I spent many hours wandering in many sites related to Poser/DAZ Studio, it seems that DAZ's Victoria 4 is the most popular character.  I see her everywhere.  Sometimes I think Miki or Terai Yuki should be popular in Japan, it seems not the case.  I really wonder why it is the case.

Is it possible to have another character to be that popular?  What make Victoria 4 so popular?  Why contents creators choose Victoria 4?

Will a "non-commercial" character become such popular?

She's a decent model, she's versatile and DAZ made sure that there was a lot of stuff for her when she was introduced (which gives DAZ figures a huge step up on non-commercial figures).  The base figure is also free.

I think that V3 could have been jazzed up with some JCMs, but then that would break existing clothing.

Marketing.  Generate a huge following by providing a free base, provide tons of outfits and accessories for a modest price, and you have an instant winner.  If you make it easy for vendors to create content within a relatively short amount of time and effort, you will see the popularity of such models grow exponentially.  And if you include features which make these models as close to realistic as possible, the fan base will grow further. 

But there are other models available which have better versatility and fan popularity, however lack major vendor support and attention.  Apollo is one.  He has almost faded into oblivion, but there are many diehard fans that still enjoy using him in their renders.  And there is Antonia, currently developed as a collaboration between many contributors here at Rendo.  She is gaining popularity as more users discover how much more versatile she is to V4, then again, there isn't an overwhelming support for her just yet.

I agree with everything hborre said!

So do I: I think he's got his finger on the proverbial pulse on this one.

 I also agree with hborre. Plus vicky can be used without ever cent on software. She is free. There are free textures, free clothing, and can be used with dazstudio which is also free. And she ride in on V3's coat tails. V3 was very well supported and free too.

Quote - Marketing.  Generate a huge following by providing a free base, provide tons of outfits and accessories for a modest price, and you have an instant winner.  If you make it easy for vendors to create content within a relatively short amount of time and effort, you will see the popularity of such models grow exponentially.  And if you include features which make these models as close to realistic as possible, the fan base will grow further. 

But there are other models available which have better versatility and fan popularity, however lack major vendor support and attention.  Apollo is one.  He has almost faded into oblivion, but there are many diehard fans that still enjoy using him in their renders.  And there is Antonia, currently developed as a collaboration between many contributors here at Rendo.  She is gaining popularity as more users discover how much more versatile she is to V4, then again, there isn't an overwhelming support for her just yet.

^^^

This.

I agree with hborre like everyone else. I also have a theory that the earlier versions of Vicky were better than the figures included with Poser at the time, and the current popularity is a holdover from then. Can't be sure, though, since I wasn't involved in CG at the time; that's just a possible explanation I've thought of.

It helps that DAZ3D offers V4 and Studio for free to the masses.

Apart from all that has been said before, I like that Aiko 4 and Steph4 are now morphs for Vicky - makes it easier to create interesting charas with mixed morphs and dress them.

Also, out of all the shops I know, DAZ' website looks the most professional and is the easiest to navigate. Makes you feel safe to buy there, which isn't entirely unimportant. (And the awesome looking shop art in promo pics surely helps sales, too.)

 Hi, yes I think it is because there are so many add-on products for V4, clothes, poses etc.
I think all her magnets and magentizing clothing is a bit painful though. the magnets take up so much space in the heirachy editor for example.
Love esther

 Many pointed out that Victoria 4 is free.  It is not true for me, I bought it when it is not free.  Is it possible to get a refund because the product becomes free of charge?

What make more vendors to create contents for Victoria 4 than another character?   For me, it is not easy too.  As Esther mentioned, the magnetize clothing is a bit painful and the size is big.

BTW, Apollo is a great character.

And there is Antonia, currently developed as a collaboration between many contributors here at Rendo.  She is gaining popularity as more users discover how much more versatile she is to V4, then again, there isn't an overwhelming support for her just yet.

Is Antonia really more versatile than V4? She certainly bends better, but last time I checked she didn't include a fraction of the sort of morphs that Daz sells for V4. The "swiss army knife" approach to figure creation is what Poser users have come to expect. The only one who has handled that aspect better than Daz up to this point is Anton. Of course it helps to have a small army of content creators churning out costumes for a new figure.

What female Poser-ready rigged figure is better than Vicki ? Why?

 vickie 3

 apart from her back hump and spaggheti arms.  Her face was very morphable with lots of polys (more in the lips than V4)
Love esther

Why are Windows and MS Word so popular? To some extent it is a cycle that feeds on itself: Everybody gets V4 because everybody HAS V4.

I do think V4 and M4 are superior to the figures that SM packages with Poser (which I started out using like everyone else who buys Poser). But I think the gap is less than a few years ago.  I wonder if some of that superiority is simply based on the fact that the universe consists of Vicky clothing and the offerings for SM's characters are much more limited.

v4 is used alot due to shrewd marketing and peer pressure IMVHO.
what choice do they have?  either use it or be ostracised by their peers.

 huh, I don't think anyone will ostracize me for not using V4.  It's just there are a lot more clothes and poses, couples poses etc.  makes making my comic easier.
Actually I have managed to put morphs into the V4 on V3 body that came with it using morcloth and so I can use V3 as the same character when I want and still use my V3 clothes and poses too.
Love esther

Of all the female figures for Poser/Daz3D.. V4 is the biggest one. I mean, do a google search or a search content paradise, rendo or sharecg, if its clothing, morphs, textures, etc.. its out there for her.

There are plenty of other figures out there that are as good as V4.

Actually, V4 is popular because of V1, V2, and V3. Everybody else's explanations still apply. Victoria's popularity is largely based on the popularity and widespread use of the original Victoria character.

When the first Victoria debuted, it was a much better figure than the P4 female figure. As the Poser program started shifting from its original intent to be a software mannequin to a product used to create artistic renders, there came to be a greater need for more realistic figures. The original Victoria and Michael filled that void. Community support for Poser content shifted from the less realistic figures that came with Poser 4 to the DAZ figures. The companies owning Poser in those early years didn't challenge that new secondary market for selling Poser content and have not been able to get it back now that they want to be in it.

There is currently a momentum behind the DAZ figures that's hard for new figures to break into. It doesn't mean it can never happen, but DAZ has done a good job of not losing that ground. DAZ did learn lessons from the meager support for the first Aiko and Stephanie and now introduce new figures with loads of available content when they first come out.

The main reason V4 is popular is because of the past popularity of the earlier figures. Customers know that the DAZ line of figures will be fully supported by the company and by the community. It's a sure bet that V5 will be the most successful figure when it is introduced. It will have little to do with how much better that new figure is from V4 or other figures.

Let's not forget that the community buys into the new Victoria and other DAZ figures. People, that could just as easily use V3 in their images, use V4. They repurchase all the clothing, textures, and poses, that they already have with V3. We live in a society that loves change solely for the sake of change. There isn't always a practical reason for those changes.

Daz do make some great quality figures, no doubt. But other figure seem to be left in the cold as far as product add ons, freebies, etc go.

Quote - There are plenty of other figures out there that are as good as V4.

Plenty?  Which ones?  From Smith Micro or from one of the medical 3D sites?

Antonia Polygon
Sydney
JessiG2
Natalia

I use them all and they are great to work with.

If I'm not mistaken the V4 base has always been free, if you paid for the morphs over 30 days ago you can't get a refund. If you look on your receipt you should see V4 as free. If not I would ask at Daz about a refund, not here.
I like all the Vickies for different things but as content creators get better they will typically create for the new models.

She is awesome?

Quote -  Many pointed out that Victoria 4 is free.  It is not true for me, I bought it when it is not free.  Is it possible to get a refund because the product becomes free of charge?

That's a risk you take with anything you buy, ever.

The companies who sell the stuff don't come round your house and ask for more money if the price goes up, so you just have to suck it up when it goes the other way.

Quote - She is awesome?

Surely you jest.

I much prefer V3 to V4, and it makes me very sad that there's pretty much nothing being made for her any longer.

I liked V3 as well.

Quote - I much prefer V3 to V4, and it makes me very sad that there's pretty much nothing being made for her any longer.

I'd see this as an opportunity to learn how to make things for her yourself. Imagine the satisfaction you'd get out of it!
Also, you can obtain any number of tools to convert V4 items to V3... personally, I like using Blender3D for that purpose, and Obj2Cr2 to make the modded item into a conforming clothing again from the obj file. Amazing how much you learn about mesh having a good look at it in Blender3D. I've learned to admire some people's work... Fabiana stands out as a premiere modeller!

Besides, this gives you a chance to tweak a thing or two and make the item even better than before. Can't do that with Fabiana's mesh though: impossible to improve on perfection.

Quote - "She is awesome?"

I'll probably be outnumbered 10 to 1 as I usually am here nowadays, but yeah, I think it's simply because she is a superior figure. She has many body-shaping morphs that allow for a variety of aged or full-figured shapes, creature morphs which most other figures do not even have, very flexible expressions, variable sized UV maps that allow for more detail in areas that previous versions did not, the base figure is free and she has a ton of support. People like to bring up the bending problems, but any figure that is going to be flexible and support morphs that drastically change the body shape will have similar issues. A lot of the time when we see a figure rendered in a high-end program that has perfect elbows or shoulder bends with no postwork, it's because the figure was modeled for a static pose. It's like buying a poseable action figure or a resin anime model; the model will look perfect because it doesn't have to be flexible.

I think the real issue many people have with V4 is because can be a headache for some people to use in Poser. That is a legitimate problem, but it shouldn't detract from the actual figure.

SnowS

I'm currently learning all I can about Poser (and V3 because I like V3 better than V4) so that I can practice making (cloth, skin, and hair) content for her with an ultimate goal of converting my own standalone 3D figure I've modeled to work with all the V3 content that's out there.

Quote - I much prefer V3 to V4, and it makes me very sad that there's pretty much nothing being made for her any longer.

You've already bought all of the tens of thousands of products that were made for V3? There's no great shortage of items that were created for that figure. The amount of new stuff is shrinking, but finding content (free or paid) is still easy.

I wonder why Renderosity never launched their own line of figures.

They tried with Renda, but as I understand it, the artist that they hired to create her apparently incorporated someone else's JCMs...

Near-nudity in the link:

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

you never really know what you are getting with a figure or textures whether its v4 or v3

the lighting set-ups and angles have been tweaked so much in the publicity images!

when I had a really unimaginative spell a while back I loaded a blank v3 then went through each morph/texture package I had in a scene with consistent lighting and resolution and camera angle
took one shot then on to the next

did the same with v4 - It did help me find the strong textures or morphs out there and  all I would say is that nearly all v4 morph/texture packages beforethe  V4 elite series were probably worse than the best V3

A real shame...I mean considering figure creation starts with rigging first...and a low poly mesh built around it.  ...Poly flow developed to reduce the number of JCM's

Quote - *They tried with Renda, but as I understand it, the artist that they hired to create her apparently incorporated someone else's JCMs...

She looks good...too bad the artist didn't have the courage to use their own JCM's

A real shame...I mean considering figure creation starts with rigging first...and a low poly mesh built around it.  ...Poly flow developed to reduce the number of JCM's

The JCM's likely wouldn.t work well either, unless they had the same geometry and JP's as well.

As to the OP's question : in a nutshell, marketing and support. You can sell anyone anything, no matter how good or bad it is, as long as you have the marketing and support for it.

hah that  "renda"  glimpse  was funny -  seems like a fig totally ripped off of  V4.

I hate V4 -  its  just  that  it seems like  she always ends up  looking good  in your render  no  matter how F'd  up  you  set her up.

sort of like "ends justify  the means"  philosophy  went into  her build.

cuz  right off the shelf  she look like shit.

@ P3D - I recently closely matched the dimensions of a Poser native fig  so  I could see what would happen if I stole the rig - I mean  i made the fig so  that  JCs  could basically match up -  and yeah  the JCMs  didnt  serve my  particular  mesh  well, even  with the JCs doing not bad on  a basic level.

also  the whole array  of  application  scale  of  the JCMS     will never  be right for your  own mesh also , even  with joint centers  matching.

Quote - hah that  "renda"  glimpse  was funny -  seems like a fig totally ripped off of  V4.

I hate V4 -  its  just  that  it seems like  she always ends up  looking good  in your render  no  matter how F'd  up  you  set her up.

sort of like "ends justify  the means"  philosophy  went into  her build.

cuz  right off the shelf  she look like shit.

@ P3D - I recently closely matched the dimensions of a Poser native fig  so  I could see what would happen if I stole the rig - I mean  i made the fig so  that  JCs  could basically match up -  and yeah  the JCMs  didnt  serve my  particular  mesh  well, even  with the JCs doing not bad on  a basic level.

also  the whole array  of  application  scale  of  the JCMS     will never  be right for your  own mesh also , even  with joint centers  matching.

Hi Santicor :)

Nice figure you have going there. Good to see something new.

I agree, I always hated V4, because of the magnets. I liked her topology it was pretty smooth.  But I hated all the mags and slow load times. She does look bland right out of the box, but I think that may be by design.  It leaves more options open that way, she can be easily morphed into varied shapes. But with all the power of daz behind her of course she will be the most popular figure, was there ever any doubt? If another group (you would need a group) were to start making kickass figures, it would still take many years to ever top the daz figures in popularity.  You have market trend and the general buyers perceptions to deal with. Truth and quality really have no say in the market in short term.  If everyone believes something is just the bomb then it is. Long term, perhaps truth and quality may win out, but not likely.

*As to the OP's question : in a nutshell, marketing and support. You can sell anyone anything, no matter how good or bad it is, as long as you have the marketing and support for it.

Remember the "pet rock"

Anyhoo...sounds like daz has the Poserverse in the palm of their hands...no beating 'em...so i'll get back to watching the grass grow. 

I think V4 has a lot of potential. If I were DAZ, I'd leave the mesh and the morphs as they are and concentrate on improving the rigging. As a Poser user I'm very sad to say this, but I'd probably also create my own rigging system within D|S and distribute a Poser-8-compatible version as a separate figure. I would definitely not support pre-8-Poser for the next generation of figures.

Quote - *The JCM's likely wouldn.t work well either, unless they had the same geometry and JP's as well.

I hope they had enough confidence in their abilities not to do that...use the same geometry and rigging.

*As to the OP's question : in a nutshell, marketing and support. You can sell anyone anything, no matter how good or bad it is, as long as you have the marketing and support for it.

Remember the "pet rock"

Anyhoo...sounds like daz has the Poserverse in the palm of their hands...no beating 'em...so i'll get back to watching the grass grow. 

Hi patorak,

Don't quit!  Keep on going. But just remember, it's a long row to hoe, and mostly rock and gravel.  

Rigging. There is an interesting concept.

This is going to be the dumb question of the year coming from a complete and utter rigging noob.

What I'm reading here is that V4 uses magnets to deform / move / twist polygons/mesh in the areas that need to be affected when she moves, say, an arm or something forward or backward. This is, I assume, to prevent distortion and for skin and everything to look as natural as possible in whatever position she is in.
Joint-controlled morphs would/should do the same thing? So, let's say we move her arm forward: the mesh in the armpit should crease and fold up like real skin does? Wouldn't that require a higher-density mesh where the creases/folds are? with attention to edge-loops to allow natural folding as much as possible...

Trying to get my head around this... so, let's say someone were to re-rig V4 (don't know if that's even legal to do, but anyway): they would have to go from the basic object file, re-create a bones system, define on what axes the bones articulate, and then through placing the appendage in a given position, create mesh morphs of the affected area that would look as natural as possible for that position.

Sounds like a really fun project. There are some incredible wizards that have done just that with Antonia, is my understanding, so it can be done. But for V4, would that require shifting/adding/rearranging mesh to allow re-rigging to work properly.

Perhaps they could consider this for V5.

So much I really don't understand about all this! But in my ignorance of what's involved I can't help but think that it certainly would be fun to try and rig a figure.

Quote -
So much I really don't understand about all this! But in my ignorance of what's involved I can't help but think that it certainly would be fun to try and rig a figure.

It's not really that much fun if you're doing it with Poser, although the new ways of creating falloff zones that were introduced in Poser 8 look like a substantial improvement. Also, colorcurvature's new morph loader should make it much easier to create JCMs. But my feeling is that if you feel at home with Blender, you should probably try that first. The downside, of course, would be that you couldn't use your Blender rig in Poser.

 ODF - I disagree about the V4 mesh being good. well unless they can put more polys in her face.  it's hard to make a certain specific look with V4 face.  looks like michael jackson and maralyn munro are easy, but other specific looks are not easy atall and maybe impossible eg I tried to make her look like a V3 character I was using in my comic and I just couldnt because of lack of polys around her lips,
Love esther

Hi Esther, I think what odf meant by "It's not really that much fun if you're doing it with Poser, although the new ways of creating falloff zones that were introduced in Poser 8 look like a substantial improvement" was that creating a new rigging was going to be enhanced by Poser 8 features, and those by colorcurvature... the underlying mesh is still poxy, unlike Antonia's mesh.

 my first thought when I saw colorcurvature proggie advertised was that maybe someone could redo V3 rigging and make her intoa V5 rather than use V4.  V3 had better tendonn and muscle definition and better face for morphing.  V3 also had problems like spaghetti arms and a back hump that always made her look about 60 yrs old from the side.  I bet these problems could be removed by someone clever.
Love esther

Personally, I found V3's mesh terrible and completely useless for morphing. That was one of the main reasons for me to start working on my own figure. V4 is much cleaner. But everyone has different tastes.

That's pretty much what I was thinking too, hence my line of inquiry, Esther. There's a lot about rigging I haven't a clue about, but I understand that in order for mesh to deform properly in extreme flexion and extension positions, one has to be mindful of edgeloops and mesh density. Which is one area that apparently the V4 developers had to compromise on: polygon count vs reasonable mesh density in the right areas. Beyond that, it's all a bit of a grey area.

How grey? Charcoal? I'm wide open for correction and illumination...