I think we may be missing a point here ... and an opportunity. Vicky, Mike, Dina, Eve, Dork (affectionately dubbed), Posette et el ... are unique characters who have their own set of morphs. New characters from developers would also have the same ungiqueness. Don and Judy are base generic people to develope new people from. They each have their own strengths. That said ... another option is perhaps ... licencing the use of the base head from the "face room" to develope new models at a much lower rate ... There are different alternatives here guys. We all just have to re-think our approach even if the existing models (besides Judy, Don and derivatives) do not match the face room. As I said before. Try not to judge before you have the software. We will be going in all new directions ... new adaptations. It will all work out. Take a deep breath guys and think of alternative means to incorperate the new technology. Boni

Steve, Thank you for that post!! Even I sometimes forget you aren't superman and can balance so many projects at once. I could see why you would affix such a high price tag to it, it would've detracted from the things that needed to be done for P5. In the same regard, speaking business wise, I also understand the "make an offer, then counter the offer" practice that many businesses do. This practice is not uncommon and happens for just about everything out there. However, in all fairness to DAZ and speaking for myself, if given such a number I would've blanched (as I did when learning the number myself here) and not even bothered trying to counter it myself. For me, and I am sure Diane as well where Dina V and the other new models DSI has coming out, 30k is ALLOT of money!! grins I only wish 3D characters made that much!! But for Diane and I to approach Curious Labs, as a supporter (whereas DAZ has been a MAJOR supporter) of Poser and creator of content for use in Poser, if we were qouted such a high cost we'd have walked away from the table ourselves without even bothering to counter that qoute. Why bother? We might be able to afford 3K... but 30K? Hell, I would say to myself: "Why even bother, they want 30k they'd only laugh in my face if I offered 3k." and walk away from the table feeling dejected (as I am often times known for doing) and think I am no longer needed or wanted and have just wasted your time. In the same regard, being qouted 30k, I would have to say to myself (as a business), if I am going to spend that per unique mesh would it not be better for me to just see about licensing the same application as CL did, that way I can spend that cost (and possibly a bit more) ONCE and apply that to ALL of my unique meshes, maybe even providing the DSI licensed application as a stand alone program to Poser users, so that they could utilize the same technology that P5 uses and port their works into all Poser versions. Granted, I am sure the license of that software/technology may cost more than the said 30k... but long term investment as a content creator, the value would prove greater to me, since such application could be used for all versions of Poser and not restrictive to exclusive P5 content. Perhaps that is the same thing that might've went through DAZ's mind upon hearing that cost? I know it went through mine!! One possible solution would be to make the ability for content creators to make their own characters "Face Room" ready so as to save CL the time they need to get the stuff on their plates taken care of for their customers, while also enabling content creators and supporters of Curious Labs to make their products adaptable for Poser 5 without having to possibly approach and bother you from your goals. Just my thoughts... Jack

Jack has said it very well, the 30K figure scared me too, when some kind person pointed it out to me (It gets hard to follow every thread). I'm excedingly grateful that DAZ made it public too, so we're not telling tales behind other people's back. Lets be frank, while the 30K may have been inteneded as a starting point, it is a ton of money - if you sold a computer artist's time at $50 an hour (probably a good figure) it would be 600 hours. I built my own figure, Supermodel Lori, in about 60 hours of work, to give you some comparision. So, my thinking is some of that has to represent a licence fee, the faces can't be that hard to set up in Poser 5, Gee, Vickie only has 12,000 vertices in her face. The thought of licence fees for anything scares me, as Jack said, there just isn't that much slack in the items we sell. I'm willing to take Steve Cooper's word for what he said, and also what he said in a similar thread I started at PoserPros, but still, 30K! I still get a bad feeling about this.

Thanks for the info, Steve! That's about what I should have expected from the face room. For some reason, I got it in my head that you had found a way to create the meshes dynamically (I should know better, even in simple projects, this is not an easy task). That would be awesome, but not very feasible Maybe that will be ready for Poser 6? ;p ~CD

Steve, Congratulations with the release of Poser 5! We are aware of the amount of work that went into pulling that off. Clearly there are plenty of communications between us that we have not made public. In this instance, I am sorry if you didnt want your price quote for setting up our figures for the face room made public. We had no intention of upsetting you by doing this. We felt we were in a catch 22 position that if we only made a general statement then people would not have realized the magnitude of the cost to do this work. They may likely have assumed that we were not doing all that we can to improve our figures or that face room compatibility was not a high priority to us. As far as the negotiation is concerned, Im sorry for not better understanding how you do basic business. We assumed that as a business partner you were giving us a good faith quote from the beginning. If you recall, at the point that we learned you were interested in haggling, it was already too late for this functionality to be incorporated for the release of Poser 5, and would require an update for Poser 5. By the way, thanks for the insight on your basic business practices, now we will better know how to negotiate with you in the future. ;-) Again, we realize that it is important to use discretion with what is said publicly, and we try only to provide information when we believe it is important to help our customers make informed conclusions. And as we all know only too well, the public may often assume the worst when too much room is left for speculation. :-) Again, congratulations on the successful release of Poser 5. Sincerely, actually sincerely hoping that further misconceptions wont have to be cleared up ;-) Dan Farr President, DAZ Productions P.S. Back on topic, thanks to everyone for the great suggestions for our Millennium figures. We are really doing some fun improvements on Victoria 3 and are excited for her upcoming release.

So uhm, daz characters can't use the face room but the new p5 characters can use DAZ textures? Am I confused on this?

I like the openess, being able to get details, learn info is very very very helpful as what is happening behind the scenes and will make in front of the scene so much easier when it comes to putting money down. With so much of Poser relying on the Public, deals like the 30K per figure should be made public.

Ok Ok here i go.... first fo all detail detail detail you can never have to mutch deatil higher polys is a must in ALL and i do mean ALL body parts. I dont know about everyone else but the expreasions on vickie and mike are herendus if someone in real life looked like that wthey would be put away in a nice padded room lol. it seams to me that detail morphs are being overlooked guys need detail morphs also i mean it isnt easy to make diffrent looking guys. My gawd who are you ppl at daz baseing thease figures after they tend to be a bit well um lets just say they are a bit odd ok ok i have seen almost billoins of pictures made with victoria mike and stephanie and have you ever noticed no matter how much you morph them you can almost always tell what model they are i would like to make pictures with DIFFRENT looking ppl ...regretting asking for wishlist yet lol... ya know mike is lacking in suttle morphs and i tend to (like other ppl) find that the more muscular the worst there should be other body types like slender(not emaciated), Swimmers build, avrage build the human form is a massive wonder please try to cover as many bases as possable and put it in Mals and Female models i mean we want some of mike stuff in vickie and vice versa easier poseing is a must it is a bit difficult to pose them realisticly i mean 1 twitch and they look like they were in a blender. more zones or what ever they are called like thigh and stuff smaller aresa to allow for more deatil and Wonderus conforming has anyone realized that if there were upper middle and lower brease we wouldent have the conforming problems as well as all the other places realsim does depend on being anatomicaly correct it seams so many try to pretend that those areas dont exist my gawn if you havent noticed those are the more used areas on the bodys lol and no one is happy with the krappy ones the figures comewith go out and check out what props and items are being created to replace certim body parts you think you would have gotten the hint by now some transition morphs have you ever tryed to do something like haveing michael go from limp uncut to erect OUCH talk about shredding body parts bobbet didnt have it this badly and do you ppl go out and accutialy look at what ppl are doing and wanting with thease figures because so far you dont sure you are the kings of this thing and all and everything you make are the best but you lack in the people department instead of looking at what we are doing with thease figures you seem to be trying to guess at what you should do and not doing that too good there is something to be said about haveing them look too perfict rember the more perfect the figure the less realistic it is and i think we all are tyring to go for the MOST realistic characters we can instead of studing some nameless models try to study what society finds attactive look at the stars and find out the certin things that make them aluring i am pretty sure there arnt many famouse ppl out there that look like mike and vickie ppl like slenget waists toneing (the toneing morph on mike is disgusting it should be a monster morph lol) just look at life to creat lifelike dont look atwhat you think perfection is you are creating thease for us to like so make them for us not what you think and about the CL thing i do know that is a way around any problem they give you so please make stuff for p5 they may say that you cant do something but the one thing america is based on is that fact there is a way around EVERY rule look between the lines and at what the do allow from us the customers and use it to your advantage that what commers and freedom is all about lol Yes there we are i have reached the end of my ranting i am sorry for any mistypes as i got a bit swept up in this ^_^ i also am sorry if i steped on any toes but thease are what have been bothering me the most lol