Quote - i was only wondering the cost of D/S, not the "Who is better",and i don't want a debate either, i just (like everyone else) want to render as cheap as possible, and i dont mind things being free and having to pay for extras, but i do want to know is will i be living in a card board box once i start that rollercoaster ride?????
Hell, im half way there already with poser,lol.

It's really going to depend on what you need. frankly between the free base program and the freebie scripts you can get away with doing a lot with studio at no added expense other then the content you already purchase for poser. at this point studio without any add-ons is at about a level between Poser 4 and 5, meaning that it has more advanced materials and renderer then poser 4 with displacement and raytraced reflection and refraction, and there are freebies for advanced shaders with more features and hdri that goes far beyond Poser 4(there is even a freebie shader construction room availible from a 3rd party as has been mentioned earlier), but dosent have dynamics or rigging as of yet and the animation capablilities are frankly still extremely basic. I think the added PW shaders add a lot to the material and rendering options so I would add that but there isn't really much more that you actually have to have to render stills. any added plugins add features that may be useful but are not absolutely manditory to make decent images. It's all dependant on what you are looking to do with the software. I still need poser, as Studio does not yet have rigging capabilities, but if I am going to assemble and render a scene I will reach for Studio becouse I just find it much faster to work in studio, it has tools that make posing a lot faster for me, but your milage may vary as they say. at the very least it doesn't cost anything to try it.