I'm thinking of upgrading from P5 to P7. However, I'm very confused by the eFrontier web site and the comments above aren't giving me much hope. Is it actually true that if you order right now (in the "pre-order" period) you don't get the download link right away, but have to sit around waiting for it? That would make sense if the software was not released to anyone yet, but there are obviously people here dowloading and using it. Are "late" preorders being penalized by forcing you to sit around for an arbitrary, unknown amount of time, until the download link appears?

Maybe it's just some strange way to control download traffic. Even then, you think they could be upfront about when you can get your software.

Or am I wrong about how this all works?

edit: needless to say, I'm talking about ordering online copies here, not hard copies. Thanks.

Thanks everyone! At least now I have somewhere to get started...

Ah well, I guess I'll need to take the extra step in photoshop. I like P5 so far but this is one "feature" I could do without... :) Thanks all!

In Poser 4, I always could import a background of any type (bmp, jpg, etc.) and then when I added it to my library it would automatically generate a thumbnail based on what was visible on screen, creating a PNG thumbnail. Now it doesn't work. I get an unrendered/untextured thumbnail of what's on my screen, and since it's not adding the rendered, imported background I can't use that trick. And yes, I tried to export the image as a png, but the png itself is still the unrendered version...

I understand where the idea for such a gallery comes from, but like many others I can see it as being a headache to define what is or isn't post-work. For example, most textures for objects are created in a 2D environment like photoshop. Obviously, this is not considered postwork. But what if I go into photoshop and create a detailed, 2D painted background, apply that background to a square prop, and then put that square prop behind my Poser characters and other objects. That's not post-work (it's more like "pre-work"), but the image would contain significant elements that are created in a 2d environment and were not actually rendered in three dimensions (but, in the final image, may fool the viewer into thinking they were). Or for that matter, just inserting a simple background image. If I take a photo with my digital camera and use it as a background, is that cheating? I certainly wouldn't be able to animate that picture (as some have suggested as a test for post-work) without it being obvious that the background was static and not rendered on the fly. Of course, if lots of people want such a gallery, why not create it. No skin off my nose.