After a very brief acquaintance (about 30min.):

OpenGL works perfectly for me.

Renders are faster than in P5.

The overall feel of the program is smooth.

I'm impressed.

So much for first impressions. Now, I will see what I think after a couple of days.

My summary so far:

If you don't have it -- buy it.

Otherwise, it's your loss.

Long-time P4 user spends 1st day with P6. Everything works great! Why did I never buy P5? This stuff is wonderful - the interface has the same familiar feel as P4, the cloth room is AWESOME! Multiple libraries are AWESOME (I know, I know; these were available in P5) - speed is at least as good as P4 & theres some neat lighting things going on. I'm enchanted with it!

It is slicker and smoother than P5, to be sure. But the scene set-up tools are still very weak (no multiple selection, no duplication, still very poor undo). The new female is no Vicki-beater. It will be interesting to see if she gets any more support than the P5W.

the interface has the same familiar feel as P4 They went back to their P4 interface? If so, then that would be the only reason I'd buy. Please tell me they did a way with all the added crap P5 came with???

I've had to drop my hardware acceleration to get the firefly to work [same issue as p5]. I'm not impressed with firefly at all, no improvements over P5 there. That said the package as a whole and all the new stuff is really cool! I just wish they'd done more to Firefly :-(( Incidentally, system: Pentium 4, 3.4 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, 256 ATI Radeon x600 pro with latest drivers. thefixer poser coordinator

since you dropped your hardware acceleration, did you you change your preview settings in P6? then brought the HA settings back up? ppl have had a lot of success doing that...

No, but I'll give it a go, thanx Khai!! thefixer poser coordinator

NO they did NOT go backward to the P4 interface you better stay back thereon P4 and leave Poser6 to the serious power users.

I'm enjoying it a lot more than 5, that's for sure. Everything is faster and I've had no problems loading up any of my old content. I also like the Firefly presets. All in all, this is a much more usable program than 5 IMO. I just can't even describe how pleased I am with the speed boost thanks to OpenGL support. My only complaint is that it still doesn't support multiple undo's. I've no idea what's holding CL back on that regard.

Birddie - I don't know what the P5 interface is like, since I never got P5. I didn't know what to expect with P6, but to me the learning curve with P6 wasn't that bad because many tools still look familiar from P4. Sorry if I made it sound like P6 and P4 interfaces are EXACTLY alike -- they're not! Part of the reason I am happy with P6 is because I thought my several-years old Dell might not be powerful enough to run it, but it runs P6 just fine. That is not the case with DAZ Studio, which I can barely get to work at all. The suggestions for multiple undo's, better duplication, and selection tools are good ones, though. Maybe in P7!

Message edited on: 04/01/2005 07:08

Awesome! Totally awesome! There are SO many tiny little interface tweaks that make life easier, after 60 minutes, I hadn't even delved that deep and I was already very impressed. And I'm a satisfied P5 power user.

Well, finally did a test scene with Jessi - had that render cooking while doing other stuff. I'm impressed. I usually consider the default Poser content to be just fun freebies but coupled with the default P6 hair props, Jessi makes for fine renders. Just need a decent texture for her. However, for a Poser default character she's impressive. Haven't gotten around to fiddle with James yet though - it was kind of a mistake to have purchased Kielo just recently since I'm so engrossed in using her that I may not really get to do much with P6's characters for a while ;).

I also think Jessi is OK, and James too. I know everyone's machines and everyone's expectations are different, but I am happy with my P4 to P6 upgrade!

2 thumbs up from me. OpenGL is working great for me also. So far I am impressed.

Just found another nice fix last night.. when you add morphs, and are typing the morph name, if you want to add a space, it does NOT open up the load file requester! Thankfrickin god! Now I really want adjustable opengl texture resolutions (or at LEAST 1 higher res option!), and I also WANT auto naming of morphs based on file name, and that batch idea someone else had would be really nice!

NO they did NOT go backward to the P4 interface you better stay back thereon P4 and leave Poser6 to the serious power users. Excuse me? No problem, I have no intensions on upgrading to P6. I got better things to spend my money on. Nice way to talk to people who would consider buying it though, nice attitude you got there. so thanks for your encouraging words. Power Users??? Best one I've heard yet. Ah yes, the poser guru's hard at work always with their quick wit. The P5 interfaced SUCKED that's why I never upgraded and will continue happily along with PP. I was only asking a question nothing more.

So what's the difference between the PP and the P5 interface? I only briefly had glimpses of Poser 4 at a friend's place but never used. P5 was a program that I bought on a whim and I had no problems with the interface at all, other than needing to sort of "re-educate" myself to get to grips with it since I know how to use Lightwave, Softimage XSI, and Maya, Poser's way of doing things was quite unusual to me at first but nothing particularly brain-busting. What's so good about P4 and its PP then that makes so many users of it shun P5?

I've had to drop my hardware acceleration to get the firefly to work [same issue as p5]. I'm not impressed with firefly at all, no improvements over P5 there.

I've heard a couple of people say this. It's a bit odd to me, because I've not had this problem at all.

With the myriad of possible hardware configurations that are out there, I suppose that it's not unusual to run across difficulties like this in certain instances.

Unfortunately.

As for the quality of firefly renders, I haven't had enough time yet to evaluate it.

My initial post was to indicate my early first impressions.

BTW - It was a snap to transfer my P5 multiple runtimes over to P6. It took me all of about 2 minutes.

My friend had P5. It would crash, slow renders, the morph dials would freeze on them ect. Too many problems. They had brand new desktops, my friends are total geeks when it comes to this stuff. They always get the top of the line computers & upgrades. They hated P5 and went back to PP like a lot of people did. I will gladly stay with PP for as long as possible.

I have no intensions on upgrading to P6.

Unless if it's a money problem, and you simply can't afford to upgrade...........

.......then I would recommend that you reconsider.

Trust me -- P6 is worth it.

With P5, there might have been some legitimate gripes. But there are few with this one.

P6 is a true improvement.

As for the "attitude" of others -- right or wrong -- that shouldn't affect your personal decisions over things like software. Choose what's good for you. I wouldn't turn down a chance to own my dream car just because someone else gave me a dirty look.

Another thing -- the more RAM that you have, the happier that you'll be with P6.

Without a doubt, P6 demands more from your PC than either P4 or P5 did. But with a newer and better software, that's to be expected.

Well I'm sorry to P**s on the parade of Poser6 but so far it just isn't doing well for me! Don't get me wrong, I just love all the new stuff and it looks great on OpenGL preview but does that Firefly render engine suck or what! Just won't have it on my system and I wish I knew why!! Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with HT, 1 Gig of RAM and a 256Meg ATI PCI express graphic card. You'd think it would fly huh!!! Renders with the P4 engine no problem but you can't use the new stuff with that! At the moment it was a waste of my hard earned!!!

Does Firefly use any OpenGL features if you have hardware acceleration enabled? I ask because I've seen some people post about problems with Firefly (which are resolved when they disable hardware acceleration) and I've seen two of them mention they own ATI cards. I ask because it has been my experience with various other 3D content creation packages such as XSI that ATI's less than stellar OpenGL support tends to bring issues.

fixer I guess I got lucky then. I had the kind of problems you're talking about with DAZ Studio and was afraid I'd have the same thing happen with P6. For some reason it runs just fine for me on my old machine.

Pentium 4 3.4 GHz with HT, 1 Gig of RAM and a 256Meg ATI PCI express graphic card. You'd think it would fly huh!!!
Renders with the P4 engine no problem but you can't use the new stuff with that!

Once again -- that's just really strange to me.

My system doesn't have the specs that yours does -- other than the RAM. I've got 1.5G of RAM. And I intend to jump it up to 2G in the next couple of weeks or so.

P6 will use the extra RAM, especially when it comes to complex scenes.

I've got a suspicion that your rendering problems might go away with the first service release. Which will hopefully be out shortly.

Does Firefly use any OpenGL features if you have hardware acceleration enabled?

P6 gives you a choice over whether or not to use hardware accleration with OpenGL. Although they recommend hardware acceleration -- which makes sense.

I've got a dual-monitor card with 256M. I'm not sure about the manufacturer -- I'm not at home right now. I'll have to check. The card, like my machine, is a couple of years old.

2.53 Pentium IV, 1.5G RAM (soon to be 2G).

I'm going to wait a bit before getting a new PC. Another generation of processors needs to pass before the performance/cost balance will tip for me. Message edited on: 04/01/2005 11:15

Oh I do hope so Xenophonz. I just tried something that was in another post about Quicktime causing issues so I uninstalled it to try, and P6 ran much faster but the jury's still out on whether that was the issue. More testing is required tonight!!!

thefixer
poser coordinator

Message edited on: 04/01/2005 11:08

'Just found another nice fix last night.. when you add morphs, and are typing the morph name, if you want to add a space, it does NOT open up the load file requester!' Garee, That IS good news. I can barely believe CL have fixed that after only 10 years or so. I always instinctively press 'Esc' immediately after the spacebar. I may need to get out of that habit. mac

To TheFixer: you state: Incidentally, system: Pentium 4, 3.4 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, 256 ATI Radeon x600 pro with latest drivers. I have the same sort of machine as yours but with l.5gb ram ,only had it for a month now. My Graphic card is the same as yours. My driver shows verson: 6.14.10.6490. Is this the same as yours? Still waiting on delivery of P6 lol. Jan

Driver version dated February 22nd 2005 [6.14.10.6517] I just did a render in Poser5 firefly that Poser6 wouldn't touch with lower settings than Poser5. I tried it as a test, there's obviously an issue somewhere!!

There is a newer march radeon driver, and it included opengl2 compatibility... maybe update the driver?? Radeon drivers are updated every single month.