"You can certainly have both and DS is an example. I don't think they've suddenly seen the light, I think their aim all along was to be more accessible to the casual user - eg. DForms vs Poser Magnets, PowerPose, asset management - while enabling more advanced features for those that want them. The plugin architecture is well suited to that. Can SM do the same with Poser, I don't know but sans a complete rethinking it seems less likely"

It's beginning to look like DAZ deliberately spent the first few years building Daz Studio up into something resembling Poser, with most of it's basic functions, and now they've done that, it's moving up to a whole new level. DS 3 (currently in beta) has some great features. Shader Builder gives you a GUI to make your own RSL shaders and Shader Mixer (node-based procedurals similar to Poser's material room) allows you to combine preset shaders and apply them. These are both immensely powerful functions and they open up a whole new slew of possibilities in DS. Along with Shader Baker, Figure Mixer, Morph Follower and a few other new things, DS 3 is looking very good indeed.

Can SM do the same with Poser? Well, I certainly hope so. They've surprised users in the past (especially with all the things they added to P5), so it may be that P8 will up the ante yet again. I've always felt Poser was being held back by it's outdated code, but maybe the dev team know things I don't and they can add even more without touching a thing under the hood. Time will tell, I suppose.

One thing's for sure. If they aren't up to the challenge, DS definitely is.

Disclaimer - I've no intention of starting a 'My software's bigger than yours' war. But it's becoming harder to talk about the future of Poser nowadays without mentioning DS somewhere along the line. We all use what we're comfortable with and that's just fine by me.

mac