Today's e-mail from Poserworld said they were starting a new business (making custom 3D models), because they believe the Poser and DS user base is shrinking.

Is that true?  Why would the user base be shrinking?  Is everyone moving on to Lightwave or other high end software? 

I would not give any credibility to anyone manking that kind of claims without providing evidence.

What happened is that Poserworld user based shrank. That is their issue and, as unpleasant that might be, it's not indicative of a trend in the industry. A lot of restaurants close their doors every year. That is not an indication that people stopped eating ;)

Development of Poser is continuing at great pace and the new game development version is proof of that.

Development of Studio is continuing as well and new characters and options are available. A recent report forecasted the 3D market to be expanding in the next few years so we are in good shape.

Cheers.

Paolo

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We seem to have lost a number of participants on the forums, which doesn't necessarily indicate that the user base as a whole is shrinking.  Participation on all the forums I've frequented over the past few years has been down.  Hard to know what that means, really.  Maybe they're all Twitter-tweeters now, using mobiles instead of computers.  Maybe they've all taken up knitting.  :unsure:  Maybe it's zombies, like when all the internet participants gradually disappear in World War Z, the novel.  :scared:

One might take the view that Poser is being expanded to be marketed to gamers because the traditional user base has been contracting, I suppose.  (I don't think that, but it is a worry that has struck me, once or twice... without any actual evidence.  Cage is a worrywart!  :lol:)  We might guess a lot of things, but they would just be guesses.  A thread at RDNA which asks how many Poser users there are came to the conclusion that no one knows, perhaps not even Smith Micro and the Poser Team.

It would be interesting to know of any actual data anyone has on a topic like this.  I don't think anyone would come forward with anything, for good or ill.  :unsure:

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.

Poser users shrink in summer and grow in winter
Posers a winter sport ;)

Poser users shrink on weekends and grows week days
Poser is a workday sport ;)

Never been a lot of $$$ in a hobbyist anykind of business.
There's millions in movies.
There's MILLIONS in games.

So we all know where the eyes staring,for all the CGI app's.

they use to say money and sex biggest reson for divorse
now not just any game but they call the game buy name Call of Duty
is now the #1 reson for divorse.
Can't ya see the old judges setting there going ya husband is always home not running round on .
so now ya have what ya want a husband home all the time and that's why ya want a divorse ?
there alt to be a comdy movie in there some where :)

Poser is a LW plug.LW has 0.000001% to do with #of Poser users.

time chages landscape but where still there.
runtime and DAZ fourms both have around a million members.
CGTalk has around half a million.
so twice as many of LW,Max,Maya,C4D etc etc use DAZ Poser.
and this is just the english speaking part of the wourld.

the fundamental flaw with LW,Max,Maya,C4D etc etc there bloody difficult to learn
and takes for ever to get anything done in them and they cost to much.
DAZ Poser don't have any of those probleams.

CGI Will never die ,best medium ever.
Games are here to stay untill the end of time.
Can't put this genie back in the bottle

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

I've noticed a change but I don't think it's because the user base is shrinking.  The economy is still having a negative effect on how people spend money and existing users have probably come to realize that they just have too much Poser stuff.  In my case I probably have more 3D models than I'll ever use after more than 6 years of building a decent library of 3d models.

While there are people around that want to produce pictures but do not have the skills to draw or paint there will always be a need for something like Poser or Studio.  I include myself in that number but I also accept that, population wide, I am in a monority.  Most of my friends and family do not understand what I do or even why, so I doubt there will be megabucks in 3D software.

As to the question of if the userbase is falling or even growing I don't think that we will ever know for certain unless of course the powers that be just stop producing the software at a cost that people can regard as resonable for a hobby.  Isolated stories do not really build a picture and most market moves can have two sides.  The recent sale in newer editions of Poser can be seen as a sign they are not selling enough copies.  On the other hand it can be seen as an attempt to move a large user base to the new versions to help the market grow.

One point is fairly clear though, them that says they know exactly what is happening in the market don't or if they did they would not be allowed to tell.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

I suspect a big part of the userbase is corporate users who stick to the default factory content and default factory poses.  They never buy anything from us 'artists'.  If PoserWorld's base is shrinking, it may have something to do with their odd halfway Members-Only business model.  

My python page
My ShareCG freebies

Is there still a market for an affordable character animation program?  Of course there is.  So who makes up this "base" we're talking about?  If it's people buying Poser, only Smith Micro know for sure, and I don't think they've given any numbers.

How do you measure something like this? 

Product sales is not an indication.  Many Poser users are quite content with older versions... 

Merch sales can't be an indication.  Many users by now know how to make their own props and might be using the fitting tools to repurpose items in their collection.  Even figure creation doesn't seem the insurmountable task it once did.

Activity in forums goes up when there is a new release or some groundbraking new figure or plug-in.  We're smack between releases (aside from Poser GD) and most users seem to have their favorite figures, renderers, modeling/sculpting tools etc. Users who may have been posting here are now posting at RDNA, in the Daz forums, or in the Marvelous Designer and zBrus forums...  Or 3D-Coat or iClone forums.

Who is this "base"  Is it the Poser users, or does it include the Daz people who still use or follow Poser developments?  Is it the 3D hobbyist, or the hobbyist who buys things?  The more we learn to do on our own, the less we tend to buy or post questions in forums.  How can something so undefined even be measured?

 

 

Quote - Never been a lot of $$$ in a hobbyist anykind of business.
There's millions in movies.
There's MILLIONS in games.

While doing some research for an economics paper two years ago I found the following numbers, ...the movie industry made 8.5 billion dollars US (and yes that's BILLION!), the gaming industry made 8.3 billion, and coming in right in the middle was 'adult entertainment' at 8.4 billion dollars.     The economy may stink but it's obvious from the steady growth in these industries that folks are turning to other forms of entertainment.  The 3D hobbiest is no longer a burgeoning industry; rather it's a steadily growing pastime with Poser leading the way (arguably).  In the Poser NNTP usenet group (yes, folks are still in the newsgroups) we frequently post 'Poser sightings' when someone notices a Poser made animation on TV or the net.  This demonstrates that folks are starting to use it commercially.  I've even started making short animations to use at work for our aircrew training packages.    This is BIG...and Poser is at the forefront.  Someone here posted recently that there's a million folks registered with the forum...doesn't sound like it's shrinking at all.

 

 

i've never bought anything from poserworld.

i don't want to make games, i want to make cgi movies.

internet activation requirements or internet connection requirements alienate me as a customer.  seems to be a lot of that these days.  feels like they trying to stick a syphon in my pocket.

---

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10 years ago Poser was pretty much the only game in town for the hobbyist 3D artist. Blender was barely getting off the ground, there was no DAZ Studio, there were no free game engines to build your own game or virtual reality.

Today all of those options exist for the hobbyist and freelancer, and Poser is just one of many. Free game engines have become common place and some of the leading names - Unity and Unreal being two of them - have market places that have built up around them whose prices are often in line with Poser and DS content prices, and don't come with the $500 to $2000 licensing that DAZ content requires in order to use in game engines. 

Game engines are used for more than just games. Many people use them to create cg movies, presentations, web comics, etc. Everything you can do in Poser can be done in Unity or Unreal and the learning curve isn't much steeper than Poser since a lot of it is node based "plug-in-play" so to speak, you don't have to know coding to work in a game engine (of course coding helps to customize whatever you're doing). Some engines have modeling tools built into them so you don't even need to invest in external modeling apps. 

This is one of the fastest growing industries out there and there's no sign of it slowing down or going away any time soon. With the introduction of Oculus Rift, and other consumer affordable VR simulators to follow it, I'm sure we're going to see an increase in demand for CG content, especially in the adult oriented areas. 

So IMO, the suspected decline in Poser use is really just a reflection of how many more options there are for people out there today as opposed to what it was just a few years ago.

"So IMO, the suspected decline in Poser use is really just a reflection of how many more options there are for people out there today as opposed to what it was just a few years ago."

I believe this to be absolutely correct
look at what people are doing with iclone
http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/

My website

YouTube Channel

I think it is declining as is all software sales not just Poser-Studio. The number of computers (laptop and desktop) sold has been shrinking for several years.

Partly because of the economy. Partly because the computers some of us have, the newest one isn't some giant leap in technology or speed like in the past. And finally people think they can do it all on a tablet (the Cool factor in effect).

That said, I have friends who jumped all over the netbook-tablet products and got rid of their laptops or desktops. Several have come back to real computers because they realized there are certain apps they need that they can't run now and or miss the screen real estate, memory and processor power that a netbook or tablet can't provide. One even stated something like, "I wanted to be Joe Cool with my tablet in meetings at work, but discovered I wasn't getting things done as well, as fast that I could with a laptop and it almost cost me my job."

Yes I carry an iPad when I travel and I travel a lot. Great for watching Movies while flying coach to and from Asia, playing games or checking email and making short replys. Otherwise Poser, C4D, CS4, Solidworks etc, all come along on a laptop or are used by a desktop at home or work.

 

 

Gary

"Those who lose themselves in a passion lose less than those who lose their passion"

Thanks for the replies.  Lots of things to think about.

Gary, I think you might be right about the decline of the desktop being a factor.  IRL, I am an engineer.  I am on a desktop all day, and so are all my coworkers.

But a surprising number of them use their smartphones as their main computer outside of work.  Especially the younger ones.  They often have laptops and desktops at home, but they never turn them on.  They prefer to do everything on their smartphones or tablets. 

I imagine that might cut down on the number of people who might check out Poser or DS out of casual interest.  (That was me, once.)

I think there is an oversaturation of the marketplace.  There is so much new stuff available that I'm not surprised that some might see their sales decline simply because there are more goods seeking the same dollars.  I get emails about every other week from a vendor with practically everything on sale for $2.  It's hard to make much selling characters for that kind of money...

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Quote - That said, I have friends who jumped all over the netbook-tablet products and got rid of their laptops or desktops.

Unfortunately in the U.S. people have been "dumbed down" to smartphone apps.  The majority of the people who buy tablet products so that they can get rid of their laptop or desktop, probably don't realize that there are other types of software out there outside of MS Office and smartphone apps.   They are easy to spot because they can tell all about the different types of smartphone apps, but they will struggle to name just as many software titles designed to be used on a laptop or desktop.

Laptop and desktop computers will give you the most value for the dollar.  Tablets are good for their mobility and not much beyond that.  When it's time for some serious work to be done a  people will use a laptop or desktop.

Quote - I think there is an oversaturation of the marketplace.  ... I get emails about every other week from a vendor with practically everything on sale for $2. 

There's definitely an oversaturation which is why the prices are low.  This is a perfect example of an economic formula dealing with supply and demand.  The greater the supply the lower the price.

Sales are also a good indicator of a possible decline in business.  The first thing that a vendor /business will do when they aren't making as much revenue as before is to throw a sale.  I know Daz3d is known for having big sales, but lately their sales have been in high gear.  I'll put it this way, I can't remember the last time Daz wasn't running a big sale promotion.

For the last few months the sales of Tablets have also started to decline.  I am not sure if it is just a dip or a pointer to the fact the tablet market has started to reach saturation.  Some like me were never interested from the start while others seemed to jump in only to find out later that the were limitation.  Another point floated is that those the have a tablet are less likely to upgrade, certainly there does not seem to be the same drive to upgrade as with smartphones.

Whatever the real position it will be interesting to see how the markets will develope over the next year.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

It sounds like we're all shrinking, in the way that Lilly Tomlin shrank in The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

That, or... it's me, isn't it?  I'm shrinking.  Oh, jeez, I knew this would happen.  Now I'll have to start wearing tall hats....  :scared:

Yeah, this post added nothing to the discussion.  Sigh.  (See, Cage is shrinking!)

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.

Quote - It's hard to make much selling characters for that kind of money...

Well if it's characters for V4 then I'd imagine the market for that is pretty saturated by this point, so even those who have been doing well with V4 characters may be seeing a decrease in demand for their content, if all or most of what they're doing is V4 characters. But there is still a lot of room for a lot of other content, especially environments. 

Quote - It sounds like we're all shrinking, in the way that Lilly Tomlin shrank in The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

That, or... it's me, isn't it?  I'm shrinking.  Oh, jeez, I knew this would happen.  Now I'll have to start wearing tall hats....  :scared:

Yeah, this post added nothing to the discussion.  Sigh.  (See, Cage is shrinking!)

 

Don't panic, if you really were shrinking everyone else would look bigger.  Even if you are, try and think of the benefits of being so small......like ....errr, well there must be some. 

 

I really need to find a mouse who can talk before I post again.

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - > Quote - It's hard to make much selling characters for that kind of money...

Well if it's characters for V4 then I'd imagine the market for that is pretty saturated by this point, so even those who have been doing well with V4 characters may be seeing a decrease in demand for their content, if all or most of what they're doing is V4 characters. But there is still a lot of room for a lot of other content, especially environments. 

 

Quote - 

Well if my buying pattern is anything to go by that is spot on.  I used to buy a lot of V4 characters but I have only purchase two in the last year and they were both in the Prime section.  Not a lot of profit in $3.50.

 

Environments is a different matter I am still buying them but I tend to buy less and pay more per item as I like the quality of the enviromment to be high.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - i've never bought anything from poserworld.

i don't want to make games, i want to make cgi movies.

internet activation requirements or internet connection requirements alienate me as a customer.  seems to be a lot of that these days.  feels like they trying to stick a syphon in my pocket.

Not a whole lot of difference between games and CGI movies.  Have you seen "GTA V" or "The Last of Us"?  "Watchdogs" or "The Order 1886"?  If you can make one of those games you'll have no trouble making a CGI movie.

Quote - Today's e-mail from Poserworld said they were starting a new business (making custom 3D models), because they believe the Poser and DS user base is shrinking.

Is that true?  Why would the user base be shrinking?  Is everyone moving on to Lightwave or other high end software? 

Poserworld has a business model that may not be sustainable.  What also works against them is they don't make hookerware for V4 - they make practical things - which is why I am a member.

As far as "shrinkage", for the past decade the Poser user base has been "shrinking" - With the release of Poser 9/2012, we are actually in negative numbers - and I suspect that with the release of the GameDev version, the "shrinking" Poser userbase will create a black hole and destroy the Earth - which will be dissapointing to fans of the Zombie Apocolypse and those that fear the Large Hadron Collider.

Poser users are not also moving to higher end software - this is the same crowd that says they can't afford to pony up $40 or so for an old copy of Poser 9.

The market is fragmenting however.  Consider the confluence of the following:

1.  The V4 market is saturated.  When was the last time something for V4 rolled out that made everyone say "Damn, I GOTTA have that!"  Yeah, I don't remember either.  In all seriousness, how much hookerwear and early 20's white chicks do you need?

2.Post V4 figures:

a.  Genesis never got much traction with the vendors outside of DAZ.  In addition to that, the vendors making genesis content with very few exceptions (Dariofish here and Male3dia over at DAZ) are making the exact replicas of the bland, early 20's Caucasians since the release of V4.

b.  Anytime a new Non-DAZ figure is released, self-appointed "experts" will proceed to flood the forums to make mountains out of molehills - using standards that they NEVER would apply to their figure of choice (i.e. V4 or genesis for the DS community).

3.  Vendors

a.  Most vendors have a Poser 7 workflow and they are aggressively uninterested in using any post-Poser 7 advancement.  They learned how to do something in Poser 7 and that is good enough for them.  The really believe that no one uses any version of Poser past the one that they learned on.

b.  Customer:  *I'd like some clothing for M4.*Vendor:  "Almost a decade ago I made a product for Apollo Maximus, it didn't sell well, therefore I will never make male clothing ever again." 

c.  Then there is the whole I'm an artist, I make what I want nonsense. God forbid they do market reseach - or use mechanisms like kickstarter so that every product is financially viable BEFORE they start work on it.  That would interfer with their artistic abilities apparently. 

4.  Users.

a.  The genesis users do not appear to venture outside of the DAZ cul-de-sac.  There isn't any reason do, especially since the genesis 2 figures are branching even farther away from Poser, the state of DSON and the lack of non-DAZ genesis content mentioned above.

b.  Those of us that have moved beyond the Poser 7 workflow have other storefronts (and forums) to visit.  Renderosity is in a Poser 7 timewarp and I don't think they will be leaving anytime soon.  I want products that take full advantage of 2014 - and many of those are sold elsewhere.

c.    Dawn has a dedicated storefront for people that want a V4 (and soon an M4) replacement that takes full advantage of Poser 9+.  The same can be said of other characters.  Not to mention that the troll factor is much lower at other forums.

d.  Because I fully leverage the capabilities of Poser 2014, I spend less time in this storefront. 

e.  As far as the forums, a lot of topics are beating the same horses as they were a decade ago (This being one of them along with this new version of Poser doesn't do what I need, therefore it sucks! or the ever popular, All hail some earlier verison - which somehow go so much better than it was when it was actually released.)  Some of the newer ones are variations of How can I get genesis working in Poser?

*The market is fragmenting and people are going to gravitate to places that cater to what they want.

Don't venders exspect to make 99.9% of there $$$ off there new product with in about the first 3 days of publication ?

Then after that they leave there product in the store so they might get a sell here and there from time to time.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - As far as "shrinkage", for the past decade the Poser user base has been "shrinking" - With the release of Poser 9/2012, we are actually in negative numbers - and I suspect that with the release of the GameDev version, the "shrinking" Poser userbase will create a black hole and destroy the Earth - which will be dissapointing to fans of the Zombie Apocolypse and those that fear the Large Hadron Collider.

Please cite your source for this info.  The only thing that matters is whether SM sell enough copies of Poser to continue developing and supporting it.  Are sales down?  Have official numbers ever been released?

Unlike DAZ, SM sell their product, they don't subsidize it with merchandise and plug-ins.  The fitting room allows any Poser user with intermediate skill to create new clothing and re-purpose old items for newer figures.  Why would anyone buy an item when they probably already have something similar in their collection for a different figure?  Both EZSkin and EZMat can also extend the life of older items and reduce the temptation to buy specific shader packs or scripts designed to accomplish similar tasks.

As Poser still largely works the way it has for years, I'd like to think more users are comfortable making their own content and less dependent on others to provide it.  That is where I'm at right now.  I'll likely buy every version SM release, but with free tools like meshmixer and Sculptris, plug-ins like EZMat and EZSkin and an ever growing familiarity with how Poser works I now have almost zero need for 3rd party commercial products.

How does any of this equate to a new version of Poser being a bad thing?

If that is the case, RorrKonn - almost every product I have purchased is a surprise to the vendor.  I buy what I need, when I need it, not when it is released.

My frustration right now is over all of the older content that I can no longer purchase here because of 'Rosity's stupid sales policy.

Poser 2014 makes old legacy figures new again.  Not to mention the fact that I missed a lot of items because I simply didn't have the computing horsepower I have now.  Poser 5 forced me to move from a G3 PowerMac to a G4 Powermac, Poser 6 forced me to a G5 PowerMac - Poser Pro convinced me to buy a MacPro.

My want list of stuff that is no longer available at 'Rosity -

Miki 1 - 40+ items; Miki 2 - 20+ items; P6 Jessi - 31 items; P6 Koji - 2 items; G2 Females - 15 items; Gloria - 1 item (still sifting round for her, the G2 males); Terai Yuki - 7 items; V3 - 16 items; V4 - 2 items

Even at the clearance sale prices, these items would put me back over $900 dollars - and I would buy them.  Not all at once of course, but they would make their way to my bloated runtimes. - especially the Miki stuff.

I have a similar list from stuff I missed at RDNA & Content Paradise.

Quote - > Quote - As far as "shrinkage", for the past decade the Poser user base has been "shrinking" - With the release of Poser 9/2012, we are actually in negative numbers - and I suspect that with the release of the GameDev version, the "shrinking" Poser userbase will create a black hole and destroy the Earth - which will be dissapointing to fans of the Zombie Apocolypse and those that fear the Large Hadron Collider.

Please cite your source for this info.  The only thing that matters is whether SM sell enough copies of Poser to continue developing and supporting it.  Are sales down?  Have official numbers ever been released?

Unlike DAZ, SM sell their product, they don't subsidize it with merchandise and plug-ins.  The fitting room allows any Poser user with intermediate skill to create new clothing and re-purpose old items for newer figures.  Why would anyone buy an item when they probably already have something similar in their collection for a different figure?  Both EZSkin and EZMat can also extend the life of older items and reduce the temptation to buy specific shader packs or scripts designed to accomplish similar tasks.

As Poser still largely works the way it has for years, I'd like to think more users are comfortable making their own content and less dependent on others to provide it.  That is where I'm at right now.  I'll likely buy every version SM release, but with free tools like meshmixer and Sculptris, plug-ins like EZMat and EZSkin and an ever growing familiarity with how Poser works I now have almost zero need for 3rd party commercial products.

How does any of this equate to a new version of Poser being a bad thing?

I was being facetious.  The whole The Poser user base is shrinking has been an ongoing shriek with no evidence to back it up for about a decade now.

I agree with you whole heartedly about being able to repurpose and revive legacy content.  That is what is so awesome about 2014.

The only bad thing about the upcoming GameDev version of Poser is that I won't be able to buy it until Sept 1.

Quote - I was being facetious.  The whole The Poser user base is shrinking has been an ongoing shriek with no evidence to back it up for about a decade now.

I agree with you whole heartedly about being able to repurpose and revive legacy content.  That is what is so awesome about 2014.

The only bad thing about the upcoming GameDev version of Poser is that I won't be able to buy it until Sept 1.

You were quite convincing...  There may be truth to that point of view, but in all the years of hearing it I've never seen the damning evidence.

I don't know how much this GD version will cost, but I doubt it's in my current budget.  I've every intention of buying it, though Poser 2014 is completely adequate for my current projects.

Quote - My frustration right now is over all of the older content that I can no longer purchase here because of 'Rosity's stupid sales policy.

Contact the vendor to see if they still have the product and if they are willing to sell it.  You may be able to get it depending on how old the product is. You may be able to purchase it from a different site or directly from the vendor.

Miki 1 isn't available anymore, anywhere that I've looked. So I wouldn't expect much content to still be available for her either. 

In fairness, content takes up a lot of server space and bandwidth, and if it's not selling then it's just draining resources and that can get expensive. There's no reason to keep it around just because it might have a chance of selling one copy once every 6 months to a year or so. These marketplaces are businesses and they have to keep their costs down where ever they can find room to squeeze a few pennies out of the overhead. 

You could always PM the vendor that created the item that's no longer available and ask them if there's a way to still get that item. 

Quote -  Dawn has a dedicated storefront for people that want a V4 (and soon an M4) replacement that takes full advantage of Poser 9+

Is there a Dawn2 you might be talking about here? Cause Dawn1 does not take "full advantage" of most any of P9/10's features. At least not that I've seen, and I have worked with her a good bit to see exactly what she's capable of. She's weightmapped, that's about it. But beyond that, no figure has utilized any of the new features of P9/P10. At least none that I've seen, and I've been looking for them. Except ChrisII, but he's a toon, not a realistic figure. Rigging/design-wise tho, he's freakin awesome. > Quote - Don't venders exspect to make 99.9% of there $$$ off there new product with in about the first 3 days of publication ?

Then after that they leave there product in the store so they might get a sell here and there from time to time.

If their content is mediocre then probably so, but for the artists that actually put time and effort and attention to detail in their work it shows and they can make very good money doing it. But the majority of content available is mediocre at best, so it's understandable why the misconception that you "can't make any real money at this" notion exists. There are several artists I know of, and many more I don't know, making very good money selling Poser and DS content, and other CG content for other apps. Poser and DS are by far not the only apps that people buy content for. And custom commission work can pay very very nicely. Have you ever looked at the prices on Squid? Or at their contributing artists status? They have levels based on sales quotas. I think the highest is Diamond at $10,000+ in sales, and there are a lot of diamond level artists at squid. From what I've been told it doesn't take too long to reach diamond either. If your work is good enough people will buy it.

 

I was excited about the game dev version of Poser when it was first announced, but I've been experimenting with DS and have found that so far DS does everything the Poser game dev version is claiming it will do, as far as FBX and mesh reduction/combining goes, and I don't have to buy anything extra. So I'll likely be holding out on this version until I see some examples of just how good it is. Still looking forward to seeing it in action tho.

 

Quote - Contact the vendor to see if they still have the product and if they are willing to sell it.  You may be able to get it depending on how old the product is. You may be able to purchase it from a different site or directly from the vendor.

That is what I have been doing - although in a couple of cases, the vendor simply gave the product to me, but in other cases, the vendor has dropped off the face of the 'Rosity.  I'm still trying to figure out the best way to approach Aery Soul (or whatever handle they go by these days) to agree to sell me a copy of May for Miki 1.

What frustrates me is that if so much as 1 copy of a product was sold, 'Rosity can't just trash it - because it is still in the purchaser's account, available for download.

They really should rethink the clearance policy.

could ya get a smitth micro stock report ?

wouldn't that give ya some info on Poser ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - In fairness, content takes up a lot of server space and bandwidth, and if it's not selling then it's just draining resources and that can get expensive. There's no reason to keep it around just because it might have a chance of selling one copy once every 6 months to a year or so. These marketplaces are businesses and they have to keep their costs down where ever they can find room to squeeze a few pennies out of the overhead. 

All of these producst are on the servers - everyone of them still has a webpage, even if 'Rosity doesn't want to sell it anymore.  Go to your purchase list and pull up something that isn't for sale any longer - the webpage still exists and the zip file is still available for download.

As long as 1 copy was sold, you have the same space and bandwidth costs as any other product - you are simply missing out on potential sales.  Not a lot granted, but when "sqeezing a few pennies" every little bit will help.  And as far as the vendors go - it would be "found money"  They have sunk those costs a long time ago.

When I contact these active vendors at 'Rosity to pick up a number of things that I missed the first go around, I'll be buying content that is sitting on 'Rosity servers at this very moment costing "server space and bandwith".  And 'Rosity won't see a dime of it. And it is a lot of content - it's actually larger than my current wishlist - and that is saying something.

Again, I think 'Rosity need to relook their clearance policy - it may have made since when it was first formulated, but the community has changed, even if 'Rosity hasn't.

Why not make these things part of Prime?  At least you could get back some of those "server and bandwidth" costs that 'Rosity is currently eating.

Quote - could ya get a smitth micro stock report ?

wouldn't that give ya some info on Poser ?

No - the stock market hasn't had a relationship to reality in a very, very long time.  As long as things like front-running are legal the markets are a casino.

Quote - All of these producst are on the servers - everyone of them still has a webpage, even if 'Rosity doesn't want to sell it anymore.  Go to your purchase list and pull up something that isn't for sale any longer - the webpage still exists and the zip file is still available for download.

Ah, right. I'd forgotten about that aspect. Still, I'm sure there is a logical business reason for why they remove items that don't sell. Some of it is also due to vendors pulling their stores for various reasons. 

There is - churn.  I don't think 'Rosity understands how Poser 2014 can change the game for endusers that move beyond NVIATWAS.  Figures that were problematic in 2005 aren't in 2014.

My problem is I didn't know then what I know today.  In 2006, I didn't know that Idler168's high heel pump was the exact same obj that he uses for every figure he makes that shoe for - which is a lot, it's a good shoe.  I didn't know that all of the texture sets for the V3 product would work with the other Miki or Jessi high heel pump.

I have the same issue with dynamics - I missed a lot of cool stuff in the past because my computers at the time didn't have the horsepower to make dynamic cloth worth my time.  My trusty MacPro is a whole different story.

Quote - 4.  Users.

a.  The genesis users do not appear to venture outside of the DAZ cul-de-sac.  There isn't any reason do, especially since the genesis 2 figures are branching even farther away from Poser, the state of DSON and the lack of non-DAZ genesis content mentioned above.

Aside from Dawn, are there any other new figures that even work in Studio? I know the native Poser figures won't.

Quote - > Quote - 4.  Users.

a.  The genesis users do not appear to venture outside of the DAZ cul-de-sac.  There isn't any reason do, especially since the genesis 2 figures are branching even farther away from Poser, the state of DSON and the lack of non-DAZ genesis content mentioned above.

Aside from Dawn, are there any other new figures that even work in Studio? I know the native Poser figures won't.

not no vickys ,but there might be some stand alone wolf monsters and all.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Long time ago I was a memver at Poserworld it was nice while it lasted but in the end the selection was just not what I was looking for (though I do not buy all that uch these days anyways)

What really out me off Poserworld was all the weird emails they were sending a while back from other business ventures to wanting/needing money and crying about possible shut down.. worst thing I unsubscribed about 4 times and still got those mails every once in a while. In the end businesses such as that will never see mooney from me.

As for all of the Poser userbase shrinking.. I am not seeing that at this time. It is however summer and most things slow down in summer to a degree I myself have been spending lots of time outside and on vacation and nowhere near the marketplace or Poser.

Quote - 10 years ago Poser was pretty much the only game in town for the hobbyist 3D artist. Blender was barely getting off the ground, there was no DAZ Studio, there were no free game engines to build your own game or virtual reality.

There were a lot of free game engines, the difference is that not too many people knew that then.

The Build Engine has always been free for personal use, released in 1995.

ID Tech 1 (Doom Engine) released to public in 1997.

The Source Game Engine has been out for about 10 years, completely free, and can do just about every type of game you can think of. It could compile for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. Newer versions do, Xbox, Andriod, etc.

There are many more that are free and have been so for years.... Many companies release previous versions of their game engines to the public after it isn't the newest one with all the "bells and whistles" Some of them are not easy to use. They release the engine(s), but not all of the support stuff that goes along with it. Some have oddball file formats and scripting as well.

As for 3D there were not a lot of choices, but there were a few.

Simply 3D came out in 2000 and could do 3D rendering, had a library, etc, but I don't recall it having rigging.

There were some other ones, but I seem to be drawing a blank now.

The major difference with all of these, is the ease of use and the community surrounding them.

Poser has a rather large following compared to software that proceeded it. And a lot of that has to do with sites just like this one. Lets face it far less people had an internet connection 10 years ago. Now anyone with a cell phone can get on the internet.

Is the Poser user base shrinking? I sort of doubt that.

Programs without a following have a tendency to disappear.

And we are still here, debating if we (or someone else) isn't.

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

I used to follow these free 3D engines, waiting for the magic one to come along with the "make game" button enabled. 

But IIRC many of them weren't actually game engines, rather just tech demos of someone's rasterizer project.  And the ones that you could actually make agame in had strings attached...

The ones I remember most impressing me were CosmoCreator and Beyond Virtual.  I'm sure none of what was available then can compare to what's availbale now in Unity or UE4.

I do miss some of the more promising 3d stuff of about a decade or so ago...  Remember Merlin3d that was designed around the space navigator?  And whatever happened to Anim8or...  Don't even get me started on TrueSpace's demise...

Communities don't usually just disappear, they tend to migrate.  If less people are using Poser, and I don't know that this is even true, they've probably moved to iClone, Daz, or a more full featured program such as Carrara or blender.  I strongly doubt that the idea of animating 3D characters appeals to fewer people than it did 10 years ago.

in Poser 3/4 days there was

Softimage ,Max ,Lightwave they where the big 3

at that time they could only do about a 10th of what Blender can do now.

then came all the rest etc etc

Softimage is being ghosted 2015 ,once the king ,now ...R.I.P.
Lightwave forums seems like a ghost town compared to back in the day.
Sad ,there both killer app's but not the most user friendly.

So if they can't survive ,kinda hard to see how med rage app's could survive.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

I can only speak for myself..... when it comes to poser, yes I'm shrinking :)

I'm still on Poser Pro 2012 and have no intention or need to upgrade. I only use it in conjunction with Vue, to pose and set up my characters, props, etc. For that, not much is needed. The new features that are added to poser do not change my experience with poser, I don't need them.

Seeing how SM now trying to break into other markets, I'd say yes, the poser base is shrinking.

Looking at the content market, I'd say yes, the poser base is shrinking, but mostly vendors imagination seems to be shrinking. I see the same stuff (slutwear) over and over again. I see the same kind of props being released over and over again. No one is moving forward, the market seems to be standing still and we all know what that means in the end.

Poser is driven by content..... if the content well dries up, so will poser. The content market is saturated since vendors lack a long term vision, they create the same stuff over and over again, doing the same everyone else does. That will have a huge effect on the market long term. No new releases means the market will slowly die and so will Poser.

SM has seen this and are now trying to breath new life into poser by exploring a new market with different customers, different needs. Problem is that DAZ tried this not too long ago and failed miserably, let's see if SM will do better.

If vendors want to survive, they may need to adjust their license, at the moment Rendo does not allow the content to be used in games. I'm wondering if vendors will go along and stores will change policy and revive the whole content market perhaps. But... knowing how uptight Rendo is, I see them cling unto what they have even more, instead of being open minded and embrace new attempts in the market.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

Yes, it is shrinking.

Why?

In the beginning there was only Poser.
Now there are more and more apps coming into the competition, cutting into the Poser user base.

All depends on what do I get for my dollar?
End user friendly?
Bug free and crash proof?
And yes, content creater friendly too?

The market is driven by its customers.
And sometimes customers look at the competition.

The best way to keep Poser on its rails is to release the next versions with more native high quality content and become as end user friendly and as bullet proof as possible.
Just my 2 cents.

 

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Wait ,we can't sell game meshes & licensing here at Renderosity ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

As with any area of business, things get diluted as time goes on.  You get one price comparison site, then there's a million and only the fittest survive.  You get one popular MP3 player and then you get a million clones and again, only the fittest survive.  You get a 3D content website such as this (one of the first) and then there's a million others and yet again, only the fittest survive.

Because of that, I'd say that any 3D content business packing up is doing so because they're not one of the fittest.  You either market and run your business successfully in a manner that is attractive enough to keep your business afloat, or you don't.  Businesses generally only close because they failed to achieve their goal, but that should never be taken as an indicator of the state of the industry it failed in.

I do believe that Game Engines such as Unreal are a direct threat to programs such as Poser though.  I was taking a good look at Unreal a few months back and it's mind-blowing what can be done, no need even to wait for a photoreal reneder, it's done in real time.  I reckon both DAZ and Smith Micro need to get those viewports replaced with a realtime render implementation as soon as possible.  Those game engines could suck-up their custom like a sponge if they don't!

Quote - Yes, it is shrinking.

Why?

In the beginning there was only Poser.
Now there are more and more apps coming into the competition, cutting into the Poser user base.

All depends on what do I get for my dollar?
End user friendly?
Bug free and crash proof?
And yes, content creater friendly too?

The market is driven by its customers.
And sometimes customers look at the competition.

The best way to keep Poser on its rails is to release the next versions with more native high quality content and become as end user friendly and as bullet proof as possible.
Just my 2 cents.

Your argument presumes that there is a finite number of Poser users that isn't growing. 

Quote - I do believe that Game Engines such as Unreal are a direct threat to programs such as Poser though.  I was taking a good look at Unreal a few months back and it's mind-blowing what can be done, no need even to wait for a photoreal render, it's done in real time.  I reckon both DAZ and Smith Micro need to get those viewports replaced with a realtime render implementation as soon as possible.  Those game engines could suck-up their custom like a sponge if they don't!

 

While I support SMs move to market a game version of Poser I do not think that turning it into a game engine would be such a good move.  Already in this thread a number of game engines have been mentioned, a lot of the free so I do not see why this would be such a good move for SM

I have no interest in game development, I support the new game versions as I know others do have an interest and more power to them.  I may be very strange but I like Poser for what it can do now but only in the stills areana (assuming you regard selecting a single render from a simulation can be defined as a 'still'.  Really I have no need for a real time render, nor, come to think of it a Photo real render, but as I said maybe it is just me and I am strange.

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote -
While I support SMs move to market a game version of Poser I do not think that turning it into a game engine would be such a good move.  Already in this thread a number of game engines have been mentioned, a lot of the free so I do not see why this would be such a good move for SM

I have no interest in game development, I support the new game versions as I know others do have an interest and more power to them.  I may be very strange but I like Poser for what it can do now but only in the stills areana (assuming you regard selecting a single render from a simulation can be defined as a 'still'.  Really I have no need for a real time render, nor, come to think of it a Photo real render, but as I said maybe it is just me and I am strange.

 

We are not the target audience for PoserGameDev - it is all about getting Poser into additional professional workflows with other applications. 

We are a secondary market - which is fine.  I use Poser for storyboarding graphic novels.  The addition of FBX inport/export means I have access to things that most Poser vendors are simply not interested in making - like quality furniture.  Figure baking, polyreduction and polyhide means I no longer have to laborously build multiple scenes and render in passes to get my final image.  My workflow is going to speed up - and I am all about that.

If my office had this version of Poser back in '08 - it would have been used extensively in our training development process.

ssgbryan.

 

I totally understand were you are coming from and I agree with your comments.  I was just responding to the suggestion that SM needs to move Poser to a real time renderer.  If that is added to as an option I would support that as well just not as a replacement for Firefly.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

I'd just like to clarify what I meant:

If you were to put Poser or DS along-side Unreal Engine right now, the 3D programs we love so much would fare badly.  The reason: Unreal would simply need to add what is effectively a "Pose Room" to Unreal Engine and that would be it.

As much a I love Poser and DS, I wouldn't use them if I could import a poseable cr2 into Unreal, that's why DAZ and Smith Micro need to employ Unreal's biggest tactic (a realtime render engine) before Unreal get around to importing Poser figures.

Realtime rendering is the buzzword now, so pretty soon, no one will be prepared to wait for a render because there will be no need to, in fact there already isn't a need to.  Most people probably think that Unreal Engine is just a game thing, but it isn't.  It's used for games, machinima, movies, animation, stills, art, whatever.

I'd say Unreal is a threat that is far from being "Unreal".

I am still not convinced but then I have not played with Unreal as I have no interest so you may well be right.  Just find it hard to believe that a Renders in Poser, Vue the rest take time to do a quality render.  If you can get the same quality realtime it would be all the rage but then that is very different from being a 'Buzzword'.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

But even Vue is in danger, every 3D rendering program out there that doesn't do realtime rendering is in danger because people aren't going to sit around waiting for renders when they don't have to.  I've seen it do Vue-type scenery and detail that looks every bit as good as Vue, and dare I say it better due to the talent of the artist using it.

Each frame took precisely one sixtieth of a second to be completely rendered, or in other words, it's realtime rendering at 60FPS and that's pretty damn neat!  You move around your scene like a game, and your render is done, whatever the view is, that's your render.  I doubt realtime rendering can be ignored by any 3D rendering product if intends to survive, I could be wrong, but seriously, I don't think I am, not after seeing what Unreal Engine 4 can do.

If it's not real time.why waste your time with it ?

C4D 16 will be Realesed 08.12.14 for only $3,700.00.
Well that's the end of Poser ,snif snif.

Can we give a way / sell meshes on Renderosity with a game license included ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

For those of you talking about the Unreal engine (4) as a potential threat, have you actually been to the website & rented your software yet?  Just take a look at the system requirements.

Poser and DS are safe.

Not to mention things like:

Generally, you are obligated to pay to Epic 5% of all gross revenue for your product, regardless of what company collects the revenue.

Quote -
But even Vue is in danger, every 3D rendering program out there that doesn't do realtime rendering is in danger because people aren't going to sit around waiting for renders when they don't have to.  I've seen it do Vue-type scenery and detail that looks every bit as good as Vue, and dare I say it better due to the talent of the artist using it.

I have not seen that at all. I've heard others claim it also, but when they posted links it turned out they could not make it true. Yes, I've seen excellent stuff, even in games and realtime rendered, but not with the same level of detail...... at least not something I could afford.

If this were the case why wouldn't big animation studios switch in a heart beat? Because real time rendering still cannot get to the level of detail and quality they are after.

I'm sure Vue and Poser will be around for a while, but I'm not sure when the time is right that they will switch to real time rendering, since the question is can any of us afford that kind of technology? Most of us are doing this as a hobby and to really make real time rendering worthwhile we need to buy expensive hardware and SM, E-On and so on need to implement expensive software changes. In the end the user base will pay the price and that's the time the user base may really shrink, since we simply can't afford to buy that kind of hardware and software.

Besides.... I don't see the problem. If you set up your scenes correctly you can render something beautiful with a decent quadcore i7. I'm working on a huge scene now in Vue. Roughly 12 terrains each with it's own detailed ecosystem, over 2.4 billion polygons in the scene, that is without the dynamic ecosystems. 6 animals with high-res textures. A number of detailed trees, fog, clouds, dust gust and more. It's the biggest scene I've ever done in Vue. I'm rendering it at 1600x900, my test renders take 6 minutes on my laptop (quadcore i7 2Ghz) , but I need to tone down the atmosphere quality for that. The final render with high quality atmosphere takes 59 minutes on my desktop (i7 3770), just a regular system anyone can afford. The scene takes 1hr30 minutes on the laptop, it's a bit older, but still not to bad. But... to get these kind of times you need to set up things correctly. I've seen similar scenes that take 8 hours rendering if not set up correctly. Most people simply don't take the time to set up their scenes right.

With these rendering times am I desperate to invest a lot of money into real-time rendering? I don't think so. Once my scene is done and I start preparing dinner, eat it and even before I can do the dishes my render is finished. No time lost at all. I can also wacht a movie and not even get to the end before my render is done. Again no time lost. For the kind of money I need to invest into good real-time rendering, I can buy a lot of fun stuff.

It all depends on how you look at it. I know E-On doesn't have plans to switch to real-time rendering any time soon and neither have I heard SM plans on this whole matter, so I'm in no hurry to spent any kind of money on something I don't need.

CPU rendering will be with us for many more years, by the time we enter the next decade things may be differently, but by that time they may have invented some new kind of CPU making GPU rendering obsolete..... since that is what technology is all about..... what seems to be the future now will be overtaken by what will be reality when we arrive in the future.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

I reckon Unreal must have the best purchase option of any software I know of that is not free, and by now you probably know what I'm like for complaining about stuff like that!

For less than twenty dollars you get the full, commercial, unrestricted product.  If you cancel that subscription you will still retain that licence and can continue to use it privately or commercially.  Depending on what you do there might be a small royalty, but so what, look how cheap it is to licence such an insanely powerful product?

It's an incredible deal.  I took out a month subscription then cancelled, I still have the product and I am still able to use it unrestricted.  This is a fair system, and although I won't be bothering with the current update, I'm absolutely certain I will be buying more in the future because the amount of stuff they add in each release is equally amazing.

They seem to have the only genuinely fair subscription system out there.  I know because I've tried it (and wouldn't have done if it were a greed machine).  It's perfectly fair because even after you cancel, you still have the licence, and if you like what they add next time, great, you just pay another twenty dollars and you're on your way.  If you donlt want to bother with newer releases, you still get to keep your current licence.

So far, Unreal Engine 4 has cost me less than twenty dollars, and unless I want the next version, it will never cost me another penny.  My licence is fine and fully functional.

Cinema 4D is a modelling program as well as a 3D renderer, so Unreal isn't as much a threat to Cinema 4D as it is to Poser.  The only thing stopping me from droppingPoser and DS altogether is the fact that it uses cr2 figures.  If Unreal ever gets to import these figures I would be rendering in Unreal all the time because you're literally walking around a render in 3D space.

Just 45 minutes ago I was walking around a subway and moving items around.  Those items were even reflecting in the water on the floor as I moved them around the scene.  That sort of interactivity is pretty much perfection, so can you imagine what it would be like if you could load up a Poser or DAZ figure in that scene and pose it?

All Unreal would have to do is make an importer and it would do just that.  An even more sobering thought is that they offer the source code to everyone as part of the deal, so anyone with the ability can make such an importer even if Unreal donlt want to.  Due to that, I reckon it's only a matter of time until you can import a cr2 into the Unreal Editor and replace DS and Poser completely.

That's why DAZ and Smith Micro can't ignore realtime rendering.  If Firefly harnessed the GPU for it's calculations, that would be great, and although it still wouldn't be realtime, I think it would still be enough to stop people ditching it for another realtime capable 3D environment.  If Poser used a GPU Firefly to render even a quarter of the speed of Octane, I'd still be happy to stick with it because it's using the native renderer and Firefly is a great renderer designed for the Poser environment.

Even my old GTX460 manages this, no problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcfk_vncbfE

Sure, but that is not the real challenge for a game engine at all. It's all limited space, limited view, confined corners. Even my laptop can handle that stuff, no problem at all. It sure looks cool, but when it comes to game mechanics, that's peanuts.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

It's actually only the rendering I got interested in it for and I tell you what, reading through the effects and materials sections of the documentation is pretty droolworthy stuff, it's like reading the manual for a 3D renderer only more enjoyable cause you know it'll all happen in realtime while you're "in" the scene as you adjust it.

Don't understimate how powerful their shader, lighting, and rendering system is, I'm not exeggerating when I say I thought it was mindblowing when I first discovered it, I still do.  The main thing is that if you want to, you absolutely can pull-off a photo with it, it's that good.

Unreal uses FBX. 

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/FBXAnimationPipeline.html

So if you have Poser game dev, then Poser figures should be usable because it exports to FBX. They don't have to be reduced res to work in the engine. 

 

Here is an example of Unreal Engine 4's real time rendering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO2rM-l-vdQ

Say what you want, but I've never seen firefly produce anything close to that. 

Quote -
Cinema 4D is a modelling program as well as a 3D renderer, so Unreal isn't as much a threat to Cinema 4D as it is to Poser

Unreal and Unity both have modelers, tho it's an extra cost for Unity, unless you have a subscription to the full version or have bought the full license, but Unreal's modeler is built in. Probably isn't that great for organics, but it's plenty for architecture. Build, rig, texture all right there in the UDK.

 

 

 

 

DAZ Poser has realtime renders right now :)
http://render.otoy.com/

Why hollywood does what they do is on them ,not CGI.

I'm not going to go Vue vs realtime.
it's faster ,cheaper to use Vue then it is to make a game forest.
Can Vue make a game forest in minutes ? that would be monumentally helpful.

does 2014 realtime games look as good as real life Hollywood video's right now ?,probably not
,but they look dang good thou.
Do we play are music with vinyl records threw eight 3 foot speakers ? probably not.
why do we settle for mp3's threw two 6 inch speakers ? cause it's cheep ,fast & easy so it's good enough.

Who will win the CGI Wars ?
The one that makes a app that we can set down and make any 2 hour long movie ,
that we could think of in 2 weeks for a very low budge.
They will be the CGI winners and hoolywood will be ghosted.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

The links are impressive and I can see it's potential but it depends on what you are looking for from your hobby.  I can't see it gives a great deal if you are in the business of book illustration where you are looking to create a high detail still.  Yep I know games are great but there are still people who read books and comics and I see little benefit from a realtime renderer in that part of the market.

I also produce calendars, banners and cards for the family and friends, none of which need a real time renderer or game engine.  So maybe some people may move away from Poser if they are into games but making yourself the same as the competition is not always the best way to survive.  Finding a niche in the right market is also possible.

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Let's also not forget the time involved :) Building a real-time scene takes a lot more time then building a scene in Poser or Vue. So, the time gained with rendering in real-time, you loose big time in building the scene.

For animation yes, such a game engine is cool, but for still images, I don't see the added value either.

Oh, and let's not forget that to get the real cool stuff shown, you need to do coding and that is not for everyone. So, while the videos shown are very cool, it took a lot of time to create those. Building a scene, coding the effects, movements, collistions and more. Rendering is done in real-time, the rest is not and takes a lot of time.

I've created 3D games scenes in the past, using conitec's game engine and a lot of work was involved. I can safely say it takes a lot less time to do a scene in Poser and Vue then it takes in a 3D game engine. Yes, the rendering is real-time and very fast, but that's where it stops :)

You all make it seem like a breeze to use Unreal and other similar engines, but that is not the case, you only gives us half of the story. To arrive at those amazing videos, there is a lot more involed and it's safe to say that the majority of users never get that far or that good!

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

**
@Shane**
Cheers, I was about to post that Infiltratror demo but you beat me to it!

Have you been able to test that FBX thing?  And am I understanding you right that I'd be able to take any figure or content I can use in Poser, and make it loadable in Unreal so that I would be able to pose the Poser figure in the realtime viewport?

**
@RorrKonn**
I've been looking for a video I saw, it was a demonstration of outside scale and detail, pretty much the sort of thing Vue is famous for, and honestly, it was in no way outdone by the Vue renderer.  In that video Shane just posted, that outdoor scene at 2:45 is absolutley mindblowing when you consider that everything you see has been completely rendered sixty times over in just one second.  I doubt Vue could manage to render that scene just once in per hour, let alone sixty times over in one second!

There's no comparison on the quality to speed ratio because I honestly think Unreal looks better even realtime.  Even more crazy is when you consider not just the rendering, but also the animation and dynamics in that video.  The sparks, crashing ships, particles, dirt, people walking, swingind ropes, it's all calculated in real time - that's just crazy!

I had no idea things like this even existed until a few month back.  The only reason I found out about Unreal was through watching a machinima that was made with it.  I got curous because I started to wonder, how come they've made a movie with it with their own content if it's a game thing?

That's when I discovered, it's not just a game thing.

If you look super-close at that Infiltrator video Shane posted, you'll see stuff like films of oil on the water, particles of dirt on the lens, flare, chromatic abberation, incredibly lifelike physically based materials and shaders, crazy good lighting systems, bokeh, and endless other goodies.  It lacks for nothing and it's all done in realtime!

Like I said, I could be wrong, but I think these things are a serious threat if software like DS and Poser don't start doing realtime rendering in their own viewport.  I suppose one very easy way for Poser to do this would be for them to licence the engine for use inside the Poser viewport, perhaps sell it as an extra just like the game update they just released.  Selling it as an addon would be idea because it means the price only rises for those who want Unreal rendering in their Poser viewport.  And let;s face it, absolutley every Poser user in existance would indeed want that in the viewport, who on earth would say no to instant rendering?

Things like that cannot be ignored, they're just way too impressive!

Click for the little details you might not notice first time around - all realtime!

**
@Hornet**
This isn't the best demonstration, but it will give you a good idea of how easy it is to bring content into Unreal and actually use it in realtime.  You really don't need to worry about that technical stuff at the end, you can get by without all that, that's really only for people who use it for making games or get highly skilled at it.  I've got by dead easy, I've only used the nodes for basic stuff, and even those are dead easy because their documentation and tutorial videos are extremely good.

It's this easy - Click for video

@Aeilkema
You get all this for less than 20 dollars, yours to keep, and if that new addon for Poser really does allow you to bring content and posable Poser figures into it for an instant render, the enjoyment factor is going to be pretty high.  I'm hoping Shane tells me what I want to hear, because if he does, I'll be buying that new Poser addon so that I can work, set up my lights and render in Unreal's "instant" environment.

Here's an example - Click for demo of lighting setup documentation

Quote - ! **
@Hornet**
This isn't the best demonstration, but it will give you a good idea of how easy it is to bring content into Unreal and actually use it in realtime.  You really don't need to worry about that technical stuff at the end, you can get by without all that, that's really only for people who use it for making games or get highly skilled at it.  I've got by dead easy, I've only used the nodes for basic stuff, and even those are dead easy because their documentation and tutorial videos are extremely good.

It's this easy - Click for video

 

Yes, nice video, but I am NOT into animation so just how do any of the features help be illustrate a book and and why should Real time rendering matter to me?

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - @Hornet
This isn't the best demonstration, but it will give you a good idea of how easy it is to bring content into Unreal and actually use it in realtime.  You really don't need to worry about that technical stuff at the end, you can get by without all that, that's really only for people who use it for making games or get highly skilled at it.  I've got by dead easy, I've only used the nodes for basic stuff, and even those are dead easy because their documentation and tutorial videos are extremely good.

It's this easy - Click for video

Did you seriously see the same vidoe as I did? Did you see how many nodes this guy connected to get something done? While connecting a few nodes is easy, to get the results he wanted, he had to connect tons of nodes, one big clutter of nodes. Unless you have a second screen as he does, this will get a bit too cluttered :) What fun are the basics anyway if you can do some really cool stuff? But to do the real cool stuff, you have to really dig in. Seriously, with all the nodes and variables and things you need to set up, you lost the time you've gained in real-time rendering already.

This is not faster at all then setting up your scene in Poser and render it. Also when you really want to animation in Unreal, you're way beyond basics already. You need to set up your characters, still animate each movement, tell then how to interact with the enviroment and what you want them to do. In the end that will be time consuming.

You make it sound way too easy, since you've scratched the surface yourself. Even with that, be honest, that took quite some time to get done, it's not a matter of mimutes. Once you start animating and bringing in your animated characters the whole easiness is gone and you're way beyond basics..... that will get very complicated and will get way more complicated then what users here now do with Poser and Vue, even those who animate.

Good luck with it and I hope you do understand what you're getting into, nothing easy about it at all once you advance :)

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

it must take lightyears to set up a thing like that.
But, it does look good.

Nice video's.

Perhaps the best thing coming out of this is a possible technology transfer beteen SM and Unreal.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

What I learned most ofthese videos is: The importance of textures and material room setups.
IDL? GC? Ambient? Poser has it all, but not in real time.

I see:

• Good texturing.
• Good material room setups.

But building setups like these?
You need months if not years.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

@Hornet
Because you don't have to wait for your render, you're constantly in your render as you work so as soon as you throw in some smoke or particles or lights or bokeh, whatever else, you just position your camera where you want it and you're done, render complete!

That's what attracts me to it as a stills renderer, that, and the fact that it has features even raytracers don't seem to have.  For example the bokeh and abberation effects in Unreal are probably the best I've seen, and they're realtime as well.  You shouldn't let that bunch of nodes scare you because like I said, the way it's designed you can be hidden from that and only ever touch it if you want to do something deep.

The guy in the video is showing it from a game developer point of view, so don't let that scare you.

@aeilkema
Ok, have you thought about it this way...

If you were to load poser content into Unreal, how much more enjoyable is that going to be when you do not have to wait for a render because you're in the render?  When you have live bokeh, DOF, motion blur, smoke, fog, smog, lights, rain, particles, swaying chains, cloth blowing in the wind, all at your command, all movable in a mouseclick?

Remember, Unreal has a marketplace just like Poser and DS does, so it's just as easy to use ready made content in it as it is in Poser or DS.  You don't need to get technical with it if you don't want to.  If a person can load a figure, pose it, throw in a few effects and not have to wait for a render, what's so hard about that?

I haven't found it difficult to do anything I've tried so far and I'm pretty new to it.

Just to give an idea of a small team using it (one person), here's an animation someone made using the old version, all they did is use it as an animation tool, just like Poser or DS.

Click for Dystopia - a budget short animation using even the older version

How long would that take with Poser or DS?

@Vilters
Yup, I think getting it licenced to be used inside the Poser viewport would be amazing and would be the best way to keep ahead of this stuff for Poser.  I'm just dreaming I suppose, but who knows, it's not like Unreal don't want to licence their product out so it just might happen.  Not only that, if Smith Micro don't do it, I'm guessing DAZ might come along and snap it up for the DS viewport instead :-D

Assuming they already haven't in secret.

Oh, you really have no clue about these things do you? That video takes ages to create, did you even read the description? That little project took 6 months!!!! Sorry, but with either Poser or Vue you could do this in 6 months as well, since you don't have to do everything from scratch.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

No need to be rude about it, yes I did read the description, and like I said, it's one persons work using the old version.

You just didn't listen to a word I wrote in my previous reply.  Do you think he had to create all that content in order to use it?  Of course he didn't, it's no different to Poser or DS in that respect, you can buy rigged figures, scenes, props, content, throw 'em all together and job done.  In fact it wouldn't surprise me if half the stuff in those scenes started life in the Poser or DS community, it's perfectly possible as they can import this stuff.

Doing it in Unreal the job is done quicker cause you did it in a realtime environment and had to wait for nothing to render, from your first tweak to your final output.  So yes, I do have a clue about what it entails, I'm using it, and it does not entail as much as you seem to think it does.  Poser and DS users thrive on ready built content, and having ready built content in a realtime environment has to be a good thing - especially when it costs less than twenty dollars to buy the licence.

You can't really ignore these things.  You're letting yourself be intimidated by something that really isn't intimidating at all if you read the tutorials and watch their videos, they're very good at teaching their system.

Quote - @Hornet

The guy in the video is showing it from a game developer point of view, so don't let that scare you.

 

Not scared just can't see the point.  Reminds me of the quote "You can wake up someone who is asleep but not someone who is pretending to be asleep."

Anyway you clearly can't see my point and you are not going to convince me of the worth of a real time renderer for what I do so we will have to agree to disagree.

Moving to lurk mode.

 

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Let's not argue about it guys. 

I posted the link to the Unreal 4 animation because someone on the previous page had said that to get movie quality rendering in real time would cost insane amounts of money for hardware and sofware. So that animation was meant to show what the engine is capable of in real time without all the expensive hardware and software setups. 

It wasn't meant to suggest that one person could create that animation. I don't think one person could create that whole sequence in any program by themselves, at least not in a reasonable amount of time. 

With FBX you can import an entire scene, with animation and everything else you need. Except possibly lighting. I'm not sure how lighting translates over. That may have to be done within the engine itself. I haven't investigated that far yet.

But the whole point is that it's good that Poser finally has FBX. Whether you actually want to use it or not is up to you, but in terms of Poser's longevity I see it as a smart move on SM's part as it would be in their best interest to stay as up to date and relevant with the rest of the software/competition out there as possible. The still render hobby users are not a large enough market to sustain an entire company. The majority of 3D enthusiasts are interested in animation as well as still renders, so anything that makes Poser more appealing to the various needs of 3D artists is a good thing. the 3D/CG industry moves extremely fast and its easy for one app to get steamrolled by it if it doesn't keep up with the latest advancements. 

Everything that can be done in Poser can be done in Unreal or Unity. Still images, animated text, presentations, anything. And it doesn't require knowing how to code. Knowing coding helps of course, but if you can't find a video or tutorial on how to code whatever script you're looking for, then there are a good number of sites out there with free scripts that can be downloaded and plugged into whatever project you're working on. 

For me personally, I've discovered just from the little bit that I've been experimenting, that it's easier to work in Unreal or Unity than it is to work in Poser or DS, and I've been working with Poser for the last 10 years. And I know virtually nothing about coding and I've only been fooling with these engines for a year or two. And that's what is appealing to me about them. I enjoy Poser, and I intend on incorporating my Poser creations into these game engines, if for nothing else than to discover what all is possible with it. So far I'm liking everything I see.

Just a few weeks ago I was asking about Vue in another thread, and was considering buying it. But now that Poser has FBX, I have no use for Vue, as I can do whatever I need in Unity or Unreal, so Vue would be a waste of money, and more of a time sink trying to learn it.

@Hornet
Another one who sounds hurt, don't be!

I pointed out Unreal Engine because I think it's a threat to Poser and DS, I never brought it up to get you to try it.  I've been quietly using it for months without even mentioning it.

In fact, the only time I felt bad about not mentioning it was in Nygtfalls thread when he was talking about Vue.  I was going to mention it as a realtime replacement for Vue, but the concept sounds too alien I thought it best not to go there.  I did mention finding something standalone to create the plants that can then be imported into a program, and guess what, import those plants into Unreal and you can use Unreal's painting tools to paint those plants wherever you like, and again, all in realtime.  When you've placed those plants in real time, you don't have to wait for a render, it's already rendered, cause the render is realtime as well - lol

People don't have to be interested in this thing, but unless you're aware that things like this are real and do exist, you're living behind the times.  I'll be the first to admit that when I first found out about it I felt exactly that, that I were using a workflow way behind the times.

It might not be for you, but personally I'm super pleased I found out about it.

Long replies.  I just wanted to add my two cents to what was being discussed on page 2.

I don't want to 'diss' renderosity, but it is this market that is saturated IMO.  Testing is not quite as good as it should be.  I gave up vending here or any possibility of doing so when I submitted a package and was told 'make it look like this other one we are already selling'.  That one message explained for me so much of what the issue is.  I've sold quite a few copies of that particular package now, without making it look like anything else out there.  

As to when sales come, Ambient (I think that's who said it) is 99% correct in saying that 99% of sales come in the first 3 days.  I think that is primarily due to the market saturation.  Most people don't go through all 500 pages of similar products.  So the newest products sell quickest.  

I do have one product out that has been out for 5 years now though, and I still get sales.  So I'm not sure if with that longevity if the math still holds true.  If you are selling somewhere that cuts off the product after x amount of time, it is probably more likely to be true.  This is basic estimations from my crappy math brain.

As to OP, I do not think the user base is down.  Based on sales personally, I'd say it's up.  However community participation across the board is nose diving.  I think that makes it appear as if users are down.  Maybe they have all gone to facebook and other less 'moderated' forms of communication.  This is a pita you know.  I'm not even 100% sure if I've said anything here that is not allowed or will be deleted.  In that way I am often unlikely to post due to the fact that my time spent trying to participate may just be completely wasted.  I don't really have that much time to just chuck out the window like that.  

I am:  aka Velocity3d 

Quote - @Hornet
Another one who sounds hurt, don't be!

I pointed out Unreal Engine because I think it's a threat to Poser and DS, I never brought it up to get you to try it.  I've been quietly using it for months without even mentioning it.

In fact, the only time I felt bad about not mentioning it was in Nygtfalls thread when he was talking about Vue.  I was going to mention it as a realtime replacement for Vue, but the concept sounds too alien I thought it best not to go there.  I did mention finding something standalone to create the plants that can then be imported into a program, and guess what, import those plants into Unreal and you can use Unreal's painting tools to paint those plants wherever you like, and again, all in realtime.  When you've placed those plants in real time, you don't have to wait for a render, it's already rendered, cause the render is realtime as well - lol

People don't have to be interested in this thing, but unless you're aware that things like this are real and do exist, you're living behind the times.  I'll be the first to admit that when I first found out about it I felt exactly that, that I were using a workflow way behind the times.

It might not be for you, but personally I'm super pleased I found out about it.

Going to look into it now.  This is the sort of stuff I tend to miss not coming to the forums much.

I am:  aka Velocity3d 

Cheers Shane, I'm glad at least someone else out there can see it's actually pretty easy to use as a Poser/DS kinda thing, I just hope aeilkema will take note of that because I think he feels a bit intimidated by it, which is a shame, same for Hornet to an extent.

Thanks for the heads-up on FBX, but just one further question on that:

Let's say I exported a Roxie and a V4.  We know they both have different deformation systems inside Poser, so what would happen when it gets into Unreal for posing?  Would the figure adapt a deformation map generated by Unreal  as it get's imported or would it take the individual maps from the figures used in Poser and deform exactly the same when those figures get into Unreal?

@jjroland
Great stuff, as a recommendation I'd say be sure to stick to the "Unreal Engine 4" videos because the older version known as "UDK" is not relevant to this new version, it's quite different, so stick to the "Unreal Engine 4" videos otherwise you'll be learning stuff that might be obsolete.

I only realised that after watching about 6 hours of UDK stuff :-P

Quote - import those plants into Unreal and you can use Unreal's painting tools to paint those plants wherever you like, and again, all in realtime

And what makes that even nicer is, that  one 1,000 polygon tree is still 1,000 polys, whether you have just one copy of that tree in your scene, or 100,000 copies of it, because it's all instanced. I've been hoping Poser would implement instancing, and LOD, for a long time now, but there doesn't seem to be any sign of that coming. 

Yup, it's super crazy amazing at that instancing stuff, it can even do it with physics!

And here's a video for those who wonder how hard it is to set up a scene with premade content:
Piece of cake

Quote -
 I think that makes it appear as if users are down.  Maybe they have all gone to facebook and other less 'moderated' forms of communication.  This is a pita you know.  I'm not even 100% sure if I've said anything here that is not allowed or will be deleted.  In that way I am often unlikely to post due to the fact that my time spent trying to participate may just be completely wasted.  I don't really have that much time to just chuck out the window like that.  

I've never deleted any of your posts. In fact I haven't deleted much of anything in a while now, except for some random spambot posts. I try to only get rid of the hostile stuff that sounds like arguing. Been trying to make it a point for people to express themselves freely on any issue as long as it doesn't devolve into arguing and hostility. haven't seen much of any of that in a good bit now, which is nice.

 

 

Quote - I've never deleted any of your posts. In fact I haven't deleted much of anything in a while now, except for some random spambot posts. I try to only get rid of the hostile stuff that sounds like arguing. Been trying to make it a point for people to express themselves freely on any issue as long as it doesn't devolve into arguing and hostility. haven't seen much of any of that in a good bit now, which is nice.

 

That is really refreshing to know.  I know you have never deleted my posts.  You seem to be a fairly easy going mod, which is also refreshing.

I am:  aka Velocity3d 

While the images look nice they are not truely real time rendering.  If you watch carefully they show reflective surfaces that only reflect the background and not the object that moves in front of it.  In the elevator you can not see a reflection of the main figure even though it appears to be reflecting other things.  In the one video with the particles they appear to be emitting light however they are not reflected in the surfaces that appear to be reflecting other light sources.  Also I notice a total lack of any type of mirrored surface, all the metal surfaces appear to be matte finished.  To impress me I would like to see mirrors setup to reflect each other and going through a glass surface and have the metal surfaces of the statues reflect something other then a point of light making you believe that it is reflective.  And not just some background image that is prebaked into the scene.

 

Monty Omn from Rooster Teeth does similar things in near realtime with Poser.  Look up the making of season two of RWBY.  One of the scenes shows what is supose to be a glass floor that reflects the ballroom and all that is is the ballroom inverted and placed below what would have been the glass floor.  Takes no time to render since there is no real reflection going on.

 

The whole point of games engines is make an image that will fool people into accepting it as good enough to make it believable.  So even though the images look nice they are not the same same thing as a rendered image that trys to portray how the scene would look like using real world type of lights and reflections and all the other pieces that a game engine will fake and gloss over. 

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

Quote - Long replies.  I just wanted to add my two cents to what was being discussed on page 2.

I don't want to 'diss' renderosity, but it is this market that is saturated IMO.  Testing is not quite as good as it should be.  I gave up vending here or any possibility of doing so when I submitted a package and was told 'make it look like this other one we are already selling'.  That one message explained for me so much of what the issue is.  I've sold quite a few copies of that particular package now, without making it look like anything else out there.  

As to when sales come, Ambient (I think that's who said it) is 99% correct in saying that 99% of sales come in the first 3 days.  I think that is primarily due to the market saturation.  Most people don't go through all 500 pages of similar products.  So the newest products sell quickest.  

I do have one product out that has been out for 5 years now though, and I still get sales.  So I'm not sure if with that longevity if the math still holds true.  If you are selling somewhere that cuts off the product after x amount of time, it is probably more likely to be true.  This is basic estimations from my crappy math brain.

As to OP, I do not think the user base is down.  Based on sales personally, I'd say it's up.  However community participation across the board is nose diving.  I think that makes it appear as if users are down.  Maybe they have all gone to facebook and other less 'moderated' forms of communication.  This is a pita you know.  I'm not even 100% sure if I've said anything here that is not allowed or will be deleted.  In that way I am often unlikely to post due to the fact that my time spent trying to participate may just be completely wasted.  I don't really have that much time to just chuck out the window like that.  

I would say that participation is down across most boards. How many times can you beat the same dead horse?  On the other hand, we may simply be more spread out.  18 months ago, I spend most of my posting time here, with a lingering presence in the DAZ forums - nowadays, If I want to discuss Dusk and Dawn, why would I be here?  My time would be better spent at Hivewire3d.  If I want products that leverage Poser, why be here, when with the exception of Snarly-Gribbly & BagginsBill, the vendors that make extensions & addons to Poser reside over at RDNA.

As far as social media - Urhm..., no - I do not Facebook or any other social media.  Sorry 'Rosity, but I value my privacy.

I don't purchase based on release date - I buy as needed.  And if that product is V4 only, I'll more than likely ignore it unless it is in either Prime or Clearance - I have a 53Gb V4 clothing runtime - don't really need anymore.  I am steadily adding to my Dawn runtime, and other figures are still seeing their runtimes expand.

from cave paintings to now , Art is just an illusion.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

@Richard
A few years ago I'd have been in absolute agreement with what you just said due to the way games looked to me, but the abilities of that engine are truly incredible, you can go as deep as you like, you can even create your own shaders from scratch if it lacks something you want.  If you want a mirror in a mirror, you can have it no doubt.

Anyway, I'd hate to start pissing people off, I'm just pointing out what it is and what it can do, and as far as I can tell, there's nothing that can be done in a raytracer that cannot be done in realtime in that engine, some way or some how, and even if there was, someone will add it before too long.

I've found the "official" introduction which shows how easy it is to get to grips with, it's part of a set so if you let it run to the end it will automatically load the next video and the next etc, gradually you learn how easy it all is:

Click for Official Unreal Engine Introduction

Quote - The whole point of games engines is make an image that will fool people into accepting it as good enough to make it believable.  So even though the images look nice they are not the same same thing as a rendered image that trys to portray how the scene would look like using real world type of lights and reflections and all the other pieces that a game engine will fake and gloss over. 

That's a point that people still have a hard time getting. Animation allows you a set of cheats that realistic still rendering does not, and vice versa.

Let's say you rendered a scene where a character is looking across a busy freeway, and you want it to be realistic. One is animated, one is a still (with a high simulated shutter speed, so minimal to no motion blur in the still). Or a shot where a superhero is swooping over a parking lot, same deal.

With the animated one, realistically simulating glass and reflection in the vehicles would be a complete and utter waste of time because that level of detail simply wouldn't be detected anyway by the viewer, so rendering it would be a waste of time. Use fake reflections, and certainly not real glass.

For a realistic still, you can't do that.

That's one of the secrets of game engines: they are primarily designed to make scenes with motion and moving objects look good. But in those games, no matter how realistic, if you stop moving and simply look around in a still scene, the fakeness is immediately apparent. Flat billboards instead of 3D objects. Fake reflections and shadows. Identical instances. Obviously fake matte backgrounds. To paraphrase Monty Oum, they cheat like motherf*ckers when they can, and that's perfectly okay. When the game engine is in motion, great. When it isn't, enh, not so much.

Quote:
*"For a realistic still, you can't do that.
*That's one of the secrets of game engines: they are primarily designed to make scenes with motion and moving objects look good. But in those games, no matter how realistic, if you stop moving and simply look around in a still scene, the fakeness is immediately apparent."

Not in Unreal it isn't, it's perfectly viable for pulling off a photo or competing with a raytraced image.
Feeze this video at 0:50 and drool if you'd like to see proof of how nice it looks when still.

A still looks fine to me :blink: It was rendered in one sixtieth of a second as well.

That is one BEAUTIFUL engine!

Quote - Quote:
*"For a realistic still, you can't do that.
*That's one of the secrets of game engines: they are primarily designed to make scenes with motion and moving objects look good. But in those games, no matter how realistic, if you stop moving and simply look around in a still scene, the fakeness is immediately apparent."

Not in Unreal it isn't, it's perfectly viable for pulling off a photo or competing with a raytraced image.
Feeze this video at 0:50 and drool if you'd like to see proof of how nice it looks when still.

Freeze it a few seconds later. Glowing particles that don't cast light (or reflect) where they should.

Now you're just being silly.

If you want those particles to glow, reflect and even effect global lighting, they can, you have complete control over everything!  You get the basics to play around with and if you want to go further, you can switch on more advanced settings, and if you want to go further still, you can start playing around with nodes and make it do pretty much anything you can imagine.

Like I said, it's not just a game engine now, they've opened it up as a multi-use engine.  It's so good they use it for movie visuals so the lack of realism thing is nonsense.  I see that sort of thing on YouTube and it almost always comes from people who use the inferior engines.  It took me less than half a day to compare the engines and Unreal is far and away the best of those engines.  The difference is so clear it's scary that people even bother to argue about it.

It also costs less than $20 for a licence.
I know I couldn't give them mine quick enough!

Hey guys this is starting to sound like an argument so lets drop it back a couple notches. 

There are pros and cons to using game engines, just like there are pros and cons to using any other software package. It's all about what your intentions and needs are. 

This is also getting a bit off-topic focusing on the game engine aspects, when the thread is about Poser's user base shrinking. There are several other game engine threads running right now and it's difficult to keep up with all of them so can we pick one that's on topic and keep all the game engine related stuff to that please?

Thanks

 

~Shane

Have to agree, Shane, would love to know about that deformation thing on FBX though, I haven't a clue whether the Poser addon will send the deformation maps over or whether Unreal would create one on import.

I see, threads done.  Too bad, was enjoying reading the discussion and different points of view.

I am:  aka Velocity3d 

I do think there's one major thing missing in this new Poser version..... export to directx (.x). There are still a number of game engines geared at the hobby/semi-pro market that do use that model format. I'm even wondering how you can create something geared at the game market and not include that format.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

Quote - I do think there's one major thing missing in this new Poser version..... export to directx (.x). There are still a number of game engines geared at the hobby/semi-pro market that do use that model format. I'm even wondering how you can create something geared at the game market and not include that format.

That is windows only.

So? Still a major game model format. A lot of game engines are windows only..... but they do output games that run under other OS's.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

I think FBX is more commonly used by both the hobbyist and pro communities. 

 

Quote - Did you seriously see the same vidoe as I did? Did you see how many nodes this guy connected to get something done? While connecting a few nodes is easy, to get the results he wanted, he had to connect tons of nodes, one big clutter of nodes. Unless you have a second screen as he does, this will get a bit too cluttered :) What fun are the basics anyway if you can do some really cool stuff? But to do the real cool stuff, you have to really dig in. Seriously, with all the nodes and variables and things you need to set up, you lost the time you've gained in real-time rendering already.

This is not faster at all then setting up your scene in Poser and render it. Also when you really want to animation in Unreal, you're way beyond basics already. You need to set up your characters, still animate each movement, tell then how to interact with the enviroment and what you want them to do. In the end that will be time consuming.

The node system he shows is the controller for the planet code. To set that up in Poser would take just as much, if not even more time, simply because there is no way to animate that way in Poser short of using Python.

Many applications use a very similar setup (networks of nodes) to do what is shown in the video, and I would consider that normal. Houdini is done basically the same way, and I can set something like that up in Houdini far faster than in Poser. Granted Houdini is going to have way more nodes, but that is because everything in Houdini can (and has to) be displayed as nodes in the editor.

Unreal is a very impressive Engine. and the WYSIWYG interface is a prime example of extrememly gifted and talented programmers. They did not add the node setup up because it is slow. That node system makes manually writing code a thing of the past. Yes you will have to get in there once and a while to do things, but your not starting with a white editor screen like your are writing Python for Poser.

As far as animating in a game engine, that is not that hard either. Writing games has gotten extremely easy, compared to what it was years ago. If all you want to do is setup up a fast render, it is even easier.

One thing that really impresses me about Unreal, is that they added a node system to literally drag and drop code into the right place. People want point and click, and that is what a node system is.

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

Where are the wicked cool Poser video's on Youtube ?
Youtube is the best and FREE advertising & if your advertising ya app as a animation app ,
Then Seriously where are your Poser Video's ?

Blender even has short Video's on youtube
Where's Posers Sintel ?

Who wins ? The one with the best Gallery & Video's
Who Shrivels and dies ? ...

Unreal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY20pxEQM-A

Blender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HomAZcKm3Jo

Poser ... w.i.p. I hope.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

David, RorrKonn, well said, though to be absolutely fair I think from an animation point of view at least, the crown has to go to iClone as far as productivity goes.  There seems to be endless amounts of short and even long movies out there done in iClone.  It's proof that their animation system is productive while the others are less so.  Search *"iClone movie"*on YouTube and you're spoilt for choice, right from the early stuff to some of the more modern, more impressive looking stuff.

Only problem for me with iClone is I wish the rendering were a bit better, and the UI seems to be losing the plot and getting a bit messy lately.

Anyway, I agree it's not on topic for this thread, but I think Unreal Engine warrants it's own thread here so that we can discuss "Poser to Unreal Engine" workflows etc.  Shall I start it or is there anyone else here who's already well aquainted with working with it, and with FBX and that sort of thing, maybe start a thread with some pointers?

Didn't get a reply from Shane on the FBX thing so I tried exporting an FBX from DS instead.  I actually got Genesis to show-up in Unreal Engine on the first attempt although I couldn't pose it, but wow, the amount of options in Unreal for just importing an FBX file is crazy.

@ RorrKonn
I googled : "Youtube SMith Micro"

And this is what came up.

One of the very best and most complete youtube series for 2D and 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/user/contentparadise

Find them by app, by webinars, all are there

happy Posering all.
Tony

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Vilters, I don't think RorrKonn meant tutorial videos, more like completed stuff, animated shorts and movies etc.

and that reminds me.
treat your customers well ,So you don't lose them.
you can't replace a lost customer but
customers can replace app's ,forums ,stores ,venders etc etc.
god forgives ,I don't fxrealms,iclone,cgtalk.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

"Where are the wicked cool Poser video's on Youtube ?
Youtube is the best and FREE advertising & if your advertising ya app as a animation app ,
Then Seriously where are your Poser Video's ?"

.........well said, though to be absolutely fair I think from an animation point of view at least, the crown has to go to iClone as far as productivity goes.  There seems to be endless amounts of short and even long movies out there done in iClone.  It's proof that their animation system is productive while the others are less so".

Not to be a "one note Charley" here but it is very difficult to create CG animated movies in poser
because the only things that even remotely qualifies as an "update" to its character animation system, are  animated constraints and soft bodies for the "jiggley bits"

The rest of poser CA system remains firmly planted in the year 1996.

Have a look at this 3.5 minute video and you see why Iclone rules the world of affordable Character animation tools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pijbJ7PcvrI

 

My website

YouTube Channel

@ wolf359

Have you tried the Poser : Direct manipulation tool?
With IK on the arms or legs ON and OFF?

Full description is in the manuals.

The only thing Poser does not have yet is collide with an object.
(Floor, table, stairs, chair.)
Poser only has a Drop to Ground plane. Ctrl + D

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

does DAZ puppeteer work in Poser ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

"@ wolf359

Have you tried the Poser : Direct manipulation tool?With IK on the arms or legs ON and OFF?
Full description is in the manuals."

Yes I have used this tool and am quite familiar with it,

Understand this;
Posers IK solver ,such as it is, is still fairly usable in scenarios where you need it on for the entire animation.

the problem is when you try to later in the sequence to switch it off for motions that dont require feet/hand pinning.

then your figures limbs can go berserk ruining your entire sequence.
has this been fixed in the "game dev "version???

"does DAZ puppeteer work in Poser ?"

well you can create puppeteer or Animate+ motion in DS and export them to animated pose file's(PZ2) for poser
via the free "poser format exporter" plugin for DS

I do this all the time with my older DS 2.3
cant speak about the latest versions of DS.

My website

YouTube Channel

I don't think we have something like Puppeteer for Poser. I would really like to have a tool like this and I think this should be possible in Python.

There is a plugin which works a lot like Power Pose though, Dizzie's Hampelmann. It's here in the free stuff.

For me, it's an invaluable help when posing.

A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for.
Sail out to sea and do new things.
-"Amazing Grace" Hopper

Avatar image of me done by Chidori. 

Puppeteer used to be for Poser before it moved to DS. I recall that at some point some of the technology was incorporated into Poser.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

Just a note:

Nobody has really addressed what's going on in the "Market" and the typical demographic's... time and how they consider a new purchase.

Poser is very easy to use and very good at what it does - Still Rendering. This appeals to a select group of people with some segment also desiring animation rendering capabilities, which it also does fairly well. There are even commercial users who like Poser's quick and easy animation rendering with a wide base of content, but that's probably because either "That's what they already have" or "They can't afford to hire out for more heavy-duty production capabilities."

Where do "new users" come from? Mostly, it's going to be those that saw a pic somewhere rendered in Poser that they liked. There's painfully little brick-and-mortar shelf-space out there and almost all electronic media has flown to the net.

That means a much more even playing ground with competitors competing across a very wide segment. There's lots of rendered pics out there from lots of engines. (How many potential first-purchase users interested in 3D have ever heard of the "firefly engine?" Zero. Well, maybe one or three, but that's about it.)

So, the guy that saw the pic he liked which was rendered in Poser? Well, he may have done some other image searches and has seen stuff rendered in a great many other programs. Poser doesn't have "box competition" to back it up any longer. Now, it's competing with "results", for at least one demographic. There is no limited "shelf space" on teh interwebz...

But, take a look at the typical demographic  - Mr. User." What else are they interested in? If they're interested in "animation", as well, Poser isn't going to be top of a google search on "animation programs" is it? And, if it did pop up, what are the animations going to look like when compared to other products that "do the same thing?" (Remember, they're a neophyte, they know very little about the capabilities or intellectual requirements of the programs they're drooling over.) So, Mr. Possible Poser User is bombarded with things like the Unreal Engine or Unity or even Blender and he gets to thinking...

"I like animations. I like cool pictures. I like games. I like boobs. Can I have all of these?"

The answer is, of course, "Yes, Mr. Possible Poser User, there is a Santa Claus and you can have all of these things."

Mr. User is torn. He's making a purchase decision, but he's also making a decision concerning his time. He can only spend so many hours a day using his new toy, so what is he going to choose? And, even if he choses Poser, will it satisfy his need for those things that Poser doesn't do or those things it doesn't do well. Mr. User has diverse interests, after all, and if he likes cool still pictures, he probably like moving ones, too. And, if he likes all of these computer graphic thingies, he may think he could program a game or three or model 3D figures and create something that rivals anything produced by a professional studio! (Mr. User is typically a neophyte and doesn't do much research beyond an image search.)

Now, let's add in the younger demographics. They're pretty savvy, when it comes down to graphics and 3D. (Compared to a few years ago.) Their addiciton is also heavily supported by the most popular applications out there. They can get "free" and very powerful software, like Blender (Let's not talk about its UI) or they can even log into their Steam account and grab some development tools for their favorite games. They can get something like Unreal and start mucking around with the stuff that they really love. Where's the attracttion for Poser for that segment? Where it that segment's "creative spark" generally pointed?

I don't know if Poser's user base is shrinking. However, I am certain that their target audience is shrinking. Those are two different things. Poser's target audience is budgeting its time and its attention and, right now, Poser is not very strong at commanding either of these for users who have access to other tools or even newer ones. "Why spend a bunch of time learning Poser when it will never be able to do some of the things I want to do? I can do laser blasts and boobs in Unreal! So cool... bewbs..."

(A Note: Don't think so? Count the number of vidyo gamez with bouncing bewbs... Case closed - Poser bewbz don't bounce unless you really work hard and spend a lot of time making them bounce. You want Poser boxes to fly off the electronic shelf? Add real-time in-window rendering for soft object dynamics, like bouncing boobs, for Poser 2018 or something. They wouldn't have the bandwidth to support the rush to the servers.)

In order to escape the enevitable doom of a shrinking audience, SM has to expand its product's capabilities. (Remember, that's a "shrinking audience", not a "shrinking user-base." The audience is more important, long term, since it is what limits the possible number of new users. )Right now, Poser is exactly what it say's on the non-existent box "A posing and rendering program." That is no longer enough. It will shortly be "not enough" in the next year or so, without good innovation or extreme polish. Poser has to diversify its capabilities in order to compete. And, it's worth noting that is "only to be able to compete." That does not guarrantee it a place in the market, that only expands its potential in existing markets, where it will still have to compete with other products.

Honestly, Poser will be around for awhile, yet. But, it has to adopt capabilities that other programs are already ahead of the curve on. Either that, or it must radically improve it's already targeted capabilities, like import/export functions, integration with development tools and work-flows, animation, rendering, accurate real-time rendering, content generation, increased object modeling and manipulation tools, etc... in order to rise just high enough to get noticed and to renew the current segment's interest in still-shot and pure motion animation rendering with easy content management and content expansion.

I like Poser. I enjoy Poser. But, I don't enjoy the fact that if I put my time into a game dev engine, I could have a richer experience in modeling and rendering as hobby and my ceiling for that experience isn't as limited by the program I'm currently using.

 

PS- By the way, how, in this day and age, can one have something called an "animation package" that doesn't do particle effects? And, why is that? Is it due to limitations or is it a cost/design consideration? Medicine can be expensive, I know. But, if I don't buy it when I need it, I might die... Poser needs accessible particle and lighting effects, pronto, quick-like, in order to "wow" audiences, old and new alike.

Of course the user base is shrinking.  After a certain age, we are all getting bit shorter due to osteoporosis or sarcopenia :)

However, for a serious answer, I just feel that less are socially active or have different social outlets, so lack of participation might be a caution but doesn't necessarily mean that users are dying out.  Anything we can do, as a collective all over the poserverse, to interact in a postive way with newcomers, will sow seeds for an active community.

.

My bad ,Brain glitch.
Anyways Game Pro 14 has Kinects so not even sure if rigs or puppeteer are needed anymore.

---

I got in to 3D cause of game graphics way back when.
I herd about Poser 3 from the TrueSpace mailing list "before forums"

2014 DAZ Poser are still cheapest / fastest way for new users to get characters.
probleam was untill Roxie,V5 they where not made to main app specs.
So DAZ Poser is adapting ,15 years late but better late then never.
but now it's alot easier to make ya own characters in 2014 then back in the day.

and since where talking about UI's.
Posers could look alot more professional.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

"Today's e-mail from Poserworld said they were starting a new business (making custom 3D models), because they believe the Poser and DS user base is shrinking.

Is that true?  Why would the user base be shrinking?  Is everyone moving on to Lightwave or other high end software?"

Think you have to be very careful when comparing different tools and then conclude that poser is shrinking based on that. 

In my opinion you cant really do that, as these programs are completely different. Blender, 3ds max, maya etc are complete 3ds applications which allow the use to build everything up from ground, where poser is a tool that makes use of these things and is not meant to be a complete 3d package.

Switching from poser to one of these application is like going from word to a programming language. Where the learning curve is extremely high and with no experience in making 3d even making the most basic things are really difficult.

To put it into perspective it is probably equally difficult to modelled good looking characters as it is to make good rigs, texture them and animate them, so its a lot of work to make something in one of these applications to even reach something near what you get in poser. So looking at nice looking images made by very good artist requires a lot of experience, and my guess is that they use several different tools to reach the final result, from a 3D application to photoshop, maybe some after effect etc.

And none of these programs will give you anything that looks good with just a few clicks on some buttons. 

So my guess is that poser user base is fairly steady, might even increase slightly, but that more people might start to integrate more tools into there workflow, which is very common for anyone that does 3D i think. 

Personally i might use posers cloth room for cloth simulations and then import the result into my 3d app and finish up whatever is needed there, because its actually really good and easy to use.

But regarding the OP post, even if they are switching to custom models not really sure what it means, But I would assume that, what they might try to do, is just to reach a larger audience, since poser as well as unity3d, the different 3D apps etc. can all work with these "custom" objects anyway. So doesnt really have to aim it towards a certain application. But as i said not really sure what they mean with custom objects, they might mean something else.

They could buy C4D,zBrush,Wacom,photoshop,quixel,allegorithmic,topazlabs.
So now they have the app's to make just about any wicked cool character they want.
Even if they buy all those app's.Not so sure if they can buy 
Imagination ,Skill ,Talent & Drive to make those wicked cool characters.

There's only about 10 give or take 5 CGI Artist on the planet that can make a Vicky.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote:*
"The rest of poser CA system remains firmly planted in the year 1996.

Have a look at this 3.5 minute video and you see why Iclone rules the world of affordable Character animation tools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pijbJ7PcvrI"

I agree, animation in Poser is way behind the times.  Every time a new release is announced and we get that list of new features I'm in constant disbelief.  We get new animation stuff but it never seems to be anything worthwhile or something that works in front of your eyes.  Animation needs visual feedback on the fly.

At the very least I think we need something like this in Poser, because seriously, if that Walk Designer survives 'as is' for another release then Poser is well and truly off limits for animation (for me anyway).

We at least need something like this:
Click for animation done the easy way - A Motion Modifier System

As per the title of the thread, if it turns out the Poser userbase is shrinking, sure, it might have something to do with the severe lack of modern animation features.  I love Poser, always have, but the animation side of it is an absolute joke (to put it as politely as I can).  That video shows just how much Poser is lacking in the animation department.

@ pumeco

Have you tried the Poser : Direct manipulation tool?
With IK on the arms or legs ON and OFF?

Full description is in the manuals.

The only thing Poser does not have yet is collide with an object.
(Floor, table, stairs, chair.)
Poser only has a Drop to Ground plane. Ctrl + D

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

The surprising thing is that so many people are giving reasons why the Poser base is shrinking and how SM had better wake up and smell the roses when the quote that started it all states that the Poser AND DS user base is shrinking.

Of course this could just be a way of a company saying we are not making the profits we used to selling the same on stuff but, if not, it suggests the market is changing.  If it is I suspect that is slightly wider than software X is doomed if it doesn't include Y and Z in the next release.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

**
@Vilters**
You mean the tool for manipulating the figure in the viewport?

I've tried it and use it now and then, and yes, it's a good tool, but I'm not sure how that relates to what was being done in that video.  Did you watch the entire video because I'm totally puzzled at your comment.  You sound as if this tool has something to do with animation.  I know it's for dragging the figure around, but where does it help in animation?

I hope you're not teasing, Vilters, otherwise Roxie will be round to kick some ass!

Are there any videos on YouTube where it's used for animaton?
If Poser could already do that, I'll be a very happy man!

I agree the animation tools in poser could be stronger, but i also think a lot of people might assume that its really bad, because you can see all these fancy animations on the internet made with varies programs. 

But to be fair animation takes a very long time, especially character animation and I dont think its much off if you assume that a professional animator working with an already rigged character will spend around a week or so to make around 20 second of animation. So taking that into account to make good animations requires time even if you are a proffesional and might have a specific animation packages to work with. I think you can make nice looking animations in poser, but it requires that you really know the tools available and also know how the character you are animating behaves, based on there anatomy etc.

Animation doesn't have to be so time consuming though.  Something as simple as a walk can take hours to perfect doing it manually, but if the correct tool is there, it can be done in a few minutes, seconds even.  There's some iClone users producing animations as long as real movies because of the tools.

That's pretty impressive, and it's not far from the norm either because I often see animations in the 20-30 minute range.  iClone is by far the most productive and it's animation tools are the reason, Poser could do a lot worse than take a leaf out of iClone's animation book.  The only thing I ever seem to see from Poser is someones "Boob Jiggling" test, which is cool, but it's not a full-blown animation.

Stills are great and Poser is surely one of the top dogs at it, but for years I've been wishing Poser would catch up and make animation easy as well.  DS is a lot better than Poser in that respect, but I prefer Poser's interface.  Right now, I can imagine that if iClone had Unreal's realtime renderer, that would be totally incredible.  Even better would be Poser with iClone-style animation tools and Unreal's realtime render engine in the Poser viewport.

Bloody hell, imagine that :woot:

Anyway, take a look at this channel, the guy has an animation in there that is over 129 minutes long:
Click for examples of what high-productivity tools can give you

"Stills are great and Poser is surely one of the top dogs at it, but for years I've been wishing Poser would catch up and make animation easy as well.  DS is a lot better than Poser in that respect, but I prefer Poser's interface.  Right now, I can imagine that if iClone had Unreal's realtime renderer, that would be totally incredible.  Even better would be Poser with iClone-style animation tools and Unreal's realtime render engine in the Poser viewport."

*Yeah completely agree, and i didnt try to imply that poser is very good for making animations, just that you can do it and get decent results, if you are willing to spend the time needed to learn the tools. And as you i would also love to see some big improvements to this, since making animations is really fun. And since poser is so much aimed at being a product that makes use of finished products, being able to really work with them easily when animating would be a huge bonus.

There are a lot of people who complain about Poser and animation and how hard it is.  It really depends on what you are trying to do and how much you wish to do by hand.  Pumeco points out a video done in Iclone at 1 hour 29 minutes.  watched the first couple and there is really nothing there to make it more then average.  They took a lot of stock motions and applied them over and over.  You can do the same thing with Poser and BVH files.  My son took a Movie making class and only using Poser made 5 films during the course of the16 weeks.  A ~4.5 minute music Video a 30 - 60 - 90 second commerical and a 5 minute final project. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECglepATIg&feature=youtu.be

attached is a link to the final project.  Most of the motions were from the Mellon Carinega(sp) BVH project, via trubones website.  Some of the walk cycels in the commericals were done using the built in Poser walk designer and are not bad.

 

It really depends on how much effort you want to invest to get results.  Please remember the attached video was made by a student take 4 different classes and not a lot of effort was made to fine tune any of it.

Poser 5, 6, 7, 8, Poser Pro 9 (2012), 10 (2014), 11, 12, 13

"@ pumeco

Have you tried the Poser : Direct manipulation tool?
With IK on the arms or legs ON and OFF?
Full description is in the manuals."

Hi, any reason you are repeating this to pumeco?
is there any new information regarding IK along with the direct manipulation tool >>FOR ANIMATION<<, that you can share with us?

I ask because a quick read of the animation section of my (admittedly ancient)poser6 manual states the following confirmation of what users like DaleB have stated is still the case with the current poserPro:

from the manual:
"You can use IK or not in your animations, however it is a global setting. If enabled, it’s on
for the duration of your animation, and vice versa. You can turn it on or off while you
work, but the final setting is what will “stick” in your final animation. Toggling IK on and off can affect your animation; it’s best to pick an option and stick with it to avoid having unexpected changes occur in your animation."-

pg163 poser reference manual

"The only thing Poser does not have yet is collide with an object.(Floor, table, stairs, chair.)
Poser only has a Drop to Ground plane. Ctrl + D"

Well what about a clamping filter to avoid the extreme spline graph overshoot?
or a nonlinear motion mixer like the one in Daz studio?or the ability to cull  the unnecessary frames from imported mocap so that it can be effectively edited.
 

No wish to hijack the thread here , but Trust us animators when we say posers animation tools are way behind other programs in the same consumer priced space.

My website

YouTube Channel

"There are a lot of people who complain about Poser and animation and how hard it is.  It really depends on what you are trying to do and how much you wish to do by hand.  Pumeco points out a video done in Iclone at 1 hour 29 minutes.  watched the first couple and there is really nothing there to make it more then average.  They took a lot of stock motions and applied them over and over.  You can do the same thing with Poser and BVH files..........
Most of the motions were from the Mellon Carinega(sp) BVH project, via trubones website.  Some of the walk cycels in the commericals were done using the built in Poser walk designer and are not bad."

Hi understand this; AKIAK other than expensive pro pipeline solutions like
Autodesk® Motion Builder,
there are very few of the so called "high end" CG apps that can parse other sourced Mocap/BVH to their native figure rigs, with the relative ease of poser& Daz Studio.

I can personally confirm Maxon C4D and Newtek Lightwave cannot.

However Canned BVH/mocap files are only useful for your personal projects and to depend on them entirely
does NOT make you a 3D character animator, but frankly an import& playback technician with some  basic video editing skills
to put together the final clips with music etc.

They offer very little help with paid CLIENT GUIDED animation projects whereby your paying client sends you a video of a skate boarder performing a "flip kick ollie"
and wants you to have him do it 4 seconds into the animation.

if there is not canned Mocapfile  of that particular motion in your archive or at "truebones",
you have to grok it manually
it is then you will quickly run into the limitations of posers "global IK"  system.

My website

YouTube Channel

> Quote - **@Vilters** > You mean the tool for manipulating the figure in the viewport? > > I've tried it and use it now and then, and yes, it's a good tool, but I'm not sure how that relates to what was being done in that video.  Did you watch the entire video because I'm totally puzzled at your comment.  You sound as if this tool has something to do with animation.  I know it's for dragging the figure around, but where does it help in animation?

It makes it easier to pose limbs instead of having to use the dials to do it, which makes animation easier. Poser is pretty much the only app out there that uses a dial system for posing and animating figures. Most other apps use a direct manipulator with the arrows and curves to twist pull and scale the different body parts in whatever manner necessary. 

Quote -
There's only about 10 give or take 5 CGI Artist on the planet that can make a Vicky

There is nothing special about vicky, she's not even realistically proportioned, and there are many many artists out there that can and do do far better. Just look through the zbrush galleries, or any of the other high-end cg sites outere. lol, really rorrkonn, sometimes...

 

 

*(Click to enlarge)*

@ Shane and Pumeco

Yes, that is the Direct Manipulator in action.

Select the rings to rotate, the boxes to scale, and the Center point to move the selected actor around.

This, combined with IK ON or OFF, and the Figure => AUTO BALANCE makes Posing easy.

In the above?

I had IK ON for the legs and AUTO BALANCE active.

I selected the left hand and pulled it out.
The AUTO BALANCE posed the rest of the figure to prevent it from falling over.

I selected the right hand and posed it. => This again changed the AUTO BALANCE to prevent the figure from falling.

And I twisted the head.

Have fun with the Poser tools.

Tony

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

(Click to enlarge)

From the above, pulling the right forearm out; You see the Direct Manipilator and the AUTO-Balance functions in action.

The left figure is only there for reference: That was the starting pose.

Happy Posering, Tony

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

**"It makes it easier to pose limbs instead of having to use the dials to do it, which makes animation easier. Poser is pretty much the only app out there that uses a dial system for posing and animating figures.**

** Most other apps use a direct manipulator with the arrows and curves to twist pull and scale the different body parts in whatever manner necessary."**

Well to be Fair those dials in poser( including the direct manipulation tool), were designed for well ..posing and not intended for animation as they only change parameters for that one point in the timeline you happen to be.

Poser does provide a functional ,albeit outdated ,graph editor
and key frame Dope sheet that one should be using when animating the body parts and see your feedback/results ever a range of frames( see pic).

The reality is that almost no serious character animation pipelines actually create motion by merely pulling points
on a spline graph these days.
nearly everyone uses some fashion of layered nonlinear motion mixing and recording similar to the ones you see to the Iclone website videos.

I am not some silly purists who thinks everything should be hand animated.

Maxon C4D has a nonlinear motion clip mixer just like the Daz "aniblok" system

But alas Maxon finds no apparent need for the ability to import/parse mocap directly to C4D rigs nor to auto create lipsync from  sound files in their $3600 program.

Poser biggest strength is it ability to import mocap to its NATIVE existing figures
but it forces you to work with them in a linear fashion
unlike the  aniblok/motion systems in DS or iclone

My website

YouTube Channel

"@ Shane and Pumeco

Yes, that is the Direct Manipulator in action.

Select the rings to rotate, the boxes to scale, and the Center point to move the selected actor around.

This, combined with IK ON or OFF, and the Figure => AUTO BALANCE makes Posing easy.

In the above?

I had IK ON for the legs and AUTO BALANCE active.

I selected the left hand and pulled it out.
The AUTO BALANCE posed the rest of the figure to prevent it from falling over."

Completely unrelated to ANIMATION!!!

My website

YouTube Channel

@ Wolf

Drop the "un" and we agree. LOL.

Did you try?
It works like a charm in an Animation.

But I agree, like everything else, it takes practice.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Quote -
nearly everyone uses some fashion of layered nonlinear motion mixing and recording similar to the ones you see to the Iclone website videos.

Poser's animation layers don't work for you? 

I've never used them so just asking. My animation experience comes from maya, cause that's what I used in school. Personally I hate animating, but will do it when forced to. Think I'd rather pull my fingernails out with pliars, so I haven't done a whole lot of it in Poser. 

(In all honesty I intend to do more of it soon, just have been too busy modeling and rigging to have any time for it).

 

 

Haven't  logged-in in quite a long time, and pleased to see some ol'timers I still recognize!

Popped by to see if there was an chatter about the news of SMSI being "delisted" from NASDAQ yesterday -- & this seemed the most appropriate thread.

Other than the press release from NASDAQ, I didn't spot any public statements from Smith Micro, so was curious if there had been any prior discussion in here of the consequences, e.g. rumors of pending sale?

 

 

I didn't hear about that, Nance...

Here's the release for those who haven't seen it.  I haven't seen or heard anything else about it, except in their Q2 report they noted that they had taken a $2.4 million restructuring charge...

Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Continued Listing Rule or Standard

Item 3.01. Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Continued Listing Rule or Standard; Transfer of Listing.

On August 7, 2014, Smith Micro Software, Inc. (the "Company") received a letter from the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC ("Nasdaq") which stated that, based upon the reported stockholders' equity of $9,610,000 disclosed in the Company's Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2014, the Company no longer meets the requirement set forth in Nasdaq Rule 5450(b)(1)(A), which requires companies listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market to maintain a minimum of $10,000,000 in stockholders' equity for continued listing (the "Minimum Stockholders' Equity Rule").

In accordance with Nasdaq's Rules, the Company has been provided with a period of 45 calendar days to submit a plan to regain compliance. If the Company's plan is accepted, Nasdaq can grant an extension of up to 180 calendar days from the date of the letter, or until February 3, 2015, to regain compliance with the Minimum Stockholders' Equity Rule. The Company intends to submit a plan to Nasdaq within such 45 day period and is currently considering available options to regain compliance with the Minimum Stockholders' Equity Rule as promptly as possible. The Company will also have the option to file a transfer application to list the Company's securities on the Nasdaq Capital Market

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wisdom of bagginsbill:

"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
“I could buy better software, but then I'd have to be an artist and what's the point of that?"
"The [R'osity Forum Search] 'Default' label should actually say 'Don't Find What I'm Looking For'".
bagginsbill's Free Stuff... https://web.archive.org/web/20201010171535/https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/Home

humm ... well if SM losses Poser .hope Autodesk or DAZ buys Poser.
Would be nice if a CGI Company owned the CGI app Poser.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

RorrKonn's Quote
There's only about 10 give or take 5 CGI Artist on the planet that can make a Vicky

AmbientShade Quote
There is nothing special about vicky, she's not even realistically proportioned, and there are many many artists out there that can and do do far better. Just look through the zbrush galleries, or any of the other high-end cg sites outere. lol, really rorrkonn, sometimes...

All right let me exsplain my thinking .
All the app's even zBrush comes with pemade characters all ready.
Don't know if they still do but at one time AutoDesk came with Poser characters even.
So if there just modifying a premade character ,sure it looks cool.
but there not getting credit for making the character.

Now if they make a SubD mesh that looks as good as Vicky
from a cube I'll give them credit.
but there's only a very few I've seen that looks that good.
Some of those meshes at Turbo ya couldn't pay me to use them.
So I've only seen a very few girls that look as good as Vicky
that I know they modeled from a cube.

& to go a bit farther.
If ya go to all the stores even TurboSquid.
never seen another mesh like Vicky
that morphed in to all that she does ,not even for $2000.00.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

"All right let me exsplain my thinking .
All the app's even zBrush comes with pemade characters all ready.
Don't know if they still do but at one time AutoDesk came with Poser characters even.
So if there just modifying a premade character ,sure it looks cool.
but there not getting credit for making the character."

Im not really sure i understand what you mean, but its very common for modellers, if not all of them to start with some sort of basic shape that are modelled from a primitive. In certain cases they might use a base shape of some kind, but the shape would simply be to not having to make such over and over again, and is a simple step of modelling a character.

Here are some example of how some start modelling those characters. Even though these are not humans they are humanoids and i doubt they would have any problems modelling humans as well if they needed. 

If you see how they start and what they end up with, they are not using a premade model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxRp8R62Nlc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8QHytHds7I

Its also very common to model a very simple model in Maya or max and then import it into zbrush and start from that.

But these are probably the most common ways to start modelling characters, compared to using a high res mesh where there might be a lot of details in that you dont need. But not sure thats what you referring to?

3D-Mobster :Oh I know there's a lot of very cool monsters that rock in zBrush and
I'm a fan of them all.
but it's way more difficult to model a realistic pretty girl then it is a scupt a ugly fantasy monster.

We know what a realistic girl is suspose to look like.
A ugly fantasy monster can look like anything.

So even though there both bipeds ,a pretty girl is still way more difficult to model .
So it's not really a fare comparison.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

@ To All:

Well, the Direct Manipulation example screengrabs are NOT from a Vicky..

Good night all.
Have fun using the Poser tools.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Quote - 3D-Mobster :Oh I know there's a lot of very cool monsters that rock in zBrush and
I'm a fan of them all.
but it's way more difficult to model a realistic pretty girl then it is a scupt a ugly fantasy monster.

We know what a realistic girl is suspose to look like.
A ugly fantasy monster can look like anything.

So even though there both bipeds ,a pretty girl is still way more difficult to model .
So it's not really a fare comparison.

I wouldnt personally think it makes a huge difference to these modellers. And also a pretty girl depends on the beholder i guess :D

But here is an example of someone modelling a female using a basic shape, i think she is pretty enough to compete :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAcZsMhxM0

It doesnt matter whether the figure started out as a cube or a basic human shape. The geometry has to be rebuilt once the sculpting is finalized anyway. Very few modelers still poly model a whole human from scratch. It's a huge waste of time and doesn't allow for the same level of control that sculpting and retopologizing allows.  A basic human shape can be pulled out of z-spheres in about 30 seconds and remeshed to a sculptable mesh in another 30 seconds, so why bother poly modeling by hand? You can still ride a horse and buggy to work if that's what makes you happy but it's not very productive and definitely not as fast as a car. These days poly modeling is mostly used for hard surfaces or very low poly meshes that don't have a lot of geometric detail, or for producing basic shapes quickly.  And any figure can be retopologized to suit whatever app it needs to function in. Outside of Poser and DS, most human models don't have the complex geometry that Poser models require in order to allow for all the morphing and still be animatable, but that doesn't mean any other model out there can't be made to have the same kind of topology if the person building it (or retopologizing it) understands proper topology for animation to begin with.  

Vicky is a nice figure, but she's not the best. She's just the most popular in poserdom because no one has bothered to create one for Poser that was better. There are others out there that are much more realistic, and could easily be made to work in poser with all the functionality - and then some - that all the vickys have ever had, should the artist choose to do so or allow someone else to. 

As for the talk about SM and their stock, we really don't need two threads about it. One is more than enough. Maybe SM will take the opportunity to finally wake up and realize they need to invest in a serious content department to compete with their competition. But something tells me they'll just continue ignoring that elephant in the room. 

 

Quote - As for the talk about SM and their stock, we really don't need two threads about it. One is more than enough. Maybe SM will take the opportunity to finally wake up and realize they need to invest in a serious content department to compete with their competition. But something tells me they'll just continue ignoring that elephant in the room. 

Actually if you look at this link, from their 2013 financials most of their eggs are in the mobile basket:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-q-donaldson-co-inc-2013-03-07

They would have to really work on beefing up their mobile customers to turn a profit rather than try to triple their consumer sales to match what they are making in the mobile division.

Anyways we all ended up on diffrent pages.
So let's just light one up and break the seal. :)

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

My two cent, I love poser and still buying new and old content as to

what I'm in the mood for. Every time I get used to one Poser they 

bring out a new one. I don't mind buying a new Poser, but the learning

part is getting hard. Characters are getting more advanced and better

I think. I hope the folks who make all these characters keep up the

great work. Money is one thing, but love for a hobby is something else.

Beware-The Smoking Man Still Lives!

Yup, I like the Direct Manipulator, I use it, and I'm also a big fan of the way Auto Balance works in Poser.  The video I posted demonstrates a motion mixing system though, so I thought he'd watched it and was somehow suggesting that the Direct Manipulator could help achieve similar things.  I appreciate the explanations but it's not the same sort of thing.

That said, it was a surprise to see Vilters' low-poly figures as full frontal nudes for the first time - wasn't expecting that!  They have good bodies for low-polys but seriously, you have got to work on that smile of theirs, the face even creeps Roxie out, and believe me, that takes some doing!

---

Dude, I'm almost afraid to sleep!!!

Later,
Roxie - Girl With Blade

---

**"Yup, I like the Direct Manipulator, I use it, and I'm also a big fan of the way Auto Balance works in Poser. ** The video I posted demonstrates a motion mixing system though, so I thought he'd watched it and was somehow suggesting that the Direct Manipulator could help achieve similar things.  I appreciate the explanations but it's not the same sort of thing."

This ^^

My website

YouTube Channel

I use the tools the applications provide for us.

Starting from the Lo Res Female Dev object file at +/- 8.000 polygon, loaded and morphed in Blender, and YES, I added some edgeloops on critical area's (8173 now), and YES they still use the original texture improved by me, and YES the uv-layout is improved over the original one, and YES they ONLY have 3 material zones (also reduced by me) and YES they only use ONE Diffuse texture making Material room work dead easy, and YES I build a Blinn&Specular and a Displacement&Bump map from this same texture in the Poser material room.

In Poser I also use the tools at hand.
Smooth Polygons enabled with a crease angle of 180° on all groups.
SubD to level 1 giving them about 36.000 polygons each.

I learn and use the tools from Blender and Poser.
None are perfect, not in Blender not in Poser, but I found a streamlined and bulletproof workflow between both apps.

The figure is a constant WIP. LOL.
Started somewhere 3-4 years ago, and each week, some vertex get moved.
Rigging is still conventional, and only both thigh are W-Mapped on the above one.

I have several versions, and some are completely W-Mapped, but this is rarely needed.

Use the tools at hand, search for solutions, work around shortcomings, but above all, streamline your workflow between Poser and the modeling app you use.

@pumeco

This is the first time you see her like this?
Man, there must be at least 100-150 posts where I used her to "demo" something;
After al, they are the Poser Dev Figures LOL.
The male version is also floating around here somewhere. LOL.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

(Click to enlarge)

Here she is with tha angry morph. LOL, You did not like the smile did ya? LOL.
And her "volume" sister will get a bathing suit one of these days. LOL.

Oh, and the dynamic hair is styled with magnets.

(You all did know, that you can "style" dynamic hair by putting magnets on it. Yes? )

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

(Click to enlarge)

Here an older version, all using the same texture, but me playing in the Math room.

Is the Poser user base shrinking? My population is certainly NOT.
LOL
LOL.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

"Poser's animation layers don't work for you?

I've never used them so just asking. My animation experience comes from maya, cause that's what I used in school. Personally I hate animating, but will do it when forced to. Think I'd rather pull my fingernails out with pliars, so I haven't done a whole lot of it in Poser. "

Hi
Every video tute I have seen on the poser animation layer system has shown me that while is it useful it is not a true nonlinear motion mixer that allows you to re arrange motions in any order split, crop,reverse, speed up ,slow down & mirror motion and change the facing direction of the moving actor in much in the same way you would work with video clips in Adobe Premier or Apple final cut

The video below show what a true nonlinear motion mixing system is like .
its the one I use from Animate + for Daz studio
http://vimeo.com/4726306

My website

YouTube Channel

"@ Wolf

Drop the "un" and we agree. LOL.
Did you try?
It works like a charm in an Animation."

LOL!! no offense but this tool, which I have used extensively,
is a POSING tool.

Understand this; Animation in the 21st century is not done through **"pose setting"**with the Direct manipulation tool OR the parameter dials, auto balance, center of mass or any other viewport manipulator.

It is most effectively done using the spline graph editor manipulating the figures X,Y,Z channels over a RANGE of frames

Now yes, there is this form of vestigial animation called "pose to pose" where by you may have your guy/gal standing and set a keyframe.
then go to frame 65 etc. and repose his arms and set a key frame.
The computer interpolates &create the frames in between
those two poses and his arms move.

This is a carry over from the old days of drawing pictures of each frame on paper during the "Golden Era" of Disney et al.

NO ONE in 2014 animates this way in a CG app because it is slow and produces wildly unpredictable results.
it was only done that way in the past, because back then, only the most uber expensive pro apps had usable Spline graph editors that accessed every channels X,Y,Z Axis's and had a proper Dope sheet to grab and manipulate large blocks of key frames at a time.

In this beginner tutorial
I create a simple short arm animation without touching any of the view port manipulation/posing tools.
http://vimeo.com/4933364

The trend today is even moving away from graph editors& Dopesheets and more towards powerful motion generator& mixing system like the ones linked to by pumeco

Now you are free to use the Direct manipulation tools to create
pose to pose animation if you are so inclined.

Just as you are free to try and build a realistic "rotting flesh"
Shader without learning anything about how the math nodes work.
and Bagginsbill and I can both have a bit of Amusement.

My website

YouTube Channel

vilters where is a Lo Res Female Dev object file ?
is it the Poser 4 Low ?

Poser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimeGeometriesfemaleNudeLo

Poser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimeLibrariesCharacterPeoplePoser OriginalsPoser 4 Lo

have a path to it ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Poser Pro 2014 ContentRuntimeLibrariesCharacterPoser ProFemale

Both versions are there

LowResFemale => The one I use => Morphed in Blender => Material zones reduced to 3 in Blender => Poser cr2 adapted to point to the morphed obj file.

MedResFemale => Never liked this one => Far too many issues in the eyes, mouth and face to start repairing and morphing

Same for the male => I only use the LowResMale

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

(Click to enlarge)

Original and Morphed LowResFemale versions.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

vilters :
I found them ,don't know why they keeping hiding stuff in plane site like that. ;)
Definitely like your custom version better :)

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Ok, here we go, the guy comment ... 1,6,2,5,4,3 That was ***the*** hardest grading of doable I have ***ever*** subjected myself to!

@Vilters
Your's definitely looks better than the original, and I totally admire the fact that you modeled her a genital even though she's low-poly (I genuinely admire you for that).  But the face is terrible, I don't see why being low-poly means she has to look like that.

As she's a WIP, I recommend closing the lips by default and making the lips fatter.  I don't mean to go crazy and give her fat lips, I just mean fatter ones than she has now because they're just way too thin, I think that's the main problem with the face.  As for the hair, the leftmost brown babe looks best because that sort of hair is ideal for that sort of style, but that other style, like the face, is terrible, looks like wire-wool.

Is there any reason you decided to make it dynamic?

Why not a matching low-poly hairstyle? - At least a low-poly hairstyle is in keeping with the low-poly thing where speed and resources count.  Last thing a person would want is dynamic hair so I'm puzzled why you chose to do that on a low-poly figure.

The figure itself though, that's way better than the original, really nice work on that!

**
@Wolf**
Totally agree, it's bad enough how much ahead that system is, and even worse when you consider the video demonstrating it is five years old!

It's even more powerful with the latest version of aniMate.  iClone is still my preferred tool for animation though, I just wish the engine it uses looked better.

(Click to enlarge)

Unbelievable, even after 3 years of WIP, I added 4 polygons today.

Poser, a never ending story.... LOL.
Fun, Fun, Fun.

Improved bikini too. LOL.

@ Pumeco? For the face? That is how she is.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

This is the kind of work I would like to see SM put into the legacy content.  I understand leaving it alone for historical/curiosity purposes, but when I see what can be done with the older content I can't help but think "why isn't this what comes with Poser instead of the same figure from 10-15 years ago?"

And if they don't want to do it themselves, they could just call out to the community for improved legacy content.

"Have you made significant alterations to a legacy figure by morphing, material or joint changes?  Do you feel your modified figure improves considerably on the original?  Produce an image of your figure alongside the original content with a brief description of your modifications and send it to us for evaluation.  Your modified figure may be considered for future Poser content distributions..."

Or something like that.

(Click to enlarge)

And this is a "simplified" Roxie.
Morphed in Blender, reduced number of material zones, and some Math room work.

Have fun using the Poser tools, Tony

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Quote -

@ Pumeco? For the face? That is how she is.

Who is she ,ya girl friend ,wife ,the one that got a way ,who's she ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

I think the bikini makes her breasts look saggy even though they look ok without the bikini.  Still don't like the face because the lips are truly awful, even adding at least some volume to the upper lip would make it a lot better I think.

Closing the lips looks better than them being open, but the lips really need some volume, and even if it's modeled on a real person, I can't imagine there would be so little volume in the upper lip as that.

Very unusual if it is.

I just realised, so that's two different figures, the lips are too thin on both!
Give 'em some volume, Vilters, trust me :woot:

I can model the figure to the woman.

i can not botox the woman to the figure. LOL.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Going back to the OP I've come to a bit of a halt with Poser at the moment. Just not feeling inspired to do anything with it. I've gone back to mainly using Vue again and playing around with Blender. And now I'm trying very hard to resist getting Manga Studio..... wanna draw stuffs!!!

I've fired up Poser a few times recently, stared at it for a bit and then wandered off and done something else instead. I'm just all out of enthusiasm for it right now. I was going to say maybe it's because there haven't been any new figures that interest me for a long while.... but now I think about it didn't I buy a new horse that I've never even loaded? Meh.

vilters not saying who she is.humm ,So that must mean while vilters was on one
of his spies missions, in amsterdam. They met and fell madly in love .
Even thou it's one of those once in a life time loves.
It was just to dangerios for her to stay with vilters.
So vilters had to leave his heart behind .
Now all that's left ,is her Poser shadow.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

@ RorrKonn
LOL.

Never been to Amsterdam. LOL.
Holland? Mmm,
Lelystad, Walcheren, Arnhem (long time ago), Eindhoven, Maastricht (they have one of the biggest and a great model airplane shop there).

Nah, I am 55 and the lady I modeled is the ONLY woman that never lied to me.
A good friend from the past.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Have to admit, I see Vilters in a whole new light if he's a spy, gives him an air of cool and sophistication, danger even.  That said, I'm shocked how he can live so close to Amsterdam but have never been there.  It's one of ***the*** most bestist places on earth for going shopping.

Those are real women in the windows, not mannequins or Poser figures :woot: :woot: :woot:

(Clicker-de-click to enlarge)

LOLO.

You are all pretty jaleous of what can be done with only 8.173 polygons. (excluding hair)

Using Blender to morph, and Poser to Smooth, SubD, and some Math-room-texture work.

Just using all the tools available boys. All you have to do is : DO IT.

LOL.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Next project, building facial expressions.

See ya

And have fun using the Poser tools.

Tony

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Click to enlarge the Posing test..

Poser Pro Low Res Female : Polygon count increased from +/- 8.000 to 8.173
Material zones reduced to 3

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Quote - "@ Wolf

Drop the "un" and we agree. LOL.
Did you try?
It works like a charm in an Animation."

LOL!! no offense but this tool, which I have used extensively,
is a POSING tool.

Understand this; Animation in the 21st century is not done through **"pose setting"**with the Direct manipulation tool OR the parameter dials, auto balance, center of mass or any other viewport manipulator.

It is most effectively done using the spline graph editor manipulating the figures X,Y,Z channels over a RANGE of frames

Now yes, there is this form of vestigial animation called "pose to pose" where by you may have your guy/gal standing and set a keyframe.
then go to frame 65 etc. and repose his arms and set a key frame.
The computer interpolates &create the frames in between
those two poses and his arms move.

This is a carry over from the old days of drawing pictures of each frame on paper during the "Golden Era" of Disney et al.

NO ONE in 2014 animates this way in a CG app because it is slow and produces wildly unpredictable results.
it was only done that way in the past, because back then, only the most uber expensive pro apps had usable Spline graph editors that accessed every channels X,Y,Z Axis's and had a proper Dope sheet to grab and manipulate large blocks of key frames at a time.

In this beginner tutorial
I create a simple short arm animation without touching any of the view port manipulation/posing tools.
http://vimeo.com/4933364

The trend today is even moving away from graph editors& Dopesheets and more towards powerful motion generator& mixing system like the ones linked to by pumeco

Now you are free to use the Direct manipulation tools to create
pose to pose animation if you are so inclined.

Just as you are free to try and build a realistic "rotting flesh"
Shader without learning anything about how the math nodes work.
and Bagginsbill and I can both have a bit of Amusement.

The whole point that the animators continually make is that the tools =are not evolving=. The graph editor is exactly the same as it was in P4. As is the dopesheet. As is the manipulation tools. As is our pernennial favorite, the global IK, which in and of itself has caused more people to throw up their hands and drop Poser as a motion tool than any figure's shortcomings ever dreamed of. The days of the 'Poser Twelve' joke are long gone; there are a lot who manage to use Poser in an animation pipeline (Yay RvB & RWBY!), and a lot more who -want- to....only to slam into the hard equation of Time budget per frame being anywhere from excessive to 'Are You F-ing Kidding Me?' We can do things in Poser's accessible architecture that the big boys either can't or won't. But the longer in the tooth the basic tools get, the more marginal the whole package becomes. They are running out of goodies to offer the still frame crowd; that leaves the motion geeks. The latest Poser version may be aimed at 'game development', but there are a lot of machinima makers who started drooling at the potential there. But who are going to slam hard against the tool limitations. Not the best way to build your user base; glass celings hurt, and the frustration of them leads to backlash....and if a competitor gets a foot in the door, it could get nasty....  

(Click to make it "grow" LOL )

Roxie is liking her new Bikini too.

if anybody wants it?
I"ll pack it up and put in freestuff.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Please stop derailing this thread while others are trying to discuss the main topic. 

 

Quote - Please stop derailing this thread while others are trying to discuss the main topic. 

 

 

Not quite sure if people have stopped posting on topic because the thread has been derailed so much or if it has been derailed because the topic died.  In any case there is unlikely to be a difinitive answer to the question posed by the OP but it was interesting while it lasted.

 I nteresting to see where it goes now if it comes back on topic.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - > Quote - Please stop derailing this thread while others are trying to discuss the main topic. 

 

 

Not quite sure if people have stopped posting on topic because the thread has been derailed so much or if it has been derailed because the topic died.  In any case there is unlikely to be a difinitive answer to the question posed by the OP but it was interesting while it lasted.

 I nteresting to see where it goes now if it comes back on topic.

 

Most of the discussion in this thread has been off-topic.  We've discussed vendor problems, sites closing, competition from Daz/iClone, figure popularity...

The title of the thread asks a simple question; did the number of people actively using Poser peak at some point in time, and is it now decreasing?

This doesn't even distinguish between legitimate "buyers" and illegitimate "users".  It doesn't distinguish between people who always buy the most recent version vs. people still using Poser 3 or 4.

It's only asking if less people are using Poser (than in some other unspecified time, possibly 2002 or perhaps even 2012) and I maintain there's no accurate way to measure this, as we've never agreed on what the question means.

Quote - Most of the discussion in this thread has been off-topic.  We've discussed vendor problems, sites closing, competition from Daz/iClone, figure popularity...

Yes, and those points all fall mostly under the thread topic. I'm primarily referring to those posts that have nothing to do with those points and are instead focusing on random crap like amsterdam and how attractive or unattractive a particular model is. 

I don't have the ability to split threads (like most forums have), so my only other options are to delete posts or lock threads. But since people get into a tissy over that, I ask first that it stays mostly on topic. It's okay to throw in a divergent comment here and there, but when an entire page has nothing to do with the main points others are trying to discuss then its best to take those comments to a different thread that is more in line with whatever tangent it's run off on. 

 

Yes, and those points all fall mostly under the thread topic. I'm primarily referring to those posts that have nothing to do with those points and are instead focusing on random crap like amsterdam and how attractive or unattractive a particular model is. 

I don't have the ability to split threads (like most forums have), so my only other options are to delete posts or lock threads. But since people get into a tissy over that, I ask first that it stays mostly on topic. It's okay to throw in a divergent comment here and there, but when an entire page has nothing to do with the main points others are trying to discuss then its best to take those comments to a different thread that is more in line with whatever tangent it's run off on. 

 

Just to clarify, I was not knocking the intervention but trying to point out it is difficult to give an answer to the question however, Moogal has made the point far more eloquently than I ever could.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

I have not noticed any intervention. But have noticed a lot that has nothing to do with the topic.

Typical.... But let's look at that a bit differently.

Could that have anything to do with the perception of the amount of people that use Poser?

I am sure that just like many forums, this one has people that just read for the most part.

And when they come to a thread like this, what do they get out of it?

Years ago when you came here, here were a lot more people logged on, but this is not just a Poser site. You can't judge much on that. More people probably posted, but you can judge on what forum they posted too.

What you can judge, are the posts that have nothing to do with any particular thread. .

Makes it tuff to get anything relevant out of a thread when very little is relavant in it.

It is hard to judge program usage, and even harder to judge other factors surrounding it. We don't have the data to support numbers or the access to them. And a firewall can skew Posers usage numbers anyway.

It is all guess work, so what we get are naked low res peeps to look at in skimpy bikini's.

That brings it all together doesn't it?

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

Well, that about sums it up.

These questions about "popularity" or "population" HAVE no answer.
There is no objective tool to measure.

At least, and sorry for sticking my neck out, at least there was something to see. LOL.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Oh there's always an answer to a question.

V6 being the best selling mesh of all times is the answer.

and yes Roxy wants a sexy bikini :)

2 answers in 1 sentence,easy enough.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - Oh there's always an answer to a question. V6 being the best selling mesh of all times is the answer.

V6 is a morph, of a free mesh.....

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

I used to think that Poser was deliberately designed to foster a merchant-centered community.  Rigging was very difficult 10 years ago, and when I started using Poser I found it very hard to simply import a prop and to set up materials and groups.

I learned to do those things over time, and in that same time Poser has been significantly improved.  I wondered if things like the fitting room wouldn't give the false impression of a shrinking market, as users would start doing for themselves the things they used to rely on others to provide.

A healthy community is one that encourages people to share their work, discuss their techniques and help solve problems.  In that sense I feel the Poser community is doing well.  I still enjoy coming here, and I frequent other Poser related forums also.

When I see threads such as this one, my main concern is whether Poser will still be around in 2, 4, 6 or ten years from now.  The economic viablility of the core program is all that specifically affects me.  Merchants will come and go, and I wish them all the best of luck in the meantime.  But without continued support and development of the actual application the user base will definitely disappear.  So the only thing I worry about is too many users holding on to outdated versions, piracy, and increased competition from other programs.  And among those, the last one is technically a good thing.  (Would Poser have the features it has now if Daz and iClone weren't targeting the same niche market?) 

Quote - When I see threads such as this one, my main concern is whether Poser will still be around in 2, 4, 6 or ten years from now.

Poser is in it's 20th year, and I remember people asking the same question years ago,

Even thou Poser has been sold multiple times, it still continues..

A 20 year run with any program is rare by software standards, but the ones that last that long have a far better chance of continuing than others that do not.

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

For once I can claim to have not caused any off-topic dicussion because it was RorrKonn who brought up Amsterdam, and Vilters who stated posting low-poly nudes.

Back on-topic then, I know for a fact that the Poser userbase is shrinking cause there's me for a start, that's one less customer they won't have next release.  I'll wait until SR5 for the fixes needed in Poser 10, and if they don't come I'll get a refund.  All I know is I've had enough of forking out cash for software that doesn't work as advertised.

Is the Poser userbase shrinking?
My guess, yup!

I'll build a rig in Blender, sorted.

**The Genesis series and V6 are for DS only. Period. End of story. **

That "stupid as hell" DSON thing should never have left alfa stage in the first place.
If they wanna take it to Cloud? Joepie, then it's out of our way for good.
Make our day, DO IT! It's driven more then enough Poser users nuts.

Nah, take it or leave it, but THAT is my honest true to GOD opinion.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

@ Pumeco

For your issue with Roxie and the morph brush mirror?
It is not even a bug. It works as designed per specifications.

What you could do is file a objective and well documented "enhancement" report through the proper channels.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Quote - I know for a fact that the Poser userbase is shrinking cause there's me for a start, that's one less customer they won't have next release.

Yes, but don't forget that someone that is new to 3D is not going to jump into Blender and rig a character. Someone that is new to 3D is going to want the point and click route. And lets face it, Poser can do just that.

For everyone that moves onto a more complex program at some point, and there will also be others coming into it that are new. If someone came over to your house and saw your 3D stuff then wanted to see how to do it. Would you start Blender or Poser to show them? Chances are good that you would show them more than a few programs, including Poser. Which one would a newbie more likely use? Chances are better than good, the point and click one. Whichever one they choose. If just one chooses Poser, you have been replaced and not affected the user base at all. Two, and you added to it! How many people have bought Poser, because you showed it to them? Either directly, or indirectly. Only the directly part of it can be answered. If someone overheard you talking about Poser and bought it, you may never know that you influenced their decision to add to the user base.

Just because you are going out, does not mean that no one is coming into it either. That is sort of like saying that you will never buy a Ford again (for whatever reason), and suddenly Ford goes out of business because of it. Ford won't go out of business because you bought another brand of car. And someone that never owned a Ford before will buy one the same day. You can say the same for any major brand of car, they get sold everyday no matter what you or anyone else thinks about them.

On a similar note, if everything you ever wanted was added to Poser would you still not use it? Interesting question isn't it. Yes you probably know how to use other programs that can do everything and more, but you still have it. You bought Poser, so even if you stop using it, you are still a registered user on the list of people that used it. Publically stating that you stopped using it does not change the fact that you have it installed, and will probably still use it since you already know how and it is there. You probably have a large Runtime as well, which includes saved scenes etc. If you want to use them in Blender, you will still load Poser, export the scene, then use it in another program. There really isn't a direct route to load a Poser scene directly in most applications. Same goes for Blender, and that can be even more complex because Blender has multiple routes in many areas. (Render engines, which change texture setups, etc)

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

Quote -
Back on-topic then, I know for a fact that the Poser userbase is shrinking cause there's me for a start, that's one less customer they won't have next release.  I'll wait until SR5 for the fixes needed in Poser 10, and if they don't come I'll get a refund.  All I know is I've had enough of forking out cash for software that doesn't work as advertised.

 

This illustrates my point about how do we determine if the user base is shrinking...

You say you won't continue upgrading Poser.  Yet here you are discussing Poser.  You did not say you were going to uninstall Poser or that you would never use it again. 

You may no longer be a paying customer, but you're still part of the user base as long as you continue using Poser even occasionally. 

If you absolutely refuse to use Poser again, why should you even care?

 

 

Well the last few threads have raised an interesting point.  The thread started because someone selling content was clearly not selling enough or not as much as before and drew the conclusion that the Poser/DS base was shrinking.  That is however a biased veiw as it looks only at Poser/DS users that are buying content.

I am certainly buying less for a number of reasons.  Firstly I can use the fitting room in Poser Pro 2014 but I have also learnt to model simple stuff which also allows me to adapt someone else mesh for my own use.  I also continue to use V4WM and have a vast Runtime of content I really don't need to add to.  Had a new Poser figure been introduced that was massively better than V4 (from my point of view) I would have spent more than I do at the moment.

I do not want to open up the usual debate but it is a fact of life that changes at Daz also changed and split the market so this will have impacted where people spend their money and thus there is a possibility that the buying base has fragmented. 

Even looking at the buying section of the user base leaves out a large number of users that fill their runtime with free content. 

All this shows it is impossible to give a answer on the size and state of the user base and no one can predict the furture.  One persons 'must have' feature is another person irrelevant feature, for each person that stops using a program how many people start. No ones knows, so predicting what will be around in 4, 5 or even tens years is anyones guess but if Poser is no longer sold does that mean I will stop using it. 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Judging the buying population?

Indeed, last week I was thinking about what to build next.
OK? What has not been build yet ? ? ?
Surfed the usual marketplaces and found out? I got no answer.

Tons of dresses, shirts, shoes, pants, hair, props, all is there in a gazillion versions already.

If the OP is a vendor that sees less and less sales?

This is normal as the market is fooded has reached a saturation point.

And secondly, more and more end users are building their own stuff.

This still says nothing about the end user base growing or shrinking.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

"Please stop derailing this thread while others are trying to discuss the main topic. "

Thank you sir!!
I am sure we all are aware how that low poly model/avatar
holds a special place in its creators heart.

And not trying to be harsh, but frankly their is nothing so particularly exceptional about its  topology, polycount or magnet controlled hair or its  overall looks that warrants its naked body being repeatedly inserted into this thread.

"Not quite sure if people have stopped posting on topic because the thread has been derailed so much or if it has been derailed because the topic died.  In any case there is unlikely to be a difinitive answer to the question posed by the OP but it was interesting while it lasted."

One could argue that all of this comparison to iclone is at least tangentially relevant to people who answered "yes"
to the original question, and are giving their observations that many may have left due to posers lesser animation capabilities compared to the sub $300 Iclone.

My website

YouTube Channel

"For everyone that moves onto a more complex program at some point, and there will also be others coming into it that are new."

It also depends on your definition of "userbase"

I have not purchased a copy of poser since the release of poser 6, for reasons I have made abundantly clear in various posts, yet I still use poser in my CG work if only as a Character/Content add on to Maxon Cinema4D Studio via the incredible "interposer pro®"
plugin.

I imagine that still allows me to be counted as part of the  poser"user base".

My website

YouTube Channel

"the longer in the tooth the basic tools get, the more marginal the whole package becomes. They are running out of goodies to offer the still frame crowd; that leaves the motion geeks. The latest Poser version may be aimed at 'game development', but there are a lot of machinima makers who started drooling at the potential there. But who are going to slam hard against the tool limitations. Not the best way to build your user base;"

Hi DaleB
As I understand it ,there are no new actual Character animation tools in The game dev version.

Now that it is out, I honestly do not understand exactly who was the intended target market of the release.

On the low consumer priced end of the Market
People outside the current poser user base, who dont qualify for upgrade pricing ,have better low cost/free options for Game dev.

Iclone Pro is $200 USD
Iclone standard is $80 USD

Daz Studio has exactly the same type of low poly game export features as the new poser game dev version and is ,of course ,Free
and lets not forget blenders built in Game engine tools

People inside the current poser user base
have not expressed alot of public interest in game dev as far as I have seen.
the only vocal adopters in this forum seem to only want to create  low poly single mesh figures for the occasional crowd scene.

A nice option for them for sure but does not contribute to growth of the user base.

I personally plan on moving over from OSX to Windows hopefully very soon with the purchase of a new  powerful Windows based laptop.

The first applications I plan to buy/install are:
the latest version of Iclone pro.
the latest version of DAZ studio to get proper access to genesis
and use my genesis figures for animation work in iclone as it supports genesis directly.

and the latest build of Blender to use its Cycles render engine.

Interesting times ahead
 
   

My website

YouTube Channel

Quote -
As I understand it ,there are no new actual Character animation tools in The game dev version.

Kinects? That is new.

Granted it still uses the older things with it, but it does have something new.

The addon framework allows for lots of things to be added to Poser. Maybe we need an animation addon that expands on what is there.

---

Some things are easy to explain, other things are not........ <- Store ->   <-Freebies->

That is exactly what we need, shvrdavid. And if my coding was 30 or so years fresher, I would have been stabbing at it  long since. Hmmm, new thread time....?

Whether its skrinking or not i have no clue. But I think some things to prevent it, if its the case, would be to stop releasing several different versions and just make one version. 

And then they need to push features such as a particle system so you could make smoke, water, snow etc. Which are stuff that have been in other 3d packages for a very long time now.

Then they should give the material room a huge update and expand the material library with lots of new shaders and at the same time switch to one of the more professional render engines, that can render all that is needed. 

And ofc the animation tools that have already been mentioned. 

I see no reason why you shouldnt be able to make very cool stuff in Poser, which some already are doing, but to take it further, I think it requires that they are willing to take some steps forward and start to redesign it a bit.

Poser survived 20 years because .

1.DAZ's making characters.
2.Venders making DAZ Characters stuff dirt cheep.
3.Users making a lot of tools ,plugs etc etc ,PhilC kinda stuff and all.
So ya can use DAZ Characters in Poser.
4.until DS4 ,no real competition.

Just take one of these out and do you think Poser would have survived for 20 years ?

Name one other CGI software that's always decades behind all other softwares and
had countless owners .that's still in business ?

Poser needs
1.A character making company making Poser characters.

2. A knowledgeable about 3D CGI company
   dedicated to make Poser the wickedest app out there.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote -  

Poser needs
1.A character making company making Poser characters.

2. A knowledgeable about 3D CGI company
   dedicated to make Poser the wickedest app out there.

1. Character Making companies exists already.  Just how do you propose to get vendor and end users to adapt new figures? Vendors & customers alike spend time & effort looking for reasons to avoid any new figure - most of which have been ridiculous reasons.

If you want freakshow figures with unrealistic proportions like the DAZ figures, Dawn SR2 is being released this month along with Dusk - who is going to a LOT of morphs out of the gate.  If you are looking for a replacement for V4 & M4, your requests have been answered by the guy that made Victoria and Michael.

If you want realistic figures with realistic proportions, you have the SM figures and most of the other 3rd party figures made over the past few years.

Those of you waiting for a Poser-Native genesis figure are just kidding yourselves - which if you had gone peeking inside of the PCFs over the last couple of years, you would realize by now.  In addition, DAZ has made it quite clear that they would rather go out of business rather than make Poser native figures.  This is a corporate ego thing - not a techinical issue, as the release of Dawn made quite clear.

You can also refurb your legacy characters, if you are not too lazy to actually RTM.

What more do you want?

Problem #1 - solved. 

2.  The Poser development team is making Poser the "wickedest app out there".  It is leveraging itself into more professional workflows. Which we can take advantage of, if you are willing to move beyond a Poser 6 workflow - which most hobbyists around here are not, apparently.

Poser has the frameworks available to add quite a bit and more of the frameworks become visible with every release - which a number of vendors are already doing - visit RDNA & take advantage of what is available - and get an idea of what is coming down the pike.

It is amazing what you can find if you shop at more storefronts than just 'Rosity. 

 

To get back on topic........

I wouldn't worry about this end of the market - too many hobbyists that shop here appear to be aggressively unwilling to move beyond a Poser 6 flow.  That applies even moreso with the vendors.

Quote -
I wouldn't worry about this end of the market - too many hobbyists that shop here appear to be aggressively unwilling to move beyond a Poser 6 flow.  That applies even moreso with the vendors.

More accurately, vendors are aggressively interested in making money, and that means building content for figures that people actually want to use, that are designed properly and don't contain missing faces or holes in their mesh, or overlapping UV maps, or geometry that was never mapped to begin with, or a-symmetrical inconsistencies that make much of their content construction a nightmare or simply impossible to do. If you're not a content artist then you won't understand this until you actually dig in and learn the process and the differences. 

For example, P6 James is my favorite figure, but he is unusable to me as-is. I've had to rebuild him just to make him viable as a figure, and there's no point in me wasting my time doing all that because I can build my own figure with less headache, and do whatever I want with the end results. Give it away, sell it, whatever, because its my figure and not someone else's mess that I've had to clean up and rebuild because they clearly didn't know what they were doing to begin with, or didn't bother paying attention to details. 

And that is basically the case with all the poser natives. Slapped together as an afterthought with no real quality assurance. When the majority of users have to modify the content just to get it to function the way it should have out of the box, they're just going to find someone else's models that are easier to use and better constructed. Or build their own, as I have. 

 

Shane?
Unfortunate for the native Poser figures, but I have to agree.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

I love Poser but there are some things it could do better, then again that could be said for any peice of software.  Point is there are a lot of the things that make Poser even easier to use and available if you are prepared to pay out a little.  I know some have the sentiment that Poser should do everything they want it to for the price they paid and thats that.  They are free to take that route, I just take a different route and have number of scripts or add ons like the Advanced Figure Manager and Advanced Library mManager by Semidieu.  Light and Render Dots and, my favorite, Camera Panel Plus from Netherworks.

I have no problem with taking this route as it allows people who do not need these features, or have a restricted budget, to buy Poser at a stunning price for a piece of software that does what it does.  At the same time it allows me have the same functionality and add a litte here and there.  Someone here suggested Poser was a the Fiat of the 3D world, I accept that and all I have done is customise it a little.

Some Poser users users complain, with justification, that something does not work, does not work as described or could be better and that I understand.  What I have more difficulty in understanding is those who do not use Poser but seem to spend a trendeous amount of time in a Poser forum. 

There are peices of software I have purchased that I felt was a waste of money and not used but I do not spend hours on the forum stating why I do not use it.  Still it take all sorts and they are free to continue but, for me, it seems time could be better spent using and learning the software that, in their eyes, is so much better than Poser. 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - > Quote -

I wouldn't worry about this end of the market - too many hobbyists that shop here appear to be aggressively unwilling to move beyond a Poser 6 flow.  That applies even moreso with the vendors.

More accurately, vendors are aggressively interested in making money, and that means building content for figures that people actually want to use, that are designed properly and don't contain missing faces or holes in their mesh, or overlapping UV maps, or geometry that was never mapped to begin with, or a-symmetrical inconsistencies that make much of their content construction a nightmare or simply impossible to do. If you're not a content artist then you won't understand this until you actually dig in and learn the process and the differences. 

For example, P6 James is my favorite figure, but he is unusable to me as-is. I've had to rebuild him just to make him viable as a figure, and there's no point in me wasting my time doing all that because I can build my own figure with less headache, and do whatever I want with the end results. Give it away, sell it, whatever, because its my figure and not someone else's mess that I've had to clean up and rebuild because they clearly didn't know what they were doing to begin with, or didn't bother paying attention to details. 

And that is basically the case with all the poser natives. Slapped together as an afterthought with no real quality assurance. When the majority of users have to modify the content just to get it to function the way it should have out of the box, they're just going to find someone else's models that are easier to use and better constructed. Or build their own, as I have. 

I blame that on DAZ, mainly, though. Admittedly, Poser took their eye off the ball there though. DAZ had no real competition in the figure department, and the one or two figures that did pop up that might give DAZ a run for it's money, I believe DAZ sued or bought them out. (I say "believed" because I can't remember what happened with The Girl and Sadie, but somehow they ended up being DAZ figures). Poser saw DAZ more as a partner, so they didn't see the same warning signs I did when DAZ first started building Studio.

Actually after posting in this thread that I was feeling very uninspired with Poser at the moment, I went and rendered some stuff. And now I feel like rendering more stuff.

Like a lot of people by now I have bucketloads of Poser content and I like making my own stuff. But mostly I'm less and less interested in the newer stuff. My goto figures are still the older ones - A3, H3, M3 - and even though I like newer figures like Miki4, once I load her up I really can't think of much to do with her. So part of that is I have a lot of stuff for older figures by now, but at the same time those figures have some of the least stuff. There's never been a huge amount for H3.

So maybe it's not just about the user base declining, but that a lot of users are fine with what they've got, or at least that they don't need to keep getting new stuff at the rate it's produced?

Quote -  I blame that on DAZ, mainly, though. Admittedly, Poser took their eye off the ball there though. DAZ had no real competition in the figure department, and the one or two figures that did pop up that might give DAZ a run for it's money, I believe DAZ sued or bought them out. (I say "believed" because I can't remember what happened with The Girl and Sadie, but somehow they ended up being DAZ figures).

DAZ can only buy figures that are available to be sold, so I don't fault DAZ for that any more than I would fault the creator for selling it.

They can only sue over figures that use some portion of DAZ's models, when they can prove it. They don't own a copyright or trademark on the human form and they can't control who builds competing content. There are only so many ways geometry can go together to make a human shape and eventually some patterns are going to be repeated, kind of like car keys. 

Pretty sure the Girl was built by an indie artist and sold to DAZ. I never heard of Sadie, but I don't pay a lot of attention to all the female figures out there. Most of them look pretty much the same to me and V4 or G2F suits what I need in female figures. 

Quote - So maybe it's not just about the user base declining, but that a lot of users are fine with what they've got, or at least that they don't need to keep getting new stuff at the rate it's produced?

There is a lot to be said on that.  Why should I buy YAV4HO (Yet Another V4 Hookerware Outfit)?  My V4 Clothing runtime alone is over 50Gb.  Most of it has been run through either/or/and Xdresser, WW, and now the fitting room.  Nowadays, I am only buying DAZ gen4 content that is either clearance, prime, or below $5. - and it needs to be really good.  It is the whole "what is the economic value of the 2nd item".

People complained about vendors not making content for any figure not named V4, & the Poser Team gave us the fitting room.  They are providing tools, it is up to the endusers if they want to take advantage of them.

As a result of this, my purchasing here is starting to look like my purchasing over at DAZ - props, settings, and merchant resources, as opposed to more 20something Caucasians and lingerie.  I am still buying, but the content is changing.  Not to mention the fact that once I learn something new, it is one more thing I don't need a vendor to supply.

(Click to enlarge)

This is what I made today for Roxie. Not finished yet.

But like me,
I "feel", and that is very subjective, but I "feel" that more and more content is becoming "home made".

Build in Blender, baked AO and material zones maps. I did not paint a single pixel yet.

The user base is probably pretty stable, but like others have said before, sales can be slowing down, because the end users change, and find more pleasure in building their own stuff.

Best regards, Tony

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Hmmm...

Poser was the program that made me most envious back when I was still using the Amiga in the late 90s.  I never wanted to model people, I prefer to make mechanical things and their environments.  I had tried making people to put in my scenes, and while not bad for their era, it was consuming time I wanted to spend making other things.  As a sci-fi/SFX guy I look at props as something you build, whereas I see "actors" as something to audition.  It never bothered me that some people looked down on using premade figures and content, I just didn't want to spend years modeling and rigging a figure just to have someone standing in an image for scale.

After getting a "proper" PeeCee I got a chance to mess around with Poser 4 a bit and promptly bought version 5 at launch.  I've bought every version since, except for skipping 2010.

Initially I just wanted people in my scenes.  It wasn't long before I started thinking about characters, and unique props and clothing.  But I found it all very daunting, almost as if it were designed to encourage use of pre-made content and to keep people like me utterly baffled.  Then Poser6 came out, and being that it was a much more polished release than P5, I found myself doing all kinds of thing with it.  I used it as a renderer for the models I was making in nendo/Wings, and created a number of interesting (at the time) images that no one would guess came from Poser (mainly because I wasn't putting any figures in them).

Somehow, and the story still seems strange to me, I recommended Poser to someone working in a (government) research facility close by.  A few months later I was asked if I'd like to meet with a group who were looking to use Poser to illustrate their study data.  The second time I was asked if this would interest me I decided to see what they were doing and somehow got myself a nice contract to produce a substantial number of short animation clips.  I created an environment with office props, tweaked casual guy into an acceptable looking humanoid and began cranking out a seemingly neverending series of clips.  I learned some valuable organizational skills in the progress and put in more time with Poser over a couple of years than I had using it just for fun up until then.  I got my check around the time of the PP2012 release, and it seemed only fitting to upgrade (having skipped PP2010).  I'm still amazed by this good fortune...  (What are the odds that someone in my town would need my precise skillset, and I'd also be in a position to take on their project for what I imagine would have cost them a great deal more had they approached a production studio?)

I checked out iClone and it was like a flashback to Poser4, everything I'd want to do would require a purchase and to make anything myself I'd need programs that were way out of my budget.  Poser 2012 was a big step up for me, and I decided that I didn't need iClone or even D|S.  If I wanted to do something bad enough, I was pretty sure I could figure out a way.  I made a ton of stuff when PP2014 came out, but lost about a year of work when a drive crashed (apparently I'd been backing up stuff to the same physical device thinking a partition was on a drive that it was not).

Now I'm using Poser to make 2D images for a mobile game.  I haven't had time to play with the fitting room, EZMat, Reality or even re-visit my old projects.  Yet I still use Poser almost daily.  I'm rendering something right now...

There have to be others who've found themselves in a similar situation.

There have to be others who've found themselves in a similar situation.

For me its pretty much all stuff i make in 3ds max are going to be used in poser, unless I ofc have to do something for a company. But i like making images and as you i dont want to spend so much time making characters, first of all i dont have the required skills to model them of the standard that i would want nor do i want to spend the time doing it, rigging etc. So Poser is perfect in that regard, there are a lot of very high quality characters available and working with them is very easy as well. So for me at least Poser is pretty much always in my workflow one way or another.

So if there werent a program like poser or Daz which made it so easy to work with characters i doubt i would use any characters at all.

1. Character Making companies exists already.  Just how do you propose to get vendor and end users to adapt new figures? Vendors & customers alike spend time & effort looking for reasons to avoid any new figure - most of which have been ridiculous reasons.

HiveWire3D has some fans.
but HiveWire3D or another Character company needs to work a lot faster.

If you want freakshow figures with unrealistic proportions like the DAZ figures, Dawn SR2 is being released this month along with Dusk - who is going to a LOT of morphs out of the gate. 

I and a lot of others like the genesis figures

If you are looking for a replacement for V4 & M4, your requests have been answered by the guy that made Victoria and Michael.

atualy I replaced V4,M4 with V5,M5 :)

If you want realistic figures with realistic proportions, you have the SM figures and most of the other 3rd party figures made over the past few years.

I like the characters that came with Pro 14 also.
but I'm a Fantasy Artist ,never really cared about rendering what I could take a picture of.

Those of you waiting for a Poser-Native genesis figure are just kidding yourselves - which if you had gone peeking inside of the PCFs over the last couple of years, you would realize by now.  In addition, DAZ has made it quite clear that they would rather go out of business rather than make Poser native figures.  This is a corporate ego thing - not a techinical issue, as the release of Dawn made quite clear.

Wich is why Poser needs a character making company to replace DAZ.

You can also refurb your legacy characters, if you are not too lazy to actually RTM.

I only work on my own Meshes .

What more do you want?

I want Poser to survive for another 20 years.
A CGI app without competition is nothing but stagnated.
Think it would have taken Poser 20 years to get SubD's if DAZ Studio was around in 1994 ?

Problem #1 - solved. 

We have different opinions about that.

---

2.  The Poser development team is making Poser the "wickedest app out there".  It is leveraging itself into more professional workflows. Which we can take advantage of, if you are willing to move beyond a Poser 6 workflow - which most hobbyists around here are not, apparently.

I have Pro 14.

Poser has the frameworks available to add quite a bit and more of the frameworks become visible with every release - which a number of vendors are already doing - visit RDNA & take advantage of what is available - and get an idea of what is coming down the pike.

I like seeing venders making up to date meshes

It is amazing what you can find if you shop at more storefronts than just 'Rosity. 

I get around :)

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - So if there werent a program like poser or Daz which made it so easy to work with characters i doubt i would use any characters at all.

I'd just go back to drawing them.  How I wish Poser or some other program could build a character from a drawing...

PP2020 Pro Ultimate will be able to:

"Glass, take picture"
"Glass, wifi picture to Poser."
"Poser build model from incoming wifi picture."
"Poser send model to full size 3D robot printer".

"Model? One coffee, two sugars please."

One can dream, right?

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Quote - PP2020 Pro Ultimate will be able to:

"Glass, take picture"
"Glass, wifi picture to Poser."
"Poser build model from incoming wifi picture."
"Poser send model to full size 3D robot printer".

"Model? One coffee, two sugars please."

One can dream, right?

 

Would love if it were that easy...  "Computer, run program 'Vicki in a temple with a sword'..."

:lol:

 

 

Quote - > Quote - So maybe it's not just about the user base declining, but that a lot of users are fine with what they've got, or at least that they don't need to keep getting new stuff at the rate it's produced?

There is a lot to be said on that.  Why should I buy YAV4HO (Yet Another V4 Hookerware Outfit)?  My V4 Clothing runtime alone is over 50Gb.  Most of it has been run through either/or/and Xdresser, WW, and now the fitting room.  Nowadays, I am only buying DAZ gen4 content that is either clearance, prime, or below $5. - and it needs to be really good.  It is the whole "what is the economic value of the 2nd item".

People complained about vendors not making content for any figure not named V4, & the Poser Team gave us the fitting room.  They are providing tools, it is up to the endusers if they want to take advantage of them.

As a result of this, my purchasing here is starting to look like my purchasing over at DAZ - props, settings, and merchant resources, as opposed to more 20something Caucasians and lingerie.  I am still buying, but the content is changing.  Not to mention the fact that once I learn something new, it is one more thing I don't need a vendor to supply.

Yeah. Pretty much the same here.

The only things I've bought at Daz for a few years now are when they have sales on some old M3/H3/A3 stuff that I haven't got yet and I've haven't bought anything here for quite a while now either.

I don't buy props or buildings as I make those inside Vue or in Blender, I make quite a bit of clothing in MD and convert stuff with XD, so really there's not a huge amount left. I think my last buying spree (except for old stuff sales) was a few things for Miki 4 and Anastasia when they came out. I did buy the Hivewire horse, but I've never even loaded it up, just used the tail on another character.

It's difficult to say what would actually inspire me to start buying Poser content again now. I really can't think of anything I want or need that I don't already have by the shedload!

Yep, the more I read here?

End users are changing from "to buy" to "to build".

And the market has reached a saturation point.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!

Subject: Is the Poser user base shrinking?

I think the answer is "yes". Years ago when checking out the renderosity gallery, I've seen more Poser posts than today. The amount of Poser posts have decreased a lot. You have a lot more photographs , DAZ and VUE pics these days.

Quote:
"@ Pumeco

For your issue with Roxie and the morph brush mirror?
It is not even a bug. It works as designed per specifications.

What you could do is file a objective and well documented "enhancement" report through the proper channels."

Vilters, I've already done all I'm prepared to do, they know about the bug and they haven't fixed it.  It doesn't work as expected because a mirror copy should be a mirror copy, not a bug-ridden effort with vertices missed out (still happening even in SR4).  I'm not after "enhancements", I'd be perfectly happy to get what I paid for - that's why I bought it.

I've seen a lot fewer posts on Poser Pros, too... :tt2:

Some regular posters from here have moved over to Hivewire.

There is a nice Poser Facebook group... https://www.facebook.com/groups/527852800622101/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wisdom of bagginsbill:

"Oh - the manual says that? I have never read the manual - this must be why."
“I could buy better software, but then I'd have to be an artist and what's the point of that?"
"The [R'osity Forum Search] 'Default' label should actually say 'Don't Find What I'm Looking For'".
bagginsbill's Free Stuff... https://web.archive.org/web/20201010171535/https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/Home

I started going to RDNA forums when PoserPro 2012 was released.  I thought mentioning bugs/feature requests in the official forum would get them noticed faster.  Probably not (I've been told over and over only bug reports get noticed), but I still like checking in there.

If the users have indeed specialized over the years, it makes sense that there wouldn't always be one catch all forum everyone would go to. 

I imagine some of the Reality users check into that forum, and Snarlygribbly has a small forum too, I believe.  Plus, having figured out Poser by now, there may be users more active in the Marvelous Designer/zBrush/3D-Coat forums because those are the programs they have the most questions about.

There's also that site which can't be named...

I can believe the base is shrinking, just not on what seems to be anecdotal evidence.  Still, it's paid users and upgrades that concern me.  If SM keep developing Poser many of us will continue buying and using it.  I'm sure there were a lot of people over the years who bought a copy of Poser, asked a bunch of noobish questions, realized there was no "make art button" and moved on.  Maybe they play minecraft now, or went to Second Life.

My town used to have a great local music scene.  It's always had its ups and downs, but many of the more active bands playing now were formed by older musicians who'd dropped out of the scene to marry/raise kids and are now forming bands again because their kids have grown up enough that they can finally get away from the house long enough to practice/perform.  The decline in the local scene is a bit of a mystery...  Some people blame the resurgence in electronic music, assuming would-be musicians instead became DJs who only play at parties, or must make music on their computers at home and post it on SoundCloud/Bandcamp.  Others say there are just as many musicians as there always have been, but the scene became fragmented so there's not the buzz on the street that there used to be.  Or that local scenes as a whole are withering because of the internet/monoculture.  I've even considered that a whole generation (4 years in a college town) of kids played Guitar Hero or Rock band instead of learning real instruments and forming real bands.  But almost no one seriously believes it's because people just don't have any interest in music anymore (though some of what passes for music today could indeed be used to argue that point).

Similarly, I find it hard to believe that fewer people are interested in making/rendering/animating their own characters compared to just a few years ago.

Quote - I think the answer is "yes". Years ago when checking out the renderosity gallery, I've seen more Poser posts than today. The amount of Poser posts have decreased a lot. You have a lot more photographs , DAZ and VUE pics these days.

I wonder if that might be due to changes in the way people use the galleries, though.

PoserWorld supports Poser and DS, and their e-mail said they felt BOTH the Poser and DS user bases were shrinking, so I don't think DS is really the issue.  Though perhaps DS users are more likely to post their images at DAZ.

Taking a wider view...it seems like casual users (as I suspect many Poser and DS users are) have moved to social media.  Rather than posting in the galleries and in forums, they post on Twitter, Tumblr, etc. 

Renderosity also changed their rules at one point, and started limiting the number of images you could post to their galleries, and that might be an issue, too.

 

 

 

I don' know that gallery posts & views are a good measurement - I've been here almost a decade & I have yet to post or even look at the galleries.  My WIPs & freebies are over at Deviant Art.  Lots of Poser/DS stuff going on over there.

Places that stagnate tend to lose customers.

Quote - > Quote - I think the answer is "yes". Years ago when checking out the renderosity gallery, I've seen more Poser posts than today. The amount of Poser posts have decreased a lot. You have a lot more photographs , DAZ and VUE pics these days.

I wonder if that might be due to changes in the way people use the galleries, though.

PoserWorld supports Poser and DS, and their e-mail said they felt BOTH the Poser and DS user bases were shrinking, so I don't think DS is really the issue.  Though perhaps DS users are more likely to post their images at DAZ.

If you honestly believe a word Poserworld said in that email, well then....In short it was a cheap desperate attack to get customers to shop at their store.

My Renderosity Store

I actually don't care , what Poserworld says.

I just think the big hype is over. When I got into 3d, it all seem to me like being close to an exciting new technologie. It was like:"OMG, I can draw in 3d now !!! "

Nowadays it all became normal. It has lost a bit of its sensational magic. Nobody is really blown away about CG in movies anymore today. Renember how the press went wild about the effects ,when Terminator II came out. Later it was OMG-great, that you could do something like that at home.

All those enthusiasm has gone lost for some. Others are still driven by their passion for 3d artwork.

Well, these people are still here. It seems normal, that the userbase is shrinking. There is nothing realy bad about it, it is just, as someone already said, a saturation.

I don't know what Poserworld has to do with it. If it is as I said ,they won't be able to change it anyway.

I am just curious to see, where 3d technology is going in the future and what I can create with it.

Thats the great thing about 3d graphics it evolves all the time, i do agree that the sensational magic as you call it might have gone for some. But think a lot of people would enjoy being able to make such things if it werent to complicated. Which poser over time could help do, but with poser and any other 3d software out there, applying the newest technology is not very easy and also require that the end user have the computer needed to work with it.

But as computers gets more and more powerful and software gets more and more advanced, i dont see any reason why these new thngs shouldnt just be integrated into any software package in the future, its just a matter of time in my opinion.

Here are some examples that are pretty interesting i think:

GPU Technology Conference 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XISqvBVyASo

Realistic character hair 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cECnvJeXXE8 

There could be an additional reason, that makes the community shrink:

Since the show "The Big Bang Theory", more girls could be interessted in Nerds and geeks and might feel attracted by them. So some guys now prefer to to pose "real life figures" instead of digital Poser dolls. That could be indeed very distracting. They might also feel encouraged to sign a contract in a gym.

In that case I'd see some runtimes rusting.  ;) ^^ :D XD

I've not been visiting the stores (or really using Poser very much) for quite a while now. At the moment, I'm in need of images again and so here I am but I'm still not buying much.

The truth is that I've been buying for so long now and have so much material in my runtime that I just don't need to buy much any more - if I'm asked to make a book cover or illustration, then the chances are that I have something that I can use to get the job done. I did buy a bunch of Dreamlands models when they were on sale and then there have been some odd little models like the Russian Dolls that turned up at the store recently.

I'm sure that I'm not alone in the community in having reached this point. If I can do the job with what I have, I need a good reason to part with the money for something new. That reason could be that nothing else will do or that I see certain possibilities in a model that are worth my time and money. Unfortunately, much of what is new in the store is just a variation on stuff that I have already purchased before and probably more than once.

Perhaps if I had taken up Genesis then I might feel the need to buy more, though I suspect that would just involve buying much the same as I already have for V4 & M4 all over again. But there it is.

Last I looked, Poserworld hadn't done much of anything new for months.

Quote - There could be an additional reason, that makes the community shrink:

Since the show "The Big Bang Theory", more girls could be interessted in Nerds and geeks and might feel attracted by them. So some guys now prefer to to pose "real life figures" instead of digital Poser dolls. That could be indeed very distracting. They might also feel encouraged to sign a contract in a gym.

In that case I'd see some runtimes rusting.  ;) ^^ :D XD

So when they learn Vicki is actually a lot cheaper in comparison, they'll start coming back?

"So when they learn Vicki is actually a lot cheaper in comparison, they'll start coming back?"

Between the NDA's legal fees no doubt

Fractured or sundered are perhaps  the words to choose between but are we talking Users, community merchants or marketplaces?

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket
Charles Péguy

 Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do;they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart
Walter Savage Landor

So is that TTFN or TANSTAAFL?

Quote - Fractured or sundered are perhaps  the words to choose between but are we talking Users, community merchants or marketplaces?

Yes - to all.

Thought of two more choice words divided and riven

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket
Charles Péguy

 Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do;they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart
Walter Savage Landor

So is that TTFN or TANSTAAFL?

Well I can't give a valid answer to the question from the OP but with three of the major Poser/Daz content sites having sales with 70, 80 and 85% off and some with vouchers on top I can believe Poserworld might not be selling as much content as they used to.   Assuming any of the sites are of course.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Quote - ....with three of the major Poser/Daz content sites having sales ...selling as much content as they used to.   Assuming any of the sites are of course.

That would assume a Site Sales centric world view

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket
Charles Péguy

 Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do;they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart
Walter Savage Landor

So is that TTFN or TANSTAAFL?

What ever happened to all the exciting stuff over at Poser Place?

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket
Charles Péguy

 Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do;they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart
Walter Savage Landor

So is that TTFN or TANSTAAFL?

People tend to think that because they are doing okay, then their neighbors are doing okay... until they're hit with irrefutable prrof that they are not. I lost my job in 2009 and had to cut WAY back on what I could afford to buy or do. I couldn't afford the Internet anymore and could only post online when I went to the library to check online for jobs.

I'm doing better now. Have a steady though not substantial income coming in and can afford to be online  all I want. But I'm still not buying stuff like I used to. I haven't bought anything from DAZ for months. Plus, I'm making a lot of stuff for mayself now, so I don't really need to.

Basically, what I'm saying is that over time, things should bounce back. The question is how many of our favorite vendors can survive until they do?

Quote - Basically, what I'm saying is that over time, things should bounce back. The question is how many of our favorite vendors can survive until they do?

Unless of course, this is the new normal.  Which I suspect it is.

Vendors believe that "If I build it, they will buy it."  In spite of all evidence to the contrary.