The hobby, which is what 3D art is for me, has certainly changed in all the years that I have been playing with it but then so much in life has changed in the last twenty odd years (and they have been odd years in many respects). I have not used DS for many years now and clearly DS and Poser have moved off in different directions but I think we too often look at the differences and pay little regard for commonality. I guess this is understandable in some respects, in the same way we as a race tend to look at what we want rather than what we have. Concentration on our wishlist always seem to take priority over what is in our runtime but for all that there are so many similarities. Finishing up with a good render needs good lighting, composition, attention to detail and so much more and that is true no matter what software is used, there may be different paths to that goal, dependant on the software in question, but the basics remain the same.

Even today a large percentage of the content can be made to work in either DS or Poser, sure some may need a little bit of effort but very little is totally impossible. As to worrying about investment in 3D art software is no more vulnerable or protected than most things in life. When I started with Poser I think I paid over $400 for Poser, I know for a fact that the upgrade for Poser 7 was $249 and I purchased it on sale at $160 and that was in $2006. At the time many were predicting that Poser was dying and would not last much longer. I also purchased Bryce and Hexigon, 14 years and Poser 11.2 looks nothing like Poser 7 but Bryce and Hexigon has not changed much. Sure they are still around as is the company that owns the, but very few people would buy them today.

Trying to predict the future is a mug's game and with a good level of certainty that you will get it wrong. Far better to do your research and buy based upon what you can see and use today and from there on in have fun using what you have rather what you think you might have. Personally I think Poser is in a good place, a better place that is has been for a while but guess what, if all development on Poser stopped this very moment I will still be using it, for how long who knows, that is the future and I would rather have fun now and not worry about that.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.