Rendo Buys Poser

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  • #1126770
    Daishi
    Participant
    Rank: Rank 3

    https://magazine.renderosity.com/article/5283/renderosity-acquires-poser-from-smith-micro

    Poser is no longer a Smith Micro product. It now belongs to Renderosity.

    Hopefully this means they'll unfuck it and make it a valid rival to Daz.

    #1126784
    eelgoo
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank 7

    Well, despite having been a Poser user for many years, I have not loaded it since IRay launched in DS.
    For me, it was a quantum leap in realism & I never looked back.
    TBH at this stage I can't really see Bondware's logic in buying Poser.
    I can't see they will have the resource to do much with it.
    For their sake I hope it was cheap, because I wouldn't want to lose 'Rosity as a store. :0/

    #1126823
    Checkit1414
    Participant
    Rank: Rank-1

    I think maybe they (Renderosity) just did it to finaly getting a "link" out of the chain and having more control on what they are making.

    If we look at it, Renderosity is arguably the second biggest store after Daz own store. But unlike Daz, it wasn't owning any "right" to any program it was making asset for. They always to play by the rule of the program made by Daz or Smith Micro.
    Also, it was quite obvious that Renderosity was the biggest main store of Poser's product.

    So i think for a question of marketing and to give them more control on their future asset creativity, they just took out Smith Micro out of the equation. Who know...maybe Renderosity had to pay some sort of royalties to Smith Micro for having the right of making and selling product for their program. I don't know how all this work.

    But one thing for sure, with Renderosity now owning all the right on the Poser Program, they'll have less their hand tied on the creativity and the making of assets for this program. But who knows what will be their plan. Just like Daishi suggested, do they intend to revamp Poser's program and it's technology to be a serious competitor to Daz Studio ?
    Or just stay like this because they don't have the ressource to do anything more with it like Eelgoo suggested.

    Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

    #1126857
    ulysses
    Participant
    Rank: Rank-2

    The only logical reason is to create a DAZ 2.0. Own the software and own the store that sells the content. But it's going to be hard to beat the price of DAZ Studio ;o)

    What can they possibly offer that DAZ doesn't already?

    #1126877
    eelgoo
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank 7

    Well, if Smith Micro, presumably a software development company fail to make Poser competetive, Bondware, which I take to be primarily artists & hobbyist product vendors, is really going to struggle.
    Where SM really dropped the ball was when they refused to adopt the Genesis line from Daz as native within Poser & forced Daz's hand into developing DS.
    It took Daz a good while to even get it competetive with Poser, but they got there & then soon overtook the apparently under resourced Poser.
    Much as I like to see healthy competetition, I fear we are past the point of no return for Poser. :0/

    #1126882
    AnjaBear
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank Overload

    You all realize that Poser still has the same Kai Krause interface that was released with Poser 3? And it hasn't been changed or tampered with since then? And we're talking the mid 1990s. The only changes to the interface was them trying to have the browsing of the content using the Flash engine (which is no longer valid anymore) and the only big change was the addition of Superfly (which I haven't been able to figure out).

    The content provided when you actually BOUGHT the Poser software was made by vendors who are mostly long dead, or since quit. Many of the things in the content pack with it were from RuntimeDNA in their start up days. Most of it is sub-par quality.

    Additionally the figures that came with Poser only had one generation of figures that looked halfway decent and were not truly miscreants. Those were the G2's. Everything else had repair software created by Blackhearted to remove the "gross" effect from the figure's looks and bad bending.

    Poser was good with Daz's Generation 3 (V3/M3/D3/F3/H3/A3/SP3)
    and with Daz's Generation 4 (V4/M4/F4/H4/A4/SP4)

    Once Genesis was introduced, then you needed special software as Daz changed the structure of storing the files and they just were no longer Poser compatible. This was not because they hated Poser, it was because they were advancing technology and developing with the times. Poser in the hands of Smith-Micro, which was only interested in their Mac-related Zip software and Smartphone systems tech, just bought it as a cash cow and not really interested in doing a think with it. For a while that worked, but then after years no one wants to pay hundreds for software which has an interface out of the stone age-which isn't intuitive, and photo-real isn't possible without expensive plugins.

    The split of Poser or shall we say Split of Daz to create a BETTER posing and rendering system was just necessary - wasn't anything against Poser, it just needed to be done. Smith-Micro refused to work with Daz to keep the formats compatible and shunned Genesis and all subsequent versions. They wanted to stick with old figures created back in 2006, and never progress further than that - after all there were tons of products available for V4 and M4, who needs anything else.

    The site HiveWire is made up of disgruntled Daz folks, who used to be part of the Daz creation team (Chris Creek) and others like Lisa Buckalew (Platinum Club, plants creator) and Ken Gilliland (Platinum Club, bird creator) and a small amount of people who sell stuff everywhere else too. The only good thing they did was created the Hivewire Horse, and Hivewire House Cat and Kitten and the HiveWire Dog and Puppy. There Daz hasn't updated the Daz Cat since Anton Kisiel made it back in 2001.

    So I see this as the final Divorce of Poser from Daz...

    Poser now must either move out of Daz Studio's shadow and completely overhaul itself, created a content and assets house, update the tech and build a modern interface, make seamless compatibility with external tools like Blender or Render Engines and Gaming Engines, or simply hang it up, and stay a legacy product - but charging mainstream pricing for an antique? Not sure.

    I consider this like how the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki felt after the 2 nuclear bombs destroyed their cities - and they need to rebuild, completely from scratch. Smith-Micro truly nuked the product's future in the years it owned Poser, and now they need to rebuild after ground-zero.

    Say what you will, and I started with Poser 3, and was a huge fan of it, this will require huge energy and enthusiasm and know-how to resurrect.

    AnjaBear

    #1126886
    eelgoo
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank 7

    Very valid input there, Anja.
    ( I was shortly after you with Poser 4. )
    Which only re-enforces my puzzlement as to why Bondware bothered to buy Poser? :0/

    #1126895
    scoobydude51
    Participant
    Rank: Rank 4

    With poser in good hands I really hope that’ll stop DAZ from being a monopoly on 3D Content.

    If you look at the current patterns, DAZ’s prices got way more expensive after Poser was pretty much abandoned by SmithMicro.

    DAZ acquiring RuntimeDNA in 2016 seemed more like a way of removing competition from the Poser crowd since they wanted to make their store look like Renderosity’s, yet it pretty much blew up in their face when they tried to partner up with hivewire to sell the hivewire animals (after many DAZ users were complaining about lack of new DAZ animals) as well since it only lasted for like less than a month and it was right before the DAZ Dog 8 was released, the hivewire content suddenly vanished with no response from DAZ whatsoever.

    It was discovered that DAZ was secretly creating the DAZ Dog 8 without hivewire even knowing, and decided to pull out of the partnership and decided to go partner up with Renderosity instead. It’s showing that Renderosity is much more consumer friendly than DAZ and more former DAZ vendors have left and moved into Renderosity’s marketplace in the last year or 2.

    DAZ needs Poser to compete since DAZ is becoming more of a bad place to buy and even sell at these days.

    #1126905
    eelgoo
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank 7

    I think the days of Poser / DS effective competetion are long over.
    That said, I really do value 'Rosity as an alternative source of Daz Studio compatible assets, so would not like it to disappear, which is why I expressed my concern that they had bought Poser.

    #1126910
    barc
    Participant
    Rank: Rank 4

    Poser is still a better posing solution than DAZ imo. But that's the only thing Poser has going for it.

    I hope Rendo doesn't start focusing only on Poser content at the expense of their DAZ content. That would be a real loss.

    #1126913
    scoobydude51
    Participant
    Rank: Rank 4

    It’s already confirmed by the Rendo staff that they will continue to sell DAZ products.

    #1126927
    eelgoo
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank 7

    A sensible choice, as I suspect that probably generates most of their income. 🙂

    #1126974
    Daishi
    Participant
    Rank: Rank 3

    I think they can pull it out.

    The fact is that Poser is in many ways, even after years of neglect, still has better base functionality than Daz Studio.

    The way they can win this IMHO is work to build in native Genesis support (while working on their own models, and probably ways to transfer genesis content to those models), incorporate a modern rendering engine, and overhaul the UI.

    #1126990
    eelgoo
    Moderator
    Rank: Rank 7

    I'm sorry, but I can't see that.
    I appreciate that each program has its strengths & weaknesses, but I think they have a mountain to climb to even reach parity with Daz Studio, which is free software.

    :0/

    #1127057
    Daishi
    Participant
    Rank: Rank 3

    I disagree.

    It needs an overhaul to modernize it, but it still has a number of features that daz still lacks.

    Daz's great advantages are two fold. First, its free. Something Rendo could easily correct by... well... making Poser Basic free as well. Second is the polish. That can also be dealt with by a UI overhaul.

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