Heh... That's pretty funny Vitzer... your "Do you think there will be a Poser Forum and DAZ forum"... ::chuckles:: From just my unadulterated opinion, that would depend on two things I would think... 1.) Depends on just how far Renderosity has their nose stuff up CL's bum... 2.) Poser survives the market after poor reception to faulty product... Be interesting to see what will happen in say... the next six months. :o) Jack

Jaqui-

Thanks for asking for clarification on that issue; you are right that there is a huge difference between those two scenarios. Your second scenario is what I was referring to. We're still early enough in development that I don't want to promise specifics, so let me just say that we have always been keenly aware that it's absolutely necessary to make DAZ Studio easily extensible by third parties.

Vitzer-

When you say "I'm just plain old vitzer" do you mean plain old Vitzer who claims to be a long-time Poser user and online community member, and yet who only created his user member ID at Renderosity and PoserPros the day before making that claim (September 25)? To me it is obvious that you are more than just plain old Vitzer and likely somebody who needs to hide behind an alias to protect his identity. Anyway, if people want to, they can read your previous posts and form their own conclusion as to who you might be. This may also to help people to determine your motives and sincerity with your questions.

Be that as it may, Ill move on to your questions.

Does your outside developer plan mean that I won't be able to cut and paste the content files?
No, it means that you won't need to. It means that users without programming (or text file hacking) skills will be able to easily create and distribute their work, and it means that those who do have programming skills will really be able to add to or modify this program.

You think there will be a spinout here thatll be a Daz studio forum and a poser forum?
Thats a good question. Maybe you should direct that to the forum owners.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr

Dan, that's what I thought you meant. ~grin~

dan please let me beta test it.... please..... hehehhehehe

Vitzer, Jack, Dan - any chance we can keep the politics to a minimum in this thread, and just discuss the ACTUAL topic (DAZ Studio) rather than who might be who and what their hidden agendas might be? After all, IMHO, it becomes blatantly clear who has what agenda with each successive post, without having digs at all around. R'Osity members don't need as much spelling out for them as often seems to happen, IMHO.

Wow. The screenshots here look great. I'm looking forward to seeing and learning more about Daz Studio when information becomes more readily available. The only two things that I "wish" the programers would include are: 1)a bryce 5 plugin and 2) The ability to create & render scenes that are 720 by 480 (DV standards). Keep up the good work. :)

We have some great plans that will involve a very large external beta testing team. The scope of this plan will be announced sometime in the very near future. Ooh, I hate to feed the frenzy that this community is prone to, but I have to wonder. Perhaps Plantium Club members will be given the opportunity to beta test? Heck, if it's as cool as --no, scratch that. If the bloody thing is functional, I would gladly pay full price when it's done on top of beta testing it before, if it means I could get my sweaty little hands on it that much sooner. The openGL preview alone would save me tons of time compared to Poser 4. I have great faith in this product for several reasons: 1) DAZ has the golden opportunity to learn from Curious Labs' mistakes, and seems to be taking that opportunity. 2) DAZ has less at stake in this program at any given moment because their money-making eggs are in other baskets. They won't HAVE to ship or die because of missed mortgage payments and programmers sleeping on the office couch. They can afford to take the time to do it right and do it completely before release.

I am inclined to agree with you 100% FyreSpiryt and I think you hit the nail on the head as to why this new application may be just the ticket that this Community has been needing for quite some time. 1.) DAZ has always had an involvement with the Community and has a vested interest in seeing that Community, not only flurish, but also grow. 2.)They, like many of us, have been reading the numerous wishlists that the Community members have been asking for of Poser. 3.)Being that this is a completely new software package, they have the ability to add the features and coding in that will make this application expandable (as mentioned by it being open source for other developers). Unlike CL, they wont have to tear the program down to the foundations and basically start over. 4.) DAZ has the ability now to diversify and expand, not just their market, also giving the Community the ability to diversify itself. I suspect in the future we will see, not only 3D props and characters for brokerage, but numerous plugins that enhance, expand and challenge the Community of artists that these sites cater too. 5.) This application (by way of plugins created for it) has the ability to go beyond the means of just the art Community and pave the way into other fields (such as video games, advertising, animation production, etc.) expanding not just the value of the software package, but the Community of users for that package. 6.) Ease of use. Let's say a developer does create a plugin for DAZ Studio that changes the software's material application (much like the difference between Poser 4's material settings to Poser 5's Material Room settings). Based on my skills or desires, I can expand the application to my needs and desires, rather than a company expecting me to adjust to their assumtion of what my desires may be. If I want to keep the program simple and easy to use (such as Poser 4) I can... or if I wish to challenge myself (heh and patience) I can purchase a plugin to grow the application's function as I see fit. :o) 7.) As you and others have pointed out. DAZ has the ability to bring in an income as a means to support the development of this application and release it when they are ready too. This means they don't have to rush because money may be running out of their coffers, or implore the Community of users to "Buy before they Try" to facilitate the expenditures of development. Therefore, making sure that the Community of users get see a stable application when Roll Out comes around. All in all, I think this is a VERY SMART business move and decision by DAZ! This application will provide them the ability to expand their growth without the need of relying on another company to make a profit(and forgive me "who3d" for being political about this) which obviously through the recent release of another application who had tried to cut DAZ completely out of the picture by providing altered DAZ geometry without any renumeration for the alteration of that geometry and trying to pass it off as their own. Touche' heh heh heh... and bravo DAZ!! Of course, that is just my opinion... Jack

"and forgive me "who3d" for being political about this" I'd heard this acusation of geometry massaging refuted elsewhere, so I'm not entirely sure how certain it is or how relevant to the basic comments. IMHO it's a clear advantage that DAZ have their main revenue stream (at present, at least) in content, not the package under development. Even better - they don't have to design all their content, external artists use them as brokers requiring little effort on their part to get some income on an ongoing basis. The politics and AFAIK unproven accusations aren't required, IMHO, to get this point across. Meanwhile, the suggestion (almost outright statement) of yours that we're all going to be able to "Try before we Buy" the final product is most interesting - and thoroughly approved of! Means one will hopefully have a decent amount of time to evaluate the differences before cracking open the wallet yet again :) Cliff Bowman (Who3D) CL, DAZ, and Renderosity Marketplace customer

{This means they don't have to rush because money may be running out of their coffers, or implore the Community of users to "Buy before they Try" to facilitate the expenditures of development. Therefore, making sure that the Community of users get see a stable application when Roll Out comes around.} Cliff, I believe this statement is referring to preorders and I don't see how it suggests "try before you buy". Although, you never know. DAZ could do a tryout demo like a lot of other companies (including CL with Poser 4) do.

DTHUREGRIF ummm.. poor comprehension my end perhaps - I took not having to "Buy before they Try" to mean users wouldn't have to shell out for the program before experiencing it. My interpretation of Jack's interpretation of what DAZ might or might not do

Yo, Dan: I recall proposing an outline for a content rights management system for Poser about the time Vicky2 came out. You seemed to like it at the time and CL never replied to my suggestions. Will we be seeing something like this in Studio (i.e. embed use rights in freebies, embed non-editable creator data in .CR2s)? You've already hinted that .PCF-style character distribution is built in.

Dunno if that would be possible with any Poser format, Duane... a flat ASCII file is a flat ASCII file, and even the cheesiest text editor can remove or change information in it. Also, how can you embed use rights in something when there's no way to determine if the eventual use of the item is within those rights or not? /P

Well, Pen, it'd be nice for reference. For instance, if I'm working on a scene and want to know who made a certain prop, it'd be nice to be able to acess that from inside the program rather than having to dig through CDs and hope I can find the original ZIP.

Pen: Believe me, my evil master plan to implement DRM takes into account ASCII formats and use rights. Without going into specifics, an encryption block is put in the file which among other things contains a critical part of the original file without which the item is useless. Hack away in Notepad; the file is secure media regardless of what its datastream looks like. Falsifying creators and terms would be a non-option; subsequent creations based off original items would append more creator info while leaving previous intact. Before anyone squawks, trust me, the underlying method is sound and already being used. The renderer's Display mode would have a series of checkboxes for common use categories; unchecking those would blink/disappear items not conforming to those categories (this presupposes content that has DRM embeds). Another "shout-out to all my peeps" function would paste a list of creators into a text box for copying and pasting attributions into your gallery image comment.

FyreSpiryt: "Well, Pen, it'd be nice for reference. For instance, if I'm working on a scene and want to know who made a certain prop, it'd be nice to be able to acess that from inside the program rather than having to dig through CDs and hope I can find the original ZIP." Mmm, yum - this'd be a nice ability regardless of any encryption hanky-panky. duanemoody: "Without going into specifics, an encryption block is put in the file which among other things contains a critical part of the original file without which the item is useless. Hack away in Notepad; the file is secure media regardless of what its datastream looks like." Certainly text-only files can contain encryption (IIRC all e-mail is just ASCII - but programs like PGP encrypt anyway. It's been a long time but even I have dablled in writing text-only encryption). "Another "shout-out to all my peeps" function would paste a list of creators into a text box for copying and pasting attributions into your gallery image comment" Again neatly avoiding any comment on encryption of data, just being able to list up every contributor to an image (and the full name of the product you've used) would IMHO be a distinct benefit to many. I would like to be able to do this without wading all over the place wondering where items like eyelash transmaps came from, for example (Erm... how would textures be affected?)

I like the ideas you guys are proposing. About 60% of the items I have are from freestuff, and I couldn't tell you if they are commercial, non-commercial, or even who made them most of the time. Having that built in would be wonderful. As for textures, most modern graphics formats have fields for metadata or creator data, the DRM info could simply be placed there. I like where this is going, if it would only be implemented!

Certainly it's easy to put REM statements in a .OBJ, all we'd need to do is settle on the meta-statement syntax and - and this is the hard bit - get it actually implimented. Gosh-darned useful if it ever did though, especially if we could encourage "cross-platform" support (DAZ Studio AND Poser). Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer...

I love the idea of inserting creator info for reference... my concern was based on the fact that if someone wanted to hack it, it could be done. (to be honest, someone could whip up a macro in Word or a batch file in 'doze right now that can do it, or this one line in Linux or perhaps even in OSX could knock it out: cat creator.txt >> mynewfile.cr2 - this merely appends your original owner info (the contents of the "creator.txt") to the .cr2 The problem with an ASCII file is that it has to start in ASCII-readable code - even encrypted characters are ASCII-readable before decrypting. If you had an encrypted block, it prolly wouldn't take too much to exchange that block for a "dummy encrypted block", and unless you incorporate CRC checking or some gawdawful stretched-out algorithm, that dummy block would suffice nicely... and, even if you did use CRC-style algorithms, a simple "keygen" style block-generator wouldn't be hard to implement. IOW, I'm not averse to the idea, but it seems like such a waste of CPU cycles, outside of adding author and revision date info (which I myself could have a lot of use for in the modelling department.) Even worse, if you think there are folks who detest Poser 5's registration scheme, they're gonna absolutely hate this one. But all in all, it wouldn't take much to add comment lines denoting who made what and when... I think cr2 files could be made to use the standard "#" character to claim comment lines... /P /P

Well said :)

I love the idea of having the creator embedded into the file in some way. I have way to much stuff to always remember who created what after more than a couple months of download. LOL

The info doesn't have to be in the files itself.
Lets assume that there is a server which would give you this info if you want it. Something based on a check sums. If it works for CD's then it should work for Poser files too.
This thing could act as a update service/search engine too.

MadYuri nice idea - this would also mean that, conceptually, it needn't be tied to any one vendor. Still, we'd need a server (or readily available, regularly updated database).

I much prefer that the info just be appended to the file, and could, say, be read from in-program, with a usage tag in it ("don't care", "non-commercial only", commercial w/ x restrictions, see README file", etc.) That would help those who could use the resource tracking help (me ferinstance) MadYuri - I like the idea of having the info centralized and online, but someone would want to be charging for the service, else it wouldn't pay for any party (even DAZ) to host it for everyone that wants to 'register' their creations w/ the server. If you can get over that hurdle, or no one has any objections with paying for a registry service, I can see the merits of the idea easily enough. :) /P

Again with wow. Will this program be able to animate more than 1 person on screen at a time? Will this program be able to import quicktime movies as background images? This would really help with lining up character's animations that are to be composited into other scenes. One thing I really would like to see is a batch render mode, where if I had 10 or 12 seperate files/animations to render I could que them up, set the folder where I would like the files saved and have them render while I go to work. Anyways I'm just throwing out some ideas.

I have no Fantasy software in mind, I'd be happy with a software package that functions as it is supposed to. By the time all the wishes are added you'll have a $10.000.00 program with a release date of 2010.

It's very exciting to see the preview of DAZ Studio and Vicky 3! I'm especially happy that you're supporting OS X with it, and look forward to its eventual release. A few basic requests: 1. Would you please, PLEASE clothe Vicki in the preview image? 2. As mentioned before, Bier curve animation with Maya-like scaling/translating/rotating abilities in the graph editor would be wonderful. Also the ability to view multiple parameters in the graph editor simultaneously. That would make every variety of concurrent and overlapping motion, from blinks to walks, a lot faster to do. 3. Maya-style camera controls where you can use various click combinations on a three-button mouse to zoom, translate and rotate the camera within a window, without needing to click on a separate controller.

Why would you want to clothe Vicki? It would be hard to evaluate the new Vicki 3 Character if she was all covered in clothes. As long as we are on the subject, which is it officially, Vicky or Vicki? *8-)

1: A setup wherein the "average" male figure has a height of "180". Why 180? Because that's the "average" height of a North American and European man in centimeters. All of a sudden, it's very easy to model without having to do all sorts of unit conversions. 2: A "default" male figure that is NOT a pin-head. As time has gone on, the Poser-associated figures have become more and more distorted and unnatural in their proportions.

1: Agreed, but hopefully it will use a choice of centimeters (EU), inches (US), or native Poser units (a neutral measurement created by CL - clothes modellers and char. makers still rely on 'em.) Both Rhino and Poser 5 can already make these conversions. 2: If you've ever seen Victoria, she has always had the same problem, and some of the chars made for her exaggerate it even more. OTOH, from what I've seen of V3 so far, the proportions are much more human this go 'round. /P

Dan, I'm really curious as to how DAZ Studio will handle Vicky's joints and whether there will be realistic muscle motion when the joints are moved. That's always been a recurring problem with Poser figures, and I hope your application will address it.

Dan, I would like know only one thing right now: Is Daz Studio going to come with a basic collection of characters like Poser?

Damn is this a long thread! Well to keep it going let me add my 2 cents.

It would be great if DAZ studio supported multiple threads. Rendering in 3D is a CPU intensive task and to be able take advantage of a dual processor system can lower render times. Besides with the new P4 3.06 with Hyper-threading future single CPU PCs will be able to take advantage of multithreaded apps.

DAZ Studio must be able to export to other apps such as Vue 4, Cinema 4D R8, Lightwave etc. I cant stress this more. The biggest reason why I didnt upgrade to Poser 5 is that there is no way to export to other apps. Some people with both Poser 4 and 5 installed on the same system were able to export Poser 5 into Vue but it did not take advantage of any of Poser 5s new features. Im sure Poser 5 will eventually be able to export to other apps but until then I wont get it.

DAZ take you time to get it right. I rather wait a bit for a solid program then to get a quick release of some bug ridden piece of cr@p. So far DAZ Studio looks good.

I second that! Will Daz be able to export to Cinema 4D R8 or Maya?

"It will be able to read several different 3D file formats"...Hi Dan, I hope DAZ Studio can read Vue native ".vob" files. This way, we can get everything in and out of Vue :)

yes relaibel export is nessessary and the old relable OBJ and 3DS no longer cut it. OBJ does not support transparencies (and I know cinema 3d does not import texures from MTL files) and 3ds whiel 3ds does support transparncies it does not support vertices with dual UV coordinates and filemanes withmore than 8 charaters

will we need poser5 to render filemanes?

We are working with several other companies to have file format combatability. I cannot say specifically which file formats will be supported in or out because we have not fully determined which ones are feasible. Additional file formats will be added over time as well. Good human movement is essential to this application. The figues will have bones and weight mapping that will aid in creating a better movement system. We do plan to include some basic figures with DAZ Studio but not our main models (maybe the low res version of Michael and Victoria with a few morphs). Our theory behind this is to allow people to purchase what they want separately so the we can keep the cost of the base application less expensive. I wanted to respond to a few of the above questions but am unable to respond to everything at this time. I do want to note that we are paying attention to your suggestions throughout this thread (and other threads where possible). We will continue to share more information about things as we can. This application is being developed as a tool with this community (as well as others) in mind. We appreciate all your input. Soon there will be a place where input for the application can be centralized and responded to in a more effective manner. Thanks for your thoughts. Dan Farr

Hey andygraph... let me tell you... things are better in Mac OS X. I used to be anti OS X, but I have realized that unlike OS 9.. it never crashes :)

Will Daz Studio support Dual CPU? That was a huge downfall for Poser 5 IMO.

Something I would like to see: default settings that make sense. WHITE lights, white. And for a program designed for character pics and portraits, how about a lens focal length for portraits, i.e. 75 or higher. 38?! What the heck is that about?

Here's my vote for NETWORK RENDERING and DUAL-CPU! :) -Tim

I totally agree with the render to disk option and would like to see that for both single images and animations.

My main concern is that the human figures move like real people and NOT dolls. This must be the central, and most important goal in a figure studio. I dont ask for miracles, just a fare approximation of the human form Can you avoid exploding elbows I hope so :-) I just got V2 and M2 and Im enjoying working with them. Protect this program anyway you want, but PLEASE avoid this crazy Three falls and youre knocked out approach taken by other companies that should know better!

i'm just wondering if anyone has heard anything new about Daz Studio since Christmas?

Nope. Nothing yet that I know of.

I guess quality takes time after all we dont want another program beta forum on this site:-) LOL!

wow, oh, jeez, great scott. well i have a long list of thing i want included in the daz studio, but im not going to tell you, damit read my mind. how about a modeler/poser/animater. take say a base mesh shirt that fits over mike, now have tool were we can add to it, morph it, put clothing wrinkles change the collar and on and on, and make it already boned so we don't have to pull our hair out grouping it., another think, how about doing a clothafy type room, like p5 has, but make it work. no wind force needed, just when the dude (or dudatte) walks his shirt flows around him on its own. the clothing room takes for ever and things go wrong, so dan i hope you make a sound working program, cause i will by it, but i want it to work, i don't even use the Face room in p5, and the hair room is getting on my nerves too(but i haven't given up on it yet) and i would like to be able to render a animation to a movie file, with the background transparent, like a png file. plus if you put collision detection(like p5) and gravity, please make sure it works, cause i got a hard on when i heard p5 was going to have it, and when i finnly got p5 the damn thing doesn't work right, so i walk a way with that weird feeling like i didn't get lucky, just taken.(and yes i am a loyal poser user, i love it but hey we talk about our own kids) hoping the daz studio is a hit. ( and whats wronge with two forums) bryan Corearts.com

Does anybody think that DAZ Studio 3d will be out by June?? I know that it takes a long time for programs to be made and tested...but June would be nice and might give (some?? a lot??) of the users to figure it out over the summer...

I think so, June 2005 that is.