While I agree with everything you said, destro75, I do have a correction to make.  They work hard to add the features that they like - while ignoring the vast userbase when they request features and bugfixes.  This has been endemic for a very long time.  Great, there is now dynamic hair/cloth, shader nodes, IBL/AO, and so on.  But there has been no change to undos or rigging or anything else in about a decade.

And the idea that a complete codebase rewrite requires them no longer to support the vast content already available is hogwash (!!).  There is no law (legal or scientific) that prevents them from moving to a new paradigm while not continuing to support the current one.  Call it 'figures v2' or something, but if they can hook in all of those third-party additions, then they can 'hook in' a new figure layout (say with NURBS/cage tech and a better rigging algorithm).

At least e-frontier seems to be more competent and have a sincere interest in moving Poser forward. :)

Robert

I for one have been heard and answered by e-frontier customer support and so on, even at the wee hours of the night. So I do believe people there are concerned and do their best at helping out, but, without knowing their priorities, it would be difficult for me to state an opinon on what they are doing is right or wrong, or what is getting fixed or not.
Anyway, after the whole "Hexagon 2: is it still a beta?" fiasco, they probably want to to get everything as bug-free as possible before an oficial update on anything -be it a program or a figure or whatever.

"Promises, Integrity, Honesty"

Hmm.  I dunno.  They're late on a few things.  July just ended a few days ago, for pete's sake.  By that benchmark I should be questioning the 'integrity & honesty' of 99 per cent of the people I do business with.  After rereading the original post I don't see enough substance there to make much of a fuss about EF or CP.

On a somewhat related thread, has anyone ever received a response from eF tech support? I contacted them weeks ago about several issues, some of which have surfaced in various forums without resolution since then, so I know I'm not the only one with the issue - e.g., not OpErr. I've never even had an acknowlegement that the email was received.

By contrast, I had, as did many others, problems with Virtual Fashion when it was first released. I contacted Reyes on Saturday night, surprisingly had a response on Sunday, further communications with a knowledgeable and courteous gentleman on Monday and clarified/solved all the questions/problems by Tuesday. They were even amenable to suggestions for future enhancements.

Is eF so overwhelmed that it takes this long to address questions?

<"))%%%<<

Folks,

Please keep this discussion civil.

There is room for everyone to express and discuss their differing opinions without recourse to name-calling, surely?

Please remember this key adage: "Talk about the issues, not about the person."

Thanks.

No one can or should deny the fact that ef is good for Poser. They have done quite a bit for the Poser app. Going to trade shows is part of buisness and may add something good to Poser.

But, this figure content has been a bust for them. Thier figures are very poorly done. Some say they do have beta testers, wheres the proof in that. They must be beta wanabe testers that have absolutly no Idea on how figures are suppose to work. Looking cute in zero pose or face shots, does not make workable figures. You can't use them for animations unless completly clothed with long sleves and such. They really should have fixed the originals that are quite popular and that would have given them all the time they wanted to create the new ones, be it for P7 or what ever.

Now , ANIME STUDIO as a possable addon(is that one word or two?) to poser would be great, but you need figures that can be animated, oops. That's OK, I bought ToonBoom 2 weeks ago so I'm already set in that department.

I will be buying P7 when it comes out. I seem to be one of the lucky ones that never had the issues in upgrades as some have had. I've been using Poser from version 4 and have bought each upgrade from the start. I have nothing but praise to say about how ef has handled Poser. I have completely lost faith in how they handle the content.

weren't the figures made by an outside agency, not ef ????

I'm talking James, HJessie, Mikei, koji, and now the new ones

Quote - weren't the figures made by an outside agency, not ef ????

I'm talking James, HJessie, Mikei, koji, and now the new ones

Yep.  Always been the case.  Curious Labs contracted with Zygote for p2-4 figures.  Curious Labs and Daz got into it over Don and Judy which were reworked p4 figures.  P6 james and jessi, as well as miki, teri yuki 1/2 are all contracted out.

e-frontier's freebies are all contracted out too.

Beta testers aren't necessarily responsible for the release of a product that has flaws, bugs, or is incomplete. Their job is to report what they find, however, testers typically don't make the final release call. I don't happen to know how it works at e-Frontier, but the widespread contention that "testers aren't doing their job or don't know what they're doing" regarding products with flaws is potentially unfair.

You may be right, the beta testers could be doing thier jobs and the rest of the department is not doing anything about it. 

My point is, there is a major breakdown from modeling to release. It doesn't matter that the figures are contracted out. As I said, the content is poorly handled.

Y'know, Olivier.. I just DEEPLY REGRETTED something I just bought (those shaders) because I usually wouldn't touch a merchant with your attitude with a ten foot pole.

I seriously mourn the fact that I didn't read this thread BEFORE I spent those $30 because in that case I wouldn't have used them on YOU.

I've so far admired you and your knowledge, but man oh man...

And this isn't an attempt to suck up to Mizrael, it's no big secret I regard him as a very dear friend. This thread just makes me sick. And not from Miz' very valid concerns.

I still haven't figured out just what his purpose was for leaving RDNA to come to this thread. I can't think of a single issue I ever had with him to justify his trolling me.

Yeah I had an argument with Ynsaen on his site over a year ago, but even she and I have made up over that issue so I don't understand what his issue with me is.

I hardly ever post to RDNA anymore because for the most part, most of my postings have been ignored as far as I can ascertain. The few that have been answered were answered by Olivier and I had no indication from his replies that he didn't like me or anything. That being said, his replies here seemed to have come from out of left field and I don't understand why he even bothered. I certainly wasn't muddying up RDNA by posting here.

This was interresting. Now, that's amusing. Please, go on, develop  your point of view.

Looks and sounds to me like he's written himself one of those stupid AI Alice Psychiatrist programs that people find amusing in their non-responsive answers. He obviously has nothing to contribute and is somehow amused by his own idiocintricities.

That's a start. Then?

Quote - > Quote - You can't be mad at them for heading to Siggraph. They are out at these conventions to build the user base. That results in more revenue for the company, which allows them the resources to grow the product.

Actually yeah I can be. From what's been said at CP, their entire creative staff from modelors to website design staff went! Sounds more like a free company paid vacation to me. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure someone said that they'd ALL gone to SigGraph and that just seems a bit foolish to me when they've just done a major site redesign and released much ballyhoo'd new figures with loads of issues. Someone SHOULD have been left to mind the store in both of these areas.

I can vouch for the fact that it was NO VACATION. 
Everyone who works an exhibit booth a a trade show like that works thier butts off, and the EF staff was no exception.  I went to SIGGRAPH just as an attendee, to see the exhibits, and learn and experience as much as I could.  I can tell you that just being in the exhibit hall was exhausting.  I can only imagine what it must have been like for the people who actually worked there.  It seemed to me that most of them worked the entire day, every day, without even a lunch break.

Well apparently Tori's having at least 1 day of  "Vacation" while she's there, she's even said as much. Convention or not, they do all get some free time and their airfare paid for by the company to see Boston. I'm quite aware of the work that goes into conventions, but I'm also aware of the benefits of company paid travel. I didn't work in the airline industry for as many years as I did and not know what fun can be had even on "Business" trips.

A Summer spent in Dallas for training was one of the highlights of my travels and we were in class for 8 hours a day for 6 weeks, but we still had time off to have fun and it was more like a vacation than spending those 6 weeks would have been just gonig to the regular job would have been. I'm not trying to paint the convention as all fun and games inspite of comments to the contrary, but it's not all work and no play either.

In anycase, as far as it goes, it still doesn't justify leaving the home front with no staff to do neccesary work. That was and remains my reason for bringing it up in the first place.

best of luck to them in boston. last I checked, it was 98F in the shade. referring to claw's message above, I was sorry to see anton won't be working on poser 7. anton's v4 rumour page seems to indicate that either daz didn't get an advance copy of P7, or that they are designing v4 as if they believe there's no change in joint-handling between P7 and P6. personally I dunno, but it would be nice if they could finally rewrite the entire code ab initio .

Hehehe... Well I doubt they'll melt and a day sitting by the hotel pool is still a day by the pool.

Quote - Personally, I find the face room a waste of time. Face camera - morph dials - all I need.

hear, hear

Well Face Camera - Morph Dials WOULD be all, if the characters contained face shaping morphs. Which they DON'T. So in that respect, the face room is very much needed. AND it's a great tool as well, if you take a moment to learn how to use it.

Of course, the missing face room creates a market for Face Shaping morph packs G so... But even then... I WANT face room support for the G2 characters!

And what's wrong with wanting it all? I like the faceroom and I like addon morphs. They both have their place in my runtimes! Addon morphs have been more useful to me since the Poser ability of grouping them to understandable groups was added. I find grouped dials so much easier to cope with.

Trekkie --

Thanks for clearing that up. I've been trying to figure out why "Olivier" sounded familiar (aside from the obvious). So the supercilious mind-onanist in this thread is the same guy who wrote the IBL tutorial? Sigh. Why do I keep being surprised when talented people turn out to also be jerks?

M

As far as the thread title goes, it's a bit idealistic to expect honesty and integrity from a business. They exist to take your money with as little cost to themselves as possible. Expecting the business to be honest and have integrity is like expecting a pig to stay clean. That said, let's not forget that there is a difference, a huge difference, between a business and the people who work there. The business has its own values and objectives that may even conflict with those of the people who work there. The Japanese had a solution for this problem, with a corporate culture in which the individual took responsibility for the morals of the company (hence the president of JAL "shamed" by the loss of a plane), but they are now Americanized enough to stop that silliness and get on with screwing their customers (hence Sony's unpunished foray into your back orifice). Businesses do not have morals, ethics, or consciences, any more than cars do. Americans have used that as an excuse to leave their ethics, etc. in the parking lot, but that's a whole different issue.

I have nothing against the folks at e-F or CP. Personally. But they are not "the company." Companies are not the sum of their faces. I may get irritated with an individual while that individual is lying to me, but I don't forget that he is just doing his job. And part of the job is taking strokes when you lie. Of course the problem is that the messenger often isn't the origin of the lie, and I think that applies here. The origin of the lie is some middle+ manager who told it to the messenger knowing that the messenger will be more believable if he thinks he's telling the truth. The manager is closer to being "the company" than the messenger is, and farther from having to face the people lied to and cheated. Welcome to "big" business.

That said, e-F has done some good things with Poser, even if that doesn't mean I'd trust them to babysit my kids. And they have stuck to the low-hanging fruit while doing it. Like the ugly, moronic brother we are willing to defend, Poser has some incredible, legacy crap in it, some of it hopelessly stupid, like the fact that the Editing Tools added since PP4 do not have their own icons. This may seem trivial, but have you ever forgotten that the Trans In/Out icon on your screen is actually the Magnifier? So, faithful acolytes of MS, the Poser company continues the tradition of adding chrome to a Model-T engine. And why not? We complain, but we buy, and when we run into something like the bugs in Judy or Jessi, the faithful queue up to intone forgiveness, charity, and patience -- even though the last has never, not once, been rewarded.

In business, forgiveness means no impact on the bottom line, charity is free money, and patience means ignore them and they'll forget about it. You want clean pigs? Then get a firehose and wade into the muck.

M

Regarding beta-testers: Blaming the testers for problems is hacking pretty low on the food chain. Let's pose, as a hypothesis, a beta-testing system like this:

The testers cannot see the data on reported bugs, to know if the problem they encountered is already reported. The company actually decides to close a tester discussion forum they had used on the previous version, so testers can't see or talk to each other. The test forms are hopelessly tedious, requiring the tester to fill out redundant data like screen size, etc., which is not relevant to the bug being reported and could just as easily be stored permanently in a database. Once the bug is reported, there is no acknowledgement of receiving it, no communication about fixing it, and no request, eventually, for a regression test. Rarely, the tester gets an email from the company's QA manager asking a question about some bug or other. Eventually the product is released and the tester's bug has been ignored.

I can't imagine a test program actually being run that stupidly. But I was in one once; not a single fantasy in the description.

M

Okay, so I appear to be a "stinky trolling jerk". :D

That's great. So, you had to be 3 to get this? A nice example of collaborative work, really. ;)

Well, I guess this is the fair price to pay for telling some people here that they'd better invest their energy into masteing their tools instead of vomiting all the time on other one's hard works, accusing without prooves, spreading false rumours, manipulating people and making issues for being politely redirected toward a brighter plan of existence... :)

Bah! No harm, folks! I won't make any issue regarding this. I keep issues for the people I care about (you know, those alien stinky trolling jerks who help others from time to time). In your funny lttle gang, I see no one who could ever be worth having any kind of issue. Sorry if that hurts your ego, kids: that was not my intention. :)

God bless you! All! And may He help you to find more constructive ways of expression!

I wasn't going to respond to this thread anymore because it was never my intent to turn this into a flame war. Initially, I responded because I don't like the idea of people taking cheap shots at folks that are working their tails off doing the best they can. Ok, I was a fool to think I could change anyone's opinion on this board. But I'm responding here to the latest bashing of Oliver. You see, I stick up for my friends like some here stuck up for Miz. So in that, we have something in common.

Oliver, for as much as you folks want to bust his chops is one of the hardest workers in CG/Poser that I've known, and I've known a few. He is always 100% giving with any knowledge he has. His constant encouragement and patience to others who are struggling is something that is in short supply in this world. So bust on him if you will folks, but you're dead wrong and blind to reality.

I used to spend a lot of time on this board and decreased that because I was fed up with this kind of whining backstabbing behavior that seemed to be growing as time went on. Life's too short folks! All I'm saying is you can chose to try to make Poser and yourselves as creatives better by working hard and together for those goals, or you can continue on like this thread and bash the hell out of those who are working at it. My suggestion, quit complaining and ripping people and figure out how each one of you individually can make it better.

My best wishes to you all in your efforts!
-jay

Olivier --

Congratulations. I had not gone so far as to agree with Trekkie that I would regret purchasing anything from you, but thanks for the incentive. I have the Poncho, and I will treasure it always. The shaders just fell off my wish list. That's Ok, though, who needs customers?

I try to make big concessions for the fact that people are communicating in a language they haven't mastered. I remember how inarticulate I would be if I were trying to say this in French. But attitude shines through, sometimes, and posting laconic, patronizing pseudo-wisdom that contributes nothing to the conversation and is clearly intended to do nothing except piss people off (Vous compren', 'pisser'?) -- that's an international language.

Sad: You have made no arguments for the people you care about, done nothing to counter the things said here, and managed to make yourself look like somebody I would rather I'd never met. Welcome to the club, take a seat in back, please.

Salud.
M

Let's not forget that the G2 Passport Preview is just that: a preview. It's just the base figure with some textures. I'm sure that more complete G2 figures will be replaced in the not too distant future, and these will have morphs and face room support. Although, us Passport subscribers were promised that G2 would be free to us, so I hope that we at least get a hefty discount on the final figure (I wouldn't like to pay full price just to get face room support for a figure I've already gotten for free).

G2 are FREE for passport users.

They DO have morphs, just like the G1 had.

G2 have much better joints than G1.

G2 WORK in the face room (at least James2 does, I've just tested it, not sure for the 2 other guys but that wouldn't surprise me they do).

CP and EF are 2 seperate entities.

CP does not release any product. It's a DISTRIBUTOR.

Just to bring some facts that should have been reported by the so called "victims of Olivier's ugliness".

Now a little example of manipulation, based on the same model as this thread:

"so you see, this whole thread has no other purpose than leading people to feel confused with EF and CP. For what motivations? Well, when you realize that these are the same guys who piss on Daz, RDNA, EF and CP, would it be in this thread or in oprevious ones, you get the picture. In fact these companies share a common point. A coomon issue related to their Lord. See what I mean?"

No proof.

100% bullshit, would I say.

But I'm pretty sure that some of you have some serious doubts now, right?

That's the kind of effects a manipulations can create.  And that's exactly what this whole thread is.

And finally, for the guys and gals who wish to tell me they won't buy my stuff because I'm a ugly person that should be burnt in the old fashion, money is not a major goal in life, you know. My only concern is to provide people the perfect tools that can help them making nice pics. If you happen to make nice images and share them with the community, I'll be happy. If you buy my stuff I'll be happy too. If you don't that won't make me sad at all. I hope you can decide what you need to get or do without  any childish consideration. Not for my personal business, no. But for your own life, I truly hope so.

I leave you there, folks! Go back to Poser or any other app and make some nice pieces of Art! You'll feel much better! :)

TYPO: at least KOJI2 works in the face room. Sorry.

The official postion at CP has a familiar ring: The G2 release is just a beta, and our bugs will be addressed for the final release.

Also, there has been no hint I've seen that they will renege on their promises that Kelvin and Olivia will be free to Passport owners, James and Jessi G2 will be free to P6 owners, and Koji and Miki G2 will be free to owners of the original of each.  If they  weasel out of any of those deals, I will be through defending them.

M

So finally something I can address and not vacuous semispiritual nonsense purporting to be enlightenment. About damn time! Olivier you're attributing motives to my complaints that in all seriousness do not exist. Placing kharmic blame on me for spending my money with EF & CP is just plain stupid. What manipulation could I possibly achieve by pointing out where a company and it's subsidiary have fallen down on their promises?  If there is any manipulation intended it's to make that company aware that it's customers don't like being lied to.

You can distinguish between CP as a distributor and EF as the parent company all you like. They're owned by the same people though and that makes them one corporate entity in most peoples books. I've already stated that I'm aware that the broken promises are originating above the CP Moderator's heads and don't blame them for making the announcements and promises they've made. I'm over it and I'm over your superior attitude as well. From now on I'll speak with my wallet. I reward honesty and integrigty and I'm not so highly invested in this hobby of mine that I can't find something more entertaining. Have a nice day.

Without going back to find it in this thread, I also recall someone asking me "What Have You Done for poser today". I don't remember who and don't really care. What I have and haven't contributed to this community has no bearing on my status as part of the community, IE: whether or not I'm in the community or out of it.

For the record though, I hosted freebies up until February of this year for many other people in this community at lostin3d.com until I had to close it for financial reasons. That site was up and completely free to the community for 6 years! I never once asked for a dime to host for other people.

Also, I've released several freebies of my own morphs, characters and objects and still share a few of them via my yahoo briefcase. Just because I've never been a merchant or never charged a dime for my contribution that doesn't make my contribution any less real or valuable than those of a merchant who's just out for a quick buck. I'd say I'd earned quite enough Kharma in my contributions to this community thank you very much.

As for telling me to invest more time in developing my talents and less time in threads like this, that begs the assumption that I'm not doing it and is over the line. Most of you people who are claming I'm somehow misbehaving or have some deep dark hidden anti-Poser agenda don't even know me.

miz, regarding status, most of us try to ignore the fact that there's an informal, unwritten pecking order in the "poser community" that has developed over the last 10 years. unfortunately, some will use it as a weapon. personally I'd rather have us all equal under the sun, rather than having some more equal than others, but it's a fact of life in the "poser community". :lol:

I have been consistently impressed by what Poser can do. While I'm incl;ined to see Poser 6 as being more like a Poser 5.5, jumped to a full version number for reasons of corporate branding, not stupid reasons but not really relevant, I've decided that there are two areas that the Poser world need to pay attention to. 1: Interface design. Windows makes a big thing about having a UI which can be tweaked to suit the user: colours, font sizes, all that sort of stuff. Apart from a few menu windows, Poser ignores this, you can't even pick a text and background colour withing Poser, and I sometimes struggle with the contrast I'm stuck with in the l;ibrary menues. A lot of this seems to be stored in XML files, so it doesn't look impossible to make this easier for a user to adjust. I'd really like to be able to read the names and numbers on parameter dials more easily. Being able to pick different colours for the font and background would make a huge difference. 2; the Manual. The P6 Manual is an expansion of the P5 Manual. And the Shader section is no more than a summary. For simple things, like the Add math-node, you hardly need anything more complicated. And a full explanation of the fbm node would trigger a full-scale MEGO, with added mayo topping. But there's not even a pointer to a source on the maths. That's only one example. The Hair Room was apparently completely misunderstood by whoever wrote the manual. Dynamic cloth is pretty intimidating. People here havc managed to explain a lot, but there seems to be a general weakness--it's not just e-Frontier--on explaining things. I've tried to find stuff out, and where I've discovered something interesting I've tried to publish and explain. But it's almost as if Poser is being aimed by the geeks at the professional market, priced to sell at amateurs, and nobody bothers to bridge that gap. Not even extra info on the web site. (And I could rant to as much length about the usefulness of DAZ 3D readmes.) Look at what started this thread: it does rather look as though these people are poor communicators. They're not the people you want writing software manuals. I like to think I've got some abiulity to get information out of a manual, but there's so much that isn't in the manual for me to discover. And there's times I feel that I'm doing something in some bizarre way, like going through a .cr2 with a text editor, not because there are no tools, but because it's the only way I can see of finding out what is going on. Poser sometimes feels more like an achaeo;pgical dig than computer science.

You're right Nancy, but I personally ignore status. I don't tell people with no galleries that they have no business judging art either. The mentality of Stranger as Outsider or Enemy is one of the weakest stances in socialising that I know of.

Just because you don't know someone or don't know what they've done, it does not equate to evil motives, inexperience or lack of contribution. The lack of knowlege is on the part of the person or persons who isn't informed but making judgement calls regardless of their own knowlege of the situation. That's why that "What have you done for Poser today" remark was so uncalled for. That person obviously wasn't aware of what I've contributed and that's their failing for not looking into it before judging my contribution.

I'm sure that I only know a small percentage of the contributors to this community and only those who focus on areas like Sci-Fi, Fantasy and the Poser default figures that I'm interested in personally. That doesn't make others contributions less valuable just because I personally don't know what they are. I just don't see it as pertinant though. It's a red herring used to judge a penguin's value by as far as I'm concerned.

Quote - TYPO: at least KOJI2 works in the face room. Sorry.

I just loaded Koji G2 into the Face Room. Got a message saying that it was not a supported figure (same as you get if you try to load a Daz figure). You can do things in the Face Room with Koji 2, but in no way would I describe the results as being satisfactory.

you can't even pick a text and background colour withing Poser,
Surely you realize that being able to pick text and background color would require a complete re-write of the code from the ground up!??!

:) M

a general weakness--it's not just e-Frontier--on explaining things.
You are too charitable. It's not weakness, it's laziness. The moronic notion that software is self-explanatory has been around for decades, and since hiring competent writers to write informative manuals is expensive, and it's pointless when the user has been trained to think they can get along without one, documentation is junk.

The worst of it is, if you ask tough questions, you will generally discover that the programmers can't answer them. I assume this is because 1) the original coders did not comment their code, 2) there are no legacy design specs, 3) the new code was not written with clear, measurable objectives. Just thank Dog that the followers of Microsoft (which makes a ton of money publishing documents on programming that they don't read) aren't coding the controls for nuclear power plants.
.... uh, ARE they?

M

Hopefully the silence on P7 means that they are actually doing the core code rewrite that was supposed to happen for P6.

Quote - Hopefully the silence on P7 means that they are actually doing the core code rewrite that was supposed to happen for P6.

when and where was it said that a code rewrite was "supposed to happen for P6"?

I've seen lots of people demanding it, and many threatening they will not upgrade if it doesn't happen but i have never seen any info from CL nor e-f that said it would happen.

If I recall it was mentioned a rewrite for P5. One of the top management or owner, had stated that in a thread somewhere here. That was just before all hell broke loose with the change of personel and quick unfinishe P5 release. I'm sure you could find the P5 thread here if you looked hard enough. I'm not going to. It really doesn't matter anymore any how, don't think it will happen even in P7.

Gee, I thought the core rewrite for poser was already done -  called Daz Studio, or something like that? ;-)

Which I will take P6 over DS any day.

Meanwhile, the industry marches on. I'll give EF about  6 - 12 months to take Poser to a whole other level - or I will.....bitch and complain, and then give them a few more months....

Given EF's ever expanding portfolio of software products (many of which are good) I hope they have the pockets to do more than a service release for Poser next. Or mabe they will be too busy?

The optimist in me says there is a bright future for Poser and EF - they will take all these programs, such as Shade, Manga, Motion Artist, and integrate them into a tightly bound STUDIO 3D graphics / Animation Studio App that will Rock the world.

The pessimist in me says EF saw a great cash cow in the vast Poser User Community - a built in marketing mailing list for all the programs they have imported for "western" distribution - while being content to try and grab some dollars from Daz through Content Paradise.

Do we really need more figures? or and application like Virtual Fashion - that is very over priced for it's capabilities?

JP

There's three things looming that will kill Poser, as it is currently. 1: Windows Vista (and OS/X) 2: 64-bit computing 3: Processor speed depending on multicore processors. There's going to have to be support for that, or Poser is going nowhere. I could see P6 turning into a Poser Artist 2, but it would be hard to leverage Poser into sales of other products if it's a 32-bit, single core, development dead-end

I suspect that the pure-Vista version of Poser will be P8.

As for P7......frankly, I don't have a clue about what ef is going to do.  So I won't waste my time in pre-judging a software that doesn't exist in the Marketplace yet.  I'll judge it after I see it.  However,  based upon my very positive experience with P6: I'm not staying up nights owing to any anxiety on the subject.  I believe that ef will do an excellent job with P7.

But being an optimist with a positive view of things isn't the current forum fad (when was it ever?)......so it's uncool to offer any (choke......) praise.  To some -- bitterness has a taste which is far superior to that of chocolate.  It must be superior -- because they indulge themselves in it so very, very often.

Some few of us will actually enjoy the products which we pay for.  And we are sheep-like enough not to feel like the companies involved have cheated us because they (horror of horrors !!!! )*   MADE MONEY* while they were pleasing us all with the new toys which they have provided for us so that we can while away our idle time in pointless self-indulgence.  As a matter of fact -- it's all so pointless that it's cool to hang around the forums all of time pointing out to the rest of us (over and over again) just how incredibly pointless our behavior is........here -- let me spend my time kicking over your virtual sand castle(s) for you............because you deserve it for being so -- whatever it is that you are that I don't like.........

Making money is evil.  Everybody knows that.  Because it is a fact.

Personally, I'm looking for good things from ef.  And from DAZ.  And I hope that they make a profit, too.

Taking some time and not saying anything about P7 is smart, as far as I'm concerned. I find P6 quite stable for the most part. I wouldn't mind another SR but I think that is something all users would like. Let P7 happen when it happens.

Well personally I don't feel cheated just because a company "made money" of whatever tey're selling. After all, that's the whole PURPOSE of selling stuff. I mean.. I make money on my products here (money I for a large part promptly use for other Poser products...) but Mizraels complaint wasn't about EF making money of this but of the fact that they put out incomplete characters with MORE errors than the ones they were supposed to replace.

And yeah they are a PREVIEW.. but ... well colour me stupid but I thought a preview was supposed to be a sort of showcase as well.. If I weren't entitled to the new G2 characters for free (since I bought their previous incarnations) I wouldn't touch the G2 people with a bargepole. They're new, but newer isn't always better.

And don't get me wrong, I LIKE Content Paradise. I buy quite a lot of stuff through them, and I'm a Passport member and all, but I'm not blind to the fact that they, like everybody else, are NOT perfect.

And if pointing that out is wrong, then I'm wrong. So be it.

You didn't complain about the great evil of companies making money, erny.  Neither did Mizrael.

As for the ef figures......as I've stated elsewhere -- I rarely use them.  Miki and James are the best of the lot, IMO.  I suppose that it's not a big issue to me due to the fact that I use the DAZ figures around 95% of the time -- so I'm not much affected by it.

But I'll be the first one in line to buy P7 -- and who knows what figures it will come with?  We'll see.

Quote - There's three things looming that will kill Poser, as it is currently. 1: Windows Vista (and OS/X) 2: 64-bit computing 3: Processor speed depending on multicore processors. There's going to have to be support for that, or Poser is going nowhere. I could see P6 turning into a Poser Artist 2, but it would be hard to leverage Poser into sales of other products if it's a 32-bit, single core, development dead-end

Though Poser 6 is described as requiring Windows XP I happily ran it under an earlier version of windows for over a year. I had no problems once I installed SR1 and was puzzled by the complaints of memory issues by people using Win XP with much more memory than I had .

It's been 2 months now since I upgraded my PC. I've come to the conclusion that Poser 6 was NOT designed to run with WinXP they just put the name on the box to reassure people it was a modern design software. Poser 7 will probably be the same except they'll say it requires windows Vista to give the impression of being new. (or am I being to cynicle?)