Quote - 10 years ago Poser was pretty much the only game in town for the hobbyist 3D artist. Blender was barely getting off the ground, there was no DAZ Studio, there were no free game engines to build your own game or virtual reality.

There were a lot of free game engines, the difference is that not too many people knew that then.

The Build Engine has always been free for personal use, released in 1995.

ID Tech 1 (Doom Engine) released to public in 1997.

The Source Game Engine has been out for about 10 years, completely free, and can do just about every type of game you can think of. It could compile for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. Newer versions do, Xbox, Andriod, etc.

There are many more that are free and have been so for years.... Many companies release previous versions of their game engines to the public after it isn't the newest one with all the "bells and whistles" Some of them are not easy to use. They release the engine(s), but not all of the support stuff that goes along with it. Some have oddball file formats and scripting as well.

As for 3D there were not a lot of choices, but there were a few.

Simply 3D came out in 2000 and could do 3D rendering, had a library, etc, but I don't recall it having rigging.

There were some other ones, but I seem to be drawing a blank now.

The major difference with all of these, is the ease of use and the community surrounding them.

Poser has a rather large following compared to software that proceeded it. And a lot of that has to do with sites just like this one. Lets face it far less people had an internet connection 10 years ago. Now anyone with a cell phone can get on the internet.

Is the Poser user base shrinking? I sort of doubt that.

Programs without a following have a tendency to disappear.

And we are still here, debating if we (or someone else) isn't.

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