We can get the open source of DAZ?
autodolor
Posts: 70
I think if DAZ Studio is free, the most normal thing is to offer your code in open source. This would help to improve the whole set ..., but I think this is not possible, or not? The contributions of third parties can help you too much to polish code, not focused on your developers, but going through your quality controls. Perhaps it is a vain question, but by intention, I think it will be considered.
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I think their business model is predicated on some obscurity to their code and tools- especially when it comes to HD morphs. Not sure they are willing to go open source because thye probably think they are protecting their revenue streams by doing their current model.
Daz Studio is not free It is distributed at 100% discount at the current time.
It will certainly never be released as open source
Daz Studio is Daz 3d's flagship program
Quite a few software is offered for free without being open source
Free to use is not the same as open source. Numerous elements of DS (at least 3delight, Iray, and the Optitex cloth engine used by older dynamiic clothing) are not Daz' code to release in any event.
Open source does not guarantee support - why would a coder wanting to contribute to a 3D application choose DS rather than Blender? As far as I can see most open source projects tend to have one major application in any given field, with a few other single-person projects - the obvious exceptiion is Linux distrbutions, where there are commercial opportunities from support.
I'm also wondering if Daz is willing to work with an external developer to disclose some functionality details in order to develop a product that could be published on Daz marketplace.
For example, I am working on material transfer functionality from Daz to Blender, which aims to replicate Iray materials in Blender.
In order to replicate 100% of Daz materials in Blender, this would require understanding how shader bricks work.
But because the shader brick implementations details are all hidden, it's impossible to figure out how to replicate many of the shader bricks.
For now, I don't have a plan to work on the parts which require hidden implementation knowledge. But if Daz is willing to assist, this could be a win-win deal.
You can write all the plugins and scripts you want though.
I understand that there are parts of third party code, such as Autodesk's FBX or DAE, or Iray, which belongs to nVidia. It is obvious that there is an agreement between companies, although they are open source with their proprietary SDK. I'm not talking about "the whole DAZ Studio", but about parts like these: the I / O dll's, which are upgradeable like the FBX, the Biovision BVH, or precise information on why the API is changed in scripts that in previous versions work, and in 4.12 no..etc .. I totally agree with JClave: The darkness is ... dark.
And some light I think is necessary.
Of course you can make plugins, with the SDK 4.5! From ... How many years ago?
You'd need to ask Daz directly, through a support ticket or perhaps (if this might be a product) through the PA contact.
You download the DAZ Studio 4.5+ SDK and then get any OS Plattform compatible SDK you wish to integrate into DAZ Studio, even completely weird things if you like, and integrate it. The DAZ Studio has example plugins code that is broken that you can fix to get you started.
I asked. They said no.
You are missing the point of Open Source, Richard. Support was exactly the inciting issue which caused Richard M. Stallman to start writing a C compiler so that he could implement open version of all the tools he used at the MIT AI lab where he worked, and never have to deal with poor support ever again. When a project is Open Source, literally *anyone* can become a world class expert in the software. Even you yourself as a user of the software, or such a person that you employ to modify the software on your behalf, to better attend to your needs. When there are thousands of people all over the world who have seen and understand the source code, support is everywhere you look, and it is better and cheaper.
I think you may be placing so much value on commercial support because you've never participated in an Open Source community? I cannot count how many times I had a question about a library or something, and by the next day, I had been in contact with the very guy that wrote the code in question and received a detailed answer. One can get used to a hyper responsive community. What do you think your chances are for calling up Microsoft today, and getting a detailed solution from Satya Nadella by lunchtime, tomorrow?
I can't speak for @autodolor, but when you've experienced the feeling of community with an Open Source project that was important to you and you were passionate about, and maybe even made a small contribution to it, it is natural to crave that same sensation with another program that is important to you and that you are passionate about.
It was never, ever, ever going to happen, but I totally get where @autodolor is coming from.
But only if there is a community of suitably knowledgeable people, which is not guaranteed.
That wasn't the point I was making - I was saying that the money from commercial use helps to underwrite the development of multiple Linux releases, but in other fields there are not, as far as I am aware, multiple open-source options. Krita/Gimp maybe - but those are, as far as I can see, somewhat different beasts.
As well as where I come from, TheMisteryIsThePoint (What a beautiful nick ...!), The selfless work of thousands of brains is more coherent in order to improve, not 100% a software code, but 7947934% or more! This can be verified with Blender, where many users use Daz products to transfer them to a more efficient work environment, where there are unthinkable tools in Daz. Not everything is going to be bad! Daz has, today, have the best 3D character frameworks. For this reason, other companies such as Reallusion, with their iClone, are using these characters: Their iAvatars are, in my opinion, very weak. But they do provide interaction with mocap, for example, and that's where Daz fails.
I don't really know what end use Daz users have. A render of a pretty photo with a damsel with a centaur stomping on it? A poster for a red lantern house (...)? Years ago I was doing TV spots and videos for trade fairs, and I had to adapt to the kindest 3D, since I'm actually an industrial designer and what I used most was Rhino and Solidworks. I use the Daz figures for my presentations of my products, closer to hand utensils (Dinnerware, kitchen appliances, etc.) and having the possibility to put your hand correctly in a 3D simulation is a fantastic tool, which I never found: Daz gave it to me.
And I'm also a programmer, not a professional, but I do my scripts in Python (which, mysteriously, Daz lacks ..). I work with three computers in my house, two Win10 and a Linux Debian Kali (For a wifi project that I have in my hands ...). I usually use Visual Studio and the linux gnu c ++. And, of course, I love GitHub and other developer websites, where you see the code, and think about whether it is valid, or something is wrong ... and you warm your head to help polish code. And you help hundreds of people. And you have feedback from other people, and between all of them, wonders are created.
So I was asking for some open source. Daz hangs many times, simply by deleting a character ... Importing a third-party Fbx is heroic! .. And in that, we can all help. That alone was my proposal. Thank you all.
I'm certainly not going to blame Daz for continuing to believe that the only way to succeed is to protect their IP; that's how it has always worked. There aren't enough Billion-dollar Open Source companies like Red Hat to make the other paths self-evident. But I think a lot of companies, say IBM and HP, probably wish they had understood a decade earlier. And IBM and HP are the lucky ones at least in that they still exist today.
Anyway, you are certainly not alone in your thinking.
But Richard, it is guaranteed. Because you are only one step removed from the very creators, and they all go out of their way to *facilitate* communication with them. I cannot think of an Open Source project whose very founder I cannot speak to directly. My three best examples of this is when I asked what was, in restrospect, a pretty stupid question on the Linux kernel mailing list. Within a few hours, at 4 in the morning, Alan Cox himself, then pretty much Linus's right hand man, responded and was only slightly condescending about how I really should have been able to figure it out for myself (and that much, I think, only because he is English :) ). Another time I was using a realtime networking library developed by Doug Schmidt at the University of Washington, used widely in the defense industry. Another detailed response from the very creator, within hours. Yet another time, I noticed some wierd behaviour in a one-man shop's SMTP server he had written for Java. I told him what I was seeing, offered him the fix, and the next day my name was in the next release notes, and he thanked me personally for fixing the code for a version of Thunderbird that he didn't personally use.
There is a reason why people like Open Source so much.
You've referenced what many companies have figured out: Open Source projects can increase the value of, and demand for, my product offerrings, and do so largely on someone else's dime and time. It only takes the company to value that more than the small fraction of their IP they would have to forfeit, which in many cases is not that valuable anyway (looking at you, NVidia). I'm sure you can see the Daz/Blender analogy I am wishing you would consider.
But I cannot think of a context in which there are *not* multiple viable Open Source choices. The joke is that the problem with Open Source is not lack of choice but that there is too much:
Daz will not OpenSource because business's are out to make a profit. As a greedy person myself! I try to get the most out of something that I can. Daz is gonna squeeze the buffalo till it squeals like a pig. hahaha!!! It is just the nature of business. Individuals can go OpenSource, but unless a business can make a profit from going OpenSource they will never do it. The future is OpenSource because if you have a piece of software and you need it to do something else and it is closed source you are out of luck. What happens if that business closes down due to bad business practices. Again you are out of Luck. I like playing with Daz Studio and it's content but as a old Lightwave user I see it as a delivery device for DAZ company licensed models. So I also am learning Blender and am quite surprised by it's strength for a OpenSource rendering and animation platform. I would stop asking DAZ to OpenSource and learn to do things in Blender and if you are a good script writer or creator of code I would strongly suggest you help them work on this great piece of software.
actually since selling 3D models is their bread and butter, it is not a stupid idea
I dare say it is more because of the dependencies on other proprietary code that they cannot,
Nvidia iray just being one of many examples
they could not even do the lipsync in the 64bit as didn't own the license which is why they sell Mimic Live
the various dll for importers, exporters etc, quite the list
even jpg has a license I believe
I believe that WendyLuvsCatz is correct in that they use proprietary libraries such as Qt. and others that Richard mentioned earlier. Iray and FBX are both freely available to anyone to get by signing up (I did).
I think you are confusing Open Source with freeware. Blender is Open Source, and so you shouldn't be surprised at all, but rather expect it.
Daz Studio is not free, that's just their business model...
Steve.
I say be glad Daz is free when. I started with daz. in 2010 it was being sold for about $230 for daz studio 3 advance I paid $75 on a special offer
when daz released daz studio 4.0 pro it was first released for $49 I got it for a intorductory offer for $19 & and shortly after they started offering daz as free/ discounted offer
But yea we use to have to buy daz studio
We didn't have to buy it, there was always a free "standard" version. The paid version had additional features though.
Yes right!. But it was bare bone its was comparable to poser without cloth room and python & to poser pro with cloth room & python Daz 3 alone would not allow you use the full potential of the software or any of the tools and features needed to be unlock with the Advance version. it worked just enough to make you want to buy the software to unlock the rest of the features.. so yea it was free but not able to do much with it which means if you wanted the posing tool or texture atlas to work you needed to pay for the advanced versions
I was using poser pro when i started with daz 3a. Its funny when daz studio 4 pro first was around released they were charging $49 and then shortly like within a couple months Daz started offering a 100% discount of it. My invoice said i paid $19 for daz 4.01 pro so i must have got a 50% discount on it when it was released.
DS4 pro was way more expensive than that on release. You must have purchased it during a big sale, because I paid much more than that for the DS4 Advanced upgrade from DS3A on release.
Never in this universe and parallels, I hope. The day that this happen I will cry with bitter tears. The interesting thing is What is in the mind of DAZ team about Genesis or whatever they create in the future. I don't want "strangers" changing this paradigm.
PAs can develop plugings for adding functionality. GenXs and Hair builders like garibaldi are plugings, Mesh grabber if a new panel in the tools. So, people can develop functionality in Daz Studio. A lot of API is public and developers can speak with DAZ team for information about development of tools. DAZ is so so so DAZ, that they were willing to share knowledge with poser to implement genesis in poser.
My attempt at a plugin failed fairly early on as it took so long to get a response to a question it would have taken ten years to write it at such a pace. Easier for insiders I think.
Open source basically guarantees a world class (literal and figurative) team of coding experts. And in my opinion, Daz Studio could use some of those world class experts with some of the problems they currently have.
No, it doesn't - it means that if there are world-class experts with an interest in the application and the time to devote to it they may contribute, but it does absoutely nothing to ensure that such people willl exist or be willing to contribute.
However, there's really no point in arguing this since - as I pointed out above - the licensing issues almost certainly present an insuperable obstacle.
I empathize with you. I cannot imagine where the authors of certain plugins got the knowledge to do such sophisticated things, if I am stumped by the 2^7 permutations of what the documentation could actually mean for something extremely simple...
I *really* actually hope there is no such insider track, because then I would aggressively wonder why I was never told about it by support.
1) Certain function's signatures are part of the SDK. But the function's semantics are poorly documented. A bunch of header files does not an SDK make.
2) Perhaps Daz is willing to share knowledge with another legal entity, but they have shared exactly, precisely ZERO with this individual, and not for wont of asking.