Hi everyone!

Can someone who has worked with both tell me briefly what advantages I would gain from upgrading from 5 to 6?

What does 6 do better then 5? 

I’ve looked at the data but it's hard to see what the practical differences are.  When I went from 4 to 5 the differences were major but this seems more subtle.

Thanks a lot.

Mike

The big ones are lights (Point Lights, IBL, SSS, AO, etc..) and materials. I also had easier time of the Cloth Room, though I do not recall anything official on that count. The new content is quite nice in most regards. 

Many times it is hard to say what has improved, because ones skill is always improving as are ones work flow.

raises  hand and leaps up and down   LOL

Advantages:

1.  You  can use some conforming clothes like the Morphing Fantasy Dress, in the cloth room (this is what motivated me to upgrade to version 6);

2.  IBL lights;

3.  Renders actually cancel when you press "cancel";

4.  You can compress object files;

5.  Gather Node so you can make things glow without lights;

7.  You don't have to edit a file in order to see unlimited thumbnails;

8.  Area render (you can render just a small spot to see what a texture looks like instead of having to render the whole thing;

9.  You can set up render settings and save the presets.

Disadvantages:

1.  Lights.  More than 8 lights don't preview well and leaves the preview window nearly black, so older light sets with more than 8 lights while they will render ok, don't preview well at all;

Thanks for the info!

Mike

Acadia

1 Poser 5 has the cloth room too.

4 Objects can be compressed in propack and I think in poser 4 also.

Poser 6 is to a large extent a bug fix for Poser 5. I find it slicker and smoother to use, but for me the functionality is largely the same (since I don't use Poser for rendering).

Quote - Acadia

1 Poser 5 has the cloth room too.

4 Objects can be compressed in propack and I think in poser 4 also.

Yes, Poser 5 has a cloth room, but you can't work with the Morphing Fantasy Dress in it. At least not unless you manually edit files, and even then I couldn't get it to work.  There is some change to the cloth room in Poser 6 that allows it to do somethings that the one in Poser 5 can't.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2517340

Object files can't be compressed in Poser 5 though. The poser was asking about whether he/she should upgrade from Poser 5 to Poser 6.

Hi!

I have both Poser 5 and 6 but only use P5, i find it faster to work with and with SR4 it works like a charm.

Regards / Jonny Bode

Object files can be compressed in poser 5, are you sure you are not talking about pmd files?

I've always compressed my files when I had Poser 5 because I don't have a large hard drive. There wasn't a "compress .obj" files option in the compress files area of Poser 5.

Here is a screenshot of the one in Poser 6.  The first thing I noticed was the "compress .obj files".

Sorry, I assumed the older versions compressed the object, too, but they don`t.

It sure saves loads of space :)

Poser 6 is what Poser 5 should be from start!
If you know how to use P5 than P6 will be a toy for you!
I love the area render! a great time saver! my number one reason for using P6 instead my P5!
IBL lights are great too :thumbupboth:
I dont use the compress thing at all so this is not a reason for me... :closedeyes:
Content is nice for someone that is new to Poser,If you are in poser for some time you'll probably have similar things through various freebies...However our runtime is never complete

Lets not forget that you can undock the library and make it wider.

you can move your MAT pose files to the material library (renaming them mc6) and then they will apply to props that are not parented nor have a figure in the scene.

you can save material collections (MAT pose equivilant) in the material room.

i use image based lights and/or ambient occlusion in every render, edge blend in many renders, and will soon be playing with the "fast scatter node."   i basically went from ppp to p6, so i know less about the details of the material room in p5, but did p5 have all the lighting, variable  and math nodes?   i know the math nodes are simply indespensible for me.    also, what was the displacement support?  and wasn't it hard to reverse normals or change the smoothing properties per item?

Everything mentioned above (plus it just operates smoother), but unless I missed it, how can we leave out my big wishlist item since P4 ... OPEN GL PREVIEW SUPPORT!! 

Also, if you're an animator this helps with rendering preview movies (which are essential if your serious about animating) as it utilizes the Hardware OpenGL functionality of your system to speed up the render process. 

I was a very disgruntled P5 "beta-tester", and I was very hesitent to get Poser 6 because I felt ripped off by Poser 5 like many who purchased it, especially early on.  However I could never go back to Poser 5.

Still waiting for multiple-undos, better dual-monitor support, and various other upgrades that are overdue, but all-in-all major improvements through and through. (memory handling, items staying un-animated, etc., etc.)

Hope that helps too!

Best,

Tim

Thanks for the help everyone!
I still haven’t decided whether to do it or not, I have had P3, P4, and P5.

I originally used Poser only to create characters that I inserted in to architectural illustrations, restaurant interiors etc.  I create the figures then use effects in Photoshop to make them match the appearance of the illustration I'm inserting them into, i.e. watercolor etc. Then I scan in the art and insert the people in Photoshop and print out or place the art in a video presentation.

 This saved a lot of time as the interior was the thing that was the focus of the drawing, but having a lot of people in it made it appear more user friendly.

 More recently I have started working with the animation aspects of the program for use in PowerPoint and video presentations.  It's amazing how having some movement in the art ads to the impact.

Right now I'm working on creating an animated mummy for a short video on Egyptian Art for kids.   Nothing complicated he will point at things on the screen etc.

Compression isn’t a big factor, I have 600 gigs of hard drive space, and everything gets transferred to DVD once it is done.

 I may just wait and see what Poser 7 has to offer since the changes don't seem to be  major.

 Thanks again for the info.

 Mike