Define successful. For the topic at hand, I'd consider successful as meaning a high level of support for a character such that users can find the clothing and accessories they want to use and that the characters get a lot of usage in galleries. There's a synergy between users and merchants that has a degree of inertia to get the ball rolling. If a character is used a lot, merchants will make items for that character. A lot of people won't buy a character until there's a lot of support. It's one of the reasons that DAZ has given away a few characters. People, that have a character are more likely to start using the character right away and that might generate interest in having items available for those characters. Victoria and Michael are extremely successful characters because those characters have wrestled the standards for Poser figures away from the makers of Poser. All a person has to do to see the success of those two characters is to go to any Poser merchant site and look at how much is available for Mil figures versus anything else. I can't give a figure or number. In terms of the discussion here, widespread product acceptability is what I was thinking of. I'm sure that Studio May considers MayaDoll very successful because the character is being used and there's a fair amount of clothing for her. There's still not any massive level of support for MayaDoll. One potential problem with getting mass acceptance of a character is that the biggest supplier of Poser figures and accessories will not support a product it doesn't carry. DAZ has no MayaDoll, NeftoonGal, or Laroo products. That, in and of itself, will limit the widespread acceptability of any character that doesn't start at DAZ. > with the new "clothes convertor" tool from markdc, that could become less of an issue in the future Yes and no. I remember a thread where Mark said that there's still a good half hour's work in converting any clothing item. If I can buy a clothing item for a new character for $2, I might consider that a fair exchange for a half hour's work. > I wouldn't hold my breath on waiting for a "consumer" version of Max I tried and almost died. Poser has something that I don't think any other 3D graphics product has and that is a large buying aftermarket. Poser users are spending money after they buy the program and, in the long run, will spend significantly more. I don't know if it's large enough to make it worth the while of the bigger companies. Adobe has a consumer version of Photoshop (Elements), so there's always the possibility of one of the big 3D graphics companies reaching down to a lower end market. If not, somebody else will put out a powerful, low-cost, easy to use 3D application. There's a gap between the free programs and the high end programs that will eventually get filled. I can't think of any other way that another company or person can gain the kind of groundswell that DAZ has with their primary figures other than to bring an accepted standard in the high-end graphics world and bring it to the Poser world. > There are places where DAZ has left gaping holes There are holes, but I don't know if they're gaping holes. There are lots of areas where DAZ and merchants are not heavily producing things. I suspect that they're holes where there is limited desire. There's a reason why there aren't many Poser Honda Civics and it's probably the same reason that there aren't a lot of average to less than average looking Poser characters. People are buying the sporty cars they can't afford for the attractive characters they cannot be. For a content creator, will a Honda Civic sell as much as a Corvette or a fantasy costume for Victoria? I'd bet that the creators building cars are car buffs and making what they want to see and are less concerned with the marketability of the model. DAZ also doesn't do dynamic hair or dynamic clothes. For whatever reason, just about everybody has left monster making to Sixus1 and BeyondBent. If I need to use low-res characters, P4 characters are a good starting point because I've got tons of clothes and morphs and hairs for those figures. > I've never used Don and Judy for the same reason I didn't use Posette and Dork - compared to the Millenium figures, they suck. To be honest, I haven't used them either. Judy has an awful default face. Don looks like a cross between Michael 2 and 3. I don't really know if the P5 characters are decidedly inferior to the Millennium figures. I seem to recall an old post that their joints weren't as well tuned as the Millennium figures. They're still a step up from the P4 figures. I'll bet the lack of support for the P5 figures was a surprise to both Curious Labs and DAZ. I'm not against any other figure grabbing a solid share of the Poser market. I'd like to see more competition. It will be very hard for it to happen. At the moment, I'd guess that MayaDoll is the most successful human character not created by DAZ.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon