Maybe the smart thing to do is stop buying Vickie stuff--hair, clothes, etc., and put that money toward P5. Any thoughts?

"Native" Poser 4 figures are rather primitive compared to Millennium Figures such as Vicky. I think the new P5 figures will be more advanced than "Native P4" figures, and possibly more advanced than Millennium Figures. Millennium Figures might not become obsolete, but it might be akin to using Posette and Dork after you have Michael 2 and Vicky 2. Most of us only have so much money. I intend to save that money for Poser 5.

steve cooper said poser5 will be backwards compatible with everything available now so vicky will still be usable, don't know what she'll be like next to the new woman tho. I have the money for poser5 ready right now, just wish they'd say buy it now please :) Rob

I agree that the P5 figures will probably equal or surpass the Daz figures and make them, if not obsolete, then at least less desirable and less supported by third party creators. I think Daz is going to have to get very innovative or they're going to lose a major portion of their market share. HOWEVER, I am a bit curious (no pun intended;) why Kupa's little preview a while back showed off the P5 man, but NOT the woman, since he knows people are much more interested in her... Was he just teasing, or was he hiding something? It seemed very suspicious to me. Her face is going to make or break her, and possibly Daz, as well.

"Her face is going to make or break her, and possibly Daz, as well" Not to mention other, um, attributes of hers...

But seriously--I assumed it was just a tease. But hey, Kupa--enough's enough. Trot her out here and let's have a look.

With as much money as I have invested in the Millenium family and their accessories, that alone will keep them from becoming obsolete, no matter how spectacular these new P5 people may be. Besides, my computer can barely contain all those polygons in a couple of Mil Figures on screen, anything more will cause it to choke and die.

"I think Daz is going to have to get very innovative or they're going to lose a major portion of their market share."

Interesting comment x2000. I think it has already happened. Did I misread things in the California Dreaming thread or is Runtime DNA designing the new figures? And with the Poser community morphmaster Traveler very much a part of RDNA they could be very innovative.

Daz still lead the market but they are becoming more of a Brokering outlet for quality developers within the community as are most of the community sites. Things could get very interesting over the next few months with many more top quality figure options being released for P5.
And no, I have no inside information, just speculation! ;0)

Regards
STORM

The Millenium family is pretty well established and has a lot of stuff out there, both free and commercial products. It would be very surprising if the market suddenly decides not to develop new add-ons for products with such a huge penetration in the Poser community. The appearance of Victoria and Michael did not make Posette and the Dork obsolete, nor will the P5 figures make any of the older figures immediately obsolete. And it will take some time before the P5 family is as well dressed, textured and equipped as the Millenium family. Furthermore, there will still be people that stays with Poser 4 for the time being and hence have no access to the P5 figures. Mike and Vicky will not lose their jobs with the introduction of Poser 5, but they might get a little less attention.

hopefully the existing clothes will be able to take advantage of the collision detection in Poser5 without too much fiddling about, plus these new figures are likely to have a bigger memory requirement so it would be easier on most people to stick with the older models at least to start with. I'm still waiting for a vicky texture that comes close to beating Vicky Buster for Posette. Rob

This is pure speculation also, but I reckon the reason DAZ is brokering more items these days is they are working on Poser 5 stuff, same at Runtime DNA. No insider info just my wishful thinking B) Mark

oh yeah my post is pure speculation & wishful thinking :)

Yep, pure speculation and wishful thinking is all we can occupy ourselves with until we have Poser 5 installed on our machines...

LOL, same here, musicat... And, furthrmore, what is wrong with having more than one set of characters? I'm sure there will sneek in a Vicky or two in my renders even after the release of Poser 5.

You know, I don't think the Millennium people will become obsolete because people will always have their favorites. There are still people here who love Posette and P4Male and refuse to move on to Vicki and Mike because they just plain don't like them. There are devoted Vicki and Mike fans who won't give them up, even after P5. It's all a matter of preference and everyone has their own opinions. Especailly when folks have developed specific characters with those figures and won't want to let them go. The world is made up of different people. I don't think everyone will abandon the Millennium people for just one stock male and female figure to everything. Just my two cents worth. Melanie

I dunno--since I got Vickie, I haven't spent dime 1 on Posette, and I don't think I've used her in a single render. And you don't see a whole lot of higher-end Posette renders in the gallery either (or Posette stuff in the Mplace, for that matter). That makes Posette more-or-less obsolete, if you ask me. Hmmm... VIII; there's an interesting concept... What are the odds she'll (finally) be anatomically correct? Um, maybe, ZERO?

I have only breezed through the comments, so pardon if this has already been said... But a lot of people are worried about the processing needs of P5. Given a lot are hoppyists and may upgrade their PCs SOMETIME in the future, they aren't likely to do it just because P5 came out. So....the Mil figures just might be useful for people who can't run P5 AND whatever figure(s) they may send with it. Kinda the same reason there is a use for the Lo-Res Mil chars.

Thing is that the P5 guy is the dork LOL ... I mean he has a new texture thing but he is stll the dork. So I dunno about obsolete :)

Personally I think the hint to subdivision/Nurb surface rendering should give us a clue. The newer figures will hopefully will be cage based with subdivided surfaces. Meaning that the 'older' polygon meshes will become obsolete at least in the way things are modeled for P5. Just a guess. Tom

Okay correction, not obsolete as many people probably already model like this but convert it over to a polygon mesh to go into poser.. Then again I'm just an idiot babbling at this point and making strange guesses :) Tom

So glad to see that I am not the only one who noticed the p5 guy is an updated dork.

I don't know, I know there are some people who get in and occasionally still say they prefer Posette over Vicki, even after she's graduated to Vicki 2. For some reason, people will always have their favorites. Some people just can't leave the old behind. I personally never use Posette amymore. I haven't since Vicki 1 first came out, but I know there are some people who actually bought Vicki and Mike and have just abandoned them for their favorite old Posettte and Dork. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Likewise, I'm sure there are those who will never give up Vicki and Mike (and let's not forget Stephanie) just because a new set of characters have come out. I guess we'll see when it all happens. Melanie

I'd be willing to bet Daz has not been left out of the P5 loop. I just can't see any reason why Curious Labs would not support their efforts, the relationship is so mutually beneficial. If it's true that P5's new figures will not be Daz creations (I haven't heard proof either way), you can be sure there will be new Daz figures coming out for P5, taking full advantage of whatever new technological progress P5 allows. I imagine that Daz would make more money selling their figures separately than they would make through a licensing agreement to bundle them with P5 anyways. As for new figures being nurbs cages... from what I've seen of figure modelling work with nurbs, I think this would be a step backward away from realism. I mean, nurbs/sds modeling is all about making low-res models and having some high-powered mathematics smooth them out for you. I think this works well for certain applications, but I don't see it as a substitute for a truly high-detail mesh made from digitizing a real human body. I just don't think you can synthesize that kind of detail from low-poly source models. All the figures I've seen made with nurbs tools look "nurbish" to me. Nurbs models have a certain plastic look to them that counters realism, IMHO. -Adam -Adam

I couldn't wait till I could afford to get the Millennium figures. Before I got them, my Poser installation was bloated with so much P4 stuff, it wasn't funny. When I finally got the Millennium figures, it was an easy decision to reinstall all my Poser stuff. I never installed anything for the P4 characters. When I got PBooost, the first thing I did was banish the P4 stuff to an area that I never visit. I've never missed them. In my world, Posette and the Dork died months ago. The current versions of Vicky and Mike are liable to become obsolete too. The Poser 5 characters will look so much better.

I think most people have forgotten that the original Poser default figures were created by Zygote. If you go look at Zygote, the figures they still sell are identical to the old P3 figures, only made for 3D MAX or Lightwave or some other programs (and much more expensive, too). DAZ evolved out of Zygote, which is why I still think they may have a hand in the figures. I'm sure CL has some agreement or partnership with DAZ. Heck, if it weren't for DAZ, Poser probably would have gracefully faded away long ago. DAZ makes a lot of the things that Poser users use (now there's a great sentence!). But seriously, I doubt very much that CL would ignore DAZ in any way. They're too important to their existence. Melanie

"HOWEVER, I am a bit curious (no pun intended;) why Kupa's little preview a while back showed off the P5 man ..." Does anyone know where I can find this preview image? Must have missed it. TIA :-)

it's in the "california dreaming" thread. and, yup...it is the dork.

Looked to me like the P5 Man was just a higher-res Dork (similar to the Mobius standard figures released in freestuff a while back), with different texture coordinates that are more similar to the current "Millenium" method of texturing. (Which has actually been done by artists for years in other applications, as the face REQUIRES more detail). I highly doubt that the Poser 5 models will be anything but wavefront object based (which means they need polygons), because that was also require users to know which models are polygon and which aren't, causing serious issues for people using morph targets. The P5 figures will by no means look better than Mike or Vicki, IMO. They're still the Dork and Posette, even if they are higher-res.

we'll just have to make them look good then, I'm going to have a long serious fiddle with that face morphing thing when I get it, watch out for my face to appear very soon after ;) try not to have nightmares. Rob