Quote - > Quote - Dear Sir,

Why does content from the DAZ store use installers? Why can't I just unzip a runtime?

The installers: 

• are flaky;

• restrict control over where content is installed;

• may refuse installation if another product is "missing" - why? Why must I have, for example, V4 to install V4 content. I may, quite legitimately, wish to use the content with another figure;

• are too long winded - very annoying if one is reinstalling or rebuilding the runtime structure.

My compliments,

Marc

I have the same issue also, it's a headache with a Mac since they now use intel processors and powerpc is absolete. please correct your files.

As a Mac user myself I am continually plagued by this installer issue. All the installers are being recompiled as we speak and this issue will go away before too long.it is a long process as you can imagine so please bear with us.

Quote - Lzy724,

I agree... however, as William the Bloody has refered to, the OP has been marked "online now" for several hours and we're still waiting for the first response.

 

Sorry... I left computer logged in when I went to bed. :)

I don't keep normal hours... But I do sleep.

Quote - maybe, some product support for Poser characters in the Daz store?

it would be a pleasant surprise to see a Daz original clothes item for James or Sydney.

I am personally in charge of what gets entered into our content production pipeline. If I believe a product can be financially successful, and can make a case for it, then it will get made. The numbers just do not support that a product like that would provide a return of investment needed to warrant the effort. 

I would be happy to have my mind changed, so feel free to show me where I'm wrong.

I am slightly uncomfortable talking about potential products for our store in this venue, however, I do not want to disrespect our host.

Quote - With regard to the inability to use the Genesis figure to its full potential within Poser, and given that DAZ would presumably like Posers users to invest in the Genesis range of products, what outcome would DAZ like to see?

Specifically, what solution is preferred by DAZ and what does DAZ see as the required steps (and by whom) to achieve cross-platform compatibility?

I'd appreciate it if your answer could address specific issues, rather than something along the lines of 'SM needs to work with us and build support for Genesis'  - I'm looking for something more tangible.

Is there still some technology that either party needs to build into their code base? Is the file format an issue? Are there legal issues? That kind of thing.

We would like to expand the cross-platform support of Genesis and thereby support of our company. This will be accomplished through support of our file formats and infrastructure like Catmull-Clark subdivision that we cannot implement ourselves in other programs. This is why the notion of a good part of this being in SMs court came about. Just to let you know, everyone at SM has been a delight to work with and we are all moving ahead as best we can within the best interests of all involved.

The end result? Hopefully a fully integrated and native genesis inside Poser. Time will tell.

Quote - With regard to the inability to use the Genesis figure to its full potential within Poser, and given that DAZ would presumably like Posers users to invest in the Genesis range of products, what outcome would DAZ like to see?

Specifically, what solution is preferred by DAZ and what does DAZ see as the required steps (and by whom) to achieve cross-platform compatibility?

I'd appreciate it if your answer could address specific issues, rather than something along the lines of 'SM needs to work with us and build support for Genesis'  - I'm looking for something more tangible.

Is there still some technology that either party needs to build into their code base? Is the file format an issue? Are there legal issues? That kind of thing.

We would like to expand the cross-platform support of Genesis and thereby support of our company. This will be accomplished through support of our file formats and infrastructure like Catmull-Clark subdivision that we cannot implement ourselves in other programs. This is why the notion of a good part of this being in SMs court came about. Just to let you know, everyone at SM has been a delight to work with and we are all moving ahead as best we can within the best interests of all involved.

The end result? Hopefully a fully integrated and native genesis inside Poser. Time will tell.

Quote - I agree with all those who wish to keep it civil. And open.

Randal, you have - in Genesis - a relatively low-res mesh. Works a treat in DS4 but not all that optimally in Poser. Are you anticipating a higher-res mesh that will be generated during export from DS4? And would that high-res mesh support either the V4 morph set or the new V5 morph set?

The answer is not a higher Rez mesh, it's in SubD that the magic of Genesis happens. Even if we could bake the SubD in and get the figure into Poser with more detail it might actually bend and look worse.

There is a reason why genesis bends better than previous versions... It's because the bends are made then SubD is applied which is the idea behind Catmull-Clark.

It may be that we could create a figure that would be a "Posette 2" that was more detailed and poser weight mapped. But odds are good that it wouldn't do much more than V4... She was and is pretty great. We will pursue genesis functionality in Poser until we succeed or it becomes obvious that it will never succeed. If its the latter, I can assure you that we would dedicate resources toward an alternate solution... Like a new Poser-native product line.

Quote - I'd say a couple of things:

1.  Oh, you noticed we were missing?  Way too little, way too late.

2.  You might want to wave the white flag without coming in here and labeling people "well meaning" liars.

 

I wouldn't say you are "missing" we still enjoy a very good level of business and it can't be all from people who only use DS.

I didn't call anyone a liar. But honestly thinking you know an answer does not actually mean you know the factual answer. There are a few DAZ friendly faces here that try their best to help out.  But they do not have all the inside knowledge and answers that a true employee like myself will have. That's all I meant.

Quote - Randal. I know your meaning well but... Daz needs to look into the problems with the Staff. eg, the banning policy,

 

I was banned from your forums, on the very first offence, why? I blocked a moderators Email address. now lets be clear. I did not block his DAZ address. I blocked his PERSONAL address. I was told "Daz must be able to contace me by any means" and I was banned.

pardon? the fact this mod used his PERSONAL address to contact me for offical Daz business is not a security risk? how am I supposed to know he's a member of the daz staff? and thats not even counting the feelings of "who the hell do they think they are to tell me what I can or cannot do with my Email program?"

at that point Daz lost my trust and my custom.

roll n 2 years, and I watch a group being banned on a forum. no biggy. but when I see someone banned again for saying hello to someone (and the person that said hello got an email a few minuted later from a daz staff member asking if that was them!) what little trust I had dipped even further.

 

I know the Cult of daz will now attack me and tell me what I'm saying did'nt happen (sorry guys, it did and frankly shut up and rant elsewhere), but you Rand wanted honesty did'nt you?

I obviously cannot speak to this as I do not have firsthand knowledge of the situation. I am greatly interested, however, and I would appreciate a longer and more detailed explanation of your situation in email. Please contact me if you wish at randy@daz3d.com

I will say that our forums are ultimately a tool that should, in theory, improve our sales. We operate it in the hope that it will increase customer good will, provide a place of community and learning and a place to share... All with the intent of helping the company be more successful.

If it ceases to be those things, and becomes a negative to the company, there is no point in operating it. With that realization, we set about to decrease the negatives. As a part of that we hired new mods and CVs and right around the release of Poser, things started to get confrontational and the censorship started. Wrangling a messy beast like a forum is a terribly tricky process and even the best intentions can go awry. 

We just want it to be a nice place to go. We really don't mind dissent as long as its civilized and rational. We have banned Poser zealots AND DS zealots alike. Could we be better at it... Absolutely. This last couple of weeks we have had quite a few meetings about the forum situation and we have some ideas that may help it all work better.

One of the things on the table is a new social space that may come as a part of the new web store.

We are working with our mods to help them be more consistent and we hope to publish a clearer set of forum decorum guidelines so nobody will have to guess what is acceptable.

Quote - Randall,

Once the CR2 Exporter is finished - Are there plans to provide poser format versions of the clothing, MAT files, Pose files and expressions of Genesis/V5 only products? Or do we have to go through an exporter for each of them?

 

I cannot answer this with any certainty, we are trying to get basic functionality in order first, then we will work on things like this.  What we would ultimately love is DAZ file format support inside of Poser, but that may or may not ever happen.  Until then it's going to be something of a workaround jury-rig kind of thing.

We are very committed to providing some measure of worthwhile functionality, but at this time, I can't tell you that it will ever be equal to the quality and ease of use you would have natively in DS4... keep your fingers crossed!

Quote - Just one little question ...

Poser community is enormous, the last version of poser is able to very realistic renders ( when people want work on it ), and able to use weightmap, more realistic bending ...

So why Genesis character is only for daz user, knowing that ? Creating the same figure for the two world is "plus" for you, no ?

 

(Sorry for my english, french ;) )

We chose to diverge from the Poser methodology because it did not allow us to evolve our product in the ways we dreamed about. Please realize that Genesis didn't happen overnight, it was in development for two years. At the time, there was no indication that Poser would ever utilize weightmaping or other key parts of the technology that we knew we would want. We wanted toincorperate industry standards... A single skin mesh, weightmaping, morph projection and more.  Our only solution was to force the evolution of figure development by playing a heavy hand. It wasn't until recently that we even knew what SM had in mind for this latest version of Poser and we didnt get our hands on a beta copy for review until a lot later than you would expect.

Since then, the lines of communication and cooperation between DAZ 3D and SM have greatly improved and we are all working on our compatibility issues together. This does guarantee a solution to the genesis issue, but please know that we are all working toward it as best we can.

Its not just poser either. We had to work hard to get genesis working in our own Carrara, which it will be in 8.5 and there are initiatives to get it into Maya and other 3D platforms that will allow us to cater to a wider market.

in the end, we are confident and hopeful that the development of the Genesis platform will raise the standards of this segment of the industry for everyone. 

Quote - It would be nice if you would split toe DS4 download into two parts. Some of us have slow or unreliable connections.

This will become irrelevant under the new DL and install system... but before that gets implemented, you may still see a separate content installer... Even if its short-lived.  The problem is that we have been upgrading our default content as fast as we have be updating DS4 so the Full DL was needed to stay current.

Like I said, though, you won't have to worry abut this once the improvements we are working on have been implemented

Quote - I use Poser from version 2 and Daz Studio from the beginning.And now use last pro version of both. I also bouth may content stuff from the beginning of Daz  after Zygote 

I would use this opportunity to write why i appreciate more and more DazStudio pro for all its functions and bridge to others softs (like Photoshop and Poser) but still prefer to use Poser

I thinks that the content managment of DAZStudio is now better and better but still too complexe and each time i use DAz installers on it i am not sure where it instal the product and there are still some stuff i  never find it in my content libraries beside this using Poser is very simple

Our content management is actually quite powerful and flexible... I really love it and I have mine all tricked out and customized i dont know what i ever did without it. It can even work just like it has always worked because it can still use the runtime poser paradigm. We realize that the main problem is that we have not provided adequate education resources to help everyone adapt and understand. You will see this improved with the new DL and install process that is under development.

It is also one of the main directives of the company to finish out our documentation. You can view our online docs as we fill them in at http://docs.daz3d.com

If you would like personal assistance in settining it up and understanding how it works, I would be happy to personally work with you to figure it out.

Quote - Dear Sir,

Why does content from the DAZ store use installers? Why can't I just unzip a runtime?

The installers:

• are flaky;

• restrict control over where content is installed;

• may refuse installation if another product is "missing" - why? Why must I have, for example, V4 to install V4 content. I may, quite legitimately, wish to use the content with another figure;

• are too long winded - very annoying if one is reinstalling or rebuilding the runtime structure.

My compliments,

Marc

One of our main projects right now is to revamp the download and install experience. We realize it's a pain and we are fixing it as a high-priority

yes they did cost extra... you could only get them in the Morphs ++ pack

They were not finished at the hard release date we had set for V5 launch... so we decided to go ahead and release V5 anyway and do an update shortly therafter.

There will be an M5, we are working on him now. And he will have Gens.

THe V5 Gens are the most detailed we have ever done.  Even if they arent "functional"

They were done as tastefully as we could manage.