I doubt there will be a reply, but I didn't want to violate any TOS in the usual haunt, so...

Stopped by just to peek about - it's been almost a quarter-century(!) since I first posted something in the forums. I still remember it like it were yesterday... It was a busier time back then, with 2,3, 4, sometimes 5 pages full of posts per day, with something always happening.

Now? Two months of posts barely fill the first page in the Poser forum.

Lots of folks I know and respected are... dead. Fucking dead. Literally, they're pushing daisies. I miss some of them terribly the moment I think of them. No room to talk here though - I damned near bit the big one myself in 2016; honestly, I don't recommend it - St. Vincent in Portland really has a kickass CICU though.

Lots of other folks have simply drifted away. Some went to the DAZ fora (which I literally founded, then left as that monster went corporate and grew beyond my meager ability to control). Others went to graze in different pastures - Blender, Unity, Stable Diffusion, whichever. Some returned to their physical art roots - clay, oils, pencils... 

I always figured this place would adapt somehow, but now, I'm not so sure. Buying Poser was a good idea, but the execution so far isn't quite where it should be IMO. The (apparent) dwindling userbase activity seems to reflect this. Don't worry, I'll go no further, except to say that I was hoping that Poser would come back enough to keep DAZ on its toes. Maybe it will at some point? 

Ah, well. Days gone by and all that. 

I'll pop in from time to time, but it increasingly feels like I'm walking through the ruins of some long-forgotten civilization. 

Thoughts?

Do you still use Poser? Where can I see your art? :)

It does seem the forums here are slower - In the time I've been here, they've never been fast. But now, much slower!

Death in the community is a horrible and inevitable fact. Philosophically, we can say it's part of life, but obviously not the best part. The sense of loss is awful. No one has seen or heard from Misty Lara Carrara for - What? A few years, I think. Misty was a sweetheart! Obviously, Carrara was her passion. Recently, it seems both https://www.renderosity.com/users/ArtistKimberly and Lou Harper (an interesting and well-regarded contributor on Daz forum) both passed. I did not know the former at all, but I frequently read posts from and sometimes exchanged posts with the latter. It's no fun. It's just how it goes. Glad you're still here, Penguinisto.

It appeared that Poser might be able to come back, but once again an inferior figure was trotted out, and the only voices I heard were fawning praises. "But he has no clothes!!!" I wanted to say, but figured it would be impolite and insensitive to do so.

Then the great vendor exodus was forced, and it looks like there's no coming back from that. What a terrible decision it was to let the bean counters mess with the artists. Tragic idiocy. What we called "community" was actually only a few dedicated people who engendered goodwill and esprit de corps. Once they saw that the bottomliners had replaced the lovers, they left, and this is what we've got.

Actually, death would've been less tragic, cuz it happens to all, and it has been overcome. Stupidity, however, lasts forever.

I would argue, respectfully, few artists actually left. Mostly, they became multi-site vendors. I would also argue, the vendors here still do some beautiful work. I can't speak to Poser or the fate of Poser. I will say, the vendors here are doing some good work for Poser, though that doesn't necessarily help me. I use DS. But I import a lot of Poser content! So, you can weigh my input accordingly. It may be bean-counters forced an issue, but it may also turn out it was necessary for the long-term viability of the store. These are things we don't really know - things I don't know. I believe Community is the people who show up here and in the galleries to share and communicate, not the site owners. It's us! And I'd love to see greater engagement. There are people I liked hearing from, and I don't see them now. It bothers me that I make a post here and it takes a day or 3 before there are more posts. It's alarming and I don't have a fix for that.

Yes...I remember a more vibrant set of forums too.I came to Renderosity as a refugee from the wonderful 3d Commune when it went bankrupt in 2009, and found a very warm welcome here. At the time, I was doing lots of Bryce and I didn't have or used Poser. Posted lots of Bryce images back then, loved to read the comments and to give comments to others. Then, as I was learning modeling, the art creation and the gallery browsing took the back seat. Now, I hardly render nothing but promos for my models, and I had to learn some Poser too. So, I keep on adding retro sci- fi content for Poser now... I am not leaving for DAZ anytime soon!

And yes, Penguinisto, I also miss terribly several good friends, already departed...Sigh.

Have a great week, guys!

Gabe

"Do you still use Poser? Where can I see your art? :)"

I tend to keep to myself these days art-wise, mostly sharing with family...

I stopped using Poser awhile back, and went exclusively DS awhile ago (disclosure for those who are newer: I was on the dev team that launched DS v1.0, and wrote the entire user manual for it. I still used Poser until around 2013 or so.) That said, I 100% do not hate Poser. Indeed, I'm hoping it makes a comeback, if only to keep DAZ on their toes - it needs it these days. I'll go one further - make a Linux-native version of Poser and a flexible-enough (morphs/topography, not joints) model or two for it, and I'll buy it immediately, in spite of having way over a TB of DS content. After all, I still do use NearMe, V4 (though not near as much these days), and lots of other figures that were made specifically for the old-school Poser. I also don;t really bother with Genesis 9 or with things like dForce, since they eat more time and computing power than I'm willing to spend. Update NearMe with a better-bending mesh atop that, and I'm all in (I know, I know - licensing issues, etc.)

I criticized the crap out of Poser throughout the years, sure - but I did it out of tough love. Well, that and watch the sub-IQ cultists lose it in response, but mostly because of the the love part.

Sorry about whining over folks that have died... just that I remember the long convos in DMs (and even phone calls and physical visits.) I miss the trailbusters - folks who would post outrageous stuff to the galleries, just because. Stuff that forced you to think. Out-of-the-ordinary stuff. Stuff that wasn't yet another NVIATWAS (if you know, you know. example: I once built a DS sample plugin that produced a NVIATWAS scene that was ready-to-render; it was done to show 3rd-party vendors how to use the C++/carbon DS API to build UI elements, but I wanted it to actually do something. Nobody had a sense of humor about the temple background being a pic of the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City, though - so that had to change...)

You know? I just hope Sean Martin is still alive - it'd be rather fun to torque him up at least one more time (evil grin.)

I don't know if this is the same Sean Martin you're talking about, but this from hivewire a few years ago. https://community.hivewire3d.com/threads/r-i-p-sean-martin.4222/

Awful! I recall Sean Martin's passing being mentioned in the forums here. The shocking part is, it's already over 4 years ago!

Please forgive me. I didn’t think of physical death when I read your words. Rather, I thought it was a metaphor. I feel a bit ashamed of this, although I know I’m working with a translator. I’m very sorry for your losses; the topic of death is always something that deeply moves me, and I think I can understand your sorrow. Please accept my apologies.

As for Poser, I wish it didn’t look so bleak. Let’s be honest, most products are for DAZ. During a sale, DAZ products are usually twice as numerous as models for Poser, and even those for Poser are often quite old. Good for me, I love the older models. I work with the V2, V3, V4 generations and, of course, La Femme, though, even here, beautiful models like those for DAZ or V4 are rare, and the male models are even worse off, often spending their time almost naked or in underwear. Fortunately, you can convert clothing, though these steps are probably more for older users. I’ve had my runtimes since 2006 and have accumulated quite a lot. I would be happy if models could once again be used for both programs. I would be glad if someone could take care of converting the old textures from one figure to another. I can swap textures between V3 and V4, I could swap them for Miki, and I wish I could swap them for La Femme. I wish I could (somehow) use current DAZ textures on the old figures, or at least on LF or Dawn. These are all wishful thoughts that were technically possible many years ago, but today, no one can implement them anymore. (Though I do think the texture converter is there, and somehow, the existing plugins were developed.)

No worries! Glad you;re here @midinick.

A lot of products here are for Daz Studio, and a lot of products are for Poser. I use a fair amount of Poser stuff in DS. Pretty sure anything from Daz up to G2 can be used for both programs. It would be great if everything was compatible with everything else without a lot of extra work.