I finally broke down and treated myself to Poser 5. I did have a hard time trying to activate it because I could not find the serial number for the world of me. The docs and manual where no help that I could see. I discovered it by accident when I threw the CDs (in despair) on my desk. The serial number was stuck to the back of the CD envelope. Who on earth puts serial numbers on the back of CD envelopes? (I guess CL does.) . After that, everything installed just fine and now resides on its own partition along with P4 and the first thing I did was download and install the latest update from CL. I did not have a chance to monkey around with it too much because I also got Myst IV which demanded my attention. The ability for multiple Runtimes and nested folders alone is a Godsend and I did play with the rendering option a little. The multiple view ports are also cool and will be very useful. I also checked out Don and Judy (they ARE ugly, arent they, but then the same thing was said about the original DAZ Millennium figures). I guess Ill have to R.T.F.M. to get my head around the other new options like the Material, Face, Cloth, Hair, etc., Rooms. All in good time but from what Ive been able to see so far, I think Im going to like P5! I have purchased a lot of add-on items (and I mean a lot - characters, textures, clothes, props, scenes, etc., etc., etc., far too many) for use in P4. What I have done in the past was to install them in a temporary folder and edit out all the PP specific (dont have PP) and P5 specific stuff before moving it into the P4 Runtime folder. I guess I now have to re-install stuff I want in P5 and perhaps edit out the P4 specific stuff if there are both P4 and P5 items/folders. My question is, if there are no P5 specific items, but separate PP and P4 specific items and/or folders, do I use the PP or the P4 specific items in P5? (I hope this makes sense.) Also, I know that the special morph injection folders (!DAZ, !AwfulSoul, !B-Man, etc.) have to be in the Libraries folder of the P5 Runtime folder but do the associated Pose folders also have to be in the same P5 Runtime/Libraries folder or can they be in separate Runtime folders elsewhere on my computer? Any additional words of wisdom, hints, tips, encouragements and general advise in migrating from P4 to P5 from you P5 gurus would be greatly appreciated. Wish me luck and TIA for your response. Now all I need is time

Use the PP options if there are no P5 specific ones. Word of warning about PP stuff - the bump maps will be connected wrongly for P5 renders. Bump maps should be connected to the Bump Channel in P5, and the strength set to approx 0.05. Chances are most bump maps will be connected to the Gradient Bump Channel and they will look awful. I believe you should keep INJ/REM poses in the same Runtime as the Channel Viz folders but I'm not absolutely certain. I don't use extra Runtimes - and I have TONS of content. Get hold of Ajax's free P5 shaders from Freestuff; you'll have a lot of fun with those. When rendering, forget about using Production Quality. You can get exactly the same quality from Draft mode by playing with the render options. The anti alias option in P5 is totally variable (it's the Minimum Shading Rate option). A good starting value is 0.05. Decreasing it increases the quality. That's all I can think of at the moment. Welcome to the P5 Club. Enjoy yourself. :)

You do not need to uninstall all your Poser 4 stuff. I have Poser 4 and poser 5 happily coexisting on my Windows XP and they have been there for a couple of years. I can't think of anything, offhand, that Poser 4 uses that Poser 5 can't always use (though you can't go from Poser 5 to Poser 4 as far as the materials (nodes) room, dyanmic cloth, dynamic hair, etc. go for many reasons). It used to be that I could only load up Victoria 3 and Michael 3 morphs in Poser 4 before I could use them in Poser 5, but that doesn't seem to be true now. Be sure to get all patches that are available if your Poser 5 isn't already upgraded. I used to hate Poser 5 and now I use it exclusively. Go figure. There is a learning curve but don't be afraid to ask questions and you'll do fine.

By the way, if you haven't figured it out already, Poser 5 can access the Poser 4 runtimes without you moving anything (unless you want to for the sake of organization).

You don't need to Activate Poser 5 any more. That was taken care of by one of the Service Packs. Yes, they still ask for your serial number. Oh, and many companies put serial numbers on the CD envelope, since it's a logical choice. I have mine safely zipped into my Poser CD wallet.

Whatever you do be very careful about installing things to the main Poser5 runtime, only put things like Python scripts & sketch presets in there everything else should go into seperate runtimes, Poser5 will be happy that way & check out the tutorial on PoserPros about how to get rid of the Content Paradise tab & functions as they really slow Poser down especially when starting up.