. . . that addresses poser content development.  Various forum posts discussed why, formally, Poser vendors now develop content only for DAZ Studio. Clearly these vendors have the technical abilities to develop content for both DAZ and Poser. Not being a vendor, I have little insight into this issue-and may well exhibit my ignorance here (go figure?). But I’ve long wondered whether the vendors’ migration from poser to DAZ was financial. If so, what subsidiary would cause former Poser venders to once again develop content in both the DAZ and Poser format?  

 My knowledge of Renderosity’s business model varies from none to non-existent. Instead, I’m contemplating a private-sector LLC that subsidiarizes venders who develop poser content. So, my questions is this: how much would a vendor who developed a DAZ studio content expect to also create poser content? 

I think the issue here is Poser, you are required to purchase a license, to use and be able to see what you create for Poser, whereas in DAZ Studio you can start creating content right away, without any worries that you have to purchase Poser, purchase LaFemme, if you're looking to create clothes or hair or other props. Creators are looking to make money not spend money on additional software.

I think the issue here is Poser, you are required to purchase a license, to use and be able to see what you create for Poser, whereas in DAZ Studio you can start creating content right away, without any worries that you have to purchase Poser, purchase LaFemme, if you're looking to create clothes or hair or other props. Creators are looking to make money not spend money on additional software.

You are welcome. You don't need Poser or DS to create let's say: a villa by the sea, if you have a geometry file and some basic textures and materials maps, you have a product any 3d program could use. That could get a decent amount of sales, for the right price.

Poser vendors have 2 main problems:

1. Not knowing which Poser figure to use

There's a bigger market for Genesis 8 and Genesis 9 than there are for the Poser characters. 

I don't think there has ever been universal adoption of any Poser character by the Poser community since V4. They've all been a little hit and miss. And as Crystalis mentioned, you need to pay for the Poser characters, whereas the base Genesis characters are free and come with enough content to create a promo image. So in my position as a content creator, I don't own the "paid" Poser characters, and I don't know which free Poser characters are popular enough to create content for - so I just don't create content for Poser characters. It's too risky - you can spend two weeks creating something and have 1 sale.  

I don't have any stats on how popular La Femme 2 is - but she's too expensive for me to risk buying her - I won't get my money back. And I wouldn't use her for any reason other than content creation.

2. Daz is easier

Daz has developed systems and features for content creation. They can show 2-sided meshes, and it's easy to parent props and collapse a series of parented props. 

Daz auto exports the geometry files - you still need to do that manually in Poser.

Daz has an option not to overwrite thumbnails. Poser does not have that option.

Poser has a massive bug with their drag and drop feature (it doesn't disable) so I'm forever frustrated by my screen being dragged somewhere  - and I never want it to drag anywhere. I have no issues with Daz.

So to re-ignite the Poser market I would say you'd need to:

1. Offer vendors free upgrades on Poser software.

2. Give vendors the main characters for free.

3. Talk to the Poser development team to make things easier for vendors.

4. Talk to Poser customers and find out what they want - then tell the vendors.

5. Increase Poser's market share by promoting the software (For example, I wrote an article here on why game developers should use Poser (or Daz) and not AI - but it's published here and not on game development sites.)

As to the "how much" question - that depends where the vendor lives. Dollars go a lot further in Africa and South America than they do in USA and Europe.

These days, Poser is a very different animal than Daz. It used to be you could make something in one and it would work in the other or only need minor tweaking. Now, you need to import it into each and at least create proper shaders. For the most complete market, you would need 3delight, iray, superfly and firefly shaders. If it's something that needs to be rigged, you will probably need to do that too. And you need promo images for both programs and all four render engines. It adds a lot more work.And that's for props, not figures.

As Pandab5 said you would need to create separate content for figures each program supports. You would have to know your way around each program very well.

I appreciate everyone’s comments. My question derived from posts I read some time ago in which some noted that revenue from poser products didn’t justify the effort needed to create the product in both formats. Your replies highlight that the decision to develop content for only one program involves much more than sales revenue. While I was exploring only the cost concept, you’ve shown that both the concept and implementation are unworkably complex, especially with figure-based content as opposed to scenes, architectural structures, props, etc.

As to the "how much" question - that depends where the vendor lives. Dollars go a lot further in Africa and South America than they do in USA and Europe.

Poser shopping section of the store be looking dry as Sahara.

Completely off-topic, a topic I started no less, but nonetheless a concern. As the person who started this thread, I receive EML notifications when any of you comment. I look at those but a few minutes later, I notice that some posts no longer exist. WT?

Years ago, the Holmes-Brandies Marketplace of Ideas moved me into a legal profession. For anyone unfamiliar, Justice Holmes believed that everyone gets to toss her/his ideas into the marketplace, where each will be debated and the best ideas will rise to the surface. Obviously, the 1930s couldn't fantom today's age of social media disinformation because it assumed the public employed some ability for critical thinking. But . . . none of that justifies a forum's dismissal of ideas it, for whatever reason, doesn't like. So, what exactly is happening here?

Just as a note, I'll be traveling Monday through at least the middle of June and won't have regular access to the highly insightful insights you may post. Nonetheless, I hope you all prevail in the marketplace of ideas.

New vendors recently welcomed ... 14 in all, and not one offering goods for Poser.

So there you have it: when people ask what should Poser's developers and community should do next. Better Content Creation Tools and Tutorials. You can't attract talent if you don't have what it takes to make things for the software you sell. If the other software offers a suite of tools that make it easy,  the cottage industry will use that one to make money. Done.

It is ridiculous that there are none available for the modern versions. Why???

I posted a reply similar to A_Sunbeam's but then I thought it is not helpful at all, so I retracted it.

What I want to know is what drives the Modeller and the Texturer, once they finish their product, to say: "we're going to make this a DAZ Studio only item." Perhaps Renderosity can set-up and provide them with a online sandboxed version of Poser loaded onto a Rendo computer and preloaded with basic stuff and shaders needed, computer on which they can login and work, get familiar with and develop a Poser product

OR

hire a person, one of the Testers, to convert the item to Poser format, with the creator's permission, of course.

Let's try to figure out a way to make this work for everyone.

EDIT: Hope everyone's having a fantastic weekend :)

Daz can read some Poser files. So it's easier to make a product for Poser and convert it to Daz than the other way round.

But converting isn't that simple:

They read the geometry files differently and also the material files, like normal and bump maps. I've had to remodel a prop several times, because only one of the programs had a shiny or black spot (indicating there's a problem with the geometry).

Sometimes I can see no difference in the render when apply a map regardless of how high I put the setting, in which case I remove it. Someone just converting, would include all those nodes and end up with over-complicated material settings that slows down render times, and has no effect otherwise.

Daz wraps a texture with the seam front and centre. Poser wraps a texture with the seam at the back. You sometimes can't notice a seam in Poser because it's obscured, then you take the product into Daz and the seam stares you in the face.

If there's something specific you want for Poser, you could always request in the Marketplace Wishing Well.

I looked back at some of my earlier images which had collected twenty or more comments.

In one case, for example, all but four of the comments were by members who are no longer here.

And the further back I go, the more members are now missing.

Just a comment.

all but four of the comments were by members who are no longer here.

And the further back I go, the more members are now missing.

Just a comment.

My attempt to clarify some misunderstandings in this thread:

Let's assume you've made a dress for Genesis 8 Female, and now want to create a version of the same dress for La Femme. Even though the dress is already modeled, it is still near as much work to convert the dress for use in Poser for La Femme. The ONLY thing you don't have to do is remodel the dress. However, you DO Have to morph it to fit La Femme. But the remaining work isn't only the materials. The work involved will be exactly as if you are creating a Poser clothing item from scratch. 

--- Take the dress OBJ created for Genesis and morph it to fit La Femme. The dress will have to be rescaled to Poser scale (which is much smaller), and then reshaped to fit La Femme. At this point, it's probably easiest to remove the groups on the La Femme version as well. Leave the material groups intact.

--- After scaling and reshaping the dress to fit LaFemme, place the OBJ in the Geometries folder of the runtime you are creating for the dress. Import the OBJ file in its default position and scene.

--- If the dress is going to be dynamic, use the cloth room to assign dynamic properties. If it will be conforming, use the setup room or the fitting room to copy joint zones from La Femme to the dress.  After that you have to check and test weight mapping or simulations to make sure the dress behaves as expected. This is the second-most time consuming part of content creation. Test with various poses that bend joints to their upper and lower limits to make sure the clothing behaves properly.

--- In the Pose room, load both La Femme and the dress into the scene. Copy morphs from La Femme to the dress. (Yes, I know you can do copy morphs from the Setup or Fitting rooms, but the results are better when you wait to do them in the Pose room. This is the most tedious part, because every morph should be checked to make sure morphs transferred reliably and cleanly. This is a step that is applicable to both DAZ and Poser products, BTW. 

--- Create Poser materials. A note here. Both IRay and SuperFly work best with PBR-type maps (diffuse, normal, roughness, metallic, opacity, emission).  Firefly uses specular and gloss maps instead of roughness and metal.  But going with Metal and Roughness creates very similar results in IRay and SuperFly. 

--- Double check packaging and make sure the runtime folder is arranged properly. 

--- Create readme file and promo images.

As you can see, it's a lot more work than many realize, and may be too much to expect a tester to do the conversion without a percentage of the sales.  It is close to double the work to create DS and Poser versions of clothing, but whether or not it is double the sales isn't an easy question to answer.

DeeceyArt posted at 11:36 AM Mon, 3 June 2024 - #4485624

My attempt to clarify some misunderstandings in this thread:

Let's assume you've made a dress for Genesis 8 Female, and now want to create a version of the same dress for La Femme. Even though the dress is already modeled, it is still near as much work to convert the dress for use in Poser for La Femme. The ONLY thing you don't have to do is remodel the dress. However, you DO Have to morph it to fit La Femme. But the remaining work isn't only the materials. The work involved will be exactly as if you are creating a Poser clothing item from scratch. 

--- Take the dress OBJ created for Genesis and morph it to fit La Femme. The dress will have to be rescaled to Poser scale (which is much smaller), and then reshaped to fit La Femme. At this point, it's probably easiest to remove the groups on the La Femme version as well. Leave the material groups intact.

--- After scaling and reshaping the dress to fit LaFemme, place the OBJ in the Geometries folder of the runtime you are creating for the dress. Import the OBJ file in its default position and scene.

--- If the dress is going to be dynamic, use the cloth room to assign dynamic properties. If it will be conforming, use the setup room or the fitting room to copy joint zones from La Femme to the dress.  After that you have to check and test weight mapping or simulations to make sure the dress behaves as expected. This is the second-most time consuming part of content creation. Test with various poses that bend joints to their upper and lower limits to make sure the clothing behaves properly.

--- In the Pose room, load both La Femme and the dress into the scene. Copy morphs from La Femme to the dress. (Yes, I know you can do copy morphs from the Setup or Fitting rooms, but the results are better when you wait to do them in the Pose room. This is the most tedious part, because every morph should be checked to make sure morphs transferred reliably and cleanly. This is a step that is applicable to both DAZ and Poser products, BTW. 

--- Create Poser materials. A note here. Both IRay and SuperFly work best with PBR-type maps (diffuse, normal, roughness, metallic, opacity, emission).  Firefly uses specular and gloss maps instead of roughness and metal.  But going with Metal and Roughness creates very similar results in IRay and SuperFly. 

--- Double check packaging and make sure the runtime folder is arranged properly. 

--- Create readme file and promo images.

As you can see, it's a lot more work than many realize, and may be too much to expect a tester to do the conversion without a percentage of the sales.  It is close to double the work to create DS and Poser versions of clothing, but whether or not it is double the sales isn't an easy question to answer.

I agree, there's a lot of work, much more than people realize, and the sales aren't guaranteed, so the time invested has to be carefully considered.