I do not like the direction this thread is taking. Why are we rehashing the past in this thread about HiveWire moving forward a bit differently? What is the purpose of speculating about things that may or may not happen? None of us have a crystal ball. Seems to me that time would be better invested in creating vs speculating and rehashing.
I apologize for upsetting you. I was responding largely to this:
And yes, since someone is bound to bring it up again, that may very well require rebuilding Poser with proper unimesh support. Honestly, they'll have to do it sooner or later anyway if they don't want to be relegated as a "legacy" product. It's going to take awhile, likely a few years to get it altogether, so it'd be best to bite the bullet and start the work ASAP.
And more generally to the preceding back and forth about Rendo and DS products. Or more widely, a content community that supports two (or more) pieces of very, very different software. I'm just saying that I think we should look forward, and let those platforms naturally diverge without shaming anyone for working in one and not the other. And that Poser customers need to support modern Poser figures, like the HiveWire3D family, La Femme, and Ero, rather than wait for Poser development to follow behind DS development.
I only brought up the past as a reason to look forward, wishing all the developers good luck on their divergent paths.
Wouldn't the amount of content be determined primarily by the vendors and what software they're using?
What determines content is demand and sales. Because once most vendors have an established workflow on a platform, the core of their work is (for models) in their modeler and texturing tool of choice. Most content creators' primary love is working in their modeling, sculpting, or texturing tool(s), not the final software platform or figure they publish to. Which means that every hour spent working on a version that sells less rather than a version that will sell the most loses money.
People often say, "Why not make version X supporting [insert figure or platfom here] and make more money?" The problem with this logic is it ignores any other products the vendor makes. And it implicitly assumes that porting content is simple, easy, and fast, when it in fact doubles every aspect of your work except the part you love most. A new version will still need publishing to a platform, testing yourself, overseeing beta testing, doing promo renders and writing promo text, promoting the new version, packaging everything, etc. The only thing you _don't_ have to do is the part that makes all that other stuff worthwhile.
It's a whole lot easier and more lucrative for most vendors to just pick a single workflow and spend that time on a new product rather than a lower-selling version of an existing product. More importantly, it's more _fun_.
Demand drives the what vendors publish for. This is why many of today's DS-only vendors were yesterday's Poser-only vendors.
Yeah a great concept but for many like me it is also a real great matter of INVESTMENT! For those like me heavily invested in Mil4 figures or animals creatures and sets that work in Poser to re-invest in figures that work in D/S is not a clear solution.
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear in this, either. I was (and am) saying that Poser customers need to invest in new Poser figures if they want new Poser content. Invest in them and show them off.
I genuinely get not being able to afford much in the way of indulgences. I really, truly get that. I also get wanting to stick with a figure you've invested _so_ much in. My own V4 library is huge. I also get wanting to stick with the certainty of popular DAZ figures. I get why the community still clings to both older figures and DAZ figures. But for the Poser content community, and Poser itself, to survive, Poser content customers must invest in new content for modern figures. Holding back might feel safer, but en masse (not putting this on any one person _at all_; you do what you need to), it's slowly strangling the community.
Ken1171 can't do it for all of us.
And now I'll get back to Blender's #Nodevember and working on a set of materials for Poser.