I have tried two earlier versions of DAZ Studio myself, the first just didnt work but the second did, although it used more resources than even Poser did.
I am wondering now that it has been through a few more updates what the users opinions are, I use Poser, Vue and Mover myself. I love Vue but poser is a dinosaur, I'm not fond of Bryce, but at its current low price and Daz Studio's zero price I am very tempted, if only to escape from Poser.
So I'm interested in what do the Users think, ie what do you find works well and what doesnt?

I like it a lot. I hardly ever use poser anymore unless I need to do something that only it can do. So far I havent had the need to do that.

I find it far too slow and buggy, plus until it can handle magnets (or an equivalent) I have no real interest in D|S

There's a couple things I love about D|S : 1) Transparency shows up in the RT preview - Poser's transparency "dots" makes posing stuff like hair a real pain (but it does slow the D|S RT down). 2) Multiple Selections - for both Posing (great for hands so you don't have to bend each finger) and for texturing. 3) D|S file format is a fraction of the size of a .CR2. I had a 21MB Poser file shrink to 1.9MB in the D|S format. 4) DAZ is churning out updates every couple of weeks - while there are still bugs, they've been doing a good job of squashing them. 5) DAZ has said it wants to put posing of DAZ content directly into Bryce via a D|S plug-in. 6) And of course it's free! The biggest problems I have with D|S is: 1) Conforming stuff is often off (ie body parts poke through that doesn't in Poser) and can be really difficult to fix 2) The renderer is really slow 3) RT posing of body parts is really twitchy and often kinda odd although the dials work well. Quite frankly I hope someday I can give up Poser all together 'cause all I want to do is pose DAZ content for use in other apps. Near as I can tell CL is going towards an all-in-one solution which really doesn't do much for me. HTH; Dan

Is there any clue as to when the importing of animations will be supported?

"DAZ has said it wants to put posing of DAZ content directly into Bryce via a D|S plug-in." that will be some plugin as bryce cant actually do animating like that as it stands. mouser said that poser is a dinosaur, but daz studio is not really any better as far as I can see, it might have open gl but so far at least it doesnt have animation and when it does it wont be free. Poser 5 and the correct use of the texturing and the procedural textures could do anything that daz studio AND bryce combined can do.

To me, DS is just a small subset of Poser's functionality (with the exception of the GL preview). I feel very limited in DS, coming from P5 I miss my materials, atmospheric lights, dynamic stuff, etc - all the bells and whistles. DS just covers only a very basic "purchase, pose and render" workflow, and it's obvious that it's a work in progress (one release has displacement, the next hasn't, one has raytraced shadows, the other hasn't,...).

Attached Link: turnover

Without comprehensive animation tools (Dope sheet and graph editor with realtime feedback) this DS program is basicly useless from my perspective. :-) IM just glad I still have poserpro4 and cinema4DXL 7.3.3 installed on a separate drive so can at least get my DAZ/poser content into Cinema4DXl

A point was made about Bryce and animation limits, I am not that literate with Bryce having only used a demo version in the distant past. My question now is related to Bryce and animation, I am mostly interested in animation myself. Is there any more informed info on the subject of Bryce's animation abilities or limits?

With bryce you can animate skies and (I think) materials. The 3d object animation, however, is quite basic. You can animate an object moving along a path or rotating etc, but you can`t animate morphs and it has no bones either, these are things that, if added to bryce, would make it a much better program IMO.

Until Bryce gets a new faster render engine its just not practical for animation IMHO :-( some of us dont have multi seat render farms and waiting days for simple 240 frame animtions is just plain ridiculous!!

Attached Link: http://www.rendermagix.com/trinity/index.htm

Well to date daz studio is at beta 0.9.4 and every version that comes out is better then the last the rendering has speed up and alot of the most anoying problems have been taken care of. as for the bryce plug in it is at the moment available for bryce from what i read at Daz3D they intend on improveing bryce D|S and mimic to someday be almost all in one in D|S you create the character and set it up, in mimic you take care of the voice animation and sound and in bryce you create an imersive and realistic world for your character to be in all togather there idea for the future of these programs sound wonderfull to think with little work you can create an entire animation with realistic world daz3d has always said that D|S is and never was intended to be a replacement for poser but instead more like a helper program or assistant progrma it make all this content easier to handle and work with. but do keep in mind that Daz|Studio is in BETA that means that it is not complete and they arnt going to add all functunailty right away so that they can have something to make add ons and plug ins for in the future they did mention that that is the only thing about D|S that they will be chargeing for is the plugins. dont expect it to work perfectly that is what beta testing is all about its so us the consumers can put D|S through the entire shebang and tell daz what needs fixing so that when it is released in its full state that it wount be bug ridden like poser always is and other programs are.

i hope my babblings have helped somone i know most of this has been repeated so many times in so many diffrent forums but as long as people ask it needs to be said.

on another note there is a web site that has released a plugin for maya to be able to use poser content even without poser it is in its earlie beta testing right now and is very bare bones but what they have achieved is amazeing it imports morphs characters props and mats all into maya and you will be able to pose morph and render all in maya and from the pics on there site (especialy the egyptian one) the outcome is almost too real :)

Message edited on: 08/05/2004 14:13