Please, I'm not trolling for a flamewar; just looking for some opinions from folks who use Poser a lot. I'm a very casual user, generally upgrading since version #1, but skipping every few versions. Have become sort of proficient with version #4, and have purchased Victoria from DAZ as well as some of the things from the Marketplace here. I usually use Poser along with other applications, like Bryce. Some of the new features, like hair and cloth, sound attractive, but I have managed until now using 3rd party add-ons or post-work. The greatest improvement, IMO, would be predictable operation and ease of posing. I have fun with it, but it is not my major thing in life. Question is: is Poser #5 a worthwhile purchase for such casual use? Frankly, the "upgrade" fee from version #4 strikes me as high, and the amount of "beta" work going on scares me quite a bit. Since Poser #5 came out, I've sort of been looking for a major shot of excitement in the Gallery, and have sort of missed it. Getting really good results is more due to the skill that to the tool.

well. if you plan to use it with bryce for rendering then no its not as all the advancements will not work in bryce IE, dynamic hair, the fierfly render and texture room. You will be able to use the face and cloth rooms. so only you can deside if thows will make it worth the price for you. I am one that has have relativly few problems with P5 right out of the box. and personaly love the program. But then it is a time saver for me as till now i had to export to Maya then do my hair and cloth then export to the porgs i used to render in Bryce 5 is one of them. Now with the firefly render engin i render most of my work in poser set up cloth and dynamic hair in poser. So for me it was a worth while investment. Laters Vel

To me, it's worth it for the hair, which is great, and for the materials (also great). You do need a pretty powerful machine to run it well, I think. It runs well on my machine, but doesn't on others, although it seems like it's getting more compatible all the time - there's really few complaints in the beta forum anymore. The renders also turn out better (most of the time!), so that little to no postwork is needed. You can't export the hair or materials into Bryce or other apps at the moment. Really, it's up to you - you will have to spend some extra time getting everything right to render in Poser, most of the new features won't export out.

ooooh.... good point about exporting!

I posted in a thread above a recent Judy WIP with some postwork, that gives you an idea of what P5 is about. There's a LOT more in P5 than in P4 so I guess it depends on what you use poser for. Most of the new stuff doesn't export to other programs like bryce. If you do all your work in Poser, then that's fine. I think for basic scenes, P4 would probably work just as fine. As for all the beta testing, CL has it pretty close now. The latest patch seems to have quieted a lot of folks. The way I see it.... Face room is fun for using pictures of your friends. Material room is a steep learning curve on nodal procedural mats. You can have tons of casual fun with UVmapper in P4. Hair room is awesome, but again, doesn't export. There's atmosphere controls in the latest patch that some have started to post with and it seems to have promise for fog and lighting in smoke filled rooms. Setup room is just like P4 pro pack Content paradise so far is merely the 'osity market place. Cloth room opens up some new doors to clothing but it requires a hefty puter to run it and most of the clothing out there is still P4. So all in all, I see P5 as a fantastic program for the hard core Poser user. And I wouldn't let the bug/beta thing slow you down at all. I guess it all comes down to what you want to do with Poser. I'm really trying to learn 3d apps and am enjoying the daylights out of P5. Care to elaborate a bit on how you use it? And I think the upgrade price is well worth it if you are into Poser.

If you use the P4 hair and clothing, you can export the P5 people just fine.

For those who render in Bryce I don't really think Poser 5 has that much new to offer. Since you cannot export the hair NOR the materials, those are pretty much useless. As is the renderer. Cloth is okay and rather neat for special purposes. The face room is neat also, but if you're not into closeups it doesn't really matter. It's easier to read the parameter dials and libraries are easier to deal with though. And it has all the features (except exporters) of the ProPack like multiple view and Python scripting which is a good selling point. Of course, you could try doing renders in Poser only...big learning curve...but scene building is difficult without the tools of a real rendering package. And if you're used to doing your own scenes, you really don't want to purchase background stuff that everyone else is using too. But it does give an opportunity to try new things, like portraits, for example. Lots of interesting new ways of using Poser lighting have come about in the past year that in combination with the new 'atmosphere' stuff can give you very nice output in less time than you can do it in Bryce.

Forgot to mention...you said 'ease of posing'. Well, there's no change there. Same ol' same ol'. Use the dials, start with a premade pose close to what you want and tweak tweak tweak.

NO

I must be one of the few unhappy Poser 5 users. I think the whole program is a major pain to use. Execpt for the way the hair looks I cant say I like anything about it. Maybe Im old fashioned, but when I pay $200 + dollars for something I expect it to work right, not have six patches andcounting. If this was a $50 game that needed this much fixing everyone would be raising hell about. If Poser 4 works for you keep it, if you really want Poser 5 wait untill they get it fixed. Myself i`m sorry I bought it.

I'm a very casual user and I find sticking with Poser 4 works fine for me still. I've been able to afford to take my pick of the great stuff for vicky by all the great creator/merchants out on the web. I just found great knee high Treadz for my vicky and some great hair too. Happy happy joy joy... :)

I agree with just about everything said here. If you're mainly exporting into Bryce, keep P4. However, if you want to take advantage of all the new features that don't export, get P5. It can be a real pain sometimes, but the fixes are getting better (the rest of us have beta tested to death for free). And the new features are pretty neat. I still export to Vue or Bryce once in a while if I'm not using any of the new features. But if I want really nice hair or dynamic clothing, I just do everything in P5.

My .o2cents.... P5 is much more difficult to use, IMO, and also much slower... It loads slower, renders slower, imports textures and mats slower. the library tree takes longer to load. I have an AMD XP1800+ CPU..which is 1.53ghz..512meg ram. Having said that, the final result looks better in my opinion...there are many more options. I did not buy the Pro Pack, and now I have all those features as well. One of the things I like the best is the ability to actually see the text on the dials...P4 was such a pain. the multiple views are very nice..The ability to use a scrolling mouse on the library is very nice. The library itself is arranged much better...you can click right on the folders to open everything. P5, in its basis, is the same as P4, and I guess with the addition of the Pro PAck...you then get the additonal features, new render engine, etc.... As a final thought, had I not purchased P5, I doubt very much that I would have missed it all that much. Its still pretty much the same game with some added frosting, which makes the program overall a lot harder to use and master. Many folks will probably not agree with my take on P5...but I'm still using the same models, same clothes, same hair, and so forth that I had in P4...I got much more done in P4, as well..mostly because of learning the new rooms in P5...applying materials to the models....attempting to make hair...etc...and of course the slower render times... I also had a lot of problems early on, but most of them have been cleared with the recent patch releases. CL is working very hard on correcting the problems. Its your call, and quite frankly, I think if you're an avid Poser user, even though casual, a fairly tough decision to make...would I buy it if I had known what I do now??? Very doubtful....but I haven't gone back to Poser 4 since I got 5....so I must like it a bit :) Its a challenge, maybe...and the end result of your work gives that wow feeling quite often...as you experiment and try different things, there are many moments of great discoveries...little shadows that change the quality of the render, finer detail, better lighting...new tools to use... If you do decide to upgrade, just be patient...read the manual...plus you have the added benefit of having some of the questions answered already..there are tutorials...lots of xamples, and some folks that can already answer many of the questions.

Nope. Not worth it.

It could be once more issues are fixed.

P5 has improved substantially since its initial release, but still has many fundemental restrictions and limitations that aren't going to be fixed until there is a major rewrite of the core (if ever). Also the export and extendibility limitations and lock in to proprierty third party technology count against it. The best advice, now, is to hang on to see what the DAZ app has to offer, I expect that there should be at least some news within the next month or so. The Poser engine is such a dinosaur that its not unreasonable to expect that anything new should be way ahead of P5, and some of the eye witness reports seem to confirm this. Since DAZ are partly developing this app in order to support their modelling business, the pricing is likely to be competitive with (and may even undercut) the CL product. Bill

Sometimes I use the new features of Poser 5 (dynamic hair, firefly render). But I prepare may scene in Poser 4 first. P4 is much faster than P5 for library browsing, posing and conforming.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=278202

Easier Posing
First off, the new dial controls make it so much easier to pose. The new morph putty tool and the new scale rotation tool also make it easier to pose.
What used to take me two hours I can now do in about five minutes.

Raytrace Render
The new render kicks ass on anything you will get out of Bryce... Realistically you could create a Bryce type scene easier in Poser 5 than you could export all the Poser stuff to Bryce and render there.

The Cloth room is very easy to use and really helps expand what you can create.

The hair Dynamics is cool, I have not mastered it yet but I can safely say that the next closes thing to this you would have to spend at least $5500.00 on another program.

The face room is cool, but not really the high light of the program.

The most awesome part, which at first is a little intimidating, is the Material Room. Here is where Poser really grows up and becomes a real 3D app. With any good raytrace render there has to be a good material shader tree. The shader tree in this program is based on the same interface and structure as Renderman, or PRMan the render that Pixar uses.... this thing is powerful.....
Like I said a little intimidating at first (especially compared to Poser 4) but really cool. Once you experiment a little you will soon realize that it is not as hard as it seems and the possibilities are endless.....

Just check this render that I did....
This is one night of experimenting with reflections and refractions.
http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=278202

This program is well worth every penny and more.....
if you have an older machine you may need to upgrade to something a little more powerful, and until CL works out all the bugs (they are getting close) you will have to tolerate some nuances, but I guarantee that this will be the best software purchase upgrade you make this year.

"Raytrace Render The new render kicks ass on anything you will get out of Bryce... Realistically you could create a Bryce type scene easier in Poser 5 than you could export all the Poser stuff to Bryce and render there." Yeah, right. :-) Spit, Face room is great for Bryce, because the morphs can be easily exported and used in Bryce. I do hate the usual deafult Poser face, and this way I can get different-looking faces. Even if I'm not making every picture a close-up. Cloth is also quite okay and can be used meaningfully. Unfortunately, hair is really a problem, and I'd like to see it exportable in a useable format. But if you create pictures just in Poser, it's a great advance. Much more abilities and capabilities.

Thanks, folks. This advice is appreciated.

For "casual use"? No, P5 is not worth it (unless you have the money to burn). Are you really going to use the Dynamic Hair when the Kozaburo stuff is much better (and free)? Will you realistically use the Dynamic Cloth? (Probably not.) Stick with P4 until you absolutely have to upgrade or if you're trying to do to super pictures (in which case, you should save your money and buy Lightwave). And how about this for a reason: CL seems to be dropping the price on the base software AND releasing service packs every few weeks. If you wait long enough, the price may drop to $300 AND include all the service packs on the CD. Or, you can pay $350 now, um, I mean, $339, and then patch it to the current version. And then patch it again next week for that current version. And then watch as the price falls to $310 for a Christmas sale.

You can hear a pin drop. It's always like that just before the storm.

LOL...I can hear rumbling in the distance.............

Poser5 will disappoint you if you are expecting "the basic stuff" to be smoother, faster, or more stable. CL instead focused on adding dramatic new features, as others mention above. ChristianB - cool, really cool - I'd stayed away from material room complexity, but now I'll have to get into it grin IMO, Larry Weinberg's strength has never been in making a product easy to use or stable. Still, Poser, whether 4 or 5, does useful stuff at a decent price. I've got my money's worth. But to most "casual" users, who already have Poser 4, I would suggest instead spending that upgrade money on more "content". Subscriptions to PoserWorld and PoserStyle, plus ponying up for the DAZ platinum club. Morphworld 3.0. Discounted "classic" content CD's here or at DAZ. Better "textures" for the models you already have. Buy some 3D modeling package, and learn to "tweak" those inexpensive models into just what you want :)

ChristianB: "Raytrace Render The new render kicks ass on anything you will get out of Bryce... Realistically you could create a Bryce type scene easier in Poser 5 than you could export all the Poser stuff to Bryce and render there. " Surely you're joking. LOL This is the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. Poser simply does not have the tools to be a scene builder. Just moving objects around is a chore. Sheesh. Took me half an hour to put a dragonfly on a wall in Poser using the dials and various views. Just the mere fact Poser has no separate object/camera/world space coordinate systems can really slow you down. This is basic stuff.

To me its like comparing apples to oranges. I think if poser was able to export files easily to other programs it would have great potential. Also the ability to include an easy plugin system so third party developers could adress ergonomic and effect type of issues. Imagine being able to easily export a finished poser scene with textures, etc. in place without the usual disassembly/reassemby that's now required. That's if you can export it at all. As a musician I take for granted the fact that MIDI allows almost total integration of all my systems effects. If we had that kind of integration in 3D graphics, people would laugh at how we currently do things. Its currently inefficient and very time consuming which is alright if your a "tweaker" by nature and have all the time in the world. But if you rely on productivity or you find that tweaking hampers creativity, then incorporating a MIDI type of system in 3D graphics applications would be a godsend. Its time that someone took the bull by the horns here and made this happen.