Previous versions of Poser have introduced new male and female characters. Poser 6 looms, so what will the new characters be like? Daz 3D are already giving away the base versions of Mike and Vicky. Could those be the next generation of default Poser figure, or are Daz trying to kill any new characters?

Since the split between Daz3D and CL, I don't think they will be Millenium figures. Otherwise, why didn't CL just purchase the rights to use M1 and V1 or similar in P5? Most likely they'll be updates of the current set (Donky, Judette, Willhe, Wontshe). If they are, I will not be using them. The children represent pre-adolescents. There is no way to create adolescents with any of the P5 figures from what I've seen. They have some nice features, but overall they are rather useless. Hopefully CL will either drop the entire FaceRoom idea or actually update it to work properly (in scale and in texturing).

CL posted not long ago words to the effect that, 'daz is doing their own thing and CL is doing their own thing'. Also, Sixus is apparently involved in some P6 stuff (hopefully the default figures). They do terrific work. All he said if I remember right was that their contribution 'didn't include monsters' and that he couldn't say more for the time being.

Sure would be nice to have a set of attractive toon figures in the default. The existing set (Barney, Bertha, etc) are too weird to use.

With any luck, they will have new figures that don't have the lousy default bending of the Vickie series - maybe they will have a fix for the bad bending at the hip, knee, elbow, shoulder etc.

Let me add to the insanity.....

Poser 6 will have some new terrific mind blowing characters and animals. DAZ knows this and that's why they're giving away the base figures now. They hope to get all of us hooked on their figures and spent lot's of money on them now, so that you cannot part from them when Poser 6 comes. After all you've invested way to much in the DAZ stuff. This way the new terrific mind blowing characters and animals will not gain support by the community and will become redundant.

My advice is stop investing in DAZ stuff, because when Poser 6 comes you'll be sorry you ever did.....

I know Judy isn't that good at all, but Don is much better then Micheal 1 2 and 3 combined. Unfortunally content creators never took him seriously and I'm afraid that the same will happen if or when the new Poser figures come. DAZ figures and content seem to have a spell on us users and the content creators too. Before you know it, you've spent all your money at DAZ once again.

Message edited on: 02/11/2005 14:39

Well, unless the P6 figures are spectacular, then i'm afraid i've already invested too much hard earned cash in the Mill figures to go buying loads of stuff for whatever they might be. Jack

...EJ has breathed new life into Judy, though. One of my favorite characters now.

---------------------------------------------------------- "but Don is much better then Micheal 1 2 and 3 combined." ----------------------------------------------------------- I'll concede the Mike3 is way too femboy looking in his default state and too much injection/texture work is need to make him seem rugged and masculine IMO. but Good old Mike2 with his built in morphs is much better than Don by any standard. :-)

Well, they won't make the leap to soft joints because they can't because nearly all users use Millenium characters. It would be great though if, combined with Shade, they had a double set, meaning: bizarre shoulder joints and bended knees for V3 and company, and a soft system for their own characters. My guess is that they somehow must see to break the barrier of everyone waiting 'till someone else has bought to see what's wrong, and what's been fixed. What would you see as a must have feature that would make this a must have?

Yes, Aeneas, you hit the nail so hard that the board broke. :) Poser needs to update its archaic (really archaic - we're talking 1990 here) joint system. Doesn't need to be scrapped completely - I find the axially-dependent joint feature has some merit. But it is so far behind some other systems that eventually the impediment will lose Poser its user base. As you say, support the old stuff, make some new stuff. :) And to correct a point: It's not that Donky is better or worse than Michael X. It's that it has limited morph support (face morphs requiring a trip to that awful FaceRoom so that you can mangle your texture mapping in the process) and virtually no add-on support. It is useless.

Unpopular opinion - Personally I hope they don't include any new content assets/character except any required to demonstrate a new feature or option. Aftermarket sources do content much better than they do. Every effort they've made in that area has just resulted in a total S***-storm of b*tchg and griping in the forums that just derails any judgment of the program itself on it's merits. How much time and fuss was wasted on endless harangues over missing morphs in the P5 characters, or how everyone convinced themselves P5 would have an infinite menagerie of all-new all-perfect animals, just by repeating and miss-repeating to each other the one vague unguarded comment posted by kupa in an early "California Dreaming" thread. The default LoResGuy figure is the only one I use with any regularity, myself, so I guess I'm not really the one to talk, but, the default P3/4/5 meshes make up a fair cross-section of sample characters to get anyone started with the program. If they do choose to toss anything new in, I'll just consider it a treat, and hope it's not a cause for thwarted expectations and major contention just because it doesn't include everything everyone could concievably ever want for their own pet themes and current projects. Because it won't, no matter how hard they try. . . . just my 2 cents worth - oposing opinions expected and inevitable . . . G

(shrug) - maybe they found a way to automatically 'bone' characters? 'course, Reiss-Studio would throw a fit if that were the case... /P

"(shrug) - maybe they found a way to automatically 'bone' characters?" Why would Reiss-Studio care about that? Unless you mean converting the Poser rig to other formats like Max, Maya, and Lightwave.

New joint technology? That would be tempting. But how many people use dynamic hair? It maybe does need to be a major improvement in the underlying tech to justify totally new figures. I suppose a new joint system would need a new Judy, but how different would the figure need to be. Would dynamic clothing work? Could conforming clothing? And I wonder who "owns" the idea of morph injections, or MAT pose files?

Just to point out that if they use new joint technology, it probably wouldn't support the old (ya know like other programs don't support other joint tech) and if it did, then why bother with old. and vice versa.

They'd have to support the old stuff or 10,000,000,000,000 items are now useless in Poser 6. In what reality would they want that! ;) But, adding new joint technology doesn't mean dumping the old technology. That's the problem with Poser (maybe CL). It seems to be all or nothing. They won't fix the myriad never-ending problems (single undo, walk-designer hiccups, Wavefront OBJ export still requires fancy mouse work to select options, etc.) because maybe it requires some low-level changes and when they add a new feature, it is completely alien to the environment (Material, Face, Hair Rooms), pasted in place with some gum and spit. The original idea of Poser 5 was a complete rewrite to modernize the application and update known issues. That didn't happen. Will it happen in 6? Doubtfully.

"Just to point out that if they use new joint technology, it probably wouldn't support the old (ya know like other programs don't support other joint tech) and if it did, then why bother with old. and vice versa." There are programs (plugins) out there that can translate a Poser rig and import a fully jointed, skinned, and "ready-to-animate" character into high end apps like 3dsmax. In fact, I think it's only available for 3dsmax. It's called, GestureMax. It basically automates the rigging of a Poser figure from a PZ3 into native 3dsmax bones or Biped. The translation is not perfect, mind you, and still requires lots of tweaking on most figures, but it can save lots of time. Anyway, my point is simple. If 3rd party developers can find a way to translate the Poser rig to a more modern standardized rig, then surely Curious Labs can find a way to do the same (and much better) in their own native program. In other words, you'd be able to use all the old figures with the new joint system once you translated it over. Or, just use the old one on the old figures, and the new one on the newer figures. It's not an impossibility.

I'm not going to pretend I know just what the different joint/bone methods involve. But consider the example of how Poser 5 brought in the Firefly rendering engine, and shader trees. Poser 5 still does Poser 4 rendering, without too many disasters.

I have a few wild guesses like Neftis, Anton or Cubed. I doubt the P6 will be just be updated versions of the P5 figures after so many complaints from the consumers. As far as assuming Sixus1 is doing the default figures, I don't see any basis for that assumption at the present time. However, if you see what's in store for Lilin2, I think the idea of Sixus1 doing the figures is quite promising :)

I dunno, Papa.. Anton disconnected himself from the poser community, and has been busy with RL. (He stopped in, around Christmas, but then left again on an extended trip somewhere.) Neftis had some health issues, and then had family health issues as well, and has not even posted on her own site in months. MAYBE Cubed....

...I don't think anyone is assuming Sixus is doing the base figures. Their involvement in P6 certainly warrants speculation in that direction though since modeling, rigging and texturing seem to be what they do best.

Bare with my spelling I forgot to run a check :)

Kim, please forvige me, I instantly created an entire Naked Kim With A Textbook Running With Her Checkbook poser scene in my mind. ::::: Opera :::::

Hey, wait CL, look over here in the corner, it's us animators waving our hands..... PLEASE make the frame count display extend to 5, not 3 digits, amd make it bigger and change the font. PLEASE give us some sort of alert at the end of a test render that outputs the real time duration. PLEASE make cut and paste in graphs work. ::::: Opera :::::

LOL : )

That PC Connection pic shows Poser 6 item number as #377195. If you look on their web site, that's the item number (and price) they've got for Poser 5.

But that doesn't mean the new version won't sell for the same price...

Ohhh - and I always thought that Daz and CL was the same thing in the end. That really makes me wonder why CL isn't the one to get there hands on the great artistes here from ROS and have them make stuff for sale at CL site like Daz do. So - can we blame CL if they are thinking about taking over the marked of Poser and making a version that dosn't support the "old" stuff?