Better Female Armor
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LOL, that's not actually trying though, is it? This is not the place to hire anyone. No one's gonna accept an offer from some rando here, and Daz doesn't facilitate that kind of transaction, unfortunately. Try someplace where people actually look for this type of work. There's Fiverr, there's all kinds of sites like that. That's how I got my tutoring for my certification as a Formula 1 winning, super-modelling brain surgeon.
'got no takers'
I'm curious how much you were offering.
Some rando? Interesting outlook you have. So a stranger walks into your store and you're going to tell them to get the hell out, that they're just some rando and their money's unwanted? LOL
Little wonder I found no takers here if everyone is so jaded. "Rando". Yeah, I had already been a part of DAZ for a couple of years. Not exactly random, but hey, if producers wish to pass up an opportunity to make money just because the offer comes from a "stranger"...
Fiverr? Mmm, too many amateurs and hacks for my taste. I figured the best source would be DAZ. When I got no takers here, I looked on Upwork for 3D artists. On a whim, I looked at non-CGI artists, which is how I ultimately found the person I hire now. When the custom art's time and quality was compared to what's feasilbe on 3D, there was no comparison, to be honest. Guess it was a blessing in disguise that no one took me up on the 3D here.
Left it open for discussion. I didn't intimate in any way that I was looking to go cheap and in fact stated otherwise. I'm a big believer in that you get what you pay for (I've invested about 10K in custom art thus far with probably another 20K to go, at least for this current series - will be other art after if my plan is successful, which I have no reason to believe will fail at this point). I can only conclude (given replies here referring to "rando" and "Some Internet Guy" and the unwillingness to branch out even when there's a reward to do so) that DAZ producers (at least the ones who visit these forums) aren't exactly open to new opportunities. A shame, really.
Well I told you of the specific case I knew of ...
You did and I thank you for that. :) If I had had more luck here, perhaps things would have been different. That said, I'm glad of how things worked out. Can't say how utterly pleased I am with Juli. She's incredible.
My hope is that my feedback and comments and others who agreew with me compel DAZ producers to go about their products differently.
Awesome (excepting this being boobalicious armor, which I found a way to get rid of for the most part). Bought, downloaded, installed. Thanks for the link!!!
happy you like it! we just made because wanted a practical female armor. :D
You did a great job!
For reference, here's a discussion of what armour for women would have looked like, back then, namely just like armour for men.
Personally I strongly prefer fantasy wear. natural gear is boring and don't have much variety. While I do understand everyone has taste in how they want a certain character to look.
Historical gear works for certain themes, but fantasy gear always have the best designs. I'll take a sexy fantasy outfit any day over a boring fully covered armor fit.
I looked up the armor thats on the preview pic, the one at 3:05 in the video and it actually looks pretty good and to me seems like a good mix of fantasy and reality. Its not overly slooty and its not so realistic looking that it resembles a refridgerator. I searched for the source of that armor and the full suit is in the pic below. I noticed that it looks a little similar to a SC6 character which is in the YT video below. Chest armor thats contoured but still covers up, armored skirt below the belt, cloth skirt underneath that and thigh high armor boots. I would love to see that kind of armor on the Daz store. Medieval armor up top and short miniskirt on the bottom.
https://i.imgur.com/ieCVti8.jpg
It shouldn't be a case of either or. There's a very happy medium that's being largely ignored.
You CAN have Fantasy armor that's sleek and sexy/cool-looking and yet realistic and protective enough that it doesn't snap the suspension of disbelief, like much of the Fantasy "armor" here does, be it heavy, medium, or light.
All that siad, historical gear doesn't have to be boring either if done and reproduced correctly. That's just a matter of doing proper research. For instance, the Ancient Romans had some very cool-looking loricae, but theirs is hardly the only time in history where that's true.
Plenty of game devellopers are perfectly happy to go with unrealistic stuff and sexy stuff. The argument according to which if only companies/individuals were doing more of this or that stuff that isn't currently done, their sales and profit would increase considerably because they would access an untapped market is pretty common, not just in the domain of 3D assets. And generally attempts fail, and that would be because people believing that there's such an untapped market base their belief on the preferences of the small subgroup they're part of. Themselves, their friends, people who post of the same forums they do would like the product (or so they say, because as already pointed out, there's a difference between saying and buying), so they assume that there's a large demand by overestimating the representativity of their group. You need to actually study the market, or take risks, as you said.
Risk-takers are rarely rewarded, and even studies run into this problem of people saying they want product X, and then not buying it. For instance, they want the "authentic" food product in droves, but then they don't like the "authentic" taste, and they find it too costly anyway, and nobody buys it. To give a completely different example related to 3D products this time, people will clamor for say, more black characters, arguing on the basis of racial diversity around us that should guarantee sales. Would make sense if they weren't forgetting that the racial diversity around "us" is in fact racial diversity around "them" (say, the USA), neglecting the fact that in most of the world there's little racial diversity, or, where there is, it's a different racial diversity than the one they're accustomed to and are asking for (Middle Eastern, North African or South Asian types rather than Black, for instance). Hence that their argument is falling flat with a large segment of the potential buyers. Here too, we have people making an assumption on the basis of what they know (or believe they know) about their own subgroup (albeit in this case a very large subgroup) that is much less representative of the market at large than they think.
Now, I know nothing about the creation of 3D assets specifically, but enough otherwise to know that some people asking for something on the basis that the product would supposedly appeal to many in their opinion is utterly unconvincing..
Seriously, someone proposed an actual solution : commissioning the product and trying to sell it yourself. If you're right, then you'll make money. If you aren't willing to take this risk, then you can't seriously argue that other people who also aren't willing to take this risk are misguided. For many things, that wouldn't be a realistic option (say, if you clamor for a different model of car : you aren't going to produce cars yourself), but in the case of 3D products, it's perfectly realistic.
Something else I'm adding later : I don't think that deprecating people who are interested in the products the OP doesn't want is very useful. If I remember properly the term, he refers to " teenage meat beaters" buying skimpy armors. Doing erotica and even porn, I fall squarely into this " teenage meat beater" category (even though my teenage years are unfortunately long behind me). But as such I actually buy the skimpy armors and as a result am much more a customer than the hypothetical non teenage meat beater who might hypothetically buy the non skimpy armor. In fact, I noticed reading this thread that I own several of the "realistic" female armors the OP was seemingly unaware of. So, I'm even more of an actual buyer, even for the products he's asking for. But, the thing is, as a result of what I do, I rarely use these realistic armors. In fact, "never" would be more accurate. And the consequence is that I'm not going to buy anymore of this stuff I don't use. I might not be more representative of potential buyers of non skimpy/realistic armor than the people the OP has in mind, but then again, maybe I am. Maybe many other meat beaters are in fact buying realistic female armors too. Maybe they are the majority of the potential customers, buying both skimpy and realistic armors. He has every right to despise people who buy a product he doesn't like, but demeaning these actual customers isn't a particularly convincing argument when someone argues on the basis of self-interest and profit as has been done in this thread. At best it's a moral argument : "do you really want to be associatied with these (despicable) people by selling stuff to them?" but moral arguments don't pay the bills.
It was a very interesting and instructive video.
very well put!
You certainly know how to muddy the waters, I'll give you that.
Plenty of game developers out there go for more realistic armor, clothing, etc, too. I provided examples of some in this thread. But even the majority of developers who lean hard sexy still maintain some believability so as to maintain the suspension of disbelief. There are exceptions, but those are few in my gaming and gaming industry experience.
Risk-takers are OFTEN rewarded. Were rewards for gambles as seldom as you state, we'd not have the advancements we've had in every walk of life, nor would there have been major advancements in the 3D or gaming industry. Indeed, if anything, the ones playing it safe are more often than not the ones left behind.
As for your diversity analogy, yeah, I'm not going there except to say that anaology does little to support the argument that more realistic armor wouldn't sell. Moreover, no one's asking for historical/more realistic armor at the sacrifice of the fantastical but in addition to the fantastical. Provde a few options with the fantastical armor (like toros protection, sensible footwear, etc.) and that stands a good chance of increasing sales. More people than I pass up the fantastical becuase it's not just fantasitical but ridiculous, just as more people than you buy fantastical and shy from historical (which doesn't have to be boring but that's an argument for another day). Point is it doesn't have to be a case of either or. As for your argument that those who ask for things don't actually buy those things, sure, it happens but (again) those are exceptions and fairly rare. If they were the rule, market research and developments/prodcuts based on that market research would not exist. Goodness.
Actually, I was willing to take the risk at one time and tried to find a content producer here on DAZ to partner with (the deal being I pay them to produce the content and then THEY could resell it), but got no takers. I then went in search of a content producer via other avenues such as Upwork, but ended up going the route of hand-drawn artist because hand-drawn possessed a higher emotive threshold than I could obtain with 3D renders. Going hand-drawn also allowed me to avoid the risk of turning off people through uncanny valley. This, however, was quite a while ago and now I don't know that I'm still going to go with a hand-drawn artist. My rendering and postwork abilities have greatly increased since that time as has DAZ's models (G8 is miles better than its predecessors). That's a long-winded way of saying I will likely go in search of a content producer for historical clothing, weapons, and armor that possess a unique blend of Fantasy, kind of a balance between the two for something new and fresh that maintains a level of realism. I'm undecided whether I will choose to resell that content. Will have to see. Might keep it propietary for Mystica.
Meat-beaters. lol I don't think I ever put it quite like that. I think I wrote that a majority of people in the gaming and 3D industry view the target audience of DAZ and DAZ products as horny teenagers and changing that impression could prove beneficial. At any rate, I never meant to be disparaging or deprecating.
Like I stated earlier, DAZ and its in-house models have come a long way and matured in considerable ways. It's a shame many of the independent content producers haven't done grown likewise. There are exceptions, of course, as I've gladly found and happily purchased.
One big thing worth considering here is the amount of time/effort necessary to recreate something that's historically accurate/phyiscally realistic versus something that isn't. In any business, time is money. And a product that is guaranteed to sell well that's a literal yarn to make versus something that requires extensive research, testing and revision to serve it's function (fantastical items that fail the reality test is kind of a given; items meant to be realistic that fail that test are DOA) is obviously gonna lose out nine times out of ten during the early project proposal stage. At least it will if the content producer wants to eat (which is not a trivial priority.)
With that said, the most obvious strategy to me for content producers to work the market would be to do the following (probably should be holding this back to bolster my own profit margins, but whatever):
What you will end up with is a small group of people (let's call them verismo users) buying just the original set and everyone else buying BOTH the original set and the add-ons. For a combined profit margin of the same (if not more) than what you'd get producing chainmail lingerie sets all day. Plus nothing but satisfied customers.
Correct. You wrote "beef beaters" not "meat beaters". In fact I first thought it was "beef beater", but then corrected my post and replaced all "beef beater" by "meat beater" since I wasn't familiar with the first one and thought that I was probably misremembering. I'm going to consider "beef beater" as deprecating too. Not that refering to teenagers wasn't already deprecating.
"Matured" and "grown" are equally non neutral terms. You're again clearly implying that people who don't share your views of what should be produced (and apparently content producers who don't produce what you want as well) are immature and need to grow up. More delicate than calling them teenagers overtly, as you did previously, but the meaning of your statement stays the same.
Despite being ostenstibly couched in commercial terms, your argument seems to be mostly based on moral views.
Very well, I see you're determined to take my comment as deprecating. So be it. Nothing I can do about that, except to say you have a tendency to read more into what's being said than is actually being said.
For instance, I never stated what should not and should be produced. I simply asked for something more matrue and realistic to be produced in addition to what is already produced and gave reasons as to why the more mature and realistic might be a good idea for the content producer personally and for DAZ reputationally.
Neither does my argument have anything to do with moral views. You're the first to think that, or at least the first to state that. Truth is I'm very open-minded, especially when it comes to the naked body and sex. Conservatism like what you see on U.S. television - hey, it's okay to show someone getting murdered, even mutilated, but my GOD, let's not show people making love, and for all that's good and holy, don't dare show breasts, asses, or genitalia - is wholly asinine. At any rate, in my eyes, there's nothing more natural than the bared human body...you know, unless somene's about to go into battle.
Which is to say that sexy is great so long as it doesn't break suspension of disbelief.
Sade, I was wondering for the plate armor models that you've made did you make them in Maya or Blender or something? or did you use Marvelous Designer?
Exactly.
For instance, consider the Eagle-Guard Armor:
Cool-looking, eye-catching (those claws are optional, btw, which is great), but what's truly awesome is the troso armor and kilt add-on:
Pretty cool, offering both, and I purchased both.
On the opposite end of the specturm is Orleans' Armor. Here's the product for G8M, which I bought. It ventures into that area between historical and fantasy. A little unrealistic in what it leaves unprotected, but still usable and doesn't obliterate suspension of disbelief. One thing that's cool about this set is it allows for freer movement than you'd see in a strictly historical set.
And here's the G8F version, which I didn't buy and won't despite the fact it's on sale right now for $2.99. Crotch and midriff being exposed is deal-breaker as are the high-heel boots...high-heel steel boots, mind you. It's unfortunate the creator didn't provide more realistic boots and greater protection or offered them as an add-on. As for it being boobalicious armor, that can be negated through breast morphs on the model though the end result might render a bit odd and require postwork.
Thread locked as it has become an arguemnt, not a discussion, and is in danger of wandering into forbidden topics.