Wheee! This thread is such fun! I wonder if anyone from Daz or CL would care to comment on all the things we've brought up. It'll be interesting to see what they say.

I just came up with an idea. How about a scheduled chat here to help Daz and CL work out their problems? Lets all get in on it real time. Didn't Barbara Walters do something like that with Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin? How about it, people? Lets ask both companies to sit down with us all and tell us their plans and see if we can help them work out their differences. I know, it ain't gonna happen, and if we did get them together online with everyone, probably nothing would be settled. But I bet it'd be fun (evil wicked grin).

But we know what their plans are. Curious Labs have released Poser 5 and intend getting their foot in the door of content provision by proxy by tying in with Renderosity and unannounced "other sites", taking a rake off the top. Daz already provide content and are getting in on the application side of things. What's there to find out? Neither of them are going to tell "us" their business plans nor reveal "in company" secrets like on bloody Oprah. Neither of them are in charge of millions of pissed off people in a foreign country. And quite frankly what did Barabra Walters achieve? Last I checked those two particular countries were still pissed at each other. Work out their problems? See above. Curious Labs are getting in on the content provision. Daz are getting into applications. You don't "work out" something like that. You compete, and hopefully kill off the competition. It's called business or capitalism whichever you prefer. :) Hehe. Live chat? Here at Renderosity the new partner of CL)? Those two? ROTFLMAO You'd be better off hiring Dr. Seuss to talk to them. Fun? I can think of better fun to have with a roll of barbed wire and two hand grenades. :)

I just hope the DAZ app will use plain text data files Yeah, that would be nice. Nothing like hand editing a cr2 to get something to work, or find out what happens when you connect part b to part d and turn dial e. :) Actually I do agree with this. The plain text format of the cr2 is such a bonus for editing and changing stuff around that simply can't be done in the program itself that it'd be pretty boring without it. OK, lots of other apps don't use plain text and are probably faster as a result, but they're not so much fun in a editor. :) Cr2Edit, Cr2 Editor, morph manager, mover and all the other utilities have made Poser content creation almost bearable. It'd be a shame to lose all that functionality.

Questor, You would need the morph information thats in the cr2 file. DAZ would have to have a new program written. DAZ would have hire programmers do this. Im sure any programmer worth their money can figure out how CL created Poser. Its not rocket science. Therere programs out there that will decompile a program, you wouldnt copy it line for line, but once you know how poser was written youd know how to write your own. This sort of thing is done in business all the time, although youll never find a company that would admit it. DAZ has never stated officially that theyre going to write a Poser-like program, and may never create such a program. That said, DAZs only business is creating content for Poser, and cant afford to place their future in the hands of unstable company.

"They would then have to answer why they didn't do so for any other character, such as DaCort's. "Ah no they wouldn't.What I SAID is ANY version of Poser SHOULD SUPPORT POSER figures,plain and simple.I don't care who made them.Curious Labs,it seems does not care.They have lost my business.

That depends. Daz already have the morph information for their own files (Mike, Vicky, Steph, Mil Kids), other content providers I'm afraid would probably be pretty much on their own as they have been so far. Jim Burton, DaCort, Traveller, all create their own morphs for their characters. Again, you don't need to strip this information from the cr2 as it's already held in the cr2 in obj format. If you look inside a morphed cr2 you'll see a whole bunch of geom lines. The text information of the morph is just embedded in the text of the cr2. A simple text editor will strip those. Quite honestly Daz would be foolish to create an animation program and then NOT convert their own files over to it, including morphs. Other providers of characters such as those I've mentioned may well be on their own same as they have been with poser. As for decompiling Poser. Reverse engineering of the program is specifically prohibited. If Curious Labs could prove that someone had decompiled their app and written one around that code, they'd go ballistic and you'd end up in court again. The big bonus for this sort of thing is that if you create content for the program you get a pretty good feel for how it works and does stuff. But if you look at the massive number of other animation programs, it's no real mystery. No need to decompile Poser (honestly, who'd want to, you might just get a bunch of poser's bugs thinking they're valid code)... Yes it is done in some businesses. But there are some things worth decompiling, and some things that aren't. :) I agree with you, Daz can't place their future in the hands of an unstable company. CL have had problems over the last two years - the attempt to gain extra revenue from the Warez Amnesty last year and the admittance of cash flow problems this year is evidence of that. In an industry as volatile and unforgiving as software and as dynamically changing as CGI, that's a very dangerous position to be in. As to your last comment. Yes, Daz HAVE stated that they're creating an animation and rendering program that bears some resemblance to Poser. Heck any animation/render package bears some semblance. That information is available at Poserpros (www.poserpros.com) in the general discussion forum, in the 61 page long thread mentioned earlier. They've not gone apeshit advertising like Curious Labs did in their "California Dreaming" thread because the app most likely isn't ready yet and is either still in testing or has yet to reach testing. I doubt they'll make the same mistake as CL and hype the program too early but probably will hype it worse than Christmas when it's close to release. Usually people learn from other's mistakes. Some don't. :) It's the limitation of only providing Poser content that's been limiting Daz's growth. I believe they stated once that they were under contract when they broke away from Zygote NOT to produce or develop content that would conflict with Zygote's production line. They have to my knowledge honoured that and built a strong reputation as Poser providers. Now I guess they can expand their horizons and are doing so by buying in software (Mimic), probably programmers, and developing their own end solution. Steve Cooper once said that Curious Labs developed other software (Avatar Lab, Pro Pack) because they didn't want to be a one trick pony. I should imagine that very much the same thoughts went through the Daz PTB as well. Allowing also that Poser 4 has been with us for several years, it would be foolish indeed to rely on another company for the future of your own - especially one so slow to update and apparently lacking. I think that fairly applies to Curious Labs as well. Previously Zygote (now Daz) provided the content for Poser. Curious Labs have chosen (by using RDNA) not to have all their eggs in one basket. Not a foolish decision at all - if they'd produced a stable enough application to do it. Unfortunately their market share has probably taken a beating with this release. We have yet to see how badly. If they survive, then there will be some competition. Something we've never seen at this level. The pro-level market is filled with competitors but there are none here at the hobby/pro-am level. Should be interesting if nothing else.

I probably shouldn't be getting into this fray, but really, haven't CL's "proprietary formats" only been proprietary since P5's release? I would think that only the 'z' files (crz, etc.) would be of concern. (But that's logic, and logic has nothing to do with law.) There's tons of aps that read and write the normal text files. Of course, there's a difference between a helper ap and a direct competitor, but still. Looking at it from a practical angle, lawsuits take years. I don't think Curious Labs will be around long enough to see it to an end, especially since the lawsuit would probably upset business for both companies. And I don't think Curious Labs would be able to get an injunction against DAZ's program using those formats because there's so many aps out there that also do so. I'm sure DAZ has considered this and many aspects we haven't even thought of. They'll weigh the risks vs. the benefits of supporting the file formats we're used to, and decide from there. Even if DAZ's app doesn't support Poser file directly, if their format is also a text file, then there will be a free conversion program out within a month. I'm not a lawyer though. I'm just offering my take on things.

I agree with you Fyrespirit, the Daz PTB will likely have thought of things that won't even occur to us and are intelligent enough to know what they can and can't do. My main reason for responding like I did was because of the "poser 4 compatible" requests. It can't be, it's not allowed to be, it must be different." Now whether someone writes a conversion utility is another matter. 3DExploration converts between most of the 3dmesh formats, but it costs lots of money - probably because of licensing to use those formats. For Daz to use the Curious files, cr2, pp2, etc etc etc, they need to purchase the rights to do so from Curious Labs - that's done either as a license or in the cost of the SDK (software developers kit) which comes with a license. I don't see Curious being too happy about Daz having that facility. Sorry I just don't see it happening under the current circumstances. As for the file formats, they belonged to curious labs right back from when they first started using them. Poser 1 or 2 or 3... I'm only familiar with them from version 3. Each application uses it's own format - no matter how similar it may be to others the structure and naming must be different. Daz could use a text format, provided the structure was significantly different to a cr2 format and they can call it anything they want. There's a good reason all the other applications around use their own formats. And why there are standards across the board such as 3ds, obj, dxf that pretty much all applications can read. A conversion utility within the month? Quite probably. But, Curious do have the option of killing that, same as they've since been enforcing ownership of the word "Poser" and preventing secondary apps from using it. It's currently a strange situation where one of the players in this field is getting a little more heavy handed than they've been before. Nothing wrong with that, it's just protecting business assets, but it makes things a little sticky for developers. To be honest, if Daz convert their own stock over to the new format for their own system it would be quite a bonus for anyone interested in that option. Though I'm not sure how they'd recoup the costs of doing that. Most people I think would be very unhappy indeed if they had to purchase those files all over again, and it would hurt Daz's venture into applications to ignore that. Could figure developers carry their figures over to the new format and re-release them? Yes, but again, would they charge for the conversion. I see NO poser figures carrying IK chaining and compatibility with any other application out there - except a few from PhilC for Avatar Lab. Who's converted for Cinema, Lightwave, Max etc. Those who wanted that nagged for it and Curious gave them ProPack. If there is sufficient similarity between the structures, Curious might have a case to fight - and I'm positive they'd do it if only for the chance of "kompensayshun" There are pitfalls and problems laced throughout this and I'm pretty damn glad I don't have to navigate through them, but I wanted to at least start explaining from my point of view the problems associated with "Poser" compatibility. For Daz to be protected from legal action their app can't be poser compatible not without a world of hurt for someone. Even secondary developers must be careful. Because while Curious may well be struggling, and there might not be much life left in the company, they'll fight all that more bitterly to stay alive. Can they stop people writing applications to convert their files? Yes, and within the law. If they haven't licensed it, they can kill it at any time. It's all speculation on my part, but I'm nervous of people asking for things that can't be provided and then shouting because they didn't get it. I felt the same way about the demands on the wish lists for Poser 5 - people asked for the earth and look what they got... This is similar - people are asking for something they can't have - Poser compatibility. Without at least a small conversation on this, some people won't understand why they didn't get what they wanted. At least starting the conversation gets it discussed by people who may or may not know what they're talking about (I've been hoping someone who knows will chip in - because I'm playing guessing games here) LOL Honestly. I don't know precisely what can and can't be done, only what I've read around the forums, and what I've gleaned myself from other sources. The two companies involved will know better what they can and can't do. But I can't help being concerned by people asking for something like the ability to swap between the programs using the same file types when they just can't have that. Tools, features, functions fine. What the heck, we've had some fantastical requests in Poser 5 wishlists - some of which were answered, however badly. But compatibility with another program is a whole different ballgame to feature wishes. On that note. I really would like the Daz app to do something Poser has never done. Let me use the much smaller and more compact 3ds format for characters and other models - retaining the 3ds mapping co-ordinates. Simply because there are SO MANY 3ds models that could be animated it'd be real nice not to have to convert to the bloated object format all the time. Imagine porting in a robot, car or spacecraft or whatever in 3ds and being able to set up a boning/skeleton structure and animation with that instead of all the work needed currently to convert it over to something Poser understands. Now THAT would be something I think - certainly more in line with other applications and offering much better compatibility across the board.

Actually, I see a few ways around the file format issue, if it even is one: 1. Competitors could use existing file conversion utilities, leaving the legalities with the utility creator. 2. License with another company that Poser content can currently be converted into (ie, .obj and .3ds). If CL ever supports exporters for these other file formats, then using these file formats would make sense. 3. I am not sure that CL can even claim copyright on a plain text file. I offer the restrictions on copyrightable material direct from the Copyright site: "102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." I believe that all of the coordinate information, etc, contained within the CL file formats could possibly be considered any one of the following: "procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept". Since CL's files are no more than a "recipe" for creating the characters, I highly suspect that CLs' copyright protection claim on those files would be invalidated by the restrictions set upon copyright material. 3D space, IMHO, is non-copyrightable, as people could, by pure happenstance, arrive at the same XYZ coordinates, etc. I believe that it was stated in another thread(s) that file format protection has been successfully challenged in a court of law on many occasions. With CLs' diminished financial stability, current development, and other issues with P5, I highly doubt they would have the resources to put up an adequate fight. All a competitor would have to do is "outlast" CLs' resources (much like a hostile takeover in business) to win that battle, if there are even grounds for a confrontation.

Now that's interesting. Thanks Cyberstretch... as I said, I'm just playing guessing games with much of it. As a "recipe" for a procedure it's possible that it could be interpreted through an import filter to utilise the recipe in the program parameters of the new application. That has some interesting possibilities, though I wonder why that wasn't implemented in ProPack? After all, if you suck a poser model into one of the supported apps all the IK and boning is lost and you have to set the whole thing up again (I think) Interesting though. Ta muchly.

I'm stupid, bear with me. Can you not import a posed vicki -for instance--as an obj and reimport her still posed? Still posed and dressed? Isn't that how Vue first worked? If I'm off the wall, just tell me and I won't be offended, I'm dumb as dirt in tech issues. The other question is-- did CL claim absolute rights to its file formats in Poser 4? That's the agreement Daz is working under. [Can they continue to ignore the clims of the P5 eula as long as they don't use P5? What good is it then?] Side issue, if this was going to end up in a long drawn out court case, and I were Daz, I would budget in compensatory payment to CL from the start. And if I were CL I would take it as it would insure the continued existence of Poser. Emily

Putting the question aside the question if DAZ could make a Poser-like program, that I think that is for lawyers to decide, let's get to the next question- SHOULD DAZ make a Poser like program that can use the current Poser figures and Props? I have every faith CL will (eventually) fix the bugs in Poser 5, once it is working properly will we be happy with it, or do we want more? From what I hear there are some problems with render speed that are probably unfixable (maybe in Poser 6!), the poor interface (as Fishnose put it so well, above) will not be changed in a SR, either, But other than that, do you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln? So what I'm trying to say, is there room for another Poser-figure operating program, or is DAZ wasting their time? Any body ever go through all the Poser 5 wish lists and see how much made it? ;-)

Should they? Hrrm, personally I think, that's a resounding Yes. Why? Simple because competition stimulates a market and the poser market has been somewhat limited to one. So yeah, the more the merrier. I'm still waiting for some of the big boys to blink and realise there's actually a market at the home user/pro-am level and get their arses down here. Will they fix it? I'm more concerned with "can they fix it" than will, personally I very much doubt that they have the resources or ability to fix it, but they might just get it to work a bit better. :) I didn't bother going through the wish lists because there were so many of them, mostly repeating themselves and some of it was pretty "out there", some of the more basic wishes didn't make it though. I'm sure somebody will compile a list sooner or later. :)

I have every faith CL will (eventually) fix the bugs in Poser 5. I don't. Why? Because almost every day I run headlong into a bug in Poser 4. I haven't seen any evidence that the future won't echo the past. SHOULD DAZ make a Poser like program that can use the current Poser figures and Props? Absolutely! To echo Questor, true competition in business is always a good thing. It inspires innovation and lowers prices. And beyond that, I'd just like a choice. Not all of us do the same kinds of art and so not all of us have the same needs. It would be great to have more than one program, so we could chose which one will work best for us.

First of all, let me say I like Poser 5. Second of all, I think DAZ should continue with development. Competition can be a good thing for both companies.

A few thoughts... 1) I doubt seriously Cl could enforce any licensing on the Poser file formats. They contain no code and require no licensable algorithms to read and format. 2) DAZ's "poser killer" application is not even vapor at this point. There is no hard information at all and it doesn't look like there will be any in the future. 3) Clearly, DAZ's figures are of high quality, and they may well have helped create the Poser aftermarket - but it no longer NEEDS them... they are good vendors, but if the folded tomorrow someone would eventually take their place. Obviously it would be better not to have to:) 4) Competition is good :) 5) Face room incompatability with existing Poser figures is >NOT A BUG<. All the ranting in the world will not make it so. It is a fundementally different morph database with specific characteristics. 6) There is NO WAY I would think it useful for the community to pony up 120K to make Mike/Vicky face room compatible. Heck, I don't even need the face room that bad :)

Attached Link: Is DAZ creating a 3D character animation and rendering tool?

I know that I have bought Poser 5 and looked at Judy and Don, only to find their morphs, etc to be lacking the Millenium family's versatility. However, in terms of the Face Room question, I know I have seen a number of folks around here produce remaps for Vicky to use Posette textures, Stephanie to use Vicky or Mike textures, etc. Is there a rason someone couldn't create a remap of Vicky to use Judy textures? Then you could use the face room to create a texture useable on Vicky. I don't have the details of the remapped conversions, but I know it's been done. Just a thought.

1. You can't possibly call that "hard" information :) 3) Of course :) 6) Then they should do it :)

1. Well, given that it is still in development, AFAIK, with obvious competitors lurking, would you consider giving out "hard" evidence under the circumstances? 6) Perhaps they are. Only DAZ knows.