Hi folks, I wanted to give you some official news from the land of Poser. In case you haven't heard Steve Cooper and Steve Yatson have both moved to different companies. I've stepped in the fill Coop's spacious shoes. On the bright side when you say "Hey Steve!" in the office it's much less confusing: only one guy answers. (Yes there were 3 Steves).

 Don't worry though as all the rest of the Poser crew is still here and even some new faces. Fahim Niaz has been the product manager for Smith Micro's 2D Graphics products for years. He's my mentor in this job and I'm his mentor in the world of Poser. Together we'll keep Poser moving ahead.

 I want all of you to know that despite recent management changes Poser is still here for the long haul and we have focused our efforts on you: artists, content creators, and animators.  No matter how you use poser we realize one thing stands above all else: content is king.

 We intend to provide you what you need to create with Poser. We won't abandon years of established workflow. All improvements are carefully designed to retain as much compatibility as possible. You have huge collections of content and one of our goals is to keep all of it working as we move forward. Most importantly, we know that without you there is no Poser. You are the center of the Poserverse and we will support you.

 There's been a lot of interest lately in physically based rendering (PBR) and its ability to produce extremely realistic renders. For years this has been available using plugins such as Reality. Poser 11 will include it's own PBR as well, giving you, the artist yet another choice in production rendering. Our new render engine is based on the Cycles engine of Blender fame. Don't worry; the familiar FireFly render engine is still going to be there. We're just giving you another rendering option.

 Among other things, Poser's integration of Cycles (currently code named SuperFly) is going to give you a much-requested feature: rendered caustics. SuperFly will use the same material room you already know from FireFly. You won't need to learn a new material interface.

 Another part of the SuperFly implementation is the addition of Area lights. Area lights are just what their name implies an adjustable light source that isn't just a pinpoint. This gives you much more realistic highlights, reflections and soft shadows. You can also make any object become a light simply by increasing its ambient value.

 We are here, we hear you and we're making the best version of Poser ever.

Here's a test render from the new Cycles render engine. Remember this is a Work in Progress. (Sorry couldn't resist the checker board thing LOL)

Still messing with glass ...