I've been occupied the past year with other things and have not fooled around much with Poser stuff.  I'm still using Poser 5 and Vue 4 :) What are my options for upgrading in either category?  I've wandered through a few of the posts and it looks like the "same old, same old" where the new poser release is concerned.  Since I don't have a commercial use for this stuff.....just a hobby.....I'm wondering if I should even bother.  Thanks for any useful input.

I've upgraded Poser twice, to P7, and Vue twice, to Vue 6 Esprit, and I'm happy I did.  The memory bugs in P5 were mostly corrected in P6 and are pretty much gone in P7.  There are a lot of new options in P7, including HDRI lighting and better use of IBL, along with collections which allow you to have rapid access to your favorite things without having to look through your runtimes.  There's also the multiple undo feature that most of us have been asking for since P3.

As for Vue, even though this is the Poser forum, lots and lots of improvements, including a little goodie called ecosystems which allows you to have objects with millions of polys that don't bog your system.  You should read the Vue pages to find out everything that's happened since Vue 4.

Welcome back and Happy Holidays.

Thank you Victoria....I'll take some time over the holdiay to get "caught up".  One thing that is pretty important to me is the ability for Poser and Vue to interface successfully.   Can you tell me  if Poser 7 and Vue 6 work together as well or better than  P5 and Vue 4 do?   I thank you for your reponses and wish you a very Happy Holiday :)

Quote - Thank you Victoria....I'll take some time over the holdiay to get "caught up".  One thing that is pretty important to me is the ability for Poser and Vue to interface successfully.   Can you tell me  if Poser 7 and Vue 6 work together as well or better than  P5 and Vue 4 do?   I thank you for your reponses and wish you a very Happy Holiday :)

Vue 6 and Poser 7 work wonderfully together and Vue 6 now offers the ability to repose inside Vue along with support for the Poser shader nodes.

This is just a quick render of Victoria in Vue 6.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=134208

I did the posing and the shaders inside Vue.