Firstly, thanks in advance. Bare with me, I'm going to tell you a little about my job. Not for vanity's sake, I know it quite probably will be boring; but to set up the question I'm here to ask. This post is long so skip it if you're short on time or dislike long posts. It will eventually relate to Poser, I promise ;-) If you happen to have a job like mine (or one nothing like it for that matter) I'd love to hear about it as well as your answer to the question to follow.

I'm an art director for a small multimedia company. I have a staff of one (who is also the art director). Get the picture? We work on projects including:

-- interactive CD interfaces in Macromedia Director projects
-- backgrounds for large screen projection of live video feed conferences involving surgeons performing live surgery (video feed sits on graphic background something akin to talking head news graphics)
-- PowerPoint presentations
-- Video graphics
-- a limited amount of web work
-- some print material

I love 3D and I'm always trying to "fit it in" to what I do at work. I seek new tools to expand what I can offer my clients and employer. Sometimes there are no demo versions available; often the demo versions are not close enough to the "real thing" as to rely on for purposeful evaluation. As such, I take the risk and purchase programs now and again to see if I can incorporate them into my tool box. I use my own money in this effort because it's easier to justify occasionally spending down time learning new software on the job if it costs my employer no capital expenditure. I want to own programs myself because I'm working on starting a small freelance business. The initial motivation being to pay off credit card bills incurred from purchasing software, but I also hope to supplement my income. Needless to say my funds are finite and I need to optimize this effort so I'm seeking your opinions with regard to Poser, both in general and specifically to Mac OS X Panther.

I would like to be able to incorporate "People" in my work when needed, although currently that need is very limited if not zilch (sometimes though, availabiltity becomes need with good samples and a little prompting). Poser also seems to have some features in addition to the obvious figure rendering, such as soft body animation physics (cloth blowing in wind), atmospheric effects and such that imply it could be useful over all as an additional tool, especially when coupled with Carrara 3.

I work on a Mac G5 dual 2 gig, 2 gigs of ram, standard shipped video card, Panther OS X.

The following are general questions relating to Poser 5. I gratefully invite you to answer all, any, or none in a general manner or as they may specifically relate to the machine specs above or to you personally. Please feel free to offer any other info I haven't thought to request.

-- To those who can relate Poser to my job as previously described or to your own: Have you found Poser to be more than an "interesting toy" or pleasurable hobby? Have you found it to have real world applications in your work including and beyond images involving the human figure? If so, would you care to relate a brief case study of how?

-- Have you found Poser easy to learn?

-- In learning Poser have you relied on:
---- contextual learning drawn from inferences of the interface itself
---- documentation that arrived within the shipped packaging
---- 3rd party learning materials
How would you weigh each respectively regarding which was more useful and which you relied on most?

-- Was the included documentation physical or electronic? How would you rate its effectiveness and the ease of understanding it?

-- Do you find Poser to be stable? How often does it crash?

-- Does it "play well" with Carrara 3 in the manner implied by the mfg's marketing material?

-- What specific problems, if any, have you encountered using Poser with Carrara 3?

-- What problems, if any, have you encountered in general with Poser.

-- Given my previously stated goal and circumstances would you recommend Poser 5 and why. If not, why?

If you've made it this far, thanks for hangin' in there. In the interest of fair exchange and you're possible interest, here is a little of what I've discovered for myself about other programs I've tried. I'd be happy to tell you more of what I know if you'd like.

Carrara 3
(actual application plus latest free updates, not the demo):

The mfg description of their product is very accurate. It's very inexpensive for what you get. It's versatile, fairly stable, has advanced rendering, and a variety of modeling tool choices, and some fairly sophisticated animation functions for it's cost including bones and a built in physics generator. It also includes loads of other built in features plus available 3rd party add-ons which, so far, the list of both grows more impressive with each version. I think it compares in many ways (but to a lesser degree) to what you can do with Cinema 4 D and Maya and in some respects, depending on your need, is much better. Better because it's so much easier to learn, and costs so much less. In short, I love Carrara. It's a bargain.

Cinema 4 D and Maya
(latest demos each):

Included here together because on the surface they appear very similar in form and function and "surface" is as far as I've gotten. I'd love to learn one or both to a greater depth but I currently don't have the time to invest in learning a program that you have to rely on reading documentation so heavily to do so.

Vue d'Esprit 4
(actual application plus latest free updates, not the demo):

Very interesting and fun to play with and has an enjoyable interface. Also very, very slow. It's fairly easy to learn. It's final renders are a little disappointing. Fine detail (like water ripples or ocean waves in distance) often appear as unacceptable noise rather than added realism. The sky renders are hit and miss sometimes they look great, sometimes too "contrasty" and cartoonish. All in all, it still seems like a work in progress. It will probably evolve into a great program in future versions.

Amorphium Pro
(actual last previous version application plus latest free updates, and the latest demo for OS X):

For some reason I 'm really drawn to this program although it has limited use for me currently. I would like to find ways to use it more often simply because I dig it. I can see the possibility for further use if I run into the need for quick organic modeling especially if abstraction is applicable or to fill in a unique gap where other applications are lacking. It's fun, generally easy to learn although a little difficult to master in technique, has plenty of features, and generates beautiful renders although many may find them a little too shadowy or soft at the default settings. The render options allow for "all or nothing" options with regard to renderosity but do allow for a large variety of pixel depth and anti-aliasing. For what it costs it's not a bad application to have just for the fun of it, if you don't mind paying for something that will mainly be for fun. Who knows, you might find it fits some professional need specific to you just fine.

Amapi Designer 7
(actual application plus latest free updates, not the demo):

I 've been very disappointed with this ap, because of it's learning curve to price ratio. I tried the demo and found it very difficult to learn but I recognized that Amapi Designer 7 can be a very powerful program especially when used with Carrara 3. The two together allow for just about every type of modeling method available. However, I find by it's very nature that NURBs modeling is not intuitive to me, especially as presented in Amapi. The concept is great, but it takes a lot of practice to become comfortable with NURBs in Amapi's free floating, sometimes disorienting work space. I found the tools difficult to master quickly. I bought the ap banking on the included documentation to make it easier to learn. Unfortunately, there was no physical manual, only pdfs. I hate bumbling around in PDFs while the ap is open (usually resulting in a crash in this case). I'd rather have a good manual with a comprehensive index next to me as I work. I've found no 3rd party books on Amapi 7 or earlier, only expensive CD based tutorials (again I need a book). I have hopes that I will eventually learn it but that probably won't be until eovia makes a printed version of the manual available (something I was told was scheduled to happen soon by an eovia rep -- something for which I've been waiting since Amapi Designer 7 first came out some months ago).