What is the cheapest way to upgrade from Poser 11 to Poser 13?

Currently you can upgrade from 11 to 12 for $99.95.  Then upgrade from 12 to 13 for $99.95.  Saving $50 from just buying Poser 13 straight. 

Wait for the powers that be to have a change of heart and offer a cheaper upgrade path from 11 to 13. Maybe wait for 13 to go on sale. Wait long enough and the straight price, non upgrade, will be more realistic after version 13+ gets released. $200 cost to jump from 11 to 13 is significant when considering how far that money can go towards other software tools or buying poser content. Long time user of Poser here and am also on 11. Love the software, honest and freely admit it. However, $200 is a deal killer for me. Individual cost/reward analysis will vary for each individual. The argument I've seen for the high upgrade cost for 11 owners is "...people upgraded to 12...".  No offense meant, but so what? Will poser 13 users who upgraded from 12 stop using the software by offering a more attractive upgrade price to version 11 users looking to upgrade? Not likely. Would the poser community benefit from more poser 11 users upgrading to 13? Probably. If the upgrade price from 11 to 13 was $99 it would be a no brainer and I'd already have jumped on it. The software, I love. The current upgrade price for pre version 12 owners, yeah, not so much. I'll continue to wait.

It has always been a struggle to justify the cost of software upgrades and, in the present financial climate, it has become almost impossible to justify such costs.  There is always the trade off of use over the cost of an upgrade, if you wait for another six months hoping to save money fine, but what price do you put on the fun you can have using the new software now.  The changes from Poser 11 to Poser 13 is a rather big step and much has changed, also,  there are some who found Poser 12 almost impossible to use for content creation, so your intended use for Poser 13 could be a big factor.  As a hobbyist I found Poser 12 to be a big enough step up to justify the upgrade price, moving up to Poser 13 I am blown away with some of the changes.  The last few weeks has been a bundle of fun for me as I only use Superfly these days and the changes with Superfly in Poser 13, for me, justifies the upgrade price alone.  What price you can put on that is difficult/impossible to quantify but I do feel, with the world looking so depressing at present, we still need to find our fun somewhere.

At the end of the day it is an individual choice as to when or if to upgrade.  Having said all that I do wish the powers that be would offer a better upgrade price to poser 11 users.

I'm not in the decision-making of this so I can't say the reasoning, but one thing to consider is that anyone who had Poser 2014 Game Dev was given a free upgrade when Smith Micro shut down their servers. So essentially, some people would then be getting that discount on jumping 2 versions.

To further add to the pricing confusion, both Poser 11 and Poser 12 are priced at 149.95 for the full version.

That doesn't make sense.

RedPhantom posted at 8:10 AM Mon, 1 May 2023 - #4463899

I'm not in the decision-making of this so I can't say the reasoning, but one thing to consider is that anyone who had Poser 2014 Game Dev was given a free upgrade when Smith Micro shut down their servers. So essentially, some people would then be getting that discount on jumping 2 versions.

That is a fair point and one I had not considered.

If the end goal is to have a larger, more robust user base for version 13 onward then it seems counter productive to split hairs on upgrade versions allowable at the $99 price. If the end goal is to punish some prior version users, well, don't know how well that ever works out for any company. Again, I love the software. But the vibe I'm getting is that the powers that be aren't in any hurry to get my money. Call me crazy, but it seems like it would be a good idea to keep as many poser users in the current version as possible. Larger current version user base would be better for everyone. Sorry, but the tactic of restricting the user base for whatever reasons seems like a really bad move in a highly competitive field.

I am a bit surprised there isn't currently an 11 -> 13 upgrade.

I didn't upgrade to 12 for two very good reasons, and one of them was the negative outpouring over problems with 12. Very likely, there are others like me. They saw all the hate that 12 was getting (and secondarily, a lack of new relevant features) and figured they'd just wait until 13. I considered upgrading to 12 not all that long ago because I saw more and more posts saying problems were being fixed.

If it were me, I'd do the following:

Poser 12 - 13 upgrade = X.

Poser 11 - 13 upgrade = X + (X * 50%)

Result then, Poser 12-13 'rounded' = $99, Poser 11-13 = $149.  If that were the case, Id have already upgraded.

Parallels my call, too, Meshbox.

;-(

I built a heap of store-points towards my #11 to #12 upgrade, but realised #12.0 lost eg the 'simple' Material Room stuff I used. Waited for subsequent #12.x to put such back, but #13 came along first...

Seems #13, after a few teething troubles, runs cleaner, faster etc etc than #12 did: Kudos, Team_Poser !!

But, sadly, a lot of that uses PC hardware I lack...

Also, I'm not yet sufficiently impressed by the community's opinions of #13's benefits to put my 10+k points towards it...

Could be said that, beyond using 'External Libraries',  'dipping a toe' into Cycles' Emission and Reflection, and using Superfly plus network-render 'Box', I'm essentially running Poser_11 as a 'super-P_4'...

Um, 'Guilty as Charged', I'm afraid...

NikKelly posted at 11:39 AM Sat, 6 May 2023 - #4464430

Parallels my call, too, Meshbox.

;-(

I built a heap of store-points towards my #11 to #12 upgrade, but realised #12.0 lost eg the 'simple' Material Room stuff I used. Waited for subsequent #12.x to put such back, but #13 came along first...

Seems #13, after a few teething troubles, runs cleaner, faster etc etc than #12 did: Kudos, Team_Poser !!

But, sadly, a lot of that uses PC hardware I lack...

Also, I'm not yet sufficiently impressed by the community's opinions of #13's benefits to put my 10+k points towards it...

Could be said that, beyond using 'External Libraries',  'dipping a toe' into Cycles' Emission and Reflection, and using Superfly plus network-render 'Box', I'm essentially running Poser_11 as a 'super-P_4'...

Um, 'Guilty as Charged', I'm afraid...

For what I use Poser for it is difficult to equate the list of improvements in Poser 13 to what am am seeing on a daily basis.  Renders are certainly faster, lighting options appear have increased in Poser 13 and it can certainly make better use of HDRIs.  Little touches like having the choice of what you load into such as last render, preferred render, empty scene and so on makes it a lot nicer to use than 12.  I never had a problem with 12 as far as stability but I do know many creators did but Poser 11 was never that stable for me and Poser 13, so far, has shown no real stability issues.

I have really enjoyed using Poser 13 in the few weeks I have been using it, it is a more rounded product than Poser 12 and it has pushed me to try and make far more complex renders.  It is early days but, so far, I do not regret having paid for the upgrade quite literally frmm day one.