Chuckle - I didn't always agree with WFB's politics but he was a gentleman and a scholar.

"...essence telling their potential customers that their competitor's product does something they think is really neat, but their own software cannot do it."* 

My point is that there are **two **markets. I don't know if Daz created DS with hopes of taking down Poser, quite a tall order. Perhaps they looked at the serial ownership changes and sought to ensure that there would even be an application for their content should Poser crater. Regardless, if the online commentary is any reflection of reality (always a dangerous assumption) then there is not a lot of overlap between Poser and DS. A few people use both but probably one much more than the other. Beyond that is a chasm of disdain or 'can't get used to the interface' perplexity. I bet the DS users break out pretty much the same way.

If you look at the marketing, SM has full page ads in Computer Graphics World, touting Poser's power along side the big boys. Daz does the 'Hey, everybody can do 3D art' thing. While they (Daz) continue to add power to DS, they seem focused on the more casual, less technically inclined folks who buy much of their canned content. SM by contrast seem more desirous of the higher end hobbyist and hoping to snag as many Max/Maya etc. users with the promise of an easier figure workflow. I think cool, and yes fun features like AniBlocks are an example. In fairness. Daz has had the benefit of seeing Poser and being able to rethink things that had become stagnant in an application that was long overdue for a rewrite.

Absent smoking gun emails where Daz has rejected DC offerings from their independent vendors, I assume that they chose not to spend their own money on creating it because they thought it wouldn't sell to the majority of their customer base. Again, they are not the only game in town either. Given the virtually nil cost of maintaining additional inventory in a virtual marketplace and zero creation cost with independent vendors, why would Rendo et al not pick up the ball that Daz supposedly dropped and laugh all the way to the bank?

Daz has created something that they feel will appeal to DS users. Did those folks see DC in Poser and demand it, quite possibly, but no doubt the vast majority of them have been willing to wait for it to appear 'Daz soon,' rather than jumping ship. By the same token, Poser users may see something they like in DS and clamor for it, but they aren't going to desert to any significant degree. IMO, there was no Machiavellian plot here, just a simple matter of not trying to create a market that wasn't going anywhere fast regardless. I would give more credence to darker motives if Daz weren't primarily content sellers - who knows if they will ever get a significant part of their revenue from DS? Their primary mission is to ensure that our Goddess Vicky becomes omnipresent in every temple, irrespective of application or architecture - may it be so.

At any rate, I've far exceeded my quota for bloviation, much as I enjoy it. BTW, I just downloaded your V4 platform slides. They look really cool and if it hadn't been for this thread, I wouldn't have seen them :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken