I'm a new migrant to Poser Pro 11, straight from iClone 6, Daz Studio, Carrara. Goal is a tool set for character animation, smooth custom content pipeline, quick i/o, speedy render. Attractor is definitely dynamic soft cloth and physics.

Overall, no buyer remorse, it's possible to start work and create immediately. Nice to have 3D mouse and viewport raytrace shadow, and a tested GoZ workflow. Superfly and raytrace viewport still WIP, but the great potential is there. Age issues like scene manager can be rectified with well-written 3rd party scripts etc. Community is definitely brainy and supportive.

There are however some serious "workflow handicaps" that need attention, if only to keep Poser on par with its prosumer peers and stay relevant in the prosumer animation department for the near future. Good news is these could be rectified easily with near future SR.

My following suggestion are additive/ optional and should not disable/ disrupt existing user's habit.

Universal manipulator should be universal: Rotate in 6 axes. Translate in 6 axes. Scale in 6 axes.

Universal manipulator needs custom transparency/ thickness/ shading option (currently invisible at certain angle/ background/ preview render condtions).

Rotate tool (as Poser Twist/ Rotate/ Rotate-Universal) should by now have set degree increment (10/ 15/ 45 degrees or free).

In-Viewport Concise Selection: All Transform tools (Move/ Rotate/ Twist/ Scale/ Universal manipulator) should be able to Select Whole Figure or Whole Prop.

Proposed: a clean and fast solution across all cameras: Double Click on anything in scene to Select Whole and Center.

(at least as an Interface option to be switched on under global Preference)

In-viewport basic Duplicate/ Array (the weirdest missing feature so far)

Translate tool to expand to become in-viewport Copy/ Duplicate tool for figures or props with CTRL pressed.

Universal Manipulator should become in-viewport Multi-Duplicate array tool for figures or props with CTRL-SHIFT pressed.

Animation UI/ GUI

Animation Hotkeys urgently wanted - Space Bar play/pause the most universal AV CG interface hotkey missing in Poser a game dev anim tool, seriously SM? ;)

Animation key scrolling auto-linked to Wacom dial or gaming controller scrolling (possible in Carrara the antique neglect-ware).

Animation Control needs Play Range (seriously?).

Animation Pallette Play Range needs 3X larger handle and need to be on top with Timeline scrubber.

Animation Pallette keyframe tracks need to have collapse-able hierarchy:

1. by Current Selected
2. by Current Active
3. by Type (body parts + sub-parts, material, camera, prop, face controller....)

Audio Scrubbing needs to be audible (currently scrub resolution too coarse to be useful for viseme/ phoneme finetuning).

Audio Scrubbing needs to be visible in Animation Palette (in its own Layers).

Audio Scrubbing in needs to have its own Play Range.

Animation Layers need to catch up to year 2000 standard and have buttons to be

1. on-clip time-stretchable, blendable
2. on-clip CTRL-drag to loop
3. on-clip breakable, multiple broken clips per layer track
4. per-clip weight adjustment
5. Plus and Minus zoom both horizontally and vertically

To catch up with the other template based animation tools:

• outdo DS animate2 - mouse hover on clip to audition animation, on loaded layers or loaded Layer Dots
• outdo DS Puppeteer - turn Pose Dots into Puppet Dots. Don't stop at Poses, puppet Mat/ Light Dots too.
• outdo iClone - Right click Figure/ Prop context menu to load "Perform Layer" (or figure/prop-specific Layer Dot Set).

All of the above are not special but character animation BASICS...

Advanced animation wise, would be great to have official support for volumetric particles

Carrara style replicator, instance scattering and flocking scripts. There're more, but another time.

Think about what these additions will mean to the typical game dev's animated character pipeline.

Think about how all this enhances the creativity of Poser animators and moviemakers.

Think about the possibilities for new animation-centered store product lines - content or addons!

Thanks for reading and considering this...

Hope 2016 will be a good year for character animators in the Poser PRO space!