Stewer, there's a few renderers that seem to go against that theory. Vray for 3dsMax can do micropoly displacement extremely well, and is still lightning fast at raytracing. ;-) I'm not sure why people consider C4D among the great renderers, because I found it way too slow for me as well. Results are good, but it doesn't even come close to the likes of Brazil, MentalRay or Vray. If Poser could somehow speed up it's rendertimes, or at the very least allow us to network render a scene, then I might use it more often than I do. Rendering long animations (10,000 frames or more) with it is virtually impossible since it's so slow and unstable. Plus I usually render to targa images instead of AVI for animations, which Poser doesn't seem to allow.

You might wanna bring this question to the 3dsMax forum if you haven't done so already. I'm not really sure about the answer, but perhaps someone there will know. I'm thinking not too many people here in the Poser forum are running their own render farm. No offense to anyone. ;-)

Whoops, lastly, I should point out that I have rigged the Vicki base mesh in 3ds using Character Studio, and I found it much much easier to pose her because I didn't have to struggle with system crashes, bad joints, and ugly folds in the mesh. Her bends were much more natural and the IK was smoother and more intuitive. If only 3dsMax Demo had a working version of Character Studio, I'd encourage people to download it and try it for themselves, but sadly it does not. What I'm looking for in future versions of Poser would be more powerful animation capabilities, and a much more intuitive interface. However, then you're looking at the price of the software going up higher than some would be willing to pay, because of the extra programming involved. It's a very "bloated" program right now (in that it's easy to bring to it's knees), and has a very strange and inconvenient workflow. I don't think anyone who's experienced more advanced software can argue that point. Unless you've tried the high end software (and I mean really tried it), there's no way to understand why it costs so much compared to Poser. But there's many reasons, and once you get involved in animation, they become clear. Anyway, I like Poser very much, it's well worth what it costs to be frank. You can absolutely produce impressive work with it, but the price to pay might be the hair on your head if you decide to use it for long, complex animating.. ;-)

"There is a FANTASTIC frodo in the poser gallery ...done..with...VICKI!! I mean dead on!!" Well, it's a very good image! But he stated that he painted some parts of the face he didn't like. So it wouldn't look that good in animation. Key point... the mesh is limited by it's vertices. There's only so far you can push and pull them before they "break". That's why using the same mesh as everyone else reduces the the chances of producing a totally unique character. I don't think people fully understand that perspective. Also, I know Poser can and is being used by professionals. However, what I said was it would NEVER be used by professional FX studios because of it's many instabilities and limitations in animation. It would take 10x longer to animate a film in Poser than in Character Studio for 3ds as an example, and the rigging system is less than desirable. I'm not poking for an argument here, but I think people who love the program often overlook some key points as to why it's not accepted everywhere.

As a post script, I'd also like to point out that because Poser rigging is kinda crappy, most of the characters look rigid when posed, or look like plastic dolls. Everyone using VIcki, for example, will have all the same "bends" and the same mesh creases in their renders. This isn't the case when you create a model from scratch and rig it yourself in 3dsMax for example. You can create different bend areas, and much more natural poses. So again, it comes down to the uniqueness of what is produced. *this is just my perspective from observations I've seen regarding the matter. NOT my personal opinion about the software's users. ;-)

Ok. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and play devil's advocate for a moment. I'll probably get bashed for it, but maybe I can help bring some light to the subject. The reason everyone outside the Poser community hates Poser art is because so MUCH of it tends to look and feel the same. The program is so easy to use, and so inexpensive, that it's been embraced by people who otherwise would have no inclination to learn 3D, and all they use it for is to render stale images of default Poser figures over and over again. Some are postworked in photoshop, but using the same meshes as everyone else produces undeniable likenesses that are hard to avoid unless you do massive amounts of paintovers. Even using tons of morphs to change up the mesh is not going to produce a unique character. Because it's still the same mesh, and it's going to have similar characteristics to someone else's figure. Since everyone and anyone can buy the same product morphs, there's a good possibility that the art you produce can bear a striking resemblance to someone else's work... this makes it very unappealing to those who do professional art and want to make something undeniably their own. There's nothing wrong with using stock characters in a pinch, but imagine if LOTR's Gollum was done with a poser figure. Suddenly, there would be tons of movies using some form of him in their scenes too, and then that cheapens the original because the likelyhood that it would be represented uniquely each time is slim. Also, Poser can not be used by professionals in a productive way. Its good for making still images, but sucks at animation. Plus, you can't network render animations produced in Poser, so therefore it would never be used by FX studios. Most of the people on sites like CGTalk are in the business of FX and character development for film and professional use. Poser doesn't fit that criteria. I hope what I have said here doesn't get taken the wrong way, because I use Poser myself too. But I certainly understand why people do not find it "valid" when you have artists out there who make some truly unique things from scratch, from modeling to texturing. You can't really compare that to just buying a premade Daz figure and some texture from the marketplace. For example, how many "April Wet" texture renders are in the galleries? When that texture came out, there were at least 2 or 3 renders a day posted that used it. You can see how someone who makes their own textures from scratch for their own models would look at that and cringe I think.

Genny, that's probably because Poser lighting leaves a LOT to be desired. That hasn't changed no matter what version you use. Fido13, let's be realistic here: painting over a render and rendering with a totally different 3D program are two different things. Fixing up what Poser screwed up by hand, and using a render engine that can do things Poser can't is totally different. However, THAT being said, there is NO WAY allowing people to postwork a Poser-rendered scene to no end is having a "level" playing field. That's simply not true, especially with the skillz some people have at painting in hair, etc. And being that you can't judge just how much postwork was done, then I feel there's only one way to make it perfectly fair to all... NO postwork, NO outside apps. I'm not counting Firefly for Poser5 as an outside app, because if you can produce great results with that thing, you deserve an award! LOL! Either that, or ANYTHING goes, so long as you used Poser to set up the poses and the props. Hey, fair is fair, right? ;)

This is probably a "probe" email. Meaning, spammers send out the emails automatically to a stolen list, and then see who bites so to speak. If the emails bounce, they are removed from further mailings, but if you respond in any way, even with a "hey, what's this?", then they know it's an actively checked email address that they can spam with their crap.

Hmmm. So there's a collision detection for bodyparts? But does it work with the hair too, or is it just there so bodyparts don't intersect each other when posing? I don't think poser4 has this option, so it sounds like it's dynamic specific.