Is Poser Dying? The only answers you will get here will all be very subjective, the only people that really know the answer to this question work for Smith Micro, and I seriously doubt they would post here to confirm if it is dying.

I think looking at content trends at the various DS/Poser sites can give us an idea related to market shares, and it would appear that Poser is loosing ground in market shares, though even this could be skewed since the only real legitimate current competitor figures to Genesis seem to be V4 and Dawn. V4, which seems to still be the go-to Poser figure, has been around so long that no doubt the market is saturated, so waning sales for V4 may be more to do with that, than a major drop in market shares for Poser.

I have noted several long time Poser users that have not upgraded to P11 (myself included - more on this latter), the reasons vary, and it's not that uncommon to see this at the release of a new Poser version. I have also seen a lot of long time Poser users posting images done with DS/Iray, this trend could change now that Poser has Cycles (Superfly - I still find it hard to warm up to this name). IMHO there is enough ancillary evidence to indicate that Poser is losing some of market share that I think this is probably true. It doesn't mean Poser is dying, but I think is does mean that SM has to up their game a quite bit.

As for why I didn't upgrade, it's not a simple answer, but the main reasons fall in three categories. The first being that I didn't see the value in feature set upgrades to warrant the cost of the upgrade. This was actually quite close, the integration of Cycles to me was a huge plus, and feature wise it was very close. The lack (still) of instancing was one of the factors that influenced my decision, as did the lack of any improvements in dynamic cloth (and dynamic hair a bit too). But feature wise I was still pretty much on the fence, because I was really interested in Cycles.

The second area was figures, This was no doubt influenced by the statement from Nerd3d "content is king". My take away from that statement was that finally, either Poser was going to implement native support for Genesis, that they were finally going to deliver their own figure that wasn't borked on release, or possibly they had worked a deal with Hiverwire to either include Dawn, or provide a dramatically reduced (in price) "value stack" for P11 users. So, maybe my expectations were a bit too high? Regardless, dumping a "not quite ready for prime time" figure on P11 users was IMVHO a sign of either a company that just doesn't get it, or the sign of a company that just needed to get something out the door....now. Regardless of the reason, it seems highly unprofessional to me to put a figure out with the problems that Pauline has, more or less expecting the user base to fix her. Seeing this, after the person in charge of Poser development said content is king, made me question the value of this upgrade even more.

The third factor in making my decision to not upgrade to P11 was partially influenced by the state of Pauline on release, the total lack of high quality Cycles renders from the user community within the first few weeks, and the library issues. Right or wrong, I got the impression that P11 was released before it should have been. I can understand some issues with a new library system, but it seemed like there were some critical logic errors that should have been vetted and fixed before release. For me though, the total lack of great user renders coming for Superfly was a huge red flag. You implement a new render engine which is one of your biggest selling points, yet none of your beta testers are flooding the forums and galleries with renders that make this a must have upgrade??? Seriously? Finally, almost two months later, renders that show off what superfly can do are showing up in more frequency. I was on the closed beta team of the Octane plugin for Carrara, and our small group put out more renders for the release of the public beta (at release) than SM did for superfly. To add to this, I was producing decent renders using Iray within 36 hours of getting my hands onthe 4.8 beta and Iray (the image here: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/the-corridor/2661869</https:> was done in the first 48 hours), it may not be the greatest image, but the shaders were all tweaked by me from the auto Iray conversion provided with DS, and using EIS profiles on the mesh lights. My point here being that I would expect to see numerous (100+) images of a similar and/or better quality within the first week from P11/Superfly. Just take a look at the Demo Reel made for the public release of the Octane for Carrara public beta here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GeGGs_QU-I. Granted, it's not super awesome, but when you consider the images were generated by a 4 person closed beta team (while learning/testing) and one developer, I would have expected at least this level/number of images in the forums and galleries from SM showing off superfly. Again, this made me feel that either P11 was rushed out the door, or SM simply doesn't get that having a lot of great user renders on release is important. Either one give me reason for pause.

Ultimately, I decided not upgrade. This is something that could change later, I'm not saying I won't ever upgrade, but for now, P11 doesn't give me anything I'm comfortable risking my money on for rushed software. Oh, I almost forgot one other issue. The lack of a real EULA for Paul and Pauline, they're supposed to be merchant resources, but as far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no real EULA for them yet. Again, not something I would expect from commercial software (trust us, go ahead and use the figure, we'll let you know what you can legally do with it later).

IMHO, moving forward SM/Poser will need to bring more improvements and features to the table or their market share will begin to decline (if it hasn't already). They also need to ensure that future Poser releases are solid, and don't appear as rushed releases. Poser still has some good features that aren't available in DS, but as is stands for me going forward, as a commercial product, Poser not only needs to match the new features that show up in DS (like PBR), but exceed them with other useful new features.

For those that have upgraded, please keep posting your superfly images, and progress on Pauline, and other good things about P11. This is all very important to any possible future upgrades for me (and possibly for others as well).

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