Return support for RSR thumbnails since there is still a considerable amount of commercial content available that does not install PNG thumbnails. I know there are workarounds, but native support is better than having to run other programs.

Divorce Poser from Internet Explorer. I am not going to buy another version of Poser simply because Microsoft makes another inevitable change to their browser that is going to break Poser.

I like what Ockham came up with. I'll want to play around with colors and transparencies, but he's come up with a really nice effect.

I had to do a search for PhilC's script and it seems to be a mesh "explosion" that pulls apart the components of a mesh assembly. Since I was looking for something to blow up spaceships, this might have some application combined with other effects.

http://www.philc.net/exploder.htm

Acrionix's 2D tutorial is another direction. That made me look for Photoshop tutorials and below are a few interesting ones.

http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/special-effects/realistic-explosion.8664.html

http://www.beautifullife.info/web-design/25-best-space-scene-photoshop-tutorials/

http://wegraphics.net/blog/tutorials/create-a-dynamic-particle-explosion-in-photoshop/

http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut008.htm

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1dAedHmsuk

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/?featureid=1740

Along those lines, but more as a bomb blast that has more of a spherical eruption. Those are a specific shape using a transparency to get the effect.

Wikipedia has fights and vandalism. If you look at the top of any page, there are a number of tabs. The Talk tab is for discussions of the content in the entry. View History is a computerized listing of all changes made to the entry. It's sort of a giant Undo list where changes can be reverted back to what they were originally. The person making the change is supposed to document the reason for the change, but most people making changes don't bother doing that. There are options for each change to see what the entry looked like before and after the change.

Looking at the Talk tab under Poser, somebody had to remove an addition that a user posted saying that a girl was a poser. There's a discussion about the validity of adding a link for Apollo Maximus. Somebody added a link for their web comic. A claim was made that 90% of illustrations with human figures are Poser. This section only documents the changes that somebody took the time to document. The discussions here aren't very heated, but Wikipedia also has articles on religion and politics and they sometimes have to be locked down till emotions run their course.

Any time a suggestion is made to give people more responsibilities, everybody ponders the worse that can happen. The worse abuse listed, if thread posters moderated their own threads, was that they would automatically block a set group of posters all the time. I don't see individual blocking of the most abrasive personalities an issue. Anybody getting blocked more than they like will have to eventually consider that maybe their posting style is too confrontational and they should change it. As far as having uniformity/conformity rules for posters to moderate their threads, I kind of accept that hundreds of people are going to do it hundreds of different ways, from zero post regulation to an overly control-freak level of thread moderation. The majority would fall into minimal interference with posts made. Too many rules is often more dangerous than too few.

An example of a site that has made itself nearly obsolete by having too many rules, visit the Open Directory Project.
http://www.dmoz.org/
Most people have never heard of it. Their goals are great: to create a human index of the content on the web, but their rules are so fastidious that they tend to drive out the editors that they sorely need to keep the site current. Considering the primary use of the site is by search engines, that value the human ranking or algorithmic ranking, the obsessive compulsive need to have very complicated rules for titles and descriptions became silly. I was surprised to see that the Poser entry now has an editor, but that editor hasn't done anything with the category in over a year. That means links are at least a year old, no new ones have been added in that time, and the Smith-Micro link for Poser isn't at the top of the page.

I'm well aware that website changes aren't very likely to happen--especially when there are free human solutions. Changes start with a suggestion. The suggestion I offered doesn't have a lot of traction, so it's not going to happen. I've been a moderator on another site's forum and it's one of those usually thankless jobs where the prefernce is to not intervene in discussions.

Interestingly, Wikipedia uses an even more open form of moderation to run an encyclopedia where anybody can alter any input by anybody else. It remains one of my first sources to look up information on a subject even though I'm well aware that there is always the potential for bad information to be in it. Overall, people are trying to make the encyclopedia informative. The people with specific agendas, or an intent to abuse the system by being mischievous, are a thankful minority.  Since there is always the potential for abuse, Wikipedia isn't my only source of information, but it's usually one of the best starting places.

Wikipedia is a good example of how giving users a little more authority isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Quote - I can't say I care much for your option 2 because it's open to abuse.  I know for a damn fact I'd abuse it, even though I believe myself to be a basically fair and reasonable person.  Still, it's an interesting point.  :) 

At your very most abusive, how badly could you abuse the right to moderate your own post? What specific dangers are there and what would be the effect to the tone of the forum? At a general level, it's always a little unnerving to give people power. It's one of the reasons why democracies are scary. If you trust people to be responsible enough to initiate posts and comment on posts, letting them moderate their own posts isn't the most frightening thing in the world.

In real world forums, the person speaking not only has the right to moderate what is discussed, but is expected to be responsible for keeping order. A person pulling together a meeting chooses who should and should not be invited. The person holding the floor is supposed to keep the meeting on topic and cut down on side conversations that are disrupting the flow of the meeting. What I'm suggesting is giving the topic starter the same responsibility to keep the thread on topic that a speaker would have in real life.

The worst abuse I can imagine is people that don't like each other will start locking each other out of their respective threads. On a surface level, that's not friendly. From a forum level, that will cut down on fights. Separating two people that don't like each other isn't always a bad thing. I'd imagine that most of the moderators can name two people here (not looking for any specifics) that clearly don't like each other. When those two people comment on the same post, there's a better than average chance that there will be some heated exchanges. Letting them block each other is common on social networking sites.It helps keep the peace.

Contrary opinions might be stifled. This isn't a political or religious forum. This is a software forum, so there shouldn't be that many topics that are controversial. Allowing topic starters to moderate their own topics is not the same thing as allowing them to control the entire forum. A view being blocked from a thread can be a new thread. The majority of threads here aren't controversial and won't receive much if any moderation from the thread starter.  It takes time to moderate a topic, so the general preference will be to not moderate until it's necessary.

There will be complaints--especially at the beginning, about overly heavy handed moderating by a thread starter. A hundred people will have a hundred different styles. Tell the complainers to start their own posts and then they can moderate what's said in their threads. Let's just accept that thread starters have the most active interest in what is said in their threads. In the long run, the greatest volume of complaints won't be against overly moderated threads, but against those that aren't. Some posters won't bother policing their threads and those are the ones where arguments will have time to fester. Since infighting will not be tolerated in most threads, the ones that do occur will be that much more noticeable.

Under the current system moderation occurs after the riot is in full swing. Give thread starters a means to police their own threads and there will be less riots.

Besides, how often do we open a thread that sounds interesting only to see that it has wandered so far off the original subject that it was a waste of time wading through the side conversations? Sometimes the thread starter tries to get back to the original topic, but others are wrapped in the peripheral trains of thougjht. A forum moderator won't step in as long as the post is civil. The topic starter currently has no means to keep things on track.

The suggestion is to give moderators a means to block troublemakers from posting additional comments on a thread where they are misbehaving. They can post in other threads, but not the one they're blocked out of. People that want to kill a thread can get nastier to spur comments in kind that kill the thread--which seems to have happened here.

All moderators need is a link at the bottom of a post (where it says [quote] [print] [save]) for [block]. Maybe there needs to be a check box to indicate why the block is occurring for bad behavior or off-topic. I don't think a reason is needed. Most people will figure out why they got blocked from a thread.

Otherwise, you're letting the people with the least appropriate behavior dictate what topics are allowed to be discussed. The negative comments came in a lot hotter and heavier after the moderator threatened to close the thread. I'd suspect that's fairly typical.

In my case, I stopped buying Poser content because my interests shifted to other things. That's just my nature. I get hot and heavy into a project, get a certain achievement out of it and move onto other areas to eventually go back to other things I enjoyed later. I never totally lose interest in something, so I'll still grab a DAZ weekly freebie, check Poser stores and look in forums every now and then, but not with the regular frequency I did when I was more absorbed with the software.

I was a member of the Platinum Club and dropped out when they stopped including a $30 voucher that helped offset the membership cost. I'd been thinking of dropping out a couple years before, but usually found enough stuff in the membership package and voucher to make it worth keeping. The voucher went away and so did my membership. Renewing an annual membership was $30 cheaper than starting a fresh subscription again. That was intended as a barrier to dropping the membership.

I found the higher start fresh club fee became a barrier to get back in. The next year, the $30 voucher was back. If I'm paying $30 more to rejoin, what's the point? Come to think of it, why should I want to pay extra for DAZ content by not being a member? That stopped me from even buying sale items because there was always the nagging thought that I could get it cheaper. DAZ saved a little money from me downloading a few models the $30 voucher would let me get and lost a few thousand dollars in purchases since I stopped being a member. I have no hard feelings over any of this. It mostly gave me a reason to start doing something I'd been telling myself to do for a while--which is to use the models I've bought and only buy something new I absolutely need at full price. The savings from sales for content I'll probably never use would never justify the cost of buying them.

I'm not a fan of club membership schemes since the club fees are what allow a club to lower prices. In some ways, it's a bit of a shell game because customers tend to forget that they helped subsidize the lower prices. I haven't joined any of my area's warehouse clubs in the US, but BJs sends me a trial membership a couple times a year that I'd use for a couple months. The last time I went, they recognized me and, even though the company sent me another trial, they wouldn't honor it because I'm only allowed one trial. Whatever. I did some searches on the net to see if I could match their prices for the items I'd buy during the trial and found that Amazon has a Subscribe & Save grocery program that saved me 10% or more on most of them and delivers them to my door on a flexible schedule. So, take that BJs! There's a certain satisfaction when a business pushes you to find an alternative and you find a better one. Besides, the company needs to change their name because they sound like a porn category.

Quote - most businesses do try to make out that their customers are important to them.

Whenever I'm on hold by a company's customer support line for half an hour, constantly hearing the recorded line to please hold because my business is important to them, I really do feel important ;)

Sorry about the double pasted post. Pasting from Word resulted in triple spacing, so I pasted into NotePad, copied that and pasted over the selected text here in the text box and didn't know that it pushed it down instead of replacing it. I found the mistake too late to edit it myself and only a mod can clean it up now.

Attached Link: http://poser.smithmicro.com/

I'm not interested enough in exactly how Poser is being shifted/realigned within Smith-Micro to do any further digging. If anybody has any info or links, it would be interesting to see them.

For anybody that felt terribly clever about finding Poser in the SM store, please read the part of my original post that said, "It's still in the store. Links from the store can eventually bring one to the main page for Poser." I'm posting the link I found here because it's a much more comprehensive link than the my.smithmicro one. This appears to be the link maintained by the Poser development team whereas the my.smithmicro link isn't very informative.

Just because there are press releases and Poser activity doesn't mean the program is healthy at Smith-Micro. If memory serves me right (not that I'm betting on it), didn't E-Frontier buy Poser from Curious Labs a month or so before Poser 7 was released? The company, that owned the 3D program Hexagon, was advertising a new release and was accepting pre-orders just before selling it to DAZ and never released the update on their own. The update was released by DAZ.

Companies operate on many different levels and one hand doesn't always know what the other is doing. I have no inside information on whether or not Poser employees had much lead info before their unit was bought and sold multiple times. Everybody just keeps doing their job since there's often no way of knowing what is going on. Typically, only the top people at a company know what's really being done.

I even had one uncomfortable job where I was stuck in the middle of having to let a division of the company continue working on a project that I knew full well my management was talking about taking away from them and giving to another division to start from scratch. When the coup finally happened, my management didn't even tell me and I got waylaid at a meeting by being the only person in the room who was unaware that the project had finally been moved. Even though I was the project manager for the project being moved, my management was doing things behind my back as well as behind the backs of the division that was happlily proceeding as if the project were theirs to complete. It was something I had some inside information about, but I didn't have all of it. Guess who got all the blame when the new division picking up the project found out that all the behind-the-scenes wrangling came out of their time to do a six-month project such that they only really had two months to do it and failed? I'll give you a hint--it wasn't the upper management bosses that kept everybody in the dark.

Just because things look like "business as usual" doesn't mean they are. Does a Poser presentation at SIGGRAPH mean Smith-Micro is committed to the program?--Probably no more than Hexagon's owners, taking pre-order money for a new release of the software, had any intent of releasing it. Smith-Micro could be in the middle of selling Poser and still be at SIGGRAPH. All that press release means is that somebody representing the company is presenting information at the event. That has no bearing on whatever behind-the-scenes things are going on, if any.

Seeing Smith-Micro remove Poser from their product listings is akin to having your name taken off your company's organizational chart. It may not mean you're fired, but you can pretty well bet you're not on the short list for a promotion. Sometimes a product spun off to a satellite part of a company is a good thing because it often grants the spin-off more autonomy. It's also done to make it easier to get rid of that product. There are times when this kind of change allows a product to shine and there are times when it's the first step to divesting the company of a product they're no lonter interested in. I don't which case is happening here.

I was looking at the top selling products at the MarketPlace here and at RDNA and none of them are for Genesis (although some things, such as hair, is compatible). My cursory look does seem to indicate that Genesis hasn't taken off the way previous DAZ figures did. It didn't take long for Victoria 4 to bury Victoria 3, nor was it a long time for V3 to eclipse V2. It was only a few months before new commercial V3 content became almost nonexistent once V4 was out. Genesis has been out longer than that and still isn't doesn't appear to be widely supported outside of the DAZ store. It has to be hurting DAZ financially. Poser users, that normally have a feeding frenzy for new DAZ figures, weren't biting for Genesis because that figure is not compatible with Poser. Roughly half of the DAZ store is devoted to figure content. Since Poser/DAZ Studio are mostly used for pinup art, a disproportionate amount of purchases goes to figure content. Since Poser users haven't adopted the Genesis figures the way they did the DAZ 4th Generation figures, DAZ is losing money

People getting into posing software are generally going to start with DAZ Studio because it's free. It comes with Genesis and enough content to give a beginning 3D artist a place to start. If those beginning artists like the results they get using the software, they're eventually going to buy some figures, morphs, clothing, hair, and models. Initially, they'll start with the DAZ store, but they'll eventually branch out to other content markets. The more advanced those users get, the more likely they're going to search and find that there is a lot of excellent content outside of, as well as in, DAZ stores. The fact that Genesis isn't selling well here is an indication that those numbers are a lot smaller than the number of Poser users buying content.

As I said in the original post, Genesis is a great idea. If Smith-Micro had come up with it, people here would love it. Buy a clothing item for one figure and it works on every other figure in Genesis. Wardrobe Wizard only works on supported figures and the market primarily drives those figures to adult females. If PhilC doesn't think there's enough money to warrant the effort to add support for a new figure, WW cannot be used for that figure. If somebody wants to do a Planet of the Apes type image with a costumed gorilla, Genesis will accommodate that, but not WW because the time it takes to create the WW plug-in isn't worth the small number of expected sales. Genesis also means one texture fits all and one morph fits all (some may need tweaking, but the Genesis design simplifies the process). If a Genesis user wants to create a race of alien figures, Genesis makes the job a whole lot easier and that race will have access to all the clothing in the Genesis line. Until Poser does something similar, Poser is at a disadvantage. Considering that most Poser users are creating sexy images that have no marketable value outside of low-paying porn sites, that's not an issue for most Poser users. I haven't played around with Genesis figures, so I don't know how well the idea compares to the reality, but it's certainly a forward step in this niche software market. The problem isn't Genesis.

The problem was abandoning figure content for Poser. Figure content is where the money is. Locking out a large proportion of the buying market was a bad marketing decision. It was probably based on overly optimistic expectations that the market would shift to the better technology. It didn't. Instead of letting Genesis gradually shift Poser buyers over to DAZ Studio, DAZ took an aggressive all or nothing approach and seem to be far closer to the "nothing" side of the scale than the "all" side.

A more cautious approach would have been to release V5/M5 as Genesis figures with a promise that Poser versions would be out in a couple months so that they can optimize the meshes for use with Poser. It would be extra work, but the extra money brought in by Poser users should more than cover the conversion costs. After all, this has been a very profitable strategy all the way up to V4/M4. All the clothing, textures, and character morphs bought by Poser users would be compatible with Genesis because the Poser and Genesis meshes would be identical. The Genesis figures would have more flexibility than the Poser figures, but at least Poser users would have new figures that would presumably be a little better than the ones they have now.

When V6/M6 would roll out a few years later, Poser users would have bought a ton of content that works with Genesis as well as Poser. Poser users would have had a few years of seeing DAZ Studio users doing a whole lot more with that content than what can be done with Poser. DAZ Studio users would not have to repurchase all their V5/M5/Genesis content to work with V6/M6. Poser users would have to do that or run a separate program to convert the clothing to V6/M6 instead of having it work natively in DS without any extra work; run a separate program to convert textures; and be stuck not having another program to convert character morphs to the new figures. Poser users would eventually start wondering if they're backing the right software. DAZ should still put out a Poser version of V6/M6 and continue doing so until the additional sales stopped supporting the cost to make it worth the effort to convert the new figures for Poser. In the end, businesses are about making money and decisions that lose a lot of money aren't usually the best. DAZ is a content driven company--not a software company even though they've tried to enter that arena. To survive, DAZ has to produce content that people want to buy. Adopting a business strategy that does the reverse surprisingly isn't as beneficial as it might otherwise seem.

Oddly, DAZ is sticking to their guns and not releasing Poser versions of any of their new figures. That's a bit inexplicable in light of the fact that the overall figure market has not embraced Genesis. Any time DAZ feels like it, they can release a Poser version of V5/M5. It probably won't be as successful as it would have been had it been done earlier. There are clearly a lot of negative emotional attachments to DAZ abandoning Poser figure releases. A free Poser V5 with a big sale of Genesis content that works with the figure will go a long way to healing emotional wounds. There will no doubt be some folks that will be too upset to even download the free figure. All I can say is: "Calm down. DAZ doesn't love you. Smith-Micro doesn't love you. Microsoft doesn't love you. Apple doesn't love you. They all have one thing in common. They love your money." Don't get emotionally involved in software or other products because it only clouds one's judgments in making purchasing decisions.

At some point, DAZ has to publically confess their sins. Blatantly obvious mistakes don't get better with age. Obviously, the longer it takes to make an apology, the harder it gets to admit a mistake, and the harder it is for the public to accept. It's still better than continuing to ignore a problem. DAZ doesn't have to apologize for Genesis. They have to apologize for abandoning Poser users. There were probably good reasons for doing it. Without those reasons made public, there seems to be increasing ill will. DAZ has to acknowledge the website debacle. Not releasing Poser versions of V5/M5 was a bad marketing call. Unleashing an immature/incomplete website to the public was just plain dumb. The first time I encountered it, I
got the weekly freebie and couldn't download it for a week. I don't get too upset over free stuff, but there were a lot of people that paid for content they couldn't get. The forums were completely unavailable for a long time. The site still isn't as functional months later as the one it replaced. Somebody in DAZ management needs to eat some crow over this one. It's still better admitting what went wrong and moving on instead of ignoring the mistake. People make mistakes. It happens. Over time, apologies get accepted and forgiveness sets in. Nothing has happened that is so horrible or irreversible that it cannot be forgiven.

One thing I don't understand is why the DAZ store doesn't have more content for their Poser compatible figures by outside merchants. Looking at the New Releases showed only one pose pack for V4/M4 without anything for Genesis. The disparity between what the DAZ store is selling versus what everybody else is selling seems to point to either a mandate or massive incentives for third parties to create Genesis content. There would probably be a legal nondisclosure statement to prevent outside discussions of such things. Without any edicts from DAZ, one would expect that more third party content creators would be marketing Gen4 figure content in similar proportions to other stores. DAZ Original content may focus on Genesis, but other content creators in the store would normally produce content that they think will sell. If outside creators are being forced to produce content for the DAZ store that won't sell as well as what they could make elsewhere, the natural thing is going to be for them to seek other stores for their wares. I'm not paying enough attention to the market to know if that kind of exodus has happened.

It'll be interesting to see what the future holds for DAZ. The company can stubbornly adhere to their current direction or do something different. Enough time has lapsed that some measure can be taken of their current approach. If the intent was to nudge Poser users to switch to DAZ Studio, the general consensus here indicates that's not happening. The funny thing is that DAZ is competing against DAZ. It's not even a fight with another company's figure. People are continuing to buy Victoria 4 products. Since DAZ doesn't seem to be releasing V4 content, Poser customers are patronizing other stores. A "buy this or shop somewhere else" approach is only benefitting other stores. It's hard to imagine that continuing to ignore Poser users for another year will be any more a winning strategy than it has to date.

When DAZ stopped producing figure content for Poser users, a lot of their Poser customers either spent less time browsing for content in DAZ stores or stopped altogether. More than one poster has said that the money they routinely spent at DAZ is money they're now spending at Renderosity. The online store that people browse in will be the store that they make purchases from. A Poser user browsing the Renderosity MarketPlace for V4 content is more likely to buy a prop they come across there than to take the time to search other stores for other versions of that prop. Some users will search other stores. Some will just make a spur-of-the-moment purchase. The store the person didn't go to didn't make any money.

As I've stated, I have no stake in this matter. I don't use Poser enough right now to be overly involved in marketplace squabbles. I was curious about the things I saw.

I was looking at the top selling products at the MarketPlace here and at RDNA and none of them are for Genesis (although some things, such as hair, is compatible). My cursory look does seem to indicate that Genesis hasn't taken off the way previous DAZ figures did. It didn't take long for Victoria 4 to bury Victoria 3, nor was it a long time for V3 to eclipse V2. It was only a few months before new commercial V3 content became almost nonexistent once V4 was out. Genesis has been out longer than that and still isn't doesn't appear to be widely supported outside of the DAZ store. It has to be hurting DAZ financially. Poser users, that normally have a feeding frenzy for new DAZ figures, weren't biting for Genesis because that figure is not compatible with Poser. Roughly half of the DAZ store is devoted to figure content. Since Poser/DAZ Studio are mostly used for pinup art, a disproportionate amount of purchases goes to figure content. Since Poser users haven't adopted the Genesis figures the way they did the DAZ 4th Generation figures, DAZ is losing money

People getting into posing software are generally going to start with DAZ Studio because it's free. It comes with Genesis and enough content to give a beginning 3D artist a place to start. If those beginning artists like the results they get using the software, they're eventually going to buy some figures, morphs, clothing, hair, and models. Initially, they'll start with the DAZ store, but they'll eventually branch out to other content markets. The more advanced those users get, the more likely they're going to search and find that there is a lot of excellent content outside of, as well as in, DAZ stores. The fact that Genesis isn't selling well here is an indication that those numbers are a lot smaller than the number of Poser users buying content.

As I said in the original post, Genesis is a great idea. If Smith-Micro had come up with it, people here would love it. Buy a clothing item for one figure and it works on every other figure in Genesis. Wardrobe Wizard only works on supported figures and the market primarily drives those figures to adult females. If PhilC doesn't think there's enough money to warrant the effort to add support for a new figure, WW cannot be used for that figure. If somebody wants to do a Planet of the Apes type image with a costumed gorilla, Genesis will accommodate that, but not WW because the time it takes to create the WW plug-in isn't worth the small number of expected sales. Genesis also means one texture fits all and one morph fits all (some may need tweaking, but the Genesis design simplifies the process). If a Genesis user wants to create a race of alien figures, Genesis makes the job a whole lot easier and that race will have access to all the clothing in the Genesis line. Until Poser does something similar, Poser is at a disadvantage. Considering that most Poser users are creating sexy images that have no marketable value outside of low-paying porn sites, that's not an issue for most Poser users. I haven't played around with Genesis figures, so I don't know how well the idea compares to the reality, but it's certainly a forward step in this niche software market. The problem isn't Genesis.

The problem was abandoning figure content for Poser. Figure content is where the money is. Locking out a large proportion of the buying market was a bad marketing decision. It was probably based on overly optimistic expectations that the market would shift to the better technology. It didn't. Instead of letting Genesis gradually shift Poser buyers over to DAZ Studio, DAZ took an aggressive all or nothing approach and seem to be far closer to the "nothing" side of the scale than the "all" side.

A more cautious approach would have been to release V5/M5 as Genesis figures with a promise that Poser versions would be out in a couple months so that they can optimize the meshes for use with Poser. It would be extra work, but the extra money brought in by Poser users should more than cover the conversion costs. After all, this has been a very profitable strategy all the way up to V4/M4. All the clothing, textures, and character morphs bought by Poser users would be compatible with Genesis because the Poser and Genesis meshes would be identical. The Genesis figures would have more flexibility than the Poser figures, but at least Poser users would have new figures that would presumably be a little better than the ones they have now.

When V6/M6 would roll out a few years later, Poser users would have bought a ton of content that works with Genesis as well as Poser. Poser users would have had a few years of seeing DAZ Studio users doing a whole lot more with that content than what can be done with Poser. DAZ Studio users would not have to repurchase all their V5/M5/Genesis content to work with V6/M6. Poser users would have to do that or run a separate program to convert the clothing to V6/M6 instead of having it work natively in DS without any extra work; run a separate program to convert textures; and be stuck not having another program to convert character morphs to the new figures. Poser users would eventually start wondering if they're backing the right software. DAZ should still put out a Poser version of V6/M6 and continue doing so until the additional sales stopped supporting the cost to make it worth the effort to convert the new figures for Poser. In the end, businesses are about making money and decisions that lose a lot of money aren't usually the best. DAZ is a content driven company--not a software company even though they've tried to enter that arena. To survive, DAZ has to produce content that people want to buy. Adopting a business strategy that does the reverse surprisingly isn't as beneficial as it might otherwise seem.

Oddly, DAZ is sticking to their guns and not releasing Poser versions of any of their new figures. That's a bit inexplicable in light of the fact that the overall figure market has not embraced Genesis. Any time DAZ feels like it, they can release a Poser version of V5/M5. It probably won't be as successful as it would have been had it been done earlier. There are clearly a lot of negative emotional attachments to DAZ abandoning Poser figure releases. A free Poser V5 with a big sale of Genesis content that works with the figure will go a long way to healing emotional wounds. There will no doubt be some folks that will be too upset to even download the free figure. All I can say is: "Calm down. DAZ doesn't love you. Smith-Micro doesn't love you. Microsoft doesn't love you. Apple doesn't love you. They all have one thing in common. They love your money." Don't get emotionally involved in software or other products because it only clouds one's judgments in making purchasing decisions.

At some point, DAZ has to publically confess their sins. Blatantly obvious mistakes don't get better with age. Obviously, the longer it takes to make an apology, the harder it gets to admit a mistake, and the harder it is for the public to accept. It's still better than continuing to ignore a problem. DAZ doesn't have to apologize for Genesis. They have to apologize for abandoning Poser users. There were probably good reasons for doing it. Without those reasons made public, there seems to be increasing ill will. DAZ has to acknowledge the website debacle. Not releasing Poser versions of V5/M5 was a bad marketing call. Unleashing an immature/incomplete website to the public was just plain dumb. The first time I encountered it, I

got the weekly freebie and couldn't download it for a week. I don't get too upset over free stuff, but there were a lot of people that paid for content they couldn't get. The forums were completely unavailable for a long time. The site still isn't as functional months later as the one it replaced. Somebody in DAZ management needs to eat some crow over this one. It's still better admitting what went wrong and moving on instead of ignoring the mistake. People make mistakes. It happens. Over time, apologies get accepted and forgiveness sets in. Nothing has happened that is so horrible or irreversible that it cannot be forgiven.

One thing I don't understand is why the DAZ store doesn't have more content for their Poser compatible figures by outside merchants. Looking at the New Releases showed only one pose pack for V4/M4 without anything for Genesis. The disparity between what the DAZ store is selling versus what everybody else is selling seems to point to either a mandate or massive incentives for third parties to create Genesis content. There would probably be a legal nondisclosure statement to prevent outside discussions of such things. Without any edicts from DAZ, one would expect that more third party content creators would be marketing Gen4 figure content in similar proportions to other stores. DAZ Original content may focus on Genesis, but other content creators in the store would normally produce content that they think will sell. If outside creators are being forced to produce content for the DAZ store that won't sell as well as what they could make elsewhere, the natural thing is going to be for them to seek other stores for their wares. I'm not paying enough attention to the market to know if that kind of exodus has happened.

It'll be interesting to see what the future holds for DAZ. The company can stubbornly adhere to their current direction or do something different. Enough time has lapsed that some measure can be taken of their current approach. If the intent was to nudge Poser users to switch to DAZ Studio, the general consensus here indicates that's not happening. The funny thing is that DAZ is competing against DAZ. It's not even a fight with another company's figure. People are continuing to buy Victoria 4 products. Since DAZ doesn't seem to be releasing V4 content, Poser customers are patronizing other stores. A "buy this or shop somewhere else" approach is only benefitting other stores. It's hard to imagine that continuing to ignore Poser users for another year will be any more a winning strategy than it has to date.

When DAZ stopped producing figure content for Poser users, a lot of their Poser customers either spent less time browsing for content in DAZ stores or stopped altogether. More than one poster has said that the money they routinely spent at DAZ is money they're now spending at Renderosity. The online store that people browse in will be the store that they make purchases from. A Poser user browsing the Renderosity MarketPlace for V4 content is more likely to buy a prop they come across there than to take the time to search other stores for other versions of that prop. Some users will search other stores. Some will just make a spur-of-the-moment purchase. The store the person didn't go to didn't make any money.

As I've stated, I have no stake in this matter. I don't use Poser enough right now to be overly involved in marketplace squabbles. I was curious about the things I saw.

Some Spider-Man artists have a more cartoon style than others. This isn't the most cartoony look I've seen, but was the one that was easiest to find.

When I've introduced Poser/DS to young nephews and nieces, they haven't liked it enough to keep using it. They were mostly below teen age and, at that age, the nudity meant nothing to them. They weren't interested in it and quickly put clothing on the figures before playing with the program. Equating nudity with filth and shame is a learned concept, not an innate trait of human beings.

At 15, your brother is three years from being a legal adult. Nudity has a different meaning for him than for a child. Since he can draw, he can already put erotic fantasies to paper if he wants to. Poser/DS will be used in whatever artistic fashion he already is pursuing.

In other words, Poser is just another artistic tool. How it gets used is up to the person using it. The software does not transform the person.

Quote - I cannot give any plausible explanation for why the conversion is specifically and intentionally not present in Poser.

It may not have been intentional. As part of my old job, I sometimes had to write specifications. The most important requirements are easy to put on paper, but sometimes some of the little details get lost because there's usually a rush to write a spec. Some of the missed items get caught in the review process, but ocasionally a few things aren't there when the it goes out on contract.

Or maybe SmithMicro didn't know how much content was still available that would no longer show up correctly in the library. I don't really know.

I started working on a zombie apocalypse image for the Halloween contest here. I decided to do one with zombies assailing an M1 tank with soldiers on top protecting a family holding onto the tank's railing. Nearly everything that I added to the image didn't have PNG thumbnails: DAZ M1 tank, Michael 2 (to use Billy-T's Ranger uniform), Victoria 3 & Millennium Kids (because I have more clothes for them than newer models), Grim & RawArt zombie texture for Grim (still the best zombie I've seen), Viper's M9 pistol, and the Mask-da Mask M4A1 rifle. By the time I start adding character morphs, clothing, and textures, I'm using over a dozen files that no longer show thumbnails in Poser. Outside of the Ranger uniform and guns, all the content is still for sale at DAZ.

Something SmithMicro needs to keep in mind is that Poser users, in general, are older than DAZ Studio users. Somebody new to 3D figure art is going to find it cheaper to dip a toe in the waters with a free program than a $200 program. Since Poser users generally have been around longer than DAZ Studio users, they're more likely to have a lot of older content. It would be nice to have that content show up correctly in the $200 program because it still works perfectly fine in the free one.

Attached Link: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Western-Digital-Elements-External-WDBAAU0010HBK-NESN/product/B002QEBMB4

Not all Black Friday deals are that good. I was surprised to see a 1Tb WD desktop hard drive quickly sold out for $80. That's a higher price than it's been at for the last 5 months through Amazon based on camelcamelcamel price tracking. In fact, Amazon jacked the price up to list price to make it look as if it were a great deal. I know I've seen better prices than that in store sales. I can go to newegg.com and get the drive for the same price. Some of the deals have been great and some not so good.

Always remember to check prices at other stores and use camelcamelcamel to see how prices have historically been at Amazon.