On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=much worse,10=infinitely better) how would you rate poser 5 compared to poser 4.

though I know there are many here who would differ Gotta go with a solid 9 I've had nothing but fun with P5 and have somehow managed to avoid most of the bugs others have reported.

I have to say that I'm impressed with a lot of the features in Poser 5. I have C4D, as and example, and in order to get decent hair and dynamics I have to spend quite a bit of money for the addons. Was thinking about this yesterday, that for the money Poser 5 is a pretty sweet deal. They seem to be going after the bugs with a vengence, and the support seems to be improving. Still unhappy with their business practices, but maybe they will learn from this experience. I will continue to use Poser 4 as well, because sometimes you just don't need the extras to make a render look good. I am not sorry I got Poser 5, just sorry about the way it's been handled. I hate 1-10 scales...lol Marque

The problem with 1-10 scales is that a single number rarely tells the whole story.

As of the most recent patch ....

Stability/Bugs: 3 (improving)
Speed/Performance: 4
Compatibility: 5
Resource Hog: 3 (more memory, more CPU)
P4 Renderer: 5
Firefly Renderer: 7 (needs particles, radiosity, and omni lights)
Materials: 9 (lots of potential)
Animation: 8 (animated materials, dynamic hair/cloth, crosstalk fix)
Content: 8 (P4 + Pro Pack + additional goodies)
Interface: 7 (Library, morph dial groups, Material Room)

As a whole I have not had enough time to play, but I have gone back and fourth to compare 4 with 5, I think Poser 5 as a whole is an 8 compared to Poser 4....Sharen

Definitely a 10:

• The box is much bigger. In these days, when most other software companies are reducing the size of the box to save paper and resources, it's nice to see CL sending out dictionary-sized boxes.
• The box is prettier. I like all the graphics on it.
• I like reading the features of Poser 5. It makes me think how great this program will be someday.
• The box fits nicely on my bookshelf.
• The box looks cool next to my Photoshop box.
• The manual is nicely bound.
• The graphices on the manual are nice.
• I'll have to deduct a point since the CD's don't come in a jewel case. How do I like using it you ask? I give it a 0: I uninstalled it and went back to P4. I'll re-install it when it finally works correctly and we, the paying public, are not beta-testing it. Oh, I'm sorry, I think I mis-read the question. Did you mean, "Is Poser 5 (out-of-the box) better than P4?" or do you mean, "Is Poser 5 (now that it's been patched twice and more than 100+ bugs have been fixed) better than P4?" I'll wait and see what "SR2 Patch, Final" fixes...

Hi P5 is Fantastic value and a wonderfull tool. (present bugs aside. That are being fixed as we speek) as to scale a 100 <-- not an xtra 0 here. this poser upgraid if the most far reacing upgraid i have seen any company put out every aspect of poser has been upgraded and not just a few dials andded moved and renamed as many companys tend to do and call that an upgraid. if you want pro power for your sceens with cloth hair texture and volumetic raytraced rendering for 350.00 Us I chalange you or any one to find the list of features now in poser at any where neer this price. YOU CANT FIND IT!!!! Period. so Guess this answers your question in spaids. Laters Vel

To me this is not a question of better than Poser 4, I treat them as two separate programs. Marque

for me it is a 8. no big problems from the beginning, getting better with every sr.

I give it a 9. Im having fun time is the only issue though. Need a faster renderer.

A 8 for me. The only thing that is worse, is the stability and it gets better.

All the gushing is making me a bit queasy guys. Remove noses from CL neither regions please. Ok, I'm gonna weigh in here. Because of the setup room addition for those of us who didn't come from pp, the materials room and the dynamic cloth, I have to give it a solid 7.5. The new features I didn't mention were omited because at this stage they are toy like and not really coming into their own yet. The face room was particularly dissappointing. I remember the moment I decided to buy it was right after readin about the face roomand how it would save out your textures from the source photos. Sorry, but this is a joke exporting at only 512X512. I still have high hopes for this program and am encouraged by the patches. It remains to be seen whether this software will evolve to the level of something like Maya. I sure hope it does. But, that is a few versions off I'd say to say the least. AND, it would require a complete new coding of Poser which for the F'n record should have happened this time! Still, at this point in time Poser is a one of a kind software with no rivals for what it's primary function is, so it's still top of the pops as far as I'm concerned for rigging humanoids.

Little Dragon summerizes my thoughts/ praises/ concerns, very nicely. I would add the following modifications and additions: Face Room: 5 (needs compatibility with Steph, Mike, and Vicky; higher resolution a must) Hair room: 6 (huge potential, collision needs to work) Atmosphere: 7 (cool effect, needs to work on various lights) Firefly Renderer: 5 (I feel the need for speed) Content Paridise: 0 ( for obvious reasons) All in all an ambitious piece of 3D software not quite fully realized as of yet though. Time and continued efforts from CL should eventually bring P5 broader praise from most end users. Less bugs and more user features will ensure this. Having EULA concerns resolved would be icing on the cake. Overall rating overlooking bugs 6-6.5 (this will hopefully hopefully change)

I give it 8, It has p4 and pp features, and much more. For the price of the upgrade it is cheap. For the part-timer and hobbiest Nowhere can you get this much for so little cash. If you like P4 you will like P5. Sorry To all the folks that has problems, but mine have been few. If you would like to wait on the final patch/verison, i see nothing wrong in waiting, but keep taking notes on tips and tricks... and I like the "Beat" and it is easy to "Dance" to. Niles :) **** Note*** I have not tried the animation features... (not part of the 12)

Greybro if you have read many of my earlier posts about CL you will realize my nose is nowhere near the nether regions of CL....lol I just am trying to get a different perspective on the whole thing. I now own the program. I cannot get a refund for said program. No matter what I say, they will do what they will do. So I am trying to make the best of what I have, with the help of some of the people here who are working at making Poser 5 a better program. Marque

when (if) it will perform as promised and advertised - 8. right now it's 3.

nether reagens ya right. and no for 350.00 i would not exspect a clone of my Maya Unlimited 4.02! get real. I send bug info to where it dose some good and that is CL. I bought the proie and use it have had few problems with it. it works and works well for its price. yes there are areas i would like to see changed, when these changes happen great. but slamming the company serves only one purpose and that is to try to put them out of business. Is that what you want to see? they are fixing things and rapidly. So give them a break Geez what has been done can not be undone! sigh so now i have been pulled into the flame slam the smaler to be slamed mantality. Its not worth my time or energy to do this. i gues i return to egnoring 90% of the posts here again, as the bees are once more buzzing. Later maybe get productive and maybe the ones that are good with the porgam will bother to frequent the board more often and offer more advice tips and trics in sted of going to other boards to get away from the flame wars! Vel

Velen, your going to get all kinds of answers with a poll like this. A negetive "report card" doesn't necessarily equate with a flame war just as a positive one doesn't necessarily mean butt kissing. I believe these are people's honest opinions here.

Marque said it, for me too the upgrade was a pretty sweet deal - although it will NOT be a 10 until I can get a copy for our blazing new Mac. I'm very glad I didn't wait - from the big things like Materials to the little things like being able to nest library folders and morph dials - I don't ever want to go back to P4. I've only done a bit with hair and fabric, but impressed so far.

I'll give it a 5, I've got it, but I gave up in frustration went back to P4, when I buy new stuff, it still goes into my P4 runtime. later jb

First, Lapis is right about honest opinions (as usual). Rating: Library: Solid 8. SO MUCH BETTER than P4. Hair: 7. It'll get a 10 when collisions are fixed. Materials: 10. The longer P5 is out, the more we'll change how we think about materials. Great potential, but we need more 3rd party stuff. Face: 0. Too small a default on the size of the map, doesn't work with what is now the standard for figure sets (Daz's figures). To hard to map in the small window. Nice toy, but its useless to me as is. Cloth: 4. Great potential, but its slow to calculate, and there aren't enough cloths for Mike that work with it. Setup: Solid 8. It lets us poor non modeling sods create characters from models we find on the web, or build our own bu combining geometries. Pretty neat. Needs a a slightly better interface so you can excude material mapping on materials already assigned (this may be my learning curve problem). Content Paradise: -10. Duhhh... something promised and hyped as much as it was should have been ready on the release date. Still no date when it'll come up, or any real details as to what it will include. I jokingly said it should be a link to Little_Dragon's email address in a post once. Now I feel that even that was too tough for CL to accomplish. Aside: Little_Dragon, your help in this forum has saved me hours. I appreciate every post you and others make to help the rest of us. Characters: -5. Don and Judy are shameful. They would have gotten a -10 except they can wear Mike and Vicky's textures. CL would have done a lot better to include Mike and Vicky 1.0 and make them face room ready rather than these sorry b*stards. Bug fixes: 7. Doing a good job so far. SR-1 hurt me more than helped, but SR2 and SR2-2 fixed a number of my problems. Wish hair collisions was one of them. Business practices: -100. This is not the way a company should do business. A price reduction less than a month and a half after the product ships, with the number of problems we who bought early had, with no compensation is insulting. I expect CL to make it good to us one way or the other. To be honest, they've even left them open to a class action suit with the price reduction if they don't give some kind of compensation. A very good case could be made that CL knew of the problems before the release, knew that Content Paradise wouldn't be up in a reasonable amount of time, and knew that we would be alpha (yes, alpha) testing for them. We had resonable expectations as to the quality of the product before it shipped. We expected some bugs. We in no way could expect the number or severity of them. CL has made an excellent effort to fix them, but they are still in breach of the implied contract (that the software will mostly work). I love P5. Its such a great improvement in the way of features over P4. However, a deal is a deal, and CL hasn't fullfilled its part yet. My advice is to buy it, live with the bugs until they're fixed, and keep the presure on until all the problems are fixed. For those of us who bought early or preordered, keep reminding CL we do expect compensation of some kind. Come up with a list of acceptable compensation to the community, and publish it here.

ok accepted as true. I apolagise for flying off the handel. wrong time of the month for me should know beter. Laters vel

Strong 9 for me. I never give 10's!

The P5 interface is much better than P4, but most of my vicki characters still have scalling problems, so are essentially useless. I use P4, and am looking forward to switching to P5 when the characters work. P5 is actually nicer, and the rendering speed is acceptable, but for CL to ignore the investment that people have made in vicki is not realistic. So an 8 for the interface, but still using P4.

Jehllm, the scaling problems are now fixed with the new version of sr-2beta which was released a few days ago.

Right now, about an 8 but when all the bugs get worked out it will be a solid 10.

10

9

It works for me like a champ and the new features are really useful.

As of SR2-2 ... OVERALL: 6 Face Room: 4 - As the one of the first, if not THE first, to bring up the serious flaws with the FR, mainly the anemic texture resolution, I am still waiting for this to become more than toy. (Some people here actually "jumped me" on this, claiming I didn't know what I was talking about. SHEESH!) Hair Room: 5 - Neat concept, but kills the render time. With some of the advanced "old style" hair (like Anton's) you can get some incredible results ... even for animators like me ... without the horrible render times. Cloth Room: 7 - Really useful -- again, especially for animators -- and fairly well implemented. Simulation time is painfully slow, but the results speak for themselves. C-detection DEFINETLY needs some ironing out/improvement. Material Room: 8.5 - Easily one of the best new features for Poser. Not perfect, but much improved with Service Releases. Pretty much agree with everything else pdxjims said. -Tim

Compared to P4. At present, I have to give it a 1 or 2, as I'm finding it mostly unusable. If/When it's fixed and does what it currently claims to do, I'll probably give it an 8 or 9.