I know I'll get a hundred different answers to this depending on who's answering, but I'm curious to know. A short explanation. I've been working on a pack for sale called 'Room Creator' and it's main advantage is flexibility and configuration. The user will be able to set up a room, move doors and windows around and position them wherever they want, add on areas and change the space to suit themselves. Every figure in it is about as flexible as you can get. It'll be a very cheap base pack with several (also cheap) expansion packs to enhance the functionality. What I want to know is this. How high do you rate flexibility? Would you have a problem with a figure that has 40 different walls and 30 materials, or would having to set all that up put you off? Bearing in mind that the large number of walls and materials gives you a LOT more choice than if it only had, say, 10 walls and materials. Would you prefer the ability to morph doors and windows, switch body parts on or off, and generally set things up the way you want them, even if it means doing the configuration? Or would you rather have an 'instant' house with everything nailed in place and ready to render? I know it's difficult to answer these questions without knowing how much work is involved, but I'm pretty sure that if you can handle vicki 3, you'd have no problems with this. I've built and rebuilt everything in the pack over and over, making improvements every time, and I don't think it could be any easier, considering the versatility you get. So far, I don't know of anything else available for poser that is this configurable. One last thing. Single large pack? Or base and expansions? Base would be under $20. Expansions around $10. Those would probably have 5 - 10 main figures in them, all multi-part figures. I think that making it one pack would probably be too expensive AND too much stuff at once. We're talking up to 40 posable figures here. So what I'm really asking is, is configuring things worth it, if it gets you total flexibilty? Interested to hear some thoughts. mac

Would you prefer the ability to morph doors and windows, switch body parts on or off, and generally set things up the way you want them, even if it means doing the configuration? Or would you rather have an 'instant' house with everything nailed in place and ready to render? ............ Both. Provide one fully assembled sample unit, so we can get an idea of how it can look, and also the raw kit pieces.

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Ockham, Perhaps I didn't explain very well. The room is one figure and is assembled by adding the various other figures, doors/windows, etc, and positioning them wherever you want. It's not a raw kit that you have to build brick by brick. I can set them everything up to open in default positions of my choice, but that's not much help. It depends where you would want to put things. Or if you want to switch on certain body parts and hide others, or morph things, I can't decide that for you. I understand what you mean though. Maybe what I can do is decide on a rough look and position each figure accordingly. Although even that causes problems, because DAZ like everything to be zeroed in anything they sell. mac

For me flexibility. I can figure it out and hack n learn if the results are going to be worth it for me. RuntimeDNA has a wall construction set room product that has a prebuilt room and u can turn off or add to or do your own thing, I like this approach. I don't like to have prop XYZ be noticed if I can flexibly change it around to be my own creation, that is a big plus for me ("oh you used XYZ product in that render huh?", ick!). That's me. The biggy for me is when there are lots of props and all the files are all over and I have to go and move the folders/files change it up. PLEASE make it easy on the harddrive directory and as flexible as possible. my 2 cents. Sounds interesting, I'll be looking forward to seeing the results when finished.

Pssst also regular walls, doors and windows are fine, we need real world stuff BUT I got all this Daz Sci-Fi stuff and would love more Sci-Fi wall and room settings stuff. Maybe an addon pack dunno what your doing so ....just a thought.

'PLEASE make it easy on the harddrive directory and as flexible as possible' 1 Geometry folder, 1 character library, 1 prop library, 1 MAT library (in Cameras). (no '!' in the folder names - LOL). Plus a huge help file that covers everything imaginable. And flexible is the pack's middle name. mac

kool. I thank you, and my hard drive will too :)

flexibility PLUS low poly counts. i think folks can get their details in the textures...and, those should not be grindingly large either...i.e...4000x4000 brick/stone maps.

Great! I'm able to give good answers here. Poppi, I've been battling with poly counts for the last year and I won. I'm now able to get the right balance between low file size and still keeping everything looking good. To give you an idea, my patio doors figure has 35 body parts, with 30 or 40 morphs, an obj file of 700kb and a cr2 of 800kb. Throw 10 figures in a scene and you might start getting near the size of a base vicki. Textures. They'll be basic, but look good, and certainly not huge in size. Jpegs are the biggest single factor in huge downloads. mac

To give you an idea, my patio doors figure has 35 body parts, with 30 or 40 morphs, an obj file of 700kb and a cr2 of 800kb. Throw 10 figures in a scene and you might start getting near the size of a base vicki. i am so impressed. low poly count is a secret that few share in this community. so, how'd ya do it? i can't get the right poly count to save my life...even using 3ds format. hats off. but, you are good at what you do. i downloaded a couple of your hats from 3dcommune, long ago, and they impressed me.

'i downloaded a couple of your hats from 3dcommune, long ago' Well, poppi, thanks for the nice words, but that WAS long ago, at least in modelling terms. What I've learnt in the past year makes me embarrassed to think of some of the things I posted before. But the only way to learn is to do it. I did freebies for 2 years before attempting to sell anything, and for the last year haven't posted anything at all. Mainly because I'm trying to get it right first. So, if you add a year or 2 of experiments to the hats, you'll get an idea of what the difference could be. I've found that low poly counts can be achieved by just taking the trouble to try each piece out and see how it works. In 3d max anyway, if you're making a door or other square object, it doesn't need 10 or 20 segments per side, (unless you want to bend it in the middle!), so you can use 1 seg per side, cut down the size, and, as long as it works with the morphs, it'll be fine. I make things, add the morphs, try a texture and if it works, fine. A high poly count usually comes with curved objects, but you can get round that too by trying each piece to find the right balance. Mind you, I only make inanimate objects. I wouldn't know where to start with the human body. I have huge respect for people who can make characters. But maybe one day... Anyway, for now, my philosophy is this. There are so many people like Jim Burton, Nerd, etc, who do make great characters, but where are you going to put them? In a temple? Well, we've all seen what that can lead to. LOL. So I'm sticking to creating places they can live in. mac

i made a little cottage in rhino....and it had a ton of polygons...it wasn't very detailed or anything...i think part of it was too many window panes, and offsetting all the surfaces, etc. oh, well, i will keep trying. i do like organics....can never make a vicki...but, this month's rhino challenge is an alien pet....which i need to bring home from work and work on. :*)

No mac, I agree with ockham. Flexibility is all very well, but if I have a Poser scene idea, I don't want to spend hours adding and moving about every separate element of the room, never mind the stuff I'll add to make it look 'lived in' - and then figures of course. So definitely both - in other words, all the nice flexibility with ready-to-drop-in-place-parts, but also several example pz3 files with everything dropped into place in a couple of different ways. Just like Travelers 'Platez' set at RDNA. You get all the stuff individually but also 6 (or more, I forget) ready made pz3's (that of course can be pulled apart as much as one likes) :] Fish

I can't make pz3 files because DAZ doesn't distribute anything in pz3 format. So that's out. What I've already done is make MATs that position figures around the room, so you can build a set in a couple of minutes. One advantage is that all the main elements are cr2 figures, not props, so you can use MATs. I have MATs that raise the blinds, open the windows, etc. Thing is, rooms usually have to be 'built' in one way or another, usually by adding the figures or props. It's like dressing a character. You just add the clothes you want. But once that's done, the user can save as many pz3s as he likes, with the variations. mac