Blue BG Test

Not that I think anybody is paying attention, but to hell with it.

20,000 polys, Poser Firefly, no postwork.

How?

About sixteen years ago, I got this new program, Poser 4. It was on sale. I couldn't really do much with it at the time, but I kept fiddling with it. The program had this character, "Posette" - the Poser 4 Nude Woman. And I thought she was a really great looking character - certainly far better looking than P5 Judy, who came along a few years later. Really fabulous looking body. But, her bends were awful. Well, then there was the whole Zygote/DAZ split, and the new "Millennium Woman", and I saw her and thought the same thing as when I saw P5 Judy. I was thinking "they didn't need to make another new character, they just needed to fix the old one." And, I realized I had all the tools I needed to fix her issues right in front of me, in Poser. I just had to learn how to do it.

Well, now it's 2015, and Rose is the result. Her mesh has been re-grouped and tweaked a bit, she's been completely re-rigged from scratch, she's been re-mapped to use custom textures with a similar layout to the old V3 textures, and the face you see her with is now her default face. But, she started as Posette, the P4 Nude Woman. I can say without fear of contradiction that she is far and away superior to literally any other model out there.

Yes, that's basically a highly modded Posette you're looking at.

I objected to the Millennium Woman simply because I thought they needed to fix the old models, not create new ones. But, this trend continued, with Vickie 2, then Vickie 3, then Vickie 4, then Vickie 5, and now Vickie 6. At each step, the figures have grown linearly larger and larger in file-size and system overhead requirements, have grown exponentially more complicated, and yet at each step, they didn't (and still don't) provide anything better than what I already had in my girl.  And at each step, we were told by DAZ that each model was the best, perfect and beyond compare.  Vickie 2 is the best, the ultimate, her bends are flawless.  Wait, now Vickie THREE is the best, the ultimate, her bends are FAR superior to Vickie 2, they're flawless!  Oh, now Vickie FOUR is the best, the ultimate!  Why, her ultra-complex magnet system makes her bends utterly perfect!  It's so good, in fact, that's why we...  Ah...  Decided not to include it in Mike 4.  Because...  Umm...  Men don't bend?  Oh, but nevermind, now it's GENESIS!  YES!  Perfect and beyond compare, because everyone knows males and females aren't much different physically, so you only need one figure to do both male and female characters to absolute and utter perfection!  OOOO!  And now it's GENESIS TWO!  WOO-HOO!  See, it's TWO figures, one male and female, because EVERYONE knows that men and women are very different physically, you need two different base shapes to correctly create male and female figures to absolute and utter perfection! 

And at each step, the DAZ-Fans shut down their brains and opened up their wallets.  Oh, sure, Studio is free, the base figure is free - SO much better than Poser, because it's FREE!  Except, you know, for that one time when it wasn't, and thousands of people paid hundreds of bucks for the "pro" version of the program, only to have it go free again later.  And, of course, you can't DO anything with the base figure.  It only has a couple basic expression morphs and a crappy low-rez texture.  You need to buy hair and clothing and textures and props and morphs and everything else to actually make a decent render.  And every time you get a new figure, you have to do it all over again.  New clothes, new hair, new textures, new everything, because nothing was backward-compatible.  Clothes and textures for V3 don't work on V2.  Clothes and textures for V4 don't work on V3.  With V5, hey, you could use V4 textures!  But, they quickly fixed that issue - nowadays, you have one texture map for each individual character, and the maps for one frequently don't work on another, despite that they're all the same mesh, just morphed.  Min Seo and Mei Lin are both Genesis, but the textures for one can't be used on the other.  Victoria Six is Genesis 2 Female Base, just morphed.  But textures made for Victoria 6 won't work on Genesis 2 Female Base.  And, of course, clothing and other items made for Genesis don't work on Genesis 2, you have to buy it all over again. 

Their entire business paradigm is built on this.  Get the free stuff, then you're on a spending treadmill, constantly paying to keep up with the latest.  All the while hoping that the character you purchased will continue to be supported, because if it isn't, there's nothing you can do to change it, you have to buy another and start all over again.  And several times over the years, they'd release a new version of studio that wasn't backwards compatible with the previous one, so some or all of the stuff you bought before wouldn't work, even if you hadn't changed characters between times.  So, you had to buy a large chunk of stuff all over again.  Scenes that load fine in the version of Studio you're using no longer load at all in the next - time to buy new lights and material settings and all the rest so you can do it all over again.  Plugins that worked fine in one version are all broken in the next, time to buy all your favorite plugins all over again.

And one day, it hit me.  Something that nobody else ever said, or apparently has ever realized.  It became and remains my personal opinion that the basic business paradigm here is like a drug dealer standing on the corner, saying "Here you go, kid, the first hit is free.  After that, it'll cost ya."

Because that's what's happening.  Free introductory product, everything else costs money, but you can't really do much with the free product unless you spend money for the add-ons.  Combined with a marketing and production strategy that is focused on supporting only the newest releases.  Seen anything new for Vickie 3 lately?  Or Vickie 2?  Nope.  Thus, it's the same basic paradigm, really.  Free to start, yes.  But then you're on the spending treadmill, and you can't get off it without admitting all the money you spent was wasted.

Look at that picture above again.  You're looking at a modded Posette.  I posted HOW to do this over and over and over and over again in the DAZ forums for years.  How to do better rigging.  How to do better bends and morphs and all the rest.  Why Vickie wasn't perfect, where errors existed in her, and how to improve her.  For years, I posted about this.  And I was shouted down on the forums by the DAZ-Fanatics every time I implied that the current version of Victoria was anything less than perfect.  And, of course, utterly ignored by the company. 

Until I finally realized that if the business paradigm can be said to be like that of a drug dealer, well, that means the fans were basically like drug addicts.  They were hooked.  Nothing I said was going to get them to see what I was seeing.  I was wasting my breath.  Even the Poser users on the forum were hooked on Victoria.  First Vickie two, then Vickie three, then Vickie four...  At each stage, each one was perfect and without flaw.  And they're FREE!  Except, you know, for those times when they weren't, and you had to pay twenty or thirty bucks for the base figure.

So...

Here I am, years later.  Still using my girl, a modded Posette.  And here you all are, waiting for the next "Genesis" release so you can spend more money buying all the clothes and hair and everything else you bought before all over again for the next character, and keep DAZ in business.

Nobody wants to hear how to take one character they like and improve it, tweaking the rigging and materials, learning how to work with lights and atmosphere...  Nope, none of you are even slightly interested in any of that.  Nope.  What you want to hear is "When is the next release coming out so I can spend more money!  I have too much money in my pocket, it makes me saaaaaaad!  WAAAAAAAAAAAH!  HELP ME SPEND ALL MY MONEY, DAZ!  PLEASE!  OOOOOH!  OOOOH!  A NEW THONG FOR VICKIE!  WOO-HOO!"

So, no.  I don't bother to tell people how to do this anymore.  None of you give a shit, anyway. 

Look again.  It's a modded Posette.  She's 20,000 polys.  That's it.

So, you stay on your dark and shadowy side of the street, little DAZ-addict.  The track-marks on your arms and your constant trembling reach for your wallet disturbs me, deeply.