I was paroozing the Truespace Mailing List and I found this: I knew a few folks who used to work at Metacreations. (if this has been beat over too much already, I apologize in advance...I shall not post on this subject again...ever) Here is what they have told me. (several sources said the same thing, so i am assuming it is as they say) 1. All 3D products not directly supporting Metastream by default are GONE! This includes (but not limited to) Bryce, Poser, Painter, KPT, Raydream, Infini-D, Dance Studio, and Painter Classic. 2. Carrara will be "supported" as MC moves to its new offices, whereby, it will most likely be sold off. Canoma is going to be staying with the (d)evolving MC. 3. All previous patents owned by Metacreations are being held indefinately. The only expeptions are Bryce, which is still held by its original creator, and KPT, which has partial sources from Adobe and Aldus. 4. More layoffs are planned...we have only seen the begining of the end. 5. The reason for the pull-out are still a bit cloudy. 6. Marketing was spending WAY over budget, but receiving next to nothing in returns. Several user groups for various products got "snubbed" at SIGGRAPH and other conferences. (They were a no-show at Macworld) 7. Development was getting kicked by both users and management for not producing updates/new developement quickly enough. 8. Management was giving themselves 20% raises with 10% losses in revenue each quarter...something had to give. So, instead of filing chapter 13, they decided to liquidate all but its most "promising" applications. They knew that Carrara was not going to save them, nor would the further development of Painter. Bryce5 project brainstorming was canceled on the eve of the announcements. Use what you have, cause after they close their doors on the office in Cali, they will not produce another 3D artist tool or 2D painting tool, ever again. Regards,

#1: poser DOES support metastream. well, sorta. i mean, it has a metastream export, dont it? (it even works, for some people.) hmph.

And--as a matter of fact, got yet another glossy ad folder from them yesterday. DB

Time to move on then. My copy of Animation Master 2000 from Hash just arrived, so I'm going to start spending more time learning how to create human figures with that.

Well I know Larry Weinberg is gonna be PO'd because they spend MONTHS developing a programming SDK so that Bryce in iteraction could be utilized. Also the Poser 5 Pro Ed. ain't gonna happen. It's taken Larry and team since July to get a decent bug fix for P4 out and even Larry and Seath have stated that there is still quite a bit left to do with Poser 4. If anything the only thing I could see would be a "Poser Addon Pack" with plugins and the new and improved Zygote Models. AND they ARE working on a TRUE 3DS export that will hopefully be in the next patch. As for Carrera Larry was saying that Carrera was to be Meta's answer to 3DSMax. It was going to allow for LOTS of expandablity. They were also working on plugins for that program too. Bryce for $50 bucks? Sounds doable. I kinda wish they just called programs like Poser 2 or 3 and Bryce 2 or 3 the "Lite Versions" or SE versions. Not quite as good, but more entry level. Kinda like "If you like these you love THESE!" As for Canoma, it was a flop from the start. It was too expensive and it didn't allow for spheres and circluar patterns. It was nice, but not nice enough. Kinda of a waste of time and money if you ask me. In that new 3DSuite they should've put in RDS5.5. Here's hopin' huh guys.

As I said before, let us try to get the current owners of Bryce and Poser to let us have the source forms so we can develop them between us, like is done with the Gnu software and the JPG support software? - It is said that Poser is written in "Code Warrior". But all this talk of "C Exceptions" in Poser 4, gives me the impression that Poser is written in C. Is Code Warrior a full compiler, or is it merely a front-end that outputs a translation into C or C++? If the latter, someone could use it to translate Poser into C, and transfer the comments to the C version from the Code Warrior original, and port it to PC, and from then on work on it as C. Much better than see Poser vanish down life's /dev/null merely because of USA business politics. - What language is Bryce written in?

And at the top of the screen as I was going back to the forum contents list after sending the last reply, preventing cacheing merely to get itself read, up came an advert that said that Metacreations sell Bryce and Poser etc!

Well the owner and creator of Bryce said he won't let it die a while back ... Just thought I would mention that ...

Just a comment: Didn't this exact same thing happen with Fractal Design? I have had Painter and Bryce since 1.0 and I just don't see either of them fading into oblivion especially in the Mac market. I know PC users are used to software dropping off the face of the Earth but in the Mac market we don't have that happen as often. As far as I know Painter, Bryce and possibly Poser (I can't remember) were all originally Mac software before PC versions were created. If that is the case I'm not as worried as I could be. As for MC selling stuff off that's fine as it looks like they won't be around too much longer. Maybe Kai will pick up some of the stuff at his new company? ~Derek

Anthony , Codewarrior is a brand of compiler , like Borland or Microsoft...its still a c compiler, versions for MAC, WIN and Linux. The base code of Bryce/Poser is still C. ARADTech

Well, if Code Warrior is a sort of C or C++, unless Code Warrior C is a very exotic dialect, I would have some chance of porting Poser to my old faithful familiar Borland C++ 4.51 which I have written a lot of software in. I managed to port the JPG support into Borland C++ 4.51 and in the process found and overcame snags, and told the JPG email group what I had found. And likely more people have Borland C or Visual C than Code Warrior.

And please again: what language is Bryce written in?

Ultimately, I just hope software like Poser is picked up by a real company and not a toy manufacturer like MC. Poser needs a real GUI one that is practical and easy to use. The current one while the GUI is easy on the eyes many features are next to impossible to use very well. Larry, please model Poser after progs like Truespace 4. TS 4 while, not as capable as 3DS MAX has the absolute best interface I have ever seen. Its not over crowded with a bunch of useless functions and manipulating the lights and cameras is easy as hell. Very staight foward stuff. While MAX is not. Pete