5/1/08

Does anyone know how these characters are mapped? Will they take textures from any other figures? Seeing that they can be develpoed and distributed freely, one might be able to have a cottage industry remapping these figures to take various standard textures.

I wonder if any one will make an application like Clothim/Clother/Masker for these models?

PhilC:

Any word of when you might get WW2 fixed to support these figures?

LMK

Quote - > Quote - For you and me, Blackhearted, yeah we'd do our own meshes.

For Ma n Pa kettle that are just testing the waters tinkering around with barely a clue about modelling, they are perfect for them.

i think you are selling ma and pa kettle short. ma and pa kettle might not know much about 3D but correct human anatomy is instantly recognizable by anyone.

again, people need to stop making excuses about these and fix them.

Unfortunately anyone who points out the flaws is labeled as a cronic complainer. Been there, done that.

I'm as it seems, the only one that am happy for these low/medium mesh figures since I can't model anything human like. Will use them as background figures in my game project. They are so perfect for that IMHO.
Another use I will have for the low poly one is as a "collision object" when doing hair for people.

Quote - this 'background use' thing is a weak excuse.
you can make a 2K poly model that still has proper proportions and anatomy. video game developers do it all the time.

...heh - with enough sub-D and a customized-all-to-hell non-standard rendering engine, sure... but this is Poser and a REYES renderer, which kinda makes the whole videogame comparison kinda moot. And 2k is pretty thin.

Now granted that the faces on these things are pretty hideous for anything close enough to make out facial details, but I don;t think that was the point of building 'em.

Quote - the reason i am so upset about this is because Poser is partly judged by its content.

Unfortunate but true.

Quote - ive been hoping for years for a company to take over Poser that will actually bring it into this century and update it to a modern, professional, quality look and feel. what ive seen in this thread is a tremendous blow to how seriously Poser is going to be taken.

Given the lead time between acquisition and product release, coupled with Smith Micro's history, I honestly expected no such thing. Plus, we're kind of stuck with the Kai Krause -built parti from the looks of it.

/P

I think the very essence of these figures is that you use your own creative ability to "fix" them to suit your own purpose. They are a starting point, a time saver. To level this degree of criticism against them to my mind indicates that folks have totally missed the point.

I can see modelers taking the low resolution mesh into their 3D application and saying "Thanks, that's saved me a couple of hours working up a basic humanoid mesh. I can get straight into the creative stage of my project."

The UV mapping is perfectly acceptable. Even with the addition of additional vertices created during customization the base mapping will still be intact. One can edit as required but the "heavy lifting" will have been done. Again a great time saver.

Wardrobe Wizard support? I can but would there be much point in supporting something that by its very nature will be altered?

5/1/08

If they can be reasonably dressed and shoed, why would one alter anything but the hands, neck, face, and head?

At least for crowd or distant characters, WW2, and Cloths Creator could be a big help. After all,anyone who buys Poser Pro,already owns these figures.

LMK

I'm interested to see what people do with the low res figures.  I can't model my way out of a paper bag so they would be a total waste for me.  There is something disturbing to me about the eyes.  If people come up with decent looking characters with them I would buy them, sometimes you want cartoonish characters or just background fillers.  I think the main problem with Dork and Posette were they didn't have any decent maps, but with good maps they actually look good.  This PP7 children need a lot of love I'm sure to reach their full potential.

Quote - I think the very essence of these figures is that you use your own creative ability to "fix" them to suit your own purpose. They are a starting point, a time saver. To level this degree of criticism against them to my mind indicates that folks have totally missed the point.

the average home user wants something they can unpack and use. to expect them to be 'thankful' for content that came with a program they paid for, and now they have to extensively alter to come close to matching free content that has been around in some cases for 8+ years is rediculous.
again, poser will be judged in part by its content. when someone picks up a poser box or looks at their promo pages, they dont care what 'potential' these figures might have after countless hours of morphing or after third party merchants have had their way with them. they want to see what they can achieve now.

much of the entry level poser market are either people dabbling in 3D art as a hobby, or artists and professionals that need figure visualizations or reference. in either case they will want something that either:

1. looks visually appealing
2. looks and poses like an average, anatomically correct human being
   from what i see, out of the box the poserpro models are neither.

and can we drop the 'low poly background figure' excuse already? it has been pointed out already that 10k is neither low poly, nor is 'low poly' necessarily synonymous with 'unrealistic'.

as a merchant, i am very concerned about the success of poser. but even if you are not a merchant you should be concerned since the popularity and future development of poser depends heavily on how the average consumer perceives poser. its absolutely absurd that i actually have to come here in a forum and argue about these models when the problems with them are glaringly apparent to even a layman. they should never have been released in their current form without tweaking - 'theyre meant to be tweaked later by people' is weak. even poser 3 models were usable out of the box as they were. this isnt even about 'preference' or whether or not you 'like' their bases bodies and faces, as if this were a vicky or stephanie discussion. this is about the fact that they do not look human.

poser should look and feel like a polished, professional program and come with a pair of models that can be used out of the box for visualizations, as a nude model pose resource for traditional artists, a basis for digital painting, comics, etc that the program is advertised for. these models are not suitable for those purposes and are a clear step backwards from previous versions of poser.

stop defending them and work on fixing them, nothing like this is set in stone and it is never too late to fix something.

Quote - ...heh - with enough sub-D and a customized-all-to-hell non-standard rendering engine, sure... but this is Poser and a REYES renderer, which kinda makes the whole videogame comparison kinda moot. And 2k is pretty thin.

2k is thin as hell, yeah... it was just an example that ive seen 2k poly figures that still had realistic human proportions and faces. 

Quote -
Given the lead time between acquisition and product release, coupled with Smith Micro's history, I honestly expected no such thing. Plus, we're kind of stuck with the Kai Krause -built parti from the looks of it.

hey, we can hope :(

Quote - stop defending them and work on fixing them, nothing like this is set in stone and it is never too late to fix something.

Bud, you're kind of tilting at windmills there - the chances there will be any significant improvement of those figures is nil, they're boxed and shipped.  Did you ever see a major overhaul of Sydney/Simon, or even Jessi/James?  Jessi G2 doesn't count, she's basically Sydney.

im busy working right now so really ive only seen this thread and havent had the time to pore over the SM site, nor am i really that interested.
i assumed they would be doing an online release for poser pro at first, like many software companies are doing.

if they actually boxed it and shipped it like this, geez.

it used to be that metacreations took active part in the community. each new successive owner takes less and less part in the community and apparently loses touch even more. simply browsing the poser marketplaces and interacting with the community would have averted something like this easily.

theyve basically bundled 'redistributable content' that no experienced merchant would touch with a 10 foot pole. way to go, i wonder what fun suprises await us in Poser 8.

 Is there and difference in the UI responses ?

(ie: lag time , busy indicator cursor hang ups)

Quote -
the average home user wants something they can unpack and use. to expect them to be 'thankful' for content that came with a program they paid for, ...

... , poser will be judged in part by its content. when someone picks up a poser box or looks at their promo pages, they dont care what 'potential' these figures might have after countless hours of morphing or after third party merchants have had their way with them. they want to see what they can achieve now.

much of the entry level poser market are either people dabbling in 3D art as a hobby, or artists and professionals that need figure visualizations or reference. in either case they will want something that either:

1. looks visually appealing
2. looks and poses like an average, anatomically correct human being
   from what i see, out of the box the poserpro models are neither.

I would have to agree with this statement from a Hobbiest/Existing Poser owner,
Personally, prior to becoming familiar with the 3rd party addons, I simply used what was originally included with my first Poser purchase , P5. 

By the time I (now having some experience with Poser)  made the upgrade to P7, I did not even use the "included Content", nor did I include it in my runtime. I was just trying to find a less irritating, faster workflow, that was bug free (hahaha) seems like Poser just about becomes stable and then wham, new version, damn! (needless to say,it has not stopped me from using it yet)

I would think (?) that the hobby/casual user  would look at just the Poser 7  package and not the Poser Pro.

If the target group of the Poser Pro is the Professional industry, I would have thought there would have been a whole new line of "High End" content.

just my .02

pjz99 you've forgotten the poor Don & Judy from Poser five.  They were so unpopular they tried to leave them out of Poser 6--later offering them as a separate download because of the out cry.  I keep hoping for Daz or Apollo quality figures to come out with each new Poser release, but I keep getting dissapointed.  I'm not holding my breath for Poser 8 either.  Actually I think that Don & Judy were of better quality than Jesse and James, I wish they would have offered more add on's for them.

As for the current lo res people, my understanding is that they are intended to be made into something and not used as is.  That, I suppose, is why they would be in "Pro" Poser package, for professionals to make into something that people would like to have.  I must say this, however, the Quidam people don't look as bad out of the box.   I wouldn't know what to do with those guys.  So I suppose Poser Pro isn't for everyone--everyone else will have Poser 7--I'm very interested to see what the Pro's actually do with the new version and how much different it will make things turn out.  Many professionals already are closeted Poser users anyhow.

Quote - I would think (?) that the hobby/casual user  would look at just the Poser 7  package and not the Poser Pro.

If the target group of the Poser Pro is the Professional industry, I would have thought there would have been a whole new line of "High End" content.

IMO regardless of the target audience, all poser content should be held to a high standard of quality.
poser is already regarded in an unfavorable light by much of the 3D community. in order for it to grow and be recognized as a viable program it needs to shed this stigma, and the only way i can see this being achieved is through slowly improving the interface, adding more powerful features and professional quality content.

these models are a step backwards. im not trying to insult the creator or SM but rather to point out that releasing them in their current form was, IMO, a mistake - and that they should be fixed so that they look more human out of the box.

@  BH,

I absolutely agree with you POV. 

I was thinking, prior to release,  that  PPro was going to something COMPLETELY NEW
With a totally new content package

(not just Poser7 Reboxed with additional parts)

Guess I am just not overwhelmed, as a hobby / casual user with what has been laid before me as new, Maybe my expectations where too high.

I purchased P5 Full, P6 Full, P7 Full , then tried Daz Studio (just don't like the flow) being a loyal user and customer, this time I'll keep my money and spend it on high end content.

.02

Synpainter

I've always regarded the default Poser figures as essentially throw-away figures, anyway.  So to me personally it's no big deal.  That's not to say that it might not matter to others -- but speaking for myself, adding another Jessi or whatever to the mix wouldn't be of any particular interest to me,anyway.

BTW - I don't have the time to read through this thread right now, so please indulge me if these points have been made by others previously.........

I see one of two possibilities at play here -- saying this with the full disclaimer that what I'm doing is engaging in wild speculation. and that I could be completely and totally wrong about this:

1.  Perhaps what they've done here is to tacitly admit to the fact that the DAZ line of figures are the default Poser figures.  All others (including those that come pre-loaded with the program) are also-rans, at best.  So from a purely business standpoint: why waste money & development time on producing yet another line of new figures (George & Martha, this time?) that won't be able to come close to matching the DAZ figure's built-in popularity, anyway?

OR:

2.  SM now regards their figure-content line as being separate from the Poser program itself.  That is to say: they can make more money by selling their line of unique figures -- and the content for them -- apart from the base program.  Not a bad marketing strategy on their part, if that's what's going on.  The potential downside being that there might be some forum complaints about the quality of the figures which come pre-loaded in Poser...........

If I'm doing Arc Viz, then these new default figures might come in handy.......in the background distance.

Quote -
1.  Perhaps what they've done here is to tacitly admit to the fact that the DAZ line of figures are the default Poser figures. 

If that were the case, then why not just contract w/ DAZ to provide some built-in V3/M3 love up-front?

Nah - I'm thinking this thing is a lot like buying a new house with a redwood deck half-finished in the backyard - you simply lash together the rest - just enough to last until you can get the proper design and materials to tear it all out and build a brand-new deck for yourself. Whether or not you keep parts of the existing one is up to you.

SM bought their baby with something brewing in the pipeline, and they probably decided to toss it out there and get it out of the way.

Quote - SM now regards their figure-content line as being separate from the Poser program itself.  That is to say: they can make more money by selling their line of unique figures -- and the content for them -- apart from the base program.

Why re-invent DAZ, Rendo, et al when you don't really have to (e.g. revert to the old CP arrangements)? Not arguing with you, but just asking...

/P

Quote - SM bought their baby with something brewing in the pipeline, and they probably decided to toss it out there and get it out of the way.

Could be -- dunno.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Quote - Why re-invent DAZ, Rendo, et al when you don't really have to (e.g. revert to the old CP arrangements)? Not arguing with you, but just asking...

I'm not 100% certain that I follow you here -- "re-inventing DAZ, Rendo, et al", and "reverting to the old CP arrangements" seem to me to be two somewhat different topics.  But in any case: it could have something to do with the fact that both the DAZ and the Rendo business models are successful in this market.  No business should be above learning from another.

But I can speculate with the best of 'em.  For that matter: so can anybody............

Quote - Your guess is as good as mine.

The qualifier "probably" makes that pretty clear, no need to belabor the obvious.

Quote - The qualifier "probably" makes that pretty clear, no need to belabor the obvious.

In my observation, "belaboring the obvious" isn't the core problem in typical forum threads.  But rampant speculation & snap judgments -- frequently presented as proven fact -- is.

I don't see why so many have a problem with these new figures. No, they're not what we're used to as poser users, but they're not really for us. Smith Micro makes it clear what their purpose is and as a game designer I wish these figures would have been released 2 years earlier. It think it's a great move to tap into new market venues for SM.

Poser Pro comes with a set of four re-distributable 3D characters to help users save production time. This set includes a male and female figure in both medium and low resolutions. These professionally modeled 3D characters include facial morph targets to create expressions and visemes to synch with imported sound files in the Talk Designer, plus they are Face Room ready.

*Use these four figures as a starting point and customize them to create your own real-time 3D or game characters. Modify these fully-rigged characters with Poser Pro’s powerful magnet deformers or sculpt detail using the Morphing Tool. Import them into the Face Room and modify their geometry and texture to match your imported facial photographs. When you’re finished, these four figures can be exported via Poser Pro’s many geometry export options including COLLADA, or hosted via PoserFusion plug-ins, and re-distributed for royalty–free use in your project.

*It's clear, isn't it? Not for really meant for us, but for people who are using game engines or visualization projects and cannot afford to be bugged down by lot's of polygons and many different textures on a model.

Poser needs to expand it's horizon to survive, it should have done so years ago. The poser community is to crowded, too many players on it. I'm afraid that former EF has started way too late with their new/added focus. I really do think that we will not see another version of Poser.

I'm still testing Poser Pro, I'll post later with my first findings.

Can someone tell me if the mutant Poser cat is still included in the content?

:b_tonguewink:

.......and exactly what content is included?

Quote - In my observation, "belaboring the obvious" isn't the core problem in typical forum threads.  But rampant speculation & snap judgments -- frequently presented as proven fact -- is.

Yes, enemies are everywhere.  Loose lips sink ships and all that.

Quote - Yes, enemies are everywhere.  Loose lips sink ships and all that.

:laugh:

If you say so.  I'll take your word for it.  But what that has to do with imagination being presented as reality escapes me.

aeilkema; =THANK YOU= you pointing that out. I know a few project geeks that are going to be pointed at Poser Pro specifically due those meshes. This makes PPro a potential animation tool for oh, things like the open source Crystal Space game engine suite. Between morphs, displacement, normal mapping and a little scaling, you have all you need to populate a game world, no recourse to Max needed. Add Poser Physics for the ragdoll effects, and you could create in-game sequences left and right at a fraction of the cost. Probably not good enough for the higher end game engines, but with an open source engine.... That kind of thought actually gives me hope that SM is going to continue taking Poser forward. Hell, this might be the herald of the rigging improvements we've been howling for for years. The old rig is excellent for games; but to move things more forward, some kind of weight mapping is going to have to be done. If the two rigs can coexist, then we keep our backwards compatibility, and will have a new generation of figures that might finally shed some of the 'Poserness' in the way joints work.

Quote - It's clear, isn't it? Not for really meant for us, but for people who are using game engines or visualization projects and cannot afford to be bugged down by lot's of polygons and many different textures on a model.

no game designer worth his salt is going to use those models even if they are really hard up for meshes. game meshes have incredibly well-planned and optimized low-poly meshes and textures with baked details. more recent ones make use of normal-mapping. 10-35k is not low-poly, and they are naked - add clothes to them and all of a sudden they are high-poly models.

as for the 'starting point' argument -- if someone posesses the skill to turn one of those into an optimized and attractive game mesh then they will also posess the skill to create one from scratch and wont bother with them. budding game developers still understand their craft and have no use for such models, advanced game developers will possess the skills or resources to create/source something more suitable and of much higher quality.

poser will never get anywhere with people all defending serious shortcuts like this. with each release of poser people are becoming complacent and just accepting things like this and rationalizing over them. after a decade of poser development we should be expecting more than this.

Quote - aeilkema; =THANK YOU= you pointing that out. I know a few project geeks that are going to be pointed at Poser Pro specifically due those meshes.

you would be doing them a great disservice.

these are optimized game or visualization meshes:

they took me 2 minutes to find on turbosquid, and cost $25 complete with all textures and in industry standard .max formats. both are 4k polys, and look completely human in visualization type renders, which is more than i could say for naked medium-resolution models that ship with poser.

i totally agree with you on the rigging however. ive been hoping for a revamped rigging system for years - its basically the main thing holding poser back right now but noone wants to address it because of all the legacy content.

Y'know, blackhearted, for someone who doesn't care about this much, you sure type a hell of a lot about them.. LOL!

Quote - poser will never get anywhere with people all defending serious shortcuts like this.

Well, I feel compelled to point out that when fair numbers of people defend stuff like this (and I agree, those models are pretty bad for their stated purpose) - there's not much incentive for the developers to take poser anywhere else, is there?  I bet it's selling like gangbusters, fans are fans and they can't resist.

You know what the coolest thing about this release is? You don't have to buy! I didn't buy P7, I skipped it, it had nothing at all that I would be willing to pay the $129 for and I still don't see why anyone did and we all know many people didn't buy P7.

Now PP comes along..... I didn't have the intention to buy it, but summing it all up and having skipped P7, PP Base became kind of interesting. Paid only $21 more for it then when I would have upgraded to P7, yet I get some awesome improvement and additions. Upgrading from P6 to PP is worth it, not sure about going from P7 to PP.

As for content, I COULD CARE LESS. Most of it I never use. I buy Poser for it's features, not for content.

FYI.... I used to be a game designer. I don't have the skills to create a human / organic model from scratch at all. I can do buildings, planes, cars, you name it, but at humans I'm terrible. BUT contrary to your statement I can alter and optimize a human / organic model even though I don't posses the skills the create them. If I still would be creating 3D games, these models would have been a good start for me to spin off my own human models.

* I bet it's selling like gangbusters, fans are fans and they can't resist.

*I seriously doubt that.... Poser 7 sales were at an all-time low and I'm pretty sure PP will beat that all-time low record since it doesn't offer enough for P7 users to really be a full upgrade. It's more like asking money for a service release. For P6 users as I am this upgrade is a bit more interesting, still it's minimal. I seriously doubt that PP will be poser's salvation.... on the contrary, PP may well be poser's down fall and death.

BH's point was, you'd be kind of nuts to use a 15k human model as a base to start with for game tech anyway, aside from the appearance.  Much smarter to go with one of the 2-5k poly models available elsewhere (and much cheaper I might add).

Quote - Y'know, blackhearted, for someone who doesn't care about this much, you sure type a hell of a lot about them.. LOL!

i dont care enough about poserpro to read the entire promo site.
i do care about the continued success of poser, and its most certainly not going to come about through cutting corners -- or all this rationalization and justification for those cut corners.

Quote - As for content, I COULD CARE LESS. Most of it I never use. I buy Poser for it's features, not for content.

its not so much about content that people wont use, its the fact that content like this was included at all in an application that is in dire need of a facelift.

Quote - I seriously doubt that.... Poser 7 sales were at an all-time low and I'm pretty sure PP will beat that all-time low record since it doesn't offer enough for P7 users to really be a full upgrade. It's more like asking money for a service release. For P6 users as I am this upgrade is a bit more interesting, still it's minimal. I seriously doubt that PP will be poser's salvation.... on the contrary, PP may well be poser's down fall and death.

and this is what weve become pretty much conditioned to expect through poser's changing hands on an almost yearly basis. apparently all a new version needs is a couple new bullet points on the box and changing the company name -- while all of the old problems and shortcomings are ignored version after version.
i wonder if Poser 10 will still use the same outdated rigging system and meta interface which is already over a decade old.

Ahh the greed.

200 dollars? LOL.

I'll still with my outdated P5.

All they do is change the name on it
and add a few more useless bells & whistles then change hands again
once they make their millions off it.

Oh man, what a rip off = 200 hundred dollars?!?

LMAO.

Blackheart I see your point. . .

Blackheart I see your point. . .

Several key features in PPro...Gamma Correction. The whole scene or material by material. Gone is the overly Red skin colors, if you dial it out with Gamma correction.

Background renders. While scene A is rendering you can be building scene B. Render Que. Send a whole bunch of scenes to Render Que and go do something completely different. No more waiting. No more waiting until the end of the day to wait to render over night. Even if these are just test renders, because you use Vue or C4D or something else to do final renders. It speeds up you work flow.

There are other features like HDRI optimized output, that I have yet to even play with. I am on a Mac, and it seems a ton more stable even with the limited time I have used it. Even if high end render seems to take longer then P7, the process of speeding up my work flow, was well worth the price of admission. Low or Medium res characters that are redistributable is not something that interests me at this time based on where I am in the 3D curve. If you think they screwed up by only including these and new users to PoserPro will be disappointed, think again. All legacy P6 and P7 characters are free if you want or need them.

Glad I purchased it so far.

Quote - All they do is change the name on it
and add a few more useless bells & whistles then change hands again
once they make their millions off it.

there have been some useful features added through the versions.
the firefly renderer, AO, dynamic cloth, the morph tool.

the problem is that these are small features that make it difficult to justify keeping up with each new version (although going from 5-7 would be worthwhile), and that by this point after so many versions the glaring issues like the archaic interface and rigging system should have been addressed. its simply not fair to just sit back on your laurels and expect content creators to make up for a poor rigging system through basically hacking the poser text formats.

like pjz99 implied, threads like this are the exact reason we get so little out of each poser version - because for every guy like me thats screaming bloody murder about rushed substandard content there are ten people rationalizing it and accepting it. there is no excuse for poor quality. none. spend another week morphing them or reworking them at the mesh level and make them look more human before releasing it. with the public perception of poser at stake, id definitely say its worth the effort.

Cool. New Poser features to play with.

Regarding upgrading. I think the price is fair and exactly the upgrade price I expected. I only upgrade every two versions. Last version I bought was Poser6 so I am in on this one.

A new rigging system for poser.... hmm.

Most people, even Daz, barely can rig properly with spheres. The simple fact is noone really knows how to rig. Or refuses to really learn, tweak, and make the most of what is already in there. A more advanced system isn;t going to make figures better when people won't truly learn the existing system.
 
Another rigging option added beside the existing one would be a viable option. IMO.  Don't replace the existing system. Just add another one to choose from; like the simpe materials vs. shaders.

Off to read. ack. SO much for the weekend.

it takes me forever to make an animation in Poser, so i dont have alot of files waiting to be batch rendered on the network renderer the backburner is kind of appealing but not enuf the new figures are funny, looks like P2 mans brother i bought Poser 4, PPP, 5, 6, and 7 I have no plans to buy the new PP atm

"like pjz99 implied, threads like this are the exact reason we get so little out of each poser version - because for every guy like me thats screaming bloody murder about ..."

No I'm guessing that they know by now that whatever they do, they'll still see people in forums screaming like blody murder about anything they can find to scream about.

Funny thing is, everyone who's gotten is seems pretty damned happy with it.. and everyone who hasn't hates it for x/y/z reasons.

I've only read one thread anywhere from one person who's having some opengl issue with it on his system.. everyone else who's runnign it really seems to like the imporvements.

But since they OWN it and can make FAIR judegement calls about the imporvements, they must be WRONG, right?

Quote - Another rigging option added beside the existing one would be a viable option. IMO.  Don't replace the existing system. Just add another one to choose from; like the simpe materials vs. shaders.

of course, so that legacy content could still be used.

as one of the people at the forefront of poser rigging, surely youll admit that figure rigging in poser is getting a little out of hand, no? i mean figure creators are having to go to great lengths just to get something to pose naturally in poser - which is supposed to be a program first and foremost for figure posing and animation.

most poser 'technology' right now is actually nothing but text file hacks developed by individuals like yourself, nerd, drax, etc. this is all being taken for granted by the developers, and also by many beginner poser users who dont understand how much work is involved in poser content development. in the past half dozen poser versions why have no improvements been made to the heart of the program - posing figures? how much longer are people going to expect figure creators to take up the slack through countless hours of CR2 hacking?

as for those that are already working miracles within poser's limitations - think how much more they could do with more tools and options at their disposal.

As a matter of fact, I do buy Poser for it's content. I LIKE the default Poser people. I always have. Til now. I Bought P4,5,6 & 7 for the new included content as well as the features. 7P just doesn't rate the price tag for me. The ony feature I've heard that I'd like to have is the gamma correction. I just don't want it bad enough to pay $200 for it.

Quote - No I'm guessing that they know by now that whatever they do, they'll still see people in forums screaming like blody murder about anything they can find to scream about.

Funny thing is, everyone who's gotten is seems pretty damned happy with it.. and everyone who hasn't hates it for x/y/z reasons.

you dont have to buy the program to be concerned about what Poser Pro released to the masses with a $500 price tag and including base figures that look like someones first attempt at modeling a human is going to do to the perception of poser.

Quote - This is how professional LoRez characters for architecture visualisation look like.
They are 3000 polys clothed and they look actually MORE realistic than your average Barbie and Ken, umm, sorry..Vicky and Michael render. 

Yeah, those, and evermotion and archvision lo rez people for arcitectural viz. oh, and Dosch and few others. All much more suitable for arch viz purposes then naked cartoon looking 15,000 poly meshes. When you use arch viz people, you don't want to spend time messing with making characters!

I wonder what is the target audience for those Poser Pro figures?????? Some sort of Video game mods?? Does anyone know?

Blackhearted, I think a lot of the problem is that in the past CL-EF-SM relied heavily on their venders to support their figures no matter how underdeveloped they were.  So there was a lot of promotion and product selling to support the poser base.  This release coincides with a time in which Content Paradise split from two of its major venders, Renderosity and RDNA.  So I doubt that much thought was put into preparing content for this release.

Considering what you have done with figures in the past, I would find you highly credible in your opinion of the new low mesh figures.  The jaw of the female is too big and the ears on both figures are too flat against the head.   I've spun the figures all the way around.  If the figures are meant for using in the background, it's only with their faces away from camera.

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I feel that the figures provided are ideal for the purpose for which they were intended.

Agreed. These things weren't meant to be admired - they were meant to be 'filler' at a distance.

Maybe if I were making a nightmare scene with the "attack of ball joint dolls coming to life"  Or C3P0 meets Face-off

Definately won't be using them in any visualizations i do for work. Not unless I want to be fired from the project, that is.

I can't think of a single reason a starter figure should look like this... yuck!

"So I doubt that much thought was put into preparing content for this release."

Well, Vanishing Point offered to make content for inclusion in PoserPro, we actually have the models made and ready to be released. It was decided by someone, somewhere, that models of fully rigged cars, tanks and planes may not be what Poser users want, lol, so we will find some other way of releasing all these figures. Maybe 3D World may want some stuff for their cover discs.

Attached Link: Marketplace forum

Quote - Funny thing is, everyone who's gotten is seems pretty damned happy with it.. and everyone who hasn't hates it for x/y/z reasons.

That isn't strictly true.