Hi, Im currently using poser 4 and pretty happy with it...But now Im thinking of buying poser 5....Can anyone tell me what the main advantages of poser 5 are and if its worth the upgrade ? or should I buy vue5 (looks pretty neat) and render my poser 4 scenes with that ? my current machine is an athlon 2000 + with a gig of ram and a GF4 4200 Ti with 64 megs thanks in advance

Among other things, P5 offers: a more advanced render engine with raytraced reflections and refractive effects a material-shader system that makes all sorts of neat tricks possible within Poser enhanced library management features (subfolders, multiple runtimes, breaks the 256-file limit) enhanced morph management features (sort, group, split, or delete morphs) a crosstalk fix dynamic hair and cloth It also includes several features found in Pro Pack: the Setup Room for rigging your own posable figures PNG-format library thumbnails eliminates geometry RSR files, and the need to delete said files when they become corrupted Python scripting Multi-pane display windows

I would buy poser 5 but maybe you could also buy vue 5 at a later date? The materials in poser 5 are very much better than poser 4 although they are more difficult to learn. The cloth room is very good once you work out how to use it properly. I havent used the dynamic hair much but some people do like it.

If you want to work with the current models such as Vicki and Mike then I suggest you upgrade. I've beena Poser4 user for almost a year now and I'm behind the times but I don't feel the need to upgrade. It all depends on what you wish to do with the program. Poser5 sounds vastly differnt from Poser4. And, if you feel like learning Poser all over again then go for it. ;)

Poser 5 is not that difficult to learn and it can be used like poser 4 at least til you learn the basics.

for me personally, I don't need to upgrade. I like working with the Eve character in Poser4 the most and dont feel it necessary for me to upgrade. I didnt say difficult to learn as Poser4 is an easier 3D app to get to know, just different from Poser5. :=)

You did say "And, if you feel like learning Poser all over again then go for it" A lot of the way things work in poser 4 is very similar in poser 5 so you don`t actually have to relearn everything.

It's a personal preference thing. I've used P4 since a few weeks after its release (used 2 and 3 prior) and only got 5 about a month ago. So far, I see it as a waste of money. It is incredibly slow, has serious trouble with transparencies, is actually incapable of loading certain P4 figures, is extremely crowded(800x600) and did I mention how slow it is? ;) But the advanced texturing and rendering, and of course the multi-layer runtime libraries are definite plusses. Here's hopeing P6 will be more thuroughly tested before its release. I don't expect it to be long since CLabs has mentioned version 7 already.

Poser 5 is actually made to work with a screen size of 1024x768 or higher, I tried using it at a lower resolution for a while but gave up because parts of some screens are not visible, the face room in particular needs the larger screen size to work properly. That is partly why I don`t use poser 5 so much because my screen is normally set to 800x600 and I have to change it before loading poser 5 which is a nuisance. I have had no problems with loading p4 figures (even ones I made myself).