Quote - > Quote - FYI, DAZ just added a Poser discussion forum.

To what purpose? to disparage Poser there is already Renderosity Poser forum.

Our plan is to trap unsuspecting Poser users and poke at them with a stick but please don't tell anyone ;) Seriously though, we have heard several requests from the community to do it so we thought it would be a good thing to do.

I just wanted to poke my head in to mention that I have been following this thread listening to the concerns that are mentioned (hopefully it wont get handed back to me). As Jenx mentioned it was not uncommon for me to post over hear in the past. With the management change at DAZ I am now freed up to spend more of my time communicating with and listening to customers. That is something I enjoy 100x more than dealing with demanding board members, cash flow mgt. etc. I am excited about the management change because now I can do more of what I love.

To borrow again from Monte Python (like Randy did) Randy reminds me of the brave knight who looses an arm and still and calls it a minor flesh wound. What I mean by that is although Genesis has been successful from a financial perspective as he suggested, the fact that it does not work in Poser does hurt. It hurts because it is polarizing the community and that is not good for anyone. People are spending more time arguing rather than enjoying creating art. I will say that finding a way to get people access to Genesis (or at least V5) in Poser is at the top of my list of priorities figure out how to get done. The order it very tall but definitely something we see as very important.

In hearing the concerns around the installers etc. I will see if there are ways to will serve a broader group of people with the way we implement it. I will make sure that your concerns are voiced clearly to the engineering team so they can see if there are solutions.

Since Randy is leading this, I will let him continue to respond as he as been but I want to let you know that I am taking note of concerns expressed here. I do also want to apologize for the numberous mistakes we have made with people individually and collective and I hope that we can improve on those things in the future (I commit to do what I can to change things for the better).

Sincerely,

Dan Farr

Gabriel,

I appreciate your understanding on this and for taking the mellow approach. I hoped that I have learned to mellow a bit over the years as well. Just for the record, I will say emphatically that we never saw any of your work in progress images, model or anything related to GND4 until she was released publicly in March which was after we locked down the figure. I still believe that the GND series is one of the best works I have seen and I don't believe people view Elite as a replacement for her. With the 3 different shapes "Elite" is focused around being versatile and for spinning up unique .

Patorak, I don't don't know if you are addressing me with your question about the Jane shape but I cannot see why you would not be able to include that shape in your figure. If you were addressing someone else I am sorry for jumping in.

I did want to address one other thing mentioned above, I believe by Patorak as well. DAZ is still focused on this market and is not jumping trains to the game market. The mogware partnership is around creating a pipeline for existing content to be ported to game and virtual world environments. Our focus there is more towards end user adaptation although we have seen a ton of interest from Game Developers as well. I believe It is all in our interest to expand the market and create opportunities for both creators and customers alike.

Dan

Before the jury is in on this people may want to know that all 3 final "Elite" morph shapes were handed off to the DAZ PA community on February 13th. From the best we can tell that was about a month prior to GND4's release which was the first time we saw her. Even with the similarities shown in the image above, one can also focus on the differences like the scapula, lower back  and upper buttocks and as Gabriel has pointed out the arm thickness. Another thing to mention is that ultimately we are working from the same Victoria 4 rig so proportions are going to remain identical no matter what changes are made in the topology.

I think some people may be missing the point of Elite. It is not just one shape but 3 very different default shapes that are designed to be used in combination with each other. That is were the uniqueness and power of this product is. Take a look at the various images that people are posting with it and judge for yourself. Our Eutopian shape is definitely more athletic than prior Victoria shapes but our other two shapes are likewise more detailed and realistic than similar shapes in Victoria 4. It is not a replacement for GND (or any other morph character for Victoria for that matter).

I have always loved Gabriel's work and still do. His products will continue to stand out as they always have.

Dan Farr

Netherworks, thanks for pointing out my mistake on the SDK. I was wrong in my thinking about how the Studio SDK is currently being deployed. It is currently being bundling with a user license of QT which is the software that is used in the interface and some of the functionality of the software. The fee associated with it is to cover that license. If someone already has a developer license of QT we can get them the SDK for free. I realize this situation creates a big hurdle for most people. When we started DAZ Studio we had discussions with the developers of QT leading to the expectation that we would be able to ship QT for a nominal charge or possibly nothing at all if it were associated with DAZ Studio. As time went on, there were changes in that company personnel that put us in the situation where we have to charge for it. So unfortunately the charge for the SDK is a pass through charge for the QT license that we were unable to get around at this time.

So where does that leave us now? We'll, we have done some very extensive programming to tie the scripting language into almost every bit of functionality of the software. We have heard from several sources that D|S scripting is more extensive than many other applications.  We are still working on opportunities to find additional way to deploy the SDK without the requirements of QT.

I have no intention of turning this discussion into a DAZ Studio v. Poser topic and in fact, I will not engage in discussions on that topic. My response was directed specifically to the inferences that DAZ Studio is a closed application. My points were not intended to be argumentative but only informative. I hope that my tone reflected that. Poser is actually one of DAZ's top resell items in our store and I do not want to disparage it in any way. In fact, as many of you know, Poser and DAZ Studio both have issues of credibility to overcome among some of the "Professional 3D communities" and I don't think that it helps either group to foster negativity towards the other.  Both programs do a fantastic job of empowering people to be creative and have fun doing it.  

Sincerely,

Dan Farr

Hello,

I thought I would jump in and answer a few questions explaining this from the DAZ perspective. DAZ has never made a strategic decision not to allow exporting of scene information to be importable into Poser. The only reason that possibility is not available today is that it is a nearly impossible task for us to do it without having full access to the Poser file format. In reality, there is only limited public information about the Poser format. We have spent a lot of development efforts to be able to read Poser formatted content and still have some areas where we can only approximate and not 100% accurate. This problem becomes exaggerated if we tried to export those files again to the Poser format. We have come about as far as we can without there being more public information on the format.

DAZ Studio has one of the more open and detailed SDK’s that it publicly available for free. Our intention with DAZ Studio is to be open and to be compatible with other 3D software applications. We currently have an .FBX exporter and have joined the Khronos open format group supporting the Collada format for creating a more open opportunity for the exchange of content between other 3D applications. (http://www.khronos.org/members/contributors/).  

As an additional note, we are in the later stage development of rigging tools that will allow for rigging within DAZ Studio that could then be exported for use within Poser. These tools are very powerful and will allow people to accomplish some things that they haven’t been able to before. Because we still don’t have a perfect representation of the Poser format, there may be some slight differences between bends etc. in DAZ Studio to Poser.

We strongly believe that the success of DAZ lies heavily on having an open development environment for our models and software that is supported by a large community. We are of relatively limited resources and realize that we can not nor do not want to try to do it all ourselves.

I hope this helps give a little of our perspective on things.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr

Well I am going to check out for the night. I know that I have not been able to answer all the questions but for some of them only time will tell. I can say that there are a lot of people at DAZ and Eovia who remain just as committed to this industry as we have for many years. With the acquisition, that committment increases. I realize that there are some people who are unhappy about this because they are uncertain what it means for the future (or they may have other reasons) but, I want to re-iterate how excited we are at DAZ to have the great people of Eovia on our team and expect to do some great things together.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr

dlk30341, I cant give you any re-assurance other than restating that the team who has worked on Carrara will continue to work on Carrara and the team that has worked on Hexagon is still working on Hexagon. We are every bit as committed to see that these products will continue to develop as the last owners of Eovia were.

Dan 

I apologize for assuming that our reasons for purchasing Eovia are obvious. Carrara and Hexagon are powerful tools with a strong following. We see the same potential that Metacreations saw in the applications when they developed them and before they divested to become an internet company. With the acquisition we have brought in some very talented developers and marketing people onto the team. We now have a much more complete product line and tools that already work reasonable well together. 3D artists and animators will benefit from us being able to provide more functionality and tools at affordable prices and we have tried to do with our other tools and models. As for what this means to the Poser-community I can not tell.  All I can say is that we are still developing models, software and doing the business we have been doing while trying to provide the best product we can.

Dan

P.S. I edited the last part out before I read your post.

Nothing cryptic, the agreement states that they need to assign right to the new owners to continue using the SDK. Not a big deal, just the fact.

Dan

The Native Poser Importer in Carrara 5 Pro is code that was created by the Carrara team and will remain as a main feature. Transposer was developed through an agreement between EF and Eovia from the Poser SDK and we intend to continue to offer it.

Dan 

Otaku, as I said before, the acquisition has not affected the delivery of Hexagon 2. It is later than they had projected it to be which would have been the case no matter who's name was on the Stock certificates. If we would have owned it earlier, we would not have done the pre-sales. With that being said, it's development is continuing with the exact same team with it's exact specification and development schedule that it had prior to our purchasing the product.

Dan

The developers for Carrara are French and they are located in the Mtn View offices and now work for DAZ. They are committed to see that Carrara continues without a hitch. We had them out to the office today meeting with our developers of Studio. It was a great meeting the future is very bright from our perspective. I know that there are going to be a lot of questions that exist but they will be answered in time. We are developing a fantastic game plan together that will ultimately lead to more capabilities and options for users of all the applications that we now offer. The synergy is very powerful.

Gary, I will look at your message and get back to you.

Dan

P.S. DAZ's "main schtick" will give us the power to do things that software companies alone will not be able to do. The Eovia team is very excited to have the added flexibity of a company with a broad offering and a large existing customer base.

Jcleaver,

Even though we did not own Eovia at the time you made the pre-order I can assure you that we will do something for people who have pre-ordered. You will not "get the shaft" but will be getting more than you bargained for.

Dan