Here's my take, as a customer who's using V4 and M4 to create characters for a Young Adult Fantasy graphic novel set in the present.

I didn't actually get M4 until about a year ago (after finally acknowledging that toons like Krystal and Kyle weren't going to work for my project), but it didn't take long for me to acquire a large and versatile collection of clothes for him. Most of it was PC+ stuff from the DAZ store that was on sale at even lower prices (under $1), but I also downloaded lots of freebies and bought a few outfits at Rendo that filled specific wardrobe needs.

As I went through all my M4 clothing to see what I could use for my characters, I found that I could put together just about any kind of outfit I might need, esp. if I mixed and matched from different sets, used my own textures, and adjusted styles as needed through custom morphs or trans maps. I'm now at the point where I don't need any more clothes for M4, which is good news for my wallet but not so much for vendors.

So that's one reason why clothes for males might not sell: given the fairly simple nature of contemporary men's clothing, it's not hard to amass a collection of basics that will serve most needs, with a few customizations.

Here's another reason: some outfits for M4 are priced kinda high ($10 or more) and never seem to go on sale or be eligible for coupons. If such an item is on my wishlist for more than 5-6 months with no change in price, I usually just remove it from the wishlist and instead see what I can come up with using my existing M4 wardrobe or using Poser figure content or Genesis freebies converted to M4.

For what it's worth: the only reason I ended up buying more clothes for V4 is that it was harder to find decent "basics" that would be appropriate for a PG-rated story. I can't tell you how many times I've bought what looked like a cute shirt, only to discover that there was no way to release its tenacious grasp on every inch of V4's breasts -- and that's just NOT the look that my teenage characters are going for!

I also wanted to comment on the issue of quality. For my purposes, what matters most in a clothing item is the object itself -- how it was modeled, rigged, and morphed, which determines how well it will conform to a variety of shapes and how it will hold up to a variety of poses.

The textures the clothing item comes with are of far less importance to me, although I do appreciate UV mapping that makes it easy for me to apply my own textures without having to do all kinds of contortionist tricks in Photoshop to get a weave or pattern to lie the right way on a sleeve or collar.

Learning to make your own textures for clothing is pretty quick and easy, while learning to properly model, rig, and morph a clothing item takes a lot longer and requires much more skill, knowledge, and attention to detail. So that's the part I would happily pay the vendor's asking price for (rather than waiting for deep discounts). But, unfortunately for those vendors, I wasn't able to identify who they were until I'd already bought and messed with so much clothing for M4 that I just didn't need any more!

For what it's worth: I'm only interested in conforming clothes b/c I put characters in way too many poses (and fiddle with the poses in each shot way too much) for dynamic clothing to be practical.

Morkonan posted at 6:43PM Tue, 21 November 2017 - #4317054

In regards to male-clothing sales appeal, IMO: The reason that some male clothing items don't sell well might be due to limited variability in what men actually wear. If you have a pair of pants and a shirt, you're considered just about "fully dressed" if you'r a guy. :)

So, for a complete, basic, wardrobe for a standard male figure, what do you need? Long pants, short pants, long-sleeve dress shirt, a knit shirt, some underwear if necessary, a pair of sock and, perhaps, two different sets of shoes.

There, done. With a paint program, you can make those look different, even appear to be of different types of materials, with very, very, little effort. One can even make decent shorts from a pair of long pants only using a transmap.

Women's clothing, as any man who's had a girlfriend or wife knows, is as varied as the flowers in a field... So, modelers can really get creative and can use many, many, different real-world examples as inspiration. All the while, a man's "knit shirt" remains... a knit shirt.

I was going to say something similar... That the same genres of clothing aren't as popular for men as for women. But if you are determined to sell male clothing maybe the key is to think outside of the fantasy/sci-fi box. When I have looked I have been surprised at the lack of real world clothing; business professional, office casual, typical white and blue collar attire. Where are the mechanics and construction workers, the road crews, the moving men, the delivery drivers? There are lots of cheesy rock and rollers, but what about big band or jazz era clothing? Make military uniforms, make street clothing for various sub-cultures (mods, rude boys, punks, etc.), and every sport from soccer to rodeo riding has associated styles. Where are the nerds and dorks, the metro- and lumbersexuals? I think the real takeaway is that no one wants to make the male clothing people would actually buy because it is more likely to be boring real-world stuff.

[perpetualrevision]

For what it's worth: I'm only interested in conforming clothes b/c I put characters in way too many poses (and fiddle with the poses in each shot way too much) for dynamic clothing to be practical.

That's a problem with Poser's dynamics. In theory, dynamic (or at least elastic) clothing should be less problematic than conforming one rigid figure to another.

moogal posted at 6:27PM Thu, 23 November 2017 - #4318476

[perpetualrevision]

For what it's worth: I'm only interested in conforming clothes b/c I put characters in way too many poses (and fiddle with the poses in each shot way too much) for dynamic clothing to be practical.

That's a problem with Poser's dynamics. In theory, dynamic (or at least elastic) clothing should be less problematic than conforming one rigid figure to another.

That's a problem of users not knowing how to use the controls properly to get what they want more than anything Poser's doing, or not doing.

Maybe part of why mens clothes don't sell as well is because its the same thing that gets made over and over. I don't think it's really valid to compare poser/ds clothing to the average guy's closet in the real world because of the variety of clothing you see on tv and movies. If you're gauging what's in you male characters wardrobe to what's in your own and using the same 4 shirts and 2 pairs of pants on your characters then its going to result in a pretty boring comic visually, even if you do change up the color patterns. Like I said earlier men's clothing sales have grown pretty significantly in the last few years and the styles have evolved. You can go to google and type in contemporary mens clothing, or any key word like hoodie, jacket, athletic wear, etc and find scads of different styles and options for men. But in Poser/DS, we get the same boring polo shirts, button ups and jeans. Here's a screen cap of just a handful of the images I've collected and am still collecting just for modern men's clothes. I have tons of them and am always finding more. I save save them so I can use them as reference for the men's clothes I'm working on. And that's just the modern stuff. I have folders for historical, fantasy and sci fi as well. Combine some ideas and come up with your own and it doesn't take long to produce a decent collection.

"But in Poser/DS, we get the same boring polo shirts, button ups and jeans. Here's a screen cap of just a handful of the images I've collected and am still collecting just for modern men's clothes. I have tons of them and am always finding more. I save save them so I can use them as reference for the men's clothes I'm working on

Nice!! I really covet that black & yellow one on the lower row in the middle for myself in real life :-)

I agree completely With your sentiments regarding the state of mens Clothing in the DS/poser markets :-/

I like crisp conservative "Near future" Designs with nice clean lines an a few simple wrinkle morphs at the joints

For My Male clothing modeling,I have been getting alot of my inspiration from a book called " The Art of the Mass Effects Universe"(the video game)

Here is the concept sketch I referenced in designing this suit for the Genesis 3 Male I really like the result I ended up with.

wolf359 posted at 6:49PM Sun, 03 December 2017 - #4319267

I really covet that black & yellow one on the lower row in the middle for myself in real life :-)

Yeah, that's one of my favorites too. And I've seen several variations on it, from different front openings to short sleeves. Just shows what a bit of imagination can do for clothes. The younger guys especially like the post-modern,semi-futuristic styles in clothing.

Right now I'm working on two coats for G2M - one long leather coat from google reference and one short workman's jacket from my own closet, which happens to be a favorite cause of how comfortable it is. Both of them are still in pretty early stages but this is just after working on them a few hours between last night and today. Already have pants and boots I made a while back that I can pair with them.