"Couldn't the IK and animation be overhauled with a 3rd party plug-in? "

I would imagine so.

the new animated constraints system tells me that the ground work for a working IK switch is already present

After all IK is just propagating constraint on the rigs limbs.

But as much I have griped about the broken IK system ,the reality is that

modern character animation programs dont really depend so much on

a workflow that leaves it to the user to  manually switch IK on/off.

The broken IK switch is the least of the issue with poser animation tools

when you have used nonlinear,procedural motion systems Like 

I we have in Iclone or even Daz aniMate2 you realize that motion generation

purely by manually setting keyframes and pulling on spline graph editors is a vestigial

approach from the past.

EXAMPLE: MODERN ANIMATION CREATION

"as I said, the only real issue I have with it is that it's slow, so yup, I know it's slooooooooow :-P

Needs some GPU-love to make it faster!"

Actually, for me at least, it not just Fireflys  rendering speed

For those who only render  single stills Firefly is fine

I have NO problem waiting several hours for a high quality single image

from Blenders Cycles when the result is photographic realism

For me it is the overall lighting and camera management abilities that make or break a program for producing animations longer than the 5-10 second clips you see on youtube from poser users.

for example the ability to"shoot" from multiple cameras and switch cameras
during the render.

Just watch any modern movie/TV show and sit and  study the camera cuts during an action sequence or even romantic conversation.

those cuts are achieved by shooting the same scene from multiple cameras

simultaneously and deciding how to cut them together for storytelling effect in post .

The ability to attach a camera to a spline and have it fly through or around your scene with complete control over what it targets or zooms upon 

Also the ability to export camera& light animation date to industry standard

programs Like After effects&Nuke for compositing of effects that match your 

original camera movement.

And we have already gotten the bad news from Bagginsbill  about trying to render flickerless GI in poser......Forget it.

I have set a  NON GI ,standard lighing"frame budget" of seven minutes

(per frame) for my current animated film project.

The attached image is production still rendered in the quality and complexity standard I require for that seven minutes per frame

**Note all of the reflective surfaces and there are animated textures

that have to be calculated per frame as well*

Not to say this  image could not be done in firefly but I doubt anyone

could render similar within seven minutes. 

 

 

 

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