Tried searching this forum but I couldn't see a thread that covered this. I'm a fairly happy Poser 5 user, should I upgrade to Poser 6? What are the advantages? Please let me know what you think or, if you know of threads that already cover this, please post some links to them. Here's my thoughts on upgrading... Saved pz3 files with dynamic hair take soooo long to load, calculate & render in Poser 5- is Poser 6 any better at this. I love the material nodes in Poser 5, any enhancements in 6? The Curious Labs, sorry e-frontiers, website says Poser 6 is more intuitive & faster than Poser 5. Is it? OpenGL HARDWARE ACCELERATION - any good? AMBIENT OCCLUSION - Huh? What's this? Your opinions are valued. P.S. As I am using Poser 5's Dynamic Hair, I'm not interested in moving to DAZ Studio.

The hair is a bit faster (and looks nicer) in P6.

Several enhancements to the material room and the nodes themselves. New options, new shader nodes, the ability to save MAT poses as material collections ... and with Python's total access to the material room in P6, many new possibilities for scripting and automation. poseworks' ShaderSpider is probably only the beginning.

In some ways, it's faster and more intuitive. They have a simple-interface option for the Material Room that probably won't interest you, but it's less confusing for newbs and makes the transition from P4 a lot easier. The cloth and hair rooms run their simulations faster. OpenGL eliminates some of the sluggish performance of the interface, and the latest service release for P6 appears to make the parameter dials more responsive. Double-clicking the library thumbnails will load new figures now, instead of replacing them; the library panel is multi-columned for improved browsing, etc. The area-render tool is a godsend for doing quick test renders; you can reuse shadow maps while tweaking your render settings for a scene, which saves a lot of time otherwise spent calculating shadows. And the render-wipe feature lets you compare multiple renders to see which will be best.

It doesn't look quite as lovely as the OpenGL display in DAZ Studio, but P6's new OpenGL-accelerated preview is a vast improvement over the earlier SreeD display, and on a good video card it'll run much faster/smoother. I'm seeing higher framerates on a lowly GeForce FX 5700. It's nice to finally have transparency displayed properly in the preview. The cartoon preview modes have been tweaked slightly also, with new options, and you can now adjust the line width.

Ambient occlusion is a new lighting option. It can solve some of Poser's inherent precision problems with shadows. And used properly, it can produce more realistic renders than previously possible. Image-based lighting (IBL) is pretty cool, also.

"Double-clicking the library thumbnails will load new figures now, instead of replacing them" That sounds wonderfull! After many years of using Poser I still sometimes double-click when I want to add a new character, then have to "Cancel Figure Change" and start again :( I hear that you can now change the tracfkingScale for translate channels, and "the library panel is multi-columned for improved browsing" that's more good news. If they keep making these types of improvements I might even dig into my walet and buy P6! Now it there was a way to inject whole new channels, a way to swich off the use of nodes, and an option to load figures with leg IK off, and if the default for animations could be changed to Linear interpolation, I'd be really impressed.

There is a way to inject whole new channels in P6. You don't need a blank channel in the CR2 any more; the channel will be created automatically.

nerd, among others, has discussed the process. Read here:

http://www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=13

Thanks for the info Little_Dragon, I didn't realise that, and I am very impressed!

Thank you Little Dragon for taking the time to answer, that's exactly the information I've been looking for.

When Poser 5 came out, Curious Labs allowed us to download the manual as a PDF file, which I read and that persuaded me to buy it. It's a shame e-frontiers haven't done that (at least I can't see it on the poser website) as I like to know what I'm buying.

I guess the reason is to deter people from using pirate copies of Poser 6 although I'd've thought the manual was easier to pirate than the software.

Message edited on: 11/13/2005 05:49

Two words: Area render. This saves me sooooo much time. If I calculated my hourly pay rate and transferred it to time saved in just re-rendering the area of a scene in which I'm interested, instead of having to wait for the whole damn thing, Poser 6 would already have paid for itself many times over.

I used Poser 5 for about a year, then upgraded to Poser 6. I have since uninstalled it and gone back to using Poser 5. Way too many bugs and problems....scene saving often saves blank...nothing. Parameter dials are very unresponsive, meaning I have to repeatedly type in numbers rather than use the dials, never did figure out how to use the new lighting features, won't import Wavefront objects, I don't have a video card installed on my computer so all the new render improvements don't work unless I lay out several hundred dollars for a card....and so on. I'd stick with Poser 5 for awhile if I was you.