I want everyone to understand I am not defending anyone nor attempting to defend anyone, however, I would like to point out that neither SMS or Hivewire (as far as I know) have sold their stores, but merely closed them. To that end, they pretty much would HAVE to tell the vendors what they are doing.
Fair point. That is just to show how fragile we are as vendors in this market.
Sadly, as related by Ken, if they did go that route they would starve! I go to the Poser only New Products page every day. I see maybe ONE new product there and most of it is either fantasy buildings or machinery or environment sets I have no use for. MOST of the clothing for L'Homme and La'Femme are lacking in detail so I pass on most of that too. It's a sad state!
Looking back when DAZ started, they had barely any native contents, and DS was barely functional. But they have turned things around. Considering Rendo is quite experienced in this market, it's now their turn to try to turn it around again. If they want Poser to succeed and recover the position it once had in this market, this is something they just have to do. It's not optional.
However, DAZ had years of head start on figure creation, so they have the edge on that. LaFemme was a decent start, but she is not up to my standards with that kind of topology (or lack of). I am putting my hopes on Dawn 2.0 as the next big thing, but then it will depend if Rendo will see her as competition and fight her back. It has happened before with DawnSE. The difference is that now Rendo owns Poser, so fighting Dawn 2.0 might be suicidal at this point. The Poser community tends to be quite divided, and it cannot win like that.
I jumped ship from DS to Poser after years and years of saying "I hate the UI" I still do for the most part, it would be nice to have OPTIONS to change up the UI more like colorizing the UI to ones desires or having the code rewritten to change out the light and outdated clunky camera/movement control modules.
I would like to mention that SMS had completely revamped and modernized the Poser interface by adopting the WX framework, which is modern, modular, dockable, and customizable. And what's more - for the first time, this allows Python developers to create tools that will natively dock into Poser because WX also exists in Python. This was never possible before. There are always things that could improve, but I believe the new Poser interface is as modern as it gets. For the sake of fairness, I have heard as many complains about the Poser interface as I have for the DS one. Many hate the zBrush interface, but still use it nonetheless. I guess it's a matter of getting used to it.
Truthfully I love L'Homme almost as much as I loved Genesis 8 Male so it's not that Poser is lacking good quality figures namely La'Femme, L'Homme, Duck, Dawn, Luna but it's folks wanting and willing to make stuff for them to keep the market green. BUT In My Opinion DS is robust, customizable and their figures, technically, are better in allot of ways. Realism seems to be the bottom line for allot of users, new and old. You have to REALLY work hard in Poser to achieve that. Folks want things easier, which is more pressure on the published artist but that's the game I guess!
I believe DAZ figures used to be good in the past, up to Genesis 2, when figures were still meant for this market. Then DAZ decided to go mobile with their new Morph3D company, dedicated to creating real-time 3D avatars for the mobile market. For that, they had to convert their figures into real-time low poly game models, with sacrifices on the rigging, mesh topology, and poly count. These are no longer targeting this market anymore, and I was never Ok with that. It ended up that Morph3D didn't succeed, but for what matters, Genesis 3 and 8 were already compromised.
Some people get mad when I say that these are game models, but hey, I am a professional game developer, and I know a game model when I see one. Simple-bone rigging is primarily required in real-time game engines, as well as simplified topology and low poly meshes. It's all there, but people refuse to see it for what it is. It has been a long time these figures were no longer designed for this market, so it's not for me. I have actually predicted this would happen way before Genesis 3 was released, ditching TriAx in favor of simple-bone game engine rigging. I wrote articles warning people that DAZ would eventually turn to the gaming market because they have been trying for years (no secret).
Having participated in the design and making of Dawn 2.0 with Chris and Paul, I can see her being a proper figure for this market because, as opposed to the current DAZ figures, she was designed for us, and not some other market we have nothing to do with. Her rigging is still TriAX, and not game engine simple-bone with all of its limitations. Her topology is by the book, and her poly count was not sacrificed for the sake of some game engine we have nothing to do with. I want a figure that was designed for US and this market. For that matter, DAZ can't give us that anymore. That fate was sealed when they ditched TriAx, when their attention was turned to the real-time mobile market, and not us anymore.
Therefore, having that said, I am putting my bets on Dawn 2.0 because she was made for THIS market - for us.
