Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com

Important price notice on Pro Pack- Poser Pro Packs introductory price will be changing on October 1st, 2001 to $199 via the Curious Labs webstore. If you purchase Pro Pack before the end of September, youll still be able to get it for the introductory price of $149. For more information about using Pro Pack with Poser 4 visit our website at http://www.curiouslabs.com/products/proPack/index.html If you want to see whats happening here at Curious Labs or read up on some great users, events, or even the 3D industry check out the Lab Report: http://www.curiouslabs.com/labReport/index.html To purchase Pro Pack, Poser 4 or other products from our online store: http://www.curiouslabs.com/store/index.html

Hmmm . . . Some truth to what you say, rwilliams, but when I look at the efforts CL has put into elimminating bugs (2 upgrades to Poser4, 2 to ProPak) I'd say they've pretty much demonstrated a commitment to providing reliable software. Consider; a large portion of their customer-base have never bought from them at all! Yet those who have Metacreations-branded Poser4 receive the same level of support as newer customers. I don't know how profitable Poser4 has been for them, but I respect a company that takes their time with a product (regardless how much I'd personally LOVE to get the next major upgrade!), instead of rushing some glitzy kluge of half-assed "features" and a bunch of cosmetic changes into distribution just to make a buck (MicroSoft's WINme comes immediately to mind). Pro Pack had some bugs, but these days no software company can make a package that will absolutely and perfectly run on every possible PC configuration straight out of the box (again, MicroSoft, with all the money & resources in the world, fails at that at EVERY attempt!) I think the fact that CL moves a bit slower than we'd like is more an indication about commitment to support, than dereliction of duty. I, too remember nostalgically the excitement, with which I met each announcement about earlier versions of Poser. I also recall the growing impatience I experienced calling Fractal Design monthly for information when Poser1 missed their release date by about a year! Months of delays accompanied the release dates of Poser2 thru 4. Even changing their name to Metacreations brought no change to this particular problem. My personal hope is that when CL finally announces Poser5, they'll have taken enough time on it, to actually have a solid product ready for distribution when they promise. The fact that they make such an effort to stay in touch with the poser community here, with Tech Tips, announcments, etc, is very encouraging. Anyway, time to stumble down off my soapbox. Dissenting opinions expected & encouraged; part of what this forum is all about! :-) Happy Rendering, All! Jerry B leather-guy

Very well put. It just seems that we could see something new in such a long time. Third party support has taken Poser4 further then Curious in my opinion. Things like transmapped hair, MAT files, etc. to name a few. And from what I hear, Pro Pack has some major problems. I never updated to ProPack because it didn't appear to have any of the features that I was waiting for. So it has been a long time since I have seen something new. I would love to see Curious Labs make a buck. But to do that they need to offer something worth buying. I have never even seen a Poser Retail box in a computer store, and I go into CompUSA, Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, and Circuit City a lot. Maybe they could generate some money if they would get their product on the shelves. I see Bryce 5 at some of the above mentioned places, and for $299. People will pay for something new. Like you said, all software now days seems to have bugs. I just bought Animatek World Builder several months ago. I have my problems with it, but I at least am using it. When it comes to software cycles, Poser is WAY past due!

Lets not get out of hand and end up in C&D okay? -Jeff

C&D? For some reason I'm coming up dry on the term. What's it mean (He said, exposing his ignorance).

I understand the tacic of rewarding those who are willing to trust you from the start with a lower price. I just wish PPP offered something that I could use, like maybe a plugin to Carrara with functionality at least equal to the Poser 3 -RDS 5.0 plugin. And a patch to allow us to lock down and control the actor in ERC script. As for Poser upgrades, I suspect we are following Nature's math here. #1 = 90% #2 = 90% of what is left #3 = 90% of that. Pretty soon you get much effort for little additional function. If you go to Ray Tracer and Randiosity quality rendering, it may lead to a different level of price structure. From what I could see< MC was a company whose primary goal was to run a stock scam, and use the trust of graphics program producers and their customers to pull it off. We are lucky that the programers had enough heart left to rescue their babies from the wreck.

The heck with a major upgrade, just give me good documentation! It's appalling that a program like Poser is reduced to its sham of a manual and that joke of a book by Shamus Mortimer.

C&D is the Complaint & Debate forum.

I agree, it's easy to get impatient awaiting the next upgrade, but my understanding is that a lot of the 3rd party features like MAT files, Hi-Res characters like the Millenium figures, et al, wouldn't be possible without the work CL put into ver 4.03 - a free upgrade, but nothing to sneeze at. As for Pro Pack, like you, I've held off buying, due to so many postings on problems some users have had. But I notice today they've posted yet another fix, (service Pack 3?) trying to nudge it even closer to stability for all. By the way, I just came across a list of some of the things the Python Script product at DAZ can do (using the Python functionality in ProPak), & I have to confess some of them make me practically drool with desire. If I go for the ProPak before the price increase, it'll be because of that, most likely. BTW What's your take on Animatek? Any experience to compare it with Bryce5? Any opinion which is better with poser?

OOps, looks like I cross-posted a bit, there. Thanks for the clarification JeffH.

Animatek is not easy to learn, but seems to do a good job importing Poser including all props etc. It is hard to get the Poser figures not to look flat. I never used Bryce5 but Animatek is lightyears ahead of Bryce4. I attached a small sample. No post work except censorship spots. Also left of Volumetric Lighting to show more detail.

Forgot - Credit goes to Thorne for Acorn and Penny. Also, Animatek really shins when it comes to animations, and can import Poser animations - though not too easy.

Thanks for the info, RW. Nice image! the sky is incredible, 'though I think I see your point about flat poser pics - Or did you have a fill-light on the figs? Just curious. Render On!

Do you have a link? When I "searched" animatek, all I got were pages saying "Animatek's World Builder..."

Don't know if this is the right place for this question but... Kupa, is Poser Pro Pack going to be integrated and therefore included in Curious Labs Poser 5 ????? Please let us know .... before October 1st, please. Thank you Eddy

If you mean the green spots, those are just added in Photoshop to cover nudity. The link is http://www.digi-element.com. Animatek World Builder is correct.

Oh! Thanks! I like world builder, but I don't think it's that much better than terreagen, so far. The trees still don't do it for me- the unnatural growth angles from the trunk are so- cg! So far I prefer x-frog trees, but the files are ridiculous! I made a really nice x-frog tree, and saved it as a DXF, and the file was 15 GIGS! I'm still trying to learn World Builder, though. (I'd never heard it called Animatek.)

While I certainly am in favour of software companies doing everything in their power to control quality in their final products, I would also like to make a suggestion to those who have become agitated with every rerelease of a former Metacreations product. I would like to invite the most vociferous complainers out there to spend some time learning how the actual coding works. I say this for two reasons..firstly, I am inclined to be highly sympathetic to the engineers and programmers that spend many days, often til the wee hours of the night, busy trying to retrofit old code into something that is functional on a tight deadline. In the Bryce forum, several people have discussed this very issue recently. This cannot be the easiest job, particularly when one is competing for the low end of the software market. It relly comes down to how much one wants to spend. We all, techies included, want the best balance of features, stability, and price. Increase the proportion of any one or two elements, and the other part of the triad will seem comparatively underemphasized. This is basic economics. The second reason I would suggest people taking the time to look under the hood is so that we might have a more experienced group of contributers who might be able to build their own custom plug-ins or talk shop with the CL/Corel/Eovia programmers. Now that sounds like a win-win situation to me.

We do not plan on incorporating the Pro Pack hosting plug-ins and exporters into future versions of Poser. And the next version of Poser will be quite advanced feature-wise. Any features in Pro Pack will be modest in comparison to that future offering. I don't know if that's much help with deciding whether to purchase or not. However, we've always acknowledged that Pro Pack isn't for every user. It's targeted to a specific group of users. If you work with Max, Lightwave or other 3D applications that either now or in the future will incorporate Poser figures, you will need Pro Pack. Steve Cooper Curious Labs

"And the next version of Poser will be quite advanced feature-wise" Please!!! No more bells and whistles Just build in a new render engine one at least equivalent to the render quality of bryce 3 or 4!!

if you want a render engine spend the money and buy LW or Max. Just what do you expect for $200. It's not like Poser has a 1,000,000 user base. That's why they made PPP. I am a Lightwave modeler and animator and let me say that Poser makes it easier (here's where I would like to see improvements) to pose and animate. Please Steve, put your resourses where the name is. Could it be that's why the named it Poser instead of Renderer?

I for one (one of the only ones it seems) am VERY pleased with poser/ poser propack, and I welcome the 3rd party support, it is not often with a program that you can get so much extras for it. Propack is everything I wanted from it, I am able to make my max things poseable, a wonserful tool. Everytime i download a wounderful freebee from here I feel I am getting more out of my poser. I am a poser-aholic for years(since the apple IIe) I have wanted a program exactly like poser, and here it is.

"if you want a render engine spend the money and buy LW or Max." Thanks for the advice, but Im already there (See pic) >"Just what do you expect for $200"< Not Much!! quite frankly, im not talking about radiosity but when i see the render quality of similarly priced programs ( Bryce, vue, world builder basic and the terragen freeware,) i wonder how they managed to pull it off with their relatively small user base.

I've had a chance to talk with Kupa a short while ago, and when he mentions advanced new features, trust me, you will love them. But dont bother asking me, youll have to wait for the official news. Im anxiously awaiting the next major upgrade of Poser. I appreciate the time they take to put all their efforts into making a as bugfree program as possible and keep it updated with all the new fixes and features that are added with almost every update. Youve got to admit, that while there has been alot of bugs in the initial release of Poser, a good 85% of them have been addressed and fixed. I wish Windows had at least 60% of its known bugs fixed. As for ProPack, I dont use Max or Lightwave, but I found it still monumentally useful. Motion blur for animations, the multiview window, and for making new posable figures and props, The setup room makes the process for me a breeze(almost-but getting there), oh yeah-and Flash export. Ken

PPP is what I expected and I also am glad that CL took the time to make Poser a relavent, professional tool for animation. It's been at that level (with the help of a little Post :) ) for still stuff since ver 4. I love my LightWave and now Poser and LW work together. Sure it would be better if I could throw away one or the other because it is always easier to work in one environment, but I have a professional level product with the Poser/Lightwave bundle.

Long live Newtek!! and Maxon!! unfortunately not all of the very talented member/artist's here can Afford or justify the $$cost of lightwave$$$ Max $$or Cinema$$ and unless CL makes a major upgrade to the core app soon I wonder if Poser will just become a marginalized "gateway" App thatallows us high end users easier access to the wonderfully prebuilt human millenium models to use in our real programs.

micheleh wrote >" made a really nice x-frog tree, and saved it as a DXF, and the file was 15 GIGS!<" WHAT????!!! how long did it take to save that out?? thats unbelivable!!!