Attached Link: Poser Pro 2010 Beta

I think as you were posting this. 
http://poser8.smithmicro.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2009/12/10#poser_pro_2010_beta

I finally was able to bite the bullet and picked up Poser 8.

So new things to learn.

The manual and tutorials... suck when it comes to IDL, but was happy to see a few entries for the new light options.

Perhaps Bagginsbill or the PTB here in this forum will sticky all of the IDL and P8 lighting threads. I haven't had any problems with the library or anything so far.

More things to explore.

-- Jeff

Wonder why I never got any notice about the beta being available?

Quote -

The only part of Poser's promotion that may be misguiding, is the one about animation. No, you cannot animate within Poser. Lacking the proper tools, it is neither fast, nor efficient in that aspect, although it does provide a very good starting point, with the figures already rigged and the facial morphs made easy. I believe they could and should have done a better job with this part. Still, with enough practice, something decent may come out of it (like Monty Oum's Dead Fantasy, do check it out in Youtube, it's a great job).

In the end, Poser is exactly what its name suggests, a tool that provides easy posing for figures and the extra option to add more assets to a scene. Nothing more, nothing less.

My only question is, will a decent version of Poserfusion come out for Poser8? Because the one that came with Pro (and it's 1.2 upgrade as well) are extremely troublesome and limited.

Just my 2 cents on the matter :)

I beg to differ. You can animate in Poser. There are a few ways to do it. The easiest is to let the program do the tweens in between poses or expressions. You can find a few tutorials on YouTube that explain how to do keyframes and make adjustments to the body part you want to move using the graph editor. You can also use the other adjustment tools as you would when changing a pose or expression. Each change will be recorded in the timeline. There's a thread here with links to a couple of the tutorial videos...
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2772661

You can also use low rez figures as proxies to animate if you must grab body parts.
 

There are a couple Poser animation aids here that can be purchased... Mols V4 Animation Toolkit is in the RMP is one.

I know people who cleanup BVH files in Poser before using them in another program.

I've  also seen an aid that allows you to import video clips so you can rotoscope.

You just have to get more familiar with the tools provided. Poser doesn't have everything to make it super simple, but it does have a lot. I saw great animation done with it years ago, before even some of the recent tweaks. The biggest problem is there aren't enough people who take the time to learn how to do it and spread the knowledge. It's very similar to the small number of people who know how to properly design shaders/materials and those who know how to setup proper lighting. There is sadly lots of ignorance in Poserland.

Animation is not fast and easy in most programs... I can only think of two where it is easy and yet can be complex to start from scratch - Animation Master and Project Messiah. If you're into combining pre-made clips, aniMate+ for DAZ Studio is easy in its own regard and you can export those animations to Poser using a free DAZ plugin.

Yes it can and much better at it than just rendering !

WOW! That is really impressive, Coltrace! Talk about getting a grip on the software... you're the Jedi Master!