I am considering upgrading from Poser 8. Is Poser Pro 2010 much better than Poser 9? Is there a good reason to get one over the other? Or to stay with what I have? I use PCs, currently with 64-bit system, but will need to upgrade the machine for either of them. Any preferences or advice would be helpful. Thanks!

PP2010 is basically a side-grade of P8, essentially the same except for some extra features and 64bit functionality.  If you are interested in upgrading, then P9 or PP2012 would be the choice.  Better off with PP2012 because of 64bit functionality and gamma correction for one.  Other features include WM creation for figures, SSS, etc.  Go to the Smith-Micro site and read their comparison chart.  This will give you a better accessment what each version can and cannot do.

If You cannot go pp2012, go 9. Only SSS is worth it :D

Thank you for the info!

Poser 9 is currently on sale at Amazon for cheaper than the digital download sale price.

My question was along the same lines. The last version of Poser I used was 5. I tried a demo of PP2012 and didn't care for it at all because you can't find any extra characters or props you add to it which in turn was frustrating and forced me not to use it. So would 5 to 9 be a better transistion?

Quote - If You cannot go pp2012, go 9. Only SSS is worth it :D

if nothing else the SSS is well worth it!

Making that transition even to P9 will be a "culture shock".  Yes, SSS is worth it alone, however relearning the basics from P5 will take time and might be frustrating.

If you have a 64-bit machine with 8GB or more RAM, I strongly recommend going with Poser Pro 2012. The increase in memory accessable is phenomanal. You should be able to easily render scenes with about five times as much stuff in them as your previous version of Poser choked to death on.

I didnt find it to be too much of a culture shock. getting use to the new lighting and material settings that are available was abit of a shock. BUT it has been well worth it. I would suggest to anyone wanting to get upgraded to do so.

Ok guys, thanks for the tips. I've been dying to get some new stuff up, but was stuck with trying to decide which version was best for me and less free time doesn't help either. Ciao!

Blurry reflections are fast in PPro2012 (I don't have P9 but might be fast there as well).

Gamma correction at render time is in Pro versions of Poser only (I my opinion it is so essential to any attempt to mimic the real world in a render that I don't understand why SM does not add it to any Poser version).