Read the interview in the magazine for this month, very informative and a good well written article. Thanks so much to Kupa and his great staff again for the work put into Poser 5. Sharen

In what magazine, Sharen?

yes it was a good interview. yet i would be asking the hard hitting questions. like why did CL release a product that wasn't really ready for release. What kind of pressure was CL under to release the product so early with out it being fully tested? if so many users ( XP)complain about the product when it was released and tried to get help from CL techs, ( when and if they could get it) that CL would send a "form" to fill out and they would get back to you. If so many problems still persist in the Windows version, what is the real outlook for people who use Macs and there new operating systems. Did CL know that they were going to be numerous problems with P5 when they released it? ( check Poser Forums for new and up to date problems. this may sound like i'm trying to trash CL.. far from it. i'm more concerned about the people who invested money into this New program, and wind up spending more time trying to install, fix, or work around the bugs. ( too many bugs to count). i thought and had heard they were beta testers for this program. now i don't know CL guidelines about being a beta tester, yet i have been a beta tester for 8 years for world wide company ( not many folks know this about me) and when we beta test the software, we are to report the errors, bugs, and glitchs, and see if we can fix or correct the problem. if we can't we report it., after all bugs are worked out, then we go GM, if we don't , we continue to work on it until its ready for the public. if there were beta tester out there, i would assume some didn't do their job right or didn't do it at all, by not reporting the problems that P5 is having. for if reports were made, bugs wold have been worked out. i know CL is going to have its hands full when they come with P5 for the OSX, i wonder how many OSX beta testers CL has? beta testing is a important part of releasing a good program. and if your a tester, your job is to test it and report it. not ignore it.

"i would assume some didn't do their job right or didn't do it at all, by not reporting the problems that P5 is having" You should never assume.

Not making any accusations but Were'nt many of the Beta testers vendors who had Sweet Deals to sell their P5 content in the new built in "content paradise"???

good question Wolf.

Sharen, what magazine? Rosity? Shortly after release someone said Kupa was going to tell us what they went through developing P5 and getting it out the door. I thought it was going to be a post in this forum. Was it in the article? I am still anxious to find out exactly what CL did in the three years it took to create this disaster. And how they managed--with all this hard work--to leave the old bugs in and still create a whole batch of new ones.

Perhaps she'll reply to you Jackson. I'd like to know too but never managed to get the woman to talk.... (called her 'blond' once, me own fault! bears a grudge obviously...

I am sorry, it was the Renderosity Magazine, 3rd edition. Sharen

I'm taking the position that they are hard on the trail of some fixes and are producing a patch. Based on what I read from Kupa's post about the release, they were aware of many bugs with the product going out. So, it doesn't neccessarily mean Doug and the other testers didn't report the bugs. Once the cd's went to press though they were probably commited to the release time line. We've dealt with similar situations to the at the bank with our Annual Report which is a hard bound book they print up for Stock Holders at a certain level. There are always 11th hour mistakes found but that can't stop the presses. Regarding Wolf's question. Content Paradise isn't active yet so that's really an unfair assumption. Have you seen the content cd? It's full commercial products from many of the folks I know had advanced beta copies. And none of it is really for sale unless you count the price of P5 and I'm fairly certain those generous vendors didn't get a slice of that action. Don't get me wrong. Does the program have serious problems? Sure it does. I'm just giving CL the benefit of the doubt at this point in time. I think they realize the limelight they are in and will address the big bug issues. At least I hope they do.

saxon, I never bear grudges, they don't accomplish anything. LOL, and how did you know I was blonde....you think that makes a difference huh? LOL....Sharen

sigh Blonde's great...

I don't have access to the Renderosity magazine here in Germany, but one question I very much would like to ask is about the involvement od Egisys. Did the new parent company pressure Curious Labs to go off on a bunch of tangents with the new release instead of fixing old bugs and sticking with the (to me) all-important issue of a better rendering engine for Poser? Did they pressure Curious Labs to release Poser 5 before it was ready? Enquiring minds want to know.

Ah!!!! Blondes.... sigh. Apples and blondes....

This is one of the main reasons I never buy a new release of software until it's been out for a while. I don't want to mess with patches and fixes. I want a fully working program right from the start. Every time you have to reinstall it for whatever reason (hard drive crash, etc.) you have to dig up all the patches and fixes and install them. A waste of time and frustrating. Back when Poser 4 was released by MetaCreations, it was also way premature and was riddled with flaws, and caused a flood of complaints. I just wonder how a company can be proud of a product that is so badly done. It seems that in almost everything nowaways (not just software, but everything) quality of a product and pride in a good job has just gone away. The mass market is just too eager for the $$$ to roll in, I guess. Melanie

Not making any accusations but Were'nt many of the Beta testers vendors who had Sweet Deals to sell their P5 content in the new built in "content paradise"??? "Sweet Deals?", Content Paradise was never mentioned. Doug Sturk

It doesn't take a genius to figure out some of the people who used P5 before its release and they may have been beta testers. However I cant blame them for any thing wrong. They very well may have made comments about problems which the company decided to overlook. Also may have worked fine on their system. I know I have beta and alpha tested products before and problems I reported were not fixed before release. I frankly have to applaud them for taking the time to test. I also do not think it proper to release their names for several reasons. I doubt it had anything to do with content paradise as any merchant can use it as a selling tool. Ron

Lately I have seen alot of post concerning the Poser 5 software, and I have tried to read them all very carefully, sometimes I don't think it is as much the software as it is a reaction to different operating systems and how certain people operate their own computers. I know there have been a few bugs, even a few little annoying things, but the only thing that I have come across that is bothersome is the speed. I am not an authority on program writing so I will stand by Poser 5, I do think it is a good software package. Sharen

IMHO, the decision was simple. It'd been three years since the release of 4. Sales were no doubt slacking off, and I'm betting the giveaway of 3, which was hoped to enfuse some cash into the company through purchased upgrades to 4, didn't pan out monetarily quite as much as expected. So CL could either continue working on 5 without release and subsequently find themselves going under because of cash flow, or they could release it with errors in place that could be corrected with a later patch. Which would you have preferred? A buggy 5 that can be fixed, or no 5 at all?

hi - am working in a small office as a software testing engineer - and i know: every software contains bugs - there is no absolutely bugfree software on the world. many bugs are never detected - they are minor or occur under very seldom and strange circumstances - others are more obvious. but i learned for myself: let's wait a bit before purchasing ... and when purchasing then not the german version, but the english version, because it's more up-to-date. (of course i know - if everyone behaves like this - noone would ever purchase a program - hehehe ;))

My opinion is I'd have rather seen none at all. Sorry but I'm one of those consumers who feel it is wrong for a company to release a product that they know doesn't work properly. I can understand software being unknowingly released with bug that a company has to fix. I could probably let slide a company releasing a product with a minor bug if it didn't effect the functionality of the product in a major way. But to release P5 knowing it had bugs. Some of which can not only make the program almost impossible to work with in some circumstances and in others out right crashes the machine? Uh-huh. Thats just poor business practice. I'm one of the lucky one for whom P5 works enough that I can get some use out of it with 'workarounds' but what about those who can't use it or don't want to resort to work arounds? They got a nice paperweight on their desk. Heck one of the 'fixes' I use to make P5 work better, makes the rest of my Windows GUI difficult to use. And I'm not blaming the beta testers, mostly cause they have no say so on bug fixes anyway. The fault lays at CL's feet for this debacle. Now I just hope they fix it in the 'patch'.

IN my opinion they should have bundled the propack with poser4 dropped the price to $200 and AGRESSIVELY MARKETED it,in the Cinema4DXl Lightwave and MAX communities many of those guys are dying for some easy to use characters rigs to use in their high end programs. they could have milked poser4 for more cash and delayed the release of poser5 to get it right. BUT I see that DAZ is already selling lightwave scripts on the DAZ site so they have lightwave savvy programmers on board Hmmmm !! well it seems obvious what market they will be seeking when they release their own posing and character animation program.

Well to get back to the reason why I posted this thread, I wanted all to know that if you haven't read the article, and you receive the Renderosity magazine, 3rd edition, you should read it when you get a chance, it is very well written and explains alot of unaswered questions. Sharen

That was suppose to say unanswered questions....:-) (sorry it is the blonde thing)

Thanks, Sharen... A lot of the "hard hitting" Poser 5 questions could not have possibly been anticipated, for what it's worth. When the interview was being given it was well prior to the release of Poser 5, and the experience I had was with a Candidate version of the software that ran perfectly on my system. I tried to present the questions that were meaningful to the community at large, not focusing on Renderosity, but considering as well the outlying sites, such as DeviantArt.com, PoserPros, 3dCommune, etc. The interview was designed to be more about Curious Labs and the state of technology than it was about Poser 5. I wanted to focus on the broader professional market, such as Poser's ability to crossover to higher end production, the future of character animation in the changing internet, and some thoughts about the community, who Mr. Cooper gave credit to for building it, and what impact it has on the ever-changing software. I cannot possibly explain to anyone who has not spoken to Steve how much charisma and genuine caring he brings with him to a conversation. While it appears that some people are disappointed in the interview ( judging only from responses within this thread ) I feel that for the purpose I approached that interview it was wonderfully presented. Please also keep in mind that this presentation was entirely at my expense and the expense of those on the team ( thanks Windy and Stephen ). I did my best to contribute to the community and to our publication without expecting or receiving payment. There were deadlines, outside pressures, and scheduling difficulties throughout the entirety of the project, working around SIGGRAPH, Curious Labs' intensive beta program ( and yes, it was intensive ), and final rushes for Poser 5. I hope that the written words of the interview convey the strength, conviction, and faith of the Curious Labs team. They endured a time in their history that almost saw them bankrupt, a time in which Steve Cooper had to lay off his wife, and most of his staff ( I think they were down to eight people ). Well, I hope this clarifies a few of the questions here. Good reading! Cheers! Paul Jenkins

Paul, yes, I was trying to get that across, from your article you see that Poser 5 was not just slapped out into the world, took alot of preparing and testing. Well anyway it was a good article. Sharen

Um, just something I've been wondering about... I don't have P5. I've been reading all these threads here at the Poser forum and time after time I see people say "I don't think it's a bug, it's probably your system"... WHAT KIND of a program is it if it doesn't work on most systems but needs exactly this-and-that type of build to work? Saying the problem is someone's system sounds really strange to me. It shouldn't matter whether you've got AMD or Intel, the program SHOULD work no matter what processor you've got (as long as it's powerful enough), or what motherboard you've got, or what videocard you've got - as long as they're above the minimum requirements. Just my two (euro) cents.

Just for this very brief period, virtually all the copies of Poser 5 that are being used, are in America. The entire rant and rave is only coming from Americans, time will tell whether we Europeans will be as vitriolic in our criticism.

I must say that I've been surprised by you guys...

I haven't read the article but I can get the jist of the content from Paul's reply and that will probably make me buy the mag. It also serves to remind us that there are real people behind this software, real people taking real risks. In the past I've berated Steve for not gettng the software out sooner so I must take my share of the responsibility. I haven't received my copy yet but it is far more than I expected. Even if I get every bug that's going it's still going to an incredible upgrade but that's not the real reason why I'm buying it. It's also my gesture of support...
Oh and thanks Paul for the best unintentional belly laugh I've had all day (penultimate paragraph....)

I'm way past tired of these threads, but since it is obvious that many people read or post to them without having read the prior threads, I would note the following: If you search this forum, you will discover that CLers, including kupa, weren't taking paychecks. Perhaps it's wild speculation on my part, but I think that maybe CL was under some pressure to get the product out the door. A search would also reveal that CL admits that it was aware of non-critical bugs on shipment, not the usability nightmares that some have experienced. And my sympathies go out to people with those problems, not the people who are constantly trolling to complain about a feature that was not implemented in P5, or who persist, despite any real knowledge of CL's position, in believing that they had better business plans that the people who were saving the company in the real world. I have even less good to say about the people who are using the announcement of the updater as another occasion to lob a written jab in this forum...attacking people who are trying to clean up problems they may not have seen. As for the bug vs. system question, it is not simply one of intel vs. AMD. A PC system (macs being a different story as noted above) is not simply the processor; there are different motherboards, videocards, drivers, iterations of operating systems, other apps (particularly graphics apps) that may reside on a hard drive, bits of orphan code in registries, etc. BTW, I'm not of the school that it's all the fault of the user or system, either. Again a search of these types of threads suggests that there are some problems common to diverse systems. I would hope that these are problems that can be rectified with the updater, along with the no-brainers (missing morphs cr2's etc.)

"I cannot possibly explain to anyone who has not spoken to Steve how much charisma and genuine caring he brings with him to a conversation" This a key element to any con man's success. I am not saying Kupa's a con man! I'm merely pointing out that, if he was, you wouldn't know it. "If you search this forum, you will discover that CLers, including kupa, weren't taking paychecks" Hmmm... could be true; could be part of the con. Eowyn is 100% correct. ALL software publishers have to deal with the fact that PCs are put together buy different manufacturers' parts and that every configuration is different. I'm so tired of hearing these same excuses over and over again: 1) All new software is buggy. What do you expect? 2) The user is "inexperienced" and/or didn't read the dox. 3) PC's are so varied and convoluted. 4) P5 doesn't do what you want, so you're just whining. None of these are valid reasons for why P5 is what it is. They are lame excuses that can--and have been--explained away. Yet the loyalists choose to ignore the truth and keep using these excuses. Neither side is gonna give an inch, so let's quit arguing and pray the patch fixes the major issues.

You state that you are not calling kupa a con man, then say statements that CL staff was not getting paid "could be part of the con." In legal circles this is called libel... just thought you would like to know.

Sorry, you are correct. I misworded; I should have said "...part of A con." instead of "...part of THE con."