What interesting news! DAZ coming out with their own Poser type program! I have not, and will not buy the overblown P5 with all the headaches and patches needed... I do not care to fuss in the many rooms to get a "decent" figure when the current P4 mil figures are so versatile with the touch of just a FEW dials and in many cases one dial! I hope that DAZ's program will continue to have the perfect EXPORT and import capabilities that P4 has now! I want to continue to use my P4 mil figures and all the other wonderful models from DAZ and from here.. in a "P4 type" program which easily exports into my Vue and other programs!! I also hope that the DAZ version will run "willingly" on most computer systems, at least medium range systems with win98 too, for those of us who really CAN'T upgrade. I will gladly wait and see what they have to offer! Meanwhile I am happily using my P4 & P4 characters with Vue and Bryce!! At the very least I DO have P4 forever, and hope it is always there for folks like me, who have no desire for steep learning curves, "Advance programs", and who just want to have quick, easy fun creating 3d art! (and from what I have seen in galleries, artists can create VERY advanced art with Poser 4 anyway!) Hopfully, Sara

well right now this DAZ program is vaporware :-) if it uses BVH files and exports animated DAZ figures to Cinema, Lightwave vue etc with ease it will enjoy huge success$$$$ but i would like to see it first.

i for one enjoy the control given in P5. Yes, there's a learning curve, but its not so bad considering the results. There are some full face expression dials that do it all in one shot, or you can tweak to your heart's content. Just depends on whether you like a VW or a BMW.

I hope you are right, though I'll never give up P5 it would be nice to have more options. but i'm not sure Daz's program will be direct competition for Poser Dan only mentioned that it was a rendering and animation program that CL "might" view as compitition. perhaps that's a smokescreen and it will be a full blown posing program. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

But how long we need to wait to see what DAZ's program comes out ?

Why does the saying, "Putting the cart before the horse," pop into mind here? Take care and be well. casamerica

plus you're back at version1....but then again, it can't be too much worse than version 5 of Poser....perhaps a bit feature lacking.

What an assinine message. You are assuming this non-existant "program" is going to be the be-all and end-all of applications, just from your tone. You are expecting the first version of an application to come from a company known for making models, not applications, to be bug free and absolutely feature rich? And you are presuming to have full knowledge of all of the capabilities of the application. Please, while the rest of us are using our P4 and P5, you can go back to your "Daz application" and be "creative". - Ray

None of us even knows what sort of application DAZ has in mind. I believe one of hem said it was not planned to be a new Poser but rather something to work in conjunction with Poser. I have high hopes and will watch with interest. I believe DAZ may be a bit more in touch (than CL) with how people really use Poser and what might make things easier for us... CL omitted quite a few usability features and features that would allow more complex characters in the P5 release. Hopefully whatever they come up with will be compliment Poser well, filling in some gaps. Phoenix

Geez, ryamka, ease up on the lady! Read her message again. She asks for a simple program that works. You call that "be-all," "end-all?" Well, when you're so used to Poser, I guess it would be, eh?

Competition is a good thing :) Who said CL have to be the Microsoft of the "pose world"? wink I am really looking forward to seeing what Daz have to offer.

I HAVE BEEN THRU ALL THIS KIND OF STUFF BEFORE. wITH METACREATIONS,RAYDREAM STUDIO< CARRARA AND EOVIA...PROMISES PROMISES!! People always believe the grass is going to be greener based on hints and promises, but it's never quite like that. Maybe Daz's program will be great...but maybe not. Its taken Steinberg 15 years to write a truly solid and stable music program (cubase SX) with no legacy code and they have a ton of experience behind them. Daz have had little or no experience in writing apps..(maybe they will hire people that have...I dont know) But I can tell you this...I for one wont be pinning any hopes on Daz writing a bug free version one of a program that is supposed to solve your problems that you think you have. Words are one thing, reality is quite another. Personally I think Clabs will straighten out Poser 5 a hell of a lot quicked than we will see a perfect version one of Daz's new app that is bug free. Lets get a shot of reality here. HMann

Being as they already let the cat out of the bag, so to speak...... exactly how long is it going to be before this application is ready, given that they can work out the EULA issues with CL. An annoucement like that deserves some kind of follow-up... have I missed it? sigh Going to have to check the forums more often.

I think people like to base too many things off of others opinions not facts or actual experience. Kind of like all those people who boycott movies when some says it's bad, how can they have an opinion with out seeing it. They Can't. Enjoy your vaporware(pretty big bug in itself) My P5 seems pretty bug free and I haven't had any problems with the export...except #ind, but P4 does that too sara. Hey HHmann, love the hair!

...well right now this DAZ program is vaporware :-) Ummm... no it's not. Vaporware is a non-existant program that has been hyped well in advance of its release. Generally the release date arrives with no program. Then the cycle repeats itself again and again. Sometimes vaporware is a strategy to reduce competitors' sales. Sometimes they are just testing for market response. Sometimes it is because the programmers just are never able to produce a decent product. None of the above applies in this instance. Firstly, the only reason DAZ mentioned it was because they have indicated public disatisfaction with Poser 5. Being an ethical company they felt it best to divulge this information in the interest of full disclosure so that the public would understand that DAZ has a strongly vested interest in P5's EULA that goes beyond the obvious. Secondly, they did not say that this program would definitely be offered in the future. Instead, they said they were seriously considering the development of such a program. (actually, I'm going from memory here but I'm pretty sure that's what they said) Thirdly, they did not say it would be equivalent to Poser- only that it might be considered to be a competitive product to Poser. Lastly, they gave absolutely no indication of what their proposed program may or may not do compared to Poser. Now even with the wildest stretch of imagination this could not possibly be construed as "hype"- a prime ingredient of vaporware. My guess is that it will not provide all the features of Poser 5. My hope is that it will offer all the features necessary to someone who modifies, poses and textures figures with the intention of exporting said figures to an external program such as Bryce, Vue or any number of other renderers. If we are lucky this will not require a state of the art computer and if we are really lucky it will not include an onerous copy protection system, if any. The real danger here, assuming that DAZ does indeed release this program, is that our wild dreams and speculations will become so extravagant that, no matter what the program turns out to be, it will fail to meet our over blown expectations. Certainly the possibility of such a program excites me. But I won't get excited about much else until further information becomes available. - Jack

Well! But for one sour apple, I got a pretty good discussion going here... ;) But I do want to clairify... I WANT a Poser that will EXPORT like P4 does now.. what good are new characters to me if the mesh is a "foreign language" to Vue and Bryce? The humans are one thing, the clothing is another, the materials are another, the hair seems to be another.. all things that Vue and Bryce NEED to READ properly..and that will perhaps take a lot of work for CL to create a recognizable format for them.. OR are they going to let e-on and Corel do that?? I have not seen anything from CL on this very issue, and it is central to what poser IS.. a place to create, pose and EXPORT characters out to other software to use in scenes! Why on earth was this issue not taken care of before release?? This does not inspire confidence!! E-on already worked so hard to get Vue 4 to read Poser 4's pz3s... a great new, useful thing!!! Will they start again with this new stuff?? Corel certainly won't! jjsemp- your image, his shirt, is amazing! But is this a permanent textured shirt now? Can it be used on the figure outside of P5? I would get a little more excited about p5 if some of these things seemed to be possible...(and where are the eyelashes of all the P5 figures?? isn't that the oddest thing to have been left out?) I just thought that if DAZ would be competative in some way perhaps CL would not take our $$ before the product is finished, like Metacreations has done to all of us for years!!! It is SO not fair to take advantage of such loyal followers! I suppose I will make more people mad now.. so I will just go away and be quite now. Sara

Sara you have EVERY right to say how you feel.If nobody said anything,then nothing would get done. ;o)

Actually I build world kits and have worked in Poser 5 since it was in Alpha Beta. I can tell you that once CLabs has refined and tweaked the firefly renderer...you will not need to export to render. Based on what you know now you may find that difficult to believe, but its true you will not need actually need to export and render. Now some people may argue with this point, but untill they have spent at least a few hundred hours in Poser 5 playing with the renderer and material nodes its difficult to take their comments really seriously. Why??? ....because the Firefly renderers power lies in understanding the materials and nodes and lights..thats why. Being based on the Renderman REYES renderer, this renderer has a huge power that is not immediately apparent and it's not just in the Render options as I mentioned. What this means as people start to realize the power this renderer and the material nodes harness they will start to produce scenes that you have never seen before in Poser. I dont work for Clabs nor do I get a cent from them, so this is not some company hype.. it is a fact. Take for example Bryces renderer...its a basically sophisticated raytracer with good antialising...but in Poser 5 it has displacement mapping in the materials...what this means in laymans terms is that you can place a texture on an objecty and according to the map you can distort it in 3d space at render time because the renderer and materials are that powerful. You can create clouds using this technique ...out of something very simple like a sphere...Bryce cannot do this actually...and just htis alone is a very important feature. Of course the Firefly renderer is not perfect in its current incarnation, but it has the right approach to be built on very quickly and I am sure CLabs will do this. OK it doesnt do Photon Mapping or real world global illumination but neither does Bryce actually. Regarding worlds in Bryce...well basically they consist of meshes and materials mainly and this can be easily be done in Poser 5. The hair generator alone can generate grass on a flat mesh...I dont believe Bryce can do that either. Sometimes we have to give up old concepts to embrace the new or get left behind...I'll bet in a year or so you wont hear of many people wanting to export to Bryce or Vue anymore...of course if you can do all you wanty using this technique then great. But it pays to have an open mind...thats also part of creating. I have been programming and writing music with cutting edge software tools for at least 15 years...and I have constantly updated and put up with bugs, because I wanted to learn. Sure I've had my headaches...but at the end of the day I did learn and I am glad I did. Keep an open mind Poser 5 has a few bugs, buts its good points far outway those and Clabs will be dead keen to stomp those bugs I am sure, they welcomed bug reports when it was in Beta and they seem to have the same attitude now. Cheers Harvey Mann

Harv...I'm sure once people really learn it the Firefly renderer will prove its worth. But to tell us we will no longer NEED to export to render in another application is unfair. We may not NEED to but we certainly may WANT to. Please don't assume that all we want in our renders is what Poser/firefly can give us. Believe it or not for some of us Poser figures are only INCIDENTAL to our work. We still need to export. Not all of us are into top heavy babes and temples and closeups with expensive texture maps with fancy makeup. I am sooo disappointed that the exporting bugs in ProPack are now in Poser 5. The hair doesn't concern me personally, and I think the cloth stuff as props may be fine. I am a little worried about materials you make from scratch within Poser. It seems Poser won't create a UVMapped texture from its own materials like ZBrush does. Or am I wrong on that? There certainly may be times where I will render solely in Poser...but not for everything. So the interface with the outside world is still very important.

Spit is correct, Harvey. You mention having an open mind, yet everything you say is based from one point of view: Poser's. What about people who build worlds in other programs and just use Poser for the characters? Will they be able to build their worlds inside Poser? I doubt I can do in Poser what I can do in Vue. Even if I bought all the scenery props out there, Poser still wouldn't hold a candle to Vue's quality when it comes to creating nature scenes.

Maybe CL can add a "landscape room"? Actually, I agree with some here. I first bought Poser to create characters for export to other 3D apps. It is great that Poser 5 has the ability to do some amazing work on its own; but I think it is important to be able to export to other apps as well. In a related note, I did read somewhere that CL and E-ON had signed an agreement recently to be able to import Poser charaters into Vue. I hope this wasn't just for Poser 4 characters. Considering that this agreement was signed this summer I have to think that it would include version 5 as well. Hopefully we will see soon.

It is SO not fair to take advantage of such loyal followers! I certainly agree, Sparkel, but there's an old saying. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I don't understand why so many people are so shocked and dismayed by how buggy Poser 5 is. Why did they think it would be any different than Poser 4 or Poser Pro Pack?

I have to say that I'm really surprised that no one has come out with another character creating program like Poser yet. After all, we have several landscaping programs, such as Bryce, Vue, World Builder, World Construction Kit, Terragen, etc. Why is there only one program that is dedicated solely to figure posing and rendering? I would welcome other programs and I would still use them all, as I use the other landscape programs. There's room in the world for more than one. I haven't bought Poser 5 yet for a variety of reasons, but especially since I've seen some of the renders that are beginning to show up, I'm just not impressed enough with them. I personally can't see much of a difference in the quality of the renders vs. those of Poser 4. And the stock figures, Don and Judy, et al, are as ugly as Dork and Dorkette in P4. I would still be using the Millennium figures exclusively, even if I had P5. It would be nice to see other choices on the market besides just one Poser-type program. Melanie

I agree completely, melanie. But the reaction from some of these people when you mention it....sheese, it's like you insulted their mother or something. And jcleaver: If CL added a "Landscape Room" they may be in violation of someone else's EULA ;) Also, Vue 4 has always been able to import Poser 4 files. The new agreement you heard about is for Poser 5. Although, AFAIK, it's still a rumor.

"XP is problematic"? Um, how? What do you base this on? Completely base-less and uninformed opinion. - Ray

So.. CL does not really WANT us to export.. they want P5 to be an entire world to stay within in almost all cases? I love my outdoor vue scene capabilities.. plants (not just hairy grass), numerous trees, flowers... any moutians I want... Harvey, your p4 hair is the most beautiful hair I have EVER seen..and your poser worlds backdrop, ground and skies are amazing... but honestly I don't know when there will be the power to load up poser with ALL the vegitation I use in Vue.. and all the atmosphere.. lighting options that are VERY easy to control.. I will keep an open mind.. as the discussion has gone on, I can see more clearly where P5 may be going, and what parts may be worth it... so I may eventually get it.. (only if it will REALLY run on win98se.. I can't afford to upgrade really!) ... and for sure I will wait at least 6 months... but Harvey if you beta tested.. will CL give us EYE LASHES? :) Thanks for all the discussion and input! It's been enlightening, and thanks too for those that encouraged me to continue to dialog! There still is a place for my current P4, Vue and even Bryce as they are... I have never even used all the wonderful models, props and stuff I have downloaded for those yet!! :) Sara

Musicat: You went out and bought a new program (Vue4) because of a rumor about Bryce, not 'news'.

Hey all! Some thoughts as I come to them...

***hmann - "*I can tell you that once CLabs has refined and tweaked the firefly renderer...you will not need to export to render.

Based on what you know now you may find that difficult to believe, but its true you will not need actually need to export and render.

Now some people may argue with this point, but untill they have spent at least a few hundred hours in Poser 5 playing with the renderer and material nodes its difficult to take their comments really seriously. Why??? ....because the Firefly renderers power lies in understanding the materials and nodes and lights..thats why."

No offense, but this simply isn't true for many of us... and will be even less true as time goes on. I get the feeling that CL wants Poser to be considered and important and viable tool in the professional world of animation - and there is simply no way that is going to happen on a large scale unless P5 can interoperate and export to the big software.

There are a large number of capabilities of Max that dramatically enhance the renders... capabilities that simply do not exist in Firefly. Even assuming that someday they might exist in Firefly, the production stream of a professional animation house will rarely change to render with a completely unfamiliar engine.

Skip the renderer; the work environment of Max (as an example) for placement and lighting of a large scene is superior to the Poser environment in many ways, and the ability of camera motion is dramatically more flexible.

Then we have the extensive libraries of materials and assets that companies have in the larger systems (Lightwave, Max) to be considered.

Then all the plug-ins and special effect filter abilities. Let's not forget fluid dynamics and particle systems.

Add all that together, then let's add the advanced rendering engine. Firefly is a nice tool but ray-tracing is no longer suitable for much production level work - GI and radiosity shaders are crucial, as well as the ability to switch between rendering engines as needed. For instance we use Illustrate! often for jobs here to do cell shading,

Poser is simply not suited to be the final rendering/compositing system of a higher end production house. It wasn't designed for it... and that is clear throughout the tool

Nor should it try to be!

CL doesn't have the money and staff to take on Max and Lightwave for the hearts and minds of animators. For the high end Poser is a particularly interesting "plug-in" that has some rendering abilities of it's own useful for previews.

I think CL understands this. I cannot imagine they think it i a good idea to present Poser as a final rendering engine to the larger customers in the animation world.

***musicat - "*i need not go into the major problems, cept the hardware issues when you want to upgrade your puter. those were my main concerns & also the subscription payments. think of it this way, instead of paying $200 for the OS, think of paying $20-50 a month for using it."

It is worth pointing out that XP has been widely adopted and the "hardware" problems extremely small. In fact, there has not been verified incident of a single user being denied legitimate access to WindowsXP due to the protection system.

Further, the EULA of WindowsXP make no provisions allowing MS to charge a subscription fee. There is no mechanism in the software that allows for it.

sparkel - "So.. CL does not really WANT us to export.. they want P5 to be an entire world to stay within in almost all cases?

I think it much more likely that CL simply didn't have the resources to handle Max/Lightwave exporting by the delivery date. Though a strong statement that such support is coming soon would really help. They are smart people, and they seem to understand the market so I am sure it is coming.

Unfortunately we will be keeping most of our work away from the P5 features in our production stream for just this reason - the P4 compatible work we can re-use.

Spit - "Musicat: You went out and bought a new program (Vue4) because of a rumor about Bryce, not 'news'."

As was the choice of OS apparently.

Hi Guys. Thanks also Sparkle and Tirjasdyn for the compliments on the hair and stuff. Sorry to Spit and jackson if I gave the impression that you will never want to use other apps, what I meant was you will not necessarily need to export...of course you may want to export to other apps because that is the way you get the best artwork for your taste. Now from what I can gather the co operation between Clabs and Corel and others for the purposes of interaction between Poser and other apps like Vue and Bryce is not that great (at present anyway). I dont really know why, but I suspect that its to do with money demands and so on. Its a bit of a bummer, but there are ways around it and one way is to make Poser much more powerful and capable of doing environments...I am pretty sure CLabs are interested in this and it would probably be easier for them to do this than for corel to put a posing facility in Bryce. Bottom line is people will work how they prefer, but over time things change and at least having a renderer like the Firefly renderer is a big step in the right direction. Personally I would like it to be a lot faster and have better anti aliasing and also Global Illumination and perhaps caustics as well...but hopefully in the future sometime. In the music world there are similair problems with competing companies...recently I upgraded to Emagics Logic 5 and spent quite a lot of money only to be told a couple of months later that they were bought out by Apple and will no longer be supporting PC users at all so I lost all my money on it. Of course there was a huge backlash as they have a huge PC user base, but could we do...not a lot. At least CLabs are taking responsibility for Poser and stomping the bugs and are listening to the user base...I can tell you that is pretty rare. Thats basically why I have some faith that despite the fact that Poser 5 needs a patch, Clabs will come good with that and they are headed in the right direction with the upgrade. Its hard sometimes to see the long term vision of these companies but at least they seem to have one. Cheers Harvey

Hey Soulhuntre. Actually I was saying you will not need to export...I wasn't suggesting that Poser would ever take on Max or lightwave or would ever want to. Basically a huge amount of Poser users are hobbiests and renderers...and I am sure CLabs want to keep it that way. Why? because quite simply there are a lot of them and they buy lots of extras, because they like making artwork maninly...many of them dont know what a caustics or photon mapping renderer is...or could care less. Now there are a lot of people in this market and they spend a lot of money, albeit in small amounts. Thats why Daz and Renderosity have done so well, to make Poser a fully pro app that has appeal for the pros would kill off this market and CLabs know this only too well, as does Daz and R'osity. In fact Chad from Daz wrote ages ago that Zygote sponsored Daz to build exclusively for Poser because they saw the market was there, he also said they would never do that for Maya because there is no market there...it appears to be the same for Max and Lightwave as well. So to make Poser a heavy duty battle ready app for the pros like Max would be suicide and they know it, and I never suggested that. What I was saying was the Firefly renderer is a step in the right direction and that when its tweaked and built on you wont necessarily need to export to Bryce and Vue...provided the facilty to have environments is there in Poser...which it will be in time...thats all. On the contrary Alias Wavefront have often shown signs of trying to crack this market that Poser has (by being a sponsor at R'osity, halving the price of Maya and releasing Maya learning edition and so on, they want a slice of this market..I know that for a fact .) It seems obvious that there are more hobbiest than pros and that means selling products cheaper to more users and keep the app relatively simple, the pros already have Max and Maya, so why try to sell Poser to them...they'll never buy it. But also as far as Discreet and Newtek are concerned...you can only sell so many upgrades to the pros before you have to start looking elsewhere to sell your products, and you can bet they will also look at hobbiests and semi pros and thats where Poser is at its strongest...so why change? Nope Poser will never compete with Max...nor would it want to, as far as I understand it's going in a different direction, and thats what it needs to do. Cheers Harvey

Musicat, both my siser and I have Bryce 5. I have Win98 and she has ME, and it works fine on both systems. I don't know where you heard that, but it's not true. I was reluctant to get it merely because I didn't think it was much improved over B4 other than the tree generator, but a nice friend bought copies for both my sister and me as gifts and we've both been able to use it. I've never heard anyone say it wouldn't work on anything but XP. If it's true, no one told my computer, because it thinks it can run it just fine. ;) Melanie