The figure to be included as a Default Scene for Poser 13 is still a closely guarded secret.

That is to say.

The new figure is certainly not a unimesh figure.

Is it a new version of Dawn or a new version of La Femme?

Now, please let us know what kind of figure you think will be the main focus.

Andy 3

Pro!

It's a new skeleton... That way don't have to worry about flesh against flesh, muscles, bulges, what not. Etc. :) 

Please note this is just a satirical answer, as I have no clue as to what it really is.

I think Dawn 2 has already been ruled out of contention by Hivewire3D.

First let's get it straight that the figure will be Uni-Mesh in its object state.  That is prior to import into Poser.  The Uni-Mesh that everyone is talking about is some mythical way for Poser to handle the mesh inside of the program that no one here is ever going to see.  The Mythical Uni-Mesh is something a small number of people have demanded over the years and to make Poser do that means a total rewrite of the program.  Which a side effect would be that all the old content won't work since it is no longer split.  What everyone really wants is a way to export the figure they imported and have it remain in the same order for the vertexes and faces that it came in with that way you could take it over to another program and work with it there then bring it back to Poser and not have it explode.  Also using the built in tools to smooth between body parts without spiking.  If it does those two things what do you care about how Poser does its thing inside teh program?

hornet3d posted at 9:58 AM Sat, 4 March 2023 - #4457606

I think Dawn 2 has already been ruled out of contention by Hivewire3D.

It was, but I wonder if that may have changed. They said it was not Dawn 2, but that was when Poser 13's new figure was supposedly unimesh.

randym77 posted at 4:06 PM Sat, 4 March 2023 - #4457647

hornet3d posted at 9:58 AM Sat, 4 March 2023 - #4457606

I think Dawn 2 has already been ruled out of contention by Hivewire3D.

It was, but I wonder if that may have changed. They said it was not Dawn 2, but that was when Poser 13's new figure was supposedly unimesh.

No, it has not changed :).  Dawn 2 will be a HiveWire figure sold at Renderosity, not a figure included in Poser 13.

Well, so much for that theory. La Femme 2? Project Evolution?

I'm little leery of it being an entirely new figure. If the original plan was a true unimesh figure, it seems like this substitute figure might be something quickly cobbled together and rushed out the door. Which has been an issue with previous Poser native figures.

randym77 posted at 1:19 AM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457683

Well, so much for that theory. La Femme 2? Project Evolution?

I'm little leery of it being an entirely new figure. If the original plan was a true unimesh figure, it seems like this substitute figure might be something quickly cobbled together and rushed out the door. Which has been an issue with previous Poser native figures.

Project Evolution is a fantastic character, but it needs some work to convert the clothes, not sure that there's enough vendors willing to jump on board, which hurts its distribution. 

Poser is used in the educational market, and therefore the default figure needs to be "kid and family friendly." 

So make the not family friendly bits, denser poly wise and morph injectable.

Good point. Though I'd think it would be easier to make an existing figure family-friendly than to create an entirely new figure.

Support is ever the issue. LF still doesn't have a fraction of the support V4 has. The chances of this mysterious new figure don't seem good, with Dawn 2 coming out soon.

Y-Phil posted at 6:59 AM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457700

Project Evolution is a fantastic character, but it needs some work to convert the clothes, not sure that there's enough vendors willing to jump on board, which hurts its distribution.

Which can be said for every single post V4 figure released for Poser.

bwldrd posted at 9:39 AM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457714

So make the not family friendly bits, denser poly wise and morph injectable.

That would involve completely redoing the base OBJ to have "no gens"  which would then "break" all associated morphs and content.

Changing the polygon count to add Gens can't be done by simple injection. It would have to be a geometry switch out. Different poly counts, different meshes.

To clarify. 

You have a figure that was designed for a more mature crowd. This figure has lots of polygons in one particular area. And there are lots of third party morphs and such that add further ... ummmm ... "realism" and animation to that particular area.

Now you hope to make that figure that's already out there more accessible to a family friendly crowd. That means you have to "morph out" the detailed gens in the base and smooth them out.

But now, all those detailed adult-oriented morphs will no longer work the same on a base mesh that has been smoothed out. The morphs will no longer look the same and would have to be reshaped to work with a "no gen" base figure. So really, the time to address all this is during the design of the figure from the start. Too difficult to make changes when there is content out there already that relies on the older default shape.

I look forward to mercilessly dissecting the new Poser figure like a captive restrained on a slab in a disorienting and indifferent alien abduction lab.

FWIW...Mec4D made some comments over at Hivewire implying that the delay in Dawn 2 was because they were waiting for Poser 13. Now that they know there's no unimesh, they aren't going to wait.

randym77 posted at 1:38 PM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457752

FWIW...Mec4D made some comments over at Hivewire implying that the delay in Dawn 2 was because they were waiting for Poser 13. Now that they know there's no unimesh, they aren't going to wait.

So, they'll commence getting the ball rolling for Dawn 2?

jartz posted at 3:27 PM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457762

randym77 posted at 1:38 PM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457752

FWIW...Mec4D made some comments over at Hivewire implying that the delay in Dawn 2 was because they were waiting for Poser 13. Now that they know there's no unimesh, they aren't going to wait.

So, they'll commence getting the ball rolling for Dawn 2?

That is how I interpreted it. She said, in response to the no unimesh news:

---

I just heard the news from people as well , this is not what we planned , I guess for now it was just a waste of time waiting .
You are right , time to move forward and then when they are ready we will jump on the wagon with P13 .
My intuition told me it would be not ready for March and I was right .

I just wish I know that one month ago no more waiting for now .. time to move on with it

---

Is the main figure of Dawn 2, the most expected?

You are not postponing support for Unimesh because you can't prepare the main figure for Unimesh, are you?

Richard60 posted at 10:24 AM Sat, 4 March 2023 - #4457608

First let's get it straight that the figure will be Uni-Mesh in its object state.  That is prior to import into Poser.  The Uni-Mesh that everyone is talking about is some mythical way for Poser to handle the mesh inside of the program that no one here is ever going to see.  The Mythical Uni-Mesh is something a small number of people have demanded over the years and to make Poser do that means a total rewrite of the program.  Which a side effect would be that all the old content won't work since it is no longer split.  What everyone really wants is a way to export the figure they imported and have it remain in the same order for the vertexes and faces that it came in with that way you could take it over to another program and work with it there then bring it back to Poser and not have it explode.  Also using the built in tools to smooth between body parts without spiking.  If it does those two things what do you care about how Poser does its thing inside teh program?

It would be truly trivial to do this.  I currently do this with a Blender plugin I wrote and it takes about a split second to map Dawn's verts back to original order.  Then I can play with the Dawn mesh in Blender (effective sculpting requires unimesh) and just export the sculpted mesh from Blender and Poser loads it as a morph just fine.  I was going to have the vert map saved but the Blender Python API is so fast it takes just as long to read and write the map as calculate it (in a vert count like Dawn).

The plugin even allows for a kind of "nudge"  That is, a split mesh that's ever so slightly distorted from the original unimesh.  That takes minutes rather than split seconds since it has to calculate the mots likely target vert for each source vert.

For Poser to do it would be even easier.  When the figure is created (split), Poser obviously reorders the verts.  Since it's importing the OBJ it knows the vert index from he OBJ.  And Poser can easily handle additional meta-data to save that index (etc.) in the figure data file.  All it has to do is save the vert map when creating the split mesh figure from the source OBJ.  Then use that map if you have an "export in original mesh order".

I really don't understand why they don't.  They have the data and the logic is simple.  Maybe a day or two to write, for someone familiar with Poser's source code.

Oh well.  I would have put that feature in years ago.

randym77 posted at 3:41 PM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457763

jartz posted at 3:27 PM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457762

randym77 posted at 1:38 PM Sun, 5 March 2023 - #4457752

FWIW...Mec4D made some comments over at Hivewire implying that the delay in Dawn 2 was because they were waiting for Poser 13. Now that they know there's no unimesh, they aren't going to wait.

So, they'll commence getting the ball rolling for Dawn 2?

That is how I interpreted it. She said, in response to the no unimesh news:

---

I just heard the news from people as well , this is not what we planned , I guess for now it was just a waste of time waiting .
You are right , time to move forward and then when they are ready we will jump on the wagon with P13 .
My intuition told me it would be not ready for March and I was right .

I just wish I know that one month ago no more waiting for now .. time to move on with it

---

I made a comment to that, to the effect of "wait, Dawn2 somehow depended on unimesh" And was informed that no, she wasn't.  

My guess as to the Dawn2 delay is all the additional content that's needed for a minimally viable figure.  That is, a certain base of morph packs.  I would think at least half a dozen.  A certain number of pre-fab characters.  Maybe another half dozen.  A number of conforming clothing items (more than a dozen).  And those, with morphs from the base morphs.  Textures for all that.  Anyone who's developed any of that knows how long each one of those takes.  And, given that D2 is new, development of content probably reveals obscure bugs.  That then have to be corrected, leading to down-chain corrections in supporting content.

Certainly, all the people working on D2 and supporting content are well aware (to the point they have nightmares about it) what happens when you release a not-fully-baked figure that falls flat.  You can't have been using Poser over its life without having a runtime stuffed with figures that never got there.

BUT...

The silence is not good.  It really isn't.  And the secrecy.  I see no gain.  It's not stoking anticipation.  It's not scaring competitors.  It's not hedging bets on included features.  It's depressing which I handle by just taking it out of mind.

 

Dawn 1 flopped because she only shipped with a few morphs, because Chris was more interested finishing in that stupid horse.

If Dawn had launched with the full set of morphs that she has now - the Poser community would be saying Vicky who?

Instead, the Poser vendor community continued to fragment, and here we are.

Might be a figure that will make us all happy " Who Knows "

5000 ++ Character 5000++ outfit sets Loads of morphs and add-on's how can this ever be beaten. The quality still good enough for good results Sure it is not going to be easy jumping from the Millenniums to a new figure. Why anyway ? you could of placed more efforts Improving that ever lasting flagship even more, rather then wasting all this energy in new dolls that never are going to beat V4 and end up as dust catcher in runtimes. But I probably forgot about the fact ( Mill are Daz ) and who wants Daz anyway  :) 

vopehov506 posted at 2:42 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458235

you could of placed more efforts Improving that ever lasting flagship even more, rather then wasting all this energy in new dolls that never are going to beat V4 and end up as dust catcher in runtimes. But I probably forgot about the fact ( Mill are Daz ) and who wants Daz anyway  :) 

If you think "It's Daz" is the reason for moving away from V4 and not "V4 is ancient tech that was made like 20 years ago", might wanna get your noggin checked there, fam.

V4 is hell to work with to make anything look decent (and sorry, your image there would have looked great some 15 years ago). Worse yet if you count all the "fixes" required to make her BEND anything close to how a human being bends.

But you don't have to jump if you don't want to.

The greatest thing about Poser is that new features are built into the software, rather than the figures - and we have documentation to use them.

My legacy figures are weight-mapped.  Using Project Evolution as a template, I added control chips to all of my figures for expressions and such.  Ken1171's scripts mean that firefly to superfly conversions are 1-click, as are importing DS content.

Poser gives us the best of both worlds.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 5:38 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458239

vopehov506 posted at 2:42 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458235

you could of placed more efforts Improving that ever lasting flagship even more, rather then wasting all this energy in new dolls that never are going to beat V4 and end up as dust catcher in runtimes. But I probably forgot about the fact ( Mill are Daz ) and who wants Daz anyway  :) 

If you think "It's Daz" is the reason for moving away from V4 and not "V4 is ancient tech that was made like 20 years ago", might wanna get your noggin checked there, fam.

V4 is hell to work with to make anything look decent (and sorry, your image there would have looked great some 15 years ago). Worse yet if you count all the "fixes" required to make her BEND anything close to how a human being bends.

Well ok was a quick render .... but no need to be that rude towards Creators and vendors of Renderosity already that there are not that many left for Poser!

Btw that uggly 15 year old charater can be found here ( As you say )

https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/92636/sase-willa

 

Thanks to a network of top-notch hackers, I have been informed that the new figure that will ship with Poser 13 is Peanut Guy 2.

Well  These artists were making great looking Poser characters, to bad they jumped over to DS also the " Better La Femme " did not seem to get there interests. Stil they done great works and still do for the Genesis. My personal meaning stands, They do not look like they were made 15 years ago !  Just because you wish having a new flagship does not mean that all the other stuff is not worth it any longer. First of all you need to bring out something that beats the older stuff then the discourse might change a little.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 5:38 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458239

vopehov506 posted at 2:42 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458235

you could of placed more efforts Improving that ever lasting flagship even more, rather then wasting all this energy in new dolls that never are going to beat V4 and end up as dust catcher in runtimes. But I probably forgot about the fact ( Mill are Daz ) and who wants Daz anyway  :) 

If you think "It's Daz" is the reason for moving away from V4 and not "V4 is ancient tech that was made like 20 years ago", might wanna get your noggin checked there, fam.

V4 is hell to work with to make anything look decent (and sorry, your image there would have looked great some 15 years ago). Worse yet if you count all the "fixes" required to make her BEND anything close to how a human being bends.

I suppose that you may be right from a rigging point of view, concerning Vic4, but from a customer's point of view, I find the way to express your point of view quite rude, too. 
I mean: once I've started to use Sasha-16, each time I try to use LF for example, I think 90% of the time that it's missing these morphs controls, it's miss those, it took an infinite time to move each part, etc...
I love what you're doing with LF, honestly, and I'll continue to buy most of your products, but... Sasha-16 is actually my way to go, simply because it's so easier, not to speak of the breasts controls (NGM precisely) that are cruelly missing from LF, a perfect way to have very nice cleavages.
LF, Dawn1: same problem: many many morphs are missing.

And no, I still don't understand how to implement those that are missing: I've detected a bug in the implementation of the controls to move Sasha-16's arms (there's a subtle difference between the left and the right) and I still doesn't understand how to correct this, so I can't add the same to LF

vopehov506 posted at 7:39 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458249

Well ok was a quick render .... but no need to be that rude towards Creators and vendors of Renderosity already that there are not that many left for Poser!

Okay, you're right, I sounded more rude than I intended, and I apologize for that. Perhaps it was my preference for more realism talking, but alas, that's not the only valid way of making art, by far.

What I meant is:  V4 has a lot of limitations for what she can do, even though people have been coming out with workarounds for them (see: Sasha-16). But... those are workarounds. It's wonderful that you all have the OPTION to stick to V4, or use Sasha-16. But what you said there was that there shouldn't be any need for any new figures.

It's a matter of choice: some of us will prefer to use the tried-and-true figure that has a lot of content, even though you might need a bunch of add-ons and fixes to make her look better. Some of us will prefer a figure that works better out of the box, even if it has less content.

Not to say that LF is perfect. I just think she's much better to work with than V4, for *my* way of work.

There will most probably never be a release of a Perfect Doll where you will not have to make workarounds and Fixes, right out of the box ( Where would the fun be ) V4 still would have huge potentials if creators would continue working on her. Due the huge offers of addons still the most secure direction for a Vendor to be getting some more sales :)  I understand that it is more difficult now since Bondware changed the Python engine in Poser so many packages that contain Python helpers do not work correctly anymore, also the Lali for the Genitals will no longer be an option as she cant be created since Poser 11.2 Bondware version, same with the Perfect versions with all the fixes, or the Weight mapped V4 , the biggest loss are all the AS-Alice versions that will not be fully working anymore. The Python change was like throwing all these great works right into the shredder. With all these great extensions all these great Creators also vanished at least for Poser , It will be a loong hard way for a new Doll to reach the level V4 had reached that is for sure and I doubt that there are enough great creators left to accomplish this plan.    

The thing is... 

Imagine a new user.

If they were to use V4:

-Ok but she's not weight mapped.

-But you can use Sasha-16!

-How do I install that?

-You need V4, and THEN a download over it-- 

-And then how do I fit the clothes?

-You have to convert them all

-Nevermind all that, I'll just use usual V4. Oh damn, WHAT'S GOING ON WITH HER SHOULDERS?

-There are fixes for those! You have to buy them separately though. And then transfer those morphs to the clothing.

-Oh god what's going on with her butt?

-Ah they changed how magnets are calculated in a version of Poser-

-Why are we still even using magnets?

so on and so forth. Again. It's great that people can still use that, but it's just too much to expect vendors to still be stuck to that. Making things bend well without weight mapping is a nightmare that is completely unnecessary when we DO have weight mapping, and for vendors to support Sasha-16 specifically it would bring another set of complications, considering she's a third-party modification built over Daz's old figure (and Daz is each day supporting Poser LESS).

Me, personally, I think Poser needs a figure entirely made specifically for Poser, WITH the latest techs. LF wasn't picked up too much because  a lot of vendors have left and the content creation is spread out. At least that's what I think.

(And V4 reached that level because for years she was the only one, when Poser was at the HEIGHT of its userbase interest. People have moved away, because making 3d images is no longer the novelty that it used to be, so many programs make those nowadays, including some free websites. I think we gotta accept and leave the nostalgia behind - or keep using V4 but can't really expect vendors to stick to her.)

So who says you have to use anything greater than Poser 10?  Keep with that version and all your great V4s and her add-ons work just fine.  The problem of course is that vendors would have to choose between V4 standard or Weight mapped which ever version that might be.  Since everything works in standard you can guess which version will get the support.  And I am sure that the small number of V4 forever supporters have no problem with doing the conversions themselves getting a new person to learn that is highly unlikely.  I haven't been over to DAZ in a very long time but do they really have a bunch of new V4 content rolling out the doors?  A couple of products here doing a quick lookup shows products for DAZ V4-Genesis 9 using I-Ray materials.  Not exactly Poser friendly. 

Weight mapping was introduced in Poser 9 ... granted, not as robust as in later versions, but weight mapping support does go back before Poser 10.

"V4 still would have huge potentials if creators would continue working on her. "

I bought thousands of dollars worth of V4 content when she was in her heyday, which now goes largely unused.  While I do have a runtime with all my old generation 4 content in it, I haven't added it to either Poser or DS in years.

Oooohhh, can I play this game?

Imagine a new user.

If they were to use LF or LH (or any other post-V4 figure).

Does they have any normal clothes?

Nope - it is pretty much lingerie, fetish clothing, or casual summer wear.  Why, don't you like all your art taking place in strip clubs or bedrooms?

Do they have any characters other than early 20's Caucasians?

Yes - we have 1 old Caucasian woman, 1 old Caucasian male, and a couple of other ethnic characters - why would you need more than 1 or 2?

Any kids?

No - why would you need those? they shouldn't be in strip clubs or bedrooms.

The selection seems to be pretty small for a figure that has been out for a couple of years already.

You have everything you need.  Look how well they bend - it is easy to see, since we don't have any of that pesky clothing in the way.

But I would like .....

I only make what I am personally interested in.  Why aren't you interested in what I make?  Don't you understand how hard I have worked on this?

Maybe I should try DS, they seem to have a lot more of well, everything.

The reality is - vendors and endusers left for a reason.  And it isn't the bendability of the base mesh.

(edit - any post V4 figure)

Well the comment was about the support scripts etc. not working in Poser 11 which probably some did stop working and Poser 11.2 does require the Snarrly fix to make the version number return something like a valid result.  So anything Poser 10 and lower to 6 maybe 5 should continue to work with V4.

I do agree that it would be nice " IF " a new replacement for the flagship finally would be published. "Hope dies last" so it be that, that "TOP SECRET" startup figure in Poser 13 will be the Perfect out of the box flagship, "who knows" as it is a well kept secret ! So it better be really great  if it is kept as such a big secret :)  but I guess you might know more then I do. Ok I might guess " It will be a Male " 

ssgbryan posted at 6:21 PM Mon, 13 March 2023 - #4458349

Oooohhh, can I play this game?

Imagine a new user.

If they were to use LF or LH (or any other post-V4 figure).

Does they have any normal clothes?

Nope - it is pretty much lingerie, fetish clothing, or casual summer wear.  Why, don't you like all your art taking place in strip clubs or bedrooms?

Do they have any characters other than early 20's Caucasians?

Yes - we have 1 old Caucasian woman, 1 old Caucasian male, and a couple of other ethnic characters - why would you need more than 1 or 2?

Any kids?

No - why would you need those? they shouldn't be in strip clubs or bedrooms.

The selection seems to be pretty small for a figure that has been out for a couple of years already.

You have everything you need.  Look how well they bend - it is easy to see, since we don't have any of that pesky clothing in the way.

But I would like .....

I only make what I am personally interested in.  Why aren't you interested in what I make?  Don't you understand how hard I have worked on this?

Maybe I should try DS, they seem to have a lot more of well, everything.

The reality is - vendors and endusers left for a reason.  And it isn't the bendability of the base mesh.

(edit - any post V4 figure)

LOL

Here is a business suit for La Femme

La Femme Business Suit 3D Figure Assets La Femme - LHomme Poser Figures RPublishing (renderosity.com)

Change the texture 5 times and you have your suits for a week.

Le sigh. *mumbles about decent promo renders for anything in Poser again*

Those images do not want me to buy that suit.

You know what I really miss ? it is to see such releases of top notch outfits and morphs, these were times where I spent my money to get each of them releases.

every time things like this appeared in the stores , not specially from this creator I just had a big BOAH gotta have it , did not even check the price it just had to be a part of my runtime. But sadly these times have vanished at least for poser, even that a few other figures tried there luck after V4, but never they gotten such a wardrobe choice and for sure not of this quality. Not even wanna start mentioning all the texture Pack addons of incredible quality, each worth the money spent.

 

Honest question:

Why don't more people learn how to create content?

It's not rocket science.

If you can use Poser you can create Poser content and learn how to make the items you're not finding in the store.

It's not as difficult as you might think it is. Time consuming and frustrating at times but not difficult. It's much easier to do today than it was in the days of V4 and earlier. Not just in terms of Poser's own creation tools but in the modeling software.

If you aren't happy with the content that's available you could learn to make your own and share it, either free or commercially and we could see less arguments about only seeing certain types of content in the store.

'Rosity has a bunch of tutorial videos on how to use poser as a customer but very little in terms of how to build content for poser.

We could have discussions devoted to learning how to rig a piece of clothing or texture a custom hair model properly.

Honest answer: because I don't have the bandwidth. I work for a living and have a family. This is my hobby. I dint have the spare spoons to learn yet another trade.

Rhia474 posted at 7:47 PM Mon, 13 March 2023 - #4458360

Honest answer: because I don't have the bandwidth. I work for a living and have a family. This is my hobby. I dint have the spare spoons to learn yet another trade.

Fair enough.

I don't mean it as in "if you don't like it build your own", I just mean it would be a more productive forum topic and could help increase the production of new Poser content.

It can be easier to build something new than trying to adapt an existing item.

Most vendors create what pays their bills. But everyone has access to Poser's creation tools, at least any version since Bondware acquired it. And simple things like pants, shirts, etc., can be created in a few hours.

Really? Can you point me to a single tutorial that explains how to create a pair of pants in Poser itself? Or a shirt? A serious question.

You need a modeling program to create clothing, unless you want to attempt piecing it together with primitives and the grouping tool, which is possible but won't produce very good results. A simple skirt could be built with primitives and either rigged or clothified. The fitting room will group a clothing object for you.

You can download a free modeling program like Wings3D or Blender. I haven't used wings in ages so I'm not sure how much it's changed but with blender you could practically draw the shape of the clothing you want around your figure and create the model that way. Even if you've never touched a modeling program you could build a simple pair of pants for any figure just using 3 or 4 basic modeling functions and it would fit the figure the way you want it.

vopehov506 posted at 7:39 PM Sun, 12 March 2023 - #4458249

Btw that uggly 15 year old charater can be found here ( As you say )

https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/92636/sase-willa

I had not seen that character before. I like her! Wishlisted.

I'd buy more La Femme stuff if there were more characters like that. There's not a lot of darker skins, particularly of the idealized type for fantasy, etc. Seems like vendors assume that if you want "ethnic" characters  you want realism. I don't want to see every pore, mole, hair, etc. Just my preference.

I'm that way with old-fashioned style art, too. Back in the day, one of my art teachers told me I could get rich, because I made everyone look so much prettier than they actually were. I think he meant that as a (polite) criticism, lol.

AmbientShade posted at 7:45 PM Mon, 13 March 2023 - #4458359

Honest question:

Why don't more people learn how to create content?

It's not rocket science.

For me...it requires an attention to detail that I simply do not enjoy. It's not my forte. I'm a big picture person, not a detail person. I'd rather pay someone to do it for me.

There's also quite a learning curve. I have tried. PhilC had a bunch of tools for clothing creation that I bought, and I made a few dynamic items, but none of them were good enough for even free stuff.

I've also tried modeling. I've tried a bunch of different programs, including zBrush, Shade, Wings, Cararra. I've made stuff, but it was awful. Way too many polys. The only software I had any success with was Anim8or. I have used Microstation for 3d modeling in my day job, but it's not real compatible with Poser. I'm planning to give Blender a try, but I don't expect to make anything worth sharing. I'm just hoping to make stuff to use in my own renders.  Never mind the headache of packing it for distribution.

Then there's textures. IMO, textures really make the render. I have Photoshop, and I've made some of my own textures, but I'd never share them, because they just aren't good enough. Especially for human figures...textures are a pain. I'm more than willing to pay someone to do it for me.