Thank you for withdrawing "outrageous" PJF. By contrasting Vicky's reception with the Store's it was a way of drawing attention to my perceived difference in the lack of any comment or debate on her as a commercial product (while enjoying prominence here) with the intense debate around the setting up of the Store. That is all. It was not intended to reopen that debate. The thread was essentially about what we pay for commercial products and if we as consumers should do what other consumers do in other markets. As for Vicky's pricing and what goes into producing a new and unique figure I have some idea of what goes into the making, as I am along that hard road myself. As for cost, in purely financial terms if your costs exceed you returns you are out of business. By the same token if you price is too high you may not meet your costs. The balancing act is keeping costs down and maximising sales. Look at what happened over 25 years ago to the car manufacturing industry world-wide when Japanese imports cut the heart out of all of the established companies and how they have since recovered by innovative products, manufacturing techniques and cost controls. And there are countless other examples including the computer hardware and software industry. Competition and consumer lobbies have played a part in all of that. And finally as to the Store being amateurish, well I am sure Zygote started off small, Bill Gates started in a garage (not that I hope the Store goes the Microsoft route!). Give it time, let it walk first and then run. Nobody is born a professional, it happens over time. It is 3am here, time for bed. 'night all STORM

PJF "Personally, in the context of this place having a shop stuck on its back, I found STORM's comments about Zygote's clear and upfront commercial enterprise to be borderline outrageous, even allowing for the humorous presentation." I am a little confused by the above. What comments exactly? As far as I am concerned I am questioning the cost of Victoria, as a member of a community and a market which consumes products from Zygote and on a forum which looks at all things to do with Poser. Equally I have questioned the commercial strategies in the Store. What is "borderline outrageous" about all of the above? Surely it is the right of all of us as consumers to question and debate such things, and do it on a forum dedicated to the product? STORM

Wow! I get back here and It seems in the meantime that WW3 has broken out and the questions I raised about Vickis pricing have been turned back to the earlier debate about the Store and this site. Let me state for the record I believe the Store is a good thing; I support it on or off this site. I had questions about commission rates and the commercial strategy, which were answered by Jack. The bottom line on all of this is that this site needs to earn money to survive in its present form and also if it wants to grow. If Jack and the team get it wrong people will "virtually walk". That is a heavy burden and I do not envy them their task, nor their massive input into making this place happen. I am sure they all have had many sleepless nights planning, working and worrying. Bast I understand your emotion but I think your words were written in haste, in the heat of the moment. We have all been there, dog-tired and emotionally blasted. There is no hidden agenda that I am aware of, just people genuinely interested in the future of their online home, expressing themselves and their concerns with varying degrees of ability and wanting to discuss issues that they feel are important. As Ikyoto pointed out the fact that debate happens makes this place a community and as such the right to debate and even dissension should be respected on all sides with the one proviso, that the debate is carried out in a civilised manner. Now can we please get back to the issue and as Jim Burton suggested "chill out". Chad thank you for joining in, you have every right to and I hope you do not take my questioning Zygote's pricing as an attack but I think you got it wrong this time. You rightly point out that Poser users are "demographically unique" with the greatest proportion being non-commercial users. Price comparisons with other non-Poser model markets (which are aimed at mainly commercial and industry users) do not work because they are completely different markets. If any commercial producer were to charge 100s of dollars for single Poser Models they will earn very little from the vast majority of Poser users and consequently have a tiny market share percentage and penetration. This has implications for the market's awareness of the products of those companies and their influence on the market. It also usually entails higher marketing costs for products (Zygote currently enjoys a very high profile among Poser users which probably equals low marketing costs for their Poser products). And despite having to balance the internal production economies of Zygote there is more to business than sales and profit. There is also goodwill, market share maintenance and even dominance, all of which have a real dollar price tag when estimating the value of a company. Looking at the Victoria downloads page here it is possible to get some idea of the number of Victoria units sold. The downloads vary but peak on some items at around 1,800. Taking into account factors such as failed downloads and curiosity, I would estimate you have sold around 1200 units to users of these forums with maximum sales of about 2000 in general, less than 10% of this 15,000-strong-market. Perhaps if Vicky were around $50 and all her accessories in a pack costing $20 you might have had a significantly greater market percentage which would have given you equal profit but a much stronger leverage on future sales of Vicky developments and products. It would have also generated much greater goodwill (in the business sense of the word). In addition to all of this there is a large and growing skills pool among very talented Poser users who are pushing the models far beyond what Metacreations envisaged for Poser 4 and this has future consequences for the market. On that issue I want to ask you a question. When I look at Victoria I am reminded of the "eyes" developed by Bushi, Nerd and Bloodsong; by the changed body structure developed by Torino (Eve); and by the transparency mapped hair developed by Grey (I think he was the first) and further developed by Kozaburo and then Allerleirauh and many others. How much was Victoria and Zygote influenced by these developments? STORM

I totally agree Nance, it will generate what has been seriously missing in the commercial end of the Poser Model market. In a word: COMPETITION It is amazing how prices drop when there is the threat of competition. Personally I have tentative long-term ambitions to develope commercial models (I am still learning, learning, learning!) but I don't think I could ever justify charging a package price of $200+ for a single Poser figure and accessories, no matter how good. Particularly given the fact that I owe so much to this community and have learned so much from it (as have Zygote!). For a CD with 100s of megabytes of models, clothing, hair, textures etc maybe $100, maybe less. My philosphy is make it affordable to the many, sell more units, keep everyone happy and earn my living that way. BTW Traveler I want to thank you for all your wonderful work and generosity of nature, if Vicky is worth $200+ your morphs are priceless

Ditto! It's hypnotic, I keep wondering if it is going to fall off with the effort.

He he Ikyoto, very good. The question is will Zygote then pay me a sales commission for all my hard work? Seriously though please be clear on this I am not trying to be negative or attack Zygote. Sorry if it came across that way they are free to charge what they like. What I am trying to question (in my awkward way) is the response of this community as consumers to market prices; Zygote's in particular. If you examine any consumer body there are often powerful forces within that body that influence what suppliers selling to that market charge. Indeed, it is often a major topic of debate and discussion in all consumer communities and societies. What surprises me is that I cannot ever recall seeing this question raised in this community as regards Zygote's prices. either they have done market research that indicates this or (more likely) they believe that their prices will not be questioned. What I want to know is why?

It really is refreshing to see a debate (with strongly held views on all sides)carried out in a civil, polite, logical and very informative manner. My faith in this place just went up. Congrats to all but particularly PJF for putting your concerns and arguments so clearly and logically and edarsenal for your mature and open response. STORM

Nerd check these out as well (The same people make Mesh Paint 3D as Bast suggested although I believ TrU-V is a their hot product available as a stand-alone or plug-in. ) http://www.texturetools.com/products.shtml "TrU-V (patent pending), is the world's FIRST and ONLY analytical texture mapping solution.TrU-V analyzes your object's geometry, and automatically sets mapping coordinates that are perfect wherever you paint. Your brush strokes never change in size or shape, and the paint goes where you expect it to, every time. $299.95 Intel-based processors TrU-Viewer allows TrU-V owners to view texture mapped updates of their objects with any 2D paint software including Adobe Photoshop, MetaCreations' Painter, and Corel's PHOTO-PAINT. Depending on the program, updating the 3D OpenGL window can be as simple as a single keystroke. TrU-Viewer nearly turns any 2D paint program into a 3D paint program. The only real difference is that all of the painting takes place in the 2D views. Award-winning MeshPaint 3D is the worlds first full-featured 3D paint program to support multiple 3D animation applications, including Kinetix 3D Studio MAX and 3D Studio Classic, NewTeks LightWave 3D, Microsofts Softimage and Caligaris trueSpace. $69.95 Intel-based processors" Hope all of this helps and does not further confuse the issue.

Allerleirauh to the best of my knowledge Deep Paint will not create UV Maps but only work on existing ones, I believe the new Texture Weapons addon package for Deep Paint is supposed to do this.

Thank you for explaining Jack, hopefully it will help to alleviate any worries and build confidence in the venture. STORM

As someone who visits this place at least once a day, everyday, you and the other admins have my complete respect and admiration for the sheer amount of work, dedication and professionalism you have put into making this the best 3D graphics site on the web. Maintaining and growing such a resource and paying for the bandwidth all costs and this has to be paid for. Commercialism in some form is consequently a reality if this place is to stay alive. The Poser Store is part of that reality and if Renderosity does not open one someone else will. The Store is a natural and required development and I welcome it and wish it well as yet another resource for artists being offered by this site. I would like to see the store make lots of money for all involved, artists and Renderosity because all are deserving of this. My only concern is what is the best, most viable and sustainable commercial policy for the Store. Thus my posts above on a slightly different approach to commission charges. One of the consequences of entering the commercial retailing world is competition (if your leave yourselves open to it). There are plenty business-minded people out there who will happily let you do the hard work of setting the thing up and then pounce on it and cherry pick it by offering better deals to contributors and customers. That is a reality of the commercial world. So be forearmed and forewarned, make it hard for the potential commercial competition to do this, protect you asset and your investment by making sure that your Store offers the best deals and rates possible to artists and customers. It may not be possible to lower the commission rates, but if it is I would urge you look long and hard at this issue again. In my opinion it is the one potential "Achilles heel" in the whole venture, everything else - the 15,000 members, the reputation of this site, the existing goodwill and much more are all working for you. The best of luck to you Jack, the Team and the Store. STORM

I have posted a long (possibly overlong) thread above on the question of commission rates and why I think it might be an idea to reduce them. Here is another argument. Assume that someone in this forum makes another Victoria (only better and a new mesh and there are many here capable of that) and decides to sell it. Assume also that they are not going to fleece people for $90 plus more for hair, tex maps, morphs and clothing but are going to charge $50 for the lot, a complete package. How big is their market? For something like Victoria it might be 1000 model sales, maybe more if the price is right and the model good enough. At 50% commission that is $25,000 to BBay/Renderosity. In one of her posts above fur said " before knocking anything, ask someone who's built an online store just whats involved. Heres just some of the things you would need to get started:" and then lists a lot of things that cost money. But for the $25,000 lost to the artist in commission charges he or she could easily buy all of that and more and have a lot left over. This might be put into reducing the cost of the model to say $40, in turn increasing sales even more and leaving the artist with a nice shiny new server and a functioning online store in which they could also broker stuff. It is one of the reasons anyone involved in making really high demand models will probably not sell through the Poser Store (no offence intended to any artist selling there already). This is a major loss of a market segment and potential revenue to Renderosity/BBay before you even start. I believe the Poser Store should take a long term view on this and not use the argument of everyone else charging 50% or more commission as the reason for doing the same. Break the mould and try much lower rates, if they don't work up them. Remember this store, unlike other purely commercial operations, is growing out of a community of people with a culture of sharing and helping each other. Commerciality in their "online home" is a difficult and even resented concept for many in such a community to come to terms with. Lower rates might prove much more acceptable to all concerned and increase volumes dramatically in sales turnover and in the range of stuff being put into the store. STORM

Anthony that sounds very interesting, I think I am going to try it as soon as I get finished with texturmapping etc. Thank you very much.

Well bloodsong I can report complete success using your method with one or two alterations. After UV mapping is complete and the new geometry saved, firstly load up the original model (in my case the P4 Nude Woman) in Poser. Save this figure back to the Library calling it "P4 WomanNew" or something like this that reflects the stage one is at and to distinguish it from the original. Shut down Poser and then open up the cr2 file of this new Library figure with a text editor and get it to point at the new Geometry saved in the P4 Woman folder from UV Mapper. In my case I called this new geometry "P4NudeWo1". The next stage is to start up Poser again and load up the "P4 WomanNew" Library figure in Poser. Now there is no way it seems that one can play with selecting and deselecting the "texture applies to whole figure" applying the original texture to the body and the new one to the head because of the "skin" definition problem as you spotted. Here is what I did. With the "P4 WomanNew" figure up in Poser I selected the head and then opened the group editor. Then I selected all the head mesh and created a new material called "SkinHead" to distinguish it from the body skin. But one could call it anything really. I then applied the new head map to the head i.e. the "SkinHead" material and the original P4 map to the body and it worked like a dream. I saved this figure back to the Library overwriting the earlier "P4WomanNew" figure. The next stage was to see if another part of the body could be remapped and this new map be applied to the same figure in addition to the new head map. This time I used UV Mapper to open up the new geometry in the runtime folder, i.e. "P4NudeWo1". I decided to re-map the nipples using exactly same method you outlined for the head. I saved the remapped model back to the runtime geometry folder, calling it "P4NudeWo2". Closed poser, opened up the cr2 file of "P4 WomanNew" (the one with the re-mapped head) and changed it from pointing to the "P4NudeWo1" geometry to the "P4NudeWo2" geometry. Opened poser, loaded my "P4 WomanNew" figure, selected the chest, opened the group editor and selected the nipples. I then created a new material calling it "NewNipples" and resaved this figure replacing my "P4 WomanNew" figure in the Library with it. I now have a P4 Fem figure with a head map 2048x2048, a nipples map of 500x500 and any original texture map I care to use for the rest of the figure. It seems that the only limitation on this is: 1) the amount of memory one's computer has and 2) the increasing complexity of the templates UV Mapper exports and the problems of distinguishing the new maps from earlier ones. I am so excited about all of this I might even write a proper tutorial with step by step screen shots. We will see. So far I have only been mapping the templates onto the figures but now I am off to play with creating textures and bumps. Who knows the P4 woman might give Vicky a run for her money yet! Thanks again to all of you.

Thank you bloodsong you have answered my questions (for now - there are bound to be more!) and have provided a great tutorial-like response to the issue. I am sure many others will benefit as well. And yes, if you are reading this Steve Cox, being able to export templates for sections of models, as bloodsong suggests, would be the single most useful new improvement to your wonderful UV mapping utility that I can think of. BTW Steve you do not get half the thanks you deserve for this utility, it has been an integral part of almost every new non-Metacreations development for Poser to date and is crucial to all of us. Thanks again to all of you, I'm off to try this out. STORM