wolf359 posted at 10:20AM Sun, 28 July 2019 - #4358228

But trust me 3D animated Characters are in demand in 2019 and any 3D Character program that hopes to gain the next generation of users while ignoring basic animation ability (walking and talking) does so at their own peril.

So declares the user who, by his own admission, doesn't use Poser, doesn't use DS, doesn't buy content because he "grows his own" telling Poser how to retain customers.

Really, how can you miss the lunacy of following such direction?

wolf359 posted at 11:32AM Sun, 28 July 2019 - #4358228

The "a good figure" is a vague term, but I wanted opinions We're talking about Poser.

So to be clear, you only want opinions on what makes a "good figure"
for poser without any contextual references to posers feature set and how that feature set works in conjunction with the "good figure"..for poser??

And you have consistently posted that you have found your "good figures" in the Hivewire bases anyway so why do you even want peoples opinions at all??

And you consistently make the same assessment. Poser has to beome a "clone" of all the other software in order to regain it's market.

You concede that poser needs to "regains its market share"

No, I believe I said, "And you consistently make the same assessment. Poser has to become a "clone" of all the other software in order to regain it's market.

In fact, I never said anything about Poser's market share. And by "clone", which I put in quotes, I meant that you think Poser has to do all the things other software does in order to compete in this market.

Oh, and while I do use Dawn and Dusk, primarily, they both work natively in Poser. I don't use other figures, frankly, because I don't render as much as I used to. But when I do, I usually use Poser.

I meant that you think Poser has to do all the things other software does in order to compete in this market.

Clarke is it not better to compete with program features and figures that utilize them ALL rather than depend Loyalty and nostalgia.

How did Loyalty and nostalgia work out for the once mighty, Nokia ,Blackberry or even Microsoft in the mobile device market??.

Competing with your direct competitors, in terms of features and abilities should be ,Bondwares primary strategic plan because the desperately needed ,NEW, incoming users to the entry level 3D Character market , will not be swayed by the tired, old tribalist,emotional hatreds that have kept many loyalists from leaving as matter of "principle"

I do use Dawn and Dusk, primarily, they both work natively in Poser. I don't use other figures,

But you started a thread asking for opinion about what makes a "good figure" in general ,not about why you have chosen Dawn and Dusk whom "works natively" in poser only for the purpose loading,Dressing and rendering still portraits/pinups etc.

Right now Dawn,Dusk ,the HW Gorilla, and the HW baby has more feature support in, (there I go again), Reallusion Character creator 3 and Iclone than in any version of poser.

GhengisFarb posted at 7:30PM Mon, 29 July 2019 - #4358217

Yeah, DarkSeal made an awesome Poser/DS figure very much like the Pathfinder Goblins that was just incredible. Think it lasted 3 days before it was purged from the internets. :(

Dude, I still feel envious that I missed out on freebies by the dude who Poser-rigged the DOAX (Dead or Alive Extreme) babes... those things were (for the time) fantastically done (Even if they did literally suck out the .obj files from the XBox game...) :(

What V4 had, what Genesis has, what all DAZ products have, was and is excellent marketing and product design. While good product design can include "high quality," not all versions of high quality enhance product design.

The customer demand that started this market wasn't animation nor even 3D. It was illustration. Poser and Bryce were created to make illustrating with Painter easier. And since they were part of Zygote, DAZ has mostly put that use first. Even after adding game-based aesthetics and game-friendly features, they still primarily design and market their content and software as illustration tools.

I used to be able to spot Poser use in about 50% of top illustrators' works. DS is still used for professional and hobbyist illustration almost as much as photomanipulation. Poser? Not so much.

Well before the SM purchase, the Poser team began to treat content community illustrators as people they had to serve rather than wanted to. They designed and marketed to 3D professionals, totally ignored 2D professionals as a market while occasionally using them in marketing, and talked down to and tried to appease the content community. They repeatedly showed they didn't understand how a content ecosystem worked. For instance, making figures that shared body maps and morphs, but not head maps and morphs. As a result, they steadily lost customers to DAZ, and many customers regarded their innovation packed new releases as having "no new features," since almost all features were specifically designed for animators or content creators.

I'd say about 75% of features added since PPP are used by less than 10% of the Poser customer base. That points to a problem that has nothing to do with SM or budgeting.

If the Poser team had respected illustrators and content users from the start, they would have released the Cloth Room with a workflow that didn't require the timeline (but could use it). They would have normalized the controls and labeled them with real world terms like "Quality," "Elasticity," and "Stiffness". By now, we could have already had weight mapped dynamics with initial tension settings. The morph tool should have settings like "move" (or "grab," as Blender uses), "rotate" or "bend," "billow," "gather," "wrinkle," and "turbulence." Instead, neither cloth nor hair has become any easier to use. All Cloth and Hair Room improvements have been on the performance end, with absolutely no work done on its completely failed UI, despite usage numbers really clearly indicating that failure at their release.

When it comes to poorly designed features, the Poser team has always tried to either entice users with better performance or change users with tutorials instead of accepting that usage sets the standard, and changing the interface. Bondware needs a Poser team willing to respect how customers work and be willing to accommodate it.

Mind, I don't mean listening to us whine and argue in the forums, or catering to the "Make Art" complaints. I mean taking into account the most common workflow(s) in the community. Using labels that make sense to most users. Providing features that make it easier to make awesome stills, features that would benefit animators anyway.

The strategy of adding 3D professional features has mostly failed the Poser team from the start, and they did nothing but double and triple down on that failure. But we still don't have things like in-camera composition guides, a post-production bloom feature, a background that makes an environment sphere unnecessary, or a set of HDRI for fantasy renders (no modern structures or people), or a set of pure skies. Those simple, low-hanging fruit additions would make it so much easier to make illustrations, and would also benefit Poser animators.

Who will never number more than a handful. Professional 3D animators who make their own models don't need a separate posing tool. They've done just fine without one for the past two decades. Game content creators need Poser even less. Even if Poser worked perfectly and were free, adding Poser to a professional workflow would just complicate it. They have to model, UV map, texture, and do particle effects in the application of their choice, one which probably supports rigging and animation. If they switch to Poser as the final stop, they're giving up particle effects and advanced physics and most likely a much better renderer. If they're ending in a game engine, it's almost definitely easier to go from their chosen app directly to the game engine.

There's pretty much zero benefit to using Poser if all you do is make content for your own animations or for games. And I say that as a Blender user. There are other 3d studio apps that have stronger rigging and/or animation tools. Still, even I, who have never used Blender for animating or posing, know that you can do so much more in terms of animating in Blender than in Poser. Like making complex meshes follow a dynamic cloth base.

The best Poser figure is one designed for the content community. One that makes illustration using 3rd party content easier. That assumes its users will mostly use a different character and entirely different clothes and scenery with each illustration. That assumes the majority of its users will never make their own 3D content, and will focus entirely on the ability to make a new image every day or so.

That means designing a base figure with a flexible topology that can take definition. That means lots of morphs at release. That means doing everything, and I mean everything, to make vendor support easy.

For instance, a good Poser figure needs morphs that either can be burned into new morphs or exist outside the library where they can be referenced. The creator should make very clear that morph artists supporting the figure should put them outside of the library, so others in the community can build off them. The figure needs to support merchant resource texture and dial-spin morph characters. While people complain about the flood of similar characters for figures like V4 or Genesis, the fact is that you need that flood if you want at least hundreds of customers to each go through about 7 unique characters a week without it looking like they all used the same 7.

Content creators should be able to detail the figure easily in any 3D application. Poser content creators, especially the ones that remain, often use free or cheap tools. This is the main reason I love Dawn. Her topology makes her a dream to sculpt.

A good Poser figure needs to make it easy for vendors to publish both skimpwear and flowing fantasy dresses for her. And until Poser gets a much more usable and functionally improved cloth room, that means making it easy to build conformers for her. La Femme is absolutely great at this, and Deecey's video tutorials for this are amazingly clear and easy to follow.

Ideally, a figure and its basic morphs should be designed and built with the testing and feedback of at least one clothing creator, one morph artist, one dial-spin character creator, and two or more top illustrators who do not make 3D content. It should be designed first as a community tool, rather than a specific dream girl. A Poser figure is a canvas. Make it easy for content creators to provide the paints and brushes, and customers will come to paint.

As much as DAZ has focused more on illustration, there's still tons that neither DS nor Poser does to make illustration easier. If all Bondware did was change the Poser UI to either make general tools usable for illustrators or get rid of them (Face Room, I'm looking at you), and add features and content to make illustration easier, I think there are a lot of people out there who would take notice.

kobaltkween posted at 7:20AM Tue, 30 July 2019 - #4358330

The customer demand that started this market wasn't animation nor even 3D. It was illustration. Poser and Bryce were created to make illustrating with Painter easier. And since they were part of Zygote, DAZ has mostly put that use first. Even after adding game-based aesthetics and game-friendly features, they still primarily design and market their content and software as illustration tools.

(snipped out important stuff just to keep from adding more text)

One can hope that Renderosity/Bondware has, as it's objective, to return to the roots of Poser and move forward from there!

Trying to force a round peg into a square hole has always been an exercise in futility. Do what Renderosity does so well - cater to the customer base that uses Poser as it was intended and allow the techno nerds the ability to outsource those tools they want to use in Poser.

Honestly, what I see from DAZ at this point is them "techno nerding" this base right out of their software. The system requirements from them are quickly outpacing the hobbyist budget.

Poser and Renderosity will/should be here welcoming those customers back with open arms.

kobaltkween posted at 8:08AM Tue, 30 July 2019 - #4358330

For instance, a good Poser figure needs morphs that either can be burned into new morphs or exist outside the library where they can be referenced. The creator should make very clear that morph artists supporting the figure should put them outside of the library, so others in the community can build off them.

I don't understand what you mean by this, "exist outside the library" ?

As much as DAZ has focused more on illustration, there's

still tons that neither DS nor Poser does to make

illustration easier.

Daz recently bought the former third party graphMate and KeyMate Plugins and folded them into the free base program.

They also have an all new IK solver for switchable foot/floor contact in the DS 4.12 beta.

In september, they will be releasing a new DSON based plugin that loads FULLY functional Genesis figures into the worlds top Character animation program for Film& TV..Autodesk Maya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9UGtguQoDQ

Even Daz realizes the limited growth potential of the still illustration/portrait /pinup market.

BTW, I honestly agree with most of your last post, except the assertion that "professional Character animators" always model and rig their figures themselves.

This is true for major film VFX and Game companies, however the Small shops and one man operations do use prefabbed animated Characters and will pay .

I do model my own clothing and make my own custom face morphs But I need quality pre rigged figures for use in C4D & lightwave3D Via FBXor Alembic & MDD.

This is why sites like Mixamo exists.

And why commercial plugins like this one exists for C4D.

https://www.rodenburg-verlag.de/shop/cinema-4d-plugins/people-in-motion-r2-0-cinema-4d-r17-winmac/

I have been asked by individual pro freelancers over on the CGsociety.org forums, about my own Iclone/Daz genesis to C4D pipeline I used to create my ,soon to be released, full length animated film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjokKZX1r6I

Again you are quite correct that such users will not be using Daz studio , poser or even iclone for final output renders. (and with good reason)

IMHO ,However it cant hurt to have animation&character export options to lure such users into your commercial market places.

AmbientShade posted at 1:30PM Tue, 30 July 2019 - #4358341

I don't understand what you mean by this, "exist outside the library" ? The best place to put all referenced files is outside of the libraries folder. For example, Runtime > Geometries, or Runtime > Images. If this folder doesn't exist already, make it. It will install like any other folder.

In modern versions of Poser, morphs are in .PMD files. By default, Poser puts those .PMD files in the library with the .cr2, .pp2, or .pz2 files that reference them. Many people, Poser team included, leave them in the library with the presets that access them. Which is a bad idea for the same reason it's a bad idea to put meshes and images in the library with their presets.

Poser preset files link from the Runtime folder down. Let's say you bought a figure. If a preset file (.cr2), mesh (.obj or .obz), images (.jpg), and morphs (.pmd) files are all in a folder "My Fig" in the library, unless the creator edited the links by hand in the preset, all of the links to the resources will start like ":Runtime:libraries:character:My Fig:". But let's say you decide this one figure doesn't need it's own folder, and you want to group it with other figures. Or you find its folder is (or will be) packed full, and you want to put the base figure in MyFig > Base. So you move the figure and its files, but now all the links are broken.

This is why almost all brokerages long ago wouldn't accept any products that didn't have their meshes in Runtime:Geometries and their images in Runtime:Textures. In point of fact, most insist on a naming convention within those folders. As in they will not accept your product if its files aren't in the right place. They do not, however, have a similar standard for morphs. But its even more necessary than for those other types of files.

Poser will tell you that it can't find the obj file. It will tell you that it can't find images. It will say nothing when it can't find the .pmd file. The morphs just won't do anything. To the user, it just looks like the morphs are broken. The dials will be there, they just won't do anything. It fails silently, and unless you're fairly knowledgeable, you'll have no clue why. You'll just assume the creator and the product suck.

Imagine I want to make a dial-spin character. Legally and just plain politely, I will do this by referencing someone else's PMD file, not embedding the other person's morphs in my own new PMD. If I do the latter, my customers will get the other person's morphs without paying for them. At least the ones in the new PMD. If I do the former, it's just an add-on to their work, like most V4 dial spin characters needed you to buy Morphs++. But if that person packaged their morphs like Runtime > libraries > pose > My Name > My Morphs > INJ My Morphs. pz2, INJ My Morphs.pmd, then my product referencing their PMD file will break the moment someone decides to move it to libraries > pose > My Morphs, or libraries > pose > Fig Name > My Morphs, or libraries > pose > Fig Name. All of which are pretty logical alternative structures.

Many content users install into an empty Runtime so they can move files where they want them to go.

If the original artist instead treats their PMD morph file like a mesh, and puts it in Runtime > Morphs > MyName > MyFig, anyone can reference those morphs for dial spin characters and give away or sell dial-spin characters for those morphs. La Femme's base morphs, for instance, are in the Geometries folder, not in the Libraries folder. Making her easy to support. But part of why Dawn character support never took off might be because her morphs are in the library. That means that any characters made for her either have to risk breaking the moment a customer decides to reorganize their library to fit their comfort or use entirely custom morphs. I love sculpting and have a free tool for it, and it's still a PITA to have to create my own versions of utilitarian morphs just because I can't build off of any Dawn's morphs. By far most character creators, even best selling ones, do not create their own morphs or 3d paint. They need to be able to reference other people's injections as much as they need merchant resource textures.

One of the ways the Poser team consistently demonstrated how they don't understand their own user base by doing this with their own figures since zipped OBZs were introduced (again, pre-SM). I actually reported this to them, and was rebuffed and told I shouldn't reorganize my library. They thought it was fine to make stuff that breaks and requires hours of hand editing references each time you update (I've done it several times) if you just make your library work for you. Which tells me that they didn't really mean for their content to be used.

wolf359 posted at 5:59PM Tue, 30 July 2019 - #4358371

As much as DAZ has focused more on illustration, there's

still tons that neither DS nor Poser does to make

illustration easier.

Even Daz realizes the limited growth potential of the still illustration/portrait /pinup market.

Ironic, don't you think, considering that still illustration/ portrait/ pinup has given them the wherewithall to go after the animation market.

ironic, don't you think, considering that still illustration/ >portrait/ pinup has given them the wherewithall to go after the animation market.

Even former prostitutes have later become credible women's rights advocates .

The greater irony is that the software that has, for decades, called it self

"The figure Design and Animation Tool"

Has delivered "figure designs " for the last 6 full versions that were thoroughly rejected by the core faithful.

And its name cannot be found in any modern day online discussion forums about Character animation.

Quoth KobaltKween:

"Poser preset files link from the Runtime folder down."

Damn I missed you!

But yeah - most folks in Poser aren't going to immediately grok the idea (I do like it though.)

But while we're monkeying around with that, it would be huge if Poser could break free of that 1990s legacy file structure. The ability to organize things practically any way you frickin' want is very liberating.

This (like the separate morph-ref bit) is a program, not a figure limitation though, IMHO. But, breaking free of it will take a fundamental change in how the figure file is constructed, how its assets are referenced, and most importantly, how those supporting assets are kept track of in the file and by the application if anything changes.

Can't argue at all against anything you've written, though.

Penguinisto posted at 11:03PM Tue, 30 July 2019 - #4358402

But while we're monkeying around with that, it would be huge if Poser could break free of that 1990s legacy file structure. The ability to organize things practically any way you frickin' want is very liberating.

This has been the default of Poser since the introduction of Poser 8. My runtimes have been set up MY way since then.

I like the way references are stored now. It is aimed at supporting a development workflow. Files that are generated with a .cr2 are for use with that .cr2 and located in that same folder the .cr2 is in and have the same base name as that .cr2. Had Poser been making image texture files, they would have gone there also. Within that folder the user can hammer, drill and weld at his heart's content. There is however one problem with the present implementation: the referenced files within the same folder as the .cr2 are still given as full path names where the reference better had been relative to the .cr2, so just by the basename.

Once the figure or prop development has lead to something worth consolidating and referred to from elsewhere, it can be moved to the production setup with geometry in Geometries, texture image files in Textures, morphs in Morphs and so on.

It would be convenient to have a tool that can re-organize content from development mode to production mode and vice versa.

kobaltkween posted at 2:40AM Wed, 31 July 2019 - #4358376

AmbientShade posted at 1:30PM Tue, 30 July 2019 - #4358341

I don't understand what you mean by this, "exist outside the library" ? The best place to put all referenced files is outside of the libraries folder. For example, Runtime > Geometries, or Runtime > Images. If this folder doesn't exist already, make it. It will install like any other folder.

Right, I got you. For me 'runtime' and 'library' are pretty much synonymous, I wasn't thinking specifically Geometries, even though I practice this myself, at least with objs. It just wasn't registering for some reason, especially at 6am. My actual thought was "well where the hell else would you put them?"

But I see your point, and it makes sense, at least to a point.

FVerbaas posted at 5:18AM Wed, 31 July 2019 - #4358410

I like the way references are stored now. It is aimed at supporting a development workflow. Files that are generated with a .cr2 are for use with that .cr2 and located in that same folder the .cr2 is in and have the same base name as that .cr2. Had Poser been making image texture files, they would have gone there also. Within that folder the user can hammer, drill and weld at his heart's content. There is however one problem with the present implementation: the referenced files within the same folder as the .cr2 are still given as full path names where the reference better had been relative to the .cr2, so just by the basename.

Once the figure or prop development has lead to something worth consolidating and referred to from elsewhere, it can be moved to the production setup with geometry in Geometries, texture image files in Textures, morphs in Morphs and so on.

It would be convenient to have a tool that can re-organize content from development mode to production mode and vice versa.

We do have a tool to do that - Netherworks Creator's Toybox.

As soon as I do my first save (CR2, PP2) I run Toybox to get a clean CR2 and re-point to the Geometries folder.