Currently running poser 7 and vue 6 on windows 7, works flawlessly so far (with exception for some of the normal bugs in the programs).
Feels a lot faster than vista but might be due to me switching over to desktop from laptop and putting 8gb's of RAM in it...

Im 20, havent even been working for a year and i already feel that time flies way to fast :/
I guess it will only be moving fast and faster as well.
Also as you said it really puts things into perspective, especially for me since i have lived just slightly over 1/5 of her life.

If its below a 10 min render, yes, if over, mostly not.
Love doing test renders in vue tho, first a very rough version, then a smoother one, and then smoother, and smoother etc etc until its done.

Changing materials or creating them? Changing them can be done in material room in poser or in vue if you import it there.
Editing them as in actually change the texture would be Photoshop/gimp/paint (ok, maybe not paint...).
Just open the JPG files that is under runtime/textures and edit away :)

Just popping by to say i WANT THIS! also ive read thru the thread and its very interesting to se how and what is involved in making this.
Dont know much abouyt modelling but im hoping to some day get the patience and motivation to learn enough to make some stuff of my own, things like this really helps in increasing motivation, even if its years out of my reach :)

About a cheaper x64 program for CG i think that Vue have had it since 2007, and they support multiple cores as well.
In vue its much more needed than in poser tho, a scene with a couple of billion polygons tend to eat memory and the 2gb limit in 32 bit doesnt really help with that :P
I agree that it is good poser is getting it tho, since poser figures tend to be very poly and texture heavy large amounts of ram can only be a good thing.
I also belive that aplications such as maya/max/lw etc tend to use "smarter" soltions requiring less memory (sub d) and i think the textures usually are a lot lower res unless its in extreme closeups.
In poser there is the "1 size fits all" thing going and therefor it tends to be very large texture maps and rather extreme polycounts involved.
A step in the right direction, but it will require a lot more before i use poser to actually render anything tho.

Not to sound negative in any way but 64 bit capabilities in a CG aplication is far from cutting edge these days.
Only example i know of is Vue who has had it for quite some time.
Im guessing Maya had it for a while as well (quick googling leads me to suspect since 2006).
And also 64 bit is even further from new technology, existed since the 1960's, since 2003 in PC's.
Id rather say that any aplication that makes use of large amounts of RAM and CPU and that doesnt have x64 if getting behind.
Ive had a x64 system for over 1.5 years and been patiently waiting for something like this, now im not getting it since the issues with exporting to vue :/

Anyways i apologice if my post comes out as negative, it's not meant that way, just wanted to point out that poser is very far from cutting edge ;)
And im glad that you are happy with your new system, i wish i could get a desktop so i could buy a monster system as well :D

I do, don't know from where tho, but i feel its some kind of game concept art picture?

Do i get the feeling that vista is no longer the main subject of this thread? :P
Either way, poser work fine under vista, most of the time :)

Dont know about infinite, i have the xStream version so that might be the reason.
I got a dialog where i can choose if i want x64 or 32, and i also dont need an extra license for installing multiple copies, but like i said, might because i have the xstream version.

Yeah i know that it is possible to run some aplications under linux, but Wine cant really be trusted, as soon as a new version is released the things that might have worked the last 10 updates might just stop working again, and for a NORMAL user its not really "easy to do" imo.
I agree that it is an alternative but you have to be prepared to spend several hours to get things to work and also might not be able to get all the plugins/features you would otherwise get within minutes under windows.
Personally i just started using linux so im no expert, but i would say i know a lot more about computers then the average guy (i work with tech support).
So far my experience is that linux is a much better OS then windows, but you need to be motivated enough to work your way thru the problems that will, eventually, arise if you plan on using the same aplications as in windows.
But yes, its a very valid alternative, and in some specific cases, a better one, i agree :)

While i like a lot of the things in vista, using hardware more effectivly isnt one of the things it do very well.
At least not if a majority of the benchmarks are to be believed. Now they did fix a lot of issues in Service Pack 1, but a well optimised xp still run most aplications better then a well optimised vista. Now when it comes to x64 its very hard to compare vista with xp since vista have both and XP only have 32 bit, the x64 XP is actually based on windows server 2003.
When using 3d aplications i would say that x64 is a MUST, not being able to allocate more then 2gb ram to any single process is very limiting.
So for optimal speed and performance i would go with XP x64, for usuability and overall "good feel" i would go with Vista x64.
Not going to bring up linux since it cant really run any decent aplications for CG in the first place.
But if things work well and there is no need for more speed then id go with vista any day over XP, since it much less of a hassle to configure and secure properly, and it looks way better :)

Just a tip for those running 64 bit os, you can run 2 installations of vue, one 64 and one 32.
Whenever i need a character skinvu'ed i open 32 and save character after finishing as a vob and then open it up in x64.
You might run in to license problems with dual installations but worked fine for me anyways, and now i cant live without skinvue :)

I got vista when it was first released on my desktop and used it for over 6 months and everything worked perfectly. This was when most of the issues in vista still existed, now they have release service pack 1 and most aplications are even supposed to work with it. However after getting my laptop some 5 months ago (moved to a new country without my dekstop) i have had a lot of problems with vista and 3d aplications.
Most games run fine but whenever i try to use poser and/or vue i keep getting crashes. Ive tried most fixes around but it still doesnt work well with poser at all.
Since im tired of having to spend 3 times the amount of time im supposed to on each image im going to throw vista out and get xp x64 and ubuntu on my second laptop.
I figured if i want fancy windows i might as well use ubuntu, and from what i have heard xp 64 seems to run both vue, poser and other 3d aplications perfectly.
So i guess it varies from computer to computer (drivers etc).
Just my 2 rather long cents....

Id like to join in, id really apreciate some useful critics so i know what to improve.