From Viewpoint digital for the low-low price of $1050 US. I bought several of the Marlin Studios Seamless Texture CDs and some of them come with free Viewpoint models. One of them said it came with a model of Notre Dame worth $600 US. Upon examining the model I couldnt believe people were charging so much for it, I thought no way could their other models be so overpriced. I checked out their website and was shocked at their low model quality and prices. (And please dont tell me that they are low-poly models designed for games and such. A beginner at 3D modelling could do better than most of the items sold there) Just wanted to say folks, that if Viewpoint's prices are anywhere near competitive in the industry then you should all be very thankful that the high quality models and textures found at Renderosity and Daz3D/Zygote are so affordable. Thanks again to all who provide both our marketplace items and our generous freestuff archives.

Clearly upon visiting this viewpoint website, I find that it is all about profit, and has nothing to do with art, in anyway. The "vision" here is $$, and if people are naive enough to fall for it, so be it. But I digress...yes, many of us have modeled better than this with rhino-at-3a.m.-and-3-pots-of-coffee-on-a-lonely friday-night-right-when-you-run-out-of-cigarettes. Bryan

Viewpoint is a company that made its name selling models to production companies that make big budget movies. When they started, they were the only game in town, and could charge whatever they bloody well liked! Viewpoint has never woken up to the fact that the 3D world has changed... -SMT

Viewpoint has actually changed their pricing policies in the last year or so. They added a 10x multiplier to all their old meshes! As an example, some old car meshes that were $300 (still way too much!) are now $3000! They have to be kidding.....

They still make a killer profit from the film industry though. If you order thre acual paper catalog you'll find that alot of the stuff is acualy really high res, (Brokered stuff) but is still over priced. What I have here in the store for ten bucks I brokered to them, and they tried to put a $1000.00 price tag on, (What they have is a much older version and have compleetly redone it since) Companies still buy the older one for the big price tag though. Go figure. Below is a new and redone vertion of what they were selling.

I hope you get some of that 1000.00 per sale! gee, I feel better because when I went there a long time back now, I thought maybe there was something I was missing about the models. I kept thinking, well, maybe they are for something I know nothing about and they miraculously change into more organic, life like models when inserted into some magic machine! LOL!

maybe the movie makers should wake up. And come to rendo,daz,zygote for there stuff. That way we all can get a piece of the pie.

What makes this even funnier is that the old Metacreations became Viewpoint after they sold off all their software. Great minds think alike heh?:-)

Here's the real Viewpoint: Many of you are familiar with the REM Infografica meshes. The whole collection was sold to Viewpoint. Using the vehicle meshes as an example, most come as 4 meshes with varing levels of detail...price for these are $244, $194, $94 and $94, or $626 if you want all 4. You can pay them a $395 a year "membership" fee and recieve 80% off all models you wish to "license". Quite a deal... hmmmmmmmm.... BUT... The founders of REM apparently retained the rights to sell their models. You've heard of De Espoona?? Buy ALL 5000 REM models on 9 CD's for $500!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just can't figure who in their right mind would ever give these rightous con artists a penny.

Yeah, Meta dumped everything (and WE all know it was EVERYTHING) to team up with viewpoint for some new web-based 3D technolgy. Talk about your collosal blunders of the modern information age. I thought it was risky to begin with, but now that its been out for a while and IS NOT catching on (at least as far as I can tell) I'm quite positive Meta is going to have to bend over. Couldn't happen to a "nicer" company, IMHO. Not to mention there are about a bagillion competing technologies. Can we say ... uh-duh!

So my sentiments exactly with you all. The whole behavior of said companies always seemed to fly in the face of common sense. Baffling realy. Yeah. The web-based thing. They revamped the whole product line and it had finally matured into a spectacular line up! Then they dumped it for the web-based thing. Baffling realy. I never could make sense of that pricing thing at Viewpoint. I found far better for far less at other comercial sources. Baffling realy.

Is it true that the US military pays $5000 for a screwdriver? Maybe they are the customers!

The DeEspona collection is quite awesome .. You now even have the option of buying any of the high res models for $10 for each masterwork! Check 'em out!!!!! http://www.turbosquid.com/HTMLClient/Search/Index.cfm A fraction of the cost compared to the Viewpoint site!

Oh yeah ... you'll have to do a search for De Espona at the above address ;)

The MetaCreations board of directors probably hired a new CEO who would implement grand ideas for them or some such nonsense (this happens all the time in high tech companies) and then the guy totally effed them over because he had warts for brains and no grasp of reality. Someday they will fire him and pay him $M to go away. Man, i hate those guys. My day job company has miraculously survived one of these numbnuts and are starting to actually prosper again, now that we've gotten back to what we do well, and run by the original founder.

Viewpoint made it's rep off of the high-res, detailed models in the ModelBank, not off of their regular line. And I'm afraid that MetaCreations is applying the same winning business ideas that drove them out of the 3D business since they took over viewpoint datalabs. I do agree, Daz3D does pretty nice quaility work at competetive prices. They same does NOT apply to the models at the main Zygote site - those are just as ridiculuously overpriced for what you get as Viewpoints main line is.

Bear, i think we Poser/Bryce folks are ridiculously spoiled--AND the other stuff is ridiculously overpriced!

Oh yeah... nfredman. ;] We get so much truly excellent freestuff, that we're REAL persickety on what we pay for and how much we pay, eh?

Attached Link: http://modelbank.viewpoint.com/

Quick note: I just browsd ViewPoint Datalabs ModelBank, and the models in there are still at roughly the same prices as they were a few months ago when I browsed them. Model bank membership: $395 Average on models to non-Model Bank Members: $94 - $394 Average on models to Model Bank members: $19 - $79 [usc] Sorry, no $3,000 high poly models in that area of the ViewPoint site that I was able to find. And the ModelBank model are excellent - I own a few of them from when my studio had a model bank membership. Extremely detailed - you can download the high res version of their sample model and check it out. The so called Premier Models are a different story - I seldom bwose them, and I don't think they were EVER worth the asking price.

If you were calling them on behalf of say Sony entertainment. You would have a whole different choice of models,very real professional stuff. But you would pay a HUGE price for let's say a helicopter, but it would be very realistic. But for consumers they offer horrible cheap models at ridiculous prices. Screw Viewpoint, and I will always hold a bad grudge against Metafu%#ations, if anyone in here bought Carrara you'll understand, they sold us a beta stage product for full price that didn't work, then dumped us on the side of the road like a pile of garbage. Long live renderosity and all of the people here who make it what it is!