Well, the problem I have with Poser is it's not really good at the one thing it exists to do.  I have never had half of the problems with Poser 7 other people seem to.  I've had it Poof away a few times, and it hangs and freezes on some operations, but my biggest headache has always been it's inability to find associated textures on its own if something gets moved or saved in a different format.  Maybe because I'm not using those high-end 3rd party figures everyone else seems to be that P7's always worked so well for me.  So, no, I don't think P7 is a bad program, especially not for its price...

HOWEVER, for a program called Poser and pitched as a character specific tool, there are some glaring deficiencies I've never been able to get my head around.  Horrible rigging tools, hugely inadequate joint bending system with no weight mapping, no soft bodies (even something basic like "Jiggles" could be part of the program but isn't), and of course problematic self-shadowing that misses entire features such as nostrils.  All of the animation tools in the world would be wasted on figures that only look (halfway) real while sitting still.

I'm not giving up on Poser just yet.  That said, Carrara6 looks too good to pass up.

Have you tried Wings?  It's a little confusing, but it seems to work.

I really don't know how many people make their own stuff.  I know that I've made things I couldn't find a few times, and used things I found that I could have just as easily made.  I suppose the common wisdom is that people who make their own stuff do it in other programs, only working in Poser or Studio if they're in the content biz.  I have a hard time believing there aren't at least a few Poser users who model everything themselves and neither buy, sell, or share content.  If I can ever find the time to get the hang of zBrush, maybe I'll be in that category someday.  If Truespace, blender or Studio don't lure me away, and I'm not expecting anything to change in that area any time soon.

For being supposed entry level programs, it's especially hard to make your own stuff in Poser or Studio, IMHO.  Everyone seems to use a handful of smaller tools in addition to or even instead of the provided rigging tools.  What does that point to?

Quote - Isn't Poser an expensive hobby anyways? Content isn't free... :)

No, but Wings and blender are! :closedeyes:

Wait a second...  Two additional plud-ing, one to let you work with cloth, one to let you make cloth...  What does the base do again?

A few extra bucks?  You mean a few hundred, maybe.  I have Poser, and I love it.  I don't see these plug-ins that bring it anywhere near Poser's price.  Hopefully the SDK will bring some forward.  Hmmm... how much would you pay for working softbodies?  Fluids?  Atmospheres?

Poser has a $50 plug-in for physics, and many other shaders and such are commercially available.  I can see complaining about the lack of certain features, but I think this is a very good free program, even if end up becoming someone's expensive new hobby.

I've gotten some nice shaders that weren't that complex at all.  Initially, they were essentially the same materials as my P4 materials.  Everything from the P4 room is in there, and getting them to look as they did in P4 wasn't too much work.  I just try to link everything direct and avoid the math nodes.  I'll often use copies of the same texture at different strengths to give a little more control (since it's already being referenced) over each channel. The material room is one of my favourite parts of the program.  I can't believe how long it took me to try UV scaling!

Well, I think I'm happy in the sub $500 category.  I'd prefer to be in the sub $250 category, but I went and got the new Truespace again.  I really almost threw everything out last year and tried to switch to blender.  I lasted about 20 minutes before screaming like a monkey at a vending machine.  My big problem is that there's just no take-it-or-leave-it yet.  No one really talks about this, but all of these programs are serious commitments and you can't just get by with logic.  And trial and error?  Gawd, try that in zBrush.  I got the 3.0 upgrade in June for buying it at the old price in 2002.  I never could figure out what it wants from me, but the art in the galleries is sooo good.  I launched it about 2 weeks ago and had to ctrl-alt-del because I couldn't find undo or quit.  Cost is relevant when you think of it as an over-time thing.  How many plug-ins could I buy in 5 years time versus how many times you might upgrade a full version of another package?  I'm really anxious to see how this new cloth thingie turns out!

It seems to me that Daz studio is a platform for viewing and using brokered content.  Things like the upcoming cloth plug-in which is free until you wish to make your own clothes lead me to this opinion.  Thing is, alot of people never make anything new.  They are, I suppose, happy with the fantasy/military/medeival/sci-fi selections already available.  These people will be using created content, but not creating it, so it makes sense to charge them this way.  Poser, OTOH, uses a different buisness model, but at their current pricing I see no reason to complain.  I suppose I paid for features I haven't used, and bug-fixes to the ones I do use.  Nothing new there.  My biggest fear was that Daz would nickel-and dime me on basic stuff (eg: unlimited undos plug-in, $19.95, Interactive camera widget, sale price $9.99, etc.) but that hasn't really happened so far.  If they can keep the plug-ins reasonably priced, and provide a useful program when devoid of plug-ins, then I'm cool with that.

Alot of complaining for a free program.  I'd hate to hear what you'd say if you'd bought Poser or something.  Are American programs that bad?  I like Japanese, German and Italian myself...

Does anyone know if you need the morphloader plug-in to load pre-morphed figures? 

I have a few things done in each version of Poser since 4.  If I install Daz Studio, will I be able to use the more recent stuff?  I'm expecting a lot of material issues.

I thought the tiff would be the alpha.  I mean, it's not the tiff's apha channel you need, you need to use the render you see as the alpha.  I think.

I noticed that the depth cue is calculated based on the farthest object on the screen, or something like that.  I tried it in an animation once, and got horrible flashing as it was constantly reevaluating its farthest range.  Does that mean it becomes less accurate overall as the distance increases?  I'm guessing there are only 256 slices it can recognise along the z axis.

Microsoft only controls the software development.  Sure, the last several generations of GPUs have been developed in response to or in parallel with the DirectX roadmap.  That said, once those features are established and implemented, they can always be supported through updates to OpenGL.

Here's a quote from a recent news article posted on www.opengl.org:

“DirectX 10 hasn’t lived up to any of its promises, and in fact has been a titanic disappointment. More than that, the features that are supposed to be unique to DirectX 10 can also be exposed in OpenGL. Given how few people readily jumped on the Vista bandwagon, it’s safe to suggest there might be a slight paradigm shift to favoring OpenGL, especially now that DirectX has had its components largely broken up.

A rejuvenated interest in Mac gaming more than likely means rejuvenated interest in OpenGL, which is NOT platform dependent as DirectX 10 is. A rejuvenated interest in OpenGL means the potential for DX10 features outside of Windows XP. In short, DX10 is, at least at the moment, bust, and the features it boasts so proudly may indeed wind up making the journey back to Windows XP in the form of updates to OpenGL.”

Yeah, but a switch to Direct X would screw the Mac folks.  Which is probably M$ reasoning in the first place...  I don't see OpenGL going anywhere, even if Vista does botch it up.