After stuggling with P6 with number of its issues. The new features are great but the rendering / memory issues have made me go back to my faithful P5.

Even after installing the latest update successfully had the same problems in some of my friends cases things got worse.

I feel I have waisted my money. CL should first fully test the product prior to releasing the product. Their sole intrest is to market the product quickly due to diminshing sales.

To the staff at CL when are you going to release the service pack to resolve the current issues?

Message edited on: 04/16/2005 02:09

I'm really sorry to hear that you've got all these problems and are forced to go back P5. I don't think P6 is a waste of money at all, in due time a service pack will be released. "Even after installing the latest update successfully had the same problems in some of my friends cases things got worse." The problems couldn't have gotten worse after the update, since it only updated the P6 content (clothes & figures) and the problems related to that. The update wasn't a service release, it doesn't take care of any of the bugs, it doesn't do anything to the application itself.

No offence, I spent hard earned money like many others to what was marketed about the product. I want a fully functioning product to what was advertised.

I really want to use my P6 with all its new features but I am not happy after emailing CL and posting my earlier posts here.

Its like you saying, after buying a new car, I drive the car up a hill, the two back wheels fall off beacuse the car manufacturer failed to put in a vital component and that okay beacuse the it has nice features. That's not right at all!

I just want to know when will we be expecting this update. Not to much to ask ??

aeilkema is correct, the update was just a content fix. What exactly are you have trouble with? Maybe someone here could offer some advice. I think more people have P6 now than all those who had P5 anf most of my friends seems happy and excited. Some problems I have heard of are with older hardware but nothing too horrible. I have dual PentiumII's, a discontinued Radeon 7200, on Windows 2000. Basically my system is years old now. hehehe. I'm happy, but I can appreciate how frustrating new software/hardware can be. I heard that they really listened to their beta team this time around. I would try to hang in there, take a deep breath, and see if it is possible to narrow down where the problem is. I know there is alot of data they have collected and are addressing. Sympathy, hope, and regards, Anton

Dimension, I understand how you feel. I expected some bugs, but the memory bug is terrible. If you're not careful, it can nuke hours of work. It kind of annoys me that they knew about a problem this serious, but went ahead with the release, just to keep the schedule. At the very least, they should have warned people. In big, red, screaming letters.

I am sure they will fix it, and when they do, this will be terrific piece of software for the price. In the mean time, I've gone back to P5 as well, at least when I want to do any serious work.

And I'm sure CL is working as fast as they can to fix it. I hope they take their time and do it right this time.

Strange, from all I read here, poser 6 almost sounds like a demo where you can't save your work? Good things take time. If they were to rush a fix now and it caused more problems or did not fix it all, I'm sure that would be really bad and make for many locked threads. Better they take the time and effort to make certain the fix will make poser 6 the quality everyone is expecting it to be. Sounds like it will be a fine program once completed. Most users love what is already there. Like a big juicy slab of prime rib, the smell is there, the taste is awsome, but it wasn't cooked enough, have patience if you want perfection. Most people here were pushing and pushing to get it out, maybe that's why they rushed the darn thing to the table. Would the screaming have been louder if it was not released yet due to possible bugs? Too many were drooling so much they just wanted poser 6 no matter what!

Too many were drooling so much they just wanted poser 6 no matter what!

I don't think that's true. People learned their lesson from last time. The announcement of P6 came a surprise to most of us here; we hadn't really expected it so soon. When they said "Spring," a lot of us assumed it would be May, not March. Someone may have been putting pressure on CL to get it out no matter what, but it wasn't us.

You may be right, although I'm sure I saw a few droolers. If I were Curious labs, and once the fix were developed properly, I would perhaps consider adding a little special something extra, whether another surprise character or add-on or prop or morph targets for the new poser people, just to say thank you to all those that love this program enough to have patience and understanding and courtesy and believe in it with such a passion. How many softwares and even games, no matter how awsome or great the developers, come out without any bugs or notorious easter eggs? Some people actually look for them once they buy the stuff and get disappointed if there isn't some cool loophole or disjointed problem. Maybe something really positive will come from this memory leak issue in that whatever update will happen, will not only fix the leak, but foxxy up the program too and make it spectacular instead of great!

You have no idea how glad I am that I saved my money and used it on DAZ figures instead. You 'all' drooled. I read the posts. You all couldn't wait to blow your money on a new release. There's an old saying: there's a sucker born every minute. Sorry, but it's true. Too many people here are now running into trouble with P6 and switching back to the old versions. You diehards just don't want to admit that this P6 version has been the worst yet. (my humble opinion)

Message edited on: 04/16/2005 09:39

Nah, P6 is really promising. Possibly the best Poser ever, and far from the worst. A lot of people who didn't like P5 love P6. It just has one, huge, PITA flaw. Which I am confident that they will fix.

We did all drool...but that was after they announced the release. They knew about the bug by then. If they hadn't announced the release, no one would have been drooling.

Me, I still consider it money very well spent. It was only $60. For that price, I'm willing to wait for it to be stable.

I don't believe it is the worst yet, not for a moment. Even Poser 4, which was the biggest breakthrough for poser ever, (just look how BIG it got), it also had it's bigtime problems for a long time. Big example, you could work for hours on something and end up with spaghetti for all your effort at the end, twisted, dismembered noodles spatted together in knots!! Now, people here do that deliberatly to get in the hot twenty, lol! No really. Your being a bit hard on folks here saying it's so bad. I'm sure the people that pre-purchased will get the last laugh once a fix is done because of the savings. Poser 4 was a lemon for some time, it's the people using it and enjoying it and really putting there all into it that made it so great and also made it possible for poser 6 to happen! For a while there no one thought poser 5 would ever be at all when metacreations went bye-bye. Let's not stone effort and devotion and great possibilities that are surely there now more than ever. Poser 4 became a shining star from being a lost asteroid. Poser 6 can be a shining galaxy..

"You diehards just don't want to admit that this P6 version has been the worst yet." You seem to appear in EVERY thread like this one, but I have never seen you in a thread discussing features or threads that compliment the software in any way. Hmmmm. To quote the original poster: "The new features are great but the rendering / memory issues have made me go back to my faithful P5." He's experiencing some frustrating problems with the notorious "memory bug", which is going to be fixed in the next SR. However, people seem to be experiencing this problem in varying degrees. For instance, I lost 1 pz3 scene to it so far, but that's just one in dozens of successful scenes/renders. Everything in my gallery so far has been all P6 produced works. According to your logic, EVERYONE that has something good to say about P6 are all just 'diehards' blowing smoke, and everyone having bad problems are the only ones telling the honest truth?? Please. That makes no sense. Dimension_X, I understand your frustration, and I don't blame you. I hope the SR1 gets released very soon, so we can put an end to the very annoying problems some people are going through with the software.

Sometimes when you see litter on a street it doesn't bother you near as much as if and when someone comes along and does a dance and song and heckle about the littering. Some people just like to accentuate the awfulnesses of stuff and life, much like reporters do everyday, especially in tabloids. Melodrama galore is what news and people are all about most of the time, or we would not have any news and tabloids would not have market. Suppose if no one really stomped on poser 6, it might not be near as interesting, sometimes all the heckling and booing makes it even more popular than ever. Maybe if they just admitted that there is a two headed demon baby character in poser 6 that is causing all the mayhem and weirdness and this program just needs to be excorcised but the Pope funeral was more important this past week so no one had time to do it yet, instead of hiding the awful truth!!

"Some people just like to accentuate the awfulnesses of stuff and life, much like reporters do everyday, especially in tabloids.... Maybe if they just admitted that there is a two headed demon baby character in poser 6 that is causing all the mayhem and weirdness ..." Lorna, you just made the SMARTEST comment I've seen in this forum. Ever. It won't stop the Awful-o-maniacs, of course.

One of the apparent causes of the Memory Bug is rendering on Default Firefly settings. Apparently Texture Filtering is one of the root causes. Me, I always switch over to Manual Settings and am able to render a scene using 2 Unimesh, One DM background setting with lights, 1 Sixus1 monster, Clothing, morphs and still rarely see the memory bug. In fact my P6 is EVEN MORE STABLE than P5 SR4... I literally forced the memory bug to occur by trying to render a 4 unimesh scene with one of Kawecki's background props, Stonemason's Sci-Fi containers, lights, morphs, and other assorted props and textures. I think the memory bug can be annoying, but there are ways around it. This is just someone that wants what they want, when they want it, and will trash anyone that doesn't agree with them.

Nah, I think she's someone who dearly wishes she had Poser 6 herself. She doesn't, so now she's trashing it. "Wouldn't want it anyway, it's a piece of trash." IOW, sour grapes.

As a developer myself, I know that cretaing stable software is very hard to do. This is because people tend to use it in a zillion different ways and if a developer would test all these conditions then it might take a few years before someone might release a program, but by then the program would probably cost 10 times more. Now that Poser 6 has been released, the developers will listen about the bugs people discover and I have no doubt that they will fix them soon. Any professional that uses software should realize that if they need predictable results, then they should not use the latest release of software, but stick to a previous more stable release until the new one becomes more stable. And also before you create professional content at least test the new tools ou get. So why would people use the latest version of programs? Well curiosity is one thing, but also trying out things so you are prepared by the time you transit from Poser 5 to Poser 6. I lover Poser 6, even whith the bugs, I still can create content, and I use Poser 5 for predictable results.

I step back on my render options. Other than that I have ZERO problems working with, rendering in POSER 6.

this is my first weekend with Poser6. Some buggy quirks spotted. Jessi's head bend/twist/sidetoside dials misnamed! Odd IK/nonIK behaviors. "Use limits" unusually limiting. Using 'hard-hat' rules...frequent save and frequent pz3 incrementing. No sign of memory problem yet. Firefly animation render with 1 normal Jessie, strand hair, conforming dress and one of PhilC's models, shadow map lights....progressing speedily and successfully all night long. Strand hair is a major WOW! More later. ::::: Opera :::::

Putting a book mark at all similar threads. Have P5....works great since I got my new computer...waiting to see if and when I should buy P6.

I just had a really weird incarnation of the memory bug, unrelated to rendering. In fact, I hadn't rendered at all. I was running sims in the cloth room. Suddenly, I got a message that said "you are running out of memory, please restart soon" or something along those lines. And the file was nuked. In very odd manner, too. The only thing I could see was the dynamic top I'd been working on. The figure, the other clothing, the jewelry and hair, etc. - all gone. They showed in the heirarchy menu, and they showed in selection menu, but I could not get them to be visible. I started over again from scratch, and everything's fine.

Even with as much as I've had to say about the memory bug -- I heartily endorse P6 above and beyond all other versions of Poser.

Whenever P6 gets the fix for this one MAJOR issue, then it'll be like a Saturday afternoon with friends.

Or like a Saturday night.........

Don't misread me.

No one "fell for" anything when they bought Poser 6. It's got the potential. It's up to Curious Labs to fully unleash that potential.

Then we'll fly.

Even with the specter of the memory bug leering over my shoulder, I can still do things with P6 that I never would have dreamed of doing with P4/P5.

Believe me, I completely understand the frustration with the software. I have experienced it in operation myself -- although not quite to the degree that some of you have.

This bug seems to have differing effects on different people.

For a few individuals, the memory bug makes P6 almost impossible to use at all.

For others, the bug causes rendering problems with only 1 or 2 figures in a scene. While others of us have to go up to 3 or 4 figures with clothing, etc. before we see the problem.

Some people report corrupted files; others of us haven't had that happen.

A few individuals have files lock-up on them during posing. But most of us haven't seen the problem crop up anywhere except during renders.

And -- there are others that tell us that they've had no problems at all.........

.........must be nice.

But my advice would be to buy the software. To buy P6, that is.

Drooling? That's hard not to do. Especially once you've had the chance to get a hint of what Poser 6 can do for you.

After that, even thinking about going back to P5 would be like thinking about moving back into my old college apartment..........no, thanks.

Message edited on: 04/16/2005 16:40

maxxxmodelz, I will admit and I am diehard user and I and other artist I know are frustrated with P6 and its problems.

obaeyens, I apriciate your comments as a developer, however the issue is not a zillion method to use Poser. The cruts of the problem is the artist who want to render their work which is highly detailed trying to use all the new features P6 has to offer than its predecessor. Part of the same problem CL as a developer looks like approached one type of artist who creates scenes using 1 to 3 characters with standards scenes and props.

Not Demanding artist creating very complex scenes using in excess of 3 figures and higly detailed scenes and props (this fit my criteria). This is where P6 fails either in Firelfy or Poser 4 rendering.

In addtion to this did you all know if you use P5 is not forward compatible with P6. Which is also a dilema and very frustrating. CL I feel will have to release a further SP for P5 to resolve this issue as Merchants will begin to have problems.

I willing to offer my services to CL as a beta tester to test any forthcoming release of Poser range to assist CL as a demanding Artist prior to release of their forthcoming product range.

It works just fine for me.

I have to agree that CL was damned near stupid to release an excellent bit of software with such a blatently obvious memory issue, ok software is release with glitches and errors but not one of this magnitude, I have a funny feeling that CL don't really understand the memory side of poser that well, as even P5 had memory issues, what with the memory leek that it had,and now i can't even do hi res renders in P6.... But as soon as this major bug is fixed i will be happy, But the real question is WHEN ARE WE GOING TO SEE THE FIRST SERIAL FIX??????? I AM WAITING... STILL...

One thing I want to see. Once this 'bug' is fixed I want to see lots of high rez quality pictures of poser BUGS in the gallery!! Cockroaches, spiders, ants, bees, you name it! And naked!!! Maybe with bug swords and bug temples, and do they make bug boob morphs? A poser 6 bug gallery anybody?

I had p4 and never had p5, though I envied what i saw of it, at the time money was too tight to get it. I saved my lil pennies, and yes, got the pre-order of p6 and couldn't wait to get it in my hot little hands. In a nutshell.. P6 makes P4 look like a tinker toy. P6 has had some minor problems, mostly freezing up in the simulation in the cloth room. No render problems, and the freeze up was just twice probably because i was asking from it a hurculean task. you see, I am "learning" P6 as its a whole other entity from P4. I'm sure P6 groans at my mistakes :). On the whole though, things that did NOT work in P4 regularly work on P6. I no longer get the dread "obj not found" error i got constantly or the mid render freeze up and lockup of my whole computer that i did before. Nothing like P4 adding in just a shoe, and everything you just have worked on for hours goes buh bye with that obj error, yeesh. Even with the error, I loved P4, and love P6 even better... Though I'm stupid and still cant figure half of it out :)

I started with P5 and never had P4. Like you Tiari, I tried to get it to do things it was probably not designed to do. A good many of Poser's problems are user related I think :) But I got past most of those issues and now P5 works really well. I just don't have the time right now, to deal with new bugs or new stupidity on my part :) I figure if I wait awhile, they will eventually patch P6 a time or two and then all I have to deal with is my stupidity....not Poser's :)

I'm sure the people that pre-purchased will get the last laugh once a fix is done because of the savings. Nah, CL got the first and last laugh on us.

"Nah, CL got the first and last laugh on us." That would be so true if CL was a fly by night company or some once in a blue moon software company that just threw out a software or game and then disappeared. That does happen, leaving many disgruntled consumers. But that's not the case here. CL knows what it has here. Lots of devoted poser users, hobbyists and professional artists that really cherish the tool they provide, which means lots of potential for a LOT more business and noteriety for CL that I'm sure they cherish. If they choose to throw all that away, it's they're loss, but I believe they just need time and patience. I don't think they're laughing, if anything, they are probaby thinking hard on a fix because they know there not going to be selling much of anything very soon if they don't. Poser dork was a laugh, so was demon baby, this memory problem isn't funny unless people keep making it into a mockery and shooting down the app because of this, giving it a bad rep before it even has a good start and a cure.

I have no doubt at all that the Poser developers are very hard busy to fix that bug. But first they must determin where the bug is located (and it seems to be in the Texturing part), then they must understand what is causing it. And this is not always caused by their program but might be caused of a video card bug (I am using ATI now and I have that bug). So fixing it would mean to find a workaround for that driver bug. And hopfully they don't have to rewrite big parts. Another problem is they fix that bug, they need to retest the whole program, including this bug type. And this can take time because fixing this could cause affect other parts. One thing that could be a good thing is to let experienced users use their beta program and give feed-back before they finally releases it. I too create image processing software and program OpenGL VR stuff for CT-Scanners, and I can say that the people working at Poser does a very great stuff. Very impressive.

The issue might also be in Firefly, not Poser itself. Which would involve the vendor who codes Firefly in the fix. There was a major version upgrade between P5 and P6...and texture filtering is 100% Firefly...

I don't know about the people that are doing the loudest complaining, but if you adjust your work habits, including not using default Firefly settings, it works beatifully. But hey, I'm a CL cheerleader...(NOT) =P

I've found I have to exit P6 regularly, and even then, I need to make incremental backups under different filenames. Sometimes I have no textures applied and haven't even rendered once since starting Poser, and the memory bug nukes my files. Usually when I'm running hair or cloth sims.

But I still like P6, and consider it money well spent. Assuming they fix this bug, of course, which I'm confident they will.

The problem isn't that P6 is a bad piece of software, it's Curious Labs (and eFrontier?) that's the problem. This is the second time they've done things "on the cheap" by getting the users to test their software for them - after it's been released. Any company that develops software should have a separate Quality Assurance group that does proper unit testing on the software and the distribution media contents prior to any release (this goes for service packs too!). I'm a developer and that's the only way to make the client happy. No matter how many pretty features you give the user, it doesn't mean anything if they can't use them (or they're just plain not on the CD)! Granted, a good number of people here aren't having problems, but there seem to be sufficient numbers to indicate CL dropped the ball. This isn't as bad as it was with P5's release (I had to wait for 2 service releases before I could even run the darn thing!), but this memory issue and many others should have been caught before releasing it. I have no doubt CL will eventually fix the problems, but as for why they released it when they did? Probably goes back to rule #1 of business logic: "If it makes sense, don't do it." Cheers, Bonzai Gopher

update: (see post 19 above) Now rendering second run on my animation, moderate load, all P6. 1 normal Jessi with conforming dress, strand hair with no dynamics running, substantial Pnil-C model, Realism Shaders applied, two shadow map lights, .02 min shading rate, 720x402. First run of 430 frames: no lock up, slow down, wierdness or faliure. 5-hour re-animation session, no problems. Second render now 6 hours old no problems. Reallistically, you guys won't see this thing 'til mid week. ::::: Opera :::::

The memory issue was caught before they released it. They decided to go ahead with the release any way.

Probably for the same reason NASA chose to go ahead with the Challenger mission, after engineers warned that it was too cold. "Take off your engineer's hat, and put on your manager's hat." Famous last words.

Yes, managers, I know them more than enough. I have seen projects going really bad because of the managers intervinions, and when they finally distroy the poject, then they search for a scape goat. :-( A memory problem is always a bad idea to release a program. If they caught it before they released it unfixed, then this is the case of bad management.