What figure do you use the most in your renders for Poser? I've listed 9 figures by name and 1 for other. Double names are either based on, or morphs of, another figure. If you don't see the name of the figure you use THE MOST, please write down the name of that figure. I would prefer you keep your choices to just one figure, but if you honestly use more than one figure a lot, knock yourself out. Also, for the purposes of this survey, Male figures are separate figures. Just write them under Other.

1. Roxie
2. V4/ Sasha
3. Anastasia/ Alyson
4. Pauline
5. Dawn
6. Sydney/ Jessie
7. Project E.
8. La Femme
9. Genesis
10. Other

2, 10 James

5 Dawn, 10 M4

 

 

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For quick images, I use V4 or Sasha because I have plenty of content for her. For images I'm taking me time on, I'll also use Dawn, PE and La Femme. I like variety.

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I suppose V4 with the following morph packages is my goto figure, and is really all I have ever needed:

• V4 Morphs++ (By DAZ)
• V4 Muscle Morphs (By DAZ)
• V4 Natural Breast Morphs (By Posermatic)

So that is my goto figure (strictly when injected with those morph packs), which I use to get me in the right ballpark of any look and body type I'm after. I then use the Poser Morph Brush to make any facial and joint adjustments I need, while the figure is posed.

For the Male, I use M4 with the male equivalent of those morph packs (Obviously Excluding Natural Breast Morphs).

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What can I say? She (oy, here I am ascribing "personality" to a collection of data) has the base structure and morph additions that has allowed me to recreate two favorite OCs in polygonal form.

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M4

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V3 and V4

M3 and M4

Dawn

K4

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Genesis, but mostly Genesis 2 female and male

10. M4

I really like weightmapped David, but at this point there's just so much more stuff for M4, he's the one I end up using.

Back in the days I was using DS, it was V4 mostly, with Steph 4 on occasion, though I was still using V4 after returning to Poser 7 years ago.

In the past 6-7 years, it's been Dawn, and occasionally Dusk.

In the past 14 months, I've been using La Femme "almost" as often as I use Dawn.

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2. V4 (WM version)

2, 7 and 8.

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Still V4, now as Sasha-16. I'm a little more all over the board with male figures.

Sorry to piggy-back on your thread/question, EClark. I'm curious if people might share some reasons they prefer one figure over another? Is it related to amount of supporting assets, materials and/or rendering quality, ease/range of posing, etc?

I'm pretty much brand-new to the Poser ecosystem and, similar to when I was first learning about DS, I'm curious when or why certain figures might be preferred over others, etc. In DS, I learned how in some scenarios, the newest options aren't necessarily the best ones.

@ TwoCatsYelling : Yes, You answered your own question

1,2,6,8,9 and 10.. anyone actually, I have no "go to" figure

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TwoCatsYelling posted at 3:47PM Mon, 09 March 2020 - #4383017

Sorry to piggy-back on your thread/question, EClark. I'm curious if people might share some reasons they prefer one figure over another? Is it related to amount of supporting assets, materials and/or rendering quality, ease/range of posing, etc?

I'm pretty much brand-new to the Poser ecosystem and, similar to when I was first learning about DS, I'm curious when or why certain figures might be preferred over others, etc. In DS, I learned how in some scenarios, the newest options aren't necessarily the best ones.

Yes. I have Project E, Dawn and the new girl ;), but to knock out something quick, I got to what I have muscle memory for. And that's V4. Face it, she has several metric tons of assets available.

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1. V4/M4/K4 - because I have a set of characters I use a lot
2. La Femme/L'Homme - because they are so versatile and I love working with them!
3. Project E - because she is amazing!!
4. Paul/Pauline - because they are better than most folks give them credit for
5. Legacy figures - Jessi, James, Judy (3Dream's Eternal Judy) Don, Sydney, Simon ... etc)
6. Other figures I'm starting to experiment with (i.e. Dawn, Dusk, E2, Orion and Venus)

Boni

---

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Common play: 8 ,7, 1 in that order.

However lately more and more 10, as the mood strikes go up the attic and open some long-closed boxes: Blow the dust off Miki2, or see how Antonia is doing.
.

Wow, almost forgot about the Miki series, Olivia, Kelvin and Koji!! I use them regularly too.

Boni

---

"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork

V4 and M4

Recently? Sasha 16, Glidman's (controversial) Ayana Doll (Terai Y ;), A3...

But I've just returned to Poser and I'm enjoying all the new rigging tools so it's the Poser Pro Medium Res Female for learning weight painting and JCM creation, she's "open source".

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I like variety, so I use different figures all the time: Sasha, La Femme, Genesis 2 female, PE, Dawn, and Pauline. For males, it’s mainly M4, and some use of Dusk and Paul. I never use the legacy figures, though back when I used Poser 10, I created body doubles using Posette for scenes with a lot of figures.

Don't really have one; it depends on the look I'm going for at the time.

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Well, guess I'll answer this one as well. Dawn and Dusk are my current Go to figures. In the past, primarily Roxie, V4, Alyson, and Miki 4. Ironically, males in the past have been mostly Michael 3. I find him more expressionable and easy to pose.

7, 8.

I use PE 90% of the time simply because the default shape is very naturally average (which is the type of style I prefer) and I don't have to do much to her because she already looks like the every day person. I use LF for certain things, close up face shots but tend to shy away from body shots because LF's body type isn't average and I have to do a lot to Un-LaFemme, LaFemme.

2. Sasha-16 / V4 / M4

I look forward to working with La Femme and L Homme as we get better acquainted.

2. V4 - purely because 90% of the stuff in my runtime is for her.

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7 Project Evolution, and genesis 2's sometimes for females, and for the males M4 and genesis 2, but actually I use a lot of them

TwoCatsYelling posted at 6:16AM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383017

Sorry to piggy-back on your thread/question, EClark. I'm curious if people might share some reasons they prefer one figure over another? Is it related to amount of supporting assets, materials and/or rendering quality, ease/range of posing, etc?

I'm pretty much brand-new to the Poser ecosystem and, similar to when I was first learning about DS, I'm curious when or why certain figures might be preferred over others, etc. In DS, I learned how in some scenarios, the newest options aren't necessarily the best ones.

All the above, naturally. :)

I collect new figures because I consider them resources, actors in whatever I am animating. There are very few people comparatively who can take a figure and morph it enough to where its difficult to tell it was 'Figure X'. Dial spinning doesn't really change that (newest example is LaFemme/LaHomme. Despite the gender change, you can tell it is the same mesh). You have to choose carefully, of course; some 'actors' are only good for face shots, some head and shoulders, etc. due to how the creator worked the topology and rigging. I'm a writer and movie maker, so my needs are quite different from the people who concentrate solely on still images (of course I do that too when creating a character and storyboarding). It was why I paired Vue with Poser; I could animate the figures, then import it into a Vue scene and render there, giving me a non static natural environment, or a more flexible internal render (at least until Cycles was added to Poser). How well the figure bends when a motion file is applied, and how much tweaking is needed are more vital than a lot of things stills need, since you can hide a vast number of sins behind some dynamic clothing

Dale B posted at 6:35AM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383091

TwoCatsYelling posted at 6:16AM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383017

Sorry to piggy-back on your thread/question, EClark. I'm curious if people might share some reasons they prefer one figure over another? Is it related to amount of supporting assets, materials and/or rendering quality, ease/range of posing, etc?

What you hear after a request like that is the sound of a submarine "DIVE DIVE DIVE" lmao

2 V4

Dale B posted at 7:46AM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383091

I collect new figures because I consider them resources, actors in whatever I am animating. There are very few people comparatively who can take a figure and morph it enough to where its difficult to tell it was 'Figure X'. Dial spinning doesn't really change that (newest example is LaFemme/LaHomme. Despite the gender change, you can tell it is the same mesh). You have to choose carefully, of course; some 'actors' are only good for face shots, some head and shoulders, etc. due to how the creator worked the topology and rigging. I'm a writer and movie maker, so my needs are quite different from the people who concentrate solely on still images (of course I do that too when creating a character and storyboarding). It was why I paired Vue with Poser; I could animate the figures, then import it into a Vue scene and render there, giving me a non static natural environment, or a more flexible internal render (at least until Cycles was added to Poser). How well the figure bends when a motion file is applied, and how much tweaking is needed are more vital than a lot of things stills need, since you can hide a vast number of sins behind some dynamic clothing

A caveat if I may "emptor" here, please, I originally bought my first version of Poser (2) for use in animation. At that time, there were no "Legacy" figures. There are now, of course, and no I don't collect figures, but I do like variety. That's why I like the Legacy figures. For me, at least, they're easy to pose, and most of them come with their own wardrobe, small though it maybe. I mention this because Legacy figures are great for background shots and building crowd scenes in Poser. As anyone who's ever tried to build a crowd in Poser knows, that poser does not have instancing, so every new figure you add to a scene, even if you duplicate it, slows Poser down considerably. Legacy figures are also usually lower polys than the newer figures, so I like to use figures like Posette, Don, Dork and Judy as, say, background diners and waiters in a restaurant scene. I once had a ballroom scene that slowed my Poser down to a crawl. Don't forget, it's not just the figures that slow poser down, but the props as well.

EldritchCellar posted at 12:38PM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383058

Recently? Sasha 16, Glidman's (controversial) Ayana Doll (Terai Y ;), A3...

But I've just returned to Poser and I'm enjoying all the new rigging tools so it's the Poser Pro Medium Res Female for learning weight painting and JCM creation, she's "open source".

Sick as the proverbial parrot that I didn't get me hands on Ayana when it was available. :(

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2. V4

V4 M4 - I do "furry" / anthropomorphic figures mainly and use Sparky"s morphs for V4 and M4

I'm a little stunned and surprised by how many people are still using V4.

EClark1894 posted at 2:14AM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383177

I'm a little stunned and surprised by how many people are still using V4.

I'm not. It was a massively well supported figure and there's a lot of content, compared to almost every other figure out there. I use it now and again - the WM version - but most of the time, I tend to use Sasha-16 if I want a V4 type. Then again, I often use V2 and V3 and even the old Stephanie. They're all useful in their own ways and it's not like they go bad through old age.

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I'm not.

V4 still is figure with the most content available, and which most people already have in their runtimes, Easy to use, without the need to have to jump though innumerable hoops just to get the figure wear a basic a pantie. Let alone a dress!

With all the drawbacks of conforming clothes, the way Poser handles dynamic clothing is an absolute show.stopper for anyone new to Poser. Why not have a look at "the other program" to learn how this could be handled?

I for one, will stick to "conforming", or (if I come across a piece of dynamic cloth - which is basically a simple prop), I' ll try to convert the prop to a conforming figure because it's so much easier to handle, compared to endless simulations ran from "guess-what-this-value-does" interfaces.

And now you wonder why people not jump the "new- & shining figures" bandwagon - with "clothing" that in 80% of the time they may have to guess obscure values in the Cloth Room and run endless simulations all day long just to get a half-way decent render at the end of the week?

Say, in which reality do YOU people live in???

Think about it!

Peter

EDIT: crossposted with Sam... :/

TwoCatsYelling posted at 8:43PM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383017

Sorry to piggy-back on your thread/question, EClark. I'm curious if people might share some reasons they prefer one figure over another? Is it related to amount of supporting assets, materials and/or rendering quality, ease/range of posing, etc?

Female

1. Jessi/Sydney/Olivia/Miki 2
2. P6 Jessi/Miki 1020
3. Gen 3 Females - Victoria 3/Stephanie Petite/Laura
4. Dawn
5. V4 - (40+ characters, non-Caucasians)
6. Alyson 1/2
7. Pauline
8. Miki 3/4
9. Antonia
10. Genesis 1/2/3 (mainly for kids - and non-humans)
11. Project Evolution
12. Kez/Mariko/Eroko/Eternal Judy/Maya Doll/My Michelle/The Girl

Male

1. James/Simon/Koji/Kelvin
2. M3/Luke
3. Apollo Maximus
4. D3
5. Dusk
6. Rikishi
7. Tyler
8. M2
9. Rex

If an artist only uses 1 base mesh, they are going to be pretty limited - even if that mesh is Victoria 4.

As you can see, I tend to run with the SM figures. They are literally the only normal sized figures available, (outside of SP3 & D3). For me, clothing content has been irrelevant since PhilC released Wardrobe Wizard back in the Poser 6 era. I have been all in on clothing conversion systems since that time. Most of my clothing was made for V4, but hey, between WW, Xdresser, and the fitting room - any outfit can go onto any figure.

Dynamic Clothing is only a show stopper if you are aggressively uninterested in learning how it works - every tool has a learning curve. The issue with dynamic clothing is the interface. We never could get Steve Cooper to understand that the only people who understood the interface was the Poser Development team. Hopefully, the new Poser team will spend some quality time on the interface to make it more user friendly.

It was a problem back in the Poser 5/6 era, when hobbyist level computers simply didn't have the horses to run the simulator..

I am working on a series of graphic novels based on Star Trek (the original series) I need everybody in the same outfit (V4 Courageous/M4 Valiant - except for Dusk - I commissioned the SFO outfit from Poser World for him - your welcome.)

Why do I use so many different figures? Let me let you in on a little secret.

Go look at characters - with almost every vendor, if you own 3 of their characters - you own all of their characters. Most of them look like siblings to each other. There isn't actually a need to buy that 4th character. By using characters based on different meshes, I don't get that "family reunion look" in a group scene - and almost all of my scenes are group scenes..

If you need anything outside of early 20's Caucasians, you need to have a wide variety of base meshes.

I have started to work the G figure into my cast of characters. I need children & we haven't had that in Poser since Luke/Laura. I also need older characters - all post V4 characters are from Logan's Run. I need more than 1 non-Caucasian. I need older non-Caucasians. I need younger non-Caucasians. The Genesis figures have a much wider variety of races and body styles. They are a pain to move into Poser, but once you get the conversion system down, they can be pretty lightweight. I would prefer to continue using just Poser native figures, but that simply isn't going to happen - there is no variety.

The Poser/DS universe is about 95% Caucasian - and the non-Caucasians get Caucasianized by vendors - I have been around a lot of Asians - I have never in my 56 years seen one with blue eyes - ditto African Americans. It went from annoying to creepy a long, long time ago.

ssgbryan posted at 5:29AM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383191

The Poser/DS universe is about 95% Caucasian - and the non-Caucasians get Caucasianized by vendors - I have been around a lot of Asians - I have never in my 56 years seen one with blue eyes - ditto African Americans. It went from annoying to creepy a long, long time ago.

For the record, I'm black and no, I don't remember ever, in my 62 years on this planet, ever seeing a blue-eyed African-American, or any other black person for that matter, but I have seen one with green eyes. Grew up with him. Not a member of my family, but knew him from the neighborhood. That doesn't mean they don't exist, though. Remember, though it's something that not many people know nowadays, there are some black people who are passing as white.

Eye colour is a fascinating subject in its own right. ISTR reading that blue eyes are the result of a genetic error, so I guess it's possible for any ethnicity to have 'em, although it's more prevalent in Caucasians.

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EClark1894 posted at 11:20AM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383177

I'm a little stunned and surprised by how many people are still using V4.

I am not really surprised but it does make me wonder about all the clamour there is for a new figure when there is a new version of Poser being developed. If lots of people are not using the new figures perhaps the development time would be better spent on adding new features to Poser and improving the existing ones. If someone is still using V4 because there is a vast amount of clothing for her, which there is, that suggests that she is mainly used clothed. If that is the case better bending is not that big a deal which is what most new figures developed concentrated on.

How many figures you use is very dependant on what you use Poser for, in my case I use it mainly for storytelling so the main character remains the same. As the heroine is Dawn based that is what I use the most, I do use other figures but only in the role of 'extras' so that might be V4, V3 or even Scarlett based. I used to use V4 as my go to figure but I also love doing portraits and I found it easier to create more convincing expressions with Dawn than with V4. Portraits do not generally need a massive wardrobe so the fact V4 has some many clothes is not really a major plus.

 

 

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 use V4 and M4 a lot because there is so much content for them. A lot of it free.

And it's not just clothing. It's textures. If you're trying to get a likeness of a specific person, textures make a huge difference. Dawn and LF just don't have enough textures (particularly nonwhite, or suitable for anyone not college-aged).

As an extra thought - any robot based on a human figure - will involve A3, V3, M3 and V4.

hornet3d posted at 1:39PM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383203

I am not really surprised but it does make me wonder about all the clamour there is for a new figure when there is a new version of Poser being developed. If lots of people are not using the new figures perhaps the development time would be better spent on adding new features to Poser and improving the existing ones. If someone is still using V4 because there is a vast amount of clothing for her, which there is, that suggests that she is mainly used clothed. If that is the case better bending is not that big a deal which is what most new figures developed concentrated on.

How many figures you use is very dependant on what you use Poser for, in my case I use it mainly for storytelling so the main character remains the same. As the heroine is Dawn based that is what I use the most, I do use other figures but only in the role of 'extras' so that might be V4, V3 or even Scarlett based. I used to use V4 as my go to figure but I also love doing portraits and I found it easier to create more convincing expressions with Dawn than with V4. Portraits do not generally need a massive wardrobe so the fact V4 has some many clothes is not really a major plus.

I use Poser for story telling - mine has an ensemble cast, so I need a lot of folks that don't look like they are closely related.

We get new characters because there is a contingent of folks that want something that bends better than V4 (before all of it's fixes).

The problem is that vendor support for new figures is, to be charitable, spotty. Part of this is vendor intransigence i.e. I only make what I am personally interested in. The other is Poser's ability to add new features to any mesh the end user wants to use.

Any legacy figure can have newer tech added to it. We also have the ability to retrofit any figure asset to whichever figure catches our fancy. If I am using LaFemme or such, it only takes a couple of minutes to convert that V4 outfit for her use. Get LaFemme, or Pauline, or Dawn, or whoever, go over to DAZ, join Platinum Club and get an incredible wardrobe @$1.99 an outfit. Come to 'Rosity, join prime, rinse, lather, repeat. That doesn't leave a lot of money for vendors making newer content. That newer content has to be better than what is already available. And most of it isn't (Sturgeon's Law).

Which means I can spend that money on something else, rather than buying an asset made specifically for that figure - which is a good thing for the end user, not so much for the vendor. If the vendors had gotten behind Dawn, we would all be saying Vicky who? But that is water over the bridge.

To be quite honest:

I still use V4 (in it's Sasha-16 form).

• I know this figure in and out. I know which dials do what, and I know the caveats when making custom morphs for a character.
• I know how to save those custom morphs as a character injection. And Sasha-16 bends ways better than even Genesis (with knees that look like an elbow. and elbows that look like a bent maccheroni.
• By default Sasha-16 comes with a joint centres injection that makes clothing her with non-WM V4 clothes a snap. You don't even have to use the Fitting Room.
• Plus she comes with a truckload of other useful tools.

For me, that's all I need. So why learn another figure? Everything I need can be done, and as someone said before, there's a "metric ton of content available for V4", including textures, textures, and more textures.

Most "characters" I have, I only bought for the sake of getting the textures.

And with Poser's "Magic Wand" called the "Morph Brush" I can do anything I want to create custom characters and morphs. Among other features, this tool alone is the one that stops me from migrating to the competition!!

Poser has so many great features that are known and used by so few people.

Well then:

• I have my favourite 3D Program
• I have my favourite figure
• I have enough skills accumulated to achieve whatever I want

So WHY should use another figure (let alone another program)?

regards,

Peter

Kyle 1.5. Incredibly versatile beyond his simple toon appearance, with a lot under the hood if you want to work with it. Hardly any support, but I've managed to put together about 30 gigs of stuff, thanks to WW.

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ssgbryan posted at 11:28AM Sun, 15 March 2020 - #4383245

hornet3d posted at 1:39PM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383203

I am not really surprised but it does make me wonder about all the clamour there is for a new figure when there is a new version of Poser being developed. If lots of people are not using the new figures perhaps the development time would be better spent on adding new features to Poser and improving the existing ones. If someone is still using V4 because there is a vast amount of clothing for her, which there is, that suggests that she is mainly used clothed. If that is the case better bending is not that big a deal which is what most new figures developed concentrated on.

How many figures you use is very dependant on what you use Poser for, in my case I use it mainly for storytelling so the main character remains the same. As the heroine is Dawn based that is what I use the most, I do use other figures but only in the role of 'extras' so that might be V4, V3 or even Scarlett based. I used to use V4 as my go to figure but I also love doing portraits and I found it easier to create more convincing expressions with Dawn than with V4. Portraits do not generally need a massive wardrobe so the fact V4 has some many clothes is not really a major plus.

I use Poser for story telling - mine has an ensemble cast, so I need a lot of folks that don't look like they are closely related.

We get new characters because there is a contingent of folks that want something that bends better than V4 (before all of it's fixes).

The problem is that vendor support for new figures is, to be charitable, spotty. Part of this is vendor intransigence i.e. I only make what I am personally interested in. The other is Poser's ability to add new features to any mesh the end user wants to use.

Any legacy figure can have newer tech added to it. We also have the ability to retrofit any figure asset to whichever figure catches our fancy. If I am using LaFemme or such, it only takes a couple of minutes to convert that V4 outfit for her use. Get LaFemme, or Pauline, or Dawn, or whoever, go over to DAZ, join Platinum Club and get an incredible wardrobe @$1.99 an outfit. Come to 'Rosity, join prime, rinse, lather, repeat. That doesn't leave a lot of money for vendors making newer content. That newer content has to be better than what is already available. And most of it isn't (Sturgeon's Law).

Which means I can spend that money on something else, rather than buying an asset made specifically for that figure - which is a good thing for the end user, not so much for the vendor. If the vendors had gotten behind Dawn, we would all be saying Vicky who? But that is water over the bridge.

I take your point but there seems to be little incentive for vendors to move on if users are still using V4 and M4. I can also see the need for a variety of figures but it seems many users seem quite set in their ways. Most my hobby expenditure goes on props and Superfly materials these days but if I do buy clothes it is always for items made for Dawn specifically I never buy anything for V4 these days even though I know I can convert it easily.

 

 

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.

ssgbryan posted at 9:50AM Sun, 15 March 2020 - #4383245

hornet3d posted at 1:39PM Wed, 11 March 2020 - #4383203

I am not really surprised but it does make me wonder about all the clamour there is for a new figure when there is a new version of Poser being developed. If lots of people are not using the new figures perhaps the development time would be better spent on adding new features to Poser and improving the existing ones. If someone is still using V4 because there is a vast amount of clothing for her, which there is, that suggests that she is mainly used clothed. If that is the case better bending is not that big a deal which is what most new figures developed concentrated on.

How many figures you use is very dependant on what you use Poser for, in my case I use it mainly for storytelling so the main character remains the same. As the heroine is Dawn based that is what I use the most, I do use other figures but only in the role of 'extras' so that might be V4, V3 or even Scarlett based. I used to use V4 as my go to figure but I also love doing portraits and I found it easier to create more convincing expressions with Dawn than with V4. Portraits do not generally need a massive wardrobe so the fact V4 has some many clothes is not really a major plus.

I use Poser for story telling - mine has an ensemble cast, so I need a lot of folks that don't look like they are closely related.

We get new characters because there is a contingent of folks that want something that bends better than V4 (before all of it's fixes).

The problem is that vendor support for new figures is, to be charitable, spotty. Part of this is vendor intransigence i.e. I only make what I am personally interested in. The other is Poser's ability to add new features to any mesh the end user wants to use.

Any legacy figure can have newer tech added to it. We also have the ability to retrofit any figure asset to whichever figure catches our fancy. If I am using LaFemme or such, it only takes a couple of minutes to convert that V4 outfit for her use. Get LaFemme, or Pauline, or Dawn, or whoever, go over to DAZ, join Platinum Club and get an incredible wardrobe @$1.99 an outfit. Come to 'Rosity, join prime, rinse, lather, repeat. That doesn't leave a lot of money for vendors making newer content. That newer content has to be better than what is already available. And most of it isn't (Sturgeon's Law).

I'm not challenging what you said, just asking for clarification. Just what do you think is missing or needed to make the new content better?

I'd like a response from anyone else who agrees with that accessment.

It sounds like the vendors and customers are working together pretty well to maintain stability.

Silicon Valley is locked into the Github Syndrome, requiring revisions of everything every millisecond. That's good for monopoly vendors who can force everyone else to move along, but it's not good for people who want to GET WORK DONE with the product.

Work doesn't have to be paid work; it can be unpaid artistic work. Anyone who is trying to do real work NEEDS a stable set of tools and supplies. If you follow Github you're spending ALL your time on revising your workflow and reorganizing your runtimes and adapting to the new products. You're spending NO time on actual work.

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Content that is mesh based, so hair, wearables and props, all start with a mesh, made in whatever modeller. From there the decision to make it a store product is a commercial one. How much time will it take and how much nett revenue will it bring?

What is missing is means to speed up or circumvent the steps that take the most working time to come from mesh to product in the store. Both investment and nett revenue are stochastic variables so one looks at expectations.

Expected revenue is always a guess, driven by factors outside the control of the vendor. If your launch campaign is drowned into someone else's, you know better for next time. This is commercial life, of course, but a parameter that becomes very important on the small scale most people work on. Stores could work on reducing uncertainty of individual income through grouping of products.

Expected work is much affected by perception of reliability of the tools. If creators can rely on 'copy joint setup from...' to provide a proper result they are more likely to take the plunge than when they know they will have to spend hours and hours to brush away the ripples left by the process.

Would creators have a tool that in an overnight process can reliably optimize vertex weights to match animation bending with results from dynamic simulations and get the errors as a JCM, that would drastically reduce the time they need to spend on rigging. Cost wouldn't be hours of work but an odd kWh of electrictric power.

ockham posted at 4:08PM Sun, 15 March 2020 - #4383620

It sounds like the vendors and customers are working together pretty well to maintain stability.

Silicon Valley is locked into the Github Syndrome, requiring revisions of everything every millisecond. That's good for monopoly vendors who can force everyone else to move along, but it's not good for people who want to GET WORK DONE with the product.

Work doesn't have to be paid work; it can be unpaid artistic work. Anyone who is trying to do real work NEEDS a stable set of tools and supplies. If you follow Github you're spending ALL your time on revising your workflow and reorganizing your runtimes and adapting to the new products. You're spending NO time on actual work.

If, like me, you have a heroine or other major character in a story moving to a new figure is not a simple task as you have to go back and redo the renders to make the character have some consistency throughout the story. To undertake such a task there needs to be significant gains from making such a change to make the investment in time worthwhile. I have only done a major character change once and that was from V4WM to Dawn SE and it was a lot of work. I did not do the change with the launch of Dawn because my character was set up to be more mature than the average Poser doll and there were no such textures around for Dawn and the morphs were limited. It was only when Dawn SE was launched that both the textures and the morph situation had improved enough for me to make the jump. As I do not do nudes the better bending was not the main gain for me it was the improvement and ease with which more realistic expressions could be created that was the big gain for me.

I think the other point is that it takes quite a while to understand a figure well enough to get the best out of the figure, another reason why I understand why so many have stuck with V4. It must be really hard to gain that level of understanding if you are jumping ship each time a new figures is created.

 

 

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.

At this point reading this thread it seems any effort i make now or in the future is useless. I don't really think I could ever make a living at this but it would be nice to offset the cost of the software needed, but it seems to me reading this that everyone is settled and happy with the status quo to the point that noting new for Poser is worth the effort involved in it's creation.

Am I true in this belief? would it be better just to let Poser content die out to the point where only approximately 15 year old figures are available to use in 10-15 year old technology? And that everything needed for those old figures and old technology has already been made so any attempt to add to it is useless?

Please let me know if what I am reading this correctly so I can move along now and now waste any more time effort and yes, money on this area of 3D.

My family will thank you

Humm another thought just occurred to me that the point of this thread may be exactly to frighten of present and future content creators form Poser and it's newer figure.. But that sounds too much like conspiracy theory...

Letterworks posted at 3:41PM Sun, 15 March 2020 - #4383648

Humm another thought just occurred to me that the point of this thread may be exactly to frighten of present and future content creators form Poser and it's newer figure.. But that sounds too much like conspiracy theory...

Seriously? You think I started this thread, not knowing the outcome by the way, to frighten people into not using Poser anymore?

Not seriously, but as I said if is a good conspiracy theory right?

Not if you're the one it's about.

Letterworks posted at 5:51PM Sun, 15 March 2020 - #4383646

At this point reading this thread it seems any effort i make now or in the future is useless. I don't really think I could ever make a living at this but it would be nice to offset the cost of the software needed, but it seems to me reading this that everyone is settled and happy with the status quo to the point that noting new for Poser is worth the effort involved in it's creation.

Am I true in this belief? would it be better just to let Poser content die out to the point where only approximately 15 year old figures are available to use in 10-15 year old technology? And that everything needed for those old figures and old technology has already been made so any attempt to add to it is useless?

Please let me know if what I am reading this correctly so I can move along now and now waste any more time effort and yes, money on this area of 3D.

My family will thank you

Sometimes "new technology" isnt worth the spit it takes to hurl. Poser has introduced several new features that hardly anyone uses — not because there isnt call for them but because the learning curve is steeper than your usual hobbyist artist wants to handle... and let's get real, shall we? Poser and Studio both are hobbyist programs. If you choose to use either for anything beyond that point, you have to put in some considerable time and effort, just as you would with any art form.

But I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. There are several programs out there with considerable years on them — Photoshop and Illustrator leap to mind — and no one's complaining about those. They havent really changed the basics of either since the late 80s... does that make them something to avoid?

As for the grief about M4 and V4... they're solid mesh designs, capable of a lot more than what most people give them. Unlike the incessant parade of "characters" from that other place, they're adaptable if you just look under the hood a bit. So people still make things for them and you seem to think that's not worth their time? Seriously? Sorry, but that's sounding awfully presumptuous. I'd much rather use a character mesh with a proven track record than have to rebuild my runtime every two or three months when a new "character" is introduced that will have a limited shelf life.

As for Poser's flagship characters, yeah, not so great out of the box. But then look what the community has done with them, just as V4 was pretty dreadful until the community rose to the challenge. I may my own issues about how the launch of L'Homme was handled, but seeing what people are creating for it — and La Femme — has been pretty amazing. Maybe that's not good enough for you? Sorry. We'll all try harder in the future to make you happy.

docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider

Just as an example of what's possible with these ancient meshes, my goto, as I noted above, is Kyle 1.5. It's another ten-year-old mesh — maybe more, actually. But if you work with it, just using what Redspark put in there, this is what you can get.

You just have to put in the work to find it. Not everything needs to be recreated from Square Zero when we havent really even examined what our current stuff is capable of.

docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider

I find the fact that a lot of us use multiple figures very interesting. But not really surprising.

A lot of figures have been released for Poser over the past two decades. Naturally, some of the legacy figures attracted our attention and we stuck with them. For me, I really like Victoria 3. I know her mesh is not very good. But, I still like her and use her in my renders (EZ-Skin and the Morph Brush help).

I see that many people use Victoria 4 because of the amount of quality content. I use her for the same reason. The size of Victoria 4's closet would make Imelda Marcos jealous.

La Femme, Dawn, and Project Evolution impressed me. They are wonderful additions to the Poser family. I released a comic that used Dawn, Victoria 4, and Genesis 3. And, I'm currently working on a scene with Victoria 4, La Femme, Aiko 3, and Victoria 2.

My Go To Figures

• Victoria 4
• Dawn
• La Femme
• Victoria 3
• Genesis 2
• Genesis 3/8
• Victoria 2
• Stephanie Petite 3
• Aiko 3
• Stephanie 1
• Sydney
• Alyson 2/Anastasia
• Terai Yuki

M4 - because I have so much content for him (and Genesis doesn't really work in Poser)

Letterworks posted at 12:14PM Mon, 16 March 2020 - #4383646

At this point reading this thread it seems any effort i make now or in the future is useless. I don't really think I could ever make a living at this but it would be nice to offset the cost of the software needed, but it seems to me reading this that everyone is settled and happy with the status quo to the point that noting new for Poser is worth the effort involved in it's creation.

Am I true in this belief? would it be better just to let Poser content die out to the point where only approximately 15 year old figures are available to use in 10-15 year old technology? And that everything needed for those old figures and old technology has already been made so any attempt to add to it is useless?

Please let me know if what I am reading this correctly so I can move along now and now waste any more time effort and yes, money on this area of 3D.

My family will thank you

I think the answer to your question depends very much on what it is that you are looking to create. Despite playing with Daz and Poser for over twenty years (the last fifteen or so Poser only) I still spend far more on my hobby each month than a really should. Like many I have masses of content for V4 which was my go to figure for more than have the time I have been playing and now use Dawn. So if you make some new clothes for V4 I am not going to by it but the same is true if you create yet another bikini for Dawn I am not buying that either. Most of my expenditure goes on props these days but I will spend a fair amount of money for the right clothing for Dawn. These is not a great deal of content for Dawn and even less good quality fantasy or sci-fi which is the type of renders I normally generate. I accept that this is a niche market so I will happily spend $30 dollars or more if the clothes are either very special or there is enough options in the outfit to make it a kit bashing resource. Of course that is just me and others will have very different needs but it proves that there is still a market for Poser content but you need to do you research and decide what will sell and at what price. If it is yet another piece of skimp wear then it will have to be low cost because there is plenty of competition no matter which figure is aimed at. Looking at the galleries might give you an idea of what is missing but don't forget the vast majority of Poser users do not upload the renders so galleries are not a massive help.

You don't have to be sensational either, there is plenty of skimp wear for most figures but may have few options for what I would regard as everyday clothes. A lot of the props I buy today are everyday, picture frames, tables, chairs, mirrors and clocks have been some of my recent purchases. I use them to populate a room to make it look a little more realistic but I doubt anyone just rendering pin ups in Poser would bother as all many need is a couple of walls to a room and possible a bed close.

 

 

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.

Letterworks posted at 9:07AM Mon, 16 March 2020 - #4383646

At this point reading this thread it seems any effort i make now or in the future is useless. I don't really think I could ever make a living at this but it would be nice to offset the cost of the software needed, but it seems to me reading this that everyone is settled and happy with the status quo to the point that noting new for Poser is worth the effort involved in it's creation.

Am I true in this belief? would it be better just to let Poser content die out to the point where only approximately 15 year old figures are available to use in 10-15 year old technology? And that everything needed for those old figures and old technology has already been made so any attempt to add to it is useless?

Please let me know if what I am reading this correctly so I can move along now and now waste any more time effort and yes, money on this area of 3D.

My family will thank you

If your core program has been slow to innovate then the content created for it. will stagnate as well.

What are the major new features in poser 11 that would be considered paradigm shifting in terms of making the program more attractive to vendors as a content development platform. ?.

When you see people saying that they are using this or that 12+ year old figure that indicates that the core program has not truly innovated in more than a Decade or the old content would not be compatible ,in any worthwhile fashion with the most recent features of the program.

And crowdsourcing figure development only leads to LESS UNIFORM STANDARDS for any potential new vendors to follow as the one person who made their own exotic figure is the single point of failure and when they leave,die ,quit the figure typically dies with them.?

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wolf359 posted at 2:50PM Mon, 16 March 2020 - #4383731

Letterworks posted at 9:07AM Mon, 16 March 2020 - #4383646

At this point reading this thread it seems any effort i make now or in the future is useless. I don't really think I could ever make a living at this but it would be nice to offset the cost of the software needed, but it seems to me reading this that everyone is settled and happy with the status quo to the point that noting new for Poser is worth the effort involved in it's creation.

Am I true in this belief? would it be better just to let Poser content die out to the point where only approximately 15 year old figures are available to use in 10-15 year old technology? And that everything needed for those old figures and old technology has already been made so any attempt to add to it is useless?

Please let me know if what I am reading this correctly so I can move along now and now waste any more time effort and yes, money on this area of 3D.

My family will thank you

If your core program has been slow to innovate then the content created for it. will stagnate as well.

What are the major new features in poser 11 that would be considered paradigm shifting in terms of making the program more attractive to vendors as a content development platform. ?.

When you see people saying that they are using this or that 12+ year old figure that indicates that the core program has not truly innovated in more than a Decade or the old content would not be compatible ,in any worthwhile fashion with the most recent features of the program.

And crowdsourcing figure development only leads to LESS UNIFORM STANDARDS for any potential new vendors to follow as the one person who made their own exotic figure is the single point of failure and when they leave,die ,quit the figure typically dies with them.?

While I accept a lot of what you say I am not sure adding a new figure every one or two years is the answer either, sure it gives vendors the chance to sell but usually that is just a rehash of the same content to fit the new X2 figure that was created for X1. I also wonder just what new features are wanted/needed by what is in the main a group of hobbyists. For me the main changes in Poser that I felt was worthwhile was the move to a 64bit program, the introduction of Sub Surface Scattering and addition of Superfly as a render engine as well as the improvement in the morph brush.

I use Paint Shop Pro for both my photography and post work but I only ever upgrade every second or third release because the extra features do not justify, for me at least, the added expense.

 

 

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.

Well, my latest Poser render has Aiko 3, Kids 4, V4, Kelvin G2 and Roxie ...

wolf359 posted at 11:37AM Wed, 18 March 2020 - #4383731

If your core program has been slow to innovate then the content created for it. will stagnate as well.

What are the major new features in poser 11 that would be considered paradigm shifting in terms of making the program more attractive to vendors as a content development platform. ?.

When you see people saying that they are using this or that 12+ year old figure that indicates that the core program has not truly innovated in more than a Decade or the old content would not be compatible ,in any worthwhile fashion with the most recent features of the program.

And crowdsourcing figure development only leads to LESS UNIFORM STANDARDS for any potential new vendors to follow as the one person who made their own exotic figure is the single point of failure and when they leave,die ,quit the figure typically dies with them.?

To quote Dekard Cain: Stay a while and listen......

"UNIFORM STANDARDS" are like communism - a red herring.

Many vendors DO NOT FOLLOW CURRENT STANDARDS THAT HAVE EXISTED FOR OVER A DECADE. How do you propose to get vendors to follow new ones?

Many vendors refuse to learn any feature that was added to Poser after they bought their copy - full stop. Ever since the release of Poser 9, all I have heard is _ I don't have time to learn new features._ .

These are the same folks that don't buy new copies of Poser.

These are the same folks that are still making material .pp2s for Poser 11.

These are the same folks that are still runningalloftheirfilenamestogether because they apparently are still using Windows/286.

These are the same folks that hide their products in Ego folders, making it harder to use their products.

These are the same folks that use numbers in the place of colors, forcing the enduser to load each one to see what it looks like.

These are the same folks that can't name their products consistently throughout a single product, much less any texture add-on product.

These are the same folks that make thumbnails that don't provide the end user a clue to the product - they are creative however.

These are the same folks that were aggressively unwilling to make content for any post-V4 figure. SM addressed this by adding the fitting room to Poser, effectively killing the clothing market for these same mediocre vendors.

At the end of the day, these folks want a way-back machine so they can stay in October 2007. And have a user base stuck with Poser 6.

---

End users still use V4 because it has a metric butt ton of content made for it and most of it is better made than what is being made for post-V4 figures. Poser innovations are in the software - and they are legion. With Poser, we can add innovations like weight mapping, subdivision, and control chips to control facial expressions (or muscles) to any legacy figure we choose to use. No need to waste money on a new figure, if it doesn't float your boat.

But what if you have a new figure that does float your boat - like, I don't know, how about La Femme? The vendors don't support it, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. And don't get me started on Le Homme, poor b****** doesn't even have a pair of shoes. (In the examples below, replace V4 with M4/M3/D3/Simon to see how a male product is supported.)

Poser to the rescue:

The innovation of the Cloth room means that the collection of Dynamic clothing you bought for V3 & V4 will easily fit La Femme.

The Innovation of the Fitting room means that the hundreds of outfits available for $1.99 at Daz or $3.50 at 'Rosity are available for La Femme. Hooray! La Femme has a wardrobe. And unless the product is really good, I am probably not buying any original clothing made for her - unless it is really good of course, then V4 can wear it too.

The innovation of the Dials to Single Morph command means that La Femme just became a LOT less memory intensive.

The innovation of Copy Morphs From command means that you can put that FBM you just created into your conforming clothing and it is a lot less memory intensive - especially if you delete the character morphs that aren't being used - each unused morph takes about 1Mb of memory, btw.

The innovation of the Merge Figure command means that I can add an outfit to La Femme and merge them into a single .OBJ. So La Femme is now wearing the V4 Courageous outfit with Star Trek TOS Textures. I can easily slot her characters into my Star Trek stories, should I need yet another instantly forgettable early 20's Caucasian that looks exactly like it's V4 predecessor. (See what I did there?)

The innovation of the Reduce Polygon command means that I can further shrink the La Femme's memory foot print, if necessary

On a wider scale....

The innovation of the Add-in Framework means that I can pull in DS native content (via DSON importer), update legacy texture sets (via EZ-Skin), unfubar material .pp2s (via Batch Material Convert), unfubar props (via Geometry Stripper), unfubar cr2s (via Cr2 Editor), Import FBX models, (very useful when you need furniture) etc.

Let me give you a 2nd order example.......

The Genesis 8 figure has facial bones. This is implemented in the base mesh - it can not be retro-fitted into Genesis 3 or earlier. Poser uses control chips, which will do the exact same thing (and then a whole lot more - just like every other feature that is common to both programs).

I can (and have) added control chips to my Genesis 3 figures that I use in Poser. All it cost me was a little bit of my time; in my case, less than 1 hour (Because I RTFM.) - now all of my characters have them - I added them in a single afternoon to every base mesh I own. All of my figures have the same expressiveness you can see in Project Evolution (I put my control chips in the exact same places, again no real need to reinvent the wheel.)

Poser 11 Pro isn't the one you vaguely remember, five or six iterations back.

This week? My little blob model who is soon to be remodeled, spiffied up, and rigged.

Also really like Akatora's free Decoco and Deco figures (plans to shine them up too), sadly they are only available on the internet archive now. They're redistributable ;)...

https://web.archive.org/web/20161125024925/http://members3.jcom.home.ne.jp:80/mowais/freestuff/freestuff.html

Oh yeah, shout out to Dodger's free Orc figure (an old school first edition D&D type orc)... love it.

http://www.threednd.com/orc.html

---

W10 Pro, HP Envy X360 Laptop, Intel Core i7-10510U, NVIDIA GeForce MX250, Intel UHD, 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM, 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Mudbox 2022, Adobe PS CC, Poser Pro 11.3, Blender 2.9, Wings3D 2.2.5

My Freestuff and Gallery at ShareCG

EldritchCellar posted at 7:21PM Wed, 18 March 2020 - #4383966

This week? My little blob model who is soon to be remodeled, spiffied up, and rigged.

Also really like Akatora's free Decoco and Deco figures (plans to shine them up too), sadly they are only available on the internet archive now. They're redistributable ;)...

https://web.archive.org/web/20161125024925/http://members3.jcom.home.ne.jp:80/mowais/freestuff/freestuff.html

Oh yeah, shout out to Dodger's free Orc figure (an old school first edition D&D type orc)... love it.

http://www.threednd.com/orc.html ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Decoco and Deco figures, Never seen nor heard of those. I just DL them and already rendered them , nice.

thanks

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HP Zbook 17 G6,  intel Xeon  64 GB of ram 1 TB SSD, Quadro RTX 5000 

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CHK2033 posted at 8:56PM Wed, 18 March 2020 - #4383973

EldritchCellar posted at 7:21PM Wed, 18 March 2020 - #4383966

This week? My little blob model who is soon to be remodeled, spiffied up, and rigged.

Also really like Akatora's free Decoco and Deco figures (plans to shine them up too), sadly they are only available on the internet archive now. They're redistributable ;)...

https://web.archive.org/web/20161125024925/http://members3.jcom.home.ne.jp:80/mowais/freestuff/freestuff.html

Oh yeah, shout out to Dodger's free Orc figure (an old school first edition D&D type orc)... love it.

http://www.threednd.com/orc.html ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Decoco and Deco figures, Never seen nor heard of those. I just DL them and already rendered them , nice.

thanks

Word of caution 'bout Deco and Decoco, if my memory serves me correctly the rigging on one or both of those is asymmetrical. I recall it was an easy fix in the setup room. More problematic are some unwelded verts, isolated verts, and a couple of other problems with Decoco. A few years ago I created a fixed version, as a personal project, and I remember that it was a chore to fix. Luckily there are no body morphs in Decoco to break by altering her geometry. Not sure how the unfixed model will render with unimesh and subdiv, I'll have to check. Deco seems to Subdiv fine... They both are begging for re-weighting. Anyway, other than those problems, those figures have some of my favorite modeling of facial features in anime figures, reminds me a bit of Satoshi Kon types (Perfect Blue etc). Unfortunately not as much support as say Kururu or Sera. Glad you like them!

---

W10 Pro, HP Envy X360 Laptop, Intel Core i7-10510U, NVIDIA GeForce MX250, Intel UHD, 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM, 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Mudbox 2022, Adobe PS CC, Poser Pro 11.3, Blender 2.9, Wings3D 2.2.5

My Freestuff and Gallery at ShareCG

EldritchCellar posted at 12:52AM Thu, 19 March 2020 - #4383975

Word of caution 'bout Deco and Decoco, if my memory serves me correctly the rigging on one or both of those is asymmetrical. I recall it was an easy fix in the setup room. More problematic are some unwelded verts, isolated verts, and a couple of other problems with Decoco. A few years ago I created a fixed version, as a personal project, and I remember that it was a chore to fix. Luckily there are no body morphs in Decoco to break by altering her geometry. Not sure how the unfixed model will render with unimesh and subdiv, I'll have to check. Deco seems to Subdiv fine... They both are begging for re-weighting. Anyway, other than those problems, those figures have some of my favorite modeling of facial features in anime figures, reminds me a bit of Satoshi Kon types (Perfect Blue etc). Unfortunately not as much support as say Kururu or Sera. Glad you like them!

https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/Deco

https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/Decoco

V4 and M4.

I'm still on Poser 2014 BTW.

V4, and using P10 myself. V4 has such versatility, and if Shane ever finishes his couple, then I might be willing to switch figures AND my Poser version...

V4 Sasha-16 Jessi/Sydney/Olivia/Miki 2 La Femme P6 Jessi/Miki 1020 Alyson 1/2 Pauline Miki 3/4 Antonia

For more "realistic" adult females, my go-to is V4 S-16 (aka Sasha). Karina has made the figure incredibly easy to use, and I have more morphs, skin textures, apparel, and hair for her than I'll ever need. Plus, I just like her better than my other options.

If she needs company, I use M4 and/or K4.

For more "fantasy" figures, my go-to's are Mavka and Nursoda's people (esp. Vila, Fehn, Telka, Aina, and Hein, but I love them all!) I also really like Aiko3, Maisie, and Star but haven't had as much occasion to use them.

When I first got into Poser, it was all about Cookie! And, to a lesser extent, Krystal, Koshini, Ichiro, and, of course, Chip.

I have more than 20 human figures in my runtime, not counting Nursoda's people or the ones that come with Poser, so when I say that V4/Sasha is my favorite, it's not for lack of trying others!

---

TOOLS: MacBook Pro; Poser Pro 11; Cheetah3D; Photoshop CC

FIGURES: S-16 (improved V4 by Karina), M4, K4, Mavka, Toons, and Nursoda's people

GOALS: Stylized and non-photorealistic renders in various fantasy styles

hornet3d posted at 7:52PM Tue, 24 March 2020 - #4383632

I think the other point is that it takes quite a while to understand a figure well enough to get the best out of the figure, another reason why I understand why so many have stuck with V4. It must be really hard to gain that level of understanding if you are jumping ship each time a new figures is created.

I think that's a very good point. I didn't even start using V4 until a few years ago, because up until then I'd invested all my time in pushing the limits of what I could do with Cookie and Krystal and a few other toon figures. I found V4 confusing and frustrating at first, but I persisted when I realized I could do so much more with her than I would've been able to do with the toons. Now I know her so well (or rather, the Sasha-16 version of her) that it's somewhat jarring to load any other human figure and find myself without all the helpful dials and features I'm used to, organized in a way I'm familiar with. (I can't wait until Karina releases an improved version of M4!!)

I've also grown very familiar with V4's geometry and rigging as well as her material zones and textures, so I feel comfortable making various kinds of modifications. I don't feel like going through that whole learning process again, with another "base" figure (by which I mean the kind of figure designed to be transformed into multiple characters.)

Nursoda's figures don't work like V4, but they're not designed to be "base" figures, so they're also not very complicated -- certainly not the way the more recent V4 competitors are. And I'm so delighted to have such charming and stylized characters to play with that I don't mind putting a little effort into making them more usable (though I wish more of them shared the same UV templates for eyes and mouth).

The fact that some Poser users may not feel the need for a new "base" human figure in no way suggests that the marketplace for Poser content is doomed, as my own purchase history can well attest! There's so much more to buy beyond clothes, hair, and skin textures, unless, I suppose, your only goal is to make portraits!

---

TOOLS: MacBook Pro; Poser Pro 11; Cheetah3D; Photoshop CC

FIGURES: S-16 (improved V4 by Karina), M4, K4, Mavka, Toons, and Nursoda's people

GOALS: Stylized and non-photorealistic renders in various fantasy styles

perpetualrevision posted at 12:20PM Wed, 25 March 2020 - #4384453

hornet3d posted at 7:52PM Tue, 24 March 2020 - #4383632

I think the other point is that it takes quite a while to understand a figure well enough to get the best out of the figure, another reason why I understand why so many have stuck with V4. It must be really hard to gain that level of understanding if you are jumping ship each time a new figures is created.

I think that's a very good point. I didn't even start using V4 until a few years ago, because up until then I'd invested all my time in pushing the limits of what I could do with Cookie and Krystal and a few other toon figures. I found V4 confusing and frustrating at first, but I persisted when I realized I could do so much more with her than I would've been able to do with the toons. Now I know her so well (or rather, the Sasha-16 version of her) that it's somewhat jarring to load any other human figure and find myself without all the helpful dials and features I'm used to, organized in a way I'm familiar with. (I can't wait until Karina releases an improved version of M4!!)

I've also grown very familiar with V4's geometry and rigging as well as her material zones and textures, so I feel comfortable making various kinds of modifications. I don't feel like going through that whole learning process again, with another "base" figure (by which I mean the kind of figure designed to be transformed into multiple characters.)

Nursoda's figures don't work like V4, but they're not designed to be "base" figures, so they're also not very complicated -- certainly not the way the more recent V4 competitors are. And I'm so delighted to have such charming and stylized characters to play with that I don't mind putting a little effort into making them more usable (though I wish more of them shared the same UV templates for eyes and mouth).

The fact that some Poser users may not feel the need for a new "base" human figure in no way suggests that the marketplace for Poser content is doomed, as my own purchase history can well attest! There's so much more to buy beyond clothes, hair, and skin textures, unless, I suppose, your only goal is to make portraits!

I couldn't agree more with any of that and I do find it ironic that many of the users clamouring for a new figure never get anywhere near the limits of the figure they are using. It is a bit like asking for a new updated version of a word processor when the, other than typing, the only features you play with are text styles and paragraphs. Still each to their own, I like to get to know the figures I use and often go far beyond what I thought was initially 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.

Victoria 3

Gallery

Aiko 3, Hiro 3, AikoToon (original Aiko 3 based), HiroToon, M3, V3, David, Freak, Melody, and Micah. Nothing has ever come close to the Gen 3 figures for LOOKING like comic book figures.

Genesis for monsters, SanctumArts Drub for monsters, parent Poisen's Cthulu Dreaming for a good Cthulhu (can parent a lot of things for the head to make all kinds of monster from it.)

I really wish the crew that was doing the weightmap project on the DAZ 3 figures had succeeded will dig up a tutorial on weight mapping and build me a WM D3 and M3

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?

I have long dreamed of an updated higher res mesh of the Gen 3 figures, done so that old clothing and items would still fit and work with them.

10 M4

My "go to" figure depends on the demands of the project I'm working on. Some have been based on character design. I usually start with a figure I like, morph it till I get the look I want and find outfits for it that fit the "style" and personality I want to portray. Ones I've used in the past include LaFemme, Miki2, Miki4, the old SM G2 figures, and a number of random figures like Little One.

Another project required a lot of characters with unique outfits and ethnicities, so I started with clothing and decided which figure has the required outfit styles. Since my collection is old, it's mostly V3/M3 or V4/M4 stuff. I could refit what I have for better figures, but I don't have as wide a range of skin textures for any other figures either. The characters are mostly posed standing and full-clothed, so clothing and textures were more important than "posablility". The old Daz figures were good enough. Since a Poser "fix" has been created for Genesis 2 & 3 I've started using them for some very specific outfits I needed.

Posetta . She's pretty much the first character n the mother of all that followed. She is the Mona Lisa of 3d characters.with out her we'd all be rendering rocks .?

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

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

JimTS posted at 5:13AM Thu, 02 April 2020 - #4385126

I really wish the crew that was doing the weightmap project on the DAZ 3 figures had succeeded will dig up a tutorial on weight mapping and build me a WM D3 and M3

Joe Public made a WM D3.

GhengisFarb posted at 5:19AM Thu, 02 April 2020 - #4385128

I have long dreamed of an updated higher res mesh of the Gen 3 figures, done so that old clothing and items would still fit and work with them.

Have you tried the subdivision feature? You increase the density to incredible levels (if your system can handle it). If you take the Poser 2 low-res figures, for instance, and up the subdivision to 3, this is the result:

JimTS posted at 8:16AM Thu, 02 April 2020 - #4385126

I really wish the crew that was doing the weightmap project on the DAZ 3 figures had succeeded will dig up a tutorial on weight mapping and build me a WM D3 and M3

David 3 weightmapped: https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/David_3_Weight_Mapped

V4 and Girl 4, especially Rebelmommy's Lilbit character. Not that I work with Poser much right now. Now that Superfly supports RTX cards I should really get back to using Poser.

Can't say that I have a goto figure anymore. Poser has come a very long way over the last several years in my opinion. Ever since the GoZ exchange was introduced, creating content has been relatively easy. Nowadays any Poser native figure can be used as a starting point. Merge zones to weight maps, noodle until happy, save out to library. Sculpt and remesh (ZBrush or Blender) the original figure into a totally new one. The original figure is then irrelevant except for using it as a donor rig for the new resulting creation. Sure, rigging needs to be tweaked or some areas totally reworked after marrying the donor rig to the new figure. But, Poser makes that easy too. The only figures I use are the ones that ship with Poser or come with the legacy content download. This is something I've been noodling on just for giggles in spare time. Evil-Lyn started off as G2 Sydney. Skeletor and BeastMan started off as G2 Simon. These figures have the G2 rigs as their base, modified of course, entirely new geometry and UVs. Pipeline is Poser, ZBrush and Modo.

2. V4 - modified.

Genesis 3 to V4/M4 rig

Kerya posted at 10:32AM Wed, 29 April 2020 - #4383986

EldritchCellar posted at 12:52AM Thu, 19 March 2020 - #4383975

Word of caution 'bout Deco and Decoco, if my memory serves me correctly the rigging on one or both of those is asymmetrical. I recall it was an easy fix in the setup room. More problematic are some unwelded verts, isolated verts, and a couple of other problems with Decoco. A few years ago I created a fixed version, as a personal project, and I remember that it was a chore to fix. Luckily there are no body morphs in Decoco to break by altering her geometry. Not sure how the unfixed model will render with unimesh and subdiv, I'll have to check. Deco seems to Subdiv fine... They both are begging for re-weighting. Anyway, other than those problems, those figures have some of my favorite modeling of facial features in anime figures, reminds me a bit of Satoshi Kon types (Perfect Blue etc). Unfortunately not as much support as say Kururu or Sera. Glad you like them!

https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/Deco

https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/Decoco

Thanks for the links, Kerya! These are characters i don't have in the library, and that wiki site looks fascinating!

ockham posted at 11:12AM Wed, 29 April 2020 - #4383620

It sounds like the vendors and customers are working together pretty well to maintain stability.

Silicon Valley is locked into the Github Syndrome, requiring revisions of everything every millisecond. That's good for monopoly vendors who can force everyone else to move along, but it's not good for people who want to GET WORK DONE with the product.

Yes and no. Some of the software I've worked with over the past couple of years have comments in there dating back to the 1990s... other software in the catalog (same employer) has the CI/CD model, where everything is stuffed into Docker containers, shoved through a Jenkins/Stash-powered pipeline, and is updated live, any time of day or night, without a CAB or RFC required. Both models can and do work... if you do it right.

You should already know this - feature creep and suddenly-'broken' stuff is a design/UX (read: people) problem, not a delivery method problem. It's not too hard to make constantly-updated software that behaves the same way over long enough periods of time, just that it gets new features and bugfixes at a pace that keeps up with the industry it's in. It can lead to sloppy practices ( 'I don't always bugfix my code, but when I do, I do it in Production...' ), it can make it all too easily manipulated towards stupid/bad ends, and it can lead to a sloppy attitude among those writing the code... but that's not the model's fault. The fault lies squarely with those who run the show.

Now GitHub (since you named it) is more often that not centered around projects that don't have paying customers, SLA-backed expectations, and long-horizon release/use schedules. You know, FOSS and hobby stuff.

Work doesn't have to be paid work; it can be unpaid artistic work. Anyone who is trying to do real work NEEDS a stable set of tools and supplies. If you follow Github you're spending ALL your time on revising your workflow and reorganizing your runtimes and adapting to the new products. You're spending NO time on actual work.

Hazard of the professional life that relies on a moving target, sadly. Unless you band together as a group and set a few ground rules (such as no abrupt changes and always overcommunicate, dammit!), you'll get stomped on.

But then, a question... what is it that drives the upgrade cycle from an artist's POV?

Depends on the artist. The still artists want better endstage rendering; lighting, texture and shader abilities, better static posing (a lot of them without a learning curve at all, or a learning bump). Along with that, content that fits their favorite figure.

In my case I'd love a full IK solver, as that would increase Poser's usefulness as an animation tool. At the moment the endstage rendering is irrelevant to me, as I use Vue as my endstage. If they got metaball generation (aka Metaform or some similar python script) included, that would change my render profile considerably. Interior stages would be done in Poser, as the metaball system would permit running water, showers, fountains, broken pipes spewing, smoke, fog, plasma effects galore. The old Metaform wasn't RealFlow by any stretch of the imagination, but it was capable of filling an effects niche that was sorely needed, and one written today, to take advantage of the multi core processors, would speed up the simulation by orders of magnitude.

I won't even get into the '5 clicks and done!' end of things, as that is so varied in wants and needs.

I've heard others complain about the IK in Poser. To be honest, it's been such a bug for so long, I honestly don't think anyone at Poser knows HOW to fix that problem.

Not having access to the source I couldn't begin to say, but I suspect it isn't a matter 'can't do it', but a matter of 'how to do it and not break every existing figure out there'. The backwards compatibility that they have maintained has been a big feature of Poser for decades, as it has avoided the who propietary format kerfuffle. A full IK/FK solver would likely push some data into the cr2 that might explode its size. There would have to be changes in the animation data storage, as FK would permit you to designate kinematic 'pins' all along the chain that would act as the temporary 'end' of the chain.

I've long suspected that it would take branching the code in a way that you have a 'classic' mode that preserved the backwards compatibility, and an 'advanced' mode for new figures and content. Think about a new figure with full IK/FK and softbody set up out of the box (with a more traditional version for those who want hard bodies, as it were).

There's always been the Poser geeks who get off on finding and exploiting the bugs in the code (conforming clothing, anyone?), and the ones who just want things to function with little to no work involved under the hood. As long as the file formats remain consistent, I think such a branching would actually work. There would be a hard break between the old content and the new. The program would still function properly with the old, while the new would have a clean slate. The trick would be massaging the program so that it is the common element, and you could switch between the two modes. If the two levels of figures could work together, that would be the perfect outcome. Big if, I know.

ssgbryan posted at 1:45PM Sat, 02 May 2020 - #4383951

"UNIFORM STANDARDS" are like communism - a red herring.

Many vendors DO NOT FOLLOW CURRENT STANDARDS THAT HAVE EXISTED FOR OVER A DECADE. How do you propose to get vendors to follow new ones?

LOL - software industry ain't any better...

(ref: https://xkcd.com/927/ )

But here's the thing - if a feature were compelling (market-wise), it will be implemented and it will sell (see also dForce, which to be honest I detest due to the loooooooooong simulation times, but the results are pretty, so... -shrug- . )

But, all that said, to the original topic, My go-tos tend to evolve, but for now...

Genesis 8, because I've painstakingly bumped a megaton of old Vicky 4 (and in some cases earlier) characters up to Genesis, G2, G3, and now G8. On the plus side, each iteration allows me to work over and improve the figure.

NearMe. Slightly long story, but... I originally got it for my stepdaughter when it first came out, to get her something cute besides the digital dress-up thing, something that could get her started with CG since she was massively into Anime at the time (seriously, I still have her DVD collection of Fruits Basket. It was a starting point for the two of us to bond when her mother and I got married; when she saw the massive pile of Anime DVDs I already had she immediately stopped thinking I was some intrusive asshat, so...) Anyrate, she fell in love with the mesh, actually made morphs for it, I helped convert a megaton of older stuff that I had to fit it, etc. I recently unearthed it in an old backup drive, and I use it a lot nowadays. Mostly, I make dumb comics-style stills with it and email the results to her once in awhile (she graduated HS back in 2013 and got married late last year.) I almost always get a phone call within a day of sending one though, which pleases her mother and I immensely.

LoloBot Same reason I keep NearMe... plus, it costs $0.00. Cute as hell, and I think Cassie squealed loud enough for me to hear it from here when I sent her the link.

Michael 2. See also my incredibly dumb avatar as to why. Between that and the old "Kabuki Hair", and all the texture conversion (old-school -> 3Delight -> iRay) and the SubD, etc... yeah, fuggit, I'm keeping it. Might eventually re-make it in G8 Male, but meh...

shannonhoppe po. sted at 11:50PM Sat, 02 May 2020 - #4387067

.

@shannonhope - Is that a render or is it a photo of 3D print lf your work?

V4 Toon Girl Sadie Aiko 3 ChibiBel NearMe AnimeDoll

Who finds a friend finds a treasure!

ironsoul posted at 2:30PM Sun, 03 May 2020 - #4387972

@shannonhope - Is that a render or is it a photo of 3D print lf your work?

Last part of the question should have been "of your work" not "if your work" - I'm finding it difficult to spot the difference between renders and photos these days.

That is the advantage of PBR render engines.

V4 and M4

I also mentioned V4 and M4 earlier in this thread but should clarify (especially now that Karina has returned from the Beyond) that I am slowly migrating my V4 characters over to Sasha-16 during the COVID-19 lockdown, and am absolutely loving Sasha as I get to use her more and more.

tomyee posted at 9:08AM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388085

I also mentioned V4 and M4 earlier in this thread but should clarify (especially now that Karina has returned from the Beyond) that I am slowly migrating my V4 characters over to Sasha-16 during the COVID-19 lockdown, and am absolutely loving Sasha as I get to use her more and more.

May I ask a follow up? Why are you still using V4/M4? Why not one of the newer models?

EClark1894 posted at 7:08PM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388086

May I ask a follow up? Why are you still using V4/M4? Why not one of the newer models?

I'm not the person you asked, but I'll answer since it also applies to me. The reason I still use V4/M4 is that the newer models simply aren't good enough for me personally.

I got heavily into Dawn when she was released, but quickly got over it, badly rigged hips combined with her shape and face just turned me off. To be specific, her shoulders, crotch area (which deforms weirdly when posed), joker mouth and 'wrong' eyes made it very difficult for me to work with her. The face is the most important part of the figure for me, and if you can't make that work, it's no-go. Which brings me to LaFemme.

I was very exited about LaFemme at first, but that didn't last long as I got to work more with her. The face is just impossible to work with for me, and the mouth in particular is.. I dunno how to describe it even.. and no nose to speak of. The shoulders are weird, the arms in general are bizarre and the hands and wrist bending in particular are just very wrong in my eyes. Weird knees as well. She bends well though (except for the wrists), I'll give them that. Not many morphs to work with tho.

This doesn't mean I never use these figures tho, I just find them very limited, and I end up going back to Sasha, who bends really well, and have all the skins and morphs I need.

Which brings me to PE: I love PE, but there isn't enough content there. Not talking about clothes, those can be fitted, but skins. Skins and morphs are the most important factor in any figure for me personally, and if you can't switch those up, the figure is dead in the water for me. I found one commercial character for PE that I bought, and while I like the morph, I was disappointed to learn that the skin was just the same procedural merchant resource the original skins were made from, and procedurals and tiles will IMO never be as good as photo resources. So, for me, there aren't any good skins out there. I also struggle a bit with PE's face, again particularly the eyes and mouth.

So the reason I go back to V4 is simple, with Sasha, she now bends just as well as the new figures (and even better in many cases), and she has enough skins and morphs that I can do whatever I want with her.

I am cautiously optimistic about Dawn 2 however, as they have addressed some of the issues that troubled me the most about original Dawn. Also looking forward to AmbientShade's new figures, from what I've seen they could very well be my new go-to figures. If character vendors step up and embrace them at least.

(Note: I'm not 'figure-bashing' here, just pointing out issues that I personally find discouraging)

EClark1894 posted at 1:16PM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388086

tomyee posted at 9:08AM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388085

I also mentioned V4 and M4 earlier in this thread but should clarify (especially now that Karina has returned from the Beyond) that I am slowly migrating my V4 characters over to Sasha-16 during the COVID-19 lockdown, and am absolutely loving Sasha as I get to use her more and more.

May I ask a follow up? Why are you still using V4/M4? Why not one of the newer models?

Hi EC, I actually have mentioned this in previous threads about why I still stick with these two figures. I've created a ton of custom characters (using the morph brush, using imported OBJs, morph packages, etc) for both figures over the years, and the amount of time and energy gone into those, is just not something I want to repeat by porting them over to any of the newer figures -- which are mostly female anyway, and Karina's S-16 is so good at fixing any bending issues, plus maintaining compatibility with my huge library of V4 content, and it's not been as hard as I'd feared to port their faces to S-16, so I'm happy with what I've got.

I do hope Karina eventually does a similar fix for M4 (I think a lot of happy S-16 users are waiting for that too), and if there are any content creators who would like to keep making clothing for V4 and M4, that's the stuff that I'd still buy today. Ideally a conforming outfit that has parts which can be simulated either with the Cloth Room and/or VWD to get the best of both worlds (hybrid clothing). Sadly I think most content creators are Daz-only now, and I've lately been just kitbashing existing clothes or modelling my own clothing and using the cloth room, or even just using post-work to get the render I want.

EClark1894 posted at 1:47PM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388086

May I ask a follow up? Why are you still using V4/M4? Why not one of the newer models?

Earl, I probably think about this in a too simple way. But:

• Imagine you have a garage full of special tools, accessories, and spare parts for the car you're actually driving (Let's call it the "Morris Karina")
• You are well accustomed to operating and maintaining that car, plus you also know how to drive it in the most difficult of terrain and weather.
• Let's also suppose for a moment that, unlike cars, digital meshes don't age!

Then one day a brand new and innovative car is released!! (Let's call it the "Fnord Kartina") It has all the latest technology on board, a completely redesigned undercarriage, a different driver's cabin and a completely redesigned dashboard.

Unfortunately, the switch for the headlights is now on the far left, the gear stick is behind the driver's seat, and in order to look at the speedometer you first have to open the glove box. Also the pedals for gas, brake and clutch have swapped their position. But now you can adjust the brightness of the cabin light with a menu-driven on-board computer, and the doors will open if you operate the trackball in the centre console...

What would you do?

Run after that new junk? Or just stick to what you have, you know, and you master perfectly?

As long as it fits all your needs, and you can happily continue working in your garage to improve your old, reliable car? While the alternative would be:

• BUY the new shiny car
• BUY all tools again because the old one aren't compatible
• BUY new accessories
• BUY...
• BUY...
• BUY...!

That's the DAZ hamster wheel, spinning since Genesis was introduced. I don't need that in Poser too!

Question answered? NO!

Because there's more to it!

From time to time, certain people drop by here, boasting about "industry standards" (though the figures they advertise are anything, but certainly NOT an industry standard. But "it sounds soo good"...)

Well, IMO, V4 IS an industry standard (at least for our hobbyist niche).

Show me any other 3D figure with similar longevity, and similar versatility!

Over the last 12 years we've seen a parade of "NEW! INNOVATIVE! GO TO!" figures coming and going... Still V4 prevails. Now I ask you - WHY??

I think I have a guess at why:

Because there is a whole galaxy of textures, morphs, characters, accessories, props, Python scripts, and what more out there which will work with this figure without hour-long tweaking, only to find out that it doesn't work with your new shiny figure at all because gas, brake and clutch have swapped their position and also work differently now.

For all those who just want to set up a nice scene and finish their work with a nice render, all they need is SASHA. let the die-hard-tinkerers continue to play with the new figures. To each it's own!

But for ME (as in "me, myself and I") I won't use neither Pauline, PE, nor LaFemme for (reasons see last posts!) .

MY opinion, so attack me if you disagree, and not the posts I referred to!

K

KarinaKiev posted at 1:00PM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388147

That's the DAZ hamster wheel, spinning since Genesis was introduced. I don't need that in Poser too!

I can grok that... I held off on that series (and stuck with Vicky 4) until just around the time that G3 came out, specifically because it seemed like a new iteration shot out the door every other week, and I refused to commit to anything until then.

G8 is now, what, 3 years old? G3 came out 3 years prior to that (this one's a guess)? I bet a G9 might show up sometime next year or so (though I'd fail to see the appeal of doing so, minus any eyegasmic feature to accompany it that is.)

From time to time, certain people drop by here, boasting about "industry standards" (though the figures they advertise are anything, but certainly NOT an industry standard. But "it sounds soo good"...)

No such thing... yet. You get close to it, though, here:

Well, IMO, V4 IS an industry standard (at least for our hobbyist niche).

Show me any other 3D figure with similar longevity, and similar versatility!

Posette (Poser default female figure: 1998 - 2005). Not as new-shiny as the Victoria 1/2/3 series, but it remained quite popular up until around the time Vicky 4 came out. After all, most of the really ground-breaking stuff happened on little Posette: Conforming Clothing, ERC, Transmapping, morphing (some would say), etc.

But, all things are relative, yes?

For all those who just want to set up a nice scene and finish their work with a nice render, all they need is SASHA. let the die-hard-tinkerers continue to play with the new figures. To each it's own!

Question: From a stark newbie's POV, would this statement still hold true? Or, would said newbie be directed to go download a mass of stuff, install it just so, go chase down deprecated (and often now-missing) bits and bobs, etc? Not an argument, but rather an invitation to examine.

But for ME (as in "me, myself and I") I won't use neither Pauline, PE, nor LaFemme for (reasons see last posts!)

Well, that and PE don't work so hot in DS.

MY opinion, so attack me if you disagree, and not the posts I referred to!

Sounds kinky... please, continue...

Karina, your answer sounds good, but I'm afraid it's too simple. For instance, based on that answer , you pobably would haved stopped buying Poser after version 5 or 6. I didn't buy 5, for example. I skipped that version. You also probably wouldn't need to upgrade your computer or other software. 2009 was the last time I bought a new Mac. I did upgrade every version of Poser since 6, though, but I didn't upgrade to every version of Blender, and that was free. So, no, I don't chase after shiny and new, but I do move forward.

And unless I think a post is factually incorrect in someway, I don't tend to attack posts or posters.

@Clarke you have touched upon a certain reality that people seem to ignore.

Of course ,Planned obsolesence is what Keeps the Daz content Hamster wheel spinning.?

However, to be fair this strategy, has made Apple the behemoth it is today. ( and Many other consumer product producers) so it is nothing new.

First I agree completely that NONE of the Female figures from Antonia to PE and lefemme could compete with Daz V4 even without SASHA16, they all still Fail to compete IMHO

I make my own Daz studio/Iclone pro content,thus I am not affected By anything in this market except whatever new awesome features I get in my main 3DCC Blender 2.8x.?

However If V4 is the pinnacle then yes, everyone could have stopped at around Poser pro 2014 (Where I Stopped& bailed)and live off of their 50+gig content hoards,and the trickle of new bits here & there, until Death

As Peng hinted, If people are encouraged to not try/buy the new and shiny, how Does bondware make money selling new poser software that boasts new and shiny features and Figures as a selling point to justify its cost? ?

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wolf359 posted at 8:38PM Mon, 04 May 2020 - #4388172

Of course ,Planned obsolesence is what Keeps the Daz content Hamster wheel spinning.?

If that were true, then hows come I can still use V4, A3, V2(!), M2, etc etc etc etc etc etc... and all their stuff.... in latest-greatest versions of Poser or DS?

Did you mean that DAZ no longer distributes Vicky 4 (like 14-15 years after it was first released), therefore "planned obsolescence"? Oh, wait - I just looked - you can still buy Victoria 4.2 as part of a massive starter kit in their store... like nearly 15 years after Vicky 4 first hit the virtual shelves.

So yeah, c'mon man... stop that.

First I agree completely that NONE of the Female figures from Antonia to PE and lefemme could compete with Daz V4 even without SASHA16, they all still Fail to compete IMHO

Kinda agree here, but only insofar as the figures' relative and perceived inflexibility (in appearance, not joints. Wanted to point that out.). Now if they could work the topology a bit (or if enough folks get real creative with ZBrush, etc), then we could see some improvement... and it may well get there, since LF just came out, relatively speaking.

Would I use any of 'em? Prolly not, since I have my investments (time, money, cursing, etc) elsewhere, and imports look like sheer drudgework (barring a porting-in of a Python version from, err, this geologic era ;) ), but the potential hasn't vanished entirely here, especially for the newer folks.

However If V4 is the pinnacle then yes, everyone could have stopped at around Poser pro 2014 (Where I Stopped& bailed)and live off of their 50+gig content hoards,and the trickle of new bits here & there, until Death

You could, but for how long? Unless you have Stage-4 something-bad, I doubt that even you could hold out until Death. I know I couldn't/wouldn't.

(PS: 50GB? Those are rookie numbers! You gotta pump those numbers up! )

I think what also helps keep V4 and M4 alive is that Daz will release those figures for free (along with some nice addon packages like V4++ and M4++) every once in a while. I already got these for free many, many years ago during an earlier Daz promotion, but obviously it helps that Daz does still push V4 and M4 to some degree by giving it away. People will always flock to stuff that they don't have to pay for (initially), like figures, and 3d packages like Blender.

I would consider pushing the idea that Bondware should give away a limited version of Poser for free and try to adopt a make-money-from-content business model like Daz, but I fear that it just wouldn't work precisely because the compelling content isn't there, unlike with Daz. But at the same time, trying to sell a 3d package for over $100 is always going to limit your ability to grow your user base... people are getting more and more used to open-source software (free).

Bondware needs a way that content like clothing and hair will work seamlessly across all figures (older ones like V3, V4 to newer ones like LaFemme and Dawn), no messing with Fitting Room because new users simply won't bother to spend the time to learn it, and that way content creators can make clothing and have access to all Poser users that are on whatever figure. To me that means a new dynamic cloth simulator that is far superior to the current outdated Cloth Room, but has the power of something like VWD (but with a ton of presets or the ability to analyze the mesh to apply a preset to it accurately). I buy the cloth, I position it so that it overlays the figure in my scene, tell the Poser cloth wizard that this item is cotton (or the content creator provides the presets that tell the new cloth wizard what is constrained, what is not, etc). and then in seconds it just simulates what I need...

The one essential change that has come in mainstream figures is the 'A' pose now assumed by genesis8. It is not the first one, Sixus1's Scarlet and Ali's Angela/Ang2 featured that pose and also Ali's Bella originally was in A pose. There may have been more but those three figures come to mind.

Reason for DAZ to make gen8 A-pose is simple: A-pose and dynamics go hand in hand. Cut a jacket in T- pose and you end up with huge lumps of fabric under the armpits and ghastly strain on the shoulders in about every normal pose the figure can take. DForce would not have worked well in T-pose.

Scarlet was abandoned by her maker. At Mankahoo Ali soldiers on but he is a one-man band. Tools provided in Poser are not geared towards A-pose. The cloth room is a shadow of what it could have become. Yet dynamic clothing, or at least dual mode clothing, are the future. To compete Bondware needs La femme 'en A' and a deal with Marvelous Designer or with VWD. The first route would provide a content production route and a simulation tool, the latter provides only simulation.

I never really liked V4. That's juist me. There is no 'click' between us. 'V4' However is and will remain to be a de-facto standard format for content, if only for the sheer volume there is available.

That's an excellent point, FVerbaas! I never liked the A-pose and preferred the T-pose (probably because that was my first exposure to the default state of a 3d figure) but you've changed my mind. I always wondered why some figures used the A-pose and this makes it more understandable.

If that were true, then hows come I can still use V4, A3, V2(!), M2, etc etc etc etc etc etc... and all their stuff.... in latest-greatest versions of Poser or DS?

Did you mean that DAZ no longer distributes Vicky 4 (like 14-15 years after it was first released), therefore "planned obsolescence"? Oh, wait - I just looked - you can still buy Victoria 4.2 as part of a massive starter kit in their store... like nearly 15 years after >Vicky 4 first hit > the virtual shelves.

The ability to load a 13 year old legacy CR2 base figure into the latest version of Daz studio, and having it supported by the PA store content and programs features & addons are two entirely different things and you know it. C'mon man ..stop that!!!?

If You *lack any content creation skills, what do you actually do with a Vicky 2 figure in Daz studio 4.12???

With those vestigial figures, You wont have access to HD moprhs JCMs, the latest lipsynch options,

Skin builder

Fit control

Expression enhancer

The spline based dynamic hair system

Adjust rigging to shape with extreme body morphs

None of the High quality 4K Iray skin materials

None of the ready made hybrid Dforce clothing or Hair

The three click transfer utility for cloth rigging.

The new photos to faces feature or the third party Face Gen artis pro that does the same thing.

None of the convenient pose control dials for hand/fingers and facial expressions. etc etc etc.

There is a reason that Daz will not allow distribution of older versions of their Free Daz studio software.?

They want you using the Latest version of Genesis and re-purchasing the "new" content and addons to keep that hamster wheel spinning.?

Again ,not a crime in a captialist economy ( see Apple ,Microsoft et al)

But IMHO ,one cannot keep blasting Smith Micro for letting poser stagnate for years while insisting on still desparately clinging to 15 year Old "golden age" content that is not even compatible with the new features that would enable the software to compete with Daz studio or Iclone.?

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IIRC, Scarlet was abandoned by Sixus primarily because of the way she was savagely criticised upon her release. People were not kind.

@EClark1984: Sure the figure was not well received. To my knowledge there was more but that is not the point here. I just mentioned her to indicate A-pose is nothing novel.

FVerbaas posted at 10:24AM Tue, 05 May 2020 - #4388188

@EClark1984: Sure the figure was not well received. To my knowledge there was more but that is not the point here. I just mentioned her to indicate A-pose is nothing novel.

Well, you did more than just mention the pose. You also mentioned that she was "abandoned by her maker" but gave no reason why. The whole context of your post could leave readers to speculate as to why if they weren't already familiar with the figure.

wolf359 posted at 7:17AM Tue, 05 May 2020 - #4388185

The ability to load a 13 year old legacy CR2 base figure into the latest version of Daz studio, and having it supported by the PA store content and programs features & addons are two entirely different things and you know it.

In what way is that "planned obsolescence", given that anybody, anywhere, can create content for any of it, and it'll run on the software? Anybody can make content for it, and sell that content anywhere (see also, well, here.)

If You *lack any content creation skills, what do you actually do with a Vicky 2 figure in Daz studio 4.12???

You mean besides download and use the zillions of freebies still out there for it? Or hey, let's just go buy Vicky 1/2 stuff directly from them

Besides, the question could apply to anything - if you lack the content creation skills, what do you actually do with Posette on Poser $latest, or iClone $latest, or Blender $latest...?

With those vestigial figures, You wont have access to HD moprhs JCMs, the latest lipsynch options,

Nope, but that obsolescence was not planned; the figures just never had 'em. Nothing is stopping you from adding those abilities yourself, however, since a huge chunk of the goodies.features you listed were originally third-party plugins, and some are just a matter of merchant/user desire+ability.. ;)

There is a reason that Daz will not allow distribution of older versions of their Free Daz studio software.?

Yeah, lots of 'em - liability, support, bandwidth, OS compatibilities (e.g. MacOS' shift to 64-bit-only), etc. There's a reason why you can't buy a legit copy of Windows XP Pro from Microsoft, either, so...

They want you using the Latest version of Genesis and re-purchasing the "new" content and addons to keep that hamster wheel spinning.?

...and yet I can still buy Vicky 1 stuff ...and it still works on the latest iterations of DS and Poser. - shrug -

But IMHO ,one cannot keep blasting Smith Micro for letting poser stagnate for years while insisting on still desparately clinging to 15 year Old "golden age" content that is not even compatible with the new features that would enable the software to compete with Daz studio or Iclone.?

I can agree to the premise, depending on context. But then, even old mesh can be rehabilitated to an extent, and a lot of folks want to get a bit more mileage out of what they originally bought long ago, and I can't fault 'em for that.

Btw, I don't render as much as I used to, between modeling in Blender and working on my Content Directory, but I do still own V4 and M4, and all of the content I bought for them, they're just not my go to figures. Right now, that actually seems to be Dawn and Dusk.

ironsoul posted at 6:10PM Wed, 06 May 2020 - #4387972

@shannonhope - Is that a render or is it a photo of 3D print lf your work?

@ironsoul - Not a photo. That's the models as they sit in Modo low poly (BeastMan's whip looks to be subdivided but the rest is straight poly low). I'll knock the dust off the project here in the near future and finish it. Another pass in ZBrush to shore some things up, texture pass in Substance and do the fur elements in ZBrush and toss it back over to Poser. May take me a minute to get back to it but I'll post the finished work when done either here at Rendo or over at my Deviant.