But adding it to Python _does_ provide it to non-Pro users. I mean, that's your point, right? That you want to give that functionality to people who buy your product, even if they don't have Poser Pro? It just doesn't give people who don't buy (or download? would it be a free addon?) the script an interface. So they would be adding the feature for non-Pro users (potentially pissing off their Pro users), but not taking advantage of the credit or increased usage a UI change would give them.
I'm all for it in general, and I think I understand what you mean. Putting in the interface would be a bolder, more obvious move, so it seems safer. I think it's a good call to ask for it that way. But I also think it's a lose/lose situation, where putting it in the interface at least gives them the win of significantly improving Poser's functionality to content users. If the team has good vision, they'll see that adding it to regular Poser's interface is a good idea and would probably boost sales.
I have to say that I saw this trend _long_ before SMS bought Poser. I saw it back with P5. They added cloth it in a way that only professional animators would find at all usable. Their features haven't focused on standard content community usage since P4/PPP days. Do you remember how people said that P7, with it's 21+ listed new features, had nothing new? That's because almost all of those features were irrelevant to most in the content community. They didn't need lip syncing, and they didn't need Poser's strand hair to render better when they couldn't do anything with it in the first place.
I've been assuming for almost two decades that the Poser creators knew what they were doing as they really obviously kept designing their software for professional animators. But it looks like DAZ was smart to break from them when they did, because at P5 they decided to stop making a program for people to make pictures with and start making a program for professional animators. Even when they finally brought on someone from the community,while Nerd3D is awesome and knows the community inside and out, he's a programmer and animator who uses Poser in ways less than 1% of this community does. The only features they've added since 2001 that have made sense as an appeal to the content community are full injection morph support in the interface (which took several versions, and only completed with the latest version), a raytrace renderer (which took _way_ too long, considering the guy working on the renderer knew that it sucked for realistic animation, let alone stills, and only happened because they used an existing renderer, and again, only with the latest version), GI, SSS, weight mapped rigging, interface support for creating JCMs, the Morphing Tool (though I don't think it's used much, and is in desperate need to of an equivalent to Blender's "Grab" brush), and autofitting. And in my admittedly limited experience, their autofitting doesn't work very well.
They've been treating this community as a kind of incidental customers for years when it comes to their product design. Which is why all of their figures have had major usability flaws. I won't say that's why their figures have failed, because DAZ has fought hard for content domination. But not one generation of figure since Posette has been designed with consideration to content community workflows, and Posette was made by DAZ. That's what, 7 generations? And pretty much the same team of developers? That's not on SMS. That's on the team behind Poser, that SMS acquired with the software like eFrontier did.
Most Poser users only use two rooms: Posing and Material. And most can't use the Material room very well beyond applying materials. Which is fine, because most content creators can use it well enough. But even content creators mostly only add the Setup room to that list. Even the fitting room seems to get minimal usage in the community. That's years of programming prior to the SMS acquisition that's gone to waste because the community either has no use for it (Face Room) or it wasn't designed for normal people making stills to use (Hair Room, Cloth Room, Bullet Physics etc.) and has seen no UI improvements since it was introduced and really obviously failed.
They've been trying to change us into the kind of customers they want instead of designing Poser to do what we need. If that team failed, it's because they haven't respected how their tool is used or the people using it, and spent millions of man hours trying to get respect from people who have never wanted or needed them, and never will.
I mean, literally off the top of my head, here's an the ideal workflow for working with strand hair as someone who just wants to make stills:
- Paint where you want a single type of hair (for instance, head hair, eyebrows, lashes, etc.) to go on a figure.
- Set the basic hair type (length, curl, thickness, etc.)
- Cut/grow and style it.
- Paint basic colors on it.
- Set color variation by hue, value, saturation, amount, and streak thickness.
- Save the hair settings to the library as something that can be applied to the figure like materials.
- Pose the figure, and make the hair respond to gravity, the figure, and relevant props _without using the timeline_.
- Tweak the hair to fit the shot (so it's not in the eyes too much, or whatever).
That took me literally a few minutes to come up with. Everything on that list could probably have been added in the second iteration of the Hair Room, and definitely by the third. Instead they partially did about a quarter of that list in the very beginning, then spent the next several years making the hair render more realistically. Why worry about how it renders when no one's using it in the first place?
I'm actually a bit more hopeful now that they've got a new team. There's more of a chance that new people won't keep making the same mistakes. That they'll focus on the customers they have. Poser could be an _amazing_ and unique product if it returned to its original purpose of facilitating awesome illustrations. Then proper bending and anatomy would be higher priority, dynamics you could "sculpt" to fit your final image would be an obvious feature, adding standard post-processing effects like glows and lens flares would be another obvious addition... They could put themselves back on the map if they returned to that original goal.
I was actually talking about DAZ making DS into a real time platform, not a outside product. They were vaguely talking about that at one point, IIRC.
Much like Apple (but, amazingly, on a much smaller time scale), DAZ has deliberately molded their customers' community into an informal fan group. They identify themselves as DAZ customers first, not people who have specific artistic goals that DAZ's products happen to support. Every time anyone points out that DAZ is a company that acts like a company, they get attacked by DAZ customers as if someone insulted them personally. Every time DAZ releases a new feature that's so unstable it can barely function, I see people posting about how wonderful it is when it's not crashing. DAZ customers tend, by and large, to follow DAZ first and foremost, and use their products secondarily.
Lowering resolution deviates from their customers if you see their community primarily as people who make pictures that happen to use DAZ content. But if you see their customers primarily as people who buy DAZ products, then there really can't be deviation as long as DAZ is consistent. If they're consistent, it's more like Apple putting most of their energy into computers as appliances and getting rid of their desktops after spending years as the brand to go to for powerhouse media production workstations. Most graphics people still use Macs despite them being _much_ less bang for your buck nowadays. The emotional appeal of the Apple brand and aesthetic were greater than their need for high functioning hardware and money. DAZ has fashioned a very similar customer base, while actually giving them really good functionality. The only ones hurt are people like you or I who make content but aren't blessed by them, which is exactly what they want.
It's not an accident that most of the people still using Poser are either geeks who like to tinker and explore, people who make very individually particular artwork, or both.