I know that this has probally been gone over before, but I didnt find any thing about it in skimming the topics, so I will ask it here in the hopes of finding some advice. I have been using D/S for a while now. I use it for the basic modeling and then import it into Bryce for the final composing and render . While I enjoy using both products tremendously, I have a few dynamic clothing freebies that I would love to use. In addition I like some of the models that come with Poser. I have downloaded the demo for it and found it to be a little difficult to get around in. So I am wondering if it is truly worth me purchasing the program. Is it better than Das Studio? And which version? The figure artist or the full program? Any advice will be a big help..

As far as I know, the Figure Artist doesn't include Dynamic clothing or hair. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's a hacked up version of Poser 7 with some of the rooms removed. Other than that, It depends on what you want to do. If you want to do things that only Poser can do, dynamics and faceroom stuff and morph brushes, yeah, it's MUCH better than DS. If you just want to create still images with no dynamics, original morphs or faceroom work. Stick to DS.

And rather then buying figure artist, just pick up poser 6.. I think you can get it for around $60 or so. Then you also have it as an uprade path to poser 7 or poser pro.

There was a thread about it's lowest online price last week...

D|S can hold, render bigger scenes, than poser. The bad thing about D|S, is two thing. Doesn't have a walk cycle for characters and its own material room, although you can apply textures, and adjust em (reflect, transparent). I do have Poser 6, and D|S. I find after many years using Poser 4, 5, then 6, then moving into D|S to understand it, that D|S is more relaxing for a huge scene, lighting (3Dlights: Lights and Mood Master) is awesome. Poser 5, 6, 7, and now PPro has a straight forward material room (when you get to know it), and of course a walk cycle. Poser is hard on the system when rendering, depending what it is (poly counts).

Will be great to take advice from Gareee if you do get poser. Will save you a bundle of dollars. Doesn't hurt to have poser and also use D|S. Can have fun with both. 

Obviously the price is an issue, DAZ is free, Poser isn't.

Figure Artist is really Poser Light and might be suitable for some needs, especially if you are an artist and just want layouts for your finished work.  IMHO, Poser seems to be more intuitive and easier to use, but then VUE seems more intuitive and easier to use than Bryce, so that part is up to you.

And Garee, I've been to your storefront and you rock.  The Girl is my favorite character!

Quote - D|S can hold, render bigger scenes, than poser.

I couldn't get it to render the 10 Aiko 3's Poser did...

*D|S can hold, render bigger scenes, than poser.

*No way..... I'm often creating large scenes with many figures and props and I'm unable to duplicate 90% of them in D/S. Poser can handle a lot more then D/S can.

With Poser Pro the whole thing changed again, Poser Pro handles memory better, especially when rendering. To get lights as good in D/S as Poser you still need to buy some pricy plugins (and hope they'll still work with the next upgrade). Same goes for animation, materials and more. Before you know D/S isn't so free anymore if you really want the same benefits as Poser standard has.

What Gareee suggested is a good route to take.

Can't the dead horse be allowed to rest in peace? 

D|S is still in a state of flux at the moment and needs some time (years?) under its belt to settle down and decide what it's going to do.
In the long run, it'll probably be at least the equal of Poser if not better. After all, DAZ is the major content provider and it's in their own best interests to make D|S as good as it can be.
D|S can't handle dynamic items at the moment, though it's almost certain it will- or at least implement its own version- in the future, so if that's important to you now then you may want to get one of the Poser versions.
Poser's Firefly renderer is more advanced, more flexible and higher quality than D|S's 3Delight renderer at the moment, but bear in mind that 3Delight is constantly evolving and will probably surpass Firefly as time rolls on. It's also- arguably- easier to use.
D|S isn't so good at animation as Poser yet, but it's coming along nicely with each release.
Poser has a "weird" user interface where 3D programs are concerned whereas D|S has one that seems more "natural" for users of other 3D programs and is- arguably, again- easier for a first-timer to get to grips with. Still and all, neither of them is as straight-forward as perhaps they could be.
Also, to my my knowledge, Poser hasn't had a "core-rewrite" since Poser 4- so later versions are just add-ons and updates and fiddles with the original code, so not much underlying technology has changed. And it sometimes shows.
D|S is a new product written with at least half an eye on multi-core processors, bigger RAM capacity and an architecture that freely supports plug-ins and expandibility, so things that are missing now such as the face room, dynamic cloth support, dynamic hair, advanced lighting etc. will be developed as core additions or added and integrated by third-party developers. 

My overall view is that D|S is the way forward ultimately. And it's free, which is a huge bonus. That said, if you want the features now, then get a copy of P6 as recommended above. Don't get any of the "cut-down" versions; just get a full copy of P6 which- as stated- isn't much money at all now. And, you'll have a legitimate upgrade path to newer versions.

Still, since D|S is free, you might as well get it anyway.

D|S handles some things better than Poser, namely content navigation, though Poser's Dynamic Cloth room and Material room IMHO, put it far ahead of D|S currently for usable functionality.

Do a search either here or at RDNA for "bagginsbill" to get an idea on what the Poser Material room is capable of.

I can go back in my Daz Studio Beta Archives to at least May 07, 2004. That's at least four years that Daz Studio has been in the works to date. And still no soild, unchanging, base engine under the hood. One never knows what the next version will Break or Fix.

I always enjoy the Daz Studio is Free. I agree, that is 100% true, the "Basic" Das Studio is Free.
What I do not like is the Ala Carte Marketing methods.
Sure there are plenty of people that really love the lean and mean "Basic" free Daz Studio.
But if you want to get into Daz's Versions (PlugIns) of Poser like Functions, you start paying and paying and paying for those PlugIns.
No doubt at all that Daz Studio will some day have Dynamics, Rigging, Hair, better animation etc etc etc. And you will once again pay and pay and pay for those PlugIns as well.

I happen to like the One Price Up Front method of marketing.
I am not waiting and hoping month after month as to when someone will create a new plugin that will do something similar to what I can already do in poser.
What really seems to be a problem of late is that, even after paying good money for those PlugIns you never know if the next version of DS will break them or not or how long you have to wait for an update.
I may be the only one who would pay for Daz Studio, but "IF" Daz was willing to offer a Retail version of DS with the PlugIns built in and "Stand BY IT" , I would buy it.

As far as the DS vs Poser, I really do not care which Program you like the best or why.
I have my own personnal choices as does everyone else in Poserdom.

A lot of people wrote the obituary or Poser when Smith Micro bought Poser.
Sorry, I haven't seen that happen. In fact SM has released Poser Pro 64 bit.

That's my 2 cents worth.

Quote - Obviously the price is an issue, DAZ is free, Poser isn't.

Figure Artist is really Poser Light and might be suitable for some needs, especially if you are an artist and just want layouts for your finished work.  IMHO, Poser seems to be more intuitive and easier to use, but then VUE seems more intuitive and easier to use than Bryce, so that part is up to you.

And Garee, I've been to your storefront and you rock.  The Girl is my favorite character!

The way I see it, if you have DS, You don't need Poser Figure Artist. It's like going sideways. If you want to get into Poser after DS, Poser 6 like Gareee says is the way to dip your feet in and still get more than DS has to offer.

Thanks! I've always been a big fan of Girl, and Neftoon Gal. I REALLY wish Nefits hadn't vanished and taken neftoon gal with her.

Seems like sometimes we take 2 steps foreward, and then 1 back.

Quote - In fact SM has released Poser Pro 64 bit.

Nope ... they have released Poser Pro 32 bit and included a 64 bit Firefly render engine. And to use this 64bit render engine you have to render to background ... when you hit render as you used to in P7 then you start the 32 bit render engine.

Well, I did have problems all the time when trying to build a scene (large enough) in poser 4, 5, and 6.  Soon after building a scene in D|S I felt comfortable after what I have seen, done. In poser I wasn't able to build this type of scene (image example), but in D|S I could no problems with camera advantages. Poser would bog down my system, out of memory error messages, and even reboot the system after a blue screen of death, when I tried to make large scenes not even close enough to what I done in DS. In this image example, I still am able to add twice as much before then my system will bog down. That is even adding hills to compensate background further on. I even added an dystopia air vehicle to the scene.

Then a render. Not that great, although I didn't install the other lights yet.

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.

Agree, I've read a lot of good things about the latest poser. Hoping to purchase a copy soon when I get the cash (I dunno when), but will be a boxed version, not download. All my posers were done in WinXP, and encountered memory problems, computer bogging down, even a blue screen then reboot in WinXP when trying to render. I really hoped they fixed memory issues in the latest. I got fed up and challanged D|S. Yes it was like learning a whole new lanquage and still am educating myself. I do get fustrated on constant updates of D|S (New version), that even now my Bryce 6.1 doesn't recognize the latest version of D|S. Still waiting for that fix. 3Dlight really expanded my use of D|S along with Mood master. I was really amazed of the lighting and renders I was getting.  I do have the [ UberEnvironment Light Shader IBL HDRI](http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=6337&cat=370&_m=d) for D|S, and I am amazed at the renders I am getting from them to.  I suffer in Poser, although I still use Poser(6). Trying to see if I can get the best out of it, and keep up the skills. Both D|S and Poser have their pros and cons. Maybe the latest poser will be awesome here (hopefully), now that it is on the third hand of another company. Dunno how many companies Poser been through, but the best always stays with one company like 3DS max that I wish for. I seen wonders with that programs. But, me the little unfortunate guy is forbidden from owning a purchased copy until I have a good few thousand bucks on me.

This image done using UberEnvironment IBL.

Lightwave's been with Newtek for the last 22 yars.. and the last 6-8 years of it has pretty much stunk.

Quote - Lightwave's been with Newtek for the last 22 yars.. and the last 6-8 years of it has pretty much stunk.

Not quite. LightWave 1 was released with the Video Toaster in 1990.

Naw, it had to be before that. I remember the amiga's being about gone by then, and the amiga 2000 was the system you ran it on.

I'll have to google some, but i coulda swore that lightwave dates back to 1985 or so.

Hmm I see the amiga 4000 being released in 1992, so I could well be wrong... but it feels like 22 years to me.. LOL!

Ah... videoscape 3d was released in 1988, and was the precursor of lightwave. (I actually even still have a copy of the old videoscape demo animation somewhere!)

Other cam and angle of same scene, light. Only different is textured (which I do not like), and sky background. From my experience poser could not even handle this size of a scene. If a walk cycle was in DS, I would have fun animating on this. I still can with other things.

I like the scene, but it's really not that huge. The objects used aren't high poly at all and the textures are rather small also. Those objects were designed  with huge scenes. While it looks impressive and huge, it;s actually quite less demanding on a computer then a few fully clothed & textured figures with some high resolution hair in a scene.

I've attached my city that I did quickly in Poser Pro on my machine, used FireFly with medium settings (right between Draft and Final, I most often use that setting). Qood qoality, yet reasonable renderign times as well. I've got 2Gb installed and I'm on winXP.

As you can see Poser is very capable of handling a similair scene as whay you did in D/S. I may post a different angle also, not sure yet, got to find some time first ;-)

Here's a close up.... added some spaceships as well. I've still got over 1Gb memory left so I could add a lot more to the sity or expand it even more. Not going to do so though.... time for other things.

You're using D|S - so Poser Figure Artist is a waste of money. The only thing it has that D|S doesn't have is the walk designer, for the rest D|S has everything that Poser FIgure Artist has, and in quite a few regards D|S has better implementations of it.

Poser gets interesting when you're running a 64 bits OS (XP64 or Vista64). In this light, buying Poser 6 in order to get a less expensive upgrade to either Poser 7 or Poser Pro is a good move.
Poser 7 can use up to 4 GB of address space on a 64 bit system. It's still a 32 bits application, like D|S, but it's compiled with the /LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag, so it can use more memory.
Poser Pro, when rendering in an external process, uses a full 64 bit render engine. I've tested it with a scene that was too heavy for earlier versions, and it happily chugged away at the scene, using over 6 GB of address space. Took a lot of time to finish (2 days), but it did finish alright.

On my systems (Q6600, XP64/Vista64) D|S is not stable. Loading more than 2-3 hires figures with clothes and hair, plus a decent environment, invariably leads to crashes. In Poser 7 I had no problem loading and rendering up to 15 hires figures in a complex environment.

Dynamic cloth might be somewhat daunting at first, but once you take the initial hurdle, you're going to love it. Loose cloth with a far more natural flow than is ever achievable with morphs. Wind forces interacting with the cloth.

Dynamic hair is also an underused feature of Poser 5 and higher. And unlike transmapped hair, you can create every aspecit of dynamic hair in Poser itself, you don't need a single external application. Dynamic hair can be deformed just like normal objects using magnet and wave deformers, but it can also be simulated/calculated, just like dynamic cloth. Including wind force interactions.

Dynamic cloth and hair are the animator's friends in Poser. And well-made dynamic hair has a more realistic look than even the best transmapped hair.

I read good things about PP.

Here's a close up.... added some spaceships as well. I've still got over 1Gb memory left so I could add a lot more to the sity or expand it even more. Not going to do so though.... time for other things.

The thing about 3d aps, is a person can have 3 gb left, poser would only use so much, and not all. So, if 1gb left, poser will not use it. Unlike PC games, it will use most what you have.  Add barriers (forts), 32 of em to the scene,  4-6x6 and good lighting (realism lighting, render), and a 3d terrain

I've got 2Gb of memory in my system, running WinXP. I've seen Poser using most of it, Poser will use the 1Gb if needed. I don't want that to happen of course, then Poser will not render anymore.

As long as Poser and D/S are 32 bit applications, they will never use all of the memory available in a system, I think they'll use 3Gb at the most, but the way D/s has been programmed (as I understand) it will use even less. That has nothing to do with 3D applications, it's the 32bit limitation. Poser Pro breaks that barrier somewhat by having added the 64bit rendering engine. If one has 6Gb in a system, you can build a scene that uses 3Gb of memory and still be able to render it, since the 64 bit rendering engine will address the 3Gb memory left in the system. Previous versions of Poser and D/S (at the moment) cannot do this, if your scene is too large and uses most of the physical memory in the system, the scene will not render anymore. Those problems are gone for people with Poser Pro & 64bit system.

The scene rendered in the image attached is much more demanding then the city and YES it uses over 90% of my systems physical memory. During rendering the available physical memory drops to 110Mb. No other apps running (just a firewall and virus protection). On my system Poser uses all of the available memory if I let it.

EDIT: The scene already has 4 6x6 Dystopia city blocks (just placed them differently) and all different ones, you used some of the same blocks twice. I could add the barriers easily, the 3 spaceships are much higer poly then the barriers. I've got a landscape in it and a background, but I do use 4 lights only. But adding more lights wouldn't matter too much anyway, it just takes more time to render.

ok everyone! thanks for all of the great advice. After weighing my options and everything,  here is what i have done. I purchased Poser 6. i purchased a new computer- a AMD64X2 Duel Core 4000+ 2.11 Ghz, 2.00 GB of Ram with a geForce 8600 Gt video card installed. as I am typing this i am in the process of running the file and folder transfer program for both my old computer and the new one. Both computers are on my network and are running side by side. later today I will be transfering compleatly to the new computer, (I hope) i am still waiting on the Poser program which should arrive on Monday or Tuesday.