BTW, with the two 2.66GHz P4's, applications that support dual processors will run at 5.32GHz (not quite, of course). How's that for processing power for animation of complex scenes? I'm running a 2.54GHz P4 now and it screams. Expect to hear sonic booms with the new system... BYS

I'm using C4D XL8, LightWave 7.5, and Photoshop 7 as well as Poser. Eventually going to get Maya 5. But, as I said, Poser will only use one cpu, but the other is free for surfing, working in Photoshop or PSP, or whatever. That is an advantage that I really miss since my dual PIII system became a web server. Not for long. Anyway, I figure that someone looking to get a video card with 256MB memory seems to have money to afford a good system. I didn't forget, just that, hey, it's expandable beyond that if needed at some point. Not everyone stays with Poser indefinitely. If he decides to go for C4D, LW, Maya, 3DSMax, SoftImage, Houdini, or whatever, in the future, well, extensibility is already there. BYS

You should talk to the seller. This may be something that was overlooked, a bug in the files, or just a configuration issue (I know that these are all supposed to be tested here at Renderosity prior to sale acceptability). Still, that is the first place to take a product specific problem. BYS

The Intel SE7505VB2 has RAID onboard. ;) This is a very nice board or I wouldn't have just ordered one for myself. BYS

Dual monitor is great - using GeForce4 TI 4600 with 21" and 19" CRTs. Harddrives are definitely a must. 80GB or greater at 7200RPM with 8MB Cache (Western Digital or Maxtor). Almost everything that size is UltraDMA/EIDE. And, yes, lotsa RAM. Note that the Intel board supports up to 8GB. Can't complain about that upward compatability. ;) BYS

I'm looking into an Intel SE7505VB2 server board with dual 2.66GHz Xeon processors. Very nice. Onboard LAN, audio, and video. 8X AGP, 533MHz FSB, up to 8GB memory, Hyperthreading support. You can get the board, processors, and 2GB memory for about $1500. Before anyone spews about Poser not using both processors, at least you'lll have plenty of power available to do something else while rendering. BYS

Look!!!! I don't see the problem (!) with ! or italics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;) BYS

Yes, and as OS, memory, video card, and cpu structures advance, Poser is looking older and older. Soon it'll be a stagecoach will AM radio and a fan. ;) From what I've read from the initial press-release of Poser 5 up until now, it appears that the one determining factor is that CL promised to once and for all correct problems endemic to the application from its inception. The fact that they mentioned "from the ground up" rewrite of the code shows that this was their claim. Instead, as you said, they made a couple of minor modifications and piled on bells and whistles while leaving the bugs intact. This is what has caused the most unsympathetic voices to be heard. With the long wait and promises, the results were demeaning to both CL and its users. One issue that I take personally is what they call an "undo" feature. There are programs out there for free, written by teenagers with better undo/redo support. I've written better undo/redo feature support in my own programs - one programmer. Seems to me that the programmers at CL don't actually program but just tweak the founding code a little here and there. Compare the feature/stability of Poser from 1999 and 2003 against any other continuing 3D application from 1999 to 2003 and you will see what I mean. BYS

williamshell, that's just untrue about rendering on machines. I have read plenty of posts on Poser and other 3D apps where someone could not render, sent the exact file to others, and they said things like, "rendered fine on my machine", etc. Of course, when talking hardware, we're talking about stability, firmware, and drivers. Although firmware is software, it's not software installed on your hard drive and executed by the OS - but into an EPROM (or similar). This is, AFAIAC, hardware. And, although single program execution is primarily deterministic, the entire set of software (drivers, dlls, threads, processes) running on a computer is somewhat chaotic. You're talking about the interaction of hundreds or thousands of them, each going through the same pipe, in somewhat arbitrary or indeterministic time intervals (determined by priorities, user interaction, external and internal triggers). Since the essence of chaotic theory is that slight variances lead to majorly different results, this accurately explains the problems with most computers today. The best that can be done is to code with the strictest standards, using as much stable code (OS dlls, for instance) as possible. Still, I agree with you totally concerning whether or not Poser was "recoded". It certainly was not. It was revamped and had code modules added - sometimes poorly. BYS

Well, what is the intent of the picture? Is the dragon the woman's pet? Or not and she's surprised/fearful/interested/enamored to see it? Not only should a picture convey mood and aesthetics, but it should also convey information worth consideration by the viewer. This can be to show an event (real or not), to voice a message, to evoke an emotional response, and so on. Also, the woman and dragon being the focus of the picture, they should be placed more central. The eye wanders to the bottom left corner and off the picture or around the trees, to the dragon, woman and off the top left corner. Cover the upper right diagonal and you have your central figures. Cover the lower left diagonal region and you have just a nice landscape. In this case a camera shift to the left and down, aiming it up will center giving an ominous feeling. Moving the camera up and to the right, aiming it down toward the central figures will give a more controlling feeling. Moving the camera around the central figures, keeping in mind the mood and event/action/message you wish to convey. BYS

Let's face it, some problems with Poser 5 are bugs, some are hardware related, some are software-incompatibility related. I just reinstalled my entire WinXP Pro system today because LightWave 3D 7.5c Modeler was freezing my computer, which it hadn't done before. System specs: Intel 845G chipset, 533FSB, P4 2.54GHz, 1G DDR PC2100 RAM, GeForce4 TI 4600, 30 GB OS drive, 2 80GB drives, and so on - always the latest firmware, BIOS, drivers, patches, updates, etc. It's a nice beefy system. So it was not a hardware problem. LW was working nicely previously, so it was not a bug. It was definitely incompatibility or corruption with drivers, software, dlls, who knows. Hard to flush out a problem with lots of installs of various types and no dump (since the entire OS was freezing). Reinstallation seems to have eradicated the problem. Wish it didn't require such drastic measures, but there was no possible way to trace the problem - anyway, Windows gets cruddy very quickly with lots of apps installed. ************ Now, for the guy who says install only the OS and then Poser, well, you must have a rather simplistic computer setup. I have Poser PP4, Poser 5, LW 3D 7.5, Cinema 4D 8, UV Mapper Pro, Adobe Photoshop 7, Premiere 6.5, DVD Workshop 1.3, RecordNow DX (for writing data DVD archives), XP Office Pro, WinZip, StuffIt, Norton AV 2002, Real One, QuickTime 6 Pro, CyberLink PowerDVD, and many other minor software and drivers for all hardware and peripherals. And I use these all on a regular basis (3D CG, DVD video creation, animation/video editing, among other activities). No games, no Kazaas, no cutsie applications. Everything installed on my system has a direct purpose for being there. It'd be great if we could each afford three or four identical systems to isolate our main body of applications, but that would be ridiculous. You're electric bill would be catastrophic, the wires would take over your home office, you'd need a nice expensive KVM switch (or ten monitors, extra mice and keyboards), a network administrator, and more than one copy of any software that is needed on more than one machine (if you want to stay legal). ********** Poser has bugs, has inadequacies, nuances, and structural problems just like many other apps. Why the endemic problems weren't sorted out from 4 to 5 is beyond me (despite knowing their desire to shove a product out the door asap). As has been pointed out and hinted at, complex interactions of hardware, drivers, dlls, and software are impossible to predetermine. The best thing to do is make sure to have good, functional, non-flaky hardware with lastest firmware installed, avoid software that is known to interact poorly with your main applications, and don't install, uninstall, reinstall, install other stuff, uninstall, reinstall, etc. This is a sure way to cause havoc on your system. The registry will be a massive mess of non-existent dependencies. Also, get rid of all of that automatically run system tray crap. Real One, QuickTime, monitors, and cutsie quick run stuff like that just eats up valuable memory, bandwidth, and yields more potential for crashes than almost anything else. BYS

They don't appear to be too "bright". Eye whites actually appear to be more of an offwhite with a grey/blue tint. You could tone down the specular highlight on them (and the tear ducts), but it looks more like the lighting is direct (in line with the camera) which is causing them to be brighter. BYS

CL says that they are working on a P5 "Pro Pack" that will include updates to their plugins for 3DSMax, LightWave, and Cinema. For stills or boned Poser characters, check out Greenbriar Studios for a not-so-free set of plugins soon to be available for Cinema 4D (already available for LightWave 3D). :Little Rant in CL minor: It's taking CL an inordinate amount of time to make these updates for Poser 5. I know that they released the product prematurely and spent oodles of time making it stable and killing bugs/oddities, but since then, I've learned Cinema4D 7.3 and 8.1 as well as LightWave 3D 7.5. I've started learning Maya PLE and am getting read to demo 3DSMax 5. Already building my first full, realistic human characters in LightWave. At this rate, Poser is going to become a moot point. BYS

First, you have to be initiated into the secret order of the "Free Morphans". ;0) Actually, these are "base" figure models used in Poser. Dork, for instance, is the affectionate name applied to the standard Poser 4 Male figure. Posette is Poser 4 Female figure. I don't think there are (or haven't heard of) any nicknames for the Poser 4 Child. In Poser 5, Curious Labs has decided to name the figures for us - Don, Judy, Penny, and Will, after characters from "Lost in Space". Stephanie is the proper name of a third-party female figure model available from Daz3D. There, you'll also find Victoria (versions 1,2,3) and Michael (versions 1&2 - 3 on the way), which are high-resolution human models for Poser. Of course, if you want to go further, people who create new "characters" (unique morphs and textures) for the base figures usually give them their own names. All in distinguishing or anthropomorphizing the human models, I guess. BYS

Norton AV. Forget McAffee or other online virus checkers. These days, fully protecting your system from the possible avenues of infection is the only way to avoid them (or use another system exclusively for internet, no networking to other machines). I receive about a dozen emails with W32 virus every week. Luckily they are automatically Bayesianed out by a spam filter. Keep it enabled all the time except when not connected to the internet or installing. BYS