Hi all The recent announcement about e-frontier buying Curious Labs is probably the biggest news since Curious Labs bought out Poser 5. Tt's BIG. As many have pointed out, this could be the end or the new beginning for Poser. On one hand we have an experienced Japanese software company who have the talent to update Poser for the 21st Century, clean up all the old code and get something fast, efficient and feature rich out. We also have a company who's main revenue stream is high-end software, therefore we have to wonder, what is in store for us hobbyists? Will Poser be disassembled and combined with something out of our reach? It is true that Curious Labs did no favours for Poser, they bolted on features instead of improving the core features, alienated much of the community and the biggest supplier of content (Daz) with a greedy and somewhat arrogant attitude. Eventually they saw the light, tried to fix their problems, but alas, too late. Daz saved Poser, along with all of us here at Rosity, without Daz we wouldn't have kept using Poser, or at least, it's very doubtful we would of. Vicki and Mike (mainly Vicki and all those temple/sword pictures) kept Poser interesting and kept our artwork flowing. Daz deserves a huge thanks, more than they tend to get. DazStudio, provided it is moulded into a stable platform, has the possibility to raise the standard for the Poser user. We have no experience of fast code, efficient memory management and hardware acceleration, it'll be a joy for most people. Sure we'll get people who will just complain because they like too, others will complain with genuine need, I have no doubt there will be serious compatiability issues and bugs in DazStudio, but let's be thankful that we, as a community, are getting a chance to participate in the ALPHA and BETA programs, be level headed, they will not work properly or offer all the bells and whistles off the bat. Let's do Daz a service and provide feedback, we all ripped apart Poser 5 because we didn't get a chance for this. No doubt we're looking at 18 months or so before any new version of Poser, that may be optimistic, Poser could be handed to an entirely new development team, it'll take them time to get to gripes with it. However, in that time, DazStudio will no doubt improve and grow as a product too. For the first time ever we'll have competition in the software as well as the content. This will truly be a fascinating and exciting couple of years. Hopefully, in the future, we'll have the choice of two packages to produce our artwork in, each offering different features and functions, competing with each other for our business. Our art, as a result, will only get better. Let's just give both companies the time, and support, they need and make sure that they know we are ready to help. Best wishes Jody

This is the first I've heard of the news ... and personally, I'm glad to hear that Poser may survive. It's been part of my graphics arsenal since version 1. Though I am VERY disappointed in Poser 5, I look forward to seeing what Poser 6 will contain. Good luck to E-Frontier and CL!

eh. I don't know. I thought it would be an outright sale of poser to E-Frontier. It isn't. but maybe we'll be offered a cross-grade to Shade.

As far as what e-frontier bought.. well I doubt they bought poser... for the code.. they wanted the user base. Coming from a programming background.. it make's no sense to even try to take poser from 5 to 6 using the same code base. It's buggy and it's old code.. I really don't think you can salvage anything. What would make sense is to take their shade package.. and give it the ability to read and save pz3 files; and to pose characters. then offer this new package to existing p5 users as an upgrade.. Well atleast that's what i hope they do.. because if they think they can touch the orginal 8 year old code and add to it.. forget.. it's probabbly spagetti code at the moment. So many hands have touched it. that it would have to be re-written. Nick Nick

Attached Link: http://www.e-frontier.co.jp/digitalbeauty/feifei/garally/index.html

They're very cool models for sure.

Hmm, I have to read this....Sharen

Well, I only know of one Shade user (probably wrong though) and that's HobbyHopper! He's done some outstanding stuff with it! On the positive side, this is probably a good thing for poser and probably a good thing for Shade. E-Frontier is probably looking to expand out of Europe and will use Poser to do it!

If you're talking about e-frontier's website Sharon, you'll have to know Japanese! :) Well.....time will tell! :)

Attached Link: http://shade.e-frontier.co.jp/en/shade/index.html

Not much info there about the program features. Gallery photos look nice. No sales outside of Japan....for now. There is a demo for Shade 6 professional, with the usual limitations. Has anyone tried it?