There's some really nice work been done here, especially with some of the face morphs.

That said, one reason I tend not to use this particular mesh is that I create a lot of face morphs using Posers morph brush. Alyson's mesh structure just doesn't play well with this tool, particularly around the brows and cheek dimples areas. Try smoothing those areas and you'll see what I mean. It doesn't on it's own mean that she's a completely useless figure, just that she doesn't fit in with my particular workflow.

However, I do feel the need to offer a critique of the Poser native figures. IMO they don't live up to anywhere near their full potential because in one way or another they tend to have quite major flaws in their design and development. For me it's not simply down to subjectve opinion about whether they may look 'ugly' to my eyes. There are far more objective critiques that we could discuss about them, depending upon what you want out of a figure in the first place.

I think there are problems with the mesh design/topology, hampering decent bending and custom morphing, one example of which I've mentioned already. I'm also not a huge fan of Alyson or Ryan's body shapes, and I think this is probably because they haven't been constructed with very close reference to real human examples (if they have I'd love to see the reference material). I think they need to be, lest they be more caricature than realistic in appearance even when morphed (again, it depends on what you want out of a figure). If I'm honest I don't think their morphs (albeit that there are plenty in these figures) are particularly great either. They tend to deform the mesh unrealistically in many instances, and in the worst cases cause bumps and creases in the mesh that I'd consider anomolies. While the weight mapping of P9/PP2012 offers much better rigging potential, I'm not convinced that this has been particularly well implemented (although it was very new at the time they were released).

Now, honestly, this isn't to bash in any way those that have worked on these figures. I'm trying to offer a constructive and honest critique here - gripe at me all you like for being honest. I would imagine that in the grand sphere of things Poser native figure development isn't necessarily as focused as I might suggest it needs to be in order to turn out exceptional design, rigging and morphs. This is perhaps because of cost or some other resource related factors (time constraints etc). I'm just guessing really. Teyon has suggested that there may have been some factors of this nature earlier in this thread. I know what it's like to work creatively to tight deadlines and low budgets.

My real point is that it's the one thing that's always perplexed me about Poser - why the single most important elements of a figure design and animation tool, aside from the application itself, arn't as excellent as they can possibly be. From my point of view it would be like sending out a commissioned portrait that didn't resemble the sitter or that was badly painted - I just wouldn't let a piece of work leave my studio that wasn't up to standard.

I suspect that up to now, even taking into account the G2 range which I thought had some potential, that figure development has never really been a priority for the Poser developers. Understandably the app itself has come first, and in the case of PP2012 I think they've released a truly fantasic product with many improvements and new features. But I think there's probably been an acceptance that the Daz and other 3rd party figures would offer the quality in terms of figure content to be used in Poser.

A potential problem for SM now though is that if the apparent divergence of Daz content and Poser continues, then they will need to really up their game in provision of native Poser figures, or at least offer support to one or two of the third party developers who have sought to provide the kind of quality that I think Poser users are looking for. We have Antonia and phantom3d's rigging & figures developing in the wings, but even these efforts IMO require an additional input to bring them up to par with the potential of even V4's morphing capabilities (let alone what Genesis can do in DS, which I have to say looks awesome). I'd like to see these projects prosper with te help of SM rather than them churning out sub-standard figures in each iteration of the software. It's a waste of resources IMO. Why not take a little more time and develop a truly great figure/s, or support someone else in doing so.

This is just my opinion btw. Make of it what you will.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

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