Quote - If you only have to export once per UV, then it begs the question why doesn't creator sell the cr2 and some texture maps (pz2's or mc6's) ala they way they sold V4 and include cliff's scripts to fit clothes (unless I am missing something obvious)? It would drive their content sales to a higher level if the casual Poser user doesn't have to install the latest version of studio and monkey around to get things installed and running. Plus it would cover those who say they can't run the latest and greatest veersion of studio on their cpu, but can run Poser.

OK, I think I can reasonably answer that here rather than making a new thread by keeping my rambling to a minimum and jettisoning a lot of the history build-up to where we are today, and instead concentrate on where we are rather than how we got there.

Genesis itelf is, as of today, not only the result of past business decisions but also effectively part of DAZ Studio. It's also not a figure, in the traditional sense, so much as it is a paltform for designing figures on. It's the latest generation of the "human figure development platform" that in previous years has been kept internal to DAZ, not provided to end users at all. Genesis itself is however MUCH like the Gen4 figures - V4, M4 etc. in that there's a mesh, with a rig, and you can add textures and morphs and the like - but the major difference, from my point of view, is that "Genesis the concept" only starts there - with the option to be enhanced in other ways. I suspect that these aspects make DAZ too nervous to release a "Poser version" of Genesis because it would make for a lesser figure than the Studio version of Genesis, so could easily be seen as a bit of a rip-off for Poser users.

LOL, even now I'm finding myself deleting paragraphs of stuff because I'm getting too wrapped up in it and too detailed. I can't speak for DAZ - I don't KNOW enough of the reasons that they do things - but my guess is that they don't release a .CR2 Genesis for the following reasons:

As it currently stands, it's simply not designed to work in Poser. You can do a LOT with the figure in Poser, but you can do more, more easily in Studio - because it was developed symbiotically with Studio. A lot of design decisions appear to have come about without any consideration for making it work in Poser - seemingly because they originally didn't think Poser would get the level of upgrade that it DID get with the most recent generation. A cock-up, but we're here now, and have to deal with "what is" rather than "what could have been". They have developed their own way of doing things like adding in extra characters, geografting - even the mesh smoothing, none of which is directly Poser-compatible.

A lot of the problems stem, actually, from being where we are post Genesis-creation rather than where we could have been. Right now there ARE add-ons for Genesis which simply wouldn't work in Poser. At least, I wouldn't be able to make them do so without a ton of work. You need the kind of dance documented in my tutorial just to get clothing to work with many Genesis shapes, it's not easy to add a new shape to Genesis figures (you have to re-export from Stduio if you add a new shape - D3 or M5 etc.).

Those things which can - or could - be done in Poser would take a whole lot of work - and work means time, and time is money. It would take work for them to include IK in the .CR2 exporter - and they would want, I am sure, to do a better job of it than I have. It would take money to backtrack on the way UV switching is done to make that Poser-compliant... or to develop something that works as simply and easily as just loading a different Genesis .CR2 over the one whose UVs you want to change out (my current preferred way to UV-switch in Poser - because it's built-in!). It would take an awful lot of effort, I suspect, to create the kind of injection capability that V4 et al used so that most shapes that can work, would.

All of this extra work would need to be paid for - and my guess is that, on top of the existing Genesis and DS4 development costs, DAZ aren't certain that the buying Poser public would be willing to pay enough for that work to be worth it.

I don't say it wouldn't - and I don't say it would. But I think DAZ would need to be pretty darned sure before they put in almost as much effort as developing Genesis in order to come up with a proper figure "system" that works as well in Poser as the marketplace would expect.

By doing it as an exporter - a free exporter in free software (currently) - they get around having to offer support, they get around having to meet your, my, and their own expectations of having stuff "simply work" in Poser. We export it, we are then largely responsible for how well it works, and what it does - and what it cannot do.

Frustratingly, this reluctance to either release a very limited base Genesis for Poser or to spend the extra money to develop a Poser equivalent to Genesis + Studio has resulted in most people simply imagining that Genesis is inherantly going to be rubbish in Poser. It isn't. It is FAR from as polished as v4.2 is, and by extension v4WM too. But it also still does actually have many of the benefits of Genesis - like being able to morph from M4 to a Gorilla, as per my first Genesis animation (to do which I needed IK, so I've been adding IK in for some time now). Poser users can benefit from shared clothing - a pair of jeans that fit Stephanie can also fit Mr Hyde. The potential for reduced end-user cost to achieve a given "look" is tremendous because of the "neuter" base aspect of Genesis and the huge range that it's able to morph into, even without geografting and UV switching on-the-fly. It's also a lot of fun ;)

 

Ahhh. Still too wordy. A summary:- IMHO, DAZ don't release a Genesis .CR2 - won't even let me release one with the tutorial - because it isn't a complete, finished, fully Poser-compatible figure. And they don't want to sell you anything that's below what they deem their minimum quality level. Fortunately, they'll sell a tutorial by me meant to make using Genesis easier, but then if an axe falls it'll be on MY neck, not theirs ;)

 

Cheers,

 

Cliff