You don't need a content manual in order to learn how to build content. This has been established. Vendors have been doing just fine without an official content construction manual for about as long as Poser has existed. That's why this forum exists, to ask questions on things where the user manual and other resources don't provide the best answers. I'm working on generating interest in a Poser wiki here for Renderosity where others can contribute their knowledge, but it takes a long time to compile that information.

Anyone with the patience and time to do the research can write their own content creation manual if they wanted. You don't need Smith Micro's permission. Chances are that by the time it's done the next version of Poser will be out and at least a third of the info you've compiled will be outdated. There was a book on all the "secrets" to content creation and rendering that had a few updated editions but it seems to have stopped around P8.

Many software companies do not write their own training manuals. They provide basic user manuals and rely on their user base to provide the more in-depth training. That's part of the vendor support for Poser. Many vendors create and sell their own tutorials, but they're all based on information that's freely available online and in the user manual if you just take the time to look for it. 

 

There is no official word from Smith Micro or HiveWire on plans for Dawn to be bundled with Poser. At least none that I can find. There may be promotions here and there but that's not the same thing. That's just a promotion. 

Dawn is not a failed figure. She's been the most successful 3rd party figure so far, aside from the DAZ figures. Content is still being made and sold for her. It may be a small portion of the market compared to others, but it is still there. One of the biggest reasons there aren't as many people using her or making content for her, as there are for V4, is because she requires P9+ to be useable in Poser, and a large percentage of Poser users are still using P5 - P8, which V4 is compatible with. Dawn is not compatible with those versions. So naturally she's not going to be as widely used. No figure will be, until the majority of P5 - P8 users upgrade to P9 or higher. Believe it or not there are still people using P4 with Gen 2 and 3 figures, with no intention of upgrading, or no means of doing so. I know because I get requests from them from time to time to do custom content, but I don't work in anything prior to P7, and they generally don't want to pay my rates anyway. 

Any figures created that require P9+ in order to function are going to have a much smaller support system because they're not backwards compatible. And even if they were, why would anyone need to use them when they have Gen 3 & 4 figures that already function just fine in older versions of Poser and have plenty of content available already? The only real reason would be to have a new toy to play with. 

Yes Poser definitely needs a figure that takes advantage of all the latest Poser tech and is designed with attention to detail, but that figure still won't be as popular because it will require the latest version of Poser, and Poser requires money to upgrade, while DS is always free. So at most, that figure will take a long time to gain traction even with a lot of people supporting it innitially. Much more time than the year or so that Dawn has been around I'm sure, because Dawn can be used in DS without requiring Poser. The catch to that is, more Dawn users are making content for her in Poser than in DS because DS has Genesis and really doesn't need a non-genesis figure. Poser's tech currently doesn't match DS tech in many aspects, so even there, that glorius new Poser figure will not be as versatile as a DS figure and will therefore be more complicated to build for, and more of a learning curve for the end user. Maybe P11/2016 will change that, but for now that is the way things are. It's very difficult to compete with free, when your product is not free. Anyone with a somewhat decent machine can start using DS and build content for Genesis 1 or 2 without ever having to buy a single piece of anything. The same can not be said for Poser or any of its figures. 

As I see it, Dawn has done as well (if not better) as can be expected for any 3rd party figure, and it doesn't look like she's going away any time soon. I'm not a fan of Dawn myself, but I do like the new horse, and I plan to add it to my runtime and start building content for it as soon as I get the time to do so. At the moment I'm a bit more interested in the new Daz dragon as I have some specific ideas for it that haven't been done so far, that I can find.

 

Anyway, really - stop the arguing. I'm not going to keep saying it, I'll just start handing out warnings and suspensions. There's no reason this topic can't be discussed maturely without disrespecting each other or talking smack about other companies and their business practices. 

 

~Shane