I have HAD IT. Ive been disappointed about a great number of things with this new release, (plethora of bugs, lack of critical features such as undo, etc.), but I guess this is the straw that broke the camel's back

Incredibly the Walk Designer is STILL utterly USELESS!! It has the potential to be such a powerful tool, but did CL bother to fix its glaring deficiencies from Poser 4? Heck no! Unless you are doing the tamest of walks which basically can be interpreted as leaving all of the settings at, or close to, default it simply does not work properly. You get LEG SPAZZ.

This is something I have complained about on R'osity for years, and written to (and called) Curious Labs about LONG before P5 was under development. There is no excuse for not fixing this, and a great many other things.

Here is an animation from a long time ago when I was complaining about it back then. And here is an animation using P5 and Don now. Geeeee-wilikers! What an improvement! (And yes, I am loading the proper CR2s in the Walk Des. Window.)

All I can say is, THIS IS PATHETIC. (That and a LOT of other things.)

Fuming (obviously) Tim

Well if you want it fixed you should write a civil letter to the tech address explaining how to repeat the bug. Step1, Step2 etc.. Now is the time. -Jeff

Shake a leg, Donny .... Hey, donny, you got something in your pants ??? I'm sorry, man, that's just terrible.... One of my main bitches with software companies is the fact they don't fix bugs, even when they release an update. I'm not sure there's a real good excuse for it either... You usually here something like not enough time, too much code change or a full rewrite, etc...IMO, if an entire rewrite is warranted, bring it on. If they can't do it, maybe reduce the price of the app and at least make mention of the problem...up front honesty.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

I know, a pretty childish title for the thread. And yes, I know I have been somewhat critical of this release already although with all the bugs, who hasnt but the most blindly loyal.

But more than the NEW bugs, what really bothers me is what I have learned Poser 5 really is it is Poser 4 -- with ALL its old bugs and poor design and interface flaws with some 3rd-part gee-whizz apps slapped on top.

Granted there is a lot to be excited about, and as a user of Poser since version 2, I very much like Poser. I mean dynamic clothing and hair is wonderful, especially as an animator. And the face room can be a very powerful (and fun!) tool.

However, it is entirely frustrating to have a product that was supposedly going to be re-coded from the ground up only to rapidly realize this is utterly untrue. Its also doubly disheartening to have a piece of software you love be so close to being a wonder-product, only to have the development company totally fail you and the community which has supported it so well.

Hopefully, all of the interface bugs will be cleared up in the next patch. Unfortunately, a patch will not save a program that still incorporates all of the old problems from Poser 4. Whats worse is, not all of these 3rd party add-ons are even implemented properly. Or is that the interface is so poorly done that it prevents them from performing adequately?

I'm sorry CL and those who feel quite differently about the new release, but even at $149, I feel very taken for granted. And I can't imagine a lot of others do not as well. This has been building up for some time, and as I said, seeing that the futility of the Walk Designer had not even been corrected, released the floodgates of frustration. I haven't even touched on the disappointment many have expressed about FireFLAW, the numerous bugs, etc. To put it simply ... it is very disheartening.

It looks like you've got IK on and it's simply moving the feet. Is IK on? Does that make a difference in Walk Designer? I haven't used it much but don't recall having had this as a problem any of the times I've messed with it.

Before they made me they broke the mold!
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I'm pretty upset, too. I mean, I figured that for a few hundred bucks they'd include, at the very least, true motion capture functionality, ai joint tracking, and one of those cool suits with all the sensor balls... WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!?!?! Dude, seriously. You're an animator, and if you've been at it this long then the walk designer's hang ups aren't going to kill you. Use it to set up your general animation and tweak, then go on to the fun dynamics the physics engine, etc. and stop freaking out. Don't think I don't hate the software, though... I am pissed! I got my software and noticed a "glitch" right away. Inside the CD cover it says, "DO NOT LOOSE THIS." I mean, wtf?! They were developing all this time and didn't check a dictionary?! I'm not sure I can bother using any software, no matter how advanced, if they have a typo in the packaging material... Paul

Jeff: I have written tech support, as I said, and I have called them about the problem in the past. I am nothing BUT civil when I communicate with a company (up until a certain point anyway). You attract more bees with honey ... has been my life-philosophy. But I feel it is wasted time (and/or breath) ... they have yet to implement any of the changes or bug fixes I have requested for Poser 4. Why should I think they would bother to do so now? For the sake of what is right, and for there own bottom line, I hope they do. Boba: Yes, it does not seem to matter if I turn IK on or off in the Walk Designer. Someone mentioned this (way back when ... could have been JeffH) and it did not work then. Thanks, Tim

Just to name a few of the holdovers from Poser 4:

• Walk-Designer Flaw (witnessed above)
• No REAL UNDO and/or multiple levels of undo (preposterous)
• No 3D Hardware OpenGL support for the interface (ditto)
• Same anemic, non-standard, and out-dated interface
• Still no mouse wheel support (dated interface related)
• Still no right-click support (ditto)
• Still can not see frames beyond 999 in any of the animation palettes
• Still does not use the rendered document window when adding to the library
• Still can only resize windows from bottom right corner (dated interface related)
• No minimize functions (dated interface related)

Im sure some others would care to add to the list, but these are some of the most glaring and frustrating on my list.

I will echo the sentiment I have found of many others: "What WERE they doing for the past three years?" Besides licesning 3rd-party plug-ins and slapping them on a Poser 4 interface with a marginally updated library system.

-Tim

Dave: That's the thing ... they supposedly were "building it from the ground up" ... and thus the three years. What a total load of crap. I've held my tongue about it since the release, but as I said, I just feel misled, very disappointed, and frustrated. Entropic: You're right, I can ... and I use Lifeforms a LOT, but it sure would have made my life easier if I could do a simple jog or run within Poser for a change. WHY have the WD if it's going to create useless animations? It's a waste of code and everyone's time. There are a lot of things you can "work around" in Poser. Things I have been working around since version 3. But the point is, a good many of these things I shouldn't have to take 10-20 steps, just because Poser has STILL not been properly coded. They list these features in all their propaganda .. and that's part of what we are paying for ... and, sadly, we're simply not getting it. The box should say: "NEW! Walk Designer -- well it kinda works." "NEW! Face Room -- Comes close to being useful, but with low-res texturemaps, awkward controls, no way to import or save heads directly, limited morph dials and character compatibility, we really half-assed it!." "NEW! FIREFLY Render Engine -- Well, we gave it a fast name anyway." "NEW! Nodal Shaders -- But your on your own as to how they work." "Redesigned from the ground up -- Well, kind of ... we basically bought some 3rd part plugins for the new rooms, than haphazardly slapped them into our totally untouched, and historically lacking, Poser 4 interface." "NEW! Simplified lighting ... Why bother with those complex and useless omni and volumetric lights, when you can have the straightforward PoserBall light setup?" Ok, I'm getting silly. You get the idea. -Tim

entropic wrote: at the very least, true motion capture functionality, ai joint tracking, and one of those cool suits with all the sensor balls You mean this ISNT included? damm, now Im pissed too. lol BT

I get the idea that you're looking to bitch, and that's ok. But the fact is, this software is a godsend. First of all, the interface is XML and SKINNABLE. Gee whiz, captain, that means we can rewrite the interface to suit our needs, and even optimize it if we want... hrm... maybe they should have marketed on that. The lighting's simplistic, and lacks in some respects, but Poser users don't want Mental Ray lighting capabilities. Hell, people bitch about the speed now ( and it's still vastly faster than Bryce, Mental Ray, et. al. ), how do you think they'd feel waiting around for GI? "NEW! Nodal Shaders -- But your on your own as to how they work." Yeah... well... umm... learning how things work is part of being an artist and animator. Bitching about something being too deep and hard to learn won't gain you points in my book. I'm sliding right into the materials set up, and we already have a few artists producing brilliant works with them after only a few days... Feel free to rant, bitch, moan, and exclaim. I don't care. But, I'm sorry, I paid a few grand for 3ds max with Mental Ray, so implying that you didn't get your money's worth is just limited perspective. Take a deep breath and calm down, and you'll see that I'm right on this. Three weeks ago, people were wandering around this forum going, "It's the greatest thing on earth!" and having religious experiences. They were taking photographs of Poser 5 going into their CD trays... WTF? You can't blame Curious Labs for not selling you Soft|Image. And the worst part is, through all the moaning now I see people putting images together that will soon be Final Fantasy Movie level quality, so I highly doubt that the software, for a few hundred bucks, is really the problem here. Paul

*** I see people putting images together that will soon be Final Fantasy Movie level quality*** ROTFLMFAO

Want links, Questor? =D And as another point, what other company pays their employees to go to these forums and cater to our whiny asses? Paul

Walk-Designer Flaw (witnessed above) No REAL UNDO and/or multiple levels of undo (preposterous) No 3D Hardware OpenGL support for the interface (ditto) Same anemic, non-standard, and out-dated interface Still no mouse wheel support (dated interface related) Still no right-click support (ditto) Still can not see frames beyond 999 in any of the animation palettes Still does not use the rendered document window when adding to the library Still can only resize windows from bottom right corner (dated interface related) No minimize functions (dated interface related) Okay, a few of these: Walk Designer, as far as I can tell, was never designed to be an end-all, be-all sort of tool but a starting point, which is pretty much like saying Don and Judy might have pleasant personalities, but damn you need to work on them to make them look presentable. Same thing with WD, I'm afraid, which, IMHO, is how it should be. Multiple undos? Poser is a memory hog to begin with. Why would you burden it down with multiple undos that will just sop up more memory resources? The interface doesn't strike me as being "anemic". It's different, but then so are the interfaces for Bryce and Amapi. They all work. Would you rather have drop down menus and tool boxes? Sorry, not me. I like the way this is set up. Mouse wheel and right-click support? Hello, some of us are still on Macs and use only one mouse click. I'm not saying that should drive the changes, but not everyone has a mouse wheel either. Need it that badly? Write it into your mouse parameters. Minimize function? Piffle. I can go to finder and pull down to "Hide Poser", and it's minimized just fine. Sorry, but few of these strike me as reasons to just say "screw it".

Seeing as many other companies have their own forums and the poser forum is essentially a pointless visiting place for other companies your comment is redundant. And just as a point. Curious Labs doesn't pay their staff to come here, they pay their staff, coming here is simply PR and business practice. They ain't fuzzy huggy wuggy buddies. Links? You can give links to "Final Fantasy quality renders". Made WITH and IN Poser 5? Yeah, right sure. With the poser lighting set up, cameras, figures, textures? Wait while I swallow my "gullible twonk" pill.

I'd venture to say less than 1% of the users are interested in re-skinning it, or even have the know-how. We just want the interface to work like a normal interface. As I said, I was getting silly. Yeah, I'm disappointed about the mediocre lighting still present, but can I render it in C4DXL or Vue ... sure. Sure, learning how things work is part of it. But the manual (and with all due respect to Anthony ... I think he was under tremendous time pressure) seems to equate to one of these deals: "Widget Temporal Analysis Toggle: Toggles the Widget's Temporal Analysis" Sorry, there's learning ... and then there is needing a supplemental manual. (CL is not the first to do this, but it doesn't make it right or any less frustrating.) Sorry, but the whole "it's not that expensive argument" is deplorable. What's more, there are cheaper programs that incorporate the CORE, BASIC interface features I mentioned above. I've said it before, and I'll say it again ... even the crappy COOL3D has OpenGL hardware support, full mouse support, multiple UNDOs, etc. These are basic items that should not have been overlooked. -Tim

P5 is about what I expected for $130. I like it, but in saying that, I accept that it will have (sometimes major) limitations. The best thing Curious Labs did in their entire corporate history in my opinion was to open up Poser to other 3D apps. THAT's where the power of Poser lies. I hope they continue doing that, otherwise this newest version will lose a lot of loyal customers. The program itself is, and pretty much always has been, virtually useless for standalone rendering.

The real kick in the pants is, they released such a bug-ridden pile of crap just to get it out the door. That should infruriate EVERYONE. Even those who don't mind that it's the same old P4 with some new widgets slapped on. And no, not all software companies do that ... give me a break! Most DO NOT. Sure all software ships with bugs for the most part. But not bugs of this magnitude that stifle their very ability to work. -Tim

I'm not saying you shouldn't rant, and a lot of what you say makes sense tim---but I guess I've been bludgeoned into near coma like every other software user on the planet. You oughta hear my wife piss and moan about Photoshop upgrades---makes me never want to touch the damn thing!

Virtual: Utter nonesense from you as usual ...I think you just like to Troll on me big time. But I can't resist just a couple of these preposterous notions ... 1. Walk Designer as a starting point?? LOL! It's not much of a starting point if I have to go in and re-key every part of the damn animation. 2. Memory-schmemory. So are a lot of other programs, yet they still have manage to have USER SELECTEBLE (HELLO! KEY WORD!) levels of UNDO. Hell, if your overpriced Mac costs so much you can't afford a decent amount memory, make it one level of UNDO, or disable it alltogether. I'd just like to see ONE REAL LEVEL of UNDO.

"The real kick in the pants is, they released such a bug-ridden pile of crap just to get it out the door. That should infruriate EVERYONE. Even those who don't mind that it's the same old P4 with some new widgets slapped on." Dude, I'm not gonna bother. If you're that pissed off, call and ask for a refund. The fact is, most of us don't have the bugs you're talking about. In fact, I haven't had a hang wedge or crash yet. Not saying it doesn't happen, but, hell, it's a very few people making a lot of noise and expecting the rest of us who are incredibly happy with the program to stop enjoying it. Screw that. I'm sorry you've got issues. I don't. Most don't. So stop making it out to be like Curious Labs is persectuing us and ruining the product. Poser 5 is the biggest evolution of this franchise ever. Those 3rd party apps you keep dwelling on cost 500 dollars or more, by themselves, so I'd say you're getting a deal. As for the manual, I've personally already got two CL - to - English translations out there in three days. You call them tutorials. Kiera has a couple, as do many others. In other words, get a grip. There's no need to fly off the handle and scream bloody murder. If the program doesn't work for you, fine. It won't work for everyone. Go buy May, Soft|Image, Lightwave, 3ds, or some other app that suits your needs. Personally, I'll stick with P5 and 3ds max together, because for what I want to accomplish, they are more than enough by far. And I'm currently finding Poser 5 vastly easier to learn and use than 3ds max was when I first picked it up. Paul

Awwww, hell ... let's just debunk all of 'em : 3. When I talk about the interface, I'm giving the wrong impression for sure. I'm not talking about the positioning balls, or the buttons, etc. I actually have grown to like those, as I have the one's in Bryce. I'm talking about the core API ... it should be a standard Windows/Mac interface. 4. "Hello, some of us are still on Macs and use only one mouse click." Hello? Well that's your bassakwards fault, not the huge percentage of people on Windows (and even some on Macs who go 3rd party) who realize the powerful and effecient functionality this offers. And no wheel support is doubly-moronic. If you're not using a wheel-mouse in a browser, you are so completely clueless, it's sad. I don't know about you, but some of my libraries are huge ... I'd like the DEFACTO-STANDARD way (for 95% of the computing population) of scrolling through them. 5. Sorry, I wasn't clear on the minimize. I can minimize the program with a keystroke, or right click, or one of many other ways (since I'm on a Window machine). I'm talking about minimizing and resizing windows WITHIN Poser 5, like you can with literally every other application on the planet. I'm asking for industry standard things, that come in software MUCH less complicated and MUCH less expensive.

Okay yeah the UI is not windows based..it was created for Mac originally and ported to Windows. Context menus and wheel mouse scrolling support would be nice. Those old Mac style dialog boxes need to go :-)

And for the record, tim, I'm not argueing out of any desire to defend curious labs, I'm argueing because I read most of your posts, I like your work, and I hate to see you acting like a half-dozen other people who feel the incessant need to freak out and publically decry their rage. It's infantile, and you're better than that. So can we please now start calmly discussing your issues with an open mind, and maybe find ways to make you happy with the software you've paid for? Paul

Timoteo, sorry, but all it sounds like is you're being a bit childish at this point. I don't have P5. I dn't know what bugs it has, but I'm sure there are a few. But it's a frickin' bottom-end 3D app, not Softimage or Maya, don't expect DaVinci with a $2.00 kids crayon set. And you'd be amazed what can be squeezed out of the Poser 4 renderer, let alone the new one. Finally you just accused Entropic of trolling you. Sorry, but from a neutral 3rd party perspective, it looks like YOU are doing nothing but trolling, trying to stir up matters for whatever reason.

Remember, kids! Napalm is Nature's Toothpaste!

I don't think Tim's trying to stir shit, Val. I think he's just pissed off and frustrated and needs to take a break, smoke a bowl, and chill for a bit. I have no idea what set tim off, and I know that if I've been working hard on something and can't get it to work properly, I can get childish and pound my fists and scream, too. Usually it just makes people think I'm an ahole. I don't want to think that tim's an ahole. I'd rather just believe he's frustrated and needs a few minutes to calm down stop ranting. Paul

I am not sure what everyone else expects, I have not really gotten into animation in the past but with Poser 5 I am really learning a lot more about everything related to animating materials, hair cloth and even walk or movements. But I am finding the program to encourage me to learn more by using the new features. I am not sure about the walk designer, I tend to think that this is something that is more of a convenience than critical. I thought that the best way to animate characters was frame by frame...?...my biggest problems so far have been operator related. I am really happy with the stuff they did put in, the multi level file access; the hair and shaders...maybe it is because I am not looking for a lightwave type program or a 3dmax, I have enough trouble learning truespace!!!... I really enjoy Poser 5, after a realtively short learning period the program is a lot of fun. Maybe what some really are looking for is to graduate to a high end modeling program with a lot more "plug ins" to buy...and a lot more power....and a much higher price.... looking back from Poser 2, 3 4 and now 5, wow 5 has more features.

Entropic: Not to beat it into the ground, but I'd just like to say, I don't think it is just a FEW people. I dind't even think I was one of them until I started really trying to use the software beyond the FACE ROOM.

Also, Steve has admitted it shipped with significant bugs because "they needed to be paid." I appreciate his honesty, and like him personally, but that is a little more than disturbing.

As I said, I've bitched and moaned on the UNDO and some other pet-peeves from the start. But when I saw the WD issue was still there, along with all the others, well that convinced me they had certainly not rewritten Poser from the ground up.

-Tim

PS> Hell, I loved the Pro-Pack add-on, and thought it was a good value. I never said an unkind word about it, or P4 for that matter (other than to ask why something didn't work, or how to fix it). This release simply does not measure up to what was promised, let alone what was expected.

Valandar: For the record, I wasn't accusing Entropic (whom I respect a great deal, likewise) of Trolling. (I was speaking to Virtual, who seems to harp on me whenever the opportunity presents itself ever since I presented some facts about the Mac platform he didn't appreciate hearing.) "But it's a frickin' bottom-end 3D app," Same old argument. AGAIN, a majority of the complaints I have voiced here are about BASIC interface features I mentioned above, that are in far less expensive applications.

Tim, as for it shipping it with bugs, I just gotta say, if it didn't ship when it did, it never would. I'd much rather have a buggy app than no app at all. We've waited so long for this, for CL to crumble at this moment would have been horrible, and the wait would go on for another year, maybe two. I can respect Steve's honesty. With the issues with Avatar Lab and the long development cycle, I imagine that even now Curious Labs is not rock solid financially. Personally, I'd rather see them developing Poser 6 than to let it fall to Corel or Adobe. I'm not saying you can't get upset. I know there are probably a lot of things about the program that might frustrate you, but tearing down the forum walls in rage won't fix that. We have a lot of eductated people here who can teach each other. We have Python scripters who might be willing to attempt fixing the walk designer. We have options. As a community, it does us no good to tear at a product like wolves. It's fine to say you're unhappy, and I can respect that. I just hate to see you unwilling to approach these problems with an open mind and an open heart. It sets you well away from the community that will support you to no end. Paul

Paul: I never thought you were defending CL or any of the other things you mentioned. I simply feel ... well "hoodwinked" would be apt I suppose. It's very frustrating when you like a program like Poser as much as I do, only to have a long anticipated release correct none of the basic things you were expecting it to correct. I apologize if it seems childish, and I fully admit it is clear, unadulterated venting, ranting, and bitching. It stems from the realization that I did not receive what was promised. Sure the new features are great, some might even say revolutionary in such an affordable package. But I'd much rather have it do the things it should have been doing a long time ago that relate to CORE FUNCTIONALITY. That's all. _Tim

Much better approach, Tim. Now that I can hear what you're saying without anger, I can certainly understand you better. The core functionality of Poser is a tough beast to consider though. What I said about the lights I meant. Sure, they're limited. People want limited in this case, because dealing with a twenty-three hour render due to overlapping volumetrics would be hell for most Poser users. But let's talk about the walk designer. I've never used it. Most people don't. It really does suck that the people who rely on that portion of the program seem to have been overlooked. But now lets consider what our options are. We can ask Steve Cooper and Curious Labs to prioritize upgrading the walk designer for a future patch. We can put out calls for Python Scripters to look into smoothing it out. We can experiment between your machine and mine to see if there's a problem somewhere that we might be overlooking. Does any of these solutions sound amenable? Paul

"I see people putting images together that will soon be Final Fantasy Movie level quality, so I highly doubt that the software, for a few hundred bucks, is really the problem here." WHERE??? may i See some links to these poser5 renders?? So Far all Ive seen are "firefly" renders that look like the old P4 render engine with betterlooking hair on the figures (in some cases) NO offense but its outrageous hyperbole like that that raised poser5 expectations to pie in the sky pipe dream levels on the first place.

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Thanks for you desire to help, although I must be perfectly honest, it almost seems patronizing ... but nonetheless ... We can always ask, but if history is any indicator, the request for anything of this nature will go ignored. Python is a possibility, but I would say very unlikely. I would LOVE to see someone produce a run or jog using ONLY the WD without that hiccup. However, I have issued the challenge in the past, and not one could. There are few animators (relative to still renderers), so overlooking us is nothing new for CL. They appear to be TRYING to gear Poser more and more towards animation ... a market they would be crazy to ignore in this day and age of Pixar, Final Fantasy, et. al. However, things like the Walk Designer and (another "butt-burner) the inability to animate depth of field, are frustrating for animators. Now THAT is something a master Python-scripter might be able to help with. Any takers? (I might just put that in a new -- "POSTIVE" -- post.) Thanks again for your suggestions and desire to help. -Tim

Tim: We did actually get some level of depth of field in P5. I won't say that it's great, because I haven't had a chance to explore all aspects of the new renderer and camera options yet. Hopefully, we can get these tools working as quickly as possible so that the animators have something new to work with. I'll even cross the bridge and say that the motion blurring is a little goofy, but it has potential, too, I think. I wasn't trying to be patronizing. I'm sorry I came across that way. I really do have high hopes for this product, and think it has enormous potential. While Poser 4 offered very little funcionality over P3, the difference in what we see in the galleries is incredible. P5 will allow us, in 3 months, 6 months, a year, to be progressing yet again farther than we ever could imagine possible from this moment. Another option I would consider is talking to others in the animation community who might be capable of writing a plugset for Poser to handle walk design and motion handling. It worked for Mimic, after all. It might seem outrageous for me to stand here and suggest we look at third party developers for full plug sets, but I think they'd give us an open ear. Reiss-Studio with Poser to Maya, Mental Ray, Cebas Final Render, and more are all examples of long needed plugs developed from third party sources because of community desire. So why not give it a shot? Paul

"for CL to crumble at this moment would have been horrible, and the wait would go on for another year, maybe two." Why would that be horrible? "Personally, I'd rather see them developing Poser 6 than to let it fall to Corel or Adobe." Adobe at least has a history of writing apps that work...

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

"Why would that be horrible?" Because I like the people at Curious Labs, and don't give a damn about the folks at Adobe or Corel. ;) I'm honest as I can be, Bear, but I won't pretend to be unbiased. ;) Paul

I was going to say the exact same thing. After Effects is godsend, and incredibly stable. Premeire 6.5 is amazing, Photoshop, Illustrator, and the list goes on. I've never met a PERFECT software developer ... but Adobe comes pretty close. From what I know of them, I like the people at CL, but that is personal and this is business. Hey, Adobe buying CL might be the best thing to happen to them and the users. It might save the principles from financial ruin. Who knows?

Honestly, though, I look at Adobe and while I will acknowledge their good points, which are many, I will also say that there is a bad point that would disturb me. They don't care about us. I think CL truly does, and I'm not saying that out of any form of naivete'. ( insert Ironbear's snicker here ). When you consider what they have added to PPP and P5, and cross check it to the community wishlists, you'll see a lot of places where we decided what would get included. sure, there are still things we asked for that we haven't seen, but there's less reason to believe Adobe would pay any attention to our desires whatsoever. Just my 2 dollars. Paul

I have been following closely all the pros/cons on P5...and will probably see some of the pros turn to cons when satisfied users hit some glitch that hasn't been uncovered yet. I am still learning P4 and will probably never get P5 because of some of the upfront probs I see...and just don't need some of the features. I agree I would have just as soon they had updated P4 at nominal cost and offered some of the hi-power stuff as addons. My big concern as to the future advancement of Poser at this point is the 'new user base'. A lot of us did not enter into the program until release 4 and it was this user base that made Poser 4 as profitable item as it became...that and the P3 users that upgraded. I see a lot of P4 users claiming they are waiting b4 upgrading so am sure new users will play the 'buyer beware' game as well. Bugs are common in new software or upgrades...hell, even Ford Motor Company doesn't always get it right the first time. But if they make the same mistakes two many times, people will gravitate to Chevrolet and a new breed of bugs. Unfortunately in the case of Poser...we have no alternative breed of bugs to try.

You've got a buck 98 in change coming. That's where we differ. I don't mistake milking the PR value of a niche market for all it's worth "caring" for it's customers. Good business yeah - until it backfires on them. "Naivete'"? Maybe. It'll do. No makey. You keep up the work of CL apologist, and I'll keep snickering. We'll cancel each other out.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

"You keep up the work of CL apologist, and I'll keep snickering." I gotta try something, Bear... no one's ever gonna pay me for my art, that's for sure. ;) Paul

snicker

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

Tim I think some when else above suggested that you turn IK off for the walk designer. I dont get that jerkyness that you do. Did not have it in 4 or the ProPack. Just trying to help solve one of your problems. Ron

I dunno, sitting around the sidelines snickering and throwing pot-shots is somewhat weasel-like to me.

It doesn't help anything and at worst is just plain slimey.

Better to contribute to solving the problems than hindering the process.

-Jeff

Another useless thread. SIZGH!!! Q

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard
S Mallarmé

I think you just like to Troll on me big time Pookie, I don't even know you, let alone care to troll on you. So kindly get over yourself and your silly-ass notions of self-importance, okay? Jeesh..... I'd just like to see ONE REAL LEVEL of UNDO Well, big whoop. You didn't get it. Sad. Maybe next time. I'm giving the wrong impression for sure You can certainly say that again. If you're not using a wheel-mouse in a browser, you are so completely clueless, it's sad No, I'd just consider you lazy, but that'd be my sentiment only. Wheel mice, for my money, are awkward pains in the ass. Different strokes, okay? Sorry, I wasn't clear on the minimize Gosh, like so many other things in your rush to bitch all over me. Makes me wonder who's trolling whom here. I'm asking for industry standard things, that come in software MUCH less complicated and MUCH less expensive Then go work with IT and quitcher bellyachin'.

Tim I just studied your animation. The jerking is between the last frame returning to your first frame. A looping transitional thing. You may see that as a problem but I dont. Others may. Ron

The walk path is not a finite distance. It can be lengthened or shortened. The runs,walks,struts,etc. inside the WD however ARE finite. That means if your walk path is too long in relation to your stride. The WD has to do something about it to make up the difference. In this case. It has to add a few key frames of action to make up the difference. And you get an unwanted repeated action. If you take that same animation you put in that example and cut the number of frames down from 120 to approx 80. It will not jerk anymore. And it will work just fine. ScottA

We also serve who merely stand on the sidelines and smirk. ;] shrug Best suggestion I can come up with still for "solving", is for CL to do what they stated they were doing way back and actually redesign Poser 5 into an upgrade, rather than P4 with plugins. Don't see that happening, honestly. Instead, they're putting you in the unenviable position of doing their product support in here and finding workarounds for the glitches. Which - I will NOT take away from you Jeff, doing poser tech and poser user support you do very well in here, and have been doing for multiple versions. You are very fucking good at it. I can wish they'd given you something better to work with. Oh well. Both of us will live.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

I am sorely disappointed. Not as much in P5 as in the misleading title of timoteo1's thread. He concedes that it's a childish title, but given his behavior since he got P5, I expected childish. And I'm not talking about the complaints themselves, some of which seem entirely valid. I'm talking about the fact that he is lodging them in a (sorry if you didn't realize it before this thread) grating, whiny tone, on such a frequent basis that it seems entirely possible that he is spending more time complaining about P5 than using it.

And to anticipate the likely response, I recognize that some people are having so much trouble with P5 that this would not be difficult to do. However, the absence of features like a multiple undo (hell, a true single undo), which I would also appreciate, or the use of a non-standard API, simply do not require the cyber-equivalent of Munch's "The Scream."

No, my complaint is that the possible alleged problem with the Walk Designer is apparently not the last straw for timoteo1...so I will waste more time having to page past his constant complaining to get to threads I actually want to read. I only read this one because I thought I could get the champagne out to celebrate.

Would Poser would be less buggy in the hands of a more financially stable company like Adobe? Maybe, although the fact that Adobe worked with CL in developing Atosphere suggests that they don't currently have the type of staff they would need to do Poser. In all probability, they would end up hiring the current CL staff that produced the code you don't like. It might have allowed them to delay the release of P5 for more extensive beta testing, or allowed them to recall before shipment to address late-discovered non-critical bugs, but it wasn't so long ago when the number 1 complaint here was the long delay in releasing P5. Then again, there's always some who aren't happy unless they're unhappy.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Adobe was able to do Poser better technically. What is the price for full version of Photoshop? And the upgrades would be more frequent, more incremental, and all of them would cost at least as much as what you paid for the P5 upgrade. There are some who would not be bothered by a higher cost, but based on the rampant doomsaying on this issue before CL announced the upgrade price, I would suggest that you would lose so much of the user base that Adobe would end up discontinuing or reselling Poser after they bought it. But at least we could be treated to a lot of complaints about the cost until they did.

I find long diatribes like this utterly fascinating, and normally do not get involved in some of the more lengthy ones. However, I would like to point out that the good folks at DAZ (with whom I have no affiliation - except that they have consumed much of my plastic in the past)use LIGHTWAVE - not only for rendering, but also for animations. I have personally successfully used Poser 4 characters with and without animation in LW 7.5 on both PC and Mac and have written tutorials on how to do it. Get a copy of LW 5, 6, 6.5, 7, or 7.5 - the Poser->LW plug-in works fine with all of those versions. You don't import Poser figures saved as .obj, .dxf, .txt or whatever alphabet soup into LW - you open the .pz3 files, just like within Poser. LW, with the aid of the CL plug-in, translates the figures into native .lwo objects and .lws scenes. If you don't like the herky-jerky walk (which may smooth out in LW), design your own in LW and then animate. Ok, back to my hole under Middle Earth now... -scara

Attached Link: running man

**DO NOT** use a walk path turn off IK for the feet apply the walk " in place" divide total the number frames by the frame rate to determine the "repeat cycles" example 150 frame animation 30 FPS= 5 cycle repeats hit "done" close walk designer select the hip in the Z trans channel in the graph editor drag select ond **delete all but** the first and last key frame. select the last key frame and raise its value way upwards and watch your figure slowly go from running in place to moving forward. adjust this curve along the Z trans until his forward motion matches his footfalls this animation took 8 minutes from loading mike2 to renderd movie ***-wolf359 founding member of the "12 animators"-***

My website

YouTube Channel

Or you can use the WD and just use the proper number of frames for the animation. ;-)

There is no "proper " number of frames for a walk/ runcycle it s that stupid path thingy that screws up the animation in my opinion -wolf359 founding member of the "12 animators"-

My website

YouTube Channel

nice run wolf, I'll have to try that, I guess I never really paid atention to the quirks of the walk designer before, because I always just figured it was my homemade characters that had to be tweaked to make the walk or run look smooth

This is for P5 but I suppose it is also related to P4: 1.)load Don 2.)create walk path 3.)straighten walk path so it's a straight line 4.)apply run at 80% The shins will jerk just like Tim's animation does. Now go back to the WD and change the number of frames from the default 120 to 80-90 frames. Your walk path length will have some effect on the number you need here. Apply it. The animation is now fine. No jerking shins or feet. Poser doesn't have any math logarithms to calculate path length and compare them to the preset cyles or the percentages you set them at. You have to be able to see that on your own and know whether to add or subtract total key frames so they match. ScottA

VirtualSite- Um, you use a Mac and you can't right click or use a wheel? Jeez, what OS are you using? I've been using right click, left click, wheel and a couple of other buttons that confused the hell out of my PC using wife (hey, so she has this one fault. So sue me!). While these functions don't work in Poser 4 in classic mode, until the Poser 5 comes out for OS X, these funcions are a bit irrelevant anyways.

http://schuetzenpowder.com/sigs.jpg

By the way wolf. I hope that "you have to be able to see it" statement doesn't sound snooty. Sometimes I see my words and I realise they can be taken the wrong way. ScottA

Tim, As a software designer, I am glad to hear your rant. Helps me keep in perspective the "little" details that will drive some users nuts [may be different for different users]. Gradually, the industry is stumbling towards a future where those who create awesome raw abilities [such as posing characters] don't have to "embed" those abilities into a single application [whose interface will likely suck - at least for many users]. Instead, many different applications will be built, mixing and matching XML-based data formats, and powerful components [such as posing characters]. (If Kaleida Labs' ScriptX had survived to maturity, we'd be ten years closer to that nirvana, but that is another story...) Hang in there, and keep ranting :-) -- ToolmakerSteve

Well like all these posts it is pretty easy to spot the Daz3d and Curious Lab stooges No matter what they say the great unwashed masses out there will not buy it. My tip is by the early next year Curious Labs as we know it will be gone. The French /German owners will then send it to India or Malaysia and by the end of 2003 we will have a new version of Poser that works for around US$ 200.00

The cure to 90% of Poser's problems can prolly be fixed right here - go to it: www.python.org For the right price, I'll code the script myself (and I ain't cheap, either.) Otherwise, you may as well get to it, becuase 1) I don't got P5 yet, and 2) I prolly won't get around to any serious Python stuff until I have time to learn what changes have been made to P5, and how I can adapt my Python skills in Linux to Python skills in Win32/Poser (not sure how Macs handle it...) Personally - Poser has the best bang for the buck, period. If you want Animation Heaven with all the trimmings, then go get Messiah, Maya, or some other zillion-dollar proggie. Otherwise, either you can contribute code (the means are certainly there to do it), pay someone to write the code for you, or you can demand a refund. Not all that hard, is it? Y'know, Tim? Paul wants to coddle you... cool. (/me waves at Paul!) Me, I get paid to be patient and tolerant whilst educating the ignorant, ego- and pride-hampered, and/or the obstinate. Therefore, being a perfect bastard in the face of such things whilst off-duty comes rather natural to me, so in the spirit of the posts you have complained in, do bear with me. You want a zillion levels of Undo, great - Python can most likely plug into the UI dots and run a parallel undo tree...go write the script, kiddo. The 999 frame limit? same-same - get Python to double the counter - because here's an industrial-sized clue: No one is going to do it for you, no matter how big of a temper tantrum you throw! IOW: You have three choices in this natural world: 1) solve the problem yourself (yes, the tools are there.) 2) wait for CL to do it for you 3) go buy a real animation proggie or wait for one in your price range. ...and no amount of foot-stomping and screaming will change that. So... which is it? (incidentally, has anyone tried solving it by using the python walk scripts found at Poser ++?) /P

So what, if any, is the difference in the Poser Python vs. the regular Windows version-2.2.1 ? A question from a total stranger to Python....but, hey, I can't use P5 as it is, might as well learn to program in my spare time :)

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

For the record, I think people are giving tim a rough time. Every single one of us in this forum has, at some time or another, made a complete ass of ourself. Tim's a good guy, and has a lot of talent. So he got ticked off and ranted? SFW? I do it all the time, and people don't hang around the thread after the fact giving me hell... well... except Ironbear, but he's allowed to because of senority. So the problem's fixed. We got from point a to point c with a bit of bickering at point b. let's drop it and get on with life. And if anyone feels otherwise, remember that, at some point, you'll jump into a cause the wrong way, and look silly, and I'm sure you won't need the rest of us hanging around beating on your ego and dragging out the past after the fact. ;) Of the many people in this thread, I'm not the one who should be taking this position. There are many others here who have had to live down far more stupid rants than I have. Paul

I thought you bought goods or services that are supposed to work and not need at least 5 programs to make it more functional. Then you want to add Python scripts ?? A lot people in the software business have lost the plot. But should we be surprised when most seem to be nerds with limited life experiences I got a laugh the other day whilst watching NBR. A senior administration official was whinging about OPEC. What about the Bill Gates cartel and Windows. At least OPEC oil always did what it claimed to do.

Yea.... I've been bitten and chewed on several times... :) by the way....

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

Some other zillion dollar proggie. OK, can't resist that tempting little snippet. Messiah Animate 3.0 - 595 dollars (reduced intro price) Messiah Studio Advance - 1395 dollars Not badly priced considering the awesome array of tools and functionality you get. Poser 5 349 dollars (US shipping cost) Poser 5 upgrade 129, 179 or 209 dollars depending on which version you're stuck with. (US Shipping Cost) Different countries may vary for pricing. Remember, Poser 5 is acknowledged as being "broken" by Curious Labs, but that doesn't matter, they love you and will fix it just as soon as they can afford to hire their programmers back again. So. For another 200 dollars on the full version price you get an animation suite with far more power and capability and software compatibility and system compatibility than Poser provides. Or, for another 1000 dollars you get one of the most awesome animation and rendering suites available for budget oriented users. Considering how much people are claiming to have spent on their computers and in the store the price is not out of reach nor is it in the region of "zillions" which quite frankly is a ridiculous statement that reduces the credibility of the rest of that post. Hohum. Other software prices available on request and perhaps oddly, none of them equate to zillions of dollars. Perhaps someone is confused with the Space Program, or Vickie's underwear wardrobe? Just one last note. Maya 4.0, 4.2 and 4.5 was designed around the requests of the userbase - Alias are using that as a marketing gimmick, as are a couple other companies. Oh dear, looks like Curious failed to be unique again as certain people keep on claiming. Never mind, they are unique in one respect, but I'll let someone more capable of verbiage than me to explain it. On that note, it's late here. Goodnight all.

I dunno, tas... I'm just too used to the open-source world (but yeah, everything not marked "beta" or "unstable" works just fine.) In that world, you have the means to do something about problems. Yes, Poser has problems. But we still have a choice - we can always go buy something else, or save your cash for software that is 100% bug-free. :) /P

Questor - you're absolutely right. Seriously. There are alternatives out there... something that will get you accused of being a DAZ sympathizer (huh? heh.) Me, I'm a mercenary - I buy and use what works for me. If P5 turns out to be a turd on my machine, I'll cease to buy anything from Curious Labs... as I've mentioned elsewhere, my level of caring for CL or DAZ was the equivalent to the level of caring I showed for the local Jeep dealership when I got my Jeep... if there was a better deal, I was out uncovering it :) /P

save your cash for software that is 100% bug-free. :) We could retire :) or we may be retired by the time that may come about...nevertheless---the bank account would be bulging

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

"the time, and people don't hang around the thread after the fact giving me hell... well... except Ironbear, but he's allowed to because of senority." Hey! I'm not giving Tim hell. ;] Ummmm.... peers suspiciously at Paul Are you absolutely sure you meant "seniority" after "Ironbear". I kept reading that expecting to see "Senility". ;]p~~~~~ Remember: we measure seniority by geological age, which means that Jeff outranks us all.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

I'm still using P4, but regarding the walk designer you gotta ask yourself is it the artist or the program? Part of the walk problem has some thing to do with how close to 0 the xyzs get. the closer to 0 the more problems you are likely to incur obviosly this is a design flaw but if you know the workarounds you can work with it. thanks wolf359 and SctttA for the info. I'll try to remember this thred if I have trouble with walk designer, - TJ

Tim, I am an animator. I animate "from scratch". No "walk designer" No coddling. No stick the body on the path and let the feet fall where some number-crunching machine tells them to fall. I've been in the computer games industry for 15 years starting with Kings Quest 4, moving through various adventure and rpg and puzzle games and then out onto the Internet... where the last 4 years' work has all vanished into pixel dust with the dotcom melt-down. Sigh. I've written articles in the professional tradezines protesting the stupidity and ignorance of those who mistake kinesmatics for animation, and then demonstrating what is necessary to bring a character to life. Numbers don't breathe personality into a figure. Computers can't animate. If you find that the Walk Designer is a crutch which slips in your grasp, why don't you throw the crutch away and rely instead upon your own talent and eye for movement? As for the rest of your complaints? Some of us LIKE the interface. Most of us are tired of your bitching in any case. Carolly

Jeez, what OS are you using 9.2. I'm sure that, if I gave it a serious chance, I'd find a wheel mouse with a right click useful, but right now, I'm perfectly happy with my dinosaurish single action clicker. :)

Tim, In a possibly vain attempt to bring this back to the points you were making in your original thread... Poser 5 was supposed to be recoded "from the ground up" Was it? So far as I can tell nobody at CL ever claimed this (it would have been stupid anyway). This was just a rumour that propogated through the community along with all the other completely unrealistic expectations of P5. You can't really blame CL for something they never said. The walk designer sucks. Sure, and no matter what CL do it always will, to some extent. The problem that the walk designer tries to solve (natural walking with a variety of skelotal structures) simply has too many variables to be definable as a finite (solvable) problem. Regardless of how much time and effort CL threw into it, the results will always require tweaking. While most of the other problems you have addressed are really more "wish list" issues, I do, however, have to agree with you that the failure to address many of the P4 bugs that have been reported over the last few years is inexcusable, and inexplicable. Bugs often help expose coding and design flaws, especially those that most immediately effect the users. The very first, and easiest, step towards improving a product is to address the outstanding problems. And for the users, what is the point of submitting bug reports if CL are not going to fix them when they have the most obvious opportunity (ie. a new product release)? And of course the existing bugs that have not been addressed added to to the new bugs help to detract further from the overall impression of P5. Bill

Entropic - "The lighting's simplistic, and lacks in some respects, but Poser users don't want Mental Ray lighting capabilities. Hell, people bitch about the speed now ( and it's still vastly faster than Bryce, Mental Ray, et. al. ), how do you think they'd feel waiting around for GI?"

Oh, I agree a lot of folks would be annoyed - and I totally agree CL didn't want to or even have a need to build in a rendering system with an "advanced" lighting model (these days most of us in my production pipeline consider GI to be a basic/minimum feature). What I find is hurting most is the lack of an easy way to get this stuff into a system with a high end rendering engine at this time. The hair I can live without... but the dynamic cloth shouldn't be a problem and basic support for the material room wouldn't be that hard.

**Entropic - ** "putting images together that will soon be Final Fantasy Movie level quality"

Let's not get crazy. Poser5 is good stuff... but it isn't that good :)

Individual stills from photograph based textures? Sure. Animated characters under diverse lighting conditions from procedural textures? No.

VirtualSite - "Multiple undos? Poser is a memory hog to begin with. Why would you burden it down with multiple undos that will just sop up more memory resources?"

There is no reason for multiple level undo to be an serious resource hog, but let's skip that and take just ONE level that actually does the right thing :)

I >LIKE< P5, but I think we need to keep a realistic eye on where it has limitations, either by accident or design.

Soulhuntre I must disagree, in priciple at least, with your low expectations of what Poser's renderer should be capable of. Especially, Firefly's big problem (or so it seems having read the responses) is that it is actually a pretty poor (re-)implementation of the Reyes renderer design, ie. exactly the rendering architecture that was used in FF. Implicit in this technology is the opportunity to handle many of the higher level features. Reyes is not actually a difficult (maybe not simple though) technology to implement (I've done some work on an alternative renderer for ProPack, so I know). The evidence that I have seen, however implies that CL pretty much ignored a major cornerstone of the Reyes design principles (locality) and possibly missed a few tricks in subdivision as well. They have therefore [apparently] ended up with an implementation that performs below expectations (and renderers in other applications) with less features, even when acknowledging that it improves on P4's basic scan line implementation. Whether this was due to a misunderstanding, or lack of experience, or whether CL believed (wrongly) that they could improve on the technology is moot. The fact is that, probably with less effort, they could have gone for a text book implementation and got a better result and one that would have compared more favourably with other apps. Bill

It's an unfortunate fact of life that many softcos follow Microsloth's lead and produce upgrades that tack on more new features but don't address outstanding issues in the basic program. This is because Marketing like to be able to put out stuff saying "Now has feature Y!!" rather than "Feature X now works properly!!". Never mind multiple undos, it's ridiculous in Poser 4 that moving the camera prevents the last undo to the figure, and that you can't undo an accidental deletion. If P5 has not fixed these quite basic issues, it's very sad.

Interesting example (figure deletion) Pantast, although I think it illustrates how non-trivial some simple ideas can be. Poser cannot rely on the original cr2 remaining intact, and during the course of the session, materials could have been customised and any number of morph targets (with new delta sets) could have added, or deleted using the hierarchy editor and deformers. All parameter setting would have saved as well across all animation frames. As a result, in order to provide a deletion undo function Poser would have to perform the equivalent of a single figure/object pz3 save (on memory or disk) every time a deletion was performed. This is not necessarily an impossibility (in fact it may be fairly trivial to implement if the existing "save" code was reused), but it would obviously have added a performance overhead. The counter argument is just to tell users to "save often", so they can control how the overhead affects them. Then again it could always be implemented as a switchable option. Bill

As a programmer myself, there is no reason for undo to impact performance, unless too many bits change to hold both versions in memory. Deleting a character should only change one pointer in memory. Applying a Photoshop filter to every pixel of a 2000x2000 image is another story ... However, re-arranging application code that didn't do undo right in the first place is a substantial effort that could introduce more bugs. I suspect they simply couldn't afford the time and the risk. Regardless of the reason, the end result is sad. I am hoping Poser 5 will attract a larger user base. Poser 5 has such cool new features. Now, if Curious Labs can just "get the basics right". For me that's: (undo; stability; being more responsive when user clicks cancel in the middle of a lengthy calculation). Any why are the parameter dials now part of a fat pop-up window that is constantly in my way? In Poser 4, I put the dials under the library pull-out to save screen space. No can do in Poser 5.

BTW, Thanks for the Walk Designer tips.

FWIW, I've never had a BVH file work perfectly either and inevitably have to tweak them. I have 100 percent confidence that I will also have to tweak Mimic output as well.

Considering the difference between the binary logic of computers and the Fuzzy logic of the human brain (some of us more fuzzy than others) I don't expect any consumer software to be able to automate animation completely. Heck, even Pixar has to have humans tweak things although they - if anyone - have the most sophisticated software available.

At this stage in the evolution of software, I'm glad just to get closer to the ballpark.

I adapt. Whether I'm working on PC or Mac. Regardless of the software. I adapt. I've never found a software that did everything exactly the way I wanted. I adapt. Even the software packages I love the most, I've had to adapt.

Sometimes it's not easy. But anything made by humans is subject to flaws, bugs, built-in obsolescence, or simple differences of subjective preferences. Therefore I adapt. If it's not worth the effort, I use something else. Or adapt the project to accomodate the limitations that I have right now. Regardless, I adapt.

I am the pine tree that bends in the storm but doesn't break under the winds' pressure (like the mighty oak).

• basic concept of the style of Karate I used to study.

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

Geez, this software really isn't ready for prime time. I just had the Cloth Room turn Don into a wad of polygons. All I did was load Casual Don, a Hi-Res square, and a Wind Force; position the square and Wind, then pose Don's arm, fiddle with parameters, then run a simulation. I had bumped Collision Offset and Collision Depth up to 5. And I was using "Drape Frames". But those settings should influence the clothified square, not Don. NOTE: Ctrl-A [Restore All] recovered him fine. Looks like a new situation that further exposes Poser's long-standing problems with wadding up figures. -- ToolmakerSteve

Clarification: "long-standing problems with wadding up figures" - I'm referring to rotation dial on body, or messing with joint parameters on a body part, and having some body part go haywire - to have the WHOLE FIGURE wad up so easily surprised me.

Hi Steve Deleting a character should only change one pointer in memory The problem with that approach is the character still consumes (in Poser's case) a vast amount of system resources and would also require a lot more than one pointer change to disconnect it from the current scene. Each individual body part (actor) in fact has a semi-independent existance in the overall poser scene. Hence (at least) dumping the character data to the file system would probably be desireable and still require a lot of work other than a reference switch, likewise reconnecting the figure correctly. This is what I was implying. My reference to the pz3 save was for the convenience of demonstrating (apart from reformatting in ASCII) how much information must be temporarily saved, either in memory or on file. Bill

Ok, I have to step up here (just in general, not to any specific person/post) Some have slapped Tim for his frustration. Where Tim may have appeared to many as childish or whatever, I have to say that I agree with him. Most people on the list are Still-Render people, some of us are animators - two different disciplines for sure.

Now let's look at what's going on. Tim is trying to create with a package he has loved in the past. The new version of this software is filled with promise. He spends his hard earned money on this new version. What is he met with? He sees glitches that should not be there. Aside from people's preferences for interfaces or whatever there is undeniably a trust violation. All who have hammered Tim for bitching are missing a key point. People have said "do it this way" or "here's a work around" or suggest that Tim write python or XML or animate every move from scratch or redesign the interface. None of this is relevant. This is not the enduser's resonsibility. The user should not in anyway have to "work around" anything. There is a difference between a "Trick" and a "Work around". Tricks are getting extra functionalty that a system was not specifically designed for. Work arounds are attempts to recover broken functionality. Tim was promised a rewrite from the ground up. In my little software development world, this is known as an SLA. Service Level Agreement. This sets user expectations for what is to be promised and delivered. Regardless of all the other bugs withnew functionality, CL has clearly NOT rewritten it.

Now I have to say that I think CL does care about the product and that the money issues are certainly a factor. I am sure there was pressure to deliver this software way before it was ready. This is the fault of the example set by Microsoft - that pushes garbage out and has people burning internet bandwith pulling down patches.

I have to say also that I too feel betrayed by CL. I am not at all happy with this release. There are plenty of great ideas here like the face room and such. But look at Tims example of the manual:

"Widget Temporal Analysis Toggle: Toggles the Widget's Temporal Analysis"

He's absolutely correct in this regard. There is so much that is good and yet so much that is bad with this release.

Here are examples:

Good: New Render Engine
Bad: Slash-your-wrists-slow

Good:Nodes and shaders etc.
Bad:The manual is lame in explaining use.

Good:Support the most popular model on the planet(VICTORIA)
Bad:Have to manually rework your bump maps which no matter what, you use will lose some quality. -Or- you are forced to use the old render engine.

(an interesting move don't you think? Inclusion of the old engine is self-evidence that CL knew it had problems. To thier credit, they were thoughtful enough to include it but I would have prefered a fast new render engine that supports the new stuff as well as natively worked with Victoria as is, without having to do any content conversion)

Good:New Models

Bad:They suck. Not having a V2 level model is kin to a war crime. No one can tell me that CL is ignorant of Victoria. It is Victoria and Michael that made Poser seriously usable. Anybody want to argue that?

Good:Face room.
Bad:At least for the love of god, let me use V2 head a the basis. The face room morphs are about as flexible as a cereal box.

Well I could keep going but I will work myself up into a frenzy....and that is the point.... it shouldn't be this way.

I am waiting for the patches... I need the patches.... I must have the patches.

I personally have gone back to P4 to work. I have P5 still installed to play and learn (plus I dare not uninstall it for that security big brother crap).

Bottom line:

I have P5. I can't wait until I can use it when it gets stable. If it wasn't for the people at CL I'd probably uninstall it and ask for a refund. I love the package (P4) but I am hugely disappointed by P5. I will extend my trust 1 more time. Should CL not step up for this I'll have to bail and save money for an alternative. I don't want to but....I may have to. I have seen a few posts from CL answering quick questions as of late but I am concearned that Steve has not stepped up to face the family on these issues. There are issues... you can not argue that point. There ARE issues. You may be more or less tolerant/patient than others but there are people like Tim/Me who are deeply passionate about what we try to do in our escape from Corporate America at the end of each day. If P5 was your living wouldn't you be even more concearned? The tool needs correction and it needs it now.

My Wish list:

Stability!!!!

Speed!!!

A better manual

Better Models or the ability to use V2 level heads in face room

I'd like a native way of dragging in V2 and other models and have the system do all the remapping for me... I shouldn't have to.

Better on screen or even hardware based posing.

Volumetrics

Particles

And Most of all some word from CL about what is going on.

TalleyJC - Animator X

Since the release of the propack4 and the LW,C4D,MAX plugins I have accepted that poser is and always will be just a character animation plugin for bringing those hi quality DAZ CG humnoids into a REAL program. ;-) When i have animated poser figures in Cinema4DXL I have Open GL hardware acceleration and batch rendering.mutilprocessor support, particles ,volumetrics and radiosity.etc. etc.same for LW and MAX users Most poser users are strictly still render, photoshop/PSP artist, and Dont care about all this highend stuff Yes the walk designer should work by now and this business of room panels bleeding over into each other in P5 is terrible!!! :-/ but poser was NEVER meant to be a full fledged immersive CG program. And if i may offer My opinion to animators and aspiring Desktop filmakers,its really time to stop asking CL for these highend features and treat this $300 program as a plugin and start saving for a REAL program that will import your DAZ models from poserpro4 (LW, C4DXl ,MAX ,Vue). And to Timoteo1 :I feel your pain brother :-) a while back i posted a similar angry rant over at the Cinema4DXl forum at creativecow.net about this $500 Dynamics plugin for cinema4DXl. a plugin whos manual is 95% general physics theory and 5% instructions for us users of the plugin!!!! :-/ within minutes I had three sample files emailed to me that I reversed engineered to get the basic dynamics settings and start doing cloth simulations.in C4D (it helped that my diatribe was replete with references to the superiority of lightwaves built in collision dynamics) So a full on rant from time to time can get you results.

My website

YouTube Channel

I would just like to add my 2 cents. Timoteo1 is a godsend. We (we being the people very unhappy with a buggy and tempermental Poser 5) need someone to keep the pressure on Curious Labs to give us the program they promised. I have watched the "support" that CL has given here in the forum and on the rare occasions that they do respond, it's usually with a "you're the problem, not Poser" attitude. If the pressure is let up, the problems will fall to the wayside, like many of the problems that have been around since Poser 3. Those problems will never be fixed, and if the new crop aren't delt with now, they never will be either. I'm not trying to say CL is doing this deliberately, it's just the nature of the business. So Timoteo1, I applaud you.

Hi Bill, (I wrote a Paint and Animation program back when memory and disks were much smaller and slower than they are today.) One wouldn't keep deleted character data in RAM for a long time, consuming valuable resources, but that isn't what is needed for undo. Rather, the "deleted" data can be kept around until the next time the user does something that needs a bunch of memory - at which point, the "deleted" data is "really" deleted so that the user can proceed. For a single-level undo, this is a non-issue, as ANY operation after the delete will quietly toss the old "deleted" data. Even for a multi-level undo, it is easy to cache hundreds of small undo-steps, plus one huge undo-step. In my experience, "Undo" never needs to be a performance OR memory-hog problem. -- ToolmakerSteve

TalleyJC, "a native way of dragging in V2 and other models and have the system do all the remapping for me..." What are you describing? Oh- is that another comment about the Face Room (I haven't been there yet)? -- ToolmakerSteve

"At least for the love of god, let me use V2 head a the basis. The face room morphs are about as flexible as a cereal box." That is a Daz issue. If Daz decided not to support Poser 5 or install it, then CL can't do much about that. Keep it relevant. Q

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard
S Mallarmé

Hi Steve I did say that its not impossible, but there would, in the the first instance need to be major improvements to Poser's memory/resource management, and that would be, in itself, a far more significant improvement in Poser's functionality that the undo function itself. Bill

Bill, I agree :) Steve P.S. I've now been using Poser 5 enough to see Undo work in a fair number of situations. This gives me hope that the problems we're seeing may be part of the bugginess of this release, rather than a fundamental software design problem. Fingers Crossed that they can fix Undo!

First of all, the interface is XML and SKINNABLE. Wow, this is excellent news! The Walk Designer doesn't work that great, there are no levels of Undo, there is no right-mouse support, and there are numerous "focus" issues but you can change the color of the application. Sorry for the sarcasm, but changing the interface color is just "icing" and "window dressing"- the application itself should work flawlessly before they start working on the ability to "skin" the interface! Hello, some of us are still on Macs and use only one mouse click. Hello, some of us are Windows users, and the last I checked, Poser 5 is a Windows application. That means that it should provide some level of right-mouse support (and possibly center-wheel scrolling). This was made part of "Windows Standards" with Windows 95... SEVEN years ago! If they want Windows users to use a "Mac" application, they should be consistent: don't install a shortcut on the Start Menu, don't write to the Registry, don't use the 3-letter file "extension" (.cr2, .pp2, .pz2), etc. This is actually being discussed in another thread, but it's past time that CL starts to develop Poser as a WINDOWS application. It doesn't matter if was created on an Apple, a Mac, or an IBM, the fact is that it is now running on Windows and it should conform to Windows Standards for User Interface design. I'd much rather have a buggy app than no app at all. NO, NO, NO!!! It is this attitude that encourages companies to release buggy software in the first place. Our attitude (as consumers) should be- NO BUGGY SOFTWARE! If it takes software companies an extra year to remove the bugs and they loses sales, that's their fault. If I receive a buggy program from a big-name company such as CL, will I even bother to get the upgrade? Will I purchase another one of their products, knowing full well that their last product was buggy? But, let's consider this statement: is it better to have a bug in an app that deletes a folder instead of a figure than to not have the app at all? Is it better to be able to switch from the Face Room back to the Pose Room, but have Poser crash (due to a bug) than to not have a Face Room at all? Another point to consider is- how many issues were brought over from P4 that were not corrected? Did CL ever actually claim that they were re-writing the code? Is P5 actually just P4 with some new "bells & whistles"? --John

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions

Hey guys! Listen up! Sheee-whillikers!! Anybody who has EVER purchased a piece of software knows that the first version out the door is buggy. Period. Whether it is a crash-worthy bug or a minor glitch or a bad case of stutters in a sub-routine, I doubt if anything more complicated than a mouse-driver has come out error-free (and, BTW, Microsoft refuses to support their own mice, 2 bad ones in a year: I've only bought Logitech for the last decade). And they can afford a thousand beta-testers if any company can. Therefore, if you are a congenital complainer, and you know who you are, because the rest of us surely know your names, I have a suggestion. Please, for the sake of your stomach lining and our eyes and ears, PLEASE don't buy any software during the first 6 months after release. Wait until the patches and updates start coming. Saying that something "sucks" isn't constructive criticism, either. A proper bug report stating what happens, when it happens, and your system configuration (and any other helpful information) emailed to tech support will do more to getting the problem fixed... unless your goal is simply to vent in a public forum. Most of the complaints mentioned above have been a matter of personal choice and design preference rather than flaws in performance. The product has been out for 2 weeks. It may take a while to discover what shortcomings lie with the software and what lie with the users... just as it takes a while to discover the strengths of each. Carolly

Ohhhhhhh! Boy I have a dozzy here. Ahem how do I start this off. Mad at Curious labs is an understatement. Let's just say it totally trashed my computer system or my copy of IE 6. I just rebuilt from a bad motherboard and after two weeks to get it up and running again I installed poser 5 excitedly hoping to check out this new great program. This is my experience. One I had to enter my code to get it activated, which of course transported me to the poser 5 web site. I then had to enter my previous poser 4 serial no. but instead of getting a your cleared......yes you have an original poser verified installation enjoy your new program I got a....their is a problem with the verification please contact tech support. I then went back to the program to check it out and found it 20 times slower than poser 4 at rendering and did not like the interface at all. The file garbage has to go! I finally gave up and went to or tried to go to renderosity only to find out that I can now no longer get into renderosity. I keep getting a Error including template."/home/poser/public_html/gallery.ez". I can go anywhere on the web it seems but not renderosity.... What has Curious labs done to my access to renderosity? I am typing this out on my other machine that thank god doesn't have the latest version of poser on it. I have uninstalled IE 6 back to 5 and reinstalled IE 6 only to find out I still have the same problem. Hmm a total system reinstall after all this work just to get it back up and running.......Grrrrrrrrr. So as a warning to anyone running windows 2000 beware! And to you beta testers.....shame on you I was under the asumption you had this version checked out and yet you none of you ran into any problems of this magnitude! I don't like my system being toy'd with. My system is dual 1 ghz proc's .....1 gig of ram and the latest 3d labs graphics card. It did not come cheap and I don't appreciate curious labs messing with it! To whomever I read about comparing Curious Labs Poser to the programs used creating Final Fantasy........please give me a break. It costs over $300 and it doesn't work ok......! Final Fantasy worked but they went bankrupt right where I see Curious Labs Going. Following the footsteps of Final Fantasy....except Final Fantasy actually worked. And where is the freakin phone no at curious labs......been disconnected? They trash my browser trying to register the darn program and leave me with no way to contact them besides e mail or fax...Which by from what I have been reading from other forums they don't even answer anyway! So I'm back to poser 4 and stickin with DAZ and I just would like to say Meta Creations Great product wish you hadn't went away........! Oh and has anyone noticed that Curious Labs has not done any upgrades with poser since the buyout from Meta Creations and now this trash they call no 5!...............Yeah I'm pissed!

Carolly * Anybody who has EVER purchased a piece of software knows that the first version out the door is buggy * Sorry, but while its true, its also a platitude. The real problem here is the overall perception of customers and many applications are perceived as stable on first release, even if they're not bug free. P5 certainly doesn't seem to fall into this catagory. * A proper bug report stating what happens, when it happens, and your system configuration (and any other helpful information) emailed to tech support will do more to getting the problem fixed... * If you had read many of the posts in this thread you would realise that many complaints this time around are regarding P4 bugs that have been reported, some over three years ago, but still haven't been fixed. What exactly is the point of reporting a bug to CL's tech support if it will be ignored? Many people seem to think, and I sympathise here, that the only recourse remaining, is complaining loudly in a public forum. Alternately people could boycott P5 and CL (which almost certainly needs every sale it can get) can go bust. And that would be a tragedy for all. Bill

"Hey guys! Listen up! Sheee-whillikers!! Anybody who has EVER purchased a piece of software knows that the first version out the door is buggy. " Uh yeah... but this is VERSION 5. Says so on the box. g

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

• Anybody who has EVER purchased a piece of software knows that the first version out the door is buggy * Fine, whether this should be accepted by the buying public as normal or not is debateable, personally I think it's a crock of s**t but it should be remembered that Poser 5 is NOT a first release of new software, it's the third release of Poser from the CL team and their fifth release of related software. Cooper and others have often claimed that the Metacreations team responsible for Poser were kept together... so, first version? Hardly.

Well let me just reply to this long winded suck it in your shorts buddy reply. One I have ample experience with bugs. I beta tested MSN many years ago when I was one of the first members. I also have a top admin in networking in NY State checking out my system. This so called bug your referring to is deep coded in the heart of the windows system. Not your typical bug. Bugs don't normally trash your code so bad that you have to reinstall the entire system just to get back to square one. Also the bug originated from me having to go through their stupid registration process to protect their superior product full of bugs! Which of course did not even go though...after 4 tries. Hello! Are we on the same planet! Also this is a Meta Creations Product.. Curious labs has done no upgrades except to linking to their site Ok.. This is the first upgrade and I have never had one so unstable. And I have owned Version 1, 2, 3 and 4. Never had bugs like this before......! Yeah I'm upset I just spent big bucks getting my system back online only to have it trashed with one program in less than an hour. Oh by the way Bill do you have their phone no.... If anyone wants to go through this hell just to check out a version of poser that is totally inferior to the older product well then go for it that's all I'm going to say. Anyone else that want's to trash my knowledge and call me a cry baby and that I should accept a program that demands me to get a key code just to use it and then find out it wreaks my system hey go for it. I shouldn't be the only one suffering on this one lol. Oh yeah I don't have any Poser 4 Bugs either........! It works fine. And man does it render fast. I'm not trying to be to overly critical here but shoot it trashed my entire software ok...... I think that this so called bug is major and the program should not have been released period. If they wanted money than they could have asked the art community for help/..Hell I would have gave them some just to keep going. I just feel like they took on a program that they were not capable of handling and now we all suffer for it.

Ironbear * I just feel like they took on a program that they were not capable of handling and now we all suffer for it * Spot on, IMHO. Despite the admission that P5 had to be released in such a hurry because the company was running out of funds, project management is the end of the day a matter of balancing funds/time against the amount of work to be done, and like all equations that has two sides. Bill

Sorry ironbear, I quoting from the wrong post. DemolitionMan - not sure who your last post was aimed at, since I was the only person mentioned by name even though I none of my previous post was in any way responding to any of your own. As it stands, while I may have misunderstood the intention (apologies if that is the case), I think you will find that we are broadly in agreement. Bill

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=880418

Here's a link to tie these two threads together. Don't get me wrong. Curious Labs DID release an appallingly buggy program. But some of the responses on the other thread are good reminders to keep SOME perspective ;-) -- Steve S.

C'mon.......... You're blaming P5 on not being able to post messages here! The site is having problems for everyone. It's a well known fact. There's just too may people here and the servers can't handle it. But NOW I understand what's REALLY going on. P5 is actually to be blamed for all of this and more!: Alien abductions Higher property taxes My neighbor's new car breaking down My T.V. cable going out for an hour last night My dog licking his balls wayyyy more than normal. Damn you Poser5!!!! And Damn you CL!!!! :-) ScottA

GoldenOdyssey, If that really is caused by Poser, then you are right that they've done some no-no. But why do you jump to the conclusion that their INTENT is to be controlling? It could be some bizarre programming bug. Hmmm. So it happens even after UNinstall? Then it would have to be something left behind... Ah, because it wasn't EXPECTED to still be there, it was only there temporarily during the registration process. I'll bet if I had access to their source code [I don't], and knew where to look, I could fix it promptly. Did you send in a bug report? I am puzzled by one thing: what does the address bar say when you try to get to a Renderosity page? I mean, does it start with "http://www.renderosity.com", or are you talking about some link embedded in a frame at Curious Labs' web site? -- ToolmakerSteve

Ironman - You Da Man: "Uh yeah... but this is VERSION 5. Says so on the box." I like that way of "framing" the situation. No excuse for version 5 to be so bad. I worry that CL has just shot themselves... somewhere worse than "in the foot". "5" looks like a feature-set that would really broaden their market, IF they can make a working version. Much as I personally hope CL pulls through this, I pray NEW customers don't buy this release until CL comes out with one heck of a patch! They would likely get bogged down in all the fancy, barely working features, and give up on the whole scene :( So, I reiterate as I have elsewhere "rant away". But why act like storm troopers have come into your house and done bad things to people you love? And why show NO RESPECT to what appear to be decent, hard-working people, who I believe are doing the best they know how?

No probs, William. I think that was demolitionman, but you can blame me for it with no hard feelings. ;] Btw - heya DM. Long time no see. waves shrug sshaw, I have problems with the idea that even on 1st release software consumers should accept a state of affairs where "It's the first release so it has to be buggy", or "it's only a [insert $ amount here] so it's bound to be buggy". That's an insult to the customer, and it leads to a situation of dwindling quality in coding standards. Taken to an extreme in the "release now, patch maybe", you get situations like those that have killed a number of gaming companies, and caused PC games to start talking a backseat to console industries. It's not true either - I've seen games that took 3 - 4 years [that being about how long it takes to code a game engine or app from scratch] that worked with minimal patches needed. I've also seen "only $49.99 programs" like Thief II and System Shock II that worked out of the box, with the only patches needed ones to add functionality for new video etc hardware specs, and plug minimal coding errors. If you don't think that a major game engine is as complex as a graphics app, suggest you write John Carmack and ask him. Different criteria perhaps, but equally complex to code and debug.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

Actually, it's even tougher. Game engines, especially in online multiplayer games, have to do realtime motion physics reactions whilst juggling unpredictable player actions, all of which has to be done and current by the next outbound TCP/IP packet. Animations proggies have the luxury of time by comparison, which is why typical animation proggies can deal with 20,000-200,000 poly humaniod models, while the practical limit for the upcoming Unreal2 engine is 3,500 polys per player character model, and that's being pushy about it. Currently, 1100 polys per player model is just about the breaking point for Quake3 or Unreal Tournament if you want to play online with a decent frame rate (and an 1100 poly model in UT will reeeeally bog down a server :( ). (heh... guess who used to get into coding mods real big? :p ) Now - IB's right, in that as many bugs as humanly possible should be stomped out of existence before shipment. OTOH, from a practical IT point of view, expecting a coder to catch 'em all is impossible - the best you can hope for is that the bugs are tiny, inconsequential things that won't get in your way before the inevitable patch comes out. As much as I would love to see a perfect software release, I believe that only the program "Hello World" came out 100% bug-free, and even then I'm not so sure. Incidentally, a LOT of game engines usually patch frequently, becuase cheaters find (sig it with me now) bugs. While these bugs are normally inconsequential and un-noticed by the majority, they can be exploited to make a shitty player into a gaming gawd, all with the minimum of effort (Counterstrike's Wall-hack, Quake3's "button6" debacle, Diablo/Everquest's dupe bugs, UT's continued need for CHSP, WinAce, Ratbots, purefuck.exe, etc etc etc...) BTW, IB, I've seen games that take 3-4 years too... and well - can you say "Daikatana" or "Anachronox"? I have yet to play with P5, so I don't honestly know what the deal is yet. I'm not coddling CL here, but I think that there has been more than the usual griping going on in this case... /P

"(heh... guess who used to get into coding mods real big? :p )" Heh heh - you too? We had a couple of "Gee, let's break the engine" go rounds when I was into that. ;] "and well - can you say "Daikatana" or "Anachronox"? " Add "Tresspasser", "Starlancer" and... oh well, we can go on. ;] Point wasn't that gaming code doesn't ship with buggy releases - it does, including massive debacles like Daikatana - but that the amount of time devoted here is what's generally required in creating a release from the ground up in an equivalently complex app. Not 3 - 4 years spent basically patching add-on modules into relatively untouched existing code... That and the observation that if it's not reasonable to let companies slide on the functionality on the basis of "Well, it's only a $49.99 game", letting them slide on a application costing almost 10x that is ludicrous. I'll bet that if this were a new MS operating system release we were discussing here, the same people pulling this rhetoric would be screaming for Bill Gate's head on a plate. And hey... an OEM copy of Windows 2000 Pro is "only" about $179 or so. So... you hold Curious Labs to looser standards than you do other application developers? Why? Because they have a niche app that there's no equivalent to - so take what they deliver? Because the company execs "buddy up" to people in the forums? Er... what's that got to do with it? Becuase they're site sponsors and partners here? Heh. Reread the "Mission Statement" - it says nothing in there about Renderosity's mission being serving the best interests of software developers. Let's just agree to differ on some points Peng. ;] You and I can agree that possibly there's been more than the usual griping. I can hold that based on this release, CL rates all the flak they're getting, and if it damages the company... well, too bad, they bit it off, they can chew it. And we don't have to agree on those. No makey. ;]

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

Btw... that "you hold " was generic, Peng, not aimed at you.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

1. Brain freeze - I meant to say: IronBear, You da Bear! Or something like that :) 2. Re: "shrug sshaw, I have problems with the idea that even on 1st release software consumers should accept a state of affairs where "It's the first release so it has to be buggy"," Whoa there. I agree completely. No project I work on goes out the door with problems like Poser 5 has. I would never do that to a customer. Besides, its stupid from a strictly business sense. In the long run, "reputation" is everything. 3. [*** No longer talking to Ironbear ***] "You reap what you sow." Curious Labs has earned the ranting that goes on here. But the world is an imperfect place, and I'd prefer to work WITH them, warts and all, than see Poser vanish, or be swallowed up by some large company. I mean, some of the rants going down here at Renderosity, what do the ranters hope to accomplish?

Ah, no probs. Close enough for collision detection. ;]

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

GoldenOdyssey- Wow. I see why you are pissed. That's some damning evidence that the Poser 5 registration process is doing something scary to our computers. Unfortunately, it is beyond my knowledge what the significance of that is. (I try to stay away from the low-level Windows aspects. Ah, for the good old DOS days, when machines were dumb, but straightforward.) I must be aging. After hyperventilating against Microsoft for years, I hardly even care what Poser is doing during installation. I just want it to work, so I can get on with my life. -- Steve S.

"Wow. I see why you are pissed. That's some damning evidence that the Poser 5 registration process is doing something scary to our computers." Let me know when yu fidn some (evidence) because nothing posted here is anything liek evidence at all. Content paradise makes no alterations to your IE setup - and there is nothing involved in Poser5 that would prevent you from getting to Renderosity... Except paranoia... The poser had to re-install as part of rebuildign a machien with fairly massive problems... it seems to me much more likely that those are the cause of the issue ;)

Hey soulhuntre.....you don't even want to hear this...! Actually I won't waste my time even talking to a dizz like yourself. One check your spelling it makes you look stupid. And Two You want evidence how about I spam your butt with my screen shots.......! Arrrrrrrrgh Can I reach into the computer now and choke some more dorks who can talk the talk but not walk the walk. Oh and yes you are correct we are really lying here and just trying to stir up trouble over a program that my finance loves...get a life! Now that I have your attention read down to my next thread. Waves to Ironbear...:) long time no see ole friend too bad it has to be under these circumstances lol. Well Steve I am sorry that I and some off us vented so much about the program. I really did intend on coming off a little bit more professional and in a different way. And I agree with you I just want it to work lol. But.... One as to your statement to Golden about the Poser 5 doing something scary to our computers. No it's not scary it's down right invasive and iritates me. I really don't like the security check on the CL website to register and get my newest version working. I never did like that kind of protect my software kinda of thinking. Because it usually ends up hurting the registered bonifide customers more than it hurts the Warez kiddies and hackers ok. It's an unnessary pain and doesn't protect anyone. (Ok my complaint)..To put this whole thing in a nutshell. I install the program.....I go to their site, I enter my code then I am asked to enter my Poser 4 code. I do this and I get their is a problem with you registration code please contact tech support. I double checked my entries and tried numerous times but the same thing. I then attempt to log into renderosity only to find out I can only access the Marketplace and Poser 5 stuff. (Yes Only Poser 5 Stuff) I have most of the links to the right of the site missing and no matter what I click on it just loads up the Marketplace front page and from their I can browse around, no where eles. And yes to those who have suggested using another browser it's all the same Mozzila etc. I have them installed and the same thing. I guess that rules out the browser being the problem eh. Screen shots can be provided using both IE and Mozzila upon request lol. The only cure for this problem seems to be a complete reinstall of my machine. Does anyone think that this is acceptable or funny? I don't just work with poser I also have been dabbling with some really nice modeling programs and I actually thought I might be able to use some of the stuff in Poser....:( But that's not the point I have some major programs and some low level ones that are really cool like Bryce and they haven't invaded my machine and banned me from my own galleries here or caused havoc with my code. That's right my code. I bought Windows 2000 full version and I don't like anyone messing with the system, it's mine and I feel like I have a right to have complete access to it's functions. And this is just the minor beef. I played with Poser 5 (still have the 7 days left before it becomes vapor)and didn't like what I saw. Extremely slow render process, almost pathetic excuse for rendering time actually...Ok it was real slow..........lol. And the interface with the ugly windows looking file icon's really turned me off lol. And the characters are not desirable at all. My system is not slow....dual Pentium Flip chips running clocked at 1 Gig-a-hertz with a pro 3d labs card, 80 gig Maxtor drive and 1 gig of ram. Ok that's it I done venting. All I can say Is this program is going back. I don't want it. The security part is really what bugs me the most. This is not Lightwave or 3D Studio Max. OK it's Poser and it's cheap and well was kinda cool to play with. I understand CL's need to want to protect their investment but this is not the way to do it. And it does appear a whole lot like renderosity and Curious Labs has joined code forces to enforce this farce. Anyone eles have something stupid to say about why this is happening on my machine and others? I love the program but hey, I still have version 4 and I am sure other major modeling programs can pick up the slack if this software fails. Also as much as I love Renderosity I had better not find out they are involved with this problem also and providing code or whatever to CL to cause this. I can find other community's to hang out in or create my own. I am sure that I am not the only one to feel this way. Yes I am only one person so who cares right. Probably the many others who may be silent feeling the same way or having the same problem. The scope of what is happening here and what I'm trying to say is way to complex to put into words but I'm sure eventually everyone is going to be bitten by this bug rest assured.

"But the world is an imperfect place, and I'd prefer to work WITH them, warts and all, than see Poser vanish, or be swallowed up by some large company. I mean, some of the rants going down here at Renderosity, what do the ranters hope to accomplish?" Exactly what you stated. :0) If some of the "ranters" did not care what happened to CL or Poser, do you seriously think that they would waste the time and energy to type and point out the flaws so that CL could fix them? It seems the general perception is that if you point out flaws that you are somehow adversarial to the software developers. In reality, though, telling them what they did right is, in effect, doing little to help other than to inflate the ego. Telling them what is wrong gives them the opportunity to examine the areas that need reworking.

Ok and to you the silly one above me called CyberStretch....and boy is this a cyberstretch. I don't give a Rat's......you know what about ego or ranting in general. The program didn't say anything about this registration garbage untill I opened the box and read that's right read the manual. And then it causes major havoc on my system when all was just reinstalled and running well. I took it off thinking things would go back to normal and nooooooooo. It's still messed my browser up. So kiss poser and shut up.....I am tired of all the people giving me crap over this when I think I have a right to vent. I don't mind pointing out flaws for fixing but this is not a flaw and I don't want this version period....! I just want my MTV. lol.....I want this system back the way it was is that too much to ask.

Ah boy I wish I had read this thread more earlier. This is for ENTROPIC.....:) You my friend are a major .....ah how can I put this ahhh Bevis Butt Head...nahhhh working for Curious labs are we. I mean how eles could someone put out such mind boggling dribble, and making absolutly no sense what so ever and think to get away with it. Everything Timoteo1 said is factual and very well written. He is correct Poser 5 is nothing more than Poser 4 with some geez whiz gadgets thrown in. That was my initial impression. According to Entropic it's like lets say you go to the garage to get your car worked on and the mech say's I don't know what I'm doing so I'm going to charge you and fix your car but cause more problems than you had before you walked in because I'm learning and need the money and you say ok....geez go for it you pour soul. I mean come on get real is this individual for real or what. Picking on the guy for stating glaring problems within the program and calling it sour grapes or venting is just plain off the wall crazy........

Yeah Demoman, sucks to keep meeting like this, but it could be worse, eh? ;] ", what do the ranters hope to accomplish?" Complex question possibly, with as many answers as there are people involved. Soo... I'm going to shrug and just approach it from my POV. I don't have a major interest vested here. The company I work for isn't going to be involved with Content Paradise, so as long as CL doesn't try to enforce any restrictions of content distribution, that's a non-issue for me. CP doesn't affect me much either way. Renderosity's affliation with CP does potentialy affect me as a merchant here, as long as I'm a merchant here, but I'm willing to take a "wait and see" attitude on what those ramifications will be. The EULA provisions and ramifications they may have DO have an active, and possibly adverse effect on any merchnats involved in content distribution, and by extension, any brokerages involved in that. Those ramifications are being hotly debated at PoserPro's right now, so I won't rehash that 850+ post thread here. I will say that it is a concern to me, because of a number of implications... Main one being that having followed this business across numerous threas at multiple sites going back to before the CL "Amnesty" brouhaha, and the first announcements of their inline store, through the various DAZ3D EULA debates etc... the entire EULA controversy, the Face Room controversy/negotiations, Content Parasites, er... Paradise, et all looks to me like a knuckle duster between CuriousLabs and Daz3D over market share, and CL is using it's "we're your buddies, we're yer pals" connection with this particular online community to polarise supporters. I object to watching that. I object to seeing a site that I consider my online home - still, even though I no longer work here - used in what could effectively become a commercial concerns battle. I object to what I percieve as valid objections by customers of CL that just happen to not be glowing reviews of the latest release being discouraged by representatives of this site... probably because CL is a site affiliate and a major sponsor. I could be wrong on those perceptions, if so, no makey - it won't bruise my ego to be wrong, but I'll be damned if I won't call it as I see it based on what I see. On the actual program... I watched here, in this forum, as CL posted glowing previews of what the new software would incorporate, and all the improvements, over multiple threads, and basically used hype and hucksterism to whip up a frenzy for pre-orders - with the blessings of this site - when the odds [I think] were pretty damned good that they HAD to know weren't going to be delivered. And as they made claims over the course of three+ year to be delivering a redesigned program and new figures rather than what seems to be [based on user analysis] Poser 4 and Pro-Pack with modules leased from Size8 Software, SI FaceGen, and Pixels3D patched in. Not very well patched in, based on what a lot of these threads seem to be showing. Down here in Texas, we gots words for that. ;] Now, don't get me wrong, that's not a personal annoyance: I may have a need for P5 professionally - to test P5 content on if nothing else - and I can write the cost off as a business expense and not be out a fucking dime at the end of the year. What is a personal annoyance is watching people I consider friends get scammed into making pre-order purchases on something that's proving to be a dissapointment to them, and THEN watching them get told to "shut the fuck up about it". Again: I'm using the word "scammed" advidely based on my perceptions of the entire "California Dreaming" hype vs what these "rants" are showing. Anyone thinks that I should not get a bit annoyed over that... hey, your priveledge. Just don't get miffed when ya gets told to piss up a rope. So... Possibly these rants won't do a damned thing for what existing purchasers are experiencing. Wah - they're big boys and girls, as has been pointed out to me, I'm sure they'll live in the long run. They may not do a damned thing except create an awareness that new purchasers MAY just want to look real carefully at this before sending in their $179 or $349 to CuriousLabs, and make an informed decision on wether the so called "upgrade" is going to deliver their money's worth. And if they do that, and people make the "Buy/Not Buy" choice from informed decisions rather than pre-release hype and glowing reviews in the Rosity Rag, then the so called "rants" serve a useful purpose. This is what a comunity is supposed to do: act in the best interests of it's members, not in the best interests of it's software purveyors. If Renderosity takes it's mission statement seriously, then that' what I think they say they're supposed to be doing: promoting the best interests of their members, not supporting the best interest of their sponsors and affiliates. Heh - when you get in the position of affiliating with a company and a major software release, you get stuck between that rock and that hard place. And sometimes ground in it... ;] So... Curious Labs may not care to read less than glowing praise in their pet forums. Too damned bad. CL worshippers may not care for it. Ditto. But the people having the bad experiences have every damned bit as much right to discuss them here as the people having good experiences, without being made to feel pariahs or attacked for it. When you attack someone who feels they have a valid greivance, you may just be making an enemy out of someone who could have been your friend. The odds are pretty good also that somewheres in the middle between the bad experiences and the people having no problems is the reality of what the software can do. We won't see that reality if one side or the other is shouted down. Hope that somewheres in all that I touched on the question. grin

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

What a LONG,DRAWN(NO pun intended)OUT,INSULT filled post.Would ALL of you calm down?Stop the name calling,and insult ridden posts.Timoteo1 and anyone else has the right to talk about things they like and don't like(Though the WAY it is said is important).What everyone should do,is NICELY email CL and Steve with what bugs you found and ask for a fix.Make a post or list here then give CL a chance to correct said bugs.If Timoteo1 wrote CL about Poser4s WD problems then I'm sorry,they should have fixed it,plain and simple.If the same KNOWN(and I say Known and Real Bugs)that were in Poser4 are STILL in Poser5,then it IS wrong that they are STILL in Poser5,No excuse,unless it was Totally impossible to fix them.At least Timoteo1 opens his mouth,and he brings up POSSIBLE Problems that should be addressed(If they are legit bugs,of course),should he write CL and Steve first,then WAIT to see if said bugs are corrected,(Everyone should do that,not just Tim..),of course,should he post things here that may be bugs?Sure,we all should.BUT it should be done in a fair,calm,controled way.(not so easy for anyone;o).It is Totally normal to get pissed off and go off,and timoteo1 is no different than anyone else.He is mad and has the right to be,as those who are happy,have the right to be.The easiest way to handle this,is Post KNOWN/POSSIBLE bugs,but don't go off on each other or CL or Steve personally.Everyone wants the same thing.A working,stable,feature packed program that ALOT of people use and PAY FOR,so EVERYONE gets what they want.:o)SMILE

DemolitionMan - "Hey soulhuntre.....you don't even want to hear this...! Actually I won't waste my time even talking to a dizz like yourself. One check your spelling it makes you look stupid. And Two You want evidence how about I spam your butt with my screen shots.......! "

Spell check, got it. Thanks for mentioning it ... no one ever has :) Oh, it's "ditz" not "dizz".

Anyway, feel free to send screenshots if you want - but the reality is that without the active participation of Renderosity.com there is simply no way for Poser to limit your browser to only Poser5 content on that website. I suppose it is possible that Renderosity.com and CL have some sort of cookie thing set up that could do something like that - but I doubt seriously that such is the case.

But then, I doubt seriously that your browser IS limited to only Poser5 content.

I have no doubts your machine has problems... but I don't think your browser issues were caused by poser5, and I don't think that there is any code in poser5 that alters your browser set up one iota. Examination of how CP works seems to indicate that they simply load the IE COM control inside poser and point it at their own URL's... not effect your general IE setup.

Is Poser5 perfect? hell no. Far from it. But to imply that it makes some sort of massive firewall like limitation change to your ability to browse the net is simply without any basis at all. Your own experiences are not a definitive indication of any such thing even if I took them as being absolutely accurate.

:: shrugs :: You're certianly welcome to discuss your problems here or anywhere else, but I would think you might want to calm down and separate out your legitimate gripes with Poser5 from blaming it for everything bad that happens on earth.

I am not talking about a DAZ/Poser issue specifically. The folks at CL have to know that DAZ's models is what makes Poser usable. 90% of the products offered on this very site are Victoria related. People that use poser use Victoria. CL's new models should have had the same number of facial morphs when designed. If you read my post, (the line above the one you referenced) You will see that I refered to a V2 LEVEL model not V2 specifically. So I am sorry if you can't recognize or missed the relevance.

I think he may be on to somthing. That's an angle I had not even considered. But when the pieces fit...

ToolmakerSteve.... The people over at DAZ created models that really made poser something special. They used the wavefront objects with all the library structures that poser expected, textures, bumpmaps etc. CL knows victoria and must love what she's done for them. Take your Victoria and try to render her in firefly. What happens? Your bumpmaps are nowhere. You have to either render in the P4 engine or go about playing with converting your bumpmaps and go play in the materials room. Being that DAZ followed the poser conventions, why would CL not support a native import for any model using bumpmaps that were in the Runtime library structure? Knowing that bumpmaps are part of any good model - why on gods green earth would poser not provide a import for models (that use bumpmaps) that made them P5 ready. I didn't see anywhere that bumpmap support (as it was) was being dropped. I was taken by surprise. Its kind of silly don't you think? To provide a method of connecting to your p4 library but drop the ball on the bumpmaps? This would be the same as an upgrade to Microsoft Access that allowed you to read your tables but made you manually convert your existing queries or MS Word that provides new fonts but expects you to convert your old ones. Imagine having a word doc that you worked on for a client proposal that had 15 different fonts in it, scattered thoughout the document - you upgrade and then find out that the doc, when imported, is changed all to courier.

A few points to consideR: Alternately people could boycott P5 and CL (which almost certainly needs every sale it can get) can go bust And then what would happen if we needed to re-install P5? Would we be able to get a new activation code? Or would we be stuck with a pretty paperweight? Also, where are the CL people? You see Nosfiratu every so often, but where are kupa and the usual gang? A monhs ago, they were here every week posting a new P5 render and gushing about how great all the new fetaures were going to be. (How come my Don doesn't look anything like the guy in kupa's "California Dreaming" post? It must be the lights.) Where are they now and can we get them to start addressing some of these issues? Or, at the very least, can we get a public "We are working on a patch to address the issues and we will let you know when it's available. [And yes, you Mac users will get the patched version, we used the Windows people as our public beta-testers.]" --John

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions

JHoagland, I've read a public "We are working on a patch to address the issues and we will let you know when it's available" from both Nosfiratu and Kupa. They know there are problems and I'd rather have them working on that than hanging out here. I also suspect that they know that for some people here - no one in particular - no amount of talk is going to fix things. The only way to make things riht is to get the patches out ASAP. There are just some things that you can't get into without ending up in ugliness. Nobody wins in those threads. We'll see what happens.

Before they made me they broke the mold!
http://home.roadrunner.com/~kflach/

"So... you hold Curious Labs to looser standards than you do other application developers? Why? Because they have a niche app that there's no equivalent to - so take what they deliver? Because the company execs "buddy up" to people in the forums? Er... what's that got to do with it?" To be honest, I don't take looser standards for CL than with any other company (and yeah, I know it wasn't pointed at me :) ). It's just that you have a huge pile of folks who are quite used to Poser 4, and now they gotta unlearn some things, and they have to learn others. The problem may not be bugs per se, but I suspect that it's a bag of mistakes and screw-ups we all commit whilst still learning, but frustration + pride = 'we're calling it a bug!' I admit that some things, like the lack of undo levels and such contain out-of-the-way bugs (undo levels IMHO is pretty damned minor in the scheme of things; fugg sakes, UnrealEd was as stable as a cork in a hurricane and had only a rudimentary undo setup... that's why you saved successive builds.) Anyrate, these are indeed items that could've been addressed, and may be patched yet, who knows? But others, like the Walk Designer, turned out to be something that Tim is alone in experiencing, with numerous other animators flooding this very thread with helpful suggestions and reasons why it may have happened (turns out he left IK on, apparently.) The rest, and even you will have to admit this, is a big ol' gangbang of complaints + mob mentality, fostered by the frustration of having to learn how to use this new thing. Like I said earlier... I dunno what P5 is like yet, because mine hasn't showed up yet (should be here today or tomorrow.) I'll figure oit out for sure, but I'm not going to come stomping onto the fora shouting "Poser 5 SUCKS!" every time I come across a stumbling block. As per CL? Shit, man - I agree with you 100% there. If CL can't take a little criticism, fugg 'em, that's their problem. If Poser goes under, something else will certainly take their place. In the big scheme of things, machts nichts. It's just that things are getting to be like one gigantic pity party in here, and since everyone is still learning this critter, there's no counterbalance to it. That is what winds up hurts a lot more than CL's rep in the end. /P PS: I honestly don't care anymore what Bill Gates does with his OS... After XP and with the inclusion of the stealth EULAs that came with the latest Service Packs allowing MS control over what's on your machine (DRM ferinstance), I refuse to use anything newer than Win2k.

I'm with you on that one. I like Win 2000 Pro. It seems to work.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

Wow, I can't believe this thread became this enormous! For some reason it stopped emailing me about the replies. (Just happened to come accross it searching for something.)

I'd love to address everything said here but it would take forever, and is just not worth it at this point. And thanks to those of you who understood what I was talking about back then ... I feel much vindicated now that pretty much everyone realizes what a stinker P5 really turned out to be.

20/20 hindsight ... choose a more mature title for a thread. Probably would have received a lot less (uncalled for) bashing. -Tim

Well, I can't resist addressing just a couple ...

Penguinisto said: But others, like the Walk Designer, turned out to be something that Tim is alone in experiencing, with numerous other animators flooding this very thread with helpful suggestions and reasons why it may have happened (turns out he left IK on, apparently.)

Uhhhh ... dead wrong. IK is not the issue at all. Plain and simple, the Walk Designer is still bug-infested like I correctly stated in my original post.

Are there workarounds? Sure, sort of. That was NOT the point of my original post ... which every blockhead on the ugly side of ignorance seemed to miss. I was (and still am) upset that Poser was supposed to be completely redesigned from the ground up. Bugs like this one, reported since the release of P4, were still there ... it was obvious to me and anyone else who ACTUALLY OWNED the program that it had not been created from new code.

Penguinisto also noted: "The problem may not be bugs per se, but I suspect that it's a bag of mistakes and screw-ups we all commit whilst still learning, but frustration + pride = 'we're calling it a bug!'"

What can I say, but WRONG AGAIN. It's patently (and painfully obvious) that P5 was (and still is to some extent) a bug-ridden piece of crap. I understood pretty much everything about the new features of P5. There was no pride, my friend, just a whole stinking pile of bugs.

At least Penguinisto was a little more constructive in his baseless attack then some of the others. ;)

-Tim

While I'm opening old wounds ...

Carolly's (typically) self-righteous comments deserve special attention:

"If you find that the Walk Designer is a crutch which slips in your grasp, why don't you throw the crutch away and rely instead upon your own talent and eye for movement?"

That's what I bought Poser for ... UH-DUH! Sorry we're not all blessed with being such a talented animator like you Carolly.

"As for the rest of your complaints? Some of us LIKE the interface. Most of us are tired of your bitching in any case."

Glad you speak for all of Renderosity. Especially love hearing those kind of comments from people who didn't even OWN the software. Nearly 100% of my observations were completely accurate, highlighting that Poser 5 was a rehash of Poser 4 with 3rd party apps untidily thrown on top. Which is now obvious to everyone, I'm sure even you.

Yet another laughable comment now that history has unfolded ... "The product has been out for 2 weeks. It may take a while to discover what shortcomings lie with the software and what lie with the users... just as it takes a while to discover the strengths of each."

The shortcomings fell entirely with the software.

Ahhhh, good ol' Time, the Great Vindicator.

-Tim

PS> I loved the King's Quest series!! However, King's Quest 4 (and 5, Absence) absolutely SUCKED. Dang, I slipped and said that word again. ;P

I know this is a old post but I have to reply.

Beings I have worked for a software company for the last 5 yrs, doing tech support, the one question that comes to mind. Have you reported your findings to the company, or are you just complaining?

Most companies do not know there is a bug in there software unless they are told about it. Even in beta and alpha test, they generally only test what has been reported.

Also, it is not like they break things on purpose, many times a fix in one area will affect how the code works in another area. It has nothing to do with competency or even paying attention to detail. This is something I have learn over the last 5 yrs. Before that I was a user of the program I know do tech support for, so I understand where your coming from, but know I also understand the other side of the coin.

Don't get me wrong, bitching and complaining isn't a bad thing, but if you want something done about it, you NEED to report it.

Renegade572 said: Beings I have worked for a software company for the last 5 yrs, doing tech support, the one question that comes to mind. Have you reported your findings to the company, or are you just complaining? Most definitely, yes, people have reported these bugs, see the P5-SR2 forum. However, according to some accounts, since Poser 3 and throughout the development of P4, ProPack and P5 CL have accumulated a database of over 600 bugs that have never been fixed or addressed. Given this its easy to see why so many feel frustrated. After all what is the point of putting in the work to catagorise and report a bug when, in all likelihood the same bug has been reported many times over a period of several years and in all likelihood will never be addressed. Poser's past developers (its effectively in new hands now) have never seemed to commit to bug fixes beyond those necessary to get the program up and running at a "reasonble" level of functionality. The culmulative effect of this policy over a period of many years has resulted in the mess that code is currently in. Sadly, the overall impression with P5 was that CL was forced to address many of the major issues as a result of the widespraad criticism, in this thread and others, hurting sales, rather than in response to genuine diligent and constructive bug reporting. Bill

ROTFLMAO! Nice try Tim, but you and I can both read the same thread. Incidentally - William, CL may be run by a bunch of nice guys, but that doesn't shield them from the consequences of their actions.They have to learn to sort out what's important and what isn't... and most of all to make sure their product works reaonsably well before it ships. /P

Poser 5 just confirms a theory I have on the quality of computer software. I will not elaborate at this time, I call it the GENERAL theory. I also have what I call the SPECIAL theory, on their perpetrators. Often wondered what happened to whats-his-name

Oh, come on ... stopping teasing us. Lay out your "GENERAL theory" for us. I need a good laugh now and then Cofee. ;)

But seriously, I use many, many software apps that do "complex" tasks. I can count the ones that are unreliable, buggy, and an insult to consumers in general on one hand: Poser, Lifeforms, Scala ... and Vue & Premiere to some extent.

The rest are rock solid -- may not have every feature I want in some cases, but are rock solid: Bryce, After Effects, 3DS Max, Mimic2, DeepPaint, Illustrator, Photoshop, PP10, ParticleIllusion, Vegas ... and the list goes on and on.

-Tim

Hello Members First of all I would like to say thank you to all of you. You have saved me $500.00 dollars in cold hard cash.That's what i like about this forum.Yes we did read all the posts and the one item that made us take notice.Is the fact that CL is using old code.We down loaded the first Poser program during the Meta Creations owner ship.It did have the same issue with owner registration and other options. Yours,Minosa

Hey all, I know this thread is ancient, and all water under the bridge now, but since I sorta took on the task of defending CL in it, I wanted to clarify one important thing: I completely agree with the principle of ranting - of complaining when something is unacceptable. What I find questionable is: * insults, rudeness, total lack of respect for someone; * paranoia that someone is deliberately doing something bad (e.g. poorly supporting Victoria import). So when I ask "what do some of the ranters here hope to accomplish"? I'm talking about the TONE of some rants, not the concrete content of the complaints. Granted, Poser5 initial release was ASTONISHINGLY buggy. No wonder it brought out extreme reactions! -- ToolmakerSteve (aka ssshaw) [I had given up on this thread in disgust; just now stumbled across it, realized people had some important responses to my comments. Sorry if I left the impression I was ignoring the responses.]

And consider the following thoughts. If Poser brought in tons of money, there would be resources to make it work well. If this niche attracted lots of customers, there would be multiple vendors, and at least one would be stable, and we'd all be using it, the others would have died. Why do I mention this? To shed some light on why things are the way they are. Not to excuse the release of shit, but in hopes people will look deeper at situations. Try to grasp why things are the way they are. Writing complex software is unbelievably hard. Consider the argument about the complexity of games, and how they are mostly stable, so why shouldn't Poser be? Quite right; though early PC games (actually, Apple II, Commodore PET, and Tandy) were ridiculously simplistic by today's tandards. However, games make money. So more games were made, and we learned lots of techniques for making them, and developed tools to help deal with the complexity. Well-trained teams of people carry out every aspect of game development today. It is unrealistic to compare that to Poser. Again, I underscore that I say this not to "excuse" Poser. I just wish people would see that their expectations may be unrealistic. What surprises me, is that it isn't until now that someone is finally developing what looks to be an effective competitor to Poser [DAZ Studio]. Despite the wealth of characters & clothes available for Poser, and how handy it is to load these, apply textures, pose -- are there really so few people who will buy such a toy/tool, that no one else bothered to make a better one? I guess it is because most of those with use for such, use the high-end tools... BTW, I am tackling the programming tasks needed to make a character animation tool. Bit by bit. If CL fails to fix the bugs by Poser 6, well then I'll integrate my pieces into DAZ Studio, which should be stable sometime in 2004...