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Before this conversation gets too fractious and requires a moderator, we as customers are not the best authorities of the economics that vendors have to deal with. A product that seems unsuccessful can hurt reputations, affect how the store views the vendors, trigger refunds, and have all sorts of secondary effects. The whole concept of the "long tail" is much more complicated than people think...
If you know how to balance a checkbook, then you know that getting five more dollars, even if it's a month later, means you end up with ten, which is a five dollar less loss. You gave up any other money you would have recouped over time by pulling the product.
Your math really isn't adding up here, since it cost you nothing more to leave the product for sale, but you gave up ANY chance at recouping ANYTHING else by pulling it from the store. Just admit that you got huffy because your product didn't sell right away and on an impulse, you pulled it. Because no true business person who actually gave a d@mn about earning money or recouping costs would do that, at least not after one stupid week, because it's a silly, unprofitable thing to do.
When you have a store with enough products where you can trend what sells and isn't, then feel free to express the above opinion. $10 a month will not recoup thousands anytime within the next few years, and that's a fact, not faulty math. I'm not running a charity to have unique items just sitting around gathering dust. It gets cleared out if it doesn't sell.
In addition, given how rare dark-skinned skin resources are, pulling the product may preserve the investment for a future product, which might otherwise suffer from using the same resource base as another (possibly heavily discounted) product.
I totally appreciate and respect that. But those are not the reasons that have been given. I have no problem with a vendor choosing to pull a product at any time, but I just personally don't see how denying any possible future earnings at all is better than leaving the product for sale for a decent amount of time. To recoup a decent portion of that profit in one week, in this business, seems to be highly unlikely anyway. I'd think that every vendor could pull most products if they followed similar mentality.
But I'm done debating this. It's not what this thread was about at all.
Fair point, but begs the question: where is it now, now that we have the G2Male and there are customers stating a need that it'd fill? IIRC, Wynn M5 was released a few weeks after Genesis2 hit, and a few days before we got Gia instead of the G2Male -- anxiety was high, we didn't know what was going on or how long we'd have to wait for the G2Male and how well G1 characters would work on it when we eventually did, and a quick readthrough of a forum-search on “Wynn” shows a few people telling the PAs point-blank that much as they liked him they weren't buying while these issues were up in the air. Then he was gone.
Given the huge investment in creating the unique resources, why wasn't Wynn M6 ready for the G2M/M6 launch? Or close to ready now? We're not stupid people, variations on “only PAs can understand my pain” aren't convincing.
Male-M3dia bought and paid for the property. Whether you or I agree with how he uses it shouldn't even be an issue. Arguing with PA's stands to hurt everyone.
Truth be told...there arent enough unique textures out there period, for any race or sex, but it is more obvious when it comes to darker skins.
I must say, Elite Rob and Marie are probably the most over used Elite textures outside of Lana that I tend to see in galleries around the web. I am certain Daz made a ton of money likely much more than they invested into Rob and Marie. Money can be made with darker skin textures, its just a matter of marketing. Rob and Marie were extremely well marketed.
No offense to anyone but if I see another elite Rob render again I'm probably going to stab my eyes out because I've seen it all before.
Photo based skin is over-rated big time in my opinion. It's about time to learn to depart from this dependence. Unless you have access to attractive naked people of all ages and races and can afford to photograph them, you will be limited to what's available in the stores and that isnt much at all which we all agree!
What I am gathering from the discussions so far is that it is already difficult to recuperate investments into photo based skins in general, even more so with darker skins because they sell less often. I think the problem is that photo based skins require too much initial investment from the PA which puts too much pressure on the content to produce returns.
NO MORE PHOTO BASED SKINS!!!!
TIME TO LEARN HOW TO DO IT BY HAND
Photo based skin has several problems anyhow:
1. Specular highlights: I personally HATE specular highlights on skin textures. All specular responses in a render should come from the lights in the render engine and not pre-baked by the original camera session. Pre-baked specular is a form of surface pollution and should be avoided. It makes the skin look FRIED, which is very very very common in the store here.
2. Blur: Another thing I HATE is the depth of field blurring that is inevitable when working with photo referenced skins. Because humans are three dimensional and camera lenses are flat, the camera will focus on one area and blur that which is outside the focus area. When the PA gets the references home he/she has to assemble them onto the mesh in some paint program. Often the PA will find he doesnt have a well focused sample of a given skin region, so it is applied in its original blurred state. Or also common, the PA finds she needs to blend two tiles and so employs blurring brushes which then ruins the underlying detail information.I often see skin textures for sale here and other places where in some areas I can see distinct pores and leather grain and in other places I just see smudgy otherwise smooth patches. Cheeks and foreheads in sharp focus, noses, ears and other areas much more blurred. This on again off again level of detail drives me nuts and screams FAKE to me now matter that a real human skin reference was used.
I'd argue there must be a better way, and that way is to avoid photo references altogether.
Zev O's overlays are fantastic example of what I mean and I plan to use them as brushes to create character skin flaws for lots of different characters. ZevO provides wrinkles, stretch marks, moles and all other sorts of skin flaws. One could make a hand made skin texture built up from leather resources to look fairly plausible as human skin by painting these "flaws" on top of it.
I mean, the flaws really are the hard part, right? When we look for realism, arent we really looking for the flaws?
So how about it? How about someone out there who knows how demonstrate for the rest of us how to build human skin textures WITHOUT reliance on naked people. Anyone got this kind of skill? Anyone willing to share it? Because without this, we will continue to see the same skins reused over and over and darker skins will never happen because they don sell well enough to pay for the photo sessions in the first place.
Mutiny solved. Build it yourself.
Yes, this is what I'd like to do but I couldn't really find anything substantial. So as not to hijack this thread I'm going to create a thread in new users asking this.
I see absolutely no reason to bring him back and redoing effort simply because people erroneously speculated that Genesis would stop being Genesis and wouldn't get a unique skin because of it. I don't see how that is my issue if you missed out on buying it. The last few months was ridiculous due to several people using speculation as facts scaring people into a frenzy. Honestly, the mods should have banned them from the forum for that because they created an extremely negative and hostile atmosphere, when you know now it was all for nothing.
I don't put out things that you can't use for other things in the future. Remember that. If he couldn't be used for Gen2, he would never been released.
You saw his counterpart, Rayne, get a G2 morph update. If he sold even a fraction of her, he could have gotten a morph update just like her because her skin could be reused.
I'm not even thinking about that reference to even put myself through it again. I'm off to working on other projects.
If you missed it, you missed it.
This is not a thread for second -guessing another's decisions, nor for cross-examining a PA. Time to drop this aspect of the discussion.
I'm not even thinking about that reference to even put myself through it again. I'm off to working on other projects.
If you missed it, you missed it.
Trust me, that's a post I'll never forget. Thank you for your honesty.
.
Okay, now that it's been clearly established that what happened to Wynn M5 does not support the position that high-quality darker skin textures don't sell, I'll say again that I'm buying (men preferred at this time). Although I'm intrigued by Rashad's point that skillfully made-from-scratch skin textures would be superior, when I have darker-skinned characters in my art I'd like to be able to say that some of the money spent on the supplies to make it went to support darker-skinned people in the modeling industry. Representation matters.
I remember we had to wait quite a bit for the non-caucasian ladies when V6 came out too. Patience is a virtue, it seems.
Personally I'd love to have some Indians as well (and then I'm talking Delhi, not Dakota ;-))
I'm not even thinking about that reference to even put myself through it again. I'm off to working on other projects.
If you missed it, you missed it.
Trust me, that's a post I'll never forget. Thank you for your honesty.
.
Okay, now that it's been clearly established that what happened to Wynn M5 does not support the position that high-quality darker skin textures don't sell, I'll say again that I'm buying (men preferred at this time). Although I'm intrigued by Rashad's point that skillfully made-from-scratch skin textures would be superior, when I have darker-skinned characters in my art I'd like to be able to say that some of the money spent on the supplies to make it went to support darker-skinned people in the modeling industry. Representation matters.
Nothing's been established. Not sure how you came to that conclusion. You really need to stop speculating since it affects your buying habits; I think that's been the only thing established.
They don't sell as well as white characters. Since I sell both of them and have the numbers to back it up and you don't, I do think I know what I'm talking about.
I wish I could say it was that easy. Painting a texture in photoshop will not give you realism. If it did, so may texture artists wouldn't be spending the money on subscriptions to 3d.sk. At one time you had textures that were considered painterly and textures that were considered photo-realistic. It's not one or the other but a blending of both.
I wish I could say it was that easy. Painting a texture in photoshop will not give you realism. If it did, so may texture artists wouldn't be spending the money on subscriptions to 3d.sk. At one time you had textures that were considered painterly and textures that were considered photo-realistic. It's not one or the other but a blending of both.
It absolutely won't give you realism. As soon as you put good lighting on them you can instantly spot painted textures, especially if you use the same brush to paint large areas of the skin. Even if someone did to an excellent job of painting, chances are it wouldn't be something that people would be able to afford due the the enormous time to meticulously paint intricate details that are available in photo references.
I wish I could say it was that easy. Painting a texture in photoshop will not give you realism. If it did, so may texture artists wouldn't be spending the money on subscriptions to 3d.sk. At one time you had textures that were considered painterly and textures that were considered photo-realistic. It's not one or the other but a blending of both.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but it'd make me happy to be proved wrong on this! anikad said she'd start a thread about it -- it's here.
Deleted to post it in anikad thread
Those look like great products. I'll have to add them to my wishlist. I do wonder whether made-from-scratch procedural skin wouldn't be just as hard to create as photo based textures. On the plus side, a texture generation program made by artists collaborating with programmers could in theory provide the variety and flexibility that we desire in skin colors in a similar way to the huge variations on morphs available with the Genesis character. Want an old dark skinned character? Just dial it in. No need to worry about 'baked in' specular highlights or weird shadows on nipples and such.
That said, I'm not interested in Genesis 2 at this time. Maybe in a couple of years, who knows... In the mean time, I'll vote with my dollars on products by PAs who listen to their customer base.
Ditto'ng this!
As a matter of fact, darkskinned characters are rare, and so are males and even more older people. For instance we still haven't seen him for the runtime. Perhaps because I might be the only one to buy him....
(bthw I got Wynn and I like him a lot! He looks gorgeous as a poest-armageddon survivor in crazy hairdos and cut-off jeans)
mm3, I understand that it has cost you a lot of money to produce a character that hasn't sold and I understand that would annoy you. It would annoy me if it happened to me.
One question, would it be possible to recoup your money that you expanded by selling the resource to others? From what has been said in this thread it is obvious that such resources are rare...from what you are saying it doesn't sound like you wish to create any more dark skinned characters yourself as they don't sell but would a merchant resource sell not only to vendors but to people who wish to make their own textures?
This is only a suggestion from what you are saying it cost a lot of money to get. I'm only trying to see a way for you to recoup some of it...
I never said I'm never making another ethnic character; I said I'm not interested in using that reference at this point. I'm working on other things. That said, I'm not interested in making it a merchant resource either. It was produced to be a unique character and I rather it stay that way.
A better solution is to fill out a support ticket and petition daz to see if they can make more ethnic references available for characters or for development of other characters. Posting on the forum isn't going to get their attention. Someone with a bit more connections and resources may have better luck in securing the materials PAs need to make the products customer want.
Those with 3d.sk accounts should put a request in to see if they can get more ethnic references.
This is the suggestion page if you wish to request.
http://www.3d.sk/suggestion
I used a current request "Black African Men" as the suggestion. Then you could expand on your request from there. Perhaps if there are enough requests, they can find a photographer to do the request.
It absolutely won't give you realism. As soon as you put good lighting on them you can instantly spot painted textures, especially if you use the same brush to paint large areas of the skin. Even if someone did to an excellent job of painting, chances are it wouldn't be something that people would be able to afford due the the enormous time to meticulously paint intricate details that are available in photo references.
I'm inclined to disagree with you both on this. Not because building skin from scratch is easy, I am certain it is not. But for the purposes of selling skins at Daz3d a lot can be done from scratch.
Kelvin Okafor////////////////// Here are a few examples of hand drawn human faces by an artist who is admittedly extraordinarily talented. I dont have anywhere close to this level of skill, but I am certain there are people out there who do.
Lets analyze for a moment what these images demonstrate. First, it proves that mere mortals CAN fake complex surfaces such as skin well enough that the average person would believe the skin was real at one point in time. We can see the pores, leather, stretch marks, moles and everything drawn by hand. What we are missing is color information, which I admit is very challenging. Starting from a base like this, adding color isn't so hard to imagine.
I have some content to upload to the thread Anikad already started about human skin.
I refuse to give up at this point. I have a strange sort of faith that we can do this thing and do it right.
Read up on Kelvin Okafor and see his amazing images of Amy Winehouse, Princess Diana and many many others.
http://enpundit.com/hyperrealistic-drawings-by-kelvin-okafor/
I never said I'm never making another ethnic character; I said I'm not interested in using that reference at this point. I'm working on other things. That said, I'm not interested in making it a merchant resource either. It was produced to be a unique character and I rather it stay that way.
A better solution is to fill out a support ticket and petition daz to see if they can make more ethnic references available for characters or for development of other characters. Posting on the forum isn't going to get their attention. Someone with a bit more connections and resources may have better luck in securing the materials PAs need to make the products customer want.
Those with 3d.sk accounts should put a request in to see if they can get more ethnic references.
This is the suggestion page if you wish to request.
http://www.3d.sk/suggestion
I used a current request "Black African Men" as the suggestion. Then you could expand on your request from there. Perhaps if there are enough requests, they can find a photographer to do the request.
That's fine I was just looking for a way for you to recoup some of the money you expended. The way your posts read it sounded like you didn't think ethnic figures were going to sell...I was just trying to help.
It absolutely won't give you realism. As soon as you put good lighting on them you can instantly spot painted textures, especially if you use the same brush to paint large areas of the skin. Even if someone did to an excellent job of painting, chances are it wouldn't be something that people would be able to afford due the the enormous time to meticulously paint intricate details that are available in photo references.
I'm inclined to disagree with you both on this. Not because building skin from scratch is easy, I am certain it is not. But for the purposes of selling skins at Daz3d a lot can be done from scratch.
Kelvin Okafor////////////////// Here are a few examples of hand drawn human faces by an artist who is admittedly extraordinarily talented. I dont have anywhere close to this level of skill, but I am certain there are people out there who do.
Lets analyze for a moment what these images demonstrate. First, it proves that mere mortals CAN fake complex surfaces such as skin well enough that the average person would believe the skin was real at one point in time. We can see the pores, leather, stretch marks, moles and everything drawn by hand. What we are missing is color information, which I admit is very challenging. Starting from a base like this, adding color isn't so hard to imagine.
I have some content to upload to the thread Anikad already started about human skin.
I refuse to give up at this point. I have a strange sort of faith that we can do this thing and do it right.
Read up on Kelvin Okafor and see his amazing images of Amy Winehouse, Princess Diana and many many others.
http://enpundit.com/hyperrealistic-drawings-by-kelvin-okafor/
First you've only showed black and white images. That would be far easier to emulate skin as the black shadows would hide the details.
Second like I said, once you add lighting to it, you're going to see that it's painted. You haven't disproved that.
Third, the effort to make that type of skin will drive the cost up of a character where it would not be worth the effort on the vendors part.
So really you haven't disproved anything I said.
That's fine I was just looking for a way for you to recoup some of the money you expended. The way your posts read it sounded like you didn't think ethnic figures were going to sell...I was just trying to help.
Ethnic figures don't sell as well. I have enough product that shows that. I do them as I'm interested in doing them, I rather do male figures, but they don't sell as well as my female ones.
So for me, I would have to be interested in doing them for me to make a product, not profit.
Right now, I have other things on my plate to be interested in doing an ethnic character.
It absolutely won't give you realism. As soon as you put good lighting on them you can instantly spot painted textures, especially if you use the same brush to paint large areas of the skin. Even if someone did to an excellent job of painting, chances are it wouldn't be something that people would be able to afford due the the enormous time to meticulously paint intricate details that are available in photo references.
I'm inclined to disagree with you both on this. Not because building skin from scratch is easy, I am certain it is not. But for the purposes of selling skins at Daz3d a lot can be done from scratch.
Kelvin Okafor////////////////// Here are a few examples of hand drawn human faces by an artist who is admittedly extraordinarily talented. I dont have anywhere close to this level of skill, but I am certain there are people out there who do.
Lets analyze for a moment what these images demonstrate. First, it proves that mere mortals CAN fake complex surfaces such as skin well enough that the average person would believe the skin was real at one point in time. We can see the pores, leather, stretch marks, moles and everything drawn by hand. What we are missing is color information, which I admit is very challenging. Starting from a base like this, adding color isn't so hard to imagine.
I have some content to upload to the thread Anikad already started about human skin.
I refuse to give up at this point. I have a strange sort of faith that we can do this thing and do it right.
Read up on Kelvin Okafor and see his amazing images of Amy Winehouse, Princess Diana and many many others.
http://enpundit.com/hyperrealistic-drawings-by-kelvin-okafor/
These are pencil drawings. They are not 3D skin textures. I made textures for Posette and Dork. Both painterly and an early attempt at photo-realism. It was adequate for the times. I loaded one of them up a few years ago and almost deleted the whole lot right then. I keep them around for nostalgia now.
I worked on creating a procedural skin shader for V3 back in the P5 days. I got part way through it. It's not bad. V3 still need eyebrows as I was trying to see if it could be done without any outside additions. That included masks and texture tiles. Even if I did finish it, it still has one major constraint. I would only work in Poser. Poser's material room like DS shadermixer is directly tied to the render engine.
Comparing a pencil sketch to a 3d render is like comparing apples and oranges.
Honestly, I wish all the textures came with a no eyebrow option, then I wouldn't have to buy so many. I could use different eyebrows and makeup resources to make the characters I need. Its hard to make different characters if they all have the same eyebrows.
True but the point of what I was trying to do back then was create a texture for skin and eyes that used only the various nodes in the Poser material room and the model's material zones. To do that required creating new mat zones for the eyebrows and eyelashes and they trying to work out which combinations of nodes faked the brows and lashes the best. It stated to get very convoluted not to mention messy with all the nodes that were wired into the various mat zones.
Sorry, don't use Poser, I was thinking more on the line of opening Photoshop, grab a face texture with no brows, slap the brows of choice, make a bump map. tweak placement until it looks good, save new texture.