KateTheShrew - "I could have done a much better job in Poser than they did with whatever highend application they were using and I'm not an animator!"

So they had a bad animator :)

No one is claiming that a high end system makes for inherently better animations. I think the point is that there rapidly becomes a point of complexity where the high end systems keep on going and the lower end stuff does not.

FishNose - "Let's face it, a prog like Poser scares the hell out of high end people. Suddenly anyone can make it look good if they have any idea about lighting and composition.And they don't have to spend months building the model first, or otherwise pay someone else thousands of bucks to make one."

I suppose it could be - but none of those I know in high end shops are at all scared because in those situations where Poser is the better tool they are happy to use it if it gets the job done. They are also happy to pull in a Daz model if needed and bone it because doing something like that would take them an afternoon or so.

So I don't think they are scared at all, because they can't be "beaten" in any meaningful way - as professionals they will use whatever tool works.

wolf359 - "they often praise the "models" and animation until they find out its poser and then there is an embarrased silence!!!"

I have seen this as well - but the reasons are not embarrassment... it is simply that they no longer consider it a useful discussion. Most of the high end sites (and C4 doesn't really qualify) will praise a model because they are praising the amount of effort and skill that went into it - and when they find out someone simply purchased it they lose that admiration.

I'll do it myself - I have praised several models of humans that I know were built from scratch... but I certainly would praise someone for their Victoria model when I knwo they purchased it. Instead I'll discuss their lighting or whatever it is they did - maybe the composition or the whole scene idea.

wolf359 - "but somehow my animation has no credibility to those guys even though i could get $$Paid$$ for 3 Dino animations before this "Legit "guy finishes wagging his tail."

And in that forum why WOULD it have an credibility? You didn't model it, you didn't bone it. In a forum of people discussing modeling techniques this would be about as worthy of praise as discussing a prize cat at a dog show.

Seriously - look, if the forum is discussing end result animations then the tools used are not relevant - it's what can you get done. But if the forums is about modeling then you can't expect to be praised for something you didn't model.

darkphoenix - "and its rendering engine is still years behind every other major package"

The Max5 engine rocks :)