Has any body here been following the Curious Labs Q&A? If so, is it just me or are they not realy saying any thing. The only thing I have been able to get from this is the fact that we will have to buy Poser 6 to get waht we thought we bought in Poser 5. I asked if they would atleast give existing Poser5 users a VERY LOW price upgrade. They declinde answering that one. I would like to know others opinion on this.

I couldnt agree more. It looks more like a poor attempt to spin doctor the situation and get focused on P6.

I came, I rendered, I'm still broke.

I thought they were going to come here and show us how dedicated and passionate they are about Poser, and they did just the opposite. I sometimes think that I care more about Poser than they do...

It didn't help with most people asking the same question over and over again, about "Artist." It's P4, how many ways can that be answered. Ultrop- I didn't see a post there by you. Are they selecting the questions to answer? Might explain the same questions being posted. All I read, seems CL is trying to push P6 before fixing P5. Makes me wonder if I should have waited for P6. Mind you I haven't had much trouble with P5, but fixing P5 before going on to a new version would seem a better buisness choice.

Given their past rhetoric, I doubt I'd invest in P6. They've lost a LOT of confidence and the only way to get some reason of that back is to deliver first the P5 that was expected by the community. Further talk of P6 only diminishes the confidence that they'll deliver.

Read Question 18 and 19... typical CEO/Corprate Bullsh*t...his answer makes no sense at all, plus it sounds so cold and blunt. I read the questions everyday... but I like to think of it as "The Joke of The Day". The question I submitted was not posted... I can only guess what the answer would have been. Marc Keohane does not impress me at all... and "I like Poser5" ;)

beryld: That's why they are up to service pack 3. They are fixing problems. Although I haven't had problems either. I didn't read them as PUSHING Poser 6 at all. They mention a few things that need to wait until Poser 6 and now it's pushing? Come on guys... I must agree on the vagueness on some answers though.

Yes they are selecting the question they answer. I new they would not answer my question, but I wanted to try any way just incase. They have waisted so much of my time. I have finaly managed to generate 30 seconds of reasonably complex animation. The only way though was to render it in 20 frame batches, witch meant for almost 2 weeks I got up every 2 hour during the night and rebooted, reloaded poser, reloaded file, a 15 minute project. Start render, repeat 2 hours later. I am capable of coming up with some amazing animations. I just cannot get it renderd in any worth while maner and time frame, nevermind the random things that goes wrong during the setup. Took 3 months to setup 30 seconds of animation just because of inexplicible errors. I am some one that has never come accros anything on this planet that I could not figure out and even make do things it was never intended to do. Poser is the first in 40 years. Something must be done about these people

vague for sure, but after P5, I don't think I'd commit to anything :) No matter what happens...hopefully P5 is fixed totally...but I'm not sure it really matters all that much...it does what it does... I won't be buying P6 unless its just too awesome to pass by...and it works as advertised....but I'll probably wait even then until all the patches are out...no way will I get a prebuy on this...unless its free.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

I am hinging my bets on DAZ studio now. I am prepared to pay quite a bit for it, if DAZ is serious and can make it work.

Attached Link: http://www.3-axis.com/demos.html

Ultrop: Check out http://www.3-axis.com/demos.html and click on the "The Amazing Doctor Melon" animation at the top right. Let it load, it's about 14 meg. I don't know if this helps at all but I was getting renders of 500+ frames in one rendering session with no errors or crashes at 752x480. That is with dynamically animated hair and cloth simulation. I was also doing raytraced refraction. I don't know why I had no problem and others are.

As far as I have been able to determine, Poser works as long as you do precisley so and so and only this never that and in this sequence not that, never make mistakes and for heavens sake don't save and reload the file. For the cloth room for instance the program messes the file up so badly that eventually you can not do any thing. If you delete the cloth, reload the prop and then set all the setings to what you wanted and learned during you experimentation and all the rest of the animation is done, it works fine. Rather sad if you ask me.

I didn't have these problems at all. I had files with tons of keyframes and cloth simulated. Took it to another machine as well as loading on the original and it all worked great. I'm sorry to hear of these problems you are having. I seam to be able to use it freely.

LawnDartLawnDart, I love it when people say "it worked for me, so you must have a problem." I'm a software developer so I can guarantee you that they wouldn't have patched it three times if it didn't have any bugs (and now they're talking about a 4th patch). No one patches their software just for the fun of it. Trust me, it has bugs and they can't just pass it off as user error. Anyway, in a few months it won't even matter. -Mark

mark...why won't it matter ???

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

mark...why won't it matter ??? Just me guessing that alot of people will migrate to Daz|Studio and other apps. And it's difficult for me to believe that a company can survive when it doesn't listen to it's customers. Plus I guess that most people won't be willing to upgrade to Poser 6, so what is their revenue stream? -- Their Poser Artist product? I don't know the future anymore than anyone else here, but that's what I would bet on. -Mark

There is an inherent danger in expecting DAZ|studio to be the cure-all, perfect, etc. I suspect that the prog will be good, functional and well-supported, but also suspect that progress and plugins will be slow. It looks to me to be planned as modular -- get the rendering engine, then buy the animation, then the posing room, then the lighting kit, etc. The reason I say all this is that something in Marc's replies has been very revealing. When asked about new models and features, he's been very specific that they are not going to focus on any meshes or functions, that they want to put out a complete, coherent prog which delivers what P5 promised. And I'm not going to write off the possibility that they might do it. But it does say something about their economic chances of survival. Right now, software development companies are having a tough go at it. Investment is down (CL's own parent company, egiSYS is broke), companies like Corel are tanking (Adobe and Macromedia are probably the only ones outside Microfart with a secure base) and the bigger you are, the harder you fall. And yet DAZ is growing, specifically because of the affordable (sort-of, or at least accessible) nature of their offering. In other words, because of their modularity. From the marketing approach alone, you can see the advantage. Do you want to pay $40 to $100 per plugin, get only what you need, and gradually build a studio, or shell out $400 tomorrow? Now, I'd rather not see CL and Poser go under. But I'd say the determination to do one big lump package and not reassess their market approach says lots about their future. Take care; Chas

I agree with what you're saying and I don't want to see them go out of business. I want to see them listen to their customers and have a little bit of passion about their product. He came in here like he's selling toasters. If they don't care about Poser then why should I? -Mark

Well, I submitted one simple question that's important to me if no one else: Will it ever be possible to import a P5 .pz3 or .pzz into Vue d'Esprit? No answer. I've managed to figure out how to deal with the few idiosyncrasies I've run into with Poser 5. Forget Poser 6 until I see what DAZ Studio can do.

First, if your one of the lucky ones who haven't had problems with P5, congradulations, and remember that a LOT fo us aren't so lucky. Every problem with P5 has been documented here by many different users under many different systems. These problems are real. It's been over a year since P5's release, and major problems still remain. Second, those who have followed P5 from the get-go know that CL admitted to knowingly releaseing a product they knew was very buggy and doing it because they had cash problems. Kupa, the former president of CL admitted that here. Kupa also promised us here that CL would provide free content. CL has gone a long way on fixing these problems, but a number of them remain. We've also never recieved the new content. Marc has said there will be no new content, and gives very little detail on what will be in SR4. Fixing collision detection? Hair room? Neither is mentioned. Third, CL's parent company has declared bankrupcy. Marc says that CL is solvent, but it's just an asset of the parent company. EGISYS doesn't even have it's own website anymore. Creditors and judges will decide what happens now to CL. My understanding is that CL has a very small staff in the U.S. No programmers that I know of. If EGISYS was doing the programming in Germany, and they're going bankrupt, who's going to do the coding on SR4 and P6? Fourth, CL is repackaging P4 as Poser Artist. This is nothing but a rename to get new customers. THere is nothing in this new offering that isn't in P4. It's just a ploy to increase sales. I'm sure that there will be poor newbies out there who buy Poser Artist thinking it's an upgrade or a different product from P4. Since CL doesn't do refunds, they won't get their money back. This goes in line with item 3, no programmers or very short staffed. Fifth, P6 is mentioned in over half of the threads. This is putting the package in front of us, to get us thinking of the next release rather than the crap in this one. This is the old bait-and-switch technique. See the pretty ball, don't look at the piece of dung. Sixth, a number of us asked questions that were not addressed. Questions that were addressed tended to be answered with "too complicated to code", "maybe in P6", and "our partner is doing that". I was very polite, asking that if CL's president made a statement that new content would be provided, why isn't CL going to follow through it's commitment. Of course, CL didn't answer any questions yesterday. Finally, CL is in trouble. Financially and it's reputation had declined tremendously since P5 was released. They had to do something. Marc's coming here was an attempt. If he'd been open and honest, and said he would meet the commitments his company has made, he'd of done a lot better than his pick and choose on the questions, and lightweight answers. I felt like I was watching a presidential news conference. Nothing but spin and mirrors. My apologies to all who get tired of those who've had it with CL's business practices. I was good for the longest time. However, when the CEO of CL comes here and tries to spin, it opens all the wounds again.

Ultrop, It is nice to see that I am not the only person who can only render 20 some frames at a time! Makes me feel a little better. :) Mabye we should compare systems and software? One of the first things I want to try with DAZ|Studio is to see if it can render an animation for more than 20 frames. DAZ has also mentioned that Studio will support Python and also have a DTK for plugins. Hopefully they will provide the DTK spec for free, and the programmers in the communities can develop plugins for Studio.

After having Poser 5 on my New PC for 2 weeks. I took it off I'll stick with Poser 4-Pro. And yes I will buy Daz studio stuff I need. I will not buy Poser 6 - Why should I, People still can't get 5 to work. Pre-buying Poser 5 was a mistake for me, and a damn good lesson, don't believe all the hype a company puts out. They sold us an Beta product. No-no I will not fall for that anymore. Maybe I ought to have a sale on all my bad buys in softwear. Lets see.....

Love is Grandchildren.

pdxjims stated: "Every problem with P5 has been documented here by many different users under many different systems. These problems are real. It's been over a year since P5's release, and major problems still remain." That is why I just stopped trying to solve the problem P5 not being able to render more than 20 frames at a time. I am going to be building a new system this year. I plan to get it set up with the OS (Win2K) and necessary drivers and software [but not Anti-virus software, since it has been blamed for some of of P5s problems]. Then I am going to install P5 and see if it can render the animation.

Marc Keohane did state that Reiss Studios is working on a Carrara plugin. This is a good thing, but I hope that Reiss Studio does not end up dropping it in favor of plugins for C4D and Lightwave. Kupa stated that a Carrara plugin would be developed after the C4D and Truespace plugin when the P4 Pro Pack was released. The Carrara plugin was never developed.

With all the problems cl, and it's parent company are having... I wonder if cl will get around to making a sr4, or poser 6. When daz studio comes out, I wonder if it will work with all the poser figures, etc up to poser 5. From my stand point here, it looks like poser is just not going to be around much longer, and it would be nice to have something I can use my poser stuff with that works. Also, something that has the ability to import, and export stuff from the likes of, bryce, lightwave, and 3d studio max which I all happen to own, and took a major bite out of my savings account.

I guess I should have read the newest questions and answers before posting in this thread. From the Q & A page: ========================================================== Q 35 by Jackson on August 19, 2003 8:48 "The key quality areas Curious Labs are focusing on include bug fixing, usage enhancements, memory and speed." This is very good to hear! Are any of the core problems in Poser going to be fixed with SR4? I'm talking about stuff that's been plaguing it since version 4: freezing when it can't find a texture, memeory leaks, not releasing textures no longer used, random crashes, etc. Many of these have gotten worse in Poser 5. None got any better. And are there any plans to bring Poser closer in line with the Windows API standars? Thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------- A by Curious Labs (Curious_Labs) on August 22, 2003 05:52 We've a lot of areas we want to improve, and it's just a questions of priorities at the moment. I can say we do plan to address the traditional issues (such as the ones you mention), and not just the Poser 5 issues. This is important. We'll move on to do a Service Release 4, but most of these issues will need to be address is Poser 6. We're going to focus Poser 6 on general fixing, enhancements, and improvements (eg speed). As for the Windows API, I'm aware that some customers would like to see this. Again it's a question of priorities, and I need more data to decide what to do here. We'll be doing some surveys shortly we're we'll collect the data to make a decision on this. Q 36 by rreynolds on August 19, 2003 9:03 What new features or improvements are being planned for Poser 6? ------------------------------------------------------------ A by Curious Labs (Curious_Labs) on August 22, 2003 05:59 Poser 6 will focus on improving the technology that's already there - e.g. bug fixing, enhancements, speed, memory. We don't have a specific list of what we'll do yet. We're in the planning stage, and we'll also be doing some surveys. =========================================================== So, if I am understanding the two questions and answers correctly, I am going to have to upgrade to Poser 6 in order to fix the problems in Poser 5??? Mabye I am totally clueless, but I thought Service Packs and patches were released to fix problems in software. I hope DAZ does well with DAZ|Studio, because I do not want to have to pay CL to fix the bugs in Poser 5.

I wonder... When Daz Studio comes out, looks good, has promise, a great product... someone can see the potential $$$$$... has cash to spend, and makes Daz an offer it can not refuse... takes over ... wants more profits, lays off people, stops devlopment, rip the heart and soul out it, and leaves the consumer with unfullfilled promises and tons of what if's and whys...Naw... it could never happen... could it ???? I hate the word Corporate!

Me too Niles :) But I don't think it will happen with DAZ :)

It can happen anytime in any field or business... I used Netscape Navigator till AOL got it, had Warner cable ...till AOL/TIME/WARNER... but with all things there will be alternatives, sometimes much Better ones! Niles ;)

It's a shame my post/question wasn't posted, asking the guy why his company is wasting time developing/supporting translation plugins to high-end software when real high-end software users don't use Poser, in fact, most hate Poser (just an observation). You'd think these guys would be focusing on where the problems are, not blindly trying to make a buck anywhere they can.

Mark said: I love it when people say "it worked for me, so you must have a problem." I'm a software developer so I can guarantee you that they wouldn't have patched it three times if it didn't have any bugs (and now they're talking about a 4th patch). No one patches their software just for the fun of it. Trust me, it has bugs and they can't just pass it off as user error. markdc: I wasn't saying that I don't believe that others are having problems. Or that it's your problem. Or even insinuated that the program has no bugs. That would be a little unrealistic don't you think? Show me a program that is tauted as having no bugs and I'll show you a lying salesman. LOL... Please don't put words in my mouth. I have enough problems with my own. ;) Actually I know quite a bit about bugs myself. I was doing QA for about 10 years before starting my own business. I don't seem to know where they are trying to pass it off as user error either. I certainly am not. All the best, Lawny

CIM LW: His company isn't wasting time developing translation plugins. Another company is doing it. I use the Plugin for ProPack with Lightwave all the time. I can't wait for the P5 LightWave plugin. Hair and cloth will be a welcome addition. I "think" I'm real. poking arm to make sure :) The plugin has proven to be quite lucrative in my studio. I've used it for all kinds of work.

Niles, the scenario you outlined is not what happened to Poser. The group that because CL were the survivors of the MC scam. Poser was lucky to survive that. They shell was finally picked up and sort of capitalized by EGISYS. But it looks like they had to sell too much of their soul to do it. The present situation indicates that EGISYS did not have the financial resources necessary to get CL up to the speed needed to pull this off. The work needed probably required X # of man hours. Cut back on people and it takes longer. Tell an undermanned staff to finish when they lack the resources necessary to do it and you get what happened. Larry and Steve cared about the program. They may have exercised more than a little wishful thinking, but their goals were our goals. They were replaced by a Suit.

It's a sore spot for some of us who are having problems with P5. A few of those who have P5 working without real issue have said that because their systems work okay, obviously any problems are pebkac ones. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.) Admittedly, there have been some problems that turned out to be user error, but a lot of problems have been documented over and over among a wide range of users, yet they've been dismissed as imaginary problems. There's even a club for those of us who are "supposedly" having P5 problems - the EVM Club. (Extremely Vocal Minority - I'm the official secretary of the EVM.) Sometimes we EVMs can get a bit defensive because a few P5 users have really been "enthusiastic" in defending P5. Cheers!

Ah, I understand now. I certainly didn't mean to open up any old wounds (or already festering ones).

LawnDartLawnDart , I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. But we had all kinds of people running around with this "worked for me" attitude when P5 was released. It was buggy as hell and CL has already admitted they knowingly released a defective product. SR3 made alot of improvements, but there are still bugs (hence the need for SR4). And your statement "I seem to be able to use it freely" sounds like you're saying that he must be doing something wrong. Maybe that's not how you meant it, but that's how it came off. -Mark

Nope... I didn't mean it that way. Actually, I feel the frustration for the ones that it isn't working for. I've had bouts with pieces of software that were crashing when I needed to reach a deadline. It gets so frustrating sometimes that you don't know whether to cry or throw your mouse through the screen. I mean that literally. It's not very fun troubleshooting a scene trying to figure out what is making it go belly up while the time is ticking away. All the feelings of panic and the painful vision of sitting in front of a client trying to explain why the 3D animation wasn't done for the ground breaking of there new multi-million dollar building. I've been on the other side of the fence. It's a bummer to say the least. I think part of the problem of forums is that people can't here tone of voice or see body language. That's why I wrote "I'm sorry to hear of these problems you are having" before I wrote about using it freely. I'll be more careful in the future. Joe @ 3-AXIS

Ratteler: They will make DAZ Studio and then use LightWave! Just kidding... :)

Forget about Poser 5. This is the biggest crap I've ever seen in my life. You only can apply once a texture to the figure or clothes and thats it :) If I want to apply another texture I cannot do this anymore. Not the user has the problem. The problem is Poser 5. They promised us a software that never came out this way. I will not buy Poser 6. I wait till I get DAZ Studio and go with this. Curious Labs lost a lot and they will loose more

Strength Is Life, Weakness Is Death

I hope DAZ Studio is a smashing success but I won't get onto the messiah bandwagon just yet. DAZ is subject to the same pitfalls as every other company bringing out a new product. They have made great models but a complex application is an entirely new ballgame. Their customer service, comittment to quality, etc. will stand them in good stead but it remains to be seen how things will work out. There's a big difference between something like a mesh and a 3D application. From what I've read, bugs even became a factor as they moved into more complex figures like Vicky 3. Expect that to be multiplied with Studio. I'm not saying they can't pull it off, I just think we need to have realistic expectations, at least in the short term. As for CL, hopefully if things get too bad, someone else will buy Poser and continue to develop it. The continuing competition would only help Make Studio better. My guess is that Poser 6 would be a complete rewrite. It sounds like there's only so much they can fix in Poser 5 from a practical standpoint. The holdover bugs from Poser 4 seem to indicate that that the way the code is structured, fixing some things would require such a major effort that a rewrite is the sensible way to go, while trying to fix the worst crash causing bugs via service packs. Now, they should have done this from the beginning and why they didn't I don't know. Poser Artist sounds like a gamble, but not necessarily a completely stupid one. If it's simply Poser 4 with a new name, that makes no sense. On the other hand, if the streamline Poser 4, strip out some things like animation, the grouping tool, joint parameters, etc. and sell it cheap, it might work. No one here would buy it, but the key is to grab a new market that mey exist. There may be a lot of people out there who would love to do Naked Vicky in a Temple but who definitely don't fit into the artist/computer graphics category. There are a lot of people who will buy an inexpensive image editor to play with their photos but who wouldn't dream of buying Photoshop. At the very least, it will be interesting.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Frankly, I don't think CL will produce a P6. I wouldn't bet on an SR4. EGISYS is in bankruptcy. Even if CL does make a P6, would anyone here actually risk buying it? Brand new software from a company that doesn't fullfill it's legal obligations to owners of the previous release, and that is in bankruptcy? Duh. Not me. We should have started the class action suit when we talked about it before. At least then we could be considered creditors in bankruptcy court. I don't think the first iteration of Daz Studio will be the wonder pill. I do think it's an excellent first step to a better product/platform. The approach they're taking may disappoint a few when they see the limits of Studio in the first beta, but in the long term I think we'll be a lot better for it. Note to te most excellent Cresent: I thought the "M" in EVM was "majority". I know more people who have problems or have just given up than I do satisfied P5 users. Leaving to go get on the boat. Unless there's free internet access on it, I'll see everyone in a week.

Yes....Poser Artist could be their attempt to make a "Picture It!" for the Poser world. The problem is....that's maybe what they should have done in the first place? A "Poser Artist" for those who just do stills....and a "Poser Animator" for those who do animations? I've been a user of PsP since it first started. The company has grown, with it's user base, from a very simple "newbie program" to a fairly sophisticated software, that IMO, rivals Photoshop. But the user base developed with the software. If I were a total newbie, Psp 8 would be as hard to use as Photoshop. Psp has been successful because they started as simple shareware program, listened to feedback from their users, their customer service is second to none and their user base has grown with them. Unfortunately, CL and it's predecessors may have wasted too much of their reputation on trying to be all things for the community, in too short a period of time. Plus they don't seem to listen very well and have crappy customer service. Frankly, had their been an inexpensive Poser Artist that interfaced with Vue I may well have gone that route! All I ever wanted was a program that could properly pose and then export human and animal models for use in Bryce and Vue. Now....of course.....it's too late. I'm not going a step backward, having invested a huge amount of time and money in Poser 5. Unfortunately, I still can't import a Poser 5 generated .pzz into Vue or Bryce :) I also think lmckenzie is correct about trying to "fix" Poser 5. A total rewrite is probably the sensible way to go....but I think everyone thought that's what Poser 5 was going to be!? CL may have "rolled the dice" one too many times.

lmckenzie, you can in a way lay some of the blame when it came to the bugs they ran into with Victoria 3. I was the one who billed Morph Injection as the new messiah when it came to poser figures and urged them strongly to start using it way back when I released Musclebound Michael nearly two years ago. Had they not been so far in the development already, and had wanted to base Michael 2 aroudn the same technology, so to speak, as Vicky 2, we might have seen morph Injection with that product. (I had a long conversation with Steve Kondris, then in charge of DAZ's brokering dept. about this during that time) Morph Injection added a lot of potential, but also added much more to the debugging cycle. But yes, software does have a much more complex debugging cycle, that's part of the reason they are doing a public beta and building upon that, working with the community to fix bugs, etc. before even having a product that they charge for.

So we have Corel selling to Vector: ------------------------------------------------------ Corel investors vote for Vector deal | August 21, 2003 By David Legard Corel shareholders voting overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve the $124 million takeover of the company by investment company Vector Capital, Corel has said. One of our fav program, Bryce, is in a very similar situation as Poser.... Now EGISYS is in major trouble.... Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise if there is any possibility that both of these programs can be spun off from the bean counters and bought back by companies/developers that have some passion, creativity, and commitment to their user base.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

I believe (just my belief) that anyone buying DAZ Studio to spite Curious Labs are going to get a surprise. DAZ Studio will increase the 3D market in this arena bringing more users to Poser as well. Also remember that DAZ Studio (at least the first one) is going to require a .pz3 file. I also have a concern for DAZ. By the time the application finally comes out it will be so hyped (like it is now) that they are going to get attacked WHEN it doesn't deliver. The "yeah but it's a beta" BS is going to be right out the window as soon as a winer loses a file. Or a file gets corrupt. Or the scene won't render. Then the gloves will be off. Personally I believe that DAZ Studio was introduced to early. Businesswise I understand the motive for doing this. Introduce it because P5 is comming out. This way less people will buy it and wait for DS. Smart move? Maybe... No I am not bagging in DAZ. I know them all very well. I honestly think of them as close friends. I'm concerned for them is all. I will also use Poser AND DAZ Studio. Which ever one gets the job done in any particular situation is the one I'll turn to. These are just my opinions.

Re the CL Q & A, I've been reading it every day and becoming more and more disillusioned. My questions weren't answered either. In a nutshell... Poser 5 is going to continue to be patched, but never entirely fixed. Poser 6 will (maybe) be what Poser 5 was touted as being - ie. a complete rewrite. Poser Artist = Poser 4 - Since Poser 4 is outdated (in it's name anyway) and Poser 5 is buggy and complex to use, the simple answer is rename Poser 4 and sell it all over again to a new group of users. No work. More cash. Fair enough, I suppose. DAZ|Studio - So far, DraX is the only one who has stated the obvious in this thread. D|S is going out on FREE public beta. This fact alone should tell us that DAZ learned a lot from the Poser 5 debacle and are using the gray stuff God planted between their ears. I don't know whether D|S will be the best thing since sliced bread, but look at the facts. 1. In a few years, DAZ has become one of the biggest providers of Poser content, by providing high quality products at excellent prices. 2. DAZ has a reputation for customer service second to NONE. 3. Despite the howls, moans and pleas from the communities, DAZ has not allowed themselves to be panicked or pressured into releasing a half-assed, unfinished piece of junk. When it's finished and working, we'll see it. 4. The damned thing will be FREE and we'll all be able to use it, comment on it and make suggestions, with a high probability that they'll actually listen to us (miraculous though that may seem). 5. Nobody's being asked to shell out 100s of bucks for D|S. You get the base, then buy whatever modules you need to float your boat. I sincerely hope CL survive. After all, no matter what, we all owe them a huge debt of gratitude for giving us this maddening, frustrating, but still amazing (and cheap) program. Judging by the amount of time a lot of us spend in here, Poser is a major entertainment factor in our lives, if not more. So, maybe we have a lot to gripe about, but let's at least wish CL all the best. mac

"When C-Labs got Poser, they dusted off the ProPack that was already mostly done, and made it a product." CL wrote ProPack from the ground up. It hadn't even been started yet. They fixed a bunch of bugs in P4 and rebranded it and then started on the ProPack. Actually Avatar Lab is still going as well as the online community that is using it as far as I know. Just a few fact straighteners

"Larry and Steve cared about the program. They may have exercised more than a little wishful thinking, but their goals were our goals." and "I have to disagree with this. I don't know about Larry because he rarely appeared here but I can say it was largely Kupa who told the lies that convinced people to buy P5." It's probably somewhere in between. In business, you sometimes have to do what you're told or whatever you need to do to survive. "Frankly, I don't think CL will produce a P6. I wouldn't bet on an SR4. EGISYS is in bankruptcy. Even if CL does make a P6, would anyone here actually risk buying it?" Um, what if Adobe or Macromedia decided tomorrow that they were going to buy out CL and take a serious run at the 3D market? Could happen. I doubt it, because if Poser needs to be completely rewritten, then all you're really buying with CL is the Poser name, which is unfortunately very near to mud anyway, right now. But things happen, in the world of business. And if a company you respected made a show of developing a good reliable package with Poser 6, would you buy it? Of course you would. And with egiSYS bankrupt and no significant cash flow of CL's own (other than whatever subsistence they can manage with "Poser Artist"), this scenario is what Marc and CL have to hope for and work toward. Hence the talk of putting the nose to the grindstone on P6. And for that reason, I sincerely believe that at this point in time, they really are committed to fixing the problems. "One of our fav program, Bryce, is in a very similar situation as Poser...." Yes, and it has been for awhile. Bryce has stagnated while they claimed to focus on their main products (Corel Draw and Word Perfect, which have also shrivelled up to nothing). Meanwhile, products like Vue and MojoWorld have appeared to cover some of the aspects of where Bryce could have developed... and are doing a better job of it. "Instead of a rebuilding Poser they way they should have, they got desperate because after 3 years everyone who would buy P4PP already did." That's very true. CL never really had that major cash draw that they needed to commit to development and fostering their company. Which is the whole motive for "Poser Artist." Remember that the first year+ of Poser4 sales went into Metacreations' pocket, so CL missed the lucrative launch of the thing. "Personally I believe that DAZ Studio was introduced to early. Businesswise I understand the motive for doing this. Introduce it because P5 is comming out. This way less people will buy it and wait for DS. Smart move? Maybe..." I don't know the details about the current rivalry between the two companies, other than at some point, things seem to have soured between DAZ and Curious Labs. Possibly to do with the proprietary costs CL was charging for "face room" readiness. But I don't know that the announcement was as designed so much to hurt CL as it was to propitiate their own survival. The announcement was made after P5 was already released and the scope of the bugs in it were becoming known. DAZ needed to know that the Poser market they were committed to wasn't going to turn into a pocket industry and dwindle off and die as people get tired of an outdated prog and fed up with a bad upgrade of it. They also wanted to be able to make their products functional in all aspects of a prevailing posing program, and therefore needed access to the code and know that the coding wasn't going to change on them without notice. Announcing DAZ|studio was a survival thing, in a lot of ways. "I sincerely hope CL survive. After all, no matter what, we all owe them a huge debt of gratitude for giving us this maddening, frustrating, but still amazing (and cheap) program. Judging by the amount of time a lot of us spend in here, Poser is a major entertainment factor in our lives, if not more. So, maybe we have a lot to gripe about, but let's at least wish CL all the best." I agree. To be fair, I don't own P5, so I can afford to be a little more forgiving. But I would like to see both CL and DAZ move on to better fortunes.

I wouldn't say that the Adobe Atmosphere community is doing well... it's a very very small niche.

On the Avatar Lab...not sure if its still in effect, but CL has been GIVING IT AWAY for several months.... I picked it up FREE, as have several other folks.... There are some great motion files and stuff in there if nothing else, plus characters which can be moved over to Poser....

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.
All things connect......Chief Seattle, 1854

What sadly hilarious is that IF Poser Artist was that Poser 4.5--plugins, Python, and Library exstensions-- they wouldn't have to look for New buyers--a lot of people Right Here would buy it. Add a Carrara plug in and I'll buy it and I have Poser 5, which even works much of the time as long a I dont ask it to do too much. Posre Artist= Poser 4.5. Think of it, Meditate on it, it couldhappen. Maybe. Emily

I sort of asked about that in my question. :( The fact is that they don't SEE it. They don't understand the NEED for it. Poser 4 as Poser Artist is just a way to make a buck. Whereas Poser 4.5 needs some development time but would give them more than a buck. But no. They keep their Poser 5 blinders on. Heaven forbid they should set P5 aside for an instant to work on a Poser 4.5. Instead we wait for a Poser 6 with all the extra paraphernalia that a lot of us don't even want. We need a Poser 4.5 NOW, not in two years and full of bugs and unnecessary features.

Dave-So, it's no suprise that Corel got sold since they been bleeding money for two years. It was pretty much a case of sell or die. My only comment on P6 is that if it don't support graphic cards and Open GL it will be DOA and they may as well not even bother starting to development on it.

Why shouldn't speech be free? Very little of it is worth anything.

I saw Spit's question and it made me sad how clueless the response was-- if this were Katherine, or god forbid anyone from Daz, this thread would be seriously and attentively read and acted upon. But it's not going to be. I just for a moment forgot. I can believe is six impossible things before breakfast but I have a hard time believeing in Poser 6. On the other hand, I thought they were gonna tank the Mac version and they didn't. Shoot, the library problem is already fixed-- port it backwards-- couldnt be too hard since the core of Poser remains the same. giveitup Emily

With CL's current state of affairs P6 wil show up on Feb 30 (u pick the year :-) )

Why shouldn't speech be free? Very little of it is worth anything.

sandoppe: Check the Vue forum and E-on's site. The 4.2 patch of Vue 4 -will-enable P5 import into both Vue and Mover. Right now people are waiting for it's release. That info has been out there for the last 2 months, and it's E-on doing the work, with tech support from CL. Daz Studio looks like it has the potential to be a nice tool....hopefully. But keep in mind that DAZ has also started to release Service Paks (read: bug fixes) for their mesh models; something they have been doing for -years-, and presumably are very experienced with. We also don't know the pricing schedule of the plug ins that will be -needed- to make DS actually useable. It could easily equal or exceed what those of us who pre-ordered P5 paid, and for the same functionality...or less. No one knows, and despite stated intentions, no one -will- know until an idea of the work and time involved are realised. Those are the determining factors on plug-ins, and if the time needed for an animation suite dictates a price tag of $200 =just= to recoup costs... As for CL. They aren't content creators, and no doubt when things went Tango Uniform, whoever was contracted was also let go. As for the ease of 'fixing things'. Poser is a cross platform app that started with the original Mac code base, was ported to Win3.1, then 9X in its 3 iterations, then NT in it's 3 iterations, as well as Mac through several generations and a few OS changes, one of them to Jaguar. The wonder is that the bloody thing works at all! As Poser Artist is P4, I would suggest that this will be the break point; PA will maintain the legacy support, and any new iterations of Poser will be recoded for the current state of the art OS's, namely 2kXP (possibly 98, as MS seems unable to convince people to upgrade) and OS-X. Doing so will allow them to scrap large swaths of code that were needed for legacy compatibility. P4's executable is 5.44megs (with pro pack). A total rewrite of =that= much code is not a simple endeavour, as anyone who knows code should be aware of. P5's is 10.2megs. That is 5,440,000 and 10,200,000 individual hex characters of -compiled- code. What the size of the actual source is is anyone's quess (unless LDLD knows?). That also applies to actual service packs; fixing a bug is usually easy(actually finding the little bastard is another matter entirely); fixing the things the bug fix broke can be a lot harder. And no one who has not actually seen and tried to work with a specific piece of source can say how easy adding or fixing something is. That is pretty much like saying that because you can work on your Piper Cub (or your Learjet), you're qualified to cross the tarmac and tell an E-7 how to work on a C-130. The only question is whether the E-7 calls the MP's or decks you himself. Marc -was- pretty vague. But there is a real probability that he simply didn't know about the technical issues. If they are working on SR-4, as stated, things would be in flux. Then there's the warm, loving reception that Kupa, Larry, and several others got. Make no promises, and no one can call you a liar. This is a community of artists...and unfortunately, too many artists let their passion get the better of their common sense, and their experience. P5 was hailed with refrains from The Heavenly Choir. Then it was shipped in an unstable form, and was suddenly The Antichrist to many. Now DAZ Studio is the Second Coming. But it is just a program, and one that =will= have bugs in it, will refuse to run on some people's machines, and all those other things that programs do, and I don't even want to think about the issues with video cards and OpenGL compliant drivers (or lack thereof) for same. Do we really want to go through another hurricane of this kind again?

I don't have any more information than anyone else about what "Artist" will be, but I certainly can't see it as being just Poser 4 with a different name. If that were the idea, they would be better off ditching the "Poser" part completely and calling it "Figurama" or something. If anything, I think it will be a "Poser Lite." The name "Artist" would seem to imply no animation support. Stripping out the most unused parts of the application, grouping, magnets, phi editor, 3d import/export, etc. would leave something that would seem to be more appropriate for folks who simply want to do still images with standard characters. Of course, that's all idle speculation. If it were me, I'd be thinking, Poser 4 sales have peaked out. Poser 5's reputation is irreprably damaged. Poser 6 is a long way off and will require a fundamental refactoring of the application. Studio is looming. How do we survive to ever be able to do Poser 6? The only answer seems to be trying to capture new group of users. It's really just the opposite of the ProPack strategy The problem with ProPack is that it really appeals mostly to Poser users who wanted to move up, a limited number, since most of us can't afford, justify or even want to use Max or Maya. Those using just those products generally seem to disdain Poser as a toy, so no big gains there either. If you start with the (relatively) stable Poser 4 base, trim the fat and add things like multiple views and jpg bump maps from ProPack that are useful to everyone and sell it for well under $100, that's a product that might sell.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Well that's the problem. They don't see that! Hell, I would BUY a Poser 4.5, but the Poser Artist thingie is just Poser 4 in a new box. The guy kept repeating that.

Calypso Dreams... My Art- http://www.calypso-dreams.com

Renderosity Gallery

DaleB

I supported myself as a programmer for many years!! I know the problems involved. I also know that no matter what the client asks, how impossible it might seem, it CAN BE DONE and within spec and mostly within deadline.

Except for rewrites...they always go over deadline.

Poser 4/Propack code is pretty solid as to crashing bugs, just a bit rough around the edges on some interface issues. Taking that code base and working on expanding the library capabilities and making the parameter dials READABLE without adding fancy stuff, would not be impossible nor even that difficult.

They just don't see that as a viable thing to do..they are concentrating sooo hard on Poser 5 and going from there. They have a cash cow under their noses and are totally ignoring it. :(

I bought P4 when it was sold by Metacreations, so I don't owe CL anything.

Spit; I wasn't trying to bust your chops; as you said higher up in the thread, you have coded for a living. But a lot of people haven't, and haven't got much of a clue of the plethora of issues. I've had to explain that size issue with an executable too many times before...and how large the source for same can be....as I'm sure you have. And since the interface is XML, I believe, CL could very well be doing just what you suggested..once they get SR4 out the front door. Because the ceo doesn't know about it doesn't mean it isn't happening. If this had been an Q-A session with the actual development team, that would be a very different matter. But Marc is not a code monkey to our knowledge; he's a businessman. I agree that a tweaked out P4 could be a nice revenue source. I don't think that CL is going to tell us everything, anymore than I think that DAZ will.

Who ever said animators aren't artists? . Poser Artists is Poser 4 reboxed, cheaper (legally) to APPEAL to a new market of people with less cash (or more sence) than the rest of us. At $99 US (so probably 249.99 UK) it should be affordable enough for a bunch more people to buy. Since it seems they're not going to cripple it by removing functionality, that COULD be a "good thing" - if DAZ|Studio doesn't get there first, cheaper. I'm woefully underwhelmed by the obvious attitude that past promises mean nothing. I realise it's probably because they (as a company) simply cannot afford to deliver what they (as a company) have promised, but saying "We've got cash, we're AOK and not going under" in the same thread as (HEAVILY paraphrased) "We're only doing minimal damage limitation - you want even a bit more than that you'll need to pay for an upgrade". I for one am sick "up to here" with "Oh, that bug is fixed in the next version - you have to upgrade for $caching$ for that to work properly". Is it me, or do people even now seem to hope for a complete rewrite? Marc SEEMS to say, repeatedly, that P6 is basically intended to be a fixed version of P5. No (or few, if any) new features and no new content, just fixes to the code to improve speed and memory usage. Personally P5 actually works FAIRLY well for me now, with SR3 - and has never been as bad here as the worst tales people have to tell... but I've already been sold P5 once. To be sold P5 again, as P6 "but this time it really works" the upgrade price is gonna hafta be impressive. To me, not CL. My favourite scenario? Larry (perhaps) gets together with Dan Farr and they bitch-slap each other around until they have a mutual cameraderie thing going (like in the movies). Then they buy out the CL and Poser names and dump the suits, rename DAZ|Studio to Poser 6 and include the Poser 5 feature set (hair, cloth, the new materials editor! Libraries, yadda yadda). Because although the DAZ page says that the program supports .PZ3 files and all subsets, I have a horrible feeling they mean Poser 4 .PZ3 files... I'm not pinning any hopes on DAZ|Studio and certainly not on Poser 6, especially after this little Q&A session. But I rather suspect that, once it's actually ready for public consumption, DAZ|Studio is at least going to make a nice addition to my toolkit.

A "fixed" version of P5 and a complete rewrite may not be mutually exclusive. If indeed P4 bugs still lurk within P5 then to some degree it must still be based on the old P4 (or even P3) code. If they hope to compete then at some point they are going to have to bite the bullet and start clean. They might have stumbled along as long as they had no competition but with even a half decent Studio to compete against... I'm don't agree that absolutely any unreasonable set of requirements can be accomplished on time and on spec. You simply can't will working software into existence, especially when you consider other factors besides time and specifications, like Budget and Morale. The best programmers in the world can't be real productive when they're spending half their time surfing jobs.com and fearing that every email is a layoff notice. I like your scenario who3d. The Germans might be willing to sell cheap right now too. Since it sounds like a lot of the new stuff in P5 was bolted on anyway, they could just as easily bolt it on to Studio and maybe even use the right bolts. The whole P5 bugs issue is probably just a trans-Atlantic metric vs standard thing.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

I for one don't want D/S tainted by anything from P5.

There seems to be a lot of talk in this thread about 'fixing bugs' in future Poser 4/5 code rewrites. All very well up to a point. But quite frankly, I could live with a few bugs if CL would only make some sensible basic changes to the interface. My question to Marc (unanswered) was along the lines of 'In poser 4, can we ever expect to see multiple undo, user-selectable fonts, precise imp/export options, proper libraries, etc? (and a few other things which I forget now). We all know poser 4 is buggy, but we've handled it for years. P5.... well, that seems to be a whole new batch of gremlins, but I could care less about them. Give me a poser 4.5 that is usable, with the basic improvements we've all been screaming for for years, and CL can have my money. If CL had paid any attention to the Poser 4.5 thread in this forum months ago, they wouldn't need to waste time doing any f**king surveys. They'd know already what we all want. mac

"...basic improvements ..." Yep, those are the usual suspects, though I don't recall hearing much clamor about the import/export options. I'm not defending CL, just trying to figure our a credible software engineering issue as opposed to sheer indifference and incompetence on their part. These issues existed even during Kupa's benevolent reign and didn't get fixed. How difficult is it to change a font? Not very in Windows or, I imagine on the Mac, if you're using OS native tools, but they're not. AFAIK, Poser 4 was developed using some hybrid, cross-platform development tools to acommodate both targets. Maybe, just maybe, what would be a simple change to a completely Windows or Mac application involves a whole lot of ripping and tearing and breaking with their system to implement the Poser 4.5 wishlist. Maybe not. Maybe they are just stupid and arrogant and lazy, but not having walked in their coding shoes, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless you can find some of their programmers and get them liquored up enough to talk, we'll probably never know for sure.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken

Yes, but they aren't listening, are they? Or using the program, because if they were using it every day like us, they'd WANT to see those bugs fixed. As for stripping things out of Poser 4 to make Poser Artist a lighter version - well, stripping out all the animation code would actually be WORK. Easier not to bother. Is that playing "the sucker market"? Maybe it is.

And it was the wrong answer! I asked if Cl would follow thorugh with the commitment by Kupa when he was pres of CL to provide new animals, Marc said that people wanted other improvemnets and that the promised content would not be delivered. Breach of promise is the legal phrase. Another one is fraud. I'll never buy from CL again, and if someone sues, I'd join. I'm frankly tired of their double talk, lies, and broken promises. I'll try not to comment on any way about CL anymore here - UNLESS - they come and spin again. Then they're fair game.

Yup. I noticed he answered it. About 10 days ago or something, wasn't it? Then he didn't answer any more Qs. I've been checking the thread from time to time looking for more, but he seems to have given up. And now I no longer see any link to that thread. It's gone from the header. Looks like he's had it for now. mac

I would guess that he's not the only one who's had it! :)

LMAO! Too right! mac

Dunno what pages you guys are looking at, but the front page still has a link to the CL Q&A. As for MArk and/or CL - while I'm no fan of the apparent double-talk and lack of commitment at times, I can sympathise a bit. After all - include extras (Don, Judy, Atmosphere room) and get blasted. Don't include extras (new animals etc.) and get blasted. Given that one takes time, effort, and money - while the other doesn't, I know which one I'd do in his place. But seriously - did anyone ever actually see Kupa PROMISE specifically new animals etc.? I ask because this is another one of those things I've only ever seen 2nd hand reportage (griping) on - never "the real deal". Not that I wouldn't greatly approve of some new animals - and I'd love to know exactly what it was that Kupa was gonna "give us" P5 users as a thank-you.. AND I miss the "about spring/summer-time" network rendering function :(

Yes who3d, Kupa promised here in a thread.

Well, the link IS on the front page (I haven't seen that page for years), but the thread is effectively over. He hasn't answered a Q since Aug 19th. mac

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=815371

who3d, the full thread is at the attached link but if you don't want to sort through all of it here is the salient quote (in response to a question from LittleDragon)... "7. Re: It has to be Tuesday somewhere in the world! by kupa on 8/5/02 21:15 Updated versions of the animals, as well as few new ones, will all be available as a free download through Content Paradise right inside Poser 5. "

Actually, he answered questions up to 22/8.

can any one tell me where the thread was moved to??

It wasn't a thread in the Forum,it was a special section linked from the front page and the Forum header. Can't see a link at the moment - it may be gone.

curious to know if they answered a friends question about the two buggs lights a single sided planes

Doesn't sound familiar.