Can we ever discuss DAZ|Studio without having the thread into a "why-Poser-sucks" rant? Or is "at least it's not Poser" the only appeal DAZ|Studio has?

Er....is there a release date announced yet? I've got students who would love to get into 3D but don't have the resources. If the DAZ program is as decent as it sounds, this would make a great teaching tool. But...when?

Biggert-Couldn't have said it better myself, although I've said it worse a number of times. :O)

Even if Daz Studio is just a render engine, So is Renderman and Mentalray for maya. They sure out render Poser if you can figure out how to use them. Poser exports to RenderMan ever since. If you want to use PRMan with Poser, go ahead.

"Even if Daz Studio is just a render engine, So is Renderman and Mentalray for Maya. They sure out render Poser if you can figure out how to use them. I am hoping Daz studio will include Global illumination in their renderer. Poser render engines are really bad including FireFly." It takes a LOT of support from the application to make Renderman useful... just slapping the Renderman renderer on something isn't going to dramatically change anything about what you wind up with unless the application can feed geometry and materials to it usefully. The more you work with something like Mental Ray the more you realize that Firefly has a lot of power and (gasp) a decent UI to get at it... the wiring system in the shader room for example is actually pretty cool :) What is interesting is seeing how many peopel are confused into thinking that D|S supporting "hardware accelleration" and "OpenGL" is going to make renders faster :) The first D|S only product that hits is going to split this market into chunks and the peices may well no longer be large enough to support the kind of grwoth we are used to.

"Can we ever discuss DAZ|Studio without having the thread into a "why-Poser-sucks" rant? Or is "at least it's not Poser" the only appeal DAZ|Studio has?" Of course we can't discuss one without the other - at this point the "poser sucks" rant is the core religon of the community :)

It takes a LOT of support from the application to make Renderman useful... Even more, it takes lots of understanding from the user. If FireFly's "shading rate" parameter and the Material Room are confusing you, don't even think about RenderMan.

The purpose of DAZ Studio is to replace an aging, neglected, closed application. Poser doesn't suck. It can be used to make great art, but its development has been neglected (no OpenGl support, limited undo, etc). OpenGL is not that difficult to implement (I have alot of experience with it) so I don't know why they haven't done it. It would be alot more usefull to most users than the face room for example. -Mark

I've never had a problem with any purchase from Daz. Other than conforming hair but I've come to hate all conforming hair no matter where I get it. I do agree with the person who complained about having to buy to get to work. THAT is annoying. I'd much prefer to buy a package that works out of the box. Maybe basic, but at least workable. I also never, or very rarely render in Poser. I'll be interested to see what Studio does, but if it's another module thing I doubt I'll bother buying it. I look back at all the money I've spent this year and by overweight visa... and have decided I've got to really watch what I spend better. Bottom line though, Daz has produced some great stuff and I wish them luck in the future.

What Mark said. Poser doesn't suck. But it needs to keep up with the times, and it's become clear that CL isn't up to it. Maybe that will change now that it's got a new owner. But in any case, a little competition is a good thing. Poser 5 was buggy. Even with the SRs, it's still buggy...and it doesn't look like they are going to fix it. Probably the most annoying is the memory leak. With my other programs, I can run for days, even weeks under XP without rebooting. With Poser 5, I have to reboot frequently, or it will lock up. Kind of ruins the work flow, y'know?

Poser does suck. Most software sucks. It's not so much that they that they don't do the job. It's that they make us work too hard to accomplish trivial tasks. At one time this was understandable but with today's hardware and memory availability there is no longer any good reason that I should be forced to adapt to the software. Software is supposed to make life easier for the user- not the other way around.

Why should I have to remember whether a hair item is a figure or a prop so that I can find it? Why can't all hair be stored in the same place? Granted, props are handled differently than figures but that's what context sensitive menus are for. When I need to find a texture why must I waste my time searching through endless directories? Why can't all the necessary components for an item be kept together? Why am I stuck with just a single subdirectory level? Why do the program error messages lie to me when the truth would make it far easier to solve the problem? If I want to rearrange things more to my liking why is it necessary to go to the system level to rename or move files, create new directories, change hard coded system paths, etc? Why must I spend a bundle on third party accessories just to perform basic functions that should have been built in to the program from the start? Why? Why? Why?

Software has come a long way when it comes to user friendliness but it could have gone so much farther than it has. And oh yes, why can't Poser make my coffee in the morning?

Software sucks. Long live software.

• Jack

Just to redress the balance a little, I'm one of the 'Poser 5 works fine for me' brigade. Poser's animation tools are superb and the hair and cloth rooms work without major problems. It's true they can take a little while but there are workarounds and bringing in a little common sense to your animations helps a lot (such as allowing space for the cloth between body parts and not expecting Poser to work on ridiculously high frame numbers - 999 frames in one scene would a very boring animation make!) I'm with Joe on this, the changes to the library pallette, being able to edit the morph list and the materials room alone would have warranted Poser 5. The additional functions ought to have had Poser up to version 8 or 9 at least...

Until the TIME, D|S is just vaporware.

I'll reserve judgement. I think maybe I'll wait until the program is actually released.

One thing gives me hope. DAZ has a history of quality.

'They're not just taking on Curious Labs, they're taking on every other established software with a render engine, pose ability and materials palette (Maya, 3DMax,lightwave, Cinema 4D just to name a few)' With one difference - they're not charging users $2000 - 3000 to do it. Everyone seems to be forgetting this basic fact. DS base will be free, not only at beta, but afterwards too. No one's ever accused DAZ of being a charity. They're in business. And when your business depends on one software that was designed 5 years ago (poser 4) and still doesn't work properly, and another (poser 5) that, when it came out, led to mass hysteria followed by mass lynchings in public fora, you might want to consider doing something about the fact that your entire future is going to be dominated by these 2 dodgy apps. DAZ is obviously doing that. And, judging by the current standards of the competition, if they don't do it, CL certainly won't. CL's CEO has already stated publicly that Poser 6 will NOT have any new features, but will concentrate SOLELY on stability. In other words, they're going to try and get poser 5 to work properly. So, good luck to DAZ, I say. mac

Ratteler, I appreciate what you say but what I'm referring to is purely the length of a scene/clip call it what you will. In most cases it's no more than a few seconds before a camera angle changes. Many people who use this program plonk a huge chunk of mocap into Poser (which incidentally doesn't have a restriction on the number of frames it can hold, just the number displayed) and wonder why the thing takes forever. Rendering just the scene and no more than you need makes good use of time and sense. The 3D equivalent of shooting loads of film and editing it afterwards doesn't make sense...

OK, before someone gets in, the limit on the number of frames in Poser is 36,000. Try keyframing that lot, and at 60 fps that's an hour. Even you'd have to agree that would be a boring shot!

Like watching fly's ______ Uh... you know what...

...DAZ is making Studio to promote and profit DAZ! Well they sure aren't doing it to give themselves a bad name and lose money. This is news? But as discussed above if CL hadn't bungled things there may have been no need for DAZ to feel Studio was necessary though it would still be a good idea. I am not a seer so would not try to forecast the future. But if Poser does manage to do well I don't see why DAZ would completely abandon a market that they so clearly dominate. That would hardly be good business. Now if the customer base definitively moves to Studio that would be another story. Companies have succeeded in suporting more than one product in the past. Why should this be different? And yes, I think that DAZ does try to put happy faces on everyone. Happy people make much better customers than angry ones and business with a smile can be so much more enjoyable than one without. - Jack

'There have been lots of suggestions that DAZ is putting out Studio for purely altruistic reasons' Oh yeah? I sure haven't seen any. Where exactly did you see these suggestions. As far as I'm aware, most people know exactly why DAZ is putting out DS - ie. to promote their site and sell content. In other words, good business. And DAZ aren't making any secret of that either. mac

Really, maybe you haven't been reading the forums here and else where. Perhaps you aren't as aware as you think you are.

Peace grasshopper ;^)

first, not buy from DAZ? do i have a choice? its easy to say dont buy....but im no 3D super duper genius like some of you guys who "can whip up a figure in a day." ooo! i need figures....who else creates versatile figures like DAZ figures? ye theres Dacort and MayaDoll but how much accessories are out there for them? not much eh? besides i cant use MayaDoll cause its soo geared to look Japanese and Animeish.....pretty difficult to make it not look otherwise.....cant deal with that....so what's left? DinaV? not much stuff for that too...AHH! i know! Vicky! lots of stuff for it! anyone else? i need a figure thats more high res than the P5 or P4 figures and none else exists other than the DAZ figures...so whats my option other than not buy from DAZ? i live in the US...i need food...say i dont want to buy from stores in the US.....so where do i get em? import from China? nah man....i gots to buy from US stores.....right? second--basic economics tells you its more expensive to sell things individually than as part of a whole group.....what do you think will be more expensive? a new whole car? or buy the car's parts individually and put them together? there are some exceptions to this but by and large that is what happens. well......im just paranoid....i read too many economics and Mao Tse Tung books.......maybe i should read my Poser 5 manual more.......that way i can upgrade from having problems mainly cause i'm new to Poser (as Rising_Phoenix always tells me) to problems due to my being a Super Poser 5 Master (get it? my problems are increased from level 1 to level 10...more complex....right?)...heh...

umm....i mean its hard to make the Mayadoll (for me at least) look otherwize...... also my second point is about DAZ Studio being modular...or whatever thats called....just in case u dunt know what um talkin bout

biggert: Anyone who says they can whip up a figure in a day is full of soup. Maybe they can whip up something using Vicky/Mike by turning dials but a character from scratch? No way. Not photorealistic or as nice as DAZ's Vicky and Mike. They take months to complete. AND... I personally know the modeler who is mainly responsible for the creation of those models. Chris Creek is without a doubt one of the best modelers in the world. Buy from DAZ. They make good models.

Yo Rattler: Thanks for clearing that up about the figure creation. I used to think the same thing about modeling objects for scenes. Anything other than mine was never used. Then I had to start making a living. Modeling everything isn't economical. I've never been in the LightWave forum here. I'm looking forward to checking it out. Cheers, Joe

Part Curious Lab's E-mail "Service Release 4 and POSER 6 SURVEY COMING! **************************************************************************** Service Release 4 for Poser 5 is due out in January/February of 2004. In January, we will offer more details on what SR4 will provide to Poser 5 users. Also, the Poser 6 Survey will be available soon to collect your valuable input on future development." I thought the the biggie for Poser6 was a Poser5 that worked. I hope they really fix everything instead of adding more gingerbread. It may be that DAZ3D was worried that Poser would fold, (there was a lot of talk) and that DAZ3D wouldn't have a market.

"I don't doubt it won't be long before there will be content in the DAZ Store exclusive to DAZ Studio and usable only in DAZ Studio." This would be a huge mistake. The Poser marketplace is a small, happy buble that exists mostly as an accident of history... it coudl collapse in fairly short order once this small niche is split by more fragmentation than it already has (Daz not supporting P5 in some ways for example). This market is small in real terms, split it and it might find itself collapsing in important ways.