I am coming into this a little late, but it took me a while to backtrack over 5 pages. I saw some comments that I would like to clarify, because it's something I have personally gone through here at HW. Those are legit concerns, and I am happy they were brought out.
* If we made a Poser product, and then want to make a DS version, is it the same, or perhaps less work than making the original?
This is a tricky question. It depends. If it's a prop, or poses, then the answer is YES, it's quicker to make the DS version - assuming you already know how to use DS. If you are new to DS, then NO, you will spend a lot of time fumbling around trying to figure things out, where DS offers way less documentation for content creators to get started with. I guess this is a major issue for people coming from Poser to DS - lack of proper documentation.
Most commercially sold DS tutorials for CAs are already outdated, and chances are you will get stuck even if you buy them. This is because DS changes from one version to the next patch or update. Things change place, name, or the way they work without notice. This is not to say that DS is "bad", but instead that it's harder to learn without proper documentation. As a matter of fact, there are things I like better in DS, and some are better in Poser. None is better in everything. I just wanted to say that it was rather painful for me to learn DS because the information was *hard* to come by, and I had a product to deliver. Very frustrating.
If the product is conforming clothing and materials, then the answer is NO. I have seen some of you mentioning that the models and textures are already created, so that's about it. Unfortunately NO, the bulk of the work is in the rigging, the morphs, the JCMs, and converting the materials. All these things are incompatible between the two programs - period. There is no such thing as a "conversion" - be it from Poser to DS or vice-versa. Once the initial DUF or CR2 is created, that is just the starting point for a lengthy process. I believe most CAs are stronger in one program than the other, so creating a native bullet-proof product in a program you are not quite at home with will take LONGER. At least it does with me - I can't talk for everyone.
If you have created a Poser product and want to bring it to DS, the barriers are bigger than doing the opposite. This is because Poser doesn't support Unimesh geometry internally, and it WILL destroy your OBJ if you let it create the body groups for you (auto-group). Once the OBJ has been compromised, you can't bring it into DS because it expects geometry to be Unimesh (single piece geometry). Poser will break each body group into a separate mesh if you let it, and DS doesn't like that. You will run into a series of problems if you try to force it that way.
If you created a DS product, and want to bring it into Poser, that's an easier process, because DS will preserve your geometry in one piece, which will give you better results in Poser too, unless you let it auto-group it, for then you will get a broken OBJ again. Everything exported from Poser will have broken, non-Unimesh geometry, and that is that. This makes it impossible to export morphs from Poser to DS, because the mesh will have different number of vertexes and vertex order. We can export morphs from DS to Poser, but not from Poser to DS if your geometry is preserved in one piece (as it should be). The solution to this is to create our Poser morphs in an external program, which is a waste when we have the Morphing Tool built in.
Materials will NOT just "convert" between the programs. Basically all bump, normal, specular, and displacement maps will be ignored in the transition. All procedural or native Poser/DS shader nodes will be lost. All greyscale maps from Poser are incompatible with DS, because in Poser the base level for greyscale is zero, while in DS it is 127. This means you will have to necessarily redo all your shaders, unless all you have used is a diffuse map. Not to mention Superfly and I-ray. I was hugely frustrated in my first attempts to create I-ray materials. Here again, where is the proper documentation for MDL shaders for I-ray? I am not referring to the user-level help files, but instead a vendor-level shader creation documentation. I don't know if there is some nowadays, but when I tried there was none to be found.
Against all odds, and with some sacrifice, I have personally taken the burden to learn DS anyway I could, and have released all products for Poser and DS in proper native formats from 2013-2016. I have acquired the knowledge and skills to have it done. Then the issue of pricing came up. How do I price or sell the products in 2 versions? Most people don't know this, but it was rather painful to have a Poser version ready for store that was being held back by a DS version that was, more often than not, taking more than DOUBLE the amount of time to make it bullet-proof in DS. Why? Well, it's the old story - information at content creation level was HARD to come by, and I was getting stuck at one point or another. When something is scarce and rare, it becomes valuable, so people who had the information were often not willing to share it. It was hard for them to get it as well. In other words, creating for DS was rather unpleasant in such circumstances, and sometimes even hostile. Maybe one day learning DS will be easier and people will learn to share the knowledge, but we are far from that as it is. I am not saying that DS is hard to learn because it's a difficult program, but instead that the INFO is hard to come by. It's almost like there is a secrecy around it, which is what happens when something becomes rare.
I know this is getting long enough as it is, but this is to show that even a simple question like the one above doesn't have a simple short answer. So how do we price something that was so difficult for me to create? The answer is - the same as the Poser version. Oh, but it took me so much more time and effort to create the other version, and I have to sell it for the SAME price, or even combine both versions for a slightly higher price? YES. Wouldn't this mean I have worked for more than half the time for free? YES. Bummer.
So all this discussion about being compensated for the extra work is meaningless. Customers will not accept a higher price, no matter how much work we put into it. Like Lisa said, there are vendors who accept this fact, and some who don't. HW does not force anyone to create both versions. That is completely up to the vendor. I have initially thought that making both versions would increase sales, because in theory, that makes sense. But the reality was that my DS versions sold quite poorly at HW - probably because most DS users go "home" to buy DS products, where they have an entire market just for them. I made my accounting after 3+ years and came to the conclusion that making both versions was consuming me as an artist, and I had to stop if I wanted to stay creative. Sales-wise it didn't pay off, and the extra work was hindering my store. I could be making more and better products if I quit trying to make it work everywhere.
I understand there will always be customers who believe there is a magic button that converts things between programs, and that is that, but the reality of things is quite different. There are simple ways to do a quick-n-dirty conversion, but that can only be used for personal use. Bullet-proof store quality will take much more than just that. I know I can convert a simple outfit in minutes, but that is only good enough for personal use. And if you are converting from Poser to DS, and you let Poser create the OBJ, things will get ugly at some point.
So does it pay off to sell products for both platforms? If your sales are paying off, then YES. Otherwise NO. Making both versions is by no means a guarantee of increased sales. At least it wasn't for me in the 3+ years I have tried. Some vendors are willing to live with that, and some are not. It's completely up to you. I am speculating here, but one possible reason why my DS products didn't sell at HW was because the market has become polarized to a point where the bulk of DS users may not feel the need to "leave home", so they don't shop here. It's a matter of free market offer and demand. If my DS versions don't sell here, I stop making them, especially when they were holding my store back. As a matter of fact, many of you might have noticed that I now produce MUCH more products than before, and faster, too. As a content creator, I also feel happier because I almost never get stuck in Poser for lack of info.
Please take all of the above into consideration, and see that things are not as simple as it might seem at a first glance. It's not just a matter of simply deciding to support both platforms, and then it just magically happens and everybody is happy. There is a chance that the market is broken and polarized, and nothing I could have done differently here would change the outcome that my DS products didn't sell. Some factors are beyond us, but I am happy I can now look back and know that I have at least tried for years (with considerable sacrifice) before I stopped.
