A million years ago I found P4 and then up'ed to pro pack, got carried along to P5 and got sucked into P6, looked at P7 and thought no too may complaints, but this am I got an offer I couldn't refuse, so I have now ordered P8, and I will be Dl'ing the service pack the second it gets here but other than that, help this Dino out, tips, suggetions, or survivle stratagies? It won't get here for a few days, I am soo cheap I went with the free shipping LOL. So I thought I would get as prepaired as I can.

Thanks in advance

AM I to beleve that resdence of Renderosity have no opinions, thoughts or advice?? 

OH how the mighty have fallen?? This is a first in the many years I have been a  member. perhaps you are a fear'd thsi is a set up or somthing. but I am seriously and sencerly asking for feed back, what am I getting myself into??have I made a  good choice or a huge mistake??

Please??? 

Bear in mind it's sunday night for a good part of the world :biggrin:
I'd give you an opinion but I don't have one - I only use Poser to setup scenes for rendering in Vue.  I believe the new lighting in P8 is a vast improvement on earlier versions and the render engine is a bit faster.  There's no P4 render engine available any more though

Tony I love my  Poser 8 but am frustrated with it right now LOL!

I don't know if it's my machine, the service releases or what....but I'm beginning to think that it's my machine and it's upgrade time.  I miss the fast rendering times of ProPak, and since I postwork everything I do, I'm beginning to wonder why I'm using it sometimes.  But then I remember that almost anything that comes out anymore is starting to depend very heavily on the material room and shaders.  That I'm not liking so much.

I have not uninstalled my ProPak 4.03, or my  P6 or P7  :) 

It has lots of nice features, but from what I have been reading in all of the forums, a lot of it depends on your machine setup.  What works for one doesn't work for the other.

As FrankT mentioned, there is no P4 render engine anymore :)

So I would say overall, P8 is a good thing, but it will take some getting used to.  When it runs good it's great, but there are possibilities of crashes, freezes etc, something I was not used to before.

Back up often, save at least two copies of your scenes and just be patient :)

Read up all you can in the forums and read all you can about all of the features that P8 offers, because there is a lot of them :)

P8 seems to work fine...... as soon as you dump the new library..... don't mess to much with the new user interface...... and leave IDL as it is and use the regular light setting as your used to do.

But there's one great thing about Poser 8..... firefly rendering times. Admitted it's not as fast as P4, but it's a lot faster then P6 and P7 and slightly faster then P5. As long as you don't touch IDL, as soon as you do, expect long rendering times when doing serious work. Place M4 and V4 in a room (or whatever set you use), with some nice clothes and hair and so on and your IDL rendering time will be hours, compared to 10-20 minutes or so when avoiding IDL all together. I know some claim amazing rendering times with IDL scenes..... sure, but those scenes don't look like anything most of us make, very simple scenes or small render sizes most of us don't post at all, but use for a quick preview.

The decreased rendering time makes it worth it, tone mapping is a nice feature also. The rest.... well as far as I'm concerned they might as well have spent development time on other features. I guess others need them, but I still don't see a point in the new library at all and the new UI left me very unimpressed, the old one works just fine. For me, it's good old poswer with decreased rendering times.

My tips...... hope for the best. That's not helpful, is it? First of all SR2 is a must. If you want to play with IDL, read some tutorials first. It's not just ticking a box in the firefly settings, there much more to it. Don't overwrite old scenes, but use save as and give them a new name. I made that mistake and messed up a scene completely doing so. If you have a crash, try to repeat it and report it to SmithMicro.

As I said above, depends on your system.

My P8 actually runs better without the SR2's, prior to them I was having no problems at all.

Rendering is abysmal right now on my machine, P7 is actually faster.

So, expect some really good things, but don't be discouraged if you hit bumps along the road.

Thank  you all< I have been around for a while so I expect some good and some bad but if I know what is likly to crop up I can be ready.

just one thing; Forget about lights, and everything you have been doing with them.

If you use the IDL, and after mastering it, it gives great results, one master light with a shadow, and some, 1 or 2 spotlights, depending on your scene, and let the IDL figure it out.
Use a backdrop of some kind, or BB's sfere to get the IDL to do its thing.
Keep the setting low for starters, and move up from there, you'l automatically find your machines limitations.
play, and play, and play some more.
test with simpel lay-outs, learn, and build from there.
You are no novice, just the IDL will take "some  getting used to."

Since SR2, I'v had NO crash any more. None whatso ever.
Oh, yeah, and for the new Alyson, 
Set collars at X102
Shoulders at X110
Forearms at X120, as her arms are too short. For the rest, she is quite usefull.

And read, read, and read, all you can about P8. Use the search button, a lot has been discussed here and elsewhere.
Good luck,

I am getting ready!!! Clearly it is time for a new adventure, so please excuse me, my pic's will suck for a while as I get use to the new Poser.

Leave your old Poser versions installed, in case you have troubles with P8.

If the earlier versions of Poser tolerate it, move your existing accumulated runtime (content library) to the shared documents folder, and then point each Poser version to that runtime.