Yes it's free, and in so many ways better than Poser 4/5/6. But until the following very basic things are fixed or improved I can't see myself using DS for anything but a bit of fun: 1)Importing Poser figures reveals that scaling of morphs is handled very differently. An increase, for instance, of any X scaling in Poser somehow adjusts V3 so the scaling "fits", within reason, the default scaling. Not so in DS. Any scaling deviating from the norm misaligns the morphs grossly. 2)You cannot seperate off a head and save it as a face. You can edit laboriously from a text file however. This is surely a very basic function which is missing. 3) You cannot (as far as I am aware)save morphs or poses "on the fly". You can only "memorise" them one at a time or lock them. This again is a basic function missing. 4)You cannot get rid of the boxes when highlighting a face. This can obscure the morphing work you are doing. 5)Rendering is slow and on my 3.8 gig, 1.5 gig RAM dual processor system I still get hangs, crashes and enormous delays when rendering quite simple scenes if I want any appreciable quality. 6)While the interface at first sight looks more attractive and less cluttered, in practice the interface is no better than Poser and there are fewer options, fewer parameters and equally clumsy, ill-thought-through functions which do not aid user efficiency. 7)Apart from lighting (which is the ONE area where DS exceeds Poser 5/6's capabilites) there is a distinct lack of detailed control over particularly morphs, and morphs are to my mind the cornerstone of any figure-oriented programme. Leonardis

Leonardis, it is only version 1. Show me any version 1 software that has full integration? Rome wasn't buit in a day....and nor is software. Put your requests to DAZ, that way they will know what customers are expecting in future versions. Cheers

Sure, it's version one, but after many beta versions. Not trying to be unkind here but Daz is not marketing DS for free as an excercise in charity. The "average" DS user will have already spent a generous amount on V3 etc etc and DS is a loss leader for a huge number of addons DAZ will be hoping we all buy. The ability to fully manipulate and load morphs is I think a pretty basic requirement. L

1. I'm not sure what you mean exactly, but scaling is an area acknowledged to need work in the readme. 2) You can make any pose a partial pose, of which Faxe and Hand settings in Poser are a special case. Select the parts you want to change and cmd(Mac)/ctrl(Win)-double-click the DAZ|Studio preset: a dialogue willl popup from which you can choose various options, including applying the pose only to the selected elements. You can use the second tab to change the default behaviour for that preset type, after which shif-double-clicking will perform the action without the dialogue. 3) Not sure what you mean 4) Edit>Preferences>Interface tab, change the Manipulation draw style. 5) Experiences vary - I don't know why yours would be so bad 6) Mostlt point of view, but you can edit things like sensitivty and limits of the sliders by double-clicking their names. 7) For control see my answer to 6), if you are wanting things likethe ability to import morphs we've been told this is coming in some form at some time, but no details as to when, in what form or at what price have been given.

Fair points but on point 3, I don't see a way to record poses (as with the "dots" in Poser), but I concede I may have missed the detail on the partial poses, in which case apologies. Another thing I can't find is a way to disable texturing for quick camera movement a la poser. I know you can choose the type of preview (wire frame / blocks etc) but I find this doesn't make any difference to camera motion if there is a complex scene. In Poser the ability to disable texturing as you move the camera stops the jerky/slow motion. Maybe there is an option for this in DS but I can't find it. The rendering seems very primitive to me. The only rendering option that shows acceptable shadows takes absolutely ages. How can this be right on a system which renders in Poser in seconds rather than minutes? L

They are called pose presets... At the bottom of the content window is a 'save as' button, the option is also in the menu. The 'save as options' we are concerned with here are, scene, pose preset, materials preset. Pose presets can be either transforms only (poser style pose file), morphs only (poser style MOR pose), or both. As for the render options. "The only rendering option that shows acceptable shadows takes absolutely ages", Yeah it's called RAYTRACING, and is far superior to the opengl instant pictures for morons option that is the default in BOTH DS AND Poser. Compare the 'slow render' in DS to firefly in p5/p6, which would be a fairer test. to 'disable textures' during camera moves, click on the little arrow button nect to the camera name on the viewport window, you can select the usual options, wireframe, hidden line, textured untextured, you can also switch to 'bounding boxes only during moves with an option in the 'edit preferences menu'.

Just a reminder, personal attacks, whether direct or general, are a TOS violation, so let's keep this civil. MorriganShadow DAZ|Studio Moderator

Default render methods are designed to be fast, for tweaking and perfecting... you're supposed to switch to the production render AFTER you've finished putting the pic together...

"Yeah it's called RAYTRACING, and is far superior to the opengl instant pictures for morons option" Yes I realise that raytracing is superior. Thanks. But I think OpenGL is not moronic, but a useful temporary way of rendering. The clear implication in your otherwise helpful reply is that only "serious", macho, in-the-know people use raytracing. Is that so :) Thanks all the same for the tips. L

Render Fight! Render Fight! Woo Hoo! Pixel Pankration comes to the Forum! Some lively action, believe you me! garbleinstigatornix

No, it's not macho at all, how can you see what it will look like in a render system that doesn't show what it will look like? OpenGl style rendering was added to 3dgraphics many years ago because people whith no patience wanted 'instant pictures' rather than having to wait anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Software targeted at 'commercial users' who had deadlines imposed on them by non techies (who knew naff all about cgi) was built with 'headline features' "New TurboNerd 3D v2.0, $2000, features HDRI!" Marketing goon 1 : We nead a headline feature... Tech: we came up with this thing called High Definition Reflected Images, its like reflection maps but better MG1: No no no no no, the accronym sounds ok but we cant jack the price $500 over v1.0 for anything with reflection image in the name, we need something more dynamic... Marketing goon 2: Dynamic, dynamic, hey how about High Dynamic Range Image? MG1: zogging brilliant, ok what does it do Tech: it's a cheesy reflection map to replace raytraced reflections, cuts rendertimes by 80%, and the new system means you only get a 70% drop in quality.... OpenGl was invented for GAMES, not high spec cgi, you want to see an opengl render, look at the viewport, thats all your getting, you don't need to 'render' unless you want a pic bigger than your viewport. Personally I just use zoom, its faster.

At the higher settings OpenGL renders do include shadows, which the preview doesn't, and somewhat better quality images than the basic preview. However OpenGL doesn't support reflection or refraction, or displacement.

"OpenGl was invented for GAMES, not high spec cgi, you want to see an opengl render, look at the viewport, thats all your getting, you don't need to 'render' unless you want a pic bigger than your viewport. Personally I just use zoom, its faster." Well, there you go again! Another implication that "non-serious" users only use full rendering. As pointed out, a quick way of checking things (especially shadows and textured hair in some cases) is to do a quick render. If you think that checking things look ok by waiting 10x longer then so be it. Open GL may have been invented for "games", but it's still useful. L