First, sorry about my foor english. Could using poser make money? then how? movie? But threr is many 3d program like maya and max. The model of poser is selling much? There is much of poser model. too many. Making model can make money? And, I want to know the the future prospect of poser. Could you answer me please?

Attached Link: http://www.greetinx-arts.de

If you are looking for a 3D program that you can base a career on, or use to make money in the long run, it is smarter to learn something like Maya or Max. Those who can model and animate their own content are far more in demand than those who can animate something that has already been created.

There is a wide market for 3D visualization out there no matter the tools in use. But the direction to take depends on the tools you know and use, your skill level and experience, and how viable the employment is. Concerning the last dependency, the movie/tv industry is basically a buyer's market. There are so many 3D CGers looking to fill coveted positions in this lucrative industry that only the 'creme de la creme' get to fill those positions. In other words, you are going to need to sell yourself with resume and demo-reel in hand (unless you have inside contacts, maybe). Otherwise, consider that 3D visualization has many applications: * Logos * 'Flying logos' (stuff you see in sports and news broadcasts, for instance) * Accident and trial recreations * Medical * Science * Entertainment (Special FX) * Scholastic * Models * Plugins * Historic recreations There is more available that just Pixar! ;) As for Poser, I don't think it is going anywhere soon. The transfer of ownership to e-frontier may not seem promising, but then they might just revitalize the app instead of letting it wallow (like some others). Even if Poser releases were to discontinue, people would be using it for at least several years to follow. And companies like Daz3D could not survive without it, so they would most likely find or create an alternative. Hmmmm, Daz|Studio. Yes, that sounds like a good name for an alternative... ;0)

"If you are looking for a 3D program that you can base a career on, or use to make money in the long run, it is smarter to learn something like Maya or Max. Those who can model and animate their own content are far more in demand than those who can animate something that has already been created."

Yep, that's true. However, animators at major studios almost always end up animating someone else's model in the end. Everyone has a specific duty when working on a big budget project. The modeling team does that work, then usually someone else textures the models, then it's rigged, and finally the animators do their thing with the results. There's even special people for the lighting and post work.

At smaller companies, (and sometimes even big ones) you'd probably be doing more than one thing though, so I agree it's best to know everything you can learn, but it's also good to focus on something in particular (like texturing or modeling) and make that your strength.

If Poser has a long-term future, I'm thinking it needs to gear itself up to becoming more of a premiere utility for integration with other applications, and less of a "standalone" product. Otherwise it will flounder financially for years to come, and eventually be phased out as other more financially successful apps begin to shape their character development tools around Poser's "ease of use" and take it to new levels, forcing CL out of the picture. :-( Message edited on: 12/03/2004 10:19

Companies like Discreet and Alias-Wavefront will also take the price to new levels, so if CL does things right, they'll be in the picture for some time. Everybody who contributes to the Poser galleries and Forum owns a version of Poser. How many would spend $3000 or so for a computer application? Look how active the Max and Maya galleries and boards are here. CL has the right idea, they just have to execute.

"Everybody who contributes to the Poser galleries and Forum owns a version of Poser." Yes, but legitimately? Or... "How many would spend $3000 or so for a computer application? Look how active the Max and Maya galleries and boards are here." The foundation verson of Softimage XSI is only around $500. That's extremely competitive, and you get many features that were considered very high end only a few years ago, and by Poser's standards are still very high end. I think other software companies will soon follow suit, as the mid-range software like Carrara and others bring more of the same powerful features to the table. If they incorporated a Character tool that made it as simple as Poser to morph and pose pre-rigged figures, you bet they'd blow Poser away. I think Poser is going to be fighting an up-hill battle financially for a long time unless they change some things.

Personally, I think DAZ has the better business model. Give the base software away for free, and allow the users to customize it as they see fit by purchasing individual modules or add-ons. Also have an open SDK for developers. Poser isn't going much farther beyond where it's at now without a complete revisualization of it's business model, as well as a complete re-write of it's source code. But hey, that's just my opinion. Let's see... we're on the 4th owner of the product now I believe. When will they actually change things?

I think I agree with fls13 that Poser has a greater potential future at the lower end of the spectrum. It's uncertain whether investing significantly more in high-end integration would result in significantly greater acceptance from the rather insular elite 3D market. On the other hand, the immense popularity of 'The Sims,' human avatars in messaging applications etc. I think shows that a much bigger potential market exists/We're also going to see more and more "intelligent" applications, personal "agents", etc. that would all benefir from having a "human" face on them. Microsoft's animated Office assistants were a primitive effort in that direction. I think there's a big potential for an application that can make it easy for non-experts to create, customize and personalize 3D human characters, especially as bandwidth and processing power grow to permit real-time 3D presentation..

The major advantage that Poser has is the pre-modeled, pre-rigged characters right out of the box. The thousands of aftermarket figures makes it that much more attractive. Then add the price that is being charged for the models, figures and textures and you can't match it. I have said it a million times and I'll say it again. This is comming from a Max user (me). "Owning Poser just for the content alone is worth it". Poser, Max and Reiss studio's plugin is what I use for all my projects. In the work I do I don't have the time to model objects and figures. I use Poser and the Poser plugin as a portal to bring high quality, low cost models into Max for my projects. Face it, you can't get really nice pre-made, pre-textured models for that kind of price anywhere. The first place I ALWAYS look for my objects is my Poser archive, then Daz, then Renderosity.

hmm...the makers of Poser will announce (too early) amazing features for Poser 6..the forums will be screaming full of ranting Poserholics who want it released right now..the makers of Poser will release it too early, and the same ranters will now be screaming that it doesn't work perfectly..a bug fix will come out fixing most of the problems, and things will calm down..well, it's happened before..;) (j/k..;)

... or god forbid the UI changes in P6 from it's current simplicity to something more complex to accomidate new features. Then they will scream it's too intimidating, and won't upgrade from Poser 4. Either way. ;-)

Hehehehehe ... in other words, something I've often said. The Poser community is never happy. 8-)

Sorry to say, but with feature complexity comes complexity. One cannot attain Maya, Max, or C4D levels with a simplistic interface. You can hide more advanced features, but you cannot shove them so far away as to be unseen mechanisms in the background. Well, unless the user accepts the loss of more and more control and flexibility. And I don't think Poserholics ranting about immediate satisfaction caused the very, very, very premature release of Poser 5. It was pure and simple economics. I and many others explicitly begged Kupa et al at CL to take their time, to test, and to verify. Quality is worth the wait. Who were they listening to? Their wallets. Myself? I'm awaiting Poser Mk II. The old Poser file format, archaic technologies, and ancient techniques should be archived for an updated approach: better rigging, hypernurbs shells instead of exponentially increased polygon counts, real lighting models, real rendering modes, real animation capabilities. Then Maya, Max, C4D, LW, and such will be in competition with Poser. Of course, this would move Poser from the hobbyist regime into amateur and professional ones - increasing the cost. Mediocrity breeds mediocrity.

The question is can CL survive wile waiting for the profits to start rolling in from the adoption of Mk II while at the same time providing the level of service and support that users at that level will demand before they buy into it? AT the same time of course, the existing user base, dismayed by the increased cost and complexity will be deserting in droves for Daz Studio if it's viable at that point. I think it's a fine idea but we're really talking about two different applications here to satisfy two distinctly different expectations. Everyone wants better lighting, figures, etc. but at some point, complexity will start to alienate the vast majority of users who aren't aiming to produce feature film type productions--at least not with the associated learning curve. It may be cynical but I'd bet that for every would-be LOTR creator out there, there ate ten would be just as happy with a buffer Vicky, a better temple and a bigger sword :-)

Most of what I've seen in the industry is it takes a whole lot of programs to achieve the effects that forms the finished product. A lot of the formats are interchangable so pieces can be imported and exported to take advantage of the features in each. In a lot of my work lately, I've been taking elements from Poser, Bryce, Illustrator, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Xara3d, Flash, Cool Edit, Quark Express, After Effects and Final Cut Pro. Poser will proboably be in use for a while for the content and features it does better than some other programs but not all by itself. So it's better to learn to use the features of each to put them together to the best advantage.

I hate to say this, but I don't think POser is EVER going to get out of the category it's in right now without totally re-writing the spaghetti code it almost definitely has under the hood by now, and start anew with a fresh approach.

The road it's been taking since version 1 is just turning it into "bloatware". If it just keeps adding new things to it's current code, it's doomed. The software needs to first be able to efficiently take advantage of the new hardware that's out there before it can improve upon itself in any meaningful way.

Message edited on: 12/03/2004 14:59

Poser, Max and Reiss studio's plugin is what I use for all my projects. In the work I do I don't have the time to model objects and figures. I use Poser and the Poser plugin as a portal to bring high quality, low cost models into Max for my projects.

Hardly any professionals only use 1 program for everything anymore since it takes more to get the best results. Since he was asking about making money with it Message edited on: 12/03/2004 15:22

I hate to say this, but I don't think POser is EVER going to get out of the category it's in right now without totally re-writing the spaghetti code it almost definitely has under the hood by now, and start anew with a fresh approach. I agree, but I'm not sure that's the continued goal. I believe it once was, but that things have changed within the marketplace (astutely observed thus far herein) I happen to think the thrust is exactly the same tack that D|S is taking. Not to "compete" with the big boys in an arena where Poser by itself is essentially a minnow waiting to be eaten, but rather to expand the current marketplace through introduction of new users. If competition is going to be involved, it will utilize the relationships between Poser, Shade, and Vue in order to leverage the particular cross compatibility and segmentation of those tools as the core of a new platform that users can invest in at various levels, enabling them to achieve equivalent results at a lower overall price. I do agree that the base code for Poser needs to be cleaned up. And, in truth, I expect it to happen. With Poser 7. As for the "battle" between D|S and Poser, I really don't feel we'll be able to effectively speculate on it until D|S is at least finalized -- perhaps into a second iteration -- and Poser 7 is out. At that point, the market direction will have already been made clear for both programs in the short term and they will seriously begin to differentiate themselves from each other. But, in the meantime, heck. Let's make some spitwads ;)

Hmmm.... Very interesting.... (Takes of German helmet and straightens ears.) There are aspects of the Poser interface design which could be greatly inproved. It wouldn't be artistic, but using the standard OS windows, and changing the colour-scheme from the current shit-brown theme would make a huge difference. As it is, they seem to be aping Kai Kruse without having his talent. And can somebody point me to a description of just what nurbs are. I think the folks who make the bloatware accusation are hitting one clear target. Poser 5 still has problems that are clearly related to the underlying structure, and which can make it frustrating for professional use. But I'm not so sure that the actual program is all that bloated. It's more that some key components need a re-write, Memory management for one. And Poser is a better general-purpose rendering program than many might think. It's not just the people. There are the models, and if you want to emulate Star Wars for a shot in that video, you can animate and render in Poser. (just be careful of copyrights and stuff.) I think there's a market for a reliable program that lets the average guy do things has a potentially huge market. Maybe it means, as with Shade, a Poser LE? If Poser were to have plug-ins for producing a texturemap, and other content-creation features, would people pay extra for that? Is there going to be another version of Poser Artist? Will it be a re-name of Poser 5, or something on a parallel track?

Marc Keohane did an interview with RDNA just a couple of weeks ago and mentioned some of what he saw for Poser and Shade in the future. He wasn't too talkative, but sounded quietly confident. Carolly