pppshhh..i dont CARE if it ever gets that good...i just remind myself that poser 4 was the one i fell in love with!! lol.. CD-RW;)

I dont know...we all have valid points, we all work hard, we all know what we would like to see in a program, but is it feasible? That depends...I cannot imagine CuriousLabs would jack up the price to cut its very large user base out of the loop. But there are ways to enhance it as well, for a little more, maybe, as opposed to a LOT more.

maybe if they had patches..??

In response to Questar. You have made some extremely valid points, but i feel that CL are going to have to do something about Poser's render engine. If my memory serves me well, they are doing something about it for Poser 5. I think that Poser 5 will have to be a big leap forward, but not in the league of Maya just yet. I don't think people are saying that you can get as good results in Poser as you can in Maya, I think it's more along the lines of we have the ability to create 'real' looking characters such as the Final Fantasy ones above. CL knows that the industry is fast going in this direction and they also know they can't afford to be left behind. Better character creation tools, yes. But better lighting tools and a better render engine too. Plugins could also be a possibility as seperate add-ons to keep the initial price as low as possible.

Maya just ENDED a sale. It was only $4700 for the basic software... I guess it's back up around 7K now. You want this level of renders, either learn texturing REAL well and buy a monster PC, or be prepared to pay a ludicrous sum of money for the software - or both.

I dont know CB, I think we are holding our own here LOL...

Syyd, you are one of the FEW good enough to APPROACH this level with Poser. I think there are like six others here, and another half dozen spread between the two main Poser sites. This level of realism requires more talent on the texturer's part than any special software or special advanced models, IMO. Even if CL gave us the exact models from Final Fantasy, how many of us really would even be able to APPROACH the level of realism/detail in the above renders? Maybe one in twenty - one in five if they included the actual textures?

Everyone is making valid points on both sides. Some of the Mike renders I saw above are stunning, and DO come close. The four main things that Poser has to overcome to begin looking as good as the FF characters are: 1) Rendering Engine / Lighting Shadows !!! 2) As many have pointed out, there is something wrong around the eyes, nose area. 3) The HAIR! Poser hair has come a long way, but the hair in FF is to die for! It is simply incredible ... and these are just the still shots. From the trailers I saw on the big screen, it appeared they could manipulate very strand if they wanted to! 4) Bump-maps. Take another look at the black guy above ... incredible bump-mapping. He simply looks incredible ... I feel like I could reach out and touch him. (He'd probably bitch-slap me if I tried ... the mighty Ving Rhames is playing him!) Bump-maps coupled with the right lighting/render-engine make a HUGE difference. I honestly feel ALL of these items could be dealt with in the next release, including a spiffed-up render engine. It will never be a 100,000 renderer, but even a minor improvement in this area would advance Poser renders light years. The hair would be the second major obstacle, but we're almost there now, so I don't think this will be a problem. -Tim

{I honestly feel ALL of these items could be dealt with in the next release, including a spiffed-up render engine. } I doubt they could address ALL of these issues and still keep Poser an "entry level" (i.e. less than $500) product. An improved Rendering Engine is allegedly in the works, but either there will be two "flavors" of Poser (Consumer, or <=$400 per seat, and Professional, or >$500 with all bells and whistles), or it won't be that much of an improvement. And while I'm certain the hair will be greatly advanced over what we now have, we're either $500 or two+ versions of the software from having something that "everyone" would be happy with...

I know this would not be true for everyone, but to me $500 would be a drop in the bucket! Compartively speaking of course ... it's still cheaper than most good 3D software out there (3DS, Lightwave, etc.) ... granted it's very specialized. After spening money out the whazoo on AE, Premiere and boatload plugins, $500 seems like a bargain. Assuming the rendering engine was a "mean-machine." I would still consider something around $500 close to entry level in the world of 3D animation. It would be nice to have two options $250 and $550 versions. -Tim

It's not just bump mapping, radiosity and specular mapping takes a play here as well. Out of all the functions available between bryce and Poser I really wish one of them would allow - even minimal - radiosity and specular levels. The new Cinema 4D XL7 has some very impressive lighting abilities built into it and the render options are truly stunning with volumetric caustics now a part of the options, if Bryce 5 comes close to this I'll be impressed enough to buy it as I can't afford Cinema 4D at the present time. The chances, and realistic problems with adding radiosity to Poser render engine would mean a complete rewrite of it's current renderer - but then I guess it wouldn't hurt to overhaul the thing anyway. It just seems strange that so many 3d apps allow specular mapping, yet neither Poser nor Bryce do this. I must confess that I'm surprised poser doesn't have specular levels seeing as they are so important to accurate flesh mapping - not just glowing bits on space-ships. Heh, and now I'm starting on things I'd like to see. I guess it just can't be helped. :) Hopefull, whatever CL do with poser 5, they'll manage to overhaul the program and still keep the price manageable. It would be a real shame to see this affordable package join the ranks of the other so called "professional" market programs, just because of the huge number of new toys that have been added. Perhaps better integration with other software would be a way to go - increasing the scale of poser objects to match those of other apps for import/export, and allowing greater compatibility when exporting to programs like Bryce and Vue - though if I recall correctly vue 4 now recognises and imports Poser pz3 scenes, and that has a hugely improved engine too. I do appreciate why people would like a better renderer in Poser, but I personally feel that the modelling aspects of this package would be better overhauled as there are other apps based on render engines that will always do the job better. Now, the real trick would be to make Poser animations compatible with an external renderer, so you can create the walk anim within Poser and export the whole thing to another engine to render it, rather than having to export per frame from Poser. Oh I dunno, I'm starting to ramble. Time for more coffee I think.