Poser for Mac

In every way DAZ Studio is kicking Poser's butt. DAZ is an offshoot, and now wholly separate company, of Zygote, the original creators of Poser's model content back in the early days of Poser. DAZ eventually created its own Poser-like customer platform and ceased making Poser-compatible content. So Poser was left to do for themselves what DAZ's modeling creators did so well. DAZ's model creations are far superior to that of Poser, not only for the sheer volume of what DAZ creates, but for the quality and variety of their extensive model library. Poser's latest male and female models look like hobbyist, rather than the professional creations that DAZ's does so well. It's just an obvious fact. The shame is that Poser's UI is way more intuitive than that of DAZ. Poser needs to step up their game. Bottom line: better content.

Can anyone suggest why this might be superior to the free DAZ Studio? Why is it worth paying for in light of DAZ Studio being wholly and completely Free, as in "FREE", meaning 'free' ?

Was once a good idea - and then went nowhere. Looking at rev 8 - it doesn't seem like a big step forward. The PRO version is the one you'd want, if any - though there are cheaper versions which make creating your own characters a problem. I can't see spending this kind of money for the Pro version for what you get. I got the version 7 at a discount & don't feel that was money well spent. Its horrifically slow. It uses triangles vs the the quad meshes supported by Blender & some other programs, which then make them frustrating to use, though the core Poser models are pretty well made. If you are going to drop any human model into an industrial scene to represent people - you kinda want them clothed. At least Poser gives you this option with some rudimentary clothing. In a lot of ways, some of these applications feel like you are a teenage gamer playing with Barbies, instead of being a tool that any serious animator or designer would wish to use.

What a convoluted hunk of junk. Wow, I was sure that after 15 years the engineers who created this application would have conquered so many of the issues with posing characters, but oh no. This application won't even recognize its own file types. The "tutorial" is nothing more than a lame review of features completely out of contextual paradigm of actual learning. Buttons with clear names simply blink your screen and do nothing. Really? It's 2010 guys...think you might create a program to pose characters in your software? It's been a really long time since I've had to trudge through a mess like this. AVOID.

Speaking of changing hands, i see Poser 8 is being sold by Smith Micro. Anybody know if it has improved?