Okay.... so, initial attempts to install this program went south and very quickly... crashed my disk entirely and I had to do a hard reset, reboot, scan and repair of my HD. Now, I'm more inclined to blame that on my bleeding, inching along and dying HD than I am the software. I know my HD is pretty much toasted here.
I did get it installed finally - had to uninstall and reinstall about three times before it "took" properly (*growls at her stupid misbehaving HD*), but it's finally in, and installed.
Initial impressions... yeah, I'm still very much definitely NOT crazy about the UI. It feels cramped no matter how I rearrange the elements, and I have the burning instinct to run as far as I can to get out of the cramped conditions. I detest this about Poser, it's the one thing that no matter HOW you rearrange the elements, the basics of it is.. it's CRAMPED. And I don't work well when I feel smothered.
That said! LOL.
I am impressed with the fact that it was actually able to render an image fully. This is the first time I've had an image render fully, on the
first try, since basically.. version 5. No memory errors so far, either, which is good.
I see a HUGE quality difference between what I can put out with DS and what I can put out with Poser, and I'll chalk that up to
"the she wolf and Poser do NOT get along," LOL, or in other words.. USER ERRORS!
In all seriousness, though.... this does seem to be working a bit better than P10 ever did, so I think the difference between a 32-bit and 64-bit program here is making a huge difference. No crashes on my graphic drivers, no crashes of my OS etc (not counting the installation process which I also blame on my crappy HD).
Basically... so far, so good... and now if I can just get past my inclination to run screaming for the hills at the smothered and cramped UI, I might actually get Nataani FINISHED.
I'm not sure how I'll be getting promo renders for him, because I can't put out anything even remotely resembling my usual quality, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Just a quickie play... my M4 Sani and Midnight's war eagle which just seemed to pair up nicely with Sani for some reason... and yes, I know this image quality is garbage for me... lights suck, textures suck, shadows refused to do anything much except obscure the image no matter what I did, but it was literally just a quick play in Firefly. So not going anywhere near Superfly until I have a WAY better grasp of the software.
Now, if I can just figure out the dang material room properly, a Poser Nataani just might see the light of day sometime this century.... LOL
So there you go, Sky. You're stumbling around in DS, and I'm stumbling around in Poser again. At least now I can stumble around without suddenly staring at my desktop every other try.