Just to stir this up further: I say use Poser 4 (or whatever ver. you use) and render in Carrara or Vue. Much better render engines in those 2 apps. D|S can render better than P4, but I have seen many times where the texture maps were way off. In this case, no matter how good it renders. if everything is screwy looking. it ain't better.

I don`t like the interface much. It is slower rendering than poser 4 but it can do more rendering features than poser 4.

coldrake, if you quote then qoute the whole bit.... also the part where they brag about the $400 you can earn the coming 4 weeks, that's asking for $2000, since it keeps on coming back a couple of times. As for DAZ laying off staff, just check their forums and the introduction of a number of new staff. The only one I know of leaving was Bryan Brandenburg and I really wonder why he went away. At least he was in favour of Poser users (especially when it came to Bryce & Poser working together), but since he's gone, DAZ has turned against Poser user again (at least when it comes to Bryce). Well, I'm done participating in this thread. Not that I want to stop doing so, but I'm gone for almost 2 weeks, time to go on vacation.

I heard Studio's head programmer from the beginning, Taylor Wilson, quit last month and think the next year will be interesting. I wonder why he quit.

o_O

Wow. I'd love to know, too.

Honestly, I think DAZ may have bitten off a little more than they can chew, with D|S, Bryce, and their core business of Poser content. They're a small company, and that's an awful lot of balls to keep in the air. I have a feeling something is going to have to give.

I don't like it, but I have P6. I don't like the fact that it's a must with Bryce and I think Daz droped the ball making it the go between Poser and Bryce. It's Daz's baby, so they can do what they want. I also will keep trying it every so often to see if I have any use for it. So far, No. EF is working on P7? They have Shade 8 out in Japan now I think. Makes you wonder how P7 and Shade 8 are going to work together. Dynamic hair for sure, there are other things as well, I just can't remember.

@randym77- Honestly, I think DAZ may have bitten off a little more than they can chew, with D|S, Bryce, and their core business of Poser content. They're a small company, and that's an awful lot of balls to keep in the air. I have a feeling something is going to have to give. They should concentrate on what they do best (content) and stop biting off more than they can chew. (apps) Bryce has been a major disapointment to me. I passed on ver 5.5 - Not enough reasons to upgrade.

D|S reminds me of Poser1/2 as it stands at the moment & I really don't feel the need to go backwards, hopefully when they (Daz) get some more features built in it'll light my fire, if I can get it to work that is.

Wow - it took a while but I read thru it all and "wow" is the only reaction I can give - I have to say that complaining about something that is free is strange to me. Complaining that a company is trying to use giving away free stuff to encourage you to spend money is also strange. Odd though it may seem to some people who have been posting in this thread - companies exist to make money - ALL OF THEM. Anyone who starts a company with the idea that they will NOT make money is in need of a little medical help. And most companies don't give away things like D|S for free. Normally if it is given away for free it's some little tiny thing that is no big deal. They certainly don't have to give it away - heck, they could sell D|S for say 1/3 the price of Poser and they would likely sell a lot of copies and make a lot of money, but no - they give it away. Are they hoping this will cause you to spend money? Naturally - they are a company not a charity. No sales, no paycheques. No paycheques, no employees. No employees, not company. Seems like a simple progression to me.

Ok, I may regret it but here are my thoughts on the things spoken of in this thread:

The question becomes - do you get fair value for the money you spend? Well, I've seen some of the stuff that DAZ sells and it seems to be fair value as far as I can see. The fact that D|S is free seems like a rather nice thing to me. I have it but haven't really had a chance to look at it as I am working hard with Poser 4. I don't know if D|S can do what I need but if it can't, I'd hardly complain since I didn't have to spend any money on it. Still, for many people it does what they want and although you can certainly spend a fortune on stuff for it, the simple truth is that someone who has no money to spend at all is able to get D|S and enough figures and props, etc for free that they can have the enjoyment of doing 3D work - and to me, that sounds like a good thing. Why anyone who be upset at the fact that DAZ wants people to buy stuff is quite beyond me. They didn't have to make D|S available to everyone for free, they didn't need to make figures available - even if you only get the stuff that is available for free there is a lot you can do. Now if you spend money there is a lot more, but why should that be a surprize? And why should that be a bad thing?

As for developement time - anyone who thinks that a year in the works or 2 years even is unreasonable for a product like this, clearly has never worked at software developement - or at least not software of this level of complexity. I've seen big companies which have 100s of programmers working on a project of this size take that long to produce crap [no names offered - I think one potential arguement a day is a good limit to observe and I'm sure if I named comapnies and products there would be someone to champion them - heh]

And although I don't yet know much about D|S, I have to say that Poser is not exactly a perfect product. I love Poser [even if I do only have 4.0] but it has many things wrong with it - things that we Poser users have to learn to deal with and work around. Ever hear of cross talk? I know with P4 it has often been a problem when I'm doing animations with many figures. Or why is it that you can have the pose in frame 14 suddenly go weird when you add frame 50 - even if frame 14 is a key frame for all channels. But you learn to deal with it and you learn to check repeatedly and do clean-ups for time to time. There isn't a program out there in this field that doesn't have odd quirks - I've heard interviews with people working for Pixar [and believe me, next to the software they use even Poser 6 is on the level of a pocket calculator and pad of paper] and they talk about the quirks and problems they have with their vary hi-end software.

As long as one looks at the things that don't work quite right and the things you can't do with the software, etc, etc, it doesn't matter if you're talking D|S or Poser 6 or whatever - it will suck. But if you look instead at what it DOES for you, what is GOOD with it - you get a whole different view. I do animations with Poser [to be honest, until I came here it never occured to me to use it for still pictures - I mean I knew you could, but I could imagine why] and before I had Poser I did my animations by createing single frames in Photoshop - I used multiple layers so that I could reposition parts and use the same layers for a variety of frames or just add or delete the things that changed but even so it took a very long time to get a small sized animation. Poser cut the time down to the point that I am able to work on much longer animations - so yes, it has quirks that sometimes add a lot of extra work that shouldn't be needed, but even so when I compare to animating without - well, there simply is no comparison.

My point? Instead of complaining about what isn't - enjoy what is. D|S is free. D|S allows you to do much more than you could if you didn't have a 3D posing and rendering program. There is lots of free stuff that can be used with it. All of this is good. Is Poser better? I can't say, but it really doesn't matter. I have a friend who got D|S recently - before he got it he had Poser 1 and since his income doesn't leave him anything to spend on hobbies, he was not likely to ever have a better version of Poser. Now he can pose people that actually look like people and they have neat things like actual mouths, eyes, and fingers that can be posed [P1 has none of that] - it means he can do creative things which he was never able to do before. I don't see how this can be a bad thing.

They should concentrate on what they do best (content) and stop biting off more than they can chew. (apps) Bryce has been a major disapointment to me. I passed on ver 5.5 - Not enough reasons to upgrade.

You can't really blame them. At the time they started the D|S project, no one knew if Poser would even survive. That's all changed, now that that they've been bought out by E-frontier, but DAZ had no way of knowing that would happen.

I can understand why they did what they did. Grow or die, buy or be bought. I have nothing against long development, but I do wonder if a small company can afford it. Microsoft taking two years longer than expected to release a product is no big deal, but for a small company, that's a long time to have no income coming in, when you were expecting you would.

With D|S, it's not so bad. It is helping them sell content to people who can't afford Poser, so it's bringing in some money. But you're right about Bryce. I have a feeling DAZ lost their shirt on that one. They must have paid a lot of money for it. They had that goofy "buy a vaporware upgrade now, months ahead of time, or no upgrade pricing" scheme, which they admitted was because they had to recoup some of the money they had paid out for Bryce. Bryce 5.5 was promised before the end of 2004, but didn't make the deadline. When it finally was released, it wasn't that much different from 5. I think 5.5 should have been a free upgrade, given the small improvements, but DAZ probably couldn't afford that. I don't think they have the resources to keep up with both E-on and E-frontier, which is what they are trying to do with Bryce and D|S.

The bottom line is that DAZ (prior to Studio) was almost solely reliant on Poser for its existence, and Poser users for its continued existence. If Poser nosedives into relative obscurity due to mismanagment, DAZ is screwed. It makes sense that DAZ would want to provide an alternate means of displaying their content (on a relative par with Poser). Therefore DAZ takes steps to create Studio, albeit slowly and measuredly.

A couple of things: First, I find the "comparable to P4" claim utterly bizarre, given the list of things (here in this thread) that it still doesn't have. It's a bit like claiming a Notepad clone is "comparable to MSWord 2.0." Most of us aren't quite sure what was in Word 2.0, but if we have been using Word for ten years, we know a Notepad clone is not likely to be "comparable to MSWord 2.0." As near as I can tell from this thread, D/S is still, nearly three years after it was supposed to be completed, nothing much but a front-end for 3Delight. "It" doesn't render better than Poser, 3Delight does. How that makes it "comparable to P4" is beyond me. Second, Studio has been long on unkept promises, and that suggests a poor grasp of the scope of the task (a charitable interpretation). That poor grasp does not inspire confidence in the result, assuming we ever see one. It was supposed to be in Alpha by the end of December, 2002, a few months after the initial release of P5. I can't come up with public statements to that effect, obviously, but those of us who have been around that long and remember those lynch mob days (one R'osity member offered to help P5 folks mount a class-action suit against CL, if I remember correctly), recall Farr's announcement of D/S and its imminence. I distrust people who make promises they can't keep. They are either dishonest or foolish. "Dishonest" and "foolish" are not quite the same thing as "evil," at least in my vocabulary. Car salesmen make ridiculous claims and grope you like their long-lost brother until the contract is signed. That may be "evil," but it's the American Way. Evil or not, it's dishonest, and I try to keep my own dealings with dishonest people to a minimum. I'll pay more to shop elsewhere, and often do. Dishonest people are your enemy; they think of you as prey, however friendly their approach. Foolish people, on the other hand, are ingenuously dangerous, so I try to avoid them too. If Dan Farr actually believed they would have a program comparable to P4 written in two or three months, that was pretty foolish. If he didn't... well, who knows?

If Poser nosedives into relative obscurity due to mismanagment, DAZ is screwed. I sometimes wonder how many users of other 3D modeling/rendering/animation programs would use DAZ and related content if the appropriate rigging was also available?

"Second, Studio has been long on unkept promises, and that suggests a poor grasp of the scope of the task (a charitable interpretation). That poor grasp does not inspire confidence in the result, assuming we ever see one." mickmca: I can understand your definition and your view regarding foolish/dishonest people and unkept promises/delayed releases, etc - however, you do realize don't you that by what you say you condemn pretty much all the major players in the computer industry. Apple has a long history of failing to meet release dates and also a long history of orphaning their old products shortly after bringing out something new. Microsoft has been late on every release date all the way back to the release of DOS and when they do release a product it is at best in a beta stage [they don't call it that but if you look at the level and types of bugs that their products have when first released and the average number of up-grades and patches they have to add - it shows that the products ARE beta test quality when released] Linux producers likewise have long been big on promises and slow on delivery. What does this have to do with DAZ? Different sorts of product and all ... yes, but the standards for judging a company is not limited to the type of product they produce. I'm not saying it impresses me when a company fails to deliver on time on their promises, but it has become the standard of the whole computer industry so it doesn't surprize me. These days people blindly accept things as if it is to be expected with computers - things that didn't used to be acceptable at all and things that anyone with a long enough background in computers knows are simply bad programing standards. So, if you are going to take a negative stand on DAZ for the reasons you give, I hope you are doing the same for Microsoft, Apple, the various producers of Linux, etc. Now if you do judge all of those the same as you judge DAZ - then ok, judging DAZ is fair enough, but if you don't take the same stand with the major companies in the computer industry then I think you are being unfair. Not that I'm saying you don't have the right to take whatever stand you wish, but if the standard is not applied universally it does rather lack fairness. I wish that software developers all the way from the people who write small apps up to those who do OSes and the people who write major apps like D|S, Poser, etc, would manage to put produces out when they say they will and that the products would be fully tested and fixed as needed so that there were no bugs [or at least only rare cases] and the software didn't crash [I started in computers in 1972 working on mainframes and back then the idea of a piece of software which was not in alpha or beta test stages EVER crashing was almost unthinkable but these days it doesn't even raise an eyebrow] however, wish though I might, it isn't the way of the industry. Not the OS developers and not the apps producers - DAZ is hardly unusual in that way at all. They have LOTS of company.

I think Daz is in a bit of an Iffy area, It doesn't want to produce something that is P6 and it doesn't want something to be so far removed that it will seperate it from Poser users (that is until it has enough converts). True sofar D/S has little to offer compared to P6 But consider this, Was P6 a Rushed out? i say this because D/S was released with OpenGl Support and said to be as good as Poser yet P5 never had GL support, Then there are the Minimum advances on P6 over P5, i don't Know if anyone else thinks that there wasn't enough Wow in P6 apart from OpenGL support and AO-IBL (Point lighting) somehow i was expecting a different interface!... And then there is the news of P7 next year? If this is true why release a new version sooo early? could P6 just be a stop gap release? Will we see some of the advances that some Rosity members have requested of P7, I know that if these ideas are implemented into P7 with a 2006 release date i will definately buy it. As for P6 or D/S i will stick with P6 , even with it's memory problems and it's AO artifact problem that keeps hitting me, because i know one day they will release SR4 and fix the whole thing to my liking, as in P5.

I am always amazed at how emotional people get over things that should not be emotional topics. I read this thread because I was curious whether the current version of DS now had some capability that I was unaware of because I haven't been using the product. Others have come here, with sleeves rolled up, spoiling for a fight as if there is a reason for a fight. Is there any reason in the world to have an emotional response to software other than spending money for a product that didn't do what it claimed to do? I can get livid when I've wasted money on a product that doesn't live up to its claims becaues I can't afford to be wasting money. I can even be mildly annoyed if I waste time with a free program because I only have so much free time to expend on doing 3D art. Beyond that, I have no emotional investment in either Poser or DS. I couldn't use DS on my old computer and the UI was different enough that I don't have the time to relearn how to do something I can already do. Poser isn't perfect, but I've gotten used to it nuances and weaknesses. I wonder if the emotional issue has more to do with expectations and perceptions. I remember the number of people that were so excited when DS was first announced. It was going to be the Poser killer to finally deliver a stable software program that would elevate and make easier all the things that were frustrating in Poser. That was long enough ago that I cannot remember what DAZ said versus what posters said. The one thing I do know is that a lot of people invested some emotional expectation years ago in a software product that was, at that point, little more than vaporware. I'm reasonably sure that those expectations were significantly higher than what DAZ was promising. Much of today's discontent probably goes that far back. Personally, I don't care whether DAZ Studio ever gets out of Beta. It doesn't make me think badly of DAZ. I've read that they only have eight programmers working on the program and that some may be leaving (which shouldn't be taken as a statement of working on the program as much as job opportunities for the programmers). How many thousands of employees does Microsoft have? Is there a week when Windows doesn't require a critical update to prevent somebody from taking over any PC in the country or causing damage remotely to a PC? Microsoft has been writing code for PCs for three decades. Given that the largest software company in the world cannot meet their deadlines or deliver a product without bugs, I'm willing to cut DAZ a lot of slack in not meeting deadlines and can respect them for not putting a "1.0" on the product just so they can say it complete when it really isn't. The bottom line for me is that nobody has said anything that makes me want to invest more time learning DS at this point in time. I'm keeping my mind open for future updates that may make it worth my time. Beyond that, I have zero emotional investment in either program, the delivery dates, or even the companies behind the programs.

I don't have recent experience with DAZ|Studio. I tried it about 6 months ago, because I got fed up with the limited amount of geometry and textures that Poser 5 could handle. I found out that DAZ|Studio couldn't even handle half of the geometry that Poser could. Two V3s, one Mil Horse and one charger were enough to bring it down, even before attempting to render. In Poser I can handle and pose over a dozen hi-poly figures (which I then render in Vue. Poser can't render them). Add the fact that DAZ|Studio can't do dynamic cloth or hair, and it's nothing more than logical that I ditched it right away. Why use a free Polski Fiat if you already have a paid for Chevy?

Is there any reason in the world to have an emotional response to software other than spending money for a product that didn't do what it claimed to do?

Yes.

I think part of the reason people get so worked up over this kind thing is that others' choices do affect you. Which program "wins" will determine which one gets support. No one wants to end up owning a Betamax in a VHS world.

Anton's post says it all: the once unified Poser community is on the verge of splitting, with D|S/Bryce going one way and Poser/Vue going the other. There may not be enough customers to support both. Naturally, people get emotional.

"No one wants to end up owning a Betamax in a VHS world." On the other hand, who wants to be VHS in a DVD world? I've been holding off getting a DVD recorder because formats haven't settled down to a winner, whether it's + or - (even though some recorders do both). While I've been waiting for a winner in that format, there will soon be two competing high-definition recording formats supported by different movie studios. At the same time VHS recorders are losing favor and they're harder to find, with fewer options when you have a problem with one manufacturer's quality. The writing is on the wall and I'll have to someday transfer all my thousands of videos to a disk format, but I don't want to do it with a format that will vanish in a half dozen years. Unfortunately, the world is getting more and more fast paced and things will constantly change. There's not much that any of us can do about that other than go back to the woods and leave the technological world behind us. I'm not particularly worried about DS & Poser splitting the community. The split won't happen in a real sense until DS is a serious alternative to Poser. Right now, DS is an alternative for someone who doesn't have Poser or has an older version. DS doesn't yet have the breadth of all of Poser's features. Even if DS can match Poser 1-for-1, that's still not enough reason for a massive switch. For DS to be the dominant posing program, it's got to do something better, and everthing else at least as well as Poser. DS has to do something so much better that a Poser user would have to be awful stubborn not to switch. If that is the case, where is the downside? The big split I see happening is not DS/Bryce vs. Poser/Vue, but in Poser content. Two different rendering alliances, that use the same content, are not going to split the Poser community other than those that have an emotional attachment to the software they use. That's no different than the higher end 3D application snobs who sneer at Poser users for not being as good solely because of the application. I'm not going to be siding with anybody ten years from now who thinks they can make a prettier picture with Victoria XIII in Poser 12 than in DS 7 or vice versa. The killer change in DS that can wean people off Poser will likely be advances in figure content. Although I've never heard anybody from DAZ say this, I have little doubt that the main reason for creating DS is so that DAZ can do new things with their figures that they cannot do with Poser. DAZ is probably making more money from their content than CL is with Poser (just a guess on my part--I don't have any facts). Poser is a one-time expense while content is a forever ongoing expense. Without DAZ having their own Poser style program, they are dependent totally on Poser's future. It's not a good move being tied to another business for one's survival. As has been mentioned, there were concerns for a while over Poser becoming another abandoned program and that would eventually have killed DAZ. Even if Poser continues a long healthy life, DAZ is limited in what they can do with their figures by the limitations inherent in the Poser program and CL has no inherent need to improve those figures. Neither Poser 5 or 6 made any real changes to the figure rigging. New versions of Poser have added some capabilities and provided better rendering options, but the things that make Poser what it is haven't changed much since version 4. If DS adopts new posing techniques that change how Poser content is made, new figure content will not be usable in subsequent versions of Poser unless CL adopts the same changes. That will cause a separation between the two programs. That will take many years to happen. DAZ won't abandon Poser customers until their purchases become too small a part of their business to bother accommodating. That will only happen if the new figures are so much better than the current crop that most Poser users will be compelled to become DS users. I don't see a downside to that if DS does the job right and there is a solid reason to use DS. I'll let the real Poser experts predict what those advances could be. All of that is many years away. DS will probably have a pay version, but will probably be cheaper than future versions of Poser because DS is subsidized by DAZ content. Poser has to earn a profit wholly from sales of the program. Much as I hate to disagree with Anton, I believe that Poser content creators will follow DAZ's lead. It's what the bulk of them do now and there's not much reason to expect that to change, particularly if there are advances to figures that both users and content creators want. Right now, DS has a ways to go to seriously challenge Poser. That's why I'm still not emotionally charged over the two programs. The best or most popular program will eventually win out. That's not a bad thing. It's not as if there will be a 50/50 split. Somebody is going to have the predominant posing software. That's the software that will have the most content.

DS has to do something so much better that a Poser user would have to be awful stubborn not to switch. If that is the case, where is the downside?

I think the downside is the one you mentioned earlier, with your DVD comments. Until it's settled, people are reluctant to commit.

Even if Poser continues a long healthy life, DAZ is limited in what they can do with their figures by the limitations inherent in the Poser program and CL has no inherent need to improve those figures.

I think you're wrong on that. CL is improving their figures. That is why Jessi and James are rigged like Posette. With the new Poser rigging system, they won't need buttocks groups. That may be as soon as next year, if the Poser 7 rumors are correct. (Remember, E-frontier is a content provider in Japan. They sell figures, much as DAZ does here.)

The way I see it, improved rigging is the obvious next step, clearly the biggest improvement needed. Both DAZ and CL are working on new rigging systems...and they will likely end up not being compatible.

Sounds like this community has a dilemma doesn't it? I think people need to think long and hard on whos hands their passion for this art/hobby's in if there is this much question about either choice...

Is it time to creat another choice? Take destiny into the communities own hands? An open source character posing program that involves this community? It's programers? Just a thought. A lot of programers have become involved in the community over the years.

"Until [the format war]'s settled, people are reluctant to commit." That favors CL and Poser because people are reluctant to abandon the format they have for another till they have to. DAZ has an advantage with DS being free because they don't have to sell the software for people to try anything new. Since DAZ is primarily a content provider, they can release new models for it faster and a new rigged model will probably be free to test drive with DS as V3 and M3 are now free. If I can take as a given that DS can be matured to be at least as good a renderer as Poser 6 (or whichever version is around in the near future), DAZ will probably win the advanced rigging format wars and become the dominant posing software maker because they can reach customers, faster than CL, can with updates. CL is tied to an update of Poser and it'll cost $200 to try it without restrictions. DAZ can let customers try it for free and produce rendered images without any limitations on a real, not trial version of DS. I don't care who wins. Right now, CL has the advantage because they've got a mature tested program on the marketplace. DAZ is trying to play catchup with DS. Once DS is on some par level with Poser, DAZ will take the lead because they have a strong content base to work from. I can't picture a community programmed free version competing in the mix. Look how long it's taking DAZ with dedicated programmers to do the job. It's hard to compete with what will in some capacity remain a free program. Besides, look at how often some errant member of the Poser community spits at a freebie provider for not doing what they want or not wholly living up to their expectations. Who wants to spend years of their life working on a Poser alternative and have to deal community members that don't think they're doing it fast enough or doing it right? Whichever future rigging format wins will be downward compatible with current Poser content because nobody is going to support a new format that makes their current runtime libraries useless. It doesn't matter which future format wins because it will be better than what we have now and we'll probably have what we currently have for a good long time. Somehow, it just doesn't seem like something that ought to worry me greatly.

That favors CL and Poser because people are reluctant to abandon the format they have for another till they have to.

Sort of. But it could also keep us using VHS while they're arguing DVD formats, if you know what I mean. P4 compatible is D|S compatible. You can be compatible with both Poser and D|S - if you sacrifice the more advanced options of both. For that reason, I think Anton may be overly optimistic, thinking P4 support will end with the release of P7.

Somehow, it just doesn't seem like something that ought to worry me greatly.

Well, it doesn't rank up there with, say, peak oil or nuclear war. :-) But surely you can understand why people who have a lot of investment in the outcome - merchants, say, or just customers who have a lot of time invested in learning a program and/or buying content for it - are concerned? And it's more than a format war. If DAZ goes belly-up because they can't make this D|S/Bryce thing work, a lot of us would be affected.

That favors CL and Poser because people are reluctant to abandon the format they have for another till they have to. Both CL/EF and DAZ have made significant contributions to this community, and both deserve to succeed. I doubt that we will see an abrupt change. To have Poser 7 or DAZ Studio 2 come out without support for legacy figures would be a mistake for both companies, and the biggest backlash wlil come from community members that scream murder because of significant investments in addons. Support for older legacy content will probably remain, and then gradually phased out. DAZ Studio and Poser will probably go in different directions, yes, but legacy support will probably be phased out as new innovations are widely embraced.

yeah! What she said! My personal feelings on the issue are here in this particular forum already, though likely a couple years old.

">>"Even if Poser continues a long healthy life, DAZ is limited in what they can do with their figures by the limitations inherent in the Poser program" No they are limited by their own abilities, not Poser. They have been feeding that line a crap about it being Poser's fault for years." Hee hee. The VERY heart of my particular issue with them lies in that excerpt. I no longer argue the point. (although I just now deleted the argument cause it got me. I'm out)

It's unethical. Content incompatibility between Studio and Poser is unavoidable. Eventually, yes, you are correct, they eventually must go in different directions. In the meantime, we as their customers (meaning CL and DAZ customers) need to see support for what is already out there on both sides until we decide which of the two programs best meets our needs. As for whether or not it is a rip-off, I'm not sure. Cross-compatiblity is common in software programs. For example, Corel Painter opens native Photoshop files (it has since the beginning). It does a lot of the same things as Photoshop, but it also does its own things as well. Same with Word and WordPerfect (each can open the other's file format). We will probably see Poser format support in DAZ Studio until it has enough of its own community support to rest on its own laurels - mainly because of the investment DAZ already has in Poser-compatible content.

Don't most programs liscense the file formats they import. I would imagine so .. and I am unable to comment on whether or not that is being done as I have no idea. 8-) >>Studio is great for props and Mil FIgures. But it isn't trully able to compatible with Poser4 except in a very basic way. Right ... and that is precisely why we will see it going in a different direction. You can get Poser 4-compatible content in (legacy content), but as for the rest it will have to go in a different direction. We'll probably see legacy (ie: Poser 4 compatibility) support in DAZ Studio 2?? and Poser 7, if only to appease the community ... but after that is anyone's guess.

wait a sec. you don't mean I gotta liek start doing stuff for poser 5 or 6, do you? OMG OMG That's just, like, you know EWWWWWWW!!! All that extra work and stuff for those weird material thingies with nads and the spaghetti and stuff. No!! NEver!!! Long live Poser 4!!! tap tap whisper Oh. um, err... nevermind...

Hehehehe!!! ;-)

People can scream all they want. You can't just blantantly rip off another software package because the piblic wants you to.

Anton: I think you are a little confused - being compatable is not the same as ripping off software. If DAZ had ripped off Poser then there would be a law suit, patent issues, copyright issues, etc. Writing a program to do the same thing that someone else's program does and making your files compatable with the other company's files is neither a rip-off, nor unethical, immoral. What is questionable is intentional incompatability. Having more than one product available that does the same thing gives the consummer a choice - which is at the heart of modern commerce. Making those programs compatable is in the best interest of the consumer since it means that to be able to exchange/share/trade work they do not have to buy the program that happens to be most popular even if they don't like it. Incompatability is only of value to someone trying to create an effective monopoly - if nobody can export or import your files and you have a significant percent of the market then you force people to switch to your software to stay compatable - it's a kind of corprate blackmail. So far from making a program that is compatable with another company's program being a bad thing or unethical it is in fact what should be done in every case possible. Oh, and btw, you do NOT need to licience a file format in many cases - it depends on how the creator of the format protected it, but the fact that D|S exists and has not been sued into oblivion tells us that if the format is protected then clearly they have a licience. I mean it isn't as if CL doesn't know about D|S or something. If there was any kind of violation it would have been addressed by now. The fact that DAZ was not shut down proves that such a violation does not exist.

So if Poser is so crappy and limiting, then why on God's green Earth are they copying it? I fail to see how STudio makes figures better???????

I believe the point that has been made here several times [and indeed you even quoted it] is that DAZ began to work on putting out D|S because it was looking like Poser might die and if Poser died, then anyone [like for example DAZ] that had a business based on creating content for Poser would die too - unless they started providing an alternative program for their content to be used in. They didn't make D|S to be better than Poser, they didn't make it switch to better rigging systems, etc, they made it so that the content which they made for Poser would still be viable if Poser dissapeared. They made it so that their fate as a company was in their hands rather than being in the hands of another company. Surely this is not hard to understand? Would you rather have a job that depended only on your skills or a job that depended on what Joe down the street is doing - would you rather get paid based on the work you do or get paid based on what Joe does? I think most people would rather have their fate in their own hands and that is what DAZ chose. Message edited on: 07/16/2005 17:08

"So if Poser is so crappy and limiting, then why on God's green Earth are they copying it? I fail to see how STudio makes figures better???????" They made Victoria, Michael, and all of their older content specifically to be used with Poser, before D|S ever came out. They HAVE to make DAZ Studio somewhat similar just to ensure that their own creations work. :) Also, how could you make a figure posing and rendering program that's really so different from Poser? 3D modelers all say they're different, but I've tried tons of them and they all seem pretty similar to me. Of course, you're right in saying that D|S doesn't make the figures any better though. Now if the next versions of Victoria and Mike use D|S-specific technology, things could change. That's one of the reasons why I want to back DAZ Studio. I would rather know that the primary figures will always work as they should with my software than to have frills I will never use like the Hair and Face rooms. Just curious: can you completely mirror a pose in Poser 6, like what Firebirdz and D&M do with their pose collections? I just learned yesterday that it can be done in DAZ Studio, and was wondering if that's a standard feature in P6. Thanks, SnowS

Not quite sure what you're asking ... do you mean switching right and left sides, or making both sides the same? If so, yes.

Well said FireMonkey. Anton, (I promise not to call you Anson ;) ) let me first say I have always been impressed by your work and yourself ever since the old PFO days, (long before Renderosity) and have a lot of your stuff on my hard drive. I know it hurt getting fired from DAZ, but this vehement attitude of yours against them them is VERY disappointing. I must say I expected better from you. Coldrake

Wow Anton, you've really changed. Coldrake

Personally I think that both e-frontier and DAZ will stick to the .obj geometry format for a long time to come. I don't know if the .cr2/.pz2/etcetera formats are protected. I don't think so, 'cause if they are, most (if not all) merchants and freestuff providers are violating copyrights, and CL/E-frontier certainly would have done something about it. The tricky part is this: D|S can work with Poser content and Poser scenes - as long as they don't use P5/P6 specific options. Poser can not work with D|S content and D|S scenes, not even content/scenes that do not contain anything that's not present in P4. As long as D|S specific content has no distinct advantages over P4 content, merchants will not create D|S specific content - they'd cut out their Poser customer base, and no merchant in his right mind will do that. And even if D|S specific content HAS advantages over P4/PP, merchants will hesitate. We've seen this happen with P5 specific content: it took a long time and a lot of nagging by the community before merchants hesitantly started to make some (the freebie providers took the lead. Kudos to the freebie providers!). So what is going to happen? The most important point IMO is that D|S development started when the future of CL was threatened. Of course DAZ wanted to be sure that there was a program that could use DAZ content! Right now, Poser's future seems pretty bright. And the role of D|S has been degraded to that of a functional free demo - more functional than the Poser demos. If DAZ has been laying off D}S developers, it's probably because D|S development isn't as crucial to DAZ's continued existence as it seemed two years ago. What will DAZ do next? If they're smart, they'll bring Bryce up to date as soon as possible, and convert D|S to a Bryce plugin. That way, Bryce/D|S can be a low-cost alternative to Vue/Poser. Not as powerful, but not as pricey either. Or they could work on a decent Poser to Bryce workflow, like Vue already has. Maybe use the D|S base to create such a plugin. DAZ wouldn't hurt Poser/E-Frontier, but they certainly would become a strong Vue/e-on competitor. Time will tell.

Sorry Deecey, it's harder to explain without a picture. :) I mean to take a figure who's running to the left and mirror him so he's running to the right, with the arms, torso, neck, and head all swapped properly; as if the pose was originally created that way. All I could ever do in P4 was swap the left and right sides, which was useless. SnowS

Ah, I think I've got the visual now, SS ... hmmm, would be nice, wouldn't it?

a little competition can only be healthy for both programs, it's only when one decides to stop the other doing the same thing in it's own way, who knows but D/S may one day be a good product that will make me think of using it for more than just browsing at it's inner workings, but until that day i will stick with Poser

SnowSultan: a "complete mirror" isn't built right in P6, but it's easy to do using Python - and it's possible to start a Python script using a pose file. This is possible since PP. And as long as D|S does not support decent scripting, I won't take it seriously.

"I would rather know that the primary figures will always work as they should with my software than to have frills I will never use like the Hair and Face rooms." SS, ya know I like ya, but, um, err, well, the DAZ figures don't work as they should with the software already. Never have. It was an intentional decision, as well. Not bad, not good, just a decsion. But they don't.

So they swiched to their own app because they were limited by Poser but don't intend theirs to be any better... Okay. hehe No Anton, that isn't what I said, I said: they made it so that the content which they made for Poser would still be viable if Poser dissapeared. Nothing about being limited by Poser, I said there was a concern that if Poser died [and at one point it looked like it might] then if they didn't have an app that would handle their product, DAZ would die too. They didn't need something better, they don't need to compete with Poser at all really [though it's hard to put the hours in on code and not get a bit competitive] - all they needed [and still need] is to have a program that is compatable with their content in case Poser is suddenly orphaned. If Poser where to die unexpectedly [or even expectedly] for any reason, then D|S would be the only thing available [as far as I know] that all the Poser figures, etc, could work on. It's not a question of being limited by Poser as long as Poser is there - it's the fact that without D|S they would be dead in the water if Poser ever stopped being there.

Ah, thanks for letting me know about the mirroring. You can do it in Studio without scripting, but I didn't know if P6 had it built in or not. One more little reason for me to stick with Studio. :) "SS, ya know I like ya, but, um, err, well, the DAZ figures don't work as they should with the software already. Never have." Haha...er, what? INJ/REM poses work, they pose as well as can be expected from the mesh...what don't they do correctly? SnowS

Studio breaks fingers. Maybe fixed in this last version release of Studio but D|S has done weird things to Unimesh figures for a long time and D|S update beta's haven't always addressed the issues. I haven't used D|S for 2 releases now, just see the posts at Daz forums and elsewhere and tend not to go check for myself. I got tired of being a Beta tester for each new release of D|S. and yet when Daz bought Bryce and put it in the store, 1 week ager their was a Bryce D|S importer plugin. almost 3 years as a beta, but 1 week they can do an importer. Someone said earlier Daz bite off too much, lost focus. oh well, it's a bit moot. Lightwave vs. 3d studio max vs maya. Photoshop vs. gimp. goes away to play Doom v1 in DOS emulator mode on WinXP

"Haha...er, what? INJ/REM poses work, they pose as well as can be expected from the mesh...what don't they do correctly?" IT'S NOT THE MESH! gezz when will people stop saying that. It is the implementation that Daz has chosen to use for thier poser products. Dodger and his Aeon figures has shown that it's not the mesh that is the problem. It's grouping, Joints etc.

I don't think survival is justification for ripping something off You know anton, you keep saying that as if it was some kind of mantra you cling to. Although I'm starting to think it is pointless, I'll say it again: Making a program that does the same basic thing as another company's program is not ripping them off. Making a program that has file compatability with another company's program is also not ripping them off. Let me put this another way - the logic you are using here is the same as if I said that all car manufactorures other than Ford are ripping off Ford [since Ford was the first internal combusion engine car that was made] After all, they all build cars which carry people and luggage, etc, on roads using basically the same engineering principles. They have IC engines, they use the same gas, they have tires that are made in the same general way.... need I go on? And in case you think that they ARE ripping off Ford, then think of this - if Henry Ford had not had any competition there would have been no reason to improve his car. The only reason he started painting cars different colours [he felt black should be good enough for everyone and stood by that for quite some time] was that other cars started being made with a choice of colours and he had to change or lose sales. The reason Ford went to the fully enclosed concept was because others where doing it. Henry Ford himself could not see any reason why a car needed to go much faster than a horse drawn buggy, but he had to improve speed because others were. In short, we would still be driving something not much better than a model-A or a model-T today if it hadn't been for others building cars. If someone decompiles a program and steals the actual code then yes, they are ripping someone off and btw, they could and would be charged for it - it's a criminal offence ... so tell me, how many of the DAZ staff have gone to prison because of D|S? Zero? Oh, guess they didn't do that then. The actual code is the property of the ones who write it [or those they sell it to] but the concept is not. The idea of a program that allows you to pose and render figures belongs to no one. If you are going to insist on beatting that same drum then I susgest you provide varifyable proof that DAZ has stolen something from eF - proof that they are using something they have no right to. So far I have seen none. And the fact that both DAZ and eF have publicly stated that there is no strife between them tends to go a long way towards suggesting that no such thing has happened. Therefore, to continue to imply that DAZ has stolen something [that IS what "ripping off" means after all] is nothing more than noise unless it is backed up with some real proof.

"Haha...er, what? INJ/REM poses work, they pose as well as can be expected from the mesh...what don't they do correctly?" Sticking strictly to the P4 features for which they were designed: Walk Designer Figure Height Default Poses There are other features in Poser 4 as well. Those, however, are the biggest ones. Simply put, a figure that was designed to work with the program would have had those capabilities. They don't. Never have. (and again, lest someone decides I'm bashing: it's not a bad thing, its not a good thing. IT's just a thing. Get over it.)

"Let me put this another way - the logic you are using here is the same as if I said that all car manufactorures other than Ford are ripping off Ford [since Ford was the first internal combusion engine car that was made] After all, they all build cars which carry people and luggage, etc, on roads using basically the same engineering principles." Um, actually, that is Ford's postion. Has been since 1924, when they sued for infringement of patents on several carmakers. It's also incorrect. Ford was not even close to the first with the IC engine. Ford's contribution to automaking was mass production and efficiency of such. tsk tsk "so tell me, how many of the DAZ staff have gone to prison because of D|S? Zero? Oh, guess they didn't do that then. " well, technically, guess is correct. For one, you'd have to be aware of it. Unlikely you would be. For another, it wouldn't result in jail time for the programmers unless it was established they acted independently. For yet a third, the most likely result would be court imposed financial penalty, not jail time. And, lastly, it assumes that they aren't simply waiting for it to go gold. Since Only EFA can pursue it, and the choice of when to do is strictly theirs, it is not unreasonable to think that they are letting them dig a grave. Thoretically speaking, of course. The point being that, um, ya muffed it. giggles Hell of a try, though.

Well, I'm opposed to DAZ Studio. I don't use it. However, I've been aware of some basic problems with how it treats files that Poser 4-6 have no problems with, problems that aparently aren't going to get fixed (like the 3-polygons with a common edge hole problem), plus other incompatabilitys that deal with how it is coded (like it will not use Joint Setting poses). I think DAZ Studio made sense when DAZ started it, as it looked like Curious Labs was going to go under, but it doesn't anymore. While the idea of a "free" Poser program to get new users into the fold is an excellent, it would be better served by E-Fronteir making Poser 4 free, at P-4 is Poser Compatable, after all. I think DAZ should abandon DS, and devote the energy to something more useful to the Poser community.

Though I haven't used DAZ Studio much (I like all of the Poser bells and whistles too much! LOL), I do feel that there is a place for it, and that it still makes sense for DAZ to go ahead with it. If only for the benefits that good healthy competition offers for the consumer. Without competition, things stagnate. There is no incentive to "make it better" or to "do it different." Competition gives you the impetus to build a better mouse trap, the drive to be innovative, the satisfaction of knowing that you've created something new. And, of course, we benefit from it ... I think it's exciting that things will branch out!

I don't think it makes sense for DAZ to go ahead with it. I think it's too big a project for them. I don't see how they are going to make D|S honestly competitive with Poser, plus bring Bryce into the 21st century, and create and support the state of the art human figures that are their core business.