Last week I bought Malin For V3&S3 by A-one http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=28977 On the Product page it says: "Note: The package was to be used with Poser 5.0 only" and "System Requirements: win98/2000/xp. Poser 5" Played with it over the weekend and found the MATs are for P3 - no shader stuff at all. So I left a review just warning other P5 users, this morning I find the review has been removed. I have no arguement with the morph or texture, haven't had time to do a full seam check, but superficially it looks okay and the character does look quite good. Re-reading the add copy more critically the compatability is: "****Note: The package was zipped using the paths created for Poser 5" When I 1st read that I took it as an added warning to P4/PP users that it wasn't for them, now re-reading it is a statement of what the P5 compatability actually is. I'm not going to waste my time to contact A-one as this kind of ignorance , to me, is inexcusable: 1> The paths are NOT P5 specific so A-one is losing a large amount of potential sales toP4/PP users while the product doesn't use anything that is P5 specific. 2> It's false advertising - not P5 product, the MATs are for P3 3>He/she hasn't done the research to know the difference - this is not rocket science. 4> Six products in his/her store (1st one uploaded in Feb 2004) - this is not a first effort) 5> The final straw for me was the removal of my warning with no notification As ever buyer beware....

How bizarre. I always thought Eva's products used skin shader nodes or something, since they are listed as for P5 only. I'd definitely feel ripped off if I were you.

And why was your review removed? I thought the merchants could no longer pick and choose which reviews were displayed.

Oriental Long for M3 is the same.....

I've just looked at the store page.

So you are saying that it works exactly as advertised but you are annoyed that your own assumption that it would not work in earlier versions proved to be false? You find it reprehensible that you are getting more than you expected? Nowhere do I see any references to whether skin shader nodes are used or not. Possibly the artist is doing themselves a disservice by not advertising the product's full functionality, but I fail to see how one can feel ripped off.

The reason for your warning removal: Unacceptable Reviews: Technical support for the product. Please contact the merchant directly (by clicking on the merchant name at the top of this form) I had a similar situation but I posted my warnining in such a way that I was working with the merchant in correcting the problem. After it had been resolved I requested that my post be removed. Point being, contact the merchant, you will find the majority will almost bend over backwards to assist (be nice). PhilC is one of them.

This character pack does have a P5 specific path. It uses a P5 subfolder structure: ("Malin for V3&S3 folder in the A-One folder in the Poses section) So a P5 only statement is correct. Although it does not use P5 shaders, it does use transparency (in the eyelashes) - so it is not compatible with P3 in that respect, only with P4 and P5 A-One makes wonderful products and I do appreciate the P5 subfolder structure she uses.

Altogether a different experience when I bought a set which had atrocious seams on the texture. There were several other things wrong with the pack but the seams were the worst. I was accused of having a bad attitutde, an ulterior motive, not knowing how to use Poser and not having P5. Right. I'm gonna be taking sales away. Not. Needless to say, the merchant won't be getting my business any more. Now, I know, we merchants are supposed to be supportive of each other, but it royally pissed me off that such a badly seamed texture could be released when others I have seen were rejected. No, I will not be telling you who it was. Not here, not in IM's. I just hope the person in question is reading this and takes note.

tlc, I'm grateful for the warning. I had another product by this merchant on my wishlist, but I've removed it. I'm sure it's nice, but I have lots of P4/PP textures, and I don't need another. Not for $19, anyway. The only reason I wanted it was because I thought it made use of P5's nodes. Maybe I'm dopey for making that assumption, but obviously I'm not the only one. I notice one person who bought the product I was looking at said he didn't notice it was for P5 only, and therefore he couldn't use it. I guess he doesn't realize that all he has to do is change the paths.

I think it's at the very least.... ambiguous. If I see a product say it is P5 ONLY then I expect it to be using P5 features. To not use them and still claim to be P5 only because of a folder structure may be true but I think it is at least misleading, though perhaps innocently. Thanks for the heads up, I had some of this on my wishlist and removed it - I was planning on supporting the P5 vendors but if the product doesn't take advantage of P5 then I wont... the last thing I need is yet another P4 style texture. BTW - the policy of no longer really allowing negative reviews has rendered the review system in Renderosity completely and utterly facile and useless.

Let's see, we're only allowed to post positive reviews concerning products? I'd say that's "slanted advertising." No customer would ever know if there is a problem with the product or artist. You really should re-think this policy.

Are you guys serious about the no negative reviews? Could someone direct me to the policy so I can check them out.
thanks

Oh great. If no negative comments are allowed, then customers will inevitably think that No Comments = Bad product.

I do not consider my own products bad, yet to this date only one of them has got the necessary 5 ratings to even display the stars (I do hate these stars btw)
Does this mean that noone likes my stuff then? Or just that people are as lazy as myself and forget to post comments? (Thanks to those who DID take the time btw)
I really try to post comments on stuff I buy, but sometimes I buy something and doesn't use it untill months later. And then it's hard to remember to post a review. I do it whenever I remember to do it though :o) And so far I haven't been dissapointed yet with any of my purchases. Oh and I too would expect P5 shader nodes in a "P5 Only" package.

Message edited on: 07/02/2004 01:00

If I'm not mistaken, this is the Poser forum, right? The place to exchange experiences, ideas, comments and to help each other, right? That Involves having an opinion about a product, positive or negative. It's definately within the scope of this forum. Renderosity has turned extremely commercial lately. If that means that you will go to any lengths to protect your merchants against the evil customers, you're on a very dangerous path. Customers has every right to exchange information about products in the applicable forum. That includes positive and negative statements. Censorship of product comments is just ridiculous. You are not doing the community a service by having such an attitude. Remember that it's the customers, not the merchants, who pays the bills here.

As far as negative reviews go, I'm certainly not aware of staff censoring product reviews, when it's related to the quality or usability of the product. People posting negative reviews because they had trouble downloading the product or something similar definitely is a case for removal, because it has nothing to do with the merchant or the quality of the product.

Message edited on: 07/02/2004 03:16

wimvdb: Ah yes. Forgot about that, 'cos I unzip to a temp dir and put stuff where I want. I find this even sillyer (sp!?). Make a product so that everyone can use it then put into a dir stucture that will only work in the latest version (unless the user knows how to move stuff around) - very good. And thanks for finding the transparency error. This merchant should really do the homework before asking for money for the product.... PhilC: When something says it is ONLY for P5 that gives the impression of shaders, dynamic clothing or dynamic hair, at least to me, maybe I'm thick? Would you format your product so that P3-P5 could use it then put it into a dir structure so that only P5 can use it and then in your ads claim P5 only product? I doubt it, from what I've seen of you, you have both morals and intelligence when it comes to putting your products together. nickedshield: What is unacceptable about stating a fact about a product (does not use P5 shaders)? Looking at her store I noticed under the Chinese Princess, Zhann left the comment: "I really like the product, although I haven't been able to use it, I bought it without noticing it was for POSER5. I wish there was a P4 ProPack, version also." Well if it's like this product, you can, just move the "YanZhi for V3&S3" out of the "A-one" folder. If A-one is reading this thread and wants help, I will - email me, I will even make P5 specific MATs for you if you don't know how. I already beta-test for 4-5 merchants. As it stands, I feel like I've been conned - that is why I'm not going to make first contact. BUT it is NOT a vendetta type thing on my part. The texture and the morphs are good, A-one does have talent. There are three other characters I want, but I will not be buying them now. I will be making MATs for this character as I will use her, so I shall probably put the MATs up on my site site for others to use. As far as the censorship is concerned, I don't know who cut it the "management" or the merchant, fine by me - I find it a touch Orwellian and a little sad but then it's not my site.

When you leave a product review, the merchant gets a notification. My guess is that the merchant saw what you wrote and asked for it to be removed. It's possible, of course, that some admin happened to see the comment and removed it without being asked... This policy of "no negative comments" is very frustrating. bonni

Indeed, the Readme does not even mention anything in the textures folder.... otoh: All texturing artist using high end apps will recommend using uv's with real textures, and no shaders. Certainly not for skin. I don't exactly see any reason for preferring shaders here.

Where is this "no negative reviews" thing coming from? That was supposed to be changed at the same time the stars were implemented; before merchants approved all reviews before they were posted, so obviously bad (or even neutral) ones never showed up. There's nothing about no negative reviews anywhere in the "leave feedback" page, and I've seen at least one negative review. Is there actually a reason for the "no negative reviews" idea, or is it just because this one was removed? It would have just as easily been killed under a "tech support" excuse. Aeneas, by shaders, I assume people mean properly set up for P5. Bump map in the bump channel instead of the gradient bump channel, specularity set to a realistic level. Possibly using the skin shader node. I don't think anyone neans using shaders in place of textures.

Yes, that's what I meant. Textures and shaders. Maybe even cool stuff like specularity maps.

Ya know, I was wondering where my post (and Ernyoka's response) about PInstall went - I've been frustrated by it suddenly requiring a 'permanent key' after I paid for the thing, and I sent email to the merchant which went unanswered until today - at least 2 weeks. After the first week of no answer I posted here for help, got one reply, then my post disappeared. It wasn't even a negative review, since I love the program when it's working, but I thought the whole point of the Poser forum was to get help with problems - including ones where merchants were being unresponsive or slow to respond. If this is the new policy, I can't say as I like it very much.

I've come across a number of free items that state "P5 only" and work perfectly well in P4. The only things that are genuinely P5 are those that have dynamic cloth/hair or are specific to P5 characters, or consist of shaders only. In the case of a prop that is supplied with P5 textures, it's trivially easy to add your own non-P5 textures, especially if you are rendering outside of Poser anyway. Therefore "P5-only" doesn't apply. I would look at it like this - the originator hasn't tested it on P4 and is just covering themselves by limiting it to the system for which it has been tested.

FyreSpyrit: you may well be right! I usually don't pay much attention to this as I always check this and correct it, but indeed, I've had to correct this several times. Also with stuff bought at Daz. But at least they admit that they don't support P5. The more I get used to the material room and its shaders, the less I like mat files. Loncray: I have similar experience with Daz. Having bought an item with the most horrendous seams, I was as first seen as the culprit because of my little experience. Thanks to the support at the forum here, I persisted, and unshakeable proof was given. So I was told to contact DazTech, which I did. One e-mail that they were to look nto the case, and that's it. I suggested that they give my e-mail adress to the merchant, but I doubt whether they ever did. This was several weeks ago. And it was not a Platinum Club item at all! Otho: I have had but very positive contacts with merchants here at R. Quick answers, help,...I never encountered anything negative. Except perhaps for what I wrote above: having to add bump etc in P5 myself. But that's not a real problem for me.

What resources are there on the different features available in different versions of Poser (now including Poser Artist)? I use Poser 5, but I've not used, AFAIK, anything which isn't in Poser 4. On the other hand, I know that Poser 5 adds a lot of extra data to the files it saves, because of shader trees. So if I put something together in Poser 5, how could I find out what could be removed to make a Poser 4, or Poser Artist, file? (I'm probably missing a Save Option here, but I don't want to waste time on something that would be P5 only, unless I needed a feature.)

As long as you don't rely on displacement maps, and still keep your stuff UVMapped, you can use Poser 5 stuff just fine in Poser 4/Artist. Of course you shouldn't use nested folders, though people CAN move it manually. My latest freebies are all made in Poser 5 and uses P5 shader nodes, but they can be used, and textured in Poser 4 as well. A current example is my new lasagna, that loads white but gets colours from the shaders when it's rendered. And of course P4 users could just use the flood fill to colour it - or find a pic of a real lasagna and use it as a texture map :)

Attached Link: http://koti.mbnet.fi/~ilaripih/MPEHome/

Thank you for your suggestion I try my best to adapt it to poser5 poser 4 or else previous edition in my next product.

A-One.. my solution is not to advertise as P5 specific, but to advertise the specific P5 enhancement (nested P5 folders, for instance) That way, you don't discourage P4 purchase, but do show you are supporting P5 in some beneficial way. Dark Whisper pretty much does some thing similar...

Well, I use P5. Never knew a previous version. I particularly like the option to use subfolders etc, but as I use my own system of folders and subfolders (for example I have separate subfolders for skins, eyes and characters), I see no use in a merchant using them as it makes things far more difficult to organise. So my personal preference is a simple placement, but with a recognisable name (!! a file like EH_JGWITF, or a "readme" without clue are a real horrorshow). Also, don't use fc2 or so to replace pz2 files as expressions (faces) are overwritten by a pz2 that is added later on! In case of something special (magnets...) mention this clearly in the readme_myItem. In case the bump in P5 nodes isn't connected, mention this in the readme. If you don't have P5 yourself, work with a beta tester. Just my three eurocents.

Aeneas, "I see no use in a merchant using them as it makes things far more difficult to organise." In your opinion. In the Power Pixie, I organzed over 299 headmorphs into separate dial folders, and people have RAVED about how easy that is to use. I also organized the mat poses in a logical way to facilitate character modifiction, and again, custemrs have be overjoyed that someone spent the time to actually do that, rather then have to do it themselves. Maybe you like spending a hour or so organizing a character's installation, but for my money, if the artist does that extra work for me, I'll definitly look for thei next creation, and will thank them with my next purchase. And how is it harder to reorganize yourself? The artist has already cherry picked and divided the various mat poses into sepearte folders... rather then hunt through a list of 80 mat poses, you can just drag n drop one folder. Seems easier to me.

In the case of the Malin character from A-one, there is no need to use a sub directory as there are only about 10 MATs. I suspect A-one used 'em so that all her products would be together in one "A-one" folder, each in their own folder. IMO a wasted use of a feature that cuts out over half her potential market. Whereas Garee, shows an intelligent use of sub folders, I certainly would not want to scroll thru 299 icons.. plus the Power Pixie uses P5's enhanced capabilities. A-one: My offer of beta-testing and corrected your older product still stands, email me if you need help.

Ah, I understand the complaint now. That does make sense. Guess there IS such a thing as too much of a good thing, eh? ;)