DAZ|Studio

Just came across this, thought I would post it.
Seems to be a new free alt to Poser. Haven't had a chance to install it yet, but no reason others shouldn't know about it.
If you try it, post your impressions to the thread.

http://www.daz3d.com/
-you need toregister for website account to download. free reg.
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DAZ|Studio is a free software application that allows you to easily create beautiful digital art. You can use this software to load in people, animals, vehicles, buildings, props, and accessories to create digital scenes. DAZ|Studio includes two pre-configured scenes ready for you to Load & Render within DAZ|Studio. Just double-click on the scene thumbnails inside of DAZ|Studio, and everything will come on screen posed, lit, and ready for you to create a stunning digital image. Click here to view a sample scene render from DAZ|Studio using the included content.

I was just checking that out too, looks like a great app!! Unfortunately, I got the chance to talk to someone here at work who has already installed it and he informed me that currently it will not export bvh motion files I'm still going to check it out as it looks like a great app to play with, and it'd probably be a good idea to become familiar with incase later versions allow for BVH output..

I toyed with it in beta a few times over the past year or so, and I was impressed. I had assumed that many of the missing features (like BVH support) were things that were on their way and just hadn't been added yet. DAZ had said they wanted the program to be a fully functional Poser alternative. It's now disappointing to see that it's finally in 1.0 but BVH is still absent. Not only is it not an export option, but BVH import isn't available either, which kind of has me worried. BVH is a pretty common motion capture format. Not having it makes Daz Studio not only useless for SL animation, but also for many motion capture systems. That's huge.

I've been a beta tester for DAZ|Studio for most of the last year, and am pretty familiar with it. At this point, the 1.0 release still can't do the tasks that a Second Life developer would require. But it probably will in the future.

It can already import the base male and female SL avatars, and could pose them and set up animations, but it can't yet import or export animations in a format that SL supports. That may come some time soon as a plugin, now that version 1.0 has been released. Nothing definite on that yet.

DAZ|Studio 1.0 is FREE, and really rocks for producing 3D images in general. A friend of mine, Porter, uses it to create 'fine art' portraits of Avatars from a number of gaming systems, and he can produce stuff with it that is nearly photorealistic. (IM me in SL if you're interested in his art. I'm trying not to turn this into a sales pitch.)

Take the level of customization you can do in SL, and move it up by at least an order of magnitude. Not bad for a free application. Keep an eye on DAZ|Studio. Their site is at http://www.daz3d.com .

I'm not so sure if a BVH export tool is going to come so soon to DAZ|Studio -- after all, the more tools DAZ brings to Studio, the less likely are they able to promote their flagship product, which is as expensive as Poser.

As an utter amateur, I've tried both. DAZ|Studio would certainly beat Poser at the cost/benefit ratio -- for a free product, it does amazingly much. Sure, the animations in DAZ|Studio are still a few lightyears away from what Poser can do, but who cares, when it does most of what we need in SL for "simple" animations?

Of course, DAZ's files are utterly encrytpted/compressed/obfuscated and it's up to a professional programmer to make any sense out of it. I'm not so sure if many people are really seriously considering using DAZ for animations. What I know is that DAZ could take a shot at embracing the Second Life resident population by providing fully-Poser-compatible BVH exports.

Why would they do this, on a free product, that could cut on their sales? For me the answer is simple: market. On the Poser forums at Renderosity, they seem to count the total number of Poser users worldwide at less as SL's resident population. Both Poser and DAZ encourage designers to sell their creations webside. Does this sound familiar? Yes, so many would make almost the same amount by producing content for SL (after all, a 3D model of a Poser/DAZ-created bikini costs about half a dozen Pixel Dolls outfits -- but how many, in RL, are interested in buying a Poser bikini, as compared to how many would buy it in SL...?).

I tried to explain this to eFrontier (Poser's creators) half a year ago. Well, after having tried out DAZ|Studio, I guess it's time to edit my older emails and send them to DAZ instead. Perhaps they're more willing to listen, since at least they managed to understand the business model of having a free product and making money of content (which strangely sounds familiar...).