Quote - I don't know how doomed Poser is. Even with Studio being a free app (for now), Poser still seems to be selling quite well. Apparently even the people who have switched from Poser to DAZ don't necessarily like having to use Studio and would probably switch back if there were a rival "genesis " like figure available for Poser.

I would question the "poser is selling well" part of this.

It really struck me as an act of desperation when they released Poser2014 half ways into 2013. That rings to me as "we need money now and cannot continue development into 2014 without it"

That coupled with the fact that there were really not that many improvements in 2014 from 2012, that "I" personally didnt feel the need to upgrade.

That release made me real worried about poser's future...I would hate to see it go.

Did you model from base resolution?....that should be the first thing to check. You have to build morphs from base resolution.

hex is also well known for corrupting meshes.

You could try to open the object into uvmapper, and import the uv's from the original base figure, and hope that cleans things up.

If you are on a budget and want to make your money stretch, you might want to look into DAZ Studio, it is free and comes with the genesis figure. So it is already more up to date than picking up V4 with your $20. Instead you could use the money pick up some morphs to add even more versitility to it.

If people are worried about the technology being suppressed....all they have to do is release the information on how to make some of these devices on the internet.

As soon as the information is out there...it cannot be put back in the bottle again.

Select every node in the body setup and copy it...then go to the face setup and delete everything there and paste the body setup in the face.

Then swap all the relevant maps to the face.

Copy that to the rest of the face (nostril, lips)

Attached Link: Princess Ali

http://www.daz3d.com/princess-ali

Rawn

I am sure people will use the HD tech for normal people too.....It's just me...I like my creatures...it's my thing ;)

Quote - After reading the thread (because the subject really interests me) I remain a question.

What would be the advantage of HD morph, if it's more difficult to create, slower rendering and is not available to everyone over the displace / bump / normal maps

ps. really nice char Rawnrr  remember me to "ARMY OF DARKNESS"

"ARMY OF DARKNESS"   one of my all time favorite movies ;)

But as to why HD morphs?

With HD morphs you can make much more detailed and extreme characters. Since it is a morph and not displacment, you can adjust the joints to help it bend and move better.

With displacment maps you have to worry about displacments poking through clothes, with HD morphs the clothes will follow along naturally because it is actual mesh and not a render trick.

But for me...it really is all about the detail. You can do so much more than you ever could before. It opens up whole new possibilities of what I can create that could never be done before.

I am really excited by this technology.

Rawn

This was a character set I started some time ago for genesis...but dropped the project because it was boring....now with HD it really lets me bring it to places i could not before  (hoped the picture would be at the bottom of the post LOL)

One thing I would like to add to the discussion....The HD technology is not part of the genesis2 figures, it is part of DS, and as such any figure (made in a way that it can actually sub-divide nicely) can have HD morphs made for it.

I made a couple HD sets for g2m, and am now making one for Genesis1.

(here is a g2m character I made http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/33595/  )

I am looking forward to trying to use it on various daz creatures as well.......imagine a dragon with HD morphs?....the idea has me drooling ;)

But I have to say....making HD morphs really slows down production time. You can go back and keep adding more and more details...it is hard to know when to stop. But hopefully the coolness of the HD will make them worthwhile.

Rawn

By "Obsolete" I am sure what people are referring to is that the technology keeps on growing with these programs, and what was considered "good" 3 years ago, just wont cut it anymore.

There was a time where simple bump maps on textures was amasing tech and was good. So there are alot of products what are simply textures and bump maps. But then displacment maps came in and people could add even more dimension to the textures. There could be real wrinkles, and all kinds of other data added to make the figure look much better. Then came other shaders like SSS which added even another dimension of details to textures.

Now with the advent of things like HD morphs, the palette of what can be done will grow even more, and people will grow to expect that kind of detail in their sets.

So older products can only be converted to new things so often before people start to realize that that is included in those old sets just doesnt hold up to current standards.

That is why I quite often retire alot of my older characters. Its not that they are not good characters, but compared to what can be done today...they just wont hold up anymore.

So yes...things can get obsolete in this market.

Look how happy people got when v4 got weight mapped....would they be that happy if they were just content with the old v4 as she was?
Would people have gotten as excited about dawn if they were still content with the old v4?

At some level we all are realizing that the old stuff is just not good enough anymore, and we want all the new goodness.

I wont give up on Dawn yet.

Perhaps the site was launched too early to live up to the hype. But I am sure they are working hard to try to get the pieces together to make her a worthwhile figure.

The tech gap between the software versions wont be healed....and I am sure we will see sets appear for dawn that are either poser or d/s, and NOT both...and yes people will complain about that. But as long as we know it will happen, then we can all deal with it.

The worst thing, if you want stuff developed for this figure, would be to complain to the product makers about "why didnt you make this or that version"...if they hear that enough, then they will simply think it is not worth the hassle to deal with Dawn..and that would not be good for anyone.

So give her time...and give product makers time as well.

Maybe half a year or a year from now we can look and see again how much of an impact she has made.

Quote - And yet another DAZ vendor arrives on the scene.

Why does being a DAZ vendor disqualify anyones comments?

Most of us DAZ vendors still make poser products and are poser users.
We keep a close eye on everything involved in this community and what products are available.

Why must you make the environment here inhospitable to DAZ vendors?

We are all part of this community.

HD wont get rid of displacment maps......we just wont be restricted to making things look HD by using displacment maps.

Now displacment maps can be used more properly to how they were designed. To add extra displaced detail to textures.

With HD morphs we no longer need to use displacment to do gross shaping to the mesh, We dont need it to add muscle detail, to soften mesh into a more organic look, to bump out areas for growths like horns. We can do all that with morphs now, like things should be done.

But we can still use displacment to augment texture details that are not so morph specific. So that adds a new level of versitility to both content creators and content shoppers alike.

It is all very cool!

The argument wasn't abotu which app is better. We all know that type of thing never ends well.

The comment I was making was simply addressing the dis-information that is being put out about how daz doesnt care about poser users and it is their evil plan to alienate them. When the opposite is true.

DAZ is simply a company that relies on making and selling content.

To keep the company alive, they have to make sure the content they sell is up to current industry/custome expectations. They do not have the luxury of a software company that can keep the software at a certian level and throw a few simple gimicks in and call it a new version and have a market for sales. That doesnt work with content.

Stuff with V4 level tech has been in the marketplace for what...six or seven years or so?
It is safe to say the marketplace is saturated with products for her. How many lara croft outfits do we need? So to keep the market alive they had to adapt new tech to the figures.  They built what people were asking for. We now have figures that can morph into almost any shape and size and still bend and follow poses like they were made for it. They can have clothes that adapt to all the different shapes almost seamlessly and dont require the content maker to pick and choose which morphs they want to include. Heck, they even made it so that if people wanted to, older generation textures and clothes could work with the newer figures (at least in G1).
So they were giving the market what they asked for..and people did take to it. The new users coming in are finding things alot easier than when we old timers started. I know I remember when we had to apply each texture by hand and didn not have mat files to instantly apply them.

But unfortunatly to develop these advancments that the customers were asking, they needed the software to be able to handle it, so they developed the tech and were even working with SM to try to incorporate it. But they can only do so much, so when that didnt seem to work, they made the dson system, so that poser users could at least have the options of getting some of the advancments they were working on.

We can all agree that poser does need a more advanced figure that can work natively in the program. I know I would love to see it.
Dawn has the potential to be as advanced as being possible with what poser can do, but it can only go so far until the software develops to the point to handle higher tech figures. So that i where the content creation side falls short again. SM is not a content making company, so they dont have as much of a vested interest in content advances. Their customers buy their software, and as long as they keep buying the software, then for them the content must seem like it is still good enough. So not a big issue.

So yeah...there is a gap between the apps. But you cannot really blame one side or the other for it...they each are simply looking after their own interests and future growth. The best we can really hope for are the occasional plug-ins that may bridge some of the differences, but to hope for full comaptibility between the two programs is going to simply impossible.
So it is simply up to the customers to decide what they want from their programs and what they want from their figures and decide for themselves what is more important in the end to make their art.

Quote - Oh please, DAZ CREATED the gap in the first place. DSON was merely an attempt to placate disgruntled Poser users who felt disenfranchised. It worked to some degree.  I see Poser developing in a different direction and what DAZ does or doesn't do won't matter much eventually to the Poserverse. As you say they'll go their way and create the DAZverse or whatever. Frankly, as long as Genesis is stuck in DS I'll never use it.

Eventually, another third party developer will come up with a figure that takes full advantage of Poser's technology, or SM will develop a figure that will. Either way, make mine Poser, baby!

 

 

P.S. Not really directed at you, I just REALLY wanted to use that emoticon!

No one is arguing that DAZ created the gap.

In order for DAZ to grow, they needed to be able to make figures that could do all the kinds of things that people were asking for them to be able to do. Unfortunatly the software did not have the capacity to allow the growth, so they had to push their own software....and this has worked very well for them

DSON was not made to bring poser people back because of some big mistake...it was done simply as a community service. Sales for d/s products have already far surpassed poser sales and are continually growing. The old-school poser market is not very large anymore.
But that said....many of us are still making products for poser, or at least compatible with poser. Because we all still respect that part of the market. All my poser sets have their own custom textures made in poser itself (not some simple conversion), using all the advanced features that poser can handle (or at least the ones I know how to use LOL)..and I do the same for d/s with all the advances that they have.

But as the markets grow further apart, it will become harder and harder to continue to develop for both...and right now d/s is in the lead for both the market sales and for the tech that will allow me to make cooler and cooler characters.