Show Us Your Dawn Renders!

[quietrob]

It's that guy (Erogenesis) who recently moved from South Africa to the UK, which is why the figure development got delayed. I believe the beta program has started recently, after having missed the original release date in the first quarter of 2017. I like some of the design decisions, but I need to see the results myself before I jump to conclusions. Like I said, I am a hopeful skeptical.

The updates for Paul and Pauline are being beta-tested at SMS, and are not open to the public at this time. I personally believe the issues with these figures are at design-level, so updates might not help at this point. But we all know how important they are to SMS, to the point of them emailing us claiming that "Poser is not dead". Perhaps they forgot that HW has provided us with much better figures, and therefore I personally don't believe such Paul/Pauline updates are coming to "save Poser from dying" as they put it.

To me the problem is much simpler and straight-forward. Historically speaking, DAZ used to be the content provider for Poser. After the market split, SMS was left with no contents to offer, which put Poser in danger. Since then, they kept the "we don't make contents" posture, while ignoring the fact that DAZ was departing from the Poser market, and offering a free alternative to Poser. I still remember the claims that DAZ was a different company that had nothing to do with them. In other words, they refused to recognize DAZ as competition. That was their demise based on poor management decisions. They had more to gain by joining forces with HW, but as Chris has explained, they couldn't come to an agreement because SMS had incompatible marketing strategies.

Ironically, it has nothing to do with Poser itself. Superficial updates to the CP store or figures are not addressing the real problem. SMS simply doesn't know how to place Poser in the market. Maybe they think of it as just another of the many different softwares they sell, ignoring the fact that it carries a very particular history, market, and context that comes with it. In my humble opinion, it all comes down to lack of long-term vision and poor management.

I have a feeling that everything you said is true but it doesn't make any sense. How could they keep that posture? Didn't Microsoft's success at providing content like Word and Excel teach them nothing? Didn't Microsoft's defeat at failing to acquire and defeat Quicken, teach them anything? No one in the loop of making Poser and selling it to the masses was telling them what was happening? I would say that I find it difficult to believe that so many obviously highly intelligent people couldn't see or understand what was happening in the Poser DAZ world. I mean, doesn't the President of Coca-Cola drink Coca-Cola?

Well, that's past now. I did say obviously highly intelligent people. Let's see what happens. It could be the best thing since they decided to slice the bread before selling it. (Home Made Bread is the best by the way)

 

[Hornet3d]

@Hornet3d Perhaps you are. My upgrade was from Poser 9 to Poser Pro 11. That skipped Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2014. I don't know what version you use but their still might be an upgrade path for you. In my case, Poser Pro Upgrade from Poser 9 was $49 bucks. Considering what you gain in technology upgrades and figures, it's worth the price. Of course you deal in Pounds rather than yankee bucks so I'm not sure what your cost might be. To me, the target audience should be anyone that has Poser 7 and above. A price search to qualify my statement found Poser 7 on sale at Amazon for 250 dollars american or 14,780 Russian rubles. P.S. It's cheaper to buy Poser 11.

Keep the Internet Free.

You're right I am quite different to the norm, in more ways than one, but as regards Poser 11, much as I like Superfly I am not that bothered with photorealism, the odd time I am I fall back to Lux/Reality. There is also the downside that many of the scripts I use in Poser Pro 2014 will not work in Poser 11 so for me personally the cost is high for limited benefits. The dollar/pound equation has an effect as does the 20% VAT (Vague Additions to Total) and I did attempt to do a sale upgrade at one point and even went as far as check out but when the exchange rate was applied and the tax it was no longer a cheap upgrade. As the intent was still to use Poser Pro 2014 and use Poser 11 just to play with Superfly it was a price too far.

 

[quietrob]

That's awful, Hornet! I heard taxes in the UK were outrageous. It's a pity you can't enjoy the same price benefits without a heavy tariff on downloadable software (which makes zero sense). I totally feel your pain. I love to jump in and get the lastest this or that but always end up waiting for a barrel bottom sale because like Sweetheart says. I'm cheap.

 

[Hornet3d]

That's awful, Hornet! I heard taxes in the UK were outrageous. It's a pity you can't enjoy the same price benefits without a heavy tariff on downloadable software (which makes zero sense). I totally feel your pain. I love to jump in and get the lastest this or that but always end up waiting for a barrel bottom sale because like Sweetheart says. I'm cheap.

I think what bothers me more is that I have no way of checking if the VAT is actually paid back to the UK or if it is just seen as an extra 20% profit for the company selling software. If my country is benefitting from my taxes in some way that is one thing but if it is just seen as another way to rip people off, well that is another. The other problem is that the UK price in pounds is always the same as the dollar price, or more, some sales in the US do not equate to sales for those outside the US.

 

[Hornet3d]

Part of me is always interested in a new figure but I always have a worry that it just fragments the market even further. If lots of venders just do a V4 outfit in a version to fit another figure the content market does not grow very quickly. No matter how good a figure is there is also a lag before it becomes popular due to the fact few people will buy it if there is little content and vendors will not make for the figure if people are not using the figure and buying content.

There are already a lot of good figures available that are rarely used so just having a great figure is not enough on it's own.

 

[Ken1171]

I have a feeling that everything you said is true but it doesn't make any sense. How could they keep that posture? Didn't Microsoft's success at providing content like Word and Excel teach them nothing? Didn't Microsoft's defeat at failing to acquire and defeat Quicken, teach them anything? No one in the loop of making Poser and selling it to the masses was telling them what was happening? I would say that I find it difficult to believe that so many obviously highly intelligent people couldn't see or understand what was happening in the Poser DAZ world. I mean, doesn't the President of Coca-Cola drink Coca-Cola?

I have asked myself those questions for years, but my best bet is that SMS didn't know what they were getting into when they acquired Poser from eFrontier. Chances are they thought it was just another software that seemed to have a large market. They only saw the software retailing side, ignoring the content. The proof was that CP was neglected for years, and SMS has repeatedly claimed to have nothing to do with content. There were unofficial claims that SMS never wanted CP in the first place, but it came with the Poser package. That explains a lot of what happened later. I understand SMSI is a software retailer, and they didn't realize what the Poser market was all about - contents. They thought they could get away with just selling the software, which put them way behind the competition in this market.

It took them this long to realize Poser has no value without contents, and they are still doing the wrong things to remedy the situation they put themselves into. Like I said, they don't understand the Poser market, and that's why they don't know how to position themselves in it. Their first wrong decision was to overprice Poser Pro, putting it way out of the hobbyist range where it was supposed to belong. In a way, DAZ has a similar problem. Their board of directors don't use DS or care for 3D art, which seems to be the source for the rather unfriendly environment and rather unpopular corporate decisions. In short, both DAZ and SMS are ran by people who don't understand us. They lost their roots while passing through different managements.

Part of me is always interested in a new figure but I always have a worry that it just fragments the market even further. If lots of venders just do a V4 outfit in a version to fit another figure the content market does not grow very quickly. No matter how good a figure is there is also a lag before it becomes popular due to the fact few people will buy it if there is little content and vendors will not make for the figure if people are not using the figure and buying content.
There are already a lot of good figures available that are rarely used so just having a great figure is not enough on it's own.

I have to agree on this. I believe it has been a long time since people have welcomed new figures in this market. Instead, I believe people want more contents for the ones they already have, perhaps as means to protect their investment on contents they bought over time. However, HW figures are still being affected by marketing strategies from the competition, so people are divided, and some refuse to give Dawn a try. Things are not as simple these days.

 

[Hornet3d]

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I have to agree on this. I believe it has been a long time since people have welcomed new figures in this market. Instead, I believe people want more contents for the ones they already have, perhaps as means to protect their investment on contents they bought over time. However, HW figures are still being affected by marketing strategies from the competition, so people are divided, and some refuse to give Dawn a try. Things are not as simple these days.

Well it is nice to see someone has similar thoughts.

I totally accept that I may not be the target market for a new figure the reason is fairly clear in that my renders are produced with an an imagined book in mind. The book may never see the light of day but with this thought in mind I need a character to have a number of different outfits and locations for a story to be told. I also need some form of consistency in the character and in my case a level of maturity as well (no reason my character can't have this just because I don't).

With Dawn and the fitting room I was able to utilise the content made for V4 so it was more a case of giving me the variety I was looking for rather than protecting my investment, although it did that as well and I understand why that is a need for others. Even so it was not until Dawn SE was launched that I moved away from V4 as I felt at that point there was enough content for me to use. More importantly it was clear good expressions were much easier to produce with Dawn, yes there was better bending but I was already using V4WM so, while improved, better bending was not a real issue for me.

I have spent a lot of Dawn and new content but a far bigger investment for me has been time. I took months of trial and error to come up with a character that had the apparent maturity of my V4 character. Once I had achieved that I went back and redid all of the V4 scenes I had built swapping V4 and Dawn, and along the way I learnt how I could get the best from Dawn for the type of renders I wanted to produce. I already had that knowledge with V4 and, while it was not back to square one, it was a long learning process.

For me to move to another figure I would need to see something I could do with the new figure that I can't do with Dawn, just as I waited until I could see Dawn offered me something that V4 could not. In that respect at least I do not feel I am very different from any target market.

Dawn is a great figure but it is only now getting to the point that I could use Dawn for almost all my renders without reverting to V4 clothing, and how many years has that taken?

 

[Ken1171]

Dawn is a great figure but it is only now getting to the point that I could use Dawn for almost all my renders without reverting to V4 clothing, and how many years has that taken?

I was initially rather skeptical about switching from V4 to Dawn because, well, she didn't have any clothing. But like you, I have converted some V4 stuff I used the most, and there we go. It took me only a year to completely switch to Dawn, and to my surprise, I have never used V4 again - even when V4 had (and still has) way more contents than Dawn.

I am not 100% sure what PE will bring to the table, but I hear it's about the bending, the expressions, and the realistic proportions. It also claims to simplify the rigging, which is a plus for content creation. But I rather see for myself before I have any opinions about it.

 

[Glitterati3D]

It's that guy (Erogenesis) who recently moved from South Africa to the UK, which is why the figure development got delayed. I believe the beta program has started recently, after having missed the original release date in the first quarter of 2017. I like some of the design decisions, but I need to see the results myself before I jump to conclusions. Like I said, I am a hopeful skeptical.

LOL, Ero has had more excuses for the delayed release of this figure than he has versions of her. Frankly, I don't see how it lives up to the hype. The figure isn't terribly attractive to begin with, and she's been overhyped and under delivered for 3 long years. Sure, she'll be a big flash on initial release, then support will fade off when none of them gets rich quick.

She's a figure designed for the 3D porn crowd. She will have a following there, but I don't expect the initial rush to last long.

If she's still around a year from now, I might consider doing some supporting products. Until then, nah, I'll let the get rich quick crowd run with it.

 

[Janet]

Are there any pictures of this figure?

 

[Glitterati3D]

Are there any pictures of this figure?

LOL, only all over Renderosity forums, SMS forums, everywhere but here. Look for the multitude of posts about Project E.

 

[Janet]

I love Dawn! She's so much easier to use than Victoria. I just did a render with 21 Dawns in it. I doubt that would even be possible with Victoria.

 

[Janet]

I just saw her. She does have a pretty face. I think they will release at Renderosity and it will go the way of all of their figures. Into nothing after a couple years. It takes a huge amount of support from the community to make a new figure fly. Chris has that here.

 

[Glitterati3D]

I just saw her. She does have a pretty face. I think they will release at Renderosity and it will go the way of all of their figures. Into nothing after a couple years. It takes a huge amount of support from the community to make a new figure fly. Chris has that here.

Erogenesis already said he will release at Renderosity and CGBytes.

 

[Janet]

Yah it will probably die off in a couple of years.

 

[Miss B]

That all depends on the support she gets. From what I've seen in forum posts, vendors are lining up to produce products for her, so hopefully she'll do well. Time, of course, will tell for sure.

 

[Ken1171]

LOL, Ero has had more excuses for the delayed release of this figure than he has versions of her. Frankly, I don't see how it lives up to the hype.

Oh yeah, I have lost count of his excuses. Haha! But I respect whoever tries to put up a complete figure, even more when alone on his own. Basically all DAZ figures have been used for erotica, so I can't hold a figure accountable for that. We also have Terai Yuki, a figure that was created for an adult game, but that was later widely used in Poser for general purpose. I don't remember people blaming her from where she came from.

I also understand that new figures tend to fragment the market even more, but DAZ keeps introducing more figures all the time, and people don't seem to blame them so much these days. It has been 3 new Genesis just since Dawn came out. I am not saying this is a good thing, but I miss the days when we had a wide variety of figures from different makers.

Besides, if Poser users continue to burn every figure that comes out for them, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy that we will end up with no content variety. I will give PE a fair try, and see for myself like I did with Pauline. If it's a fairly decent figure, I see no reason not to support her. It's better than trying to contort Genesis into something that works in Poser. That doesn't mean I would abandon Dawn - I have a long history of supporting multiple figures - just not Genesis these days. DAZ is no longer making Poser figures, so let's welcome whoever else wants to try.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Oh yeah, I have lost count of his excuses. Haha! But I respect whoever tries to put up a complete figure, even more when alone on his own. Basically all DAZ figures have been used for erotica, so I can't hold a figure accountable for that. We also have Terai Yuki, a figure that was created for an adult game, but that was later widely used in Poser for general purpose. I don't remember people blaming her from where she came from.

I also understand that new figures tend to fragment the market even more, but DAZ keeps introducing more figures all the time, and people don't seem to blame them so much these days. It has been 3 new Genesis just since Dawn came out. I am not saying this is a good thing, but I miss the days when we had a wide variety of figures from different makers.

Besides, if Poser users continue to burn every figure that comes out for them, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy that we will end up with no content variety. I will give PE a fair try, and see for myself like I did with Pauline. If it's a fairly decent figure, I see no reason not to support her. It's better than trying to contort Genesis into something that works in Poser. That doesn't mean I would abandon Dawn - I have a long history of supporting multiple figures - just not Genesis these days. DAZ is no longer making Poser figures, so let's welcome whoever else wants to try.

Yeah, I'm waiting for Ambient Shade's figures - Venus and Orion.

I have just never been a run with the crowd person, preferring always to support the under supported figures instead of the one everyone else runs to.

And I wasn't "knocking her" as I have never seen anything more than images, so I have no authority to "knock" the figure. Just stating my personal observations and preferences.

 

[Ken1171]

Yeah, I'm waiting for Ambient Shade's figures - Venus and Orion.

Oh, I haven't heard of these figures! Do you have a link? ^___^

 

[Glitterati3D]

Oh, I haven't heard of these figures! Do you have a link? ^___^

AmbientShade