Tomsde posted at 10:28AM Fri, 02 October 2015 - #4231965

I am a Poser user since version 4. Daz actually used to design the figures for Poser in the early days--and Poser has had several different owners over the years. Then Poser's parent company had a falling out with Daz when they started to develop Daz Studio. You can find the complete history of Poser in this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poser

I think that Don/Judy were the last Daz designed human figures for Poser. Don was actually as good Michael 2, but no one came out with much stuff for him, but I think Judy actually enjoyed some degree of popularity. But the feud between Daz and Poser's owners was the real fly in the ointment. Don could actually accept Michael 2 texture maps with some tweaking.

When e-Frontier bought Poser from Curious Labs it's answer to this problem was to open Content Paradise which offered a Platinum Club type of membership, with weekly free models and lots of content for their human models. We first started with a lot of stuff for James/Jessie, then plenty of offering for the G2 line. When Smith Micro took over though, all that stopped. The answer I think is that Smith Micro do another club, pay content providers to make things for their next generation of people and make sure those people are attractive and that people will want to use them. It's a shame that the deal was cancelled for Apollo to become Poser's default male figure. Really I think the G2s did enjoy some degree of success; but the male figures body types were not the types I like to us. I want Poser to live on, I don't want it to die. Content Paradise has very little to offer me these days. If the G2 figures had body and facial hair and a variety of mapsI probably would have used them much more than I have. Nash that Jepe developed for the G2 male was actually quite good.

If the next version of Poser worked better with Genesis perhaps everyone could be happy--but I am skeptical.

Am I the only one who worries about Poser continuing to thrive? E-Frontier had the right ideal, and Smith Micro could make more money if they had better content.

Welcome back, long time - no see.

I don't mean to sound too terribly cynical but I have been hearing the "OMG! the roof is falling in on Poser" for over a decade now. DAZ and SM have different business models. DAZ sells razor-blades - with the release of every figure, the few vendors that make genesis content simply rework the content they developed for earlier figure for the new one - you get to buy the same product over and over and over. Some of the genesis 2 female content was originally built for V3, Miki 1 and P6 Jessi. A lot of it is just reworked V4 content. There is very little "new" content for the genesis line. And what little that is "new" is as good as what was made a decade ago for M3/V3, the texturing is merely better.

SM would not make more money with better support for genesis. SM would make less money. SM, not DAZ would be responsible for all of the man-hours for writing the code. They would also be responsible for maintaining it after DAZ drops it. You have been around long enough to know how many times DAZ has changed technology directions over the years. Genesis didn't bring much to the table - it has animateable joint centers (the same tech Apollo Maximus had a decade ago) and a proprietary weight mapping scheme - which you can replace in Poser with Poser's weight mapping in less than 5 seconds.

If you want genesis working better in Poser - you need to talk to DAZ or do it yourself in Poser. It is their figure and it is their software. They made the deliberate choice NOT to make a Poser native figure. Asking SM to fix DAZ's software is like demanding that Apple fix bugs in Adobe Photoshop. SM can not reverse engineer the code - that would be a violation of the DMCA.

Hivewire's figures (Dusk & Dawn) work as native Poser and DS figures, so it isn't like it can't be done - DAZ chooses not to. The same can be said for products that come with Poser Companion Files - the vendors could make those as Poser native files (So you don't actually have to use DSON - with 1 exception, they choose not to.) They could also put those PCFs in the correct subfolders instead of stuffing every conceivable file type in the Pose subfolder, but they choose not to - even vendors that know better.

If you actually want genesis 1 and 2 figures working in Poser as Poser Native figures, right now - you can (No DSON required). It isn't very difficult, merely tedious - most of the time is spent unscrewing the file structure, so you can actually find stuff.

The key is doing away with DSON. You will never have decent performance using it.

The other key is letting go of Poser 6's workflow. You can easily upgrade all of your legacy figures (adding both weight mapping and subdivision). No need to chuck all of your content. The Poser ecosystem has lots of tools available to leverage content you already own. Currently, any of my figures can wear any clothing designed for any figure, I can do the same with hair & with a few exceptions, skin textures.