7. The mystic response... by lalverson on 6/22/03 12:08
One might as well ask if the sun will rise in the morning. I say that because with most things it really depends.

That seems to be a worryingly depressive point of view on whether you/i/we/the planet/the sun will still exist tomorrow... I'd hope the answer was a somewhat more predictable "yes"!

As to whether POSER has a future - a great deal depends on what obne means by "Poser". Poser 4, for example, has been around for ages and will likely still be around for ages as a character front-end for otehr 3d applications if nothing else. Grief - Poser 3 is still creating new users (that I know of) with free copies on magazines. So at least Poser 4 seems to have a future, in as much as many people quite possibly won't need to replace what works for them (perhaps).

If you mean "The Poser family" rather than a specific program like "Poser 4" or "Poser 5", then still a hesitant yeeeees. Poser 5, like Poser 4 before it, is still riddled with issues - but like Windows itself the benefits generally outweight the problems for many people. Whether future Poser products will come from Curious Labs or the product line sold on remains to be seen, but CL HAVE put some effort into improving the product... even if there's still some way to go, especially in the "inspiring confidence" department.

If one means "Poser-like programs" then DAZ are working on one. No rumour, it's called DAZ Studio. While the beta seems to be taking a surprisingly long time to come out (it's been in development since January 2002 IIRC and the first version is to be known to be incomplete in terms of features) it's interesting in much the same way as Poser 5 was interesting at about this time last year. Forthcoming, soonish, has some interesting features. MIMIC 2 has recently arrived, and I'd be willing to bet there's some common code between the two applications - which is both re-assuring and dissapointing (in terms of how much of a PC you need for the MIMIC/Studio working preview to approach real-time). Being designed to be extendable from the get-go, DAZ Studio has the potential to be a very different beast to the traditional Poser line - but with as assured a future as is possible without glass balls :)

So from my POV that's "Yes, yeeeesssss (maybe) and YES! Poser in various guises has a future IMHO - though the Poser of tomorrow may resemble the Poser of yesterday less than expected.