Off topic stuff moved from "Refining Our Direction at HiveWire 3D" thread

[Rowan54]

La Femme still has no male counterpart

L'Homme.....in the works. (I don't have either one....just passing on information.)

 

[Semicharm]

@Ken1171 In that respect, Renderosity is in a worse position than Daz was when they shifted to favoring Genesis and DS. Daz had a larger range of items that were at least compatible with DS and their own first party figures. Renderosity dropping support of DS products would cut half their store, and dropping Daz figures would cut that at least in half again. That's where the "foundation" I mentioned earlier comes in. Daz had one when they made the move, Renderosity doesn't have that yet...if they desired to make a similar move.

To be honest, I hope they don't. I really appreciate that Renderosity offers a refuge for those who may like Daz figures, but don't like dealing with the company.

 

[Ken1171]

@Semicharm I don't quite follow the part about cutting the profits by half twice. I am not sure if Rendo sells DAZ figures, or if that's exclusive to DAZ, but people only buy the figures once. I imagine the bulk of the sales are about contents, not the figures. And about that, some claim the MAJORITY of Rendo contents are for DS, but I don't really know. We can't consider Millennium 4 (V4, M4, G4, A4, etc) contents being strictly for DS, since they are native in Poser. Those figures would probably remain because of that, I assume. This wouldn't be a strict boycott to DAZ as a company, but instead to figures that only work in DS. I am guessing here, and there is no way to know if this is how it would be, or if it would happen at all, but most other significant parties have already gone that way.

That kind of establishes a trend that was actually started by DAZ. I am only saying that I wouldn't be totally surprised if Rendo went that way as well. In the meanwhile, they are one remaining exception if you know what I mean. Now that they own Poser, things might change.

 

[Semicharm]

@Ken1171 I checked before I commented eariler. While roughly 50% of Renderosity content is for DS, I've noticed that a they have a lot more Poser items than about a year ago. (I don't really hang out in the store that much, so I can't say when they'd reprioritized Poser content.) Even then, at least half of that is made for Daz figures or addons for content made for Daz figures. They have a ways to go before they could build a large enough foundation of in-house figures and content to realistically cut ties with DS or even become an exclusively first-party shop.

I know what you're saying about potential future plans, as I already addressed that in the comment you replied to. It's speculation and theories till there's an official word on the matter. Either way, they're working on bolstering support for Poser with new content, which is good for everyone on the Poser side of the fence. La Femme is a decent start, but she's going to need more morphs (or equivalent adjustments) and clothing that supports them. I've seen sooooo many figures come and go over the years, and that's where most fall short. Automated morph "transfers" to clothes are OK for small adjustments but often drop the ball on major changes. I can personally attest to that with my current project for La Femme. Similar tools in DS are hit and miss, but they have some products to pick up the slack. They've had a head start in that regard as well.

I'm rooting for Poser, but I'm also being realistic. As I mentioned before, IF they desired to make a similar move as Daz and others, it's not going to be in the near future.

 

[Ken1171]

@Semicharm Tell you the truth, I am pleasantly surprised if Poser contents have picked up at Rendo. If that has happened, I would imagine it was due to the Rendo-sponsored LF ads placed all over the site, and they got vendors to support her as well. Personally, I have tried the figure, and we didn't quite get along. I have tried sculpting her body, and I found myself fighting her grid-like topology (or lack of it) all the way through. I don't have that problem with Dawn, so it's a matter of figure design where someone decided it was OK to make LF with a grid-like topology. Not only that, but she doesn't even pose decently without layers of subdivision, due to a combination of low poly density and a lack of organic topology. I really tried, but I couldn't cope with that. LF is not for me, but I am happy if she's picking steam at Rendo, because Poser needs that.

Not sure if PE got some traction, though. Being heavy on poly count and the sheer number of JCMs, PE is not for everyone. Rigging conforming clothes is a challenge (I tried!), so most people are using dynamic cloth simulations, which is also not for everyone.

This is why I am eager to try the new Dawn. With the massive amount of improvements and design changes, I believe she will be a game-changer, and quite competitive in this crowded market. I already love DawnSE, and the new one will be something else.

 

[eclark1894]

Wouldn't the amount of content be determined primarily by the vendors and what software they're using?

 

[Ken1171]

Wouldn't the amount of content be determined primarily by the vendors and what software they're using?

That's a good question. Based on how it happened with V4, that may not always be the case. DAZ has released V4 as their new mainstream figure, and by that time there was little to no competition. Vendors supported her mostly because she was the only mainstream figure around at that time. Add to that that DAZ didn't release any new female figures for YEARS, which gave V4 the time to settle down and gather a LOT of contents. At that time, DAZ had released all figures for both Poser and DS using legacy rigging, so the entire community was supporting V4 at once. That time is now behind us, and is not coming back. Things have changed drastically.

Consider that V4 was by no means a perfect figure. She had serious posing problems, but the vendors community took care of that on their own by releasing several pose fixing patches. Things are very different now, where people expect figures to pose perfectly right off the bat, and there is competition out there.

But perhaps this new reality we now live on is a bit less symmetric when it comes to figure competition. DAZ had a decade of extra headway creating mainstream figures, while Poser was just making software. When DAZ departed from Poser contents, that left no one to fill the gap on the Poser side. SMS really tried, but we know how that went - they just couldn't catch up. In addition, SMS were a software retailer company, so they didn't really understand the importance of content for Poser. They just wanted to sell software, which led to the fall of Poser popularity and Content Paradise's demise.

The work of creating more Poser figures was left to initially to HW, and later also to indy vendors. The end result was Dawn, PE and LaFemme. This last one has become Rendo's sponsored figure, and later Poser's main figure. This means she shows everywhere across Rendo, and as they say, advertising is the soul of a business. Not surprisingly, LF has been picking steam at Rendo, and we can now see her product range increasing consistently. Since LF is a Poser-only figure, she got no backslash from DAZ, so she keeps progressing with little resistance. It was very different with Dawn.

So back to your question, I believe it's not only up to vendors and what software they use. There are a lot of factors involved.

 

[Semicharm]

@Ken1171 Interesting points about LF. She seems to pose well enough compared to other figures I've used. I often find shortcomings in "professional" poses and sometimes just do my own. I haven't used Dawn much. Till the recent refresh of Poser, I only had the original release of Dawn, which didn't give many morph options. I didn't have the cash to invest in content or morphs for a whole new figure at the time and without the morphs I didn't have much motivation to refit clothes for her either.

Though I've dabbled with morphs myself for personal projects, I'm not a professional designer. Now that you mention it, topology on LF is indeed going to be problematic for sculpting body morphs. That may be OK for toonish figures, but the textures and such imply a more "realistic" model. Hypothetically, they could do an update with the same general shape and bone rigging, to maintain compatibility with current items, but reform the mesh with a more anatomical topology. I don't see that happening, but who knows. They really need to do something if they seriously want a competitive and compelling flagship figure. I'm about finished with my LF project anyway. After that, we'll just have to see what happens.

 

[kobaltkween]

Rendo is still promoting DS content hard. I see no signs whatsoever of them slowing DS support, let alone halting it. From the DS's release, they (like many other brokerages) encouraged vendors to make cutting edge DS-only content, while discouraging vendors from selling Poser-only content.

Rendo is now actively promoting advanced Poser content, which is absolutely fabulous. But I don't see any evidence at all that they're not still promoting DS only content quite heavily, too. I certainly see no sign that they're even hinting at pushing against DS only content the way they used to push against Poser-only content. Hopefully we've finally entered a new world where we accept that Poser and DS are completely different pieces of software, and making content work in both isn't much easier than making it work in any random, standards compliant 3D software.

Frankly, I think it would help our community to look at content less passively in general. If we could look at the ways content made for the masses can't fit our particular project as the opportunity to play, explore, and learn.

There's no way Poser is going to start supporting DS content. Let's say they do it. Instead of doing anything actually beneficial for Poser and its users, they spend all their time and money trying to play catch-up with DAZ's technology. What will DAZ do? Update their tech to be incompatible, less able to be reverse engineered, and more dependent on their strengths.

I have _long_ said that DAZ was clear about needing to not make Poser content when they announced DS as a way to be independent of what happened to Poser. They could not be independent of the software's future but still dependent on the money from people who use the software. And I have long said that it really, truly makes sense that DAZ's developers want to do their own thing in their own way. The same is true of anyone who develops Poser. They're going to have their own ideas and their own goals, and it makes no sense for them to put all their time and effort into being someone else's lesser echo. The only reason DS and Poser are related at all is DS was originally designed (according to what DAZ said) to support Poser content.

It makes no more sense to talk about Genesis or Unimesh support in Poser than it does Vue content support in Poser. At this point, the people asking for it seem like the legacy, not Poser. Poser has great new, non-DAZ content, and has for years at this point. The people asking for things to go back to the way they were in the days of V4 when we're in the Vicky 8 days is ridiculous. Stop waiting and pick up a new figure. The community is what makes a figure great. It cannot happen without community buy in, literally.

 

[Miss B]

The only reason DS and Poser are related at all is DS was originally designed (according to what DAZ said) to support Poser content.

Oh, it did. My DS 2 (not on this laptop), and my DS 3 Advanced, both had 95% to 98% Poser compatible content in their Runtimes. I have all my Gen 4 content still in my DS 3A Runtime, and my P9 and PP11 Runtimes are for the "newer" content, such as Dawn, Dusk, Luna, and the rest of the HW family of characters. Although My PP11 Runtime is catching up, My DS 3 Advanced Runtime is still the largest. As long as Poser can access it, I'm good to go.

The DS specific content I used were products for the Millenium Environment, Multiplane Cyclorama and the like, which were specifically made for DS. My DS 4.0 Pro, which hasn't been updated since, only has my Genesis 1 content, since I didn't get into Genesis 2, 3 or 8.

 

[carmen indorato]

Rendo is still promoting DS content hard. I see no signs whatsoever of them slowing DS support, let alone halting it. From the DS's release, they (like many other brokerages) encouraged vendors to make cutting edge DS-only content, while discouraging vendors from selling Poser-only content.

Rendo is now actively promoting advanced Poser content, which is absolutely fabulous. But I don't see any evidence at all that they're not still promoting DS only content quite heavily, too. I certainly see no sign that they're even hinting at pushing against DS only content the way they used to push against Poser-only content. Hopefully we've finally entered a new world where we accept that Poser and DS are completely different pieces of software, and making content work in both isn't much easier than making it work in any random, standards compliant 3D software.

Frankly, I think it would help our community to look at content less passively in general. If we could look at the ways content made for the masses can't fit our particular project as the opportunity to play, explore, and learn.

There's no way Poser is going to start supporting DS content. Let's say they do it. Instead of doing anything actually beneficial for Poser and its users, they spend all their time and money trying to play catch-up with DAZ's technology. What will DAZ do? Update their tech to be incompatible, less able to be reverse engineered, and more dependent on their strengths.

I have _long_ said that DAZ was clear about needing to not make Poser content when they announced DS as a way to be independent of what happened to Poser. They could not be independent of the software's future but still dependent on the money from people who use the software. And I have long said that it really, truly makes sense that DAZ's developers want to do their own thing in their own way. The same is true of anyone who develops Poser. They're going to have their own ideas and their own goals, and it makes no sense for them to put all their time and effort into being someone else's lesser echo. The only reason DS and Poser are related at all is DS was originally designed (according to what DAZ said) to support Poser content.

It makes no more sense to talk about Genesis or Unimesh support in Poser than it does Vue content support in Poser. At this point, the people asking for it seem like the legacy, not Poser. Poser has great new, non-DAZ content, and has for years at this point. The people asking for things to go back to the way they were in the days of V4 when we're in the Vicky 8 days is ridiculous. Stop waiting and pick up a new figure. The community is what makes a figure great. It cannot happen without community buy in, literally.

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.

 

[Ken1171]

Hypothetically, they could do an update with the same general shape and bone rigging, to maintain compatibility with current items, but reform the mesh with a more anatomical topology.

That does sound like a good idea, but unfortunately, it is not possible. Changing even a single vertex would invalidate all existing morphs created for the figure. Once the figure is released and morphs are created for it, its topology is cast on stone.

I have _long_ said that DAZ was clear about needing to not make Poser content when they announced DS as a way to be independent of what happened to Poser.

Just to complement - for many years I used to believe DS was created because Poser was being bought and sold many times in a row, and DAZ wanted to be more independent from it. That was until Chris told me the actual reason was because Poser's owner company had decided to enter the content market with the creation of Content Paradise, which represented direct competition to DAZ. So it comes down that CP was the actual reason why DS was created. If only they knew that CP would never present serious competition to ANYONE, DS could have never existed.

 

[Janet]

I always figured it was because Poser was so buggy back then.

 

[LisaB]

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.

 

[Janet]

Let me just put this out there. I predict that in 10 years HiveWire will own both Daz Studio and Poser!

 

[LisaB]

Just to complement - for many years I used to believe DS was created because Poser was being bought and sold many times in a row, and DAZ wanted to be more independent from it. That was until Chris told me the actual reason was because Poser's owner company had decided to enter the content market with the creation of Content Paradise, which represented direct competition to DAZ. So it comes down that CP was the actual reason why DS was created. If only they knew that CP would never present serious competition to ANYONE, DS could have never existed.

You are stating this as absolute truth where it is not. There were many factors that led to Daz Studio being developed, not just the creation of CP. Chris talks about some of it in the spotlight interview published here in the forums.

Edited to add - perhaps we could step out of the box of the past a bit. The past has wisdom hidden in it that we can pack our pockets with as we step into the future. But we don't have to pull that wisdom out of our pockets every time something changes. If our hands are full of the past, how will we pick up the shiny objects that may appear on the path to the future which is yet unboxed and undefined?

 

[Ken1171]

You are stating this as absolute truth where it is not.

I am just stating what Chris has told me when I said I thought it was because Poser was being bought and sold so often. That's what I believed for many years, until Chris corrected me. So will we be censored for talking about the history of the hobby we love so much?

 

[kobaltkween]

Oh, it did. My DS 2 (not on this laptop), and my DS 3 Advanced, both had 95% to 98% Poser compatible content in their Runtimes. I have all my Gen 4 content still in my DS 3A Runtime, and my P9 and PP11 Runtimes are for the "newer" content, such as Dawn, Dusk, Luna, and the rest of the HW family of characters. Although My PP11 Runtime is catching up, My DS 3 Advanced Runtime is still the largest. As long as Poser can access it, I'm good to go.

The DS specific content I used were products for the Millenium Environment, Multiplane Cyclorama and the like, which were specifically made for DS. My DS 4.0 Pro, which hasn't been updated since, only has my Genesis 1 content, since I didn't get into Genesis 2, 3 or 8.

Oh, I know. Sorry, to be clear, I just meant that DAZ explicitly stated that was their initial goal for DS. I was trying to make the point that _I_ wasn't trying to characterize DS in a less independent way and was referring to a stated design objective, not trying to imply that DS wasn't actually able to do what they designed it to do.

I've been around long enough that I know _exactly_ how DS supported Poser content when it came out. And how many years it was late. I remember when DS SSS was through pwSurface. I actually did some pretty heavy DS material work back then, and gave up due to its rendering and shading limitations (no GC/linear workflow, at the time undocumented and buggy node support). Well, and shaming from some people I respected that I should have ignored at the time. At least on that subject.

I'm still pretty gun shy about DS materials. Materials already send me into tweak-render-tweak cycle I end up having to forcibly break myself out of. I don't find Iray materials hard for myself, but I have nearly zero faith in my ability to make anything complex for others. But I digress.

 

[kobaltkween]

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.

 

[Semicharm]

That does sound like a good idea, but unfortunately, it is not possible. Changing even a single vertex would invalidate all existing morphs created for the figure. Once the figure is released and morphs are created for it, its topology is cast on stone.

Nothing I said was about morphs. Furthermore, what you said isn't entirely true either. Changing the vertex count on one part, say an arm, does not affect the head or any other part because Poser uses fragmented "grouped" obj files. It's been that way for decades. You've certanly worked with Poser long enough to have figured that out by now.