All I ever see is "michael 4" stuff. Is M4 going to be the eternal male figure or will poser ever get a new male figure?

thought Dusk was the new boy (with some support) is a couple of others but don't seem as popular Daz is too committed to the genesis stuff

Dusk is interesting but he is incomplete as the folks at HiveWire feel that there products must not have genitals as that might not meet their standards of "family safe" ...... Dusk is a eunuch (no genitals) I am hoping someone comes along with a new version of the ever popular Michael 4

M4 genitals fit dusk with a slight adjustment on the z axis

Bill

Thank you Bill.... I'll have to give that a try

All of the gens will fit Dusk just fine.

And now that Blacksmith3D has released a M4 to Dusk module, you can harvest all of your M4 textures for use with Dusk also.

That's great but my question was will we ever have a new male character like M4. I am not talking about a character that uses M4's clothes and morphs.

Well, who knows? What I do know is that it will have to come from somebody other than Daz, and will have to be able to do more than what M4 can do, otherwise people will just stick with M4 if the new figure is lacking. To me Dusk is a step backwards and doesn't offer anything new over M4 be honest. M4 has better topology. There are characters designed on M4 that are still some of the best looking. Also M4 still has way more morphs for flexibility. So yeah, unless a new figure can top what he offers, he is still going to be around.

The downside is, most developers have practically moved on from supporting Generation 4 figures. I say wait till new Poser comes out. There should be new figures and hopefully a new male that is worthy.

Zev0 posted at 3:41PM Mon, 05 October 2015 - #4232385

The downside is, most developers have practically moved on from supporting Generation 4 figures. I say wait till new Poser comes out. There should be new figures and hopefully a new male that is worthy.

If people are waiting for Smith Micro they may be in for a disappointment. SM seems to have forgotten that content is king. They add figures yet I rarely ever see those figures used in any of the galleries at various sites. We need a new Michael

I agree. Poser users have been waiting long enough. However SM has decided to stand on their own two feet by not adopting Daz tech to incorporate it's Genesis figures, so now it's up to them or a third party to provide new figures for their users. The days of Daz providing figures for Poser is over. It's up to the community here to show support for alternative figures, maybe then more content developers will jump in, otherwise you will just have another unsupported figure on your hands. It takes a hell of a lot of resources to get a figure into the mainstream, to market it and to attract top vendors to support you. So yeah, this will be a real test for them to see if they can make it work. But SM is under new management, so let's see what they come up with.

"SM has decided to stand on their own two feet by not adopting Daz tech to incorporate it's Genesis figures"

I think this is a right way, because if they adapt Poser to use Daz3d only DAz studio figures, Poser will be dead in that moment.

Nobody said that Poser only has to use Daz figures, but incorporate a way to make them work better at least for those who want to use them and who prefer to use Poser as their software choice. If not, then it is their responsibility to be the forefront content provider for users regarding figures. If not them, then somebody else. But the offering musn't be a gimped offering. It must be something that makes users not wish they were using anything else. That is the goal you want to achieve.

To be honest.. I cant understand why SM isn't in the content business. They make the program and sell the Pro version for $500. The standard for like 150 or 200. Those figures are nothing compared to the sales you can get out of even a free base figure couple with purchased morph packs, and a slightly robust line of clothing & characters. I don't know about anyone else, but my spend on content quite quickly eclipses my spend on the program itself.
So I find myself agreeing with Zev (for the second time in not too long... weird) SM either needs to dive into the content market in a serious way, or improve the automatic rigging/fitting tools in poser to the point that the base figure for which a clothing item is intended becomes almost meaningless

Smith Micro could also completely revamp Content Paradise and then give vendors a much better deal: instead of a 50% cut, maybe 90%? After all, if they're not in the business of making money from content, CP only needs enough of the profit from content sales to cover its costs (and payment processing). Maybe if they had the option to keep a greater amount of the $$ from sales, more vendors would at least consider giving support to native Poser figures -- at least once. :D

Or, as meatSim suggests, "dive into the content market" themselves, instead.

Or some combination of both.

adh3d posted at 11:37AM Wed, 07 October 2015 - #4232424

"SM has decided to stand on their own two feet by not adopting Daz tech to incorporate it's Genesis figures"

I think this is a right way, because if they adapt Poser to use Daz3d only DAz studio figures, Poser will be dead in that moment.

Daz is an independent company and owes nothing to Smith Micro. They are selling content designed for their software. The idea that somehow two companies should play nice I doubt will ever work. I use Daz because I love the idea that it is free and the material available to Daz Studio is great. Michael 4 was a great figure years ago but if SM thinks they can keep going on the back of Michael 4 they are living in a fantasy world.

"SM has decided to stand on their own two feet by not adopting Daz tech to incorporate it's Genesis figures" Smith Micro has also chosen to exist on the hard work of others who develop products that Poser uses. They want people to use their program BUT offer nothing. They are developing Poser 11 right now but unless they completely change their pattern they will expect other people to create the material the program uses. From what I can see unless SM wakes up to the fact that content is important they will be a short lived business.

Agreed. You cannot survive on app sales alone anymore, specially when there is a free alternative that offers a PBR render engine, and can use the most popular current figure platforms. How do you compete with that if app sales is your only main source of revenue in this market? The amount of content sales on a daily bases brings in way more revenue than daily app sales totals. So I do think getting their own content support and site up to scratch is vital.

The challenge that Smith Micro faces is a considerable one. Auto fit ,IMHO, is the paradigm shifting technology that SM will have to match more than anything else.

I personally consider solutions like Wardrobe wizard and the PP2014 “fitting room” to be obsolete technology At this point…sorry.

Trust me once you have enjoyed the Autofit workflow as an end user or content producer, the thought of tedious,dodgy& unpredictable Refitting sessions with the aforementioned becomes abhorrent .

As I have said in the past Despite forum bluster the majority of people will NOT embrace substandard figure technology and Develop and buy content based purely on some ridiculous ,Tribal,partisan Anti Daz sentiment. The poser native figures have to be just as good in terms of their Appearance, versatility as well as the compatibility of ALL clothing content from Day one. Anything short of that is just wishful thinking.

I personally consider solutions like Wardrobe wizard and the PP2014 “fitting room” to be obsolete technology At this point…sorry.

Agreed. The idea is there, but end results are not. Give me Auto-Fit and Smoothing any day. I use it for hair as well. Parent a hair set from any figure to who I want, add smoothing collisions on hair to collide with figure, and hair shape fits around the scull. No need to download hair fits. It's features like this I cannot work without and is vital to my workflow, because of the speed in which I can get results. I cannot go back to the old way of doing things. It just took too much time. It's key usage features like this that I have been asking for in Poser. Things to make simple processes easier. Who cares if its a Daz feature. Bottom line it's a good feature regardless where it comes from. Point is, it's one thing to provide a figure, but the supporting features within an app are just as vital to its usability.

To Add - It is the exact same situation regarding content creation. It's the approach to the content creation tools. In Studio they work for you and you don't have to fight it. It is why you are seeing a shift in focus on content. More and more people are creating DS only content because it is easier to develop and package. For SM to counter this, they need simpler yet more powerful tools. To this day I cannot rig a figure in Poser as quickly as what I can do in Studio. In Studio I can make and assign multiple animated keyframed Jcm's to a figures joint rotation with 4 clicks. I can Auto-Rig an entire figure in one click. I can't do that in Poser as quickly and as easy. And that is a huge problem, and lot's of new developers will go the path of least resistance. Make the tools better and simpler, and it will attract more content development. It is the only way to attract more content creation in Poser and for Poser. But as long as the development tools are easier to use in another app (and for free), a shift in content support back to Poser is not going to happen anytime soon. The old ways of doing things is over. Welcome to 2015. So shrug off comments like this and ignore the signs if you want, but it is a serious problem that is escalating with each passing day. So what does this have to do with figures and support? Well, everything.

Hmmm. I had so much trouble with autofit's shrinkwrapping that I eventually gave up. I realize that there are morphs to the body that can help mitigate that -- somewhat -- but the result is still, hmmm, not that great much of the time. I found myself desperately wanting a morph brush (and not Dformers, ack) so that I could yank some of that clothing away from body contours.

However, by using the DSON importer script to autofit clothing inside Poser, where I can then adjust it as I like, I get what I feel is the best of both worlds. Plus I can clothe figures in dynamic conversions with ease.

Last night I loaded Stonemason's Old London into Poser. And it is gorgeous. I didn't bother fiddling with a hundred obj's. Instead, I loaded the scene into Daz Studio, exported it all in FBX format, and then imported that into Poser. No resizing, no searching for texture maps, none of that. No fuss; no muss. It will need some shader love for things like window glass and street puddles. But thanks to material gurus, that's easy enough. Otherwise, the entire process took less than five minutes.

People are always complaining because they want to use assets from multiple platforms without any additional work at all, or with perfect and full compatibility with absolutely no loss of features (even features they won't use) -- and I think that's unreasonable. Either that or they simply accept other people's word that such and such "just won't work" and then join the the Poser Content Commiseration Committee instead. I'm convinced that most of the issues people have with the DSON importer script comes from the lack of an updated tutorial that explains how to install it and how it works.

But, yes. I agree that getting G7 into Poser with functional expressions would be nice -- and is likely to become a necessity at some point. But honestly, I don't mind being a product cycle behind in compatibility.

TL;DR -- I'd prefer to see SM working on improving importation of assets in other platforms and increasing compatibility. Seems it's much too late to expect an 11th hour figure revolution. No one expects Adobe to provide massive amounts of content for its software, despite there being a perfectly usable and free alternative. shrug

As much as some are aggravated by the fact. Michael 4 is still the standard for male figures for Poser (Although I do promote Apollo as a better figure). DAZ frankly creates the best figures IMO and M4 and V4 were the last figures they made native for Poser. The other figures developed since just haven't seemed to measure up. Other points in this thread are totally valid ... but working strictly from the OP, this is my observation.

_ I found myself desperately wanting a morph brush (and not Dformers, ack) so that I could yank some of that clothing away from body contours._

What I do is click on the clothing and dial out the figure shape a bit (under currently used, since it gets copied over to the clothing) to eliminate some of the shape contours, then add a little smoothing. There are also some products that are designed to eliminate the effect. And yes deformers suck lol. But I have Hex and zbrush, and I can send to those apps make changes and send back to Studio if that is required. So in a way, if you have Hexagon, you have a morph brush for Studio, since it has a send to Hex option, much like GoZ.

But Zev0, I'm lousy with DS, anyway (and it still needs a morph brush). LOL I'm just glad that I have the option to use most of the Daz content in Poser. Until that actually changes, I'm still pretty happy. Frankly, I'd probably never use Genesis models at all if 1. there was more content for M4 (including some much needed joint fixes) and 2. you hadn't abandoned us!! (written with a grin). In any case, M5 is my favorite (well-supported) male fig, and I make frequent use of your addons. I did notice that you had some morphs in the store to help with autofit's peculiar issues with G2M as well.

Nevertheless, thank you very much for the tips. I don't doubt I'll end up using them at some point. I have my favorite tools (Poser), but I won't snub other options (DS) if I need to use them. :)

Lol cool. Whatever works best for you:)

In response to a number of previous comments. The ground has shifted for this art form. Poser relied on Daz and other vendors for many years, as well as the expectations that users would hack and create work arounds to fit their needs. Now simplicity is possible and the majority would rather not spend time fixing things if they don't have to. Shouldn't be unexpected as the one constant regarding technology is change.

SM could solve a lot of problems by simply adding FBX import to their base products. This would allow rigged content to be imported from a number of avenues: Mixamo, Make Human, Unity asset store, or directly from Blender, Maya etc.

BTW: I really like Dawn, Dusk, and Luna. Combining them with dynamic clothes works really well for the results I'm seeking. Since Hivewire is the only marketplace dedicated to making figures and content for Poser, SM may want to support them as best they can.

Drives me nuts when you see a really nice male figure for m4 for instance with great looking textures and then you find out the artist didn't include textures for the genitals. It is a pain in the butt trying to match closely genital textures to a figure without any included. Especially for Hi Res renders or complex anthro or creature textures. What it is about male gens a lot of people feel weird about is beyond me. or female genitals too for that matter. If you want to keep your site family safe, which is cool by me, don't include the genitals but for god sake include enough mesh in the female groin in case anyone with the right mind and skills can fix it right. Or do what DAZ did, another family safe site, they offered the male gens as a addo-on part in the expansion pak with clover leaf as the thumb. Problem solved. I won't buy figures that do not offer these things not because i desperately need the bits but for basic principal! :)