hornet3d posted at 1:39PM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383203

I am not really surprised but it does make me wonder about all the clamour there is for a new figure when there is a new version of Poser being developed. If lots of people are not using the new figures perhaps the development time would be better spent on adding new features to Poser and improving the existing ones. If someone is still using V4 because there is a vast amount of clothing for her, which there is, that suggests that she is mainly used clothed. If that is the case better bending is not that big a deal which is what most new figures developed concentrated on.

How many figures you use is very dependant on what you use Poser for, in my case I use it mainly for storytelling so the main character remains the same. As the heroine is Dawn based that is what I use the most, I do use other figures but only in the role of 'extras' so that might be V4, V3 or even Scarlett based. I used to use V4 as my go to figure but I also love doing portraits and I found it easier to create more convincing expressions with Dawn than with V4. Portraits do not generally need a massive wardrobe so the fact V4 has some many clothes is not really a major plus.

I use Poser for story telling - mine has an ensemble cast, so I need a lot of folks that don't look like they are closely related.

We get new characters because there is a contingent of folks that want something that bends better than V4 (before all of it's fixes).

The problem is that vendor support for new figures is, to be charitable, spotty. Part of this is vendor intransigence i.e. I only make what I am personally interested in. The other is Poser's ability to add new features to any mesh the end user wants to use.

Any legacy figure can have newer tech added to it. We also have the ability to retrofit any figure asset to whichever figure catches our fancy. If I am using LaFemme or such, it only takes a couple of minutes to convert that V4 outfit for her use. Get LaFemme, or Pauline, or Dawn, or whoever, go over to DAZ, join Platinum Club and get an incredible wardrobe @$1.99 an outfit. Come to 'Rosity, join prime, rinse, lather, repeat. That doesn't leave a lot of money for vendors making newer content. That newer content has to be better than what is already available. And most of it isn't (Sturgeon's Law).

Which means I can spend that money on something else, rather than buying an asset made specifically for that figure - which is a good thing for the end user, not so much for the vendor. If the vendors had gotten behind Dawn, we would all be saying Vicky who? But that is water over the bridge.