You Think Daz Studio will replace Poser?

No

Replace? I agree, no. Sharen

Its only another new program. If there was a new 3d program nobody would say will it replace lightwave or 3dsmax.

For the time being, it's just an alpha which has a loooong way before coming close to what Poser does at the moment. There are numerous bugs and a lot of things to improve before it's really usable. On the other hand, it's off to a good start and has several good points (global lights, interface) and a lot of potential. If I can risk a bet, I'd say that it has the potential to replace Poser4 if DAZ fixes what needs to be fixed in this current version. As to replacing Poser5, it has not yet the potential to compete with it, even in Poser5's still unfinished form. But DAZ have stated that they wished 3rd parties to write plug-ins for it, so it might expand the possibilities. But all this is just a wild guess... Time will tell. Que sera sera.

The face room is NOT useless I made a head that was almost perfect. Firefly and the cloth room are great and I will be looking forward to poser 6 though I want to get daz studio also. This silly partisan argument about "my program is the best- No mine is" doesnt help anyone and is really rather childish.

No it wasn`t you I was getting at, I was just saying that anyone arguing about two programs in this way is a bit pointless.

The hair and cloth features are third party add on's 50% true.

I absolutely DETEST Poser. I use it only because I have to. If there was an easy way to import Daz's figures into other apps like LW or C4D, I'd use them, instead. The last Poser upgrade (ver. 5) shows just how far the CL team has their heads stuck in their collective behinds. We've been asking for OpenGL support for YEARS now, plug-in frameworks and optional render-engines. P5 added a bunch of gook I'll never use, and bogged down what little pep P4 had. CL didn't listen, they plowed ahead and ignored a great many requested features...features that are commonly found in other, low priced packages. D|S has OpenGL, plug-ins, optional rendering engines (or at least, the ability to add them later) and the CPU overhead is a FRACTION of the stress Poser puts on a system. WIll I jump ship when D|S arrives? Absolutely!

Poser 4 is one of the best 3d programs ever. I would say that it is one of the best computer programs ever. If there was no poser 4 there would be no daz studio and probably no daz the company, either.

You Think Daz Studio will replace Poser? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what CL does with P6. Either way competition is usually good for end users. -Mark

ratteler you said "Hehe. Paradoxicly, if there were no DAZ, there would be no Poser Either" I dont believe that is true, okay you wouldnt have the millenium figures but there are so many other people selling ( and giving away free ) products for poser that daz would not really be needed.

Ratteler you also said "its nothing like lightwave" lightwave is an excellent program but the newer versions have went a bit "poser 5" it has some great new features but is a bit clunky. I use version 5.4 of lightwave, the layout program is excellent in that version. In lightwave 7 the layout has some bad changes, the keyframing has been changed and not in a good way. I couldnt even get lightwave 6 to run on my computer so I wont even mention that one...

Poser's future depends entirely on it's new owners. Until we hear their plans all else is speculation. It's also useless to argue at this time since no one knows how D|S will turn out in the end. For now, save your breath, go to your corners and a year from now when there's something real to talk about, come out fighting.

Ratteler I don`t have a mac it is a pc. Posette and dork arent the only other figures but maybe we should just agree to disagree?

Actually, xantor, a good portion of the products other people are selling are for, well, DAZ-related products. IMHO (and that's all it is), without DAZ, Poser would not be as useful and may have gone defunct some time ago. I ONLY use DAZ figures because they are the best out there. The stock Poser figures are really sad. You can't do anything near professional with Dorkmeister and Dinkette - unless you have a love of masochism and oodles of time to waste. ;) Yes, there are other figures out there. Are they as consolidated as DAZ figures? (Do they offer a line of figures with full props, clothing, hair, poses, light/camera sets?) And I agree with Ratteler concerning LW 7.5. I dislike the dual-app interface, but it is rock-solid and full of great features.

I do not know if D/S can replace Poser. It is no complete application, it will take quite a while to include and debug all the missing functions. Sure, OpenGL and a "normal" interface for a Poser-Style App is great, but I will not even concider spending money for it when it isn't rock stable. Poser 4 is still too buggy for me, not to speak about Poser 5, which i will buy if they get it stable.

DAZ Studio is neither ready nor stable. If it has the ability to replace Poser is a thing that only time will tell.

The great thing about D|S is that there is no direct money to spend. The base application is free. How much of Poser is/was free? Ah, none of it. Comparing D|S, a new, alpha, incomplete, not-yet-ready application to one that has been around for many years is really not possible. It'd be like comparing that new OS that I'm currently writing (hypothetically, of course) to Windows XP or some guy's first paint program to Adobe Photoshop CS. How can you even consider doing such a thing? If D|S is still around and being updated regularly in two or three years, Poser will either be dead (as in "no longer being updated") or being reworked like a banshee to keep up with the competition. - Again, hypothetical. As is most of this conversation. :)

I can see it coming: One day, we'll have D|S vs Poser flamewars instead of (or in addition to) Mac vs PC flamewars.

Poser will become a retro-nostalgic utility for the coming much more powerful 21st Century Daz Studio. Poser (at least in its current form) will be sold in discount catalogs in future years for $75 or less. Bryce 5 is already selling for $75 as a full blown app (and still a good one- but no future it seems.) If you look at the World War II analogy- the enemy forces had superior fighters and bombers and skilled pilots. Within only a few years the U.S. had massive carrier fleets and state-of-the-art P51's and B-29's with nearly unbelievable aircraft and pilot production capacity. --DAZ is just getting their first Prototype airplane on the field for basic flight tests. Most of you have NO IDEA what this baby can do, but the backroom BUZZ is that its going to be AWESOME! I've seen this business for a very long time. I was using a cool little program called "XP" written by two brothers named Knoll- software now know as PhotoShop. Bought my first multimedia software from the tiny little HSC Software (later to become Metacreations. I have owned ALL the Metacreations software since version 1 or 2.) Anyway- DAZ STUDIO for you newbies out there- is a spin-off of Zygote, which between them and Viewpoint, made or marketed the vast majority of GOOD QUALITY 3D models for professional users of MAX, Lightwave, etc. So the people at DAZ have a MUCH DEEPER and LARGER VISION than most little Poser newbies can grasp. They think the 3D WORLD revolves around POSER, but it DOESN'T. DAZ is making a VERY SMART and very SHREWD decision in where DAZ STUDIO is going. DAZ could care less if Poser is still around years from now selling for $59 or whatever. In fact- it will still make a nice ENTRY LEVEL software for 3D newbies. The people who bought Poser will have to TOTALLY RE-WRITE it for VERSION 6 (taking a year or more) and then enter a market that will be dominated by a DAZ POWERHOUSE Software Application, plus CARRARA, C4D, TRUESPACE, MAX, LW, MAYA, etc. It is going to be a TOUGH ENTRY to a crowded and very competitive 3D marketplace!

Veritas777 that is very patronising "all the little poser newbies" and I am not a poser newbie I started off with version 1.

I think Daz Studio looks very promising, but I'd like to see the finished product first. :) I have to admit, Poser frustrates me depending on what I'm trying to do, so if another product will fit me better, than yes, I'm quite willing to forget all about Poser. Didn't Zygote make Posette & company? Then that group that was doing the Poser models split off and turned into Daz? So... we wouldn't have those models to draw people in if those folks hadn't created them...

What could be interesting is if Daz does actually get the 1,000,000 downloads it's after. That might even be enough to get some notice from the big program companies out there that are looking for new markets to conquer. Daz might just attract some real competition to the whole 3D "hobby" field & the guppies might get swallowed.

"So... we wouldn't have those models to draw people in if those folks hadn't created them..." Then again, maybe someone else would have made these models? All this what if not why when who without whom is futile.

-WAR- GOD, I DO Love it so! --- Gen. George Patton

Begun, the clone war has - Yoda The attack of the clones.

Just curious, veritas.... does Daz pay you to say this stuff? 'Cause I've heard some homers before, but some of the stuff I've read in this forum is wayyyy beyond 'Gipper speech' cheerleading. What I've seen rendered in D|S is aight. Nothing particularly spectacular, but aight... looks like it's got some pros and cons. Pro - Free base. Con - You're kidding yourself if you think all the professional grade plugins will be $15 and less. Pro - Decent lights, likely on a par with Vue. Con - Save up for the first renderer speed upgrade plugin or make plans to hit the movies while you render. Pro - Lot of adaptibility. Con - At this point, it needs that pro to offset its problems with some systems and vidcards. Pro - Open GL. Con - Open GL speed. All in all, about what I'd expect from an alpha. I'm reserving judgment till it gets a lot more stable.

BEWARE - NOT TO EXPECT IN THE NEXT YEAR PROBABLY

After looking at the possibilities of 3delight, I woner how far DAZ will go in replacing poser. If I got the descriptions right, 3delight is able to render NURBS als well as native Subdivision Surfaces. This are features which are pretty useless when you render meshes made for Poser. But if there are enough people using D/S there could be a market for a Subdivided Vicky, which would be using very ow memory, probably have much less problems with the joints and even renders faster then any polygonal model.

I do not know if DAZ has the ressources to really use this options. But if they do Veritas could be right - Poser would have to include the same technology or would be clearly outdated.

Just a wild thought, of course. DAZ will probably have more than enough work to include Poser-compatibility, which is nessecary to enter the market. I doubt that they will find the time to include such a feature early. But if they do, the effect could be drastic.

greetings,
Uwe

"If I got the descriptions right, 3delight is able to render NURBS als well as native Subdivision Surfaces." Correct. 3Delight and Tempest (aka FireFly) have a lot in common. Which means if CL and DAZ sat down at one table, we could have a format for NURBS figures that worked in both Poser 6 and D|S 2.

Subdivision Surface would probably be the better choice. NURBS and SDS have the same smooth surfaces, but NURBS is much more difficult to handle. But I do not know if Pixel3D's Tempest renderer is able do work with these, since their own software seems not to use them.

Mathematically, SDS are a generalization of NURBS and do not differ that much implementation-wise (that's why apps like Maya can convert NURBS to SDS). The current version of Pixels3D is very NURBS-centric, which is probably why they haven't implemented SDS yet, but rumors/hopes/speculations/hints are that this will change in future versions. Also, Tempest does have the same "smooth polygons" function as FireFly, which is replacing polygons with B-Spline patches that follow the Phong normals. They're not as smooth as SDS are, but they work quite well with existing meshes. A change to SDS or NURBS will, however, break with a few things that Poser users became familiar with, at least with Tempest and 3Delight: The RenderMan interface, which they both use, does not allow to split a SDS or NURBS primitive in material groups.

If I remember right it is also not that easy to use UV-Mapping on NURBS Objects. You can also get Gaps in the meshes with NURBS surfaces, as soon as you cut them or have holes in them. This is (AFAIK) the reason why Weta (Lord of the Rings movies) changed all their models from NURBS to SDS between Part I and II. At least that's what the "Digital Production", a german magazine, told.

With NURBS, your UVs are closely tied to the topology. The advantage is that you don't have to create a UV map separately like with polys but that you get the UV map for free, automatically. The disadvantage is that you have less control over how the UVs are arranged. Holes can happen when you build your model from unstitched NURBS patches. The DP...my roommate is subscribed to it and I have a few issues of it too. But I never found that it had that much interesting information, it doesn't go deep enough for my taste - some of the reviews sound almost like press releases.

I read it as entertainment. I like the "making of" - section. I would not rely on any software or hardware review there, but reading how something was put together is intresting for me. Gru Uwe

argoforg- Don't get paid Nuthin' from DAZ. They don't even KNOW WHO I AM! I have spent way more on DAZ models over the past years- so actually I am PAYING THEM! But since I've already made a $2000 plus deal on a DS ALPHA render- I've already made ALL my money back! I make MONEY because I DO STUFF, not WHINE ABOUT STUFF. Go over to the Poser forum if you like to whine about stuff. My advice is: SPEND SOME TIME under the Daz Studio hood and figure out how to make it work for your renders. It's already EXCELLENT, but obviously it's still ALPHA and hardly anything has been implimented yet. So just use it for where its at now and expect things to get better and better as new versions come out. Also like what Stewer and Bantha are talking about as I can LEARN NEW STUFF and we can all work on the idea of making DS a great product. If Poser 6 comes along for the ride that's o.k., too. All the better for all of us!

First, lets see if CL can get SR4 to work. Then , if P6 would be freestuff, and does what it has to, and then if they come up with a figure that at least looks and bents like a woman, then, it wil stay around. But they will need at least another two years to recover from P5. No one will pay for P6 after P5. Unless it can prove ...........

veritas: They don't even KNOW WHO I AM! And neither do you know me. So, kindly quit being so patronizing and suggesting that I don't do anything, just because I'm not out to slob on Daz' knobs over an alpha version of a program, okay? I do plenty of work in four different programs, and I certainly don't need someone with rose-tinted glasses attempting badly to read me a 'newbie riot act' because I come in unbiased, rather than with some preconception that Daz3D is the be-all end-all. I came here for relatively unbiased opinion, and to discuss and compare what is being done with or said about D|S. I don't recall whining, unless pointing out flaws in an alpha release that will likely (hopefully) be addressed is whining. I could point out similar flaws in a lot of software, but it's a D|S forum, now, isn't it? It's obvious based on your thread titles, and your general demeanor, that you've either got issues with Poser/Curious Labs or simply worship zealously at the altar of Daz|Studio/Daz3D. Either is fine with me; it's your opinion and you've obviously made your money back and then some, so you're entitled to it. But there are plenty of people who can be devoted to their choice of software without leading in with condescending statements to that software's competitors' users, or calling out thread titles like 'Poser is Daz|Studio's little redhead stepchild monkeyboy!!!!' I suggest you take a cue from them. Like I said... I'm reserving judgment on the whole until it's stable. Yeah, it'll be free. Yeah, Daz is getting software and plugin developers. Yeah, it looks like it can do some decent things... but Poser 5 looked like it could do some decent things, too, and had a lot of people here salivating. It looks aight. But thus far, I haven't seen anything I would consider particularly groundbreaking, so rather than blast it or slobber on it, I'm biding my time to see what the end result is like. And forgive me for saying so, but I'm not nearly so sold on its producer as some might be... that's because I've seen Daz as a creature of whim as of late... working all-out on the biggest, newest thing and unveiling it to all sort of glorious fanfare, then slowly letting it fade from memory and fall wholly to their brokers as the newness begins to wear out and the next biggest, newest project comes along. That's my own personal opinion, and it doesn't reflect one way or the other on D|S as-is. And if you want to call it whining, fine. Like I said before. You don't know me.

Okay, after reading this, I sounded a helluva lot harsher in this than I meant to be, and I posted it while still in kneejerk 'slam back' mode. Since R'osity has no 'edit' button, I just wanted to say I'm not coming in here itching for a fight or anything like that. But I guess I take being talked down to pretty hard. So, sorry if I went overboard on that post. AF

Interesting. The 'working on the next big thing while leaving support of their current big things to other folks' made me think of an argument I saw about Apple computers. Macs and Daz. hmm.

Well, testing and gauging at least an idea of what the finished product will be like. Like I said... I'm reserving judgment. I realize it's an alpha. And I realize that there's potential there. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to slam it any more than it does to say it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, specifically because it's an alpha, and there will likely be some pretty major changes to accommodate the beta release. But believe it or not, Ratteler, I'm running an even keel on this... not really swaying one way or the other. I'm not particularly fond of Daz's recent marketing practices (see above), but I don't have any particular reason to think they're going to put out crap software, either. I just try to make observations based on what I see.

"And I realize that there's potential there." All this talk about "potential" is always reminding of how you say "uh...yeah...it has a lot of..uh..potential!" when you in fact think it's crap but don't want to hurt the feelings of the one who made it. (Think about parents visiting their son's modern art exhibition.) You know, "potential" like in "things it doesn't to (yet)". Don't misinterpret that I'm saying D|S is crap (I'll hold my judgment until we non-PC members get the opportunity to test in our own hardware) but all this "it has potential" I hear so often sounds like "it could do a lot of cool things, but right now it doesn't". As an observation, I hear more talk about what they think D|S could or should do than I hear people talk about what it does already do.

D|S doesn't do anything for me, except crash unexpectedly whenever I twist a camera or body part, with a nasty boom boom restart the computer driver conflict. That's when I switched to an ATI card, the NVIDIA I had in it before didn't even do that... it would just crash boom boom and even a three finger salute wouldn't work. Studio has potential, but its wasted as long as I cannot run the program. So I'm sticking to Poser 5 for human characters, and boning simple models in Carrara that don't need to be exported to Poser. Now once Eovia is done with the bridge to Carrara, its highly possible I may never use Studio... as I'm heavily invested in Poser stuff and the thought of rebuying everything and not being able to use some of the stuff I like doesn't leave me feeling real cheery. Sometimes its not good to be on the bleeding edge of things. I wish Daz luck though, two healthy competing apps is what the community actually needs.

Why would you have to rebuy everything?!

Daz studio will have plugins and features that poser wont have so if you use poser figures only then some of these features wont work, so you will have to buy more daz studio specific figures and props etc. The first time I wrote this I pressed escape on the keyboard instead of an apostrophe and it deleted the whole message. :(

There's no reason at all to re-purchase everything, poser stuff works in Studio, that much is evidenced by the huge amount of posts detailing it. There are some problems that Daz will need to address but once that's done it should all work. The only differences that will occur will be with studio specific models that "may" use weight mapped jointing rather than cut zones like Poser. The simple fact here is that it's a far superior system to the current more familiar joints as it doesn't result in shattered body parts. Even so, it may not be necessary to repurchase anything. Converting an item from cutzones to single form is as simple as exporting from poser as a solid and then re-boning for Studio. If IF Daz introduce weight mapping properly to Studio. I'm fascinated where people get the idea that they'll have to purchase all their stuff again. Utter nonsense. It appears currently that the major problems with importing poser models is from three things. Path errors in the file, source errors (lights, geometry, etc), and model deformation caused by a poorly implemented filter (cut zones becoming obvious). All can be fixed.

To answer the original question again: Maybe daz studio AND poser will both be successful well into the future.

I'm sorry Xantor, other than weight mapping I don't honestly see what Studio can implement that can't apply to poser figures. Currently there is nothing offered by other applications - cloth, hair etc that I can't use on Poser models now. The only thing that becomes problematical and destroys poser models (that are cut as opposed to solid) is soft body dynamics. Trying to apply that to a default poser model is a nightmare in futility. Same with cloth dynamics on poser clothing, it must be a solid geometry or it self destructs (IIRC). I'm curious what extras you think (other than weight mapping and soft body) could be implemented that would make importing poser models pointless?

Maybe daz studio AND poser will both be successful well into the future I agree with you, it's distinctly possible. Poser has new owners and backers who aren't going to arbitrarily ditch it (yet), there's always a need for low priced introductory level 3D Apps and they'd be foolish to shelve it. Studio fills or will fill another much needed niche in several markets. There's no reason why they both can't evolve and succeed very much independant of each other. The presence of Vue didn't destroy Bryce (Corel did that all on their own). Lightwave hasn't hurt the Max market and XSI hasn't killed Maya. There's always space for applications and user preferences that will keep things going.

actually, the grouping is what I'm talking about. I have been playing with it and seem to not be able to fix that. (unless I buy real uv which I cannot afford right now, I've discovered that uvmapper is breaking the model skin when resaving it, due to the grouping) If I fix it after reuvmapping, it breaks every morph in the figure. I don't know about you, but I don't have time nor desire to remake that many morphs, especially for a Daz figure I only wanted to reuvmap in some places. (and unlike some people, I actually like to move their mouths and give them facial expressions... lol) Haven't seen DAZ able to really fix it yet either. I'm not one of the ever hopeful, I'm pretty sure they don't really want me to reuvmap/edit the figures geometries in the way they become more useful for me. Also with newer models (weightmapping) I'm not interested in buying all new characters, all over again, with the related all new clothes and all new textures. If they would offer a free update that would be nice, but I highly doubt that will happen. I figure it will be new chars and new stuff, and that's great for the collectors, but here its time to make use with what I have. Also with some of the things I do, I am left wondering if I should really work with an all new figure more geared to what I need... if that's the case, I might as well break out Judy and Don and see what I can do with them instead. (thinking about totally replacing that horrid robot head they have... the bodies are actually pretty good starts but need more subdividing/smoothing in some places) Anyway its all immaterial, as the program won't run without crashing. And its not like my computer is a scrapheap... have a gig of ram and a 2.6 ghz processor, with a fairly fast ATI Radeon graphics card.

Sorry Bijou, I don't see what you're saying. Some of the functionality of Studio is limited at this time because it's a pre-beta release. So some figure functionality and morph manipulation capability is missing, and some of the figures come in looking odd. That (hopefully) will be fixed for the beta release and fully functional for the full release. Judging that now on a pre-release piece of software is mistaken. However, I agree completely with you about evaluating your own direction. Alpha software is "not" a judge of the final product, never has been, never will be. You should see the alpha versions of games and other software for a good clue here, they only represent the finished software in basic form. Most of the code is present, yes, but only a small amount is active. If the program won't run on your system then judging it as useless is again mistaken. It's not FINAL yet, it's an Alpha (does anybody actually understand what Alpha means?) Report the problem to Daz and explain what error message (if any) you get, your system spec and what precisely happens and what you do to cause the crash. They'll perhaps try to fix it, or manage to identify what causes the problem and explain it to you. As has been said in other threads here, Studio crashes can be caused by a variety of things, identifying that "thing" is the important part. If you are expecting to be able to work with Studio and use it in a production pipeline as part of your earnings now, then quite frankly anyone trying that trick is playing with fire. It's not ready for that yet, regardless of what a certain person is trying to beat into people. Your system not being a scrapheap is immaterial, something is conflicting. Same as with the release of Poser 5 there were massive conflicts for many people and a 2 ghz plus computer was seen as essential. I know someone running studio on a p3 500 quite happily and it's far more stable than Poser4, and yet another who can't even get the thing to install. It's test software, being tested to determine problems. If new figures are introduced for Studio (distinctly possible depending on the direction of the software) then yes, you need to evaluate whether you want or need to move up to these and spend yet more money. Thus far I've resisted the version 3 figures from Daz because I have no use for them. Same thing applies to any other models. If I don't "need" it, I won't buy it. Studio is no different. I won't buy figures or models I don't need and would hope to be able to use my existing libraries as best as possible - with a view to converting them if necessary. Free updates are distinctly possible. I know several vendors who updated their products for Poser 5, and several more who updated their products for the version 3 figures - releasing these updates as "free". Daz may or may not offer the same facility. Mostly though I should imagine that a new control figure (cr2 or in this case .daz) would be released rather than a new geometry model, because mostly we work from referenced geometry not imported geometry. Daz may already have plans in this regard and it wouldn't be the first time that they released an updated reference model using existing geometry. It's impossible to make those judgements at this stage of development because only parts of Studio are currently functional. The new dynamic morph system that Rob is talking about as a Studio replacement for inj morphs sounds fascinating, but it's not ready yet. Inj morphs still work the same, but studio employs them differently, dynamically. So there are changes there. I'm not trying to argue with you, just say that making assumptions about what will or won't work at this stage is like predicting the lottery numbers. The only people who know are the development team and the project co-ordinator. Weight mapping isn't uvmapping. Weight mapping is a joint control system that tells the software what polygons stretch and move, and which ones stay in place. So you wouldn't need to re-purchase clothing and textures all over again, your existing clothing would work and existing textures would apply to them because the uvmaps would be the same. What would change is the nature of the geometry being referenced and the information in the control file. Same as it is with Poser 5 dynamic cloth. You export an existing piece of clothing as a solid object. Import it to use in the cloth room, and wow, the uvmap is intact. Studio can work the same way. So there's no need to re-purchase anything. NEW models are a different matter all together, you will probably buy those for poser anyway - or studio if it eventually suits your work style - unless you're trying to say that you'll never buy clothing, figures or textures again, ever.

Well-said. :)