New all-star Poser-only figure released!

[Miss B]

Thank you ma'am.

 

[DanaTA]

Well, I just got some good news . . . my first La Femme render (back on page 10 of this thread) was chosen for Renderosity's Poser Staff Picks of the Week!

Congratulations!

Dana

 

[Miss B]

Thanks Dana!

 

[LisaB]

I give up, all the best to La Femme and it's creators, I have been seeing a few interesting renders about like this new vid.

I knew it would be a mistake thinking I could participate here, the Hive seems to prefer a very particular type of member and I guess I just don't fit the mould. It's a shame because I think that mould does more to hold this place back then help it grow. But many here appear to like it that way so all the best with it.

Perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy then? You fit the "mold" (though there is no such thing) just fine until you started twisting words around. I liked a lot of your posts in this thread. I agreed with your perspective and was thankful for it. I was glad to see you sharing in a way that was conversational. You gave credit where it was due, you said when things were partially true and explained why they weren't. All good stuff. Until the point where it wasn't (which was glaringly obvious) and it continued from there. Reading through it all felt like gas-lighting to me. Not having it.

Surprised no ones mentioned this LaFemme Webinar by Charles Taylor (Nerd 3D) and Denise Tyler (Deecey) yet but, hey! Who needs knowledge when you've got an opinion, right?

Good to see you here, Mytho! Perhaps no one was aware of it. Thank you for sharing the link.

 

[LisaB]

I have completed going through this thread post by post. Some of you have had posts deleted. I did my best to include a note as to why posts were removed.

What I saw in this thread was someone who was excited to try out the latest thing for Poser, who may not have RTFM yet, who is trying things out in an order that makes sense to them and making a sort of journal entry as to what has been found.

There has been intelligent discussion, credit given when due, gratitude expressed for explaining something that was previously not understood, personal opinion on what works and what doesn't for a certain workflow and program of choice. In most cases it's not a matter or right and wrong but of personal preference or workflow in a certain program.

Some of the issues that have been raised are directly related to the people who make the software listening to the people who create content for said software. A lot of frustration happens when one company listens to the feedback from their content creators and makes adjustments that make it better and another company totally ignores the needs of content creators and keeps doing the same old same old for each major software release. The software won't succeed without people using it and creating for it. One company has figured out how to make it easier for content creators which is a bonus that gets passed on to customers in the form of new content. The other company is hopefully finding a new foundation to stand on to make things better for all.

If La Femme can be a catalyst for change in how the people who make the software view what features will be available in future releases, that's a great thing. People could do better to stop feeding on drama by looking for the first thing to be offended by and start looking for ways to be kind, helpful and supportive no matter what figure or software they use.

That's all for now.

 

[Mythocentric]

Thanks Lisa, and you other guys! "Hey, who needs knowledge when you've got an opinion, right?" Errr! A bit naughty (and tongue in cheek, honest!) I know but I was getting sorely distraught at some of the previous posts. At least enough to break my own word and post a response. I only wish I could claim it as my own but it was once directed at me by a guy called Storm Thorgerson (if you don't know the name go take a look at some Pink Floyd album covers!) due to a certain person being a typical snarky student butthead back in the old RCA days. It worked! OK! I’m still probably a snarky butthead but at least I’m older and (debatably) wiser! However, I’m delighted that everything is now back on track thanks to Lisa. (Moral: Don’t mess with the Boss Lady, ‘cause the Boss Lady don’t mess?)

My personal view of LaFemme is I’m very excited after some initial scepticism. After all, how many figures have we seen who were going to finally break Victoria’s stranglehold on the market? After watching the Webinar I’m even more excited because I realised just how different LaFemme is. Unorthodox maybe, but if that’s what it takes I’m going to get me a whole sack full of unorthodox asap. Given that she’s a joint effort between Renderosity and SMS bodes well for the future and (hopefully) a sea-change for Poser. Mind you, I’m still claiming Dawn as a progenitor and the figure who proved that there is life after Victoria. Due respect to Hivemeister Chris and the team for that! That’s why she’s still around and going strong despite the best efforts of her distractors to prove otherwise!

Anyhow, enough from me. I’m still around occasionally but mostly these days I’m concentrating on music and taking care of our Sara’s (and Laura, her besties) musical development, so my times mostly split between our little recording studio (Goodbye small fortune!), jamming sessions at Promenade, our local music store and tutoring the guys at our Lucy’s school. Sadly for me, that mostly means I'm now the little old guy thumpy-thumping on a Fender P-bass back in the shadows while the girls strut their stuff up front (Sighs for future past!)



P.S.

The minimum charge is, if I recall correctly, is due to Paypal and the CC Companies making a charge to the Vendor on each sale for handling the transaction. Nothing to do with the Vendor who has every right to recover that cost from the buyer. Just don’t ask me how that applies to a figure listed in the store as free because I haven’t a clue other than LaFemme is listed in the store rather than the freebies section!

 

[Ken1171]

For those offended by the $3.50 minimum, you really have to ask yourself if having more focus and development time going into Poser is worth it for you? If Poser is your program of choice and you want it to continue to be developed, why wouldn't you support that effort in any way you can? Supporting that effort could come in the form of ignoring the $3.50 minimum of a cart in a store and buying an add-on item for La Femme to show your gratitude that these folks took the time (a YEAR) to develop something they think might make a difference!

My thoughts exactly. As a content creator, this is the kind of consideration I would like to see more. Every time someone releases a product or freebie, it's an act of love, passion, commitment and dedication. They could be watching a movie, playing a fun game, or spending more time with their families - but instead they have decided to make something for the community you are a part of. This is not about budgets, but just to show some support and appreciation for what we get. It isn't exactly flattering to hear that something isn't worth even $3.50. It's perfectly Ok if you can't support the artists with money, but at least give them moral support. I think that's not asking too much.

 

[Chris]

I've stayed out of this thread as far as commenting that is until now, because the subject is about a figure that I personally have no interest in, other then what can be learned by the input shared that can aid us is creating an even better Dawn and Dusk 2.0. I have some strong opinions surrounding this new figure that I'll keep to myself.

I do want to say here that I'm proud of my partner Lisa in digging into this rather lengthy thread to cull some comments and add her own. She and I have been emailing about this thread, and the action that has been needed. Lisa has a ton of other things to juggle and put her attention to, and I'm thankful that she's been willing to add her needed and respected input and direction here.

Hoping now that Lisa can focus her talents and attention elsewhere. Thank you Lisa. Also, we thank calmer heads. We are so appreciative to those here in this forum thread that love to create and explore what is new and special to them. It is this same willingness to explore new things that have attracted people to our Dawn and Dusk to begin with.

 

[LisaB]

Razor42 has been banned. Per his request, all content he has posted will be removed as soon as I am able to do it. Some threads may not make sense afterward. Some quoted text will have a random user name instead.

 

[Ken1171]

If La Femme can be a catalyst for change in how the people who make the software view what features will be available in future releases, that's a great thing.

That's the thing - LaFemme is so innovative and unorthodox (in a good way) that I didn't quite understand her at first. People got used to making and using figures in a certain mold for so long that at first I didn't know how to look at this figure, and have even jumped to the wrong conclusions, like she was missing major dials, or that her facial rig presented nothing new.

LaFemme introduces a different way to do things, and I only realized this after watching Chuck Taylor's video presentation. I already knew Poser 11 had introduced joint translations, but I had never seen it put to good use on a figure before - at least not a figure that I would consider using.

There will always be resistance to change, especially when Poser has existed for so long, and people got used to things working in a certain way. Conversely, modern figure's posing quality owe it all to Nerd3D (Chuck Taylor), who has basically invented Poser ERCs (Enhanced Remote Controls) many may take for granted nowadays because they work under the hood. This has revolutionized figure creation ever since, and that's the same guy who has now rigged LaFemme for us. Let's not take that for granted - this is quite significant. That was the very first thing that caught my attention about this figure.

And because Chuck knows JCMs like no one else, LaFemme was the very first figure (I know of) that has built-in JCMs toggle controls straight from the dials. We can toggle JCMs on/off globally with the spin of a dial, or locally with individual dials. Whenever you rig conforming clothing for any figure, you must be able to do this, but no other figure (I know of) has this kind of low-level granular control. This is the kind of figure design that considers not only the final users, but also the content creators. A worthy example that should be followed.

Another design detail that some may not notice is that the facial bones rigging have dial equivalents available. Without those, a custom facial expression using bones could not be saved as a pose preset, because Poser considers facial expressions as made by morphs. If the facial bone rigging only existed as body handles, no expressions could be saved as presets to the library.

For the record, although facial bones rigging is rather new in Poser and DS, it has been used for a long time in the gaming and movies industries. However, the way LaFemme uses body handles could be considered innovative because using all 3 transforms (translation, rotation and scaling) can cause an effect. For example, Chuck shows in his video that we can control breast size and shape by simply moving and scaling the respective body handles. I don't remember this being done with any other Poser figures. He has created a new custom breast size and shape with only 2 mouse drags on the body handles: one with scaling, and one with translation. I have never seen this before.

Also different from most figures, LaFemme has properly set smoothing scale and translation zones across all body joints, meaning we can scale and stretch/translate any joint without breaking the figure (up to reasonable ranges). Conforming clothing created with Poser 11 will be able to automatically follow these body transforms. Maybe smoothing scale zones are not new (Dawn has them), but the smoothing joint translations are. This alone allows changing body proportions without the need for morphs, and without breaking the joints. By mixing smoothing joint scaling and translations, it is possible to create whole new body types without using morphs, or maybe to serve a as starting point to create new body type morphs. Here again, conforming clothing created with Poser 11 will automatically follow the joint transform changes.

A lot of what I am saying here is still theory of what is possible, but are what I consider good examples of figure design that should be followed.

 

[phdubrov]

Still, have no consistent opinion on her. Probably she has to come not only with the manual and a brief webinar but with a suggested workflow(s).
What I really like about her, is a morphability of the eyes/orbits area straight out of the box.
The picture is not about the morphability, it's default face form with a quick expression made by chips. It is about the quality of default maps (very decent).
Shaders by me. HDRI and an area light as hair/shoulders light for lighting.

 

[Ken1171]

Still, have no consistent opinion on her. Probably she has to come not only the manual and a brief webinar but with a suggested workflow(s).
What I really like about her, is a morphability of the eyes/orbits area straight out of the box.
The picture is not about the morphability, it's default face form with a quick expression made by chips. It is about the quality of default maps (very decent).
Shaders by me. HDRI and an area light as hair/shoulders light for lighting.

Don't miss Nerd3D's webinar where he shows all you want to know about LF! I like the part where Chuck scales up the eyelids to create super-long lashes, where you can even translate the handles to edit the lashes flowing direction - all drag-and-drop with no morphs involved! Has also scaled the lip handles to control lip thickness. Translating the lip handles also create interesting lip shapes. ^^

My first LF render was using the default Poser shaders in SF, which forced me to have to edit and tweak things a lot. I didn't know there were PBR shaders as well, so I have worked much more than I should. LOL

 

[phdubrov]

@Ken1171
Didn't miss it. But the question is how to save it all as a really reusable preset. I.e. save only needed values or spawn a morph. Ideally without file editing by hands. (yeah, know about nothing about rigging...)
Asked this in La Femme thread on RS forum, still no answer...

 

[Ken1171]

@phdubrov I think Chuck has explained in the webinar that the face handles that have correspondent dials can be saved as expression presets if the dials have values. Just go to the expressions library and click the "+" button to save the preset. He explained these dials were created just for that purpose, for otherwise they would be redundant. That's why I understood.

 

[phdubrov]

@phdubrov I think Chuck has explained in the webinar that the face handles that have correspondent dials can be saved as expression presets if the dials have values. Just go to the expressions library and click the "+" button to save the preset. He explained these dials were created just for that purpose, for otherwise they would be redundant. That's why I understood.

Yes, BUT!
If you look into the expression files, you will find ALL the channels here. I.e. all your translations and scalings will be nulled the moment you apply any other (default) expression!
(Rendering now, could not try it this moment.)
It was incorrect. It will work.
From Blackhearted:
If you need this to work in a distributable morph, you will need to edit the pose .pz2 file to include the translations since it does not include these by default. You can do this by saving your morph first as a character (.cr2), and then saving as a pose (.pz2), and then copying the relevant x/y/z trans settings from the .cr2 to the .pz2. This is most easily accomplished using some kindof poser editing app like Poser File Editor from Dimension3D, but it can be done the oldskool way in notepad...

DialManager from Netherworks should help too. But, in my understanding, you still have to combine this pose and INJ file by hands. Assuming the character in question is a combination of spun dials, translations, and morphing.

 

[kobaltkween]

Just posting this for general info/opinion on character creation....

You really should be using normal maps not displacement for detail, particularly in non-biased render engines.

Depends on the size and type of detail. Every professional I follow uses displacement in addition to normal maps, and every general, texturing, or sculpting professional tool I know of includes them prominently in their features (either creating or using). I personally don't want my bicep or wrist bone definition in normal maps.

Exactly. You should be using an actual sculpting tool if you're adding detail. If you're talking about the morph brush.. that's not sculpting. You're only moving the mesh, try to do anything over 2 subdivisions with that tool and poser grinds to a halt. Doing anything above 3 subdivisions in DAZ Studio is going to do the same thing. If you're creating custom characters, especially for sale, you need the proper tool do it, especially when it comes to handling subdivisions and exporting normal maps. Poser or DAZ Studio ain't it. Period. Vendors have to invest in their craft with the proper tools.

First of all, sculpting _is_ moving the mesh with a brush. I've done tons of sculpting at base resolution, both in Blender and Poser. Second of all, vendors can only invest what they can afford, just like customers. And while I'm sure the DS market has attracted enough talent that forcing people out of it who don't meet arbitrary software requirements still works OK for the DS community (though probably helps keep DAZ's prices at double everywhere else), if we're considering the Poser market, forcing people out is the last thing the community needs. Third, I have a _great_ high res sculpting tool: Blender. It's probably more common among Poser and DS vendors than Zbrush, though I could easily be wrong about that.

That's certainly their right as they developed the tech to only offer it inhouse.

Never said it wasn't their right. Never even implied that. My point is that no one can try using it and see how it works for them. Unless DAZ releases their tools publicly, the group that can use them will remain limited and small, with no opportunity for that group to grow much larger. The number of vendors who can make HD morphs in the entire content community is a relatively small subset of vendors, and unlikely to grow significantly as things are. I'd _love_ to see that change, but it won't if Zbrush remains the only usable way to make HD morphs.

I'd love to see both DS and Poser support a map to HD morph function, especially since Blender is going to get vector displacement soon. That would make it easy to, say, take heavy stone weathering from Substance or rough bricks from Materialize into both apps. And again, to clarify, I do _not_ mean the fine detail that goes into normal maps, but the major detail that doesn't look right if it's not actually 3 dimensional.

Zbrush is a great tool, but the absolute fact is that most of the vendors in the community who make characters do not have it. Even fewer have mastered it. And the absolute number one thing a new figure base should be is easier for existing vendors to support than previous figures.

You would just simply use normal maps instead. I've been working with the tech since Genesis 2 and it's not an easy process to do. And from conversations online, it's probably a good thing it stays in house as people would try to immediately sculpt on a 3 subd mesh then wonder why clothing sinks into the mesh and they can't fix it. Like normal maps, it's only a detail pass not a sculpting tool, so people need to learn how to sculpt on low poly meshes. I've been doing it since the original genesis and the poly count hasn't dropped that much since then and HD didn't exist back then... so I don't understand the balking some people have when they haven't truly worked with the mesh. Honestly the HD morphs really have value when it comes to content creators that make guys (because of the muscle definition) or creature creators. The female characters that sell really don't need that much detail in their bodies, only the fitness girl-type products would need it... but then you could just use a normal map to get similar definition.

No, I couldn't and wouldn't. I would never use normals for large scale definition like ribs, wrists bones, ankles bones, muscle definition, tendons, etc. I wouldn't accept that in a product I'd buy, so I wouldn't accept it in one I'd sell.

But even that misses the point, because you still have to fight a regular grid mesh to sculpt the correct lines. I've sculpted cloth a bunch before, so I have a lot of experience with trying to create a nice crease across polys where there's no loops. IMHO, it looks and acts clunky, even at high resolution.

To be clear, I'm not commenting on the Genesis 3+ mesh one way or another. Ken1171 is, and he _has_ worked with that mesh. While I haven't worked with La Femme, I can see that she has a very similar topology to PE, and I found PE practically unusable for making the morphs I wanted to.

This statement is not true at all. It's easier to make UNIQUE characters and body sculpts without edge loops. Otherwise a vendor is either just making the same thing or you end up having to pull out the mesh or create a bunch of correctives to compensate for where your unique shape is different from the direction of the edge loops. Again, for the vendors that make creatures and unique bodies shapes, it's been a far easier workflow. I know I do far less work to make unique body shapes for my guys because I don't have to fight the flow of edge loops when they bend. But then on my characters I make JCMs for muscle movement because it's easy to do so and the clothing autogenerates the morph into the clothing so the mesh doesn't poke through.

Dawn was sculpted into a horse, a male, a gorilla, a dog, a dragon.... Basically, most four limbed animals have the same anatomy with different proportions. Even giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in their neck as horses, dogs, and us. So unless you're talking complete fantasy anatomy, your bones and muscles are different sizes and somewhat different shapes, but in basically the same relationship to one another and the same general shape.

There's no "neutral" when it comes to edge loops or topology. They're always in a specific place. And when that place ignores basic anatomy, like where muscles join or wrap around a limb, or how the rib cage should work, then you have to fight the anatomically incorrect edge loops. If you have a good base, that anatomy is there from the get go. Given an anatomically incorrect mesh, the 99% of the time that people are making humanoids or even animals, anatomical edge loop placement will facilitate sculpting and regular, grid style topology will fight it.

Oh, and I'm not talking about a base with a "unique shape," though that's a kind of misleading label since _any_ shape is unique. I'm talking about a specific _topology_. If I was just looking at shape, I'd probably pick PE for her very natural, realistic body proportions. Unfortunately, I can't do much with them because of her topology.

TO get Dawn for instance to give me the same images I have gotten used to creating with a heavily morphed V4 for instance, is impossible. So why try?

Easy answer: because you want to keep using Poser. If you don't care whether you use Poser or not, if you don't care if Poser is discontinued or not, then yes, just focus on what's easy and comfortable. Let V4's release be the last time you invest in a new figure. Just keep using your old content. Eventually, people will stop buying Poser altogether, because the market will finish evaporating, and all the new and cool content will be for DS.

I would _love_ to agree with Ken1171 about multiple figure bases in Poser. That was certainly the way I was thinking until very recently. But frankly, I don't think that's going to work. I mean, I'd _love_ to be wrong. Truly and really. But as far as I can tell, this whole content community thing only works when the 80/20 rule applies to one figure's content. Even if we assume vendors can just as easily make (and test) clothes that fit multiple figures (yay, dynamics!), I think vendors can either make characters for lots of different figures or make lots of different characters. And by far most customers seem to prefer multiple characters on one base to multiple figures.

I think the Poser content community only has that "virtuous cycle" of sales generating vendors generating sales when about 80% of the figure-based content is for a common base mesh. And yeah, sorry, but the sales have to come first. The community was born when people paid (IIRC) about $75 for just Victoria 1 and Mike 1 and their handful of morphs. And then paid another (again, IIRC) $75 for the same meshes with additional morphs. Even if you just count V4, I'm pretty sure most people were like me and spent at least $30 at her release. And that was as a Platinum Club member, so I was already investing in DAZ's content.

Customers _must_ come first. That's just how sales work.

If the Poser community rallies around La Femme, absolutely great. The community absolutely needs to rally around a modern figure. I _personally_ would vote for Dawn hands down, and I think lots of things make her easier for vendors to support. But I'm not going to complain if La Femme finally gets the Poser community to move on.

Users can stay on V4 or they can be upset there's no new Poser content, but doing both is counterproductive. Want new Poser content? Then be prepared to put the same community investment into a modern Poser figure you did into V4. If you stay with V4, you're actively killing the Poser content community and therefore Poser software. If you want to keep either around, you need to leave your comfort zone.

Mind, I don't mean that as a sort of admonition or complaint. I'm certainly not judging anyone. I mean it strictly as a warning. If customers refuse to make that initial investment, it's fine, but then they're going to eventually lose the ability to use Poser. Even if you're fine using your existing version of Poser, even if you're fine using only the content you own now, fact is, eventually operating systems won't run your old Poser software, and hardware won't run old operating systems. Everyone will eventually move on.

When Dawn first came out, I had no idea I'd find her as usable as I do. I supported her right away because I knew I wanted to keep using Poser, and she was by far the best bet at the time. But I watched other Poser users hang back with reasoning that a new figure had less content and less support. Well, yeah. There will _never_ be a new figure with the same support as a 10+ year old figure. And no figure will ever get more than very basic support if the community doesn't provide a reason to make content for it.

There's really only about 3 or so different choices for the Poser community:

• Stick with V4 until Poser and its community dies out, and move to another hobby when your last version of Poser stops working
• Stick with V4 until Poser and its community dies out, and move to another platform (DS, Character Creator, etc.)
• Adopt a modern Poser figure, buy new Poser content, and keep the community alive

There is no way to just sit back, wait for a figure to just magically appear with all of V4's strengths and content _and_ modern improvements, and have the community continue. There just isn't. As in Tetris, not making a decision is making a decision. And as sad as I'd be to see the Poser community go, if that's what people want, I totally understand. I just want that to be a conscious decision. And when I see Poser users simultaneously say, "I want new Poser content," and "I want to keep using V4, because I don't want to invest in a new figure," it seems to me they don't understand that they are creating the lack of content with their decision not to invest in a new figure.

DS users are buying content. Poser users aren't. So Poser vendors are switching to DS. It's that simple.

. The default body skin shaders are using the Poser Surface root, with the pesky Alternate Diffuse channel.

Just to let people know, the Alternate Diffuse channel is the _only_ channel that you can feed any type of scattering node into and have that node render properly. If you are making a Firefly PoserSurface with scattering, you should use the Alternate Diffuse input. Otherwise, the scattering node will render incorrectly. That isn't to say it will render badly or not as you want it, because you might like it better. Just letting people know how things are designed to work.

 

[Male-M3dia]

Really the matter was closed on this days ago, and I stand by what I said. Everything you've mentioned may work with a V4, but there's a shift in development when using low poly figures.

Let's get back to La Femme.

 

[Ken1171]

Yes, BUT!
If you look into the expression files, you will find ALL the channels here. I.e. all your translations and scalings will be nulled the moment you apply any other (default) expression!
(Rendering now, could not try it this moment.)
It was incorrect. It will work.
From Blackhearted:
If you need this to work in a distributable morph, you will need to edit the pose .pz2 file to include the translations since it does not include these by default. You can do this by saving your morph first as a character (.cr2), and then saving as a pose (.pz2), and then copying the relevant x/y/z trans settings from the .cr2 to the .pz2. This is most easily accomplished using some kindof poser editing app like Poser File Editor from Dimension3D, but it can be done the oldskool way in notepad...

DialManager from Netherworks should help too. But, in my understanding, you still have to combine this pose and INJ file by hands. Assuming the character in question is a combination of spun dials, translations, and morphing.

Yes, I was just thinking about the handle translations not being saved with the facial expression presets because, well, they are not morphs. However, what if we save them as poses (PZ2s), and enable the "include morphs"? We can filter the morphs only to include the head ones, and also only the head joints. Not sure if Poser would understand the facial bone rigging as a "pose", but that's worth a try.

Just to let people know, the Alternate Diffuse channel is the _only_ channel that you can feed any type of scattering node into and have that node render properly. If you are making a Firefly PoserSurface with scattering, you should use the Alternate Diffuse input. Otherwise, the scattering node will render incorrectly.

I know, I've mentioned at the end of that post that I've used the wrong materials when I did that render. I didn't know there were PBR shaders included that used the Physical Surface. It was silly because I only realized there were Cycles shaders available after that render, so I did a lot of extra work for nothing. LOL

I would _love_ to agree with Ken1171 about multiple figure bases in Poser. That was certainly the way I was thinking until very recently. But frankly, I don't think that's going to work.

What I meant was that different people like different figures, not that every CA should support all possible figures. What CAs will support will depend a lot of what figures people decide to use the most, like the simple supply and demand market rule. In other words, people should be able to choose from different figures from different makers, and CAs will just follow the money. I am not talking about something new, but just how it already used to be before DAZ stepped in with free figures, leading to basically all existing figures that cost more than zero dollars to go out of business overnight. Some may not remember this, but in that time, more figures also meant more independent markets and makers, leading to more content variety, generating much more booming markets than we have today.

It has been so long (a decade and a half) ago that people have just coped with always buying from the same figure maker, which is very different from what used to be the norm back then. It was people's decisions that have shaped the market as it is today: less makers and way less markets available. They wrote that on stone when they decided to quit buying figures made by other people because they were not free. People speak out how they WANT the market to be, but their actions in the real world is what shapes it in the end. As it stands, all we have to do is to look back in history to realize what they claim to want is not how they have been acting upon to shape the future.

But besides all that, there were also real world conditions that were beyond people's wishes and hopes, like for example, the market split, driving DS to become increasingly incompatible with Poser, and also the subsequent lack of artists to fill the blanks when DAZ departed from Poser contents. Like many have stated here in the HW forums (me included), they would have abandoned this market if HW hasn't showed up when they did. Add to that SMS' inability to recognize they were not capable of filling that gap. There was a massive number of people telling SMS that they should concentrate on making Poser better instead. Nonetheless, here we are with Paul and Pauline released with Poser 11 - another example of ill-invested time and money.

And here comes the punchline: LaFemme is what everybody was asking for. SMS quit trying to do it themselves and let other people with proper skills do it. It's what people have been asking for ages. They asked for it, and they got it. No one questions the credentials of those who created LF, and they have walked the extra mile to incorporate all the new Poser 11 bells and whistles. How can anyone complain about that now? There is some controversy about the topology, but the rest seems solid. In the end, it will [again] be people's actions that will shape the future, and not so much what they say. History has shown that these 2 things tend to be very different in this market.

They SAY they want more contents, but they don't buy them to support the vendors. Instead, they wait for sales, slowly choking the vendors, forcing them to move on and leave this market. There aren't many Poser vendors left, and the community is not showing them much love either. Here again, it will always be people's actions that will shape the future, not so much what they say. This is true for any market. Looking back into the past, more figures meant more businesses, more variety, and a booming market. Now we have fewer makers, fewer figures, fewer stores left, and a failing market. What's the relationship? In any economy, if people can only buy all the products from a couple of stores, it's not healthy. It seems to approximate George Orwell's "1984" dystopia. Therefore more figures from different makers seems like a good thing. At least it was in the past.

 

[phdubrov]

Not sure if Poser would understand the facial bone rigging as a "pose", but that's worth a try.

Yes, would. Checked it.
Plus, as I said, Dial Manager allows saving any combination of dials...
Minus side: if making a character this way - included morphs, translation dials, refinement - last part could only be done via Morph Tool or ZBrush. Just like with SubD morphs.
Don't want to call it HD morphs, many of them can happily live on SubD 1 level, which is ~100k only.
Or making SubD 0 level morphs needed for the refinement one by one in an external modeller, but on the default obj.
At least this is how I understand it now and hope to be wrong.

 

[Ken1171]

Yes, would. Checked it.
Plus, as I said, Dial Manager allows saving any combination of dials...
Minus side: if making a character this way - included morphs, translation dials, refinement - last part could only be done via Morph Tool or ZBrush. Just like with SubD morphs.
Don't want to call it HD morphs, many of them can happily live on SubD 1 level, which is ~100k only.
Or making SubD 0 level morphs needed for the refinement one by one in an external modeller, but on the default obj.
At least this is how I understand it now and hope to be wrong.

Sounds good to me! ^^