"A lot of people would have been wetting their pants with happiness if shader editing was included in the free version"

True. But if these same people are so desperate to have this function, it'll cost them about $47 right now. If they don't want to pay..... well, it's a bit like saying 'Poser should make the SDK free so we could make lots of plug-ins for it'. It's a nice thought, but I doubt it'll ever happen.

DAZ have made DS 3 as affordable as possible, and considering what's included, (especially for developers) the price is phenomenally cheap. They've also wangled a deal where the Trolltech SDK is now completely free. (It used to cost $995) and anyone who's capable can write and sell plug-ins for DS with no financial outlay. So honestly, I really don't see what more they could do to accomodate people's wallets.

"I don't blame DAZ for not wanting to buy out the third parties that wrote those plugins (fairly sure they are not DAZ in-house people) or wanting to make money off of selling their software, I just think they would make a lot more money in the long run if they had done things a little differently"

Actually, as far as I know, other than dynamic cloth (Optitex), everything else in DS 3 is in-house. Shader Mixer started out in life as a 3rd-party app (Eilir), but chris jones rewrote it completely in consultation with DAZ. I'm not sure if he now works for DAZ, but he certainly works very closely with them.

I don't think that any of the DS 3 features will leave Poser lying in the dust. Not because they're not great features, but because the choice is still pretty much what it's always been. People either love/hate the DS/Poser interfaces. That's the one reason I don't see a mass exodus towards DS. It'll be taken more seriously as a competitor to Poser, that's for sure, and I bet a lot of people will try it out, and even make it a part of their toolset. But in the end, users will still have their own preference, and if Poser 8 ups the bar even higher, all the better.

mac