Thanks all, – real bummer about not spanning body parts. 
That's one major advantage N-side's Quidam has over Poser 7. Looks like I have no real reason to buy Poser 7 then.

I think it's very important that this tool spans body parts - so I look forward to hearing from you. 
Good luck with your download.

Cheers.

Well I just hope Daz treats Carrara with respect and we get an update in the first half of next year. Carrara is only a few steps from being a reasonably mature 3D application – let’s hope it gets to grow up and express its full potential.

Thanks all

Anything to do with 'rigging' will probably encourage me to buy  - rigging has just got to be made easier to do than it is at the moment.

I hope you can still edit your animation after 'Layers' is done with it. As randym77 is correct in saying you’re in danger of getting a mechanical look to your animation.

This is a good time to introduce new words to the makers of Poser for Poser 8 –

'Squash and Stretch'.

The kind of stuff you’re asking for could appear in version 10 - but for goodness sake let’s get Poser doing some of the basic things it’s still having trouble with. A new rigging system is much more important, as I for one want to be able to raise the arms of a figure without the shoulders looking weird. Once figures look and move correctly then maybe some of the stuff you’re asking for could be implemented but not before – Poser needs to at least earn the title semi professional before any high end features are added and that’s a long way off.

I’m starting to raise my eyebrows! At long last something for the animator - this is the best reason to buy so far – just hope you can scrub the timeline in layers (I didn’t see a playhead). Hope the Setup room gets some work done to it too. Bit disappointed to see the interface is looking much the same I was hoping the space could have been utilised better – I think there’s still going to be usability issues. Poser at some point has got to turn at least semi professional, not sure if version 7 takes it there yet.
(~~/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")  oh! - they're at it already

'Animation' is the only thing I’m looking for in Poser now. Although nice renders are good I really have no interest in the fancy render settings (I feel this side of Poser is pretty mature now). Poser 6 was a massive disappointment to me as the improvements were all render based. I occasionally use Poser professionally and when I think back to some of the work-a-rounds I had to do it was unbelievable – so much so I have no intention to repeat the process (it was a p5 cartoon character I was using). I desperately need Poser 7 to have moved on a light year in the animation department because I have a future project that could make use of an enhanced Poser. And for goodness sake e-frontier give us some well made (well rigged) traditional stylised characters – I’m sick of looking at insipid plastic people that have little use other than pouting.

Hi there, looks really good - would be nice to have some great mouth morphs; for saying 'f' and 'oo'.

Look forward to playing with it.

Many thanks for being generous.

A generic character similar to Lowman http://lichiman.aniguild.com/?s=lowman only with a better mouth.

e-frontier is either ignoring or is oblivious to a massive chunk of the 3D market, and here’s how. Millions of people get a lot of pleasure out of Pixar movies and are rightly inspired by the animation – you can’t say Pixar animation is bad (didn’t go to see Cars however). Granted folk go to see anime or other forms of 3D animation and they are inspired by that, but that’s another argument and one for them to pursue. Getting back to my slice of the cake – a large percentage of the folk inspired by the Pixar movies are trying to pursue a career in animation and one day want to work for Pixar. These people use generic rigs to practise animating to short sound clips usually from a movie. Lowman and Generi Rig are two popular rigs - Generi Rig being more popular because it’s well made, is fully articulated and can express a full range of emotions. And because of the generic nature of these rigs you can use them for male or female characters – Lowman even allows you to modify body proportions.

Ok so let’s look at Poser 6 – we have Alpha Man – not too much wrong with this character but what can you use him for. Yes exactly you can use him as Alpha Man. So long as I want to animate super heroes I should be happy (and I have to say nowhere near as much attention has gone into Alpha Man as James or Jessie).  All I’m asking for here is for a well crafted generic rig with top notch facial expressions and joints that bend as they should. If you go to the theatre and someone steps onto the stage in a policeman’s uniform then you assume he’s a policeman. If someone stepped on to the stage wearing a black all in one cat suit then with good body language that person could be anyone, a doctor, a builder, a traffic warden.

Xenophonz, so are these future animated characters going to think for themselves and if they do would we want to listen to them. Anything worth listening to has got to be related to the human condition. Half of the appeal of the Pixar animations is the voice talent. So would that be synthesized in the future too? So someone types in to a computer “…but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed up world" (Casablanca). And it will come out of the mouth of a perfecly animated synthetic Bogart and we’ll all wipe a tear from our eyes. Why bother lets watch real actors bring their own life experiences to unique and living characters.

I think the world is big enough to accommodate both realistic characters and stylized characters (note I don’t use the word toon). The problem that I’m raising is that Poser seems, to a large extent, to ignore the idea of a diverse 3D world and is producing a program that is exclusively aimed at manufacturing more and more realistic characters (that have a lot of time and effort spent on them). I never used the word toon as this to me implies that it’s bias towards entertaining kids. Pixar has never produced animations exclusively for kids. In fact 3D animations made exclusively for kids I find less inspiring or unwatchable e.g. Robots. The bottom line is if you want to animate and exaggerate the movement of your characters it can’t be done in Poser as realistic characters just plain and simply don’t look right. I’ve found some hand drawn animations to be very moving, and I’ve even been moved by Ice Age’s highly stylised characters, but I have never been moved by a highly realistic 3D character. I was moved by Gollum (styled) and I was moved by Harry Potter’s Dobby (styled) Please e-frontier just balance out the Poser universe a bit – less squeaky clean bland popular culture characters and more Faggins and Shreks characters – and make them work properly (fully articulated and expressive).

Oh, and you’ll never eliminate actors as they would be the artist necessary to bring alive any 3D character

Not impressed with the lip sync I'm afraid - no better than Mimic. The thing I’m waiting for is better non realistic characters – have you ever seen Pixar create an animation with photorealistic characters – no – and you don’t want to. Give us some characters that reflect the current world of animation. You watch the Incredibles, you say WOW, and then you go home and look a James for two minutes then close Poser. And no you can’t distort things in the face and figure, it just breaks when you animate. So why Isn’t Poser reflecting popular animation culture? If there’s a generic ‘character creation room’ that allows squash and stretch and will give me exaggerated oooo shapes on the mouth. Give me that and I’ll buy Poser in a second. I know people want realistic characters, probably for still images, but for animation there’s a reason Pixar do stylised characters – there more interesting to watch and you can bend the laws of physics. If there’s ever the day we have totally realistic 3D characters in movies (and it’s coming) that would bore the pants off me – I don’t want real when I go to an animation.

Hi, the thing I’m waiting for is better non realistic characters – have you ever seen Pixar create an animation with photorealistic characters – no – and you don’t want to. Give us some characters that reflect the current world of animation. You watch the Incredibles, you say WOW, and then you go home and look a James for two minutes then close Poser. And no you can’t distort things in the face and figure, it just breaks when you animate. So why Isn’t Poser reflecting popular animation culture? If there’s a generic ‘character creation room’ that allows squash and stretch and will give me exaggerated oooo shapes on the mouth. Give me that and I’ll buy Poser in a second. I know people want realistic characters, probably for still images, but for animation there’s a reason Pixar do stylised characters – there more interesting to watch and you can bend the laws of physics. If there’s ever the day we have totally realistic 3D characters in movies (and it’s coming) that would bore the pants off me – I don’t want real when I go to an animation.

Sounds like Poser 7 won't be on the horizon for a while then. This sickens me a bit when you compare the activity and output from Blender: 3 or 4 reports from Siggraph on there website along with video (and multiple updates of Blender every year).

Poser is the only program I can use to animate (I don't really have the time to start at the bottom of a new learning curve with Blender). Trouble with Poser at the moment is that you can't animate in a cartoon/stylized manner. It just looks plain stupid with James and any cartoon style rigs supplied out of the box just aren't up to the job. With the success of ‘The Incredibles’ and the like I’m surprised that e Frontier isn’t catering for the huge market of inspired animators out there.

MachineClaw thanks for posting the pictures - at last a picture of the e Frontier booth (I don’t think it looks too bad in your pics - it‘s a small company after all). I feel like I've found my favourite can of beans in a massive new supermarket.