It is with the accumulation of frustration over the purchase of many many poser addons, clothing, poses, figures and props over the last few years that I post this: 

A significant number of poser addons have absolutely appalling instructions. And far too many clothing addons are woefully short of workable morphs.

Though I am a reasonably experienced Poser user, that is no excuse for developers to leave out information they ASSUME I might have. I am not proposing a basic Poser tutorial with each addon. What I am suggesting is that developers take a lot more care and put more time into Step by Step instructions which not all users know intuitively, and not leave out what they assume to be un-needed detail. No one is going to complain if there is too much detail, but time and time again I spend hours finding out stuff which should have been included in the product. 

One typicaln example are magnet addons. Using magnets in Poser is not an easy process and sometimes it does no harm to take the user through PRECISE instructions rather than assuming they are all experts on magnets.

The average readme of a typical Poser addon is taken up with long lists of files included, but VERY LITTLE in the way of helping the user take advantage of what the product offers. I don't know whether it is laziness or sheer thoughtlessness, but what ever it is I feel developers should really pay more attention to putting themselves in the position of the head scratching user!

I am a developer myself and our products come without exception with a very large pdf file, fully illustrated, of some 20 to 40 pages long, leaving no stone unturned so the user is in no doubt whatsoever how our software works. This is what my customers expect and they are right to expect it.

Regarding clothing addons, I see large numbers of otherwise good clothing for V3 and V4 which have barely two morphs to use. This is selling the customer short. At the very least each item of clothing should have a suite of typically used morphs so the customer does not have to scrabble about finding wierd and wonderful ways to make clothes fit.

I don't mind paying an extra amount for a reasonable product with decent useable morphs. Uploading clothes with one clunky "breast" morph (which doesn't work anyway) as the sole help to the user is simply unacceptable.
 
I would be interested to know how many other customers share my views.

Thanks.

Leonardis

I will agree with you to the point of many clothing items for V3 and 4 lacking morphs. I've said it before and once again, what is the purpose of even purchasing body morph packs if the clothing made doesn't support a one or only a few.  All people are not built the same way and heaven knows I would think people would get sick of seeing the same body type over and over and over and over again. But I do agree with you on the point of clothing morphs.

While I agree, and personally always provide the major full body morphs in my clothing, I can understand why some don't. Morph creation, testing, and tweeking can litterally take more time than development of the base package. So some merchants just don't feel that their sales justify the manhours that go into this addition. they look at the galleries and see very little use of anything but the breast morphs so what morphs do you think they will support? I suspect that if those who do use those morphs actually sent a PM or email to the merchant when they passed up buying a product from them due simply to lack of morph support, they would see the true numbers of sales they are loosing, and things might change. unfortunately a thread in the forums doesnt have that kind of impact, though of course it is a step in the right direction. I don't worry too much about morphs when I buy a product these days, If I really like a package I will buy it, even if it doesnt have the morphs, I dont mind adding them myself using one of the netherworks or lyrra magnet kits, but I have my own personal pet peave with content, which keeps me from buying products, Lack of DAZ Studio material presets. Since I do most of my rendering in Studio these days, if I see no Studio support in a product I will most likey not purchase it. And yes I have told some merchants that I didn't buy their packages for that specific reason.

Morph Magic does a great job of importing character morphs to clothing. PhilC's Wardrobe Wizard does a great job of converting clothing to morphed characters. I agree instructions are sparse. I don't know about most purchased items, because I go for the free stuff so as not to spend a lot of money. I'd expect pretty thorough instructions on a commercial product.

Quote - Morph Magic does a great job of importing character morphs to clothing. PhilC's Wardrobe Wizard does a great job of converting clothing to morphed characters. I agree instructions are sparse. I don't know about most purchased items, because I go for the free stuff so as not to spend a lot of money. I'd expect pretty thorough instructions on a commercial product.

Well I don't want to pick on Phil here, because he is one person that DOES make efforts to provide really detailed tutorials on his software. However I have not once ever used Phil's Wardrobe Wizard to any good effect. This software converts the clothes to an un-adjustable, static piece of clothing and if I drift away in scaling or morphs from very near default the clothes are torn, doscombobulated, or corrupted. Sorry Phil!

Leonardis

^^ you realize you can just re-fit the original item to your new, morphed figure...

Quote - ^^ you realize you can just re-fit the original item to your new, morphed figure...

Do you mean you can re-conform the "wardrobed" item and it will fit the morphed figure rather than return back to the default V30-fit? Please can you explain and confirm this. Thank you.

L

Quote - > Quote - ^^ you realize you can just re-fit the original item to your new, morphed figure...

 

Do you mean you can re-conform the "wardrobed" item and it will fit the morphed figure rather than return back to the default V30-fit? Please can you explain and confirm this. Thank you.

L

Analyze the clothing to the default supported figure first. Delete both the figure and the clothing from the scene. Load default figure and apply morphs. Load previously analized clothing and then use the convert to Figure option. If the clothing has body handles or any other special morphs you wish to keep: Do not use the Conver to Figure, use Advanced, Unwelded ungrouped option. Not finished... You will then have to take the clothing into the Setup Room, do nothing then exit. tedious part: You will have to use the Joint editor and toggle all of the body parts on and off or of and on. Best to read Phil's tut on this part. when all of that is done Save the clothing!!! Final step, conform and adjust if needed. Final note: If you saved your morphed figure it probably has a unique .obj name. In order to use it with WW you will have to rename that .obj to the exact name of the supported figure. When I do that I create another folder under the original and place the morphed obj ther, then rename. don't forget to edit the morphed figure's cr2 to point to the new .obj.

"The average readme of a typical Poser addon is taken up with long lists of files included, but VERY LITTLE in the way of helping the user take advantage of what the product offers. I don't know whether it is laziness or sheer thoughtlessness, but what ever it is I feel developers should really pay more attention to putting themselves in the position of the head scratching user!"

Readme's here are strictly regulated about content and I know I always worry when I want to get creative in any way. We do put a bit about foibles, fixes and so forth in the use information but its one of those damned if you do damned if you don't situations. Put in scads of helpful details and you risk your product looking like its half assed compared to other products that have to have the same issues but no mention. 

Seems like a better solution as customers is to push for an expectation of merchants adding a separate text page that includes those tips and tricks that are getting left behind. What sort of information would you be expecting? Sometimes its hard to figure out what your taking for granted as obvious and what the average user would really find helpful.

FIrst... Leonardis, can you point me to someof your products? I'd like to veiw your PDF files if possible since they may prove instructive (seriously!) but I can;t find any of your product here. A link aould be helpful.

Now on the point pf morphs in clothing. I see it two ways. If a set of clothing is made for A SPECIFIC CHARACTER as in my Jeans and Things for GND2 or Irina, then I see no reason that they need to contain additional morphs. To me these are like tailor made cloths, created to accent the specific  features of the character...

VS

Clothing made for base characters, such as my Jeans and Things for Aiko. Clothing advertised for base figures SHOULD include a number of the most used morphs included with that figure. Of course each additional morph is, in itself nearly as hard to make as the original figure, IF you want them to work and look right, so it's only reasonable that clothing containing a multitude of morphs cost more...

I do try to include useful tps in my readme;s including some of the rendering settings I use, but I certainly don;t write a booklet for fairly straight forward conforming clothing... Perhaps I;m wrong in this, I;ll wait to see what developes as others speak up on the subject.

mike

Quote -

Clothing made for base characters, such as my Jeans and Things for Aiko. Clothing advertised for base figures SHOULD include a number of the most used morphs included with that figure. Of course each additional morph is, in itself nearly as hard to make as the original figure, IF you want them to work and look right, so it's only reasonable that clothing containing a multitude of morphs cost more...

I do try to include useful tps in my readme;s including some of the rendering settings I use, but I certainly don;t write a booklet for fairly straight forward conforming clothing... Perhaps I;m wrong in this, I;ll wait to see what developes as others speak up on the subject.

mike

LOVE your Jeans and Things. I brought and converted it for my V3! Both you and OutOfTouch brought those jeans to life for me! LOL Thanks

On subject, I must say I don't usually read the readME files unless it has a, "ReadmeNOW" or I run into a problem. Sometimes I read them to locate where I got the package from. I mean, the readmes only reiterate your runtime path. I have the hang of poser enough to know where things should go. But that's just me. And that's just me being honest...

Well, having to include all file names and their locations, blah, blah, blah can become quite tedious at times...so I can understand some just wanting to make it through the process of making the bare-bones readme file.
Making products that include displacement maps, normal maps, specular maps and custom made figure morphs can be a little overwhelming for the average Poser user...I would hope that as being developers of products that we could "dumb it down" somewhat.

I personally have someone on my team that is not a vetern Poser user just for that reason.

*"FIrst... Leonardis, can you point me to someof your products? I'd like to veiw your PDF files if possible since they may prove instructive (seriously!) but I can;t find any of your product here. A link aould be helpful. "

You won't see Poser made addons from me because I am not (yet) doing any. I was referring to simulation software of another kind and if you would kindly PM me I would be happy to give you a direct link to some PDF files we produce for our customers.

*"I do try to include useful tips in my readme;s including some of the rendering settings I use, but I certainly don;t write a booklet for fairly straight forward conforming clothing... Perhaps I;m wrong in this, I;ll wait to see what developes as others speak up on the subject."

I'm not suggesting a huge or unnecessary amount of guide material, and I don't know much about your particular products, but when dealing with morphs and magnets then even for an experienced user things can get very trying. I recognise this is a basic and long standing flaw in Poser and to some extent Studio too. But to me the whole point of addon software is to take some of the workload off the user, and to that extent I think (and this won't be a popular view) that most products on Renderosity are far too inexpensive, probably due to the vast amount of stuff available to a limited customer base. I would much rather that the average addon was twice as expensive but twice the work went into making them as flawless as possible and providing comprehensive support and tutorials.

I think the whole culture of Poser addons is predicated upon quantity rather than quality. I have been developing a unique character which relies on scaling variations as much as morphs, because morphs alone cannot substantially create the figure I am after. But I have held back because I want it to be as perfect as it can possibly be. But that is my luxury because I do this for fun and no a living. Nevertheless if the quality of Poser addons is to be improved I think developers need to start upping their standards and to start also providing more variation on the doll-like creatures which V3 and V4 seem to encourage.

Leonardis

L Analyze the clothing to the default supported figure first. Delete both the figure and the clothing from the scene. Load default figure and apply morphs. Load previously analized clothing and then use the convert to Figure option. If the clothing has body handles or any other special morphs you wish to keep: Do not use the Conver to Figure, use Advanced, Unwelded ungrouped option. Not finished... You will then have to take the clothing into the Setup Room, do nothing then exit. tedious part: You will have to use the Joint editor and toggle all of the body parts on and off or of and on. Best to read Phil's tut on this part. when all of that is done Save the clothing!!! Final step, conform and adjust if needed. Final note: If you saved your morphed figure it probably has a unique .obj name. In order to use it with WW you will have to rename that .obj to the exact name of the supported figure. When I do that I create another folder under the original and place the morphed obj ther, then rename. don't forget to edit the morphed figure's cr2 to point to the new .obj.  

Well thanks for that. Goodness gracious though...what a palava!! One lives in hope that software will appear (and I am happy to pay a premium price for it), that takes all those circuitous processes away.

Leonardis