a bit curious about how it came about?

supposedly, Victoria 2 is the same mesh as Judy?  and Mike 2 as Don?
so, i'm assuming that was when the divurgence happened?

was it artistic differences? 
difference of opinion on the business schema?

was Zygote before either Poser or Daz?

where are the talents that created James, Jessi, V4, and M4?
are they still active?

remember running Poser on 4mb of ram? lol

Victoria 1 was made by Zygote, which I'm pretty sure also did the Poser 4 characters.  Zygote spun off DAZ around the turn of the Century.  They still make medical 3D models, and have an online interactive anatomical atlas..

http://www.zygotebody.com/

Don and Judy are mapped similarly to V2 and M2, but I'm virtually certain that they aren't the same meshes.

Here is some history of Poser...

http://poser.smithmicro.com/poser-history.html

While the mapping is the same (Or at least very similar), the mesh topology is quite different.

Posette is the original "Zygote" woman, sold for $195 without any texture, clothing, morphs or rigging.

Clothed variations were available for the same price, as were morphs for $95 a piece.

Posette and several other Zygote meshes were then licensed for Poser starting with Poser 3.

DAZ then branched off of Zygote to create Poser content while Zygote focused on high end scientific 3D models.

Judy and Don were derived from Posette and Dork to be compatible with the new face room technology.

poser switches company every version?

i get confused between Curious Labs and MetaCreations. 

i was using P4 and Bryce3 around the same time, vaguely remember trying to put a skin on Posette in Bryce, but it came out gray and splotched.

trying to pose them back then, they turned into boxes, very hard to make the figure hold something.

The history at Wikipedia is interesting.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poser

The Poser team used another name after leaving Metacreations, before becoming Curious Labs.  "Ghost" something.  Not Ghost Labs, pretty sure.  Umm.

Boy, I remember the panic when the forum first learned that Metacreations was selling off their 3D software.  IIRC, some who were beta testing the last software patch were going to go rogue and release the beta to us if Poser folded altogether.  An interesting night, that.  :lol:

Ghost Effects.  That's the one.

Attached Link: A Quick History Of Poser

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Here's one of my first forays into poser and postwork, using poser 3 and PS 5 (I think). Didn't return to poser until Poser6. It's amazing how spoiled we've gotten.

I don't know, is that the poser 2 nude woman?

...would be interesting to see some of the Poser Forum Old Salts early Poser version renders...

Think I'll try installing Poser 3 on my G5 and try to run it in Classic Mode, apologies for the OT.

This little picture was about 1996 or 97, everything in it is Bryce 2, which came free with a magazine.  It also carried an interview with Kai Krause, who I think founded Metacreations, who were publishing Bryce at the time.  I may be wrong but I think they might have been the original vendors/developers?  Hence the similarity in the interface between Bryce and Poser I guess.  I used to be obsessed with Bryce before Poser got up to scratch!

Nice. I've never used Bryce... I have the free 7 pro, which I've been hankering to dive into. It's funny that this topic should come up, I've held off on exploring Bryce 7 because of your comment (I threw 7 in the bin), Paul.

Love your renders, BTW.

IIRC, Zygote became http://www.3dscience.com/. If you subscribe to their newsletter, they give away free models, things like cells, not the mega-expensive stuff obviously.

…trying to pose them back then, they turned into boxes, very hard to make the figure hold something.

That was the fast tracking(?) mode to speed up manipulation. It may still exist. I'm pretty sure even in Poser 2, you could switch to seeing the entire model move, it was just slower if you didn't have a fast system.

Actually, even before Metacreations, I think it was Fractal Designs. In addition to Poser and Bryce, they, or Meta had Painter (or was it Detailer?) and Canoma, the latter to create buildings etc. from photographs. I thinkthat someone, maybe Corel bought Canoma but never brought it back on the market.  Metacreations bet on their 3D web visualization system for retail etc. They were probably about a decade too soon - don't know what ever happened to them.  

Yeah, Metacreations... Painter, Bryce, Poser, Carrara. Imagine if Daz had purchased poser?

Yes, fast tracking is still there, as is full box-only display.  I had to use fast tracking a lot on my early computers, with P4 to keep reflection map previews from crashing the software, with P5 to accommodate more complex scenes.  I hope no one actually needs to use it nowadays with the latest versions.  :lol:  Hoo boy.

Daz purchasing Poser ---> big can of worms.  The thread could melt down.  Please, don't.  :scared:

I'm sure that it was a distinct possibility at one time. Anyway my computer is kinda rickety so I occasionally use fast tracking when there are a lot of objects in a scene. Still think Poser underperforms compared to other 3d apps running on the same system. Doesn't stop me from being an afficianado, though.

I got into Poser at their Curious Lab stage of ownership, and they had a software called Avatar Lab which was bundled with my Poser Artist (Poser version 4.0.3) purchase.  Does anyone recall using Avatar Lab ? It used Viewpoint (I think it was called)  as an internet client or something, so that you could share animations online with others having the same client. Something of that ilk.

4MB RAM with the crashes every 30 minutes.

ah the good old days :cursing:

Quote - 4MB RAM with the crashes every 30 minutes.

ah the good old days :cursing:

I remember when Poser used to consume ALL of my Mac's available RAM just to run.

The RAM leaks of earlier versions of Poser were pretty bad.  I assume that's fixed now, or at least minor enough that it's rarely a catastrophe with standard RAM levels on modern systems.

Poser does get better.  Sometimes it's hard to actually see it happening, though.  :lol:

"It used Viewpoint (I think it was called) as an internet client or something, so that you could share animations online with others having the same client."

Ah, Viewpoint. That was Metacreations web tool that I referred to - couldn't remember the name. VRML, 3DXML … I don't know if they've ever setteled on a standard for web 3D yet.

Detailer! I still have the box for that one!

quote]

IIRC, Zygote became http://www.3dscience.com/. If you subscribe to their newsletter, they give away free models, things like cells, not the mega-expensive stuff obviously.

…trying to pose them back then, they turned into boxes, very hard to make the figure hold something.

That was the fast tracking(?) mode to speed up manipulation. It may still exist. I'm pretty sure even in Poser 2, you could switch to seeing the entire model move, it was just slower if you didn't have a fast system.

Actually, even before Metacreations, I think it was Fractal Designs. In addition to Poser and Bryce, they, or Meta had Painter (or was it Detailer?) and Canoma, the latter to create buildings etc. from photographs. I thinkthat someone, maybe Corel bought Canoma but never brought it back on the market.  Metacreations bet on their 3D web visualization system for retail etc. They were probably about a decade too soon - don't know what ever happened to them.  

Metacreations was the combination of Fractal Design and Meta Tools - I think poser originated with the former, and painter certainly did, while the latter was Kai's Power Tools etc. Canoma was a later product, post-merger.

Didn't poser belong to e-frontier at one time too?

I did some pages on Poser history (and future), in http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=36, and in http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=526.

have fun.

Quote - Yes, fast tracking is still there, as is full box-only display.  I had to use fast tracking a lot on my early computers, with P4 to keep reflection map previews from crashing the software, with P5 to accommodate more complex scenes.  I hope no one actually needs to use it nowadays with the latest versions.  :lol:  Hoo boy.

No, but now that we have HW accelerated previews it would be nice to have additional tracking modes.  I'd like to have a tracking mode that would disable cast shadows while posing and moving the camera as those can significantly slow down responsiveness.

Quote - Didn't poser belong to e-frontier at one time too?

Yep - this page linked earlier
http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=526

shows who owned it when up to when Smith Micro bought it

Poser 1 1995 Fractal Design
Poser 2 1996 Fractal Design

I didn't remember owning Poser 1 but must have cause I paid $9.50 for an upgrade to Poser 2
YIKES!!

I think I skipped over 3 and 4  (1998 and 1999 from MetaCreations) as well as ProPack
(AKA PoserPro) which was in 2000 from Curious Labs

Version 5 (also Curious Labs) was in 2003

Then e-Frontier bought it and produced versions 6 (2005),  7 (2006)

Smith Micro took it over and put out Poser 8 in 2009 I think and somewhere in there was a version of Poser Pro (2010?)

Then Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012 (in 2011)

...Considering the track record of changing hands, the likelyhood of poser being under a new banner seems like a definite eventuality.

SmithMiro just owns the English version & eFrontier still owns the Asian version ,Right ?

So eFrontier just sold the English version to SmithMiro ,right ?

EGISys got Poser from MetaCreations and founded Curious Labs as a wholly owned subsidiary.  Thus, my perennial joke that after the Germans and the Japanese, an Italian company would be the next purchaser - completing the trifecta of former Axis powers. Maybe they'll go through the Allies for a while, ending up owned by a Russian oligarch or maybe SM is really owned by the Sicilian Mafia :-)

MetaCreations Completes Self-Destruction, Sells Poser

Interview to Egisys/Curious Labs

Quote - SmithMiro just owns the English version & eFrontier still owns the Asian version ,Right ?

So eFrontier just sold the English version to SmithMiro ,right ?

SmithMicro owns Poser and develops Poser for all language versions. Efrontier has the exclusive (I think) distribution rights for Asia.

It must be a bit more elaborate than that. Smith Micro bought the entire US branch of eFrontier, while eFrontier kept the Asian branch. Poser is big in Japan while SM is advertising wildly on Manga Studio and alike, and note that SM issued Miki4 recently.

So I guess the relationship between SM and eF is a bit more than just owning by one and distributing by the other.

I have no idea about the contract between them. EFrontier has released its own Poser box in Asia under both the SM and EFrontier label. Poser development however is done with Smith Micro (and maybe help from EFrontier, but I have knowledge about that)

See the attached picture for the box

I was googling to see Poser users world wide.
Didn't find out much.
Wounder how many users there are in different parts of the world.
Any body know ?

Been a while since I herd any thing about Shade 3D but came across eFrontiers meshes for Shade 3D.
http://mirye.net/e-frontier

There was a Poser version for Max called Character Studio.
I kinda always expected Autodesk to buy Poser.

I bought Poser 1 at the Mall of America, when I found it in a bargain bin for $29 .... it was still an active program at the time, prior to Poser 2.

Bryce 2 I bought shortly thereafter..Bryce one was MAC only. my first program was Vista Pro. It was cool back then becasue all the developers were available to chat with and wanted input on the programs. Beta testing was easy to get into.

Bryce had a very good group on AOL at the time. Poser was concentrated here..well actually PFO at the beginning... was it around v3 that Rendo came about?

Quote - I bought Poser 1 at the Mall of America, when I found it in a bargain bin for $29 .... it was still an active program at the time, prior to Poser 2.

Bryce 2 I bought shortly thereafter..Bryce one was MAC only. my first program was Vista Pro. It was cool back then becasue all the developers were available to chat with and wanted input on the programs. Beta testing was easy to get into.

Bryce had a very good group on AOL at the time. Poser was concentrated here..well actually PFO at the beginning... was it around v3 that Rendo came about?

All the high end app's have morphs now.
But I'm thinking one of the things that made Lightwave was they where one of the first to have morphs.
V3 was created with Lightwave.
Think it was LW 7.That's around 2003.

V4 Texture seam guide has a copy right date on it.
Guess V3 would also.

Wiki reads V3 2003.

Is Posetta V1 ?

Some of the LW tools for handling morphs were written by DAZ - they used to be made available to PAs, but Newtek bought them and incorporated them in LW (8 I think) - if you look at the credits in LW8 or 9 there are three of the people who later appeared on the DS credit screen listed.

Quote - I bought Poser 1 at the Mall of America, when I found it in a bargain bin for $29 .... it was still an active program at the time, prior to Poser 2.

Bryce 2 I bought shortly thereafter..Bryce one was MAC only. my first program was Vista Pro. It was cool back then becasue all the developers were available to chat with and wanted input on the programs. Beta testing was easy to get into.

Bryce had a very good group on AOL at the time. Poser was concentrated here..well actually PFO at the beginning... was it around v3 that Rendo came about?

Vista Pro was my first 3D program too. I loved that program. :) Then went to Bryce 3D which I think was version 3 and then Poser 4 when it was owned by MetaCreations too, if I remember correctly.

I could not believe anyone else was familiar with Vista Pro.  I loved that program also.  Then Vue came along and I forgot about Vista Pro.  How sad.

Does anyone remember what the first version of Poser was importable (is that a real word?) into Vue?  I know I started with Poser 3, and was using Vue 3 at the time.  I used Photoshop to get my people into the Vue scene. 

I started with Vue 4 and I think it imported from Poser. Vue 5 definitely did.

Just did a search and the module for Poser imports was called Mover and it did work with Vue 4.

iirc Vue 4 imported Poser files for rendering and Mover was for Poser animations.

Ah, okay. Sorry if I was misleading there. I lost track of the modules when I upgraded to Vue 5 Infinite.

I only remember because my Vue 4 renders of Poser scenes kept getting these weird artifacts in them. T.T 

"There was a Poser version for Max called Character Studio."

Character Studio had nothing to do with Poser, it was (originally) a Max plugin for rigging/ animating bipedal models (typically) built w/ Max. It's now included in newer Max versions.

"Is Posetta V1 ?"

Nope. Poser 4 Nude Woman. Included with P4. P4 Nude Man was affectionately nicknamed "Dork"

Quote - poser switches company every version?

i get confused between Curious Labs and MetaCreations. 

i was using P4 and Bryce3 around the same time, vaguely remember trying to put a skin on Posette in Bryce, but it came out gray and splotched.

trying to pose them back then, they turned into boxes, very hard to make the figure hold something.

Quote - poser switches company every version?

No.  Been a long road, and I remember every step!!! Have owned every version since 1.

Versions 1 and 2 were by Fractal Design Corp.

Versions 3 and 4 by MetaCreations (a renamed and reorganized and expanded Fractal Design Corp. So same company).

Pro Pack and Version 5 by Curious Labs (MetaCreations broke up, and the Poser team split off and formed their own company. Still the same people that developed Poser in the first place).

Versions 6 and 7 by Curious Labs/EFrontier. Still the same team, just a new "parent" company.

Versions 8 and 9 by Smith Micro. Again, still the same team, just a new "parent". And stilll going strong.

Quote - Boy, I remember the panic when the forum first learned that Metacreations was selling off their 3D software.  IIRC, some who were beta testing the last software patch were going to go rogue and release the beta to us if Poser folded altogether.  An interesting night, that.  :lol:

Me too!  I think at the time I had every single software program that MetaCreations made ... Bryce, Poser, KPT, Expressions, Canoma, Ray Dream/Carrara - and my other favorite besides Poser ---- Painter. It was without a doubt my #1 favorite software company.

I'd love to see them all under the same roof again, but that's probably not likely. Some of them are no longer developed at all.

Quote - There was a Poser version for Max called Character Studio.
I kinda always expected Autodesk to buy Poser.

Someone else mentioned this already as well, but no ... Poser and Character Studio have nothing to do with each other.

Character Studio was developed by Autodesk (or, maybe a small division of Autodesk, I can't quite remember.) There was a name change for a while if I remember correctly, and Max and Character Studio were marketed with a different brand than Autodesk. The letter "D" is sticking out in my mind but I can't remember it. It was around the 3DS Max 3 days that it was sold under this "brand."  Still a division of Autodesk, though.

AHA!!!! DISCREET, that was it! From Max 4 to Max 7.

CS was initially available as a separate add-on for Max, and was quite  expensive (around 1K if memory serves, maybe more).  Its ONLY purpose was in rigging figures for animation. Max users still had to model their own characters.

Here is an idea for you Dee. :-)

DAZ stopped Hexagon....... Should be available for a snap.

Not everybody can afford Zbrush.

Let SM buy Hexagon, and team it up with Poser.

Why not "merge" both into ONE app?

Oh dear??
Did I just write that??????

Build, uvmap, rig and pose, all inside one 3D application?

Quote - Here is an idea for you Dee. :-)

DAZ stopped Hexagon....... Should be available for a snap.

Not everybody can afford Zbrush.

Let SM buy Hexagon, and team it up with Poser.

Why not "merge" both into ONE app?

Oh dear??
Did I just write that??????

Build, uvmap, rig and pose, all inside one 3D application?

OY!!! And you think the manual is thick NOW????  Whaddya trying to do to me?  LOL!!!!

Guess they where just exporting Poser 4 Characters in to Character Studio.

Quote - Guess they where just exporting Poser 4 Characters in to Character Studio.

That is quite likely, Poser is a great time saver in that regard.

Ha Deecey, you have the easy part.... :-) my dear.

At least Hexagon also has a manual.

And a lot of functions can be merged into one.

But would not that be GREAT??

Build, rig, uvmap, pose and render??? all in ONE complete 3D app???

You'd only have to leave the App, to actually make the diffuse texture.

Sales would also increase with 4 versions of Poser.

Poser X-Y-Z Debut
Poser X-Y-Z Standard
Poser X-Y-Z Pro
Poser X-Y-Z Pro Content Creator

Oh my darling, ha-ha-ha-, 4 different manuals to write :-)

And what are you gonna do with all the money you will make?????? :-)

OK, 10% for launching the idea for me.
Need my account number allready?

I know ; I am BAD to the BONE.