The future of Daz Studio
I really like Daz Studio and have a lot to learn. I do not want to waste my time learning something that becomes obsolete. I've read that Daz was not originally built for animation. With all these Daz Studio bridges for other 3D programs, are they giving up on the future? Am I wasting my time learning the nuances of Daz Studio and should instead focus on something else like Blender? Are they going to turn into a store for assets only?
Comments
I highly doubt it.
lemme just consult my crystal ball.
I dont think it would hurt to try use Blender as much as possible in your workflow, from setting up materials, animating, rendering.
I understand and I share the fears of hwgs. Daz has two activities presently.
1/ develop the DS suite of 3D tools. It costs them a lot of money and generates not income. *But* it gives them a captive maket and guaranties a decent among of customers for activity 2/
2/ sell assets. This is what generates daz benefits.
The problem is that DS is a very small part of the 3D world, and to grow daz needs to gain new customers. Hence the bridges to enlarge the customer base.
If this succeeds and if many users of other 3D tools buy assets on daz3D, DS users may become a minority of daz3D clientele. If this happens, why would daz continue to spend a lot of money to devellop DS?
This situation is obviously not in the near future and maybe, even with these hypothesis, daz may continue to develop DS to have this captive market as a guaranteed base. But I am certain that this kind of questions on the future of DS is present in the daz staff.
You said exactly what I was thinking alainmerigot. I've been waiting for the 30xx Nvidia cards and was disapppointed to learn that Daz doesn't work on them (yet, but maybe the beta version does?). And the new AMD cards may be superior but Daz doesn't support them (I think). If I was Daz, why would I invest time upgrading my free software when I can make money selling assets? That's where I suspect Daz is headed - a store. This is a hobby not my job and I cannot dedicate tons of time to learning new software so I want to become proficient in a program that is going to endure.
who honestly knows the future.
When I started using DAZ content Poser was the main app customers were using, I came from using iClone 3 which nobody here had heard of, now iC7 is pretty damned popular, Poser not so much.
I prefer Carrara to anything and DAZ have neglected that so I am using Unreal and Twinmotion a lot too.
that said a lot of stuff being made now only works in DAZ studio, more so than ever before.
The beta does work with 30xx cards.
As for AMD cards support, Iray is developped by nvidia, so what do you expect?
Daz started as an asset store only where they depended on other software providers for apps to use their content, and I really don't see them going back to that situation, even if there are more options now than just Poser so it would be less risky now. DS is their app, and they can control how it works, add the features they want/need, decide which tools are available to whom... I seriously doubt they want to lose that.
That is my biggest fear, DAZ3D becoming more of a store and having less focus on DS. IMO DS is the key to all this. Sure, I can import DAZ content into 3DSMax, blender, unity, etc (the apps i have installed) but it's way more work and for renders DS is pretty streamlined and it all just works for me. I guess time will tell.
One of the fundamental principles of business is that it's much easier and cheaper to keep your existing customers than to find new ones.
However, it is also a good idea to diversify your product range if possible so if one market segment becomes depressed the others can take up the slack. I work for a company that makes industrial pumps. We sell our products into three distinct markets. One of these has been severly depressed for the last several years so the other two have kept the company going.
The bottom line is that DAZ will continue to fully support Studio but will also diversify. As detailed above, this is a sound business strategy which bodes well for the future of the company.
Nvidia is following a similar strategy. It is continuing to develop its core business of graphics cards but is diversifying into other areas such as AI and the ARM acquisition.
Cheers,
Alex.
No fear... If DAZ would be planning to move focus out of DS, they would first release a base character in some other native format
I have 3D content from lots of stores that are long gone now.