Quote - Ambient:

Im not assuming that they are not used at all. But fixing them can make that happen to either version.

Fixing them means a few things can, and need to happen.

Vendors can update the content already out there, or make new content for the corrected version.

In Sydneys example:

If someone already has a bunch of old Sydney/G2 content and an older version of Poser, the new character and content are irrelivant to them and they will not need or buy any of it.

There is a flip side to that, the customer that has all the old content, the newest version of Poser, the updated character, and the content does not get updated.

They will either buy the new content, or move on to another character that they have content for.

After this long, I'm not talking about just an update to fix the issues that the old models have. Those updates should have been done within the first few months of their release - within the first year at most.

An updated G2 Sydney should instead be marketed as G3 Sydney at this point, with a revised mesh, a new body shape, new textures, etc. Definitely an improved rig. The mesh doesn't have to be rebuilt entirely from scratch. Just clean it up, get rid of all the junk so that it's optimized for the latest versions of Poser. Follow the pattern that has been done with Miki 1 - 4. (only make the improvements better). Miki seems to be the more successful of the SM figures, so using her development pattern as a template would make sense. Just push it a bit further.

Since SM owns a good chunk of the content for their figures, it wouldn't be difficult to update old content to work with the new figures. Why build yet another pair of jeans, when there's already a dozen or more pairs sitting in the library that have been built for all the figures previously? Just rework them to fit the new figure. With tools like ZBrush, this would be a piece of cake, and in a very short period of time any new/updated figure SM created would have a good selection of clothing ready to go. Doesn't matter what figure its for. Could be done for Rex and Roxie too, since those seem to be the figures SM are focusing on at the moment.

 

~Shane