When will Poser 5 and Bryce 5 come out? Who will sell them? What will they cost? What new features will they have?

I think that, for all intents and purposes, the Pro Pack essentially transforms Poser 4 into Poser 5 given all the features it adds to the basic package.

www.curiouslabs.com is the creator of Poser. www.corel.com has Bryce.

Where can I get the Pro Pack from? How much does it cost? What features does it have? I am in Manchester in England. How certain is it that Poser 4 + Pro Pack = Poser 5? People would not be pleased if they fork out $$$$$$$$ for the Pro Pack and soon after out comes Poser 5 with all the same features and more.

No, the Pro Pack isn't Poser5, but it IS the next version of Poser for now. Go to the CL site and e-mail the sales department about sales in the UK. I think they are opening a distribution center in Ireland. -JH.

I agree Antthony, but my belief is that the Pro Pack is just a really big add on (not cheap either), and that Curious Labs is working on P5 separatly. I hope. As for Bryce. Corel, is at least doing something. I know that haven't abandoned it ... yet. They came out with the "carbonized" beta demo for the Mac, so they have done something. (Nothing different than in B4, just runs on Mac OS X.) So we just sit and wait, as we always do. James

I think CL are working on future Poser versions. I emailed them some weeks ago with an idea i had and Steve Cooper told me that they already had that feature working. Gives me hope! My guess is that the future of Poser depends on how much the PP will sell. /Ohman

Ohman wrote: with an idea i had What was that idea?

My guess is that the future of Poser depends on how much the PP will sell.<<< Then we may be in trouble. If the messages I am reading here are any indication, CL has a serious problem on their hands -- a piece of software that appears buggier and clunkier than Windows 3.1. And I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but, not everyone who uses Poser uses LW or MAX. If CL is going to tie Poser's wagon to those two packages then there will be quite a drop in the percentage of upgrades. I do most of my humble modeling in Rhino, Amorphium, Canoma and on occassion I will open MAX. I did not get Poser, nor do I believe did most Poser owners, as a "plug-in" for MAX or LW. And I will not pay the additional costs for an upgrade if that is the major benefit. Add to that the cost of upgrading to the version of MAX necessary to use it. I can see the Pro Pack as an add-on for Poser, not as a necessary componet purchase for continued use of future Poser versions. If it is, then I think I have purchased my last version of Poser and my last CL product. And if that is the path CL has chosen, then I think they will discover I am not the only one. Take care and Godspeed.

What was that idea? Collision detection :o) I had an idea on how to minimalize the calculations needed. /Ohman

General collision detection involves checking the distances between every point and every other - that includes between each two points of the same object if the object is flexible, e.g. to stop a man's arm from going through his chest. But if the collision approach direction is known ansd the objects are rigid, it is easier. (The easiest case is between an object and the ground plane in the Poser and Bryce "drop to floor", where the object is moved in Y so that minimum y becomes 0.) Change the coordinates so that the known approach direction is Y. Then make an altitude map of maximum Y for one object and minimum Y for the other object. Then it can be found quickly how far they can approach each other in that direction before they collide.

General collision detection involves checking the distances between every point and every other < Not really. If you have a smart internal representation of the meshes into smaller and smaller sub-meshes it is possible to very fast calculate which of those that are so close to each other that a collision may occure. Then you perform the actual calculations on those small segments. I've just implemented this in a hobby project of mine and it works fine. The calculation time is reduced very very much. Say if i have a scene with 15.000 polys. Checking every polygon with every other polygon will result in about 15.00015.000 = 225.000.000 checkings. But if you can reduce the problem to say five areas where two poly groups are close to each other and each group contains only about ten polygons. => 1010*5 = 500 checkings! The problems isn't really this easy but the principle works. /Ohman

That sounds like a basis for a way to make garments and backpack straps fit different people :: put it on him, scale it down, but stop each small area of it on collision, but don't let it kink more than a set amount.

Attached Link: http://3d.a1hostco.com/3d/forum.mv?Poser+read+9019086470

That sounds like a basis for a way to make garments and backpack straps fit different people :: put it on him, scale it down, but stop each small area of it on collision, but don't let it kink more than a set amount. < Yepp! That's the way i think poser clothing should work. /Ohman