This reply/statement comes from SKondris and Richard Hasiltine from the Daz team. Hopefully it answers some questions regarding compatability with Poser.

"Genesis is the name for the whole new 5th generation of figures coming out in DAZ Studio 4. It's the name for the entire series of figures that will be created - by both DAZ 3D and 3rd party figure creators. V5 and M5 will be released as part of this series of figures. Currently, DAZ Studio 4 is shipping with a basic male, female, and child shape. We're working on up-converted clones of our popular 4th generation shapes (ie, Victoria 4, Michael 4, etc). Third party figure developers can also release their own shapes as part of this series, and we're actively encouraging them to do so. For example, we would love it if Aery Soul would release a version of their popular Alice character as a new figure shape in the Genesis series so that you all could use her shape together with all the rest that we'll be released. As for compatibility, the Genesis figures are only possible through new technological innovations we've made in DAZ Studio 4. However, the Genesis platform utilizes an open file format that we are hoping others will support. We're working on support for the Genesis series right now in Carrara. And the Bryce <-> DAZ Studio Bridge will work with these figures, too. We've had some discussions with Smith Micro, but ultimately, they'll need to make their own decisions as to what makes the most sense for their company, but we hope that they'll be able to support the Genesis platform without too much work."

"We'd be very happy if Smith Micro wanted to get their figures into the Genesis series. No reason they couldn't."

 

From Richard Hasiltine

"Current Poser-style rigging uses shapes to define how much or little the mesh is deformed by a bend, rather like the falloff sphere for a magnet though there are more shapes and no way to edit the graph as you have with magnets. A joint can also deform only its own mesh and that of its parent. With weight-mapping each vertex of the mesh is given a weight (how strongly it deforms, nothing to do with weight as measured by a set of scales) directly, and any joint can bend any part of the mesh. That allows better control, especially in tricky areas like the shoulders and hips, and also opens up more options for things like skirts and webbed fingers. So far it's DS4 only, though there's an expectation that Poser 9 will do it too - whether Poser 9 and DS4 will be able to share the same figures remains to be seen."

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