Quote - Can I say, as a person who used to work for e frontier, that I never liked Shade.

Sadly, that does you no credit. You worked for e-Frontier America, right?

e-Frontier America was made up of almost entirely all Poser oriented staff, coming over from Curious Labs and hired through the Poser oriented network.

The problem with that is, while Poser and Shade are very compatible products (it has Poser Fusion, so you can import native .pz3s and animation), they are a significantly different user experience from each other.

I am involved in the forthcoming Shade 10 release as a translator, and I can say that since Shade 9 was first released as a Mirye product at the beginning of 2009, its gotten a lot of good press to date - not as an add-on for Poser, but as a professional 3D tool for doing what it does best.

Shade 8.5 Pro is awesome and free is...well...free - if you have Poser installed, you can import in your .pz3s, even animated ones. The Callisto renderer is great. I think like Juan, I also prefer the workflow in Shade 10, but good thing is that you can upgrade to Shade 9 using the special offer in the magazine and save big bucks, AND get the upgrade to Shade 10 for free.

Shade was never a good add-on for Poser. But Poser is an awesome way to get fully animated characters into Shade.

Best regards,

chikako
Meshbox Design | 3D Models You Want