AmbientShade posted at 2:37PM Sun, 27 January 2019 - #4344363

As long as Poser is still around I doubt they'll do that. They still make money every time someone buys V4, so why would they?

Nobody buys V4. People download the base figure for free. The add-on packs are where the money comes in, but how long will they remain profitable?

I'm not saying it'll go away tomorrow. But a year or three from now? Who knows?

I haven't even touched on strategic direction (or any new corporate initiatives that might come up.)

Again, most content artists are not coders. Sorry for not attaching the 'most' modifier to the previous statement for clarification. Yes Poser has a long history of 3rd party scripts. Some of them are now even built into Poser. And yet people still complain.

They paid good money for the application - they've earned the right to complain.

Meanwhile, Over in you-know-where, their latest figure lets me use all of my old V4 stuff, and it works incredibly well.

Awesome. Then why aren't you over there using it instead of spending your time over here telling everyone how Poser will die if it doesn't make a seamless way for a 3rd party figure (of which Poser's devs and parent company have zero license to do anything with) fully compatible with any potential new figure?

Now now - be nice...

I'm merely here to try to posit opinions that hopefully Smith Micro will read and pick up. If they don't, they don't.

As far as whether Poser will die or not, that's not up to me. I do however see the slow consolidation of sites, the slow drain of users (see also the comparison of activity concerning Poser - even in this forum - from 10 years ago to now...) I think it'd be a shame to see it's trajectory continue, which is why I'm here.

You're right though - I don't have to say anything here. I can sit and watch things progress as they have. So where do you think Poser will be five years from now?

The reason Daz can make all of that old content work with the latest genesis figures is because they own the rights to all of it, so they can do whatever they want with it. They don't own the clothing meshes, but they own the rigs that make those clothing meshes work. They own the figure meshes, which in turn means they own the UV maps, so they can make those maps compatible with their current figures if they choose, or give permission to someone who can do the job for them.

Reading a file and ascertaining its contents and/or formatting requires no permission (now writing to that format/UVMap/whatever would require permission, but reading it? No license or permission required.) This has been hashed out in the legal realm with Office documents, music files (see also .mp3), etc. , and stretched waaaaay back to the old .gif format battles of the 1990s (and was solved there). The owners of that file format are under no obligation to assist you, but you can certainly read it without violating copyright. The one and only exemption involves DRM (you're not allowed to circumvent it without permission from the owners of a given file format if DRM is incorporated), but as we all know, Vicky 4 has no DRM.

TL;DR: unless DRM is involved (and it's not), anybody can write scripts to convert rigging, UVMapping, morphs, poses, whatever.

(...and Bonus! V4 content is most often made and sold (and can be had) in Poser file formats, obviating that whole aspect of it.

Long term users with terabytes worth of V4 content really isn't the target audience of new figures, unless that audience wants figures that have more versatility than V4 has in terms of functionality, multi-platform use, etc.

Correct! But most folks (myself included) love being able to slowly replace old stuff with new stuff. This means using old stuff on new figures until replacements are built and/or bought. Kinda the whole point of the thing I was talking about. But then, you know that.

And really when it comes down to it, the content market requires new figures and people investing in those new figures and content for them, in order to keep going.

Chicken-and-egg, certainly. I find it interesting (but understandable) that you refuse to put forth the risk. So out of curiosity, why not pool that risk with multiple creators and center on a figure? I noticed in your .sig that you're working on one (though I don't have a tumblr account, nor do I need any further spam in my mailbox.) Anyrate, have you given any thought to adaptability of existing content, maybe talk to a dev or two and collaborate? It would seem rather constructive to do so.

Incidentally, which ship is going down? Poser? Slowly, but it can be saved.