Attached Link: http://geocities.com/internet_ideas/

About six weeks ago I visited Poser again after a long break. I was quite amazed how a few talented individuals had advanced with human and animal models and in particular Vicky. As a result of this I am in the process of setting up a company to use Poser mainly for animal models. But I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with Poser. All I see are software problems with PPP and Poser 4 , and from the posts on this site I also wonder just how good the help, manuals and tutorials by Curious Labs are. Then comes the big debate on software protection?? I don't like cracks, warez etc but taking all things into account I think that the Poser software is overpriced and this is the core of the problem. Let's be honest here. Most of the people who use it are not going to get the results you guys get and as such they are paying far too much for a program that is full of bugs and quirks and all you end up with is a bad electronic Barbie Doll. No wonder they try and steal it. Personally I would like to see Curious Labs produce a Pro Version that was bug free, had a male and female model about 4 times better than Vicky and included PPP. Also give it a new name to differentiate from Poser. I think that it would be worth about $US 300.00. and sell a bug free Poser4 for about $US 100.00 Curious Labs beware , because if 3dsmax or Lightwave decide to go head to head ,you could be doomed at the current prices you charge. After all no one seems to be able to produce the better Vicky/Mike models purely in your program anyway. I love Poser and its potential but from a tight assed business point of veiw it has a lot of problems.

tasmanet, considering all the ready-to-animate characters that are included with Poser, it's already a steal. It's one of the best deals out there even if you're just looking at it as a package of character .obj files. For Max or Lightwave, you could be spending about $300 for a single character.

Just to put this in perspective.

I don't know how Poser 4 satisfies the needs of a pro. But as an amateur, with lots of great ideas but admittedly poor artistic skills, Poser 4 is a wonderful program. After hours and hours of work, I have finally created my first character, who looks almost like what I had in my head. I'm thrilled to death. As someone who couldn't even create a decent-looking banner in Paintshop, that I created a person is remarkable. I'm absolutely impressed by the tools that Poser 4 gives me, and how easy they are to use. Easy is a relative term- I'm still on the short end of the learning curve. I choose Poser 4 because reviews said that it's easy to use, but I didn't even imagine it would be this easy. Granted, I couldn't have finished my first project without access to all the free items that others have graciously made available, and I have made more use of internet tutorials than the manual. And in addition to Poser 4, I have bought the Pro Pack, the Vicki and Mike models, and a few items through the marketplace here. So I have maybe about a $600.00 investment this hobby. However, for what I have gotten, I think that it's well worth the $600.00 I've put down. If someone were to offer a brain operation that would turn me into a competent artist, I'd be willing to pay well more than that. It would be nice if it were even less expensive. But I've bought office programs for about the same money, and probably not gotten the same value. Sometimes, quality costs and that's that.

No, it is very good value for the content you get with it. Some things are a bit of a let down i.e. don't expect a help file to pop up when you press F1. Cheers

Cheers, if you're looking for help your going to find tons of it here. No other program can boast so much support provided by fellow users.

Well, Do you Know the price of Character Studio?, and i think poser is better. I Think the software is expensive in general, but in the price software world, Poser has a good price. The same with bryce.

I also think exactly the opposite, Poser is one of the greatest values in software to come down the pike in a long time. And while there are bugs, some of them are just from trying to do too much. Things like the grouping tool and the joint editor didn't have to be in the program, they could have sold a "Pro Pack" (gee, what a name for a program) for making and modifing the models and a regular version that only let you work with prepackaged stuff- not make your own. Plus you also have all the animation stuff thrown in too, gee, what a buy! Compare Poser with 3D Studio Max, for example, and while surely it isn't up to Max, you would conclude it is worth say 1/2 or 1/4 as much, not 1/12, the actual cost difference.

Overpriced? hmmmm... And so how much do the competitive products cost? (and I believe most power users would agree that P4 (as opposed to PPP) is now virtually bug free.

Hehehe.... I know that JKeller, and very helpfull the community is too... but it would be nice to have a feature that even most freeware has LOL Cheers

I'm fairly new to Poser, and even though I didn't pay the full price for it (computer show), I have to say it is the first piece of software that has given me the ability to create what I really wanted to, namely humans. I tried for hours to get a figure in Max to be posable, but had nothing but headaches. Perhaps character studio would have been easier, but it still costs a lot more, and buying even one figure for it would cost a fortune. Poser is not overpriced, but there was one thing said that I do agree with, and that is that if one of the other companies does put out a rival product, and does it better, for about the same cost, then CL may have some problems. And in today's world, creating human characters is more and more an appealing thing. Just look at some of the movies coming out..."Final Fantasy" anyone? CL may eventually have some competition. The main thing that I would love to see in the next version of poser, or as a supplement to the current one, is a higher resolution model. I find the current poser characters to not have enough polygons. This is really evident in areas that, at least on this site's gallery, are used quite often, like the female's chest area. As for the joints, I would really like it if they found a way to make them more realistic. I hate those glitches in the mesh on extreme poses (like kneeling). Anyway, just my ramblings...hope it all makes sense. Dragontales

Hi Folks! Tas, I've been a professional graphic artist and multimedia producer for nearly 25 years. My weak suit has always been illustrating humans. As an animator I was great with cartoon figures, but making people that really looked liked people--well, not so good. Thank goodness for clip art from companies like Dynamic Graphics! My point is that with Poser I have a tool that enhances the value of both my illustration and animation projects. And while I do intend to purchase Lightwave later this year, Poser presents an ever-growing library of resources and a low learning curve for an affordable price. For perspective you should check out a copy of Poser 1 when it was introduced by Fractal Design. It was originally designed as a "posing aid" for artists. As it improved it caught the eyes of hobbyists. And it has continued to improve to the point that a lot of professionals now consider it an important component in their digital toolbox. PPP will probably evolve into a product that may provide results that are comparable to Lightwave on avatar modeling. But Poser was never intended to compete with high-end applications. And at a cost of roughly $200 and already demanding 128MB of RAM to run effectively, why should it? Peter (Dr Zik)

Sorry, one more thing... As an aside, I know that CL is a small company, and that after the Metacreations thing, Poser could well have dissappeared. I applaud those guys for keeping it alive and kicking. I also know that as a small company, sometimes funds for advancements and such as not the same as say Discreet would have for 3D Max. I would rather see CL combine with one of the larger 3D powerhouses than one day go into the dust. Imagine, the ease of poser combined with the power and pizazz of max or lightwave. Dragontales (perhaps I need to go back to lunch, I seem to be rambling...lol)

Poser as a means to an end, is limited. But then curious labs has made pro pack. Now you can easily port poser stuff into LW and others for doing all of the things poser lacks. Plus when you consider, that if you want to do serious character work you would be porting the obj files into modeling programs to make adjustments and modifications anyway. Dollar for Dollar Poser is as good a value as Bryce. As for business, why would curious labs want to reinvent the wheel and compete head to head with the likes of Alias Wavefront, Discreet, NewTek and a host of others. In professional production you would turn to those software anyway and import and export to and from programs like poser, (Character Studio, Messiah etc) anyway. Poser fills a niche and does so very well. If I can take a poser character pull it into lightwave, modify the mesh then bone it and animate it, I save the work of creating the entire model from scratch, This in it's self is a huge money and time saver. Poser also allows for the fast and easy testing of motions and character attributes before commiting the time in LW or other programs to finalize a animation or character. In the business time is a valuable commodity. Any tool that can shve the time spent on a project is worth every penny. In this aspect alone poser is a worthwhile product.

Poser is great and not overpriced ... compared to other cgi programs. For me, software is generally overpriced. But Studio Max, Lightwave and Maya are designed for professionnal. These products are expensive because the people who use them make money with them. So, why isn't there two prices : - one for professional, artists, and so on who get money from their work. - one for hobbyists ( not sure about the spelling :) who use it for pleasure. If Max was available tomorrow with a license forbiding to sell work, at 200$, I'm sure it would sell pretty easily... Why should a person who make poser babes for his homepage pay the same price as an artists who makes profit from the program. The real power of Poser is the models by Zygote ( I started to look interested by Poser when I saw the models in the version 3 ). You can't create a whole new model in Poser. Mike and Victoria are the greatest addons to the programs, and you got to buy them appart. Everyone complained at least once about the renderer. We live with the limitations of Poser, and know how to trick them. But we are all waiting for improvements ! But it's because Poser is the only one in the place. Otherwise, CL would need to improve it greatly... Mass-market customers just deserve limited product ?? Many people talked about the Pro Pack and its possibilities to export to Max and Lightwave. If someone can afford such a program, don't you think he just need the models. Curious Labs complains about the warez and sells a program which exports to the most pirated softwares in the world. They want to sell a lot of PPP and they know many of their customers got pirated versions of max and lightwave. They can't not be aware of that. ( sorry off topic ) So, is Poser a professional tool or a mass-market tool. It was clear with Metacreations, but I'm not sure of what is happening now. I think that for a teenager who makes cgi for pleasure, it's overpriced, but for an artist who gains money, it's a underpriced :) So... what is the market ?! joelegecko

Bah you're daffed man! I have 3dstudio and character studio. Do you know how much that stuff costs? Plus the learning curve on max and CS are huge. And try animation master. Sure it has better renders but again the learning curve and lack of support are enormous. As a pro I wouldn't use Poser. It makes no sense. If I'm a pro CS and max or lightwave or Maya would do so much better for the animations plus you would use high end models for pro jobs. What Poser does i give the common guy who doesn't have $1500 or more the ability to create something real and rather good in a fair amount of time. If anyone has seen my stuff, I really don't do use any other packages except poser and maybe max for props. With the immense community out there supporting poser most of the pic above was done with Volup Vicky, some collected props and some personal props.

P.S. Curious Labs is not a small company. It is a subsidiary of a much larger european graphics company.

Mason, I said exactly the same thing :) Max and Maya for pros, and Poser for the others... But it looks like Curious Labs want to make Poser closer to those platforms, but when you got max you just need the models. So, what is the target market now ? Still overpriced for hobbyists and underpriced for artists... Don't you think Poser lacks features available in free programs ( good shadows-lights-and so on... ). I've read hundreds of complaints about these lacks. Good program for the common guy. You're right. Don't mistake yourself, I love it. But as a legal user, I got the right to put my finger where it hurts. Concerning the community support, I know about it and I think I made my part for the community:) You have Max ( and Character Studio ). Great. Sure that for someone who can afford this program, Poser is cheap :) joelegecko P-S : don't want to start an online argument, that's pretty boring so I'm happy I don't understand " daffed "... ;)

I have to say I'm one of the few that agrees with tasmanet. maybe you guys in the USA are all rich but I reckon I have to think very hard when spending more than 100 (UK pounds) on hobby software. Don't get me wrong, it's a great product and compared with Max and such like it's reasonably priced. But I have to compare it not just with other 3D software products but things like a new power drill, a band saw, some excellent bottles of wine and all the other things that compete for the money in my wallet. I also believe that if it were priced at less than 100 then many many more people would buy it and it would become the de facto standard. Curious Labs would probably make more by reducing the price and a decent bit of advertising than they do at the current price. Visual Basic has beaten most of the competition (even when the competition is much better) by being cheap.

Actually pnevai, to tell you the truth, we ARE a small company. We have 25 employees now after starting with 8 only a year ago. And our parent company in Europe...they're about the same size and a good amount of their employees are only interns. Thank all of you on this thread for your support. It is very refreshing to hear after all the flame that's been circulating the past two days. We truly believe that Poser and PPP are a fantastic value for hobbyists & pros alike, and we have good plans for the future as well. Kind regards, Karen Carpenter Editor, Curious Lab Report

Joe, no-one is saying that you haven't made contributions to the community. I've been using your textures for Mike and, IMHO, they are the best.

I don't want to start an arguement either, but I do want to respond to what you said. No matter what target market they have in mind, it seems many markets have come to embrace Poser. Hobbyist and professional. I think the Pro Pack is a great way for CL to provide for the needs of the professional because it's giving them a tool that they can use with the software packages they are already using (LW and MAX) rather than trying to compete with those packages. MAX and LW don't have so many ready-to-animate figures, and rather than re-setup the Poser characters to use in those programs, its easy to animate them in Poser and then simply import them into you MAX or LW scene. Sure it might not be the best solution for a main character in Final Fantasy, but its perfect for creating a crowd of characters that sit in the background of your scene.

For hobbyists as myself who are able to afford a more powerful program like Lightwave...they may love Lightwave's render engine and modelling tools, but they might not be ready to rig up characters and animate in Lightwave yet. Poser Pro Pack allows me to do what I have been doing in Poser, but also take advantage of the supperior rendering, lights and cameras in Lightwave.

Also, from what I've read, it looks like they may be implementing a raytrace render engine in Poser 5...they are listening to those hundreds of complaints.

JKeller, you're right ! I flamed Curious Labs while I'm using their product quite everyday... I read earlier posts from CL employees, and I understand their situation. I ask them to apology my previous post full of anger... When I bought Poser, it costed me quite a month of salary. It was a hard period for me, but it helped me improve my skills ( there's still a lot to do :) and later, to find a job as CG artist. I'm sure Poser 5 will be great, but I still think it would be better to improve the program than the protection, and to make an all-in-one program with great features included instead of export functions. I understand than setting bones is a long process ( just to mention this one ), and importing .pz3 files should be great :) But among the whole user community, how many percent got Max or Lightwave ? ( I'm talking about legitimate users ). I think that a cheaper price would help Poser to sell better. Still overpriced for hobbyists ( who can't afford Max ;) and underpriced for artists who make money with it... Thanks JK' for making me realize that flaming this team I respect was not the solution. Will send a mail @ CL in order to be flamed too :) joelegecko

One of the best things I've found about Poser (since I've had it since version 1) is being able to communicate directly with the people who made it - not just some bloody helpdesk person like at a huge company. It's great how much CI has paid attention to its user/artists - so much that they lurk here too :) Lyrra

I do agree Poser could do with better material rendering settings. Not everything is smooth shaded in the world. Plus a light map would be awesome along with the bump and reflection maps. Also an ambient light would be great. Sometimes I don't want the three spotlights only for lighting a scene. Anyway everyone will argue price point. College kids will argue its not under $50. Average people will argue its not under $200. I still say compared to any competition out there for figure modelling nothing else comes close except maybe Animation master. I don't think lower price point will prevent all thefts. Winzip is like $15 or $20 to register and a lot of people don't regsiter thier copies. If the warez thing is so popular then people out there must be feeling its a great package to have or at least steal. Also, Joe, no arguement. Just joking about the daffed comment. Old saying for nutty.

Joe Le Gecko, thanks for your apology on this thread and the email you sent. :-) We are definitely working to improve our products and always welcome and appreciate your suggestions. Please keep them coming, we ARE listening. As it's almost the end of my day and my eyes are burning from reading all these posts, I'm signing off. And again, thank you all for your postitve support. Regards, Karen

Lyrra, Joe, I do lurk a lot but try to stay out of most threads. Most of the time the questions get answered before I even have a chance. Especially the tech questions. I get a lot of private emails that keep me busy. It's really nice to see the community that has grown up around Poser. The fact that people get mad or really upset and flame us, used to bother me, but what it comes down to is that those people are really passionate about Poser and love the product. They care! What more could we ask for? I'm getting all teary eyed now. **************************** Steve Yatson Product Manager Curious Labs Http://www.curiouslabs.com ****************************

Poser too expensive??? is this a joke???!!! I dont want to sound like some wealthy elitist but this is not an expensive program!! Any one who thinks they are paying too much for poser should to go to the zygote website and see what they will pay for what is essentially slightly modified version of DORK!! or Posette!! the prebuilt models alone make poser a tremendous value!! not to mention the clothing for them And now that I have Micheal and victoria and there many built in morphs and the propac exports the models as native lightwave objects I have an UNLIMITED!! amount of human characters and some cool robots and animals to rig and render in my seat of Lightwave 6.5. Mocap

Hell, anybody look at the price of Photoshop.... I'm not sure, but I believe it's around 600 or so dollars...and that's just a 2D paint program. Powerful, yes, but still a paint program. Dragontales

E Gads! Another unknown CL employee (Karen Carpenter)uncloaks before our eyes. I love when that happens. :-) Anyone else lurking out there? ScottA

Poser over-priced?! I think not!! Poser began for me as an affordable way to learn graphics programs, I wanted to learn how to see the images I had in my mind come out in some fashion and because I had never been able to pursue art as a means of making rent it offered a way to both learn more about graphic art AND computer 3d modeling...and begin I did do...consider that along with poser the program there has developed an enthusiastic community of users AND dedicated company to keep Poser moving forward into the future. I have never once felt that poser was over priced, and now with the great customer care and support from Curious Labs this program is advancing even more in terms of its usability. I look back on my first images and I feel like I have really advanced....I know it is from the wonderful program support offered by all the users...and that is really part of the price in the final analysis. Poser is easy to use...really! Curious Labs is extremely responsive to its users and the price remains affordable. I realize also that to preserve the ability for users to update/upgrade features at a reasonble price the warez problem must be solved, I may not personally like it, but I feel confident at this point that CL will remain responsive to the investment I make over time....we will work out the security issue and I trust that they will be reasonable in terms of the user. I think it is still a huge bargain to have a program that comes with its own online super-extended support. Look at all the opportunities we have with Poser stuff coming from within our own community of users!!!! the stores are popping up and include wonderful selections of things....we have even developed a huge bank of free models, morphs and textures. At some point we have to consider the extended support as part of the price, at least in my opinion. Now I personally do not have $1000.00+ for the high end LightWave, but with poser I have learned soooo much about 3d modeling programs, 2d graphic post work, texture mapping, morphing, making things poseable...copyright stuff, ...along with the basic lighting, pov, and how-to-make-the-3d-figure render into an integrated work. No siree-bobby! Poser is cheap for what you get!

Pretty much all of us do to some extent. Karen is another former Meta person that's been around for a while. **************************** Steve Yatson Product Manager Curious Labs Http://www.curiouslabs.com ****************************

I agree with the majority here. I've been using Poser since version 1, and it has come SUCH a long way. I applaud the developers for making a program that allows us artists to incorporate humans and animals (and combinations thereof) into our artwork with very little effort. Initially I got it so that I could incorporate humans into my other 3D work with Max or Bryce (or any other 3D app), because right now I can't model a human figure that's worth a hill of beans . But I have SO much fun with Poser on its own that I find I literally use it daily. I, too, have learned a lot from Poser. But the biggest value that I find in it is having the ability to create an ENDLESS number of different characters. The stuff that comes "in the box" is sufficient to create them yourself if you want to really dig in and get your elbows dirty with morphs, magnets, and other modifications. But for those of us that don't want to deal with all the techy stuff there are always the freebies and other add-ons that you can download or purchase through the various Poser-related community Web sites. There is indeed great value for the money -- go out and price how much it would cost if you went out and purchased a male, female, child, and baby model, along with a various assortment of animals (dog, cat, horse, lion, wolf, dinosaur, fish, snake, etc). Add to that the time that it would take for you to make each one of those models posable in your 3D software. On top of that, add the time it would take to create clothes and hair for those people. And the add-on characters that are now coming from DAZ3D as well as other community members make it that much MORE cool ... Michael, Victoria, the upcoming Victoria 2, Natalia, Natrixa, Solondra, and all the Michael and Vicki variations add so much more to the package if you want to pick up the extras. I have experienced more pleasure out of this one single 3D app than I have with any other graphics program I own. Max included. And for that, I thank the folks at CL and hope we see Poser for a long time to come. Denise

Attached Link: http://www.weirdass.net

Software is intellectual property authored by an individual or virtual individual (corporation). That individual has two choices- give it away (linux) or protect it zealously. Code, good code, is an artform. If your art was stolen from... say the art gallery, and became an image for the history books (r.Crumb Keep on truckin, most widely ripped off artwork in recent times) without any financial compensation... how would you react? I've been away for a couple of days, and find this whole controversy rather odd. Curious Labs owes us absolutely nothing except creating more and better refined products for us (their user base) to purchase at regular intervals. Support, tech- all this is an investment for them in their market share. If corel comes out with a new package called "posing" or adobe introduces "poserpeople", how loyal will you feel to Curious without this "community" and their efforts to maintain it? Copy protection will be a pain in the ass. It will also close down a significant number of people who discover Poser through those warez and fall in love. Those in love usually buy the next version, sight unseen. Kai Krause, former lord of Metacreations, used to consider his power tools and bryce to be ethicsware. If you used it more than once a month, ethically you had to buy it. That was long ago and far away. Ultimately, Curious will do what is necessary to put food on the table. You decide with your dollars whether or not to eat. Its called capitalism. Mitch

I've been really vocal in my complaints about the Pro Pack's shortcomings, and frankly, I stand by them. It needs serious work and I'm sad that it was released so soon without this work in place. BUT, at the same time, I want to be among the many to acknowledge that in general, Poser is an EXCELLENT value in software, and the people who put it out and maintain it deserve our thanks and support (albeit with an occasional side dish of grumbling over needed changes and security methodology). Saying Poser is overpriced is just plain goofy. Likewise, Pro Pack will be worth its price WHEN it works. And you'll hear me say so publically as soon as it does. CL, I hope you all are not demoralized by the spirited debate here, and I hope you continue to strive to make your products better. --

Weirdass, LOL. Thanks. Just seeing weirdass.net made my day. HS that's funny, and a very well done site. **************************** Steve Yatson Product Manager Curious Labs Http://www.curiouslabs.com ****************************

Servo, It used to bother me when people were pounding us. But I came to the realization at some point that they did it because they care about what we do. I've read your posts and I believe you've sent me at least one mail outlining your issues(I get a lot of mail). You've had legitimate concerns that will help to make a better product. I think the Pro Pack does work. Obviously it's not perfect or we wouldn't need an updater, but it works. **************************** Steve Yatson Product Manager Curious Labs Http://www.curiouslabs.com ****************************

Attached Link: http://www.angrymob.net

Expensive compared to what? Max out of the box is $2600, then you spen $1500 on CS, $200+ each on 5 or 10 more plugins. Oh yeah- no 3D models of consequence either- that cost $300+easy for each model. Good luck doing character animation in Max, & learning in your spare time. I'm sure there are cheaper apps than Max, but there are more expensive as well. People do not appreciate how tough creating quality 3D characters of any measure of photorealism is to create & animate, clothe,etc in other apps. And how many hours of developement & debugging are we suppose to get for less than we pay now?? Programming is very time consuming. I love Poser.

Well that got you all stired up. Tasmanet :]

To Steve Yatson: I dont do many stills i am primarily an animator and while i eagerly await the propac updater to FIX my Lightwave hosting on the MAC platform frankly the motion blur, multiple veiwports,flash export, bone rigging system, and lightwave object export for me has made the propac well worth the $149 i paid for it.. Mocap

Maz is right in saying that Poser can be considered expensive as something for the hobbyist. However, expensive and overpriced are two different things. For all its still remaining bugs (some may call them glitches) the value one gets from Poser 4 is extremely high. If I did an analysis of cost-per-hour-of-enjoyment of Poser against some other things, I think Poser would do very well indeed. As far as I'm concerned it was money very well spent.

Phantast, you're right. I think I wanted to say expensive instead of overpriced ( which refers to a relation between cost and quality :). I never regreted any cent invested in Poser or the Daz' models, but I wanted to point that for common people with medium salary ( those who can't afford Max ;), it makes a lot of money. Mocap, some years ago, I was earning far more money than now, so when I bought Photoshop and Premiere I did not find it was so expensive, while I could not even buy them now... so I was refering to people with medium budget... Dragontales, yes, Photoshop is more expensive than Poser, but it's designed for professional artists who earn money with it...don't you think many Poser users don't make money with it? Clsteve, wow, still sorry and ashamed for flaming CL, while I love Poser and think that for the use I have of it, it's really good priced. Really want CL to have more legal users. Mason, no offense, none taken ;) joelegecko

"Poser software is overpriced and this is the core of the problem." As stated earlier, as compared to what ? Your looking to drop about $7500 on Max and $5000 on LightWave to get them to do everything really well. "Let's be honest here. Most of the people who use it are not going to get the results you guys get and as such they are paying far too much for a program that is full of bugs and quirks and all you end up with is a bad electronic Barbie Doll. No wonder they try and steal it." LOL, I personally haven't seen a program yet that didn't have something wrong with it somewhere, well except for some very basic rudimentary programs. Actually, Poser is one of the better behaving programs I've seen. The major hurdle most people face is acquiring the skills necessary to achieve the results they want, this isn't a software shortcoming, and it is more pronounced in the higher-end, more complex programs. "Curious Labs beware , because if 3dsmax or Lightwave decide to go head to head ,you could be doomed at the current prices you charge." Don't hold your breath on that one. As to the warez thing, comparing Poser to Max or LightWave is like comparing apples to oranges. With the ease of use and availability of so much "stuff" that is ready for use, the chances that Poser warez would eat into legitimate sales would seem to be an obvious conclusion. Will this new copy protection stop piracy of the program ? No, but it will prevent most of the casual sharing(multiple copies at a site or the friend's copy syndrome) of the program which I suspect is a bigger problem than warez downloading. As to Poser and 3D being an expensive hobby, sure it can be, but try raising some horses, talk about a money pit. /my slightly sarcastic point here is that it is all relative/

I have to say: My first foray into CG was via Painter 6 that I just happened to see in Comp USA one day, and bought. And that led me to Poser 4, which I bought from Meta C a few months later. Well, THAT led my into this amazing world of 3D CG, which has led me and my artwork into an area I never before even knew was possible. Without Poser, I would still be doing what I was starting to get quite burned-out on.... Had Poser been in the price range of, say, LightWave, well, I possibly never would have gone in this direction. :( Poser is about the best deal, software-wise that I can imagine! And you know, CL COULD be charging 5 0r 6 hundred dollars (or more!!) for it, but they're not. Thank you CL, for helping me to find a better path to follow through life; without Poser, my art would still be 2D........