Journals3
Newest
...And Poser's new owners are...
9 min read
The story so far
Poser has changed hands many times during its lifetime. Metacreations, Curious Labs, e frontier, Smith Micro - and now, Bondware. This journal will have a look at the consequences of that most recent change.
Poser 11 (both basic and Pro) and Poser Pro 2014 Game Dev had a feature where they would need to contact an activation server at regular intervals in order to keep working. Now that Smith Micro are no longer the owners, that server has been shut off. Bondware have produced a new version which calls their own server instead, meaning that to continue using those versions of Poser, you have to update to the Bondware version. Previous versions up to Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2014 (non Game Dev) are unaffected, and to the best of my knowledge you can reinstall an earlier version any time you like. That's the background to what follows.
The 'phone home' rant
I can understand a software vendor wanting to protect their product against piracy, but when their DRM measures make things more stressful for their customers, they can't be doing themselves as many favours as they seem to think they are. Phoning home is a questionable practice at the best of times, in my opinion, but when the software changes hands things can get seriously annoying. Chances are that the new owners won't want or be able to adopt the existing activation mechanism, meaning your expensively purchased software will phone home, find no server, falsely accuse you of being a pirate, and shut itself down permanently. A music program that I used to use and enjoy (Sonic Foundry's Acid) was taken over by Sony, and suddenly I couldn't run it any more unless I bought a new copy. If that was a marketing strategy, it was the worst one ever.
Sure, the terms of use that I agreed to (as in, clicked through without reading) probably said that that could happen, with no recourse - but that doesn't make me feel any less angry. I also understand the concept of not really owning software, but I'm old school, and if I give someone money for something I expect to be able to use the thing for as long as I like, not until they feel like breaking it.
After the Acid debacle, I don't want to buy another 'phone home' program ever again. I wasn't fully aware that Poser 11 did this, until its recent acquisition by Bondware. To be fair, I probably would have bought it anyway, even if I had known that Smith Micro could pull the rug from under my feet at any time. I had naively thought that setting my licence to 'permanent' would mean it would last, you know, for ever. That's what permanent means, isn't it?
Not if you're Smith Micro, it doesn't. I had two installations of Poser 11, both on the same licence which had been set to permanent using Smith Micro's licence admin page. Both installations stopped working within a week or so of each other, and that means I have to rehash my favourite Douglas Adams quote yet again. "This must be some new usage of the word 'permanent' that I wasn't previously aware of."
So, Smith Micro are off my Christmas card list. (During the drafting phase of this piece, much worse terms for them were considered, and deleted.) Poser had been going downhill under their stewardship anyway - the Firefly renderer was optimised for speed at the expense of quality, and then they off-shored the development team. This move lost the involvement of several people who had a long history with Poser, actually used it on a regular basis, and were passionate about its future. Later updates introduced at least one severe bug (as in crash-to-the-desktop severe) without introducing any really useful features. I had to revert my installation to an earlier version, and I never updated again.
The balanced bit
I'm not the greatest fan of Renderosity or Bondware - see The Double Edged Sword - but they don't deserve all the blame which is being heaped on them on the forums. If your Smith Micro licence expires, and all the indications are that it will, sooner or later, it isn't Bondware's fault. From my point of view, one enormous bonus is that the new Bondware version of Poser (version 11.2) will upgrade my Poser 11 standard to Poser 11 Pro for free. Bought from Smith Micro, the Pro version cost $350 as opposed to $130 for the standard. My Poser 11 licence is an upgrade licence, and in the past I've also had to enter the licence number of my previous full version when installing - now I don't even have to do that! I'll get a whole load of extra content, also free. Sure, I've already bought some of it, but... Did you hear when I said IT'S FREE!? Another advantage is that the download is just that: a simple download. No more faffing about with a download manager. If you're thinking of buying Poser, there's now a free trial available, which had not been the case under Smith Micro's ownership.
That buys them an awful lot of goodwill points. It doesn't mean that Bondware should escape all criticism, however.
- I mentioned above that the Poser downloads are just a series of files that you download yourself, which is all well and good. However the download server (Amazon Web Services) appears not to be able to restart a failed download, at least on Chrome. If you’re on a flaky connection, as I am, it can take a long time to get a 1.2GB file, which is the size of the main installer. Many of the content downloads are also large files. The slightest interruption to your download means you have to start again from the beginning.
- Poser's default scene (the one you see when you start it up for the first time) has historically been a safe-for-work figure such as a clothed human, or more recently Andy the stick man. However Poser 11.2 starts up with the LaFemme figure, naked as the day she was 'born'. You wouldn't want this popping up on your screen if you were in a public environment, especially if there were kids around. Or your boss.
- The Bondware version of Poser 11 phones home even more often than the Smith Micro version - my experiment bears out the forum rumours that it's every nine days or so. The trial version is supposed to last for twenty-one days, but I can't test very easily whether the trial licence behaves differently. This is what I got today (10th) on my non-Internet-connected test machine after installing Poser 11.2 on the 1st of the month. I'll continue the experiment to see if this time period always applies.
- (Side note) As you may be aware, Windows 7 will not receive updates from Microsoft after 14th January 2020. After that date I had hoped to take my Windows 7 machines off-line to protect them from security threats. That seems to be less practical now - and no, I don’t intend to ‘upgrade’ to Windows 10 for reasons which aren’t really important.
- (Side side note) Oh all right then - some applications that I want to use won’t work under Windows 10, and I don’t trust Microsoft to issue trouble-free updates. Call me a grumpy old git if you want, it isn't slander if it's true!
- Some Python scripts that I've come to rely on are broken in the 11.2 update, because it reports a new version number which the scripts don't recognise. Although there's a fix for this, it's from a third party (albeit a reliable one), isn't widely publicised, and I don't currently know how 'official' its release is.
- If Renderosity is an example of Bondware's software quality control, I think I have good reason to be wary. Communication has been generally poor, yet they regularly send me newsletters telling me how wonderful Poser is, so I know they can communicate. But when a member of the development team (by which I mean, they have their name on the start-up splash screen) states on a forum that they 'don't do "version" numbers' (the quotes around "version" are theirs, as if it's a controversial concept), and that there are no release notes for the current versions (there have been two as I write this in early November 2019), I don't feel terribly confident. I've worked with software developers in a professional environment, where this lax attitude would have been completely unacceptable. If you don't get your version control procedures in place at the outset, in my experience, you're off on the wrong foot. These things are an order of magnitude more difficult to impose later on.
- The readme file states that you need Adobe Flash and Air installed for the library to work, which is a lie. This is actually Smith Micro's lie, because it hasn't been true since Poser 10, but it shows that nobody knowledgeable at Bondware has read the readme, so why should I believe anything in it?
- The "Knowledge Base" (my quotes this time) on the support site amounts to five disparate articles at the time of writing. I really hope this isn't their entire knowledge base. (In fact, I know it isn't - Renderosity hosts many useful tutorials. This Knowledge Base seems to have been written without any reference to them.)
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The Future of Morphography
2 min read
Hi all! This announcement is to let you all know that I don't plan to renew the hosting account for Morphography when it comes up for renewal in December.
I do plan to continue to register the domain name, meaning that I can point it to some less well-specified free hosting if I choose, and also retain my morphography.uk.vu e-mail address. Nothing is set in stone yet on that score.
First of all, in the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, DON'T PANIC. I'm not leaving the CGI community, I'm not throwing my toys out of the pram through discouragement or disillusionment, and nor am I dying (at least, no faster than anyone else is).
I took this decision because Morphography costs me money, and doesn't make me any in return. More importantly, I don't use it for its intended purpose any longer. I haven't uploaded anything other than minor page updates for over two years. The links page is gradually being whittled away by attrition; I'm removing dead links a lot faster than I'm adding new ones. I think the heyday of the personal download site was over some time ago.
Anything made by me can be redistributed freely, but bear in mind that the things I'm hosting for other people may not carry the same freedoms. Check the readme files, and if in doubt, contact the author if that's possible. I hereby grant permission to reproduce my tutorials and artwork at other locations, as long as you identify me as the author, and pass on the same terms to others. However please try to avoid bringing the site to its knees with a download frenzy since that would help nobody. I'll still be around after it closes, and if there was something you wanted, I can make it available one way or another.
Kind regards,
English Bob
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The Double Edged Sword
13 min read
This essay is really a rant about some recent developments in the on-line Poser community. I normally prefer to keep quiet if I see a problem but can't propose a solution (the legacy of a long career in engineering). In this case I think it might be better to get it off my chest, so to speak.
Hanlon's Razor is a useful rule of thumb to bear in mind while roaming the Internet. You've probably heard it somewhere already; although the wording varies, the gist of it is the same.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
In other words, other people may do weird stuff, but it doesn't usually mean they're out to get you. They're more likely to be totally clueless. Bear in mind also that your own carefully considered, rational actions will undoubtedly appear to be weird to someone else.
As has been recorded elsewhere, Poser was originally devised to be a computer based replacement for the artist's lay figure: a wooden mannequin which can be posed by hand to serve as a reference for drawing when a human model is not available / not willing to put up with your bullshit / would be likely to call the cops. (Delete where not applicable.)
Poser uses an assortment of linked files to define the objects and actions in its library, and the scenes you can build with those library items. None of those files are in a protected format; all of them can be edited by anybody, with a free application if you choose. Some are simple text; like a programming language or script, they can be edited by any text editor, if you understand how the contents are interpreted by the program. Image files can be created and edited by a wide range of applications, and the 3D models are in Wavefront OBJ format which is virtually an industry standard by now. As a result, although skill is of course required, it's quite feasible to make new things. There's no need to break into, rip or unlock anything. This is the reason that the Poser add-on market has grown so large, considering that the program was not designed to support user generated add-ons.
I may return to the subject of DAZ and RDNA in another essay, but for now let's focus on Renderosity. They weren't the first on-line Poser community, but they were the most successful. I say "were". Once upon a time Renderosity was the go-to place to search for a free item that you wanted, or to get your question in front of the maximum number of eyes in the forum. That's no longer the case.
For some years Renderosity has indulged in an unfortunate habit that the community has come to call the "annual barbecue and foot-shoot". Like a barbecue, the foot-shoot usually takes place in summer, but invariably results in howls of protest from the members even though it's the hosts that have been using their feet for target practice. Unless they're centipedes, you'd think they must have run out of feet to shoot by now.
I can cope with an occasional site redesign, provided any bugs that result are squashed promptly, but the first of these foot-shoots that directly affected me was in 2009 when the freestuff section moved to on-site hosting. Previously, anyone who wanted to offer a freebie download had to sort out their own hosting for it. If the creator was short of money, the solution was usually a flaky free website, festooned with ads and prone to falling offline at regular intervals. On-site hosting is a positive development, for sure; but as is so often the case, Renderosity's implementation of it was frustrating in that it gave with one hand and took away with the other. They made on-site hosting compulsory for any new freestuff: you could no longer post a link to your own site in the freestuff section, although you could still do so in the freestuff forum.
As a further example of the two-edged sword, Renderosity also used this as an opportunity to serve advertisements to downloaders. I fully accept that they would need to fund the hosting for these freebies, and I also see why they would want to step up their advertising efforts - see later on for more on that subject. But originally, the ads were completely random. Some vendors who had posted freebies found that people who downloaded them were being served ads for competitor's products! That at least was fixed, but the advertising is still intrusive and untargeted. One frustrating aspect is that if you post a freebie add-on for a Renderosity vendor's product, there is no way to request that that product should be included in the ads that a downloader sees. You can only include a link - in text form, so that it has to be copied and pasted - in the freebie description page, which I suspect many downloaders never read.
Along with many others, I objected to this. Many years ago I set up my own site funded wholly out of my own pocket, which mainly hosts downloads and tutorials. Some of these are made by myself, some are made by other people and hosted by me because their original home was gone. Often the creators of those hosted items have given me permission to store their stuff at Morphography, but not to plaster it all over the Internet. I couldn't upload it to Renderosity even if I wanted to, and I don't. I want people to visit my site, and benefit from the other useful things I have. Quite often, my own items have add-on textures etc. made by other generous members of the community, and I wanted people to see those too. Sometimes there are tips on how best to use the item in question, if it is something unusual or complex. I see little point in offering something novel if nobody can use it correctly.
Myself and Adam Thwaites posted a petition at Renderosity which gained many signatories. The last was on Christmas day 2015, making it one of the longest-running threads on the site, after which it was finally locked. No reason for locking was given; the thread had been remarkably well-behaved. Significantly I think, many of those who agreed with us had never posted in the forums before, despite being members for years. This was the first issue over which they'd felt compelled to de-lurk. Needless to say, the freestuff section stayed as it was. Renderosity's long history also includes a stubborn unwillingness to listen to its members, or even be consistent in the reasons it gives for not listening.
Hanlon's Razor is a useful rule of thumb to bear in mind while roaming the Internet. You've probably heard it somewhere already; although the wording varies, the gist of it is the same.
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
In other words, other people may do weird stuff, but it doesn't usually mean they're out to get you. They're more likely to be totally clueless. Bear in mind also that your own carefully considered, rational actions will undoubtedly appear to be weird to someone else.
.oOo.
As has been recorded elsewhere, Poser was originally devised to be a computer based replacement for the artist's lay figure: a wooden mannequin which can be posed by hand to serve as a reference for drawing when a human model is not available / not willing to put up with your bullshit / would be likely to call the cops. (Delete where not applicable.)
Poser uses an assortment of linked files to define the objects and actions in its library, and the scenes you can build with those library items. None of those files are in a protected format; all of them can be edited by anybody, with a free application if you choose. Some are simple text; like a programming language or script, they can be edited by any text editor, if you understand how the contents are interpreted by the program. Image files can be created and edited by a wide range of applications, and the 3D models are in Wavefront OBJ format which is virtually an industry standard by now. As a result, although skill is of course required, it's quite feasible to make new things. There's no need to break into, rip or unlock anything. This is the reason that the Poser add-on market has grown so large, considering that the program was not designed to support user generated add-ons.
Remember that several features which we now take for granted, such as posable clothing, transparency mapped hair, ERC and MAT poses were all devised by the community of users. The vendors, and the stores that broker their creations, owe their existence to the community. Without those accessible file formats, and those enthusiastic early file hackers, there would be no market. DAZ Studio, on the other hand, was designed from the outset to promote a closed marketplace. That much was clear from the moment it was released for free; and now it has encrypted content that's impossible to hack (in either sense of the word). Creating content for DAZ Studio is relatively simple, from what I hear; and most of this creation is now aimed at supporting figures that are very difficult to use in Poser.
For some years Renderosity has indulged in an unfortunate habit that the community has come to call the "annual barbecue and foot-shoot". Like a barbecue, the foot-shoot usually takes place in summer, but invariably results in howls of protest from the members even though it's the hosts that have been using their feet for target practice. Unless they're centipedes, you'd think they must have run out of feet to shoot by now.
I can cope with an occasional site redesign, provided any bugs that result are squashed promptly, but the first of these foot-shoots that directly affected me was in 2009 when the freestuff section moved to on-site hosting. Previously, anyone who wanted to offer a freebie download had to sort out their own hosting for it. If the creator was short of money, the solution was usually a flaky free website, festooned with ads and prone to falling offline at regular intervals. On-site hosting is a positive development, for sure; but as is so often the case, Renderosity's implementation of it was frustrating in that it gave with one hand and took away with the other. They made on-site hosting compulsory for any new freestuff: you could no longer post a link to your own site in the freestuff section, although you could still do so in the freestuff forum.
As a further example of the two-edged sword, Renderosity also used this as an opportunity to serve advertisements to downloaders. I fully accept that they would need to fund the hosting for these freebies, and I also see why they would want to step up their advertising efforts - see later on for more on that subject. But originally, the ads were completely random. Some vendors who had posted freebies found that people who downloaded them were being served ads for competitor's products! That at least was fixed, but the advertising is still intrusive and untargeted. One frustrating aspect is that if you post a freebie add-on for a Renderosity vendor's product, there is no way to request that that product should be included in the ads that a downloader sees. You can only include a link - in text form, so that it has to be copied and pasted - in the freebie description page, which I suspect many downloaders never read.
Along with many others, I objected to this. Many years ago I set up my own site funded wholly out of my own pocket, which mainly hosts downloads and tutorials. Some of these are made by myself, some are made by other people and hosted by me because their original home was gone. Often the creators of those hosted items have given me permission to store their stuff at Morphography, but not to plaster it all over the Internet. I couldn't upload it to Renderosity even if I wanted to, and I don't. I want people to visit my site, and benefit from the other useful things I have. Quite often, my own items have add-on textures etc. made by other generous members of the community, and I wanted people to see those too. Sometimes there are tips on how best to use the item in question, if it is something unusual or complex. I see little point in offering something novel if nobody can use it correctly.
Myself and Adam Thwaites posted a petition at Renderosity which gained many signatories. The last was on Christmas day 2015, making it one of the longest-running threads on the site, after which it was finally locked. No reason for locking was given; the thread had been remarkably well-behaved. Significantly I think, many of those who agreed with us had never posted in the forums before, despite being members for years. This was the first issue over which they'd felt compelled to de-lurk. Needless to say, the freestuff section stayed as it was. Renderosity's long history also includes a stubborn unwillingness to listen to its members, or even be consistent in the reasons it gives for not listening.
Then they started redesigning the forums and other parts of the site, ostensibly to be more usable on mobile devices such as phones and tablets. Never mind that Poser itself doesn't run on a phone or a tablet, although I will concede that it may be convenient to post a question in the forums using one. Many graphics machines are not connected to the Internet for security reasons. Never mind that sites such as Facebook and deviantArt run perfectly fine on both desktop computers and mobile devices. At sites such as these, when you log in to check your messages, you don't have to scroll through several screens' worth of
before you reach the interesting stuff. See how annoying that was?
Note also one detail that I mentioned in passing; at both Facebook and deviantArt, you have to go to the site to see if anyone has left you a message, or if something has happened that you might be interested in. This is good practice from their point of view, because it means you get to see their advertising more often.
Renderosity, on the other hand, has always had the standard forum behaviour: when you post a thread, reply to one, or simply decide to follow what everyone else has to say, you can opt to be sent an e-mail alert (an 'ebot') when someone replies. The ebots always were a little flaky; there would be jokes about them taking a vacation sometimes. But some time in the past year, ebots got more seriously broken. You still got one the first time someone replied in a thread; but after you'd read the reply, if you silently went away and waited for someone more sensible to answer (just as an example!), you would never get another ebot. The icon on the forum showed you were subscribed to the thread, but to borrow one of my favourite Douglas Adams sayings, "this must be some new usage of the word 'subscribed' that I wasn't previously aware of".
If you look at Renderosity's headquarters on Google Street View, you'll see that it says Bondware Web Solutions over the door. That's right, Renderosity is run by a web technology company. There should be no shortage of web developers behind those doors, you would think. And yet, a year has gone by and a fault that every other forum software on the planet has already addressed is not fixed. It's been complained about endlessly; members have threatened to leave if the problem isn't fixed, and many have done so; detailed analyses of the symptoms have been posted. If Renderosity took a stranger off the street, trained him or her from scratch how to code for the web, and they only worked one day a week, there would still have been plenty of time to fix this bug.
If they had done something controversial in the interests of making more money, I could understand that, even though I might not support it. But I don't see how breaking the community features of the site will help to make them more money. Reason suggests that they understand the benefits of community - promote plenty of traffic to the site through forums, tutorials, galleries and freestuff, and some of those visitors will check out the store, and some of them will buy something. If you need to make more money, and all indications are that times are hard in the 3D hobbyist market, then you have two ways to do that. First, you can try to persuade a higher proportion of your existing visitors to spend money, through special offers and more effective advertising. In fact, the special offers have become somewhat muted recently; coupons no longer tend to apply to sales items as they did in the past, and some vendors can apparently opt not to accept them. Secondly, you can try to entice more visitors to your site. Renderosity has a lot of competition nowadays from other sites of varying size. Dissuading freestuff providers from using the site, and making the forums less attractive, is hardly the way to improve matters.
A recent announcement stated that off-site links were no longer allowed. There were several different reasons given for this, none of which really stand up to rational examination. In other words, the edict was handed down from on high, and the staff appear not to have been given guidance on what to do about it. Given that it outlaws the contents of years' worth of old forum posts and freestuff submissions, it's hard to see how it could be retrospectively implemented without editing tens or hundreds of thousands of old links. On the other hand, if these old links are not edited, then their perceived 'dangers' still apply, surely?
Many providers have said that they won't post any more freestuff there, and some (myself included) have removed their existing offerings. Many people (myself included) no longer post questions in the forums, or answer them; because if the ebots aren't working, there's no guarantee that anyone will see the answers. Posting in a forum can be an exercise in futility even at the best of times. Threads go off-topic or are disrupted by trolls, or people simply misunderstand each other and the topic circles around the answer like water round a plug hole. Now, on this ramshackle excuse for a forum, it's guaranteed to be an exercise in futility every time.
Neither malice nor incompetence seems to adequately explain the situation. If it's malice - and Hanlon's Razor suggests it probably isn't - then it's incredibly incompetently implemented. If it's incompetence, then the company's dogged insistence on ignoring the problem while telling members that 'the guys are on it' looks sufficiently indistinguishable from malice despite what Robert Hanlon would advise.
You may consider this essay to be just whining. Renderosity can do what they like; it's their site, right? They don't owe me anything. Maybe not, but I do have an affiliate link on my site. I'm driving traffic towards them (I know I am, because I get paid a percentage of sales for it), so it's galling to be told that they won't send me any traffic in return. On a more selfish note, Renderosity used to be a useful resource for me and now it isn't. Another thing that's been broken during the redesign is that attachments to old threads, which may have contained tutorial images or a small download, no longer function. Somehow, the forum structure has changed so that many of the links I'd saved to informative threads no longer work. The freestuff section can no longer be relied upon to house that thing I'm looking for. Yes, I think I have some justification for being disappointed in what's happened there. Whether it's caused by malice or stupidity hardly matters.
ENORMOUS TEXT
before you reach the interesting stuff. See how annoying that was?
Note also one detail that I mentioned in passing; at both Facebook and deviantArt, you have to go to the site to see if anyone has left you a message, or if something has happened that you might be interested in. This is good practice from their point of view, because it means you get to see their advertising more often.
Renderosity, on the other hand, has always had the standard forum behaviour: when you post a thread, reply to one, or simply decide to follow what everyone else has to say, you can opt to be sent an e-mail alert (an 'ebot') when someone replies. The ebots always were a little flaky; there would be jokes about them taking a vacation sometimes. But some time in the past year, ebots got more seriously broken. You still got one the first time someone replied in a thread; but after you'd read the reply, if you silently went away and waited for someone more sensible to answer (just as an example!), you would never get another ebot. The icon on the forum showed you were subscribed to the thread, but to borrow one of my favourite Douglas Adams sayings, "this must be some new usage of the word 'subscribed' that I wasn't previously aware of".
If you look at Renderosity's headquarters on Google Street View, you'll see that it says Bondware Web Solutions over the door. That's right, Renderosity is run by a web technology company. There should be no shortage of web developers behind those doors, you would think. And yet, a year has gone by and a fault that every other forum software on the planet has already addressed is not fixed. It's been complained about endlessly; members have threatened to leave if the problem isn't fixed, and many have done so; detailed analyses of the symptoms have been posted. If Renderosity took a stranger off the street, trained him or her from scratch how to code for the web, and they only worked one day a week, there would still have been plenty of time to fix this bug.
If they had done something controversial in the interests of making more money, I could understand that, even though I might not support it. But I don't see how breaking the community features of the site will help to make them more money. Reason suggests that they understand the benefits of community - promote plenty of traffic to the site through forums, tutorials, galleries and freestuff, and some of those visitors will check out the store, and some of them will buy something. If you need to make more money, and all indications are that times are hard in the 3D hobbyist market, then you have two ways to do that. First, you can try to persuade a higher proportion of your existing visitors to spend money, through special offers and more effective advertising. In fact, the special offers have become somewhat muted recently; coupons no longer tend to apply to sales items as they did in the past, and some vendors can apparently opt not to accept them. Secondly, you can try to entice more visitors to your site. Renderosity has a lot of competition nowadays from other sites of varying size. Dissuading freestuff providers from using the site, and making the forums less attractive, is hardly the way to improve matters.
A recent announcement stated that off-site links were no longer allowed. There were several different reasons given for this, none of which really stand up to rational examination. In other words, the edict was handed down from on high, and the staff appear not to have been given guidance on what to do about it. Given that it outlaws the contents of years' worth of old forum posts and freestuff submissions, it's hard to see how it could be retrospectively implemented without editing tens or hundreds of thousands of old links. On the other hand, if these old links are not edited, then their perceived 'dangers' still apply, surely?
Many providers have said that they won't post any more freestuff there, and some (myself included) have removed their existing offerings. Many people (myself included) no longer post questions in the forums, or answer them; because if the ebots aren't working, there's no guarantee that anyone will see the answers. Posting in a forum can be an exercise in futility even at the best of times. Threads go off-topic or are disrupted by trolls, or people simply misunderstand each other and the topic circles around the answer like water round a plug hole. Now, on this ramshackle excuse for a forum, it's guaranteed to be an exercise in futility every time.
Neither malice nor incompetence seems to adequately explain the situation. If it's malice - and Hanlon's Razor suggests it probably isn't - then it's incredibly incompetently implemented. If it's incompetence, then the company's dogged insistence on ignoring the problem while telling members that 'the guys are on it' looks sufficiently indistinguishable from malice despite what Robert Hanlon would advise.
You may consider this essay to be just whining. Renderosity can do what they like; it's their site, right? They don't owe me anything. Maybe not, but I do have an affiliate link on my site. I'm driving traffic towards them (I know I am, because I get paid a percentage of sales for it), so it's galling to be told that they won't send me any traffic in return. On a more selfish note, Renderosity used to be a useful resource for me and now it isn't. Another thing that's been broken during the redesign is that attachments to old threads, which may have contained tutorial images or a small download, no longer function. Somehow, the forum structure has changed so that many of the links I'd saved to informative threads no longer work. The freestuff section can no longer be relied upon to house that thing I'm looking for. Yes, I think I have some justification for being disappointed in what's happened there. Whether it's caused by malice or stupidity hardly matters.
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