Sometimes I am astonished about the discussions here. One group is stating its too expensive means everything that is not for free is too expensive. Even V3 is not really for free. You have to buy morphs, hair, clothes, textures ... to have full use of her. Or you have to look for freebies, done by people who like to contribute something to the community. But to do so, they need companies like Renderosity, CL and others that provide the space for contribution, support and all the stuff around. This is not really for free!! They have to pay for this. Also the artists, if they put their work on a figure, what do you think how many manmonths are in a figure like MIKI or V3? If they wouldn't be able to earn some money out of their work, who would create new figures? Sure I am also collecting freebies and I use them but very often I need something that is not available as a freebie and instead of sitting down for hours to create something (BTW, that would look mostly ugly) I look around through the shops and place an order. To be honest, most of the items are between 5 and 20 bucks and if you take your income per hour, its very cheap! And with this purchase you keep the artists busy and alive. In the other way, nobody is forced to buy MIKI or other figures. There are only 2 reasons to buy her: 1. you like her 2. you need her That's it! You can discuss here things that have to be improved but then you should have the figure and test it and then describe the things that don't work well exactly. Either one finds a workaround or you will get an update like done with Terai Yuki (HiRes). BTW, this is my private opinion and NO, I'm not a billionaire and I'm not an figure creator, I only want to be able to get the things I need for my hobby for a reasonable price in a good quality.

When I lived in Utah, folks used to insult each other by saying the other was "ignernt." It didn't mean "stupid," it mean what I call "not knowing how to behave" on some astonishingly basic level. There are some legitimate reasons to expect Miki to be free, and they've been stated here. But calling her "overpriced," which is what set Anton fuming, is disrespectful of the work that goes into one of these figures and, I suppose, a bit greedy. The MilDog was "overpriced," not because a dog model was not worth what was charged, but because it was poorly made. The MilHorse was "overpriced" because it was, in the opinion of many, junk. It bore about the same relationship to a horse as a Tonka pony. Renda was "overpriced" because she was just a transparent (and mediocre) ripoff of someone else's hard work. The Mil Big Cat was "overpriced".... Well, you get the picture. Useless junk is always overpriced. Something that doesn't work is "overpriced." But if Miki works, then she is not "overpriced," she just costs more than she is worth to some of us. The difference is subjective vs. objective, and I wish we didn't have so much trouble keeping them distinguished. "Overpriced" is a characteristic of Miki; "I don't want her that much" is a characteristic of the buyer. If I don't want AM, that's my business; saying he's "overpriced" is an insult to the enormous amount of work that went into creating this figure. Likewise Miki. I'd love to have everything I want. Once I win Powerball, I'll probably buy lots of stuff I can't afford now. But the fact that I can't afford it is not in any way an indication that the stuff is "overpriced." Saabs and Volvos are not "overpriced," they're worth more than I have to spend on a car. I can't afford $25 for a novel I will read and then pass along to a recycler. Is it overpriced? The author will get around $2.00 of the purchase price, and if the book has typical sales, a few thousand other people will buy the book. Three months' to three years' work, $2,000. That, as I understand it, is a lot more people than buy the typical Poser thingie. And let me pose a thought experiment for you. Suppose eFrontier had released Miki for free. How many complaints would we have seen from people who said they were hurting the merchants by competing against people who have to sell their stuff for a living and driving prices down? Not as many, of course. There is, after all, the "gimme" factor. When I look at how much time it takes me to create a bloody dynamic hoodless poncho, the idea of spending days building something with a challenge in it and then giving it away is a bit hard to grasp. And the idea of selling it for $5.00 and getting paid what works out to $0.38/hour for it... that doesn't ring my dinger either. I don't have enough disposable income to buy whatever I want, and I'm not exactly rolling in disposable time, either. My profound respect to the people who make freebies, and to folks who create and sell excellent models for the rest of us. If any of you are driving Ferraris to work, I'll bet you got them somewhere else. M

"The MilHorse was "overpriced" because it was, in the opinion of many, junk. It bore about the same relationship to a horse as a Tonka pony." I disagree with that statement. Maybe if you are a horse afficinato, an know every single thing about horses, including their muscle group names, he's "off" But as someone who just wants a horse to use in renders, he offers a lot of diversity, and is perfect for my uses. But everyone has a right to their own opinions.

on the subject of the horse: i don't know that much about horses, and i saw some pretty obvious errors with him. and his mesh breaking when his neck was at a reasonable angle was a really obvious problem. even now, his legs just look off to me, and i couldn't tell you the names of muscles or bones. and if my memory is correct, someone in the daz forums mentioned having a client (a publisher looking for a book cover, i think?) who turned down their work due to the the horse's lack of realism. so, yeah, it's all based on opinion, but you don't need to be an expert to take issue with the mill horse. i keep hoping jim burton will resume development on his horse. again, i don't know much about conformation (more like, don't know anything), but i thought it's legs, chest, and shoulders were gorgeous. and anything made by jim burton would have lovely joints that bend well.

"it's all based on opinion, but you don't need to be an expert to take issue with the mill horse. <<<<" ------------------------------------------------------------------ Just as you did not need to be an african big game hunter to see how unrealistic the initial release of the DAZ big cats were :-/ and it's Friday so i wont even get started on M3's "muscle morphs" ;-)

hey wolf, you've got the advantage of being able to compare M3's muscle morphs to the real thing. Most of us don't! ;-P

Attached Link: muscular anatomy

Bure Hogarth has a number of books available. Great stuff, and has been in my collection for about 15 YEARS now.

I was so disappointed in the MilHorse. I have to agree...it's poorly done and therefore overpriced. I don't know a lot about horses, either, but I think even the P4 horse looks more horse-like. The Milhorse can't bend his head to the ground to graze any better than the EdW's reworked P4 horse. It's a huge model, judging from how slow Poser gets when you load it, but somehow, you don't get a lot of realism for the memory hit.

I wish DAZ had showed us their WIPs before they had gotten the PAs to do all the textures, morphs, tack, etc. It would have been a lot easier to make fixes and incorporate suggestions.

Me, I would have suggested that they make the mane and tail smart props or conforming figures. That would give people the option to use low-res versions for long shots, or dynamic versions for more realism.

When did Daz ever ask anyone for for suggestions?...LOL. They're worse than this place in that respect ;oP... Laurie

I guess what brings it to mind is that they pretended to ask our opinion. They posted some renders here and asked what we thought, as if they were doing market research. Then it turned out that they had already made everything. Grrrr.

da bums

I stand by my MilHorse criticism. When it was released, people whose opinion and expertise I respect said it was badly done, and why. I passed on it. And yes, I'll replace my Charger with Jim B's horse once its out. I need an Alfred Jacob Miller horse, which I can't get from P4 or the Charger. I may not know horse anatomy, but I know dogs as well as anyone I know, and when I started working with the MilDog, I felt throughly ripped off and said so. But my point was not, Oh dos bums. My point was, "overpriced" may apply when the thing purchased is not what it pretends to be. Mick

And speaking of Miki: I unpacked her at work and played around a bit. Oh my she's fine. The Face Room works great, once you get it set up to work, and she has enough expression morphs to keep me for a while. I did run into an odd problem, which I probably caused myself. I used a Jessi pose on her that put her hands behind her head (relaxed 3), and got a quick lesson in how the mesh and the pose are bound together. Jessi has the most extraordinary detail in her elbows. Miki's are more what I expected, and as a result her elbow went totally loony. I don't have her here yet to try out, but I'll take a look at it this weekend. I'll be curious to see how fragile the limits are in the knees and elbows when they aren't being abused. And she is a world-class computer throttler. When I opened the four-pane viewport with full tracking, the computer essentially stopped. But beautiful and versatile? You bet. I got my money's worth, thank you. As with AM. Mick

hmmm i remember when vicky came out how everyone thought she was uglie as sin, and a few people in the community made morphs for her and turned heri nto cinderella.

Oh yeah by the way for what i paid for poser 1 id say miki is lkight years beyond poser 1 and i thought they were really cool figures when they first came out lol..