I would like to offer all developers a simple suggestion for documenting your products. I think this will help sales (or downloads) and make your users much happier. In essence, the suggestion is this: Write to the “why” and not the “what” or “how”. By that I mean tell me WHY you developed the product in the first place. Don’t tell me WHAT it does or HOW it works. Tell me what its PURPOSE is. In MBA parlance tell me what the pain in the market place is that it addresses.

I’ve probably looked at over a hundred add-ons, utilities and tools and more often than not I come away without any clear idea of how they would make my Poser experience any better.

Let me try to illustrate what goes on in a user’s head with a real live example. With apologies in advance to Paul "Mr. X" Mason, let’s take a look at his Morph Manager 4. I chose this not because it’s particularly bad, but because it’s so very typical. That, and because I just happened to come across it an hour ago. 

On one of the Poser threads here, I had noticed that someone was trying to locate Morph Manager 4, and that intrigued me because I assumed that it must be something that at least one person found useful enough to go looking for it. Maybe it will help me with some of my problems. So I followed the link and it took me here where I find that it is “an invaluable tool which enables you to transfer morph targets between similar figures, rename and delete them.” Hmmm… OK, it transfers morphs targets between similar figures. Similar?  Like how similar? Between two V4 based characters? Why would I need that? Maybe, just maybe, by “similar” he means a V4 based character and a conforming outfit. Well, THAT would be useful! Maybe that would solve some of my poke-through problems.

The rest of the section didn’t help any. It mostly just talked about some bad things the tool does. (Marketing tip: Don’t spend more time talking about the problems your product might create than you do about its benefits.) Still, I’m optimistic that any tool that will help me manage my morphs (whatever that may mean) will be a good thing, so I plow forward to the help file found here.

I get to the help page still wondering how this tool will help me, and what do I see? “What’s new in 4.0.” Argh!!! I don’t know what version 3.0 did, so why do I care what’s new in version 4.0? But wait; just past that is “Morph Manager Explained”. This sounds like what I was looking for. Maybe it will tell me what problems it will solve for me… Nope! Just more stuff about what it does. That’s NOT the same thing. I’m left having to try to IMAGINE how these things that it DOES will solve any of my problems.

After that comes the user manual, but I’m not going to bother with that because I still don’t know if this tool actually addresses any of my problems, and I’ve already spent too much time on it. So the bottom line is I don’t download it, and I move on to other things.  And there you have it.

Sorry about the length of this post, but I wanted to give some idea of the user’s perspective. Notice how I bolded many of the first person pronouns – me and my. That’s the user’s point of view - how will this benefit MEEEEE? Me, me, me!!!

Well, OK, what would be a better approach? Here is how I might summarize the tool. Of course this assumes that I’m guessing correctly about what its main purpose is. After all this I’m still not sure.

Poke-through – the bane of Poser users everywhere! You’ve found the perfect outfit for Vickie, so you load, conform and presto!! Pokethrough!!! Sure, you can use the morph tool, but that’s slow, clunky and buggy. Or you can make Vickie’s offending body part invisible. Not good either.

Poke-through usually happens when there is a morph target like BodyBuilder in your main character that is not found in the conforming outfit, and that’s where Morph Manager 4 comes in. MM4 lets you copy the morph from your character to the outfit, thereby eliminating pokethrough.

But that’s not all. To see what else MM4 can do for you check out our page at [some link].

Notice how I clearly identify the user’s problem and then milk it. Then I dismiss any other solutions by pointing out their negatives. Finally, I say how this product will fix the problem.

As a former software developer myself I know how hard it is to go from developer mode to marketing mode. There is always the tendency to write to yourself or other developers and not your target audience. Before you commit your writing to the world, try walking away from the entire project for a few days and think about something else. When you come back re-read everything as though you were an ordinary user. Remember that they will not be immersed in the product as you are, and they probably will not be as advanced as you are. (Notice how in my example after referring to a “morph target” I immediately gave an example of something even new users are likely to be familiar with.) But more than anything else, users will be looking out for ways your tool will solve their problems.

I hope this helps. I am sure that there are a lot of tools that are being under-utilized because users simply can’t figure out how they will help them. Hopefully this little tip will result in more sales or, for freebies, more downloads.

I agree.

Most vendors on Renderosity use well-known Poser/DS lingua fracas to describe their products, which they assume will be easily understood by their potential customers, who are further assumed to be intimately familiar with such terminology.

But, that's not exactly using one's advertising to appeal to the widest possible audience, is it? :)

In my opinion, many vendors end up shooting themselves in the foot by not following basic product advertising principles. Some of them are great at making renders or demonstrating their products with pictures, but end up torpedoing their product by failing to take the same care in their product descriptions. Sometimes, there isn't even any description beyond "this is a product and it has stuff in it." Well, just about, anyway...

Sidenote: Poser/DS can be surprisingly technical. Consider competent users will be familiar with many terms that a neophyte would not. So, there is some excuse there to be had for vendors of products that have "technical" features that reach under-the-hood of Poser. But, again, I agree with you - Vendors should take more care when describing the features of their products and should make more of an attempt to actually try to "sell" their product. It's almost as if some might feel that just having the product listed means that they've won some sort of contest and they don't have to try any further.

PS - Morph Manager is an outstanding little program and has been around for ages... It's one of those "must have" utilities that anyone who's been around Poser for very long has at least heard of. A person familiar with Poser's .cr2 and mesh construction would easily be able to interpret what it does. These days, there are other tools that are built into later versions of Poser that can accomplish many of the same things. But, I still use it, from time to time, because it's fast and suits certain purposes.

You're absolutely right about using technical terms for advanced products. It's all about knowing who your audience is and speaking to their level of understanding.But even if your product is highly advanced, the basic principles are the same: talk about what PROBLEMS it will solve, not what it DOES.

So, did I guess correctly about how Morph Manager is typically used? Do you mostly use it to fix pokethrough by transferring morphs from a character to a conforming outfit?

Back in the days of Poser 3 and 4, when everybody used the same limited set of figures, it was common practice to distribute character morphs in a CR2. It's my understanding that Morph Manager was created to enable the easy transferring of morphs back and forth between CR2s of the same figure. I daresay that somewhere in Renderosity's archive is a thread where the problem is stated and a solution proposed; at the time everyone knew what the problem was, and how Morph Manager would solve it.

Nowadays morphs are usually distributed in other ways and in my opinion Morph Manager is not very relevant any more. That said, I continue to host a copy on my site so that it's still available, since Paul Mason no longer seems to be around. My thinking was that anyone who wants it now will already know why they want it and what it does. Maybe they've used it in the past and lost their copy; maybe they're trying to follow a tutorial they've dug up from the archives.

But to move from specifics to generalities, not many people possess skills in both low-level functional programming and the more 'customer facing' arts of user interface and documentation design. It seems to require two mutually exclusive mindsets, which places the one-man-band who's typical in this field in a weak position.

Fantastic information and a great point!  I hope others add to this. :)

1. choose method for solving problem
2. it doesn't yield useful information
3. defend method and blame information

Ask the forum next time

I don't have an MBA. I have a Masters degree in management, and a Bachelor of Fine Art. The bit of the OP's post that concerned me the most was "I’m left having to try to IMAGINE how these things that it DOES will solve any of my problems"...

a) don't be afraid to imagine. One of my lecturers in the BFA was Christl Berg who told of going to a Photoshop conference where the developers of Photoshop were in attendance. They were not there to identify problems, but were there to see things people had done with the program that they didn't know it could do. If you are only presenting software as a problem solver, you are cutting off the people who seek expanded capacity. That isn't to say that the OP's comments are wrong, they are particularly valid from a marketing perspective, but still only from a narrow perspective.

b) any developer that sells software that knows of limitations and does not disclose them is being dishonest. I'd be unlikely to trust a product of theirs again. Maybe OK practice for a dodgy marketing strategy, but my particular management field deals with anticipating the consequences of a decision. Again, this is not to say that the OP is 'wrong', as many of the points made suggest that the vendors are relying on significant prior knowledge, including references to products that may no longer exist. A developer should be clear on what they have developed, where it has shown to break, and let the marketplace decide.

Only problem I see is that if you do happen to own a earlier version of Morph Manager, and you see the ad, you may think that nothing new has been added and not bother to check it out. Not saying that the suggestions given aren't good, but just because something isn't useful or relevant to you doesn't mean it's not relevant to someone else. And that little detail you think they should leave out might be the very thing  needed to convince someone else to come check it out.

Just saying...

(Reformatting the reply, since the forum doesn't allow multiquotes.)

But even if your product is highly advanced, the basic principles are the same: talk about what PROBLEMS it will solve, not what it DOES.

While this is, in general, a good marketing approach, we also have to remember that there are innovative products which can create an entirely new set of capabilities or even a new market. With these products, they're not marketed as targeted "problem solvers." They're marketed as empowering products that give their users new abilities or even open up entirely new opportunities that have yet to become fraught with "problems to be solved."

For instance, I invent a product that you can wear on your wrist and that harmlessly changes your skin color to whatever color you wish. Did that solve a "problem?" No, not really. It just presents a completely new tool for the user. And, suddenly, an entire industry is born... with fashion moguls competing to produce the best "apps" and tattoo artists trying to figure out how to stay in business, along with governments trying to figure out how to correctly identify the racial characteristics of people trying to apply for minority subsidies. That new industry I just created with a non-problem-solving product that creates a new dynamic in the marketplace now has a new host of opportunities for "problem-solving-product-marketing." :)

This sort of thing can happen in the Poser marketplace. Primarily driven by new capabilities introduced by continued software development, it doesn't have to stop there. This isn't a markeplace that is oversatuated with competition and innovation, however. But, there are times when some products do present "innovations." However, IMO, many of them are not built upon. There seems to be a wide gulf between "Creators" and truly "Initiated Creators" who actually have the skill to take advantage of some of these innovations in order to produce truly unique products worthy of being "problem solvers" or "paradigm shifters." (For instance, the "Reality" rendering system has been around for awhile. But, where are the products that further exploit that new niche? Where are the material sets and companion products needed to truly push that new submarket? I dunno.. One free app, maybe? This is why, in many respects, DAZ is more successful with its proprietary software - They know how to create markets and how to get creators to help fill them with products.)

So, did I guess correctly about how Morph Manager is typically used? Do you mostly use it to fix pokethrough by transferring morphs from a character to a conforming outfit?

No. But, don't worry - That's a common sort of mistaken assumption about how Poser, Morphs and Groups work.

I originally constructed a post that started from "scratch" and detailed everything-you-needed-to-know-about-how-Poser-deals-with-what-it-does-relating-to-3D-geometry...  But, you don't want to know all that stuff, right? Right! So, I erased it all and am, myself, starting from "scratch" again, but targeted at a higher level of understanding, assuming a basic knowledge of certain things, but also assuming you don't want me to go into stuffs you don't need to know in order to get your question sufficiently answered... :) I have a habit of verbosity in my posts which annoy some people, so I'm going to boil this one down to the most basic stuffs. But, considering the topic of your original post, I figured you'd benefit from more of a "working knowledge" of the subject. So, here goes... (Scroll down to the  TLDR if you don't want to read a lot...)

Morph Manager, among a few other things, transfers "Morphs" between the group(s) of one object to another object. But, you do need to understand what a Morph is and what Morphing an object does in order to get your question answered sufficiently.

A 3D "Object" in Poser is a collection of geometry made up of vertices (points), edges (lines) and faces (planes). A face, which is basically all you can see in Poser, (Because... reasons.) is made up of a number of vertices connected by edges. The smallest number of vertices that can make up a face is three and that face would also have three edges. (Think of a triangle.) Poser likes faces made up of four vertices. (Think of a square.) There are reasons for this, but you don't need to know them in order to understand what Morphs are an how Poser deals with them. From this, all you need to remember is that the geometry of an object in Poser is specifically defined and can be quite complex.

A "Morph" is a vector change, relative to referenced geometry. In Poser, this vector change is defined by the change in position of a vertice, along a vector, relative to its original 3D position. You can create "Morphs" by using various tools that deform an object's geometry. These Morphs are really only new sets of coordinates for the geometry of an object. What you need to take away from this is that Morphs are entirely relative. They do not contain the original geometry of an object (For this discussion.) Instead, a Morph is only the changes that are intended to be made to that original geometry to yield a desired new effect.

In Poser, a rigged object is broken down to "Groups." Just about everything Poser does with objects, as far as moving them around in 3D space, is relative to Groups that have been defined within the geometry of an object. (There are exceptions, but they're not worth discussing atm.) An object can have just one Group or many Groups. In "Characters", Poser uses rigging that is entirely dependent upon these Group references to tell it what the object "is" and what it should do with it. You can consider Poser to be completely intolerant of any hand-wavy messing around with these Groups and how the geometry contained within them is referenced. In regards to the geometry of an object, for this discussion, Poser is a one-trick-pony - It only cares about the Groups in a rigged object and doesn't have much consideration regarding the object as being one "object," itself. One simple mistake in messing around with these Groups makes Poser a sad panda.

As a result of Poser's fixation on Groups in an object, because of "reasons", when one applies a Morph to an object, that Morph must be based on the object's Groups. Poser doesn't care much about the "whole" object as being something worthy of consideration, here. It focuses on the object's Groups. And, if that Morph is actually a set of changes to the geometry of an object that encompasses more than one Group of geometry? Yes, that Morph must reference, specifically, the specific changes to the geometry in each Group.

When a Morph is applied to an object in Poser, like a model of a person, that morph contains the information regarding the relative changes that were made to the coordinates of each vertice in each Group. If the Morph is only to one Group of vertices, like a "head" group, then one needs only to apply that morph to the Head group and it's relatively easy. IF, however, the Morph that was created spans several Groups of vertices in an object, then one has to apply the individual changes for each Group of vertices.

Morph Manager allows you to quickly and easily transfer Morphs from one Group of geometry in a Character to that same corresponding Group of geometry in another Character and both Characters involved are assumed to have the same original geometry.

But, here's the thing and this is where we get to the "No" answer to your question. Remember that Morphs are relative changes to the geometry, right? Well, that "relative" word implies that there is a pre-existing "something else" point of view. That, "something else" is the original geometry upon which the changes were made. Morphs are entirely relative, so they can only be applied with any predictive accuracy to the geometry they were originally crafted from.

If you try to apply a Morph, which is really only a set of coordinates for a group of vertices, to an object that it was not originally crafted from, you will get unexpected results. That is because the Morph is only regarded as communicating completely "relative" changes to an object's geometry. Because of the complexity of objects, the coordinates that define them are very specific and unique. If you apply a Morph created with one object to the the completely different geometry of another, all those relative changes are going to be unpredictable and, usually, will result in just a mangled mess. Morphs and, indeed, the geometry they create are only "numbers" after all. And, if they're inappropriately associated with a completely different object or Group, with completely different sets of "numbers" in it, the results are unpredictable. They're so unpredictable that Poser will not let you do this! This is a safety feature that keep people from borking up the geometry of the characters and other 3D objects they're messing around with.

TLDR begins:

So, "No", you can't reliably use Morph Manager to solve poke-through issues with clothing by applying a Morph, originally intended for the figure's (Character's) geometry, to the completely different geometry of the figure's clothing. Morph Manager, however, doesn't have the safety features that Poser does, so it doesn't care about such hand-holding and will happily transfer one set of numbers into another set of numbers if you tell it to. But, just because Morph Manager doesn't hold you hand, here, doesn't mean that it's an appropriate or even a useful thing to do. That's one of the hallmarks of any tool that is designed for advanced users - It assumes that a certain level of knowledge is had by the user and they are familiar with the product's appropriate use. (You won't ruin anything by applying such a Morph to a character/geometry using Morph Manager, but the results will be wildly unpredictable.)

How to fix poke-through:

Thankfully, in Poser, there are tools available to solve poke-through issues and even tools that allow you to easily create Morphs that span Groups. These tools are "Magnets" and "The Morph Brush." (In some instances, even simple "scale" changes can be effective.) By using these tools on clothing items to create Morphs, either temporary effects, like with Magnets, or more embedded, true Morphs, like with the Morph tool, you can eliminate poke-through problems with clothing.