Ok, guess I should jump in here myself and add my 2 cents worth as well.  Now, how many people can name a high end 3d rendering, modellling or posing program with an interface that is fully inuitative and falling off a log easy to learn and yet has all of the features you'd expect in a modern 3d rendering program, such as shaders and proper texture mapping.  An app so easy to use that it requires almost no documentation or training whatsoever and even someone who's never worked with a 3d app before can master it on their own in a matter of hours.

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Lol.. ok, having written more than my share of UI's in the past I can tell you from experience that it's not as easy as one might think.    The more the program can do, the harder and harder it becomes to make the interface intuitive.  For a program with say 50-60 features and options your hard pressed not to have some feature somewhere that an end user is going to find difficult to find and or use.

Now multiply that by a factor of 5 or 10 and you begin to see the problem.  A modern 3d posing and rendering program is a complex beast with a ton of different options.  If you want users to have that power then it comes at a price - and that is an increasingly less "intuitive" interface with each feature you add.

Sure, P4 has an easier interface - it's "intuitive" because it's what your used to using.  I never used P4 so odds are pretty good I'd be utterly lost in it's interface and find it horrible by comparison to P7, which is a program I'm most familiar with.  It's "intuitive" to me now because it's what I've learned to use.  

Much like Bryce's interface confuses me to no end, but I can fire up 3ds Max and be building models in no time.  Because it's what I'm used too - sit a Bryce master down with a copy of 3ds Max for the first time and watch the look on his face as he tries to work with the UI.  It's most frustrating because he knows what he wants to do and is sure the program must be able to do it, but doesn't have the foggiest notion where to start.  

I guess if P4 works for you then great, use it!  If it suits your needs and your application then I wish you well and hope that you enjoy it for years to come.   But having seen some renders done in P4 I can tell you that it doesn't suit my needs or my application, I need something that has a few more options when it comes to texturing, shading and rendering so I'll stick with what I know for now, and hope that the next revision will have features that I need at a price I'm willing to pay.

Stepdad