There's an eFrontier Customer survey up at Content Paradise
www.contentparadise.com/forums/showthread.php

Thanx for the head's up.

I told them to fix their damn library system! When you upgrade the library should come along with it and we should not have to deal with multiple libraries.

Oooh! Does this mean Poser 8 is in development? Some of the questions lead me to think so.

What does any of the questions on the first page got to do with product improvement?

Some stupid questions, I think my fav was, " have you read information about or heard of 3D." ROFLMAO.

LOL! I think that part's aimed at total newbies.

how newbie could you be, if youre taking a survey based on 3d software

That was some long survey!  For a bit I thought it was about photoshop, hehe

For my part I picked choices that improved performance and not so much esthetics.  To me how a program performs is more important than all of the pretty bells and whistles that are visible when you look at it.

Some of the questions should have let you give more than one answer. They should have been like the checkbox questions, but don't put a limit on answers.

Most of it had nothing to do with improving any software. As fotr the photo shop questions, yeah, whats up with that. What about PSP or Gimp. I guess everyone is supose to use Photoshop, legal or not. LOL.

And, and, where are our prezzies for doing this for them.

Pretty good survey, esp the Poser part.   Previous surveys from e-frontier
and its ancestors were "push polls", aimed to stir up buzz for some new
or proposed product. 

This one was actually about improving the existing product.

*Most of it had nothing to do with improving any software. As fotr the photo shop questions, yeah, whats up with that. What about PSP or Gimp. I guess everyone is supose to use Photoshop, legal or not. LOL.
*I don't agree that most of the survey was irrelevant to the future direction of Poser.   I think that it explored quite extensively the kind of hardware and software environment that users have and the features that they would like to see.   As for Photoshop, well, that is the benchmark product.   If PSP overtakes Photoshop, that will change and PSP will become the benchmark product.   In the meantime, Poser and any other 3D application will continue to treat Photoshop as No.1 - they'd be daft not to.   If, as PSP claims, it can do anything that Photoshop can, what's good for Photoshop should also be good for PSP, shouldn't it?

I"m not going to get into a debate about PSP and PS. I was pointing out that there are other software that was not on the list. And benchmarking a $1000 software with a $130 ef app without including the others was not well thought out. My opinion. I don't have PS and don't use illegal copies as so many do because of the so called benchmark. 

As for the first part of the survey, it had a lot of questions that had nothing to do with ef products. The second part for poser did but I think lacked in options for many of the questions.

But, each to thier own.

Yeah, there were a few questions that needed an 'all of the above' option (like question 40; we definitely need multiple panes in the graph editor, and the additional layer options would be sweeeeeet.....) As well as both weight map support and sub D division. Almost no more joint breaks, sigh..... COLLADA support! Yay!

I'm just wondering about an outfit that hands out P5 for free, then blocks access to only P6 and 7 owners ...what's up wid dat?..;)

Quote - What does any of the questions on the first page got to do with product improvement?

Some stupid questions, I think my fav was, " have you read information about or heard of 3D." ROFLMAO.

Amazing things there.
If I say, "No" I do not have x,y,or z in one question, there is no option of Not Applicable in the next question.

I guess some marketing genius has this all sorted out. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

The Poser 7 Section was much better.

Quote - Some of the questions should have let you give more than one answer. They should have been like the checkbox questions, but don't put a limit on answers.

Most of it had nothing to do with improving any software. As fotr the photo shop questions, yeah, whats up with that. What about PSP or Gimp. I guess everyone is supose to use Photoshop, legal or not. LOL.

And, and, where are our prezzies for doing this for them.

Very well Stated.
PaintShopPro has worked very well for me for many years.
I really have no intentions of spending hundreds of $$s on PhotoShop.

I took the survey and simply skipped a good number of the question related to photoshop and even some of the Poser improvements stuff. I'm a content Poser 6 user and have no intention of upgrading at the moment. 

I really think that some of the poser feature improvements questions should have an option "I don't want this to be improved, I like it the way it is" or so.

I agree that the survey could have focussed on some of the excellent photoshop alternatives also. Not every one can or wants to afford Photoshop or even likes to work with it.

I have no need for a lot of poorly working "Ohhh shiny things" added to poser and a lot of that survey looked more like questions that cornered you into reaffirming what they wanted to hear than anything actually useful to the customer or getting the product fully functional. Out of everything listed only Global illumination, objects as light emitters, and weight mapping jumped out at me.

beryld wrote; "And benchmarking a $1000 software with a $130 ef app without including the others was not well thought out. My opinion." Actually Photoshop is only $600. Coldrake

Quote - Actually Photoshop is only $600. Coldrake

Not in Canada. I just checked at amazon.ca  and Photoshop CS3 is CDN$ 757.99 plus taxes.  That's considerably higher than PSP is.

I have CS2 and lucked out that my nephew was able to get me a copy with his discount through his job as a programmer/graphic designer. If it weren't for that I wouldn't have been able to afford to ever buy Photoshop.  Spending $760.00 on one program is not in my budget!

That's the silly part of it - when I was going to buy my first PS version I weighed it in and ended up purchasing the Creative Suite. I found that a much better value than PS alone.

Anyway, I think the survey was pretty good. At the end where they ask for comments I just requested the option to directly manipulate vertices. Magnets and morph tools are ok I guess, but nothing beats direct access to the vertices. Why hasn't that ever been in Poser through all these versions anyway?

One of the questions had "more character compatibility in the face room" as a choice. Naturally I checked it. Dare I hope?

Yes, I have FaceShop Pro but if I can work with non-EF heads directly in Poser ...

"Actually Photoshop is only $600."

Yeah, In Canada it is very pricy due to currency, and taxes. Who has that kinda money to spend anyways? Well I don't, even if it is $600, that is a lot.

I did the survey as well. Poser lacks environments, and how the space is used is very low. Although you can put anything at a distance (forever), you will need to increase camera scale to see it, also locating it will be a problem. Chat about a thick fog. Gosh, I am playing with Bryce 6.1 and it kicks but when it comes to environments and lighting, but posing or animating in it lacks. Have to use D|S to animate and imput characters or other things to do in Bryce. After playing with Poser for so many years, D|S is not my kinda software, even though it is free. I do try my best. So imagine Poser with Bryce. That would be a kick butt software, well for me anyways.

Coldrake wrote:" Actually Photoshop is only $600."

I'm in Canada too, so $800 or so. Not counting shipping. So my quick figures are not that far off. I have PSP and Painter9.5. Do I really need to buy PS? I Don't Think So!

I just bought a duelcore for about half that. On a fathersday sale.

Bryce will never be a smooth transition to Poser. Daz's way is to use Poser through DS to get to Bryce and would prefer you to just use DS. They tried a poser script but never worked well. I don't even know if they offer it. But you might want to check on that incase the still do.

I have not even bothered to install Bryce 6.1. Not because I don't like it. I have Carrara 5pro that works well with Poser, not sure what will happen with C6 it may go the way of Bryce. I use Vue6I for most of my Poser exports now. It uses Poser so you can pose, use dynamics and use poser shaders if you want.

somebody see if gimp or psp can import textured, uv-mapped obj files. if not, there's no competition. FAIK, e-f gets a commission for every cs3e sale referred from their site.

Well, if you want to get something from Poser 7 to Carrara via Transposer, you need to keep Poser 6 installed, since Transposer can handle a Poser 6 file, but not a Poser 7 one (even if they look identical when rendered in Poser).

Actually Photoshop is only $600.

In the US..... but not in Europe.

somebody see if gimp or psp can import textured, uv-mapped obj files. if not, there's no competition. FAIK, e-f gets a commission for every cs3e sale referred from their site. 

As if photoshop has been able to do that for ages.... that's a very recent addition ,besides, I could care less if a photoshop kind of application can do that or not, that's not what I need and expect from such a program at all. It would be the last feature to get me spending $1049 (english download version) or $1346 (boxed dutch version) on. I can get a photoshop like application for much much less with all the features of photoshop, expect the obj file import, but I'm sure that will change in the near future. Am I really going to pay between $600 and $1000 (if I want a boxed version) more just to be able to import  import textured, uv-mapped obj files? I don't think so.

By the way, does MangaStudio EX count? It can imported  import textured, uv-mapped 3D files in a lot of formats. MangaStudio has been able to do this a while now and I'm sure that others will catch on if there is a need for this kind of technology, but I do have my serious doubt there really is, I hate to think what would happen if you try to open complete 3D scenes in a photoshop like application. To me being able to import  import textured, uv-mapped obj files is just a gimmick with no use, one of those shiny features that sounds cool but has way to many limitations to even be used seriously.

But I wouldn't even consider buying Photoshop, no matter what features it offers. I'm not going to pay $400 more then someone else, just because I do live somewhere else then they do. Also Adobe is one of the companies that charges tax when no tax is due at all, in Europe download version are tax-exempt, yet Adobe persistantly charges 21% tax on a download version on the European versions, putting the money in their own pockets.

When I got my teeth pulled a few weeks ago, the dentist told me to stay home and (I assume because I said I was a designer and was going to be on the computer while recovering) asked if I was going to play with Photoshop CS3.  Well, I don't really use Photoshop (Ultimate Paint and Satori Photo) but I think they (ef) are aware of the "buzz" around it.  Poser/Photoshop integration would be really sweet, and would sell alot of copies (to new users even); it's just not what I need, so I made other choices.  (Yes, it does seem like something most people wouldn't use, as cool as it sounds)

No, judging from the other comments here, the dentist had decided that losing a few molars couldn't be half as traumatic as paying for Photoshop, so the reference to CS3 functioned as a kind of anaesthetic.

Heh heh... Wait... How'd you know they were molars!!??

Everyone should take the survey. They have listened to the community in the past on improvements and new features, make your voice heard!

Part one is pretty generic, part 2 becomes more Poser-centric and the choices give you some ideas of improvements they are considering, but want to prioritize based on demand.

Quote - Some of the questions should have let you give more than one answer. They should have been like the checkbox questions, but don't put a limit on answers.

Most of it had nothing to do with improving any software. As fotr the photo shop questions, yeah, whats up with that. What about PSP or Gimp. I guess everyone is supose to use Photoshop, legal or not. LOL.

And, and, where are our prezzies for doing this for them.

I am so sorry to repeat a quote, but I swear...this last sentence cracked me up....

When I got thru with that darn survey, I thought the same thing and kept looking....surely there are prezzies somewhere...I am late for work doing this......

Also, I LOVE Paint Shop Pro and had to type it in.  That is what I use!!!!!  Anyway, now I will read the rest of the posts...