Ok, I couldn't resist and I just upgraded to Poser 8 , Mac version.

Well, I'm playing with it just now (the download took 12 hours, the download speed from Smith Micro is just slooow... ). What I've to say is that as usual they filled the package with a ton of beautiful toys, I'm just playing with a Zeppelin, there are also a lot of animals and a Plushy   ...

You know, we have some rules for commercial products at PF, we don't promote them but we discuss of the "basic tools", Poser, Daz Studio, 3D Max etc. are tools that we've to buy in order to make our pictures, while for example, a 3D commercial character isn't.

I've to say that I don't buy a lot but after crying for my money I found my plastic bag full and I'm pleased, just for it  

There are three packages included: the main application, the content and the legacy content, I think that the fianl result is the same on a PC or a Mac, on the Mac they come as separate DMG files to mount (you can even burn directly them to a backup CD/DVD using the disk utility)

First of all, Posette is included in the legacy package , the legacy package is about 1gb, with all the contents of the old versions, from version 1 to version 7, and it is good to know, because before Smith Micro (I don't remember who was the old owner, sorry   ) finding the old character was a though task . BTW Posette is there, I'm happy ...

The Poser 8 figures ar Alyson and Ryan. As usual I don't find the female model so beautiful (I prefer Posette   ) , incomparison with the male model is less detailed. The luck of this characters will be decided by the people that will support them, the last ones had not a lot of luck, too much competition with the DAZ products and it's really a shame because they have few if not nothing less than a competitor product (and these ones comes included in the main package...) but you know, the market has strange rules, not always (or rarely...) the best product is supported, with best I mean the one that worths more, money considered...

About the program itself... I've not yet tried the new features, but the differences are evident, the interface, even if the commands are the same is very well organized while the previous versions were a sort of a mess , I don't feel to touch anything here, it also fills pefectly in my monitor (it has the setting ready for my LCD monitor resolution). The categories are also better organized, you can see a list, when you drag the mouse over an object it expands and the thumbnail becomes bigger... I've also read that there is a method for a better organization of the content, that is just what I need   ...

Well, I go back playing ... I'll let you know what I'll find, feel free to ask

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It sounds very cool, can't wait to hear and see more of what you do with it
I now have a 20 inch widescreen flat pannel monitor, would it fill it nicely? lol

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I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to just try and keep control over this group of bozo's at the Nut house errr...Clubhouse! --Guilty Pleasures Chief of Bozo's

Ummm... you want to put Posy into the picture.... and then give us all magnifiying glasses so we can see her - that thing is HUGE!

First impressions I got with playing with Alyson is that she looks a little "stocky" - not fat, but somewhat shorter than she should be... or am I imagining it?

Also - there is a neat Mini Cooper convertable provided now... but try to change the top from open to closed, and you get a "missing object" complaint.  It is there, but mislabeled.

I do like how the interface is set up, though.  Looks nice, and is quite logical.

I'm still sticking with Poser Pro though until there are plug-ins for 8 that can get my stuff into 3DS Max without arguments.

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Am I the only one who thinks they named it Windows because it is a major pane? BA-DUM BOOM!!

Ok here is what I want to know. How fast is the render engine and does it CRASH like
6 and 7 does when you load a lot of stuff in it? I mean there are some software out there that can blow Poser away when it comes to rendering. This is very important when using animation. Something I think me and Leahman will have fun with in the future. (Kenny pulls out his wallit and dust comes out of it.

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Two wrongs don't make a right.
But six left turns will get you around the block
and back in the driveway again.

Hi Kenny, I used it only for a little while, and I use the Mac Version. Time is just the same ( I use 4 rendering threads ). The way it renders the scene is different, it doesn't split the scene in 4 but begins from the top and finishes to the bottom, when a "square" takes long it stops there a thread while the rest continue to render the picture... Actually I can't say that it worths the upgrade in terms of performance, honestly I can't see such a big step for humanity

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After playing a little with the new toy:

This thing is extremely resource consuming. The preview window is almost unworkable, with a complex scene it's simply stuck, and I'm using a quad core processor with 3 ghz for each one and a Nvidia 8800...

Sure, with the "indirect light" improvement in the render engine, the renders are better.

So, actually I can say that the game doesn't worth the money for it if not for the new 1GB of contents and the render engine, the "parented" morphs are something that one could already do with a body morph, the morphing tool that can "pass through" body parts is very good but it is slow if you use it in a complex scene.

In any case, I suggest to keep the olf version installed (Poser Pro 7 is very fast) and work on it, then pass the scene on P8 for the final render or for some touch ups .

It's a kind of delusion, I'll browse on other sites in order to see if there is something that can be changed in hidden parameters to make it more usable...

P.S. I read now that Wardrobe Wizard is included in this version, I never tried it, I'll let you know if it's usable on Posette...

There is already an hotfix available here I'm downloading it now and I'll let you know if there are any improvements...

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The first problems:

- It looks like P8 doesn't "see" the textures from some added runtime directories
- Installed in Snow Leopard (Mac, or, better, "Mac" ) it has a problem that I think it's connected to the first one: the content of the directory has become "funny", it doesn't show the full content, if one clicks "refresh" the number on the items included changes every time and insisting on refresh causes the program to crash

They should be known issues (I've already browsed the internet about it) and while someone says it's linked to the Flash version, it looks like an internal probelm of P8, so the suggestion is to keep a working copy of P7 o PPRO to prepare the scene and then render it with P8. In Snow Leopard it looks faster in rendering and also moving in the preview window seems faster...

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Poser 8 SR1 is out now - it should fix some problems.

Tnx Posfan , Going to take it  

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