I Just downloaded Daz Studio .. and question myself what is the different againnst Poser , how does the 3D Bridge work and how it can improve it the work of a vendor ??

Thanks , greets 

Tobias

This may be a question better asked in the DS forum.

Laurie

1. UI layout

2. Render engines (firefly, 3Delight)

3. Content file format (cr2, ds2?)

4. Internal scripting language (python for poser, not sure what DS has)

5. Library system

6. DS has the bridge that connects directly to Bryce7, Poser has the Vue exporter. Both work in similar ways.

Even with all the differences they are more similar than it first appears.

Quote - 4. Internal scripting language (python for poser, not sure what DS has)

ECMAScript

Quote - 6. DS has the bridge that connects directly to Bryce7, Poser has the Vue exporter. Both work in similar ways.

...when it works. DAZ forums are full of people cursing about the bridge. At least you have to keep synchronized the Studio and Bryce version (and not blindly downloading the new one when it is available).

Poser and Daz are alike, yet differ.

Poser has default lights when you open it

Daz Studio does not.

Poser has advanced material room, hair room, face room, cloth dynamics, and set up room in all versions from Poser 5 up excluding the new Poser Debut.

Poser has sketch renderer standard.

If you want the advanced shader mixer in DS, you will have to pay for it in DS Advanced.

There is no DS equivalent to the hair room or face room.

Cloth dynamics control is a plugin you have to buy, only works on 32 bit and there is no Mac version at present and no target date.  Dynamic clothing is created and supplied by Optitex the company that is responsible for making the cloth creation plugin which was promised way back in the Fall of 2006.

You can import a morph target without having to buy a plugin, you can generate a new cr2 for a morphed figure simply by saving to the figures library.  You can even create inj/rem poses for pmd's in a text editor with a minimum of fuss.  No extra purchases required for grouping, rigging, or creating cr2's.  DS cannot even create a pz3. 

If you want the sketch render features, you have to purchase another plugin.

DS has a "free" base app.  It is also a 30 day trial of their "prosumer" DS Advanced. 

Most of the DS architecture is based on expandability aka you want to do 'x', you have to buy a plugin.  Problem with plugins: if a vendor stops updating plugins and the next iteration of DS breaks it, you are SOL.  Example are the Poseworks plugins.  He created a number of plugins including a shadowcatcher (yes, you have to pay for shadowcatching) for the base app.  Most of them work in the current version 3 but no one knows what will happen when 4 comes out.

It start out sounding like this great deal.  Free app.  Until you see what the base app after the trial is over can and can't do.  You find out you need to buy plugins to do what in Poser is a routine task.  Take a look at the standard features of Poser 8.  Take the price of DS and all the plugins you would need and then decide.

I have nothing against DAZ.  This is simple comparison and math.

icprncss2 has summed it up better than I could have. Poser is quite the feature rich program. DS is good too, but Poser allows more.**
**

Just some examples of DAZ Studio real cost:

1-the plugin to export to Lux costs 80$; on another thread of this forum you find the 0$ equivalent for Poser.

2-the plugin to handle Optitex proprietary cloth technology is 50$ (with the added snag that you get items ONLY from Optitex); Poser cloth room works with any mesh (AFAIK) and is available in the box.

3-figure setup (30$ or 180$ according to the bundle); Poser available in the box.

4-Morph loader 10$... grotesque, isn't it? for such a basic functionality.

You can reduce by roughly 30% the impact if you get the Platinum club membership but still you pay quite a lot (the above list, even for PC, is more than 110$).

The advice is: make a careful list of what you need now and in the next couple of years and check the final cost of Poser/Studio. In the Open Source Software world Free means free as beer (and as speech) in the commercial world means the first shot is free (for further reference, ask your favourite drug peddler).

And Alex as well, puts it well.

Basically what is being said here is:

Research both Products, read reviews, weight the pro's and cons.

Personally, I use Poser for 90% of my work

(props/comics/etc)

Quote - There is no DS equivalent to the hair room or face room.

Ummm... Faceshop Pro would be the DS equivalent to the faceroom. Currently on sale for wow a mere $69.95! What a bargain. NOT!

Hahahaha Steve..

If you can get a good deal on the advanced version (like when it was $1.88), and a few key plugins, it can be very useful to a developer or a heavy production user of Poser.  For example, with the Decimate plugin you can create reduced polygon versions of figures - handy for populating large environments and backdrops with a figure that may only be available for M4 or V4. With Aniblocks you can quickly create complex animations and then save them out as poses usable in poser, and even make new aniblocks sequences.  The down side is that these plugins both cost extra (around $60 or so each when not on sale).

If you are just using it for casual use, it all depends on your preferences.  There are people on both sides, some like Poser better, some like DS better.  Poser has more initial features packed in it from the go, but is slightly higher priced.  There are many more Poser plugins and scripts out there that are overlooked by so many, and usually more reasonably priced than those for DS.  While DS has a better initial cartoon render, there are solutions for poser (Anime Studio Pro can load Poser scenes and renders nice cartoon effects - or create a batch script for Photoshop or Gimp to post process your render).  A lot of it is a matter of taste.

Man this thread is heavily biased. I mean, no offense to the people working on exporting Poser scenses to to Lux, but Reality 1.2 (on sale right now btw) blows the competition away. If you want to do stuff in Lux without having to hand edit files then DAZ Studio is the way to go. And you can use Reality with the free 32-bit version of Daz Studio and then send it to 64-bit Lux. So that's a little under $52 right now to get a really easy, powerful way to create scenes for Lux. Beat that!!

Besides Reality, the other thing DS has going for it is the highly customizable GUI, free scripting language and SDK (based on QTscript). You can literally make your own workflow.

It can definitely be expensive buying additional plugins for DS, but 1) that's the same model Vue uses and 2) if you can hold out for the five bazillion sales DAZ has every year then you can pick a lot of the plugins up at a much cheaper price.BTW, Reality is on sale right now.
So in some ways it's apples to oranges.

It's interesting that Poser and Vue are in theory superior products bolted to horrible, barely customizable (good grief, I need Vue Infinite so I can change the color scheme and assign differnt kb shortcuts???).

So the best of both worlds imo would be Poser Pro 2010 but with the user-frienldier DS GUI (e.g. that upside down L in the top left corner of each view for camera and render settings), the ease of scripting and creating plugins of DS, and of course Reality.  And for Vue, basically do soemtihhng simialr for the GUI. And make it availble in the free Personal addtion all the way up so that people actually start using it (and maybe sharing how they set things up).

"If you want to do stuff in Lux without having to hand edit files then DAZ Studio is the way to go. And you can use Reality with the free 32-bit version of Daz Studio and then send it to 64-bit Lux. So that's a little under $52 right now to get a really easy, powerful way to create scenes for Lux. Beat that!!"

erm you haven't looked at Pose2Lux have you? unless you are creating shaders which are not included, no hand editing is needed and P2L works with 32 or 64 bit lux with no issues.

***and it's free. please check your facts. there is a user guide included that lists everything the Beta of P2L can do right now and shows each panel in detail.

Reality Check Guy phoning: Poser is scripted with Python...

Apropos Studio plugins: I have seen posts on DAZ forums of people wondering whether the coming of version 4 won't mean that some plugins which have not been supported in months (or years) on version 3 will not be available and the answer is yes, the SDK will be different and, unless DAZ got the source and the license to modify it, kiss goodby to your favourite legacy plugin (...and also to the thing you are sitting on :biggrin:).

One thing is super true: Poser interface is a grotesque corpse from the 1980's (like Bryce), while Studio is a modern application (tough the new interface looks like somewhat clunky).

P.S.: I am really mad with DAZ, because instead of putting resources into Carrara and leaving Studio as a posing application, they are investing in Studio and Carrara is languishing (imagine a seamless integration a-la LuxBlend between Carrara and LuxRender or what Carrara could do with a scripting engine...).

Not trying to make this thread any more biased but don't you have to buy the Daz SDK to write scripts for Studio?

I know this didn't start as a Poser vs DAZ thread, but it's derailed anyway, so ...  ;-)

Is the cost difference really such a big deal? We're not talking thousands of dollars here. I see a lot of Poser users crying about how much the various DAZ plugins cost, but how much do those same people blow on content month after month?
And features are only a selling point if they are useful to you. If you only use Vicky with transmapped hair you're not going to care that Poser comes with free face room and hair room.

I believe that if you're going to be spending a lot of time using it, the initial purchase cost of the software becomes less important. The time you spend learning it, mastering it and then using it to make art is more significant than 20 or 30 dollars here and there. I think it's far more important to consider how enjoyable it is to use, how easy it is to do what you need to do with it, and whether it's a 'nice place to be' for hours at a time. The Poser interface isn't for everybody, software doesn't 'fit' everyone equally well, DS is so different that if you hate the one you'll probably love the other.

Just my tuppence worth...

Quote - Is the cost difference really such a big deal? We're not talking thousands of dollars here. I see a lot of Poser users crying about how much the various DAZ plugins cost, but how much do those same people blow on content month after month?

Having to buy extra plugins means, for some, less money to spend on content. How many pairs of knickers can you get for Vicky if you didn't have to spend $50 on a plugin for DS that has a free equivalent in Poser?

Quote - Having to buy extra plugins means, for some, less money to spend on content. How many pairs of knickers can you get for Vicky if you didn't have to spend $50 on a plugin for DS that has a free equivalent in Poser?

Then, by that argument, you could buy more pairs of knickers if you used the free version of DS instead of buying Poser.

There are Studio SDKs: one is just the script reference and the other is a repackaging of Qt for C++ developers. The first one is 0$, the second one was (last time I checked) also 0$.

...I am not bashing Studio, I am doing what makes me universally hated: telling the truth. Hard facts. Just the facts, madam. Numbers (...those things which have the bad habit of adding up in a way people don't like...).

While I'm a confirmed Poser user, so much so that'll I'll probably stick with it for ever now, I've been looking at Daz Studio a bit lately.

The idea that you can have the base application for free and just buy the plug-ins you need appeals to me a lot. It seems a very sensible and economical way to do it. It does have the slight drawback of maintaining compatibility with plugins as newer versions of Studio are released, but that seems to be well controlled in practice.

As an application, I think DAZ Studio is pretty damn good. If I was starting over I'd probably choose it over Poser for its ease of use. Familiarity, though, is an important consideration, especially at my age when learning new stuff is getting harder :-)

For those who want to get into the more advanced aspects of this hobby, such as creating elaborate shaders or dynamic hair and clothers etc., Poser has the edge, I'd say, but otherwise DAZ Studio does seem to make things very easy.

As for the Reality plugin, I'd say Paolo has done a fine job  - it's a very impressive piece of work indeed. It's much easier to use than Pose2Lux, although I'd say that Pose2Lux has more scope for producing better results if you don't mind putting the effort in. It's also worth bearing in mind that Pose2Lux is only at v0.8.x and in beta, while Reality is an established product. Perhaps comparison (if there has to any at all) should be left until Pose2Lux is finished :-)

These are just a few thoughts, and I'm not drawing any conclusions from them. It just seems pretty cool to me that hobbyists have a real choice at this end of the 3d market, and a choice from two fine products to boot.

And besides, who puts knickers on their Vickys anyway?

Quote - Then, by that argument, you could buy more pairs of knickers if you used the free version of DS instead of buying Poser.

Very true & it also comes with free content to get you started.

Quote - There are Studio SDKs: one is just the script reference and the other is a repackaging of Qt for C++ developers. The first one is 0$, the second one was (last time I checked) also 0$.

...I am not bashing Studio, I am doing what makes me universally hated: telling the truth. Hard facts. Just the facts, madam. Numbers (...those things which have the bad habit of adding up in a way people don't like...).

I wasn't sure if it was free or not that's why I asked a question in place of making a statement, I'm glad there are people around who bring hard facts to the discussion, keep up the good work. :D

bloodboy - I think your best bet would be to post you question in the Commons over at DAZ. You should get some good answers about it there.

If you are a content creator, having DS would allow you to ensure your products can be succefully and easily be used in DS. It seems that the number of DS users is increasing, because more vendors are including DS and Poser specific shaders in their products.

I have both DS3A (didn't really do much DS with it until I got DS3A)  and Poser Pro 2010 (started with P3), as well as Carrara 8 Pro(started with C2). They all have their strenghts and weaknesses, but the most important thing is which one you feel most comfortable with, and is the easiest for you to get the results you want. A quick look in any of the galleries here will demonstrate that they are all capable of great renders in the right hands. Of the 3 apps I mentioned, for me, Poser is the one that I find most difficult the get the results I want from. Carrara is the one that is easiest for me to get good result from, with DS3A being #2.

The DS/Poser debates can go on forever, and it really comes down to which one you prefer, which one "feels right", and fits best with what you want to accomplish.

bloodboy - Play around with the free Poser demo and the free DAZ Studio to see which you like the best and go from there.