Now the truth has finally been revealed that the clothing items found in Poser4 and the ones sold here and at DAZ will not be able to take advantage of the new cloth/collision/gravity features in Poser 5. It appears that only the new clothing in Poser 5 will utilize these new features. While this does not diminish the fine work put into these clothing items by the various artists I think we will probably see new versions of these same items that will utilize the new Poser 5 format. Of course all that depends on whether new clothing items can be modelled in this new format type...

Somehow I think that the recent DAZziness, combined with what Martin C's working on and the announcment by Steve Cooper -- maybe the current clothing could be modified to work with Poser 5. From what I know of collision detection and cloth in other 3D proggies, the tighter the mesh, the better the results. So maybe just a quick sub-divide of polys will make the old clothes work with the new poser. At least that's my hope, I just spent almost 2 C-notes this weekend buying clothes for Mike, Vicky and Steph and upgrading to Mike2 and Vicky2... Until more details surface, we're all just guessing (except for those of us gagged with duct-tape). MrMongo, aka Mike Rhodes

farang, how do you know that?

Farang, please. You took a question posted in another thread and took it as a statement of fact. There is no evidence that this will be true in any way, shape, or form.

It was mentioned in a previous post that was then deleted. It stated that the clothes available now will work just as well in Poser 5 as they do in Poser 4 but will not be able to take advantage of the new features that the Poser 5 clothing has. This is a very important point and I think they deleted it because they realized that they let the cat out of the bag. I can see it now--"DAZ 3D End of Summer Sale...all clothing items now 95% off!!" If Curious Labs cares even a little about the community of artists here then they should comment on this instead of backpedaling and deleting messages they posted here. Imagine all the people currently making clothing items now not knowing that the value of their work will be diminished once Poser 5 is released!!

Farang, you may not intend to, but you are doing the clothing modellers and merchants here a huge disservice by spouting speculation and opinion based on other applications as fact. First, as others have mentioned, relative to existing clothing being able to take advantage of cloth/collision/gravity features... those who know all the details relative to this question can't say or in the case of CL, haven't said yet, so this is pure speculation. Second, relative to the same subject, suppose none of the current clothes can take advantage of those features - so what? Does that make them any less useful for the millions of renders they've already been used in? Or the millions to come? If you choose to wait (months? til next year? who knows) for P5 to come out before you buy any more clothes, that's your choice, but please don't try to convince others that they should now boycot all current clothing items based on heresay and opinion. Clothes bought today will be just as useful in P5 (whenever it ships) as they are (today) in P4 - THAT is a (pre-stated by CL) fact... clothing items made for P5 may well have additional features (for animation purposes, etc.), but that doesn't make P4 clothing obsolete - not by a long shot.

It is also my guess based on the generous work by many of the modelers here that there will be minimaly priced upgrades to current clothing that take advantage of P5 features.

Somehow I think that there will be a certain compatability between Poser 4 clothes and stuff and Poser 5 clothes and stuff. Maybe just more unheard of stuff in the cr3 file(LOL) and I'm sure the pz5 file structure will be seriously complex!! I would be extremely suprised (not to mention disappointed) if the ol' pz3, cr2, pz3 etc can't be loaded. Of course... I'm more interested in the library structure... I plan to update PBooost as soon as I have definate info on this so... either current PBooost users can re-structure automatically to P5 or PBooost Vxxx can be made compatible for a free update. Whatever the complexity, be sure that I will ensure you libraries are OK when you want to update to Poser 5!!!! H:)

After having worked with dynamic cloth and collision in other 3D apps, I'm here to tell you that you will require both static clothing models and dynamic models. Notice how Kupa politely avoided the questions about ram. That's probably because he doesn't want to scare off customers---these new dynamics will chew up ram like you won't believe, and not every clothing situation will require dynamics.

Firt off, CL has not deleted any posts. I see all posts, even deleted ones. Second, I would not wory about the clothes if I were you. The new cloth room is a adition to the product, not a replacement. There will be many times when one would rather use a conforming prop over the cloth room. Think about it!

Cross post there MAdriver. You are right, not every clothing situation will require dynamics.

Most of the things I've seen here are stills. For those the collision and gravity may not be as important - especially considering the amount of post work people do.

farang you dont know what your talking about. Ron

I quoye Kupa "ALL 3rd party Poser content that works in Poser 4, will work in Poser 5. As well, all older P1, P2, P3 and Pro Pack content/files will work in P5 too."

OK, here's the way I see it. I don't need anything more to support what I currently have for Poser. I already have far more than I've used in a long time...clothes, figures, utilities, etc. It's time for me to stop spending on Poser 4, and saving that money for Poser 5. Hell I just wish I thought of that before last weekend. I already blew about $100 on Poser stuff within the past week. Enough! I'm hoping that the Poser 5 upgrade will be "easily affordable" for a hobbiest who's pinching pennies (like myself.). I have no idea how long it will be before Poser 5 is released. As it stands, time is on my side. Because I have more time to save money. **** "This message states My Not So Humble Opinion. Our opinions might differ, but I respect your opinion!"

I speculate that as long as the new characters still use wavefront obj format, the cr2 wizards around here will probably have figured out how to add gravity effects to old clothes within a month of P5's release. Just hope they're willing to share the info.

To agree with Nr Mongo in Post #3 : I think it won't be so difficult to adapt existing clothing to dynamics. Geometries are the same( maybe a few more density in th mesh, yep ), let's wait and see how P5 will handle dynamic clothes, huh ?

I want to try and lend a bit of perspective here, based on experience with cloth simulation in various programs. I can take most Poser clothing into LW and set it up for cloth simulation just fine; as long as the clothing envelops the figure, it can be set up for dynamics. It usually has to be subdivided of course, because cloth simulation ultimately needs a ton of mesh resolution to create folds correctly. Poser 5 could for instance, simply allow you to set a certain material to use clothsim. Which would mean you could likely be able use any existing clothing. Or it is possible existing clothing will need an update to designate areas affected by the simulation; and the parameters of what kind of cloth. Both scenarios are of course speculation. However, just because a program has cloth sim does not mean that clothing modelling paradigm is completely changed. We are still using polygons, that are still modelled to look like clothing, that are still modelled as a "shell" around the figure. These same kinds of meshes will simply behave differently once in use.

Good points Mallen... Designating a material would make a lot of sense if they did it that way (you wouldn't (necessarily) want a shirt collar to flatten down onto the shoulders, for example). Obviously, we'll need to wait for more details from CL before jumping to too many conclusions, but thatnks for the insight.