"Well if you accept that the great majority of poser users will Download the free D/S basic pose figures and render still images then wheres the market for the paid version???" Depends - (and this is all wishful speculation here): What if the plugins could be in-product posing thingies for other renderers (like Vue ferinstance), so that once you import a .pz3 file into the other proggie, you could adjust mesh figures on-the-fly within that proggie? I'd dearly pay for one that does that in Vue, or in Maya (without having to rig a biped first like you normally would in Maya/3DS/LW...) Or, say that a plugin does dynamics on both hair and cloth at the same time on ALL figures in a scene (based on weights assigned to those elements), so that all you have to do is get a scene ready, assign each item a given weight or rigidity factor, then let the plugin do it's magic? I know for fact that such plugins in the big proggies will cost you a TON of cash and still need tweaking occasionally. You could also have a plugin that applies gravity the same way, a plugin that does these things but spreads them out across animation frames, a plugin that does advanced animation tricks, a plugin that blends Mimic in on-the-fly, a plugin that will turn ordinary Poser clothing into deformable cloth, a plugin that creates and deforms flowing water, a weather plugin that lets you insert volumetric rain/snow/tornadoes/whatever, or how about a plugin that converts one skin texture onto another without tweaking an external proggie all day long? Hell - the possibilities are endless. I'm fairly sure that while a lot of folks will be fine and happy with the base package, there are just too many possibilities out there for code-monkeys to create plugins that folks will actually want. Given the open nature of the API's and the standards being adhered to, folks outside of DAZ could easily build stuff and sell it, too. Once folks begin whomping out some of the plugins that I'd mentioned, it will get the attention of folks both in the hobbyist world who want to give their art a little more oomph, and actual high-end artists who always look for a shortcut that saves them time and money. /P

It's been my experience that a lot of "professional" artists make use of the cheaper tools, and just use a better rendering engine (such as a Renderman compliant one) in order to attain great results for a low price tag. I've even seen some of the artists use poser models in other applications, those would never in a million years fess up to the fact that they are taken from Poser. Yet, quietly still, they use the program, and the models that are both provided with it or available through stores such as DAZ.

Well, I suspect the base program is just that. A base. I wouldn't be surprised (nor miffed) if a posing module was separate.

Some interesting Quotes from DAZ: "The good news is that all these work-arounds will go the way of the Dodo once DAZ|Studio is released. There will be no need to use MAT pose files as you will be able to very quickly and easily load and replace materials to whichever body parts you like all in one single operation contained nicely within the interface. The INJ/REM system will also slip away into the past, as D|S's smart asset managers will intelligently keep only needed assets loaded into memory, etc." "P.S. Just to clarify about the Free basis of DAZ|Studio. The beta will be released for free, AND all future versions of the base application will continue to be released free, so long as the support for DAZ Content grows along with DAZ|Studio. We plan to keep DAZ|Studio free for as long as possible. How long that goes on for will be decided by our customers. Thanks for listening, Steve Kondris DAZ Productions, Inc."

Well, this "wireless phone business" approach is not bad for business. New contents are release more often than the application itself. Daz made it's money from content, not from the application. I used to be in the cellphone business. You give away a phone and let the customer sign up for a year. You know you are getting a monthly residual. That's how you stay in business. Daz approach to this is not novel, but surely interesting and who knows, it might work. Look at their Platinum Club approach, althought not similar, but it sure kept a lot of customers coming back for more.

"...it probabley will attract people who may not have thought about trying 3D art in the past because it is so costly." Just ocurred to me... If they want these new people, are they going to provide any content with the free base? The lure of free will pale for new users if they have to buy Vicky just to try the program. There are plenty of free props, clothing etc. but not very many completely free human figures - Maya Doll is the only one that comes to mind immediately.

Beyondbent provides free 3D models also, though not entirely human-based... or even biped...

Anyone else thought that D/S might not just be aimed at us Poser users? Why would Daz limit themselves to one group of people when the renderer is possibly going to rival those included in the "high end" modelling software. Could there be a joining of forces with Zygote somewhere in the future? yes I know Daz used to be part of Zygote but they're still around making their own (high priced) models for the big boys toys.

trust me all the" big boys" who Dont hang here at rosity HATE the whole concept of pre rigged figures that everbody else uses and they already have all the open GL textured Previews, etc as well as highend modeling effects and animation So I honestly dont see any Market for the $paid$ version of DAZ studio in the hardcore Lightwave,MAX C4D userbase.

Maybe not...who knows. It depends ultimately on what D|S has to offer in the long run. I can definitely see a market being created amongst other graphic artists who had not previously considered 3D.

From the D|S FAQ page - 'Items included in the initial stage of the DAZ|Studio Beta Program: DAZ|Studio specific file format' So.... although D|S can load pz3 files from both Poser 4 and 5, it will also have a native file format. Anyone want to take bets on what that will lead to? As someone pointed out above, the base is just that - a base. Everyone seems to assume that DAZ are setting out to replicate Poser in modular form. I doubt it. To me, it looks more like a long-term stategy that could incorporate future meshes, formats and plug-ins over the next 10 or 20 years. And with 3rd-party participation, that could lead to some interesting events. mac PS Locked thread? Can't we even make jokes any more?

Re 'the big boys' - I could care less what the 'big boys' do or don't do. If they want to blow their salaries at TurboSquid, let 'em. Anyway, the only reason these people can class themselves as 'big boys' is that they pass the costs on to the client, who wouldn't know a morph target from a bar of soap. mac

" trust me all the" big boys" who Dont hang here at rosity HATE the whole concept of pre rigged figures that everbody else uses and they already have all the open GL textured Previews, etc as well as highend modeling effects and animation " Sure, most of them say they do... However, when the deadline looms, and the project ain't quite on track (a pretty common condition), most of them DO turn to pre-rigged figures. I've seen Poser stuff running on television (and not just Dork) - sure they were rendered in something else (3DS, Maya, whatever), but the mesh is almost instantly recognizable to those who use it a lot. This isn't just Poser stuff, either... Vue d' Esprit, Bryce, you name it - stuff that most of the so-called "big boys" turn their noses up at on the web forums - has a very nasty habit of finding its way into their work, especially if it's just a short job, like TV ads or (as a real life example) the lead-in animation to the History Channel's "Boy's Toys" series from last year. I've seen Bryce and Vue crop up very frequently on the Discovery Channel and Science Channel, since documentaries are notorious for not paying anything near as much for a CG job as the movie houses do. Poser and such reminds me of CG Art's equivalent of a whorehouse or casino: The prominent big-shot citizens will denounce it in long and loud speeches on the Sunday pulpit, yet they'll still show up the next Saturday night, with lust in their hearts and cash at the ready. ;) /P

Heh. You're bad, Pengy. Accurate, but bad.

you know what gets me? why are we having this discussion in the first place? so wolf, you won't use it. others will. if others do, there's a market for it. the universe ain't just users that have Max, Maya, Cinema etc.. there are some of us that welcome an alternative to Poser. and with the competition, who knows. maybe CL will get their act together and actually deliever on promises that they have made with their software? I for one can't use Poser 5. yet other games and apps work AOK that need far more in the way of hardware and resources. examples such as trueSpace, Tron 2.0 (hell that taxes a machine to it's limits on high mode lol), etc. so I know it's not my machine thats at fault before anyone says it is.. there's no excuse for the 'pot luck' approach of 'will it run ok on my machine or not' with a modern biz. I wish Daz a lot of luck with D/S but I know for certain.. free or not, soon as 1 bug, just 1 bug is found, there will be a witchhunt from some users on Daz accusing them of bad coding etc. they won't bother about the Beta status or it being free.. they will holler and look for attention. the world we live in is sad, but thats the way it is. Kai

"As a person who already renders poser figures in a high-end open GL, batch processing true radiosity capable programthat opens Pz3 directly,it occurs to me that I have NO need for Daz studio." "...I animate in poser and import the animated figure Via the propack plugin, a thorough previsualization in poser prevents me from having to make changes after the PZ3 is imported into C4DXL." So if DAZ Studio allowed you to do the same thing that Poser does for you now but was faster (perhaps because of OpenGL previews) and possibly worked better, you wouldn't have any use for it? I'm afraid I don't quite understand. If you were able to pick up a program and just the plug-ins you actually need to do what you do now but be able to do it faster, cheaper and better, why wouldn't you want it? Surely the desire to save time and money isn't just a low-end objective? ;-) At the very, very least, I find the idea of being able to see how transmapped hair is going to look without having to render it would be an incredible time-saver. I will be using it, from the get-go. How long it takes, if ever, to replace Poser in my toolbox, I have no idea, but stating that you "have NO need" for an unreleased product without actually knowing if can help your workflow seems, at the very least, incredibly short-sighted. To answer your actual question ("how many users here already have viable alternative render solutions") I use Lightwave with the Greenbriar plug-ins; I'm looking forward to DAZ Studio helping me work faster and, hopefully, with fewer bugs than with Poser 5 for MacOSX. I'm also looking forward to DAZ Studio releases and updates for the Mac showing up in the same year as the Wintel versions. ;-) -- Walt Sterdan, Freelance

"I use Lightwave with the Greenbriar plug-ins; I'm looking forward to DAZ Studio helping me work faster and, hopefully, with fewer bugs than with Poser 5 for MacOSX" Hi Walt I have read the documentation on Greenbriar the website but i cant seem to get any in-depth reviews or sample render of the plugin from actual users. Do you know of any online examples of character animation renderd in Lightwave or cinema with the Greenbriar plugins?? thanks.

I don't know of anything online with the exception of the still and animation samples on the Greenbriar site. I don't have Animation Loader yet (working with mainly stills at the moment) but the Lightwave versions of CR2 Loader and CR2 Rigger have worked flawlessly for me (so far... knock wood). Any CR2 I've loaded has come in as advertised, with endomorphs intact. If there's anything specific you'd like me to test, let me know privately and, time permitting, I'll give it a try. You might contact the author as well with any specific questions, especially regarding the C4D versions; he's been very responsive (two free updates since my initial purchase) and I'm a satsified customer. -- Walt Sterdan, Freelance

Maclean has a good point about not thinking in terms that are too Posercentric. There's no telling what Daz's long term plans are. I imagine having the figure so recognizable is one of the main reasons the "big boys" steer away from Poser. It looks like Daz (with V3/M3) is doing a lot of thinking about getting a wider variety of looks from a single base mesh, so perhaps that will become less of a factor in time. I don't know about the 10-20 year timeframe. I wouldn't bet on even Microsoft being around in 20 years, at least not in it's present form, though I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a doddering Sadam Hussein were president of Iraq in 2023 :-)

LOL. Well, 10 - 20 years was a figure pulled out of my hat, but the principle still stands. I could easily see DAZ moving towards their own native format in time. They have a good user base and market, and the content and talent to maybe pull it off. mac

True. I see no reason for them to be bound by the Poser format. In the short term, it's pretty essential, but in the long term, I don't thank any company likes to be bound by someone else's infrastructure, especially a competitors! Working on their own, DAZ might decide to abandon obj as a base format, for something more capable. I'm sure there are a lot of innovative things they could do with the figure formats) as well. Of course, if Poser were still around at that point, the whole question of compatibility comes up. It's hard to see DAZ abandoning that market as long as it's still profitable so they'd have to think about some kind of translation facility or face doing double work to produce both Poser and DS studio versions of figures. It'll be very interesting to see how this all plays out. I really hope the market will be big enough for both products to coexist. I think for that to happen though, they will have to diverge enough in their focus to perhaps appeal to somewhat different groups of users.

*Poser and such reminds me of CG Art's equivalent of a whorehouse or casino: The prominent big-shot citizens will denounce it in long and loud speeches on the Sunday pulpit, yet they'll still show up the next Saturday night, with lust in their hearts and cash at the ready. ;)*Amusingly enough, truer than you think. I know of at least one porn flick that used Poser figures. Rendered in another app, but there was Vicki and Michael.

I read that a professor (at Texas A&M I think) once did a study of technology and adult content. It's no secret that it drives a large portion of the internet and also played a big role in the success of the VCR. I believe that he also stated that a good part of the initial success of answering machines was attributable to call girls. It's not surprising that an easy way for producing reasonably realistic computer generated human figures would find an adult niche. At this point, the time, talent and cpu horsepower required to produce pleasing animation, even with Poser's help, makes it a pretty daunting exercise but I wouldn't be surprised to see some significant developments in the next 5 or 10 years.

If Studio gets a good renderer plugin, a good material room and so on, then there will be some kind of market. Oh, but the cost of all those plugins will make it more expensive than Poser 5 which already has excellent capabilities.