I just have been looking at some of the images that I have saved over the years from the galleries, combined that with some of the other topics about Poser and I truely amazed at what has occured with the software over the years. Try going back to some of the earliest images in the galleries have alook for yourselves. It also occured to me that Poser in the ultimate form, might be the base for an AI interface of computer of tomorrow. Think about it for a moment, a computer that where you could design the AI character and change the character as you want!!

Sorry if this isn't in line with the gist of your thread but since you mention Poser and the future... I haven't used Poser 5, so I don't know what the state of the Poser art is. As a non-artist, I appreciate what Poser has done to enable people without no or minimal artistic talent to create useful or pleasing (to them at least) images. I think that in order to truly fulfill that promise to a larger community a few things are required: 1. Figures that can be posed in any position the human body can reasonably assume without cracking or breaking. One should not have to resort to being skilled with a 2D editor to fix the artifacts the 3D application produces. 2. A more sophisticated posing system. I'm not sure what format this would take. Perhaps the ability to select key points on a drawing or photograph (head, feet joints. etc) similar to mocap software and have the pose generated by the program. Some tweaking will always be required and I'm sure that process could be improved as well. 3. Easier lighting setup. Given the importance of lighting, I'd like to see an interface that allowed the user to select the environment (indoor/outdoor), lighting type (incandescent/flourescent), time of day, etc. The lighting data is available to generate this. There should be an alternative to either pre-built light sets of laborious experimentation for the non-artist/photographer. I know there are many accomplished users who would probably prefer doing things manually. Some programmers eschew easy development tools to write code manually as well. In the end, I think improvements along these lines would make Poser easier to use and more enjoyable for a larger number of people. Those who are truly talented will always be able to produce superior results with any tool.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken