Should Daz3d split its software to Pro and Home additions.
Lorwinith
Posts: 60
Should Daz3d split its software to Pro and Home additions.
There is thinking behind this, the main reason is render engines, between AMD and Nvidia, While most for Daz users are mostly on a budget and most will own AMD GPUs, and will stick with 3Dlight render engine this must be hurting sales, as I am only using G2 and G3, as they are 3Dlight friendly.
I still buy things but now make sure that they are 3Dlight compatible, which is now pushing me away from newer things that are only Iray compatible.
That is why I think Daz should now be thinking of Home and Pro additions of there software for high end and low end users, plus there are not many of us who can justify paying £800 plus for a Nvidia card.
Daz as got some hard thinking to do, and must have a AMD friendly render engine.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
3DL is still in DS. I see no reason for splitting DS. You can still use it and the older things for it, such as PWToon. I just used that yesterday!
Dana
How do you know the finances, hardware and render preference of "most Daz users"?
Daz has been leaning increasingly heavily towards iray in the last few years, and they still seem to be doing good business. So on the face of it, there doesn't appear to be the kind of problem you describe.
Why do you think that separating 3DL off into its own ghetto program will increase the supply of content for it? I'd have thought it'd have the opposite effect.
And you don't have to spend £800 plus or anything like it. A basic Nvidia card can be had for a tenth of that amount. If you can afford a better card, and your PC can handle it, then great - but don't assume you have to have the biggest baddest card to use iray.
It does. It's called 3Delight.
Agreed!
I am not saying that Daz should stop using Iray or Nvidia, I am saying that Daz should keep up the good work and support the low end user, and remember many people still use V4 and M4.
All I am saying that is that Daz should remember that many of its customers are AMD users, and should support that, And yes 3DL is a very good render engine once you learn how to use it.
This is not a discussion about who got the best PC its about supporting both platforms Nvidia and AMD.
And yes I like to see Prorender added to Daz like Maya and 3DS have done.
Adding a 3rd render engine would mean adding a 3rd set of materials. A good number of PAs already don't support 2 engines, so the chances of them supporting a 3rd one are very, very low.
What you are saying is you want MORE support for AMD since it already supports having an AMD GPU. 3DL relys on the CPU in daz Studio, so what GPU you have doesn't matter much if using 3DL
Any low end user can use daz Studio fine, you just want the PAs to cater to the low end users more.
You wanna use ProRender, there is a plugin for Blender, export your scene to Blender and you are good to go!
BTW unless you have numbers to back it up, how do you know how many users still use V4/M4 and also use AMD?
I have heard of those people... they are called .."Poser users"
There is a Poser forum here at the Daz site
.
Compare the activity there to the Commons and draw your own
conclusions about how many Daz studio users are still using the mill 4 generation.
or visit the Daz content store and search for V4/M4 content released this past decade.
Even the poser community has began to see the wisdom of moving forward from the 12 year old
mill4 generation with new poser native figures and rendeing engines for poser.
Don't forget, at one point there was a split. There used to be a basic free version of DAZ Studio and an Advanced paid version. It wasn't until DS 4.0 that DAZ decided to eliminate the split and just give DS away for free.
DS 1 and DS 2 were free, DS 3 introduced the advanced version (64 bit, but otherwise the same application with extra plug-ins as I recall). DS then had Advanced and Pro paid-for versions for a while. The render engines were the same in each version.
Whilst the OP's graphic card issues may or may not be of wide interest, (s)he does raise the point that currently DS might be described as "one size fits nobody". I understand the desire to keep things simple and having one version of DS does that, however it does also put limits on what features can be put in to DS as a free to use program. Perhaps DAZ should keep DS as free to use and have advanced features (and there are many that have been requested but are not in DS) provided by means of paid for plugins. To some extent this is already the case with some plugins such as "Render Queue", "Anilip2", "UltraScatter Pro" for example. More of these advanced feature would be welcome.
The SDK is avaialble, so PAs (and people who want to be PAs, or even people who are willing to give their work away) can write a wide range of plug-ins
A lot of people don't even consider Daz as "pro" software yet, even though you can get professional level results from it if you are willing to put in the work.
Although you can still get some use out of the older stuff, asking Daz or the PA's to continue to cater to it is like asking Microsoft to keep supporting Windows XP.
There are utilities that will translate materials between iRay and 3DL if you aren't capable of doing it yourself.. There is next to nothing that is render engine dependent unless you are talking specific shaders.
DS being free was the main reason I dropped Poser for DS. Poser had some features that DS didn't, but with dforce and no strand based hairs I don't think there's much of any reason to use Poser besides familiarity.
That is pretty much the exact opposite of my opinion
(No AMD, no 3dlight, no V4 or M4 and no Home and Pro seperate editions. looking foreward to G9 some time instead)
Actually, I'm rather dreading Genesis 9. (Though it will probably be called Genesis 10, for marketing reasons.). G9 (or 10) means whole new character sets, many of them rehashes of existing ones, whole new wardrobes and hair, also mostly similar to G3 and G8. The nightmare secenario is if there is something about G9 (or 10) that is really good that so outshines G3 and G8 that it becomes a "must have"; then the bank balance will really suffer.
No.
If Pro is already free why on earth is DAZ 3D going to spend a lot more money and make a Home version, also free, that does less than the Pro does. Also they'd have trouble hiring staff that are available and skilled to do the design and coding. It makes no sense especially when DAZ 3D already has their hands full trying to modernize the 3D capabilities of the Pro version in a niche that has the likes of Poser, Blender, Unity 3D, UE4, and others.
Its possible you may have misunderstood the OPs comments. I don't believe Lorwinith was suggesting making a simplified version for free, but rather making an advanced version which would include additional features currently not available. This advanced version would be "paid for" software, with the procedes of those sales funding the development of advanced features.
They tried that with Studio 4.0 - the base version was $49.95 but free for a 'limited' time. Studio 4.0 Pro was $495 and included the following not in the base version:
Content Creator Toolkit
IIRC, the Pro version was discounted around 50% but there was a lot of push back so the base version went away and everyone got the serial number that unlocked all the Pro functionality. Those who purchased Pro were compensated to an extent.
So - they've been there, they've done that -- and they feel it didn't work.
What I got from OP's post is they want a free Home edition that is 3Delight only and paid Pro edition that is Iray only, thinking that this would somehow encourage vendors to add 3Delight material presets to their products since more people would probably have the free version.
There is no business reason for the PA's to do this
If poser became free, I doubt any Daz PA swould suddenly go back to supporting poser.
I get it...Daz has tied their Free core application to NVIDIA Hardware and anyone wanting to get the best of DAZ Studio rendering must invest in NVDIA hardware as well.
The OP has the option of using the various IRay to 3DL material converters.
or enduring the vicissitudes of exporting and rendering in some AMD friendly external program like blender,Carrara etc.
The problem here is that 3DL can give results as good as, or better than Iray - but it takes a fair bit of work and a different mind set to do it, and for a PA there just isn't any financial incentive. There have been several threads on this and it comes down to not enough reward to make the effort viable. As I understand it (and I may be wrong) if both Iray and 3DL materials are included the results need to match. For a PA skilled in 3DL the time spent tweaking the materials just doesn't justify the few additional sales; for the PAs without the 3DL skill set it's a complete non-starter.
Wolf359's post above is partially correct - you don't need to use Nvidia hardware for Iray, you can get the same results with the CPU - it's the old time/money trade-off. With a good GPU the renders finish in minutes to an hour or so; the same renders with the CPU will take over an hour on into overnight or possibly more than a day.
It seems that DAZ3d are locked in to a business model of free software with relatively expensive content. DAZ3d then make their money from selling content and part of the profit goes towards developing the software.
Swapping over to "paid for software" whilst still maintaining the higher content cost was, realistically, doomed to failure. Swapping to "paid for software" and reducing the content cost would be quite a gamble; one I doubt DAZ3d will take.
One way forward might be to put all future advanced features in the "content category" by making them "paid for" plugins. Then the return on investment would come directly from the sales of the plugins.
This problem with this is that there are currently XXX customers using the 3DL features of DAZ Studio. Taking away some of the features and putting them in a paid version (or leaving all the current features there and adding new ones to a paid version) isn’t suddenly going to increase the 3DL user base. PAs will still have exactly the same base of 3DL users to sell to. PAs will almost always increase their sales by including a 3DL version alongside their Iray version, but the question will always be if the increased sales are enough to pay for the additional investment in creating the 3DL version.
The “3DL” version of DAZ Studio is already free, if they want to increase their 3DL user base they’d probably need to pay people to use the software.
— Walt
True sir.
However, the reason I dont mention CPU rendering with Iray, in these discussions, is that it almost comes of as cynically mocking the person who cant afford a viable NVIDIA graphics card.
Sort of like if the airlines drasticly raised their ticket costs
and blythely suggested to hapless, lower income travelers
that; "walking across the country is technically possible
if one is patient".
Daz content is "expensive" relative to what??
At this point their only real competition is Reallusion
who's native Iclone Character content is much more
expensive than the Clothing,hair & props in the Daz store.
Now yes.. Reallusion has come up with an easy way to
convert your Daz Characters and clothing to Iclone native
content ,with their CC3 program, but one still has to spend the money at the Daz store first before using it in Iclone CC3.
The obvious problem with that approach is that many of the "advanced features" are proprietary Daz IP that they will not release to the general public.
(See HD morph tool& the DForce version of the new Spline based hair).
Wolf359, to answer your points:
"Daz content is "expensive" relative to what??"
The answer to that is very simple. DAZ3d does not generate money by selling it's software. Instead it generates money through content sales. Therefore, if DAZ3d did generate money from it's software then it would not need to generate as much money through content sales, consequently content could be cheaper. So, "expensive relative to a different business model".
"The obvious problem with that approach is that many of the "advanced features" are proprietary Daz IP that they will not release to the general public.
(See HD morph tool& the DForce version of the new Spline based hair).""
Indeed, I was not talking about DAZ3d removing existing advanced features from DS4.11, but rather that additional advanced features that could be added to DS (and there are many) could be "paid for" plugins which would be self funding. Ideally, DAZ3d would be releasing those plugins themselves with or without collaboration with it's PAs or other Third Parties.
a Pro version with HD morph loader and Dforce hair creation would almost certainly sell and they could even ask $500+ for it
That rather assumes the total market would remain the same - if a paid-for DS, or paid-for advanced features, reduced the potential purchaser numbers then prices might go up and variety down. Changing one variable is likely to have more than one consequence. In any event, as has already been said, Daz did try having a paid-for version of DS - and reverted to the current model.
The problem here is that selling seats of a software package as your
primarly source of revenue, relies upon a constant influx of NEW users purchasing ONE seat of the program.
(How has that been working out for Smith micro??)
It is much easier to partner with the PA's produce a steady stream of content for people who have your free program already
than to have to spend more time and money marketing and promoting the core application to new users in an extremely competitive market space
The Software Market has changed.
Consider how Adobe, Autodesk and others have gone to a subscription model to generate steady monthly income.
While this is an effective anti piracy measure, it also prevents
people( Like myself still on DS 4.8) ,from setteling in on a certain release version and milking every bit of utility out of it
for several years without buying the new version.
There is also a Huge advantage for yor development team to only have to use one set of internal SDK's supporting ONE software version.
As opposed to having to provide tech support for older versions that people will demand because they paid for your software one time.......9 years ago
There is a very good reason why Daz will not release older versions of Daz studio and their EULA forbids others to do so.
Even Reallusion has released a Python open API to encourage third
party plugin devs to partner with them as vendors. because they realized that not every existing customer is upgrading
the core application right away.
Perhaps it may, however ,in so doing ,you destroy the long term value of your IP for a short term gain.
Consider the Classic cow/milk analogy.
If I was the first, in my village, to breed a milk producing Cow
That Milk is My IP
I would keep it as my sole IP and force others to come to me to buy milk.
Not sell the cow which will inevitably be reversed engineered
and soon the market will be flooded with milk reducing its value.