These "tour guide" renders are great, thank you for releasing this!

That's an excellent point, FVerbaas! I never liked the A-pose and preferred the T-pose (probably because that was my first exposure to the default state of a 3d figure) but you've changed my mind. I always wondered why some figures used the A-pose and this makes it more understandable.

I think what also helps keep V4 and M4 alive is that Daz will release those figures for free (along with some nice addon packages like V4++ and M4++) every once in a while. I already got these for free many, many years ago during an earlier Daz promotion, but obviously it helps that Daz does still push V4 and M4 to some degree by giving it away. People will always flock to stuff that they don't have to pay for (initially), like figures, and 3d packages like Blender.

I would consider pushing the idea that Bondware should give away a limited version of Poser for free and try to adopt a make-money-from-content business model like Daz, but I fear that it just wouldn't work precisely because the compelling content isn't there, unlike with Daz. But at the same time, trying to sell a 3d package for over $100 is always going to limit your ability to grow your user base... people are getting more and more used to open-source software (free).

Bondware needs a way that content like clothing and hair will work seamlessly across all figures (older ones like V3, V4 to newer ones like LaFemme and Dawn), no messing with Fitting Room because new users simply won't bother to spend the time to learn it, and that way content creators can make clothing and have access to all Poser users that are on whatever figure. To me that means a new dynamic cloth simulator that is far superior to the current outdated Cloth Room, but has the power of something like VWD (but with a ton of presets or the ability to analyze the mesh to apply a preset to it accurately). I buy the cloth, I position it so that it overlays the figure in my scene, tell the Poser cloth wizard that this item is cotton (or the content creator provides the presets that tell the new cloth wizard what is constrained, what is not, etc). and then in seconds it just simulates what I need...

EClark1894 posted at 1:16PM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388086

tomyee posted at 9:08AM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388085

I also mentioned V4 and M4 earlier in this thread but should clarify (especially now that Karina has returned from the Beyond) that I am slowly migrating my V4 characters over to Sasha-16 during the COVID-19 lockdown, and am absolutely loving Sasha as I get to use her more and more.

May I ask a follow up? Why are you still using V4/M4? Why not one of the newer models?

Hi EC, I actually have mentioned this in previous threads about why I still stick with these two figures. I've created a ton of custom characters (using the morph brush, using imported OBJs, morph packages, etc) for both figures over the years, and the amount of time and energy gone into those, is just not something I want to repeat by porting them over to any of the newer figures -- which are mostly female anyway, and Karina's S-16 is so good at fixing any bending issues, plus maintaining compatibility with my huge library of V4 content, and it's not been as hard as I'd feared to port their faces to S-16, so I'm happy with what I've got.

I do hope Karina eventually does a similar fix for M4 (I think a lot of happy S-16 users are waiting for that too), and if there are any content creators who would like to keep making clothing for V4 and M4, that's the stuff that I'd still buy today. Ideally a conforming outfit that has parts which can be simulated either with the Cloth Room and/or VWD to get the best of both worlds (hybrid clothing). Sadly I think most content creators are Daz-only now, and I've lately been just kitbashing existing clothes or modelling my own clothing and using the cloth room, or even just using post-work to get the render I want.

I also mentioned V4 and M4 earlier in this thread but should clarify (especially now that Karina has returned from the Beyond) that I am slowly migrating my V4 characters over to Sasha-16 during the COVID-19 lockdown, and am absolutely loving Sasha as I get to use her more and more.

yes, I'm still alive, though it was on a razor's edge... But Ukrainians are hard to kill you know :D

Karina!!!! It is great to hear from you again. I just checked your website the other night to see if there had been any updates on what happened to you. I think a few people suspected that it was a health issue (and hoping that it was not a "worst case" situation where you were no longer among us). Relieved to know that you are around again.

V4 and M4

Is there any free tool for Windows that lets you edit TrueType fonts?

Every time I visit this thread, I keep wanting to find ways that Bondware can make money with Poser and how to gain new, younger users (so that when us old timer Poser users die off, the audience will still be there to keep Poser alive). DazStudio and possibly Blender are what I think of as Poser's main competition, especially Daz... but the more tech-savvy aspiring 3d artists would be far more likely to try Blender (because it's free, it is constantly growing with very impressive new features, yet has a shitty, shitty user interface and now seems to be requiring a very advanced PC to run it).

First I believe there should be a free version of Poser, not a trial but a feature-limited version where you'd pay to upgrade to the next affordable level up. In fact there should be two free versions that each have a very specific focus:

1. Poser Comic Book Creator (which I talked earlier in this thread) for teens who are into comics, manga, etc. and want to make their own. It would need enough features to make it a better choice over Manga Studio/Clip Studio, but otherwise be feature limited. It should come with just enough content that a kid can make a simple superhero comic, complete with basic dialogue balloons. It would have no animation capabilities at all.

2. Poser Cartoon Video Creator: for kids who want to be on social media or earn income from YouTube, this one has a different set of features aimed to do videos that can be uploaded to YT or Instagram. The length of videos you can make would be limited in the free version, but expanded more in the $50 version. LaFemme and LeHomme would not be included in this one, it would come with cartoony poseable 3d characters instead. It would come with enough content to do maybe South-Park type cartoons, maybe have a limited Mimic feature built in that works with only those included figures.

So you'd have tiers of pricing: free, $50, $125, $200... (the $125 one could just be the same as the $50 but with gigabytes of content, music, fonts, whatever). The main idea is that free is what hooks them in, $50 is an affordable way to upgrade to the next best version, $150 gets them all the content and bonuses and whatever else might keep the addiction going, and $200 is the full 11.2 product that we all know and love. Keep it 32-bit for the free and lower-tier products to force a limit to how large users can create 3d worlds and renders. Doing massive 3d scenes and memory-intensive renders is pro-level stuff and they should be buying the $200 product at that point (that'd be another reason to upgrade to the full Poser).

Anyway, just brainstorming... I'm trying to think like a crack dealer and how to get dem pesky kids hooked onto my kind of crack. :)

Here's a screenshot from the Clip Studio Paint webpage. It really does remind me of Poser Debut. NOTE: I actually may be wrong about the 3d import feature only being in the expensive version (that's the one I use, so I'm not that familiar with the $50 product). If you can load 3d objects and pose them in the cheap version too, then wow, that's a pretty great product for doing comics at a cheap price!

Bondware isn't Daz, I'm sure they wouldn't do anything to deliberately annoy me, right?

But because I think they care far more about the future of Poser than Smith-Micro, I hope they'll at least consider the idea of an entry-level Poser aimed at total 3D newbies, and maybe specifically targeted for young fans of comics, manga and anime.

My friend's daughter is a huge anime/manga fan and wanted to make her own simple comic book recently, and initially I wanted to recommend Poser (or Daz, in case he didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on what could just be a passing fancy but I try to avoid helping out DazStudio since I started off myself on Poser and am biased, lol).

I couldn't do it.. both Poser and Daz are just too complicated for young people to get into unless they're already really into computer graphics and know some 3d basics. I ended up recommending Manga Studio to her instead, since she can sketch... but I wish I could've pointed her to a "Poser Comic Book Creator" or something which was cheap/free with just enough to get her excited to pose figures and do simple renders. Something fun to play with, and eventually get more serious about as she learned the tools and figured out what she wanted to achieve.

Manga Studio (now Clip Studio Paint) actually has a very simple 3d to 2d rendering system, you can load Lightwave3d and Wavefront OBJ files into multiple 3d layers, and it comes with a mannequin figure that can be posed to do exactly what Poser Debut used to do. And has lots of other 3d objects like houses, furniture, etc. that can quickly create a scene. It has a cheap version that only costs $50USD and a pro version that is a wee bit more expensive than Poser 11 ($219US, vs Poser11 which is $200US). I actually switched over to MSEX4 ages ago, and don't use Poser for much other than periodic cloth simulation, precisely because it is overall easier to use and I get decent comic book-style renders out of it. NOTE: the 3d support is only in the more costlier $219 version, but my friend would upgrade her to that from the cheap version if she really demonstrated that she'd fallen in love with the program.

The trial period on Poser11.2 is what, 21 days and then after that it is totally disabled? That's great for pro-artists to test it out, but I think teens would need much more play time with a product to fall in love with it. I kind of prefer the option of paying $50 for a more basic, but still useful version of the product without any kind of deadline so that there's no rush to fool around with it, learn it, and then decide that they want more.

Boni posted at 8:33AM Fri, 11 October 2019 - #4366724

I'd like to see a Debut version .... one that is kid friendly. No nudes. A way kids and start out. Just a thought.

Great idea. It should allow for skintight outfits (since superheroes often are dressed like this) but figure would omit the gens and nipples. The program should also let the kids/users "dress" their characters by applying just textures (second skins) so that the kids can still make up the outfits by painting some designs.

To make it easier for them to load their own simple accessories or scene props, the program should allow the user to import Wavefront OBJs. I remember when Daz Studio first debuted, the one thing that stopped me from adopting it and drove me crazy was that there was no built-in OBJ import (although I think you could buy a plugin to do it, but that seemed like something that should've been built in... you don't want to come off as being greedy right from the outset). I consider that a basic feature. If Bondware wanted to annoy me, leaving that out would do the trick.

The idea should be to entice the kids to want to upgrade by showcasing much more advanced features e.g. a FaceRoom that works with Le Homme and LaFemme (and perhaps a non-nude version of teen boy/girl too) so that the kids/user can transfer their own face to the Poser figures and insert themselves into their own comic or cartoon. This could be sold as a separate add-on feature to the base program.

The base program should support Python so that a 3rd party developer could create (sell) a module that maybe could generate word balloons that the kids could type in text dialogue into and have it inserted into the scene - not sure how hard it would be but doesn't sound super-hard.

I assume Poser Debut is a defunct product today, but I remember it with a certain fondness. It was fairly affordable ($50?) and while stripped down, I always thought it would've been a good way to introduce new users to Poser.

It would be nice, after Bondware gets LeHomme finished, if they could revisit something like a Poser Debut product again. Have the two great human figures (LeFemme, LeHomme), stripped down features (I'm thinking you can leave out FaceRoom, the advanced tab of the Material Editor, Fitting Room, Joint and Group Editor, Hair Room, maybe even the Cloth Room until Bondware can update it to be more user-friendly e.g. include built-in presets for cotton, silk, etc).

The idea would be to release something cheap ($50 or less), something only aimed at newbies (who barely know what a polygon even is). I would actually keep in something like Bullet Physics because you want the newbies to enjoy playing around in 3d, and it might be fun to let them tumble stuff around or have the figures get tossed around like ragdolls... the more they play with the program, the more they'll learn it and want to upgrade, buy more content to dress up the figures, etc.

I would also keep the comic book rendering stuff too, because it would get some users to into using Poser to make their own comic books. Perfect for maybe a kid doing a school project, or an amateur indie comic book creator wanting to create some initial rough art for their comic. In fact, instead of giving it a generic name like Poser Debut, call it "Poser Comic Book Creator" to be very specific about what the program does, and so that it also shows up if someone googles for "how to create my own comic".

So basically it would be the Daz Studio model of growing the Poser user base, aimed at young users who are vaguely interested in 3d art or making their own comics or manga. The kids are already used to the idea of in-app purchases, so this could also let them buy different content to dress up LaFemme as a superheroine, or morph LaHomme into different creatures, etc.

For what it's worth, it looks like Mike Deodato is using Poser (and a lot of photo referencing) for the artwork in AWA's upcoming Resistance comic book.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/08/08/jms-the-resistance-mike-deodato-awa/

I personally don't think the art looks all that great to be honest... assuming that it is even Poser, but I strongly suspect it is. I still prefer hand-drawn or a hybrid of 3d renders as a base reference and then hand-tracing over it while adding some stylistic flourishes to make it more hand-drawn-looking.

I realize there's not going to be any help files or documentation, but is it possible to be given a short summary of what are the new features to look forward to in 2.x so that people can decide if they want to spend the time to test it out?