Well, the last few years I've been working with mostly C++ and Java, though mostly C++ - I've worked on a pretty wide variety of projects over the years, most of which were commercial of course, and I've even dabbled a bit with PHP and AJAX though I don't really enjoy web design as much as i do "pure" coding.  In my spare time I've done a bit in Python, just little timesavers for Poser mostly.

The project I'm starting now was actually born out of that, like you I created a tcp server in python that would allow me to call any poser method that python could access from inside poser and I was in the process of creating an API for C++ - my goal was to be able to tie in some good open source rendering engines, replace Posers godawful library system with something more usable and implement a few other features that I'd really like to have when I realized that maybe I was on the wrong track.

After SM announced it's new pricing scheme and release Poser Pro I got the distinct impression that their plans for Poser and the features I wanted to see in new Poser releases were widely diverged, and the future didn't look that bright.

So I gave some serious thought to the app I was developing and after the poking around I did on sourceforge it occurred to me that my best bet was probably just to go ahead and start working on an open source app that would replace Poser, rather than trying to work around limitations the current code has by using an external app.

A lot of what I want to do is already out there in one open source project or another, so most of hte groundwork has already been laid out.  There are a ton of API's available, and provided I can get another developer or two interested in the pre-alpha stages I think this thing really has a chance to take off.

Blender is doing great despite the fact that it's user interface could probably best be described as "cryptic" if you prefer the kind version, or "downright hostile" if you prefer something closer ot my true feelings on the subject.

Probably the hardest part of this whole project is going to be getting it to read Poser and Daz Studio's file formats natively so any Poser or Daz Studio content will work in this new app.  After that there are so many great C++ libraries out there that handle most of what you need in a 3d app it's not even funny, so really it's just a matter of getting a good UI going and start plugging in features.

Anything I find unclear in the docs for any particular API I've got plenty of other open source projects to peek at the source code for, once I figure out how they did it that should easily clear up any confusing portions of any API I happen to be working with at the moment.

So all in all I think the project is off to a good start, already getting a lot of great suggestions for features to implement and with any luck I can get at least one or two developers to sign on pre-alpha and if so we could probably have something in the alpha stages within 6 months or so.

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