New Smith Micro "La Femme" base figure for Poser at Rendo
Cybersox
Posts: 9,053
I'm not sure what to make of this. The base is currently available for free over at Renderosity for those who want to play with her, and she's got a pretty solid production team behind her (Blackheatered, Nerd3d, Rhiannon, Deecey, & Smith MIcro but she only works in Poser 11 and up. Personally, I suspect it's a llittle too late to significantly change the current arc of the market, especially given that we already had one other new Poser based female figure launch this year with little impact, and I prefer the aesthetics of f the G7 and G8 female figures in any case but... well, at least Smith Micro is finally doing something.
Comments
Much as I like and admire everyone on the team who made her (a couple of them are friends), I think you may be right. SM doesn't even care about the software anymore it seems like. I hate to have to say that too, because I used it for so many years, that and I hate to see good software abandoned. But it is what it is :(
I wish her as much success as possible tho. And them :)
Laurie
Its not really free as you need to spend at least $3.50 to get her free.
+1
??? It shows as free for me. Maybe because I have a Prime membership?
i will try her out for sure...lots of products upon initial release.
Poser was my goto since it was 1st released. Haven;'t touched it in at least a year.
Yeah. The sad thing is that Blackheated's HD version is absolutely stunning and I've hoped for years that he'd make a new Girl Next Door figure specifically for one of the Genesis figures. But, if they were really serious, BH's version should have been the version they launched as the main figure. As it is, I imagine that most of the Poser crowd will continue using V4 with Dawn and G2F as distant seconds because there's tons of stuff already available for them.
When you try and check out it says the purchase does not meet the $3.50 minimum requirement. And I'm Prime over there.
I'm also a prime member and she shows as free; BUT when you put her in your cart by herself and try to check out you get an error message that the cart must meet a $3.50 minimum.
So it's just like Daz3d's 'freebies' then ;)
No, I think the programming team just didn't remember they needed to disable the $3.50 card limit for that item. It has to do with a minumum purchace requirement, not trying to get you to buy an item to get it. If that's what they meant to happen they would have said "Free with Purchase". You know, sort of like another place does ;)
No, at least with DAZ when you are a club member you can check out with a zero price for the weekly freebie.
Regarding the new model, I agree with the comments above.
At least she is pretty, which is more than I can say for a lot of the new Poser base models over the last few years.
Well, for a main figure, plainer is best because you have a better blank canvas to start with. So I don't have a problem with how they launched her. I think they did the right thing there :)
Laurie
Looks nice.
But Poser still has a strategic market postion problem that wont be solved by
another ,young pretty white girl .
Of course the inevitable first question from the poser masses will be :
"how hard is it to use my 12year old, 85 gigabyte hoard of V4 content
on the new figure??"
My personal advice is that BH, Nerd and the others is to make it very clear that they
will not tie the future of their new figure to V4 and her rotting stockpile in any way
The PE creator talked much about his" V4 clothing conversion" method
during the figure development and when people finally saw what was actually involved....
well we all know by now how that all turned out.
Right, but it requires that you purchase the membership first. So not really 'free'
Especially when she still has to date M4, Dusk or G2M. One of the core strengths that DAZ has always had is that their customers are 100% assured that there will be a male figure for every new generation of products. With anyone else, it's a much bigger question mark.
Where is L'homme?
Same here. I was a die hard Poser user until they became stagnant. At Siggraph a few years ago at the Smith Micro booth, I met a new young employee who was supposedly creating the new official Poser character and as a long time user, I gave him many suggestions on what customers want. He said my ideas were impossible. Then Genesis 3 came out with pretty much everything I described to the guy. Clearly not impossible. That’s when Smith Micro started to lose me. I really loved Poser, was not ready to give it up, but they got so behind, I had to switch and go through learning curve hell with DS lol, but now, it’s kinda hard to turn back. I will try out this new character but as I’m not going to invest in any more clothes/hair for a new character, not sure how useful it will be. I hope I even remember how to use Poser!
Wanted to take a look, and rendo is broken for me now. Weird
It doesn't look like this is a SmithMicro product. This is an RPublishing (Renderosity) product. Now, if they can just get SuperFly sussed and make her a decent wardrobe (which probably needs to be subsidized), then they might have something. Her ears are wonky, though, even with the HD morphs.
Smith Micro turning over store functions to Rendo might have been the first smart consumer marketing move they've ever done. Rendo is doing a really good push on this one. It isn't in danger of turning me into a Poser user though :P It will be interesting to watch how it turns out.
But the flip side of that argument is that there are only a dozen clothing products for F1 at launch and you're unlikely to see many more produced unless the figure takes off. Consider how long Dawn has been on the market and how there are only a fraction of the number of outfits available for her as for either of the much newer G3F and G8F. Unless your target market is doing nothing except nudes, cannibalizing older generation's product base is the only way to jump start the sytem.
She was released with a nice selection of different products, which is the right way to do it, IMVHO. I think Rendo dropped the ball with the $3.50 pay to play thing. They could have at least MENTIONED it in the ad copy. Can't call her free then. Not that I'd mind paying $3.50...of course not...but that's not the point. You don't call something free and then turn around and say "you need to pay X amount first". That just makes people mad. And that makes me feel bad for Nerd and Dee and BH and everyone that worked so hard on her. She could have had a much better launch.
I do open Poser every now and then. TBH, it does feel clunky and unnatural to me now after using DS for about 4 years. It does come back after a couple hours tho...lol. At least for me, who used it for nearly 20 years before I switched...hehe.
Laurie
To get her I bought a G8 garment on sale...LOL
...
Yeah, it's weird to use Poser at all these days. I was bouncing back and forth between the two progams up through the end of DS 3.0, but while I still upgrade to the latest version of Poser, after Genesis came out I pretty much switched to DS full time and only use Poser for trick functions and supporting plugins like VWD.
she does look good, and Blackhearted has done a lovely job with his 'High Definition' character. but , tbh, it is going to be another figure that will likely 'die on the vine'.
i think very few vendors will support her, unless they do freebies or create products just for the love of creating. sadly the Poser userbase is now a lot lower than that for Daz Studio.
Vendors who actually need the income from product creation ( 'part' or 'full time' ) cannot really afford to spend effort and time on products that will, most likely,not have a good return on time/effort invested.
New figure looks quite good IMO. I won't use her personally as I don't have P11, but she'll be interesting to follow.
The figure looks great, especially Blackhearted's figure. Rendo is giving a decent deal to upgrade to Poser Pro 11, and get La Femme, a pose pack, a pair of slip ons, and Swim Suit for ~$50 (of course you can get the figure for "free" without the purchase, but it's not usable without P11). I'm on the fence about it right now. This was the first time I didn't upgrade Poser since Poser 3, but I just don't know if I would use it that much, and if I really want to invest in a whole new character ... is there a way to easily convert Genesis1-8 clothing to this new figure?? I'm also wondering if it would be really difficult to get good renders out of Superfly, with the exception of a handful (or less) of artists, the Superfly renders are....ummm... lets just say ... not that inspiring.
Plus, I would need to at least get some hair, heels, another outfit, and Blackhearted's morphs, so there's another $50-60 dollars. I could get a lot of great stuff that I've really be wanting here for that. Hmmm,,,,,
I'm happy for Poser users, and I really do hope she does well for all involved! Unfortunately the Poser ship sailed long ago for me personally and PP2014 will remain my last version, but I'm definitely glad to see a new figure released with artists like Blackhearted behind it.
True, though I have to wonder if the Poser base really has become smaller now, or if they just don't buy as much since after XX years there's very little new that comes out for V4 that they don't already have multiple variations of. Either way, though, the end result is the same.