I've been a Poser user for about 4 years, learning stuff as I go with short bursts of tutorials, followed by long bursts of experimentation.

I specialise (if you can call it that!) in making combat fight series; a mixture of male, female, boxing, wrestling, MMA - that sort of thing - and I've been lucky enough to earn a few commissions from people who seem to like some of what I do.

Since I started, I've been working purely with V4/M4 models. Of course I have the basic figure plus the standard Morph++, Elite packs etc. Over time I've added things like muscle-packs and a variety of fixes, extreme morphs like She Freak, XandM, Super-real and so forth.

I render in Firefly and, with some tips and tricks I learned to make perspiration/shine along with some of my own skin mods in Photoshop, I have a pretty good cast of figures in my stable.

But here's the thing: I know that V4 is old tech. Very old, in fact - and that new clothes and props are getting a bit thin these days.
I also know that many of my peers are turning to DAZ so that they can utilise the well-supported Genesis models.
For a modern alternative to V4, what does that leave me with.. La Femme and L'Homme?

So here's my question: are there morph packs out there that can bring the basic Femme/Homme models that come with Poser to life?
Muscles, Morph++ equivalents, body part enhancements?
And how about skins? That V4 Elite pack is utterly superb - is there a new equivalent or better?

Is it time to shift to Femme/Homme? Or am I better off shifting to DAZ?
Or should I be thankful that I can still get good results with the classic V4.

Sorry for my long ramble, but I really feel that I should move on a bit - and I really would love some thoughts from those who may have already done so.

Thanks for indulging me if you read this far,
RSK.

V4 is still getting substantial support in Poser 13 although many users are moving away from Firefly and incorporating Superfly as the render engine of preference.  I'm surprised that you did not mention the weight-mapped converted V4 and Sasha, a V4 derivative with excellent bending and movement.  

There will be a new La Femme 2 figure that looks awesome but you can get some mileage from LF 1.2 with the right morph packages.  She is expected to be released soon.  

You will need to realize that if you move toward DAZ's Genesis figures that you will lose and cross-usage with Poser.  DSON is no longer supported and the newer Genesis version are not fully compatible with Poser.

Not sure what type of answer you are looking for.  You say that you make boxing/fighting type scenes and that you have a large cast of figures for that, and that is good.  If you have all (most) of the clothes needed for those types of scenes, why change?  I doubt that a pair of boxing shorts really changes all that much.  And most of the changes that you might find would be in color not so much style.  Newer figures have higher resolution skins, however unless you are doing extreme close ups most of that is wasted, and in fact will tend to slow things down as more memory has to be used to hold all those super fine textures.

The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, and I am sure that there will be a lot of people that will tell you to get on the forever upgrade path that is Genesis.  But if you are getting the results from what you have now why change?

IIRC, there is a lot of character / action / combat / super-hero / fantasy / SciFi material available for M3/M4 and V3/V4 that hasn't migrated to later 'Poser' figures.

Xurge, famous for their fantasy armour, are still briskly designing for M4/V4. HeroineFactory still does many Japanese Anime 'Ultra' figures, again for M4/V4...

Although EE's 'CrossDresser', using valid licences, will port outfits from such 'classic' figures to Poser's own, I've had limited 'fitting' success: YMMV...

I think part of the problem is that there was too long a hiatus without a Poser 'show-stopper' figure to supersede V3/V4. Okay, LaF is nice, and I've collected a lot of 'useful' outfits. But, if I want 'unusual', either I load and dress V3/V4, or I look around for a game-style XPS or Garry'sMod/SFM figure and port that to rigged FBX, complete with props and costume...

I don't think Xurge is doing stuff for Poser any more, though he's still selling the stuff he made before.  He hasn't even posted to Twitter in years.

At this point, it would be tough for any new figure to match V4 and M4 for versatility, just because they have such huge backlogs. Especially if you need less popular stuff, like ethnic characters, older characters, normal clothes, etc.

However...you might take a look at Dawn 2 when she appears. Some of the ethnic characters Cath has made for her look stunning.

Dawn 2 has been delayed by various events, including Cath getting covid, but hopefully she'll be available soon.

Hoping Cath finds strength with each new day and she's feeling healthy and strong again. God bless her.

I have seen some impressive characters made with Character Creator 4:

https://www.renderosity.com/gallery/items/3082010/tuff-guy

https://www.renderosity.com/gallery/items/3082019/escape-plan

hborre posted at 3:02 PM Tue, 15 August 2023 - #4472613

V4 is still getting substantial support in Poser 13 although many users are moving away from Firefly and incorporating Superfly as the render engine of preference.  I'm surprised that you did not mention the weight-mapped converted V4 and Sasha, a V4 derivative with excellent bending and movement.  

There will be a new La Femme 2 figure that looks awesome but you can get some mileage from LF 1.2 with the right morph packages.  She is expected to be released soon.  

You will need to realize that if you move toward DAZ's Genesis figures that you will lose and cross-usage with Poser.  DSON is no longer supported and the newer Genesis version are not fully compatible with Poser.

Richard60 posted at 3:11 PM Tue, 15 August 2023 - #4472615

Not sure what type of answer you are looking for.  You say that you make boxing/fighting type scenes and that you have a large cast of figures for that, and that is good.  If you have all (most) of the clothes needed for those types of scenes, why change?  I doubt that a pair of boxing shorts really changes all that much.  And most of the changes that you might find would be in color not so much style.  Newer figures have higher resolution skins, however unless you are doing extreme close ups most of that is wasted, and in fact will tend to slow things down as more memory has to be used to hold all those super fine textures.

The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, and I am sure that there will be a lot of people that will tell you to get on the forever upgrade path that is Genesis.  But if you are getting the results from what you have now why change?

I think if I'd had a lot of replies encouraging me to go for newer tech then I might be persuaded but the general feel is that there's nowt wrong with old if it still works so well.

IIRC, there is a lot of character / action / combat / super-hero / fantasy / SciFi material available for M3/M4 and V3/V4 that hasn't migrated to later 'Poser' figures.

Xurge, famous for their fantasy armour, are still briskly designing for M4/V4. HeroineFactory still does many Japanese Anime 'Ultra' figures, again for M4/V4...

Although EE's 'CrossDresser', using valid licences, will port outfits from such 'classic' figures to Poser's own, I've had limited 'fitting' success: YMMV...

I think part of the problem is that there was too long a hiatus without a Poser 'show-stopper' figure to supersede V3/V4. Okay, LaF is nice, and I've collected a lot of 'useful' outfits. But, if I want 'unusual', either I load and dress V3/V4, or I look around for a game-style XPS or Garry'sMod/SFM figure and port that to rigged FBX, complete with props and costume...

I've been using LF exclusively since she came around, so hi, nice to meet you, now you know someone who uses her LMAO

LF2 is coming soon. Just keep in mind that V4 had years with hundreds of content creators to make all that content. If you expect that from any new figure, you're asking for disappointment - however there's always the good things that come with more modern tech for new figures :)

Vicky has been around for 15 years (based on information in this thread) and has 6240 items in MP here. That's an average 416 items per year.

La Femme has been around for 4 years and had 1407 items. That's an average of 352 items per year. That's only 64 different. At this rate, once La Femme has been around for 15 years, she should have everything she needs too

ReggieKowalski posted at 10:05 AM Wed, 16 August 2023 - #4472674

Very good points and, quite possibly, the reason why I will stay put with what I've got. I'm just painfully aware that V4.2 is 2008 software and that digital graphics are forever evolving so maybe I'm just expecting the grass to be greener without actually checking to see whether it's fake turf...

I think if I'd had a lot of replies encouraging me to go for newer tech then I might be persuaded but the general feel is that there's nowt wrong with old if it still works so well.

The tools and instructions are right there.  It isn't difficult; plan a couple of hours to upgrade a base figure of your choice and save it.  You don't need that much time, but the time put in once pays for itself moving forward.

There are weight mapped M4s & V4s.  Facial chips are easy to add (and can go anywhere), etc.  You can bring the Grey Golum into Poser.  It is some work, but it is doable.

As far as the grass being greener - it is all astro-turf.  To reach rough feature parity with Poser, you are spending around $600USD.  That number was not picked out of a hat - it is what it cost me to attempt to move from Poser to DS and have roughly the same features - minus important ones like multiple GPU support in Opitx.

With Poser, you can add all of the latest tech to any legacy figure.  That is Poser's secret sauce - you can use any mesh you want.

The tools and instructions are right there.  It isn't difficult; plan a couple of hours to upgrade a base figure of your choice and save it.  You don't need that much time, but the time put in once pays for itself moving forward.

The problem is: once you do that, most of the content will stop working correctly for the figure, too. And then you have to repeat the same work on all the content.

Personally, I think it's easier - and better - to use a newer figure instead, and convert the content you want to the new figure. This way, you go through the same amount of work on each, but aside from the content you converted, you didn't go through extra work on the base figure, AND you get to use the new content for the new figure too.

This is La Femme Pro sporting a converted AS-V4 outfit and loaded with the necessary morphs for proper fit.

I actually find it a lot harder to convert content to new figures than to use the weightmapped versions of older ones.

Of course, that's because other people have created the weightmapped versions for me. But once you have those installed, adjusting clothing is easy. I just copy joint zones. The results, IME, are much better than converting clothing to other figures. Morphs and textures don't need to be converted.

If I had more skills, it might be different, but as it is...converting clothing really doesn't work well for me. Even with helpers like Wardrobe Wizard or Crossdresser, the results generally don't look that great.

And converting textures is a huge headache. With a weightmapped  version of an older figure, you can still use all the characters created for the older figure. Those can't easily be converted to a new figure.

randym77 posted at 2:11 PM Thu, 17 August 2023 - #4472791

I actually find it a lot harder to convert content to new figures than to use the weightmapped versions of older ones.

Of course, that's because other people have created the weightmapped versions for me. But once you have those installed, adjusting clothing is easy. I just copy joint zones. The results, IME, are much better than converting clothing to other figures. Morphs and textures don't need to be converted.

If I had more skills, it might be different, but as it is...converting clothing really doesn't work well for me. Even with helpers like Wardrobe Wizard or Crossdresser, the results generally don't look that great.

And converting textures is a huge headache. With a weightmapped  version of an older figure, you can still use all the characters created for the older figure. Those can't easily be converted to a new figure.

Example with a top:

The lower part's material looks like this:

On the left, the orignal node names hidden because i's a sold product, on the right the setup I keep for most classic clothes
Note that these are compound nodes are based on Ghostship's excellent products, giving great results, plus a few more nodes, for example to add some transparencies (such as laces)

And once you know where the textures are lying, there's no need for automatic stuff, because, by the way, it makes you want to "try something else" 

I don't buy a lot of clothing textures any more. I'd rather make my own.

I love some of the really elaborate clothing textures sold in the RMP, that are way beyond my skills or patience, but they tend to be so distinctive, I feel like it's not my art when I use them.

Character textures are another story. Those aren't easy to make or convert. I remember there used to be texture converting software, so you could use, say, V2 textures on V3, but I don't know if anyone does that kind of thing any more.

Then there's that software that will basically clone a character from one figure to another. I'm curious about it, but it's crazy expensive, and the results would be for personal use only.

There is always Evolution if you are looking for a more recent figure. Unfortunately not much content is available for her either.  There could have been more but Renderosity and her creator had some sort of falling out so he returned to creating comics instead.

There is always Evolution if you are looking for a more recent figure. Unfortunately not much content is available for her either.  There could have been more but Renderosity and her creator had some sort of falling out so he returned to creating comics instead.

It is true that not a lot of content's been created for PE. HOWEVER, most dynamic clothing made for LF and V4 can be used on her (Karanta does have dynamic clothing in the RMP specifically for PE). Ditto for other Poser figures not widely supported, such as Mankahoo's (Ali in the Marketplace) Bella, Vyusur's Nova and Neo figures, and Odf's Antonia (found in the Freestuff area along with lots of dynamic clothing). You just need to do a little resizing/moving the dynamic clothing prop on the figure prior to running the simulation in the Cloth Room. I've used some of La Femme's dynamic clothing on Antonia, for example, and it turned out great!

DarthJ posted at 5:53 PM Mon, 4 September 2023 - #4474023

There is always Evolution if you are looking for a more recent figure. Unfortunately not much content is available for her either.  There could have been more but Renderosity and her creator had some sort of falling out so he returned to creating comics instead.

It is true that not a lot of content's been created for PE. HOWEVER, most dynamic clothing made for LF and V4 can be used on her (Karanta does have dynamic clothing in the RMP specifically for PE). Ditto for other Poser figures not widely supported, such as Mankahoo's (Ali in the Marketplace) Bella, Vyusur's Nova and Neo figures, and Odf's Antonia (found in the Freestuff area along with lots of dynamic clothing). You just need to do a little resizing/moving the dynamic clothing prop on the figure prior to running the simulation in the Cloth Room. I've used some of La Femme's dynamic clothing on Antonia, for example, and it turned out great!