Quote - i've often thought over the past year or two that the main things that stop a content community from cropping up around Blender the way it has Poser and DS are an interface for movement like the parameter dials (one already existing for morphs) and support for a library structure and an interface for it.

I would really like to see this happen for Blender. I think it's a much more capable tool, it just needs some 'glue components' to make it accessable to the scene-composer community. My more detailed list of things blender needs are:

• side-panel library browser (with thumbnails)
• • easy way to load/link textures, shape keys, poses, etc onto existing object
• dopesheet extension "unified paramater editor"
• • like blender's shape-key editor, with sliders, but with parameters for everything
• • transform
• bones
• shape-keys
• allow hiearchial organization of unified paramaters
• aggregate paramaters up an object hierarchy (shows all sub-object paramaters)
• outliner features
• • checkbox to toggle show/hide of meshes
• (so you can see object hierarchy without seeing meshes)
• 3d viewport features
• • easy way to select the "top" of a hierarchy (daz uses double-click on any object)
• clearer visual for selection of object hierarchy (maybe just an armature visual?)

Quote - i know that you can link and append items from another file, but considering that a Blend file isn't the best way to store as much as i have in even one of the main content directories in one of my Runtimes...

I'm confused by this... You could have a directory of blend files, and link in a single asset from each blend file.

Individually, blend files seem superior to the poser-library because you can pack an entire prop into a single blend file (material, textures, and all)... In other words, a blend file can be a "self contained container" for all the parts of a single prop.

Personally I dislike the way poser/daz libraries are spread out by function. I'd prefer to see a single "archive" for each asset.. with some type information to help tie textures and poses to the models they are designed for. Then the library browser could show you only those assets designed to load onto the model you have selected.

That said, hopefully PT2 will allow interoperability with the existing Poser/Daz libraries.

Quote - ...and material zones are renamed if an item with the same material already exists (annoyingly)

I guess this is a product of Blender's flat material namespace. I'm not sure of the proper solution to this one. One solution would be to use fully-qualified material names, so the material name has some relationship to the library location. This would prevent them from colliding when loading.

Quote - a more robust, centralized library system that multiple versions of Blender could draw from would make it easier to share the already copious freebies and collaborate on movies, as well as support a content community.

Agreed. Blender could be an incredible tool for scene composers with a few tweaks.