“Revamped material room based on accurate visual preview with sliders with numeric input and editable hidden node feature (a la Vue) …”

Hey, I want my royalty payment ÷)

“Having a system that prevents you from making dumb mistakes is also a system that will not let you be creative.”

There’s no reason that should have to be the case. I don’t think anyone would want to implement a system that for instance limit your choice of skin color. The smart way to do it is to have a switch to turn limits on and off. The system could even serve as a learning tool. It could explain why what you were trying to do wasn’t necessarily a good idea. Now such a ‘Smart Node’ system might be overly ambitious in the short term, but the style of interface that Laurie suggests is IMO a winner – I’ve been saying that for a long time. The aim of a more user friendly interface, whether it be for materials, dynamics etc. is not to rob the advanced user of any capability. It is an alternative. Having the ability to start at the shallow end and go further if one as feels comfortable or more ambitious will , IMO, encourage people to explore the more advanced options at their own pace, rather than being thrown into the deep end. AT present, the alternatives are the kiddie pool or the Marianas Trench.

I agree with everything Blackhearted says. I don’t know if he is suggesting cutting the cord and getting rid of backward compatibility entirely. That might be a long range goal, but the investment people have in ‘legacy’ content is too big. Requiring people to abandon that or try to juggle different versions is I think a bad idea. If the new tools are good enough, people will make the transition anyway.

The big question is how much will it cost and how long would it take to implement these things. Perhaps the new plug-in architecture would make it possible to add hooks for some of the great 3rd party utilities that are available for other applications, rather that try to build it into Poser. That would also allow people to decide whether they wanted to invest in those tools. It would also mean that if some great new advance comes up, the guts of Poser wouldn’t have to be rewritten to take advantage of it. Maybe it would be possible to add integration with Blender for things like fluid simulation etc.

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