Quote - I've been runiing PoserPro and P8 alongside each other with no problems, you should be fine.

How should I do this?  Do I simply run the installer and let it install P8 in its default location;  would that give me a Poser 8 folder beside the Poser Pro folder in the Smith Micro folder?  Or should I browse/create a custom P8 folder when I install?

Well, if I'm going to buy two more P8 licenses (for the 64bit Poser Pro machines), I may as well get the physical boxes, so that I'll get a couple of manuals.  I love an actual paper book manual. ^o^

Argh!  Both the P8 content zip and the legacy content zip give me an "unknown format or damaged" error.  The program installer archive unzipped successfully.

Quote - If you are a Poser Pro customer, and you buy a copy of Poser 8, you’ll own two licenses and two unique serial numbers; one for Poser Pro and one for Poser 8. Any user with those two valid serial numbers will be extended an invitation to join our Poser Pro 2010 beta program as soon as it’s publicly available. Plus, the price you paid for Poser 8 will be applied to your upgrade to final version of Poser Pro 2010 once it is released.In addition to the Poser 8 core feature set, Poser Pro 2010 beta version will also include the Pro application’s background rendering, network rendering, and 32 bit/64 bit rendering.

I have two 64bit Vista machines with Poser Pro licenses and I would like to be part of the Poser Pro 2010 beta testing.  I have peculiar Poser usage habits that might help fill in beta testing gaps - I mostly tend toward animation, I use a lot of complex material node assemblies (to animate water ripples, etc), and I use several third party plug-ins and Python script utilities.
     I will likely convert both the 64bit machines -and my single 32bit Vista machine- to Windows 7 come fall.

     I have already bought three Poser 8 licenses for my 32bit machines.
     For the 64bit boxes, I want to retain 64bit rendering, so I don't want to replace Poser Pro with Poser 8, but if it is feasible to install Poser 8 alongside Pro, that would be fine.  If two parallel installations (P8 & Pro simultaneously) won't work, then I would want to keep Pro installed until the Pro 2010 beta is ready.

Quote -  Is it just poser 8 out?  did they say anything about poser pro 2?
Love esther

Poser 8 is available now;  no official word yet on when the new Pro will be released.

I have bought three Poser 8 licenses, for my 32bit machines.  My two 64bit machines have Poser Pro licenses, and I will wait for the new Pro release to upgrade them.

If the benchmark tests don't show an improvement of Poser Pro (rendering at 64bit) as opposed to Poser 7, then the tests don't reflect my world accurately.  I tend to load scenes with geometry, complex material node work, animation keys, and light/shadow effects.  On occasion when one of the 32bit machines succeeded in rendering a wallpaper, it took much longer than the 64bit machine, probably just because the 32bit box was running near the cliff edge.  But often, the 32bit box with 4Gb RAM just chokes and dies.  In all such cases, the 64bit renderer is immeasurably better, since it becomes a question of  "fail" or "succeed".

I recall that this was rendered at 2560x1600 pixels on a quad-core 4Gb 32bit machine:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1925026

...but rendering this at 2560x1600 drew 1.4Gb just for the Poser Pro executable, and 4.4Gb for the 64bit FireFly:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1924625

(how can I post an image/thumb-link directly from my gallery?)

I bought three Poser 8 licenses;  can I use the same downloaded installer for all three computers, activating each with it's own unique serial?

Quote - Has anything been done with importing and exporting images in terms of where Poser "remembers" your last use?

One of my aggravations is that Poser Pro always remembers the last folder I used, period, without distinguishing whether I was exporting to it or importing from it. So if I change a texture in the material room and do a test render, I have to browse to my render folder. Then if I go to change a texture again, I have to browse away from my render folder and find my textures folder.

I have other programs (Fireworks, for example) that remember specifically where you last exported to and that memory is completely separate from where e.g. you last saved to or imported from. Very handy, and I'm hoping Smith Micro adopts something similar, as it would save quite a bit of time wasted browsing.

Good idea!  I'll second that motion!

P3 nude woman  -  15,588 polygons

You have P2 Lo-poly Bizman looking plenty good, DP!

Oh, here are poly counts for some of the standard, higher-poly dolls from Poser:

P2 Bizman - - - -      9,993 polys
P2 Casual man    11,034
P4 Bizman  - - - -   17,138
P4 Casual man    16,219
P4 nude woman   16,380 (Posette)
P4 bizwoman         17,002
P4 casual woman 15,405

     Having made render tests to check these dolls for suitability, I found that the P2 Lo-poly dolls were pretty good, probably the best quality-for-burden compromise I have seen.  They have a good shape, low polygon count, and only a few material zones.
     The P4 Lo-poly dolls are the lowest in polygon count, but they are utterly horrid, and unusable.
     The standard P4 dolls are quite good.

      DPHoadley, have you tried to make a decent-looking remap of the P4 Lo-poly dolls?  I would be curious to see the result, though I suspect a good P4 Lo-poly isn't feasible;  they just aren't in the same class as the standard P4 dolls.

Because I need to populate a drive-in cafe' for an animation I'm working on, I loaded several dolls into UV Mapper Pro and noted the statistics.  Quoting from my post in the FaerieWylde:

[begin quote]
bog wrote: "6.6k isn't that big, unless you're having 200 of them in the great dining hall."
 seachnasaigh:  I had in mind one -maybe two- on the cottage balcony, or on the gazebo, with just a wisp or two of ivy added. And let's see (looking in UV Mapper Pro), Aiko 3 is 74,510 polys bare, and 107,540 polys dressed with hair. OK, thanks, bog. So the recliner stays, with a caveat in the readme to use a lower poly design for bulk/background use.

Speaking of render burden, bog, do you have any suggestions for what figure I should use for populating Tink's Cafe in the redux of the carhop animation? My first thought was Poser's "biz man", or the P4 Lo man, but how would they compare with M3 lo-res dressed with second-skin "clothing"?

Oh, I jumped ahead a few chapters and took a first peek at modo's shader tree, though now I'll go back to learning the modeling tools.
I often make highly interconnected nodes in Poser; I wonder if that is feasible in modo, since its shader hierarchy appears linear. Can I use node A and node B to control node C, for example?

~~~ update to add poly count info for dolls ~~~
P2 Biz man Lo..............2,799 polygons
P2 Casual man Lo........3,235
P2 default guy.............3,682
P4 Biz man Lo..............2,412
P4 Casual man L..........2,266
P5 Don.......................23,465
P6 James Casual.......40,775
P7 Simon G2 Casual..84,140
DAZ Biz man................7,501
M3 Lo........................24,406
M3, A3.......................74,510
V4.............................66,024
I suspect that V4 carries a greater memory burden in morph data than A3, and V4 certainly has more complex material settings. Dolls with many mat zones will cost more RAM than similar dolls with few mat zones. But still, this list might be useful if anyone needs to populate a scene at minimal memory cost.
*[/end quote]

    * (The opening sentences reference a 6,600-poly elvish leafy recliner chair I made as a freebie, not a doll.)

I bought Poser Pro licenses for my 64bit machines just for the 64bit render engine.  I have not used the network render feature, because I don't want to deal with trying to get/keep a network functioning.  While I often use 4 machines to render out an animation, I copy the pz3 via flash drive, and simply assign blocks of frame numbers to each machine.  I would prefer that SM add the option to render frames in reverse order,  so that I can start TinkerBell rendering at frame 1, and Firebird rendering from frame 1200 backwards.  You would stop both machines when they reach the same frame.

The GI and multithread upgrades alone are worth the price of admission to me, for P8.

For Poser Pro 2 (name?), I hope they get the movie node fixed in the 64bit render engine, because I use movie nodes a lot, to apply animated lightning, or animate ripples in water.
If there is an equivalent GI and multithread upgrade for Poser Pro 2, that would sell me a couple of Pro license updates when it's released.
It would be less confusing to me if they used the same number as the concurrent Poser version, though, e.g., Poser Pro 8. :D

I believe that it now assigns buckets as cores become available, but wait for a P8 tester to weigh in on this with a confirmed answer.

Quote - You want Mercedes or BMW renderer? They exist - go buy them. You will pay $8995.

Some of us want Maya for $130. We're not going to get it.

I would pay $500 extra to get the "optional modo render engine for Poser".
But, I realize that marketing decisions must be based on how many would pony up for a better render engine.

I'll get Poser 8 for my 32bit machines, and -when it's released- Poser Pro 2 for my 64bit machines.

Given how much time I've spent trying to get a reasonable balance between light and shadow before, the GI upgrade of Poser 8 is worthwhile to me.  Also, I found the multithread system of dividing the window into quadrants exasperating, so the new system of handing out buckets as cores become available is a considerable improvement.

I always seem to be constricted in building complex scenes, so I would like for Poser (Pro, at least) to move toward full 64bit  - the executable, as well as the render engine.  I find that I tend to do setup on my 32bit boxes, and then transfer the pz3 to a 64bit box in order to be able to render it.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2777350

I'm like a kid with Legos in the material room. :D  Some of the resulting node connections look like spaghetti. 

Triple strobe (flash-flash-flash...  flash-flash-flash...), good for sci-fi beacons:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v604/seachnasaigh/tutorials/P7_mat_triplestrobe.png

120-frame seamless loop color shift, for the neon bubble tubes of a jukebox:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v604/seachnasaigh/tutorials/P7_mat_color_ramp_120f_loop.png

animated lightning seamless loop using a matrix (Poser Pro's movie node isn't working in the 64bit render engine):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v604/seachnasaigh/tutorials/P7_mat_matrix.png