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Was anyone really expecting DAZ to issue a press release to the effect of : "...Victoria 6 our least successful release to date..."?
Success can be defined in many ways. DS can be classed as successful if you count success by the number of downloads. Can it be classed as equally successful by the actual revenue the application itself has generated (I'm not referring to content sales figures but actual monies generated by sale of DS in and of itself)?
In the Poserverse, what makes a figure successful and what doesn't? For most, it's support. A vendor can make the most amazing figure out there (Apollo Maximus is a prime example) but if there is no 3rd party support, it doesn't really succeed. In those terms, V4 would have to be considered DAZ's most successful release.
I am a Bryce User remember. I see Carrara as getting quite a bit of attention, and 2 upgrades scheduled.
I jumped off of Carrara when I couldn't upgrade 7 Pro to 8.x Pro without jumping through support ticket hoops. I like to press a button and see the deal and have time to think.
I would agree with this, barring information to the contrary. However, I also believe we are on the cusp of a change in the industry and where DAZ fits into that depends on what steps they take to meet that change. The next generation of tools and processes for creating content of a much higher standard are in the pipeline now with pTex, OpenSubDiv and the like. At a certain point, if one can buy a subscription to content, or significant bundled content that can be dropped in place rather then created, but needs little to no tweaking... studios of all sizes will commit their resources where they most make sense, and not worry about creating pots and pans, plants etc..
I agree.
To give you a real life example of company hype not meaning what it appears:
I once worked for a music store which primarily sold pianos and organs (remember those?), and gave 10 free lessons with the sale of either. They advertised this as, "our award winning free lessons." When asked about this, the owner said, "We give awards to our students, so we can say our lessons are award winning."
@ sjhayes2: You think that PA's have no power of what their products get bundled with?
@ chohole: I am quite aware that Carrara gets more development than Bryce, but there would be a greater return on investment for Carrara, and given funding it could be a gem that could compete with the other 3D packages out there in the same class. With its modelling tools, accessible materials system, render engine, and fx, not to mention native DS/Poser content support it should be the logical progression following on from programs like DS and Poser.
Bryce has a much steeper mountain to scale before it could start taking market share from the other similar apps. I'm a big fan of Bryce and think it could be fantastic given the TLC it needs.
Ah, I see the cause of confusion. I was saying that Carrara was the poor cousin of the full featured 3D suite world, not the DAZ development schedule.
I just love those explanations.
The problem with trying to say whether or not a company or product is successful based on what you see in a forum is that it's an echo chamber and not a representative sample of the actual user base.
I'm a gamer, I primarily play MMO's such as EverQuest or WoW. A few years ago I was at a fan convention run by one of the companies. Someone there brought up an issue with one of their recent expansions that "EVERYONE" hated - just look at the forums if you want proof. The devs smiled and showed real world numbers. Less than 20% of the entire player base logged into the forums on even a monthly basis. Less than 2% of the people that visited the forums in a month made ANY comment on the topic. So why should they tailor their product for a small but vocal fraction of their market.
Then of course you have to define "successful".
Is it that it sold more units in the first weekend? I can believe that, the potential market is bigger than when V5 launched and a heck of a lot bigger than when V4 launched. Remember, we're talking first weekend numbers here.
Is it that it netted more money in the first weekend? I can buy that as well for the same reason as above plus they probably made more per unit since they've improved their processes over the years.
So yeah, I can see it being the most successful release in DAZ history just like I'll bet that M6 will be the most successful in DAZ history.
I really doubt about this. Because professionnal like freelancers, educationnal, illustrator etc won't buy thousands of dollar of content per year as most hobbyist do.
Educationnal can use the free base of DS and the free item in it : it is clearly sufficient for their purpose (teaching)
You can forget about professionnal 3D studio : they don't use it because it is too complex to use daz models in their workflow and the models are not good enough to be use as they are. Video game developpers need to buy a commercial licence for using daz model more over for any real time application like video game they need a specific (and costly licence).
But I agree that daz forum is not representative of the whole daz market.
I would like to add one thing. Just look at the content that is released for Genesis and for V6 at her introduction. Does that look like a company whose target audience is the 'professional' market? Or the 'educational' market. I doubt it.
About the most successful release. The figure is a few days old. So there is only a very limited number of things they can use for the term 'successful'. It certainly can't yet figure in returns to just use one example (although I doubt it'll be a very relevant number). As a whole it sounds just like a particularly meaningless and desperate marketing blurb, not worth the time thinking about it.
I am an expert on very few things, but I am an expert on this:
A vocal forum does not necessarily, or even likely, represent the majority of people with an interest in what the forums are about. They represent a percentage of people that (a) have an interest in the subject matter and (b) use the forums. 99% of a forum can be unified and still not represent a significant percentage of (a).
Granted, forums can reflect widely shared opinions, but my point is that there is no guarantee whatsoever of that. The entire forum can be typing in all caps in disgust, and the majority of DAZ users could still be happily buying up products.
Or, if you're totally insane like myself, you can do both. I bought V6 despite being rather underwhelmed by Genesis 2 overall and the morphs bundle. Other than running side by side comparisons and maybe a handful of renders, I've barely touched her since. I doubt I'm alone in having purchased her despite having not really been too thrilled with the idea.
Still, it's obvious the less customizable V6 has a market somewhere. There are arguably as many singing her praises as there are grumpy men like myself bemoaning the loss of flexible morphs. I'm still secretly hoping they have a trump card hidden up their sleeve which will dispel my worst fears and restore absolute faith in Daz and humanity at large (hint, it involves little people not to be confused with ring-chasing hobbits). If that happens, then I'll move to adopt the figure on a more permanent basis. In the meantime I'm keeping a miserly grip on my money with regards to V6 until I can clearly see a benefit to using her over Genesis.
I'm not sure what people are doubting about what I'm saying... I'm not going to quote everybody cuz the conversations and quotes would take up more space than necessary, but I really don't think what I am trying to say is outlandish or unbelievable... I don't understand the doubt.
What's harder to believe? That Daz3d doesn't care about what hobbyists think or that Daz Studio is used by professionals and educators?
Well... Daz Studio is being used by professionals and educators. Look for yourself.
And don't think that educators and professionals don't need pretty girls in slutwear... because they do!
Of course they do. They want to sell their stuff, too, after all.
People are assuming that "professionals" are modelers or animators, but that's not the situation. Professional web designers, for example, may not know anything about vertex points or polygons but they still know about art and design and need a tool that will allow them to create images. Daz Studio creates images and is used by a wide variety of professionals...
And...
Daz has been trying for a while now to appeal to a more professional market. With the release and "innovation" of Genesis (1) and Daz Studio 4 they gained some success. People who have been here for awhile might find it difficult to believe that Poser and Daz Studio are anything but toys because they began that way, but that is not only changing, it kind of seems like the goal...
It feels to me that THAT is the ultimate goal, in fact. To leave the hobbyist and embrace big business...
That being said... I still love Daz Studio. I still love Genesis... I'm not going to buy into Genesis 2 or Generation 6, although I can see why they exist and expect it to be successful... I may still buy from PA's who create for Genesis (1) for as long as that option remains alive... I am very sad that the market doesn't seem to be geared for me (or people like me) anymore.... The hobbyist has no real interest in keeping up with the latest and most advanced technology. At least not to the point that they want to do an complete and new overhaul of their libraries with new shiny figures every year or so. Most of us just can't afford to do that...
...but the professional market NEEDS something new as often as possible...
It's not that hard to understand, really.
I wouldn't be the tiniest bit surprised to hear that Daz Studio 5 and Genesis 3 are already on the drawing board... cuz that's just the way things work in big business.... and it seems to me that is exactly what Daz is striving to do.
Is it wrong?
I don't know.... It kinda sucks for me, though.
I do, actually. Yes. And I am not one of the folks who has a hard time believing the programs are being used proffessionally. I have seen it many times now. Nor do I begrudge them the fruits of their labors in terms of having earned their way in the business world. What dissappoints me primarily is that since the merger took place, they seem to be catering ONLY to this.
That is all.
I actually find cute that some of us tend to think DAZ or Poser is a heavily popular thing in the grand scale of the 3D world.
Yes, DAZ is largely popular enough with 3D content produces, artists and hobbyists to get a number of commending awards. But if you go into a game development program that focuses on Autodesk or ZBrush, or go to a gaming/filming conference, basically any high-scale professional 3D environment, and even mention DAZ or Poser, you'll get scoffed at and laughed out of the building...
Although this is true...
It doesn't discredit what I am trying to say. It doesn't matter if Daz Studio is a "joke" to the "grand scale of the 3D world" because the rest of the world, (i.e, advertising, illustration, web design, etc) is much MUCH bigger...
It's not just 3D enthusiasts who are using DAZ Studio. It may not be "huge" in the "3D world"... but it IS being used by artists in many different fields of interest... professional artists... who's expertise is not 3D, per se... but rather, art. Same people use Photoshop. Photoshop was created by a bunch of math geeks....but it's not math geeks who use it.
...just trying to put things in perspective.
Greetings,
I somewhat dispute the idea that they are catering 'only' to the professional crowd. In fact, the Platinum Club is very much a hobbyists club from what I can tell. The professional market does not need the rolling sales and finely tuned marketing to drive purchases. The sales and marketing for DAZ are designed to trigger impulse buys, which is not what the professional market typically does.
So the deal is that professionals are where the big ticket purchases are made, and the hobbyists are where the day-to-day purchases are made. Both are relevant.
But yeah, remember the 100:10:1 rule (a variant on the Pareto principle). For every 100 users who visit, 10 will sign up, 1 will contribute. Now look around the forum and realize that we are the 1%. DAZ has the numbers, they know their sales, and no matter how much forum members argue that marketing doesn't drive purchases, I'm fairly confident DAZ has a big display board that shows the uptick in sales every time they send out a coupon, a PC newsletter, a major release, etc...
I don't doubt that V6 is a very successful release, monetarily speaking. I bought it within hours of release, but I had bought GC's to do exactly that. I'm fairly confident others did too, and that returns, like people dramatically 'leaving the PC' are lost in the noise.
tl;dr - What they do works, and they know their buyer base.
-- Morgan
The same thing happens in the Model Railway ( Model railroads if you are American ) hobby. The guys that hand build models from raw materials 'look down' on those of us who are happy with mass produced models from a store.
I heard a funny story that Guy Williams, who was one of the best modellers in the UK, took a new model engine to a meeting. Everyone enthused over how perfect it was ( It was one of Guy Williams so it had to be perfect ). After some time Guy pointed out it was a store bought model that he had repainted. lol.
Although this is true...
It doesn't discredit what I am trying to say. It doesn't matter if Daz Studio is a "joke" to the "grand scale of the 3D world" because the rest of the world, (i.e, advertising, illustration, web design, etc) is much MUCH bigger...
It's not just 3D enthusiasts who are using DAZ Studio. It may not be "huge" in the "3D world"... but it IS being used by artists in many different fields of interest... professional artists... who's expertise is not 3D, per se... but rather, art. Same people use Photoshop. Photoshop was created by a bunch of math geeks....but it's not math geeks who use it.
...just trying to put things in perspective.
I know you are, but I think it's a bit exaggerating to assume that many people outside of the artist and hobbyist sub-realm of the 3D world are big investors in DAZ and Poser because of such perspective. I would actually be quite astonished if DAZ had bigger investment numbers than us.
I know you are, but I think it's a bit exaggerating to assume that many people outside of the artist and hobbyist sub-realm of the 3D world are big investors in DAZ and Poser because of such perspective. I would actually be quite astonished if DAZ had bigger investment numbers than us.
I'd actually be QUITE astonished to learn that they did not...
None of the past two years would make any sense to me if they did not have...
but who knows....
I've been wrong before...
... a couple of times.
lol
Guess we'll have to wait and see...
Thanks for the debate everyone! It's good to ponder sometimes...
An interesting note to point out: how many customers do you imagine DAZ has in, say, a month? Say, a few thousand, tens of thousands, a million, perhaps? Now how many frequent the forums? The fact is, we have no idea how large the customer base is. And that is not taking into consideration entities that buy in bulk (i.e. more than one purchase for a single item for others).
While we can speculate that V6 being as successful as they market, that's all we can do. Perhaps it is true, or perhaps, on some level, it is not. What should simply matter to us is that the company is earning money to keep it running. Whether it's us, the hobbyists and art pros, or larger numbers of anonymous users, that is keeping the coffers full, at the end of the day, we all just want to see DAZ not tank in any way, shape or form.
Besides, $6 off is good enough reason to buy into the hype. ;-P
Editited to add: +1 to This ^^^
The gaming market doesn't use Daz - not completely true but it is true that they don't use Daz/Poser in their primary game asset pipeline though from my contacts in the industry that is changing. A lot of concept artists are turning to programs like Daz/Poser to produce concept art that can then be exported and brought into the pipeline tools to give the content artists a head start. This is still a small segment of the market as is likely to remain so for several years.
The video/entertainment market I really can't speak to.
A huge part of Daz's target audience are professional 3D artists. A lot of those are people doing commercial art, especially book covers. I remember when I went to DragonCon last year getting postcards with cover art for the new books coming out from many of the major SF/Fantasy publishers. Most of the ones that had people on the cover the first thing I thought of was I could do that with Daz. Looking at several of the I knew they were done with Daz/Poser I could recognize the figures or the hair. I have to imagine that trend is only going to grow, especially as publishers feel the crunch of eBooks.
I look at the stuff that was released with V6 and I can see it being used to do covers for romance, urban fantasy or even some mystery/thrillers I've seen. Though if they don't get autofit working more reliably with G1 stuff I think the uptake from that market is going to be pretty slow. These people need clothes and unless they have a client they can bill for them it's hard to justify buying a new outfit when you already have one that will work on an older character.
Greetings,
To add to the chain; ^^^ This.
As self-publishing becomes more common, folks are hiring artists to produce covers for them, and there's a market for people who can illustrate a scene. DAZ and Poser are _excellent_ illustration tools.
Not saying it's a huge market, but it's a growing one; I believe a more significant market right now is advertising, where something like V6 is perfect.
-- Morgan
p.s. I know this because my SO is an author and in touch with that community, and regularly bugs me to produce some of those scenes.
Yes, very much this.
Daz Studio and Poser while very user friendly and a great introduction to the world of CGI is software for hobbyists and illustrators such as myself who work primarily in 2D illustration but want to broaden their pallet a bit with some 3D tools with a minimal investment.
My first exposure to 3D was years ago when I was hired by a studio which was working on a pilot for an educational TV program (it was never picked up and the studio is now long gone). I was basically an art monkey. Low level modeller who was needed to generate simple props. I was given a crash course on Maya and a list of props I needed to produce. It was mind numbingly tedious work simply because it wasn't terribly creative, but I lacked the skills to do the really interesting modelling work and somebody has to make bottles and crates and pallets and glasses and mugs and all the other tedious little prop pieces needed to produce a show. Art monkeys free up the skilled modellers to focus on the really creative work like complex props, characters, and figures.
It was a fun job though while it lasted and gave me a taste of the 3D world even though I never got into things like lighting and stuff.
There's a reason why professional studios prefer to roll their own models rather than buy ready made models. One reason is it can sometime require more work to get someone else's model to work in your setup than it would take for a skilled modeller to simply roll their own. Another is any time you deal with 3rd party licensed work you always run the potential of legal headaches no matter how seemingly iron clad the license might be. As someone who has worked in the entertainment industry for years I can tell you there are lawyers whose entire existence seems to revolve around making your life miserable. :lol: Another reason is recognizability. Generally in a production you want complete control over all aspects of your intellectual property and design. You don't want people to watch your video or play your game and say "Oh hey, I recognize that outfit from another video, and that prop comes from this other product, and that figure comes from this product here" and what you definitely don't want (especially if you're working on a kid's educational programme) is for someone to say "Hey! I recognize that outfit and character they were used in a porn series". You basically want your intellectual property to be recognized as your own so that even if people see your work ripped off and used in other products their first thought is "hey, they've ripped off "insert your product here"'s models to make that". You never ever want it to go the other way around (even if you've legitimately licensed another product for your production).
After my stint as an art monkey I never really gave 3D CGI much thought. It was a fun gig while it lasted but when I saw how much the studio spent on licenses for Maya and the other software needed it just seemed to me that 3D CGI was something that wasn't within the realm of the average person. It was only something bigger studios could afford.
Fast forward a few years and I get into a discussion with some fellow artists and I'm talking about my gig as an art monkey years ago and how I'd love to give 3D modelling a try if it wasn't so damned expensive. That's when I was told about Daz Studio. So I downloaded Daz/Hex/Bryce and started playing. At first I found it to be a great tool for my work as a 2D illustrator. I could set up a simple scene with primatives representing props and unclothed, untextured figures in poses. I could play with the lighting and poses and camera angles and it was valuable for creating reference images for me to use to create a 2D sketch. In fact for awhile I thought that was pretty much all I was going to use Daz for because the complexity was a little intimidating at first. I never really got to do any of the really cool stuff when I was an art monkey so I started to become more excited about learning how to use the software and was pleased with how easy it started to become to to get pretty impressive results.
I started to get bolder and began playing with Hexagon. It was a weird experience because I remembered a lot of the stuff from Maya but the Hexagon environment was pretty foreign. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing but eventually I started to be able to make more and more complex models.
I still haven't really created any finished products in terms of renders. Almost all of the renders I create are only used as reference images for my work as a 2D illustrator. For this Daz is awesome. But I have discovered that as a hobby I really love making 3D models. I loved building model kits when I was a kid and for me 3D modelling is a lot like that except instead of just assembling someone else's design with pre-fabricated parts I get to do all the design work myself. I find it's a very stimulating hobby and I like that I'm able to create a model and then give it away and let other people worry about finding creative uses for it. It's fun.
I also love creating creatures, I've always loved creating creatures as an illustrator and it's just as much fun in 3D. Thanks to MirrorMT and Scultpris I've some neat morphs and then tweak them as necessary in Hexagon.
My artist friends tell me that if I really start to get serious about 3D modelling and stuff Blender is the next step up the ladder but I'm not there yet. For now I'm just playing around with the Daz stuff and enjoying the fact that I can share the stuff I create with it with other people.
The Daz products are an awesome tool with some really great uses and a lot of versatility. But I am in no way delusional about their power as a serious professional 3D tool and if I was taking a university level course in CGI design and modelling and they were teaching me on Daz Studio and Hexagon and not the actual tools I'd be using in the industry I'd be demanding my tuition back.
There may be some instances where Daz is a useful professional tool but its primary market is always going to be hobbyists and freelance illustrators and its content market is aimed at exactly that: hobbyists and illustrators who want to create some 3D renders but lack the time and/or skills to model and design their own proprietary content.
I had a friend who is Korean, I asked him if they really ate dog there, he said "yes, but it's like hotdogs here, no one admits to it."
Isn't it only the men who eat dog meat in Korea. I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's culturally inappropriate for women to eat dog.
Great to get your perspective. I agree with all you've said about the large houses currently, and I don't see that changing overnight for the reasons you stated here... but eventually I do see it changing... at some point, 3D content will become the equivalent of clip art and stock photography. There will always be stuff done custom but there will be a significant market for premade content. Some of the issues of licensing etc... will have to be worked out before that will happen and they will have to stand the test of time for significant buy-in even for stock stuff. Also, it could be the big studio houses providing a lot of that content.
I've talked with a number of 2D artists who do exactly what you say, so at least for the crowd of 2D artists I've talked with, this is not uncommon. I would even suggest that the market of mixed media, 2D/3D composite with filters etc.. is even larger then the market of 2D artists who use 3D just for reference, as by the time 2D artists consider this as an option and get familiar with the software enough to use it this way, they are often doing a lot of various composite work. This I would guess is a not insignificant market but I couldn't say of course. It is an area I would expect to grow, 2D/3D/Photomanip artists who use a combination of tools.
Of course what I say here is unqualified. That is, it is only from the various people and research I've come in contact with, not a statistically significant methodology. I will point out though that things change significantly in this industry in a short period of time, so drawing on experience from a few years ago while still valid may be out of sync with newer trends in some areas.
Currently, Autodesk is the elephant in the room, but I remember when they were not taken seriously at all, less so then Poser or DAZ. But... they are still the elephant, and.... OpenSubDiv/pTex!!! :)
Houdini, C4D, (Modo to a lesser degree...) these aren't going to be unseated anytime soon I'd expect.
The two areas DAZ could ramp up for it would seem is Asset Management (if they could ever get their asset management sorted out that is) and even more, Prototyping (with a redesigned interface.) The nice thing about prototyping is that the very things they would need for that would continue to serve their current market along with the 'graphic artists providing content for web developers, 2d artists using it for reference, etc...'
Btw... very few 'web developers' would be using DAZ Studio in the near term as they have enough on their plate. Graphic artists providing content for them, that's another story, and said graphic artists are not going to learn Maya or any of the other big packages likely. That market is the real potential huge market in the near future.
Well the point was, what is considered appropriate and what people do are not always in sync, thus the variation between what people say and what they do at times.
I agree.
...seconded, thirded, or whatever.
...seconded, thirded, or whatever.
If we consider that Genesis was built to use V4 content out of the box, a lot of skins were developed for Genesis but with V4 UVs to be compatible with both, clothing creators seemed to prefer V4 for similar reasons, and Genesis had additional content that was not compatible with V4, does that make Genesis the most successful? ;)