ssgbryan posted at 12:10PM Thu, 22 October 2015 - #4234702

moriador posted at 9:15AM Thu, 22 October 2015 - #4234656

It's quite possible that a small but robust niche market for Poser compatible content may evolve and thrive. Part of the problem of making money in the market was the sheer enormity of the competition among vendors. If a great many of them leave the Poser content market, those who remain will have a much bigger share of what remains. It might well be far more than they started with. In the end, this may turn out to be exactly what the Poserverse needed.

The nightmare scenario for Zev0 is Poser vendors moving en masse to genesis. The only reason Zev0 is making the money at the moment is due to the paucity of DS vendors. Not hard to make money with DS products if you are the only one filling a niche. He is in trouble if the folks that make correction products and morph sets for V4 move into his space. They have a much better reputation, not to mention a longer track history.

The same can be said for the half dozen vendors that regularly make characters for the golum. They will have to up their game - no more using the same texture maps for every one of their figures.

I suspect the clothing vendors at Daz will exit the market. The quality of the products they make aren't as good as what vendors were selling at Daz a decade ago. Increased competition isn't good for vendor's bottom line.

Actually Zev0 has always had some "competition" as far as his morphs go so new people doing them isn't going to be a change. Nor would poser primary vendors choosing to move to Studio to do morphs for Genesis 3 have any more impact than any fresh face doing it. A poser primary vendor may have a following with poser users but that is not going to translate over to studio as a given. That is true for any product not just Zev0's. Nor is potential competition as "bad" as you might think. Product sales are not nearly as based on "what else there is" as on the product itself and how it is presented to the customer. I'm not worried a bit about Zev0's potential income no matter how many poser primary content creators might deiced to produce for studio instead, and you shouldn't either. He has top drawer products, top drawer presentation, and the best reputation for those products with Studio users.

As a matter of fact all the content providers your trying to harsh on and cast blind aspersions at (for products your not really familiar with I suspect) will be fine. I expect to see some continued shifts in what programs are supported and by whom and where. But, I expect those only to have positive outcomes for all involved for a variety of reasons. I know some people are stuck in a past where there is a limited market and they see any competition as draining away money from them. But that is not true for the Studio market and has not been for ages. Studio is and has been a growth industry for the last few years and that isn't changing any time soon. More high quality content draws more customers and helps expand the market further so it is welcome and a benefit to everyone. I think some "bottom lines" have already increased and that is why we have and will continued to see those shifts. I can see why some of those shifts would be worrisome for some people of course. But I don't think it is those who are currently Studio content providers.

"I was in Daz the other day trying to wrap my head around Genesis and the new figures. Do you need Genesis for V6/M6? Do characters for V6 also work on Genesis 2? What about clothing? And I see V7 and G3 don't list Poser under compatible software. Literally feel like I'm a newbie starting over. I closed the browser, poured a drink and pulled up V4 when I realized I don't have the finances to start a new relationship with new characters. :("

I am sure that if you read the information on the rather large selection of products in THIS store you would be able to sort out what they required and what figure they worked with. But I will go ahead and give you a few hints anyway.

"Do you need Genesis for V6/M6? Do characters for V6 also work on Genesis 2? " V6 and M6 are for Genesis 2 male and female. There are hundreds of products here for you to look at to see what the requirements are.

" And I see V7 and G3 don't list Poser under compatible software." Poser does not at this time support that industry standard.

Someone else's superiority complex? You just picked apart someone else's work for your own ends. If you want to show people up you need to do it with your own work rather than trashing someone else's art try to try and prove a point.

I think the only way it would work is if the content creators were staff with a salary and not depending on sales for income. I know that brokerages do try to prevent glut of x where they can but they do are dependent on the income from sales so they are not going to turn away that 100th little black dress just because there already is one. Let's face it though, people who create content for a living are pretty independent and are just not very good at being told what they must do.

"eventually charge for the Pro/Advanced versions of Studio, as was originally envisaged..."

They tried that for a little while and it was counter productive. I seriously doubt they will ever go back to charging for the product when they generate far more on content sales. Any time you have an "entrance fee" you run the risk of limiting your market. Additionally, the vast majority of users are on the same page version wise and that makes the program easier to support.

"DAZ vowed years ago to be the "Poser killer," even said so publicly in an interview.  That is their goal."

I can't get over the irony of that statement because of a post at a different forum by a former owner. If it was years ago then it was different management all together and you can't attribute the statement to the current management that implemented genesis and the new weight mapping.

"But it's only a matter of time before DAZ makes an announcement saying "We have been vastly successful with the industry standard over x years, and it is more profitable.  That is why we plan to slowly phase out hobbyist standards and prices over the next year/2 years."

This speculation is based entirely on the concept that the hobbyist will not want the most advanced and highest quality products and that they as hobbyist would prefer a lower level of potential than the "professional". That they should not aspire to higher standards and should be satisfied with no improvements simply because they are considered "hobbyists". So far the very opposite is true based on the acceptance of the standards represented by G3F and Iray. I think the reality is that most artists be they pro or hobby always aspire to improving and embrace anything that they believe will let them do that. I don't see the hobbyist market declining any because of increased standards. Nor do I expect the growth of the hobby market to slow even a little bit because people are being given more advanced tools to use to create their art.

"Then pray tell how exactly "every other person who is not a DAZ PA does it" ?"

Based on my reading they take it to zbrush then subd the base figure for higher detail. Then they do morphs, adjustments etc then take sub d off and export the morph. They also do a fair bit of work on the figure with displacements and so forth for things like wrinkles etc. They they take that high resolution information to a program like substance painter where they are able to use the information to bake the correct maps to get the desired look without having to have such a high dencity mesh. Of course all of this is only based on a few hours of research related to other things since I don't have zbrush.

"DAZ going all out "professional" will shut out a lot of hobbyists who are just in it for the fun."

I never understand why statements like this spring forth. Has sales to professionals (yes there have always been sales to people who make an income from 3d) been "shutting out" the hobbyist when it happened before? No. Why on earth would DAZ "shut out" hobbyists? Why would 300 PA's stop producing for a known market that they need to survive? Why does adding potential end anything? Why do people go off the deep end any time the possibility arises of an expanded market? An increased POSSIBILITY of sales to people who use different programs in no way changes the dependence on the current customer base. That may be different in 5 years but it is very likely that the hobbyist sector will have seen some dynamic change as well.

"So, how do I create DETAILED sculpts with such few polygons without the HD tool?" I guess you do it the way every other person who is not a DAZ pa does it all over the CGI industry.

"When you can only buy one source for content..."

Did you know that renderosity strongly encourages products to be exclusive to them? I'm betting that they and DAZ are not the only ones who prefer content to be exclusive to their site. It is just good business.

"does it really matter if it is in an industry standard in a content free zone? Let me just pop off to all the other stores you mention and buy V7 a new blouse. What I can't? Damn! a Monopoly is not based on Standards, it is based on what you can buy where."

First, there is no one preventing sales of products for G3 at other brokerages. I am sure that there will be products here for her in the next couple of days as a matter of fact.

"Now they are ditching the hobbyist crowd for the industrial standard/big business crowd,"

That is just well...poop. How does going to an industry standard prevent any hobbyist from continuing to do exactly what they are already doing? Did it prevent people from doing hobby work when people started doing pro work with DAZ figures? When they used genesis with Iclone did that suddenly prevent hobbiest from going on as they always had? Why on earth would anyone be prevented from continuing as a hobby just because more people could use it if they wanted to? Are you thinking that suddenly every content provider who does products for G3 is suddenly going to stop and only do game assets or something? Because that is what it would take for the hobbyists to be "ditched".

"It was a paid product and could easily become one again. Pro version versus Free version. If Daz owned all of the market they would make D/S and their free products whatever price they thought they could get away with.... it is business and they are in it for the money."

Why is it that people forget that out of the life span of Studio it was only pay for for a very short time. DAZ realized that it was a mistake to try and sell it when they did much better financially if it was free. As far as income goes at DAZ content is king and software is secondary.

"Daz wants a Monopoly."

I'm going to call BS on that one. Studio moving to an industry standard makes it perfectly feasible for SM to implement that industry standard into poser. In other words this move is the exact opposite of trying to have a monopoly on what programs can use the figure. It is in SM's hands if they want to add that standard however.

Poser has a fairly good track record for folding in useful things that were externally created. If I were them I would have started talks with Paolo to try get him on board for just that. The tricky bit there would be requiring people to make that extra lux download (f that had to still be downloaded separately) and you know how people get about.. stuff.

"I'm thinking I'll hold out for Paolo's Reality for Renderman. :)"

I'm not sure that I blame you due to the extra level of fiddling for surfaces. But, since I am cheap and the price is 0$ I doubt if I would. That and I want to be able to figure out how to work "oh I use the same render engine as the guys who do the renault commercials" into a conversation. I know they still won't understand what I do or what I am talking about but at least they would recognize that one word.

"Sadly, it's nVidia only."

Only if you want to use GPU rendering. It is faster with a nVidia card yes but it is not required. CPU can be done with any card.

"With Poser I know for a fact that I can create realistic renders or renders that look like paintings and I wouldn't want to get rid of the things that allow that range of creativity with my renders."

The program continues to have 3delight and I doubt they will be removing it any time soon. People who are more comfortable with a biased render engine for realism and non realism have not lost any options because the new engine was added.