Shade isn't a player out of Japan at all. Why? Because it is only sold in Japan, in Japanese, to Japanese people. Soooo? Version 7 of Shade is to be in Japanese and English (etc. as far I can tell), and sold internationally. That will change their status very quickly from what I've seen of V6's capabilities on their website.

javl, Sorry for upsetting you, I guess I forgot to use this ':)' in my post. I also agree with you, the last thing we need is another buggy?, unstable? programe being rushed out with proper testing. (57.3MB service updates, just to get a reasonbly stable app. That's no joke to D/L on a 56k dialup, when you've just paid for a new toy) As someone who spent more than a few years in Q/A depts. I know, testing takes time and the pressure on to say 'tis not right, but will do' So here's to the sucess of Daz|Studio and may it spur Poser development.

As a final point, I agree with those who think that E-Frontier can only do good things with and for Poser. Japanese have a deep fascination with computers, 3D graphics - especially in human form (e.g.: Final Fantasy and the virtual popstar - whatever her name is), anthropomorphic robotics, etc. and so forth. In other words, this is right up their alley! :)

I will make one correction: it is not always just making money, it is sometimes making ENOUGH money While I agree with your overall statements, I would say that this is a distinction without a difference. Do you actually think that the end-consumers could have stopped Commodore's demise? Regardless of the reasons for the demise? Unless if someone personally had the finances to buy the company, to keep it afloat -- Commodore was doomed. I don't see that with Poser. At least, not at this time. Maybe, just maybe, we might be onto something positive here. Let's hope.

Nope. Commodore's fate was in the cards. Expectations (not any profits) weren't being met and the BoD made the decision. My belief (and that's all that it is) is that in the face of ever-stiffening competition (in Apple and M$'s new OS), they folded rather than tough it out. I don't see this with Poser either. Poser is software. Amiga was a complete computer platform (hardware, software, OS). Had CL and EgiSys closed their doors with no transfer of ownership that would be the end. But they luckily tossed the ball to someone who may actually score. [Sorry about all the football references - must be nearing Sunday!] ;) I intend to keep a close eye on E-Frontier. My Japanese reading skills are minimal, but Babelfish suffices at extracting pertinent information very quickly. Let's see what news they have to offer about their acquisition of Poser when it arrives.

Babelfish is okay. Try this one from Excite.co.jp: http://www.excite.co.jp/world/url/body?wb_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.e-frontier.co.jp%2F&wb_lp=JAEN&wb_dis=2

Rosehawk- No, it takes a lot more than that to upset me so please have no concerns about it. I was merely trying to balance what I thought was an unfair assessment. Perhaps I misunderstood. - Jack

Who cares who owns Poser, I have used Poser from v3 - v5 and have been happy with every version. I agree with previous posts that Poser 5 was released early and there were/are some problems however may of us could not or would not wait for the program to be released. When was the last time anyone bought a program that didn't require a service patch? I'm not defending CL but many of us seem to pay to beta test a lot of the software we purchase. From my understanding the company that has aquired Poser is rock solid and has been dedicated to their product since 1985. I think rather then speculate on what may happen to Poser or if Daz Studio will be the next Poser replacement, lets just contiune to do what we do "ART". One last thought if we are that concered about the fate of Poser and only time will tell, we could do the same thing the users of Blender did, purchase the software and make it open source.

no offense, but i never liked CL very much and ive always wondered where poser would be today if metacreations would have held on to it. It probably wouldn't be around at all, as MetaCreations is no longer, and their software was dispersed and picked up by other companies. The team that was responsible for Poser at MetaCreations is the same team that banded together and formed CL. I do have to applaud their efforts for trying to keep the program alive - they were VERY dedicated to that program. Looking back, I think the folks at CL had good intentions ... they tried to please everyone by making Poser 5 the proverbial "everything but the kitchen sink." But by doing so, they created more problems and the software suffered as a result. I hope this is good news for CL, and sincerely wish them the best.

It's a bit premature to be speaking of CL in the past tense. They've been bought, not closed. Let's wait and see where E-F takes this. On balance, I believe that perhaps we have a good thing in the present circumstances. Patience, patience. BTW - DAZ Studio will probably be a good thing, too. DAZ has a history of hitting home runs. But, one must be realistic. Patience, patience.

you dont really think that in all the time CL was sitting on poser4 they had been working on p5, do you? p5 was an afterthought - when poser4 had been sitting there virtually unchanged for years, and sales started to drop, im guessing thats when p5 was conceived for a boost in sales. OK ... I see your point. However, let's look at it from another perspective. In the time that CL was "sitting" on Poser 4, they had to (1) deal with losing their jobs at MetaCreations; (2) incorporate into a separate entity; (3) Deal with a severe reduction in staff (from however many programmers at MetaCreations down to a handful; and (4) the "dotcom" and "hi tech" bust that affected more than the dotcoms. There are probably other factors that we don't even know about. I am also disappointed in P5 - it's on my hard drive only for making sure that my products work in it. But, I also take into account that there are people behind this software - people who had a LOT to deal with in the couple of years between MetaCreations' breakup and the release of Pro Pack and P5. Let's give it a chance.

Bottom line. Daz|Studio: Actively being developed. Created to work with modern hardware, and modern techniques in 3D (Weight mapping). Future enhancemnts and features already listed. Not the company's flagship product, or sole source of income. Poser: 3 Years of little to no development. A very poor 5.0 upgrade that broke the promises to support modern day hardware, and fix bugs in 4.0. An upgrade that culminated in laying off most of the programming staff. Removal of features that allowed integration with other high end 3D apps. And Poser is C-Labs main source of income. When you application is SOOOO bad people are cheering for competition that hasn't been created yet, you ARE in trouble. The only monumental blunder even close to this Microsoft themselves who have become so hated that people are turning Linux into a viable OS out of, pretty much, spite. I hope this new merger means Poser 6 will be the modern day bug free app that we all expected Poser 5 to be. D|S is PROMISING to be the answer to my prayers. Poser is just sitting there silent and ignoring me. WHen that changes, I'll be happy to jump back on the Poser bandwagon.

The perspective we should all be concentrating on now is the Grand-Fathering of each stock holder. I find it disturbing anyone found this news as "qiuet." I'd sure hate to be at the worng end of selling CL stock especially to buy E-Frontier! Poser 5 has come a long way as a Ware! Pretty fair to say his older brether siblings have thier $X, 000 price tags pretty well ear marked now. P5(, with all of it's p2p...cough...Distributors...cough-cough...) is'nt going to just fall off the planet, where no one in the world is evry going to find it, pick it up, and then just start developing it, be it for personal or more worldly gain! = )

The only monumental blunder even close to this Microsoft themselves who have become so hated that people are turning Linux into a viable OS out of, pretty much, spite. As much as I believe in supporting CL, and Poser......I must reply to this statement by simply noting the obvious -- CL ain't no Microsoft. And Microsoft isn't going anywhere. To the great dismay of some. Linux is fine. But, it won't topple Microsoft. As for DAZ Studio, I eagerly look forward to its release.

Since Caly did some excellent detective work I thought I better say something here. Shade is an excellent product, extremely stable and excellent for precision work. And yes, its possible to use the Japanese version on an English system (my Japanese is pretty good, but my brain needs a rest now and then). e-on software distributes its products through e-frontier in Japan. Ive had some business relations with the owners of Shade for quite some time, and more detective work will show that Vue d'Esprit (Windows) has had Shade support for some time. e-frontier has a quality minded, extremely competent executive management team. They were a great choice for us for distribution. The new relationship between CL and e-frontier is a perfect match. I think you should be very, very happy that CL has strong backing from a strong 3D vendor. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

Lynn -- Blue skies ahead. Thanks.

Lynn, can someone, say, in the United States actually purchase and receive a copy of Shade v6? I have Japanese IME installed on XP Pro. Mulling through the Japanese would not kill me. ;)

Their website specifically states that they do not distribute or ship it outside of Japan:

We sell Shade 6 series only in Japan, and are not shipping it abroad, right now.

Otherwise, I'd purchase it and upgrade to the English version when marked for released sometime in March 2004.

Thanks as well! :)

kuroyume0161, I think you'd need to call them or send them an email to do a special order. Or, you could ask through an Asian importer. Shade 6 Pro is a very good product. The interface looks spartan, but you can command-key anything, write scripts in a number of scripting languages, assign commands to a special palette, etc. Its got a huge number of features, but those features dont clutter up your screen unless you want them to. I dont know what CL has planned but I guess you'll have a US side resource real soon now :-) Best regards, Lynn Fredricks e-on software

Ratteler --

I don't plan on entering into a Microsoft vs. whoever debate in this particular thread - it's a bit OT.

However, I will say that by no means do I support everything that Microsoft does. And, yes, I find the idea of "remote software leasing", or whatever you want to call it, to be an enormous step backwards. A step backwards to the days of dumb terminals, central "control", and puchased lots of computing time.

No, thanks.

My point was not that I "love" Microsoft. My point was that Microsoft isn't going to disappear. And, most likely, it will continue to dominate the market. Barring some major upheaval. And one must always allow for the possibility of major upheavals.

If Linux (or someone else) manages to build a better mousetrap, then more power to them.

It's competition.

$30.00/mnth.? I don't think that it's likely to happen. Someone might push the idea, and some do -- but it would be so unpopular as to create a REAL revolution.

Now, back to the actual topic of this thread.......the bright future of Poser........

Thanks Lynn. I will see what can be done.

IN the most unlikely event that poser or d/s be capable of running under Linux, I may put it in one of my more powerful machines, until then it stays in this "minimal" (micro$oft standards) celeron and slowly crunches my tiny (micro$oft standards) 30 gig hard drive as it swaps back and forth, trying to do something useful. I don't render with poser, just export an obj and convert that to POV, then put it in the Linux box where I know it's not going to hang up halfway through. Fully half of the problems with poser aren't with poser, they're products of redmond washington, home of the worlds least capable operating system, windoze xp.

Sorry, that isn't so. I don't render in Poser either, but I still find myself cursing its crazy behaviour. Nothing to do with Windows, everything to do with poor software design. "Let's arrange it so that the user selects a body part by waving the mouse around randomly until the right part is highlighted when the mouse points some place else entirely!" - Yeah, right, what a great idea.

Gave up trying to select with the mouse, less trouble to click on the list. No doubt poser is spaghetti code, but working in silly willy's wet bed doesn't help. XP especially, I've had it tell me "this program needs to close" etc. when the command was "shut down." Windoze causes windoze to crash???

From the president of e-frontier, Inc. ------------------------------------------------ I am Ando Kenichi of the e-frontier, Inc. representative director. I would like to announced that we made the acquisition of the "Poser" software business and the company of Curious Labs will be a subsidiary of e-frontier, Inc. The main software of "Poser" from Curious Labs has been doing a research and development for more than 15 years. The company will continue the development and evolve this great tool for many 3D graphics creators in all over the world. At the same time in this business acquisition, I believe we could also introduce our 3D graphics software tool - "Shade" to be useful for all of you creators. For both 3DCG software "Poser" and "Shade", we would like to study more about the technical synergy for now and the future. Please wait for our next generation of development policy for Poser. But I promise and I am sure that it will be a positive and benefit for all of you creators. For the current package of Poser series that being sold all over the world, e-frontier and Curious Labs will have our responsibility to be continue the development and support for all of our users. We will do our best and put the full efforts for this software and request your continuously support in the future. Thank you very much. Best Regards, Kenichi Ando

Thank you for the official statement. Looking forward to "the next generation of development policy for Poser."

Mr Ando, Thank you for such positive news. Sir, will MyShade be available for purchase through Curious Labs on 19 December?

Hi, Until Ando-san's post, we have not replied to this thread as there has been a more informative thread if viewed at: 240. Message from Curious Labs (74 replies) by Curious_Labs on 12/4/03 11:22 If any of you have not been into this more informative discussion - you may want to take a look through. Also, many details posted on other forums. Kind regards, Katherine

Also - "dontbotherme" - the Shade release is a Japanese release this month which will be available through e frontier. Check back with CL as we hope to have the 3 levels of Shade product in English available next year. There is much work to be done to translate to English so I would advise that this may be closer to late Spring, early Summer. Kind regards, Katherine

I've basically written Poser off since version 5. But one concern is that this new Shade deal will mean only Shade get's future integration tools. I'm still waiting for a REAL Lightwave pluggin before I even consider Poser 5. It would be good if E-Frontiers gets C-Labs to do a completely new code base for Poser. I was ready to spend $500 on a GOOD version of Poser 5.

Katherine, Ah, my mistake. I thought they were also releasing the myShade version in V7.