I do see ynsaen and relik's point. One of the big complaints that we hear from those outside the Poser community is that all Poser art looks the same. Now we have a chance to get some real individuality into Poser art. That could very well take it to the next level! Not only that, but with open source geometry it will also be easy to create clothing for your own custom figure as well.

"Once veryone has agreed on the features" In this community, one is assured that Everyone will never agree. "Seeing as it is a community product, it will obviously be free" This assumes far too much, and immediately removes some of the best folks at this sort of work from involvment. "This way we won't end up with ten different CR2 files and 5 different UV maps. " Lord, I hope not. I'd like to see 50 different Cr2 files and 30 different UV maps. Which is the point to what I'm suggesting. That is diversity. That is positive change, and allows for what is at the ultimate core of what everyone involved in this is really all about: Individual creative expression. Originality. Difference.

We have had a hard time getting the whole open-source concept out there and understood. Our figures and files go up officially (out of BETA) next week and I am trying to write up something that basically states that our Open Source figures aren't trying to be the definative Poser humans, merely resources for the community to use. Anyway, I say the more the merrier. :) --Rebekah--

I like the idea of a diverse approach, frankly.

I just realized this is like the grandmother of the Unimesh. Look at the ears, back of the ehad, hands, feet, breasts, etc. MilPeople came from her or something close to her. I forgot they started as Zygote meshes. Actually that makes sense since most of the Daz stuff came from Zygote meshes. Loading up Zygote woman, then V2 and then unimesh you can see the progression from then to now and how the mesh was altered. I always wondered what the original seed meshes looked like. There are like the Adam and Eve of Poser in a way. Cool. She's the "OrigiMesh". :) Or close to being the original. Zygote of course own it and can do what they want with their own mesh. A tremendously generous act by Zygote if they make them open source. very generous indeed.

the use of python scripting in figures is excessively annoying to me Name me one figure, just one, except for mine, that uses Python scripting. >and ERC in figure rigging creates more problems than it solves Ha ha ha. What ERC are you talking about. The only ERC I see in the figures available now is the full body morphs. And the ERC that allows both eyes to move together. And the ERC that allows the "grasp" dial to work. Why does that create more problems than it solves? You are going to hate my figures, lol, they are ERC'd to the MAXIMUM. >might create an advanced figure -- but one that I wouldn't support or use. If the figure is advanced, you won't support it. I don't understand the logic of that. Are you saying that if the converse was true, and it wasn't advanced, that you would support it? > That means these models will have very little standardised product, and you and I both know that a model without product to support it is a dead model that will never take off. >I do not know this. It is not fact, it is theory. Unsupported theory with weaknesses in the fundamental assertions that underlie it. We have a "standardized" product already. The objective is to stop that. Standardization is a limiting factor -- in nature, in business, and in life. Um, that is fact. Run through the market place. The most successful models have the most add-on product. That is not an unsupported theory, that is basic common statistical research that anyone who can type "Vicky", "Mayadoll" and "Possette" into the search box in the marketplace can do. >By doing it openly, one could suggest that several teams do exactly what you describe, creating variants of the figures that each appeal to differnt segments of the marketplace. Yep, if you read my post again, you will see that at the end I said that if there were enough people you could have two teams. And by logical extension, if there were enough people you could have ten teams. But I doubt that you will get more than two teams of people who would work on this and actually get a fully working, textured, usable model finished. (Please prove me wrong and get ten teams and ten models). >That's good. Trying to recreate what is already present? Ynsaen, you know a little of my working principles, and I can assure that I have never intended to recreate what is already present (not one of the products I have made has an equivalent existing product, and I have three completed products that I didn't release, because someone made a similar product before I finished mine). Every model I make has a new feature that has NEVER been done in Poser (hence we now have working tank tracks in Poser, etc). >In some vain hope of replacing it? No -- that is not forward momentum and growth. And I would never ever try to replace what is there. If a model has a purpose, such as standing naked in a temple, then why would I want to replace it. But if the naked model in the temple can't do yoga without breaking her legs, then I will make a model that can do yoga. This new model doesn't replace anything, it has different features and is meant for a different purpose.

Ok You two are not allowed to be on the same team. :)

Lol, Anton, me and Ynsaen have exactly the same final goal, but we just have diametrically opposed views of how to reach that goal. (and in case anyone was wondering, we are not fighting, we e-mail each other with arguments like this all the time. Soon I will convince Ynsaen that there are only two ways of doing things, the wrong way and my way, lol)

:)

Has anyone considered that here we have the perfect test bed objects to apply the current rigging to, and any enhancements and changes in the 'standard' method, and use that as our foundation to request changes for P7 by? If Zygote makes these open source, then we have a quality mesh available to all to start with.

Helgard -- I have to say that just because someone else did a product like one you have finished is no reason not to release yours as well ....

Open Source project is be a great idea :D Thank you very much Bryan Brandenburg and Zygote!! Mazak

"Openness" is good. 'Let a thousand flowers blossom,' or whatever it was Mao said. At the same time, one of the reasons Linux still isn't a significant threat to Windows on the desktop is the plethora of versions. It may be heresy but sometimes, you can have too much choice. This isn't the bottomless market for automobiles or music. There are already a number of niche figures out there that never ended up getting any significant support. Will three or four more, all requiring different textures, clothing, etc. really be that much more successful? Do we really need a Beta vs. VHS vs. who knows what else and wait to see which one(s) wither on the vine? If Zygote comes through then anyone is free to do whatever they want with these but personally, I vote for some kind of organization, even the barely controlled chaos that passes for organization in the Poser world. Give me one rabbit that I know I can feed and clothe easily, not Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter each with their own unique traits and one dress apiece. Let a thousand flowers blossom but let's have one good old standard American Beauty rose too. "She's the "OrigiMesh"." In which case, she should be named Lucy There are already at least two Eves and besides, most of aren't in Kansas :-)

Open source would be cool :)

There's already Sixus1's Adam so that name is taken for the male. The one thing that I'd like to point out for ysaen and Helgard is that you need to keep in mind that there is a whole bunch of people who would love to use these models but don't have the software to do the additional modeling as well as the skill to do the rigging, mapping, and texturing. Having these things be consistent is more likely to inspire other content creators to create freebies for them.

Okay... about the open source idea: Choose one, and choose carefully. Or write one, and write it even more carefully. Otherwise you could end up losing control of the thing entirely (ex. The BSD inetd coders had pretty much gave Microsoft an entire TCP/IP networking stack for 2000/XP/2003, which is now pretty much proprietary MS property as currently used within Windows.) One other thing to consider... have you run this past one of the legal types on staff in Orem yet? I mean, if enough of these meshes match perfectly w/ meshes that Zygote sold/granted rights to when DAZ spun off, there is the possibility of some legal nastiness there. Not saying there's anything actionable, let's be clear about that - but a little legal checking/CYA could go a long way to prevent future hose-ups. Once all that's done, I'll look forward to adding goodies to my Runtime. To all the other folks: As for forming a group to determine rigging and UV Maps and such? Well, y'all know what a hippo is, right? It's a greyhound built by committee. Ynsaen is right - let the market find the best solution. :) /P

I've thought about whether DAZ has a claim to these models too. As far as letting the market find the best solution, I think that's ok to a certain extent, but if these models are being given away for free, I don't see that as a given that everything derived for free should be for sale. I definitely agree with Helgard...

It doesn't necessarily have to be for sale, but open source is as open source does. The best parallel would be to look at the Linux market - the latest and greatest Linux kernel can be downloaded for nada at www.kernel.org and immediately modified and re-sold if it trips your trigger to do so. OTOH, the distros (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc) make money from one of two things: services and/or or add-ons that give value to the package as a whole. Same story here - the base mesh is free and anyone can (depending on how the license is written) add stuff to it that makes it worth selling (if they desire...) /P Right now we see folks selling textures for Kozaburo's stuff, so selling derivations of free items isn't exactly a new phenomenon.

Hmm, Lucy, Lucie who can take Lucy's textures (with a bit of tweaking), Lucille who can wear Lucie's clothing but has her own textures, Loosey, who's unique unto herself. And, of course, Bruce who can wear all the girl's clothing. Should be interesting.

One thing about open source though (depending on the license type) is that someone can possibly buy an open-sourced item, and quickly re-sell or re-distribute the OSS parts of it freely and legally if they desired to (esp. if the license is the GNU GPL)... kinda deters for-sale "characters" and morphs right then and there, doesn't it? /P

Companies like Zygote that sell/liscence meshes have pretty clear procedures for handling the sale of meshes to developers, all set forth by attornies in advance, all very proper and official. This is what they do so they would know what they can and can't do. Besides there is so much crossover between Daz/Zygote that if it wasn't possible, this post wouldn't be here having been a moot point years ago. Daz is really up on protecting their meshes and I am sure they can easily tell the difference between their modified mesh and Zygotes mesh. And since (Bryan?) is working their I am sure they have each others numbers on speed dial anyway.

Understood, but I've seen too many legal hose-ups between folks who were real close friends in business. For example, a little lawsuit known as SCO Group v. Novell, going on right now over what parts of UNIX V SCO actually bought, and what parts Novell can do whatever they please with, etc. Most of SCO's board consists of folks who were either former Novell employees or were damned good friends with the Novell brass (the bulk of Novell is based in Orem, UT, while SCO Group is based in Lindon, UT.) The real ugly part is, this little lawsuit was thought to have been avoided years ago when UNIX V was sold to SCO, and is based on a far smaller percentage of code compared to the whole, than the percentage of mesh we're looking at here.

That, and neither of us knows whether Bryan (or whoever, but I believe it's Bryan) is/was/will-be in contact w/ Zygote's legal department on this, or if he's only out exploring new avenues for Zygote's revenue stream. I'm just asking if he would make sure it's all nice and legal first so as to avoid inadvertantly putting Zygote in any legal snarls that would require me and 10^23 other people to go back into the Runtime and start tearing things out.

/P

Message edited on: 05/19/2005 10:35

Good points. 8-)

Which is the reason to be very careful about having these figures mapped or rigged for DAZ compatibility...

Sigh, why did I mention Linux. Now, Peng will be relating the Sith, Britney's pregnancy and heartburn to Torvald's benighted OS :-) I'm kidding of course, there are definitely parallels. I doubt any of us knows the true nature of the Zygote-Daz thing, independent company, wholly owned subsidiary, Colombian drug money laundering operation or what. Prudence suggests making darned sure of the situation before jumping into this.

I guess we'll see what happens. I am sure by now both Daz and Zygote have reread this and both know how to use the phone, so we'll see what happens down the road.

Attached Link: http://projecthuman.sixus1.com/

Rebekah, email sent on my review of your license :)

I will take a look at it. :) Thanks. --Rebekah--

Just wanted to let you know that we've been moving forward on this with Zygote for some time. Early on there were some posts about making our characters free and we thought about how to approach that request. We're carefully planning on an "open source" initiative with some high profile community members heading up the organization and direction with more getting involved every day. We're excited about this and are really looking forward to seeing what you guys can do.

I also wanted to say that we've been very supportive of Sixus1media and their initiative and will continue to be. Les will definitely be involved and we'll make an official announcement very soon.

Here's the bottom line. Every once in awhile there is an idea whose time has come. We believe what will happen next will forever change this community for the better.

Thank you once again for your support of Poser and the Poser community,

Steve Yatson
e-frontier

I've said this before elsewhere (and tried to earlier but the post got eaten): Sixus1's project human package is a very cool deal. I've snagged them, and I've considered doing some things with them. And I still may. My particularly limitation with them is they are too high poly for the uses that I have in mind. But that's me. It might not apply to someone else.

" Here's the bottom line. Every once in awhile there is an idea whose time has come. We believe what will happen next will forever change this community for the better." So when will Poser itself have an open-source version and/or a Linux version? ;) Kidding; I already know the answer... my only concern is on the legalities of the whole thing, since this community has enough problems as it is with occasional "high profile community members" getting caught selling a blatant copyright infringement or two. The last thing we need is for one of the really big boys to get snarled up in something that would drag Poserdom into a nasty bout of uncertainty. As long as the legal departments of all respective companies involved are cool with it, I'm cool with it. All I want to know is that it's been looked at and called good and legal by y'all (since you've jumped in), Zygote, and DAZ' legal departments, and what restrictions if any are involved. After that, let's open-source the beasties. Rebekah - I'm still wading through it, but so far, so good as a light once-over. Not an ambulance chaser of any stripe, but I'll compile my notes and send 'em along when I get done with it :) /P

"Um, that is fact. Run through the market place. The most successful models have the most add-on product. That is not an unsupported theory, that is basic common statistical research that anyone who can type "Vicky", "Mayadoll" and "Possette" into the search box in the marketplace can do." That is an observation and sampling, not a factual establishment of a market truth. Research can be used to substantiate fact, but here alone is one of the least useful places for that sampling, and only shows what is -- not what could be. Shame on you, H, lol. You know better than that!!! "Ha ha ha. What ERC are you talking about. The only ERC I see in the figures available now is the full body morphs. And the ERC that allows both eyes to move together. And the ERC that allows the "grasp" dial to work. Why does that create more problems than it solves? You are going to hate my figures, lol, they are ERC'd to the MAXIMUM." Well, since the subject comes up -- supporting a figure with ERC requires additional compensations and work, increasing the time involved and increasing the costs involved in doing so. It's not only the older, more established merchants that are required to come on board, but also the newer, less establsihed ones that need to make a name for themselves -- increasing the complexity of creting support items for a figure is not the route to go -- you want to decrease them. I haven't seen yours yet, Helgard -- but yes, there are other figures out there that use python...

Dear Community,

Our law firm employees nearly 100 attorneys and specializes in intellectual property. They assure us we can proceed with this offering with great confidence. We have complete ownership of the models we are offering as does eFrontier.

Bryan Brandenburg
CEO
Zygote Media Group

Message edited on: 05/19/2005 13:48

Very interesting (I wish there was a way to quickly bookmark threads without leaving some meaningless text like this...).

Ironbear, I don't see any evidence of these conspiracy theories...

'tis not a conspiracy, 'tis business. :)

Think back to the IE vs. Netscape... that's what keeps popping up in my head as the day wears on.

Zygote gets to undercut their own spin-off company and carve themselves a healthy piece of the Poserdom pie, while CL doesn't have to consider crawling back to DAZ and playing nice after that little Poser 5 tiff.

Personally, competition is cool - got no problems at all with it. OTOH, I don't want to see Poserdom get hosed over small overlooked things from external players out to increase their marketshare (we do a good enough job of screwing ourselves on occasion, thanks.) It's good to see Zygote's CEO sticking its neck out and saying that it's all nice and legal... now if DAZ has no problems with, great (obviously CL is happy about it, but prolly won't assume any legal hazard - then again they don't really have to.)

After this, I'd like to see how this open-source thingy is going to work without the merchantile element, since selling a product under most open-source models would be rather self-defeating -- unless of course you do something to it that can be both IP protected and give it value.

Take it from a guy who has been mucking around in F/OSS for years - them thar licenses won't do what many aspiring merchants reading this thread hope it will.

/P

Message edited on: 05/19/2005 15:07

Pengy, maybe its not a desire to be competitive with DAZ as much as it is a challenge to develop a new type of content...

ugly face ok. Now that casts a whole 'nother light on things...

" Pengy, maybe its not a desire to be competitive with DAZ as much as it is a challenge to develop a new type of content..."

Wouldn't call 'em "new," exactly... but that's a nitpick. What got me to thinking about is a look at the industry at large: Movie houses are doing most of their stuff in-house instead of renting places like Zygote to make mesh, and the medical industry is too busy trying to comply with Oxley-Sarbanes/HIPAA to afford any frippery out of the IT budget like buying 3d meshes of people and people-parts. So where does that leave Zygote? Looking for new markets. Their CEO knows full well from previous experiences in the industry that games makers do their own in-house stuff (with waaaaaaaaay lower polycount requirements, among a zillion other factors that don't fit into Zygote's business visions), but got to see Poserdom up-close and personal during his tenure at DAZ. So, it follows that Zygote sees money out here in Poserdom. So, why not?

Hell, it's business, not personal, so I can understand the reasons why. It's just that there seems to be a lack of forethought into it, and I really don't want to see Poserdom get smashed up-side the head with what one apt poster @ RFI termed "The Mother of All Merchant Resource Kit" fiascoes, or anything similar.

We'll table the OSS angle for a moment, mostly because I don't know (yet) what they'll come up with, if at all. a whole lot will depend on that, otherwise they're just another RDNA, another DAZ, another content creator.

As long as we as a community know up-front what's going down, I have no problems with it. OTOH, I wonder if this whole venture on Zygote's part has even been thought through to the next fiscal quarter, let alone year... (man, must be nice to have one hundred lawyers on retainer, but I'd really hate to see the bill :/ )

/P

Message edited on: 05/19/2005 15:31

ok.... We've got post deletions. For those who missed them, ironbear posted a rather scathing commentary on the proceedings, and someone who doesn't exist inthe member list for the site posted little barbs back. That's why the posts 87 and 90. (just for reference)

I've just had to delete some posts in this thread due to TOS violations. Sorry if the thread now reads a little disjointed. Please keep discussions respectful and within TOS. Thanks Karen Poser Moderator

s'okay - some of us got 'em archived. :) So what's Rendo's take on this? Any chance of getting Tim or Tammy to weigh in? /P

I wonder if some of us are thinking behind the curve on some of the details of this. Two words... Dynamic Clothing. Does the detail of the figure rigging matter as much as it did?

Depends... rigging will affect joints, which will in turn affect a lot of things that aren't dynamic clothing. Also, someone looking to do a quick and dirty animation will have to shoehorn a lot more time into their schedule if they have to take dynamic clothing into account for everything the figure wears. Otherwise I haven't the slightest idea... :) /P

Karen, no prob on the deletes (though dang it, I coulda won a bet!). AntoniaTiger, dynamic clothing is a sweetness that still has to make the mainstream, although that's only a short ways off, I believe. But, ultimately, it is not always the best solution -- and shouldn't ever be the only solution. Both conforming and dynamic styles are used when they work best for the project at hand -- and while dynamic might not be as affected by jointing, conforming is.

Well, y'all know what a hippo is, right? It's a greyhound built by committee. Yes, and we all know that the Concorde was built by one person in his back garden.

"Yes, and we all know that the Concorde was built by one person in his back garden." ...but wasn't open-sourced or under general public control - 'sides, the Russians beat 'em to it anyway, and they did it under central authority, minus committees. ;) The point is simple - you're proposing something contrary to the whole idea of open-source, and as a result you'll end up with a bigger mess than the one you're trying to alleviate. Even the Linux kernel is managed and features/functions are decided on by one guy - Linus Torvalds, the original author of it. No committees, no disparate collection of 'merchants' whose ideas are almost guaranteed to conflict wildly with one another's... just one guy making all the decisions, and if anyone else wants to make their own modified version (which many distros do), they let the marketplace decide. /P

"Yes, and we all know that the Concorde was built by one person in his back garden." I'd always wondered, especially given so many of the documents are in French and they decided to kill the project recently.

Actually, nothing is stopping him from assembling such a committee and having a go at it - meanwhile others will simply take the same models, but bring something workable to market faster and more efficiently ;) If he wants to go for it, let 'im. /P