randym77 posted at 4:00AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419482

This must be a right pain for vendors, with basically three renderers to support (or at least consider). At this point, there's probably a lot more people using Firefly and Poser 11 Superfly than Poser 12, which makes it hard to get rid of one.

It is in my opinion a big issue, because which users should you make content for and which render engines? Then one could argue that we could just include materials for all of them. But I don't think people know how long it takes to make textures, PBR makes it slightly faster and allow all vendors to use the same basic method to describe the most common used materials that you will basically find in all scenes, which is really awesome.

Obviously the big issue as you also say is that both vendors and users, have different versions of Poser. Which obviously was an issue the moment Superfly was introduced, its to be expected, as its a completely new render engine. However Poser 12 have access or uses different nodes than Poser 11 does. And when Poser 13 comes out at some point I can only imagine that it will be even worse, because obviously users of Poser 12 want to make use of the benefits with their version and so does potential users of 13, but for vendors to make content for as many users as possible, it makes sense to make them for lowest possible version of Poser :D Which means that you have to use the nodes which are available in all the versions. And that is simply when we are talking Superfly, then you have to deal with Firefly as well, because a lot of people prefer using that, due to whatever reason.

So even for content creators there is probably not a huge incentive to switch to Poser 12, because as long as the majority of the community is stuck in Firefly or earlier versions of Superfly, the benefits which potentially comes with Poser 12 and above, is not really needed. I don't think that Poser 11 or 12 improves on Firefly compared to Poser 10 or maybe even 9, for instance?

And that is a huge issue, and I also think that its the wrong way for Poser to go, their strategy for Poser is wrong in my opinion. If you compare it to Daz and their method of doing it. Content creators as well as the users, will always work with the same version, some might choose not to upgrade, but 95% or more of the community will use the latest version.

I have no clue how many people are using the different versions of Poser, absolutely no clue, and I don't even think that Renderosity knows. They obviously have some sales indications. But I don't think they have any good numbers to work with when it comes to each version of Poser.

I suggested it back when they started talking about Poser 12, that they should make it free and I still think that it is the way to go. Yes, they might lose a bit of sales from Poser itself, but it will probably also boost the number of users, which will potentially buy content for it. So what Renderosity ought to do, is to boost and work on getting top of the line content. Like investing in top of line characters, animals etc. boost the relationship (not that it is bad) with content creators. Because content is what drive both Daz and Poser. Without that, these programs dies it's that simple really.

But constantly releasing new versions of Poser, which lets be honest is quite expensive, especially when you as a user also have to buy all the content. So the strategy they are using, is sort of like driving a knife deeper and deeper between content creators and users and their own business model, where the gap constantly gets wider and wider.

So if I were them, I would change the strategy for Poser completely.

1. Make Poser free.

2. Release high quality models (humans and animals like what initially drew people to Poser, yes it will have an initial cost, but it would be money well spend)

3. Make constantly small improvements to Poser, like adding new shaders and other minor improvements, that will help the average user.

4. Listen to the community about what changes they would like and slowly implement them, not in one huge release, but as above slowly over time.

5. If they want they can work on a more massive version in the background and release that when ready.

6. Work closely with the content creators and work on getting Poser out there so people are made aware that it exists and it's now free and there are lots of content for it. Basically increasing the user base. And as that happens, the sales in content should follow, which most likely will draw in more content creators as well, which again will most likely increase their revenues from content sales.

And finally everyone is working with the same version of Poser, which will make the marketplace a lot more consistent.

I personally think that if they are continuing with the strategy they have now, that they are potentially going to kill Poser, because it becomes too complicated or to messy for content creators to work between all these versions and for users also having to navigate between it, to find content that works in their version is not the right way to go.