ouch, BB. So harsh. So true.

And you know, the rumblings from the minority are actually something that should be heeded. We're the ones who are wanting to use the dollies like B grade actors, and work Poser into the pipeline as more than a 'cheat' (as so many have called it). Look at that new zombie flick, I think the title is 'Colin'. Told from the zombie's POV, and made on a budget of $70.....which mainly went for munchies. The guy who helmed it asked for volunteers in a labor of love and experiementation. Kind of like odf and Phantom3D are doing with Antonia atm (who I can't wait to see finished). This harkens back to the heyday of P4, when more than half the new tech was from the users who tinkered. Of course Antonia, like Apollo, is going to be harder to learn to use; tanstasfl. 

What Poser 8 really needs is a fully exposed SDK for plugin development. Far too many times 'impossible' issues have been fixed or made into an advantage by Those Who Tinker. Someone would start in on some form of weightmapping. Another who hates Firefly would start hammering out a way to integrate one of the other renderers. Another would try and hack out a new GUI, and so on.

There isn't a whole lot to do for the still image crowd, except maybe a more standard lighting system. But those who animate are the ones who could take this little app and really make it sing. Improve the dynamics, add physics as part of the app, fix the various issues with layered animation, and open the api up to full python access. Maybe even see if they could integrate a particle system, or create a plugin that could talk to other apps through collada.

Of course another thing that really =needs= to happen is a total revision of the manual. Expand the section on shaders, giving a full table of what they do. More on the animation tools and the why of them. The extra books need to supplement; not explain things that the manual should....