Quote - This again!?!?!

One more time for all those D|S users who missed it the first three time I've said it...

"The vast majority of Poser content will work in DAZ|Studio. Be careful when the product "not tested in DAZ|Studio" description mentions use of the material room, lights, and the word dynamic when paired with hair or cloth."

It's just that simple!

As a matter of fact it's just that simple for vendors as well. D|S doesn't take up too much disk space and reads the same runtime structure, it would only a few minutes to load the product and do a simple test render. Most of those who bring up this complaint are not expecting an optimum D|S preset, they just want to know if everything will load properly and be usable. That is not asking for much IMO.

Vendors could look to the "Vendor of the Year" (x2) for some clue as how to properly address this inconvenient Poser-like application. Aery Soul's most recent product presentation, Classic Fantasy, had a link offering Studio users a means to work around the material room dependancy. I applaud them for having an associate test for D|S and recomend other vendors to do the same. A couple of my friends have been asked to test products in D|S and if the right relationships could be formed Studio presets could emerge to enlarge the market audience of products offered at non-DAZ market sites.

Studio might not be as capable as Poser in certain areas but it's certainly growing. It's also offered free by a large content site that happens to offer the most popular line of figures. Meanwhile the compared app changes hands every 18 months with the most recent parent severing ties with affiliate market sites. Some major vendors have recently moved over to DAZ from those affiliates. I don't have magic powers or own a crystal ball but it doesn't take that to see the future of D|S looks less questionable than that of the implied competition. What... 13 months till Poser Pro++ Super Duper?

The biggest problem I see is that to make our products compatible with every new version of software on the market .. or new addtion to hit the scene.. is time. Time is also money. The more problematic thing is that most purchasers like us to see our product reasonably priced, but if I have to spend countless hours creating new files or checking compatibilty in a large number of programs to meet the demands of the masses, then of course the clientel will have to pay the price for it. I already test in every Poser version and it has become a daunting task keeping up and making all the necessary changes for compatibility's sake.

I realize that there is the argument that you "reach a broader market and thus sales increase" by doing so. But to tell you the truth, I haven't seen it. My products sell well; they have always sold well and my newest additions (that have been made compatible with Poser 4-7 and D|S) sell no worse or better than my oldest products (some from around 2003). Nor do any of my newest additions seem to sell more in volume. So the gist is that I have put much much more work into my newer products, kept the same low price as I always have but haven't really reaped any more monetary benefits from doing so.

Also, to bring down a hammer on Poser is quite ridiculous. Poser users are still the largest market and Poser isn't going anywhere anytime soon even if Smith Micro drops the ball. We saw Poser 4 live on for many years, virtually unchanged, before the release of Poser 5 and instead of faultering or fizzling out, it's userbase had actually grown by leaps and bounds.

One cannot argue that DAZ Studio, itself, is little more than a clone. Perhaps the rendering engine may be a bit better but it's functionality is lacking. Also, what is lacking is it's ease of use for content creation. Most of us, content creators, prefer to focus much of our time and effort into content creation not fiddling with convoluted scripting languages to make files work properly for our products. Poser's scripting for files is easily understood and can be quickly learned, but in comparison finger through a DAZ script sometime. I often wonder if the nature of the confusing script used wasn't somehow intentional? Why is it that DAZ Studio can import Poser file formats and read Poser's scripting format and yet it cannot output something similar in convention? It couldn't be legal reasoning because we all create content using the same format. I'm not saying that they had to use the exact scripting format as Poser, but their convention is very far from the Poser convention. They were able to include a compiler which compiles to binary format, but they have made it fairly difficult for content creators outside of the DAZ circle and have certainly made it even that much more difficult to create one file that is compatible with both Poser and D|S. Instead, in instances, where shaders are relied upon heavily, a user may need to relearn quite a bit to create almost an entirely new product, just to meet compatibility.

So, if we are to do the work and aquire the knowledge to appease the masses so they can reap the benefits, then where are our benefits?