Quote - Five years. So, there is hope then. I kind of thought I might be inspired by the next edition of Poser, or the next big DAZ figure.

The interesting thing is that you want to care, but just don't.  It kind of happened to me when I was thinking about making my own figures.  It wasn't that it was too hard, just I felt it was unnecessarily hard and required learning too many programs at the same time.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to make items compatible with Poser or Studio or both (and wanted to be able to use them in a game engine as well).  Got bored with long rendering times and bought Carrara only to find it didn't handle my Poser content nearly as well as I'd expected.  (I have been majorly disappointed with the lack of progress on hair, cloth and soft bodies with regard to the three main programs that use "content".)  I even took a look at iClone, but it seemed like there was even more stuff I'd need to buy to get started than Poser...  (I haven't written it off just yet.  Using the GPU to render is a huge plus for me.)

I don't even buy stuff.  I just like the interface and the ease of re-using stuff compared to other programs.  I could probably just move on to Shade or Messiah, but I feel I've learned too much about Poser to just give it up.  I am still hoping they will someday add the things I want for once, everyone else seems to be with happy with it...

Just as I was about to give up on it for good, I somehow got a job using Poser (in WV of all places!).  I have now put more time in with Poser in the last three months than probably since I got it.  Now I am looking toward the end of my project and thinking, "Wow, there's so many fun things I could do with this"...

edit- I forgot to answer the question.  I have indeed become irate at certain aspects of Poserdom.  I hesitate to call it a hobby, because I have always believed there were opportunities to use Poser professionally (I even managed to find one).  What I hate is that feeling that selling content is the purpose of Poser, Studio and even Carrara.  There isn't one single program I know of, after all of these years, that will let you model, rig, animate and render a Poser figure.  All of the set-up tools I have seen were less than ideal, and still require an imported mesh before you can do anything.  The group editing tool is a joke (compared to say, selecting in Wings with the +/- keys, lasso and invert option).  Ik, is wonky with poses, to the point that it's often easier to turn it off than to get the results you want with it on.  All of that tells me that most users are just buying content, dropping it in and making NVIATWASs.  It always comes down to the fact that eventually you hit that wall.  You can do some clever stuff and make some pretty pictures, but the moment you try to "go beyond", whether it be photorealism or whatever, you'll just as often end up going nuts.