1GB of RAM. If (I should say when) you encounter a problem, come back here. There will definitely be someone who can help.

I do fairly well with a 1Gig Duron Processor and 640MB of RAM. The more complicated stuff slows me down. In general, Poser will be happiest with lots of memory a fast CPU and a huge hard drive.

I don't think there's any reason to be so dismissive of DAZ. Remember two years ago you all HATED Poser 5 and there was the real fear that Poser would go under. So just because Poser 5's bugs have mostly been finally fixed is no reason to forget the context of times past and the reason for DAZ studio...which I actually like and can't wait til ITS bugs are fixed. :) Meanwhile I have no compelling reason to re-install Poser 5 and am quite happy with P4/ProPack. (I don't care about Firefly or the dynamic stuff) If you tell me Poser 5 is faster than ProPack and uses less memory then I might bite again. Until then I'll stick with the ProPack/DS/Bryce connection.

I've never had any significant troubles with Poser 5, and I've always thought it was a bad idea for DAZ to distance itself from Curious Labs and Poser 5. When they announced DAZ|Studio, many people immediately said they'd avoid Poser 5 and wait for DAZ|Studio. It's been two years wait now, and I still don't see DAZ|Studio as a viable alternative. Poser 4 was long overdue for an upgrade, and ProPak just wouldn't cut it for me. I don't want to add stuff onto an old program. I want a new version of the program.

Daz studio is almost at the version 1 stage and is still not so good. I havent had any trouble with daz stuff in p5 either , But if I had to choose between using daz stuff or using poser 5 then poser 5 would win every time.

I also recommend getting Poser5. The dynamic cloth and firefly rendering make it quite an incredible program - not to mention the library structure! However, do be aware that P4 moves as fast as a bullet compared to P5! Really, Poser5 is SLOWWWW! Hence the reason why I still use P4. I'd guess it all depends on what your needs are. If you do basic rendering (without reflections and all the other fancy stuff) or want to delve into animation, then use P4 like I do. When I want a disgustingly realistic render, then I power up P5 and crack open a beer(to calm the ol' nerves) ;) NEVER drink coffee while using P5! Oh lord, you'll have a stroke! Seriously, get more RAM when you get P5 and a second harddrive to give it a good home. Yeah, doing that can get expensive but, believe me, you won't regret it! Personally, I have two machines. One for internet and games, and a second one for Poser and Poser only! Let's face it, an internet connection requires more security precautions than the white house anymore, and all of the NortonMcAfeeZoneAlarmSpyBot stuff drives Poser batty! I follow one rule when it comes to my Poser computer, keep-it-simple-stupid. V3 and her territorial cronies are quite happy now that they don't have to share their world with WinAmp, Doom3, a DVD player or any of the virus killing software. Again, this gets expensive but it's well worth it! As for DAZ/Studio, when they make a copy that works, I'll be happy to check it out. Till then, it's P4 and P5 coexisting in harmony. Vote V3 - 2008!

poser 6 ;-)

I have poser 5 and still use propack because, as cyberspace said poser 5 is slower. I find If I am converting a figure or prop I don`t need the newer poser 5 features so much so I use propack.

I've used Norton products since 1995. Norton does not interfere with any of my software. On the other hand, all the Norton products have served to protect me from disaster, and have fixed many problems. One of the more dramatic aspects of Poser is bump maps. Poser 4 users need to convert bump maps from jpg to BUM. You could easily need to convert 10-100 bump maps in a single session, depending on what product you buy. That process takes time, and consumes lots of extra hard drive space. Poser 5 users get to use jpg bump maps. Oh, but here's a problem. Far too many products have bump maps plugged into the Gradient Bump map node, rather than the Bump map node. We need to fix that problem. Far too many artists or online stores don't recognize that issue, so we're forced to do the busy work ourselves. It's wrong to make a blanket statement that "Poser 5 is slow." I daresay it depends on your hardware and the subject you're working on. Poser users should likely have at least 1GB of memory, and give Poser its own large hard drive.

"Poser users should likely have at least 1GB of memory, and give Poser its own large hard drive." That is pretty big system requirements for one program. What I say is, if a program is too slow for the computer then it is a fault in the programming not the computer.

We're not just talking about the program Poser. We're talking about all the goodies people like to load into a scene, and then manipulate and render. Surely if you use Poser you can see the difference.

I can have several immensely dense meshes running in max 4 and WB - I can do so without hiccups w. under a Gb memory and no separate drive needed. Add the mill horse, the cyclorama and a NVWAS + cape (No T)in a Poser scene and your machine crawls. It's the programming. Most apps are optimised for memory usage - Poser, being the still untidy mac port it initially was, doesn't do that. xantor - i totally agree with you. ~S

Spinner Max is one of the slowest programs for the PC. It is about the same speed as poser 5 on my computer and that is version 3 of max, newer versions are no faster (I have tried them on other computers).

really ? When I was on a 400 Mhz HP Brio with 352 Mb RAM /which I was until last January, I could do everything i wanted in Max, but nothing in Poser - and we're talking scenes with complex lights, volumetric fog and high density meshes in Max and V3 NWIAS/p4 nag/Dave71 cape in Poser - which spet hrs just moving the stuff around. Even when I have my Opera browser running, it sometimes consumes more memory than Max, so maybe we just have differing experiences. ~S

It probably depends on your computer and the way it is set up.