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Subject: Is Poser development dead?


ssgbryan ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 11:01 AM

prixat posted at 9:55AM Thu, 21 June 2018 - #4332160

Poser was reduced to just another runtime in DS with occasional hopeful visits to the forums.

And for me, all DS is for is to export DS content out of DS and into Poser.



ssgbryan ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 12:19 PM

wolf359 posted at 10:03AM Thu, 21 June 2018 - #4332145

This Picture is the result of all of your manual force fitting Old content between old figures..yes??

Yeah - I did it about 5 years ago w/ Wardrobe Wizard (ver. 1, not the integrated version). The figures, from left to right Dawn, Kez, The Girl, Antonia, Alyson 2, P6 Jessi, Miki 2, Mariko, G2 Jessi, and V3

I was showing what one could do then - Still canโ€™t do this in DS in 2018. Needless to say, the fitting room and the occasional swipe of the morph brush does a much better job today.

The Classic "Shrink wrapped" look of poser clothing from the last century. No wrinkle morphs at the waist,knees or elbows. the puffy ,rounded shoulders

I have correction morphs for the V3 and M3 shoulder, I just didnโ€™t bother, this was just an initial shot of the bridge crew. The main thing I was showing was how different my ST characters were from everyone else (I.e My crew wasnโ€™t the 6 foot All Caucasians, All The Time That dominates ST fan fiction). Other changes as well, the V4 Captain was replaced by a Sydney.

But that is not your fault because you are not a clothing content creator but you have the "tools" to salvage old content made by others in the past. ..in 60 seconds or less,

Iโ€™ll ignore your condescending attitude here.

But alas you have no abilty to create, bespoke one off clothing ,for a specific render or project, only scavenge from the digital rubbish bin .

I beg to differ. Since then I have added Blender, Zbrush, and CS 5 to my arsenal. I can, (I make/kitbash props and sets) but clothing isnโ€™t an efficient use of my time.

If this is the quality of clothing content that works for your stories. that is perfectly fine...to each his own art

Your point is proven.

Poser11 has "tools" to salvage vestigial content long past its market life.

But you need to understand that for a content market to grow there needs to be Vendors making &selling new fresh new content that adheres to todays quality standards.

Do you mean the same vendors that for the past 14 years told any and all in every store front that if we didnโ€™t like what they were selling that we should learn to make our own content? Those vendors?

Challenge accepted.

Those vendors are the reason we have the fitting room. Their aggressive unwillingness to change is what got us here.

The vendors only make what they are personally interested in - which is hookerware and impractical armor.

There are thousands of hookerware and impractical armor outfits out there - why should I buy a new one?

The reason I am still using M3โ€™s Casablanca Suit in 2018 is the fact that there hasnโ€™t been anything better made since it was released. (Yes, I have purchased almost every business suit released in the past decade.)

I would love to buy more clothing for my figures it doesnโ€™t matter which mesh it was made for - but vendors have no interest in making normal, well anything - for the most part, they have no vision and whine that we arenโ€™t buying their recycled content.

My ST characters are wearing all wearing the V4 Courageous and M4 Valiant outfits because in the military (and yes, Starfleet is a military organization - it has a monopoly of force and if it wasnโ€™t, both Kirk and Picard would not have been court-marshalled; that is a military, not civilian proceeding.) everyone wears the same uniform.

In all fairness, almost every figure has a TOS outfit (I commissioned one for Dusk) but between the differing boots, colors, a need to insure that all crests are in the same location, etc; it was easier to adjust 2 outfits rather than a dozen.

What โ€œquality standardsโ€? Most of the stuff for the g figures wouldnโ€™t have passed Dazโ€™s QA back in the M3/V3 timeframe. 6k by 6k texture sets donโ€™t fix flawed meshes, a lack of movement morphs, and missing poses (see most shoes for g figures; many lack a foot pose for the shoes).

file_9fc3d7152ba9336a670e36d0ed79bc43.png



FlagonsWorkshop ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 2:22 PM

It seems to me the topic has gotten a bit off track. For Smith Micro (or anybody else for that matter) to continue development work on Poser, there has to be the financial means to support said development work, it isn't cheap to do. Smith Micro's graphics revenue has been falling down a hole as of late, read the quarterly reports if you're interested in the details. DAZ made the decision back in 2010 or so that the development work would be supported by content sales - either their own, or through their brokered site, rather than direct sales from the program itself. Apparently that model is working.

Smith Micro is still trying to support Poser Development by selling upgrades to Poser. That has never worked particularly well as evidenced by all the versions of Poser that are still in use, contributing to the support hell for PA's. Right now it isn't working at all, and unless Smith Micro can figure out how to market Poser to a new group of users as well as sell upgrades to existing ones. In other words, it's a marketing problem.

It isn't a matter of Daz Studio's merits vs Poser, or V4's merits vs the Genesis Line vs Poser Human figures, or even PA support for Poser here, it's a matter of Smith Micro figuring out how to position its own products to support continuing development.

If they can't come up with a coherent positioning of Poser as a product to a sufficient number of artists to maintain development then it's going to fail.

Sadly Smith Micro's focus is not marketing to a retail environment - it's primarily a business to business company. Which is why it's graphics division has suffered since it is primarily retail.


CHK2033 ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 2:54 PM

diogenese19348 posted at 2:41PM Thu, 21 June 2018 - #4332187

It seems to me the topic has gotten a bit off track.

Are you surprised or intrigued ?

Myself,,,I'm intrigued waiting to see the next chapter, I think I may need more popcorn though.

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ssgbryan ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 3:10 PM

It has gone off topic because we can ALWAYS count on DS users to come into Poser threads to tell Poser users that they need to jump on DS cash merry-go-round. We donโ€™t pollute the DS threads, but DS users donโ€™t have a problem disrupting ours. And the moderators donโ€™t seem to mind either. Which is why fewer and fewer people are participating in the Poser forums. The regulars at both the SM forums and the Hivewire forums used to be regulars here.

Daz made the decision to support DS through content because no one was willing to pay Poser prices for a software product that had no documentation and most of the features were still beta (and would not run on a lot of machines, since they used an older version of Qt to compile the UI). It was free for 30 days, then a โ€œlimitedโ€ time to free (and the basic & advanced versions slid down the memory hole).

As far as versions of Poser, Iโ€™d remind you that 90+% of the Poser users here are running Poser 9 or later - the only folks using old versions of Poser are vendors.

Poser has been โ€œdyingโ€ since at least Dec 2004 that I am personally aware of. I am not too terribly concerned - how many times has Daz3d been sold now?

Poser isnโ€™t dying - Poser Vendors are dying off, but that is due to their decision not to support any figure not made by Daz. The fact that they compound this by not diversifying isnโ€™t the customerโ€™s fault.

Back on topic - SM has a new development team that seems to understand some of the long-term issues. They are soliciting the end users for issues - unfortunately, most folks here would rather whine in a 3rd party forum than use the system SM has set up. Because, reasons. Go back to the OPโ€™s comments - they really do believe that SM should adjust their feedback system to accommodate their laziness.



FlagonsWorkshop ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 3:48 PM

Now you're turning it into a "DAZ vs Poser" thread again, not me. I merely mentioned how DAZ markets their product. Smith Micro needs to figure out how to market Poser to a sufficient number of users to support Development, that was my point. And from looking at what the sales figures for their graphics division are doing they need to figure that piece out quick. Not just for Poser, for the whole graphics division.

If Smith Micro intends to support their product by selling it only to people that make their own content there have to be enough of then to make it commercially viable. Other wise they need to change their marketing and the way they support development. If you want to see the revenue numbers look them up on the SMSI Q4's. It's a publicly owned company.


DustRider ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 3:54 PM

Wolf359 - A large portion of that golum content IS recycled content..........

Maybe you (and the other g users) donโ€™t mind paying for the same content every 24 months or so, but I do - like the rest of the g series, it is a TCO fail unless you get it during a 70% off sale. In fact, after I post this, I am off to Daz to pick up some products for Brodie 6. They are worth $5.39, but not $17.95

Actually, I think your statement might be a bit over the top here? Yes, there is some recycling of older content, but in my experience the vast majority is new content. Some of this recycling is perfectly justified as well, especially with high heel shoes (which don't autofit well, and are a PITA to do manually), and believe it or not, bikini bottoms ((which sometimes stretch in un-natural ways when fit to different figure geometries). Of course, the advanced user doesn't need to buy new, they can always manually adjust the items to work perfectly well with the new figure. However, it seems as if most users, especially new users, would prefer to not bother with the manual fitting. Also keep in mind that the market (customers) for figures and clothing is not stagnant. New users need these basic things for the new figure, and often won't buy stuff designed for older figures. Not everyone has been doing this (Poser/DS) for years, and in fact, there are many new users on the DAZ forums all the time, and they tend to buy a lot (a recent post from on new user indicated he has spent over $18,000 in the past 2 years). So while in your eyes, this may be recycled content (and quite possibly much of the content your interested in is recycled, as my tastes differ greatly from yours), to new users it's .... well ... new content.

Being a "G" user myself, I have to say that I have bought very little recycled content (I'd guess maybe 2-3%). Since I can use anything from V3/A3 to G8 on my figures, there is no real need to recycle (unless it's on a deep discount, and something I would really like to have the perfect fit for on a different generation). So again, I think your blanket statement is more of a exaggeration than fact, since it does not reflect my own experiences. Definitely in my experience very little V4 content is being recycled as G8 content (actually I don't know of even one item, but YMMV).

"Pointing out that most of the g1 content was recycled V4 content got me permabanned in the Daz forums (30 days later Daz built a sale around that fact. Typical Daz.)."

I can kind of see why you got the ban hammer here. Times were difficult, the natives were restless, and, the big thing was maybe your insistence that this was fact. rather than speculation or opinion? On the DAZ forums this is a huge no-no. As I stated above, it has not been my experience that the majority of content is recycled. There was more of it with G1, but even then it didn't seem that the majority (most) of the content was recycled, but we have different interests, so maybe in your specific genre it was.

Speaking of Daz, has anyone noticed that almost all of the g1 & g2 content suddenly aquired Poser Companion Files?

Interesting, nope, I've had them like forever (well since they started making them, as they trickled out). Again, maybe that's just different experiences due to different preferences.

I was showing what one could do then - Still canโ€™t do this in DS in 2018. Needless to say, the fitting room and the occasional swipe of the morph brush does a much better job today.

Actually, not 100% true. If you are willing to make your own autofit clones for the unsupported figures, you can do the same thing. This does however, require much a much greater skill level on the users end.

Those vendors are the reason we have the fitting room. Their aggressive unwillingness to change is what got us here.

Hmmm, while I'm sure this is no doubt what you believe to be true, I don't recall any posts from any official spokesperson from SM stating this as fact. IMHO, the fitting room was SM's response to autofit in DS. Of course I could be wrong as this is pure speculation, but the timing fits. Just like it would seem the integration of Cycles was in response to Iray in DS. But, AFAIK, no one from SM has ever officially stated this either , so it's pure speculation as well.


One final note, and not saying this has happened here, but hopefully to help this to not degrade into another app war thread. An observation from watching the forums for years, and this is purely opinion based on these observations. Many threads about the future of Poser, or questions about Poser and DS, often degrade into a "mines better than yours" type of argument where a Poser user bashes DAZ, DS, or Genesis with opinion as fact, then the DS users (who, like me, may be simply watching the forums to see what SM is up to with Poser because they would like to see Poser succeed) respond with a different view or data, and typically their own bit of bashing, and the "fight is on". Instead, maybe it would be worthwhile to address the elephant in the room, rather than pointing fingers else where. The truth is (OK, lets say my opinion is, based on the changes I've seen over the past 10 years) that the Poser based market share is declining relative to the DS based market share. We need to ask ourselves why that is happening, and have a real critical discussion about SM and Poser. As long as we keep pointing fingers else where, we don't highlight the issues within Poser that may have caused people to move on. IMHO, the opinions of ex-Poser users should be more important than current Poser users, because they are the only ones that know why they moved away from Poser, and what Poser/SM would need to do to bring them back. In the current forum climate, this type of discussion simply can't occur, which is sad for both the community, and for Poser.

Hopefully, this discussion will remain civilized like it has so far, so the everyone's voice can be heard.

OK, back to lurk mode.

__________________________________________________________

My Rendo Galleryย ........ My DAZ3D Gallery ........... My DA Gallery ......


Razor42 ( ) posted Thu, 21 June 2018 at 10:31 PM ยท edited Thu, 21 June 2018 at 10:32 PM

@SSGBryan

I did write a long response to your posts here, addressing many of the points you have raised above. But, I decided it really just isn't worth it. From what I can tell you have decided that demarcation is the best approach for the Poser community into the future. Demarcation between vendor development paths, platform choice, how Poser users use Poser, 3rd party content stores and now even which forums you participate in. Often spreading outright falsehoods and half truths just to perpetuate those tiresome tribal boundaries, which by far the majority of the community are just plain sick of hearing about. But clearly you do not want to hear from others on what they think about the current situation or where they may have a difference of opinion to your own.

So I will just agree with you. Poser is doing great, it's just those pesky customers, content creators and 3rd party Poser supporting forums/resellers that are the problem here. But don't worry they won't be an issue for long with the way things are progressing. All the best mate and happy rendering!



prixat ( ) posted Fri, 22 June 2018 at 5:17 AM ยท edited Fri, 22 June 2018 at 5:18 AM

ssgbryan posted at 10:16AM Fri, 22 June 2018 - #4332173

And for me, all DS is for is to export DS content out of DS and into Poser.

I completely agree, I also use DS just for export, that's why I referred to it as a "free utility".

For my needs it would take an all singing, all dancing, well maintained, constantly updated version of Poser Fusion for me to return to Poser, but that's never going to happen, certainly not at a reasonable price!

Poser needs to follow established standards, again I'm thinking just in terms of my requirements, exporting to C4D (no animation required).

To most people the switch to Dual Quaternian rigging (and bringing back all those JCMs) was a step backwards and they're are probably right! Triax is better than DQ!

...but DAZ had to accept that it would never be implemented by anyone else, while DQ is already exportable via FBX.

For C4D a mixed Linear/DQ rig is standard practice.

regards
prixat


-Timberwolf- ( ) posted Fri, 22 June 2018 at 6:52 AM ยท edited Fri, 22 June 2018 at 6:54 AM

ssgbryan posted at 1:47PM Fri, 22 June 2018 - #4332190

It has gone off topic because we can ALWAYS count on DS users to come into Poser threads to tell Poser users that they need to jump on DS cash merry-go-round. We donโ€™t pollute the DS threads, but DS users donโ€™t have a problem disrupting ours. And the moderators donโ€™t seem to mind either. Which is why fewer and fewer people are participating in the Poser forums. The regulars at both the SM forums and the Hivewire forums used to be regulars here.

That is rubbish. DS users come here to exolain, why they went over to DS. It explaines, where SM made mistakes. Most DS users are former mostley disapointed Poser users. They've got into this hobby with Poser. This is, why they are still here. Although split up years ago, Poser is like an ex-lover you can't let go.


-Timberwolf- ( ) posted Fri, 22 June 2018 at 7:23 AM ยท edited Fri, 22 June 2018 at 7:27 AM

I really hope, this SM-Poser crisis will result in a totaly revamed new Poser. No rush, leave time, but it should be realy good. Poser needs first class native figures with realistic joint bendings, auto fit and a geograft technology. if they introduce a render engine, they need to update the shaders with it. Poser 11 pro appears like digging out an old app from before 2008. Users and Vendors are part of the Poser promotion, if they want or not. Sticking with Vicktoria 4 is part of the Poser crisis. It just seems Poser users don't want new stuff. So really looking at the freebe section seeing all those V4 stuff obviousley rendered with the Poser 4 render engine just gives me an eyeroll. Hivewire website with all its promos looks like the DAZ shop back in 2002. If an app and its comunity is not progressing foreward, than it is time to have an new app. Sm is selling you the same stuff over and over again. Where is the new stuff? No new rigging joint bending technology. All they put in there, are free stufff modules. Cycles renderer, bullet physiks and GoZ. if you purchase IRay, you have to pay, Cycles, you can have free with blender. No, SM has gone lazy and leans back while taking your money. I'd like to see Poser becoming a real proffessionell tool, not a children's app as it is today and I'd like to be taken serious as an artis with demands by the software company. If that does not happen, Poser will die and it will be an inside job, don't blame DAZ for it.


wolf359 ( ) posted Fri, 22 June 2018 at 9:36 AM

Sticking with Vicktoria 4 is part of the Poser crisis

Perhaps, however the poser community has not been offered a Flagship Female or male figure that would make them abandon V4/M4 entirely. Many thought it would be Project E ,until they truly realized all of the gruntwork in required to Force fit Vickys wardrobe onto the new figure combined with Eros's announcment that he is "not a business man"and is making plans to"outsource" further commercial development of the figure.

Which Likely means the PE will soon take its it place in the ash bin of poser history alongside Antonia and the other "saviours" that promised much , but never got major ,long term vendor support

My opinion is that the lack of a broadly supported new young white girl is the least of posers problems.

Character animation is HUGE now Posers Vestigial animation toolset and useless IK system makes it a nonstarter for anyone serious about character animation particularly with Competing apps like Iclone Pro/3DXchange ($250USD) which now has native figures that look better than the any of the poser natives,Supports Daz Genesis 1,2,3,8,by default if you dont care for the new Iclone people, and Has a Dynamic Cloth & hair physics system that previews in realtime.



My website

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DustRider ( ) posted Fri, 22 June 2018 at 3:56 PM ยท edited Fri, 22 June 2018 at 4:03 PM

"It just seems Poser users don't want new stuff. So really looking at the freebe section seeing all those V4 stuff obviousley rendered with the Poser 4 render engine just gives me an eyeroll. Hivewire website with all its promos looks like the DAZ shop back in 2002. If an app and its comunity is not progressing foreward, than it is time to have an new app."

To be honest, this was one of the big factors (the biggest??) for me to not upgrade to PP11. While trying to make the decision, I took a long, hard, critical look at the community, and the images it was producing with Poser (both at the user and pro level). Having gone through this with my favorite software, Carrara, slowly dying (well, it still is alive, an not quite dead yet), I saw many of the same things. True, the circumstances are vastly different, but I saw what to me was a huge reason for the loss of support for Carrara development while researching P11.

The two main things that in my mind really hurt Carrara were it was/is way too complex for the average new user (at many levels), and the images being produce by a large portion of the community were, IMHO, not as inspiring as what DS was producing. I could get similar, and even better results from Carrara than with DS (before Iray), but I was one of the few making "great" (subjective observation, that could be influenced by personal bias) renders with Poser/DAZ content using Carrara. Without inspiring images, it's hard to attract users. That's not to say there weren't a number of truly inspiring images in the forums and galleries, but there were also a number of flat ...... ummmm .... Poser 3/4 quality images. I'm not saying they weren't good images/art, but they typically didn't compete with output from DS to make people say "I've got to have THAT!!!". The other nails in the coffin were that material/shader translation is typically not the best, meaning users have to get under the hood to make great renders, and Carrara is not as easy to learn as DS. So, even though Carrara provided a much richer tool set than DS, It is simply much less attractive to the average "load, pose, render" user, which TBH, is no doubt the vast majority of the DS/Poser user base.

So, when P11 came out, I was expecting to see hundreds of awe-inspiring images from Superfly featuring the new Pauline. Remember, Chuck said "content is king", so I really thought this time SM/Poser got it, and either had an amazing new figure for us, or that they had somehow brought Genesis into Poser. I was disappointed to say the least. I did almost upgrade to PP11 when the big sale hit (at the same time PE was released), but went to the store/forums here, to the SM forum, and Hivewire (store and forums) one last time before pulling the trigger to see how much things had improved. Was I ever surprised! There were still only a couple of artists making renders that I would be proud of with Superfly. As noted by Timberwolf above, the product promos looked like they were all from 10-15 years ago, as did most of the user renders. But, the straw that broke the camels back was looking through the forums. The primary people posting were the Poser "faithful", most who were still trying to point the finger at DAZ for the situation Poser, and the Poser community were in. Then I had an ah-ha moment, and realized that the community had become so inward looking that there was no way they were moving forward at a pace I would be happy with. Alas, I realized my long love/hate relationship with Poser was either at an end, or at least on a serious long term vacation. The community seemed stuck in an eight year ago time warp, with occasional glimpses of 2017/2018 coming through. There was no real talk about why Poser was losing market share, except to point the finger at DAZ and content vendors as being the evil force that put them in the current situation. All the time, the elephant in the room .... poor decisions and an apparent lack of under standing the user base by SM and the Poser development team.

I don't know what SM has decided to do with Poser going forward, but I hope they pick the proper path, as I would really like to see it make a come back. But, the competition is ramping up on all fronts, iClone is certainly a very viable alternative now, as is DS (sorry, but it's the truth). Unreal and Unity are also moving in on the "Poser" space, as is Blender, as well as some recent developments with Genesis/Maya. I do hope they find their way again.

__________________________________________________________

My Rendo Galleryย ........ My DAZ3D Gallery ........... My DA Gallery ......


wolf359 ( ) posted Fri, 22 June 2018 at 9:15 PM ยท edited Fri, 22 June 2018 at 9:21 PM

I was still on poser 6 along with Daz studio 2.6 on the Mac OS and using the Old Interposer pro plugin with C4D up until about 3 years ago when I got poser pro 2014 really cheap for windows

I was migrating to windows as it became clear that Apple/Mac OS was NOT the platform for serious CG/3D. but indeed had become a luxury brand for high income consumers of Iphones.

While I was initially quite impressed with the Poser pro 2014 morph brush (less so with fitting room), I was taken a back by the utterly horrid Flash based content library and immediately got the External library Manager By Shaderworks.

However being a Windows man for the first time this century had suddenly opened up a whole new world to me that included access to the windows only Iclone Pro 5.5 with 3DXChange. and the latest version of Daz Studio 4.X with Genesis 1,2.

The Iclone realtime Avatars in version 5.5 were still quite rubbish looking however I now had the ability to animate my Genesis rigs in Iclone with the Actual Maya human IK foot & hand contact system they leased from the mighty Autodesk. And send the custom motion back to DS and Export Genesis meshes out at full subD resolution to C4D ,via MDD, for rendering.

Iclone can Bring in V3/4 and M3/4 and the poser natives for animation as well but since I had the GENX2 plugin to move all of my favorite millenium Shapes to Genesis there was no longer a need for me to bother with any of the millenuim figures.

Iclone Pro 6.5 was a major update with the free Character creator application and Alembic export to My windows version of Lightwave 3D All of these factors made dumping poser fo,mr my pipeline a No brainer.

Poser 11 was never even a consideration particularly when its erstwhile project Manager"Chuck" pubicly posted in this forum that the unchanged Character animation tools in Poser 11 "Made him Sad".



My website

YouTube Channel



tonyvilters ( ) posted Sat, 23 June 2018 at 9:39 AM

OK, let us finish this off here and now. YES: Poser is dead, buried, underground, obsolete, by-passed, deleted, removed, bought, fired, knifed, shot.

If I did not know any better? Kids in a kindergarden fighting over some candy.

Oh, and before we go to alternatives?

ANYTHING with an "I" is overhyped and overpaid by definition. => It is in the "genes of the "I". And a "DS" is a French car build in the 50-60's by Citroen in France.

Ok, let's move on now.


-Timberwolf- ( ) posted Sat, 23 June 2018 at 11:24 AM ยท edited Sat, 23 June 2018 at 11:26 AM

tonyvilters posted at 6:18PM Sat, 23 June 2018 - #4332247

OK, let us finish this off here and now. YES: Poser is dead, buried, underground, obsolete, by-passed, deleted, removed, bought, fired, knifed, shot.

If I did not know any better? Kids in a kindergarden fighting over some candy.

Oh, and before we go to alternatives?

ANYTHING with an "I" is overhyped and overpaid by definition. => It is in the "genes of the "I". And a "DS" is a French car build in the 50-60's by Citroen in France.

Ok, let's move on now.

Haha, the "kindergarden" term. I am walking among those mortals for about 50 years ;-) and I've never seen anything more, than "Kindergarden".

Poser is not dead, just drunk and asleep and full of puke on its shirt somewhere in an alley way. So time for a therapy. But there won't be help as long the patient does not accept help. To bad the closest friends of that patient don't see a reason for help either.


aeilkema ( ) posted Sun, 01 July 2018 at 1:53 AM

diogenese19348 posted at 8:41AM Sun, 01 July 2018 - #4332187

It seems to me the topic has gotten a bit off track. For Smith Micro (or anybody else for that matter) to continue development work on Poser, there has to be the financial means to support said development work, it isn't cheap to do. Smith Micro's graphics revenue has been falling down a hole as of late, read the quarterly reports if you're interested in the details. DAZ made the decision back in 2010 or so that the development work would be supported by content sales - either their own, or through their brokered site, rather than direct sales from the program itself. Apparently that model is working.

Smith Micro is still trying to support Poser Development by selling upgrades to Poser. That has never worked particularly well as evidenced by all the versions of Poser that are still in use, contributing to the support hell for PA's. Right now it isn't working at all, and unless Smith Micro can figure out how to market Poser to a new group of users as well as sell upgrades to existing ones. In other words, it's a marketing problem.

It isn't a matter of Daz Studio's merits vs Poser, or V4's merits vs the Genesis Line vs Poser Human figures, or even PA support for Poser here, it's a matter of Smith Micro figuring out how to position its own products to support continuing development.

If they can't come up with a coherent positioning of Poser as a product to a sufficient number of artists to maintain development then it's going to fail.

Sadly Smith Micro's focus is not marketing to a retail environment - it's primarily a business to business company. Which is why it's graphics division has suffered since it is primarily retail.

SM has shifted focus a long time ago. The graphics division is doing very well with anything but poser. Software like Rebelle and Clip Studio Paint are selling very well, are immensely popular. They get all the attention. Poser is and always has been the stepchild within SM's software family. For all these years it seems to me that SM still doesn't understand poser and it's users. With every new poser release I always get the feeling that they missed the mark once again. Poser is in desperate need of a complete overhaul, a modernization to bring it into the 21st century. It needs a whole different approach to appeal to a new audience, but catering to the old crowd is keeping it back. They need a fresh new approach, but I'm sure SM isn't the one to do that. Poser perhaps isn't dead yet, but sure is dying and the big question is if SM still wants to pour in finances to revive poser. I doubt that, since it's long overdue by now. SM needs to put the step child up for adoption and give it to a family that really loves it.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk


A_Sunbeam ( ) posted Sun, 01 July 2018 at 9:03 AM

Some sort of policy statement from SM would be very helpful - even just a simple "yes, we are preparing the next (great) version of Poser" would do. But there's nothing here or at their own forum to suggest anything is happening. Or that anyone is listening. Or even awake ...


SamTherapy ( ) posted Sun, 01 July 2018 at 12:27 PM

deadparrot.jpg

"'E's not dead... 'E's restin'"

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

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Kalypso ( ) posted Sun, 01 July 2018 at 7:09 PM
Site Admin Online Now!

😆 Pining for the fjords!


Redfern ( ) posted Mon, 02 July 2018 at 1:54 PM ยท edited Mon, 02 July 2018 at 1:55 PM

Mr. Praline: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got 'im home?

 Owner: The Norwegian Blue prefers keepin' on it's back! Remarkable bird, id'nit, squire? Lovely plumage!

 Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the
 first place was that it had been NAILED there.

 (pause)

 Owner: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and
 VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

 Mr. Praline: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!

 Owner: No no! 'E's pining!

 Mr. Praline: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e
 rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the
 bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

 (pause)

 Owner: Well, I'd better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I've had a look 'round the back of the shop, and uh,
 we're right out of parrots.

 Mr. Praline: I see. I see, I get the picture.

 Owner: I got a slug.

 (pause)

 Mr. Praline: Pray, does it talk?

 Owner: Nnnnot really.

 Mr. Praline: WELL IT'S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!? 

Sincerely,

Bill

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!


SamTherapy ( ) posted Mon, 02 July 2018 at 2:36 PM

A few errors in the above, Bill. Without going through it line by line - which I ain't prepared to do - the first one I spotted was "The Norwegian Blue prefers keepin' on his back...."

It's "kippin' on his back". Kip is British slang for sleep.

As an aside, the concept of a Norwegian Blue parrot is not as ridiculous as it seems. According to recent discoveries (last year, ISTR), the area around Norway was once part of a warm, rain forest sort of place, as favoured by parrots and the like.

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A_Sunbeam ( ) posted Mon, 02 July 2018 at 3:24 PM

Prehistoric version of same sketch ...deadparrot.jpg


Redfern ( ) posted Mon, 02 July 2018 at 3:57 PM

SamTherapy posted at 3:53PM Mon, 02 July 2018 - #4332640

A few errors in the above, Bill.

I "cheated". I Googled a transcript and simply copied and pasted it, hence the odd formatting. ;-)

You didn't think I could recite all that from memory, did you? The only reason I can remember what I had for breakfast is because I have the same thing every morning! LOL

Sincerely,

Bill

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!


SamTherapy ( ) posted Mon, 02 July 2018 at 4:59 PM

I did notice it was a C&P, Bill. Wasn't blaming you for the errors, either. Merely pointing them - well, it - out. :D

If I have breakfast, it's just good old toast. And tea, of course. Me being yer stereotypical Yorkshireman. Which is yet another Monty Python sketch...

There were 'undred and fifty on us livin' in't shoe box in't middle o' rooad.

Cardboard box?

Aye.

You were lucky.

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

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unrealblue ( ) posted Mon, 02 July 2018 at 10:57 PM ยท edited Mon, 02 July 2018 at 11:10 PM

Would be nice to have some idea of what they're working on. The "walled fortress" sure isn't helping things.

What's the point of keeping things mum? Smells rather like a product team thinking "we have no idea what, if anything, will happen" due to CEO not really caring much about the product. Which, you know, they could say. Also concerning... a lot of us knew people on the dev team. There was communication. Granted, a lot more of it prior to SM. Does anyone know anyone on the current dev team? Anyone???? O.O

All this leaves me with a VERY bad impression of SM. Sighs....

Anyway, I'm liking Blender more each day. My doctor says it's due to brain cell degeneration and there's nothing he can do. I may end up really liking it. No one ever thinks it will happen to them until it does. Then <BAM!> you end up liking Blender. Life can be weird, sometimes ๐Ÿ˜”


Kalypso ( ) posted Tue, 03 July 2018 at 8:20 AM
Site Admin Online Now!

[Redfern] The only reason I can remember what I had for breakfast is because I have the same thing every morning! LOL

So what is it that you have for breakfast every morning? Egg and spam? Egg, bacon and spam? Egg, bacon, sausage and spam? Spam, bacon, sausage, and spam? Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam? Spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam? 😀


FlagonsWorkshop ( ) posted Tue, 03 July 2018 at 10:17 AM

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK....


Redfern ( ) posted Tue, 03 July 2018 at 10:45 AM ยท edited Tue, 03 July 2018 at 10:51 AM

Content Advisory! This message contains violence

Penguin-Boom-1-B.jpg

Announcer: "It's just after 8 o'clock and time for the penguin atop your television set to explode."

Penguin-Boom-2.jpg

BLAM!!!

Penguin-Boom-3.jpg

Petterpot # 1: "How d'e know that was gonna' 'appen?!"

Announcer: "It was an inspired guess."


the very first MP sketch I ever experienced (via an LP record in 1976) and arguably my favorite skit from the entire series.

(BTW, these are very old renders, I think from the days of Poser 4. I "faked" the point light glow of the explosion and embers using a spotlight at a high shadow map value.)

Sincerely,

Bill

Tempt the Hand of Fate and it'll give you the "finger"!


SamTherapy ( ) posted Tue, 03 July 2018 at 12:43 PM

Kalypso posted at 6:42PM Tue, 03 July 2018 - #4332672

[Redfern] The only reason I can remember what I had for breakfast is because I have the same thing every morning! LOL

So what is it that you have for breakfast every morning? Egg and spam? Egg, bacon and spam? Egg, bacon, sausage and spam? Spam, bacon, sausage, and spam? Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam? Spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam? ๐Ÿ˜€

Albatross.

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Tracybee ( ) posted Tue, 03 July 2018 at 8:16 PM

Posers inability to provide a VR experience shows it's "old fashioned" upbringing Most savvy folk are now using the Oculus or the HTC or Windows reality to model and to work in 3D. A search of the WWW will show many VR programs that have surfaced just lately and are extremely popular and state of the art.

Is it the lack of interest from Poser users in this new technology perhaps has discouraged Smith or Poser from developing a VR capable Poser? Sadly Poser is now almost seen as an ancient relic from the past when it should have been at the forefront of new developments and especially virtual reality.

But I am too busy having fun and joy with the grand daughter to worry that much about it...But it is sad to see Poser disappearing into yesterday.


FVerbaas ( ) posted Wed, 04 July 2018 at 11:55 AM ยท edited Wed, 04 July 2018 at 12:03 PM
Forum Coordinator Online Now!

Which makes me ponder ... http://www.hineslab.com/mirror-stereo/

MirrorStereo-01-on-Handle-camera-395p.jpg

And for theory and many more tricks and methods https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/3d/stereo/3dgallery16.htm 1m1cc.gif


CobraBlade ( ) posted Sat, 14 July 2018 at 3:40 AM ยท edited Sat, 14 July 2018 at 3:40 AM

The Lead Developer did post this over on the Smith Micro forum:

"It has been an honor to work with the people in Braga, Portugal. We are not the same in number as the previous team, but we have a new product lead, also based here in Pittsburgh, and he and I together are working hard to secure a bright future for this product.

Hold on to your britches, we're doing the best we can for all you Poser users..."

Poser scripts by Snarlygribbly


3D-Mobster ( ) posted Sun, 15 July 2018 at 5:29 PM ยท edited Sun, 15 July 2018 at 5:43 PM

///The title says it all.... no news, no updates, no development for years. I know the Poser community isn't dead, but has development finally come to a definite halt? 2.5 years of nothing is a long time in the software development world. Am I too seriously look to the competition for future advancement now?////

I don't think Poser is dead, however I think that Poser before 11 have been slightly falling behind, meaning some new features were added, but they weren't really ones that I think most users were very excited about. Which gave the impression that nothing were really happening. I don't think that 2.5 years of development and not having heard anything is necessarily a bad sign, obviously it depends on what they are doing :) But I would actually be more concerned if they kept releasing Poser versions every year. Simply because its sort of what they have been doing until now and its obvious that if they do that, a lot of people will feel disappointed and might not bother upgrading, as buying new Poser versions with hardly any new features in, might not be very desirable in the long run.

I think the choice of integrating or making use of cycles from Blender was a very good idea and in general they should and I hope they work very well with the Blender community to help improve on this, both for Blender and Poser users. Obviously the biggest mistake with Poser 11 were the lack of decent new characters and im not really sure how a decision to release a new version with such flawed character were made in the first place, but guess the deadline came in the way. No matter how you twist and turn it, characters and content in general from a economic point of view is probably the cheapest form of marketing they can invest in and use to spearhead selling their product, heck its what the whole program is based on, they won't be able to compete with Autodesk should they want to venture into modeling and everything else that you can do in those programs for that matter. The one thing that 3ds max, Maya or most of the other big 3d applications can't do, is to work with 3d characters as easy as you can in Poser.

So I hope that for the next release whenever that will be, they have realized that its important and therefore deliver a complete set of new characters, Males, females, kids, babies, maybe even some of the animals. So they bring them into the next gen. Again it will be a really cheap way to promote a new version, compared to the cost of disappointing their users again and honestly without sounding to pessimistic, I don't think Poser as software would be able to survive that, it will still have users and a community etc. But the amount of work it would require to make a new version after that, would be to much. Unless someone is extremely keen on keeping it a live and throwing a huge amount of money into it, I just don't think it would happen.

But on a brighter note, if they keep improving Superfly and get it better integrated or updated so it follows along with Cycles development in Blender, meaning denoising feature, Adaptive sampling, changed to ACES color encoding rather than sRGB (Which im pretty sure is used now) and improved the features for working with HDRI maps. They have a really good chance. At least when it comes to rendering I think.

Secondly they need to update the UI of Poser, especially how you control lights and cameras and in general get stuff updated and Integrated a "physical based" camera. Both lights and camera need to be easily controlled in the viewpoint, working with them as it is now is very poor and annoying.

If they simply focus on those three main areas (Content, Superfly/Rendering, UI/Light/Camera) I think they could really make a strong comeback for Poser. Ohh and some better documentation of what exactly different settings does, like Superfly, cloth room etc. I think it would do quite fine.


adosity ( ) posted Mon, 16 July 2018 at 7:46 AM

The replacement of development teams has predictably slowed down releases (which is not the same as development), and the communication about what is being done has been less open than before. Understandable, too, as replacing a development team takes a lot of work that is rather uninteresting to the outside world. Work on Poser 11 has continued, with various updates and fixes along the way.

SM is requesting users share their wishes and feature requests on their own forums. You can pin-point a few common threads in these responses, but obviously a program will never be everything to everyone and choices will be made. Which those are remains largely unknown, but I'm sure the users aren't the only ones who can pin-point where Poser could do with (substantial) updates.

At the end of the day, Poser is a tool. What comes out of it has a lot to do with what the users can do with it. Photographers can make fantastic images on an iPhone, while tourists can make terrible snapshots on a Nikon D610. What SM can try to do is make SM easier to use, but that's still no guarantee. The internet is full of people who manage to turn a pre-made 3D model, pre-made materials, and pre-made HDR lightning set-up into a dreadful image.

I just don't get this myopic focus on characters as somehow the One True Yardstick by which all software should be measured. It may be different if you're in the business of creating content for characters, or if you're in the business of making tons of nude renders. Environment and prop wise there also hasn't been anything I haven't been able to use in Poser. If anything, the success of Iray in other software has made it easier, as the PBR textures can easily be plugged into Poser and work wonderfully with Superfly.


wolf359 ( ) posted Mon, 16 July 2018 at 1:45 PM

I just don't get this myopic focus on characters as somehow the One True Yardstick by which all software should be measured.

It is not a mypoic focus on Characters in general but on

one type of "Character". Specifically Attractive, Early twenties ,Ideal BMI ,White girls.

Lets be brutally honest, neither Daz or poser or arguably even Iclone Pro ,offer any compelling

features as a general 3D/CG application to the 3D/CG generalist if you remove the base Characters from the equation.

IMHO everyone who Downloads the Free Daz studio Software does so because of the High quality genesis models even if those CG artists who ultimately will not be using them in Daz studio and exporting to Maya ,Max etc.

No one who only models and renders non organic s ,like Cars and buildings and Product /Arch vis stuff, is going to use Daz studio and import their meshes to render with the Slow ,Dumb brute force path tracer NVIDIA Iray.

There are much better stand alone rendering options for those Artists.

The same can be said of Poser if we are being honest neither program has any useful tools for a professional modelor or VFX artist.

Iclone's strength is in its ability to import your Maya ,MAX ,Lightwave,C4D etc Character rigs ( as FBX) or even your POSER people's BVH skeletons.

And easily apply complex human IK Motion to them and export the motion data back to your native application as FBX or BVH. An affordable alternative to the mighty Autodesk Motionbuilder without the monthly subscription nonsense.

However even Reallusion understands the reality that this powerful option is not enough to remain competitive today and now ships every version of Iclone with a free stand alone "Character creator" program for creating your own custom Iclone realtime animation avatars.

And when I launch My Character creator program the default Scene that loads is ....Surprise!! An early twenties, Ideal BMI White girl. (see pic)

Not complaining mind you, merely acknowledging the reality of the market. Screen Shot 07-16-18 at 02.26 PM.PNG



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CHK2033 ( ) posted Mon, 16 July 2018 at 2:27 PM ยท edited Mon, 16 July 2018 at 2:29 PM

adosity posted at 2:19PM Mon, 16 July 2018 - #4333213

** I just don't get this myopic focus on characters as somehow the One True Yardstick by which all software should be measured.**

Because thats what the program is and advertised as

Poser delivers the power of interactive 3D figure design,

or this from their site also

Poser Pro 11 is the most efficient way for content creation professionals and production teams to add pre-rigged, fully-textured, posable and animation ready 3D characters in any project. So they need to make good looking figures which bend realistically.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

HP Zbook 17 G6,ย  intel Xeonย  64 GB of ram 1 TB SSD, Quadro RTX 5000ย 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


3D-Mobster ( ) posted Mon, 16 July 2018 at 2:33 PM ยท edited Mon, 16 July 2018 at 2:45 PM

////////////////// The replacement of development teams has predictably slowed down releases (which is not the same as development), and the communication about what is being done has been less open than before. Understandable, too, as replacing a development team takes a lot of work that is rather uninteresting to the outside world. Work on Poser 11 has continued, with various updates and fixes along the way.

SM is requesting users share their wishes and feature requests on their own forums. You can pin-point a few common threads in these responses, but obviously a program will never be everything to everyone and choices will be made. Which those are remains largely unknown, but I'm sure the users aren't the only ones who can pin-point where Poser could do with (substantial) updates.

At the end of the day, Poser is a tool. What comes out of it has a lot to do with what the users can do with it. Photographers can make fantastic images on an iPhone, while tourists can make terrible snapshots on a Nikon D610. What SM can try to do is make SM easier to use, but that's still no guarantee. The internet is full of people who manage to turn a pre-made 3D model, pre-made materials, and pre-made HDR lightning set-up into a dreadful image.

I just don't get this myopic focus on characters as somehow the One True Yardstick by which all software should be measured. It may be different if you're in the business of creating content for characters, or if you're in the business of making tons of nude renders. Environment and prop wise there also hasn't been anything I haven't been able to use in Poser. If anything, the success of Iray in other software has made it easier, as the PBR textures can easily be plugged into Poser and work wonderfully with Superfly. //////////////////

The characters is one of the main features of the program and what it is designed for, its what makes Poser and Daz3D for that matter what they are. Its no different than people really into writing programs are interested in features that improve on that.

If you go and look at Poser 11, lets say you wanted to buy it, this is the first thing you will see:

Poser_desc.jpg

If they want to sell Poser with such description, I think it would be wise of them to sell it with good characters, I would even go as far as to say that it would be natural to do so. Obviously this is just a part of the program and sure you can use external characters and so forth and most people do, but I personally think its a key feature of Poser as much as being able to change font in a writing program.

Its no different whether you make content or not, having access to up to date characters is the main reason people use these programs, just try to imagine if Poser 4 character were still the only characters available for both Poser and Daz3d today, I would highly doubt that these programs would exist. So I see no reason why anyone should not expect new characters and assume that most people expect a new Victoria or similar at some point.

And you are right that Poser is just a tool and you can make good and bad things with it, but not everyone are professional CG artists and might not care to much about having to spend a lot of time learning to do all these things, but merely want to make some images that they like or enjoy making, but again what will people do if they have no access to decent content?, they would stop using these programs. And characters are simply a huge part when it comes to content. But besides that, even if people purely made bad stuff, Poser as tool should thrive towards being as good as it can despite how their users use it or how good they are. Because they will reach a larger number of users with different needs. I don't really think its that relevant to take the users skill level into a account, when talking about Poser development. Because they should focus on the key features of Poser and that doesn't really have a lot to do with how skilled a person is I think, because the professional user, might only use a very small part of Poser as they use other software solutions as well. And my guess is that its primarily the characters, that they can Pose, quickly dress and manipulate, export them to Zbrush to customize them. Before they export them to other software solutions where they do lighting, rendering, Post etc. Keep in mind that most 3d programs handles static objects very well. So Poser might be good for them to quickly build a scene with static objects and with the characters in them, but nothing that you wouldn't be able to do in an external program with ease, the character are the most complicated elements.

But a user not that skilled, will most likely do everything in Poser, so for them characters and how they look and work might be even more important where as the professional might be more interested in how good they are to manipulate as they change them anyway.

So focusing on character in Poser makes good sense I think.


wolf359 ( ) posted Mon, 16 July 2018 at 4:55 PM

I was a poser user since fractal designs poser2 However you do not have to go back to the 1990's only back as far as 2003.

If you look back at the narratives at play in 2003 in this community you do not find this self validating and frankly self delusional narrative you now see being fomented that "poser is not about figures it is about the program itself."

When "Don & Judy" were introduced in poser 5 and summarily dismissed by the majority, No one was claiming that "figures did not matter" because they had a poser native Mike&Vicky from Daz and the "security" of the presumption that they would always have a new Mike& vicky from Daz . And the same can be said for James & Jessie for poser 6.

Also Note that Whenever a third party decides to undertake a challenge to Daz ,Their "weapon of choice" is a figure who is female,early 20's, has Ideal body mass index and is white.

You poser loyalists would be wise to keep the pressure on SM for a specific roadmap, because if poser were still my figure platform,then Vague Statements of corporate "nonspeak" like: "we have a new product lead, also based here in Pittsburgh, and he and I together are working hard to secure a bright future for this product.Hold on to your britches, we're doing the best we can for all you Poser users..."

....that do NOT mention improved base figures to bring the content makers on board, would be a cause for major concern.



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adosity ( ) posted Wed, 18 July 2018 at 8:07 AM ยท edited Wed, 18 July 2018 at 8:08 AM

wolf359 posted at 2:49PM Wed, 18 July 2018 - #4333235

Lets be brutally honest, neither Daz or poser or arguably even Iclone Pro ,offer any compelling features as a general 3D/CG application to the 3D/CG generalist if you remove the base Characters from the equation.

I agree with that, and it's for characters that I turn to these programs. That's their thing, their niche - and it works well enough.

My post was perhaps worded a bit awkwardly: my point being, Poser has characters. A lot of them. And to take advantage of the moment of brutal honesty; how many people are hitting the limits of those characters rather than their own? A few - at most. I've seen plenty of stunning artwork with ancient (in computer terms) Victoria 3 while seeing some horrific things with the latest iteration of Genesis.

Now, is it easier to make good images with the latter? I don't doubt it - and I think that's the 'question behind the question' in many of these comments about Poser. The learning curve and time investment requirements are steep and high compared to others. This is a significant issue, because new users will likely go to the place where they can quickly get results. That makes a nice pool of potential customers for people who make content, two developments that can strengthen each other.

So back to the original point: I don't agree with those who keep talking about new figures as somehow a "fix" for whatever is wrong with Poser. I think the key will be in making it (much) easier for average people to leverage the possibilities of the program. That'll be difficult, but we'll see how they do. Others have given it a pretty decent shot, so it's not impossible.


wolf359 ( ) posted Wed, 18 July 2018 at 9:44 AM

how many people are hitting the limits of those >characters rather than their own? A few - at most. I've >seen plenty of stunning >artwork with ancient (in >computer terms) Victoria 3 while seeing some horrific >things with the latest iteration of Genesis.

No offense, but it is statements like this that excuse people from moving forward in a competitive commercial market.

Nowhere else in the general consumer product space, do we ask people to "reach the limit of their potential" before moving on to a newer improved version of a commercial product particlulary if a product is dependent on third party content providers.

I imagine there are people who created amazing things on Windows XP with Truespace3D.

and I am sure there are many others who never reached their "true potential" with that program on XP and yes I am sure there are unskilled people creating utter rubbish with Autodesk Maya 2018 on Windows 10 professional today.

This does not change the reality that truespace3D and Windows XP are vestigial relics of a bygone era that receive no measurable support from third party content makers just as V3 does not any longer.

Now people are certainly free to use whatever they want from whatever era they choose. I personally use the Genesis 2& 3 era figures exclusively. However I am a clothing content creator myself and do not need the Daz PA's for new clothing for my "older" models.

The learning curve and time investment requirements >are steep and high compared to others. This is a >significant issue, >because new users will likely go to the >place where they can quickly get results.

I agree and this is normal human behaviour that we see from consumers in every sector this is why Wondows and Maco OS are chosen over Linux by most laypeople for example.

I don't agree with those who keep talking about new >figures as somehow a "fix" for whatever is wrong with >Poser. I think the key >will be in making it (much) easier >for average people to leverage the possibilities of the >program.

What are these "Possibilities of the program" that do not involve the use and rendering of figures??



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3D-Mobster ( ) posted Wed, 18 July 2018 at 7:40 PM ยท edited Wed, 18 July 2018 at 7:43 PM

adosity posted at 1:59AM Thu, 19 July 2018 - #4333341

wolf359 posted at 2:49PM Wed, 18 July 2018 - #4333235

Lets be brutally honest, neither Daz or poser or arguably even Iclone Pro ,offer any compelling features as a general 3D/CG application to the 3D/CG generalist if you remove the base Characters from the equation.

I agree with that, and it's for characters that I turn to these programs. That's their thing, their niche - and it works well enough.

My post was perhaps worded a bit awkwardly: my point being, Poser has characters. A lot of them. And to take advantage of the moment of brutal honesty; how many people are hitting the limits of those characters rather than their own? A few - at most. I've seen plenty of stunning artwork with ancient (in computer terms) Victoria 3 while seeing some horrific things with the latest iteration of Genesis.

Now, is it easier to make good images with the latter? I don't doubt it - and I think that's the 'question behind the question' in many of these comments about Poser. The learning curve and time investment requirements are steep and high compared to others. This is a significant issue, because new users will likely go to the place where they can quickly get results. That makes a nice pool of potential customers for people who make content, two developments that can strengthen each other.

So back to the original point: I don't agree with those who keep talking about new figures as somehow a "fix" for whatever is wrong with Poser. I think the key will be in making it (much) easier for average people to leverage the possibilities of the program. That'll be difficult, but we'll see how they do. Others have given it a pretty decent shot, so it's not impossible.

You are correct that people despite tools available can make bad things, but I think you make a mistake with such approach. As Wolf already pointed out its somewhat misleading way to look at it. Because a program like Poser have lots of users at different skill levels, so making a decision that new characters is not needed as those with the lowest skill level are yet to be judged as being able use the current characters to their full potential. Because if we turn it around, a very skilled person can make amazing things with old content, but they would be able to make even better stuff with better content, but if new content is not made available, because those with lowest skill levels might never reach a level, where they are considered good enough, you have a problem.

I do agree with you that new characters are not a complete fix for Poser. But they are crucial, because its one of their main selling points and if Poser is going to be further developed they need to sell copies, plain and simple. Because if they can't sell anything, it will eventually stop being developed. And since characters is a huge driving force to why people would buy Poser in the first place and not go to Daz3d or Iclone, they can't ignore it. Also you have to remember that Poser and Daz3d are more or less 100% content driven programs, if there were no content available there would be no users or hardly any at least. So characters are very important content elements and in the same way as content creators improve and make new stuff available, so should the characters as these are merely content..

And character does get a huge amount of attention in general. while others might like a lot of other features. Which is perfectly fine. but my point of view is that identifying the key features in Poser is crucial, and making sure that these are of the highest possible standard is what SM should focus on, instead of for instant spending time to develop the bullet system for example.

Not because the bullet system ain't a good idea, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the key features. And obviously what these key features are in Poser can be different from person to person. But I personally feel that SM in some areas have ignored these when they shouldn't..


butznutz ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 7:39 AM

I really hope DAZ buys out Poser


tonyvilters ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 7:54 AM

At butznutz. LOL. Then Blender is going to become VERY popular.


wolf359 ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 8:13 AM

really hope DAZ buys out Poser

Why?? Poser has nothing that Daz needs at this point Why would Daz spend valuable Development time updating Poser to use the Genesis models when they already have Daz Studio to lure people into their content store.

Besides Daz has other concerns right now IMHO. Reallusion is about to Challenge Directly in the Area where Daz thought themselves to be invincible:

High quality ,white female figure models rendered in NVDIA Iray.

The new Standalone Character creator 3 Application coming from Reallusion in september, will have a clothing creation system for Reallusion content vendors, that is as easy as the Daz Auto transfer utility and the Nvidia Iray render engine.

Iclone pro already Supportsall version of Genesis and has Character animation tools comparable to Autodesk Motionbuilder and now their new,included Character bases for Character creator 3, will look good enough to compete with the Mighty Genesis IMHO.

Daz now instantly deletes any Daz Forum post Post mentioning the features of Iclone or Reallusion Character creator as "an offsite commercial advertisement"

The Daz reign of Dominance in the prefabbed 3D figure space may soon be over.

https://forum.reallusion.com/357144/Character-Creator-2018-Roadmap?utm_source=rc_1802&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_term=cc_know_more



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FlagonsWorkshop ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 9:33 AM

That was an interesting thread to read. Yeah, it sounds like there is a direct challenge to DAZ there, though it is a bit confusing to those using Reallusion, there are some unhappy campers on that thread. Looking at the price points on the whole thing though (and I am talking about content) I don't think DAZ has much to worry about with Studio - Morph3D which is also DAZ3D on the other hand has plenty to worry about.

Looking at all that though makes you want to take Smith Micro and shake it by the neck. That's where Poser needs to be if it wants to stay relevant.


3D-Mobster ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 9:35 AM

Agree I don't see why Daz should buy Poser, also I don't hope they will, because pretty sure they would kill it off and not develop it. Besides that I don't think it would make a whole lot of sense from a business point of view. Daz3d live from selling products not there software so being able to sell products for Poser would make a whole lot more sense. They shouldn't really care who buys them and in which program they are used if you ask me.

Besides that, if Poser keep adding features and integrate well with Blender and other 3D programs and their communities, it will do very well I think, making Poser more of an supplement to the pipeline of making 3D. Being very good at something and rely on other programs which are good at other things and simply making them work well together could be a very realistic and potentially strong path to take in the future for Poser I think, should they choose to do it. Blender is not some sort of "cheap" half made 3D program, it is really advanced and on pair with the other solutions out there.


-Timberwolf- ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 12:02 PM ยท edited Wed, 15 August 2018 at 12:02 PM

tonyvilters posted at 6:59PM Wed, 15 August 2018 - #4334771

At butznutz. LOL. Then Blender is going to become VERY popular.

Once blender is updating its UI with some useful icons in 2.8, so average mortals will be able to use it, it might be more popular anyway.


-Timberwolf- ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 12:04 PM

It is a bummer, that DAZ sees IClone as a threat instead as a chance. It could be so easy: DS for stills, Iclone for animations.


FlagonsWorkshop ( ) posted Wed, 15 August 2018 at 1:25 PM

-Timberwolf- posted at 12:17PM Wed, 15 August 2018 - #4334804

It is a bummer, that DAZ sees IClone as a threat instead as a chance. It could be so easy: DS for stills, Iclone for animations.

DAZ Studio isn't the issue there. The threat is really to Morph3D. Nobody is going to move off of DAZ Studio to IClone to do still pictures and it will not materially content sales in the DAZ store. It might affect interactive license sales some, I don't have a handle on how much revenue those generate. .


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