"My V4 clothing runtime alone is approaching 100Gb, but unlike a g8 runtime, it isn’t full of 500+Mb bikinis."

Interesting notion, but given my experience (i.e. my own purchases), even those of us that do like to do pin-up renders, only a handful of Bikinis is more than enough, since I can easily put every bikini from V3/A3 up to G8 on any genesis figure I own. I have ~10 bikinis for Genesis 1-8. Some I got simply because I needed to complete some insane deal I was offered, and they were the best option, not because I needed another bikini (thoogh some were because I wanted that style too). I will grant you however, you do have a rather large V4 runtime.

"Poser is about leveraging what you own, not constantly purchasing the same products over and over."

True, but keep in mind, the same can be said for the Genesis line and DS. People who want to move beyond "load, pose, render" have the option to create their own clones of external figures to use that content on Genesis (which could then be used in Poser too). So for tinkerers, the options are quite impressive.

"I don’t consider ANY of the g figures attractive. With their freak show proportions, heights, and most “Non-Caucasians” characters Aryanized, I find them to be creepy. They are vastly limited in both character content and clothing content (by several orders of magnitude, even after all this time)."

Another interesting comment, given you are someone who has "moved beyond rank beginner too". Surely you know about the included morphs to change height, arm length, leg length, head size,scale, etc. to make any of the Genesis figures just about any size and proportion you want?? Of course if you want even more options, you can get add on morph packages, or create your own morphs in an external modeling software (Blacksmith3D, sold here, is an excellent option for that). As far as non-Caucasian characters being "aryanized", that is obviously a mater of opinion, one that I do disagree with. Though there are an abundance of Caucasian figures, there are also several very good characters to represent other ethnicity's that IMHO are very well done like Uchenna for Genesis 8 Female (promo image below), as we as some very good ethnic morph sets and full ethnic character sets (IIRC, there are some great options here at Rendo).

But, I understand where you are coming from, and your opinions are biased in that direction. You seem to have all the content you need, and the ability to mix and match what you have. Given the type of comic art you do, you aren't really interested in any sort of PBR rendering, as it doesn't really add to your stories. It seems as if you are also very interested in "tinkering" in Poser to get what you want from it. This is all great, and good on you for doing so, it should provide inspiration for others with similar interests.

But, as Wolf noted in is post, this is not the expressed specific intent of Poser from what SM has noted in their own marketing materials, and from what it appears was the primary draw for users to Poser for many years. IMHO, the rendering of easy to use pre-made content was what made poser popular, and in this area it has fallen behind other options, especially in the the ease of getting great quality images with high quality figures. For those of use that use(ed) Poser for this purpose, it does seem to be falling behind. Yes, I like to do pin-ups, female fantasy warriors, fantasy sci-fi, etc. (a card carrying member of the skimp-wear society), and renders featuring cute females (a real fan of The Girl too). Soooo, my desires for Poser are much different than yours, but I would postulate that Poser has lost significant numbers in it's user base simply because it has fallen behind in the specific things that I like(d) to do with it. I may be wrong, because this is all opinion and conjecture, but it does seem to be true based on what I see in the market places and the galleries.

The problem is, if SM caters to the "tinkering" crowd (I don't mean this in a bad way, as I am into tinkering as well), and not the "render pretty pictures easily" crowd (and I would say, IMHO P11 was a tinkerers update, not a pretty picture makers update), then they will be in more direct competition with Blender, Maya, iClone, Unreal, Unity, etc. I had hoped that at some point Poser might be a replacement for Carrara, but I doubt now that will ever happen. Hopefully, with the next upgrade SM will fully understand who there user base will be, and how to attract and grow that user base. I also hope that my interests will match with where SM decides to take Poser.

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