I cannot help but think that Poser and DAZ Studio will diverge and become more incompatible over time for no other reason because they can. Studio is going to evolve in new directions because DAZ has to keep being innovative with their figures to keep jumpstarting their product line. Every time a new Vicky or Mike is introduced, there is a whole new line of clothing, textures, and morphs being sold. It behooves DAZ to constantly improve their figures. Without new figure features, how much better will V4 and M4 be than their predecessors? Weren't V3 and M3 supposed to be all they could be? After playing fairly seriously with Poser for a year, I still cannot see the advantages of V3 and M3 over their earlier incarnations. I'll take everybody's word that they're better figures, but I haven't seen anything yet, with my admittedly limited use, where I can immediately point out the advantages. At best, the improvements must be fairly subtle to not be more evident. It almost seems like the difference between Tide and new and improved Tide--it's a wee bit better, but not as much as the ads want the target audience to believe. DAZ can only tweak joints so much with the current software and, with CL's current plans to not add features to Poser 6, DAZ can't wait for another major revision of Poser to start introducing new capabilities into the figures they sell. Maybe that's the biggest reason why Studio is being created--it allows DAZ to improve their product line without having to wait for new versions of Poser. Since DAZ studio will be free, there's no reason not to keep getting current versions of Studio to go with new figure innovations. Poser will then have to be the product that keeps up with those changes or lose all the customers that won't be able to use new content in Poser.

Daz studio is still very slow and although it is free, you will have to pay for standard poser type things like making figures and animation.

I havent seen anything yet from daz studio that couldnt be done with poser 5.

If poser and daz aren`t compatible then daz will probably lose a lot of business to poser, unless they speed up studio a lot.

Daz aren`t the only poser figure makers there are and I am sure that not everyone buys poser to render yet another victoria 3 picture.

Message edited on: 05/17/2004 18:31

Attached Link: Comparative figure support in Marketplace

I agree that Studio isn't ready for primetime for new users. I was having trouble trying to figure out what I could do with the program when I installed it; and I've been playing with Poser for a while. I seem to recall being able to do much more with Poser 1, without looking at the manual, immediately after loading it than I've been able to figure out with Studio. Not adopting the standard Poser Runtime directory structure is going to make Studio a nuisance to use with existing content. I just tried Studio yesterday and have the impression that the only way I can add new content, not built for Studio, is to install it somewhere else and import it. I haven't had a chance to experiment with that aspect of it, but it would be a major mistake to ignore that portion of the user base. Anything that makes Studio harder to use than Poser is just one more reason to not use Studio. Both Poser and Studio have to be backwards compatible with Poser 4 to be successful because that's what the market demands today and for the foreseeable future. I don't know what kind of new features DAZ may have in mind for their characters. I'm sure that intentional ERC controls would be high on the list. Who wouldn't want to see muscles reacting to bent limbs or automatically pull in elbows and knees with extreme bends? Then there's all other kinds of wishlist things, such as hair and clothes that react to gravity. DAZ may not be the only figure maker, but, based on a quick set of searches I did in the Renderosity MarketPlace, their major figures are essentially the Poser figure standards and have nearly twenty times the level of support as any other figures today. When it comes to clothes and accessories, DAZ is a small player. As any member of the Platinum Club can attest, there's not a large volume of DAZ original content at DAZ. Then there's thousands of products here and at other Poser stores. The vast majority of those products may be designed to complement the Millennium figures, but DAZ doesn't make any money off them. You're right that Studio won't take off till it does much of what Poser does and does it better. Nobody is going to switch to something that isn't easier and better than the product that they're using. Even if it's easier and better, it's still hard to convince people to switch from what they're familiar with. DAZ studio can only succeed if two things happen. It has to be easy enough to use that a person, who doesn't have Poser, can quickly churn out images. The more difficult thing is getting Poser users to switch. That's harder. Why should somebody learn something new when they've already got something that works? Studio can't be just as good as Poser. That's not good enough to have to learn a new interface. It has to be better. Considering that it's in DAZ's best interests to make Studio work, I'll wait and see.