I've took off a few years myself! I came back with PoserPro2010-primarily using it to export to Lightwave to render. PoserPro2012 brought me back to Poser for human rendering. The Sub Surface Scattering algorithm is superb-and BagginsBill and SnarlyGribbly have made it VERY easy to use. Look up EZ Skin (free). I've got DS4Pro and have been investigating it. From what I've been able to glean from Daz users- the SSS is much more complicated to use-and few know how to use it well. Nothing against DS- like to see the SSS to catch up in it's implementation. The same with lighting. I can set up indirect image based lighting very quickly in Poser. The only images I've seen on the Daz website that rival PoserPro2012 capability-are done by a second party renderer called Lux Render.

I use V4-weight mapped (this gives much more natural bending than the previous version! Genesis impressed me with it's weightmapping and now V4 has it). You need to convert it yourself-but the tools are free. Follow the link at the bottom of my post.

There are things I like about Genesis-but when it comes down to it-the final render speed and quality keep me using Poser.-just as prior to Pro2012 I used Lightwave to render-not Poser. I see comparable results-through export of DS scenes to Lux Render via Reality 2.1 When properly used results rivaling-and in some cases surpassing what Poser Pro2012 is capable of-are possible. Tricky-but possible- and generally taking 24 hours! However, there is a free Poser to Lux solution available that lets you render Poser scenes in Lux-with the same quality-and dreadful render times.

 People can certainly make nice art with DS- but- Documentation- there is no manual for DS! Documentation is very poor. I really hope they get that together. If I were to conjecture-I'd guess it's that much of DS4 functionality is from 2nd party plug ins.

When it comes down to it. For the basic Poser 4 style render- DS is easy! When it comes to high quality lighting and rendering realistic human skin? More complex-and hamphered by poor documentation. That COULD change.

Quote - from a personal view, i started with DazStudio, and did 99% of my work in that until they brought out DS4, which has a totally alien GUI, plus it is still in a perpetual beta state.

these days i primarily use PoserPro 2012, the render engine is considerably faster, the material room is a lot easier to use ( it has REAL documentation, plus there is plenty of support on the forum here and at rdna for it)

Poser has real IDL (DS can only approximate it with a plug-in( Uberenvironment 2, built in now) ( comparable quality renders would take 2 or 3 times as long to complete in DS)

with Poser you can turn nearly any outfit to dynamic, or easily make your own dynamic cloth to use

DS can only use dynamic cloth made by a third party ( through the Optitex simulation plug-in) atmo, only one 'maker' from Israel who works with a few PA's.

in Poser, SSS is easily applied via either a built-in macro or by a free script (by Snarlygribbly) called EZSkin, with various parameters that can be easily tweaked to taste.

DS has SSS through another plug-in ( Ubersurface) which can easily get broken by a DS4 'update'. no presets available to get a decent skin effect with one click.....

DS4 also installs a Content Management System ( as a Windows Service!!!) that runs ( as default) everytime you boot-up your computer)

Poser has several third party library systems that are excellent for sorting your content as you really want.

Poser has Service Releases that apply bugfixes and updates by incorporating with your Poser install.

with DS you have to download the entire app everytime there is a bugfix etc.

did i mention that Poser still comes with a couple of full manuals, in .pdf format?

DS has no manual, only a bit of online wiki stuff and a few vid tuts on youtube.

Gen 4 ( V4 and M4 etc) still has enormous support in the market.

 DS4 >ignore those who say that you can easily use Gen 4 outfits/hair etc with Genesis/V5.

DS4>the Autofit plug-in barely works ( best on tight fitting stuff, still cannot do shoes/boots very well, at all. destroys all morphs that are in the outfits/hair etc.

DS4 >can be fixed ( to an extent) via the Pro rigging toolset etc. but quite a bit of work entailed ( again, very little diocumentation on how to use the tools)

Poser has good documentation on its Rigging tools, both as .pdf that come with it, and several long ( 45 mins approx) vid tuts available( free)