I should know better than to step into the middle of a fire storm like this, but when I see misinformation and rumors being started and proliferated I feel I should set the record straight. Last night when I saw this thread developing, I wanted to step in then and point out that it doesnt need to be a choice of Poser or Studio but I had other obligations that prevented me from doing that.

First of all, from the inception of DAZ|Studio, we have never positioned it as a Studio vs. Poser product. I tried to look for some of my original posts on the subject but I couldnt figure out how to do it. As I recall, our statements were essentially that Studio would be a Posing and Rendering application. It actually reached that level about 1.5 to 2 years ago. Our purpose for Studio was to provide a tool that would help to expand this community and the DAZ customer base. It is doing that. We have had thousands of new people enter this community by way of Studio. (I know that many of them have even gone on to purchase Poser after downloading Studio.) I hope that we have only scratched the surface in this regard. A larger community will bring larger scale development of products and technology and ultimately more choice for customers.

Why did DAZ develop DAZ|Studio? I think a few of the reasons have already been touched on, but I will hit the highlights (not in any particular order). The first is market expansion (as stated above). Second is the opportunity to innovate and have impact on software that our content can be used in. Third is the ability to offer an integrated solution option for customers (DAZ no longer needs to sell Poser in order to sell our content). Fourth is the ability for other developers to significantly contribute to technical functionality through high level scripting and a strong SDK environment. Not to mention, were enjoying the DAZ|Studio project.

I mentioned DAZ|Studios SDK. A key goal is that D|S be an open and friendly environment to other developers, extensible through scripts and plug-ins. Were particularly excited about this because weve seen what this community can produce even without such tools. Innovations such as ERC by Rbtwhiz and Nerd, Mat Pose files by DAZ, morph injection by Drax, full hand scaling by Michael Lane not to mention the consistent improvement of Poser products (in UVs, joints, materials, morphs, etc.) by DAZ and many, many others.

It is also been great to see how this community environment fosters and spreads such innovations, leading to further ideas and improvements. For example, Ajax helped popularize EasyPose (a form of ERC), Anton helped popularize BodyHandles (although I believe someone else created BodyHandles), DAZ helped popularize morph injection (created by Drax). Its easy to see that weve all come a lot further than any of us could have come alone, and DAZ is grateful to be a part of such an innovative and growing community. In fact, one of the major difficulties in this market is just that theres so much to be done. (This is ultimately a good thing.) DAZ Studio is designed from the ground up to open accessibility for enhancements from developers through an amazingly powerful script ability and detailed SDK.

As a result, version 1.0 has taken much longer than expected to develop. It is much more robust than was the original scope. We have ended up with significant feature creep along with underestimated timelines. We expect that a lot of the noticeable growth will come when the SDK is completed and accessible by outside developers. We also have a few unannounced features that will be in the version 1.0 release candidate.

Someone mentioned above To me Studio is to Poser, what Renda was to V3. Actually the two are very different. DAZ|Studio uses the Poser file formats (as well as other formats), and in doing so follows established legal precedent in the software industry. Renda contained actual code from V3 in her files. This topic could be a whole other discussion, but from all of our legal research on the subject DAZ has strong legal footing to be able to use the formats we are using. And as far as the other functionality of DAZ|Studio being an infringement, unless any of the functionality (posing, rendering, etc.) is covered under patent protection, then we are fine. And if we are in trouble for having this functionality then every other 3D application is in trouble as well.

Taylor Wilson left DAZ a few months ago. For about 8 months prior to his departure, his focus had been mostly on Bryce development and other programmers have been working on Studio. Taylor will be missed greatly but is still offering his help to DAZ for any high level concerns that we may have from time to time. Studio is still moving ahead as planned. I am sure that Posers development will also move along now that its original creator, Larry Weinberg has moved on to Adobe.

I hope that this post will be helpful in clearing up misinformation. I also hope that readers can see that a few people contributing to this topic obviously have ulterior motives in what they are saying. Their history of trolling and harassing DAZ is out there for people to read for themselves. Just look back at other posts where DAZ is mentioned and you will see their messages there, too.

DAZ has never hidden our motives. We are a business. We are trying to grow our business and keep it viable and successful. When we do a sale or promotion we want it to be successful. I believe that the majority of our customers actually like our sales. I sure like finding good deals when I go to stores like Costco, and I like knowing that theyre making enough money to provide more value to me in the future. At DAZ we have learned that our success is strictly based on how well we provide what our customers are looking for (good products and service). If we dont provide what they want, they will stop buying our products. DAZ will continue our efforts to provide the best products that we can, knowing that if we dont we will not remain in business. We love what we do. We love the support that we have found in this community. Hopefully DAZ and E-Frontier will both find success in our respective businesses and neither one will have to fail for the other to succeed.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Producitons