Yowza, that's quite a scene. Nice! Big, yes, but nice. Surely some fly-thrus are in order!

Poser used to have some memory problems in the old days under Win 98 since it relied on the Windows memory manager, rather than implementing a custom system of its own. Not a problem for most programs, but for programs that accessed large amounts of RAM in a huge chunk- such as most 3D programs, and things like Photoshop- it caused them to behave erratically when trying to address memory beyond what the Win mem manager was designed to address; sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, pretty much on the flip of a coin. Also, earlier versions of Poser seemed to have a problem releasing empty memory back to the system after allocating it, which is why it sometimes reported "out of memory" errors even on supposedly empty scenes or even just re-rendering a scene it had already done.

I guess these things have been mostly fixed now, but it just goes to underline what I said about Poser being fundamentally unchanged since P4. I mean, there are DOS programs that still technically run under modern Win releases but they generally make a poor show of it. Every now and again, you need to write a new version of your program to take advantage of the APIs and so on that become available, otherwise you're effectively running under emulation or legacy code which is far from ideal. That's why Poser desperately needs a core re-write and why D|S- if not quite up to speed yet- has an inherent advantage in the long run.

True, D|S has had a few short years under its belt now, but from what I understand it has a fairly small programming team working on it and they have a habit of releasing versions very often, so new ideas can be tried. And you know what's the best part about it? You can actually tell the developers involved what you think and get a response. You can actually post an idea and see it implemented in the next release. That fact alone is worth so much.

I do take on board Mariner's points, though. I can understand the attraction in buying a product for a one-off fee that includes all that the technology allows. After all, you've got it all in front of you and you don't need to spend any more. However, as I say, I do expect some of what now goes out as plugins for D|S will become integrated in future releases; it's happened before after all. Besides which, even adding all the plugins to D|S doesn't exactly break the bank, and it is the model that many other programs work to.

Also, buying parts of the package a la carte does have some good points: for one, you can save money on what you don't want (I never, ever use the Face Room in Poser for example) which means DAZ has a product to fit all budgets and tastes, allowing them to produce a free version of what is, after all, some pretty cool software. It's not unlike the situation with games consoles; in their case, the hardware is sold at cost or at a loss even, and the revenue is clawed back through sale of the content. DAZ is obviously producing Studio along similar lines- if you get the package, you'll need content and DAZ sells it, so it gets some money back. Unlike consoles, however, it's entirely possible to use D|S without buying anything from DAZ at all, but I expect they're banking on the fact that most people will use DAZ content.

Back to the original topic of a suitable package for doing this kind of thing, though, have you taken a look at Carrara Express? It's just a cut-down, cheaper version of Carrara, but it behaves like a turbocharged version of Poser. It handles DAZ figures and Poser stuff natively; it has a damn good renderer, a built-in poly-modeller of some basic functionality and also has the built-in ability to generate a certain amount of background and scenery. As a low-cost all-rounder, it's pretty good and seems to be terribly overlooked for some reason. Check it out.