First off, nice work, folks. However, a marketing question...

When La Femme was released, it was a freebie with a 3.50 purchase. L'Homme is starting out the gate as fifteen bucks, rising to thirty after the sale period. Any particular reason why the same intro period for LF could not be used here? If you want users to get interested enough in using a male figure, that would seem to be a no-brainer.

If you own La Femme, the base shape for L'Homme is free. It is in the latest update to La Femme. Of course it's just the base morph, no textures, extra HD morphs, etc. But as I said the base is there.

And for those of us who acquired LF as part of the Poser upgrade?

But that aside, no textures, no morphs... funny, I dont seem to remember that being the case when LF was released.

Oh well, not my circus, not my monkeys.....

bwldrd posted at 4:01PM Wed, 25 December 2019 - #4374452

If you own La Femme, the base shape for L'Homme is free. It is in the latest update to La Femme. Of course it's just the base morph, no textures, extra HD morphs, etc. But as I said the base is there.

Wow, I wish I've known about this! I just found out about the new figure through the forums, no newsletters, no notifications... Oh well, I got the Pro version anyway.

The LF that comes with Poser is a "Lite" version. She comes with no genitals, no nipples, less morphs and no DEV Rig. The one in the store comes with all those, and now with the base LH morph.

Same goes for the LH morph that is now in LF Pro - that's just the morph, a "Lite" version if you will. The purchasable one comes with dedicated textures, conforming genitals, a figure that loads with his shape locked, and a DEV rig.

As for why he's not cheap or free - well, nobody said they had to. I imagine that they made LF free at the start because she was a completely new base and they wanted more people to try her. LH is an addon product.

I imagine that they made LF free at the start because she was a completely new base and they wanted more people to try her.

But that's the point. You want people to try him? Then market him the same way. This is what I dont get: you spend all this time creating a male version — even a morph — because people have asked for one, then you cut it off at the kneecaps with a marketing campaign that appears all but invisible. Until I saw the note from bwldrd, I had no idea that LH was, even in its simplest form, available to those people who'd bought the pro version of LF. Now we're told that you cant use this morph in the version of LF that comes with the Poser upgrade.

Not saying you should give away the store, but this is just another instance where, adding it all up, this is something that will ultimately be sixty bucks for a male mesh, plus the cost of just the basic add ons just to make it workable. Seriously, did anyone think about that?

Worth noting that we don't even know if the base morph WILL be added to the LF that comes with Poser, as that would require a POSER update and those are more complicated. I don't speak for Bondware or Renderosity or the creators of LF and LH.

Also worth noting a Starter Bundle for a Genesis8 figure is priced at $89.95 but Poser owners should give THEIRS away.

That makes absolutely no business sense at all.

Glitterati3D, If a starter bundle is priced at $90, wait 10 minutes - it will be on sale.

It's been 10 minutes and... ...just got 'Michael 6' for free! lol

ssgbryan posted at 9:33AM Thu, 26 December 2019 - #4374529

Glitterati3D, If a starter bundle is priced at $90, wait 10 minutes - it will be on sale.

It's already on sale for $60.00. The same amount being complained about for L'Homme and what a starter bundle for him would cost Poser users.

So, Poser businesses are expected to GIVE AWAY the same "bundle" that the competition charges at least $60.00 for.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I think that it's worth noting that most D|S bases are created by Daz. They can control how to sell, advertise, put on sale, give away, according to their business model and what feels more profitable for them. That's how they can make D|S free, and choose sales on content. On the other hand, most third-party content being sold there is much more expensive than those you can find here at Renderosity.

LF and LH are SUPPORTED by Renderosity, but are created by a few non-Renderosity-employed creators. Those people gotta be paid for their work, you know.

(Now, if you wanna start a call for Renderosity to hire some creators to work on LF and LH under a constant pay as employers... I'll be the first to scream HIRE ME!!!)

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 10:09AM Thu, 26 December 2019 - #4374551

I think that it's worth noting that most D|S bases are created by Daz. They can control how to sell, advertise, put on sale, give away, according to their business model and what feels more profitable for them. That's how they can make D|S free, and choose sales on content. On the other hand, most third-party content being sold there is much more expensive than those you can find here at Renderosity.

LF and LH are SUPPORTED by Renderosity, but are created by a few non-Renderosity-employed creators. Those people gotta be paid for their work, you know.

And, what they evidently don't realize is that those capable of doing this work is now down to 3 or 4 people.

When one can't make a living at their chosen profession, they find a new one. Profession, that is.

Glitterati3D posted at 10:22AM Thu, 26 December 2019 - #4374545

ssgbryan posted at 9:33AM Thu, 26 December 2019 - #4374529

Glitterati3D, If a starter bundle is priced at $90, wait 10 minutes - it will be on sale.

As noted above, The Michael 6 starter bundle is currently free; hunt for a pair of threads by JoePublic with (IIRC) Hacking Vicky for speed in the title and you can convert him to a native Poser figure...

EDIT; Here they are; Nudity in the second link...

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2874212

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2874695

Well, if you guys just expect us to compete with free, news flash: we won't. Again, DS base creators are likely employed and that's their pay. If any of us want to work for weeks without any pay, we'll do charity for people who actually need help.

(Good luck on getting a lot of Poser users to do all the work described on those links tho. That seemed like a lot even for me who creates stuff from zero.)

Hello all.

First, L'Homme is FREE To try as a morph of La Femme. La Femme was updated with a La Femme Pro cr2 that has the L'Homme dial in the body of La Femme. So you can try his morph completely FREE if you own La Femme Pro here in the marketplace. His morph will be added to Poser as well as part of the La Femme lite cr2 that is currently in Poser also being updated. This will be done AFTER the holidays and then we will send out an update notification.

A newsletter went out yesterday about the L'Homme release. We did articles both here and on Poser Software site as well as hero banners, gliders and a large group release with an article as well. I thought we promoted it pretty well.

L'Homme Pro is being sold as a product as it contains all 3 skin options, 3 eye options, genitals and bonus cr2 options to load him with or without gens and as a locked (cannot be dialed back to La Femme and non-locked versions). He also has base body morphs done by Blackhearted included. And he is on sale at 50% off.

Look, I get it: people want to be paid for their work. That's a given. My complaint is that cutting through it all, the way LF was introduced — and, as a result, unleashing an awful lot of product in the process — is very different from what we're seeing now with LH. Yes, Jenn, right now it's 50% off. It wont be forever, just as LF started out a freebie with a 3.50 purchase of anything else. So if someone wanted to get LH, it's going to be thirty bucks here plus another thirty for the pro base model of LF just so you can load in the morph. IMHO, the market wont accept that, and LH will eventually become just another forgotten male character, and all the work that went into it will be wasted.

Let me re-iterate what I said at the beginning, nice work. Kudos to those who made it happen at all. But there were so many core concept problems that I really dont understand what you folks were thinking. I mean, if indeed it's a morph, why not just release it with the LF geometry but as its own cr2 with morph baked in? Why the insistence on having another thirty-dollar mesh as a requirement? My goto mesh, Kyle, uses the same geometry as Krystal, but you dont need Krystal to work with Kyle: everything is already there in the Kyle cr2 and ready to go. So was there something in the ownership rights to the LF geometry that prevented a similar situation here?

Honestly, I wonder if anyone on the team actually talked to those of us who use male meshes to see what we wanted. Trust me, marketing something that "can wear LF's clothes!" wasnt exactly a major selling point, as far as I was concerned. I understand what you were trying to say, but it comes down to how it would be received by the market you want to buy this in the first place. It's all just slightly bewildering.

Oh, and to respond to the statement about the ninety-dollar pro-version of a DAZ character: DAZ's prices across the board are a lot higher than what we see here — and for no real reason, as far as I can tell. That said, a pro bundle usually includes a lot of stuff. That comparison wont fly here, sorry.

Again, I'm hoping I'm wrong about all this. I'm hoping the vendors will pick up on LH and give the users all manner of inventory to work with. But between the way all this was handled, coupled with the mentality of "well, no one buys male stuff anyway", I"m not even sure now why Rosity went down this road in the first place.

Just my 0.02. No doubt worth every penny.

It does seem like the release of La Femme vs. L'Homme has been somewhat...asymmetric. And given the lower level of interest in male figures in general, that's unfortunate.

However, it sounds like everyone who has La Femme (whether from buying it in the RMP or getting it free with Poser) won't have to buy the LF base to use L'Homme. Looks like the LH base package has CR2s but no OBJ, so you'll need the LF OBJ to use it. The "lite" or the regular version should do, right? The OBJs must be the same, since they use the same textures, etc.

Would be nice if they made this clearer.

Sean, I'm going to TRY to have a reasonable conversation with you........

First, I encouraged the "morph of La Femme" idea because 1) it was smart, and 2) it leaves room for other male figures. We already have Dusk and Shane's Orion is on the horizon. Why should we try to cut the floor out from them? There's room here for more than ONE male figure. There's lots of room for CHOICES for the customer. At this point, the customer has options that suit their needs, not demands made by content creators.

Second, this is a VERY different marketplace that it was just a year ago. There are only 2 content stores left - DAZ and Renderosity. You can expect the market to change, expand and evolve to manage that reality. Nothing stays the same, and the 3D marketplace isn't going to either.

Third, La Femme is coming up on her one year anniversary next month and she hasn't been sold at full price YET. Again, that's the marketplace that exists today, not the one that existed years back. We grow, we learn, we change.

And, last but not least, it was you who set the $60.00 it would cost to buy stuff for L'Homme, I was simply making a comparison to your comment. Basically, comparing the store products to the bundle. Again, the changed marketplace and how Renderosity compares to the competition.

And, Renderosity went down this road because of all the clamoring for a male figure right here in these forums. No one said it had to be ONLY their version of some male figure and they have now given you another choice - Dusk and L'Homme. Hopefully, soon, Shane will provide yet a 3rd choice with Orion.

Ok to try and make it clear. The LaFemme (lite) version included with Poser will have the LHomme basic morph include I imagine for what Jenn said sometime after the Holidays, which seems perfectly acceptable to me. Anyone with LaFemme Pro(again I have no special knowledge just what Jenn posted above) already has at least the base morph included in the update. LHomme Pro does include a fair number of additional product, such as Poses, additional morphs, the DevRig, and Genitals, Oh and several texture/materials files. Also included is One Click -Load versions of LHomme both Gens and No Gens that have the LHomme dials locked to prevent accidentally "de-morphing" him back to LaFemme. I may not have listed everything but I don't think that too bad a haul considering the amount of time and work involved.

On a personal note I applaud Rendo for placing it at a more realistic price range, it's been too long that Rendo was considered the bargain basement of Poser/DS content. The quality is every bit as good as Daz but due to creators competing for sales and other marketing factors, the pricing has remained very low compared to DAZ and I think it's time that start to be rectified.

Sean, I'm going to TRY to have a reasonable conversation with you........

Let's not even start with that, shall we? To be searingly blunt, every time anyone raised a comment on the progress of LH, you acted like we were killing your baby. All we were trying to do was make this the best possible product so people would buy it.

Yes, it's I who set that sixty dollar bar. Based on the full prices of both, that's what it comes down to. But assuming the half price sales continue for whatever period of time, you're still looking at a thirty dollar investment of an impulse item just to get started. Adding in the general resistance to male figures, that's going to be enough for folks to say, "Sorry, no."

Yes, those of us who asked for a male figure did so because we wanted one. I dont see why the concept of a separate, baked-in morph/cr2 is such an impossibility. I dont see it as cutting the floor out from under anyone, nor do I see as "not smart". I'd see it as a way of having a single level character, not requiring a separate cr2 to make it viable — and as a result, a product that more people would be willing to buy instead of putting a purchased requisite in front of it. Why is that so difficult? What would make that such a threat to the sales of Dusk and/or Orion? Does anyone complain when we see countless female "characters", even as morphs of an existing mesh? Are any of them perceived to be a threat to sales of Dawn or LF? I just find the whole mentality around the way male characters are marketed here as utterly bewildering.

I am going to repeat again, for the benefit of those who clearly need to see it: I'm hoping I'm wrong about all this. I'm hoping the vendors will pick up on LH and give the users all manner of inventory to work with. But I also think it's a reasonable fear that that's not going to happen.

Well, whatever, I guess. Moving on, because, you know, I'm just one customer, and what do I know, right?

It's nice to see Poser figures getting some love, but really the feature I'm most interested in and to be honest, could be the deciding factor in whether I upgrade to Poser 12 or not, (among other factors) is whether or not there will be any upgrades to rendering in Poser 12? In other words, are certain nodes still missing from Superfly? And can Poser read Blender node set ups? I do all of my modeling in Blender. There doesn't seem to be much use in using some shaders since Poser can't even read or recreate them. I even bought a book called the Cycles Encyclopedia with the intent to create some new shaders but discovered that Poser has a few missing nodes.

Jenn?

EClark1894 posted at 10:23AM Fri, 27 December 2019 - #4374650

It's nice to see Poser figures getting some love, but really the feature I'm most interested in and to be honest, could be the deciding factor in whether I upgrade to Poser 12 or not, (among other factors) is whether or not there will be any upgrades to rendering in Poser 12? In other words, are certain nodes still missing from Superfly? And can Poser read Blender node set ups? I do all of my modeling in Blender. There doesn't seem to be much use in using some shaders since Poser can't even read or recreate them. I even bought a book called the Cycles Encyclopedia with the intent to create some new shaders but discovered that Poser has a few missing nodes.

Jenn?

What does this have to do with L'Homme?

Maybe you should start a new thread asking about these things, instead of derailing this. You will probably get more answers in a dedicated thread, instead of letting it be buried in an unrelated thread :)

I bought the whole works version of L Homme, even though I got La Femme with my PP11.xxx

Meh. Chucked some money at Rendo in a moment of madness.

Just thought I'd check and see if anyone actually bothered to answer any of my questions. And nope, no one really did.

I wish I could say I was surprised. With all the work that went into this, you'd think someone would want to explain what the team was thinking or maybe why the physical structure of the mesh demanded otherwise or... well, something. But as it turns out, the silence around such a major release speaks a heckuva lot more, I guess.