Can I join in with a recently returning Poser users opinion?

I noticed Steve has joined in so I'm hoping he'll get to read what I have to say on the matter of Poser, and which direction I think he should push it.

For the most part I think the Poser developers are doing a good job, however, I hope they never loose sight of what it is, and why it is they can compete with DAZ Studio even though DS is free, and Poser has a price tag.

The reasons I think Poser is doing well:
First of all they never give it away, and therefore, never alienate paying customers by doing so (I literally cringed when DAZ announced they were giving away DS Pro).

Second, they've had the good sense to retain the 'meat' of what I remember as Metacreations Poser, and that's a good thing (vital even).  There's a reason the Poser and Bryce interfaces have such a fan club; it's because they're not vanilla os-based interfaces, they're task-specific designs developed and created by very talanted people.  If they ever go to a 'vanilla' interface, Poser will go downhill quicker than a teflon-coated ball of lead.  Usability is what attracts people over to Poser even if they don't think so, remove that and Poser would be just another infuriating vanilla-based interface to struggle with.

Things that I think need desperate improvement:
In a word, animation.  After coming back to Poser I'm totally bewildered at how antiquated the walk designer still is.  We're still looking at a tiny undockable screen, non-fluid movement, limited abilities and all those issues are unacceptable for a "figure animation" program in current times.  It would be cool to see some love shown to animaton, some real love, such as adding power to the Walk Designer and giving it it's own room, just like Materials and Cloth do.

I look at the way Reallusion have given the ability to design walks, puppet body movement, and blend them at will.  I feels hard to take when I compare this power to Poser and realise how far behind it's fallen in this area.

Steve, you get to implement stuff from the high-end apps and I think you do it very well, I absolutely agree with you on that.  I only hope that you'll put that expertise into the animation area as well, because seriously, Poser desperately needs some form of up-to-date 'motion-building' system.  DAZ with their 'Puppeteer' and 'AniMate' system, and Reallusion with their 'Motion Editing' are simply light-years ahead of Poser.  For stills work I would use Poser any day (because you got that aspect of the program pretty much perfect).  But for animation, nope, that's a different story.

One final thing; I really must compliment the Poser team on the Firefly Renderer.  I'm one of those obsessed with messing around with such things and I like Firefly so much I might not even bother with an Octane plugin.

That's praise indeed considering I own an Octane licence!