I was fortunate enough to be one of the Beta testers for Glamorous Jessi, and Jim did a very good job with her. Her default figure looks much less like an alien than Jessi, and her posing abilities and jcm's are great. I'm sure that anyone who purchases her will not be disapointed.

One of the things that I really don't like (or understand) with the Original Jessie is the way the foot bends well behind the toes - OUCH! It hurts just to look at it, and all of the poses with bent toes that come with P6 bend her foot behind the toes. Jim definitely fixed this problem.

FYI - hopefully before the end of the week, I'll have a free dynamic skirt (attached image - still needs some tweaking) and top posted for her. I had hoped to get it posted by last Saturday, but my jobs, and a bout with an intestinal bug, has slowed me down a bit.

Just my 2 cents. For me: 1. C4D 2. Hexagon (for a new app, the UI is very well thought out, may need some tweaking, but its fast and easy to use)

I've been down the "can't find the right modeler highway" too (as has anyone learning to model in 3d on their own). Part of the problem was I didn't know much about 3d modeling (still don't), so almost all applications seemed very difficult. The other part of the problem was finding a modeler that fit the way I think. I got C4D XL6, and it just felt right.

A couple of months later I needed to make an achitectural model at work, which gave me a focus with a needed product, to learn C4D. I was able to complete the model, and learned ALOT in the process. But if I didn't have a well defined goal, with strict time limits, it would have taken a lot longer to learn C4D.

The moral to this story? If you don't have a defined project that you have to complete, you could spend a lot of time looking for a "good" modeler, and never find the right one. If C4D seemed to fit, then takes Ben's advice and register for the class. Taking a class gives you the needed direction, focus, and timelines to learn the software. For $20 it a great deal!

If you don't feel comfortable with C4D at the end of the course, you'll have enough knowledge about 3d modeling to pick the right application, for you.

I still love C4D, and have been drooling over C4D Version 9x for some of it's new modeling tools, but haven't been able to justify the upgrade cost. I recently purchased Hexagon (I also use CS4 - so the crossgrade to Hex was a real good deal), and I love it. It is fast, and easy to learn/use, and has a great work flow (for me). But had I not gotten my feet wet with C4D, Hex would be seem a little difficult too.

Good luck on your quest!

ps: C4D 6 (ce) may be old - but it's still a fantastic piece of software. If your not real serious about modeling, it will serve you well for years to come for the occasional modification or new design.

Attached Link: http://user.txcyber.com/~sgalls/

Another free option would be to use PoseRay, which reads .pz3 files (as well as several other formats) and can convert them for use in PovRay, a free and very good raytrace render engine (with GI and HDRI simulation). I haven't used it myself, but I have seen some exceptional images produced with it. Of course there is always the option of getting another comercial application that imports .pz3 files. I use Carrara Studio 4Pro, and Transposer2, which is a very easy to use combination, with a very low learning curve if all you want to do is use it as a render engine (no native support for P6 yet, but there are some simple work arounds if you have P5, it supports import of everything including animation, dynamic hair, dynamic cloth). Carrara has GI and HDRI support, and makes getting beautiful renders from Poser files very easy. With CS 4Pro and Transposer2 you can set up a render farm with up to 5 nodes, which really improves render times. As Little Dragon mentioned, Vue Esprit 5 is another great alternative render engine. It supports the import of static images and dynamic hair/cloth. If you need Poser animation support, you can get Mover 5 which will import full animation from Poser. I haven't used Vue Esprit 5, but it is on my wish list. For a cost effective solution (free), PoseRay looks like a very good option until support for magnets and dynamic hair/cloth get included in Daz Studio. Plus PoseRay is supposed to have support for Daz Studio (possibly through .obj import/export?). In fact, now that I've looked into it, I think I'll give it a go.

Good luck with hexagon. The short video clips in the documentation are great. It may not be your cup of tea, but with the free trial, it's worth a shot.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/hexagon/hexagon.asp

one more try

Sorry, I forgot to include the link to the Hexagon page.

Momodot,

Pardon my intrusion as I haven't tried Morph Designer. I thought you might be interested in a new product called Hexagon, by Eovia, for making morph targets (and alot more). Hexagon is supposed to "play well" with Poser. One of the beta testers was a Poser content creator (including figure morphs), and he had great things to say about it. I haven't tried it for making morph targets, but it does load poser exports in native units, and you can actually see and use the imported figures (just bought it last Friday). I have tested it for making clothing/props for Poser, and I'm very happy with the results.

You can download a free 30 day, uncrippled version from the web site to give it a test run. Unfortunately the new release special is off, but there is still a discount available until June 30th.

I've tried amorphium, and although it is supposed to be easy to use, I found it hard to control, and not very intuitive. I've tried wings a couple of times, but it never felt right. The only software I ever felt really comfortable with is Cinema 4D, but upgrading to the current version, which has some tools I really would like, is beyond the resouces in my pocketbook.

Hexagon has almost everything I like in the modeling found in C4D (9x), but can't afford. I was able to start using Hexagon right after installing it. I'm working through the pdf manual right now (which has imbeded video clips - great stuff). Even though I could do basic stuff immediately, there are some real time savers that make reading the manual a big plus. It's also fun to use (not something I thought I would ever say about a 3d modeling program).

Good luck in your quest to find useable software to make morph targets Poser!

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/hexagon/hexagon.asp

You might like to take a look at Hexagon, a new modeler from Eovia. It's not real expensive, and I have found it to be very easy to use. There is a fully functional 30 day demo version that you can download to take it for a trial run, and some videos of the software "in action". It makes modeling fun and almost easy.

Just a quick correction on Carrara, and my 2 cents worth.

Carrara Studio 4 (CS4) and Transposer2 let you "import" full animations from the Poser .pz3 file, including dynamic cloth and dynamic hair. If you want to speed your render times up a bit, CS4 Pro and Transposer2 will let you use up to 5 additional machines for render nodes. CS4 has GI and HDRI for great lighting with minimal setup. The render engine in P6 is better than P5, but I still prefer the CS4 render engine.

I believe that Vue5 also supports dynamic hair.

Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/products/hexagon/hexagon.asp

Nothing to add to the above comments other than you might want to look at Hexagon, a new 3D modeler from Eovia. I haven't tried it, but it looks great, and the beta testers and early purchasers have given it great reviews for being fast and easy to learn. Right now it's $99 (US), looks great for the price. I use Carrara, and am seriously looking at Hexagon to add to my 3D tool kit.

Good luck with the new machine!

Jim, I have a 2.2 (P4M) Ghz Toshiba Satelite with 1Gb RAM, and a 32Mb Nvidia 460Go video Card. Poser 6 runs very well on it. If possible, I recommend getting dedicated, rather than shared, video ram. Shared RAM will be slower than dedicated video RAM simply because dedicated video RAM is on the video card, and shared must go through the system bus to communicate with the video card, which is much slower. I would also recommend a Nvidia Graphics card, CL worked closely with Nvidia on the open GL implementation, so it only stands to reason that Nvidia cards will be some what more stable (but ATI seems to work well too). More Video RAM means better performance as scenes get more complex, obviously 32Mb works, but 64 would be better, 128 is very good, and 256 would be great. 1Gb of RAM is a BIG plus, I had 512 on my laptop at first, and I was always running out of room and hitting the swap file (which is SLOOOOOW on a laptop). The system you quoted above sounds great. I've used Athlon's for years, and have been very happy with their perfomance. Good luck with your purchase!

YES!!!

User configurable undo would be the best. This would let you, the user, decide how much of your system resources would be used by undo. Those with modest systems wouldn't have to use precious resources for numerous undo levels unless they wanted to.

It's time for CL to wake up and smell the roses, multiple undo is not a new concept, and is a requirement for increased productivity.

I would say that compared to other 3D software companies, Eovia is probably on the small to medium end of the mid range in size. They have been around long enough that they seem fairly stable (if any software company other than Microsoft can be called stable). I have found that smaller companies, such a Eovia, that are actively seeking to improve their product often provide the best value for your dollar.

CS4 may not have all the "features" the the big names do, but they also don't have the marketing and sales staff overhead that the big names do (which the user pays for). The full version improvements (i.e. V2 to V3, V3 to V4) to Carrara have been very impresive, and now Carrara is on the heels of the "Pro" applications. The render engine is already comparable with the Pro applications. The shaders in CS4 are very flexible and powerfull, and IMHO hold there own compared to C4D and Lightwave (need to implement SS to keep up with the others). The spline modeler in CS is very powerful and flexible. There has also been increased plugin development since CS4 came out, and the plugins are very affordable.

The areas that need improvement are vertex modeling (althought CS4 Pro does ship with Amapi Designer, which fills in gaps in the CS4 modeler, and the new Hexagon looks like it might be the answer to fast, powerful, easy to use modeling for CS), animation needs some more work flow improvement and minor tweaks (CS4 made big strides in this area), and improved particles and physics would be a big plus. I'd like to see native cloth simulation capabilities within CS, but with Poser 5 (soon Poser6?) support through Transposer, you can get cloth simulations into CS4.

Bottom line though, if CS4 "feels" right (intuitive?), and seems to work the way you think, then it will be a good purchase. To me, that is the most important consideration when purchasing 3D software. If it does't fit your thought processes, you'll be fighting it every time you use it.

Good Luck!

I haven't had any problems with P6, and have used it daily on a laptop (2.2Ghz, 1Gb RAM, GeforceGo 460/32MB) for the past 3 weeks. All the P5 content I have tried has opened in P6 with no problems, but I've heard about instances where manual tweaking of the texture settings is required.

I've been working on some very high poly, high texture resolution, dynamic clothing on Jessie HighRes, and haven't had one lock-up or any signs of the memory leak issue. I've run test renders with firefly at the "max" quality setting with 3 lights, and haven't run into the memory leak problem yet. Many times I've had a P6 session running for 4-5 hours. With the render settings at maximum quality, the system resource usage jumps well over 1GB, but no problems (yet).

My experiences may not be the norm, as I've seen a lot of posts about the memory leak problem. My graphics card definitely is not up to par with many of the systems that have had OGL problems, but my system has performed very well with OGL (and the "newest" driver is almost 2 years old). Maybe I've just been extremely lucky so far, and now that I've said this, my problems will begin :-?

Overall, I'm very happy with P6, and it's improvements. My only complaint is I wish that the third party support (import plugins) for P6 was better - CL should have syncronized SDK development with P6, so the SDK could have gone out to developers about the same time as they released P6.

If you use dynamic cloth - P6 is well worth the upgrade. It seems to work much better in P6 than it did in P5.