Working with Poser every day to generate art for an online comics site, I consider myself a "Poser Pro" and the target audience for the new release.  I just see too many features that I'll never use, and the ones I would just make me a little miffed that they weren't integrated into the standard release of Poser 7.  Looking at the limited time offer for the upgrade price of $200, I also think it's a slight to their userbase.  After suffering through the bugs and quirks that Poser 6 and 7 presented, I feel like the Pro version should be a bonus to the loyal users who continue to support the brand.

I've begun switching over to DAZ Studio where I can, and I use Carrara 6 Pro for more advanced render options.  The price for those packages was absurdly little, they developers interact with the community who uses the product and they seem genuinely interested in progressing the products.  The ball on Poser was dropped a long time ago, and Smith-Micro does not seem capable of picking it up.

I've been a Poser customer since version 1, but I'm passing on Poser Pro and moving my library elsewhere.  I'm sure it's better than Poser 7, but I'm not giving them another $200 for a product that has continued to let me down.

A few days ago, I got Vicky4, and this morning my link for Poser 7.  I loaded it up, linked my runtimes, and opened an existing file.  I never could get the AO lighting to look very well in P6, but P7 gave me some very nice results on my first render, right out of the gate -

It was the Quicktime 7 conflict again. I thought I had yanked the export module, but it must have put it back in again and I missed it. I yanked Quicktime and it takes off like it should.

Got loads of XML files in there. I tried deleting some of my prefs as well, but it still won't launch. It gets to the loading screen, and then just vanishes. :(

Yep, that was it. I pulled ImageIO_Mac.mrw out of the folder and it started. I guess the folks at CL just assumed there would never be any updates for Quicktime. :( Thanks for the assist!

Aha! I un-installed Quicktime and Poser loads! Something in Poser 6 and Quicktime 7 don't get along for me, it seems.

Thinking about it, the only change I made on the desktop machine yesterday was update my iTunes program, which upgraded Quicktime 6 to Quicktime 7. I did this on my laptop a few weeks ago. Wonder if they're related somehow...

I've had problems with the Out of Memory errors when I load too much in one scene.

I also have a random problem where things come un-parented. Hair, for example, suddenly decides it doesn't want to move with the figure anymore. Yesterday, some of the Wyrmmaster magnets decided to float away and declare independance from Vicky, which created some very strange shapes when rotating her.

The patch would be very much appreciated about now.

It worked fine with a file yesterday, but when I open and try to resave it today, I get the out of memory error. I've learned to save all my files in incremental steps so it doesn't eat ALL of my work anymore. The length of time we've had to work around this bug has been very frustrating.

Poser 6 is great, but the memory leak is killing me. :(

When I used IBL, all of the textures with reflections rendered black, without reflecting anything, so I experimented with some of the settings. Those renders are pretty much right out of the box, so I'm hoping to really lean on it today and learn a lot more about the new lighting. That's the most exciting part of the program for me.

Here's the same scene, rendered with a single point light, and then rendered using the new Ambient Occlusion lighting. Very different looks, but both have strong points.

Here's what a follow-up e-mail from CL said- Americas Store The first shipment of Poser 6 SE has been received into inventory by our Digital River US warehouse and orders are beginning to be filled. Americas - Windows At this time, we expect that all valid orders for the Windows version placed between February 16 and March 29, 2005 should be filled within the next one to two business days. Delivery times will vary based on the method chosen when the order was placed. Americas - Macintosh At this time, we expect that all valid orders for the Macintosh version placed between February 16 and March 26, 2005 should be filled within the next one to two business days. Delivery times will vary based on the method chosen when the order was placed. All Macintosh orders placed after March 26th will be filled when our second shipment reaches the Digital River US warehouse, which we currently anticipate will be the week following April 12th. Global Store The shipment of Poser 6 SE has been delivered to our Digital River UK warehouse and orders will begin to be filled as soon as the shipment is received into inventory. Global - Windows At this time, we expect that all valid orders for the Windows version placed between February 16 and March 29, 2005 should be filled within the next two to four business days. Delivery times will vary based on the method chosen when the order was placed. Global - Macintosh At this time, we expect that all valid orders for the Macintosh version placed between February 16 and March 29, 2005 should be filled within the next two to four business days. Delivery times will vary based on the method chosen when the order was placed.

Just got my confirmation and checked the UPS tracking - should have my box tomorrow!

lol - yeah, I guess as long as the box spends the night in a truck somewhere, the conditions are satisfied.