The latest Renderisty magazine looks great. But I do have one small gripe about the P5 review in there. I felt like Entropic's review of Poser 5 was just a bit much. I mean come on. The new features are great, but the face room default textures export only at 512 X 512. That's need to know information right there. I got the distinct feeling Paul felt inclined not to point any of the many bugs or obvious flaws P5 shipped with in exchange for his free copy. I understand that you guys are partnered with CL, but an honest appraisal would have given your magazine a load of credibility in my book. I'm not saying he should have bashed it the way many have in the Poser forum. It's legitimately great in many ways. But in the game of life when the fast balls come at, you have to swing away, not play it totally safe. Instead, I was left feeling the review was a payed advertisement. I can get that on Curious Labs website, thanks. Regards, Brento ps flame away

An honest appraisal has to take time into consideration. If the article had trashed P5 then it would be uncredible when the patches catch up with the problems. CL has shown a committment to their customers and software. Consider a life, your life, and a snapshot on one moment of one day of your life. That's what printed articles are. Would you want that snapshot to be taken on a day when you had the flu and blew something out of your nose all over your chin? Or would you want that snapshot to be at your finest moment when you looked like you'd be voted most appealing person for the millennia? Neither would be honest, now would they?

**** Place marker *** ;]

I'm not sure how much time Paul had with the program before he wrote the article, and I can tell you that I've had the program for just about two weeks now and have not found any of these so called bugs people have talked about. no crashes at all, in fact the only major complaint I can verify is the missing morphs. and that is on two computers, my old one amd 800,winXP,768mb sdram, ati card. and I just loaded it on my brand new computer 2.53gh p4, win XP, 1gig ddr, nvidea card. did some quick tests, Judy High rez, hair room, Dynamic cloth. not a hickup. Perhaps, as I think he said previously, he as I, didn't experience any bugs. I think P5 is a great program with some spectacular features, I was not thrilled with the texture maker in the face room but then that wasn't one of the features I was at all interested in. arent you people done with your witch hunts yet?

bookmark

Greybro, I'm not going to flame you... just express disappointment at your less-than-subtle attempt at hitting two targets with one cheap and poorly-guided shot. Paul has already fully explained the purpose of his interview and the information he had on hand at the time of the interview in another thread here and he has alluded to it a couple of other times... which I feel sure that you have read since you are so interested in his interview. I'm also confident that you are aware that lead time is required for publication since that is common knowledge in the graphics business. After all the art and text has been acquired and edited and laid out, it goes to the printers. Most printers want 6-8 weeks, but they all require some time for preparing plates, inking, printing, drying, binding, and boxing up. The magazine was available at DragonCon... BEFORE Poser 5 shipped and the nature and extent of the bugs became known. You therefore insinuate that Paul possesses ESP of such refinement that he can discern and conceal software bugs. If this were to be true, he'd either be gibberingly insane from the revealed horrors or fantasically wealthy from flipping IPOs of companies which don't have anything to hide. Poser 4 had a series of 9(?) patches before it became as reliable a workhorse as it is (and it still pulls a surprise or two out of the aether). Poser 5 is a lot more complicated and CuriousLabs has already started what is likely to be a series of patches. Paul and I have crossed words in the past, so you needn't think we are buddies or anything. I do respect his mind, and his integrity.... and he hasn't started gibbering. ;^) And if you don't like flattering reviews.... well, I don't have P5 yet, but I know what I saw at the Poser Party here, and the two times I've been down at CuriousLabs. I saw screen after screen with neat tools. I also tend to be an optimist. When presented with a product as nifty as this, I'm not going to whine that it doesn't make breakfast, I'm going to wonder what else I can "clothify", what happens if this is invisible when this node is connected. Maybe I won't be the next Kozaburo or Kisiel but I intend to push things... ...So it is not the review, it is the point of view which matters ultimately. Carolly

Brent, no flame intended, but almost immediately after you posted here and to alt.binaries.3d.Poser your manifesto about why you weren't going to install P5, you clearly did. Just curious, what made you change your mind so quickly? IMHO it was odd, perhaps even rude that you posted to the newsgroup with apparently no intention of following up with the responses you generated. You were invited to participate there, but you haven't. Why broadcast a strong opinion if you don't want to deal with the responses? I'm sure the people over there would still enjoy your participation, but they are a truly good bunch and don't deserve to be ignored after they've been addressed/provoked. On the other hand, I felt badly for you when I read your "I've failed" comments at your site. No you haven't! You have a fine site and appear to be a generous, affable and talented person. The only reason I don't participate there is because I've already registered at so many registration-required sites, and am getting more SPAM now. That may be totally unrelated, but I'm being more cautious "just in case." Don't take this the wrong way...I'm not saying I don't trust you, I'm just being more careful across the board. If your site hasn't generated the membership you'd hoped for, it's not failure so much as too many Poser sites for anyone to have time for all of them. You are not doing a poor job at all, you just didn't happen to "get there first." Others have already responded well to the specific topic of this thread so I hope you'll forgive me for taking advantage of it to voice some other thoughts. Good luck with P5!

lol it's the battle of the grandstanders :D hey, they're what sell magazines. ;) i guess greybro will get a column now too. :) don't dismiss it, it's not a bad idea. how rich do you think jerry springer is? ;)

A couple of things to think about. Jewish New Year. "truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers." -William Penn - TJ

Just a note to wdupre. I'm glad it hasn't crashed on you, but if there weren't any bugs in it, they wouldn't be patching it. You make it sound like people who have had problems with it must not know what they're doing. I think P5 will be a great program once they iron out the problems.

The bugs are there, there's no denying that fact, but if you install it on 1000 different pc's with completely different specs some will find the bugs crawling right up their butts while others don't have the bugs at all. Does this make poser5 a bad program? No of course not, what it proves is that the guys & girls at CL are human, they wrote a program that works pretty much perfectly on their machines. If they wrote Poser5 on machines loaded with XP or 2k then obviously any other OS is going to be a bit jittery with it. Considering win98/Me are soon going to be unsupported by MS soon I think it's asking a hell of a lot from CL to support them too. I also think the minimum specs for poser5 were a little generous or optimistic to say the least, anyone trying to run it on anything less than a pentium 4 1Ghz is in for a tough time, 256Mb Ram should really be the barest minimum as well. Rob Flame away, I have my asbestos shorts on ;)

"Does this make poser5 a bad program? " Does it make it a credible review? Not neccessarily either. Which is what Greybro was questioning - not wether P5 has bugs or not. If you're going to stick "optimism never killed anyone who wasn't stupid as well ;)" in a post header, at least try and stick remotely close to the topic, ne? ;] You don't have to bash hell out of a product to give it a critical review. MaximumPC generally manages quite nicely. You don't have to drool all over it either... Doesn't read to me that Greybro was questioning the product either way. He's questioning the credibility of the Renderosity Magazine in their handling and presentation of the review, which is a different thing entirely. Ad copy in the guise of a review - which is what he IS stating - will do little except make any future reviews they do questionable.

Rob, Speaking of XP I just got an update patch warning from HP tonight asking HP users not to use the new XP patch until Hewett Packard can work with Microsoft to get rid of the bugs . . . those durn things are everywhere. bikermouse walks across the room (crunch crunch crunch crunch) - walks back (crunch crunch crunch crunch.) I remember the minimum disk space and memory listings back when I got P4 were half of actual minimums. That may end up being the case here. - TJ

thanks IB :) I'll try to stick to the topic in future, can't really say much about the review haven't read it, I have seen this type of review before though, in PC games magazines sometimes they get advance copies & review them favourably but when the actual box arrives the program has extra bugs added that weren't there before, it makes the reviewer & program look bad which isn't really fair to either. bm my machine won't even look at the new MS patch, I tried to load it but it just won't take it, probably save me a lot of hassle in the long run anyway.

Ayup. That's why I tend to stick to MaxPC and PCGamers... when PCG gives something 15%, it's usually a safe bet that avoiding it's good for my wallet. 95%, and I may want to wander over to FiringSquad and see what the reviewers and users there have to say about it. ;]

I apoligise for making it sound like I don't believe other people are experiencing bugs, I do believe thats the case but it seems that most of the bugs people are having are system related. my point is that if you are one of the many people who don't seem to have major bugs, you might write just such an optimistic view in an article, I know I would, even if as it seems at the moment that is an unpopular point of view. there are a few people here who are screeming to the top of their (figurative)lungs what a useless piece of crap this is, I just hav't found this to be the case. Hopefully this patch will help those whose problems with the program are overwhelming, and I would like to have those morphs, but don't blame someone for giving a glowing review, if he honestly enjoyed his experience.

Attached Link: Poser city Forum

xoconostle, I welcome your thoughts but would have prefered you posting that on my [ site's forum](http://www.posercity.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=index). But, cool. I got input from folks who've had good experiences with P5 and that's why I went ahead and took the plunge. That and the fact that I didn't want to fall behind in the P5 merchant area. Although I honestly don't see Judy textures overtaking Vicky textures in popularity for obvious reasons. I honestly forgot to follow up in alt.binaries.3d.Poser. Most of my posts over there are in support of the [Free Market Family](http://www.posercity.com/fmf/) for which I serve as the webmaster. Ironbear has sumed up my motivation for this post perfectly. Read his reply. As for the other things you mention, let's discuss those on my [ site's forum](http://www.posercity.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=index), if you don't mind.

Thanks wdupre, but it'll be interesting to see what 3D-World, ComputerArts, and 3D-Graphics Magazine do when they cover it - for comparison. Assuming that CL provides copies for independant as opposed to inhouse review.

True that, IB... I suspect that although a newb hobbyist like me can deal with it well enough, the pros may decide to tear it apart... after all, there ain't much love for Poser out in Maya/3DS/Lightwave-land... /P

"the pros may decide to tear it apart... after all, there ain't much love for Poser out in Maya/3DS/Lightwave-land" Most of the MAYA /LW/MAX pros i have talked to have no strong opinions of poser5. as it offers Nothing that they dont already have. :-) and it lacks everything that a pro level CG production level application requires ( hardware acceleration, network rendering, high quality renderer, real lighting system Blah Blah Blah Blah................. but for a $300 app it offers alot of features especially for character work and is still a very good value.

Yes, CL has released Poser 5 for independent review. I should know, I'm one of the independent reviewers, and will have a full review of Poser 5 completed hopefully very soon. As an independent, I pride myself on being as open and honest as possible in my review process. The companies I have reviewed products for know up-front that I pull no punches, cuddle up to no one, and speak what's on my mind. I refuse to write ad-copy disguised as a product review. If it sucks, I say so. That's the risk you take by allowing me to review your product. But if it shines, I'm equally as vocal about it. That's the benefit of allowing me to review your product. Does that mean I'm harsh about it if it does suck? Well, sometimes, depending on the severity of the problem. But I also maintain contact with the companies, to find out what problems are known about, what's being done about them, and how soon. That information gets included with my opinion. So if something is seriously broken, but being fixed, I'll either hold a bit until the fix is released, or include that the fix was in the works at press time. That's called objectivity, and being fair to both the company and the consumer. Being a reviewer means being a consumer advocate first. You put yourself in the position of someone who is about to pay hard-earned money for the product in question. If you want to be a corporate advocate first, work in advertising. Just my two cents worth...now I gotta get back to work. :-) ChromeTiger

Yeah CT... like I said, you don't have to trash it to be critical and objective. Just fair and hardnosed.