I think they need to take advantage of the fact that Unreal Engine can be licenced, get a contract agreed on and just get on with it.  No one is going to be interested in waiting for stills and animations to render in DS or Poser if Unreal Engine was to get an easy-to-use built-in figure with Pose and Morph dials.  All that needs to happen is for some plugin developer to create such a thing for Unreal Engine, and that's it, I think both DAZ and SM would learn the hard way about what bad decision making can do.  Unreal Engine is completely open now, even the source can be had, people can develop for it as they wish, so sooner or later, that stuff will come.

So yup, couldn't agree more, if DAZ and/or SM don't do it, somebody else will.

Someone will do it, but I don't think Poser or DAZ has to get a traditional Unreal license - They won't be making it part of their software, no matter what. They're not going to want to turn over a chunk of change to Epic.

However, all they have to do is to provide a integrating bridge and be able to "marry" certain key features that a DS/Poser user would want from Unreal (or any other engine) and that those engine's existing users would like to get from DS/Poser. Granted, that's not "easy." But, we've already seen strides made with the most difficult of tasks, materials translation and rigging, in third-party renderers. (Vray/Lux/Others) Materials are always the most difficult to translate. (But, we have bagginsbill, who can do anything! Maybe... )

One thing that I see is the possibility for a company who has a "hungry attitude", like DAZ, is to move directly into making made-for-engine assets. Not just translating their current stable and product-line to generic ports, but using their existing talent and resource base to push further into this new dynamic of home-grown-game-producers. DAZ could include an Unreal asset markeplace along with a DS bridge that integrated with Unreal, adding whatever benefits that DS could bring to the table for both DS/Unreal users to take advantage of. Would SM do something like that? I doubt it. They seem to act pretty much as if they're in their own world and anything outside of it, especially "asset creation", is somebody else's concern... That is not the attitude of a good, "constantly hungry", company. But, hey, they make good 3D posing software, at least, so they ain't all bad.

I'll be working with Unreal and Cryengine a bit, trying to find out if there are any possible marriage proposals. But, at the most, the only thing I can see that is available is asset porting, which is pretty meaningless, since a mesh is a mesh is a mesh. Yeah, I can get some culling benefits and rapid asset creation, which is a bonus, plus it's working with figs I already know. I hope I can see how DS/Poser can bring something "new" to such things for engine users, but I just don't know what it is at this point. They're going to have to move forward, we agree, in making their mark there. If not, they'll end up with small, permanent-legacy, markets.

Morph 3D, DAZ gaming sister company. Check what they are offering (hint: it is not a mere half-working decimator/FBX exporter).

Morph 3D, DAZ gaming sister company. Check what they are offering (hint: it is not a mere half-working decimator/FBX exporter).

So that's what they have been doing... Setting up stuff for the gaming market. I have learned quite a bit for your posts. Thanks.

Morph 3D, DAZ gaming sister company. Check what they are offering (hint: it is not a mere half-working decimator/FBX exporter).

Thanks for that! (I KNEW DAZ3D would move more strongly towards that market. :) ) But, that's asset creation. Asset creation is all fine and good and I'm not surprised that DAZ3D is getting closer to that. (Especially, because $$Unity$$)  But, in regards to DS/Poser, specifically, something that is more along the lines of a direct bridge for Unrea/other is what I was thinking of. Hey, DAZ3D might blow the socks off of versatile character creation on the fly. But, in order to make the next-gen leap and to more fully catch the wave of 3D Gaming Engine glory, which is becoming very popular, something more is needed.

For instance:

User starts up DS/Poser, gets favorite character, is excited and exports them to a compatible format for insert_engine_choice_here. OK, then what? Deal with learning the complexities of an entirely different proggy with only something that sort of looks like their old favorite mesh from DS/Poser?

OR, load up DS/Poser, load up insert_gaming_engine_choice, create asset in DS/Poser, bridge to gaming engine, take a look, flip back to DS/Poser, work on animations, bridge to gaming engine, take a look, open it up in real time rendering, move back to DS/Poser, load animations, key for actions/whatever, bridge to engine, etc...

Sure, it's nothing more than serving as a sort of somewhat hamstrung front-end, but it gets DS/Poser users moving forwards in both satisfaction level of their DS/Poser experience and KEEPS these users firmly in the DS/Poser market, instead of losing them.

It's like the "Reality" system. You don't need DS/Poser to use Luxrender. But, by having a bridge, now DS/Poser becomes so very much more powerful and can deliver a user-experience that couldn't be had, before. It's the value-added proposition that takes advantage of the work done by a third party. The stronger the third-party, the better it is for those who take advantage of their work. Unreal, Cryengine, Unity, et al aren't going away anytime soon. If DS/Poser could make using these packages as easy as something like Reality makes creating for and using Luxrender, the value of DS/Poser would be significantly increased.

Asset creation is cool, nothing wrong with it at all. If DAZ3D makes good quality organic asset creation easier, that's awesome. But, they're leaving what could be a profitable paradigm-shifting opportunity on the cutting room floor, IMO.