I've been a very happy Wings3D user for years, there's nothing I haven't been able to make with it for Poser, and nothing I couldn't map (unwrap) pretty well.

But I recently decided to expand my horizons and check out more sophisticated tools, I wondered if I was taking unnecessarily long in wings to do things that would be quick with other applications.

I first checked out Rhino, partly because it talks well to a parametric solids modeller I use for other stuff. I concluded that Rhino is a super-capable modeller but I didn't like the interface much and I don't feel it is ideally suited to making low-poly poser stuff. Moving models to Poser and back also isn't as smooth as Wings.

Then I tried Silo but I didn't feel it was enough of an improvement on Wings to justify investing time becoming fluent with it.

Next look was Hexagon1. It has a much prettier 'face' than Wings and some cool tools, but will I be able to make better models faster than in Wings? Frankly, I'm not sure.

Now I have the demo of Modo which looks very cool, and the upcoming release looks VERY nice - fancy renderer an' all (things like instant ambient occlusion in the modelling window etc).

What I've found with poser modelling is that I spend a heck of a lot of time 'fine-tuning' and tweaking to get things just right, remove unnecessary edge loops to get the count down, adjusting the fit of things, getting the look just right etc. I spend much longer on this, at vertex level, than I spend creating the initial form. So whether I start with a box or a patch or a nurb or a spline or whatever (in whatever fancy application), chances are I'll still want to fiddle with the verts for hours after the basic shape is there.

And chances are I'll end up fiddling with the verts in good ol' Wings, because it is so good at that close-in adjustment stuff and the selection tools are so superb. And then when it comes to UVmapping in Wings it's just an extension of the modelling process, not a whole new thing to learn.

So I'm probably looking at adding another modelling application to my toolbox, to help out where wings struggles, but I don't see Wings retiring anytime soon because I haven't yet seen anything that is EVERYTHING that Wings is, and more.

Oops, didn't mean to go on so long ...  ;-)