Tootls of the Trade - Poser 8

I was feeling like Poser had come to the end of the road with version 7.  DAZ Studio was getting better and better, and even though I've used Poser since version 1, it didn't seem to have much of a future.


Poser 8 come out a few months ago, and I was pleasantly surprised for a change.  The interface has been greatly cleaned up, and even though it's still the same old Firefly render engine, it's been tweaked a bit to make it faster and more stable, which is exactly what I'm looking for.  There are still a lot of features I don't use much, like dynamic cloth and hair, or animating, but for static comic panels, it's still my main, proven work-horse.

A lot of ray-tracing issues I had lats year seem to be gone now, and the HDRI lighting looks better than ever.  The new models DAZ has been releasing have some limitations that make them only work to the fullest in DAZ Studio, so I may end up using that mostly out of default.


DAZ is still a much better company at providing communication and previews and interacting with the community.  Poser has some good people working on it, but the feeling of connection is not quite what DAZ has.

Poser 8 has a much improved library system, which for a huge amount of content like I have, is a welcome addition.  I can now filter my items and search for things, instead of manually scrolling through folders.