This is something that maybe most of you already know. For those who don't know and are considering a "first-time purchase" of Poser 5 to use with Vue(you don't have Poser 4), be aware of this.

I was getting ready to purchase the full version of Poser 5. I learned at the Vue knowledge base that in order for Vue to work, one must have Poser 4 installed. You can purchase Poser 4 and the pro-pack combo at Curious Labs store, but it costs more than Poser 5! ($419 for the Poser 4/Pro-pack combo vs. $349 for Poser 5). Then you would have to pay another $200 to upgrade to Poser 5! You cannot purchase Poser 4 there without the pro-pack.

It is my understanding that Curious Labs has a policy that does not permit Eon to change their software so that Poser 5 items can be imported without having Poser 4 installed. This apparently has something to do with Poser 5's new serial number checking system.

Users who have contacted Curious labs about this have received rather curt feedback...."pointing the finger" if you will at Eon, and suggesting that they never worked with Eon on their ability to import Poser 4 items. It would seem that Eon could not have designed their software to be compatible with Poser 4 without Curious Lab's assistance, but the "finger pointing" continues.

Eon is apparently willing to upgrade their software if Curious Labs will grant them the authorization to do so. Until they do, you will have to have both Poser 4 and 5 installed for Poser 5 to work correctly with Vue.

Since I cannot justify the cost of purchasing both pieces of software (Poser 4/ProPack combo and Poser 5), I won't be purchasing Poser 5 any time soon.

If any of you know anything to the contrary, I'd appreciate feedback.

Hi Sandoppe, I bought Poser5 and have NOT been happy at all with it. I do have it installed, only because, Maybe??????????they will create something that is/will only work with it, and it will be, one of those things, that I just have to have, but other than that.......???? I still use ONLY Poser4, and have no regrets in buying version5, as I am confident, that someday, they will have it together. Until then, I would have to say, You aren't missing "Nothing"! There will be those, that say different, but for me, I am perfectly content with Poser4. I had loads of Problems with Vue4, before the patches, and I don't relish the fact on doing that again, with Poser5 or anything else for the matter. Genny

Thanks Genny :) I had sent three emails to Curious Labs tech support, wishlist and services without any illusion they would ever respond. Low and behold I got an "immediate" (within 15 minutes) response from what was obviously a live person. They have apparently got the message from a lot of "ticked off" users and are working on a fix :) I think maybe it was beginning to affect their "bottom-line" :) I'm going to wait and see if their "fix" works before investing $300+ in their software. If I knew where I could get it, I would probably buy Poser 4....just don't need the Power Pack add-on for what I do. If anyone has a good reliable source for the full version of Poser 4 without the Power Pack, let me know!

Well, I don't know if it will make a difference to you or not........but I have the ProPac too. (: I guess I should have said that too, but........sorry, I really didn't think about it, until now. Genny

I think you might be able to purchas P4 from daz, and possibly from the MP (here) as well. At least, they used to sell plain ol' poser 4 (no pro pack) I use P4 and Vue, and am very happy with the two. I would like propack or p5 for the python scripting, but I need to first buy a new machine before spending more money on software. eric

Hi Sandoppe, Do you have a name to attach to the hand that's attached to the finger? Please message me about it and Ill follow up. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

Ha ha.. That's a excellent message Lynn

I could be wrong, but I think it isn't either companies fault per se that it isn't compatible with Poser 5 yet. I think enough has changed between Poser 4 and Poser 5 that a new SDK would need to be released for E-On to write the importer. And Curious Labs at the moment is spending so much time fixing Poser 5 that they probably can't commit any resources to writing the SDK. Besides, wouldn't it be better in the long run to have the SDK written around a stable Poser 5?

Does P5 export in P4 format? I use Mover. I'm not concerned with the hair thing, but it would be nice if the clothing exports.

Jcleaver could be right and it would certainly be reasonable for Curious Labs to focus its resources to getting a stable Poser 5. But if that's the case then Curious Labs should simply acknowledge that's the problem. The thread I'm reacting to at Eon suggests that there has been a "policy" set by Curious Labs to not authorize Vue to write the importer and, according to the thread, without any explanation. Too many egos at work....I guess :)

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue4/PR.php#Poser

Howdy all, Im a little clearer about all of this. On e-on's support site, one user said he was told by CL that Vue 4's import functionality has nothing to do with CL, so they should contact e-on. Vue 4 and Mover 4's animation import component require some form of installation of Poser 4, because of required dependencies on Poser. CL is aware of this entirely, and if you reread any press releases we've put out about these capabilities you'll see that we've already mentioned CL's support. My read of what was posted on the e-on support site was that CL tech basically said "Ya got a problem with Vue import? You should be contacting e-on about it because the importing is happening into Vue, not Poser". I don't see this as finger pointing. Some users have expressed concerns about Poser 5 support, and Steve said you should let CL know you want Poser 5 support. He wasnt pointing a finger -- only saying that CL might want to know that Poser 5 support is in demand. What's working now under Poser 5 is a bi-product of customer experimentation with Vue 4/Mover 4 and Poser 5, and not something that's we've done or support. Vue 4/Mover 4 doesn't directly "handshake" with Poser 5 since Poser 5 is mostly a brand new product and there isn't any hand on the Poser side available to shake currently. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

Thanks Lynn for this clear explanation. I'm very happy with Poser 4 AND Vue 4 AND Mover 4. It works great. I don't need the Propack and not either Poser 5 yet:-) Guitta

Kurka, there is no such thing as a Poser 5 or Poser 4 export format, they both exports to the same format: pz3. The problem here lies in the fact that Vue needs a valid installation of Poser 4 in order for the pz3 import to work. Until Vue recognizes a valid Poser 5 installation, you will need Poser 4 installed, regardless of which Poser version that created the pz3-file in question.

Kelderek (and any other who knows the answer),

Does this mean that I have to leave ALL files installed within Poser 4 (including about 3 GB of library files) on my hard disk as well as the new Poser 5 stuff (including all the files once again)? This would be really disappointing since I upgraded Vue 4 with Mover just recently and have then also upgraded to Poser 5.

Thanks for bringing any light into this software darkness.

Kind regards,
Marco

"Kelderek (and any other who knows the answer)" Well, I will not pretend to know this answer, but I can write what I believe is the answer ;-) When loading a Poser pz3 file, Vue looks for a poser.exe file. It then validates that this is indeed a valid Poser 4 installation, using the serial number. Where you have the content files in Poser installed (in the Poser 4 or Poser 5 runtime directory) should not matter. Basicly (pure speculation here), you can have an empty Poser 4 runtime folder and Vue will happily import the pz3 as long as it is a correct Poser 4 installation. I have both Poser 4 and 5 installed on the same machine as Vue 4. When importing a pz3 file into Vue, I got a question which poser.exe Vue should look at when importing, since it found two of them. I pointed to the poser.exe that belongs to Poser 4, and everything worked fine. The pz3 in question was created in Poser 4, but I don't think that mattered at all, it was not even located in the Poser 4 directory.

Thanks for your assistance. So I will get my old Poser 4 installation partially back from my backup harddisk and try this solution. Hopefully, it is only the exe-file of ye olde poser 4.03 which is needed. Kind regards, Marco

My hands-on experience: the pure speculation is... pure speculation! Here, import of Poser 5 generated PZ3 files into Vue 4 via direct PZ3 import does NOT work even if Poser 4 is installed on the same machine. I have all the software above installed on my Win2000 Intel computer. Whenever I tried importing a Poser 5 generated PZ3 into Vue 4, I got weird results. Sometimes nothing at all, sometimes -and this is the result of the last test- I get partial import. In the last case, I tried to import a full Judy and only the head (at super magnitude, besides), appeared in Vue. BUT - It is always possible to import Poser 5 characters via the old-fashioned OBJ, like we Vue oldtimers used to do when Vue 4 was not here yet. Lynn, Steve, or whoever of Eon is interested: I am at your FULL disposal for whatever testing you might need to do about integration of Vue 4 (or Vue whatever ;-) ) and Poser 5. Just let me know. Orio

Yep, Orio, this appears to be true... Just did some testing: A pz3 created in Poser 5 would not load in Vue at all. Files created in Poser 4 still loads fine though, even if both Poser 4 and 5 is installed on the machine.

Another sad story: it happened to me, when I tried to locate my re-installed Poser 4 EXE file from within Vue4 that I rather selected the Poser 5 executable. Since then, Vue4 denies ANY access to any Poser obj file import claiming that the serial number IS incorrect. I wonder how to correct this error. I've tried to rename any non-vital Vue program file but could not find out which one is in charge for inhibiting further Poser access after an erroneous selection. I'm afraid that I am (again) forced to re-install all my Vue configuration from the scratch, including the tedious process of naming dozens of serial numbers for any additionally purchased vegetation file. Not quite customer friendly, but well, it was me who did the wrong selection in first place. Any assistance would be very much welcome. Thanks in advance!

Have you tried renaming p5 or it's containing folder to see if it will ask you to relocate it? I agree that performing a re-install of vue is unpleasant. All of those personal folders must be recreated etc... I don't envy your predicament one bit. eric

Thanks, Eric, yes I already did such things. Nothing helped. I'm first going tp try re-installing Vue Mover, but according to my experience with e-onsoftware's installing procedures I am expecting the worst. Initially, they even sent me a wrong serial number when I bought it online, and it took us all quite some time to figure out why the software could not be installed, i.e. had the anti-piracy security lock activated. Sigh. Never ever touch a running system. Never ever buy software upgrades, may they be tempting or not... :-I