I am rather curious where the notion comes from that the base figures are the dough boy and dough girl   Sorry to disappoint you all but they're still Sydney and Simon G2.

And the purpose of the hated pair isn't production anyway, so it seems that a lot of attention is drawn to these two for no particular purpose that I can see.

Heck, the default workspace opens with good old Simon there with a two day growth of beard!

Blackhearted, yes there are rigging limitations in Poser which were faithfully copied into DAZ Studio.  For the moment they aren't going anywhere.  Too bad too.  But the focus on these two characters isn't going to get the developers to work on the rigging because no one is complaining about that.

The UI is awful to be sure.  Though I can't say DAZ Studio exactly screams UI heaven either.

Oh, and if you need it, the P7 content is a download away so no problem.

Now, onto one day of more or less playing with PP after a long download.

This thing loads lightening quick compared to P7 even on Vista.  OpenGL works just fine here.

Overall the program just feels faster and looks better with OpenGL actually functioning now.  Perhaps that's the on the fly gamma correction too.  It takes up the P7 runtime without a hitch.  It finally looks like switching between runtimes won't be a major pain in the butt to do and this is only 32bit.

Renders are quicker wtihout the lags that used to occur.  I sent a small one to the background and that felt really good to actually work on something else till it was done.

In one respect it's good to see people respond with such passion to a piece of software.  It doesn't happen that much anymore.  I've also been around long enough to remember, and have taken part in, doomsday threads like this one.  In spite of it all Poser is still here.

And, remember, this isn't P8, it was never intended to be.  The promo stuff released last fall pointed out that it isn't for everyone, it isn't an upgrade, it's a more professional version with more professional features that the developers have been asked for.  That's what they said they'd deliver and, as far as I can say with such limited exposure that's exactly what they delivered.  So far, so good.

It strikes me that if we want improvements in things like character rigging so that soft tissue, for example, behaves like soft tissue perhaps a thread for a wish list for Poser 8 should be started.  Now that ought to get the attention of the developers.

ttfn

John