"5 - The purpose of the thread was to clarify a question for me. There will be products I submit which are P5 based and which do utilize, most effectively, features of firefly and Poser 5 that are not available in P4, and that do not easily traverse to D|S. Since they will handle the conversion for me, I'm pretty happy :)" I'm pretty sure they have a number of products (brokered, and not many but some) which show distinct improvement in P5 over P4 - at least one you buy the P4 or P5 version. They seem to have decided to let brokers support what the brokers want to - which seems a reasonable way to go. Cheers, Cliff

I'm glad Jim brought this back to the topic, and that he also mentioned an important fact that applies not only to D|S but to P5 and Bryce and all render applications. That being: the very nature of different render engines is that they handle (process) geometry differently. While all reliable RE's will process basic geometry efficiently, there will occasionally be differences in the way they handle such not-so-standardized things as concave polygons, backfacing polygons, more than two polygons with a common edge, nGons with more than 4 sides etc. etc. etc. DAZ|Studio is no exception, and neither is Firefly. What I find interesting is that people call these differences "BUGS" when they are referring to P5 and "REQUIREMENTS" when they refer to D|S or any other program. Another thing I find interesting is that some merchants seem adamant (even proud) of the fact that they do not (and will not) support these requirements as they apply to P5, but I'd be willing to bet that eventually they DO end up supporting the requirements of D|S/Bryce without much fuss.

Actually I do believe the switching geometries will be coming back.

"DAZ is a business. If you were making Poser products, whould you want to aim at 40% of the market or 100%? (the 40% is just a guess of course)." Me? I would aim at the gowing segment of the market - and thats P5. New users buy the current version. Its simply a diminishing return to continue to build products that fail when loaded in the currently shipping version of the target application. Start with something simple like supplying P5 mats so the objects look reasonable. Then we can move onto the more useful updates like dynamic cloth and materials that actually take full advantage of the P5 renderer. Me? I am off the treadmill. When dynamic cloth has been in the product for more than a year now it is simply becomming less and less justifiable to me to keep buying clothing that won't work with morphed characters, animates badly and doesn't work on multiple figures. To continue to shell out $$$ for clothing built on obsolete technology is just making me crazy.

Yeah, I'm finding more and more of my funds are going into things like Transpond's scenery and sets. The dynamic cloth is definitely the way to go (just be sure to get Nerd's bootie and mitten freebies; they really help with the issue of those fine polys in the hands and feet snagging the cloth mesh). Never mind the fact that I can take a sexy nightie for V3, adjust the X-Y-Z scaling a tad, and fit it on any Vickie, any Stephanie, any -Mike-, Natalia, Dina, Mayadoll, etc, etc. Conforming clothes still have their place, but dynamics has a much greater potential flexibility. And that doesn't get into things like being able to drape a dress over a rock in a scene, have a skirt lying about a fallen figure, a cloak actually blowing and billowing realistically in the wind...and not like everyone else's 'blowing and billowing'.... We really need dynamic cloth guru, like Syyd and Trav and Nerd and etc were back when we were using Poser while huddled over our fires, chewing on old mastadon. Combining the conforming and the dynamic could result in the best of both worlds (and with less time for sim running).

Funny you should mention that, Dale_B. There's this company I know that's working on exactly that sort of thing...

Fresh Mastondon!?!?!?!?!!????!!!!! COOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!! :P (Couldn't resist). So. This isn't something to do with this genetics website, is it? Hmmmmm?

shhh!!!! (think of the potential market! Only a few minor hurdles to deal with regarding the USDA and somehing about the dangers of gene splicing that I never bothered to read...)

Not to mention the incredible biomass for fuel generation (and people think that -cows- are full of it....). Or to quote one of my favorite Jeff Goldblum lines; "Now -that- is one big pile of shit." :P And the gene-splicing paper you missed dealt with lysine-guanine-mercury interactions in carrier RNA...abbreviated in the field as the Legume Factor. We won't get into the horrid mutations that occurred in those equine test animals...

LMAO!!! OMg --- now that was a rare one. applauds oh! lol gotta love being an old timer...

It -does- help knowing where all the bodies are buried...and which ones are still fresh enough to rise from the dead...doesn't it? O:)