AmbientShade posted at 12:35PM Tue, 08 November 2016 - #4289329

So for those who feel it's dying, what do you think would revive it, or rebuild your interest in Poser? Is it the tools or the content offered? Or both?

Just curious.

Both. I don't feel it is dying, but my spending patterns have certainly changed and not for the betterment of either 'Rosity or the vendors that sell here. For the past 6 or 7 years, the vendors haven't been interested in anything but recycling the same type of products, over and over (and over and over).

Things SM can address (Poser tools): I'd like better memory management - I have 32Gb in my system, yet Poser slows to a crawl when I am doing crowd scenes (which is most of them). Poser gets balky at about 6Gb, for me. I don't know if this is a Poser issue or an OSX issue, but I would like it looked at.

Poser Pro 11 added a INJ creator. I'd like to see a REM creator to go with it. There is an interest in upgraded Hair Styling tools for the Hair room, and Animation tools also - I don't use either, but better tools could change that (Oh, and updated tutorials - most were made in the Poser 5 -7 timeframe & are a little confusing if the enduser isn't familiar with the old GUI).

Fix every single bug that Erogenesis has submitted. (This should be the #1 priority).

I don't think that Poser necessarily needs an equivalent of V4 Any Poser 9+ figure will do - but if one is needed, Project E would fit the bill.

Figure types that we are missing are kids. DAZ has done pretty well with that, but we're kinda hurting with SM figures on that front. (For those needing a quick fix - Colorcurvature's M4-K4 script will work with any Adult-Child pairing that use the same mesh (V4-K4, V3-Laura, M3-Luke, SP3-Laura, SP3-V3, etc.), Lyrra's Child and height dials are another great products, if you don't mind being limited to the Daz Gen 4 figures.)

For 3rd Party tools (via the Add on framework):

1. More figures added to Netherworks' Hair Control System (Dusk, Paul, & Pauline). And I would like to take this moment to whine (once again, sorry Netherworks) about the HCS modules he hasn't updated (Miki 2, Simon & Sydney) - I'd really, really like to retire my copy of Poser Pro 2008. Yeah, I use those figures - it's how I get around the All Caucasians, All The Time issue with vendor character creation. (That is called foreshadowing...)
2. More of Lyrra's Fitting Room magnets. If I was Nerd3D, I'd contract with her to make them for all of the SM figures (along with her child & height dials). This would address vendor's intransigence about making clothing and character content for any figure not named Victoria 4. That won't help vendors, but they are the ones that are painting themselves into a corner, not SM.

3rd Party Products: More figure support for Texture Transformer (Pauline and Paul for starters, or the ability for the enduser to add that support in TT.) Oh, and a separate Texture Transformer Manual would be nice also (BTW, when updating the Manual, for the love of Cthulhu, fully justify the text. Nothing says amateur quite like left justified text.)

Moving onto vendors and the content they make.

Let go of DOS, Poser 7, and it's associated workflow - you guys are about the only folks still using it. It is almost 2017 - I should not be dealing with material .pz2s, that was a hack for Poser 4. I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that material .mc6s are a REQUIREMENT to sell at 'Rosity. Get with the program already. Let the luddites pay for & use the .pz2 to .mc6 conversion utility.

stoprammingthefilenamestogether. All this does is ensure that Poser's search function (and the enduser) can't find your product. And while I am at it, would it kill you to give your product a rational name? Leading with MAT_ insures that I (and the Poser search engine) will never find your product - as does giving a material a leading number, instead of a color. Oh, and you vendors that make texture packs - PUT THE DAMNED THING IN THE BASE PRODUCT'S FILE STRUCTURE. Then we might be able to find your product a week after we purchased it.

Why did I mention the above? Because I calculate how much effort I will need to spend to get a vendor's product working in a Poser 9 or later workflow (And the fact that my runtimes total 673.36Gb of content - but I can quit anytime, I promise). If I have to go and rename 100+ material files (and convert them from .pz2 to .mc6 - Yes, I have done that once. Not doing it again), I am not buying your product - I don't give a damn how good the product is. 90% of the folks here are running Poser 9 or later - it isn't October 2007 anymore; get with the program.

Moving onto the actual content......

Characters - how about a little variety? 90% of every vendor's figures look like siblings. Do they really think we don't notice that they are using the same texture sets for multiple figures? How about changing more than the boob morphs while you are at it? And while I am at it, enough with the All Caucasians, all the time. I have enough to last me a lifetime, which is why I don't buy characters that much anymore. I need Asians, real Asians, not the Caucasianised versions we see here and at other storefronts - that means DARK eyes (How many native Blue-eyed Japanese females have you seen?), darker skin textures (for Malyasians, Filipinoes, Singaporeans, etc); Indians - from India, although more 1st Nations and Blacks would be good also (If Reciecup can make incredible black figures, why can't the rest of the vendors?). More characters over the age of 30. Most vendors have a Logan's Run view, and most of the characters look alike, regardless of the base mesh used.

Clothing - How about some normal clothing?

What kind of normal clothing? Stuff you could wear in a professional environment. Most clothing sold in the storefronts would get the wearer sent home. Winter clothing is also a neglected area. Not everyone in the Poserverse lives in Miami.

The clubwear niche is overflowing, as is the impractical armor category - Why should I buy your clubwear or impractical armor? What makes it better than the other 783,986,254 outfits sold in the storefronts?

Period clothing - Different eras had different clothing - Here's a hint - Most women in the '20's DIDN'T wear flapper dresses. Men in the '50's didn't dress like Fonzie.

Recommendation: Go visit the Victoria & Albert Museum website & look at the clothing from the '50's. There are a LOT of female outfits that would really sell well as dynamic. I would pay DAZ prices for this stuff.

While I am at it - I am sure there is a reason clothing vendors aren't willing to convert some of their V4 content to newer figures, but for the life of me, I can't think of what it could be. Go look at Dx30's shoe collection over at DAZ - a number of those shoes were originally made for P6 Jessi & Miki 1020 (I bought them a decade ago). If I can spend an afternoon and rework a V4 product for Sydney or Dawn, why can't a vendor - I figured it out, so it can't really be that hard. Enough of clothing.

Props: Housing - real housing, not the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous that is being sold here and elsewhere. Mid-century Bungalows, Ranches, Cape Cods, and Colonial Revivals. Extra hint - most of these were small houses 775 - 900 sq feet & had either 2 or 3 bedrooms and only 1 bathroom (Indoor plumbing didn't become standard until after WWI). And don't forget to add the curtains!

Recommendation: www.retrorenovation.com - lots of color swatches, home floor plans, etc. It will get your creative juices flowing.

For those vendors that are making DS content and want to tap into the Poser market. The easier you make it for us, the more products we'll buy. Spending an additional 5 minutes can generate more sales for you. I understand that expecting you to do the heavy lifting is a bridge too far. That's ok, we're Poser users, we have the tools and the documentation to do what you can't (or won't).

Recommendation: Learn how to make movement morphs for your clothing. We've had those in the Poserverse since at least the V3 era. That seems to be a lost art in the DSverse, and it is a major factor in me not investing more in DS content.

Recommendation: Talk to Paul Busey over at 3dartlive.com and ask him to develop a Web seminar on making movement morphs for clothing in DS (and Poser - the vendors here could also use it). He as been making a nifty series for content development in DS, and this is just one of the many areas that DS is behind Poser in. Moving onto our favorite - Poser Companion Files (PCF)s.

Learn where PCFs actually go. I have 1,022 packages of DS content from DAZ installed via the DIM. Not one product has all of the PCFs in the correct location. Not one. Don't be that vendor.

For your information:

.cm2s (Cameras) go in the CAMERA subfolder

.cr2s (Characters) go in the CHARACTERS subfolder

.fc2s (Expressions) go in the FACE subfolder

.hr2s (Hair) go in the HAIR subfolder

.hd2s (Hand poses) go in the HAND subfolder

.lt2s (Lights) go in the LIGHT subfolder

.mc6s (Materials) go in the MATERIALS subfolder

.pp2s (Props) go in the PROPS subfolder

.pz2 (Poses - this includes Head and Body morphs) go in the POSE subfolder. Materials do not belong here, btw - you don't have an excuse for making material .pz2 files, very few if any of you were around in the Poser 4 (or Poser 7) era.

Recommendation: Make your PCFs native Poser files. There is at least 1 vendor at DAZ doing it, so you don't have an excuse. If I can make them in 30 seconds or less, so can you - DSON has a number of limitations (mainly due to trying to run through the add-on framework - Python is a light weight scripting language and the 64-bit version isn't getting all that far along). Your goal should be to use DSON as little as possible - that 2Gb per process limit for Python is a real one, especially with vendors using 8,196 x 8,196 texture files - which is pointless, btw.