I have P4-PP now. I'd like to get some opinions on whether P5 or P6 is the better program. What items would be useable from P4, can I use any P4 stuff at all? If I had P4 favs would I still need to keep P4 in my system to use them?

I know P6 is the latest version, but is it really better than P5? Are items from P5 useable in P6, and vice-versa? I know these are a lot of questions, but, I can only afford to invest so much money in new stuff.

Any help given is really appreciated. Thank you, all.

Go for P6, it's pretty stable (for me at least) so far, it's better than 5, better interface, better rendering options, more flexibility in the material room. I have uninstalled 5. The included content, figure wise, is better. Going from P4-PP to P6 the material room is going to be your biggest learning curve, but well worth it, some MAT files will not apply correctly you will need to tweak them .There are a lot of options for rendering and lighting that were not present in PP. The dynamic cloth room is improved in P6 IMHO. Going from PP to P5-6 will cause you a few headaches when it comes to conforming clothes with joint controlled morphs not always kicking in. There are several workarounds for this. There is no point in buying 5 IMHO.

I second DB P6 is "light"years past P5.

You would be better to buy poser 6 because it is the newest version but it does use more memory than poser 5 and poser 4. I have poser 5 and poser 4 propack installed I use propack for making figures and anything else that I don`t need poser 5 for. Poser 6 would be the best to get but keep poser 4 on your computer, at least till you have used poser 6 for a while.

I third DB. Is he elected yet? 8) I just moved my entire P5 runtime to P6 and intend on setting the P5 runtime back to its default. Won't uninstall P5 as all versions are used for testing, but P6 is a vast improvement over P5 - although a little slower and memory hungry. Also consider that the new PMD feature appears to be catching on like a spark in an oxygen tent. There is no pre-P6 support for this.

The PMD thing is very unpopular but it can be switched off, so it is not so bad.

What everyone else said... go for Poser 6. It will need some time getting used to it when switching from P4 but it's worth it.

It may be unpopular, but I see new figures, characters, poses and such starting to use them. Jessi, James, Ben, Kate, WinterQueen, Terai Yuki, Miki, and Koji use them exclusively. Yes, these are all Poser6 figures. There are three products in the RMP already using them. I strongly suspect, popular or not, this new feature will remain and grow. When you've only P5 and there are twenty figures that you really, really want or need, but they only have PMD morphs, you are screwed.

I went from P3 directly to P5. (I didn't even know P4 & it's variations were around..I wasn't on the internet then..) I've just got P6 (yesterday). My advice would be go directly for P6. There are some differences between the way P5 & P6 work; by going directly to P6 you'll avoid getting into habits that you'll have to change when you switch to P6 later. It'll still be a big leap, but P6 is a lot closer to P5 than P5 is to P4. So you'll be better off (unless, of course you are budget-challenged). The only other problem I can see re: P6 is that some of its exports/saves are not (yet) 100% compatible with other 3D software which support P5. But I expect that to change within the next few months.. Cheers, Diolma (PS - you can also link your complete P4 runtime to P6's. So don't uninstall it unless you are really short on disc space..)

Go for P6! The lighting options are worth the update. P6 Shader s are much better than P4 texture setup. You can use most P4 stuff fine, some needs adjusting or adjustments to the render settings (you can still render in P4 mode). Unless you've got an old machine and it slows down bad I think you'de be pleased with P6.

P6 beyond a doubt. So far I've been able to throw more stuff at it than I ever could in P5. Yes, there are some annoying parts but I haven't found one that's actually stopped me working...yet. The enhancements plus improved Material Room and Lights make it a definite choice over P5 for me.

P6 definitely! I am no expert in Poser but I can tell you P6 is a lot easier to use than P5 IMO. And faster too... for me at least!

I think almost everyone concurs Poser 6 is the most bang for the buck. As to how things from earlier versions of Poser behave, you will find some things, props especially, that will render with black patches. This will occur in both Poser 5 and Poser 6. Once you purchase your new version, be sure that something has been tested in Poser 5 or Poser 6 before you buy it. Not everyone is supporting the newer versions, but there's plenty of compatible content out there.:)

They're been numerous of threads on this topic and all of them with the same result, go for P6. Poser 6 is Poser 5 with all of the needed improvements, great rendering and feature additions and a number of good (imo) new figures and some excellent new content.

I will say that I much prefer P6 to P5. Especially for the expandable library pallette and the dual option material room. That being said, I had to uninstall P6 from my computer. I was getting really weird problems at bootup when I used it. Weird enough that it was necessary to re-install my operating system every 2-3 days as my computer wouldn't boot at all. Haven't had that problem at all since I got rid of P6. So, be aware that there might be compatibility problems with something on your computer that could possibly cause similar problems. (No, I didn't send any bug reports to EF on this since the only way I could get my computer to boot up was to wipe the hard drive and start over from scratch which means no logs to send. I still don't know what was causing the problem for me, but getting rid of P6 fixed whatever it was. Darnit.) Kate

Poser 6. Laurie