I was looking for reviews pertaining to Poser 6 (P6) and figured why not contact DAZ since thier tech support folks, all two of them, have been pretty good to me - even helping me with Poser 5 issues when I could not reach Curious Labs. In speaking to DAZ, I was told they could not guarantee compatibility between thier products and Poser 6. My main model is The GIRL, but something about an instance where Vicky 3 would not load into P6...?

Can anyone confirm or deny the compatibility of P6 with DAZ material (specifically for me The GIRL) or have any opinions on P6 been formed as of yet. Also, it was further explained that Bryce is similar to Shade. Any input on that would be appreciated as well.

If you're asking if DAZ figures work in P6, yes they do. But "compatibility" can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What in particular are you concerned about?

DAZ said the same thing about P5. All the DAZ stuff I have works just fine in P5 (except the Mihai Hair, which was a waste of money), it's just that DAZ doesn't know how to use the material room to make things REALLY P5 compatible. DAZ seems happy to build their products with specs from software that's six years old and two versions past obsolete. As for the Bryce/Shade comparison, I'm not sure who told you that, but it sounds like they've never used either product. Bryce is primarily a landscape creation and rendering program. There are some modelling features, but it's primary purpose is environments. Shade, on the other hand, is first and foremost a modelling program rather than a landscap generator. If the comparison was Bryce/Vue I could see that basis for it, but Bryce and Shade are nothing alike, in my experience.

I don't have The GIRL, but if I understand correctly, something about it relied on the crosstalk bug in P4, which (again IIRC) was corrected in one of the P5 SRs. This may be why DAZ is saying "no promises." I've yet to have any problem with any DAZ products in P5 or P6 that couldn't be fixed quickly. The only issue I've experienced was legacy MAT files not attaching bump maps properly. Very easy to fix in the Materials Room. I really wouldn't worry too much about DAZ/P6 compatibility. If you run into a serious problem that has no workaround, you can request a refund from DAZ within 30 days of purchase "no questions asked."

If someone can elaborate on the GIRL problems, please help. Have workarounds been established?

The mil3 figures (including the GIRL) apparently use ERC and JCM's that depend on the "bug" in P4. These won't work properly in P5 n P6. Also some of the clothing for the mil3 figures depends on this same 'bug' to match the figures. Over all I haven't seen the lack, but since I haven't used any thing but P5 since it came out I admit I might be missing something. mike

AFAIK, the crosstalk bug applies to a lot of DAZ stuff, particularly conforming clothes. It's easy to get round it by copying and pasting morphs from the figure to the clothes. This, however, doesn't work on early (V1 ans V2) clothes, since they used to prefix the clothes morphs with a letter, thereby making them named differently.

Re crosstalk, also look at Hogsoft's free Crosstalker, which will do the 2 seemingly contradictory functions of enabling crosstalk in P5 when you need it, and disabling it in P4/PP when you don't want it! Yep, the 2 bugs (well technically one must be a feature, and the other a bug - but there's no consensus amoung pees as to which is which ;-) are so similar that the same technique can be use for both.

I've got my P6 yesterday and the first thing i found, that it has major problems with DAZ V3-tunic and pants. Those work when opened and conformed, but loading a scene or cr2 file with a V3 clothed with tunic/pants makes p6 crash during load or render :-(((( Otherwise p6 seems to work fine so far, much better than the first release of P5. I think it is a problem, that DAZ used some 'undocumented features' of the previous Poser versions. I can only hope that DAZ updates their stuff, that it is usable in P6, too

I suppose that must be a backwards compatibilty of Poser 6 to Poser 4, but any product based on bugs or undocumented features probably will not be compatible.

I can only hope that DAZ updates their stuff, that it is usable in P6, too Agreed, but they haven't seemed to so far. And it's up to daz to be compatible with poser, not the other way around.

Yes, i know - therefore i didn't ask CL to do so. Unfortunatelly DAZ and CL have become more and more unfriendly competitors, so i also know, that there is not much hope that things will be fixed :-((

Okay, You guys are assuming this has to do with the competition aspect. How about this... Poser 6 came out what 2 weeks ago? Daz has had the same amount of time to play with it as anyone else. SOooo... Given the above facts there is no way HUMANLY possible to guarantee compatibility when you don't even know the program you are being asked to guarantee compatibility too. What is needed is a good dose of patience... IT would be stupid from a legal and ethical standpoint to guarantee anythng so soon.

If they would cooperate, DAZ would be have involved during the development, so that they could update their stuff in time. But of course CL would be quite stupid to give a competitor an early glimpse to their update, no one would do this. But you are right: we only can wait and hope.

what do you think DAZ's gonna do? keep updating their figures to make them work with each new poser release? do you realize the money and the workload that would entail? I doubt they'll do it. the more advanced CL tries to get with Poser the harder it is going to be for their DAZ figures like V3 to keep working together with CL's sofware.

Well, CL is responsible for keeping their product compatable with Windows or MacOS, as is Adobe, or anyone else who makes software.

As a programmer i also would sometimes like to kill someone at microsoft, when i'm forced to make an old software compatible to the newest version. Until their own DAZ-studio is not a real match for Poser, they get their money from Poser-users, if they like it or not. So they are forced to make their products compatible, if they don't want to be kicked out of business. So i think, the only question is, how long they need to do so and if they give away those updates for free. I'm quite confident that they do so, because DAZ always was fair in their business in the past.

As someone mentioned previously, the folks at DAZ didn't get to see Poser 6 until the day it was released. There is a LOT to learn in this new release, and you can't learn it in one night. In fact, you're talking quite a while to learn about all of the additions and changes and how they relate to each other. As far as updating products to be P6 compatible, there is a lot more stuff created by independent merchants that are in the same state as the DAZ stuff. The main reason that people make things Poser 4 compatible is because it's the lowest common denominator and that way they know it will work for everyone. If it went the other way around and everyone made their products compatible with P5 and P6 only, those who use P4, Pro Pack, or DAZ Studio would be very unhappy about it. So you go with the solution that would benefit most people.

So i think, the only question is, how long they need to do so and if they give away those updates for free. I'm quite confident that they do so, because DAZ always was fair in their business in the past. I'd like to add a bit more about this to put something else in perspective. I recently created a set of textures for an upcoming product (yeah, for DAZ! LOL). It took me a full day to create the necessary library files (MAT poses, thumbnails, etc) and test them for P4, Pro Pack, P5 and P6 compatibility. I will do that for any product that I make that involves textures and that will work across all Poser versions. Promise. Now ... looking through the DAZ store, I call up the items that are considered DAZ originals. It comes up with 528 items. Being that one texture set took me a day to verify compatibility with all Poser versions, it would take one person a year to a year and a half to update all of those items. That means they would have to hire a person full time to do just that ... or take one of their existing people away from what they are already doing. So it will cost them a year and a half of someone's salary to do all those updates. With no guarantee that it will increase sales enough to pay for that person's salary, because folks would probably hope for free updates. That's why it's easier for an independent merchant to do the updates. They don't have to worry about paying someone else, only themselves. There are an increasing number of PA's that ARE supporting P5 stuff, so I expect you'll see multi-version compatibility in newer DAZ stuff. But it might be optimistic to expect updates of older stuff because it does take a LOT of time to create and test in all other versions.

Luckily some merchants have a group of beta testers that run a full range of OS's and programs. My friend who is waiting on her first release has all the programs covered from p4 to p6 and D|S. That is when you will start seeing more merchants stating that their product is p6 compatibable. The reverse is true however, not every merchant is going to have this benefit.

Right ... so it isn't necessarily a "conspiracy" or "battling with competition" that is the reason why we haven't seen P5 or P6 support. I had problems running P5 on my computer until SR4. Poser 6 is working fine for me. Because Poser 6 is better than Poser 5 (IMHO), I think we'll see a change.

@Deecey i agree, that they cannot update each of their products. As far as i found so far, it is not necessary, because most of them are running fine in P6. I only think at the 'standard products' like V3Tunic, pant and similar. Those clothes have a lot of value for DAZ, because they are not only selling the 'plain sets', but also numerous texture sets. So updating Tunic/pant would allow them to sell not one, but a dozen or more products to P6-users. BTW i wonder, that not more people are telling about such incompabitilities. Maybe it is not a general bug with V3pants and tunic, but a damaged file on my system? I would be interested, if this problem also happens to other people, and maybe if there are more problems with other products. Or are there easy workarounds, cr2-editing? I have the verdict, that this new 'center-of-mass'-part could be the source of the problem.

Or it could be your video drivers. It could be anything. Have you updated your drivers lately? Also have you check for a products update from Daz? What is your system specs? Also detail the exact steps you used for the picture to see if the crash can be replicated. Hpdrag, just by going from what little you have posted I would say the problem is your end. Not Curious Labs and not Daz... I just rendered a picture as I was typing this message. It has V3 with all morphs, the tunic, pants and boots. No crash. Spec: Acer Travelmate Laptop 768 mb ram Intel Celeron Processor Win XP home sp2 ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 Runtime over 5gb on an external 120 gb HD

Okay, here my specs: Maxdata Processor: GenuineIntel 3,1 Ghz ASUS-Bios 2 Gig Ram 60 Gig diskspace free on swapdisk Video: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, 64 mb RAM i have to add that i'm a power user, that means i have a lot of rather huge scenes at the limits that poser5 could render. i loaded one of those scenes in p6 (2 V3, 2 M3LE, all clothed, some easy background stuff, 3 lights). This should become the first serious test of p6. Loading and OpenGL-Preview worked fine. But the render locked up while 'loading textures', the render window became gray and nothing happened for a long time. I reduced the scene, checked all texture stuff and so on, and so some hours of work later i found, that the only problem were V3Tunic and pant - without those everything worked fine. I made another test: one V3, one Tunic, one pant; conformed the clothes, and it rendered without any problem. Then i saved this V3 with clothes to the library as cr2. When i try to import this cr2, i always run in one of two problems (randomly): 1. poser locks and doesn't show anything; it's ctrl+alt+del-time or 2. poser opens the file, but the clothes are shifted along the x-Axes away from the V3 and seem to have one point somewhere at x->infinity. Poser locks as soon as if i try to move the camera or select anything. ctrl+alt+del-time again Did you make a new scene and rendered this, or did you import a v3 that is clothed with pants/tunic? I don't think that it is anything on my system, because meanwhile i have done some serious tests with p6. Beside of the wellknown memory bug :-(((, i don't have problems with it. I really can say, that once this bug is corrected, i will love Poser6 - compared with the first P5-version it is like heaven :-).