Quote - >> I suppose that it's all a matter of perception.

Indeed it is.

You have yours.

I have mine -- and as I have said several times over and over and over, I take full responsibility for that position.

But mine comes from almost a decade's involvement with this program and its change from a truly community-driven user base to merchants who flock to DAZ to see what they're supposed to work from next, which has resulted in a narrower and narrower culture. One page of gallery thumbs doesnt change what the full gallery itself truly is, sorry, just as few screen grabs of the current offerings at DAZ doesnt alter the fact that the overwhelming majority of items offered there are all purposely designed around the Showgirl and her... ahem... assets. And, as I've said repeatedly, that's fine, if that's what you want. I dont, which makes me sort of the unwanted guest at this all-DAZ-all-the-time-hosted party,

And I dont think anyone's ever said that places like CGTalk are any panacea here. I dont consider CGTalk to be anything more than a forum for CG students and wannabes, not professionals. It's like "Ads of the World", a forum that purports to host discussion on print media fand is frequented to an overwhelming degree by art school kids trying to look oh so impressive. But saying CG is a slam-dunk dispute of my argument... well, that's not my point, that's yours. Mine (and I repeat: mine and mine alone) is that, with the direction this package has gone, I'm not sure I no longer care about Poser's future development.  I dont care about the incessant, cookie-cutter textures and morphs for V4.x, because I personally find the mesh itself a bloated waste of virtual space, awkward to work with, poorly designed and overhyped. The A4 morph they carved out of it is freakishly ugly, IMHO*,* and the male morphs are two steps shy of an embarassment. It is thanks, as usual, to the users to make anything barely tolerable out of the mess thrown our way.

And yet this is the mesh our universe now revolves around because there's seemingly no alternative -- well, there is, of course, but because we want our images pretty right out of the box instead of putting the work into them to make them look pretty, we'll discard everything but the Showgirl, an action that IMHO has hobbled the development of this program irrevocably. As much as I applaud the work of folks like Patorak, the harsh reality is that chances are very good it wont find support in the community and will ultimately disappear. We've seen it happen several times over the years. I wish him well with his Plain Jane project, but, history being history, I'm not optimistic about it. It will wind up a niche, crushed under the relentless Vickie bandwagon... because Vickie is clearly and obviously what the Poser community wants. And that's fine -- it's just not for me. Never has been, never will be... particularly with the direction it's headed right now.

So no, I'm not abandoning Poser: I'll probably still be using it long after it's disappeared from the marketplace from lack of support (or been absorbed into the Microsoft that is DAZ). But at the same time... well, never mind -- the point's been made.

And no, I dont see the situation changing. Water will not be running uphill anytime soon in the Poserverse. I accepted that too a very long time ago. But that doesnt alter the fact that it's a pretty sad state of affairs.

Finally, thanks to the folks who have posted in this thread, both pro and con. You've certainly given me much to think about, and I appreciate that.

Just a thought here, but the Poser Universe, much like any other universe, is susceptible to Newton's laws.  Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

I think the reason that Vicky/Micheal figures sell so well is not so much a function of quality or "want" within the Poser Universe as it is a question of inertia.  Vendors create 3rd party products for Vicky and Mike because they believe that they will sell.

Consumers purchase new release of Vicky and Mike because they believe that third party products will be readily available for them, whereas other figures, regardless of quality, will probably not recieve that kind of third party support.

So it becomes a self feeding cycle, other figures have a difficult time breaking into the market, Vendors are not willing to risk spending time developing 3rd party add ons for new figures because they are uncertain they will sell, and consumers are unwilling to purchase new figures because they fear a lack of 3rd party vendor support.  The end result, new figures tend to die out pretty quickly as neither group is wiling to be the first to run the risk of "accepting" the new figure into the mainstream.

It's a lot more about marketing than it is about anything else.  However as the technology improves this will likely begin to change.  At the moment 3rd party Vendor support is crucial for many, because for the newbie or hobbiest purchasing/learning to use all the various programs you need to model/rig/create clothing and items of your own can be pretty daunting.

You have to be able to figure out how to export the figures from Poser, import them into a modeler for reference, use the modeler in quesiton, export from the modeler, import back into Poser, rig the new creation and have it work properly in Poser.

While this is old hat to a lot of us, from a newbie or hobbiest perspective if you've never done anything like that it can be a pretty overwhelming prospect.  There really isn't a single source tutorial on how to do this with most modeling applicaitons, and the applicatoins themselves really aren't integrated all that well.

So without 3rd party vendor support a new figure doesn't really have much of a chance to garner a real market share.  From the vendor's perspective they pretty much automatically assume a new figure that isn't Vicki or Mike will fail, and as a result most don't spend a lot of time creating products for them.

The funny thing is that most new figures die out quickly as a direct result of this "lack of faith" on the part of the vendors.  Even Daz products are not immune to this phenomena, I doubt they are are planning on releasing a David 4 because David 3 recieved such a lukewarm response from the marketplace.

Again I don't think this was so much a result of any shortcomings of the figure  when compared to M3, just a result of rather lukewarm support from 3rd party vendors, many of whom wanted to "wait and see" if D3 took off first, but of course there is no way D3 or any other figure can "take off" unless it has 3rd party support.

But I think things are changing - the technology is improving and 3d applications are becoming more and more able to exchange information in various formats without quite so much of the "hoop jumping" requirements.  Granted, still a long way to go here, but at least the process has started.

So further on down the line it might be possible to release a figure that might be much better recieved even without 3rd party support, as perhaps by that time 3rd party support won't be as crucial for as many in the community when it comes to which figures they wish to purchase.

But until then I'm afraid that any new figure, regardless of quality or features, is going to have a real uphill battle to make it.  All simply due to inertia.

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...