Quote - 2/19/08

Many of us who use Poser are hobbyists, or at least not professionals. I for one do not have a deep pocket of money, and no time or real need to learn how to use a dozen software packages.

IMHO, many more who use Poser are pros. I'm very willing to wager that nearly all of those who crack a snide remark in Poser's direction are either pros who use it in a pinch, or wannabes who like to pretend they're pros. > Quote - I have installed every version of D|S that has come out since I first became interested in CG, and I have uninstalled the software in one or two days. While many novices may find D|S easier to use, I (as a novice) do not.

Of course not - you're too used to the way it's always been done in Poser. No shame in saying so...

I could list a lot of reasons why I think D|S is easier to grok for the newbie (starting with multiple Runtime handling), but instead let me boil it down to the UI... it's laid out in a more intelligent fashion that Kai Krause's effort, and it doesn't require my setting aside a ton of desktop real estate just to get a good-sized viewport area. The tools are laid out in a shallow manner (meaning I don't have to go digging for them all). Many of the functions that require separate actions in Poser (e.g. IK removal, selecting base figure body parts, morph dial limits, or the act of conforming one figure to another) are automatic. Selecting an item in a scene, making it visible or invisible, or even parenting it only requires eyeballing one easy-to-read Scene Tab.

This is not to knock Poser at large... it was after all an experiment in User Interfaces. BUT... each and every Poser user in this joint (myself included) must admit in all honesty that their initial look at Poser was more than just a little opaque, to say the least.
  > Quote - And, D|S is not free. The base program may be, and a few plug-ins, but it is every bit as expensive as Poser if you want or need all of the available plug-ins.

Sorta... depends on what you want to do with it.

For the basic "hey, what's this three-dee thing all about"? newbie, it's completely free. Costs $0.00 to load a figure, compose it, add props and lighting, then render it. Now if you're already someone who has used Poser for eons, and you want dynamic this-or-that, and you want HDRI/AOL/IBL, okay... go buy Carrara 6 Pro. It'll cost about as much as Poser Pro, and it'll give you a far more comprehensive set of tools to boot (including modeling, and I don't mean Hexagon).

For the in-between folks? Meh - ye picks yer poison: Add plugins, or go whole hog. Overall you end up with a better value.

Quote - D|S and Poser are mutually incompatible. One may not be very well able to use Poser base figures or G2 figures in D|S, but DAZ figures all have known idiosyncratic problems with Poser. Problems that have been known for years and never get fixed.

I could just as easily turn it around and say that if the default Poser figures were even halfway comparable (and weren't warmed-over Zygote figs)...  I know eF/CP could churn out some decent figures fer cryin' out loud... Terai Yuki is living proof of that. But seriously - the default stuff kinda blows chunks in the flexibility department. Otherwise, why would anyone bother with Vicky/Aiko/yaddayaddayadda... ?

But, in either case the arguments don't wash as absolutes. After all, why should DAZ bother to try and make a figure 100000% compatible with a hideous and crufty codebase like Poser? Why should SM bother with R&D into default figures that basically come free with the package? > Quote - D|S is extendable through plug-ins, and I believe the SDK is free? So, why doesn’t an enterprising software programmer build a D|S bridge to and from Poser, and then each community can contribute more than just comments to the other community.

You mean things like the Poser Format Exporter (which is a freebie item @ DAZ)? Or perhaps the extensive Poser format importing capabilities that is already built-in to D|S?

Problem is, that flexibility has to go both ways to accomplish what you're proposing, and I don't much feel like paying $20k+ just for a copy of the Poser SDK, you know?

(I already know what the Poser answer will be: "use Python". That said, sometimes not every problem is a nail, but in this analogy Python is only a hammer).

/P