Can I ask you all for a favour?

We would like to make the babies a success (and the animals) so we have to set our pricing structure and packaging structure right in order to maximise our sales. This is the only way that we will be able to continue to make Poser products.

Please have a look at the following ideas and tell me which one would tempt you to buy - if any. If you have other suggestions, we're open to them!

1. Sell Baby Dylan and Baby Jenny as separate items. Each comes with all of the MAT files, textures, morphs and the nappy (diaper). Each could sell for $24.99 The clothing , poses and animation would then be sold as separate items at low prices, like $9.99

2. Sell both babies together for $49.99 and sell all other items as add-on packs at low prices.

3. Sell items both separately as in idea 1 AND as a combined pack as we are currently selling it.

BTW, just to clarify - yes, these are all original meshes, not based on any DAZ product. They were created in Maya and setup from scratch. (BTW, there will also be a Maya version but it is MUCH more expensive!)

Hi everyone - thanks for the comments! The price in Euro is 49.99 - that is roughly $64.99. This is for both figures, the clothes animation, poses, props etc. Normally, animation and clothing would be seperate upsell items. The Millennium baby includes 1 figure, less than half the number of morphs, 1 daiper - no other clothing, no poses and no animation. BTW, our morph targets are all used for expression and some for shaping realistically. There are no alien morph or other strange things. I'll post some expression images shortly. What woul all of you consider to be a reasonable price considering all that you get in the package? Maybe you should wait until you see the expressions before you set your price! :') Chris

Attached Link: http://www.cubed.ie/shop/details/dylanjenny_babyfall.mov

Attached Link: http://www.cubed.ie/shop/details/dylanjenny_babycrawl.mov

Are those machines set up to animate? I sure hope so! I'm going to enjoy playing with this!!!! :')

Reduce the dimensions of the avi file and reduce the colours before converting to swf.

What you are attempting sounds very good but it will not be easy. I have been a professional animator for almost 20 years - traditional and 3d. I have also taught animation for businesses and at the Animation Workshop in Denmark. Here are my thoughts: Animation is a very difficult and in-depth subject. 100 hours will only scratch the surface. Since you are trying to simply get them interested and give them a taste, this isn't an issue. The real issue is that you don't want to turn them off with a bad experience. I think that if you use some of the higher end software, like XSI, Maya, or Max, the students will have to spend so much time learning the interface and functionality that they will soon become discouraged. Poser is easy to start with immediately and will give them instant satisfaction. Yes, it's animation abilities are quite limited but they will be more than adequate for what they will be doing. Having said that, the other alternative would be to use XSI or Maya but have the characters pre rigged and ready to animate. XSI has ready made default figures and rigs available with a couple of mouse clicks. One more consideration. Learning XSI or Maya will prepare students for future job prospects - Poser will not. Chris Derochie

Holds are still important in realistic animation to convey a suble emotional change or to anticipate a major change of action to come. This type of hold is called a moving hold. Some parts of the body or face still move in a very subtle way to keep the figure from looking like a statue. Try holding very still for a second, like something just frightened you - that's a moving hold. It's also used extensively in comedy as an exclaimation point at the end of a gag, a pointer that a gag is about to come or as a calm point to allow the audience to laugh. Chris

You can create a set of empty folders, like Softimage|XSI and Maya do automatically, and copy them into a new project folder every time you start a new project. I would strongly recommend coming up with a simple naming convention and sticking with it so version control will never be a problem. For example, if you are working on the head of a model and you have just saved the 47th incremental save of your 5th version of the model, you might call it headname_V5_47.max(or whatever the extention may be) Chris

Fishnose said:

Serious Poser panic sets in - I'm going to die in front of my computer when I get P5, I'm already foregoing sleep, family life, sanity etc.....

Then you sound exactly like the development team! :')

I've read through the entire thread and I have only one comment, due to duct tape:

CHOCOLATE PECAN COOKIES!!!!!!
Send them on immediately!!! I would definately create far better content if my belly is stuffed full of yummy cookies!!!

Chris (always thinking with his stomach...)