Hi - We had hoped to be the first to update all of you on the latest news with Curious Labs, but it was first important that we notified all of our direct partners in the channel worldwide which took some time.

As many of you know, the Curious Labs company was formed to continue developing and selling the Poser product, formally owned by Metacreations. To start the business structure, Curious Labs joined efforts with the company Egisys in Germany who helped with financial support as the parent company. Throughout the past 3 years, some changes have been made. Though Egisys had hoped to become more involved within the Poser structure of the organization, this past year, much of the business structure of Curious Labs and Poser began a process of separation from Egisys. Most recently, the entire Curious Labs business structure was separated while Egisys was forced to focus on their business and financial difficulties. Curious Labs has remained focused on continuing all development and expansion plans for the Poser product line worldwide.

Our most recent and exciting news is that Curious Labs has joined efforts with the company e-frontier who will take on the role as parent company. The entire management and staff of Curious Labs enthusiastically support this decision. Their product Shade is one of the top selling 3D tools in Asia. You can see some product examples at http://shade.e-frontier.co.jp/en/index.html.

We feel very good about this new partnership as this is a decision based on synergy of products and business models rather than a decision based on finance - as was necessary in the start up phase for Curious Labs. Shade is a phenomenal product and e-frontier are behind bringing this product into the U.S., Europe and region markets 100%. e-frontier are also in complete support of actively expanding the Poser market throughout Asia.

With kind regards,
Katherine

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Thank you so much for posting this update Katherine. Excellent news :) ladynimue

LOL Hrmmmmm...c'est interessant.

So what does all that mean Katherine? That Curious Labs are still in charge of Poser? Or is there better news than that?

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Hi,

Also reading through the posts earlier, there are a lot of concerns which is understandable with not having heard this news direct from us until today. Those who have seen the Shade product and would like to see this product available outside of Asia, it may be good news for you to know we will be making a joint effort to localize the future version into English. The price points will also be consumer and market friendly. That's not meant to a dubbed in phrase - we can't give you the details of it yet but the advantage of Shade will be the ease of use, power and price point.

On Poser, it will not die nor will Curious Labs. This is a very positive event for both Curious Labs and e frontier as we have the ability to combine development talents and business plans for a much stronger product offering ahead. Also the good news is that e frontier is well accomplished in producing and providing digital content. e frontier - the authors of the famous Digitial Beauty character Fei Fei, would like to work together with the Curious Labs team to be a part of our future focus in providing more beautiful digital content to the U.S. and European regions.

I'm afraid there's a lot of work right now that needs all of our attention so I would like to post to the rest of the forums and get back to work. I'll do my best through out the upcoming weeks to address questions where possible.

With kind regards,
Katherine

"synergy of products and business models" Kath - it's cool, and I look forward to seeing how your new partner handles things vis-a-vis Poser (with a Shade renderer grafted in - please?) , but -- and I mean no offense here -- , any time I see the word "synergy" in a memo or statement, my trusty BS meter jumps damned near out of my hands. :) Kind Regd's, /P

Last entry - Questar question. It will serve no purpose to go into what was to blame in the past with the problems you all experienced upon the release of Poser 5. I can assure you however, the current Curious Labs team will be good news for everyone with concern to Poser and - yes - e frontier will also be a positive expansion to the "Poser team" as will the current Curious Labs team be a positive expansion to the "Shade to English" team. It will take time, but the future will give you the faith you deserve in Poser and CL. I'd love to say we'll be perfect in the future - but we all know that there is no such thing. We are and have been after some significant changes - focused onto the strength of the product and the strength of the offering to 3D artists.

Take care,
Katherine

Last, last - yes Penguinisto, the post had a lot of what will be said in our Press Release going out. The key words that are needed in press communication can be highly over-used. But synergy is the best one word description we can find to relay what we saw to make this merge/acquisition happen and what we see for the future. Kind regards, Katherine

This is interesting. I've always been impressed with what people do with Shade so I'm looking forward to maybe having a chance to work with it in the future :-)

This puts a better spin on things. Hope it all works out.

So it looks like the current thing Curious Labs is working on is not Poser, but rather, translating Shade into English and pushing that into the English-speaking market?

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I have 10 more minutes before running into a meeting. Caly, no to your questions - this is meant to be the synopsis of our future plans. The English translations of Shade is going to be a very large project which will take time to put the development team in place. The development team at CL is purely focused on Poser currently. And when the process of developing an English version of Shade begins - it will be with added development team leads including some from e frontier. If the underlining concern is "will the Poser focus whane when the Shade to English development begins?" the answer is no. Both products are highly important to the future plans of this new company and will have ample development team leads and focus. Just as an FYI for anyone hoping to have Shade in English quickly - to translate Japanese to English is a more difficult job that other localization projects. It has to do with the style of communication rather than the word for word translations so this will take some time. It's just useful I hope, for you to know this will be in the business plan for this upcoming new year.

Kind regards,
Katherine

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This sounds promising for a software that I enjoy using very much. I am looking forward to hearing about future developments.

You guys will continue to have unwavering support from Sixus1 Media. I am extremely excited to hear this news and feel that it could very easily present some awesome new possibilities for CL, Shade and everyone who has remained loyal to the work CL has been doing all these years in its many forms. Thanks for the update and good luck with the coming developments!!! -Les

It sure sounds good to me, and probably a much better partnership for CL. I think this is a situation where everyone (including us users) will benefit in the long run.

I've followed Shade a bit,in several CG magazines. Got to say....I've seen some of THE most beautiful 3D figures come out of that program. Could we be seeing some new base characters for Poser....wouldn't that be nice? Does sound promising. SWAMP

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This is great news.

Wonderful. Looking forward to great things. Expectations within the community are high, I think.

As one person who understands the message at the "Heise-Forum" (I'm German) I do have different views of this all: First of all I'm sorry hearing about people loosing their job (Egisys) - such a thing is never a happy thing because most of us do know what it means if you loose something you really put your heart into. For myself this causes some problems because it seems I lost the place to host my forthcoming tutorial because it was meant to be hosted by Egisys - this is also bad but such things happen ... and well, this does not really belong here. Maybe it is a good deal for Poser, Curious Labs and the Community around this little programm I do like so much when the head-company changes. I really hope so because I believe Poser has a lot of potential. If not Poser than the "system" of working with 3D-models in a "poser-way". It would be great to have a Poser 6 or Poser 7, or if not that to see Poser reborn in another product. But the first and main focus has to be to have a stable and functional Poser 5. If that's not possible it would be nice to have a "poser-like-programm" that IS stable and functional and does not cost that much. I know many people do still have big problems with their Poser 5. To be honest - would you spend another 300$ or more in a programm don't knowing it will run on your computer ? I hope the new head (e-frontier) do know about this problems - if they (together with CL) can erase all the problems they'ld have done a thing that the community would be more than thankfull for (I think). Then Poser can be THE programm that once it was promised (during the developing of Poser 5) to be like. And then we really can achieve something here. If it continues to be a buggy and unstable programm it would end someday where really a lot of programms ended - in the allmighty nowhere. Well Curious Labs/e-frontier - it's up to you now ! I think you can count on a (still) helpfull community.

'e frontier.... would like to work together with the Curious Labs team to be a part of our future focus in providing more beautiful digital content' So DAZ are moving into software and CL is moving into content? LOL. Might be fun. mac

@ maclean -- Sharp observation. The more, the merrier.

Katherine, Thanks for announcing and letting us know of the future plans. We wish you, Curious Labs & e frontier, all the best. Jenifer

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ROFL... Curious Labs is now a translation company? No single word about Poser5 SR4 fix... or Poser6 ? Hope dies last! Amen! Mazak

Shade looks nice. Doing a quick look at their website I see they list 4 product price points (in yen of course). Thought it might be interesting to see what that roughly equates to in US dollars and got the following: Shade 6 Professional $1,615 Shade 6 Advanced $553 Shade 6 Spirit $164 myShade $90 Looks reasonably priced for the differing market segments. Just hope my Poser and Vue compatibility survives any future releases. jon

Here's hoping the new company sees to it Poser is recoded and brought into the modern world and doesn't leave it stuck in the 90's.

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Now why am I having this gut feeling that we should forget about SR4 fix, or Poser 6 (for some time at least)?... Maybe because (unlike Mazak) I'm incurably pessimistic. :( Good luck to the "synergy' anyway... and good luck to us. Panos

Mazak and Panko - both SR4 and Poser 6 are already in the works and WILL remain. This was not really meant to be a detailed discussion - my apologies - it was to make sure everyone had an update from the source on what is going on right now. This does not change the plans CL has been communicating with everyone to date. Kind regards, Katherine

There is nothing quite like hearing news from the source. Thanks.

Katherine, my apologies for beeing somewhat hasty in my gloomy predictions. And thank you for taking the time to put in plain words a message of hope for the community (company jargon makes me a little nervous and adds to my natural pessimism :-))

"This does not change the plans CL has been communicating with everyone to date. Thanks for the update Katherine!!! See what you can do to make that communication a bit more frequent, ok? :-)

bounce bounce bounce hopefully a high bounce this time

Don't worry about Vue, e-frontier and e-on work with each other. e-frontier distributes Vue in Japan.

Panko - no problem at all. I know that there are many questions and a lot of ground to cover. And thank you PablosS --- I honestly wish we had more time and personnel bandwidth to be more active on the forums --- possibly in the future. Also it's very important to be honest and clear with fact in communicating on behalf of a company verses opinion on forums so with the process in the past few months to put all of this in place --- unfortunately it was a wiser option to finalize things and notify the appropriate partners first before publicaly communicating. Take care, Katherine

Katherine, Will be fun to see what develops. If you need a consultant versed and familiar with figure/content creation and related issues with Poser feel free to email me at antonkisiel@comcast.net If you are in need of someone with experience in this area drop me a line. I happen to be available. :) Regards, Anton Kisiel

Hi Anton, Thank you very much for you offer. Right now - no placment for this, but we will definitely keep your contact email. Kind regards, Katherine

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No Problem. Please don't hesitate if the need arises. I realize alot is going on right now.

applauds Anton Way to go man :) CL - hire Anton! He's the dude who made Geometry swapping and Injection morphs work. Plus extrememly well known and makes excellent content.

Echos Lyrra. Yeah, hiring Anton would be an investment, not an expense. :-)

Aww sucks. Well Actually JeffH figured out the geom syntax and RobWiz is the INj Master. hehe But I do make a spiffy product if I do say so myself. I did bodyhandles, sitting skirts and subdividing material poses among other things over the years. Thanks for the words of support guys. I deeply appreciate it.

Anton, thats why I said you made them work. JeffH and Rob may have figured them olut, but your anme is ont he product that thousands of people use every day. And I'm not exagerating (much) At any rate you'd be an improvement over whomever made Judy :P