I may soon actually have money for the Poser habit, for the first time in years.  I'd like to upgrade from Poser 5.  Is it worth it to get Poser 7, at this point, or is it still too buggy?

I'm also thinking about upgrading my standard female from Vicky 1.  This is probably a rather big question, but: what's the best female in Poserdom to consider, at this time?  I'm mainly concerned about flexibility and good joint handling.  I spend most of my Poser time fighting with bad joints, it seems.

Any suggestions?

For flexibility and joint handling, right out of the box, V4 is IMO the best.  For a male figure, Apollo Max has to be the best and best of all, it's free.

A lot of people don't particularly like V4 but I suspect that a lot of it is because it's a relatively new figure and - to be perfectly honest - out of the box she looks pretty bad.  Don't let that put you off, though; the figure is well worth persevering with.

You may also want to consider getting the free version of V3, which doesn't come with morphs or textures but will give you a start on a new figure.  It's no longer available at DAZ but it is still legally available elsewhere.  Sadly, I can't remember where but I'm sure someone here can point you in the right direction.

Poser 7 -which I don't have - has a morph brush which apparently solves a lot of bad joint issues.

p7 is about 1,000 times less buggy than P5 IMVHO. at least in OS X.

Hi!

I have both P5 and P7 SR2 installed, like em both but use P7 for the most.
Its well worth the price to uppgrade and I dont experience any majotr problems after the latest service pack.

As for female why not go standard and get V4, its a good character and I want you to make cool costumes for her :-)

Regards / Jonny

V4 is nice but I'd also recommend Miki 2, she is getting more and more support and is very versatile IMVHO!

Oh- no brainer- the vastly improved lighting system in P7 look worth while. IBL and hdri lights and point lights. All must haves, lol, wish I had it. lol
 V2 and V3 have a ton of stuff available still for them free.
The mill girls or the unimesh teens figures also.
I've seen some really good V4 characters, but you'll need the complete package. It's about what? $99.
Miki has allways looked really great too.
And of course, (snickers) anything in my store. :P

Seriously, I'd start with the full V3/M3 packages and the unimesh teens- The morphs and textures work on both. Most bang for the buck. Plus a ton of freebes still around.

Poser 7 is worth the upgrade.
For me, the most important improvement in Poser 7 is that it can handle far more complex scenes, especially when you run it in WinXP 64 bit.
Python support is significantly better, SR2 worked out a couple of very annoying Tkinter bugs and now it's fine. There are methods to handle dynamic cloth, materials, and more.
Dynamic hair handling has been improved.
You'll love point lights, ambient occlusion, image based lighting with HDRI maps.
The morph brush takes some getting used to, but it's perfect for fixing up joints.
OpenGL preview tends to be significantly faster than the SreeD preview that Poser 5 depends upon when setting up a scene. Depending on the graphics card, of course.
For animators, there's animation layers, and OpenGL rendering will give you fast animation renders with decent quality.

As for female figures, the P7 female, Sydney, is'nt bad at all. Somewhat limited when it comes to morphs, but she's fairly OK.
I actually like the P6 male, James (also included with Poser 7). The P6 female, Jessie, has strange proportions (very large hands and feet, upper arms too short, forearms too long), but with a bit of scaling and tapering the worst can be worked out.

Quote - I may soon actually have money for the Poser habit, for the first time in years.  I'd like to upgrade from Poser 5.  Is it worth it to get Poser 7, at this point, or is it still too buggy?

I'm also thinking about upgrading my standard female from Vicky 1.  This is probably a rather big question, but: what's the best female in Poserdom to consider, at this time?  I'm mainly concerned about flexibility and good joint handling.  I spend most of my Poser time fighting with bad joints, it seems.

Any suggestions?

You can get V3 for free here (among other characters): http://www.download.com/Poser-DAZStudio-3D-Models-Pack/3000-6677_4-10581779.html?tag=lst-0-5

That's for Windows.  They have a download for Mac too if that's your thing.

I'd suggest getting Poser 6, not 7 if you plan on rigging anything within Poser.

As for a figure, I'd agree with those saying V4, purely because she is always going to have more support than any of the other figures out there. Personal choice though, I'd say Aiko 3 all the way :)

I got a refund on P7!  I have Poser 6 and Poser 7 installed, but rarely used Poser 7.  Poser 6 is much more stable, especialy when it comes to Daz3D figures.  I ca'nt get P7 to import a morph it exported from a Unimesj figure.  The new Morph Tool is also useless, in soem respects   ANd at first, there were several other huge bugs i.e. minimum sys. reqs., Instal CDs, render hang ups,  and more!

Speaking of Daz3D figures...I crown V3 Queen!  V4 may...be nice, in a few years; but the bottom line is I've seen hand fulls of overly attractive V3 Muscle settings, but none for V4.

Quote - I'd suggest getting Poser 6, not 7 if you plan on rigging anything within Poser.

Quote -  

Poser 5 already has rigging.

Thanks, everyone.  This is helpful.

What kinds of issues is Poser 7 still encountering at this time?  I recall reading that some people were having trouble with crash errors not too long ago.  If there are still serious issues, I'd prefer to wait until a decent patch has been released.  Bitterly I recall lost work in P5 before it was patched up nicely....

I have the free V3, but haven't used her for anything beyond testing development for TDMT.  I'll look into V3 add-ons, then, as well as V4, Miki, and Aiko.  (Wait, I also have the free M3, Aiko and Hiro....)  I'd had the impression that Miki's mesh has asiatic features - which isn't bad, but it means I'd have to alter that for my primary use characters (assuming I can effect a conversion).  Does Miki have much by way of character shaping morphs?  (Or, for that matter, does she have a catsuit?)

I should like to add that Poser 6 was a much more stable than P5.  Python, and many other aspects were so much less laggy.

The V3 base is free, but the Lion's share of what V3 can do resides in her Head and Body morph pack(s.)  Then, more specifically, her Character Pack 1's Athletic MOR.  And then with what you make fo the Poser Magents(Unless you are...Cage, and can do Vertex level modeling, with Python!)

Well, you have like a dozen Hell yes votes, one one person with issues still. Count me in with the "Hell yes!" votes as well.

I LOVE the multiple undos, and use the morph tool all the time for popthrough issues, and minor adjustments.

Memory use is better, one guy in th eusenet group has used 20 mill figures in many scenes, and has not been able to get  P7 to crash yet. Material handeling and performance is much improved, and multi threaded rendering support is also built in now as well.

P7 render MUCH faster on my dual core sustem then my sads olf P6 used to, in some cases almost twice as fast. Where I used to always use lower render quality for speed's sake, I usually have my renders cranked to ray tracing now or better.

Then there is also AO and IBL lighting additons, and skin sub surface scattering for that really realistic skin appearance.
 

Personally I like P7 for the morphing tool, the multi-level undo, and the faster rendering (and the fact that it will render things that P6 couldn't handle on my computer). The main bugs with P7 that cause me problems relate to the cloth room - recalculating dynamics when you have more than one item of clothing on a figure makes it go haywire, but can be worked round by deleting the simulation and starting again.

On the female figures, over all I personally prefer V3 to V4, mostly because of the range of stuff available for her, and  her more mature looks. V4 always looks more like a teenager to me, though she does morph well.  V4 is also a resource hog; poser noticeably slows down when I load her, and I suspect that she makes P7 less stable. I certainly get more bits of poser weirdness when I have her in a scene than when I use other figures!  Having said that, I suspect V4 is the future and there are some very nice items being produced for her.

One more concrete suggestion; when you decide what you do want,do consider a Daz platinum club membership and/or a Poser World subscription. Depending on how much you expect to buy both can be very cost effective.

Apollo Max and V3.  Apollo is simply the best male Poser figure available at any price, and it's free. While V4 has superior joint rigging, I don't care for her body shape, morphs and problems with her textures. Trying to get a render that doesn't look like a plactic anime doll requires almost more effort than its worth.
I think V3 still holds the queen's crown, at least for now. I'm sure that situation will change as more content develops, but at the present rate, that could be a while. Until then, I'd nab V3 and all the tons of free stuff available. The addition of PhilC's wardrobe wizard would give you almost limitess additonal options for figre creation.
Now if Anton would only create a female companion for Apollo, we'd all be happy. I'd purchase that in a heartbeat, and I'm about as cheap as humans can get. I'm even considering having the phrase "Never Buy Retail" tattoed across my forehead, but I can't find a tatto parlor that accepts food stamps.

I think I'm sold on P7, once I have the money.  I think I'm most interested in the new cr2-driven animation potential - but I can't remember what it's called!  Ockham was experimenting with it in a thread a few months back, I think.  I'd like to try that, to see what can be done with it.  And it sounds like there are many other benefits, too.

I'm kind of leaning toward V3, primarily because the V2 to V3 version could be used with my current clothing items with little difficulty.  The big problem will be porting character morphs and creating new textures.  Unfortunately, TDMT never quite reached the point where it permits easy transfer of character morphs.  :(

Another related question: what about add-ons?  Wardrobe Wizard, that Face-shop thingie, what is recommended?

shader spider, and wardrobe wizard woudl be the most useful, and most bang for the buck I think

Wardrobe Wizard, for sure.

If you are on P5, it is time to upgrade and P7 has loads of goodies. You'll love the morph brush.

People are loving the results and ease of CrossDresser for clothing conversions. Check it out.

I definitely agree about WW.   Morph Magic has its uses, too.

Xena said, "I'd suggest getting Poser 6, not 7 if you plan on rigging anything within Poser."

That's interesting;  would you be prepared to go into more detail (I actually have P6 and P7 installed side by side), please?

I have had a few Poser 7 crashes.   One recent scene always rendered all the way through in its entirety.   When the scene was complete and saved and I spotted something that needed changing, P7 crashed immediately, as soon as I tried to revert to the preview.   None of this blah about not enough memory to load a texture - it was "Next stop:  Desktop."  

For my purposes, I think P7 is an improvement on P6, but, having said that, I fairly frequently import from Poser to Carrara, which means going from P7 to P6 first (and then to C5).   P6 always identifies that the P7 input is from a later release, but imports it without a hitch.   That probably says quite a lot about my poverty of invention, but I suspect it says something, too, about the real extent of innovation within P7.

If you use Phi Builder to create cr2's, Poser 7 leaves out parts of the cr2 when converting. Poser 6 doesn't, and neither does Pro Pack (don't have 5 so don't know if it does or not).

I'm sure I could use other tools to create cr2's that would work perfectly fine with Poser 7 (as I sure someone will suggest) but that's not the point. If it doesn't convert heir properly, then it shouldn't have the feature listed in the File menu.

Thanks;  that's interesting.

Ooh, a .phi building bug is a problem.  I hate the setup room.  :scared:

Okay, Wardrobe Wizard, CrossDresser, Spider Shader.  No votes for the face-shaping plugin?  I'll have to look into a lot of this, I think.  I've been ignoring many new developments since they couldn't apply to me.  Looks like a looming learning curve....

Thank you, everyone, for the ideas!  :woot:

Technically, ProPack up to Poser 6 was known to corrupt cr2 joint paramter data and cause non mirrored sides when using converted Hierarchies.

There have been dozens of improvements to the way joint data is tracked since Poser6 sr1.

*"There have been dozens of improvements to the way joint data is tracked since Poser6 sr1."
*Does that mean that the joints actually handle better in P7, or just that the internal processing is somehow more efficient?  (Crossing my fingers for better bending....)

It means there is less likelyhood of cr2 corruption, freezing, etc.

I get no cr2 corruption when converting in Poser 6.03, but plenty in P7.

This thread sold me despite Xena's reservations. I just hope Poser 7 can be installed on an auxiliary hard drive. My C drive is running out of space and I'm not going to remove Poser 5 since I need it to import into Mojoworld.

I used to run Pro Pack on my C drive and P6 on my D drive and they both worked fine, so you shouldn't have a problem :)

Xena, do you know if this .phi bug has been reported and is slated to be fixed?

How consistent is the problem?  What happens?  Is there any indication that the problem may be due to some formatting issue with the .phi?

I'm rather concerned about this issue, you see....

No idea if it's been reported.
Seems to be consistant. It leaves out things like taperY taper and smoothScale.

Ah, so it's leaving out secondary parameters?  That's not as bad as I feared.  I jumped to the wrong conclusion and assumed it was omitting entire actors.  Hmm.

It's not good to have parameters being dropped, but I could work around that if I had to, assuming the problem was eventually fixed.  Anything to dodge the setup room.  :blink:

You can always convert phi files in an earlier version and tweak the joints in a later versions.

I don't think phi conversions will be developed much more. Regardless, an email or bug report should be submitted since there are likely less than a dozen of us who even know how to write phi files still.

Heh heh I'm not overly keen on the setup room either. That's why I'm sticking with Poser 6 for now. Poser 7 languishes away in the cupboard with all my other impulse purchases LOL I do long for that undo though :)

Well Poser 8 is next so get some sort of bug report in even id only in a forum post over there.

We can work around this, sure, but they should fix what's broken, IMO.  I hope they would try to fix such a thing.

Can anyone with Poser 7 test .phi figure creation to try to verify the bug?  I would, but I don't have it yet!  This should be reported.  I'll report it if I need to, but I can't give them much information about what's happening, insofar as I don't have Poser 7 yet....  :(

OT on edit: I like the new look!  It's like stepping back several years, looking at some of the pages I saved back in 2001 or so!

E-Frontier is selling copies of Poser 6 and Poser 6 CE w/ Shade LE on E-bay for a good price.