I remember before when I was here it was a thriving active art community with tons of people interacting and posting up work. Since coming back I can't help but notice how all of the activity has died off? Where the heck did everyone go?

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Hello Ace.

First of all, good to see you around
Yes, your observation is right. It's become really quiet some times. There are several reasons for this, I think.
One is, we are all getting older, and at some point you are realizing you keep doing the same thing over and over again. So people left in search for something new. Some of the old users check in from time to time to say hello. Not many new users either. The younger people interested in 3D/CGI are tending more into game developement  and animation. Tools like Blender are much more interesting like Poser or DS, and they are more at home on social media rather than old fashioned forums, I guess.

So Tormie pays the bills, still, and I am sticking 'round to keep the place clean, out of inspiration myself.
A Calm and peaceful place in this crazy times, at least

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IMHO, a lot of young artists who might post here have settled on other 'content creation' tools, such as 'gamer engines'. Unity and such...

There's not many folk doing Poser stuff for eg Rendo and SCG, free and/or market. Though a lot of dual-format or purely DS material is being crafted and gifted/sold on eg Rendo, the split between Poser/Rendo and DAZ/DS just gets wider and wider.

'Feud' seems too strong a term, but DAZ definitely discourages Poser material creation. What 'new' Poser-compatible items they have seem 'old stock', fetched from archives and re-packaged.

I trawl multiple sites and formats for 'fun stuff', enjoy adapting for Poser. I'll be first to admit I've no artistic skill beyond a mild talent for tech-drawing, which spilled into CAD. My 'Irish-grade' stubborn streak sometimes helps, some-times hinders.

A major problem is that many formats' figures and scenes seem to get more and more complex with every 'generation'. How/where do you even start crafting such for Poser ??

Worse, some of the 'portable' formats are not.
OBJ+MTL versions are often 2~~3 times the file-size of originals. Poser tends to choke on such.
FBX is supposed to be the 'USB of models'. Sadly, Poser has 'issues' with FBX figure rigging, especially done by 'open source' apps such as Blender...

That said, there are honourable exceptions. I've just got a cute budget FBX 'VR-Chat' figure from a DA vendor. It was few enough $$ to take a chance. Worst case, 'window dressing' in a street-scene's shop-front. To my total surprise, it played nice with Poser. Single (!!) rig, click into scene to select limbs etc to pose...

Okay, I had to 'zero figure / rotations' to unscramble initial 'gimbal lock', and textures were PNGs, with Alpha channels used for transparency...

Still, I've contacted author to ask what/how he did that let it 'play nice' with Poser, and which of his other models have same 'provenance'...

 

quote, ahjah ... The younger people interested in 3D/CGI are tending more into game developement  and animation. Tools like Blender are much more interesting like Poser or DS, and they are more at home on social media rather than old fashioned forums, I guess.

True, there seems to be more focus on Blender, Unity, etc. I still prefer Poser, it's what I started playing around with since Poser 2. & I enjoy Poser's traditional (MetaCreations) interface.

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quote, Nik ... 'Feud' seems too strong a term, but DAZ definitely discourages Poser material creation. ... Still, I've contacted author to ask what/how he did that let it 'play nice' with Poser, and which of his other models have same 'provenance'...

Indeed, some things at DAZ3D don't even have Poser listed as being compatible-with, even though I know it's compatible. And you have to go to the bottom of their lists to find the Poser checkbox when searching for items. even though, alphabetically speaking, Unity should be listed last, or ZBrush. DAZ3D does seem to be anti-Poser (understandably, commercial rivals & all).

I would also like to know, how some 3D modellers, get their FBX models, to play nicely with Poser