[morkonan] With that in mind, how much of Poser's perceived "deficiencies", focusing on Firefly, are due more to...Products that do not make use of the full capabilities of Poser and Firefly? [/morkonan]

     Vendor artists will want to aim for the largest possible pool of users, so they'll tend to shy away from using new features which preclude the item's use in earlier versions.

     For each Poser release, I make some models which specifically exploit the new features.  Animated materials (seamlessly looped) using a matrix, animated materials using sequential JPEGs in the movie node, light-casting objects using IDL, animated displacement for water ripples, etc.

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     For at least some PBR engines, a GPU render (or hybrid GPU+CPU) does not equal a CPU render.  The GPU execution often sacrifices some features of the render engine and/or uses approximations (as does Firefly).  My view is that CPU rendering is paramount;  an option for GPU and hybrid rendering would be a nice plus.  Bear in mind that some PBRs only run well on one brand of video card.  CUDA renderers will need late-model cards and fairly high on the food chain to perform to their potential.

     As for material translation, I highly value the PBR being able to interpret Firefly nodes, so you can use the same scene/model in both Firefly and the PBR, without re-doing every last material in the scene.  Obviously, those Firefly nodes which are "cheats" will be superfluous.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to use Firefly nodes and supplement/replace where advantageous with Cycles nodes.  I don't know if that is possible.  But perhaps we could choose either Firefly or Cycles nodes on a per-material basis.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5