Dear Opinionated,

I tracked down your rant nodding the entire way. Thanks for unleashing your intensity.

Even though I agree that P6, with or without Wings/Shade as more-or-less a modeling plugin, will NOT end the current game of "fake bondage packages for V3 & M3" and "little-girlish faces with pouty lips", hopefully it will move it off center enough so serious people coming into the Poser world will understand that it is a sideshow and not (as it is now) center stage (I know I said this above). Perhaps, then, gradually, many of the items on your list will begin to appear.

Carolly, I have another possible ray of sunshine. If the morph package for J&J is excellent (or a vendor ala 3Dream creates a great one for low cost) then we may see the birth of a mini-movement of freebie/low cost distinctive 'characters' for J&J that are simply reshapes, without texture change. This might be accompanied by tutorials and exhortations for new people to learn to do this for themselves. Then, there might emerge more ambition for people to learn texture manipulation. I am describing a "path" for intermediate Poser competency that has nothing to do with buying one's way in and pressing the Make Art button.

Anyway, much as I agree with everything you said, there is also another reality for those of us who are serious about deeper tools: the 'pouty game' drives sales of Poser. That revenue might be just enough to provide CL the space to continue infusing better and better tools. CL is NOT resting on its laurels, but rather making serious strides for betterment.

About Aragorn, I concur. Besides the impossibility of the stubble you astutely pointed out, there were other elements of his characterization that irritated me. I simply did not feel enough of the nobility of one born of the blood of both Eldar and Edain and raised by Elrond. He was more like a prosaic Hamlet. Some of this had to have come from the actor himself, some from Jackson of course. But rolled into this -- and I submit rolled into the current discussion about Poser characters deeper than the trite -- is the problem that Western Culture has eschewed The King. Kingship is not embraced; it makes the mundane citizen of our 'west' uncomfortable. I think you know that I speak of a certain interior kingship, one Professor Tolkien possessed, but which is dormant in the culture today.

::::: Opera :::::