I think I need to first qualify my post as comming from someone who uses Poser, DS, and Carrara. I like all three programs, and they all have their particular (and sometimes peculiar) strenghts and weaknesses. Of the three, Carrara is my favorite because it has the greatest flexibility and richest tool set. So, my views are somewhat skewed because of that fact.

I own every version of Poser statring with version 2 all the way to PP2014 (except for P10). I first started using Carrara at version 2, and like poser have used every version since CS2. One of the main reasons for getting Carrara in the first place was to be able to render Poser figures in a better renderer. So for me, from the begining, Carrara and Poser have been sort of a software suite. With the addition of DS, I've been able to pick and chose the tool that works best (often this means the easiest) for what I want to do.

Given the fact that I use Carrara more than Poser because of it's ease of use (for me), better render engine, easier more intuitive lighting system, and much more powerful and flexible tool set (except for cloth), IMVHO SmithMicro needs to focus on improving the software. They need to include caustics in the renderer, and fix the issues with IOR. There needs to be some way to easily include landscapes and vegetation in Poser, and create realistic outdoor atmospheres (again - my opinion) without using Vue. I also think that SmithMicro needs to step up to the plate and create figures that are of equal quality to Genesis 2 (male and Female) if they don't plan on implementing better support of DAZ figures.

Yes, I do realize that these are some rather dramatic requests, maybe even seem totally rediculous to most people here. But just try to see things from my point of view, as a person who uses multiple applications designed to take advantage of what was once a unified "Poser/DS ecosystem". If Poser and DAZ software/content continues to drift apart, I will be forced to make a choice between the two - Poser or DAZ, because it will simply become too expensive to try to support content for two different systems. Dawn was/is a great idea for vendors to create content that will work well in both Poser and DS/Carrara, but there is an extra cost associated with getting both versions. For those of us that do use both Poser and DS, that can add up rather quickly.

If the Poser/DAZ rift gets wider, I will be forced to chose one over the other for purely economic reasons. I honestly don't want to be forced to make that choice, and it will be a sad day when I have to do so. If I had to do it today, based on my personal needs (which actually go beyond "Poser" content), I'm sorry to say that Poser would be that application that would get dropped from future upgrades. Unfortunately the combination of Poser/Vue wouldn't work for me, because only Vue Infinite can fit the requirements of some of the work I'm doing, and it's just too expensive, when I can meet these needs with Carrara and one inexpensive plugin. So, simply put, there would need to be a lot more functionality in Poser, and better figures, to keep my business if the Poser/DAZ rift continues to grow.

I'm guessing that I'm rather unique among the Poser user base. There may only be a handfull of us that use all three applications, but I thought it might be important for the SM rep who is checking this thread to hear the about challenges that we are facing, and what I would like/need to see in future versions of Poser, depending on the direction that SM takes. I realize I'm in the minority here, and PLEASE don't use my post as a reason to start more app/figure wars in this thread, but for me, it would be much better if SM decided to support Genesis technology better, or really really improved functionality and capabilities of Poser.

__________________________________________________________

My Rendo Gallery ........ My DAZ3D Gallery ........... My DA Gallery ......