Ron, Yes I'm aware that beta programs are often released as warez. Yes, I know Windows 95 was released by pirates before it was released by microsoft. My assumption that Poser 5 on warez sites is a fake is because I don't believe CL is far enough along yet as a whole product for it to be releasable by a warez outfit. Are you aare that you often come across as if you're acusing people of being dumb or of being intentionally obtuse or of correcting you unfairly? You have an odd manner, Ron, and I think (because you frequently make the effort to help people) that you must be a nice person, but the way you write comes across very harshly most of the time. Trying not to be ruffled cause I know he didn't MEAN to call me an idiot, Phoenix

Well, since everyone is making sugestions or listing whay they hope the new Poser 5 will include, I may as well add mine. I would like to be able to use the dials from the keyboard. Maybe ALT - UP ARROW & ALT - DOWN ARROR to select the dial and left and right to turn it.

Well, as long as we're compiling wishlist here, I'd like to add: -MP3 / Og Vorbis import. -RAViX II / Illustrate! export. -Procedural texture generation (sorta like the KPT texture explorer, but specificly designed for skin/eyes/hair) -3D acceleration -Built in Dance Studio!

.mp3's, prolly... .ogg files? I love 'em too, but I doubt it. Shaders would be a damned good idea, though... then maybe I can import all the Q3 Arena ones I already have piled up :) /P

Attached Link: http://gwarsbane.mektek.net/poser5_wishlist.html

A while back a bunch of us in the alt.binaries.3d.poser newsgroup got together and sent in a large wish list.

Whatever it is on the warez sites labelled Poser5 - it's not Poser 5 or any beta version of it.

No shit... You'll be telling us next that you'll be supporting graphics cards :) That's some fairly slick stuff, you're obvioulsy looking to steal market share from Maya. Cloth, hair and collision detection, I think the "hype meter" just ticked up a few notches. As for the pirate, it's proably poser4 with a IRC trojan or something. Which would you rather spend your time downloading? If somebody is going to rename it, it's because he wants you to download it... Besides which, if somebody had it, we'd be getting funny questions, and "new" images. This is the 'net's premier poser site, hell even the president of the company is a memeber! :) So if there were a poser5, (legal or otherwise) we'd hear of it first. Steve, I can't wait! :) later jb

Will it be backwards compatible? That is, will Poser 4 figures, especially original figures, be usable in Poser 5?

To answer some questions: Yes, Poser4 figures should work in Poser 5. Maybe not with all the features. In theory, you can use Vicky and Michael in Shockwave 3d, but you don't want to. Just like VET, Shockwave reduces the geometry which doen't look to good on high-poly models. An exported Vicky2 is ~3.5 MB in w3d format and Shockwave 3D doesn't support transparency maps or joint parameters in the way Poser does, so the result is not really satisfying. Since Shockwave3D is a realtime format, the result is also very slow on computers with not so fancy graphics cards. You will be much better off using low-poly figures for w3d and doing the details with textures. If you take a look at the feature list, you will hopefully be able to understand why it takes a while until Poser 5. Be patient, it'll be worth it.

Oh I think that's a given. Noone is gonna upgrade if they can't take their vast collection of toys with them. Even if Poser 5 does abandon the .CR2 (unlikely, I would think) provisions will most assuredly be made for conversions. The library files (and geometry files as well) that Poser reads are, at their core, plain ASCII text that get interpreted by the program at runtime. They read like an insctuction sheet, or oddly constucted grocery list. They would have to go out of there way to make them non-compatible.

I read "Yes, Poser4 figures should work in Poser 5. Maybe not with all the features." to mean that yes Poser 4 items will all work with Poser 5, but they may not be able to take advantage of all the new features in version 5 and will only work the same way they worked in version 4. For instance clothing items made for Poser 4 may not be able to take advantage of collision detection, but clothing made for Poser 5 would. That seems reasonable to me, anyway.

Please don't get me wrong: Poser4 figures will work in Poser5 the way they worked before (don't quote me on that, plans can always change). "Maybe not with all the features." is supposed to mean that some of the new Poser5 features like cloth or hair may require things in models that maybe Poser4 figures do not provide. I cannot predict the future, so what I'm writing here is anything but a final word.

Phoenixamon was quicker at posting than I was :-)

Maybe someone hacked a version of the poser 4 demo into a fully working program, This is what Warez hackers like to do. But that does not explain why they would call it poser 5.

The warez people might be referring to the ProPack as "Poser 5." Given the incredible feature list mentioned, I doubt that they would be in beta at this point. CL is a small company. Unless they contracted it out, I don't see sufficient time since ProPack and Avatar to have a beta P5.

This (small) also means it would be easier to determine which employee gave it out - I wouldn't want to be that person. Of course, they could have been hacked, but I hope their security is better than that. I would imagine that when a beta is ready, CL would be contacting folks here to do the testing. That would be the logical thing to do.

I do have a question that I hope can be answered... Will some of the public (meaning us) be able to beta test it when its ready for beta testing? Basically tell us to send in e-mails somewhere and like 50 or 100 random names are picked to do the testing. I do Beta testing for Microsoft and a few other places and enjoy hunting bugs and what not. I have been able to crash programs when no one else can... ok maybe that's not a good thing, but it does help find bugs. :)

I would like to see a feature that was available in Poser 3 Mac/Win that disappeared in Poser 4 Mac/Win and ProPack Mac/Win - namely, a Custom Install option to install everything except nude figures. No, I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. However, I am a teacher in a public high school. I have found that it is one royal pain in the butt to go to every workstation and delete all references to nude obj's, rsr's, pict's, tiff's, etc., ad nauseum, each time I load the program. Or is Poser intended only for the mature audience? In that case, I guess I'll have to delete P5's nude references as well. Not being a professional programmer I could not tell how much more programming code that would involve. Thanks for listening, kupa!

Works of the "past masters" might be part of the art instructor's curriculum, but not mine. Perhaps some of my students already frequent this site at home, but there's no way I would let them view this site at school. Besides, as of earlier this year, a bill was signed into law to the effect that any educational institution that receives federal funding in whole or in part have an Internet filtering system in place by this past September 1st as part of the Child Protection Act. Needless to say, sites such as Renderosity are already off-limits.

Deleting the nude figures for a school sounds sensible - have you forgotten what a horde of sub-human adolescents will do with the merest hint of anything sexual? Shudder

I'd like to see a more selective installation protocol. For instance: I care nothing about animation, so I would would enjoy foregoing installing animation options, in order to have a pared-down version. I'd like to see them seriously overhaul the library/menu features. Most definitely I agree with previous suggestions: let us add subdirectories as we like. Also, make the menus compatible with mouse wheels, PLEASE! Allow better customization of the Poser desktop, especially when it comes to font control. The text is too hard to read against the background, and changing the color doesn't help, because the color of the font changes with it. There are a host of common-sense things CL could do to the next incarnation of Poser. Let's see some of them, please?

Scaramouche, do you check those machines every day to make sure the little blighters haven't sneaked some nekkid people on there? I sympathize with you, I wouldn't want to be held responsible for what they might come up with. As regards the COPA, the ACLU filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Sept. 20th, asking that the act be declared unconstitutional. Since even the current conservative leaning court threw out the bill's predecesor, the Communications Decency Act by a 9-0 vote, it should be interesting.

Not all web protection schemes are "foolproof"(which is the name of a leading educational web blocking software title), but, knock on wood, none of my students have done that. Downloading anything onto their workstations without prior permission of their instructor is a violation of our school's IUP (Internet Usage Policy) and subsequent disciplinary action, which could ultimately lead to the student's suspension. For our T1 line, we must have a safeguard program in place. Additionally, the providers of the T1 line have their own web site blockage scheme. Which is why I said earlier that even though they may have access to this and other sites at their home, they do not in school.

Attached Link: http://www.mecom4d.com

One question - What about better renderings setting, soft shadows, true reflection, shin, that will make the Poser5 number one, why we try to do so big textures if we can do it using small one, but the Poser4 don't allow to ad the normal things that are needed for a realistic rendering. this are featured that every package need on the first place, Look in deep paint just simple software that show all the features , we all wish that poser 5 have this features and we never need to move to other software for extra rendering , post production and other ad. It will a revolution. Please say yes or not do we have any chance? Thank you Catharina

scaramouche, a simple python script could do the trick of deleting nude objs (or at least ease the load). You might have to re-run it each time you reinstall, but those sort of things are what computers do best;) That was what they were originally designed for. While I don't have Poser Pro, since it has python built into it, you might even be able to force a script to run each time you opened a new file (and could limit the figures that are visible) eric

Some have asked why CL doesn't give a date or hints about P5. Frankly, I'm shocked that Kupa said what he did. What if one of those things can't be fit in? Are we going to be upset? I'll bet CL will be disparaged for days. How many people have read this thread and are thinking "Wow, I should wait for P5 and not buy P4"? By announcing a date for P5 CL effectively eliminates sales of P4 and places themselves in a nasty bind if they miss the projected date. I'm sure CL wants to release P5 ASAP, but let's encourage them to be thorough so that we don't have to put up with so many (notice I'm not stupid enough to say "any")bugs. Also, for those with suggestions for P5 and beyond, don't forget that CL has a wishlist submission area on their web page.

Scaramouche If you are using Windows you could create a batch file to do the deletion. In Notepad you need to type lines like: del ".GeometriesnewFemaleNudeHifemaleNudeHiP3." del ".TexturesFemale Nude Texture.tif" del ".librariescharacterPeopleP4 Nude Woman." until you have all files listed then save it as "Clean up.bat" and after installing Poser copy "Clean up.bat" into the Runtime folder and double click it to run. The "." at the beginning tells it to start from the Runtime folder and then look in the listed sub-folders, the "*" catches the OBJ/CR2 and RSR files with one command. If you have stuff like textures using the school colours you could use the same batch file to copy them into the appropriate folders. No doubt there is an eqivalent on the Mac. The alternative, particularly if all of the machines are on a fast network, would be to set up a master Runtime folder with just the stuff you want on the server and then install Poser, delete its Runtime folder and copy your master across in its place.

I will try that batch file as soon as I get back to school tomorrow - TIA, RHaseltine, that just might help me out!