Hi
Hopefully this wont Erupt in to a Flame war but I think Daz studio is truly poised to overtake poser within 24-36 months
The new Character rigging tools ( which I will be purchasing next week InshAllah)ook very good and with the aniMate plugin and Now the Free poser format exporter supports animation& morphs.

The inevitable Addition of A proper Graph Editor and Dynamic Cloth and Daz will have Equivalent Functionality
of Poser Including Collada Export to other high end apps.
all based on a clean modern Code base with a modern SDK for external plugin developers.

As a content developer I find these to be exciting times.

yup it looks like that ...

DS is costing you twice the money..... so unless that changes it will never take over poser...
i spent twice the money on DS now to poser 7 .. and i still cant do all Poser can do ..
So DS looks Free but when you want it to be as useble as poser its costly...

Daz studio = Free Kittens

Quote - yup it looks like that ...

DS is costing you twice the money..... so unless that changes it will never take over poser...
i spent twice the money on DS now to poser 7

Not to challenge your assertion but" twice the cost of poser 7" is $500

How did you manage to spend that much on DAZ studio itself the program
( Excluding Commercial Content)??

LOL... when they offer a complete bundle with full functionality at a cost LESS then poser, then SM has a cause to worry. And without th eability to export to many higher end app formats like poser pro has, DS is still a playtoy for consumers, rather then a bridge towards prosumers.

When you add the full functionality plugins up, your cost is MUCH higher then poser's cost, and there are still legacy issues like scaling that DS still can;t perform properly, after what, 3 years of developement now?

Plus you also have to factor in the constant new bug introduction when new features are added bi weekly.

From a developer standpoint, DS is a royal PITA, because you can't relaibaly develope from week to week, without some new bug cropping up that busts content creation.

I spent a full day troubleshooting a quality control issue with a product VS DS.. and after hours of head beating, we just uncovered a NEW bug in a NEW version of DS that was causing the issue.

So I wasted 10 hours of brow beating headwork for literally no reason at all.

I'll start using DS when I can use it reliably between versions. For casual users who just want a render it's fine, but it's not a great tool for content developement yet.

And for all we know, Quidam or some other upstart might kick both poser and DS's butt 3 years from now.

actually if I have my archives right... 5 years of development.. (I seem to remember DS being announced in '03)

yup here we are :

http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=2793

well the price for the animation only is $100 ..and so we have many plugins costing 50 or more
and Light shaders for AO , HDRI light plugins .. importers exporters ..rigging tools ...

Im sure it reach poser,s  price easy ... 

But this was about the overtaking on poser... i hope it does that ... becuase Poser needs to step up.. and not release half made version 

So for the competition this is a good thing ..for my CC its less such fun

just did some sums... now, excluding cloth and hair (not availible for DS as yet).. to bring DS upto  poser features, I came out at $359. (not plat club pricing. we're assuming a 'cold' starting out user here.) Poser 7 comes out at $249, complete.

Quote - just did some sums... now, excluding cloth and hair (not availible for DS as yet).. to bring DS upto  poser features, I came out at $359. (not plat club pricing. we're assuming a 'cold' starting out user here.) Poser 7 comes out at $249, complete.

Exactly.
The sum of the parts cost far more than the complete product.
Any doubts about that, start buying replacement auto parts.

If and When Daz chooses to offer a "Complete", With Every Function that Poser has, Daz Studio Version for $249.00, then possibly I would think of it.
Highly unlikely though as Daz loves to sell you Piecemeal Ala Carte, much more profitable to them.

Let's guess that you can tack on another $85 to $150 for Dynamics as well.
And from what i have read so far, you can pay Daz for their Special Dynamic Clothes.
I believe they said that "Daz Some Day" you "May?" be able to use the Poser Dynamics Clothes that you have already purchased over the years.

Sorry wolf359, but unless DAZ implements full P7/PRO MorphBrush functionality into D|S, their newfangled rigging tools are just another overhyped / overpriced "feature" which lags greatly behind of what is already technically possible in the Poserverse.

P7/PRO gives me FULL CONTROL over the appearance of any joint of any clothing item or figure mesh, down to the vertex level.

DAZ STUDIO does not.

Once they can produce better shoulders/knees/ellbows and all the other things I can already do in P7/PRO, AND do them EASIER and for a lesser price, I'm happy to reevaluate Studio again.

But so far, they have nothing that could impress me in the slightest. (Except for an extraordinary pricetag. LOL)

Quote - But so far, they have nothing that could impress me in the slightest. (Except for an extraordinary pricetag. LOL)

That's what you get when you buy into Ala Carte (Piecemeal) Purchasing.

Quote - actually if I have my archives right... 5 years of development.. (I seem to remember DS being announced in '03)

yup here we are :

http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=2793

I have Beta Versions almost 5 years old.

Still, competiion is good, and it hoepfully will make SM add more features to poser 8 and poser pro 8. The Daz rigging tools sound a bit more intuative, and robust in some parts, and that might spark some enhancements in poser's as well.

My issue with DS isn;t the price, or ala carte stuff.. it's that basic functionality is busted from version to version.

Scaling should have been resolved over 3 years ago when I reported it first. In a recent release, conforming wasn't working properly for some items.

Those are both very BASIC functions that should never be broken in any release.

For a developement platform, it has to have stable base features, something that seems to still escape DS developement. They'll add new pretty shiny candy like buttons, but I prefer the meal to the dessert.

What's REALLY interesting that no one has really mentioned anywhere, is we are now seeing users that think DS is the Base content format, and want to know if Poser items can be used with DS.  And there have been a LOT of posts along those lines.. where they see DS as the major format, and poser as an offshoot, or possibly compatible format. THAT in itself is very interesting.

Quote - What's REALLY interesting that no one has really mentioned anywhere, is we are now seeing users that think DS is the Base content format, and want to know if Poser items can be used with DS.  And there have been a LOT of posts along those lines.. where they see DS as the major format, and poser as an offshoot, or possibly compatible format. THAT in itself is very interesting.

Probably because Daz Pumps Out sooooooooooo many Freebie DS copies.

Quote - Scaling should have been resolved over 3 years ago when I reported it first. In a recent release, conforming wasn't working properly for some items.

Those are both very BASIC functions that should never be broken in any release.

Here, I assume you mean body part scaling - aka smoothscaling (?).  I can see wholely why it is such an issue.  Not that Daz doesn't have some very competent brain power doing the design and development, but it is exceedingly difficult to 'reverse engineer' non-standard, proprietary algorithms and replicate them completely and accurately.  I know this from experience. :)  The Poser smoothscaling body part system is very complex (because it has one-to-many dependencies) and I've examined it several times coming out of it with not much less confusion than when I started.

For instance, I'm still amazed that Daz was able to get any IK solution into D|S, let alone the nice 'pin&drag' solution used therein.  From David Eberly's (PhD in mathematics and computer science) book "3D Game Engine Architecture", I quote:

"Inverse kinematics (IK) is an intriguing topic, but a very difficult thing to implement when you have to reproduce what a modeling package produces. ... If you have no idea what algorithm the modeling package uses, it is nearly impossible to reverse-engineer and match it."

One of the reasons that Poser's IK is so insidious is that 'real' IK solutions use Jacobians which output quaternions or matrices whereas Poser's rotation system is strictly ordered Euler angles - and there are no reliable ways to extract Euler rotations from quaternions or matrices (note 'reliable' here).  Remember some of the IK fun in previous versions and the once odd 'arm salute' issue?  So, whatever the developers of Poser have done to stabilize the IK, it took them a very long time and several versions to do so.  Now think about trying to do something similar but blindfolded.

The last usable version of DS I tried was 1.5, I got fed up with having things fixed in one release then broken in the next, then fixed again only to break something else at the same time.

When they finally get a release out that doesn't break things that worked perfectly before I'll try it again until then Poser wins. Poser is cheaper too!

Quote - The last usable version of DS I tried was 1.5, I got fed up with having things fixed in one release then broken in the next, then fixed again only to break something else at the same time.

When they finally get a release out that doesn't break things that worked perfectly before I'll try it again until then Poser wins. Poser is cheaper too!

Apparently the new DS Rigging did not work properly in the newest Daz Studio (.99), so rather than fixing the problem in DS, they made a fix in the Rigging Tool.

Hmmm, One would certainly think that they should have know this, before releasing either one.

I'm glad we have something to Poser a run for it's money.

Has anyone else noticed that Poser hasn't introduced a significant new feature in several years?

Depends on what you consider significant.

I consider the morph brush, the background 64 bit renderer, and the undo system MAJOR advancements in poser. I'm lost without any of them now.

They've also made the preview much closer to the actual renders as well, and being able to see some of the node materials in preview is also VERY cool.

Plus, In poser pro, they finally got out a GOOD lightwave export feature, something I've waited for for about 5 YEARS.

I wish poser would update its antiquated GUI. the library system is laughable and if it wasn't for dizzi making Advanced Library for it i'd probably have lost my mind ages ago.

The material room could use some inspiration from daz and allow multiple mat-selection editing instead of having to rely on products like Shader Spider or saving .mc6 to reapply to another zone.

Really, thats all I'd like. Oh, and a grayscale UI without having to edit all the ui .psd files.

I consider the morph brush, the background 64 bit renderer, and the undo system MAJOR advancements in poser. I'm lost without any of them now.

I couldn't agree more...

*I wish poser would update its antiquated GUI. the library system is laughable and if it wasn't for dizzi making Advanced Library for it i'd probably have lost my mind ages ago.

I also agree about the library system although multiple runtimes can make a difference, but I got very used to the navigation tools so don't change that please

The material room could use some inspiration from daz and allow multiple mat-selection editing instead of having to rely on products like Shader Spider or saving .mc6 to reapply to another zone.

Poser's material room is absolute superior to DAZ|Studio, untill now I'm not very impressed with DAZ|studio's material/shader handling, with Bagginsbill VSS-program you can also handle multiple material zones at once ( see VSS-thread in this Poser forum)
Thereby comes that the DAZ|studio renderer is extremely slow compaired  to Poser once you start using shadows.

It has several plusses compaired with poser like puppeteer and the better content handling, but to compete with poser it has a long way to go.

Best regards,

Bopper.

"Hopefully this wont Erupt in to a Flame war but I think Daz studio is truly poised to overtake poser within 24-36 months"

It depends very much on what you mean by overtake.

In these sorts of threads it seems most people post from a personal point of view. Logical but narrow.  Keep in mind not everyone is a content creator nor does everyone want to be an advanced user. If that were the case there would be next to no interest in products to make it all easier. So the better question will studio overtake poser for average user market. Odds are in its favor for several reason. First and foremost is the fact that daz activity increases the size of the market with studio. They actively pushed to bring new users to the industry not just convert already existing users of other software. On the other hand, the buzz has been that SM would prefer to pick up pro users and have not focused on the new user market or converting users from other potentially "hobby" softs.  

Looking at a few polls the percentage of studio users has grown over the last year and may already consist of 25% of the market. If dynamics are not a bust and work with less pain and frustration that will encourage some poser users to cross over on a more regular basis.

Until recently most daz users simply expected to have to spend time redoing most of what they bought so it would function properly in daz. Newer users are shifting away from that toward an expectation of more products that work properly in daz and will have that reinforced when dynamics products come out that can only be used in daz properly. Hard to say what impact better support by independent creators will have on studio user numbers however.

I prefer daz, its never cost me as much as poser did because I only buy what I will actually use as far as plug in's etc go. I create for both so I use both frequently. Stability wise I'd go with studio, but that may be because poser has crashed on me a half dozen times in 48 hours while I was doing test renders where as daz almost never gives me trouble.

If I were betting I would bet that due bringing in new users and ease of use studio would match or pass poser numbers wise in the next year or two. But, I'd put money on Vue to pass both of them at some point. I still don't have it but have never heard anything but praise for it and have a low cost into program that builds up to the more pro level work.

I don't for see DS "over taking" Poser. 

This is like saying Wings3d will "over take" Blender or McDonald's will "over take" Burger King.

My point is you will always have user that will prefer 1 over the "other" and some who are not will to try the "other".

I personally have been using both for testing of my products (SHAMELESS PLUG WARNING SEE SIGNATURE :biggrin: ).

 i am monitoring the situation, but one great advantage of poser - which led to users developing mat files and all sorts of other great things that the makers of poser never intended, is the ability to "hack"poser files which are just text files.
  Daz can't do that can it?
Love esther

"Hopefully this wont Erupt in to a Flame war but I think Daz studio is truly poised to overtake poser within 24-36 months"

I tend to agree with your statement, but from a different point of view. If there will be no new versions of Poser will still be released in 24-36 months, then your statement would be correct. But if new versions of Poser will still be seeing the light, then I seriously doubt D/S will overtake Poser any time soon.

The only thing D/S really overtakes is your wallet. I looked at upgrading to Poser Pro or switching to D/S, instead of using Poser 6. Poser Pro offered what I needed and overcame P6's shortcomings. D/S also offered what I needed, but didn't overcome all of P6's shortcomings (and today it still doesn't). But after doing some simple math and adding up all the plugins needed for D/S it became a no-brainer..... the choice was clear...... upgrading to Poser Pro from P6 was a lot cheaper the switching to D/S and it packed a lot more power then D/S does.

The base package that D/S offers is lacking a lot, the plugins make it expensive and still D/S would be lacking.

D/S will never overtake Poser, unless DAZ will drastically drop their prizes, but all they've done lately is raise prizes, so I don't see that happen for a long time.

I've not even mentioned the constant bugs that plague D/S, those in itself are reason enough to stick to Poser.

In short.... if you like overspending, lack of features and love bugs then D/S is the way to go, otherwise Poser still is and will be for many years to come a better choice.

DAZ studio's may have a rapid advancment, but it comes with a considerable price tag.

Quote -  i am monitoring the situation, but one great advantage of poser - which led to users developing mat files and all sorts of other great things that the makers of poser never intended, is the ability to "hack"poser files which are just text files.
  Daz can't do that can it?
Love esther

A scene file is closed, but DS' presets are just script files- the ASCII versions (.ds) can be edited in anything, unencrypted binary (.dsb) files can be edited with the free Scripting SDK's editor plugin. It's as if Poser's pose files and so on were written in Python - you can do anything the scripting language allows (for example, the DS material presets I did for last year's forum free bei asked the user how full they anted their glass/bottle, and what they wanted in it). However, it isn't the same kind of hacking as a Poser file allows - it's actual code.

 that sounds interesting and gives hope.  Shame about the scene files though.  I moved some of my poser folders in the days when the paths were absolute then I just used massreplaceit to change all my pz3s in one hit to match.  I can imagine that certain updates to dazstudio or to the users computer could make a scene file in dazstudio suddenly unopenable without the possibility of the user being able to fix things.
Love esther

I suspect that if Daz ever completes their endless task of trying to match (if not best) Poser's features, they will release the entire package at a price comparable to Poser. By that point a comparable price will probably be around $400 dollars.

Even now Daz fills an important niche. They can compensate for the broken features in Poser that the programmers seem willing to ignore, like the demented Setup Room for example.

"I suspect that if Daz ever completes their endless task of trying to match (if not best) Poser's features, they will release the entire package at a price comparable to Poser. "

I doubt they will release it as a complete package. D/S isn't like Poser where one team develops everything and controls the complete application. DAZ depends on a lot of 3rd party developers,  who sell there  plug-ins seperate from DAZ as affiliates and they may not want their items in an entire package. That also signifies the weakness of D/S, if these 3rd party developers stop developing their plug-ins and DAZ keeps on updating D/S, the users in time could be left with having invested a lot of money into D/S, but not being able to use the lastest version, because the plug-ins aren't updated anymore. DAZ has no control over that and if a plug-in developer  decides to stop and not  transfer the right to DAZ, the users are left standing in the cold. That could become a major problem in the future. Knowing that in poserdom merchants were unknown yesterday, are here to today and can be gone tomorrow, it  doesn't the same feeling of trust in D/S as I do have in Poser. D/S core is here to stay, but with the esssential plug-ins that isn't neccessary the case.

" By that point a comparable price will probably be around $400 dollars. "

Comparable? Poser is priced at $250, so that's not comparable. Unless you compare it to Poser Pro, but then DAZ will need to add some expensive features and since D/S by now almost cost $400, if they do that D/S will cost a lot more.

Quote - Comparable? Poser is priced at $250, so that's not comparable. Unless you compare it to Poser Pro, but then DAZ will need to add some expensive features and since D/S by now almost cost $400, if they do that D/S will cost a lot more.

And you can tack on anothe $100 or so for Dynamics.
I despise the Daz Ala Carte Mthod of buying, it's the most expensive way there is.

From one of the forums:

Quote - 1) A free dynamic cloth viewer that will allow you to view premade clothing sims that will be produced and sold here.

1. A Cloth dynamic plugin that will allow you to make adjustments to the premade cloth sim. Originally stated price $.49.95.

2. A Cloth creation plugin that will allow for the creation of dynamic clothing using the Optitex system. Originally stated price $49.95.

Also stated is that you cannot use Poser dynamic cloth in the D/S plugin. Eventually you will be able to but not immediately.

Little information has been given since this was released. If there has been any changes, it has not been stated. .

Imagine that?
You have to buy Premade Dynamic Clothing from Daz and it will not work in Poser.
Your Poser Dynamic Clothes will not work in DS
Maybe someday it may be compatible with Poser.

Sorry, I don't think Daz will be surpassing Poser anythine soon, and certainly will not be comparable in price.
And before someone asks, I have tried every version of DS since Beta v0.8x
I still do not like DS.

I am waiting to see what poser 8 brings to the table.

and don't forget one problem with DS that is limiting it's capabilities.

3Delight Licensing.
First License is free, but each addtional licence (as would be required for network rendering) is $1000.
(Pricing taken from the 3Delight website. )

Quote - "That also signifies the weakness of D/S, if these 3rd party developers stop developing their plug-ins and DAZ keeps on updating D/S, the users in time could be left with having invested a lot of money into D/S, but not being able to use the lastest version, because the plug-ins aren't updated anymore.

Actually that's already starting to happen.. Poseworks is no longer upgrading shader spider, because he's tired of constant issues between either a DS update, or a poser SR release.

You are also now seeing different developement "camps" emerge, wihcih IMHO is a BAD thing... we're seeing pewopel develop FOR DS with a "if it works great" attitude about poser users, and the same with Poser developers with that same attitude towards DS. We might end up with a lot of confusion, and more incmpatibility down the road if this continues, which isn;t really good for poser OR DS users.

Ideally, DS should be able to use anything poser users can within reason,  and then have additiional features exclusive to DS. But what we're seeing now, is developers who simply cannot justify the additional developement time for one platform or the other, so they are just abadoning the other platform entirely.

Personally, I think daz should really concentrate on 100% psoer functionality where possible, and then dick around adding new bells n whistles.

I dunno...Poser is still the champ when it comes to its highly user-friendly animation palette and graph. And the animation tools in DS are nice but still very buggy IMO. Animate is a very cool tool, but I still see DS as an adjunct to Poser, not a replacement.

Throw in the lack of interface with major 3D apps and I'd say DS is still pretty far behind.

The main issue to me is export to other software of the content.
Daz has the edge there. I can export in Lightwave units with an accurate result. There is still really no standard measurement scale in Poser. I recently purchased 2 vehicles from the same vendor. One is perfect, the other is way too large in Poser to start with, and therefore useless, (@ $16)  as multi layer objects (especially with a high polygon count are impossible to rescale without major work in the target programme..
Although, this issue is really redundant to me, because I have spent years manually exporting content from Poser and would really not want to start again. It may be something to think about for others though.
Mike

Quote - Ideally, DS should be able to use anything poser users can within reason,  and then have additiional features exclusive to DS.
Personally, I think daz should really concentrate on 100% poser functionality where possible, and then dick around adding new bells n whistles.

Here is the latest fro m Daz regarding Dynamics
Even so, where we currently stand is with a plugin that will get released as a "BETA" with a smattering of clothing outfits available to purchase. There are many known issues that will be part of the BETA, and most likely, part of the 1.0 release as well, as they are not simple issues to overcome, and we can say that definitively as we've spent months on solutions to overcome them and still have many of these issues present.

So now DS users can invest Real $$s in Proprietary Clothing for a Beta Experiment that may or may not work properly.
is Daz going to hand out refunds for those closthes, when they do not work properly?

Quote - > Quote - Ideally, DS should be able to use anything poser users can within reason,  and then have additiional features exclusive to DS.

Personally, I think daz should really concentrate on 100% poser functionality where possible, and then dick around adding new bells n whistles.

Here is the latest fro m Daz regarding Dynamics
Even so, where we currently stand is with a plugin that will get released as a "BETA" with a smattering of clothing outfits available to purchase. There are many known issues that will be part of the BETA, and most likely, part of the 1.0 release as well, as they are not simple issues to overcome, and we can say that definitively as we've spent months on solutions to overcome them and still have many of these issues present.

So now DS users can invest Real $$s in Proprietary Clothing for a Beta Experiment that may or may not work properly.
is Daz going to hand out refunds for those closthes, when they do not work properly?

I asked Steve Kondris if  we buy the clothing and the  plugin fizzles, do we get a refund.  Instead of answering my question, he was quick to point out that the beta version of the plugin would be free.

As for the DAZ Studio rigging tools, they are fundamentally lacking in one very basic area.  You cannot group your mesh inside D/S. 

DAZ Studio has overtaken Poser in price but it still lacks dynamic cloth, dynamic hair, advanced material room, face room, grouping tools, and morph tools. 

If it weren't for third party plugin creators, D/S wouldn't even have shadow catching.  Of course the PA created plugins are a real boon to DAZ.  They sell the PA the SDK.  The PA is the one who puts in the time(=money), blood, sweat, and tears just to write it.  They and their testers put in more time and effort to work out the bugs.  Once all the bugs are worked out, they take it to DAZ who brokers it and takes 50% off the top without having spent a dime. 

On top of that, the PA is responsible for updating the plugin everytime DAZ does one of it's updates which mean more time and money spent by the PA.

Nice set up.

You know what ?
The sooner the rift, the better.

V4 and M4 are defective by design because they were created to work in D|S following that new DAZ' "safe and convenient" philosophy.

They (And most of their support items) are a far cry from what Poser is able to do now.
But because DAZ has a defacto monopoly on human meshes, noone bothers anymore to challenge them, not even whoever might currently own Poser ATM.

M4 and V4 are rubbish, but the G2's are even worse.
(Which is such a shame, because with only a LITTLE afterthought and professionalism the G2 meshes could have SERIOUSLY kicked Vicky and Mike in the a**)

The only hope I have is that D|S becomes so incompatible with Poser that merchants HAVE to decide which side they're on because it wouldn't be worthwhile to make fully functional versions for both.

Let D|S users play with their dinky little content viewer producing pretty little piccies of badly rigged and over-stylized 3d dollies.
If it's what you want and need, PLEASE go ahead.

But give us Poser users who are willing to invest more than a few mouseclicks or a visit to the marketplace into their work humans and clothes that look and function properly.

So far this isn't going to happen because it's still more lucrative to churn out the same primitive stuff made for undemanding newbies year in, year out.

Poser was never meant to be that "three clicks to instant art" tool that D|S obviously so desparately wants to be now.

So please let there be a rift.
Let D|S have all the "convenience" and "a child could do it" "features" they want.
And pretty please condense all the DAZ characters even more for "ease of use".
From Freak 4 to Maddie 4 with just a single dial !
And they can even share the same clothes now ! Yupp-pee, isnt progress swell ?

Again, if that's what people want, FINE.

But what's not fine is that there is no CHOICE as long as it's only DAZ where the money is.

Again, the only way to break their monopoly is to make Poser incompatible with D|S.

DAZ long enough sucked out the lifeblood of Poser.
It's time they start standing on their own feet.

Shaders require only the free Scripting SDK, not the plugin SDK.

Then of course, there's iClone, with more than a little cash behind it.
I tend to agree with JoePublic to an extent although I would have put it more mildly.
As far as I remember, Daz Studio was born shortly after Poser 5 came out in a hurry with loads of bugs. There were certain members of this community working on DS with Daz and singing their praises to no end before anyone had seen it. The first release not only fell short of their bell jingling and near banshee-like wailing praises, but was, well, not going to compete with Poser. I think at the time the business logic was that even if kids couldn't afford Poser, they could download DS and then buy V2. The problem with that business model (sic) is that it's the package that comes first and then the content. It can't be done the other way round.
Daz is locked into Poser totally, for example, the scale issue. They can never change that. Niether can e-frontier.

Quote - Shaders require only the free Scripting SDK, not the plugin SDK.

With the Poser Advanced Material Room, you do not need any sort of SDK Scripting or even write anything.

Sorry, I will take Poser over DS anyday of the week.

Everything with Daz Studio is Pay $50 to $100 for this Poser Like feature.
What's the True Retail Cost of DS Rigging? Something like $150.00
Oh yeas, DS really is Free isn't it, if you want to click click click make Art.

How much was DS Animation?
How much is the DS Proprietary Dynamics going to cost.

As for the DAZ Studio rigging tools, they are fundamentally lacking in one very basic area. You cannot group your mesh inside D/S.

It's better to do that stuff in your modeler anyway.

Just give me a rigging system that works. Poser's rigging tools are fundementally screwy. 

There are times in Poser when I'd kill for a really good constraint system.

Quote - There are times in Poser when I'd kill for a really good constraint system.

There are times in the forums when I'd kill for a really good constraint system...;)

I think the problem with DazStudio was that it was plugged or seen as a Poser killer and it just isnt.
What they should have done and still could do is concentrate on what it should be.
Daz3d sell 3d content and DS could have been a great little entry level figure posing and rendering app. If it was just that they could concentrate on getting it working properly and leaving the heavy lifting to the likes of Bryce and Carrerra.

Unfortunetly they have taken aim at their foot and let off both barrels!

Quote - > Quote - Shaders require only the free Scripting SDK, not the plugin SDK.

With the Poser Advanced Material Room, you do not need any sort of SDK Scripting or even write anything.

Sorry, I will take Poser over DS anyday of the week.

Everything with Daz Studio is Pay $50 to $100 for this Poser Like feature.
What's the True Retail Cost of DS Rigging? Something like $150.00
Oh yeas, DS really is Free isn't it, if you want to click click click make Art.

How much was DS Animation?
How much is the DS Proprietary Dynamics going to cost.

Actually the full price of the all the rigging tools together are 179.95.  Plus another app to do your grouping and UVmapping. 

Poser's internal UVmapping is primitive compared to UVmapper programs but it's part of the package.

It doesn't look like DAZ intends to do anything with the animation tools.  They have the aniMate plugin.  It's simple to use and they can make a bundle selling little aniBlock packs.

Well we knew from the original release the two for pay plugins were supposed to cost 49.95 each.  But that was 2 years, a load of cash spent and no workable results ago.  Of course there is one way to get more cash: release the beta version for free and get testers to buy specialized products. 

The problem right now is, DAZ will hold to the Optitex system even after 2 years of failure and the admission that even after they release version 1.0 of the plugin, there will still be major bugs.  Wouldn't it have been better to face the fact that the Optitex cloth system wasn't the right choice, update the D/S animation tools and switch to the more stable clothReyes system?

My recollection was that no price was given for the creation system for Optitex cloth - only free for the player, $49.95 for the pluging with controls, and an unspecified sum for creation tools at a later date.

It would be better BUT that would cost them money & put development back by at the very least a few months while their programmers get to know the new system, much better & cheaper to rely on users to work out all the bugs.

Also don't forget a lot of the things we take for granted in Poser & D|S now are due to users pulling things to bits & working out how to make them do things they weren't designed to do or the designers never thought of implementing, Mat Poses are just one that I can think of right now.

Unless SM does a terrible job with Poser I don't see that Daz Studio will take over the market either.  To be frank, I'm not in a terrible rush for them to release the Poser 8 either--a lot of the features that were supposed to be a big deal with Poser 7 weren't all that much.  The multiple undos made it worth the price of admission to me.  The Universal Poses doesn't quite work as well as I'd hoped and I noticed they are still selling Puppet Master which apparently does what universal pose does better.  I'd rather they take longer to develop the next version and have it blow me away than just add a few features and release bug ware.

I used to use Daz Studio a lot, but there are some things that I find very difficult about it, almost to the point of giving up on it entirely:

1)  Having to reinstall every plug-in with each update is time consuming and annoying.

2)  D/S not accepting the reorganization of my runtime libraries the way Poser does, which     makes me have to fish for .obj files and texture maps way too frequently.

3)  Constant interface chances, with difficutly accessing the controls to swithc over the former ones.  Crashes of new versions on the same computer as the older version with no remmedy except ot revert or wait months for the next  version.

4)  The inability of an updated Daz Studio to open preceding versions files.  This is a big one for me, even with no change to runtime library structure I've been unable to open old files and work on a scene.  With Poser, I could open a Poser 4 file and the program will find everything and I can work on it.

For the above mentioned reasons I do the majority of my work in Poser and will most likely continue.  I also perfer Poser's IBLs and they don't take as long to render.

Quote - My recollection was that no price was given for the creation system for Optitex cloth - only free for the player, $49.95 for the pluging with controls, and an unspecified sum for creation tools at a later date.

The suggested pricing structure was in the original 3D World press release and when asked either Steve or Dan make allusions to good sale pricing and prices for PC members.

The pricing structure was

1. Cloth Sim Player: free as part of DAZ Studio 2.0

2. Clothing Control Plugin: $49.95

3. Clothing Creation Plugin $49.95

If the Control Plugin is $49.95, the Creation Plugin is going to be at least that if not more.  Look at the rigging tools.  $29.95 for the base tools and $169.95 for the advanced tools. 

Quote - My recollection was that no price was given for the creation system for Optitex cloth - only free for the player, $49.95 for the pluging with controls, and an unspecified sum for creation tools at a later date.

That was a Direct Quote from SK himself.

I just wish Poser didn't crash in OpenGL - that would be real nice.  I know that the plugins for D|S are probably going to be pricey.  But I will say that typically what is developed for D|S has been very user friendly.  How long has it been since we've seen a release for plugins for Poser?