Quote - Out of curiousity, how is DS UI better if you don't like using it? You want a real UI, check out Modo. Don't bother with the different app arguement because the same can be said with comparing DS, a new software, to poser, the original.

Does anyone remember how fast P4 was, even on our old slow machines, before all the new features of P5? Same could be said for DS before you add those poser features. But don't get me wrong, I don't hate DS, even if it may sound like that at times. DS has it's place and is doing what it was designed to do. Keep Daz in buisness.

I don't think someones going to design a new app in a short time that will take Posers place. DAZ has been working on this for a few years now and still not there. But who knows what will be in a few more years. Maybe Daz code will be outdated too.

Software changes as do the machines we use. What we think is gods gift to CG today can be crap tomorrow. Some sofware dies fast, some linger on for a few years and slowly get replaced. Poser has the power of the user base so it will take some time to die, if it does. SM has the final say as to Posers future.
 

The thing that amazes me about the newer versions of Poser, 5-7, is the tremendous amount of memory they consume just in the loading process.  I'm not entirely certain what all they are loading into memory, but all of the newer versions of Poser are serious resource hogs.  The UI itself consumes an unreasonable amount of resources, and thats long before you start loading any sort of a scene or doing anything within the program itself.

As it is I think it might be feasible to get a fairly decent replacement for Poser going in less than a year, provided it was open source and you could get some other programmers interested in the project.  Their are numerous API's for opengl available and a lot of what you would need has already been done to a certain extent, providing a ton of roadmaps for various features.

I'm still seriously considering this myself, I'm working currently on a project that allows you to use alternative, open source render engines with Poser as well as give me some functionality that the Poser library desperately needs but currently lacks.

I'm seriously considering starting with this as a base and working it eventually into a full blown app, granted it will take time (good code always does) but I think in the long run it might be worth it.

There are even open source projects on cloth simulation out there, so even many of Poser's more advanced features could be worked in I think fairly quickly.  It took Poser a lot longer to get where they are because they didn't have a roadmap, they were working from scratch.  An open source project such as I described wouldn't be, a lot of the code has already been written, a lot of it would just be bringing it all together under a functional, usable UI.

Personally I'd love to see Poser continue to develop, it's a program I've used for quite some time now and really enjoy, sadly though having been on more than my share of development teams I just don't see that happening.  This has pretty much all the earmarks of a project soon to be abandoned or orphaned.

What little development I see happening from here is going to be going in the wrong direction, rather than fixing some of Posers stability and memory management problems I see them worrying more about porting Poser scenes to other applications and getting tighter integration with packages that cost $1000 and up, a total misread of the market I'm afraid.

While someone else pointed out that there are some out there who don't care what this stuff costs, I think we can all agree that such a market is EXTREMELY limited, it won't be nearly enough in sales to support Poser and keep it in development indefinately.  Most of us do really care about how much were spending, and particularly for those of us in the hobbiest realm programs like Maya and 3ds Max are simply too expensive to be a justifiable expense.

Most of those pros that do use Maya and Max effectively in a professional environment are not going to give a care about V3, V4, M3 or any of the multitude of clothes/options they might have, because they get paid the big bucks to develop there own high end content. 

These are the guys and gals with monster stomping hardware that can run cloth simulators and animation sequences that would take my poor little computer hours to chew through in a matter of minutes.  They don't care about spending a few hours modeling a mesh and running it through a cloth simulator to get it perfect because that's what they get paid to do - and they have no licensing problems to worry about when there done.  The content is 100% there own, to do with whatever they please, no worries about varying licenses and sources.

So no, I just don't see Poser making serious inroads into the truly pro market, which leaves it only a single niche now that they've applied the nose-bleed pricing.  All they have left is the small end, ma and pop style shops who do a bit of 3d work.  Sure, they exist, but there not nearly enough of a market to keep Poser in development.

Like I said, I like Poser.  I use it pretty much daily and enjoy it tremendously.  I've done a lot of really fun and interesting things with it and I continue to learn more and expand my own creative potential even after having used the program for qutie some time.  The people in the Poser community are top notch and the content that is available for it is truly wonderful for those of us who don't have full time jobs where we are getting paid to create our own content.

However it makes no sense for me and a lot of others in my situation to pay $200 to upgrade to Pro, considering that most of us paid less than that for a full version of 5, 6 or 7 and that most of the pro upgrades weren't really aimed at us.  All of that integration stuff is useless to me, I can't afford to buy Maya or 3ds Max or even Cinema 4d and justify that expense on what for me is little more than a hobby.

The network rendering?  Ok, neat idea, but in testing it doesn't appear to be all that stable and I certainly don't have a lot of high end server type machines on my home network just waiting to be used as network rendering ports, so again not a huge boon for me or a lot of other home users.

Nope, this upgrade was aimed specifically at a market that I and a lot of other current Poser owners are simply not in, and most of the new features are not all that useful to us.  I'm certainly not plunking down $200 to "upgrade" a program I bought originally for $150 only to pick up gamma correction and a 64 bit render engine that still can't match most open source projects for quality or speed.  Just isn't worth it to me or a lot of other current Poser owners. 

So what of Poser 8?  Smith Micro has given us every indication that their future development will continue along these lines, targeting this imaginary market of professionals who have been desperately wanting to use Poser content in there work because that's what programs like 3ds max are really missing.

But the truth is that market really doesn't exist, and unless SM spends a boatload of money to convince most true 3d pro's that Poser is still little more than a hobbiest app, it's not likely to be created anytime in the near future.

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...