Content Paradise is shutting down

[Ken1171]

I think Ken is referring to this thread just for clarification:
Dawn in Reallusion CC3!

Shoot! That's right! I was referring to that other thread, sorry for the crosstalk.

Tbh Ken I can't really see anything new that the Reallusion suite brings then what already exists for content creators when using a suite of apps such as a 3D modeller, Zbrush and DS/Poser. Near realtime PBR previews are already available with DS for example. What do you feel that is in there that will give an advantage to content creators to entice them to the new platform/marketplace? I agree CC3 does look nice though, but I am just trying to add up what really would make both the consumer market and the Content creator market make such a big jump. Sure some of the automated LOD workflow looks good but it is very games content creator specialised.

For starters, I really love the I-ray preview mode in DS, but that's not the same as real-time PBR. In DS we still have to wait for the noise to clear if you want to make animations. I think I-ray does a very good job clearing noise, but it's definitely not real-time. What iClone uses is similar to what we have with Marmoset Toolbag, which also features real-time PBR. There are pros and cons to that, because it's PBR, but it doesn't have all the features. For example, it cannot do things that require raytracing, like mutual reflections of multiple objects in the scene. Each object can reflect the environment, but not each other. This may be compensated with the new RTX generation of nVidia video cards, which claim to be able to perform real-time raytracing, but I think that will be perfected in the next iteration of cards, not in the current.

iClone 6 and 7 have included amazing features not found in Poser/DS, such as (but not limited to):

* native support for SpeedTrees industry standard
* native support for DirectX11 real-time tessellation
* native support for Substance PBR dynamic materials
* real-time PBR visualization (not the same as I-ray previews)
* native support for PopcornFX particles (amazing PBR stuff in real-time!!)
* Support for hands/fingers, facial, and full body mocap with unified plugin architecture
* IK with automatic floor contact detection - massively missed in Poser/DS
* real-tine cloth and hair simulations

Those are some of the things that popped out of my head at the moment that I know Poser/DS don't have, but I wish they did. I could mention real-time physics with both nVidia PhysX and Bullet engine, but Poser also has the built-in Bullet engine, and DS just got it's new physics engine recently, so that doesn't count. Poser supports full body mocap, but not in the same level, and lacks facial and hands capture. Not sure if DS supports it at all. More recently, iClone has included new plugins that can mocap hands and face with dedicated solutions, where both are markerless.

Whether or not a feature may or may not be used to create contents for use in other platforms is a different story. As far as I am concerned, I only use the stuff in iClone itself. At the moment I don't care about exporting to game engines, though I might want to check into that in the future. Until now that has been completely irrelevant to me. I only care for what I can do with all the features in iClone itself.

 

[Stezza]

a lot of CP stuff works in Carrara... none of which are in this render which was done in Carrara

 

[Miss B]

Nice job on the newspaper headline Stezza.

 

[LisaB]

Many posts will be disappearing from this thread today. Not exactly what I enjoy doing on a Sunday morning.

Perhaps before pushing the button to share thoughts/opinions/perspectives there could be a pause and a question asked; "Does what I have written contribute to the problem or is it part of a solution?" If it's not part of a solution, don't post it.

Simple, right?

 

[Hornet3d]

Many posts will be disappearing from this thread today. Not exactly what I enjoy doing on a Sunday morning.

Perhaps before pushing the button to share thoughts/opinions/perspectives there could be a pause and a question asked; "Does what I have written contribute to the problem or is it part of a solution?" If it's not part of a solution, don't post it.

Simple, right?

My apologies if I helped to spoil your Sunday morning. I will do my very best to take your advice and if I am not sure I will not post.

 

[carmen indorato]

I get a bit of a whiff that some are pitching CC3 as some kind of Poser/DS killer, which I am pretty sceptical about tbh, but really who knows for sure. On the content side it could be a bit of a worry for those that do love those platforms (DS/Poser), especially if vendors shift their focus on content designed specifically for CC3 which could mean less content available for those already established and much loved platforms. Hopefully though we will be looking at more of an expansion of market for content creators meaning more content in general, and less of a shift to a new paradigm that excludes DS/Poser. TBH from the tool set available CC3 is looking pretty much like a Game pipeline app and less of a scene compositor such as DS or Poser. I guess that is where Iclone 7 would come in, but from what I can tell it has already been on the market for quite a while with compatibility with existing content and hasn't made much of dent in existing Poser/DS user base(Except maybe with animators). A lot of people who do use it, tend to use it alongside Poser or DS and the associated content available from their supporting marketplaces.

The Iray support is interesting, I wonder how easy it will be to translate material setups from DS Iray through to CC3 assets.

Paradigm shift in action today: Renderosity is selling less and less new great product for Poser and more and more new great product for D/S. If another player comes onto the scene i am sure that paradigm as you put it will shift again.

 

[carmen indorato]

Hello, Carmen Indorato. I think Terre grossly overestimates my ability to be helpful, but I'll give it a go. As I understand it, when you install Poser onto your Mac, Safari is what it is designed to use for browsing the library no matter what your preferred browser is. And, it insists on having Flash, despite everything else. So, basically, as long as your Safari and Poser agree, and Flash is updated *for Safari Mac*, you should be good. However, you CAN run the library without either. You just go into preferences and click library, then click launch behavior to "external". It will give you your runtimes, but it won't dock.

The other thing which can bugger up your Poser on Mac is your virus protection. I use 'webroot', and it prevents me from doing multiple selections and a few other minor things which are annoying but not critical.

I'll tell you, the thing I hate about having issues with Poser on a Mac is the amount of Help which explains carefully and in detail *why* the problem is happening rather than to say 'here's how to fix it, ya nit wit'. It took me days to figure out I'd hobbled Poser by trying to get rid of Flash!

Okay, sorry for the thread entropy. Uhmmm... boo CP gone, Hoping for something new and cool? :3

If I do that won't it create that stupid invisible file Poser asks for every time you save files out with that function activated? That is a pain in the heinie i no longer want to deal with....far, far worse for me than Flash having to be renewed every so often.

 

[carmen indorato]

Many posts will be disappearing from this thread today. Not exactly what I enjoy doing on a Sunday morning.

Perhaps before pushing the button to share thoughts/opinions/perspectives there could be a pause and a question asked; "Does what I have written contribute to the problem or is it part of a solution?" If it's not part of a solution, don't post it.

Simple, right?

Hi.
Would be simple as you put it if we could use longer messages in the site mail postings. I would just prefer messaging someone for this kind of help that dropping it on an existing thread on other subjects....like this. If something like this is tried in mail posting it refuses to allow more that some 400 characters (or something like that) in the message. makes complex information thread impossible to carry on. I recall contacting you on that some time ago but never heard back from you dear. With that said I apologize for this post!

 

[LisaB]

Hi.
Would be simple as you put it if we could use longer messages in the site mail postings. I would just prefer messaging someone for this kind of help that dropping it on an existing thread on other subjects....like this. If something like this is tried in mail posting it refuses to allow more that some 400 characters (or something like that) in the message. makes complex information thread impossible to carry on. I recall contacting you on that some time ago but never heard back from you dear. With that said I apologize for this post!

My apologies if I did not get back to you on that. I thought that I had. If by "Site Mail" you are referring to what are called "Conversations" in this forum, there is no limit on how many characters that can be entered into the field. If there is a limit being set that can be manually controlled, I cannot find it.

 

[Miss B]

I've never been aware of a limit to the amount of words/characters in a Conversation/Site Mail either. I do a fair amount of beta testing, and I'm always posting messages and renders/screenshots all the time, and have never gotten a message saying it can't be saved because it's too long.

 

[Hornet3d]

Paradigm shift in action today: Renderosity is selling less and less new great product for Poser and more and more new great product for D/S. If another player comes onto the scene i am sure that paradigm as you put it will shift again.

That is a trend that has been in progress for some time now, not just at Renderosity, as more vendors move away from Poser. Each time a marketplace closes there are some vendors who just do not bother to move their products, it happened when RDNA closed and I am sure it will happen again with the closure of CP. I don't like the closure or the reduced number of vendors providing Posers versions but the flip side of the coin is that I can concentrate my hobby spending on the dwindling number of vendors who do. Who knows it could turn out to be a lucrative market for the few vendors that stick with Poser.

The other possibility is that more and more Poser users will attempt to be self sufficient. When I first started many years ago I would often buy lighting sets, characters and material collections particularly for hair products. Such purchases are very rare these days, for the best part of three years none of my purchase were in these areas. More recently I have purchased some HDR collections and general superfly materials but now I have a good selection I can play with them to create variations and those purchases will fade out. I haven't purchased a character since I started using Dawn SE, preferring to buy morphs packs and dial spin my own. That leaves just clothes, scenes and the occasional props as the areas where my money goes. With the reduced amount of poser content I tend to save and wait for a sale to buy either new Poser content or content from a few years ago that I would not have paid the price for. I play a lot in the material room re-texturing a lot of the content so that I get more use of it. Having at least reached the point I can play in the material room with some success I may now need to look at modelling a little more.

I still see the closure of CP as a sad day but there are ways that the reduced Poser market does not have to mean the death of Poser.

 

[Hornet3d]

I've never been aware of a limit to the amount of words/characters in a Conversation/Site Mail either. I do a fair amount of beta testing, and I'm always posting messages and renders/screenshots all the time, and have never gotten a message saying it can't be saved because it's too long.

I have had the same experience and I have had some very long discussions in the past without ever hitting any limit. Such long discussions are quite rare now as most the people I had such conversations with are now longer in the forums..........I wonder if there is some sort of connection.

 

[Hornet3d]

Hi.
Would be simple as you put it if we could use longer messages in the site mail postings. I would just prefer messaging someone for this kind of help that dropping it on an existing thread on other subjects....like this. If something like this is tried in mail posting it refuses to allow more that some 400 characters (or something like that) in the message. makes complex information thread impossible to carry on. I recall contacting you on that some time ago but never heard back from you dear. With that said I apologize for this post!

I have not seen a limit but you make a valid point, if you really do have a burning issue you can take it away from the forum. There is the problem that it very quickly reaches the point where neither side is likely to convince the other and at that point it becomes a waste of time but at least they are the only ones wasting it.

 

[Miss B]

I don't know of any connection Hornet, other than in my case, I'm a Community Volunteer, but that shouldn't make any difference as far as creating a long-winded conversation goes.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I took it to mean that Hornet wondered if he'd driven people away by his long conversations

 

[Hornet3d]

I took it to mean that Hornet wondered if he'd driven people away by his long conversations

I think that was what I meant but then I do have a bad memory so who knows, at least I think I have a bad memory I just can't remember if it is true or not.

 

[Ken1171]

As far as Rendo selling less contents for Poser, it is natural for markets to fluctuate over time. However, I believe it was SMS' responsibility to place Poser in the market and maintain focus on it, but they haven't been doing such a great job from the very beginning (since Poser 7). I look at the awesome features they have been adding to Poser in all this years, and can't help noticing the poor advertising they got. On one hand, sometimes DAZ tends to exaggerate the value of things in their ads, and on the other I see SMS undervaluing new features, failing to project their deserved attention to the public.

This observation became more obvious to me when people go to the SMS forums to post a feature suggestion, not knowing Poser already has it. Some people come to complain that Poser cannot do something, just because they didn't know it actually can. In Nerd3D's last webinar at Digital Art, he demonstrated a few ingenious techniques he used on the making of the RWBY's first season, where even I was surprised because I thought I already knew everything there was to know about what can be done with Poser magnets. He combined magnets with the Bullet engine to create real-time dynamic hair in Poser that doesn't need the Hair Room!

I believe some of the main reasons Poser vendors may be loosing motivation may be related to Smith Micro's:

* Poor Poser promotion
* Fail to advertise Poser features
* Fail to position Poser in the market
* Fail to acknowledge the competition and act accordingly

There were several occasions when I have observed SMS acting as if they were still alone in the market with no competition. That was true in the first decade before SMS acquired Poser, but things have changed, and their strategy needs to change accordingly. It has become frequent to hear Poser users complaining that it is falling behind the competition at the SMS forums, with a some people getting mad on it. This doesn't come from looking at Poser alone in the market, but by comparing it with the competition. SMS made it basically a taboo to ever compare it to DAZ Studio, claiming it's made by another company and "we have nothing to do with that". I think that's the kind of attitude that has placed Poser in the situation it finds itself nowadays.

We also have to consider SMS' recent financial crisis, with dev teams being fired, a dwindling tech support, the unannounced end of the Poser "Insiders" and "Beta" programs, and the development of Poser 12 going silent for a whole year. This is not a "normal" situation, but it definitely has an impact on Poser vendors confidence and motivation.

 

[Deleted member 325]

Nerd3D's last webinar at Digital Art, he demonstrated a few ingenious techniques ...about what can be done with Poser magnets. He combined magnets with the Bullet engine to create real-time dynamic hair in Poser that doesn't need the Hair Room!

By any chance is there video of this webinar for those of us who missed it? I can't really do webinars because of poor internet access most of the time - and I would very much be interested in these techniques. I already use Magnets a lot on Hair, trees, plants, clothes, etc... to add more movement for animation - but would love to know more specifics about using them with Poser Physics for further enhancements.

 

[Alisa]

It's for sale in the store:

Mastering Magnets in Poser - A Digital Art Live/Nerd 3D Creation at HiveWire 3D

eta...it was done through Digital Art Live, so was not a free SM webinar.

 

[Hornet3d]

It's for sale in the store:

Mastering Magnets in Poser - A Digital Art Live/Nerd 3D Creation at HiveWire 3D

eta...it was done through Digital Art Live, so was not a free SM webinar.

I found it a fascinating video and it really open my eyes up to the potential of magnets and the realisation I had only scratched the surface. I have still not used all of the knowledge contained therein but these days I do not pick stuff up so quick so it is resource I have to go back to time and again and practice another skill until my poor brain takes it on board. Never regretted buying it though.