Quote - But if the recent threads in this forum are any indication, then it seems the Passion& Enthusiasm for this application has suffered a fatal blow.

I honestly Do not believe poser has much of a future.

I can not help but notice that nary a one of you appear to actually be having any Fun with this program anymore.

There is a small dedicated tech oriented group at "poserplace" and RDNA who act in many ways like some break way sect making a last ditch effort to generate interest and save poser.

The poser material room is just not artist friendly in fact it is Frankly ridiculous!

I certainly don't feel that way...  I spent a few years away from Poser while I was a video editor, as I wanted to try out things at home that I'd think up at work.  Then around the end of 2010 I was told I should talk to some people working for a government agency (in my town) who had Poser but did not know what to do with it...  That led to me working from April until August with Poser and learning the animation functions much better than I ever had before.  It only seemed fitting that I should take a portion of the money Poser made me and buy PoserPro2012.  Now I am completely in love with Poser again, but I still find other programs, projects, and distractions which keep me from any serious Poser work.

I find I can get an approximation of whatever I want in the material room.  Beyond that I let the geniuses like BB show me what's what.  I don't think the average person understandes the math and physics of materials enough to grasp the numerous things in that room.  I don't think there's anything wrong with the room, it's just that so much of it is over my head, and trial and error takes forever when there are so many things to consider...  If more people shared materials and there was a standard scene by which to compare them, then most of us wouldn't really need to know how it works.

My frustration is largely that I did eventually create a few figures that I like enough to maybe want to do something with them.  I don't need a constant process of buying new figures and their accessories, I can make a figure I like with just the handful of figures I've collected over the course of using several versions of Poser.  What is limiting me is the lack of soft body dynamics and not having weight maps for the figures I use (which don't seem to be among the more popular ones).  I'd like to have spring or soft-body dynamics for things like transmapped hair (which just usually looks better to me), clothing/accessories (because I think dynamic clothing is just too tedious to set up properly when a deformer could handle sleeves or tails just as well), and all of the other obvious things you'd want soft-bodies for.  I don't expect a proper simulation, just some bounce or jiggle for things that aren't rigid.  Something like Jiggles for Carrara would be fine, the plug-in for Poser seems pretty limited by requiring the creation of numerous morphs beforehand.

Based on SM's handling of Poser so far, I still have high hopes for the next version.