What are the requirements for product compatibility with D|S that you have been given?

So far there have been no changes to the requirements for texture content...and DAZ is working to develop material for their brokers to aid in developing product that is usable effectivly in both applications. ...but I can only speak as a texture creator Rawn

Thanks Rawn :)

Just to confirm what Rawn says. No acrobatics or other hazardous activities required for DS so far. All my products seem to work well in it, apart from certain minor glitches with SET files. And these are apparently due to functions which haven't been implemented yet. mac

I can confirm ... no differences ... basically "what works in Poser 4 works in DS." The empire is not evil. 8-)

But Steve said himself, that while most P4 content will import into D|S fine, some P4 content will never import into D|S. Not out of evilness, I assume, but basic incompatibility. Never mind P5...

Thanks Mac & Deecey :)

Deecey said #5 "I can confirm ... no differences ... basically "what works in Poser 4 works in DS." The empire is not evil.8-) Except magnets right? Or did I miss something.

Hmmm ... I think the initial question was regarding whether or not developers had to do anything different to make products work in DAZ Studio. Being that magnets are a feature of the Poser software and not of Poser content, I think it's still safe to say what I said. 8-)

Magnets aren't a part of Poser content? That'll be news to all those people that bought Voluptuous Vicki etc. ERC didn't work properly in DS last time I checked, but that was a while ago. I pretty much gave up on DS. When it can offer me the sort of stuff I can do in Poser 5, I might be interested.

Magnets aren't a part of Poser content?

Not directly, no ... the magnets were initially created in Poser, and only work in Poser. They don't work in any other 3D program either ... but you can import "content" files (meshes, models, etc) in DAZ Studio or any other 3D program. That is what I meant about it being content vs feature. I guess I look at it this way ... magnets, waves, cloth room, hair room, face room, etc. are all Poser-specific features and are PROPRIETARY to Poser only. This is no different than DAZ Studio having its own proprietary features that will be specific to it. As an example, let's say you use 3D Studio Max ... is it reasonable to expect Lightwave or Maya to support Max features 100%? Or vice versa? As another example ... Photoshop and Painter are similar applications. But Photoshop doesn't handle animations whereas Painter does. Does that mean that Photoshop is an inferior program?

Message edited on: 06/23/2004 19:00

Well, that has to be one of the strangest interpretations of the word "content" I've ever heard. If you can make something in Poser and then export it for other Poser users to use, it's Poser content. Whether you can export it to other programs is immaterial. To say "Studio can import all Poser 4 content" and then say "By the way, I define Poser 4 content as things Studio can import" is a circular argument. There are a bunch of Poser 4 things that still don't work in DS and from what DAZ have said publicly, many of them probably never will.

If you can make something in Poser and then export it for other Poser users to use, it's Poser content. Yes, but it is ONLY Poser content. You won't get magnets, hair, or dynamic clothing to work in any other application ... not Maya, not LightWave, not DAZ Studio. It will only work in Poser, period. On the other side of the coin, what do you call content that you CANNOT create in Poser? Poser didn't create the characters, clothing, and props that came with the program. This is what I think of as "CONTENT" ... the items that you import. What you are asking is that DAZ Studio do exactly the same things with the CONTENT that Poser does. That, to me, is dependent on the features of the software. In my opinion, it isn't a circular argument at all.

I'm not asking anything. I'm just pointing out that DAZ Studio does not fully support Poser 4 content and that your definition of the word content is at odds with that used by the software industry. By the way, you're also not entirely correct about P5 content not being transferrable to other applications. Vue Pro supports P5 hair and dynamic clothing. Moreover, through its ability to incorporate changes in a source P5 scene file, it also supports magnets.

your definition of the word content is at odds with that used by the software industry. Hmmm ... then how should I interpret "Content Paradise"? :-)

You won't get magnets, hair, or dynamic clothing to work in any other application ... What about Vue/Mover?

You know, I'm really not trying to jump up in defense of DAZ Studio, or against Poser, or anything. I think we are getting hung up on semantics here ... and I would like to explain my thinking behind my replies in this thread. Here is what I am trying to say. I have been using Poser since release 1 ... but at the same time I have ALSO been using other 3D software (3D Studio Max, LightWave, Bryce, anything I can afford to buy at the time). Because I have been using so many other 3D programs, I realize that to transfer content from one program to another, I can expect that there will be some additional work on the other side of the fence - because no matter how you look at it, it won't be 100% compatible. If it were, then why bother to use the content in another application to begin with? I'm not looking at just Poser here. If I want to take a Poser figure into LightWave or 3D Studio Max, and animate it there, I have to create the skeletal system to do the animation. Whether that means that I have to use a 3rd party program, or to do it myself, I realize that it will take additional time or expense to accomplish it. I don't expect that Poser will export something that is 100% compatible with Max or Lightwave. Nor do I expect that Max or Lightwave will import a Poser file flawlessly. If Poser does what you need it to do, and you are happy with the results, then by all means, keep with it! But I, for one, will not completely rule out DAZ Studio if there is a chance that someday it will make things a lot easier to accomplish than they are in Poser.

Heh heh. I'd call it "Content Hell", but anyway, it's just a tool for letting you buy stuff you can use in Poser. And that's what content is - stuff somebody can give you that you can use in your program. Photoshop brushes are content for Photoshop for example and Bryce materials are content for Bryce. As another example MAT poses are content for Poser, even though you can't use them in other programs and you can't even make them in Poser itself. They're a separate item that somebody else can sell or give to you and you can then load up and use in Poser. That makes them content for Poser.

OK, in that respect, we do agree. 8-) They are all content for Poser ... but at the same time, most of it can also be used in other apps with some mods.

well now, that sorta ran the thread off a bit, lol But my quesition was answered, I'm more than happy enough.

I agree with that. I'm not ruling out DAZ Studio either. I just won't spend time adopting it until it's at least as useful to me as Poser. At the moment, it's way behind and development on it has been so slow that I don't see it catching up ever. If circumstances change and it becomes a competive application in terms of what I can do with it, I'll start looking at it a lot more seriously. Getting back to the orginal question of the thread, I think it's a little bit misleading to say that there are no special requirements for making Studio compatible Poser content. You have to avoid using some advanced features that are available in Poser - especially, but not only, Poser 5 features. It's true you don't have to do anything extra to your Poser content to make it Studio compatible, but you do have to avoid doing some things you could do if the product were only intended for Poser.

Scuse me.... Has DS solved that issue where props and hair for P4 (specifically hr2 and pp2) files don't work because they ave the geometry file integrated? Those files are very much 'P4 content', and if they still do not work in DS....

if so, it wasn't in the last Beta I checked -- and a certain series of Props which have become indispensable to my everyday work still fly off in every direction despite at least five bug reports I know of. But that's neither here nor there. The point is that DAZ isn't requiring specific things. At least not officially. If I were to submit some of the recent work I've done, which is very heavily P5 dependent (and will not work well in P4), they would support it and try to make it work with D|S on their own. Which is fine by me. That's what I wanted to know, and that's what I found out.

Sorry for the thread drift, ynsean ... LOL. I was only trying to be helpful 8-)

Competion is supposed to be good for the consumer, but at the moment the benefits of the DS vs Poser competition seem to be strongly outweighed by the disadvantages. As a content developer, DAZ doesn't really have any effective competition. Right from the word go, DAZ has been far and away the strongest content maker for Poser. They have the only truly popular human models for Poser, they make a lot of very high quality models with a coordinated strategy and for a long time they were at the forefront of development of new ways of doing things with Poser. Since the split, DAZ has ceased to be at the forefront of developement for Poser content. They still make the best models around, but they aren't taking advantage of the features available to them, so their models are much more polygon heavy than they need to be, not as detailed as they could be with displacement mapping and don't look as good in renders as they could with P5 shaders. So DAZ development for Poser is lagging behind. If they had embraced Poser 5, we'd be seeing some really amazing stuff from them by now. At the moment there is no other company ready to step into the content market and take over that pushing-the-boundaries role that DAZ has abandoned. The end result is that the community is missing out on a lot of great stuff it could have had if DAZ and CL had continued to complement each other instead of competing.

The end result is that the community is missing out on a lot of great stuff it could have had if DAZ and CL had continued to complement each other instead of competing.

It's a sad turn of events that happened just before the release of Poser 5. We may never know the full story of what happened on both sides ... nor should we expect to. But the decisions that were made from both sides at that time, no doubt, had a lot to do with the survival of both companies. We can't fault either side for trying to stay in business.

Now, in the aftermath, and after DAZ Studio is finished, I think what we will eventually see is TWO very strong products, each which will have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. That is a really GOOD thing for the Poser community.

However, it's hard, as a developer, to choose one over the other at this point, so it only makes sense to support BOTH ... or, as the case may be, ALL (Poser 4, Poser 5, and DS).

Message edited on: 06/23/2004 21:41

Ajax -- thank you. "Since the split, DAZ has ceased to be at the forefront of developement for Poser content. They still make the best models around, but they aren't taking advantage of the features available to them, so their models are much more polygon heavy than they need to be, not as detailed as they could be with displacement mapping and don't look as good in renders as they could with P5 shaders. So DAZ development for Poser is lagging behind. If they had embraced Poser 5, we'd be seeing some really amazing stuff from them by now. At the moment there is no other company ready to step into the content market and take over that pushing-the-boundaries role that DAZ has abandoned" This is, in a nicely put package, the entirety of my problem with DAZ. I've been trying for two weeks to express it that simply, and seeing it, right there, right now, just made a huge burden lift from me.

If they had embraced Poser 5, we'd be seeing some really amazing stuff from them by now. At the moment there is no other company ready to step into the content market and take over that pushing-the-boundaries role that DAZ has abandoned" If I remember correctly, way back when there was concern that there would even BE a Poser 5 ... so it's understandable that DAZ decided to put their energies into developing another program that could use their "cutting edge" content. I suspect that DAZ has not abandoned their "pushing the boundaries" role, but that they have redirected it. What is that saying? "All good things come to those who wait." We gave CL time, let's give DAZ time too. 8-)

They still make the best models around, but they aren't taking advantage of the features available to them, so their models are much more polygon heavy than they need to be, not as detailed as they could be with displacement mapping and don't look as good in renders as they could with P5 shaders. Hmmm. Can micro displacement maps be made to work with NURBS models? I'm wondering if a good feature for P6+ would be support for NURBS models. You can always add detail via displacement maps if they can be used with NURBS, and the NURBS architecture would allow for much smoother and lighter models. Then again, it wouldn't be called sub-poly displacement if you could use it on non-poly objects. Pardon me if I'm thinking through my rectum at the moment, but I'm heavily medicated. Damn seasonal allergies! ;-))

I'd like to thank both Ajax and ynsaen for expressing my own observations and feelings so concisely. Judging by other threads here and at at DAZ, I'd say that we were in a very small minority of people who would like to see P5 achieve its real potential. I personally believe that P5 could outpace the capabilities of Bryce if the advanced features were really supported by content developers. I also think most content developers will follow the money-trail which clearly leads to DAZ, and I doubt that we will see much support of ANY current or future Poser enhancements from them. On the other hand if DAZ continues to abandon Poser** that does upen up the market for a new major source of content and new opportunities for merchants here and other places if they pick up the slack and don't just run with the pack chasing the DAZ bandwagon. It does make my purchasing decisions a little easier now ;-) From now on I'm only buying content that has P5 features in it - no sense spending money on obsolete*** product. **Poser - my definition - meaning ALL versions, past, current and future - The DAZ definition is considerably different and refers strictly to PAST versions. *** obsolete - meaning not living up to the highest current standard - inferior - yesterday's news.

Ronstuff - you echo the way I feel. As for differences or any hoops the brokers may need to jump through - I wouldn't know. What I do know tho... If it says "D|S features" on the box... I will very likely not buy it. If because of D|S compatibility it doesn't work properly in P5... I won't buy it. I don't care about P4, I'm not using it. Basically, anything that won't give me a decent product where I don't have to jump through hoops trying to make it work... I'll very likely stick the maker on my 'treat with extreme caution' list. I realize that's not fair on the makers, but neither is it fair to me when I buy something and then it doesn't work properly because of the lack of support for the newer version. If it doesn't do what it says on the box... I won't be buying another. Bear that in mind. I am already not buying human/animal/clothing figures (and morphs) from DAZ anymore because I've had problems. The only thing I will pick up are scenery props etc, maybe the odd texture, but even there I got burned before. I have a "works beautifully" list as well as a "Don't ever buy anything from them again" list. The latter is growing exponentially... Reason I bring it up is because where the P4/P5 rift started to close, there is a canyon opening up between P5/D|S. New users don't buy P4. Read my lips - they don't usually buy P4, they go for the latest version and that is P5 The die-hards use P4, and I have nothing against P4, don't get me wrong. But the fact is that more and more P5 users get out there, mainly people new to Poser and they want CONTENT FOR P5 - not for P4, not for D|S, but for P5. And that's your customers we are talking about, the people who don't have everything yet, the people you rely on buying your items. The new people... That's what people tend to forget. Those of us who have been around since the year dot have pretty much everything covered in the way of clothing / figures etc. Those who are new to Poser and who are stocking up... they tend to be on P5. You'll sell more to them than you ever will to us oldies... but only if the stuff works in P5. tries to resurrect a dead horse

Silke, IMO you are 100% correct. When someone buys a program for the first time, they buy the most current version. Poser 4 was released, what, four years ago? That's ancient, by software standards. I bought my first copy of Poser from Amazon.com, and Poser 4 is no longer available there. Poser Artist is, but it doesn't come up immediately when you search on "Poser." The new users are going to be increasingly Poser 5 users.

I think merchants, including DAZ, are really missing out by not realizing this. As you say, it's the newbies who are likely to spend the most...if they have a good experience with buying Poser content. But they are newbies. They're likely to be very discouraged by P4 MAT files that simply don't work with P5, hair textures that look blotched or speckled, objects that blow up like microwaved marshmallows.

I know as a newbie I was very disappointed with DAZ's high-res Mike and Vicky textures. I bought them, because being new, I didn't know there was any other source. But they looked dingy and unattractive rendered in Poser 5. I never used them...until I found out how to fix them for Poser 5.

It's not just me and a few of the brokers that think P5 support is a good idea then - cool. A few of the brokers at DAZ seem to have been listening - it's a pity they can't direct company policy, but they CAN include P5 support in their own products :) Cheers, Cliff

ah hell, cliff -- from you, it wouldn't matter if it was DAZ or not, lol No -- you've seen the P5 thread over there, hon. P5 has finally reached the critical mass point -- from this point on, it's only going to get louder.

"35. by ynsaen ah hell, cliff -- from you, it wouldn't matter if it was DAZ or not, lol" Errr... - thanks? (honestly, I can never figure out which hat I'm meant to be wearing - DAZ pet poodle or the cat from nextdoor that makes all the DAZ flowers wilt) "No -- you've seen the P5 thread over there, hon. P5 has finally reached the critical mass point -- from this point on, it's only going to get louder." Yup - the brokers appear to not only want the sales, but welcome improving their products. I've been really encouraged by even those who've never seen Poser 5 "in real life". What sometimes perplexes me is people who are so adamant that Poser 5 shouldn't be supported becaue it didn't used to get support and that (apparently) prooves that support is not required. At least - I THINK that was the most recent argument I've been given. I look forward to some of the possible developments with much anticipation :) Cheers, Cliff

Excuse my intrusion, but why is everyone here bashing DAZ for "not supporting P5" when no one else does? (I won't get into the EULA mess here). Why doesn't anyone jump on Poser Pros or RDNA? Heck, RDNA made the P5 characters! How many P5-only products are there after all this time? Not many, IMO, and it's probably because they don't sell as well as P4 items. DAZ is a business. If you were making Poser products, whould you want to aim at 40% of the market or 100%? (the 40% is just a guess of course). I have P5 and won't buy anything that's "P5-only." P5-only usually means you have to use Firefly to take advantage of its features. I (and I imagnine others) can't use firefly because of lockups and/or extreme slowness. And even if it didn't lock up, I haven't seen that great an improvement over the P4 renderer to make the slow-down worth it. When I look at a picture, I don't study it to see how great the shadows look. Plus, transmapped hair, IMO, looks much better than P5 hair, no matter who makes it. So why should DAZ--or anyone else--make P5-only content? Again, barring the EULA controversy, it's just not good business right now, IMO. Hi, ynsaen :)

Heck, RDNA made the P5 characters! For clarification, RDNA didn't make the characters ... but did create the character morphs and character/clothing textures. And worked their butts off. 8-)

I'm not asking for Poser 5-only products. That would be silly. Why should a merchant cut himself off from a large chunk of the market?

What I want is products that are Poser 5-friendly. Little things, like including P5 MAT files along with the P4 and PP ones. Hair textures that look good in Firefly as well as with the P4 renderer. Stuff like that.

I'm not asking for P5-only product either. I know of no-one who has made that claim or used the number of P5-only products as a measure of how important P5 users/features are except for people who don't have P5.

I have P5 and won't buy anything that's "P5-only." P5-only usually means you have to use Firefly to take advantage of its features. I (and I imagnine others) can't use firefly because of lockups and/or extreme slowness. I have problems with Firefly on my system as well. Constant lockups. Content that renders just fine otherwise when the P4 renderer is used instead. THAT is one of the reasons that, until SP4, I didn't even think about P5 support. I took Poser 5 off my system quite a few times because I had a lot of problems with it. There are still some issues that prevent me from doing certain procedures with P5 that I take for granted in Poser 4 or Pro Pack.

IIRC RDNA supports P5 probably better than any other store - I'm not sure why, on that basis, I'd want to berate them for not doing so...

Oh - I see you actually own P5 Jackson! Do you use it or some other Poserish program more? Well, I must admit you're the first P5 owner I've come across that specifically wants products not to be optimised for P5 usage as well as P4 and PPP. Let me know if you find people asking for P5-only content, I'd have thought that we were some way from that stage yet, personally :)

Cliff

Message edited on: 06/24/2004 09:28

Deecey - I wonder would the firefly crashes be associated with some of the hairpeices that have been known to cause "issues" with Poser 5 (and for the record also a bunch of other external renderers)? It might not be worth your while to locate the specific causes of your issues, but you never know - you might actually quite like P5 if you can use it reliably. One of my favourite features of P5 is improved stability over P4! Cheers, Cliff

1 - very little is going to be P5-only because most stuff will work in both P5 and P4. 2 - as noted above, no one is calling for P5 only stuff. 3 - The "Eula Issue" is so freaking dead a horse it's pathetic, lol. It's no longer even germaine to the rationale that's driving the lack of support. What is applicable is that P5 did not incorporate better support for community created hacks on which DAZ has built up a great many products (ERC/superconforming) and which was killed when P5 fixed the crosstalk bug that was driving it. The EULA was revised and explained. It's not even in question anymore. 4 - Look around: P5 has more users than you estimate... 5 - The purpose of the thread was to clarify a question for me. There will be products I submit which are P5 based and which do utilize, most effectively, features of firefly and Poser 5 that are not available in P4, and that do not easily traverse to D|S. Since they will handle the conversion for me, I'm pretty happy :)

SR 4 did resolve quite a few of the problems. One of the most notable was the hangups that light sets were known to cause (for example, I couldn't use many of the free lights at RDNA without getting hung up in mid render). Hair was also an issue, in particular Neftis' hair ... a workaround has been found for that as well. But one of the weird problems that I notice is in regards to OBJ export. I use Deep UV to do my UV mapping ... and it is a known issue that the scale of Poser models is too small to use Deep UV's "Relax" feature. The models "explode" when you try to relax them, so you have to size them up. What I usually did in P4 was load my clothing models, scale up by 100 times (ie: 10000%) and use that version of the model in Deep UV. But, interestingly enough, if I try that exact same feature in Poser 5, the model still "explode" in Deep UV. Don't know why. I do like Poser 5 ... the materials editor is very cool, I love working with the dynamic hair and clothing, but it's the renderer that I have a LOT of trouble with. I HAVE been thinking of supporting P5 more ... in fact I'd like to make some really stylish dynamic clothing. But I have a "to do" list that is up to the ceiling right now, and it's taking forever to whittle it down. 8-)

Attached Link: http://www.oddditty.biz/Files/5Things.rtf

Thanks ynsean (LOL ynsaen even!) 8-)

Message edited on: 06/24/2004 09:52

Cliff: Yes, I own P5, but use P4/PP more because it can handle bigger scenes, is smoother and doesn't slow down or lock up on me like P5 does.

"What I want is products that are Poser 5-friendly. Little things, like including P5 MAT files along with the P4 and PP ones. Hair textures that look good in Firefly as well as with the P4 renderer. Stuff like that"

I'm sorry, but I didn't know there was a way to optimize a product for P5 yet have it still workable in P4/PP. I don't believe I've ever had a PP mat that didn't work in P5. And to me, the hair textures look the same in both programs.

My mistake. I thought by "support for Poser 5," you guys meant hair, materials, etc., that can only be used with Firefly and characters that could be used in the Face Room. In other words, stuff that wouldn't work in P4/PP.

ynsaen: the 40% was a guess at the market not of P5 users. Like I said, I use P5 but still won't buy anything "P5-only."

Deecey: correction noted, thank you.

Message edited on: 06/24/2004 09:56

Attached Link: http://www.enmeshed.com/shadermagic/archives/000219.html

It's easy. Separate MAT files; many merchants do this. For example Fatale's critter has P4, PP, and P5 MATs. There are also a few modeling idiosyncracies that you have to take into account, but you can make models that are P5-compatible without making them unworkable in P4.

I don't believe I've ever had a PP mat that didn't work in P5.

The bump maps never attach correctly. They're either loose, or connected to Gradient instead of bump. Check out the link; it explains "the trouble with Victoria 3" - or rather, with her MAT files.

Try the tips in the link. You may find that Firefly is worth the wait after all, once textures and nodes are applied correctly.

And to me, the hair textures look the same in both programs.

It depends on the hair. The new Wedge II hair looks awful in Firefly, at least "out of the box."

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1812416

Thanks for your input Jim 8-)