HELP!!!

I have just upgraded from Poser 6 (honestly) to Poser Pro 2014 and also newly taken possession of a super quick beefed up HP Z800 with lots of ram simply to use with my beloved Poser software. Obviously PP2014 is plenty different than P6, so am jumping in with playing about in my new Poser but with heart rate rising steadily due to learning curve: Please any help with info or links to help me learn faster would be very appreciated. Also: my much used Victoria V 4.2 seems out of date now, and Genesis and even V 6 or did I see V7?! have given me so much choice of newer beefier more usable figures/characters, and I don't know where to start. It's as though my Poser brain in 10-years behind everyone else, and I'm drowning trying to catch up.

So please please please! Any help of kindly direction/s would be appreciated endlessly.

Also: I had saved/exported Poser scenes made in P6 to external drive/s over the years: and find these will not import directly to my lovely new PP2014... Is there a way to get the P6 works into PP2014?!?

Thank you much before hand all...

Tony D   

Well my first advice would be don't spend any money on V6 or V7 just yet as they do not work like V4 did/does.  Before I get jumped on by the usual crowd, I am not saying do not use Genesis, it is up to you, I am just suggesting you check out the implications before you start spending money.

Genesis 1 and 2 will work in Poser using an extra little program called DSON.  I will leave it to others who have worked with it extensively to explain how to set it up.  At this point in time Genesis 3 does not work in Poser and V7 uses Genesis 3.  The other news is that V4 still works and there is a weight mapped version that you can use in Poser 2014.  If you have not come across weight mapping it is used to provide better bending of a figure.  Search for WMV4 at RuntimeDNA (RDNA) if you are interested.

For tutorials, there is a wealth of them to help but you could start with the ones here at Rendo that are free and broken down into nice manageable chunks.  You will find them under - tutorials - Premium tutorials.

I am not sure why your Poser 6 scenes do not load, what happens when you try to load them?  What I do know is if you can get them to load they will not look the same in Poser 2014.  The lighting and materials have changed and some of the material tricks used to make things look better in Poser 6 do not work and are not needed in Poser 2014.

I am sure you will soon be inundated with help so i have kept is short.

Welcome to the new world.  I hope you have fun.

Several video tutorials on using Poser Pro 2014 on Youtube, under Smith Micro. I found some of them helpful.

I made a big jump, just like you but I went from P6 to PP2012 & then PP2014. Yes it is a big jump, but well worth the upgrade, imho.

I didn't really notice that scenes from P6 wouldn't open in PP2012, but it has been a while. lol I think though that it may have something to do with where your libraries are located now and if they are set up like they were for P6 on your older PC.  I'm sure someone a little more experienced than me will come along to answer that question.

I wish I could help you with links but I had to do a complete reinstall of FireFox just last week, forgot to backup my bookmarks, and lost all my links I had built up over the years.... :(   I could have filled a library- lol.  Anyway, check out aRtBee's missing manuals for Poser :  http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?book-genre=poser   It helped me out with dynamics but there's a far amount of information there that may help. Also check out Nerd3d.

As far as V4 being outdated,  imho, it is still used.  The new Genesis figures take a lot to get working correctly in Poser.  You have use the DSON to get them to work in Poser & from what I understand can be time consuming, at least for me. I have not tried it, nor do I care to do so.  There are other new figures as well like Dawn & Dusk from HIvewire and Scarlet which is available here at Renderosity & work natively in Poser. I would look around the forums here so as to get an idea of what others think about them.  I've dumped loads into V4 and don't plan on moving to a new figure in the near future, but with technology, that may change. :)

I hope this helps, even if it's just a little.
Have a creative day!

Also we have hosted a weight mapped version of V4 at renderforever.com

I find any version of genesis to be too slow to be really useful in poser, especially when it comes to crowd scenes. I still use V4 and M4 a lot for my comic making.

Poser  pro 2014 allows better scaling of your poser figures so you can shape them more how you want them.

I make extensive use of semidieu's python shaderworks scripts on runtimedna to make faster access to library, to earn any pose in your pose library into partial pose, to take advantage of your new poser version's ability to morph the clothes automatically to match the morphs in the figures (u will find this in properties menu but the python script puts it in autmatically), and to reload a whole folder full of external runtimes in one hit, just to name a few useful features.  these scripts speed up my workflow absolutely enormously. I could not make my comic without them.

Love esther

The Renderosity PP2014 video series is a good source to get you started learning the various new features.  I do agree, Genesis is too complicated for you to grasp just yet.  I am still running the gauntlet on some issues with it, but I have tried it and I like what I see so far.  However, you will need to get up to date with IDL, gamma correction, learning the material room, etc, these are enough to keep you busy for quite a while.

I have always found the video tutorial series produced by Infinite Skills to be very good, too.  But you will spend about $100 on their DVD set.

 Hey thanks bundles guys/gals for all this so useful information! I didn't know about the weight-mapped V4 - where have I been?!? Yes, Genesis does appear to be problematic to some degree for smooth fast Poser usage. Will watch progression on this though, as content seems endless and amazing to date. Oh, Dawn and such - yes: Forgot completely about those additions. And yes I've got some very interesting new additions in PP14 to learn, and will embark on these soon enough. Thanks for those tut/vids suggestions also. Just out of interest, I was wondering on average how many clothed/kitted V4s (still my fav too) with say an average scene (?!?) and lighting etc can be included in a single scene without crashing in PP14 with about 42GigRam?!? Someone once mentioned one V4 uses about 2Gigs on average... Is there any truth to this. My previous set up crashed with only 2 V4 figures with and average scene.. Just wondered...

Thank you all so much for your help and kind interest...

Tony D 

If your computer system is 64 bits, then RAM memory is not an issue in addition to the number of cores available.  Otherwise, 32 bit will limit RAM usage to ~ 3 to 3.5 gigs.

Rex and Roxie come with PP14 and make great use of Poser's new capabilities.  They are weightmapped AND designed to use Poser's subdivision.

 MY new system is: 64-bit Win 7   HP Z800 workstation Xeon X5690 x 2 at 3.47Ghz with 48Gigs Ram and Quadro K4000

 I'll have to take a peek at those figures, Glitterati3D Thank you...

I often have about 8 daz figures in a scene with no problems.

Love esther

Eight figures in a scene: oh my!!! Can't wait to learn and use. Oddly enough I've been seeing some really amazing renders with DAZ of late, and of course having DAZ as well as Poser mighten't be a problem now I have the power and space to have both with ease. Thus I could play with those Genesis figures without the DSON issue in Poser. But then again, it will be getting used to another interface, or software package, which, If I can recall, is quite different to Poser.  

Those tutorials are going be great, by the way, once I've gotten some sound rigged up. Hadn't been aware of them before but, then again, as a P6 user, the P10 onwards tuts would not have been of any use to me. So thanks for that linkage...

I will work my way steadily through these brilliant posts, form top to bottom. So cheers you all once again. I often wonder what it is about Renderosity Forums that makes them so unique?!? My experience of other forums is way below par in comparison to Rendo. So simply glad to be here...!!!

Tony D