Look at the marketplace. No Poser stuff. What sells? Cute characters and sexy clothing, always has. No accident V4's default body shape was a pinup model. But V4 is a scientifically accurate model of a human to the extent Poser technology allowed when she was made. Daz shows you can respect science and be a successful business too. I went to the Poser software web site to leave a comment and was asked to fill out a trouble ticket. INSANE!! Any real business goes out of its way to beg for customer feedback of any kind. Every new release after Poser 7 has been a disaster in one way or another as Poser has changed from a tool for artists into a 3d toy box. It would take pages to list all the ways Poser has ignored  what it takes to be a successful business. While Daz has done everything right. But Daz is not doing everything.

There could be a role for Poser if Poser would rewind to Poser 7 and concentrate on POSING. And partner with Daz instead of trying to compete and serve as a platform for Daz content that doesn't fit the Genesis line. Firefly comes from Adobe, the graphics giant of the advertising world. Has Poser no interest in that market. And then there is Apple. Folks there are a lot of iPhones out there and 3d graphics will be there sooner or later. Poser's so called management shows the imagination of a pet rock or maybe they are too happy playing in their toy box and pretending to be a business.

Of all the rants in the world, this is one of them.

It just happens to be true as well as an understatement. Poser is truly most rantworthy. Having been a Poser customer since Poser 6 and a regular user and a professional software project manager before I retired I believe I am well enough qualified to point out what drives me nuts about Poser almost every day.

Poser cannot survive without Daz as a content provider (which the marketplace proves) and thus it is Poser's professional duty to find out why Daz gave up on Poser and make amends to restore the prior relationship. Remember, Daz does not make money on DS which it GIVES AWAY.

A little of my bakground and computer as I join the rant :D

I have been using poser since 3006,  tested for RDNA and Renderosity for years.

My computer has dual ex cor xeon processors and 58 gig of EC memory.  Bifio id 1070 with 8 gig of ram

The problem is that Poser seems to no longer have developers.  It is probably not in DAZ's interest to serve a small market that Poser market has becvome

Poser can not long survive without new content, but who is going to develope it?

I have tried to help with various fitters to allow old content to be used wht LaFemmme1 and L'Homme1, giving access to much of

V4 and M4 content as well as giving away freebie characters.

All of the developers that I used to test for are no longer around.

So I agree that without developers for character contet, Poser (which is more powerful than most users know) is probably not going to survive.

Bill

I am and have been a poser user since poser 1 came out. I upgraded up until poser 7 until my business go so heavy I didn't have time to spend on it. When I retired I finally got poser 11, and now poser 13. I was a loyal daz customer until their all in on ds made buying from them frustrating. I was on rendo prime for a while and will probably get back in after we finish our retirement house next month or so. I've got literally years of content and just now getting together a dream of making graphic novels with poser. I'll spend good deal of time just shorting thru what I've bought and what was free. Content is not a problem with me, figuring out how to use the gigabytes I've transferred from computer to computer in a creative way is.

Just saying

Content is not a problem for me either,   haveover 500 gigs of runtimes + Many I never installd ( as a tester I got to keep what i tested with a few excvejptions)

I can fit almost anything from

v2/M2 through V4 /M4 to LhFemm 1 or2 and L'Homme1 or 2

New users that do not have the quantity of content can not. 

O have working Wardrob Wizard, Clothing convert4 and my own fitting routines (marketplace and free so no, content is not a problem for me

It is for new users

Bill

Bondware is a business and the limited offering of Poser content suggests to me that the content developers feel they have a larger market for DAZ Studio content.  Such is life.  As well, female avatars (tending to look younger all the time) and sexy clothes for them has always sold well for Poser and DAZ Studio so content providers will provide what sells.  I have to admit, I am always looking for stuff for my male avatars and some variety for my female avatars but I don't expect content providers to make stuff for me if it doesn't sell well in the wider market place.

The Poser software is more powerful than most users realize.  It does SO much more than just load, pose and render.  I appreciate that there is a small development team still messing with Poser and I am currently using Poser 13.3.1041.  I've purchased Poser 14.0.124 to provide some financial support for ongoing development and I must say it seems promising although it has at least one rendering bug in Superfly that has caused me to shelve it for the time being.  The only real change that I think will hurt the app with regard to content creation is the loss of the cloth room.  I've noticed that those who still provide content (much of it is very high quality BTW) have been working mostly with dynamic rather than conforming content.

As for the future of Poser (to the extent that there is one) I certainly don't want to "rewind to Poser 7 and concentrate on POSING" as posing works fine in current versions but other features such as the ability to import content (fbx, obj, collada and other formats) is really helpful as is the fitting room (SO powerful if you know a bit) and the morph brush (which very nearly allows the creation of new content within Poser itself).  I am glad that the Setup room is still being developed as I am just starting to learn that!  Elsewhere there has been praise for the return of "simple editing" in the material room but I really don't care about that.

Backward compatibility with minimum tweaking and hassle has always been one of Poser's great attractions for me.  If that goes away, then there REALLY will be a bad problem with content (and I have a REALLY, REALLY big library of stuff I won't be able to use).  >.<

Teh Mollz

....is the loss of the cloth room.?

That would be a no sale for me.   I  do not do much dynamic clothes, but I use it a lot for things like blankets over figures and such

But then I am still on Poser 11 for my probably unique situation.  I tested for shaderworks and netherworks  and have all of shaderworks products which I use on just abo9ut every free and marketplace item, There is no replacemetnt for LM2, I use it  to create all my zip files and its partial pose function

Bill

Yeah, Bill, no cloth room in Poser 14.  =\  The Poser Development team has been up front about it and state that they hope to have a replacement for the cloth room in a future version, but for the moment, if you want to use the cloth room you have to stop at Poser 13.3.1041.  If the version of Superfly in P14 really is better, I can see myself using the cloth room in P13 and rendering in P14.  For the moment, though, I will be using P13 until they fix the rendering bug I that I submitted a ticket for. ;-)

Teh Mollz

In general I only use superfly for test renders, and firefly for final renders

with 24 threads firefly is fairly fast on my system, and superfly does a poor job on things like terradom

PS. make sure you search youtube for tuts on BS

Bill

 I went to the Poser software web site to leave a comment and was asked to fill out a trouble ticket. INSANE!! Any real business goes out of its way to beg for customer feedback of any kind.

And a ticket is a way to get that feedback. It could also be a form? Which is the same thing. Or a forum? Like... this one? Not sure what you are complaining about.

There could be a role for Poser if Poser would rewind to Poser 7 and concentrate on POSING.

What does that even mean? I don't think it means anything. I can pose figures just fine in any version. Are you basically just saying "removing superfly"? If so, that's dumb. I don't want to go back to using Poser to set up a scene and then have to move into different software to render it.

And partner with Daz

Partnership is a two-way street. Poser can't partner with Daz unless Daz wants to partner with Poser. This is delusional.

instead of trying to compete and serve as a platform for Daz content that doesn't fit the Genesis line.

Everything Daz sells can be rendered in Daz Studio. Of course. So what need are you imagining that Poser could serve for them? There isn't one. They have no reason to involve themselves.

Poser's original goal was to help artists to pose people realistically in their art, a goal of western art for the past 2005 years. In the past decade or so that concern have extended from just bodies to muscles such that everyday language now references abs and pecs and many people know just what they mean. So a tool that does not address how these features react to posing is culturally irrelevant.

On the other hand Poser as a tool for making art has an interface cluttered with 'powerful' features unrelated to making art. Products from home appliances to battlefield weapons base their design and implementation on detailed user action scenarios coordinated with end users. Who among artists asked for the Poser 8 Interface changes. And the ones I talked to on site mail all hated it.

But there is so much to do in posing. Why should the user be burdened with controls that move in opposite directions on opposite sides of the body? Why cant our figures perform reflex gestures just as our bodies do from birth? Stop playing with 3d math and study how our nervous systems control how our bodies. We have more than enough compute power and so much of this just observing how our own bodies work. In other words there reflex gestures are so common a posing engine by default should be able to apply then to any figure in one click.

To willyb53:

You said: "make sure you search youtube for tuts on BS"

I'm not sure what you mean by "BS" but I'm sure it would be helpful.  I certainly know how to search YouTube. =\

As for Superfly rendering Terra Dome I wouldn't be able to say as I haven't used Terra Dome in a long time.  I'll have to have a look at that. =)

Teh Mollz

Ah, you have clarified what you mean by "going back to posing", Mazzam.  It seems to me that you are wanting content that behaves more like real human bodies.   Out of curiosity, have you looked at La Femme and L'Homme (expecially LF2 and LH2)?  They don't have your idea of "reflex gestures" but they do have many other features.

On the whole, your beef seems to me not with the Poser app as much as it is with content providers who (sadly but reasonably) feel that they can earn more by marketing content for DAZ Studio. =(

Teh Mollz

Sorry Molly, I was refering to Blacksmit :D

nNot anything in this thread :D

Bill

Also, I agree w;ith you on content providers.  In my case I do not do clothing or characters for the market place because I do not agree with Rendo's rules.  It is their  siteso they can make what ever rules they wish

Bill

I personally like the "new" interface. The ability to dock pallets rather than having them over lap and hide each other is helpful to me.

If you prefer the old look, it's not hard to come close.

Here's Poser 7 (Sorry, it's so small. I don't have it installed anymore, and this is what I found.)

And here is a mock-up in Poser 14. 

While there is nothing wrong with using Poser as a posing doll, there are so many more uses for it. I didn't even use it for that back in Poser 7. 

The benefit of Poser 7 was stability.  Now if you try to move the document window it will try to dock at the top and scramble the whole screen.The new interface fails to provide default sizes per window, requires mandatory default docking and makes radical layout changes without asking the user's permission. A user should be able to lock  a configuration to reappear for each New document or restart. U/I dots without labels are useless.

I have not had to reset my UI configuration since I installed Poser 14, except this afternoon when I did that sample. That took 1 second since I have a UI dot saved. You can turn off the ability to drag the pallets. The same goes for Poser 13 and Posers 8-12. I set how I want the UI, turn off drag docking, and it stays. You can set the preferred launch state. You can save up to 9 other configurations if you want. I have 2, one for 2 monitors and 1 for a single monitor, when I have something I want to see on the other screen. You can also stop something from docking by holding down the Ctrl button while dragging.

The problem I have is accidentally dragging the top of the document window while reaching for a menu then the screen goes nuts.

It doesn't belong here but the minimum requirement for a model of a human is that the body conform exactly nto a scientifically accurate model of a human skeleton. The shape and spatial relationship between the rib cage and the hip assembly. LaFemme utterly fails on all accounts. It is difficult to find anything resembling a rib cage and if so way to small to contain lungs her body has a strange serpentine extension between what might be her rib cage and what might be her hip bone which is way too small. She would deserve an F- in any anatomy class.

The V4 packages still for sale at Daz make it absolutely clear how to design a 3d human. Start with the skeleton. Wrap it with a musclr map and then adjust the mesh to match. The rigging comes from the skeleton with joints only where the skeleton has them. V4 bends very realistically with just two on the lower spine. Nothing less than this is in any way acceptable. Period. If you can't do at least this you shouldn't try.

If you're dragging the document when reaching for a menu, then you need to turn off drag docking. You can find it here

Just some Devil's Advocate bits...

1. V4 was released in 2005. Either license it and use it as a basis for something new, or just let it die.

2. The only realistic way to get Genesis figures (and ALL of their goodies including Geografts) working on Poser w/o some massive and complex hit-or-miss process? Either license it from DAZ, or build a bridge script/app to export it from DAZ (because DAZ can't do a consistent FBX export to save its arse. Sorry, but them's the facts.) Given this, it's IMHO best to focus on improving what you got (and this is coming from a guy who has almost 2TB of DS-specific stuff.)

3. Yes, there have been attempts to make new Poser-compatible characters since V4. IMO, an effort by Bondware to make more morphs, variable characters, and accessories (and let's be honest here - naughty bits) for their flagship figures would boost things by a lot.

4. Dunno if the render engines in Poser utilize the GPUs, but if not, they should at least include one that does. Cuts render times down to mere minutes, often seconds.

5. In spite of everything I've said in the past, I want to give one last bit of advice that points to where the puck will be - Bondware should use Poser as a front-end for something like a Stable Diffusion and/or a Sora - basically the user creates and sets up the character, clothing, etc - with each element of the scene converted into a LoRA, and the poses in it being a guide that AI in turn uses to help make the final image. Something like that anyway... I say this because in spite of all the disdain for "AI Slop", AI can be a useful part of the workflow w/o being the entire workflow... incorporating Poser (or DS) with it (or vice-versa with homebrew LLMs, etc) would reduce the 'slop' factor at least.

In answer to 4. above, Poser has had GPU access since poser 11

My problem with it is that some materials do not either get to the gpu or the gpu does not know how to handle them

I use superfly for test renders, but us firefly for my final renders because of this.

With regard to content, I have no shortage, but gettng good transfers can take some work, I am currently working on D3 to LH1 and M3 to LH1, go get access to sme items I would like to use in renders (M3 Police for example)  no current LH1 items will work.

On morphs some of the LF1 morphs do not seem to be available.  I have three packages, Deecey's is the most complete

I willnot release marketplace items for cdharaters because of some of Rendos rules which I do not agreee with because they make thing hareder to use.

Bill

Penguinisto posted at 9:53 AM Fri, 9 January 2026 - #4502943

Just some Devil's Advocate bits...

1. V4 was released in 2005. Either license it and use it as a basis for something new, or just let it die.

If you mean Poser, there's no technical investment in Poser to support V4. It's just a figure, it works like other figures.

If you mean users should just throw away a figure they have, that works, that has a very large library of existing content, that doesn't seem at all sensible. 

2. The only realistic way to get Genesis figures (and ALL of their goodies including Geografts) working on Poser w/o some massive and complex hit-or-miss process? Either license it from DAZ, or build a bridge script/app to export it from DAZ (because DAZ can't do a consistent FBX export to save its arse. Sorry, but them's the facts.) Given this, it's IMHO best to focus on improving what you got (and this is coming from a guy who has almost 2TB of DS-specific stuff.)

No argument there.

3. Yes, there have been attempts to make new Poser-compatible characters since V4. IMO, an effort by Bondware to make more morphs, variable characters, and accessories (and let's be honest here - naughty bits) for their flagship figures would boost things by a lot.

That's LH and LF. But to create a sufficient volume of content, they need 3rd party creators to be making some of it, and so far that's limited.

4. Dunno if the render engines in Poser utilize the GPUs, but if not, they should at least include one that does. Cuts render times down to mere minutes, often seconds.

Of course Superfly does. It's using the same render engine as Blender Cycles and is a very good modern renderer. And indeed is fast.

5. In spite of everything I've said in the past, I want to give one last bit of advice that points to where the puck will be - Bondware should use Poser as a front-end for something like a Stable Diffusion and/or a Sora - basically the user creates and sets up the character, clothing, etc - with each element of the scene converted into a LoRA, and the poses in it being a guide that AI in turn uses to help make the final image. Something like that anyway... I say this because in spite of all the disdain for "AI Slop", AI can be a useful part of the workflow w/o being the entire workflow... incorporating Poser (or DS) with it (or vice-versa with homebrew LLMs, etc) would reduce the 'slop' factor at least.

But I don't agree. Once you are using AI, do you need a 3D renderer at all? I think that is just giving people a bridge to a future without you. I use Poser because it's not AI.

But for artistic reasons a render engine designed for realism is rarely the best choice. The availability of layers in a Firefly makes it a far superior choice for artitists and Adobe must have known this when Firefly was created. After all advertising art has little to do with realism, any art for that matter. And Poser having ignored the needs of actual artists far too long has oddly chosen to hide the artistic features of Firefly and has neglected the need for a basic layer capable imasge processing back end.

And let me add that the Mac version of Poser has been offered as an after thought such that things that work fine on Windows can fail often on the Mac. OS centric design is bad software design practice. Almost any application can be made simpler and cheaper to build and maintain by building it on a virtual operating system. Not only does this make trivial the task of dealing with Os updates, you get portability almost for free. This is nothing new. I had a contracor do it  almost 40 years ago to allow a popular interactive graphics application to be shared between gavernment agencies almost for free.

Adobe's Firefly has nothing to do with Poser Firefly two totally different things.  And the layers feature that is in Poser is designed to merge images during a Render.  Poser has never been a post render processor for Firefly.  It now offers it for Superfly but even that is limited compared to a program designed to change a static image.  Poser makes images and programs like Photoshop enhance them.

In all the art classes (and the results the students produce) that I have seen I have yet to see one that is anywhere close to the subject they were trying to paint.  Having Poser make hyper realistic looking people so that you can use them as a reference for your real art, painting drawing whichever is a waste of time as the final drawn result won't look at all like the model.  And as you have said the original intent Poser was to be a digital mannequin to replace the physical version of a wooden reference mannequin.

The really funny thing about your Mac comment is that Poser started out on Mac.  It is not so much Poser's fault for not supporting it anymore as it is Apples.  Since they are always changing their operating system and breaking Poser which requires massive manhours to fix to make it work with the latest version.  Contrast that to Windows and I have every version from 5-14 on my windows 11 computer and everyone of them works except Poser 8 and that is because it used a feature of I.E. that was removed.  Poser 9 also suffered that same issue, except that Smith Micro went back and fixed that version even though Poser 10 had been out for almost a year by that time.

"If you mean Poser, there's no technical investment in Poser to support V4. It's just a figure, it works like other figures."

Well gee, I'm soooo glad to be informed of that! I mean, I was only there, at DAZ, as one of their employees, when Victoria 4 was developed and released. How I never knew this info you just now supplied is astounding! I mean, wow - maybe they should put you in charge!
(/facepalm)

Okay, snark aside, since you probably didn't know, let me elaborate a bit on what I was suggesting, since a lot wasn't picked up in translation... I forget that most of the heavy nuts-n-bolt users who would've understood what I shot off offhand have left long ago (or literally died.) I'll try to be a bit more descriptive and to break it down more next time - that's on me.

So, that said:

Vicky 4.1 is the most widely used figure in Poser, even today. I defy anyone to prove otherwise. Given this, the fine folks at Poser can potentially license it, re-vamp it so that it bends better (and morphs better) but wears the same stupendous quantity of clothing, materials and accessories out there, maybe toss in a script to update the materials automatically (DAZ does this in DS to update all default materials to Iray w/ some decent default Iray-specific settings to fill in the gaps, for instance).

The alternative? Ignore it entirely, but this time invest more than just some outside commission work into the in-house figures (or, see next response below...)

"That's LH and LF. But to create a sufficient volume of content, they need 3rd party creators to be making some of it, and so far that's limited."

Yeah, that ain't working. At all. Bondware is gonna have to bite the bullet and hire a couple of full-time content-makers, full-stop. You only attract talent when talent is present. Nobody wants to take risk and put in that kind of work unless they can see a reward for it - especially freelancers.

You see, here's the dilly -  DAZ makes (and buys/commissions!) a lot of their own content. Tons of it. For them, DS began as an afterthought, so they already had (and have) a content ecosystem that seeds the 3rd-party content flow very nicely.

Bondware needs to do the same - ASAP.

"There's a plug-in in the market for that. So you can use Poser that way if you want."

Well, sorta. There's a disturbing lack of a published official SDK. No scripting documentation that I can see. No Poser Dev forum. A handful of scripts (mostly Python lash-ups) in the Marketplace. Most of the addons and plugins are for DAZ Studio. What you mention may well exist, but not in any obvious way to invite devs or scripters. (Meanwhile at DAZ, I can d/l the SDK for free, and contact a dedicated dev or C/S agent there who can help me work through the uglier bits if I get stuck - as long as I have something workable, natch. Hell, there's even a couple of githubs out there with a zillion samples.)

Dude, I promise, I'm not trying to bust your chops (too much) here - but if Poser is to survive, some things should happen that I'm not seeing.

I don't claim to have the answers, but I do know what works. Been in this biz for just over 3 decades now... but it's not my show to run, and I'll be retired soon enough. 

I think technically Michael 1/2 / Stephanie 1 is the most efficient Poser/DAZ mesh ever made. For just 30.000 polygons you get tons of elaborate muscular detail without the need for several iterations of subdivision like with so called "modern" figures.

But of course clothing/texture support is a major factor to consider, and here V4 still reigns supreme.

I especially find the 17K LOD version of her very easy to work with.

(Remember that V4 17K + 1 iteration of subdivision is literally identical to standard V4)

https://api.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2891494/why-are-you-still-using-v4?page=2#msg4211734

Same of course is true for M4 17K

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2874173/this-is-not-a-weightmapped-michael-4-but-he

But I don't think Poser is salvageable in it's current condition.

Not with its current owners unwilling to address its most pressing problems.

Probably the best at this point if it would become abandonware so that a few enthusiasts could pick up what's left and try to save it.

A couple of years ago I was seriously considering trying to license some DAZ figures and optimize them to then current Poser standards. But I had absolutely no clue what such a licensing agreement might cost and wether DAZ was actually willing to still "help" Poser, even if indirectly. They are competitors, after all, and every customer being dissapointed by Poser might pick up a copy of Studio instead.

(So I took my money and bought a classic car instead)  :-)

I don't care about "new" Poser anymore, but I was still surprised they cut the last lifeline (The cloth room) that their current figures had left.

The past and present owners of Posers are known for shooting themselves in the foot, but I guess this time it's more than just a flesh wound:

Just a scratch

Anyway, still happily using Poser 11 and my classic lineup of DAZ/Poser figures. (All heavily modified / optimized of course)

The main problem with the Poser figures is incorrect rigging. The torso base bends where the human is solid bone. Usually fatal. A human bends and twists along a small stretch of the spine between the top of the hip assembly and base of the rib cage. The human body is an amazing biological machine and anyone modeling it should make a serious effort to get it right. Daz took a very clever short cut - start with a human skeleton. You get correct rigging for free. Some of the past Poser figures might be rescued that way. Take a science based skeleton of similar stature, restyle the mesh to conform, add weight mapped joints  and let Tempesta3D add details. Get some past artists like Viktohria,Sabby and Maddelirium to oversee the effort and you might have a viable character not dependent on Daz.

1. V4 was released in 2005. Either license it and use it as a basis for something new, or just let it die.

I was responding to the "just let it die" part. I guess I don't know what you even meant by that.

As for license it and use it as a basis for something new, are you suggesting something different from sasha-16? That took V4 and improved the rigging? Same textures? Same clothes? It seems to me that already happened. It was certainly an improvement. Licensing would make the packaging easier I guess, but doesn't seem to have been necessary.

I, for one, do not understand the yearning for V5.  Yes, I use her and M4, but only for those things that I can not do with LF/LH.

When I do use V4, I use her in  th the same way I use every other figure in poser.  I create a morph with a loaded V4 and spawn and save  a morph injection which I then apply to an empth/blandk V4.

There are very few things I can do  with V4 that I can not do with other characters..  I have had TT2 modules for V4/M4 for at least 4 years., see my gallery.

There are very few content items I can not converth to the figures I do use.  High Heels are my big problem, I have to do them by hand.

So wyhy V4?

  Mostly for the creature creator modules which I have not botherd to convert..

Charactes?  I do 4  to 6 characters a month (side gig, pays for my  hobby :D

I have access to all f my V4/M4 library  including textures and clothes for oth LF//LOH (obth versions)

I also have sthe same access to D3, M3, V3, items.

So if i need her geometry I have access, buut most new users do not have my library, and fraknkly probably can no longer buy most of the items..

So, why yearn for V4?

Bill

V4 is the only Poser figure with a biologically realistic body shape and rigging in a Poser cr2 format. That matters to me and the vast majority of vendors making conforming clothing in Poser format. Ditto character artists Maddelirium and Sabby and others.

Any new character conformable to a human female skeleton and muscle structure would be a highly welcome replacement. It would be better yet if major muscle groups became virtual actors making JCMs become real. Existing technology would probably support that.

Poser will never survive by chasing DS which is free. Nobody gives a damn for virtual photography as a minute of browsing the galleries will show. Pruviding a means to make the posed figure MORE realistic would be something different and Poser needs something like that.

It would also apply to 'off ldbel' uses of the product and we all know what really sells!

Out of the box V4 isn't very realistic. On the contrary, she was intentionally made "stylized" because DAZ wanted to fuse V4, Aiko 4, Girl 4 and Stephanie 4 into a single cr2.

And given the limited scaling abilitys of both Studio and Poser back then, that meant they had to compromise.

But scaling now has gotten much better, so it isn't hard anymore to turn V4 into a "real girl":

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As for the rigging:

While there were attempts to improve V4's rigging in the past either by weightmapping and/or by adding JCMs, none of those released were very...let's say...convincing.

Poser can do a lot better, but you have to put in the work to get the bulge maps "just right". 

Also be careful: The more complicated you make the rigging, the more limited it will become and the easier it will break if you morph the figure away from its default shape.

A "one size fits all" type of rigging isn't possible in Poser. If you want excellent results, then you need a bespoke rigging for every different bodytype.

Even Genesis 9 still has severe bending problems, despite all the tech that DAZ implememted into that figure.

Sasha-16 is/was a wonderful upgrade to V4. I have not interacted with Karina in several years ... but my V4+Sasha16 setup works great. No need for a "male version," the model morphs into a guy quite well.

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The bend in her back looks wrong. The body does not bend in a continuous arc. The rib cage does not bend. The torso is a two part structure bending and twisting only in the middle along a relatively short span of the spine. Most human bodies are more angular than smooth revealing quite a bit of bone. The point is that V4 conforms exactly to a science based human skeleton. The technology to model the muscle layer overlaying the skeleton has evolved a great deal. But no Poser developer since then has taken the fifst step of STARTING with a skeleton and then added the muscles and only then the skin. Takes a bit of work. Your design team should include a personal trainer as well as someone who teacher college level anatomy courses at art school.

OK, so V4 may be a good figure, I do use her when necessary, but the thread is about the survival of Poser

All of the alternative figures mentioned work in Poser, but...

where is the new content?  New V4? Occasional, but not much

New LF/LH `?  Some but not much

So, even if there is a perfect figure, are we stuck with old Clothes?

I use them because that is all that I can get,I have a 2- year supply o f old items.  New users have very little to use.

It is content providers that we need, not a new figure, which will have no clothes (which is ok with some of thuser base)

Bill

I don't usually join threads like this.  I mean, it's basically a rant and what's the point?  But, I feel like injecting a dose of "reasonable".

I think that the point that there is not much high quality content being currently sold for Poser is simply the result of content makers going where it is profitable, that is, where there are the most customers.  Back when DAZ's millennium people were interchangeably  used by DAZ Studio and Poser users, V4 and related figures REALLY sold well; it didn't matter whether you had acquired your platform by buying it (all us older users who bought Poser and got into this hobby before DAZ Studio was even a thing) or had acquired DAZ Studio for free.  EVERYone was using  the millenium gen 4 figures because there was no alternative of equal quality (with the possible exception of Dawn and Dusk).

Even if you gave Poser away for free, I think DAZ Studio's user base has become so large it would be tough sledding for Bondware to increase the market share.  In my humble opinion (and your mileage may vary) LF, LF2, LH, LH2 and D2 are all superior figures to V4 for use in Poser but there is less content available especially for those who can't develop some proficiency with the fitting room.  As for Mazzam's insistence that a more realistic figure would be an answer, he's entitled to believe as he likes but there is no real evidence that I can discern from what is selling on the market place (here or at DAZ or the other 3 or 4 places I buy things) that such a figure is really demanded by either the Poser or the DAZ Studio market.

I'm just pleased that there is ANY support for a program that I have taken the time to learn and become somewhat proficient at.  I've paid for a copy of P14 not because I think it's ready for prime time, but because I can afford to support what little development might occur.  I live in hope that the bugs I've reported in the new Superfly rendering engine are addressed and I am hopeful about the return of the cloth room.

If ranting makes people feel better, than have at it.  Myself, I like to try to keep things in perspective and work with what is available.  After all, the places I post my art are becoming increasingly buried in AI slop.  That bothers me more than the glacial pace of Poser development.  =(

Teh Mollz

P.S.  Big thanks to content providers that still occasionally provide a nice new bit of content for Poser.  I just got a lovely character set by Tempesta3D for Dawn 2 that I've been having a ball with.  Shout out to 1971s, Cofleck-Gnorg, Shaaramuse3D and many others. =)

Thank you Molly :D

As you know I try to provide at least some (FREE) content for LJ1/LF1 and some ways (involving the fitting room) for the older users to use some of their older content.

Fore me, Tendo has some rules that I consider outdated so I do not do characters or content to the marketplace.

The main problem is there is a death sprial  occuring based on economic law, supply and demand

If there is no supply (content) buyers will go th where there is content

If there are no buyers (people willing to spend on content) the developers will go to where they can sell

I do have some items that might sell, but they would actully reduce content creation so I will not give or sell them

Myy business degree predates home computers so I have no idea how Rendo can solve this

All I can say is good luck, I will continue doing what I do as long as Poser keeps working

Bill

And yes, I have misspellings, I am half blind (20/100 20/200 and touch type without reading what I type

Bill

What makes a character real is the ability to look real in a 3d environment while interacting with the scene and its contents. If this is achieved viewers will not pay attention to details. So viewers will comment on the story you are telling rather than the image itself. Psychological realism is getting the viewer emotionally invested in the character.

By the way, take a look at recent pose sets by Santuzy78. I find it quite hard to describe any difference between the figures in rhhe promo images and real people in real scenes.

No matter how awful Poser is DAz is much worse. The interface on DS is terrible and that is why it's free. 

Vicky 4.1 is the most widely used figure in Poser, even today. I defy anyone to prove otherwise. Given this, the fine folks at Poser can potentially license it, re-vamp it so that it bends better (and morphs better) but wears the same stupendous quantity of clothing, materials and accessories out there, maybe toss in a script to update the materials automatically (DAZ does this in DS to update all default materials to Iray w/ some decent default Iray-specific settings to fill in the gaps, for instance).

Dawn was the update to V4 for Poser imo. It's unfortunate that Poser does not have something as simple to use as an autofit to convert clothing. Dawn 2 has been a further update to the figure but both are still very similar shapewise.  

Unfortunately Poser users and the Poser owners never really got behind supporting the Hivewire Figures and neither did DS users. Leaving DS with a gradually developing monopoly over content. How many small brokerages have gone out of business since DS4 was introduced? No RDNA, Mada and Thornes site is long gone, shareCG is also gone. Forums everywhere are quiet as. One thing I've noticed since returning to 3d is it's like a ghost town everywhere. Even the daz forums are quieter that they used to be. 

As mainly a ds user and part time user of Poser one of the biggest issues for me when I use Poser is that I can't easily convert the clothing within Poser. 

I can do it in DS, most of the time. These days I manually fit stuff in Zbrush but when I send it back into DS it allows me to update the base mesh which to my knowledge I can't in Poser. 

I would love to see Poser become easier to use. Both programs have their pros and cons. 

One of the reasons Daz got uptake with the genesis range was the ability to convert the older figures clothing and textures within DS.

They gradually reduced what came free with the figure so now many things like additonal clones have to be bought and also alternate texture mapping. They worked out having them free cut into sales.

We can sit around complaining about lack of content or we can do something to change that.

Learn how to create content(some of you are aready way better than I am at that not naming any names.) If you don't want to release on Rendo find another shop. Fantasy Attic is at least still out there. I don't claim to be an expert content creator but if I can learn to create morphs and actually get them into Poser(which makes my brain melt) so can others.

The end result is in the hands of all Poser users. One person can't fix it but maybe many of working together can.

The problem with Dawn is that her proportions and rigging are wrong. Too bad but the market tells the tale. Most of the original content  for Dawn is now gone. No new clothing ever as far as I can see. More content for V3 than Dawn.

Daz is in business to sell content. It is worth finding out why Daz didn't keep on making content for Poser. There must have been some business reason. Something that Poser lacked in spite of its superior interface. Remember Daz invented the MAT pose to get around the Poser restriction forcing character morphs and character textures to reside in different directories. And long after V4 became the de facto Poser figure used by virtually all vendors of Poser products, Poser kept on offering far inferior figures which the market ignored. So it was Poser who fired Daz bot the other way around.

That is hard to fix because Daz is a business and Poser has never behaved like a business and I see no reason anyone would trust Poser to form and stick  to an agreement if the techno geeks running the show came up with a new algorithm enthusiasm. That sad state of affairs is what started thius thread in the first place.

But consider the user interface. It has never been modified to take care of the changed nature of computers and Poser scenes. The interface is cluttered up with options from the day when rendering a cube could be a challenge. As the Pose window becomes ever more crowded the selection algorithm has become unworkable. Trying to select an arm is more likely to select a chair or a vase in the background. Yet in the material room you can select anything you can see in one click, Why wasn't this fixed many releases ago instead of muking around with digital photography.

IMO: sure thing that the selection process clearly needs to be completely redefined in Poser, as well the detection of the coloured controls when using the Direct Manipulation tool. But even with this small problems, Poser's interface is far more intuitive when it comes to camera management and character movement.

Daz is in business to sell content. It is worth finding out why Daz didn't keep on making content for Poser.

The problem with Dawn is that her proportions and rigging are wrong. Too bad but the market tells the tale. Most of the original content  for Dawn is now gone. No new clothing ever as far as I can see. More content for V3 than Dawn.

That's a matter of opinion and I wouldn't expect more to come out for Dawn SE now that  Dawn 2 is here.  

Daz is in business to sell content. It is worth finding out why Daz didn't keep on making content for Poser. There must have been some business reason. Something that Poser lacked in spite of its superior interface. Remember Daz invented the MAT pose to get around the Poser restriction forcing character morphs and character textures to reside in different directories. And long after V4 became the de facto Poser figure used by virtually all vendors of Poser products, Poser kept on offering far inferior figures which the market ignored. So it was Poser who fired Daz bot the other way around.

I agree that to a certain extent the owners of Poser shot themselves in the foot. I remember rumors at the time that Daz offered information on the system so Poser could match it but they didn't want to have to constantly change everytime DS did. At least that was the rumor at the time. Lots of people didn't want to leave v4 behind as they had a large investment in resources for her also.

That is hard to fix because Daz is a business and Poser has never behaved like a business and I see no reason anyone would trust Poser to form and stick  to an agreement if the techno geeks running the show came up with a new algorithm enthusiasm. That sad state of affairs is what started thius thread in the first place.

But consider the user interface. It has never been modified to take care of the changed nature of computers and Poser scenes. The interface is cluttered up with options from the day when rendering a cube could be a challenge. As the Pose window becomes ever more crowded the selection algorithm has become unworkable. Trying to select an arm is more likely to select a chair or a vase in the background. Yet in the material room you can select anything you can see in one click, Why wasn't this fixed many releases ago instead of muking around with digital photography.

I'm not going to disagree with you about Poser layout. I struggle to do simple tasks in it.

Proportions are not a natter of opinion, they are governed by nature. You can sell Dawn as a fantasy figure if you like but the market seems to agree with me. I went back tom Dawn a few weeks ago and found that no matter how I posed her she didn't look right. It can happen with V4 too if get her joint wromg so i will zero the arm or head pose and start iver and V4 will look real again. Nature matters!

Dawn has functional scale zones that you can use to adjust proportions you're not happy with. They actually work better than V4's scaling ever did, and once you get a shape you're happy with it can be baked into an FBM, match centers to morph and carry on with the posing. 

All of the figures used in Poser (and DAZ Studio, I suspect) do not meet the perfect specifications of nature that Mazzam is so concerned with.  There are compromises in all content made to keep the complexity of the mesh and rigging within reasonable limits.  When a figure looks unnatural it is usually due to the artist's deliberate artistic choices OR their inability to work with the limitations of the content to achieve their vision.

As for Dawn's failure to capture the market place, it had mostly to do with V4's dominance at the time.  Again, in those days V4 worked well in Poser and was the most advanced figure for DAZ Studio.  Both Poser and Studio users had her and bought tons of content for her.  Hivewire3D clearly understood this and made the commitment to make Dawn compatible with both Studio and Poser.  Sadly, though, Hivewire 3D was relatively invisible to users (both Poser and Studio) who practically lived at DAZ.  After DAZ, RDNA and Content Paradise existed and both provided plenty of material for V4 since everyone was using her (Content Paradise had plenty of Poser specific stuff but the legacy figures included with Poser never enjoyed the popularity of V4).

All this is interesting, of course, but the only way to get good content is to make it worth content creator time.  To some extent Bondware could probably make it easier for content providers but users have to buy stuff and a small group of users (Poser) will never buy as much content as a VERY large group (DAZ Studio).

Finally, if you have been using Poser for years and never dared more than to load content into the Pose room you are missing out on so much that Poser has to offer (note, for instance, the comment by AmbientShade that immediately precedes this).  But people have different uses and levels of interest.  I, for one, am still a WIP. XD

Teh Mollz

Hivewire made a lot of promises about Dawn which turned out to a lot of hot air.

Unlike the original Michael 1/Stephanie 1 figure, Dawn's mesh topology was very inefficient. There were hardly any muscle edgeloops to be found, so to add details, you had to subdivide. And subdivide. And subdivide.

Which Poser isn't very fond of.

ONE iteration of subdivision is usually fine, but beyond that, Poser starts to struggle.

Add to that the fact that she had the fewest "crotch-vertices" of any known Poser figure around, so making her anatomically correct would have only been possible via a seperate add-on prop.

Then they claimed that she was developed "for Poser", which simply wasn't true.

Dawn was riggied INSIDE Studio, FOR Studio. Then they simply exported her as a Poser cr2. 

That's why her rigging works so poorly in Poser.

100% cross compatibility between Poser an Studio isn't possible (anymore), so if you want to have a well functioning POSER figure, you need to actually RIG IT IN POSER.

Then are their default looks. Her face looks frumpy and old-ish, and her body is built like a bulldozer. 

Despite my reservations about her mesh layout and rigging, I tried my best to turn her into something that worked well in Poser and was also pleasant to look at.

Going by the reactions she received, it looks like that I succeeded:

From Dawn to Danielle

Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to give Danielle away for free.

Not even as an encoded .pcf file.

Seems someone got p'ssed that I dared to "mess" with their "baby" and point out a few shortcomings.

Or was afraid that I would make any upcoming commercial add-on products obsolete.

I don't know.

Don't care anymore, either.

But it is such a shame. With an efficient mesh topology like Michael / Stephanie or even the 3rd Gen DAZ meshes, with a more pleasant sculpting and face, and with a few more hours (or days) spent rigging her properly for Poser, INSIDE Poser, she could have been a winner.

People stated to get tired of V4 and were yearning for something fresh and exiting.

Dawn was just a lot of big promises with absolutely nothing to back that up.

To sum it up, all "Non-Daz" meshes so far failed because they simply lacked quality.

Not that DAZ meshes ever were perfect. Otherwise I wouldn't have spent the last 1/4 century improving and optimizing them.

But even at their worst, they were still a tad better than anything else available.

And professsional content creators DO notice a figure's technical and aesthetical flaws, even if the casual user doesn't.

Given the usual profit margins, creating Poser content is a very "thankless" job.

You literally work for a pittance. 

It's hard enough to try to establish a new figure on the market.

If you have to then have to deal with a figures inherent flaws on top of that, it's no wonder those few who have the talent and willingness to create high quality Poser content, simply decide they have better things to do with their time.

No figure is entiteled to any support just because you "like" the creator or you want to stick it to "evil" DAZ. 

Firstly make a good figure that actually makes good use of Poser's technical strenghts. 

Get some actual 3D scans of real people to get the sculpting and proportions right.

Also PAY some high end content creators to give that new figure a basic wardrobe.

*

As I mentiond, a couple of years ago I was really willing to invest some $$$ into Poser. Properly licensing a DAZ mesh and turning it into the best bending and realistic looking Poser figure I'm capeable of.

But thankfully I did not and so I spent my money elsewhere, as Poser has taken a direction I absolutely can not support anymore.

I wish you all the best, but, yeah, the title of this thread is perfectly fitting, I'm afraid.

I liked your morphs, did they ever get released as injection files? 

Everyone is entitled to an opinion we all have different ideas about what makes the perfect body...as someone who doesn't do nudes or images of genitals that is for example a non issue for me and one of the reasons I was willing to do a child morph for Dawn. We all have different expectations.

I  have a question, I noticed the other day when loading morphs in Poser the figure you get with Dawn 2 is the base resolution. Is there any way to switch to high resolution as there is in DS?