Believe it or not, I'm still using Poser 4, but have something of a problem. I've just upgraded my Mac to OS 10.2.8. I also still have OS 9.2 available, and it's here that I work with Poser 4 (on a separate start-up partition). Will Poser 5 work on a Mac and if so, on OS X?

Poser 5 works on OS X. But if you want to use PoserPython, you're out of luck. A Python script that has a user interface must use Tkinter, and that doesn't work on Mac OSX. All other Poser 5 features work fine.

Raven, P5 works just fine on MacOSX.2.8. Running it myself. I've had some problems with runtime management but finally hit a solution that made loading simple and quick and for the last two months very stable. As for python scripts, not to disagree with Svdl, but I've managed to get some things partially working. Its not a closed door and my "guess" is that it won't be in P6. CL knows about the problems and imho they are going to do their best to fix the problem. My advice is to dive into P5-P6, the possibilities are most interesting! -jay

I second the advice to go for Poser 6. The upgrade price from Poser 4 is reasonable, and I suspect that CL support of Poser 5 won't last too long after Poser 6 hits the market. And it has some new features that are definitely an improvement over Poser 5, mainly the point lights and the OpenGL preview. About the Python scripts: every script that does not use Tkinter will work fine on OSX. Unfortunately, about 80% of the python scripts out there use Tkinter and will require rewriting before they work.

And the Tkinter problem is not OS X, but Poser using the old OS 9 version of Python/Tkinter which long ago stopping being supported. So it's in CL hands to fix this. Other than that Poser 5 works fine on OS X and we are all looking forward to 6.

Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd wait until Poser 6 comes out (and check to make sure there are no massive problems inherent in it) before upgrading from Poser 4. OTOH, I happily admit that Poser 5 on OSX does work well enough for me (OS 10.3.8 on a dual G5 box), though IMHO you'll need a somewhat hefty bit of kit to run it without seeing the beachball o' busyness all the time. Poser 5 on my old 1.2 G4 Cube tended to bog down once in awhile. /P

The upgrade price from Poser 4 is reasonable, and I suspect that CL support of Poser 5 won't last too long after Poser 6 hits the market.

Yeah, instead they'll offer "Poser Artist 2." Which will look remarkably like Poser 5. ;-)

...though you won't need Classic to run it, I suspect :) /P

I've noticed that Pro Pack has gone missing from CL's online store recently ....

P5X is really well done, especially when it comes to stabilty. For me it almost never crashes, I got pretty good at crashing P4PP. Being able to have multiple runtimes is fantastic - you can just leave your current runtime where it is and not have to transfer all those files over to P5. The big down side for me is that P5X is really slow, especially using the cloth and hair simulations. It's also kinda shocking that the new Firefly render engine which was written for the Mac sometimes runs close to 50% slower then PC firefly (depending on content). Also some P4 content (which is still most of the market) has to be tweaked in the new material editor but the new ME is really kinda cool - not like Bryce or Vue but much better then P4 offers. While it now reads PC resources directly, it still doesn't read the PC thumbnail preview so you still need to use Mac Converter.

That's something I've occasionally wondered about, dan. Is Firefly's render speed, on the Mac, comparable to the original Tempest in PiXELS 3D?

Attached Link: http://www.pixels3d.com/products/tempest.html

Got no idea LD. I've only messed with the Pixels 4 demo (which Firefly is based on) and that was years ago but I certainly don't remember thinking that it was at all slow. btw - Poser 6 appears to use the Tempest renderer from Pixels 5, at least it's got most of the same features.

When rendering with Firefly on OSX try to increase the bucket size as much as you can. It really helps with render times.