Renderotica

Poser fans have been carrying around a skeleton deader than dirt since Genesis 2 IMO.
Psst ... and sad to say but Daz has a foot or two in the grave with Blender's strides.

It's been finished since long ago.

I mean, their catchphrase is "Feel the Poser Pulse getting stronger" with a hospital pulse line. So inviting.

It may still have a couple of die-hard users, which is nice, but as living software, its days are long gone. The last compatible figures are Generation 4 (We are at 9 now).

I doubt the content store it was sold to has what it takes to elevate the software and figures up to today's standards, and even if they did, it's a bit too late for that. I don't even think that was their goal when they bought it anyway.

DAZ STUDIO USER SINCE 2006

Originally Posted by: Fixer

See I'm in my 60's now and have spent a ton of money on Poser over the years, much of it won't work in DS so I'm told. So not only will I need to learn how to use DS, I would also need to spend big on resources for it....

It's a tough decision to make, but when I see how DS is racing away it does make me question how long I can carry on using inferior software.......

I don't think that's true. Sure, there are occasional things that don't work, but I brought across everything from Poser when I started with Daz 10 years ago, and in fact I still buy 'poser only' stuff from time to time. You can usually make it work one way or another, sometimes very well indeed - I have a collection of shaders which I use to re-surface poser stuff, particularly metallic stuff - they look great in Daz with a modest amount of work.  

Architecture, props and environment and legacy rigged Poser figures- (up to Sydney, Miki 2, Victoria 4, ) with their clothes work fine in DAZ studio. For IRAY, you need to convert shader. 
What does not work are figures, that are capsule rigged or weight mapped rigged. Would be any figure since Poser 8, that doesn't work.

I do pretty much all animations. I switched from Poser to the Reallusion software (now up to Character Creator 4 and iClone 8) several years ago. I only use Poser to export its props and animations into Reallusion. Reallusion renders incredibly quickly. For things that rendered overnight in Poser, I render equivalent them in about 10 minutes or less, and in UHD. Using a first generation graphics processor card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970) I can successfully render three thousand UHD iRay frames at 60 frames per second (50 seconds, almost a full minute) in that 10 minutes. Just enough time to go get myself a cup of coffee. Dynamic cloth, dynamic hair, spring effects for bouncing boobs and balls...and both scanned humans and motion capture for ultra-realistic movements and looks. The limit for me is no longer the rendering time, it's the scene setup, which I would much rather spend time on. The Reallusion software isn't free, but if you wait for a sale it's roughly comparable to a couple of Poser releases. I'm sure if I upgraded to a hot new GPU the animations would render before I could even push the start button. I'll keep buying those lottery tickets. 

Edited by user Friday, September 30, 2022 2:32:42 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Disclaimer: I've always been a Daz Studio user, and all I know about Poser is that Daz is also compatible with it. I looked into Poser once, and ... nothing.

Thing is...  I sometimes like doing stupid things, I sometimes also do things in favor of this website because from my POV...  this place is amazing in itself.

Some time ago I willingly bought into a "Poser only" erotic content model from this website assuming that I would be able to use parts of it in DS considering the Power compatibility layer. However, I realized that I was taking a gamble and accepted this first and foremost.

As one could expect I couldn't use all of it but....  I did manage to "cheat" my way around it utilizing features from Daz Studio, ZBrush and some other gizmos. Let's just say that it really made me appreciate the Poser software and its capabilities even though I never used it for myself and never will.

Originally Posted by: Redsup

This makes me sad. I've been using Poser for a very long time, but I've been thinking more and more about making the jump to Daz.

What's scary for me  is the learning curve with Daz, and the fact that I've assets I've built over the many years and with many dollars that I'd hate to lose. I'm reading that many are importable to Daz with some material changes, but still. 

I know Poser at this point like the back of my hand and it's easy for me to create renders knowing where everything is and how to manipulate it to achieve the result I want. Switching to another software and starting from scratch is a bit intimidating.

I was really hoping the new owners would save it and work on new models and the like...but after one look at Le Femme and a few abortive attempt at using the character my heart sank. It doesn't even match the now ancient V4 figure that I'm still using.

If there truly is no hope left for Poser I am a sad man, and I absolutely dread having to move to Daz.

I get you there. I was very intimidated. I kept looking at the assets for Studio here and at other places, wishing that Poser could make use of them. But I kept going back to Poser because like you, I had years of experience with it. 

This is what I did: I kept using Poser to kill time and make renders, but I downloaded Studio and started learning how it was different, how it was similar, and where I needed to start. Within a week or two of doing that, I was able to light a scene properly enough to make a somewhat satisfactory image. As time went on, I was using Poser less and less, and I was actually starting to buy some of the assets for Studio that I'd been wanting. 

Eventually, I closed Poser down for the last time, and I haven't looked back. YouTube was instrumental in the changeover, Sickleyield's videos being especially helpful when it came to learning the lights, which were a major frustration at first but actually very simple to use once I knew what I was looking at. 

I won't tell you what software to use to enjoy your hobby, but if you're thinking about switching, it doesn't have to be overnight.

Originally Posted by: Godless8

GPU wise, if you are able to get your hands on an RTX 3060 12G. You will be set. You will render fast and be able to render decently sized scenes.

Oh, that's funny, that is the exact video card I have (EVGA RTX 3060 12 GB).  I also used to game a lot and have always had a decent mid to upper range rig for gaming and the last AMD (ATI) card I had was an old 9800.

I tried to use Poser back in the day but I was moving from DAZ Studio to Poser (was given a copy by a friend when he quit doing digital art due to eye issues) and after using DAZ, I never got the hang of Poser and quickly went back to DAZ.