By all settings do you mean Wire frame, shaded etc? Remeber that there is the render settings for the objects like render as document type. I'm at work so I don't have it in front of me. But it sounds like sillouette is selected for the figure or document type

Whoops.... me again. What I meant to say is that some of the elements I listed could be part of the base model (like the wall things - fire extinguishers, switches....etc) but the set lends itself for a whole slew of new props that, in the long run you could offer as freebies, to compliment the base set (should you start selling it). Other artists as well could start making props for it.

Small props will go a long way to add to the set....
Think about that room and what it would be like in the real world.... Fire extinguisers, fire alarm switces, fire hose,
the classic spinning yellow or red lights (like on top of an old police car) a black board with formulas written on it... schematic drawings pinned up....
clip boards (there are always clip boards in sci-fi.)
Electrical juction boxes, control or monitor panels, xray viewing light boxes, emergency power kill switch, an observation window (for another room or control center)
Big oxygen cylinders, A tool tray, a sink, a emergency eye washer, small wall cabinets for first aid, or goggle sterilzation. alien fetus or brain in a jar...ok maybe not...heheheheh.

I remember your early versions with the different grill work.... I like this new version except for the flat red brick things on the walls. It makes your wonderful 3d model now look like a low budget broadway stage set (if you know what I mean) It looks like things just painted on the walls..... I suggest that you run some simple pipes and conduits around the walls and possibly a cluster of them coming down from ceiling to floor. Pipes will be easy to model and texture..... Try a steel one, a copper one and a large black corregated one (like automotive wire harness) Possibly bright orange or the black and yellow "warning" type to compliment your floors. For wall art.... how about radiation or bio hazzard symbols....... Just my two cents..... I'd like to see it when you're done.... Much of my work is sci-fi so I can see all kinds of uses for it.... good job

I still have poser 4 installed so that's where I'll play. I love Poser but this Microsoft approach to putting out garbage and fixing it later is unacceptable - at least it should be. I have to say that if me or my staff was to release something like this first version P5, upper management would have canned us. I know that the poor folks at CL are under pressure and it must have been hell yesterday when the patch went out with the bad interface but I think Steve needs to get a clear moment and stop the chaos and get a handle on things. Constant user disappointment will start to drive even the blindly faithful to greener pastures. You can love the product, but if its crushing your creative process with flaws and crashes it ceases to be useful. As a developer myself, I know how they feel but overall I am embarrassed for them. This release was (is) undeniably disastrous. The broken patch - far worse. Even though I am in the minority of being an animator, I wouldn't consider myself a super-power-user but I could see the bugs from orbit. The people who had "no problems" couldn't have been doing much. I am really, really pulling for CL to get it together. It is a great program but even I am depressed by this whole mess. I love doing this 3d thing. I am really thinking about going to another platform like cinema or lightwave. If the rumors of DAZ creating a product are true I'd have to consider it. Victoria and Michael kick the crap out of everything else so far, so I think they could be a contender. I'd love for poser to be my main platform but this whole mess has really got me un-nerved. Please CL - Take a deep breath, relax and Focus. There is no Spoon. TalleyJC

Attached Link: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html

Well judy is an Alien and she doesn't want us to circumvent her plans. I can't use the face room for more than 2 minutes without it crashing. Clearly she doesn't want to be altered. Keeping in mind the level of Beta testing that went on... I am thinking that Judy amd Don's names should become Helen and Tommy. This I think would best honor the beta testers. (Anybody have a guess as to why I choose those names?) Muahahahahahahahaa (evil laugh)

What I was thinking was that if the patch was ready, the site would have been updated late last night.

Wolf359.... I am intrested in both modeling and animation. I am seriously looking at the XL package - which if I understand it correctly, is the base package with a bunch of the "separate" functions you described. Explosions are important as is hair/cloth. But I also want to model and have ease of use as well as fast render time. Also i'd like standard movie file output (AVI etc) for post production . How different are the modeling tools? Have you reviewed the cinema r8 options? I guess basically I want to know if a fully loaded cinema system would be as good as lightwave. I don't know of I care about direct poser import anymore. If I can get daz models into either product with a little work that's ok. Plus I am sure someone may have already put together a project file that has victoria with a skeleton built by now.

I've been toying with the idea of a orange/yellow transparent plane to clothify and apply wind from below... but P5 is so unstable I can't get there from here.

ToolmakerSteve.... The people over at DAZ created models that really made poser something special. They used the wavefront objects with all the library structures that poser expected, textures, bumpmaps etc. CL knows victoria and must love what she's done for them. Take your Victoria and try to render her in firefly. What happens? Your bumpmaps are nowhere. You have to either render in the P4 engine or go about playing with converting your bumpmaps and go play in the materials room. Being that DAZ followed the poser conventions, why would CL not support a native import for any model using bumpmaps that were in the Runtime library structure? Knowing that bumpmaps are part of any good model - why on gods green earth would poser not provide a import for models (that use bumpmaps) that made them P5 ready. I didn't see anywhere that bumpmap support (as it was) was being dropped. I was taken by surprise. Its kind of silly don't you think? To provide a method of connecting to your p4 library but drop the ball on the bumpmaps? This would be the same as an upgrade to Microsoft Access that allowed you to read your tables but made you manually convert your existing queries or MS Word that provides new fonts but expects you to convert your old ones. Imagine having a word doc that you worked on for a client proposal that had 15 different fonts in it, scattered thoughout the document - you upgrade and then find out that the doc, when imported, is changed all to courier.

I am not talking about a DAZ/Poser issue specifically. The folks at CL have to know that DAZ's models is what makes Poser usable. 90% of the products offered on this very site are Victoria related. People that use poser use Victoria. CL's new models should have had the same number of facial morphs when designed. If you read my post, (the line above the one you referenced) You will see that I refered to a V2 LEVEL model not V2 specifically. So I am sorry if you can't recognize or missed the relevance.

Ok, I have to step up here (just in general, not to any specific person/post) Some have slapped Tim for his frustration. Where Tim may have appeared to many as childish or whatever, I have to say that I agree with him. Most people on the list are Still-Render people, some of us are animators - two different disciplines for sure.

Now let's look at what's going on. Tim is trying to create with a package he has loved in the past. The new version of this software is filled with promise. He spends his hard earned money on this new version. What is he met with? He sees glitches that should not be there. Aside from people's preferences for interfaces or whatever there is undeniably a trust violation. All who have hammered Tim for bitching are missing a key point. People have said "do it this way" or "here's a work around" or suggest that Tim write python or XML or animate every move from scratch or redesign the interface. None of this is relevant. This is not the enduser's resonsibility. The user should not in anyway have to "work around" anything. There is a difference between a "Trick" and a "Work around". Tricks are getting extra functionalty that a system was not specifically designed for. Work arounds are attempts to recover broken functionality. Tim was promised a rewrite from the ground up. In my little software development world, this is known as an SLA. Service Level Agreement. This sets user expectations for what is to be promised and delivered. Regardless of all the other bugs withnew functionality, CL has clearly NOT rewritten it.

Now I have to say that I think CL does care about the product and that the money issues are certainly a factor. I am sure there was pressure to deliver this software way before it was ready. This is the fault of the example set by Microsoft - that pushes garbage out and has people burning internet bandwith pulling down patches.

I have to say also that I too feel betrayed by CL. I am not at all happy with this release. There are plenty of great ideas here like the face room and such. But look at Tims example of the manual:

"Widget Temporal Analysis Toggle: Toggles the Widget's Temporal Analysis"

He's absolutely correct in this regard. There is so much that is good and yet so much that is bad with this release.

Here are examples:

Good: New Render Engine
Bad: Slash-your-wrists-slow

Good:Nodes and shaders etc.
Bad:The manual is lame in explaining use.

Good:Support the most popular model on the planet(VICTORIA)
Bad:Have to manually rework your bump maps which no matter what, you use will lose some quality. -Or- you are forced to use the old render engine.

(an interesting move don't you think? Inclusion of the old engine is self-evidence that CL knew it had problems. To thier credit, they were thoughtful enough to include it but I would have prefered a fast new render engine that supports the new stuff as well as natively worked with Victoria as is, without having to do any content conversion)

Good:New Models

Bad:They suck. Not having a V2 level model is kin to a war crime. No one can tell me that CL is ignorant of Victoria. It is Victoria and Michael that made Poser seriously usable. Anybody want to argue that?

Good:Face room.
Bad:At least for the love of god, let me use V2 head a the basis. The face room morphs are about as flexible as a cereal box.

Well I could keep going but I will work myself up into a frenzy....and that is the point.... it shouldn't be this way.

I am waiting for the patches... I need the patches.... I must have the patches.

I personally have gone back to P4 to work. I have P5 still installed to play and learn (plus I dare not uninstall it for that security big brother crap).

Bottom line:

I have P5. I can't wait until I can use it when it gets stable. If it wasn't for the people at CL I'd probably uninstall it and ask for a refund. I love the package (P4) but I am hugely disappointed by P5. I will extend my trust 1 more time. Should CL not step up for this I'll have to bail and save money for an alternative. I don't want to but....I may have to. I have seen a few posts from CL answering quick questions as of late but I am concearned that Steve has not stepped up to face the family on these issues. There are issues... you can not argue that point. There ARE issues. You may be more or less tolerant/patient than others but there are people like Tim/Me who are deeply passionate about what we try to do in our escape from Corporate America at the end of each day. If P5 was your living wouldn't you be even more concearned? The tool needs correction and it needs it now.

My Wish list:

Stability!!!!

Speed!!!

A better manual

Better Models or the ability to use V2 level heads in face room

I'd like a native way of dragging in V2 and other models and have the system do all the remapping for me... I shouldn't have to.

Better on screen or even hardware based posing.

Volumetrics

Particles

And Most of all some word from CL about what is going on.

TalleyJC - Animator X

oh also, if you are using a codec that has a horizontal and vertical limit that doesn't match your render you'll get that.... I belive that Indeo for example must have an aspect ratio that are multiples of 4.... (a lot of codec are based on this).... makesure your document and render window sizes are mults of 4 (640 x 480 or 320 x 240) etc...

Make sure your camera isn't below the floor plane... If the camera goes below the floor you'll be able to see through it while working, but it will go solid in the render