that scrunched-face guy is cool but its just a sculpt. im seeing so many of these CGTalk type images posted here lately as if to imply it should be some new Poser standard.

there is a big difference between static, high-poly zbrush sculpts, static morphed and displacement mapped detail, and what is possible in high end purpose-built rigging compared to your typical 'all-purpose' Poser figure designed for mass-market user-friendly use, customization and animation by hobbyists in a hobbyist app.

you could create an equivalent figure for Poser however maybe only 10% of the userbase would be willing to:

-read the instructions
-take the time to learn to use it
-adequately compensate the merchant for the time involved in making it
-understand and accept its limitations, and the fact that you cant make the 'Morgan Freeman' character into Fat Ballerina Susan, fit your entire V4 clothing library onto her and use every Vicky pose since 1995 with it
-take the time to light it properly
-wait for it to render

 

look at the Morphing Tool in Poser. its one of the most powerful tools already at everyones disposal, completely eliminates the need for run of the mill 'fix', squish, boob, etc morphs from the marketplace, can fix clothing pokethrough in seconds and can make your renders look 10x better, yet i am willing to bet that 90% of Poser users have never even tried it. many dont even know that it exists.

same goes for dynamic cloth. people just refuse to try it.

so all of a sudden we are supposed to start dumping pro level content on the community?  everything comes with a learning curve and a tradeoff.  marketplace history has proven that the average customer is unwilling to accept this.  if this content is what people wanted, and they could manage their expectations realistically (ie: more specialization comes at the cost of versatility), then this is what merchants would be making. the truth is that the merchants make what the customers want to buy. 

over the years ive seen a few industry pros come in here thinking theyre going to take the MP by storm, dump high end specialized content on the MP. they end up barely making any sales simply because they havent invested enough time in 'poserizing' it, its too complicated to use, takes too long to render, takes too much user intervention/tweaking, etc. just look at some of the clothing thats selling well on the MP: they are not necessarily the most skillfully made, most professional, most detailed or elaborate clothing items. its generally the inexpensive, revealing ones with a ton of morphs for every vicky FBM under the sun and added features like stripping them off. you could spend 6 months making a photorealistic ball gown, that was a hybrid conformer and required the user to run the skirt through the cloth room, and it would sell only a handful of copies. but upload the 150th vicky tank top with all the V4 and ++ breast morphs, plus breast flash morphs and itll sell like hotcakes.