"NO open CL or render farm renderers like LUX and terragen are just NOT practical even for "personal work"

I understood that to mean that he can achieve fast, high quality results using Maxwell without using a render farm or hardware rendering, not that Lux doesn't support those features.

alexcoppo - yes, SM could build an exporter or incorporate the one being developed. My point is that the average Poser user wants, IMO, a fully integrated render solution, not an exporter to an external application. Poser has supported the export solution via .rib, going back to Poser 4 and maybe even Poser 2 and there have been free renderers for the format for a decade at least. Ditto export to POVRay, Kerkythea, Carrara, Vue... However great, cheap or easy they are, the adoption rate probably takes a big hit once you start going outside the core application.

Fully integrated means supporting all the native material and lighting capabilities, and rendering within the Poser interface. As people have discovered, that is a non-trivial task. Even when it's done, one assumes there will be ongoing maintenance to track changes in Lux or maintain a custom build as Poser advances. If Firefly is nearly free, notwithstanding whatever they paid to buy or license it, then free Lux doesn't sound like it will be a big savings. Someone will still have to write code and if SM is going to profit from it, I expect they will want to be paid.

In regards to Kerkythea, a new version has been announced and Giannis has stated that he is committed to continuing development. One can choose to believe or not believe that.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken