I really expected that Poser 6 was going to be the wheel. it has been a very long time since a "new" poser release has hit the digital shelves and now that Rosity and Daz and RDNA and the rest are in the mix there is so much more art and content out there.......... and so much more money to be made. My expectations were admittedly high. When I saw the pre-order offer I thought it seemed like a pretty good deal so I figured what the heck, may as well get it now. I have been using p5 for a couple years now and while I thought it was a great program, an upgrade really seemed like just the thing to re-kindle my interest. So I ordered it and began the seemingly endless wait to March 21st. Finally it came, and only 6 hours late. (not bad if you think about it! ) So I moved my gargantuan Runtime, uninstalled p5 and got ready to be dazzled and amazed by all the shiny new toys p6 had to offer. I spent a couple hours fooling with it. I rendered the winter queen and all the new figures just to have a peek at them. I liked the render compare slider and the new interface. I even thought it seemed to render at a slightly better quality than p5. I was very happy with the purchase. Untill a few hours ago. I had the day off today so I thought I would sit down and begin a project that has been in the works in my brain for a long time now. It's just a comic book story about two very different hero's. I made all my background images, dressed all my models, imported my props and then I got ready to set it all up. When there was one model on the screen it blazed. When there was two models on the screen it was very fast. When I got to 4 models it moved so slow I had to switch to fast tracking and caroon shading. When I got six models on screen it crawled, even when I switched to box tracking. I stumbled thru the setup. The result was not what I wanted it to be but I had lost patience more than an hour ago and I just wanted to try a quick render to see what was what. I had 4 police cars (the Romero Interceptors from poser world) 3 m3's (no morphs or textures applied) and the US cop outfit (from Poser World again) on each of the m3's. I also had v3 dressed in Temptations of She Devil (by BVH) and the compsition they were in was 750x450. I tried rendering in Firefly. I got a message telling me that there was a problem and directing me to lower the texture sizes and adjust the render settings for Firefly. But I didn't want to do that, so I tried in the p4 renderer, which promptly failed. I tried several times with both renderers and It won't stop crashing. I am running a 2.6ghz Pentium 4 with 2 gb RAM (yes I have 4 slots). I used to render much more "robust" scenes in Poser 5 without issue. I am really kind of ticked off that Poser 6 seems inferior to P5. I expected more. I am sure that the stability of p6 will increase once a service release or two become available. I know I got a really good deal when I pre-ordered. Shade 7 is a nice tool and I am having a lot of fun with it. I know people were anxious to get it and I am sure the demand was high. But none of that really makes me feel any better right now, because I have to reinstall Poser 5 and move my gigantic Runtime back. I just expected more. If you are thinking about buying p6 and you have missed the Pre-Order offer I would advocate that you wait. Untill a service release or two are available p6 is garbage:( I would LOVE to know if anyone out there agrees with me.

Can't say. Mine just shipped today.

I can say that I've seen a lot of positive feedback for the program -- with a few negatives thrown in here and there. But the majority opinion seems to be on the positive side.

I'll know better once I get a chance to use P6 for a while.

But I am not going to be in any hurry to rid my machine of P5.

One reason: I use Vue Infinite. And Vue hasn't been updated to handle P6 files just yet. It's coming.

In fact -- if you don't already have it, you might want to consider adding either Vue 5 Espirit or Vue 5 Infinite to your toolbox.

My P5 render problems on complex scenes went away in Vue. Plus the renders were faster in Vue.

I do use Vue 5 (not Infinite yet) and I do like it. I don't care for the way it renders Poser content though. The textures always seem a little blanched. I have been rendering in shade 7 since I got it and I have to say that the render quality is HIGH (!) though it takes a very long time. Until I got my copy of Shade 7 with my p6 pre-oder I was exporting from p5 to Carrara (which also renders Poser content well, (though I think I like Shade better) The thing is I was HOPING that P6 would be the "Do it all in one program" solution. Oh well, I still got a great deal on the pre-order. Service releases will be along shortly................ I hope :P

I just got P6, and so far so good. It's not nearly as buggy as P5 was when it first came out.

"When there was one model on the screen it blazed. When there was two models on the screen it was very fast. When I got to 4 models it moved so slow I had to switch to fast tracking and caroon shading. When I got six models on screen it crawled, even when I switched to box tracking." This sounds like an underpowered display card.

"When there was one model on the screen it blazed. When there was two models on the screen it was very fast. When I got to 4 models it moved so slow I had to switch to fast tracking and caroon shading. When I got six models on screen it crawled, even when I switched to box tracking." OpenGL problem perhaps? I did switch to Sreed Software preview and: When there was one model on the screen it blazed. When there was two models on the screen it was very fast. When I got to 4 models it was very fast. When I got six models it's still very fast. Now I've got 10 models, 2 horses, a lot of props, microcosm landscape and a huge tent and it's still fast in smooth shaded. It's a bit slower in Texture shaded, but definitley not crawling. By the way, I only have 1Gb of RAM and a 2Ghz cpu. As for rendering with firefly, that is a problem, but CL has stated that there's a bug in it.

"This sounds like an underpowered display card. OpenGL problem perhaps?"

I am using an almost brand new Radeon 9800 Pro which is a 256mb card. I am not very knopwledgeable when it comes to graphics cards, however I do know that this is a very good one. I also know that my drivers are up to date.

One thing i didn't mention earlier is that my processor has "Hyper Threading Technology". I can't imagine how that could be a detriment though. I would think that would increase performance.

Aeilkema what OS are you using? I am using XP pro with ALL of the eye candy off. I went straightaway to the Advanced system properties menu and configured it for performance the instant I had trouble
(yeah I know the Penguin makes XP'ers happy)

My PC is pretty diesel and i can believe that you could have such better performance.....

I am not calling you a fibber........

I am just really curious now, because I can't get p6 to stop crashing and my system is built for this stuff.

Message edited on: 03/30/2005 00:13

All I can say that you missed alot of good stuff in Poser6. I preordered and I will be very happy because it has the best light features in it for good renderer. There is only one it need to make perfect renderer is Aura, and thats all. It is sad to hear when you find disappoints in it because I don't see the same way. GWeb

I want to add something. If there is better software than Poser I hell sure will buy it but there isnt one. CL done a great job on advancing Poser to the limit. Gweb

I've heard hints from a few people that Hyper-threading actually slows Poser down. I'm not 100% sure of the reasons -- but I've heard that it has something to do with P6 not being designed to take advantage of HT technology.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on the HT issue. It's all hearsay on my part. I'm just repeating the statements of others.

Yes it is not designed for HT They also said that CL said they would have to rewrite entire code to support HT. I would want CL to rewrite code to support 64 bits platform and multiple CPU network including HT for Intel and AMD.

BTW -- I'm not a graphics card expert, either. But I've also heard hints that heavy-duty PC gaming type cards aren't the best for 3D apps like Poser.

Xenophonz, No latest graphic card supports gaming for display refresh and also for 3D or 2D professional film. I left links in other thread to the Nvidia pages where you may find more info what you may benefit from video card. Gweb

7 models? Geez, I am still at one, lol I figure by next year I'll be up to figuring out how to put some background into the scene ;)

"All I can say that you missed alot of good stuff in Poser6. I preordered and I will be very happy because it has the best light features in it for good renderer. There is only one it need to make perfect renderer is Aura, and thats all. It is sad to hear when you find disappoints in it because I don't see the same way." Gweb, it's cool that you are so supportive but don't you think you should try it before giving it such high praise? XENOPHONZ is there anywhere I could read about poser and Hyper Threading or is it just something that is generally known and accepted ? I haven't heard anything like that before now. I think I will e-mail Curious Labs and ask about it. Of course I am still waiting for their response to the questions I asked them a week before I pre-ordered :P I know they are busy though!

XENOPHONZ is there anywhere I could read about poser and Hyper Threading or is it just something that is generally known and accepted ?

No, it doesn't fall under the heading of "common knowledge". I've seen posts concerning HT/Poser and graphics cards/Poser in several other threads. But I can't specify which threads -- sorry.

However -- perhaps someone with more expertise on the subject can give you better help than I.

I guess the lights only concerns me for professional renderer use. I think can careless anything else. GWeb

Signing off for the night. I hope that you can get some of the issues worked out and enjoy P6 as much as others seem to. Meanwhile, I'm waiting

"But I've also heard hints that heavy-duty PC gaming type cards aren't the best for 3D apps like Poser." This is true. I've got one machine with a Quadro4 750 XGL (pro) and one with a GeForce FX 5200 (game). The GeForce GREATLY outperforms the Quadro4. On my pro card machine Scree3D was actually faster than OpenGL.

It sounds like you have alot of stuff in your PC in your that decreased your BUS bandwith. GWeb <= OpenGL Developer

XP Home, with all of the eye cany off too. I've got a Radeon 9600 Pro 256 MB, which isn't a bad card either, but when it comes to OpenGL and larger scenes it becomes very slow too. That's why I switched from OpenGL to SreeD Software preview to prevent this slowness from happening. I don't even dare to try switch OpenGL on again , but I tried anyway and it's slow). The Radeon Pro series are just home user cards, not pro-cards at all. If you really want to take advantage of OpenGL you're gouig to need a high end business card, not one of these cards geared at home users. But I would suggest switching to SreeD Software preview to see of it's still so slow. I do understand the advantages of OpenGL, but because it comes with such a price tag (slowness) I'll rather not use it.

OK so maybe my graphics card (which is heavy-duty) and the Hyper Threading Technology are detracting from my Poser 6 experience......... But...... I was using p5 sr4 on this same PC and I never had any issues where it crashed. I don't know what the most intense scene I ever set up was, but I remember a render with 4 Mil Dragons, the Greek Bath, a throng (at least 10) of v3s and m3's with LOTS of textures and morphs, all in different outfits, 4 pteradons (dedicated digital)and a 2 (WAY OVERLY THICKLY MESHED) .3ds files I made myself with very hi res textures, as well as an 800x600 background picture and several Vue exported landscapes as well as a forest of trees (which were reduced to a single model before import) and I had no problems posing. I did have some "warping" issues when I rendered, but those were easily fixed by turning the smoothing off. I just want to echo my sentiment that I think the pre-order which included Shade 7 was a very good deal, because I really do think that a service release or 2 will have me rendering happily again. But had I not got the pre-order deal, I would be fuming.

Try lowering the max texture size (in the firefly manual settings) to 1024 and see if that fixes your problem. Unless you're doing closeups you hopefully wont see much of a difference visually...

I think the title of your post is unfair. So P6 is not perfect at once, no. But this is a low-cost 3D app, and at the price it is incredibly powerful. CL is a small company trying to survive in a BIG world of software. I think they've done a damn good job with P6 - apart from a few issues they immediately promised to adress. Compare with P5 - now that was a disaster for 6 months. And no, the release was not 6 hours late. It was all of about 10 minutes late, actually :o) I know, I was there and DL'ed it. Oh, and when using GL, try switching to HW buffer in preview if you have SW on now. Or vice versa. People get different typres of results depending on various issues. But listen - you have a bunch of props, 4 (FOUR) unimesh figures - and they are all clothed. I for one am not at all surprised it slows down. That's how many figures total? And over a million vertices to move around? Try using M3 LoRes instead since they are after all clothed. Perhaps even Vicki. It should make a huge difference. The Gen3 LoRes figures are surprisingly good. Virtually no difference except in closeup. I have even made heavily morphed pinups (nude) out of V3 LoRes and no-one could see the difference. I have always had trouble with rendering a scene with multiple figures, through all versions of Poser. I always do several renders of different part of the scene (I make figures invisible in the scene temporarily) and then layer and put it back together in PShop. With no visible difference. :] Fish

My understanding of HT is that P5 was slowed down by it but P6 is supposed to have fixed that. Still on the fence myself about ordering - with download they should still send the box.

First of all Curious Labs is not a small company or even an American company anymore. People are thinking old school here. Ahh, the memories... Curious Labs is now owned by e-frontier, a Japanese company who main product is Shade which is the #1 selling 3D app in Japan. So is Curious Labs a small company. They used to be, but they are now part of a much bigger company. Why would they again release a product with know bugs in it. I think that it was to start promoting Shade which is being given away FREE. This is why e-frontier bought Curious Labs in the first place; to gain and promote their product (Shade) worldwide. Now who runs Curious Labs? This small company everyone is quick to defend... Hiroshi SATO CEO Since graduating Waseda University, Japan, in 1987 with a degree in law, Sato has accumulated his business experiences as a Venture Capitalist in Asian countries. With his background and experience, SATO specializes in managing the small but emerging company for future expansion. In 2002, he joined e frontier, Japan, as a Director. Following the acquisition of Curious Labs, Mr. SATO accepted his current role as CEO for Curious Labs, California. He now leads Curious Labs towards worldwide business and development to further expand the quality of 3D software solutions based on Poser and Shade technologies.

CL small, do you guys have any idea of how many copies of poser have been sold over the years? CL is a company like all others, struggling to bring out a great application, grant user wishes and yet do it in a reasonable timespan. That at times has it's costs, but like with P5 in the end I'm sure we all will have a solid application to work with. It's not that bad at all, there are a number of known issues which CL is working on.

"This small company everyone is quick to defend" LOL! That's a good one. I'm just tired of people screaming blue murder unreasonably. I'll defend anyone - including MS - if I think they're treated unfairly. Which is often the case. Well, CL has owners, sure. But they have to show results to those owners. And they are still REALLY small compared to Adobe, Sony, MS, Apple, Symantec, Oracle etc. :] Fish

CL is aware of the render problem, and is working on it.

Hyperthreading should not slow P6 down. It doesn't speed it up, either, but it no longer slows it down. (Poser 5 and below does run slower with hyperthreading.)

Geep, How well did it run in Poser 6? About the Shade products, I can't use it really because I hate the interface, it reminded me of old version in Lightwave. I am still in love with ZBrush and Carrara. GWeb

In Poser 6? Don't know ... don't have Poser 6 ... yet. I will try and remember to test it after I get P6 loaded. ;=]

CL = ~20 people = small E front = 146 people (across 6 companies) = still not real big if you consider each of the 6 companies "does their own thing"

I, myself, think that releasing Poser 6 with known bugs isn't such a bad idea. As long as it mostly runs good. The bug fixes can come later as they always appear in any software. The good thing is that Poser is being pushed forward. I bought Poser 5 and didn't install it until SR4 and I don't plan on installing Poser 6 till at least SR2. What about Daz Studio or Bryce 5.5? It seems that Daz can't get the product out. I would rather have a few bugs to work out than nothing at all. More people reporting their findings actually helps build SR's rather then the team trying to figure out all the problems and possible solutions themselves. Daz appears at a deadlock trying to solve all the bugs themselves and never being able to release the finished product. I remember when the annoucement of Bryce 5.5 was going to be released and Daz actully released a content CD for it with a coupon for $$$ off the upcoming release. When was this? Almost a year ago and still no release. I guess the coupon will be good whenever (if?) they are able to get it out the door. And Daz Studio? Still in beta...two years later! No, I think CL has done a great job in releasing Poser 6 even with the flaws. The fixes are coming. But what I do object to is calling it a small company. Is is now a Japanease company run by a Japanease CEO. Forget the old days of poor old small CL and smell the StarBucks. CL would like to support this image but the facts don't.

Funny that you mention DAZ..... I'm really happy that CL at least has the guts to release a piece of software to the mob (being us), DAZ doesn't even dare to release or predict a release when it comes to their software. I've been waiting for Bryce 5.5 a long time now and decided to stop waiting. Personally I do believe Bryce 5.5 is ready to go, but because DAZ has made the mistake of wanting integration with DAZ Studio in Bryce 5.5, Bryce cannot be released. DAZ Studio isn't ready to be released at all (as final application, not as beta), so Bryce cannot be released either. Imo, DAZ should have worked on Poser 5 or even 6 integration, then they could have got Bryce ready by now.

"That's pushing it - in several ways by FishNose on 3/30/05 03:05 I think the title of your post is unfair." What is unfair about the title? I AM unhappy with Poser 6. Eeverone is talking about curious labs as a company and comparing them to Daz and talking about how buggy Poser 5 was when it was first released. I have to be honest I don't see what any of that has to do with Poser 6 being "less than stable" I don't want to wait for 2 service releases before I use a product I just bought. Poser is not a new program. This is the 7th version of poser (counting Pro Pack) to make the shelves. I do agree that it is low-cost as 3d apps go, but it's also useable only in conjunction with another 3d app (like 3dsmax or shade) or with pre-built models like the ones sold here or on Daz or Poser Pros or RDNA etc etc. It doesn't actually let you "make" anything, just pose it. I am not saying that it's ill-concieved. I think the idea behind poser is a great one, and I think the price is reasonable (though I wouldn't go so far as to call it cheap or inexpensive considering what it does) for what it is, and I think by the time P5 sr4 was available Poser 5 became pretty stable. The reason I am unhappy is that Poser 6 seems decidedly LESS stable that p5 sr4 was. I think it would have been better to release the Product 3 months later with the bugs all fixed than to release the Product earlier with a statement that the Firefly renderer is buggy. Call me crazy if you want. When I said earlier that it was 6 hours late I didn't mean the download of the actual product, that was on time as far as I could tell ( I was a half hour late in checking for it and it was available then) I was referring to recieving my product activation key 6 hours after the product was released...... and as I stated earlier that wasn't bad at all, in fact I was expecting it to take a full day or even two days, which was what specified in my confirmation e-mail. As far as this goes: "But listen - you have a bunch of props, 4 (FOUR) unimesh figures - and they are all clothed. I for one am not at all surprised it slows down. That's how many figures total?" I want to state emphatically that I was able to load a lot more than that into Poser 5 sr4, and while it would get slow it would not crash during rendering. Dr. Geep I would LOVE to know how that million square model loads in P6 when you get a chance to try it. ( By the way i think that is very cool) :) Clearly there are a lot of opinions out there about this. I am just happy that I got Shade 7 free when I pre-ordered. It gives me something to do while I wait for Curious Labs to fix all these bugs...... .....and because it really was a fantastic deal to pre-order I am not really that upset. Had I not gotten the pre-order deal though, I would feel pretty slighted. And over a million vertices to move around?

re: the million square model ... I will have to look for it. (wish me luck) ;=] NaySayGuy might have taken it apart ... he's real good at doing that. cheers, dr geep ;=]

"But listen - you have a bunch of props, 4 (FOUR) unimesh figures - and they are all clothed. I for one am not at all surprised it slows down. That's how many figures total?" That is strange statement indeed, something, a remark someone would make years ago. With nowadays technology a scene like that shouldn't be a problem at all. A million vertices is hardly anything anymore. But, you have to take in consideration that most people never grow beyind using 1 or 2 figures and some props in Poser (just check out the galleries). To them 4 clothed people is a lot. Most of the poeple never use Poser beyond 1 hardly clothed figure and that isn't a challenge for a pc at all.

think it would have been better to release the Product 3 months later with the bugs all fixed than to release the Product earlier with a statement that the Firefly renderer is buggy. As I understand it, when the decision to make the CDs/final release version was made they were not aware of the bug in the rendering. The bug was identified after some investment was made. Stopping it would have cost more than they were willing to pay, so they let the release go forward, announced that the bug had been found and began work on the SR. The bad PR from complaints about a bug they know about and are fixing, is easier to deal with than the backlash they would get for delaying release (especially in light of the delays that P5 is said to have had) IMHO. By the number of complaints i have seen, the bug does not appear to be terminal for all users. I wont know how it effects me till friday. :)

I wont know how it effects me till friday. :)

I'm not particularly worried about it. They'll get the SR out in good time, I'm sure. And then we'll go from there.

In any case, I think that it's generally a bad idea to immediately delete an old version of a program (P5) before one has a chance to become somewhat familiar with the new version of the app (P6).

You never know for certain exactly what's in the offing......until you have a chance to experiment a bit. Even if everyone else seems to be reporting fantastic results with the newest release -- that doesn't mean that someone else won't experience hiccups along the way.

Best to hedge your bets.

Leave P5 installed until you've worked with P6 for a month or two, perhaps even updated it with an SR -- that would be my advice.

Well for me P6 appears to work as well as P5 but with new features. Now that can be good or bad. I think its bad sicne there have been plenty of open issue bugs reported to CL that weren't fixed in P6. The render pipeline issue of not reporting bugs is a good one. At least provide a switch we can turn on that creates a log of events so we can trace what mesh or what texture actually locked the system. Also cancel is a complete mystery to me. You're cancelling a render. How hard is that to stop? Why is there a delay of any significance and why a crash when cancelling. The system stops rendering, it dumps the memory it was rendering into then returns. But the fact the renders cannot be absolutely stopped tells me that Poser is losely communicating with Firefly and is not tightly bound to the rendering engine. My disappointment is that certain glaring bugs should have been fixed. P6 still doesn't remember directory paths you visited when loading multiple morphs. Its dialoging system still suffers from focus loss and being able to bring up other dialogs in places you shouldn't. A lot of things that should have easily been fixed but weren't. In all I'd say for the price P6 is worth the upgrade because of the new lights and features. But the simple bug fixes are not costly and should have been fixed. I don't see an excuse for those. Only thing can figure is the original programming staff left and no one knows how to shoe horn open the system to fix it.

I would like to test that out myself on my system. Is that pnuScale100.obj available here for download?

I'll post it. ;=]

InfoCentral,

The object file is ~120MB.

I have zipped it and it is still ~20MB and is still too big to put on my website.

If you would like to send me an email:

geep@cableone.net

I will try to email a copy of the zip file.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Standard email limit size is between 10 to 20 mb GWeb

I have a huge email account Dr Geep........... I also have plenty of very fast webspace and bandwith is not an issue if you want to post it :) PM me if you are interested..... I would LOVE to try that :)

How about posting it in the download area here on Renderosity? Or is this not a good idea?