i am not sure why that is a problem?

isn't that the whole selling point of the unimesh construction system they developed the mil1 & mil2 and mil3 & 4 and now the genesis figures on?

seems it shouldn't make any difference as long as in the end all the mesh verteces are shoved around the right way to make the difference between male and female figures apparent.

If they didn't do that right that is a different story but i really don't see too much problem with the males haveing been developed from the female mesh as much as the defects in the basic anatomical construct like collars necks feet shoulders etc which as I said were quit defective visually for me, in the mil3 figures. Tinking on it, it seems it would be better if that process was reversed.

I read on a thread,  think it was the very long Antonia Polygon thread that it is easier to develop a figure if you start out with a small breasted or breastless figure and then develope the additinal body morphs later. So, it would stand to reason the same idea might hold true developing the flatter chested generic male first and then build the female from that. And I imagine the clothes would work the same way. But not being a modeler myself what the frell do i know.

I was fooling around with a female morph for M4 and though an introductory beta test by the artist who offered the free morph, the final result looked good. What was cool was that say the Cro-Magnon or Homo Erectus morphs and textures for M4 I used, were great at turning M4 into a female figure who looked like she was a sister or bride from the same tribe and no need for extra textures. With the M4 ++ Morphs pack I dialed "her" smaller with a bigger softer body and petite frame and she looked like a nicely morphed up V4. SO working from the same mesh is a cool idea in my opinion if all the stuff for it is out there. Unfortunately it rarely is!

What was even cooler was I was also able to add the free gen morphs for V4 as well as the Posermatic NGM morphs on the M4 mesh. I was happier than a greedy little dial spinning Poser Piggie on the Runtime midden heap with all that fun stuff to muck about with!

Luckily I didn't need to dress my cave girl up.   ;)

Quote - Michael being crafted from a female model seems to explain it.  Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years we're pretty tough to fool that way =p

Michael was not crafted from the the female model. Both models were made from a common mesh or unimesh, which then was molded into a male or female shape. For Gen3 and Gen 4 figures, that unimesh base was not available for the masses. Genesis was basically the unimesh base and then all figures were made from from that... the base was then available to everyone, which explains the flexibility of the model, but also had its flaws as everything shared the same weightmap. Genesis 2 went back to a male and female model to solve issues with the single weightmap and make it easier to make gender-specific clothing.

As far as whether michael is feminine, that's really a matter of taste that I don't really agree with as far as why male figures aren't more popular. If that were the case then the figures that has been mentioned recently mentioned as manly would be much more popular than Michael, instead of being some of the worst looking, worst bending and worst supported figures available. And those figures are the ones constantly needing support or are borrowing from Michael's much larger closet. And from what I'm seeing the later Michaels are getting more support in this store than the Gen4 version and definitely more than any native Poser character. 

And Michaels before the Genesis versions were made to be more generic and featureless (aka feminine) so they were easier to morph. And generally when you have a generic mesh, making a figure into what you want then becomes as simple as moving a few morph dials, which people really don't do.. and really should. And those that use a external modeller can easily morph Michael's face into unique morphs as well and the marketplace has had a lot more celebrity morphs using michael's face than any other figure.

Also as shante touched on, it is easier to make a male or genderless figure into a female than it is to make a female into the opposite. So I'm thinking the manliness discussion  is probably way off base in why these figures aren't as popular.

There's just simply a smaller pool of people wanting to render male figures. 

It's true we notice even the slightest thing that's off when we look at another human, that's one of the reasons that virtual humans are so hard to do convincingly.

Quote -
It's true we notice even the slightest thing that's off when we look at another human, that's one of the reasons that virtual humans are so hard to do convincingly.

That is definitely the case but there was a serious issue with the shoulder/collar/arm pit/pectoral areas of the Mil3 figures when thy came out and a lot of people complained about it. THough pretty bad in default mode it became terribly obvious when the arms went up. THe issue was a bit less with Mil4 figures which is why the PERFECT BODY morphs and poses are so popular. THey are  a god send in my opinion, for those of us that do erotic fantasy art. But the Mil3 needed serious reconstructive surgery and not worth the effort because of all the post work needed to make them lookrelatively normal in a finished render/painting.

I know it is subjective and that we compare 3d figures to reality (or even paintings and drawings) and even that sensibility changes as a cultural fluctuation judging from all the drawing and painting styles through the ages, there is still a sense of rightness and wrongness the trained eye wants to embrace. The more off the trodden path a human image gets the less it touches our visual psyche. Having been a photographer working with human models, dancers, nudes etc, I guess I have gotten retentive in my comparing 3d human mesh to the real thing. Maybe not fair but Poser has filled the gap for me after leaving photography. I still strive to make my figures look as realistic as possible within my very limited abilities in using Poser.

As it applies to human figures,  there is a certain Balance and weight distribution and even a sense of proportion and understanding of some of the basic notions of anatomy missing even in fantasy Poser figures. The excuse has always been that well its a fantasy figure so who's to say it is wrong or right so why go the extra mile to make it perfect?

Well, we have a history of mythology and imagery depicting those fantasy figures and have grown accustomed to seeing those proportions and structures in our cultural imagery. Deviating from that in creating a centaur or satyr or dragon or alien, etc. for instane, gives a sense of wrongness, for me anyway, when you put those less thought out and created figures along side of a nicely morphed and dressed Mil4 figure for instance. Look at Dinorauls dinosaurs and fantasy creatures for instance. They are the best out there in my opinion. They look real and even next to a Mil4 figure maintain their realism compared to so many other figures that, badly proportioned and weighted or textured, have too much of a toon look to them.

As much as I envy a content creators to be able to learn 3D apps enough to create content and am so damn thankful for whatever is offered us and wish I could wrap my head around such work, I loathe purchasing a figure unless really well illustrated for fear it will not look good in my renders. So when it comes to human and animal meshes of the "real world" as we know it I am even fussier.

I think the feminine issue stems from renders using the model.  don't think it looks so out of the box. It is more a sensibility of the users. I love spinning those dials and I know may many Poser users ate doing that. THey pull a model up out of their runtime folders apply a morph or character texture, give it some vlothes or props light it using some canned light scheme, plunk it in a canned set and push render. We see so much of that kind of Poser imagery out there it becomes more than boring.

I am not sure I am any different in some ways though honestly I do spin those dials....A LOT....and do take extra care to light my own stuff and do some post work, for the most part the challeng for me is to get it to look like I want wihin Poser without too much post work. Poser is a way to relax and anything too complex frustrates and stresses me so I avoid it.

I remember when Mil 1 & Mil 2 figures were released there was so much excitement out there because they looked so much more realistic than Dork or Posette, that everyone jumped on them. I remember how they sold Steph 1 as Michael 1 sister and tried making us believ she was made from the same mesh/body as Mike 1. Supposedly the maps were interchangeable. I tried working them that way but I never got it to look right. I think I have had mor luch converting M4 to a female version.

The popularity of figure genders still comes down to subject matter. Poser is a tool and pinup art has been the rule. Period. NUDE VICKY IN A RUIN WITH BIG SWORD has always been the joke in the community and not a NUDE MIKE! Look through the galleries and you see the most popular work is pinup and almost always based on some other artwork piece created with traditional medium by other artists. Frazetta, Boris, Den, Mannara, Lopez, Segrellis, Crepax, W.E. Smith, Serpieri, just to name some of the most popular greats, all have acted as render fodder for Poser creators but content as well as finished rendered work.

I remember when AerySoul, AsShanim, etc came onto the Poser content scene the work they did for our Vicky figures was incredible. They got numerous requests to create the same quality fantasy work for Michael and tried it but stopped after the first attempt because it just did NOT sell. Now their content was no less than GREAT and took a lot of work and thought getting it to that point so I can imagine they would have liked getting compensated for that effort properly. When they didn't they just stopped creating content for the Mike figures. I picked up that one attempt at DAZ and it was sweet. But never saw any such work ever available again. Not worth their effort! Can't blame them.

The same problem from other just as creative content creators indicates the endemic issue of lack of interest in guy images. Period. So why put the effort into it.

Quote - > Quote - Michael being crafted from a female model seems to explain it.  Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years we're pretty tough to fool that way =p

Michael was not crafted from the the female model. Both models were made from a common mesh or unimesh, which then was molded into a male or female shape. For Gen3 and Gen 4 figures, that unimesh base was not available for the masses. Genesis was basically the unimesh base and then all figures were made from from that... the base was then available to everyone, which explains the flexibility of the model, but also had its flaws as everything shared the same weightmap. Genesis 2 went back to a male and female model to solve issues with the single weightmap and make it easier to make gender-specific clothing.

As far as whether michael is feminine, that's really a matter of taste that I don't really agree with as far as why male figures aren't more popular. If that were the case then the figures that has been mentioned recently mentioned as manly would be much more popular than Michael, instead of being some of the worst looking, worst bending and worst supported figures available. And those figures are the ones constantly needing support or are borrowing from Michael's much larger closet. And from what I'm seeing the later Michaels are getting more support in this store than the Gen4 version and definitely more than any native Poser character. 

And Michaels before the Genesis versions were made to be more generic and featureless (aka feminine) so they were easier to morph. And generally when you have a generic mesh, making a figure into what you want then becomes as simple as moving a few morph dials, which people really don't do.. and really should. And those that use a external modeller can easily morph Michael's face into unique morphs as well and the marketplace has had a lot more celebrity morphs using michael's face than any other figure.

Also as shante touched on, it is easier to make a male or genderless figure into a female than it is to make a female into the opposite. So I'm thinking the manliness discussion  is probably way off base in why these figures aren't as popular.

There's just simply a smaller pool of people wanting to render male figures. 

Quote -  
I remember when AerySoul, AsShanim, etc came onto the Poser content scene the work they did for our Vicky figures was incredible. They got numerous requests to create the same quality fantasy work for Michael and tried it but stopped after the first attempt because it just did NOT sell. Now their content was no less than GREAT and took a lot of work and thought getting it to that point so I can imagine they would have liked getting compensated for that effort properly. When they didn't they just stopped creating content for the Mike figures. I picked up that one attempt at DAZ and it was sweet. But never saw any such work ever available again. Not worth their effort! Can't blame them.

The same problem from other just as creative content creators indicates the endemic issue of lack of interest in guy images. Period. So why put the effort into it.

I never saw that item - can't buy what isn't for sale.  Once a vendor makes a product for sale, there is no point in pulling it - you never know when someone will pick it up.  I am still buying (and hunting down) Miki 1 content I missed when she first rolled out the door. - She works a hell of a lot better in Poser 2014/Mac Pro setup than she did on a Poser 6/G3 PowerMac setup.  Speaking of Miki 1......

There is still a Miki 1 product for sale here at 'Rosity, that hasn't gone into clearance - which means it is still selling (She is a good character btw) on a regular basis.

1 item in and of itself won't build demand. That is the kind of short term thinking that kills vendors.  I think that is the problem - every vendor expects a homerun out of the box - and is aggressively uninterested in building demand.

The branding of their products was their name and the quality they created products with. If you are not familiar with it check them out. They have always creted the best stuff for Poser figures.

They use to be long time content providers here. THen left.

They were at DAZ and didn't like the way DAZ worked distribution of funds for their products and so left there. It was there that the male clothing stuff was on sale. When they left all product would leave with them. All you could Dl was the items you already had paid for. Here was the same problem.

They were at RDNA for a while and then left. In the past couple of years they've returned to DNA and are still fairly successful merchants. THey also returned to DAZ where they are now creating content for Genesis.

Miki was never a figure I liked. There was something about her body shape I didn't much care for. Having a mile high and mile deep foot fetish never liking her feet shape, though i did get Mikki1 & 2 as well as Terrai Yuki(?) after seeing them in action, I deleted them and put them out to pasture along with hundreds or thousands of other pieces of unused Poser content.

I have learned through the years for the work I do to just stick to those figures DAZ has put out which again for my use, have been the "prettiest" and nicer to work with. I know not everyone agrees but as  said, For my tastes and way of working DAZ has consistently offered pretty good product abd support (and you can NOT beat the unquesioning Money Back Guarantee either, come on who else offerst that!). Also, product support in the community has been it difficult to turn away from them.

Quote - > Quote -   I remember when AerySoul, AsShanim, etc came onto the Poser content scene the work they did for our Vicky figures was incredible. They got numerous requests to create the same quality fantasy work for Michael and tried it but stopped after the first attempt because it just did NOT sell. Now their content was no less than GREAT and took a lot of work and thought getting it to that point so I can imagine they would have liked getting compensated for that effort properly. When they didn't they just stopped creating content for the Mike figures. I picked up that one attempt at DAZ and it was sweet. But never saw any such work ever available again. Not worth their effort! Can't blame them.

The same problem from other just as creative content creators indicates the endemic issue of lack of interest in guy images. Period. So why put the effort into it.

I never saw that item - can't buy what isn't for sale.  Once a vendor makes a product for sale, there is no point in pulling it - you never know when someone will pick it up.  I am still buying (and hunting down) Miki 1 content I missed when she first rolled out the door. - She works a hell of a lot better in Poser 2014/Mac Pro setup than she did on a Poser 6/G3 PowerMac setup.  Speaking of Miki 1......

There is still a Miki 1 product for sale here at 'Rosity, that hasn't gone into clearance - which means it is still selling (She is a good character btw) on a regular basis.

1 item in and of itself won't build demand. That is the kind of short term thinking that kills vendors.  I think that is the problem - every vendor expects a homerun out of the box - and is aggressively uninterested in building demand.

To be honest shante, I still reckon the reason for it was answered very early on.

The female meshes are more popular because it's easy pickings for blokes to view tits and ass in any pose we wish.  It might sound crude just coming out with it like that, but you know what I mean, there's no other way to put it.

I reckon it's the power of tits and ass, nothing more, nothing less.

Fair enough, for some there's the attraction of experimenting and using it for other things like space scenes, butterflies, and fluffy kittens or whatever, but I reckon even those that use it for universally rated stuff like that will still have produced some form or CG porn or erotica with it (most of them, anyway).  I suppose some of the elderly might not use it like that.  But for the most part the temptation is too great not to, especially when you look at the majority of the stuff that is being made for the figures.  We only see that stuff because it's popular, and vendors make it because it sells.

It sells because that's what the majority of people want it for.

Quote - The female meshes are more popular because it's easy pickings for blokes to view tits and ass in any pose we wish.  It might sound crude just coming out with it like that, but you know what I mean, there's no other way to put it.

I reckon it's the power of tits and ass, nothing more, nothing less.

 

It sells because that's what the majority of people want it for.

While you are probably correct, it doesn't address the frustration level of those that wish to do something other than T&A renders, or probably T&G.  (Trash and garbage otherwise known as AS&R.) 

Most of the wardrobes I use come from PoserWorld, but even there, there is a shortage of good male clothing, there is some. 

It gets worse when you're trying, as I am, to go through an age range with the same principal characters, although the K4/M4 mixer has made that easier, through the range of approximately ten to mid twenties, the clothing is the main hangup.

But it's very seldom I do a render with only one character, almost always two or more, depending on my memory and which moment of time I'm trying to capture.  Usually, males ounumber females. 

Male clothing has been an issue since I've been aware of Poser, I suppose it will continue.

Doric.

Let me ask this in a different way... Is it the content or the model? I concede that V4 is by far the more popular figure as are all the DAZ figures. But what about M4? Frankly, I've never quite warmed to him. I often prefer to use M3 or even better, Kelvin or James G2. I wasn't one of them but some people  even preferred David3 or M3 or M4. So what's your favorite male model to use?

Quote - Let me ask this in a different way... Is it the content or the model? I concede that V4 is by far the more popular figure as are all the DAZ figures. But what about M4? Frankly, I've never quite warmed to him. I often prefer to use M3 or even better, Kelvin or James G2. I wasn't one of them but some people  even preferred David3 or M3 or M4. So what's your favorite male model to use?

M2 & M4......mostly due to their overall shapes and also the large quantity of content I have accumulated for them through the years. I also do have a huge pile of stuff for the Millenium 3 guys but never installed it all because I just hate the shapes of their shoulder/underarm/pectoral/collar areas (and that goes for the female figures of that whole series).

Quote - Let me ask this in a different way... Is it the content or the model? I concede that V4 is by far the more popular figure as are all the DAZ figures. But what about M4? Frankly, I've never quite warmed to him. I often prefer to use M3 or even better, Kelvin or James G2. I wasn't one of them but some people  even preferred David3 or M3 or M4. So what's your favorite male model to use?

I'm going to say it would be a combination of figure, clothing, available morphs that appeal the the "evil end user".  I can't say if it would be the same with anyone else, but certain out of the box figures seem to suggest how I see them to be, as in, M4 can be a couple of things, James is the workman, on down the line.  I like Rex, but limited wardrobe and nothing that I really want. 

M4, I use, but with Nicolas morph and K4/M4 mixer applied, comes close to a believeable kid, but probably a few more dial tweeks required.  D3/Matt through the mixer works, not as well, but adds some for the less flattering figures I want to have. 

Maybe it's that more people prefer to work with just female figures, but when you look at life, there are two sexes and all age groups, many which have been neglected pretty badly.

Doric

Looks like Michael is getting another day of love over at DAZ with sheets, skimpwear, summerwear and weapons.

Quote -
The pin-up has been around for a very long time and it has always constituted sexy images of women not men.

Hmm. You might want to look into the history of art in other cultures before making that assumption. Many many ancient cultures (and some not so ancient) revered the male form over the female. It's only been in recent centuries that strict heterosexuality has become the norm (thanks to religious indoctrination) and pin-up art has reflected that. 

Quote -
I remember when AerySoul, AsShanim, etc came onto the Poser content scene the work they did for our Vicky figures was incredible. They got numerous requests to create the same quality fantasy work for Michael and tried it but stopped after the first attempt because it just did NOT sell. Now their content was no less than GREAT and took a lot of work and thought getting it to that point so I can imagine they would have liked getting compensated for that effort properly. When they didn't they just stopped creating content for the Mike figures. I picked up that one attempt at DAZ and it was sweet. But never saw any such work ever available again. Not worth their effort! Can't blame them.

One test case is hardly any evidence that male content doesn't sell. AerySoul does female content because that's what they enjoy doing. Maybe if they quit changing their name every 6 months then more people would be able to keep track of their work. If they enjoyed making male content then it would sell just as well, if they made what people wanted to use. Because there are at least a handful of content artists I know of personally that make their livings selling nothing but male content. I do private commissions, and have been doing them for the last 2 years. I get more commissions for M4 than any other figure, including V4. Because no one wants to make male content "cause it doesn't sell".  If male content didn't sell, then why do some items stay in the market place here for years on end? Like this character set for P6 James.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/thomas-for-james/44082/

It's not even on clearance, and has been in the MP since 2007 or 8. If it wasn't selling it would have been gone a while ago.

Quality is what sells, not the gender. 

Rex ,   The Forestwalker = 157 downloads
Roxie, The Forestwalker = 312 downloads

Rex,    The Roman = 260 downloads
Roxie, The Roman = 291 downloads

was there rumour of a male dawn counterpart?

How many original Poser figures are there, exactly?

Have to wonder cause I just checked-out Vilters downloads page (see what he's up to) and there's a whole new figure there I've never even heard of, never heard it on the forum even once.  Suzy, she's even got a Roman outfit like Rex and Roxie.

Don't know what Roxie would make of it all, but still, didn't expect to see a complete new figure in Vilters' freestuff.

was there rumour of a male dawn counterpart?

It's a bit more than a rumor.  His name is Dusk & should be out the door shortly.  Hivewire has a good thread on him in their forum.

How many original Poser figures are there, exactly?

Have to wonder cause I just checked-out Vilters downloads page (see what he's up to) and there's a whole new figure there I've never even heard of, never heard it on the forum even once.  Suzy, she's even got a Roman outfit like Rex and Roxie.

Don't know what Roxie would make of it all, but still, didn't expect to see a complete new figure in Vilters' freestuff.

Poser 4 - Posette & Dork, P4 Kids (Male, Female, Infant)
Poser 5 - Don, Judy, Penny, Will

Poser 6 - P6 James, P6 Koji*,  Jessi, Kate, Ben, Miki 1020*

Poser 7 - Simon, Kelvin*, G2 Koji*, G2 James, Sydney, G2 Jessi, Olivia*, Miki 2*, Terai Yuki 2*, Kate 2, Ben2 - Still the most supported series.

Poser 8 - Ryan, Alyson, Miki 3*, Creech

Poser 9 - Ryan2, Alyson2, & Miki 4*

Poser 10 - Rex & Roxie

*sold separately

1 item in and of itself won't build demand. That is the kind of short term thinking that kills vendors.  I think that is the problem - every vendor expects a homerun out of the box - and is aggressively uninterested in building demand.

I'm sorry, but this isn't the whole of the story, either.  Frankly, anything that ISN'T a home run gets kicked out of the stores.  Vendors alone aren't the reason some product never hit the marketplace.  If a brokerage won't put the products in the store, customers will never see it.  Period.

So, please, don't solely blame vendors for the diversity you can't find - talk to the brokerage houses as well.

 

Xurge has been making clothing primarily for males for a decade (or more). Sure, his site has quite a few outfits for V4, but I'm pretty sure he started making models for Mike (i have some of his earlier stuff -- all for M2) and probably made stuff for the girls because people asked for it. Most of his outfits are still mostly for male figures.

But, indeed, he's not with a brokerage. So I don't know if that makes a difference.

As I've said before, I expect that a huge number of customers are women who want to render women, many times fantasy versions of their ideal self, hence the skimpy clothing (and the faeries and unicorns). Add the guys who like female pinups and that's a big base of customers.

After all, I'm sure it isn't the male customers who are demanding 15 different fingernail colors in a character packet. So my guess is that women's preferences are just as big a force driving the market.

It would also explain the feminine looking male characters, since a lot of women seem to prefer that type. [I'm not one of them -- I like all types, except the smelly ones..] Also, a great many of the texture resources will be from male MODELS, many of whom may shave their body hair and pluck their eyebrows because that's what's expected in the industry. So the characters from those textures will reflect this tendency. And no matter whatever else you do, plucked eyebrows will always look quite feminine.

In any case, it's true that it gets old looking at "What's new?" and seeing the same stuff over and over and over again.  But when I actually want to buy something, I search through the back catalogs in all of the major marketplaces, and I generally find what I'm looking for these days. There's LOTS of ordinary clothing for women and men out there. It just doesn't stay on the front page for long and you have to dig for it.

@ssgbryan
Thanks, but I should have exaplained better, I meant I was curious how many third party figures there are.  Just recently I keep seeing quite a few pop-up and I've never even heard of them or seen them promoted in any way at all.

I only see one by accident or when someone asks something about one on the forum.

@ssgbryan
Thanks, but I should have exaplained better, I meant I was curious how many third party figures there are.  Just recently I keep seeing quite a few pop-up and I've never even heard of them or seen them promoted in any way at all.

I only see one by accident or when someone asks something about one on the forum.

There are lots of them - they are launched & then the vendors ignore them and customers ignore them because the vendors ignore them.  Unless of course, one has later versions of Poser - Clothing has been decoupled from figures, so today and piece of clothing can go on any figure.  I have a lot of V4 content that has never been on a V4.

@ssgbryan
Thanks, but I should have exaplained better, I meant I was curious how many third party figures there are.  Just recently I keep seeing quite a few pop-up and I've never even heard of them or seen them promoted in any way at all.

I only see one by accident or when someone asks something about one on the forum.

There are lots of them - they are launched & then the vendors ignore them and customers ignore them because the vendors ignore them.  Unless of course, one has later versions of Poser - Clothing has been decoupled from figures, so today and piece of clothing can go on any figure.  I have a lot of V4 content that has never been on a V4.

Nah, I'm going to blame the customers on this one, along with the creators of the figure. Say what you like about the Poser natives, Poser, no matter who the owners were, always gave you clothing for them to start you off, or at least a way to make more clothing for them. Most third party figures only release the figure, usually with no clothes and you never hear much from them again. Now why would a vendor support something like that? Meanwhile, most customers have never heard of the figure. One of the more successful third party figures for me was Mayadoll. I remember when I first downloaded her, there were a lot of free clothes and hair and props for her on her web sight. And frankly, I actually liked her better than V2 which I hardly evver used and in some ways I  think she was as good as V3.

 Of course, that's just my two cents.

@ssgbryan
Thanks, but I should have exaplained better, I meant I was curious how many third party figures there are.  Just recently I keep seeing quite a few pop-up and I've never even heard of them or seen them promoted in any way at all.

I only see one by accident or when someone asks something about one on the forum.

There are lots of them - they are launched & then the vendors ignore them and customers ignore them because the vendors ignore them.  Unless of course, one has later versions of Poser - Clothing has been decoupled from figures, so today and piece of clothing can go on any figure.  I have a lot of V4 content that has never been on a V4.

Nah, I'm going to blame the customers on this one, along with the creators of the figure. Say what you like about the Poser natives, Poser, no matter who the owners were, always gave you clothing for them to start you off, or at least a way to make more clothing for them. Most third party figures only release the figure, usually with no clothes and you never hear much from them again. Now why would a vendor support something like that? Meanwhile, most customers have never heard of the figure. One of the more successful third party figures for me was Mayadoll. I remember when I first downloaded her, there were a lot of free clothes and hair and props for her on her web sight. And frankly, I actually liked her better than V2 which I hardly evver used and in some ways I  think she was as good as V3.

 Of course, that's just my two cents.

Can't buy what isn't made.  I have purchased every last product released for Alyson2 and Ryan (I like Anastasia & Tyler) - I'd buy more today if anything was made for them.  The same can be said for Rex, Roxie, Miki 3/4 (and yes, the few items I haven't purchased from you are working their way up the purchase list).  Most of the other 3rd party figures, I am buying as fast as my budget allows.  The only figure I am not buying for is V4.  She has a full closet & quite frankly, nothing interesting has been made for her for the past 3 or 4 years, just dreary variations of what has gone before.
The first stumbling block out the gate for 3rd party figures is morphs - specifically the lack thereof.  90% of the character creators are dial-spinners.  No morphs = no figures = no sales. 

The second stumbling block is the vendors choosing not to make content for the product.  This is usually justified because they once made a product for a niche figure up to a decade ago.  It sold poorly (usually for a reason), and they choose to never make content for any figure not named V4.  A corollary to this is that a "successful" product is based on the first week's sales.  I have stuff that has sat in my wishlist for years.  I buy when I need the product, not because it has been released. 

The third stumbling block is people in the forums blowing up minor issues as though they were show stoppers. Just as there is no spoon, there are no show stoppers.
The fourth stumbling block is the vendors that have a vested interest in other figures showing up and bashing the new figure.

Consider the following:

Antonia - same issue as Poser native figures - built as a realistically sized and proportioned figure.  Not great for the Elvgren wannabes.  Good 3rd party morphs eventually show up - no characters made to take advantage of it.

Michelle - no morph sets out of the box.  3rd party set made available much later - no characters made for sale based on them.  Real shame because the morphs are really, really good.

Rex & Roxie - no morphs out of the box.  The least supported Poser figures since P6 Koji.  No merchant resources, no morph sets.  No vendor love other than you.  (And I am very appreciative of your support for Rex, Roxie & Miki 4.)

Dawn - no morph sets out of the box.  1 good set of morphs released a couple of days after launch - not a single character made for sale using them.  A reasonable set of morphs is just now (Nov '14) rolling out of Hivewire - still nothing in the way of ethnic morphs (Faces of Asia & Faces of Africa are not merchant resources - but really great products for the end user).

Dusk - Hivewire may have actually learned from the Dawn launch.  Dusk is rolling out with both a large selection of morphs AND some 3rd party merchant resources are going to launch at the same time.  OTOH, it is a male figure - and we all know how much love the vendors give those.

The good news from my perspective is that with later versions of Poser (and 3rd party apps) clothing, hair, and textures are decoupled from figures.

Thanks, but I should have exaplained better, I meant I was curious how many third party figures there are.  Just recently I keep seeing quite a few pop-up and I've never even heard of them or seen them promoted in any way at all.

I only see one by accident or when someone asks something about one on the forum.

Here's a link to a wiki for Poser/Daz Studio that lists most, if not all, of the currently known Human figures (and also lists for non-human figures as well) from both main sites and 3rd party sources... it includes links to find them all... the list contains both free and paid figures I think, but is fairly extensive...
https://poserdazfreebies.orain.org/wiki/Figures

Wow, that's an interesting link, often wondered if anything like that existed - thanks!

I see Suzy is an RDNA figure - I thought Vilters made it.  Didn't realise there were that many, and I do also remember Maya Doll, I also remember there was a ball-jointed doll that used to appear in a lot of images at the time as well, made by the same person.

When complaining about the lack of content that's available for various figures, try to consider for a minute what all is involved in creating new content. It's not exactly a simple process most of the time. It takes a lot of work and time and attention to detail to create an outfit or a character set that is actually worth selling. Sure a lot of people use merchant resources for the base skin, but a lot of others don't. Just a skin set alone can take weeks to create, even when using the latest software that allows real time painting of the model instead of using 2D apps and having to match seams. 

This content is extremely cheap in comparison to other "high end" sites selling content - we're talking pennies on the dollar cheap - but the process to create it and the time involved is no lower. In fact, it can actually be more complicated and time consuming to create Poser content than it is to create high end content, depending on what it is you're creating. This is something most end users also don't think about. 

On top of that, a good number of the figures available have inherent design flaws that make building content for them quite a bit more challenging, and in some cases simply impossible, or at the very least not worth the headache. These flaws aren't always obvious to most end users, especially those end users who know nothing about creating content to begin with. It's not simply a matter of "such-and-such figure seems to bend and pose just fine, why doesn't anyone make content for him/her?" Those flaws are usually only apparent when you lift the hood and start to work on content for them, or start planning what content you'd like to create for them. 

I could give a fairly lengthy list of such flaws in just about all the figures that are listed here on this page, but if I did that then it would be interpreted as figure bashing by most who read it, instead of as an educational motive like I've tried to do in the past. There's a science behind how geometry works - it's not just a matter of throwing a bunch of polygons together to make a shape and running with it. If the geometry isn't designed properly then everything you try to do with it from that point on will be that much more complicated, if not impossible, just like building a house on a shoddy foundation. You're bound to run into problems and limitations if it's not built correctly from the beginning. Beyond just the geometry, many of those figures have rigging and mapping issues that also make building content for them more complicated and in some cases, simply not possible without first fixing the issues in the figure itself - which no vendor is licensed to do and redistribute on their own. 

Then there is the popularity of various figures, and the likelihood that content built for them will or won't sell. If a vendor spends a month designing and building an outfit for a figure and no one buys that outfit, or only a dozen or so people buy it, then that vendor has wasted a month of their time and effort that could have been much better spent building content for a figure that does sell in high volume and is used regularly. So all of these things have to be considered before a vendor decides to support or not to support this or that figure, because for a lot of these vendors, time is money, so they have to make decisions based on what they think will generate the most money for their time spent. There are however a number of vendors who will do private commissions, if you're willing to pay what they charge, which is usually a pretty fair rate for the amount of work involved in comparison to other content artists on the high-end side of this work, but it's definitely nowhere close to the prices most of the market places charge per item. 

Those are some good points, Shane. Those who don't make content -- like me -- don't know the first thing about what's involved, and as a result, you're right. We think, "Yeah, it bends okay, so what's the issue?"

It would be nice if we could have a discussion about how proper geometry and rigging affects future content creation without it devolving into a bash fest. I don't think there's anything wrong with the topic per se, but as you know, such things have a habit of going down the hole into the abyss pretty quickly. So it may not start as figure bashing, but it certainly will end there. :D

Yeah, I tried having that discussion a while back and was accused of "having an agenda" so, nope. 

I've also made detailed lists of a few of the older more used Poser natives and their issues, and offered to repair/update them myself, but never got any kind of serious response. 

I remember the discussion regarding the issues on some figures, well most figures were discussed if I remember correctly.  It was very informative and gave me a much better understanding of the problems vendors face.  Unfortunately, as you say, the debate grew heated and despite valiant attempts to moderate it came to the end that so many useful posts come to.

Having gone through a lot of the Digital Tailor tutorials I can just about manage to produce some basic clothing and props.  I don't think I will ever be very good but that has nothing to do with the tutorials, which I found excellent, more a limitation of my skills and attention span.  It did however leave me thinking, if it takes me this long to build something simple, just how much effort goes into building something I am going to pay $10-$15 for.  Believe me I am in no position to criticise any vendor I am just glad they continue to produce the goods.

One of the reasons I post in the gallery here is so that I can link to the product and show others just how good they can be when used by someone with limited skills like me.  If the price I have to pay for all this is having to move a few folders and change a few file names then bring it on, I can do that quite skilfully.

Modelling and then rigging an "organic" figure like a human or animal is one of the very hardest things to do... the mesh has to have the right poly's in the right places and also has to have the right shaping as well... then rigging said figure (specially human) is even more work. The joint start/end points have to be placed just right and then various bend, twist, and swinging zones need to be tweaked until they function properly. Mechanical items are often much easier to do as you don't need to worry about the zone of bend influence, all that needs to be set are the joint start and end points and rotation values... I can tell you that from personal experience...

I model mostly mechanical items like aircraft and ships and such, but a ways back I decided to try organic modeling. My first attempt into organics was a dismal failure... so was my second... and my 3rd... and many attempts after those as well. All total it took me about 4 years before I finally got anything to work even remotely decent.

I did finally get a full figure done and working... but it was a year of development with almost continuous tweaks in both the mesh and rigging which included 6 months in private beta-testing for additional tweaks on both mesh and rigging in the process... and even then it's not perfect, but it's as good as I can possibly make it with the skills I have. By comparison my more complex mechanical items take about a month or two to model and rig, and about another month in private beta-tests for touch-ups and to have ERC coding added when it's needed... with simpler items taking much less time.

The reason the organic took so much longer... it's a far more complex and time-consuming task to model and rig an organic figure than it will ever be to set up a mechanical one. With organics you have many more basic joints to lay out and each joint has to be set up 4 times over... first to set the joint start/end points, then to set bend-zones and influences, twist zones and influences, and side-side zones and influences... and then in a new figure there's also setting up built-in morphs, and blank morph channels to make room for future morph expansions or end-user morph injections...

Creating conforming clothes is somewhat easier than creating a base figure in that it shares the rigs of it's parent figure so some of the work is already done for you... but it can be just as time consuming if you intend to include all the many morphs and magnets that many base figures use. It gets even more complicated once you get down to specific issues with specific figures as no two are the same under the hood, even when they share a common skeleton set-up and joint rig...

was there rumour of a male dawn counterpart?

It's a bit more than a rumor.  His name is Dusk & should be out the door shortly.  Hivewire has a good thread on him in their forum.

Dusk is now available at Hivewire.  I got an email today and the base model is free.

there is no wm character or anything for James6?

Nope but would an updated James with cleaner topology and human-like legs (what were they thinking?) interest you?

As to the main topic question:  A customer once referred to Poser as digital Barbie dolls. How many people rush to the store to buy Ken or how often do you see new versions of him advertised or even spoken of? There's something to the analogy I think.

there is no wm character or anything for James6?

If there's anything available for James beyond a little bit of clothing, I'm not aware of it.  Kind of a shame, if he bent like Rex and Roxie, he'd be one nice figure.  Some better expression morphs, maybe some face morphs, I really like James.  Doric.

James has a handsome face.  i actually put him on my bookcovers, way back when.

feeling nostalgic for old James. his bending, seams, is fair awful

Nope but would an updated James with cleaner topology and human-like legs (what were they thinking?) interest you?

As to the main topic question:  A customer once referred to Poser as digital Barbie dolls. How many people rush to the store to buy Ken or how often do you see new versions of him advertised or even spoken of? There's something to the analogy I think.

that just means there is a gigantis demographic poser has yet to tap into - hmmm ...

d'you think poser snared me with Jessi 6?  lol  nuh-uh  Posette?  nope

Nope but would an updated James with cleaner topology and human-like legs (what were they thinking?) interest you?

As to the main topic question:  A customer once referred to Poser as digital Barbie dolls. How many people rush to the store to buy Ken or how often do you see new versions of him advertised or even spoken of? There's something to the analogy I think.

I don't know about Lara,but it would interest me. I never bought into the 'one mesh to rule them all' nonsense. I've been getting new figures as I find them and even think I have use for them (and one of these days, if I ever get weigthmapping down, I'll be changing the rigging in a lot of them. So far, still at the lower end of the learning curve there). Maybe it helps that I animate; I think actors, not barbie dolls. You don't try and shove a dozen A list actors into a production when all you need is 2 A list and 10 B list. todo the job. Or I think resource. And since you can cram a lot of multi meg resources onto terabyte+ storage, who in their right mind doesn't want all the resources they can afford? And related to that, I finished that 1,722 frame initial dance test with Dusk. Not bad, I must say. As expected, there was interpenetration with the legs, the ankles toggled a bit, and you had the usual shoulder hitches you see in canned BVH. Most of which are either due to the mocap performer being female and not proportioned the same, or data that was uncleaned to begin with. I didn't find any issues with the skin texture, no crumple zones. So now we get to see just how long it takes to correct the mocap and how well the figure behaves then. I'd love to get an optitrack system.......

Nope but would an updated James with cleaner topology and human-like legs (what were they thinking?) interest you?

I was workin on that for a while. 

I picked up the Ultimate Head morphs from RDNA for a number of the Gen2 figures. After playing with them, though, I have to say that Sydney is by far my favorite. I actually really, honestly LIKE her.

Jessi and James have enormous!! skulls. It creeps me out just to look at them. I can't say I'm a fan of Simon in his default state, but he must be better than freaky James with the alien head, right? LOL. But since I know very little about topology, I wouldn't know if Simon is an improvement or not.

I don't see where James' head is larger than any of the others, if he was gone over, weight mapped, some of his bending issues cured, he'd be as good a figure as any.  Both he and Simon could use a little less definition, a little overdone there.  Jessi can have a nice face, but too much of a vargas girl for me, too few body morphs.  I haven't done much experimenting with Sydney, but she's at least halfway decent.  Alyson, for as lousy as her default state is, she can be made to be quite attractive  And I haven't done much with Simon either, but with me looking for a couple of characters, he's not out of the woods, nor is Ryan.  A poke here and a tweak there, he might be given a Irish face, that's on first glance, not from doing it yet. 

But yes, I'd like to see someone put some labor into James and let his potential come out.  My intuition tells me he'd be an entirely new mesh though, it might take that to "cure" his ills.

Doric

 I'd rather any efforts on the Poser natives go into improving Rex and Roxie and adding more morphs.

The problem i always have with 'more morphs' is that I do get lost in them or just lose endless time in finding the combination that gives the effect I need. One of the achievements in Poser is the morph brush. I invested in an A5 sized Wacom and learned to appreciate this feature of Poser. 'More morphs' was the solution for Poser 4 or 5. Development moved on since then.

The problem i always have with 'more morphs' is that I do get lost in them or just lose endless time in finding the combination that gives the effect I need. One of the achievements in Poser is the morph brush. I invested in an A5 sized Wacom and learned to appreciate this feature of Poser. 'More morphs' was the solution for Poser 4 or 5. Development moved on since then.

I'm not sure I follow.  One of the most common reasons given for the lack of support/use of the Poser native figures is their lack of morphs for character diversity. 

Many don't like using the face room, much less the morph brush, and would rather be able to either dial in their characters from a set of morphs like the DAZ figures have, or load pre-existing characters based on a set of morphs, again like the DAZ figures have. 

Personally, I would like to see an advanced native Poser figure that can morph from James to Simon to Rex, to Ben etc. It's entirely possible, just hasn't been done yet.  

Doric, I just loaded up  SImon, James, and Rex to compare their skulls. You're quite right. If anyone has a freaky head, it's Simon.

However, Jessi does look a bit too much like the "grey alien" to me. I think the problem I have with James is that I've often loaded him with Jessi, and once I've seen her skull.... it affects my perception of James. 

It's the distance between eyebrow and top of the skull relative to the size of the entire face. James looks good, actually. But Jessi's face is entirely too tiny. Sydney is just about right, but Roxie has a face to skull proportion that is more like V4.

@FVerbass -- If I had to rely on the morph brush to create characters that weren't exactly the same as everybody else's in the galleries, I'd have thrown Poser away a decade ago. Sure, the morph brush is a lot better now, and I use it for a lot of things. But morphing faces is not one of them. I spent hours the other day, challenging myself with Roxie. After about five hours, I gave up.  And that's why I don't use her -- because no matter what I do, she looks exactly like everyone else's Roxie. And, while that's fun for a couple of days, after a while, it gets old. (Well, I could make her really ugly with the morph brush. And I'm sure she'd look unique. But it wasn't my intent to render a deformed person. ;D) I also tried with Rex a couple of weeks ago. He ended up looking like he had suffered from some very, very serious facial burns and had to have skin grafts.

I might add that just because you don't like having a lot of morphs doesn't mean they shouldn't be available. That's the beauty of morph injections. Smith Micro might consider using them in future. If someone doesn't want them cluttering up the parameter panel, they can simply not inject them.

Whether it's more morphs or more face room options, it'd be nice to see the native figures get more options. Though if they are morphs, I'd prefer individual loading morphs to load them all at once. Some morphs I never use but others do so it's good they are there, but why do I need to have them bloating my figure?

Question: Do you use the morph brush with a mouse or with a pen-tablet?

Doric, I just loaded up  SImon, James, and Rex to compare their skulls. You're quite right. If anyone has a freaky head, it's Simon.

I don't know if anyone else has the same thoughts I do, but James and Simon, to me, both shout "Workman".  I want to put a suit on Rex, and don't ask me why, it's just how he seems to me.  I haven't done much with Jessi, due to her lack of body morphs.  Stilt legs and balloon chest, without any good way to remove what I don't like.  For the most part, head sizes, I don't really notice.  Heads come in many different sizes, I've seen people with heads like pumpkins, others that were beady small.  That doesn't change that Both James and Simon could use a little updating.  It would also probably end up with them being completely different mesh before it was done.  MY opinion only there. Doric.

@FVerbass -- Doesn't matter what tool I use. There are only so many places a vertex can reasonably go, and if you put it in the wrong place because you don't know where the right place is, it doesn't matter how precise the tool is that put it there. Some of us are not modellers; we have spent our time practicing renders. And we don't have the skill moving polys around that modellers have acquired. It's not a matter of dexterity; it's a matter of knowing what polys look like when they're moved. A pen tool doesn't provide that. If it did, we'd all be making our own content. :) Edit: And I'm decent enough with the morph tool in Poser that if I had the same interface with a modeller -- plus a few additional commands --, I wouldn't be able to morph faces, but I'm pretty sure I could knock out dynamic clothing right away. (I've also tried morphing in Blacksmith3D. Hmmm. No luck. It will take A LOT of practice to be able to do it the way I want to. In the meantime, I wanna make some renders. :)

@Doric -- Yep, I agree. Rex seems more like a bit of an Ivy League college boy to me. He has that clean-cut upper middle class boy scout sort of look to him. James and Simon are much more down to earth. Nothing wrong with any of them -- except as you point out -- the earlier fellows could use some updating, and Rex could use some morphs, too. :)