For quite a while now, I've read peopes moaning and complaining about Poser 5. To be honest, it's irritated the hell out of me. Now I'm begining to get p'd off myself. A serious straight question. Has any one person managed to open P5, set up a shot, stick some dynamic hair on a figure, save the file, render an image in firefly and exit the program. I'm really begining to wonder. I have all the patches. I'm not intending to start another long thread complaining about it. Just one positive response would be encouraging. None wouldn't be surprising. I'm ripping my hair out. Mike

The thing of it is, for some it works well and others it doesn't work well at all. Still yet with others it works at varying degrees between these polar opposites. I guess it's somewhat like a poser lottery. An enigma perhaps. The positive thing is that CL is working away at all the bugs and issues with P5 and have promised us that, come hell or highwater, they will get it working well for everyone. We can hope this is sooner than later.

Yeah, you're right. I guess if it's not working, it's not working. Simple as that. Just have to wait for the next patch and stick to scenes that don't tempt it. It was fine until I got 'creative' with the new stuff. Thanks for the wisdom! Mike

I'm currently putting together an erotic animation which is going well in Poser 5. First few scenes are complete, yep, I've met some problems but mostly I've found work arounds. The worst that's happened has been just now with an eve character complete with dynamic hair and two pieces of clothing (got a caught c exception when a file failed to find some dynamics) but, save early, save often and save intelligently seems to be the key. The atmosphere effects are fabulous and the next scene calls for three pieces of clothing and some careful keyframing for one to fall off, not easy but I'm getting the gist of it now. Hang in there, it'll come eventually....

Oh the dreaded c-exception. Indeed. It was one of those that started me off. Reared it's ugly head about 90% through a very, very, very, long render. You know, one of those renders that makes you wonder if your hard drive is just spinning around aimlessly in defeat. Lol. You're doing an animation!? I salute your patience! All the best with that. Mike

I've been keyframing animations with Poser for quite a few years now, it's become second nature now. Fortunately, P5 hasn't altered any of the animator's tools so it's relatively simple. The tricky bit comes with dynamic clothing, it's a bit hit and miss there because you can't actually see where the clothing is going to be and a slight alteration can have dramatic effects. One of the secrets is not to go for long animations, keep the scenes short and punchy, I rarely use anything longer than 100 hundred frames tops...

Yeah, I want to do animation but I'll wait 'til the software is reliable. All I want to do for now is set up each shot as a still and render a 'story -board' image as a starting point for animation when each shot is worked out. I'm having hastles just doing that so I'd hate to spend a few hours keyframing and then lose it to a c-exception. I know, save often, but Poser files are huge and I've only got three spare gig to play with at the moment. I like short and punchy too.

Attached Link: Endearment

Mike, I've been able to set up a scene in P5, add dynamic hair, save, and render in Firefly. Currently have SR2 Beta 3 loaded. The link above is a partial view of one scene I'm working on. The final scene is a full length view inside a building and I've completed the final render. Now working on the post-processing part. Granted, the dynamic hair is one from Colm Jackson, but I've been able to successfully add my own dynamic hair and render as well. I have had a few C-Exceptions but nothing major and then others have a lot of problems with P5. I doubt that even if we all had the exact same machines with the exact same setup and programs that we still wouldn't all have different problems with P5.

I'm green with envy jelisa!! That's a really nice shot. It's going to be quite something when they sort it all out. I have hope again. Thanks for the input guys.

I have. I have all the updates, faster but would really like it if it didn't still use 100%cpu Marque

In answer to your question, YES! here's my latest, Judy imported to Bryce. http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/galview.mv?Bryce+WsPHHOebg+1036903056 and another judy imported to bryce http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/galview.mv?Bryce+WsPHHOebg+1036121441 and judy rendered in Poser with a bryce background http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/galview.mv?Poser+WsPHHOebg+1035060394 Poser 5 is a way advanced application from P4/pp. While there are some legitimate gripes, the majority are users who hate the learning curve.

i have been loading running cloth and hair sims with no problems, granted 30 ot 40 fraims only to creat a still shot or test a clthing mesh. from the box release till the latest beta i havent had any of the problems most have had. with ine exseption the left arm window poping up once in a while. so i dont have any complaints. and have yet to see the C error. system amd 1700+XP asus MB 7a7sdr vintage ati 8500EL 128 meg vid and second moniter tnt pro 32 meg 786 megs of pc 2100 ram and 300 gigs of hard drives on 3 drives. windows XP pro full upgraids. hope the system info helps some who is looking to upgraid. laters Vel

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=273642

My last three Images posted to the gallery were P5. all used Dynamic hair (though the last two were for grass) and not one C exception since SR-2 Beta3. here's the last one using Dark Whispers excelent new package.

P5 works great for me.

It was a bit rocky at first. But it works fine now, with the patches installed.

I'll put it this way: I have no desire to return to P4.

Hope this helps.

Check my gallery. Everything done since P5 came out is rendered in P5, usually in one form or another of Firefly. Of course, I've had my share of c-exceptions, and the d*mn program just shutting down. After a while you know what is liable to crash it, and just avoid those things. Of course, after every service pack, I go back and try them again. Usually the fixes work.

Poser is one of its kind..for that alone 'we' should not bitch about it.
BUT..its not a bugfree application and its not for free..u have to pay real money to get a copy..and for some of us the money it costs is a lot and I can see why people would not be satisfied.
again...BUT
allthough my personal opinion is that curiouslabs released poser5 too soon all I see out of 'them' is hard work to get every question answered and every bug fixed.
Nothing frustates me more than an 'issue' with a product that will not be adressed...curiouslabs does their very best to please poser users..not only in their support but also in the way poser5 is lifted from poser4..example..u wanted hair..they got u hair..not to mention the absolute briliant face room.
Sure it sucks u can only save the texture in 512x512..but remember were not dealin with adobe or corel who have a gazillion bucks to invest in whatever..curiouslabs is a fellow member here..u wish, they try to grand u that wish..now call adobe what u want in the next photoshop..
Poser5 is worth every penny..tho some things are a work in progress it IS in progress and adjusted to our very needs.

Probably it's a miracle but I have seen only ONE bug BEFORE I installed SP beta 2. I loaded character (Michel based) with abdomen and hip scaled to x=90. After loading the abdomen looked weird. I use laptop, screen resolution 1400x1050, 2.2 Ghz, 256 RAM. XP Home no SP. All patches installed and tested without rebooting.

wdupre man do I remember those days. Only I play 12-string and always had a strap on my guitar. That's a nice render. Marque

Yes! I haven't had any major problems from the first day my software arrived. I was able to load it and register with no problems. I played around for quite a while - still no problems. I have installed the various patches and I do now have some silly little problems: It just freezes for no apparent reason. Happens at varying stages of work shrug but it isn't any biggy for me. I have been a digital artist for several years and am used to saving constantly so the freezes are just inconvenient. I don't lose work. The other weird thing is that my cursor remains in the "waiting" hourglass position whenever I load a figure or apply a pose or whatever. It is quite strange. At first, I would just sit and wait for it to return to its normal state but now I just continue working and it eventually stops. I have only been a Poser user for a few months. I rec'd Poser 3 (free) in Computer Arts mag (UK) and then upgr'd to Poser 4. My immediate feeling is that Poser 5 is fundamentally a totally different piece of software. There is quite a big learning curve which isn't particularly easy. Add this problem to the general gripes and I think you can see why so many people have been moaning. shrug I am fairly happy, so far, with Poser 5 and will continue to plough through the learning curve. I will be interested to see what Daz eventually comes up with in terms of a similar piece of software though. Just my thoughts and experience. ~Di

Thank you all for the input. I've been playing around some today and managed to render a few pics. I think the most frustrating thing is the incredible potential of the program. I think the layout and features are spot on. Just a lot of bug-hunting to be done and ironing out. I really am looking forward to the results of the CL image contest to see what the 'lucky ones' can do with it. There's always the possibility there is something about my setup that Poser doesn't like. I wish I could pinpoint something to fix. Thanks again. You guys have done some great stuff. Mike

P5 has worked well (but sloooowly!) for me. I have seen the C exception only when I run other programs (Explorer, PSP, Outlook) concurrently. I make my animations by rendering stills, then putting them together with PSP5 Animation Shop. That way, I can review the stills as they are rendered and abort if things go awry. I have been using Poser since May, so I am still a rookie. My system is: AMD Athlon 1200 w/ 512MB Ram, 18GBx2 HD, GeForce2 Video, 832MB Virtual Memory.