From the perspective that acquiring Poser content is for hobby purposes, expenditure decisions for that surely must take lower priority to getting the leaky roof fixed. Moving upscale a bit on the 3D content pricing scale, we arrive at Zygote. USD40,000 asking price for some complete models, eh ? Ah, ha. But they offer financing ! Here are their financing partners which they mention on their website: http://www.capnetusa.com/

LOL ... To their credit, the Zygote models are in a far higher league than those we are accustomed to in the hobby market. They are geared toward the professional market. Their medical models, for example, are highly accurate and capable of precise medical visualizations. I can't even imagine the development time that would go into a model that is the caliber of those anatomy models. And because the market for them is much smaller than our huge and increasing hobby market, they have to price accordingly. The renders of those medical anatomy models are unbelievable!

Attached Link: http://turbosquid.com/

and what's in between the Rendo marketplace and zygote? Turbo Squid! ::::: Opera :::::

Turbosquid, home of the $750 basketball

I've never understood the pricing at that site. What's so special about their models of plants, or cars, or basketballs that makes them so pricey? I can see the anatomy models being pricey but I can't see spending $1,000 on a plant model. I'd like to know if they actually sell anything with such high prices.

i'd bet all the highly successful vendors at Squid are in utter disbelief at the rock bottom prices here and wonder how any could possibly make any money down here.

All I can do over at TurboSquid is admire their couple of Chinese Temples and Traditional Chinese Houses. If those items could be made available for lower-resolution use, and priced accordingly, who knows....

I'm surprised that someone in China, India, etc. hasn't knocked the bottom out of all their pricing structures as they have in programming. It seems inevitable.

I agree lmck. I think it is just under their radar at the moment.

I was surprised to learn that the 'squid had marked down their top-o-the-line basketball - it's now only $150, in case any bargain hunters are interested

A good professional ball in Real Life would cost as much, me thinks ? :)

"I've never understood the pricing at that site. What's so special about their models of plants, or cars, or basketballs that makes them so pricey? I can see the anatomy models being pricey but I can't see spending $1,000 on a plant model."

It's really very simple to understand. Let's take an example: An architectural visualization artist, who works for a studio, needs a few plants to accomidate his latest design. Rather than spend a few hours modeling the plant(s) from scratch, he decides to save a few hours of rendertime instead, and pick up a few pre-made plants at Turbosquid on the company's budget. It really doesn't matter if they're $500 each. They've come in under-budget anyway, so they can then afford to pass down that extra expense for the plants to their clients, and all is equal in the world again.

Message edited on: 03/09/2006 23:42

I don't understand the pricing either. For example, I've been looking at 17th/18th century ships. On 'rosity we have the Warraok Kitt, with or without sails, for $15,00 or so each. At Turbosquid, a similar model costs over $400, has half the polys, and is not textured. WTF?

Turbosquid's been around for at least as long as Rosity, so they must be doing something that works. As maxxmodelz suggests, the pricing on Turbosquid is not geared toward the hobbyist market like this site is. Juding from the products they sell there, most of the stuff is for high end applications. If someone is working for a studio and needs something fast for a project, he or she can go there, find what they need, and figure the cost they pay for the product into the client's bill. It's not a substancial loss for them so long as they get the job done one time. It's a different thing than most of us here that do it for fun or a few extra $$. Most of the people who probably buy things there probably don't even know Rosity exists.

Maxxmodelz is right about the market, and doesn't emphasize an important part of it. The cost is not coming out of the buyer's pocket. Like the TV set that was manufactured by polluting somebody else's river. Who cares? Case in point: I work in a department with six people; two of us are professional photographers. A marketing colleague is preparing a half-page flyer. She called me over to help her get three stock photos she had purchased for the flyer at Getty. (It required "downloading.") They cost $200 apiece and one was a 14K jpg of the glass front of a washing machine, with suds. We are not talking Ansel Adams here. Instead of using house resources to snap the pictures, which will be used as clip art at the bottom of the flyer and would have cost, say, $100 plus benefits (assuming we weren't idle at the time), she spent $500-$700 dollars on stuff a high-school kid could have done with a throwaway camera. Why? Because it wasn't her money. It doesn't help, of course, that this is a government environment, so even the management has that "not my money" mindset. I'm sympathetic to the AutoCADing architect who doesn't have the time or the skills to create a 3D couch for his visualization, and I'm glad it's reasonably easy to gather up what one needs to deal with that situation. What I have no sympathy for, because I see it as yet another manifestation of our self-privileging gluttony, is the "Who cares what it costs? The client is paying for it, not me" attitude. I don't want Calcutta to put TurboSquid out of business; I want them to put that architect out of business. When the third world begins to put CxO's and other financial narcissists on the breadlines, outsourcing will take on a whole new color. I'd love to see the day when upper management is peddling its ass for a cup of soup. I'll even donate the K-Y. M

I'm sympathetic to the AutoCADing architect who doesn't have the time or the skills to create a 3D couch for his visualization, and I'm glad it's reasonably easy to gather up what one needs to deal with that situation. I don't want Calcutta to put TurboSquid out of business; I want them to put that architect out of business. I'm confused. I've read from the middle of the second paragraph to the end three times, and I'm failing to understand what you're saying. I want to understand it (else I wouldn't be asking), and perhaps it's just too late at night and my eyes are too bleary, in which case I apologize, but... What? bonni

I met a farmer at our local market. I was surprised to see that he had his tomatoes priced at $1000 each. I remarked that he would not sell many at that price. To which he replied ..... "No, but I'm only trying to sell one".

elizabyte, beasically what he is saying is that he doesn't like seeing the contractor who spends his client's money frivolously, simply because he can.

To put it differently, let's say an artist is working on a project, and they need a model of a couch. After an hour of searching, he finds two models he is enamored with. One is at Rosity for $15.99, and the other is at TurboSquid for $159.99. His budget is still $4,000 above what he has spent, so he buys the TS version, simply because "it's not his money, it's the client's." He could have simply saved that money for the client, and that would have been the end of it.

mickmca is basically saying he would love to see the look on the artist's face when he finds out the reason the client hasn't called him in 18 months is because they now have a shop run in India doing the work for them, at half the cost.

It's a complaint that's very valid in my eyes. I am a programmer, and tons of jobs in my industry are being outsourced to Asian countries. Mostly because they will do the same work, for less money, in the same amount of time. Now we can argue all day about the difference in quality (which has recently made news for jobs being brought back here) but it is usually no care to the client, as long as the work gets done.

Attached Link: http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/264830

Turbosquid frustrates me a lot. There are so many gorgeous human figures there that would really sell well if rigged for poser. But the models are over priced and not poser compatible :(

Attached Link: http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/164073

they are poser compatible in the sense you can simply obtain the mesh (and possibly a texture) and then import into Poser, rig in the setup room.

If the vendor does not list .obj or .3ds as one of his/her export formats, all you have to do is ask and they will normally provide what you want.

Sometimes you can also get them to provide various levels of subdivision from low-poly to high-res.

::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/269814

I've never used the setup room and rigging takes a really long time :( Plus there's not only the rigging, but also the dial settings for morphs and expressions.

this is true

I have the Masha and Eric models from Squid. They're excellent, and come completely rigged for use in 3dsmax (not very helpful to Poser users), but for animation, I use 3dsMax exclusively anyway, so it works out great. I did many customizations on both models, including my own textures, shaders, and hair. I actually used Poser hair and fit them to the models (as seen in the example above). I have also created 50 original expression morphs for Masha, and 20 for Eric. So far, they've proven extremely useful and versatile for characters in several animation projects I am producing. They're excellent figures, but would need a LOT of work to convert to Poser format.

Holy crap. Great renders. Is that how the animation will look too?

"Is that how the animation will look too?"

Hi, Patrick. Yes, those are actually screencaps taken from some test animations I did while developing a custom skin shader. Final renders would be 720x480, and higher resolution, but the details and shading would be about the same as what you see there. Message edited on: 03/10/2006 19:29

Elizabyte -- I should have come back sooner and answered your question. But Destro75 did a fine job. I understand your confusion, because I seemed to be talking about the same architect in contradictory ways. What I meant was precisely what D75 said. It the "because he can" mentality. (Reference to one of my least favorite male jokes: "Why does a male dog lick himself?" Men mean it to be self-revealing, but not the self it really reveals.) That marketing person didn't NEED to spend $600 on those stupid pictures, and she wasn't spending a penny on the 5-6 inches of copy above the clip art, which she wrote herself because who needs professional writers? She spent the money just to spend it. That is what I mean by "privileging our gluttony." M

Glad I didn't misrepresent! And I am in full agreement with you mickmca.