Poser skin support

Since SL supports Poser 5 for animations, I feel that LL should take Poser support one step further and allow use of the skin files created by Poser as well.

Well I thought it was a good idea.

I think it's a great idea, too. It would allow out-of-world development of certain clothing items, skins, tattoos, hair, etc.

Of course, I think it's a great idea because I already have a copy of Poser 5. I'm sure those that don't own P5 and don't want/can't drop the $200 (US) or $350 (international) to buy it probably aren't that interested.

Just the same way those people can't create animations.

I don't believe it should be a necessity, like forcing Poser use for texture editing, but I think a nice feature would be the "support" of Poser texture files. Or an external program to convert one to the other, or something along those lines.

The UV mapping in Poser is completely different than it is in SL. They would have to remap the SL avatars which would have the net effect of rendering every existing skin and piece of clothing useless. The only way they could do this would be to have the avatars carry multiple sets of UV coordinates. It's not a bad idea but if they were to do that I'd much rather see them fix some of the problem areas in the existing mapping like the crotch area. I think it's in all of our best interest to not support Poser mapping since most poser skins are not intended to be resold. People would do it anyway much to the detriment of those who work very hard to create original content for SL.

Never thought of the UV mapping issues. Still I think it would be possible without too much trouble, from my experience with Poser and other 3D modeling programs.

You probably wouldn't like to see this feature implemented because your photoskin things (which ARE AWESOME!) would be much easier for everyone to make, so I can see your hesitation.

I think it would be doable, but would probably require a rewrite of the client to allow vertices to carry more than one set of UV coordinates. They could have a checkbox in appearance for which set of UV's a texture should use. If they ever decide to do more tweaking to the existing mapping they'd need to do that anyway or else it would invalidate every clothing item that currently exists or people would be faced with redoing dozens (and in some cases hundreds) of textures.

The problem with direct support of poser skin textures is that it's an invitation for theft. You can bet that within a week, every single skin available at renderosity would be in SL, being sold in violation of 90% of the license agreements, and against the will of their creators. If people want to develop skins themselves there's no reason not to do them with SL's existing templates.

"You can bet that within a week, every single skin available at renderosity would be in SL"

True true true! I've already seen animations from there being sold in SL. Actually, it was the day of the custom animation update that I saw them popping up for sale for $500-$1000 each animation.

btw... thanks for the compliment Aaron