You raise a good point, Miss Nancy.  I was just discussing the apparent shift of C4D in the newest release towards a definitely CA-studio target.  The prices are rising and the areas of enhancement bear [sic?] this out.

To the point, what are the Poser developer's goals?  The first instantiation of poser was as a simple posable 3D figure for artists who didn't have models to pose for them.  Now it is a pretty-much complete 3D figure assembly studio with animation and affordable render capabilities.  What is their goal in the pursuit of advancing Poser?

The thing is that Poser has two basic directions to take (being over simplistic).  It can flounder into a basic hobbyist CA app - possibly becoming just a source of content for other apps.  Or it can move to the next level - pricing about double ($600) and start to implement real support for rendering, undos, and other lackluster/archaic features.  Already, Vue, Carrara, and Daz|Studio have rudimentary Poser support void of Poser itself.  Cinema 4D as well (no comments).  In other words, the longer Poser takes to finally set its sights and move forward quickly, the faster the content will be consumed by other venues.

Dynamic Hair, Dynamic Cloth, OGL, Firefly, and so on were good solid steps forward.  But we're talking CA here - far, far, far better has been done in C4D, Maya, LW3D, Houdini, XSI in these respects (even if without the figure flexibility).  When CA professionals think about characters, they don't often think "Wow, Poser will work for this multi-million dollar movie!" - they think about the quality and quantity of features that far surpass Poser for doing a top-notch job (reality hurts - as much as I like Poser).

Poser, where do you want to go - eventually? :)

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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