Quote - DAZ Studio wouldn't be popular at all if it wasn't free.  That's the only reason why there's competition.

Subjective opinions aside (there's no way you or I or anyone can tell what made it popular or not), the fact that there is competition, is IMHO a good thing. It forced Smith Micro (and eF, EGISys, etc before that) to innovate, which is a damned good thing. It also (apparently) gave Smith Micro a template for their new UI layout ( half kidding, half glad SM/Poser did that), and the idea to use OpenGL back in the day, among other things.

Quote - And whoever mentioned about Zygote/DAZ's popularity in relation to Poser is correct, but the "kids" over in the DAZ forums aren't old enough to remember that.  I remember when Zygote had only a handful of figures and I think I have them all.  All crap compared to what's available now.

Bits and Bobs: Zygote still exists separately. Its CEO is (last time I bothered to check - call it 2005) Bryan Brandenberg. See also where Posette and Dork were basically 'open-sourced'. The original modelers for the P4 meshes included (and were headed by) Chris Creek, who is currently VP @ DAZ.

The whole reason "Dazzle" was built in the first place was because of impending fears of Curious Labs dying while Mr. Cooper slowly drowned in anger (don't make me dredge up the threads). The P5 debacle was only the icing on that particular cake, as it had brewed long, long before D|S released even as a first beta. They'd had it mentioned publicly as early as 2002, and began architecting it (IIRC) in 2000-2001.

Finally, the 'get offa my lawn' syndrome won't keep the 3D hobby alive, so kindly take off the Depends already and be nice to the kids, willya? :p