So what does this mean for Poserdom at large? Poser is getting absorbed into Shade, while D|S will get absorbed into a suite that seamlessly moves from D|S to Bryce to ...?

My bet would be Lightwave.

Message edited on: 06/23/2004 14:22

"I don't see a compelling reason to buy either at the moment. Time will tell, I guess." How about DAZ producing no more Poser compatible content? They have already started to move to a D|S specific content. It wouldn't take much to make all their new stuff be D|S (or the Bryce equivalent) only.

in Post no. 9; kuroyume0161 said: "...I have a 2x2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, 533MHz bus system with more than 1/2 TeraByte (yes, your read that correctly) of storage and Poser stills chugs along at a snail's pace (esp. Poser 5)...." Have you rendered anything earnest in Bryce? It will take a whole lot longer than P5. I'm talking of stills of course, as you can't animate with Bryce. in Post no 31; stewer said: "So now I only need to figure out what all that buzz is about - I never used Bryce in my whole life, and so far, I couldn't figure out why people are so keen on rendering their Poser figures in it." It was interesting to render in Bryce because you could use tons of materials, raytracing and so on. But since P5 I see no need to bother with the straining importing process in Bryce, because P5 can do as good as Bryce. And pakled: They are not supporting Poser actually, they ar ignoring P5.

I can completely understand why DAZ isn't interested in making Poser 5 stuff compatible; I imagine that the only reason why they're still making stuff that does work completely well with Poser is because D|S isn't complete yet. What I don't understand is how having Bryce will benefit users of the finished D|S. Just a couple thoughts... - You can already pose figures in Studio. Having a plug-in for Bryce that lets you do this seems redundant. - Studio offers the more advanced material menus, displacement mapping, reflections, lighting, and all that. No reason to render figures in Bryce just for those things now. - Bryce is not a serious modeling program like Rhino or Lightwave, so I doubt you'll be able to make morphs, figures, or detailed props in it. Maybe I'm missing something, but the only advantage I can see offhand is that DAZ can now sell Bryce props...and what, landscape files and materials? If they had bought Rhino and said that you'll be able to import native .DAZ files into it and use it's modeling tools to easily make morphs and new figures, I could see that being big news. Hopefully someone else will be able to tell us why this apparently is. :) SnowS

BekaVal; "Have you rendered anything earnest in Bryce? It will take a whole lot longer than P5" I fully agree. I used to import all Poser stuff into Bryce(4) simply for better lighting and material editing, but What A Pain it was. And then after spending 2 or three days setting in Poser then 2+ more days tweaking in Bryce came the PAINSTAKING 6~10 Day and Night Render Time!! I think the quickest render I had in Bryce was about 3 days and it was not one of my usual "full" scenes! I tried to do an animation of a witch elf that floated in a 360 circle....but I gave up trying to complete the FIFTEEN Day and FIFTEEN Night Render!! So I just settled for the single shot still that alone took about 6 Days & 6 Nights to render!! (that same scene now would render in FireFly in about an hour)

So they wont support poser any more? That is thrilling news if you are a masochist :) This stinks out loud. If someone made a good terragen-like skyrender plugin for poser 5 right now then you could render scenes better than bryce and much faster than daz studio.

"They have already started to move to a D|S specific content. It wouldn't take much to make all their new stuff be D|S (or the Bryce equivalent) only. " I never understand why people keep saying this...as a broker at daz I see no push to make anything exclusivly D/S specific. It all has to be both D/S and poser compatible. I have seen nothing to show that they tend to drop making poser content...so lets get over that point

"- You can already pose figures in Studio. Having a plug-in for Bryce that lets you do this seems redundant."

How about instead making a way to absorb D|S into Bryce, so that you can pose figures on-the-fly within a landscape, instead of "pose, import process, preview, aww - shit! the left leg goes through the ground here!, go back and pose some more, import the whole shebang again, see if it fits this time, preview, d'oh! It's off by a hair's breadth!, go back and pose some more..."

Instead, just do it all right there in the proggie. Makes more sense to me, anyway.

"Studio offers the more advanced material menus, displacement mapping, reflections, lighting, and all that. No reason to render figures in Bryce just for those things now."

This time the benefit works in reverse... shoe-horn the D|S materials handling into Bryce, and make it seamless.

"Bryce is not a serious modeling program like Rhino or Lightwave, so I doubt you'll be able to make morphs, figures, or detailed props in it."

Agreed - but with freebie modelling proggies like OpenFX or Wings, or Amapi, what's the prob? :)

/P Message edited on: 06/23/2004 15:51

Addendum - perhaps we can consider it an upgrade for the (bigger) Bryce community, instead of the other way 'round. As for DAZ not supporting poser anymore in favor of D|S or various other stupid rumors, I suspect that more than a couple of individuals have their heads firmly lodged in their asses... It's simple business sense that screams otherwise for frig sakes. /P

I don't think Daz would abandon the Poser market. That would be a unwise move. It is its bread and butter. If it decides to drop the poser content, I am sure sites like Renderosity, Poserpros, Runtimedna... would be delighted. They'll continue to provide content to poser I am sure with one major competitor out of the way. I merely think that Daz is tapping into an unexplored Bryce content market. Content has always been the succes of Poser. Maybe content can revive Bryce. If you compare this with the cellular market. Daz' merely a service provider, not the manufacturer. At least not in the immediately future. My 2 cents

""I don't see a compelling reason to buy either at the moment. Time will tell, I guess." How about DAZ producing no more Poser compatible content?" That makes no difference to me. DAZ aren't the only people on the planet capable of building models ;) I joined the PC just long enough to get some basics from DAZ. Haven't seen anything else there since that interests me, frankly. I like to model my own stuff, though. Lotta people don't.

I am sure sites like Renderosity, Poserpros, Runtimedna ... They'll continue to provide content to poser I am sure with one major competitor out of the way. Yes and no ... DAZ may be a competitor in one respect, but in another it IS a manufacturer. The majority of the products that other artists at the above mentioned sites produce are based around DAZ products. Others have tried to create their own figures, but so far none have the support or following that the DAZ figures do.

.bookmarking.

,,,,,:-)

Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=49429

They announced the details. They say they're working on a plugin that will allow you to import Poser and D|S scenes into Bryce. It will be $30...$1.99 for PC members. PC version ready this week, Mac version coming. (The plugin won't allow direct import of Poser files. You'll have to import them to D|S, then export to Bryce.)

And Bryce itself will keep its current pricing. But there will be the usual introductory discount and PC discount, so PC members can get it for about $40.

I dont see what all the fuss is. Being a long time Bryce user, I am just happy to see life breathed back into a wonderful program extending its usefullnes with the promise of new developement. Bryce 5 hasnt killed off poser and I am pretty sure Bryce 6 wont either. I would think folks would be happy at having another option and tool to work with. Those that are unhappy about it, I just dont know what to say to you. (shakes head and walks away)

Message edited on: 06/23/2004 17:34

The plugin is available as well as bryce right now. The plug is listed as beta, and is in the PC club for $1.99. Bryce5 is on sale for $59, if I remember right. Wonder if it's 5, or bryce 5.1?

I read somewhere in all the blurb on this at DAZ that they had spoken to eon while they were in Japan and conversed about Poser using the same software to import figures into Bryce. I don't believe I imagined this so if I can find it again I'll post a link to what was said. Anyway as far as Bryce being given new life I'm all for that, it's my other fabourite program. 8) Catlin

It is easy to see how rumors and misinformation gets propagated. I am not aware of any .daz formatted products that are available on the DAZ website. Pretty much everything is available as Poser formatted products. Our business is based on supporting the Poser market. We hope through our acquisition of Bryce we can expand the possibilities within this market. We hope through the development of DAZ Studio we can expand the possibilities further. We have spent tremendous amounts of efforts being able to support the Poser file formats within D|S because we see the value of what is available in this community. We plan to extend that support within Bryce.

Currently we have developed a Bryce importer that reads .obj files and .mtl files. Poser currently does not export all the necessary .mtl information that Bryce needs to display the scenes properly. Studio can read the Poser scene files and export the necessary information for Bryce (since we have the code for both programs we can control that now). We have send a correspondence to Curious Labs extending the offer to help them know what information they need to include in the .mtl file so that the Bryce pluggin will work strait from Poser (without needing to go through Studio). As for Poser 5 scene capabilities, it will depend on what data can be contained within the .obj and .mtl to go into Bryce.

I hope this helps to clarify things to some extent. Please know that we have no intentions of leaving this community.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr

Message edited on: 06/23/2004 20:26

Hey Dan.. any possibility of dynamic hair or clothes down the road?

Gareee, Sure but as you put it "down the road".

hey, I got my carrot, and ya'll are saying you will work on a Poser to Bryce direct -- that makes me happy. Now, if ya'll can could just rebone the damn horsey, most folks would be happy ;) Thanks for responding, Dan.

Cool, Dan! Wonder if Vue will have a price drop now in the near future?? ;)

I hope this helps to clarify things to some extent. Please know that we have no intentions of leaving this community. Excellent response. I support DAZ. In my opinion, they go out of their way to make users happy. Regardless of your beliefs on what a company SHOULD do to keep customers happy, not a lot of companies would do that. Not a lot of executives would take the time to visit user forums and make posts to clarify concerns either. Now I'll go away and wipe the BROWN from the tip of my nose. ;-P

....does this mean we don't get a Van Hesling style Baby Vampire now??? :*(

Have you rendered anything earnest in Bryce? It will take a whole lot longer than P5. I'm talking of stills of course, as you can't animate with Bryce. I don't have or use Bryce. I use C4D, LightWave, and Vue d'Esprit/Pro... and I'm working on fixing the problem of Poser content on the first one 'as we speak'. Hmmm. An advanced Materials editor, dynamic cloth simulations, strand based hair, IBL (oh yeah, it's in there), limited atmospherics... A Materials editor finally on par with the rest of the 3D CG world, strand based hair that's useless even with my specs, a Face room which is eye-candy and that's all, and what is IBL? The reason that dynamic cloth and micropolygon displacement are useless to me in Poser is because Poser doesn't have anything near a realistic rendering engine (and slow at that) or a realistic lighting/shadowing model. Some of this would be solved by allowing us to import stills and animations into other 3D apps. With Poser 5 and the number of version changes to candidate software, this is no longer an option. Poser content is amazing - posable, morphable, dressable. The application to which this content is tied is archaic, slow, and unresponsive for anything but hobby work or extremely laborious work in a more professional/amateur arena. But, as you mentioned, I digress... The reason Poser is all of these is the lack of competition. As soon as some is seen on the horizon, everybody gets antsy. Bring on some worthy competition and make Poser sweat! Kuroyume

What are your specs, then? If you refer to computer system, I use Dynamic hair frequently in animations on a 2MHz system with 384MB of RAM. Works fine. And you sidestep your very point into a new one -- no backing off. You said: "Other than micropolygon displacement, what has Poser 5 really offered that is so much better than Poser 4, Poser 3?" I responded with those features. You did not, in your original post, meniton "specs" or Other software, you specifically asked about Poser 4 and Poser 3. The point still stands. What is IBL? IBL is Image Based Lighting, which is a sort of subset of GI and HDRI and all that other fun stuff -- IBL is exposed, but the rest is not. The rendering engine is quite capable of them -- the features haven't been exposed yet. "...Poser doesn't have anything near a realistic rendering engine (and slow at that) or a realistic lighting/shadowing model." You must be dwelling in Poser 4, sir -- Poser 5 uses Firefly, a hybrid Reyes renderer that's renderman complaint and posesses several advanced features you obviously haven't researched adequately. In point of fact, it's often considered a superior rendering engine to 3Delight -- the full features of which D|S ALSO hasn't exposed yet. Further, you mentioned you use Vue, yet you say you can't import these features to other apps when Reiss Studios has plugins available and continues to develop more of them and you yourself own Vue, which has Mover 5, which is capable of transferring the dynamics (hair and cloth) into what you obviously consider a better source (Vue). Perhaps if you learned to use the software properly, you might actually be able to hold an argument of substance. As it is thus far, you do not.

Actually, by way of fairness, D|S does use proper materials. As for Dynamic hair - IMO it's nice and all, but it all looks the same, and one can tell pretty fast in a render whether or not it's Poser 5 dynamic hair that got used. Also, until recently, most P5 features were completely unexportable. Now - arguing between D|S and Poser is looking to boil down to the same Linux vs. Windows bullshit that rages around the 'net today. You have zealots for both sides, and you have this lump of humanity in the middle who will lean towards one or the other --like me for instance-- but uses both without embarassment. I lean towards Linux and prefer it wherever possible, but I still use Windows XP Pro for Poser and such. I contribute to Linux projects when I can but hold two different MCSE's. I also use a Mac Cube w/ OS 10.2.8, and will prolly make my next computer a dual G5 sometime next year if I'm in the mood for an upgrade and don't get seduced by a dual Opteron set first... (shrug.) Tangent aside, the point is that arguing about which is better, when one is still in beta (and the other in semi-limbo pending Shade's next release), is kinda silly. /P

"The plugin won't allow direct import of Poser files. You'll have to import them to D|S, then export to Bryce." A very bad thing. D|S is screwing up many joints of Poser figures.

As for Dynamic hair - IMO it's nice and all, but it all looks the same, Because everybody's too lazy to learn how to use it and prefers to spend money on some transmapped stuff instead. And..."it all looks the same" - isn't that what applies to 99% of the Poser gallery images anyway?

It's not surprising that Daz has not been supporting P5-specific features - so many people haven't upgraded from P4 because P5 was not the upgrade they hoped for or wanted.

Dan is spot on that it's not Bryce's fault that Poser doesn't export a full set of the .mtl code describing material settings. However, being able to import P4 material settings is a waste of time, because they're so primitive (as is the P4 materials editor - ugh!). Being able to import P5 material settings would be different.

A speculation I have seen on another site (which may not be mentioned by name) is that Daz may have wanted to get their hands on Bryce partly to be able to copy the interface into D|S and thereby make it more Poser-like.

Message edited on: 06/24/2004 05:39

"A speculation I have seen on another site (which may not be mentioned by name) is that Daz may have wanted to get their hands on Bryce partly to be able to copy the interface into D|S and thereby make it more Poser-like." Man, I hope not! Bryce's interface is one of the reasons I moved to Vue. And I won't move back unless they clean it up. The Poser/Bryce artsy-fartsy interface sucks. People only like it because it's what they're used to. They'd be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to move to a clean, fast, streamlined, funtional interface...like I was when I went from Bryce to Vue. And give me Vue-like layers (all 3d apps should have this). And direct import of pz3's and DS files. If they won't do that, I wonder if they'll let e-on support DS import in Vue? waves back at ynsaen

I'm talking of stills of course, as you can't animate with Bryce Uhm, sorry, but yes you can. Animation has been part of Bryce since version 3. I use it extensively in my work. There's even a rather famous (within Bryce circles) film called "Interplanetary Traveller" that first demonstrated Bryce's animation capabilities.

"Because everybody's too lazy to learn how to use it and prefers to spend money on some transmapped stuff instead." Err, not exactly what I meant... I meant that it all looks like stylized straw, not that it's all the same set of styles. "And..."it all looks the same" - isn't that what applies to 99% of the Poser gallery images anyway?" 99% of the Poser gallery has cross-eyed figures too, but again, I wasn't referring to style. Phantast - I'd suspect that, from what I know of DAZ, that it would prolly be in reverse, that the D|S interface would go into Bryce before Bryce's interface made it into D|S... though to be honest, Bryce's interface wasn't too awful bad to get used to; my only real kick against Bryce had to do with the render engine. /P

Err, not exactly what I meant... I meant that it all looks like stylized straw, not that it's all the same set of styles. It doesn't look like stylized straw if you learn to use it. Stew could post some mind-blowing examples.

Actually, that's an incredible price for Bryce 5. I had given my Bryce5 away as a gift (keeping my Bryce 4 though I haven't used it in a long long time). But as I think now, I recall seeing Bryce 5 on the shelves at Fry's Electronics with a $199.99 price tag. This was about a month ago. I was there for a new DVD burner and was browsing hoping for another copy of Poser Artist (formerly Poser4), because, dang it, I've missplaced my copy around the house somewhere and can't find. (sigh Installed it on the laptop and now can't find the silly disk). Anyway, at that price at DAZ, I'd get a Bryce 5. I would still like to see this new plugin import directly from Poser 4 or 5, since I have no plans to use DAZ studio. Liz

But as I think now, I recall seeing Bryce 5 on the shelves at Fry's Electronics with a $199.99 price tag. This was about a month ago. Yeek. That's way overpriced. Corel was selling it for $79.

"I have seen nothing to show that they tend to drop making poser content...so lets get over that point "

The issue is not dropping Poser content, it's whether future Daz content will be enhanced for D|S. I would hope it would be... there would have been little point to spending the $$$ on D|S if it didn't provide them some technical advantages.

"Some of this would be solved by allowing us to import stills and animations into other 3D apps. With Poser 5 and the number of version changes to candidate software, this is no longer an option."

Really? I suppose then all that content in my 3DS/Max window is a figment of my imagination :)

You must be dreaming...Reiss Studio, Mover, TransPoser or that strange import menu and that python script palette don't exist!

Reiss Studio has two import plugins: 3DSMax (for $179) and Maya ($299). Wow! That's frigging expensive. Nothing even mentioned yet for LW8 and C4D 8, but at these prices, I'll stay away anyway. TransPoser (which happens to be the name I'm giving my C4D plugin - completely by accident) is ONLY for Carrara Studio. With LW and C4D (and soon Maya), why would I use a third-rate 3D application for rendering Poser content? Mover is only for Vue. Same question to be posed (hehe) here. See, all of these guys make you spend more money for ... using Poser to create everything and render in other packages. If I wanted to do stills in C4D, I could just export the character (etc.) as .obj, import, and fix the materials. Voila! Poser import, gratis. My solution works this way: Have Poser Library content displayed in another app and load the geometry, morphs, bones, poses for direct use in the app. Greenbriar Studio is already heading that direction (and I like that direction). This is a screenshot of the plugin as it stands. Most of the Poser file parsing has already been accomplished. The hardest part will be boning, morphing, and conforming. Then, who needs Poser.

might be an accident, but it's one you'll have to change -- TransPoser is a trademark now. That plug in looks good. Real good. What's your anticipated price for it?

Yeah, I figured that. Which kinda sucks since I spent some quality time with my software dictionary looking for just the right name. TransPoser is perfect, but obviously Eovia thought the same thing, first! Thank you. And this thing is currently handling three Runtime Libraries, two of which have over 7500 valid Poser files (not just files). Took less than a week so far to work the interface (and underlying structure). Poser file parsing code is from a previous project that did not materialize, but this time I'm on the warpath, determined, and pacing myself to accomplish this task. This time I desparately need this, so the drive is personal. Don't know about pricing yet, but it will not be $299+. The idea price should be around $100, if that. It's not that Poser sucks. It is a wonderful application, but it is not living up to my (and others') needs and the potential of the content. And since the Poser 5 debacle and the geologic pace of adding third-party support, not many choices are left.

Looks good, kuroyume! I wish you all the luck with it! It's great to see people who do not just complain but do something about it!

Another way to use poser 5 figures with almost any other 3d app is to export them as wavefront or 3ds objects. With the newer daz studio format you wont be able to do that, ever.

"My solution works this way: Have Poser Library content displayed in another app and load the geometry, morphs, bones, poses for direct use in the app. Greenbriar Studio is already heading that direction (and I like that direction)." If you can move Vicki into 3DS and keep her morphable and rig her reasonably well you'll sell a billion of em.

The Bryce interface is only difficult when unfamiliar. And actually, it has layers of a sort, only they're called families.

I found the bryce interface to be quite easy to use, especially since it is so similar to the poser interface.