Hoping to get some advice. I acquired Poser 3 on a free cover CD so I can't upgrade it. I want to buy Poser 5 but am nervous about the reviews of it being buggy, and the compatability issues with the various add-ons available for Poser 4. First question - do all the great Poser 4 freebies and products on Renderosity and all over the web, such as outfits for Victoria 3, work in Poser 5? Also - do you recommend I buy Poser 4 now, to be safe, and then upgrade to 5 when it's been "fixed"? Or has it already been fixed up well enough to go straight to 5 and save some $$$? Thanks.

I have both P4/pro pack and P5 and use both. 1. Get rid of P3 and go to either P4 or P5 2. Yes, everything that works in P4 works in P5 3. No, the crap you heard about bugs is pretty much resolved with SR 2.1, especially if you have Win2k. 4. What's the price between P4/PP and P5? I bet you find P5 cheaper now. If so, go for it. 5. P4 was never fixed so why should you think P5 would ever be fixed? 6. There are only two advantages to P4/PP over P5. The first is the plugin with LW and if you don't know what that is, then you don't need it. The second is that on some slower computers, P4 is a bit faster to work with for basic things. If you have a decent modern system, then go for P5. Ok, that's my 2 cents. I got P5 on the pre release and never had a single bug (er, well, almost never). I went through all the service packs and never had a single problem after the first one. I can say that there were some work arounds that I had to do with the basic proggy that were solved with the first service release. I can also say that I've heard some complain about existing bugs in the animation portion. I can also say that 90% of the current rumor about P5 is attributed to hatemail, or frustration at the new learning curve (P5 is way different from P3 and P4). I don't regret buying P5. I use both. P4 to start the scene and P5 for finalization and render.

My 2 cents... I have P4/PP and P5. Initially, I was MASSIVELY disappointed by P5. This was, to a large extent, because of my own stupidity - I was given a new toy with far more dials and twiddly bits than my old toy, and when I twiddled the knobs and didn't get the result I wanted, I was a tad too quick to yell 'BUG!'. Having said that, P5 still has some problems. Nothing specially serious, and with another service release on the way, perhaps they'll be fixed. Personally I find that I use P4/PP for almost everything. Occasionally when I want, say, a cloth effect that I know P5 will do well, I use it. But for my day-to-day work, I still find P5 too frustrating. I get occasional crashes (I have never had a P4 crash since dumping Windows ME). And everything just generally takes L O N G E R in P5. That's on a 1600Mh machine with 1 meg of memory. In a P4 P5 race, P4 is home drinking orange juice by the time P5 is halfway round the course. I suspect that this will be less of an issue as PCs get faster. I reckon P4 was probably pretty slow on the computers that were available when it came out. In short I USE P5, but not as much as I use P4. I suspect that a lot of people fall into this category, doing some work in the 'faster' P4, then loading the result into P5 for a few final bells and whistles. I still have some P5 gripes, but it's not as bad as some people (some with vested interests) like to paint it.

Thanks for your replies. I don't have the world's greatest machine: Win98, 256MB RAM and... er... I don't know where else to look to give you more specs (I lack a Y chromosome). It's a 12-month-old fairly low-end computer, so I'd be a bit worried about P5 running too slow.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool W98 user that's recently upgraded to W2k Pro, I'd highly suggest upgrading your system to an NT based operating system. The stability and absence of blue screens is a refreshing change. Additionally all versions of Poser run much better.

What we do in life, echoes in eternity.

E-mail | Renderosity Homepage | Renderosity Store | RDNA Store

nontroppe,I got Poser3 on a cover disk,about a year ago,and was able to upgrade to Poser4 from that. Most people don't know it,but many of the softwear companys do let you upgrade from those cover disk versions(not always,but often).They don't advertise that fact so you do have to ask about it.In my case CL let me upgrade to only Poser4..not ProPack or Poser5,for $109.00.Since then,I added ProPack,and am very happy with it. SWAMP

That was also my 'route' SWAMP. Got a freebie P3 on a magazine disk, upgraded to 4, then PP, then P5.

Specimen bottles? * decides not to ask * I've spent the past three days rendering a 1123-frame animation in Poser 5, and aside from the fact that P5 crashes every 100 frames or so due to the memory-leak issue, I'm having no problems whatsoever. In all fairness, Poser 4 would be crashing on me in a similar manner. I can't get Walk Designer to work properly in P5, but that's another matter.

Is the specimen bottles for the memory-leak? Sorry, just finished reading "Yellow River",by I.P.Daily...couldn't help myself. SWAMP

There's another advantage of P4 over P5....you can import Pz3's from P4 to Vue....you can't in P5 (at least not yet). If you don't have Vue and don't intend to get it and have a high end computer (ooops....just saw your specs), P5 is probably the most cost effective way to go. Having now seen your specs, you may be better off with P4 or Pro-Pack or doing what Judith suggests. Since I'm not a fan of upgrading Operating systems on machines that may not be designed to handle them properly, I would recommend XP Pro on a new machine if you can swing it. Poser 5 seems to have the best results on the XP machines (probably on any NT based machine). Definitely don't miss those blue screens judith! :) I have P5 (never had P4) on a P-IV, 1.7 ghz processor, 512 mb ram and XP Pro. Regular renders are fine, but when you start adding a lot of characters and textures, you push the memory limit to the max because of how P5 handles memory. Fortunately, XP Pro is pretty smart and "reallocates" enough memory for you to get the job done. I don't even try to mess with the hair room.....way too slow on my machine. I've also learned to find work arounds for the few annoyances that remain in P5 (after upgrading to SR1). I like the material room frankly and the ability to nest directories and have multiple Poser runtimes. The later seems to help improve the speed of the program.

Thanks for all the advice. I'm still nervous about trying to upgrade from the free P3 because if it turns out I can't do it, I doubt I can return the software! Also, don't I need P4 before Pro is any use? I thought Pro was just an add-on thing and I don't think I need to go that far just yet (also, P4 plus Pro costs 3x P5, from my research). I'm in Australia and just finding someone who sells Poser is proving a challenge. Will read the other threads too - thanks.

You know....I've never quite figured that one out nontroppo. Before I purchased P5, I downloaded the demo of Poser Pro and used it without a hitch. In fact, if it's still available, you might want to try that on your machine and see how you like it. I never had P4, so it seems like it must be a stand alone or the demo wouldn't work without P4....or maybe the demo was a P4/PP demo.....that's what was never clear. There may be someone here who can answer that more precisely, or you may want to call CL. The P4/PP combo is quite expensive, which is why I ended up buying P5. At that time, they did not offer a standalone P4 (this was around this past Christmas). The bottom line: if your system is not likely to be able to handle it (and the threads should give you some hint of that), I don't think I would buy P5 until you can afford to upgrade/purchase a high end computer with about 1G of Ram to properly handle the hair room and other memory intensive parts of the program. Even with 512 mb of ram those things are very slow for me.

I don't question that at all casamerica, but could you clarify for me if the propack download demo is both p4/propack? It was labeled as propack but worked fine without p4 installed. I'd appreciate your input on that. I didn't want to mislead him either and was glad you came along and clarified :)