Well its not good news that people are being laid off- the same thing happened to me using the excuse of 9/11 while the company I worked for raked in record profits for 4 straight consecutive quarters. But I digress... Poser, almost single handedly brought 3D modeling to the masses. In the very early days of Poser 1 and 2, before it became a mainstream hit, before Renderosity and DAZ, even before Zygote was involved, thre were very few modeling art sites, even fewer places to buy quality models online, and when you found them you could expect to pay vast sums for them. In fact, the Zygote human models that later became our beloved Posette and Dork were priced as single skin meshes in the HUNDREDS of dollars. So we can thank Poser for bringing this hobby down to the level where many could afford it. No matter what happens in the future, Poser has definitely made its mark in the art world. I wish CL, and everyone, good luck in these difficult economic times. Jim's idea of an enhanced P4 sounds GREAT.

An enhanced Poser 4 would RULE!!! For Mac OS X too. ;) Forget the older MAC OS' and anything below Windows '98. :P Save that money and time and make a solid program update for fewer os'. People will upgrade when given no choice.

Hear-Hear! on JB's idea.

And while I saw you just addressed this, just a suggestion -- although the "Team" thing may be appropriate for Press releases, in here it's a little standoffish. We've become accustomed to knowing who it is that's actually speaking to us.

Even if it's just signed by Sally the temp from the secretarial pool who says she was asked to post this by some disembodied committee, it's comforting to see a real person's sig on the post.

IMHO, it was one of the real PR charms of the former "team".

Good idea, Jim. That's definitely worth looking at.

heyas; my question is this: if egisys is now only focussing on poser and poser-related stuff.... um, what are they ditching? excuse me for being poser-centric! :) that's like avatar lab and such? or is avatar lab a poser spin-off?

oops, i have another one. how come i can't find 'the announcement' anywhere on the curious labs site? it's a press release, ainnit?? or you just telling us, not anybody else? i'm so confused.

An enhanced P4 would be quite nice. Instead of Firefly per se, why not take FlyerX's work and expand on it - a plugin to export a .pz3 to POV-Ray (a very nice and free renderer), or, perhaps a way to incorporate POV-Ray into PPP? /P

Attached Link: http://www.egisys.de/

Yeah well what about my 80286 PC running Win286! I've got 4MB in it and even a 20MB harddisk. And then there's my Commodore Vic64, (with cassette player) and the Amiga is here somewhere I think, and my Sinclair! Oh, and I want full support for transferring Poser files between the platforms too of course. Otherwise I'm NEVER buying a CL product again!!!!!! So there :] Fish

I have yet to see a 'financially stable company' lay people off. The company I work for has 57 billion in debt, they call it an 'overall stategy' too when they lay us off. Good luck Coop.

After thinking about it, the Raytrace/Firefly renderer in Poser 4 Plus wouldn't be such a good idea, perhaps, the the improved export capability sure would be. There are alot of easly fixable stuff that could be done without adding yet more bugs, or taking years to code- for example, how about letting the user set the interface colors, that should be an hours work for somebody who knows the code. I also should have added, of course- and sell it to existing P4 users for $39.95 (or so). I'd buy it in a second!

Jim, Along the same line, I would suggest that they charge something for the pro-pack external app plugins (max, lw, cinema4d). I know people won't like having to pay for them, but at least then they would have more of an incentive to keep the plugins up-to-date and working. Also, Poser should have a free third-party sdk so plugins can be developed for it( Most 3D apps do). -Mark

well, now that we're finally fixing Poser 4 after a couple of years...how about making the dial text readable...I hate using that XP magnifying app....that's all I want :) Where do I find your annual report, CL ??

Guys, If you want a human representative, an individual, a "face" from the company in here... may I suggest that you NOT demand it, especially with your other demands for changes? How about asking nicely, along with the reasons why this is a good idea for the company? CuriousLabs has never been a large company. Most of the interaction on these forums has come from the personal time of the employees, because they cared enough to come in here on evenings and weekends to answer questions and help where possible. There are now fewer employees, and their time is even more critically needed to keep Poser going. If somebody from the company wants to come in here and provide the necessary presence, that person will have to get permission to speak for the company and will probably have to justify the time allotment. Time is valuable. A good employee is valuable. At this juncture, I think that persuasion and reason will be most influential. Carolly

Jim's idea is great - fix all those little niggling bugs in P4 like the side view cameras that don't pan properly and the non-nestable folder system. Leave the rendering exactly as it is on the basis that people who want good renders will export to another app (even P5!). I would buy it for sure.

Whenever I have problems with Windows, I just call Bill (or Fluff Butt as I call him in private) Gates and he fixes it right away. His private number is in the I386Private folder on your Winows CD along with the nude pics of the Windows development team. Great company If they won't let you see them naked, don't buy their product.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=928840

see link

Good to see Curious Labs posting here, even better to see what, on the face of it, is a positive statement. I agree wholeheartedly on the "human face" of an individuals Sig e.g.: Anne (CL EMployee) and have seen company after company change from the inhuman "team" approach to more individual, accountable signatures in cusytomer relations.. it "feels" odd - maybe even worrying - to see CL going in the other direction. At the same time, showing official presence (perhaps by "CL Employee" after the name, or similar) could help avoid confusing employees and users. Cheers, and somewhat cheered at the news of a SR3 (even without guestimate date), Cliff Bowman (user)

To the Curious Labs Team: No offense, but I personally don't care who you are, what your names are or what you look like. Please just do a good job with Poser. Thank you. PS: I never met anyone from Adobe either, but I'm very happy with their products and will continue to buy them.

Everyone I've spoken to from CL either publicly or privately has always been polite/friendly, heck they're a damn nice crowd of people & I really will miss the personal touch they brought to the poser experience.

I am sorry to learn of the layoffs at CL. I agree with Thorne's comments that Poser allowed the masses (myself very much included) to enjoy 3D graphics like no other app before it. For that I am greatful and I showed my support by upgrading to P5 asap. I think P5 is a great application. Sure, I moan about this and that, but overall, it's worth every buck. Just think how much we pay for a single "object" (model) and compare that with the price of P5. P5 is a good deal now that SR2.1 has been released. I am sorry to learn that CL is "financially stable" which if I'm not very much mistaken means "still broke". I hope things become more unstable in a positive way soon. I hope that an SR3 release will do that. What would be even better would be a new self installing version on CD (including SR3) That, I would be prepared to pay a few bucks for. Best wishes Team CL, I hope things improve soon.

I like Jim's idea. Poser 4+ would be.... er.... how can I put this?..... sort of like Poser FIXED! Or is that asking too much? If it does come out, I'll buy it and sell my shrink-wrapped, unopened, uninstalled Poser 5. (Assuming I can find a buyer) mac

This is going to be interesting.

Hmmmm, I tend to agree with Carolly (#67) - give it a bit of time, it'll probably come good all by itself (when not demanded)... Regarding the comments about 4.++++ - hell guys, I bought Poser 5 as a first-time user, and sure, I've experienced crashes and problems along the way, but there are a lot of VERY good features in it. It frustrated me a lot to set up a scene and then see the render crash (not to mention other problems like collision detection), but there are workarounds for some of the problems (like lights - if the scene is a little bit complex, then the lights should all be set for render, not displacement mapping. O.K. it shouldn't be necessary, but if I buy paints and brushes, and don't get the results that I want, then I work with the tools that I've got. And P5 can give good results, if one is willing to work with the tools and their limitations...) ok, just my 2 cents' worth

P.S. I'm a hair fan......