Very true.

I think my first handsculpted character took about 120 hrs just to create the morphs, then there was the tedious crap that I hate...editing the poser files and creating the INJ morphs (which back then had to be done by hand because it was a relatively new discovery and there were no utilities available). The 2 characters that I created only pulled me a net profit of less than $150 each. Not very lucrative for putting in so many hours. It's why I often stick to props LOL. Not to give away too much but my best selling prop has netted about 10x as much and took 6hrs to make..start to finish. It seems my simplest designs seem to be the best selling.. hmmm... weird at best LOL

I think what I was getting at is that one could discern that GND4 is a top selling item in the MP. Considering no one ever buys Victoria and uses her straight out of the box (thus they purchase a character package), I would think clothing merchants would take a close look at the, top of the pick, character packages on the market and at least design some morphs around a top seller.  Perhaps even ride on the coattails of a top character creator?

My niche is props and I spend more time researching the market these days than anything else. Sometimes if I am not sure of something and how well it will go over, I'll test the market and release something just to see how it will hold up.

I'll spend time perusing the MP for items on my ideas list, too. If I see the market is oversaturated, I'll move on. If I see only a few items that are similar and I think I can do better, then I'll go for it. If I can't do better, then my item is probably not going to sell well unless it is more original in design... unique in scope (like your Wizard's Robe is pretty unique... damn good work too!)

Sometimes I think I could sell 3D Rubber Dog Poop if I were so inclined because I would target it with a theme or something specific.

I commend you on the clothing items though. I hate messing with JPs, Rots and the other headaches that come with figure creation. I'll stick to my props for now hehe.. I can model about 3 a night.. uvmapping, texturing and poserizing takes much longer .. not to mention doing the promo images ughhh..

~Will

Quote - > Quote - Actually, creating morphs can be quite simple (or difficult) depending on the software tools at your disposal. I use Rhinocerous and it's "Flow Along Curve" feature makes short work of even the most difficult morphs (Rhino 4's flow along curve screws up morphs for whatever reason, but I still have Rhino 2 and it does quite well as does Rhino 3). There is still some tweaking to do later, but that feature will always get you close to where you need to be. I have created hand sculpted characters in the past and always used Rhino to create my morphs ;o)

Most vendors that do this have a whole arsenal of tools they can use.

Um, the point I was making is that including numerous morphs for numerous characters can be very time consuming. They're not difficult to make.  However, to include a lot of morphs for a characters, they can easily number over a hundred. It can take between 15 min to an hour per morph. If a morph only takes only 15 min to make (Export the figure to morph against, Sculpt, export out of the modeller, name, inject, and test), 100 morphs would take about 25 hours at best. 100 hours at worst.

On average, a vendor makes 200-500 per set of clothing they make (unless they're a top vendor), which means to keep things at least little bit profitable, they have to limit the amount of time they spend making each piece, or they'd have to sell them at three times the price. 

The last item I made (for Apollo) inclused over 100 morphs, and it took total of about 200 hours to make the whole piece. One would have to sell $1000 worth (after the Rendo takes their 50%)and not even reach the minimum wage making an elaborate piece like that.