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Why doesn't Male clothign sell better?

I think at least part of the reason is that what little content gets made (comparatively speaking) usually is that it's either not what the potential buyer wants or they buy it and find it lacking in some respect (complaints include not as much detail as similar female versions). A recent thread over on the other forum site I frequent complained that male garments in particular were poorly made, with tube sleeves on the shirts/jackets and tube legs on the pants. Of course, as usual it degenerated into a shouting match and got locked.
 

spearcarrier

Admirable
Ooooh thank you for the links!!! I'm supposed to be sleeping but this is more intriguing. Make your own dreams using 3D I say.
 

AetherDream

Breathing Life into Characters
Contributing Artist
I know that I would definitely purchase male clothing for Dusk along the lines of the stuff that Xurge3D makes!
 

Bonnie2001

Extraordinary
....And I still don't know why male clothing doesn't sell better,..

Well in real life I don't think men buy as much clothing as women. I mean my two brothers can fit all their clothes into one wardrobe and a dresser. I have a double-width wardrobe and two dressers and they are overflowing. I think maybe that habit may carry over in their virtual clothing purchases, that is they just don't buy as much clothing so there is less demand for vendors to cater for.
 

James R.

Busy Bee
Well in real life I don't think men buy as much clothing as women. I mean my two brothers can fit all their clothes into one wardrobe and a dresser. I have a double-width wardrobe and two dressers and they are overflowing. I think maybe that habit may carry over in their virtual clothing purchases, that is they just don't buy as much clothing so there is less demand for vendors to cater for.

Not a bad theory to add to the others. My wife's clothes outnumber mine almost 2:1. My sister always had waaaaaay more clothes than I, too.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
It would be natural to think that men like to render women, and women might like to render men. In that case, women buys more clothing than men, that's a fact, but if women render men, then they would also be buying more male clothing - but I don't see that happening, and I am talking about the other stores I have worked with in the past decade - not just HW. This is a market that self-regulates by offer and demand. If there were a solid demand for male clothing, vendors would be making more of them, and better ones. But as we know, that's not the case, and that's why we are having this conversation.

As mentioned above, I have discussed this for years with female artists from all medias at DeviantArt, asking them WHY most of them like to render or draw other women. The answers varied between "I don't know how to draw men" and "I prefer to depict female characters".

I am male, and I like to depict beautiful females. I have been doing this for ages, which means I have specialized in dressing and posing women. The weird part is that whenever I have tried to depict male characters, I can't seem to understand how to pose them properly, because I had zero experience with that - AND I AM MALE! LOL

In my attempts, men look helplessly gay - as noted by my wife. All the intricacies and subtle nuances of female posing I have learned through the years end up transferring to my male poses, which is BAD. The thing about attractive men is in the eyes of women, and I will never truly understand that part as I do for female characters. Add to this that there is nothing on a man that I can possibly find attractive, and therefore is not fun for me to work with. You can say that I have a genetic disposition to have a passion to depict women. That feeling is absent when working with male characters.

Coming from there, if most vendors are male, chances are they would be more inclined to do female contents as well.

And if we look at the historical and geopolitical side of events, women was always "protected" by society, while men was made disposable. We have hundreds of years of that kind of mentality, which we can still witness on everyday TV nowadays - nobody can touch a woman, but men can be beaten senseless to death by the dozens. If a woman kills a lot of men in a movie, she's a heroine. If a man kills a lot of women in a movie, he's a serial killer. Some of the most famous studios in the world, like Disney and Ghibli chose to make most of their protagonists female, because they create more empathy with the public. In other words, there would be a bigger chance people wouldn't care what happens to them if they were male. For whatever reason, we have been conditioned to care more for women than we do for men.

We can see this dis-balance in social events, where each individual woman wears a unique garment, while all the men are dressed exactly the same. Not only that, but it's considered a social offense if 2 women would happen to come with the same outfit - they would be mad. It seems like it's a social rule that nobody cares for men, and that reflects in this market as well.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Some interesting insights there.

Well I have to say that I am one who does not buy as much for male figures as I do for female. One of the reasons for that is the main character in my storyline a heroine, now that could be because I like posing women but much of that comes from my reading and my books follow a similar line. Perhaps I am in touch with my female side, but most the women in the books I read are at least the equal of the male characters. A real twist is in real life I still like to give up my seat for a women or open a door (and for older people but that is happening less and less as it gets more difficult to find someone older) yet for all that I feel women should get paid that same as men and I never had a problem working for a female manager which I did a couple of times during my career. I can't say the same for all the male managers I worked for.

As to buying content for male figures, well to my shame I still use M4 rather than Dusk. I would like to use Dusk a lot more but there there are limitations on the content available. I have a lot of content for M4 and percentage wise, compared with what is available about the same percentage as I have for V4.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
Some interesting insights there.

Well I have to say that I am one who does not buy as much for male figures as I do for female. One of the reasons for that is the main character in my storyline a heroine, now that could be because I like posing women but much of that comes from my reading and my books follow a similar line. Perhaps I am in touch with my female side, but most the women in the books I read are at least the equal of the male characters. A real twist is in real life I still like to give up my seat for a women or open a door (and for older people but that is happening less and less as it gets more difficult to find someone older) yet for all that I feel women should get paid that same as men and I never had a problem working for a female manager which I did a couple of times during my career. I can't say the same for all the male managers I worked for.

As to buying content for male figures, well to my shame I still use M4 rather than Dusk. I would like to use Dusk a lot more but there there are limitations on the content available. I have a lot of content for M4 and percentage wise, compared with what is available about the same percentage as I have for V4.

Well, since you brought it up, Hornet. I don't think anyone disagrees with people doing the same job getting the same pay. Except, it I've been on the job for 15 years and you just walk in the door 5 minutes ago, no i DON'T think you should get the same pay as me, even if we're doing the exact same job. For one thing, I'm most likely the one who has to train you. Now if you come in and smoke me by doing the same job faster and in less time, then okay, yeah, pay that person. Probably time for me to leave anyway if i can't keep up. Promote me to where I can oversee things. Experience counts for something.

As for M4, I was never a big fan. To be honest, I preferred M3. He was easier to pose, looked better to me, and I had more content for him. But yeah, Dusk has finally caught my eye and I'm liking working with him.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Well, since you brought it up, Hornet. I don't think anyone disagrees with people doing the same job getting the same pay. Except, it I've been on the job for 15 years and you just walk in the door 5 minutes ago, no i DON'T think you should get the same pay as me, even if we're doing the exact same job. For one thing, I'm most likely the one who has to train you. Now if you come in and smoke me by doing the same job faster and in less time, then okay, yeah, pay that person. Probably time for me to leave anyway if i can't keep up. Promote me to where I can oversee things. Experience counts for something.

As for M4, I was never a big fan. To be honest, I preferred M3. He was easier to pose, looked better to me, and I had more content for him. But yeah, Dusk has finally caught my eye and I'm liking working with him.

I would not argue with that, but, all other things being equal should mean same pay irrespective of the sex of the individual.

I would love to use Dusk, just can't find the content for the renders I want to do.
 

eclark1894

Visionary
I would not argue with that, but, all other things being equal should mean same pay irrespective of the sex of the individual.
Again, no one I am aware of disputes that. But the problem is, that although it's usually portrayed that way to gain a moral or political upperhand, all things are NOT equal. I'll give a personal observation. I work as a security guard, and yes, as far as I know, we are all paid the same. However, we do not all work the same hours or shifts. Women are never asked to work overnight or evening shifts, and if they are, I've yet to see any of them do it. And interestingly enough, if you ask them, they will all say they shouldn't have too, because they're women and it's not safe for them. They also don't like working holidays or weekends. Also, they tend to take more days off than the men. I say that coming from the fact that it's usually me giving up one of my days off to cover for them. But without knowing all that, someone could look at my paycheck and conclude that I'm making more money, for no other reason than I'm a man and that the company I work for is sexist.

Anyway, back to the main discussion. What kind of content are you looking for?
 

Hornet3d

Wise
Basically I am looking for content that is consistent with whatever outfit I am using for Dawn. So if Dawn is in a Victorian outfit I don't want something modern day fot Dusk. I can do that fairly easily for M4 not so easily for Dusk. The same can be said for sci-fi outfits but that is a limited market anyway so I am not expecting vendors to create such stuff for Dusk.
 

Terre

Renowned
I think another part of the problem is that this is a rather small market (relatively speaking) and there is a substantial part of the 3D community that is mostly interested in doing female pin-ups and/or single action scenes. This group doesn't have much interest in male clothing as they seldom use males and mostly purchase female clothing. This is going to affect the number of sales of female vs male clothing. If the overall market were substantially larger than it is there would be a larger number of people looking for male clothing and thus it might look more like something worth the content creators putting time and effort into.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
I think this market used to be much larger in the past than it is now. The corporate bickering between DAZ and SMS has driven a lot of people away, by making what used to be a fun hobby into a divided and hostile environment. Things got really worse when DAZ departed from the Poser market, expecting it to merge with DS overnight, which of course, didn't happen. So the market today is smaller because it's divided, where content availability for Poser users became quite unbalanced without DAZ. However, this is where HW came to save the day, by making figures for both sides of the wall. If other stores would do the same, this would become a larger market again, and everybody would win, except for DAZ, who still wants no competition. It's this kind of attitude that keeps the market from recovering.
 

Willowisp

Adventurous
Another reason the market is smaller is because it has become much easier to reuse the content you have. Poser has the fitting room, Studio has autofit, and you can use old clothing on the newest figures with very little work (granted, the result will vary quite a bit, but overall it works fairly well). So why spend money on new content when the old M3 suit looks better than anything made today? I still buy new content, but it has to be something of extraordinary quality, or something I don't actually have anything similar to. I also pretty much only buy dynamic clothing nowadays, which will easily fit pretty much any figure.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
I think this market used to be much larger in the past than it is now. The corporate bickering between DAZ and SMS has driven a lot of people away, by making what used to be a fun hobby into a divided and hostile environment. Things got really worse when DAZ departed from the Poser market, expecting it to merge with DS overnight, which of course, didn't happen. So the market today is smaller because it's divided, where content availability for Poser users became quite unbalanced without DAZ. However, this is where HW came to save the day, by making figures for both sides of the wall. If other stores would do the same, this would become a larger market again, and everybody would win, except for DAZ, who still wants no competition. It's this kind of attitude that keeps the market from recovering.


I agree with that but what surprises me is the number of people (generally, not here) that argue against that. It seems common sense to me that if you split a market into different sections that any potential market will be reduced. There are other ramifications is the split is turns out to be less than around the 50% mark as the majority of providers of products logically go towards the bigger segment. I am not complaining, that is the world as it is and I have found path forward that I am happy with even if there were a few bumps along the way.

Now this may be a sexist remark but I will float the idea and see what flack I get but I think that many artist are more interested in the bending of the female 3d figure than the bends of the male equivalent, due in a
large part to the nature of renders they do. If this is the case there will be a stronger drive to move to the weight mapped figures for the female figures than the male, or more push to move from V4 to either Genesis or Dawn than for the male equivalent. Also a lot of people are hobbyist and for many the funds for that hobby is limited. If then you see a new outfit for Dusk at full price and one for M4 on sale price the temptation is to buy the cheapest and convert.
 

Hornet3d

Wise
I think another part of the problem is that this is a rather small market (relatively speaking) and there is a substantial part of the 3D community that is mostly interested in doing female pin-ups and/or single action scenes. This group doesn't have much interest in male clothing as they seldom use males and mostly purchase female clothing. This is going to affect the number of sales of female vs male clothing. If the overall market were substantially larger than it is there would be a larger number of people looking for male clothing and thus it might look more like something worth the content creators putting time and effort into.

I am not really into doing pin-ups but I do take your point and most of my renders are female based. I have been doing 3d art for many years and always accepted that there will be less clothing for the male counterpart but that is slightly different to saying that male clothing does not sell. While there is a massive difference of clothing items between say V4 and M4 if you remove the skimpy clothing for V4 there is still a difference but it is much reduced. As I never purchased much of the skimpy wear for V4, and the stuff that I did was often used for kit bashing, I was/am not likely to buy it for M4.

I tend to try and take life, and my art, as I find it so I accept that there will be less clothes for Dusk than Dawn particularly in the sci-fi realm, mind you if someone did make something it might sell well as there is little competition.
 

Ken1171

Esteemed
Contributing Artist
Another reason the market is smaller is because it has become much easier to reuse the content you have.

This is a pretty valid argument, but only when it comes to vendors making lots of the same for years. In a way, this would be their own fault for lack of originality. Since a new Genesis versions started to come up this quickly, I have heard a LOT of complains that vendors started to sell conversions of older products, which is their way to convince themselves that they didn't waste time creating the product in the first place. Vendors have to make their time worth when there is always a new Genesis around the corner. I wouldn't like to be in their skin.

However, only some clothing can be converted, so this is not a general rule. If the outfit has lots of small detail and it's not all tight to the body, chances are it won't be a good conversion. Not to mention footwear and gloves never make a good fit in conversions.

There are other ramifications is the split is turns out to be less than around the 50% mark as the majority of providers of products logically go towards the bigger segment.

I wonder if there is a way to know in what proportion the split has happened, because Poser used to be the bigger market, and now DAZ claims they took the bigger slice, but I don't trust a thing they say. As far as they are concerned, the Poser market doesn't exist anymore, and they push that idea in their forums as if it were true. Maybe what they mean at corporate level is that they don't care if Poser exists or not, because they have their own software and don't depend on Poser like they used to in the past. That makes it easier for them to claim that Poser no longer exists. It will remain like that for as long as SMS continues to act as if DAZ were not their competitor.
 
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