No new press release at the Curious Labs site. Conference began Sunday, exhibition today. Anybody who's there going to post here for us - Steve? Anthony? Karen?

Bueller?

Me, too. I suspect that anybody who could update the website is in Texas... but Anthony did say that he'd post pictures. Set-up is hard work (I had a dealer's table at conventions for 16 years), and they are possibly sleeping like lambs. Possibly. ;^) More likely that they are relaxing and jabbering away in a hot tub and didn't want to bring the laptops in with them. Carolly

I can't wait to find out what people have been getting up to, wonder what they think of poser5 now some more people have had a chance to see it running. Rob

Little Dragon - Ferris works for Curious? Carolly - hasn't Steve given up sleep for the duration? Yes, interested in what "non-Curious" folks have to say about the demo - surely one of ours will take pity on we poor folks far from San Antonio? Or want to make us envious of all the goodies we're missing? And of course, those non-disclosure agreements don't apply once P5 goes public. (Go easy when ripping off that duct tape!) But mostly I want the release date - October?

prepare to be flooded with pics/movies of poser5 in action I hope (hint hint), I'd even just settle for the release date, I wanna know who's doing the new figures, it's not Daz or RDNA so who? Rob

Actually, the NDAs still apply to anything which isn't disclosed by Curious or other involved parties. So if we saw something which doesn't make it into the final shipping version or heard anything about who else might or might not be involved with a particular aspect, we aren't supposed to talk about it... even after we rip the shrinkwrap off the final product and pour our eyes over the list of features. Sometimes in game development a feature which is plagued by a horrendous bug or creaky mechanism will get scrapped at the last minute... only to show up in a later patch or module or version. I suspect that the same thing happens with most tool development. Look at the "hair" feature which has been in Poser for how long? Poser 3??? And it is still mostly a word-of-mouth revelation which gets discovered every few months. The nifty new hair feature you've seen in the pictures Steve posted may or may not be rooted in that old hair algorhythm, but the idea of growable hair has certainly been on their drawing board for a long time, and it probably was something that developers weren't supposed to talk about until it did get discovered. Sheesh! It is hard to sip coffee through duct-tape (why don't they just make it in coffee-flavor?), so we will be glad when news is officially released. As for Steve sleeping? He was like a little kid at show&tell day when he gave us a peek inside his laptop (and Karen was taking note of our reactions). We haven't seen word that Poser 5 is officially announced, but if so, he's probably going around the clock showing everybody within elbow range what the team has been up to. In fact, quiet from them might be a good sign that they are in the middle of a whirlwind of attention. :) Carolly

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Frye

OK, just got back from the exhibition. Lots of cool things, but I know you guys are wanting to know about Poser. Well, compared to last year, Curious Lab's booth was a non-event. Last year they teamed up with Daz, had a large booth and lots of product demos. This year it was a VERY small booth with a VERY LARGE mock-up of the Poser 5 box (no pictures, sorry). They did not have any versions of Poser 5 that they were showing on the floor (although I hear they were showing it "behind closed doors". I did get the meet the very lovely and VERY GENEROUS Sydd Raven (THANKS!!!!!), and we chatted very briefly about P5. As you know she and her "team" - "Mr. Raven" have been involved in the development of P5 (textures, hair, figures). SHe stated that the rendering is beautiful, the cloth function works great, and that rendering times should not be too bad (however this is very subjective based on what all is being rendered and how it is being rendered). She mentioned the product should be out in "6-8 weeks", but I do not want to hold her to that, as I would rather the product be ready to go than released early, plus there are always delays in software delivery (plus CL has the final determination of when to let it go). I see most of you have seen the price for the new version. There WILL be a tiered price structure for people with P4 and/or P4 + Pro Pack. I was quoted a number for the upgrades by one of the individuals in the booth (not saying who), but I do not want to repeat as I do not know how "official" it is, although it was stated that those with the P4 + PP will have the cheapest price, one that I think is fair. In addition, there was a rep there from Reiss (I think I spelled that correctly) to talk about the upcoming plug-in for Maya. Now I know that most used of Poser most likely do not have a copy of Maya (at least legally) as they are (to date) targetted to different markets, but I find it nice that there is sincere interest from "the upper tier" products to link with the exceptional functionality that is in Poser. I wish them well. Sorry that there is not much else to say. You can ask questions, but I have already told you everything I know (except the numbers that I referred to above). On other matters, DAZ was nowhere to be seen, and I thought they were supposed to have a booth there. The Renderosity crew was there in full force, selling magazines, Tshirts, mugs, and a few other things. They had a great booth and it seemed to be busy all throughout the day. 3DCommune also had a booth, but the time I waled by there was noone there. There did have some handout regarding a "free subscription" to their magazine, so you guys may want to check it out. - Ray Yamka