"And again, what does what Smith Micro does or does not do, have to do with Dawn?"

Well, quite a lot when they start offering her in bundles with Poser!

As I read it, the thread is about what happened to Dawn's Fire.  I just gave my opinion of what happened to Dawn's Fire: If anything she's suffering the same fate as everything else that is aimed at Poser but is not Vickie related.

The same fate will continue for all vendors no matter what is released until a solid foundation for creating quality content is provided to the vendor.  Documentation dotted around the web, and videos dotted around YouTube, doesn't constitite an official developers guide.

A content developers guide is something you expect to exist by default, something you can pick up, read, and reference absolutely anything you need to regarding the technology used in the product you're vending for.  No such "official" guide exists for Poser content developers, so the situation is only going to get worse if they don't sort it out.

And what does Dawn's success have to do with all this if she's created by a skilled developer?

The success of ventures like Dawn don't just rely upon the skill of the developer.  Dawn has probably the best guy behind her from a developer point of view, but if she's targeted towards something that the general userbase sees as pointless, she's not going to do well.  People generally aren't going to invest in something that is seen to be unpopular.

And that's the thing, every figure that is not Vicky is effectively unpopular in comparison to her.  That popularity is never going to shift in SmithMicro's favour unless they sort the vendor situation out.  And one thing I can say with absolute 100% certaintly is that it's never going to happen until the vendors are in a position to make that happen.

They're never going to be in a position to make that happen until the vendors have a complete developers guide to work from.  Like I said, it's like a game engine developer expecting game developers to embrace and do well with their engine, and all without official developer documentation.  Sorry, but it isn't going to happen.

In effect, Poser is the engine and vendors are the game developers, and without that sort of documentation, we're pretty much screwed (and so it the program as a result) because the program's success depends on good quality content.