As the saying goes, it's not over till the fat lady sings! Lets see what we have in a week or two's time.

I think SM are more than aware how important the new figures are to the future of the software because Poser has to pose something and Daz has made it clear that from now on their figures will only work in Daz Studio. SM has to support the new figures now, it doesn't have a choice. Nerd3D has said that they will do that.

Personally I think that there are extremely good artists in the community who could have helped with the figures and who would have ensured that the sneak peak pictures had that WOW factor. Marketing fail. Too late now.

Poser has provided decent tools to enhance the figures though. HD morphing that can be injected easily. Matching centers to morphs to allow extreme morphing. I have already suggested a project group to make improvements to the figures to ensure a common standard. Hopefully we can get that of the ground.

There is years of life in V4 and M4. I was surprised to see the thread at Daz3D on the differences between V4 and and V7 turn into a debate over whether V7 provided any enhancements at all. The point that keeps on being made over again is that there is an enormous library of stuff for V4, but with new Vickys coming out every two years, all the vendors are doing is producing the same stuff over and over again for the new figures. Same Ole Same Ole. Keeps the dollars coming in I guess. I'm not sure, but If I've read it correctly bones, HD sculpting and matching centers to morphs could be applied to V4 and M4. They are already weight mapped and have a higher poly density equivalent to one sub division over V7. I don't think its a coincidence that the vast majority of celeb morphs are V4 or M4.

And of course there's the issue of Daz attempting to enforce even more control over where and how you get your future figures. Interesting times.