I would agree with others that the best use for purchased poses is as a quick starting point or, if you are going to have a number of background figures, to save time on the ones the viewer won't be looking at too much. Having said that, sometimes you really do need to do something fast and a canned pose can do the job if it's of a good enough quality - as Blackhearted has said, quality over quantity every time.

I find that IK is a great boon for getting a little dynamism in a pose but for a seated or standing figure, I prefer not to use it. Instead I decide roughly how I want the figure and then start by positioning the hip. I then work down the legs (sometimes tweaking the hip if it's clear that I need to) finishing with the feet, getting them where I want them. After this I work my way up the body to the shoulders and then down the arms to the hands. Next I deal with the neck and then the head. You can use references (I've used a few old comics lately) but I find that they are of limited use becaust the furniture you have in Poser is not going to be quite the same as that in the reference, by doing things this way you will usually end up with something that looks natural to that chair because you are building the pose around it.

This done, I decide on the camera position that I want for the render. Once that decision is made I can start to tweak the pose, usually spending time on the hands - but only if they are visible, there's no point in perfecting what can't be seen. I try to pay attention to what is phisically possible for a joint to do but at the end of the day, if it looks right from the camera position that I have chosen, then I don't mind breaking a few rules/bones.

Wow! These clothing items look amazing...I'm glad I found this thread, I've nipped over to the store to buy Shae, which I somehow failed to spot earlier - great looking morph (I always love the Blackhearted faces - from nia, through V3, SP3, and V4 and these.) and now I can look forward to giving her something good to wear.

On the subject of Poser's complexity - I'm not sure why that should be a problem. You have always had a lot of control over the ui, so you only need to have what you use and understand up there, while most of the harder stuff is kept in rooms you never need to visit.

Having said that, SM did release a Starter edition, which is cheap and fills the role of Poser 4 nicely with pleny of handy features and nothing to confuse you - as well as the friendly manual. It's robust too, so a newbie can use it on a fairly cheap/old computer - I've been able to install Poser on my netbook with no graphics card and no problem! (Some of you may be thinking "Why the hell bother putting it on a netbook?" but I have a runtime full of toons which make nice illustrations for my family emails)

Wow! What great work!

Really, I am sorry not to be able to read the captions but the animation is genuinely excellent, with a sense of fun. Of course, I've always been fond of animated giant robots.

This must represent a lot of work for you and I think you can be very proud with the result - I'm certainly glad that you have shared it with us here.

The Morphs++ package has been mentioned but some of the morph packages can be a pain to track down in the DAZ store now. So, here's a list of the basic items that you may wish to collect up, along with the new product numbers (DAZ changed their product numbering a while back). These should give you much of what you will need to create any number of characters. You should also check out Blackhearted's store here, as well as Posermatic's store and and at DAZ, and I also use JoeQuick's face morphs for V4 and M4 (sold here). I'll leave you to search for hair and clothes.

Victoria 4.2 Base 4783

Victoria 4.2 Muscle Morphs 3940

Victoria 4.2 Morphs ++ 4787

Stephanie 4 Elite Base 9357

V4 Elite Body Shapes 7403 (included in the V4 Elite Bundle 7417)

Aiko 4 Base 5980

She Freak V4 9499

The GIRL 4 Base 8390

V4 Elite: Reby Sky 10304

And should you want her to have a male partner:

Michael 4 Base 7877

Michael 4 Morphs++ 7878

M4 Elite Body Shapes 9300 (included in the M4 Elite Bundle 9675)

Michael 4 Muscle Morphs 9579

The Freak 4 Base 8436

Hiro 4 Base 8070

Finally, for non-human characters:

Victoria 4.2 Creature Creator Morphs 5280

Victoria 4.2 Creature Creator Add Ons 5281

Michael 4 Creature Creator Morphs 8653

Michael 4 Creature Creator Add Ons 9612

V4/M4 Creature Creator Bundle (with all of the above) 9611

If you're thinking "money pit", then you're spot on. Of course, a lot of us have been collecting the add-ons since the figure's release and had the advantage that some of these sets were free until DAZ had a change of policy.

Thanks for the heads-up - I did get the email from them but missed it. Sadly, they haven't been running these offers through Content Paradise, which doesn't charge me VAT. But still, this is plenty good enough of an offer for me. Anime Studio is a very nice piece of kit and the upgrade looks like it might be worth my while.

Still, the one thing that I hate about the Smith Micro site is the download speed. Honestly, I have a good cable broadband service and the half gig file size would take ten minutes from here or from DAZ - but from SM? 35kb/sec!!!! Yup, it took nearly six hours to download. That's just not acceptable. Oh well, I'll have a play with what's new and that will cheer me up.

Twenty years is a long time to look ahead...anyone in the UK of a certain age will remember Tomorrow's World on the BBC. The desktop will stay around for a while yet, if only in hybrid - ie. you plug your portable into it. But it has advantages that won't just go away: security, scope for greater power (and we will always want greater power), large screen viewing, and a keyboard. Damned if I can touchtype on a tablet for long - if only because its not good for your hands/wrists. (And for long periods, you need a well placed angled keyboard, and a good screen at eye level - honestly, it's not good for kids to spend all that time surfing, gaming, and doing homework on a laptop!)

Quote - I'll post my response here as well as the sample population not truly being representative of customers that buy at DAZ.

If you glance over some of the charts it would imply that most of the participants are Platinum Club Poser users that are interested in figures and morphs that because of Genesis their purchases went down. 

Thus if I would believe your survey that then when our V5 was released, we should have gotten less sales than our Gen 4 characters simply because poser users are not buying it because of Genesis' release. 

However that didn't happen and the figure sold more than any of our Gen4 only characters. Also the Gen4/Genesis characters sold more than those Gen4-only products as well. So either those were flukes or your sample population wasn't really representative of those who actually buys content here. I'm going to go with the latter simply because all of the events that have occurred in the forums over the last few months that has caused so much negativity and releasing "unofficial" survey results such as this does nothing but to spread false facts and help reinforce the negativity, not enlighten.

Analysis of results can be a tricky business - not just for this survey but also the results of your sales that you quote here. For example, V5 is new and those that do have her will be hungry for content, which is still light on the ground. They will also likely be looking for content specific to V5, so even if they have a shed load of V4 characters, they may be more inclined to buy a new V5 one than a new V4 release that would stand a chance of being rather like many other v4 releases they have already purchased. So, questions that have to be asked include: was the market that you released your V4 characters into really comparable to the market you released v5 characters into?

So I will grant that the value of this little survey may be limited but we mustn't be tempted to try and discredit with what may be equally limited information. From what I can tell, nobody is making any big claims about the survey, it is what it is, and the questions and sample data are there for us to judge it for ourselves. I don't see the spread of false facts, just someone trying to understand a bit of the market a little better. So long as we recognise its limitations, then I don't see a problem.

Has anyone mentioned product promo images yet?

There has been an increasing lack of Poser renders in in product promos at DAZ, they are either limited or absent. Now, I've not had too much of a beef with that, because I've figured that DAZ want to sell us Studio, so limiting the promos to Studio renders makes some business sense. That may be inconvenient for me (and has delayed some of my purchases until I've seen the products in Poser galleries) but it is fair enough. No beef.

BUT if you want to say that you value Poser users, then show it. If you want us to shop from you as Poser users, rather than potential Studio users, then let us see what you're selling in the software we mean to use in. Otherwise, we feel like a side market - which is fine but not what you're saying here.

Of course, many of your PAs do make and include Poser renders and I promise you, that really does help their sales from me. But take a look at the DAZ originals. Take a look at the recent crop of PC products - some aren't marked as Studio renders but they aren't marked as Poser either and they look just like the Studio ones, so I assume they are just that. What do they look like in Poser?

Quote - > Quote - ... it always struck be as odd that they should drop it though, I mean, what's the benefit of reducing function?

Slightly smaller runtimes? Being able to look in a folder in Windows Explorer and actually see (from the thumbnail) what it contained, when the filename said something like "My Incredibly Cool Electric McFinster Complicator" - which you couldn't do with an RSR?

PNG is fairly ubiquitous - most browser/viewers support it. RSR? No. You need to open an (now older) version of Poser or DSx to see it. I see that as limiting.

I wasn't clear. I understand the switch to png's and am fully behind that - I was converting to them back when I had P4ProPack, after all. What I was talking about was removing Poser's ability to read rsr's at all. Converters are, as has been said, free but it did force an additional hastle on some customers who didn't really want it - that seemed needless.

I tend to run everything I buy through a runtime repair program first - it converts the rsr's and corrects any little errors. It can be surprising how many get through the net sometimes, so I'm happy to do this and have been doing it long enough that I wasn't affected by the drop of rsr support - it always struck be as odd that they should drop it though, I mean, what's the benefit of reducing function?.

If I remember, I think that Poser began using png format with Pro Pack (the one that expanded Poser 4). Of course, back then, Poser would create the rsr for you, I think that content creators today might find it a bit of a hastle to make them.

Once upon a time though, and I think still with Poser 4 content (I remember the old DAZ dragon did this), rsr's were used for geometry. It could cause a few problems too.

I wanted to buy so much more than I did - but I had to be strict with myself, and limited myself to $45 - still managed to get about $130 of creatures for that. I only wish that I could have spent more.

On the other hand, the offer is also available at Content Paradise and from what I can tell it includes all content - I just picked up a shed load of Dinoraul stuff (if you like his creatures, make sure you check his store there as it includes some items not sold here).

Well, I don't think that this one was mentioned in the past...

http://www.mankahoo.com/

It really is a great site and home to Ang2 - great figure!

It's funny but having purchased every figure on launch since Aiko 3, I don't feel like I'm missing out this time. I am looking forward to V4 weight mapped but so far, without the weight mapping, V5 doesn't strike me as being any better than V4 with its various eliete morphs and maps.

I'm not saying that its not a great figure - it certainly looks good. But so did V4. And the low poly count is certainly a good thing but I'm just not excited about it. I don't feel like I'm missing out on the new clothing - I seem to have them, or things like them, for V4 already.

I can't help but wonder about the worth of the import and if a figure weight mapped for Studio to work with SubD will look as good as one weight mapped for Poser with its native undivided mesh. It wil be interesting to compare V4 and V5 in Poser when the new rig is complete.