I started off with Debut, moved on to 9, and now am currently on 2014. I don't know what's on the horizon in terms of new Poser releases, so I don't know if this trial is necessarily for me (I'm content with 2014 and and if something new is coming soon I probably wouldn't get my money's worth out of 11 like I have 2014). Still, it's something to consider and for people looking to get started (or switch to Poser), it's a good way to do so.

Poser Figure Artist! That was the name of it! It was the program that started me down the long road of what was termed crackware at the time because once you started gaining models, you just couldn't stop. I had no idea what the term runtime meant and succeeded only though trial and error. I had tried DAZ Studio and it was so hard to pose. At least they gave you Aiko 3 Free back then...Now she costs 12 bucks!!!

Every time I visit this thread, I keep wanting to find ways that Bondware can make money with Poser and how to gain new, younger users (so that when us old timer Poser users die off, the audience will still be there to keep Poser alive). DazStudio and possibly Blender are what I think of as Poser's main competition, especially Daz... but the more tech-savvy aspiring 3d artists would be far more likely to try Blender (because it's free, it is constantly growing with very impressive new features, yet has a shitty, shitty user interface and now seems to be requiring a very advanced PC to run it).

First I believe there should be a free version of Poser, not a trial but a feature-limited version where you'd pay to upgrade to the next affordable level up. In fact there should be two free versions that each have a very specific focus:

1. Poser Comic Book Creator (which I talked earlier in this thread) for teens who are into comics, manga, etc. and want to make their own. It would need enough features to make it a better choice over Manga Studio/Clip Studio, but otherwise be feature limited. It should come with just enough content that a kid can make a simple superhero comic, complete with basic dialogue balloons. It would have no animation capabilities at all.

2. Poser Cartoon Video Creator: for kids who want to be on social media or earn income from YouTube, this one has a different set of features aimed to do videos that can be uploaded to YT or Instagram. The length of videos you can make would be limited in the free version, but expanded more in the $50 version. LaFemme and LeHomme would not be included in this one, it would come with cartoony poseable 3d characters instead. It would come with enough content to do maybe South-Park type cartoons, maybe have a limited Mimic feature built in that works with only those included figures.

So you'd have tiers of pricing: free, $50, $125, $200... (the $125 one could just be the same as the $50 but with gigabytes of content, music, fonts, whatever). The main idea is that free is what hooks them in, $50 is an affordable way to upgrade to the next best version, $150 gets them all the content and bonuses and whatever else might keep the addiction going, and $200 is the full 11.2 product that we all know and love. Keep it 32-bit for the free and lower-tier products to force a limit to how large users can create 3d worlds and renders. Doing massive 3d scenes and memory-intensive renders is pro-level stuff and they should be buying the $200 product at that point (that'd be another reason to upgrade to the full Poser).

Anyway, just brainstorming... I'm trying to think like a crack dealer and how to get dem pesky kids hooked onto my kind of crack. :)