Now I know there's a big hoopla about P6, and from all that I have read in different threads I have gathered that it's a great application, but is it simple to use? Does it take up too much space? About a week ago I installed the copy of P5 I got as a Christmas present from my Girlfriend, and I found it very complicated and confusing to use (and I have degrees on EET, CET, and Graphic Design), it also kept freezing my new MONSTER 3.6 GHZ PC ( I know you guys are going to say it's a memory issue but I have about 2048 Gigs of DDR RAM.), and having to switch rooms for texturing, posing and applying hair is very tedious; is P6 that bad or is it better? (After a week of the P5 hassle, I went back to P4 Propack)

P4 seems to be much easier. P5 is a pain to me .. P6 seems to be more powerful but it has a few things that I like that make it more P4 like (The "Simple" material room etc) but P4 is still easier.

applied the service releases to P5? I'm currently straddled between shiny new P6 and trusty ol'P4. Because of the HUGE difference in capability, P6 is accordingly more complicated and is going to take a while to get comfy with. I've noticed though, that you can kinda "dumb it down" eliminate or turn off options, to reduce it somewhat back to the state of familiar P4. I did not have P5, but from the reactions I've seen in the communities, P6 would seem to be a little friendlier to use. Is that a fair assesment from you folks that had both?

Don't have P6 so I'll stick to the P5 bit... IMO, P5 is every bit as easy as P4 if you just want to stay with P4 style renders. Like anything else, learning to use new things is always a bit of a trial at first. The Material Room is worth getting to know in P5. It will make a critical difference in the look of your images if you take the time to get to know what's going on in there. I don't mean you should learn every single node, nor every single option; just get a good general idea of what to plug in where and you'll be good to go. Play around with the render options, too. IMO, the whole "Production" render option is a total waste of time. You really don't need it. It's a preset, and not a very good one at that. Stick with Draft renders and play around with the bits and pieces until you find a render style which suits your needs. Example - I always go for Ray Tracing, Pixel samples set to .5, Displacement off (unless I'm actually using it), Raytrace bounces at default value, Texture Resolution at 2048, and I render at least twice the finished size. This may not be what you want for your images but it works for me. I've not yet used the Face Room (I hardly ever use Don or Judy), The Hair Room (transmapped hair works fine for me) or the Cloth Room (I have some dynamic clothes but ain't used 'em yet). Similarly, I never used the Setup Room in P4PP, so there's no big loss to me there, either. IMO, P5 is a piece of cake... in the way I use it. Same applies with any app. Some people make the mistake of trying too much too soon, like picking up a guitar for the first time and hoping you'll play like Steve Vai immediately. It ain't gonna happen. You can get used to using the advanced features if you want to apply yourself in a disciplined manner.

Yes, The library structure is 200% better. Also P6 opens up, when pointed to same librarys as P4 in ~1 minute as opposed to ~5 minutes (50GB Runtime) Which is easier openening up a new (texture room) room with one click or Menu/Render/Materials. Try adjusting a dress to a sitting figure in P4, even if the dress is designed for it! Althoug there are a few steps to posing dynamic clothing, the first time you do it it's magic. Also you can save "Mat" files you have created in the material room, directly from P6 - try that in P4 If feel P6 lighting kills P4 lighting dead. Downside: Doesn't work in Vue (yet) and Hasn't got a box, in the material room, to apply materials to all material zones at once. I am on a P4 2.6GHZ with 1GB of ram and must admit I havn't tried any complex scenes yet although in P4 I tend to composite the Poser renders in a Paint program or Render Poser figures in Vue. Also I havn't played with procedural textures yet. I didn't like P5 and stayed with PP however I think P6 is great. Richard

P6 is easy, nothin' to sweat about.

As of right now, I use poser 4 pp, and poser 5. After reading many of the p6 threads, I have decided to hold off on purchasing it until it's a bit more stable. I find that P4 is easier to use mainly due to the fact that it loads much faster and has better response times on my old system.(PII, 416mhz, 300megs ram). But when it comes to the directory structure, p5 can't be beat. Just about everything I have for content is installed to my poser 4, with my P5 pointing to that runtime. I don't render with either one, but when I have to, I find the P5 renderer to be easier to use, and the material nodes can come in handy now and then. I might think differently when I get P6, but for now I stick with my P4pp.

"The Material Room is worth getting to know in P5. It will make a critical difference in the look of your images if you take the time to get to know what's going on in there." Um, this isn't optional. Unless you use only pre-made MAT poses you will HAVE to learn the P5 Materials Room. On the rest, I agree; you can skip hair, dynamic cloth, and the content parasite, use just render presets and the thing becomes pretty much P4 with a different-shaped window (and better renders). The dynamic cloth, tho, is also "worth getting to know." It is very confusing at first and the manual is no great help. Go with Dr. Geep's tutes instead. But once you figure out how the cloth room is organized you'll get quickly used to it -- and you'll find yourself reaching for dynamic cloth on every image. From my perspective, the major learning hurdle in P5 is a lack of consistent GUI standards. Different rooms have striking differences in metaphor and layout, and different pop-up windows have different behaviors as well. It isn't as smoothly integrated as the main work area in P4. Other than that, the core concepts you need to learn are about the same for both programs. If you are starting from scratch, neither is remarkably easier or more difficult than the other.

>Unless you use only pre-made MAT poses you will HAVE to learn the P5 Materials Room.

Note: P6 has a "simple" tab in the materials room. you don't have to jump head first into material nodes or confine yourself to premade stuff.

Message edited on: 04/16/2005 17:24

That's handy. Let me note for the record, tho, that I confined my remarks to Poser5 -- I haven't put 6 through its paces yet.

Attached Link: http://fnproductions.net/graphics/tutorials/poser6/

Also P6 can save multiple materials to one file replacing Mat files in the pose folder completely. As for the questions tho... Every room is worth getting to know in both p5 and p6. Having said that it will take a lot of work to really get to know these rooms. You can dumb both p5 and p6 down. However why spend the money for only slightly better renders if you don't take advantage of these other features? If all you want is point click render stick with p4. If you want that with slightly better renders get you have to dumb down p5 and p6.