I'm not trying to start a fight, but I keep hearing that Poser figures are of lower quality than other figures, so when you go looking for a figure to use, what do you look for? And mostly, what don't the Poser figures do as well as others?

I want a 2 gazillion poly figure that wont load on my system but can morph from a transformer to a treant to a bullywog to a moe anime girl to a lil pixie fairy, with wings. .. Hey you asked what I wanted, not if it was possible :D

SUPPORT.

Clothing, textures, characters. Yes, it's possible to convert a lot of stuff from other figures, but it's extra work and often doesn't work perfectly. It's why I haven't used Dawn much. There just wasn't a lot of stuff for her. The characters available, at least in the beginning, weren't that great and all looked alike. There's more choices now, but with Dawn 2 about to debut, I'm reluctant to invest more in Dawn 1. (Dawn 2 looks fantastic, BTW.) I'm not using LF and LH much, for the same reason.

For most of the things I use Poser for, V4 and M4 are "good enough." Especially the weight mapped versions. So having that huge backlog of clothes, textures, characters, morphs, etc. usually outweighs any advantages of a new figure. I still buy them, because I want to support Poser and its content creators, but I find myself still using M4 and V4.

The other thing I want is morphability. Particularly in the face. I like to be able to make the figure look like anyone. Neither Dawn nor LF have enough face morphs, IMO. Some people can use magnets, or Z-Brush, to make any morphs they want, but a lot of us are dial-spinners. It's the reason we're using Poser, and not Blender or something.

Poser figures are not lower quality. We have La Femme and Evolution.

I think when people say lower quality, they often mean "less support." You see the Genesis promo renders, and they're extremely well-done, and feature tons of things not available in Poser. Hair, clothing, textures, characters (especially ethnically diverse characters). There are a lot fewer Poser products, and the quality of the renders is often poor (not because of Poser's deficiencies).

If Genesis figures are "better," it's because of the ability to easily share morphs, clothes, etc. And geografting.

I used Poser from version 3 to version 11. I love how the interface works, Lots of things are built in (Face room, Material room, Simple morph control of mesh's, Posing, animation. I have a huge library of Poser Products (large investment). So why did I leave poser for Daz3 Studio

Genesis 3-8 characters ported into Poser is a real pain. Daz Studio is Free, Products are NOT and they are more expensive (A trade-off) IRay render engine, dForce -amazing way to make clothes, hair etc. drape correctly. Hair looks way better and now is capable of using dForce. Beautiful and diverse characters from all races and ethnicity and any character can be any age, shape and size while looking the way intended. Water that looks like water and can have dynamics AutoFit that works 95% of the time Clothing conversions from Genesis to Genesis 8, protects your investment. Surface textures and map control L.I.E HDRI Real Sky-domes with internal lighting capability. Mesh lights Massive library of products Morphs load without having to select individually or manually.
Expandability
Smart Content. Lighting controls are incredible and is huge plus New Elements animation.

These are just my thoughts and as Poser gets better I will keep my eye out, I have a very warm spot inside for the Poser Software. I would Love for Poser to move forward, It still has a good base and vendors come up with some amazing things I would love to see DAZ Product Compatibility that would really make it shine.

I'm lamenting the sub-par quality of Poser's native figures (as well as those dozends of "vicky-killer" "vanity" figures) for two decades now.

And it never was about "not enough support", but always about their actual quality:

1. Poor rigging (Especially sad as Poser's rigging tools are actually quite good. In some regards even better than Studios!)

2. Poor default shape. (It is much easier for the average user to turn an anatomically correct, photo-realistic figure into a toon than make a toon-ish figure more realistic.

3. Poor construction. (It is much less taxing to average computers if realistic muscle morphs, etc, are already "built into" the figure's mesh topology than trying to add this kind of realistic detail to a low-res "game-friendly" mesh via subdivision.

4. Poor expression morphs.

5. "Gimmick-ey rigging". (Especially true for those "vanity" "Vicky-killer" figures we've seen way too often. But often also the native default figures were "built around" a "new Poser feature" instead of optimizing the technology that really works.

With that in mind I developed my own set of figures based on either 3rd or 4th generation DAZ meshes, as these feature the elaborate mesh topology best suited for my needs. The rigging is all Poser weightmapping with no "cross-compatibility" dead weight. Shapes/morphs/sizes are based on real people. No gimmick-ey "professional" features. The figures are meant to work in Poser and Poser allone, making use of ALL the rigging tools Poser has to offer.

This "philosophy" worked for me pretty well for the last decade, and unless I'll see full Genesis compatibility in Poser, (Or a fully functional Morphbrush implemented into DAZ Studio), I think I'm going to stick with it. That's also the reason I have no use for Poser 11 or 12. (although I bought the Poser 11 upgrade). I neither have any use for just another generation of "new" (but inevitably sub-par) Poser figures, nor for a crippled Blender render engine. And especially not for an anihilation of all my python scripts. (Which one tends to use a lot of you actually create stuff for Poser).

But this discussion is vain already. All professional content creators voted with their feet already years ago and even a figure that's actually technically and artistically better than Genesis wouldn't bring those people back. But this figure would be very expensive and would take way too long to develop, anyway.

We had a small window of opportunity to create such a figure once Vicky 5 was announced, but the previous owner of Poser were way too cheap and too lethargic to do what was necessary back then.

Anyway, it's all water under the bridge now. PP-2014 as well as my "home-cooked" figures work fine for me. So far I neither have the overwhelming urge to migrate to Studio nor to install Poser 12.

What I personally WANT for Poser is to basically turn into a DAZ Studio emulator.

Give me full Genesis functionality but with a Poser front-end, as it is way too late trying to play "catch-up" with Genesis. Genesis is now supported by almost two decades of high quality content. Devoloping a high quality Poser figure isn't a "one-man show" "vanity" project, but takes a dedicated team of seasoned professionals to get it right. As well as a huge amount of professional and semi-professional content creators for support.

Sorry, but that train has left the station a long time ago. We once had both but we lost both due to ineptitude and stubbornness.

With the fitting room, almost all the products created for Genesis 3/8 are available for your Poser figures if you are willing to do a little work. I convert high-quality clothing, shoes, and hair all the time (dForce hair being the exception). A dForce garment exports like anything else from DS as an obj. Load and rig to the figure of your choice. Use existing analogues as donors in the setup room. With Headshop and body morphs, you can replicate almost any Genesis 3/8 character to a Poser figure (La Femme, Genesis 2). La Femme and Evolution have face rigging (and judging from the DAZ galleries, nobody uses it on G8 anyway). The possibilities in Poser are endless if you use the tools it gives you. Or just switch to DS and be done with these discussions.

Headshop was unusable on my computer when I tried it earlier this year. If they've fixed that, I'd be willing to give it another try.

I have high hopes for Dawn 2. She appears much improved over the original Dawn. Though it sounds like there will be little or no compatibility between the two.

You could have had a better Dawn already seven years ago. Danielle

Just sayin... ;-)

I don't have any issues using a range of figures in Poser. I do have issues with the current L Homme and La Femme - their faces are not easily changed into a range of realistic characters across ethnicity and age. But I can work with them nevertheless. I can happily and easily import FBX versions of Genesis 8 figures and characters into Poser, so that is not a problem for me either. I can also import FBX versions of figures from AutoDesk Character Generator and Adobe Mixamo, Blender3D's MB-Lab, and so on. I also generate and rig my own figures in Poser, so that is not a problem. I can model basic wardrobes for all these figures, so again, not a problem.

What do I want in a figure for Poser ? It must be easy to use for the purpose I need. Sorry if too ambiguous.

JoePublic posted at 5:40AM Tue, 17 November 2020 - #4404864

You could have had a better Dawn already seven years ago. Danielle

That post reminds me of how much I used to love Stephanie Petite. SP and David were probably my favorite figures "out of the box." I don't use them as much as I used to because it's become harder to find stuff for them. DAZ and Rosity have both weeded out a lot of the generation 3 stuff.

For some reason, I found the generation 3 figures to have the most morphable faces. Maybe because they have so many polys.

randym77 posted at 9:02AM Tue, 17 November 2020 - #4404888

JoePublic posted at 5:40AM Tue, 17 November 2020 - #4404864

You could have had a better Dawn already seven years ago. Danielle

That post reminds me of how much I used to love Stephanie Petite. SP and David were probably my favorite figures "out of the box." I don't use them as much as I used to because it's become harder to find stuff for them. DAZ and Rosity have both weeded out a lot of the generation 3 stuff.

For some reason, I found the generation 3 figures to have the most morphable faces. Maybe because they have so many polys.

I will admit that there was a time when I used Stephanie Petite and even Aiko 3 more than I did V4 or V3. On th other hand, I literally couldn't stomach Stephanie 4 or A4. It wasn't the bending or morphing, they just didn't "look right".

I still think that the 3rd Generation were the epitome of Poser figures. (although noone could "muscle up" just as good with just as few polygons as Michael 2)

Just for laughs, here's Michael 2 vs the original Stephanie 1. Yes, they are the same mesh:

But the 3rd Gen "Unimesh" took that idea even further: Here are some of the "real life" sculptings I devoleped based on it. A partially weightmapped SP3 in the middle and the others are based on my weightmapped Vicky 3

I remember I was quite dissapointed with V4/M4, as they weren't originally rigged for Poser but with Studio in mind. So their Poser rigging could have been a lot better. Their meshes were also a lot less detailed than those of the 3rd Gen Family because DAZ wanted their figures to become more "game-friendly".

So as a Poser-only user, in my eyes they were an unecessary compromise.

But they were still solid meshes and once I threw out all the legacy rigging and weightmapped them, I'm quite fond of them: Michael 4 17K WM

Unfortunately I never finished weightmapping SP3, but did David 3 instead: David 3 WM

Mostly to proof those people wrong who claimed that weightmapping a standard resolution figure with elaborate mesh topology would be impossible. Or at least very, very hard.

Anyway, that's the type of figure I find the most easiest to use and to be the most "accessible" in Poser and which give me the most realistic results despite my less-than-stellar equipment.

But Joe, are you saying that figures should be made for morphability or riggiability? Or are you saying you can't have one without infringing on the other?

If you want super-easy rigging, yes, every extra polygon means extra work. if you want realism and lots of morphability, then you need every polygon you can get.

Most of my characters are based on a V3/V3RR hybrid: I matched a low res V3RR head on a standard res V3 body. This gives me the "full-detail" body while I don't need the full resolution head most of the time. With about 50k polygons, that mesh is still light enough while detailed enough for centerpieces. I have a range of weightmapped low resolution meshes (Down to 1K) for background duty.

Again, all figures are optimized for Poser (and to run on my low-end laptop), making full use of all the things that Poser can do. I try to use weighmapping as much as I can and only add ERC-morphs if absolutely needed, as this makes cloth creation easier.

Remember I'm only an amateur with very limited ability and time. In the right hands, a professionally made Poser figure could easily "out-bend" even the latest, greatest Genesis figure. Poser's rigging tools are actually THAT good.

But as I said, I think that opportunity is long gone. It'll take quite a bit of time and especially a lot of money to create such a figure.

I have made several attempts to download your wonderful WMed figures ... and have failed miserably. Even MEGA refuses to recognize the password I know I used. Can you make them available in our freestuff or at ShareCG?

Hello Boni, these links should still work: V3WM - D3WM - M4LODWM

Also, here are the direct Googledrive links:

googledrive links

To unpack them please refer to the the included README files and/or the instructions I gave when I originally posted them.

The objects are RTE-encoded as of course the base meshes are property of DAZ. But you're free to redistribute the rigged figures or any modifications based on them as long as you also keep the object files encoded.

Happy rendering!

Thank you very much!!