Anyone abstaining from buying Poser6 like I am...on pain reflex...ethical reasons...wait and see...or what ever? Am I the only one? Just curious. What are you all thinking?

nope, you're not alone. I am waiting for Poser6 SR4. :o)

Neither am I. I just won't be able to participate in any of the P6 spoiler threads that are overflowing on here. I spent enough money on Poser PP even tho I want P6, I'm holding back for a while there are too many other things I want to buy. :)

The only reason I haven't bought it yet is I don't have the spare money or I'd be playing with it right now.

I'm in no hurry if at all. I mainly use Poser for 2D work, and while I do have Poser5, Poser ProPack fulfills all my needs. I do have a high-end modeling app for the few times I need fancy lighting and/or rendering, but thats not that often. Poser 6 does look pretty cool though, and the early adopters seem to love it. There seems to be a very reassured calmness about the few bug reports being fixed soon, which says the tide has turned for Curious Labs, and they have their customers confidence back. Thats good, as I think it gives them the incentive (and capital) to go all out on Poser 7.

I bought it, only because in my warped Poser addicted brain, I think I may want it later...and It was on sale for people like me who also bought P5 in advance. I still have NEVER used P5 for anything...but what the heck...I do have it...just in case. LOL! I am in no hurry to get P6, mostly because I don't have a lot of time to learn it...but if and when they send it...it will be mine to use when I can. (:

Nope. Not alone. I bought Poser 5 only last year and didn't really figure out how to do anything in it until last October or so. All I can do is play "Dress up Dolly" in it, so I don't feel a need to spend hundreds to get a new program with even more bells and whistles. I still can't do my own lighting or poses, so I think Poser 5 will be more than enough for me for some years to come. Maybe by the time Version 7 rolls out I'll be ready to upgrade.

I only upgraded to Poser 5 last year, when they finally produced a Service Release that seemed to fix the majority of P5's stability issues. I'm not so sure I want to upgrade to P6. I may just wait for P7, which is supposedly going to be a completely new code base, rather than just a huge bug fix for the old wonky Poser code plus a bunch of new (admittedly cool) bells and whistles. bonni

I'm still debating....I see all the problems folks are having with 6, and I still haven't completely mastered 5 yet. I do think the renders on 6 look a little better, but not enough to justify the cost.

I have it and I like it. I guess it depends on how much time you spend on any one program, but I am impressed with it. I look at the dollars to time and Poser is so well worth it especially since I don't have that much time to learn all about the high end programs...I have Vue and Bryce but mostly I like poser since I am used to it and Poser 6 renders and loads much faster. The only hitch to Poser 6 I had was the windows firewall...once I turned that off it has been doing very well...the new lights are great and I have barely had time to spend on the other rooms anyway so getting the high end programs really pales compared to upgrading my Poser!.... just my 2 cents, but poser has come a long long way since I first jumped in on poser 2.....

...and It was on sale for people like me who also bought P5 in advance.
I, like genny, purchased P6 because of a special offer extended to "early adopters" of P5. I am intrested in the new sub-surface scattering, but I like the results I'm getting with Carrara 4.

I may just wait for P7, which is supposedly going to be a completely new code base,
I'm not sure how much they can "re-write". AFAIK, the face room and the Firefly render engine (including the material nodes) are 3rd party products. Do they have access to the source? And is the Cloth room CL's, or is it a 3rd party product?

There seems to be a very reassured calmness about the few bug reports being fixed soon, which says the tide has turned for Curious Labs, and they have their customers confidence back.
Or are all of the people who experienced the P5's evolution just being quiet? CL will get my confidence back when the earn it. I read somewhere that some of the Shade programmers from e Frontier were going to work on P6. A smooth evolution of P6 is the only thing that will restore my confidence.

I see all the problems folks are having with 6

That's the best reason to hold off in my opinion. I really have no desire to keep working with new characters. I can't see how the new characters would have any content outside the poser program anyway. I just invested aton of money in V3, M3 A3 and D3. That's about all I can spare for my Poser habbit. ;) Message edited on: 03/27/2005 09:57

I don't have it yet, so I suppose I've avoided the rush, only because I CAN'T buy it - it won't stay in my shopping cart. I've been trying for about a week, I get the "We're Sorry - your cart is empty" message again and again and again. My cookies are working - I can put things in my cart, close my browser, go back to their online store and my cart still has those things in it, but if I go to checkout it is suddenly empty. I missed the pre-order offer because of it, now I'm going to miss the special edition too. Does the 'global store' exclude some countries? I'm in South Africa. Maybe I habe to find a local reseller and pay double the value? Sigh

Have you tried contacting the site admin or something to findout?

there's a thousand things in Poser 4 I haven't figured out yet..;) Heck, I just figured out morphs a week ago..;) Even if I could affored it, I don't really want to be a 'gamma tester' (early adopter)..I'd wait a while until the bugs are fixed. If your current version of Poser is 'cramping' your style, and you feel the limitations of it (haven't even bumped my head, yet..;), then by all means, go for it.

By every evidence, there are far fewer problems with Poser 6 than there are with Poser 5/SR4. For those currently using Poser4 or ProPack (or earlier,) I would strongly recommend skipping P5 entirely and investing in P6. After assessing the mostly-positive response to the P6 release, I bought it last week, and am very happy I did. I was planning on waiting longer, but after just a few hours of tinkering with it, chose to move all my content to P6 and uninstall P5. I hope this positive perspective will have some influence on those who are "on the fence." Economic considerations come first, but it would be too bad if some folks prohibit themselves from upgrading based on false impressions or the negativity of a small minority. P6 is great. There are minor bugs which appear to vary depending upon one's computer configuration, but I haven't encountered anything yet that made me sorry I upgraded.Quite the opposite.

I bought P5 and hated all it's little quirks, but I used it because it got the job done. P6 is much better. It's almost a pleasure to use. P5 was a joke. P6 is a real application.

I'm pleased that many early adopters chose to buy P6 sight-unseen, because, it gives a much-needed infusion of cash to allow for fixing bugs uncovered by the early adopters. P5 was a total departure from P4, and the bugs in it were never completely fixed. P6 is a bug fix for P5, with enhancements, so I believe that they'll nail down the worst bugs fairly soon, unlike P5, which was never fixed to everyone's satisfaction.

It's actually kind of unfair to compare Poser 6 release with Poser 5's. Most people who have poser 6 now probably have a better machine to run on than those who bought poser 5 2 years ago. Besides, if Poser 6 still uses the same base code as poser 5, wouldn't it perform better on these more superior computers than a 2 year old computer. I am not dissing Poser 6, but I am in no rush to test Poser 6 for CL. I'll just let the current owners of P6 test it out first before I decide. Right now Poser Propack still gets the job done nicely. :o)

I must add that the Shade included in the pre purchase is really a very usefull program. If you invest the time to figure out semi complex stuff - the easy stuff becomes really easy and you find yourself hunting for something just right in your library or free stuff or market place and then you remeber - hey I can make that in 20 minutes in shade. The import of a poser figure rocks since you can add items directly to the poser and when you send them back into Poser they are right where you made them in shade no fitting no sizing nothing. So I almost feel that although Shade LE is now like 60 bucks it was worth the P6 pre order just to get it.

Between the March Madness sale at Daz and an emergency trip to the vet yesterday, my piggy bank is empty again. And I don't get a raise for another 3 months, so I guess P6 is just gonna have to wait. I'd still love to try it, though. Any word on a demo?

My only crab is that I haven't recieved my box copy yet...according to the poop sheet, they started shipping the boxes March 21..Not that I am Impatient or anything I just want my P6 NOW!!(Throws self on floor and kicks and screams) My reciept says I bought it Feb 17...AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!

Poser 6 is a good upgrade for the artistically inept. In all the time I owned P4 and the few months I owned P5 before upgrading I could never get my figures to not look cartoonish even with global lighting. With P6 a basic IBL setup produces realistic renders. Plus I find the workflow/options much more intuitive. I've had few problems with bugs and no crashes at all. Overall, a worthwhile upgrade.

Waiting. One: cash is tight. Two: They announced a service release the day the product was released, I'll wait. Three: The price came down $10 within a month afte P5's release. Four: I want someone to come up with a way to disable Content Paradise in P6 first. Finally: I remember all the P5 bull. Fool me once... And most of all, after all the P5 angst we pre-purchasers of P5 went through, CL should be giving P6 to us for free, along with an apology. And a thank you for everyone who did their "Public Beta" test for one of the Service Pack releases. Is a simple "We're sorry" and "Thank you" too much to ask?

I like being able to compare renders without leaving the program... and then just exporting the best ones. I like being able to hit a wacro button and get an alabaster effect instantly... and other fun tricks to PLAY with. I was sort of like Midas running around and touching everything. I like point lights and the other new lighting features. Why use 6 lights for a candle when it is one light source? The shadow calculations are a lot faster, too. I like undos! I like telling it to quit searching for a texture and having it immediately quit... not 20 minutes later... and not crash. I like being able to cancel a render and have it not crash, but quietly and neatly obey. I like the new figures. Even though I worked with morphs for Don and Judy, who are terribly under-rated, these figures have a lot more inherent interest and appeal. This means they'll get better support. I like being able to link Runtimes. Between computers. I dropped a firewire connection between them and said "go find some massive sets by Transpond" (in my old computer) and P6 went off like a well-trained retriever and brought back everything and the moss it was textured with. Neat. :) There will be images I can make in Poser 6 that I couldn't have made in earlier versions. I like that. But no software is perfect. What do I dislike? That damnable IK which is still "on" by default means that I'll have to hack cr2s to get them to load free and clear of conniptions. I don't think the new kids work in the face room (but will have to check that). In any case, there is no easy way to get a morph setup which will work on everybody for family resemblance. Even imps and goblins have mothers! (I'm rather surprised that Saruman's orcs didn't all have his nose!) There is still no network rendering, so making even a very short cartoon inside Poser will require a lot of splicing, and building large scenes will just take time. However, I remember spending days to get a render in DKB and ice ages could come and go before getting something finished in Bryce, so perhaps I'm less patient. The name in the drop-down menu for the working window still says figure 1, etc., when it would be far less confusing to use whatever the library name says. Most people seem to create images with only one person and no clothes, so this might not be a problem, but if you have a scene with even a handful of people, and it is taking days to build, remembering whether fred, ned, or ted was loaded first and which shoes are on what character shouldn't require a spreadsheet or look-up table before conforming them. Not perfect, but a lot better. As mentioned above, I'd skip P5 entirely and go directly to P6, even if P5 boxes show up in the discount bins. It is better to wait a few months, save the pennies, and get the upgrade. The stability and sleekness alone will make the jump worthwhile. When? That's an individual call, based upon individual need. If you're in a rush, fine. If you're not in a rush? That's fine too... you're not ahead of me in the shipping queue. ;^) Carolly

I stayed clear of P5 and glad I did, Poser Pro Pack is what I use and really don't need to keep upgrading on my old computer. I don't have a top of the line pc to make upgrading to P6 worth my while or my money. I bet a few months from now when the hype dies down, the price will drop. I'm patient, I don't mind the wait. I want to start modelling so I haven't really made up my mind yet. ;)

...and even if the price drops (and I really can't see it getting much lower than the special unless you have an academic discount)... you'll have to buy Shade separately.