I know it's a bit early in the game for this question. However, what's the early results? Is it worth the extra 150.00 or to upgrade? How about all the content you purchased/aquired via Freebies while running Poser 5 ? Does it all need to be upgraded as well ?

My advise to you is I would wait for the service pack to be released by CL until then you are better off with P5 until CL resolve the current P6 issues. Content you have either purchased or acquired free is compatible with most Poser versions.

Don't bother with P6 right now as Dimension X has said, there's too mant problems with it right now. I've stopped using it for now and gone back to P5 until they sort it out. Just my view based on my experience with it so far. thefixer poser coordinator.

For me P6 is twice as fast as P5 but i seem to have a prob with P6 looking for textures

I love P6. I started working in Poser a year ago when I bought Poser 5 so I don't know about any other version but I much prefer Poser 6 to Poser 5. For one thing, I am able to render scenes that look good (at least I am satisfied with them), something I never was able to do in P5. That is because of the lights/shadows settings in P6. I like the fact that I can see the hair in the Preview window instead of just transparency dots in P5. It renders much faster than P5 (with FireFly). I have multiple runtimes (libraries only) and all the textures for the models in those libraries are in the textures folder of P5 runtime. I added all the library runtimes plus the P5 runtime and P6 never has any problem finding the textures and/or objects. I like the fact that I can export image from earlier renders instead of rendering again if I prefer a previous render. It uses P5 materials as well as P6. So far, I haven't found one model or prop that P6 can't render well in all the stuff I already had for Poser (for P4 and P5). I guess it depends what you intend to do with it. If it is for animations, I wouldn't know because I don't do these. But for rendering stills, it is great. One happy customer, France

"Too many Problems"

There is a memory leak. This may cause you to lose some data.

To USE Poser 6 until a Service Pack fix is released would be to

1. Work Large projects in smaller chunks.
2. Save often.
3. Do NOT max out render options. Poser 6 has a Final Render setting. I usually step back one notch from that and it works fine.
4. Turn off the Use External Morph Target options in Preferences.

The first two options are just good work habits anyway.
I say go for it and play.

Message edited on: 04/29/2005 08:09

I second Francemi. To be honest, I'm starting to think that the newer the computer and more RAM you cram into the thing....the worse P6's memory errors seem to get. I've been taking data and analyzing it based on what has been posted on the forums here and other places. Those of us who have about 256-512MB of memory have yet to have a file corrupted by this error. I've only experienced the error once. I would probably wait to buy it until the memory problem is fixed unless you can still get the winter queen set with your purchase. I rather like some of the extras that came with that and not to mention the Shade thing that came with it (my hubby uses it).

Kristta, I said that in another thread and I was told it is impossible. But, although my computer is quite new, I have only 512MB of RAM and I don't have problems with P6. ;o)

Poser 6 is great, but the memory leak is killing me. :(

If you render in Poser, go for it. If not, stay with what you have.

I've been on 5 for 2 years, and I'm glad I made the switch. I have a pretty new setup, and right before I got P6 I went from 265 memory to 512 memory plus added a whole other 512 drive for storage. So I've only experienced the memory bug once. I do hope that can be fixed soon though.

Don't know if it is worth $150 for the upgrade, but it was worth the $109 I paid for it. The only thing I don't like is there is some ugly artifacting in the refraction mode that isn't there in Poser 5. Other than that Poser 6 works like a dream, is a lot more stable, I can render all day with render after render after render without it crashing With Poser 5 ten renders was about the limit before I had to reboot. It loads faster, area render is great, and I like that there are more light types and material room nodes. So far I haven't even encountered the infamous memory bug that a lot of people are having problems with.

I haven't had any problems with P6, and have used it daily on a laptop (2.2Ghz, 1Gb RAM, GeforceGo 460/32MB) for the past 3 weeks. All the P5 content I have tried has opened in P6 with no problems, but I've heard about instances where manual tweaking of the texture settings is required.

I've been working on some very high poly, high texture resolution, dynamic clothing on Jessie HighRes, and haven't had one lock-up or any signs of the memory leak issue. I've run test renders with firefly at the "max" quality setting with 3 lights, and haven't run into the memory leak problem yet. Many times I've had a P6 session running for 4-5 hours. With the render settings at maximum quality, the system resource usage jumps well over 1GB, but no problems (yet).

My experiences may not be the norm, as I've seen a lot of posts about the memory leak problem. My graphics card definitely is not up to par with many of the systems that have had OGL problems, but my system has performed very well with OGL (and the "newest" driver is almost 2 years old). Maybe I've just been extremely lucky so far, and now that I've said this, my problems will begin :-?

Overall, I'm very happy with P6, and it's improvements. My only complaint is I wish that the third party support (import plugins) for P6 was better - CL should have syncronized SDK development with P6, so the SDK could have gone out to developers about the same time as they released P6.

If you use dynamic cloth - P6 is well worth the upgrade. It seems to work much better in P6 than it did in P5.

It took me a session of P6 open for 3 days and thru 93 renders before i found the memory bug. I havent seen a corrupted file yet. For me, P6 is faster and more stable thatn p5 and workflow improvement is more than worth the cost to me. I am inclined to think that the reason people with more ram are having more problems/complaints, is that they think they can push their machines to do more and are hitting the bug faster. People with less ram are much more conservitive with their scenes and are not finding the problem. There are exceptions on both ends of the spectrum. If you don't do big scenes with all the bells and whistles at render time. P6 will likely work with little or no problems.

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

There's no doubt that P6 is an improvement on P5 but, and there is a big but, there are issues that I have had and these are as follows: 1 Out of memory message. 2 Can't find some textures from P5 runtime. 3 Graphics crashing when using OpenGL. Generally if I use more than 3 lights I get the memory message, the other 2 are intermittant and don't seem to have a trigger. My PC spec is fairly high, Pentium4 3.4 GHz [HT], 1Gig of RAM, a 250 Gig SATA hard drive and a ATI Radeon X600 pro with 256Meg of onboard memory. How the guys with lesser systems aren't getting all this trouble is beyond me quite frankly!! I'm really hoping that SR1 will sort it all out, oh and for the record I like to have between 2 and 4 persons + proops + upwards of 3 lights and a scene prop in my renders, I don't consider that as pushing my machine either. P5 managed that level of work, so should P6. thefixer poser coordinator.

I don't consider my set up to be high specs - 800 MHz, 384 MB RAM - by using an Image based light and 1 other for shadows I've been able to do better than with Poser5 as long as I don't go to high on the render settings (I had to watch that with poser5 as well) I've only had memory problems with Poser6 the once when I had four figures, clothing, scenery all with high res textures etc and rendered as high as I could go. PS I'm running on Windows ME - I thought I would have to upgrade to XP, But no Poser 6 did work to my delight.(My only worry is a service pack might add features that means it only works in XP) Nigel

My computer system has a spec that is a little better than yours is, so when you say that you Render with four persons+ and use upwards of 3 lights and a scene prop, what type of render are you doing? Poser 4 draft, or Production or Poser 5 Firefly or draft any of these conditions will change render times and performance - I'd really like to know how long your renders take with four figures+ since mine take ages.
On a crosstalk note I find a lot of crosstalk problems using the P5 male and V3 and when I use M3 or David and V3, renders are really soooo slow.

I can't make serious comment about P6 yet since I haven't had enough time to work with it but so far I have not encountered any major problems that some people say they are experiencing. My guess is that they are running very low on memory.

PXP

Upgrading to Poser 6? Depends on how you plan to use it. The main improvements in Poser 6 have to do with lighting and rendering. So if you use Poser 5 to set up a scene, but render it in another application, I'd advise to stick with P5. But if you also use Poser for the final renders, the upgrade is definitely worth the money.

I was referring to production rendering with Firefly and it wasn't 4+ people it was 2 to 4 people. I have found that a scene I can render in P5 won't go near it in P6. Our of memory message is the main one for big scenes and then the other issue is P6 not finding P5 textures even though I set it up just like CL said to. I'm really hoping a fix comes soon because I do think P6 has massive potential once it runs right! thefixer poser coordinator

Their are alot of user some like me having immense problems with P6 and reverted back to using P5. The problems of P6 are in varying degree this depends on how each user uses Poser for their projects. However if all users try to do a massive project scene where you use more than 4 figures and over 12 props fully textured you will soon find P6 will fail. I have been in touch with CL and they have informed me that Service pack is currently being tested and they hope to release it once the tests have concluded. I have also informed them of my latest problem which they are looking into which P6 is not backward compatible as it should be. Any of you have both P6 and P5 installed try it. CL have given me some solutions which I have already tried and P5 fails to load P6 pz3. Hailo at the end of the day it is your choice to purchase it now or later makes no difference however it totally depends how you want to use Poser for your needs not anyone else.

Wow you all have been most helpful. Thank you for the responses. I only use Poser for stills. Based on everything I have read in this thread, it's seems giving it a go might not be a bad choice. We shall see if the dreaded Poser 6 ghost comes to haunt me...

Dimension_X, I almost always save my scenes as pz3. I have created some pz3 in Poser 6 and I have opened them in Poser 5 without problems. I don't understand how come you can't.

Sorry Francemi, but I also have not been able to open in P5 some pz3's made in P6, so it's not just Dimension X having that issue. I get a message saying it was made in a newer version but will atempt to open it and then it just locks up, I don't know if that's exactly what Dimension X gets but that's waht I get. Oh and Hailo, I do mainly stills also. thefixer poser coordinator

thefixer I get the same message sometime it looks for textures props and then locks up or without warning closes P6 down and returns to Windows. I get a variant of problems mentioned. Just to let you all know CL suggested to make it compatible I edit the P6 pz3 file and remove all feature related to IBL and the new shaders and the pz3 file would work in P5. I advised them alot of Poser user would prefer CL to ensure P6 is backward compatible and suggested that they release a update for p5 to allow for p6 new features without using P6 features. I am waiting for a response Hailo I do alot of stills and animations

thefixer: from what I can see, Poser 6 does not act the same way on different computers. Reminds me of the song "My heart has a mind of its own". We could say that about Poser 6. ;o) France

I think you're probably right Francemi, unfortunately that makes sorting the problem a little bit harder for CL I'm afraid, which can't be good for those of us that are waiting. sigh thefixer poser coordinator

Oh Yeahhhhh WooHooo!! I'm having ALL the nasty bug issues./sigh I guess this is just my luck. But, I HAD to go for it HAhAHAhaha I have a pretty nice comp set up P4 with all the good stuff. Have a Radeon 9800 graphic card. Plenty of added memory.And, I run on XP Pro. Now, I had all sorts of issues with programs when I ran XP pro from an upgrade format. I wiped the drive and installed XP Pro full version. The issues with program permissions and all that jazz stopped.( just a lil info for those who run this and are doing so via an XP Pro update version ) At any rate, I'm now a proud member of the " UNHAPPY Poser 6 Customers Club "

Well you can't say we didn't warn you [lol]!! Seriously though you have made the right decision in getting it. It is much beter tha P5 and once the problems are solved it'll rock!!! thefixer poser coordinator

Poser 6 is slower then poser 5 on my machine, it just loads faster. But when I use the menue to load a figure it takes forever and a day before I fcan access what im looking for.