this was posted on the CL site: Santa Cruz, March 5, 2003 Curious Labs, producer of the award-winning artists' 3D visualization and character animation product, Poser, announced today that it has made important organizational changes to the company, began new strategic partnerships and assigned a release date for the much anticipated Macintosh OS X version of Poser. Marc Keohane, previously Director of Products at Curious Labs has immediately assumed the position of its interim President. Keohane has extensive experience within the multimedia and digital graphics industries, working for companies such as Apple Computer Inc. and MetaCreations Inc. Also announced, is that Steven Cooper, the previous President of Curious Labs and a founding member of the company, has stepped down to begin new business ventures and will continue to work with the company as an executive consultant. In the restructure, staff had to be reduced. Affected by the cuts were some executive management team members, developers, testers and marketing staff. The cuts will not impact the ongoing support and sales of the Poser and other core product lines. Several former team members will be continuing as consultants to Curious Labs, contributing expertise in development, brand management, and operations. Keohane said, "Curious Labs has just completed an important global restructuring that sets the stage for the next evolution of the business and its products. As we go forward, we are now better positioned to focus on our customers and the market. In addition, we're building strategic partnerships which will allow us to realign our product offerings and deliver the solutions that our customers want. All together, 2003 promises enormous potential for Curious Labs and its customers." Poser on the Mac OS X Platform Also announced is that the release of Poser on the Mac OS X platform will be made available this June. It will be full-featured and will contain among other aspects, dynamic cloth and strand based hair, photo-based facial modeling and the innovative FireFly Renderer which enables smoothing of facets at render time, displacement mapping, 3D motion blur and depth of field. Partnerships New strategic partnerships with independent developers have been completed to enable the advancement of Poser and its other products, including the expansion and improvement of new versions, updates and plug-ins. Larry Weinberg, the original creator of Poser will be focusing on further enhancing the Macintosh and Windows versions of Poser while beginning to develop new products with Curious Labs. Two other important new partnerships with Curious Labs that took place include Josh Reiss of Reiss Studio and Andrew Bryant of Pixels Digital Inc. Details of other partnerships will be announced at a later date. Reiss Studio will be working on development of Poser plug-ins for professional 3D applications beginning with Maya and 3D Studio Max. Reiss Studio, founded by Josh Reiss, a 10 year veteran of computer graphics who has worked on such projects as the Hollow Man, and Monsters Inc. Josh Reiss, CEO of Reiss Studio says, Its a very exciting time to be involved with Curious Labs as a professional 3D user and as a company. The models, textures and characters coming out of the Poser community are of the quality that could be dropped into a commercial project. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to deliver professional tools for bringing Poser content into high-end 3D applications. Maya and Max are just the beginning. Pixels Digital Inc., the makers of Pixels 3D will be working to add support to Poser plug-ins for the Pixels 3D program. Andrew Bryant, President and CEO of Pixels Digital said, We are delighted to be able to work with Curious Labs. Soon, Poser users will be able to work with our Pixels 3D software. This will only widen and enhance the quality of artwork being created in both Poser and Pixels 3D.

Sounds good to me. I don't know where the money will come from to finance all of that, but I wish them the best of luck, especially if the Daz Studio Base beta is released before June.

well i think like all Mac user.

whatever

"This will only widen and enhance the quality of artwork being created in both Poser and Pixels 3D. So I guess Poser is ART ( duck and run for cover)

Why don't they fix what doesn't work first? I will be very interested to hear what Mac user experiences are when they buy this product.....

Hopefully that's what they mean when they say "In addition, we're building strategic partnerships which will allow us to realign our product offerings and deliver the solutions that our customers want."

DANG BLAST-IT!!! Lightwave plugin not even mentioned. grrrrrrrrr. Pixels 3d?! Why why for the love of god would you not update or do plugins for the currnet market re lightwave plugin?! CL partnered with Caligari for Poser and Truespace bundles, no TS plugin mentioned. I don't get this marketing strategy, the partnering, the business practises at ALL! I would LOVE to read a mission statment form CL haha. CL just lost me on this announcement. Period. Blah I'm done with them.

No mention of compatibility for P5 with Vue either.....I guess the special priced "bundled products" are suppose to make everyone happy? Not if you purchased them seperately! Stallion, I think "....realign our product offerings and deliver the solutions that our customers want"......is in the eyes of CL as they "dream about" the markets they want to try and capture, more than serving those who have already purchased their products. These guys are "dreamers"....not "visionaries". They wouldn't know a mission statement, goals, objectives or strategies if they jumped up and bit them in the behind! "How can we make our next fast buck?".....that's their "mission statement" Last comment from me on the subject

Don't the Pro Pack have the Lightwave Plug in? because one of the earlier statements say they are updating the pro pack to work with P5 so that will take care of Lightwave and Max shouldn't it?

I've never seen a mission statement that was more valuable than an announcement or press release of this sort. Mission statements tend to be dreamy-eyed "vision thing" definitions of company culture. IMO it might be a little premature to expect them to get down to specifics of which other apps they'll be doing plug-ins for. I totally understand the frustrations and disappointments, but having been through three restructurings in the past five years, I can understand their reluctance to set specific expectations at this time. Especially in light of the downsizing. Ultimately, this is good news, even if it's very broad. It means that they intend to continue to exist and thrive, which many 'round here have been openly doubting with all the attendant snickers of late. I'm very happy for the Mac users, who have been incredibly patient.

Regarding the Mac port of P5, there is one significant difference between Macs and Wintels... The Mac hardware platform is a lot more homogenrous than the Wintel platform. Because of the tight control Apple places on variety to their platforms, there will most defintely be a lot less "hardware/software" related problems to a Mac release than a Wintel release, where you have to deal with lots of OEM and 3rd party memory/processors/graphics cards/operating systems....

No mention of SR3 either.

I'm a little disappointed about the lack of a new Lightwave plugin also. Since that is the program I'm saving up for. I guess I should have bought Pro pack instead of Poser 5. As luck would have it, I think Pro pack is more expensive than Poser 5 now.

The Poser Pro Pack plug-ins are not currently updated to work with Poser 5. The plug-ins will be updated to work with Poser 5, but some high level functionality found in Poser 5 will not be enabled to the 3rd party host application. Poser 5 incorporates all the features of Pro Pack except for the plug-ins. Full details on the update to the plug-ins and its projected delivery schedule will be available soon. Pro Pack has the lightwave plug in da sa vu

This is very good news...Pixels Digital Inc., is a great company. Sharen

I step out of my Police-Box in August. As is normal, Im a week early, Poser 5 for Mac is LATE-AUGUST like they wrote in the March 5 release. After eight days of ruc-sacking and ground sheeting I get to see our Poser 5. Impressed, two weeks latter I point into the distance behind the crowd and shout Blimey,look at that!!. As the assembled mass turn to look I jump back into my Police-Box and disappear. October of the same year I drag the last two feet of my scarf out of the PB door. Im a Scarf, overcoat and frizzy hair time-and-space traveller and I bribe my way using jelly-babies to the head of the queue at the DAZ factory. Four days latter (I,m getting better at this) I have my long awaited (!) copy os Poser 5 for Mac, at 74 percent off. There is a minutes silence in remembrance of Curious Labs.

Apart from the lack of specific plugins I think this is definately good news from CL and if the upgrades they speek of will set Poser 5 free from the many bugs it's had so far what more could we ask for. Cat

Yes, this IS good news. There are too many people here with too many varied needs to immediately gratify everybody. As long as they are working to improve the program, it is good. As long as they are widening the market, it is good. As long as they are increasing its visibility, it is good. For the longer term, I'm glad for this announcement. Carolly

Didn't recognize the new Pres.s name. Is he known in the community by another nick?

I would like to see a Vue and C4D plugin as well as Lightwave. I don't own Pixel 3D or Max, so their announcement doens't thrill me that much. Fix what is broken please and I would be gratful. And what about these great new poser animals, what happened to them?? Marque

As a casual user of poser and some one who can't afford pixel logic, lightwave, max or any other high end program this news is no news for me. I've already invested $350 for P5 and was willing to invest a bit more (max $50) for high end version of the face room and better lightning. That would have made me happy.. I guess I'll have to wait to see what DAZ has to offer, because I certainly can't afford to buy lightwave to get some decent lighting... Vue might be an option.. but then again that's not the market they are after any more.. (the hobbyist,artist). Thank's for nothing...

DUM DE DUM DE DUM DUM DUM...oh, oh sorry, did someone speak! I tell you what CL, re-release PPP as an individual product; that way I can buy it, without buying Poser 4...AGAIN! In return, you get a sale out of me. Not only that it will make me (your customer) happy, because then the time would fly by faster waiting for DAZ Studio ;o) Sorry, you will not get a Poser 5 sale out of me CL...you have still not shown me that the customer really matters to you. Cheers

Attached Link: http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/

who3d - Yea, looks very promising for Lightwave plugin and auto rigging, its $120 for the bundle of plugins. I think this is where my next paycheck is going, not to CL.

Yawn...So all they are doing is stalling again! No mention of any work done to SR3? How predictable! So, by the time P5 for Mac is out of the way, we may have a working Win version just about a year after it's release? Did you all see the price of the Maya plugin from Reiss??? To use P5 with another app, it's going to cost you more than P5 itself! I have lost ALL faith in CL, they can now kiss my ass!

I love P5. The only problem is I wish I could love all of it as much as I love the bits that work. And having been burnt as a pre-order customer who had to wait months after purchasing for a fix that would allow some of it to work even close to the way it should, I find the CL statement more amusing than believable. Here is my somewhat cynical take on the above. "In the restructure, staff had to be reduced. Affected by the cuts were some executive management team members, developers, testers and marketing staff. The cuts will not impact the ongoing support and sales of the Poser and other core product lines. Several former team members will be continuing as consultants to Curious Labs, contributing expertise in development, brand management, and operations." Yea, Kupa took it in the gut after defending the indefensible for months as valiantly as a lioness defends her cubs. Good luck, but watch your back Marc Keohane, Kupa's road could well await you. Cl kept a skeleton staff and got rid of of most of the people who could fix P5. Six months after its' release we are still waiting for fundamental elements of P5 to be fixed so they can work at all (e.g. hair collisions). Keohane said, "...... All together, 2003 promises enormous potential for Curious Labs and its customers." Yep there is Daz Studio, lots of disgruntled existing P5 customers, a totally tainted product image etc... Reading the above, I have this image in my mind of Saddam's Economic Minister announcing that 2003 promises to be a boom year. Question is who will be running Iraq or CL? "Poser on the Mac OS X Platform Also announced is that the release of Poser on the Mac OS X platform will be made available this June. It will be full-featured and will contain among other aspects, dynamic cloth and strand based hair, photo-based facial modeling and the innovative FireFly Renderer which enables smoothing of facets at render time, displacement mapping, 3D motion blur and depth of field." We had all of this for Windows and much of it still does not work properly. All the Mac users get to have the same fun we did 9 months later! Well share and share alike! "..development of Poser plug-ins for professional 3D applications.." Gosh! Was this not promised before the release of P5 last September. The promises and the big hype are all very familiar. We have been hearing them all over the many Poser Forums since before the release of P5. How about a little less hype and some hard detail on fix dates for P5 and some honesty to the thousands of customers who are still waiting for P5 to function properly. Then, and only then will I consider such PR Babble to be worth more than the gas-balloon it is written on. Yep you got it. One unhappy customer. STORM

Greetings from CL.
I am doing press and artist relations at CL (like I did at Fractal Design)and I wrote the release. I wanted to address a FEW of the issues mentioned.

The engineers are working on SR3. Really.
I heard Lightwave mentioned while discussing new plug-ins.

Larry has "locked" a date that will allow the software to be ready for purchase by June. Things happen, but this date is that we are determined to hit.

Thanks for your interest in Poser. The employees here are a good and devoted group working to make CL a strong and creative company. It's important to everyone here what the artist community thinks about CL and Poser.

I am open to any constructive, NON ABUSIVE comments at artists@curiouslabs.com. I am a part time contractor and will reply as time allows.

Warm Regards,
Daryl Wise

Well, buffer me sideways with a bent screwdriver. Someone actually doing PR at CL? Don't waste too much time on us mate - I'd prefer that anything which could distract from SR3 and some serious improvements to stability be given low priority. It'd be really nice, however, to have a target date for SR3. Please?

................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ..................................................................................................... ........................................>>cricket sounds<<.................... ................................................................................................... .................................................................................................. ..................................................................................................

Concerning all the raves about "good news" for us Mac users, not so fast! Not all of us Mac users rushed out to buy OS X, being quite happy with OS 9.whatever. Just like some of us didn't rush out to buy Vicky 3 and so are being left out by the onslaught of Vicky 3 items hitting the free stuff pages. Some of us like things like they WERE, and are not in such a hurry to change to the "latest and greatest" software the minute it comes out. Too bad there are not some designers out there who take all this into conseration.

Raven, I sympathize with you - OS 8 and 9 were great in their time, but Apple has dropped support for them, which means software developers also must drop support if they wish to survive. It's a cruel world, and there ain't no justice, but we have to move on.

Attached Link: Reiss Studio, home of Professional Poser plug-ins

just wanted to say I've also heard a lot about sr3 around the office also. cheers! -Josh

It's strikes me as really funny that the one PPP plugin that works the best is not even being mentioned in the same breath as P5. Just my 2 cents worth Ed

"I don't get this marketing strategy, the partnering, the business practises at ALL! I would LOVE to read a mission statment form CL" The tech market is a fiscal nightmare right now. I suspect that the partnering with Mr. Cooper and Mr. Weinberg means that they can continue to work on P5, but at a cost that EGIsys will find much more manageable. "The engineers are working on SR3. Really..." This is the single most important piece of information that should have been in that press release. Even if there isn't a projected release date (although that question will come up). "There is a minutes silence in remembrance of Curious Labs." The melodrama is unnecessary. The wheel of fortune often spins round and round. I wish CL and DAZ both well and will watch both with interest. Who knows what time holds? Take care, Chas

This news is nice. I don't know whether it will make much of a difference in my life, though. I have nothing against CuriousLabs, but after reading so many complaints from PC P5 users and (more importantly) seeing some of the early press about DAZ Studio, I doubt I'll be an early adopter.

Instead, I plan to be trying the DAZ Studio beta while seeing what the people who do rush out to get P5 Mac think of it, and my final purchase decision will probably depend on the price structure of the DAZ Studio add-ons.

Josh, Will there be a plugin for Electric Image Universe? Tim

I said I wasn't going to say any more on this subject, but I just read that press release and have that "Matrix" feeling again. I dunno....these guys all seem to "disconnected" and "automated" to suit me. "Hi I'm your happy sappy automated marketing guy!!!" I almost get the feeling that Don has come to life and is looking for ways to snooker us into believing that something "real" is going to happen....."something wonderful!"

well i read all the posts, and i see some yeas and nays. Hopes and Hypes and ones trying to keep the faith with a company that is trying to correct a wrong. i know i've been one whos been all over CLs butt for screwing the ones who got P5 that messed up there system one way or another. i mean i really felt sorry for you guys and was hoping CL do you right. well as time passed and it seems things got worse, we all started to build a bonfire and toss CL in it. and you can't say we didn't either. i know some of oyu guys are ticked, and some are still hopeful. but you know, if it wasn't for Poser where would ya be? now Daryl Wise is doing his job and his best to keep you guys inform. he is willing to help, but his powers are limited. ( meaning he can't fix what he didn't break) but he can try to help us by listening ( and not the nasty letters either,)and giving feedback to the ones who are working on P5. i know it will be hard to convince the Mac users. boy do i know that, i'm one myself, but you know when Apple came out with the OSX i wasn't too happy about it, but in time i took to it like duck on water. if CL does a good job on P5 for OSX, i might get it, but i'll be listening to the other lake jumpers who buy it first. i still plan to go with DAZ Studio when it comes out. i mean any program that can make my work better and i still have fun with it will be worth the wait. Now lets ease off CL for a bit and see what becomes of this news. so all you you who got nails to put into the CL's cross, put them down for now. have a beer and go make something:) Old Man Sarge

I swear that I can vaguely hear Borg digital chatter coming through my computer speakers, every time I go to CL's web site.

~{8=E)

Be careful, everyone. No matter what your feelings on P5 (and before I'm lumped into the "blindly happy camp", bear in mind that my nickname for it is Problem child 5), please remember that there are people behind the product and don't attack them. And since the subject was brought up, I would like to hear an estimated release date for SR3 as well. Thanks, Cres

Hi Tim, you know it's been a while since I heard about what electric image's been up to. I remember it from when it was considered almost the only professional 3D application which was not on an SGI. If there are enough users to support a plugin like this, and the tools to do it, I'm open to the idea. is there currently a large EI community? I know we're commited to the mac solutions. cheers! -Josh

Thanks for trying to make the peace, but I'm afraid it may be too late for a lot of folks. I'm a late starter with Poser, but I sure understand why some people are ticked.....and you must admit that these new CL guys really do sound like they have a stick up the old waazoo or are connected to a wall socket! The real reason I wanted to respond to you is that you asked the question: "....if it wasn't for Poser, where would ya be?". I know where I'd be: working on some neat image in Vue d'Esprit or Bryce, or maybe cleaning my house instead of sitting in front of this dumb computer or getting some exercise and fresh air.....and I sure as heck would have a lot more money in my bank account! :) If I had a bear, by gosh I'd drink it! But I don't think I can afford to buy one :) Just having some good natured fun....hopefully you know that....Peace! :)

The announcement does sound like financial troubles - presumably Poser 5 isn't selling as well as hoped. If so, that is sad. Here is finally a version of Poser that, if it does everything it is trying to do, can produce professional quality results, especially combined with DAZ' and others high-quality models. Clearly, a number of Poser 5 customers feel misled / taken advantage of - to the point of anger and disgust. So, it is clear in hindsight that Curious Labs blundered in releasing a product that was much buggier than they realized. That may even turn out to have been a FATAL blunder - time will tell - much damage has been done. But, there are decent people working hard to fix the problems. I have had my share of frustrations with Poser, in each version - but its still worth the money. Not so much what Poser can do itself - but it has made possible this community and all the great models and artwork people created for/with Poser. I put my money were my mouth is: I'm about a month away from releasing the first of several utilities to overcome limitations of Poser. Don't write this horse out of the race, until you see how much quality can be wrung out of it. :-)

P5 runs on Windows 98se, 2000, ME and XP that's 4 different versions of the OS, all wich have their own quirks and memory handling 'features'. P5 Mac will be running on only 1 version of Mac OSX which will eliminate around 90% of the hassles the PC version had to deal with leaving only memory and system speed issues to deal with. So, in the fine print at the bottom of the page, the Mac version should run a lot smoother out of the box. :-)

CL: As a Mac user, I could care less about an imminent P5. I've gotten way too accustomed to living without it.

Take a week-end trip to Utah and learn customer relations from the professionals. DAZ has yet to produce their DAZ Studio, but I'm ready with my credit card as soon as it sees the light of day. Their treatment of the Mac community has been--has always been--a primer for how to conduct business. Your utter disregard of the Mac platform re:P5--initially blaming Apple for it's reluctance to share OS X code--was an embarrassment.

P5 for the Mac? Too little too late. Go away...

i repeat make poser 5 only for OS X will be a VERY VERY STUPID WAY !! ( MAYA is out of this list because is borning on OS X ) this is all NEW version of 3D mac software lightwave 7.5 is for OS 9.x and OS X http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/downloads/ Electricimage Universe 5 for OS 9.x and OS X http://www.electricimage.com/products/universe/techspecs/univtechspecs.htm Bryce 5 for OS 9.x and OS X http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=Corel/Product/Highlight&id=CC1M72VRBAC&highlight=requirements Cinema 4D r8 for OS 9.x and OS X http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/products_e.html ZBrush 1.55 for OS 8.6 to OS 10 !!!! http://pixologic.com/ FormZ for OS 8.1 to later !!! http://www.formz.com/web_site_2000/content_pages/products/platforms.html and ...... this is stupid peoples ?? nahhh i dont believe ;-) best regards; Andygraph

I understand what andy say, but mac annoce that the will produce from now only Mac OS X bootable computers. Like other soft. companies, i think is a great decision to make only X soft. In the same time i can understant people who have (like ME !!!) some finacial difficulties to upgrade on new machine and they are affraid to go on X OS. But I think new kernel (Unix) of mac is really powerfull and we can (for mac user) say that mac finally decide to create a powerfull, great, and stable OS. Like in the past when HP decide to change to Unix 9 to Unix 10 (hee 6/7 years ago, I think) it was a great but HARD changement for HP company and HP user. I think different? I don't know but I think is time to get a chance to MAC OS X and for mac user to try to change definively on a new OS, it help us to be more concurencly with Windows and to have some better workflow. So is with a lot of pain that I changed to classic (9) to X (10.....), but today I'm really happy. I continue to use my old computers with 9 (G3) and all G4 sey are on X. On the same time I understand that for some companies is hard to developing both mac OS applications, ...mmm but the chief is Steve Jobbs... why he don't tell us when cheepers computers will comming out with "G5" processors ?

Leave behind the Apple SEs and take a plunge into OSX. :D It is well worth it. If you thought crashes/system freezes were rare before... wait until you get Unix running underneath everything; a nice solid foundation that it takes some serious effort to throw off balance. Or some Microsoft Products. :P I swear, IE, a suppossedly established browser, managed to choke up the system, while Safari, the Mac browser, while in Alpha/Beta stages has been a lot more stable! I support the move by companies that are following Apple- Apple will no longer be supporting 9 and below. The software companies shouldn't be expected to either. That doesn't mean that I'll be buying Poser 5. I'll be waiting and seeing how it goes for those that do get it. If the price is low, if there are few problems... well, maybe. I like having a variety of options. I have every intention of trying Daz Studio.