I plan to get Poser in the next few months. Which version should I get, 4, 5, or 6? TIA infael

Well...I had P4 and then Propack, and I haven't upgraded from that, I plan to some day.

If you have a fast computer (faster than 1.1 gigaherz) and a lot of memory then you should get poser 6, if you have a slow computer like mine then poser 4 and propack might be better. Buying poser 5 seems pointless now that 6 is out, because 6 can do all that poser 5 can and more.

a simple rundown for you P4.. good for getting startd with Poser. Disadvantge, uses bum texture reference, no Python Script capability ProPak.. More advanced version of P4. Adds Python, exporting to older version of MAX and Vue and LW. Plus a Setup room for rigging your own figures. Runs on a moderate macine with Win98. P5.. Adds dynamic funtionality to clothing and hair. You can 'grow' your own hair. Requires a fairly fast processor and at least 1gig of ram. P6.. adds more advanced lighting features and material room feature. This puppy can make you cry. To take advantage of all the bells and whistle a higher end machine is a very good bet. For all around work ProPack seems to be the workhorse. You can always upgrade later. Leave PP installed. It's always nice to go back to when one of the other versions hiccups.

Poser 6. Might as well learn with the latest version and get all the bells and whistles. It's like which is better, Windows 3.1, Windows 98, or Windows XP.

Warning about P4 and PPro: I couldn't get the demos to install on a machine with more than 1 GB of physical memory. Never had a problem like that with P5 and P6. If you just want to set up part of a scene in Poser and then render in Bryce, I'd advise DAZ|Studio. Not as powerful as Poser 5 or 6, but integration with Bryce seems to work pretty well, and it's free. If you also want to be able to make figures out of existing static 3D models, but still want to render in Bryce, then ProPack would be best. If you want to set up part of a scene in Poser and then render in Vue, I'd advise Poser 5. You don't need the more advanced lighting features of Poser 6. Dynamic cloth and hair are supported in Vue (Infinite supports it directly, for other versions there's the Mover plugin). If you want Poser to do your renders, I'd advise Poser 6. By far the most capable render engine of all Poser versions, and far more capable than DAZ|Studio. Just my two cents.

Hey, Fazzel......I liked Win 3.1 better than Win98. I liked Win98 better than WinXP....Now, I'm sticking with Win2000 and I'm very happy with it! I'd go for P6 if I were you...all the bells and whistles but then, if you've got an older computer, I'd got with ProPack.

In as far as not being able to get PP to run with 1 gig of memory, need memory patch.

If I could have gotten it to install, I could have run the memory patch. But the demo even refused to install. Edited to add: I could install the demo on one of my workstations, the one that has "only" 1 Gig. It flatly refused to install on my Athlon64 with 4 Gig. I run WinXP SP2 on all workstations.

Message edited on: 06/06/2005 19:37

Since you got it to install with a michine with only 1 gig I reckon you see the point I was making. When P4/pp was released there weren't too many machines with massive memory.