DAZ is losing me
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Geesh Yike!! All those taxes, Prolly why people left England 250 years ago to start the USA
an exterior and grounds?
i removed most of my w/list. closed the chapter on buying 8.0 characters. closed the chapter on uwrap.and dforce.
finding it more fun to renovate the older stuff. shaders. replacing windows and floors with thickness.
separating glass and metal shader domains.
caustics. full idL.
yes, exactly on the bundles and sales. I do not mind paying even full price for good content, I have and still do, but the bundles being shoved out there are less than stellar, imo, plus retreads often.
The place that can;t be named has great sales, but mostly not as high. 50% common. The prices so far are lower overall. Once in awhile they issue a coupon. Simple, straight forward.
I would much prefer DAZ give the new release discount for PC+ subscribers, an incentive to be a member and then whatever discount. 30-40-50-60 or 70 as in the fast grabs. None of that mathemtical mumbo jumbo we have to wade through every single day.
PC+ coupons are as much maddening as the other sales anymore. Half the time they dont even work on the stuff they're supposed to, and its not worth the effort to file a ticket and wait 2 weeks or more to get a refund or whatever for a couple of bucks.
Well the basics of any store is simply when it comes to selling. You have this product at $10, it's too high you say, then how about I give you a better deal to buy 2 products at a reduced rate of $14 and you think you just scored, when in reality you just bought at item at $10 which was the intended goal and you spent even more cause you thought you were getting a better deal adding the second item, which in most cases is not that great and they just wanted to get rid of it.
IMO the products are not under/over-priced. They are priced at the level the seller thinks the market will accept. DAZ and Renderosity are still very inexpensive places to get piles of 3D assets without paying $100 per model. I think the DAZ/Rendo stores exemplify the American model of capitalism. You vote with your dollars.
It would be nice to see a return to build-your-own-bundle and a monthly voting poll by platinum customers where a selection of 9 from 33 items are chosen. The chosen items would be offered at very large discounts to all customers and an even greater discount to the platinum club. Voting would take place in the platinum club forum. The sale would run for a week after the poll closes.
1. Bundles which are not 100% new items- not doing it. And the banner discounts make NO sense. Sure, give me a whopping 70% off when I own everything in the bundle.
2. New items with buy TWO or more of those (with only 30% discounts) to get me discounts on OTHER things? (Which I am not interested in, many times.) No thanks.
Yep, this is a business, and the customers will let Daz know with their spending what they will accept. Just talking to others, many of us have cut back on spending. The new marketing strategy is curbing impulse buying so that's a good thing.
Keeping in mind that fanart commissions, at least fanart of easily recognizable copyrighted figures (I'm looking at you, Star Wars), is a very sticky, very grey, area. Most fanartists can fly under the radar, but making money from it is...not so legal. I will only do fanart commissions of original characters, in example video game player characters.
I was doing commissions for a while but then stopped because I just couldn't churn work out fast enough to make the hassle of dealing with customers worth it. For example, I would start my comissions at $75 for a waist-up single-character piece. I'd have to build out the character first, sometimes having to deal with ultra picky customers who were wanting to insert themselves as the player character, and then I'd put the actual artwork together. A super fast piece for me would take minimum 10hrs...most of the time more. At that rate, I was working for $7.50/hr. Or if the piece took 20hrs, it would be $3.75/hr. Totally not worth it. Charging more is an option, but then you run into the issue that the typical fanart customer won't want to pay that much. Not when they can get 2D fanart from someone else for a fraction of what you'd want to ask.
I honestly don't mind the prices...going on what I said earlier that I generally don't buy unless I can get something for at least 70% off. I do, however, get upset that the bundles are so pricey and the content in them (in general) is not of the quality to justify it. I'm not talking about the characters in the bundles. I'm talking about the clothing. Barring a few specific ouliers (like Mada's clothing which is always well made), most of the clothing in bundles turns to spaghetti when the shoulders or torso are moved in the slightest. Metal pieces that bend. Textures that stretch. Having clothing that only works on a character in an A pose, even with dForce, is not acceptable.
Yay! I love West Park! I plan on using it to make a visual novel set in a psych ward! More clean textures would be appreciated.
I always find it puzzling when people think this is an expensive hobby and wonder what hobbies they've encountered that are significantly cheaper.
It's not golf, miniatures, trains, knitting, or painting, I'll tell you that much.
I've heard there is a market of folks who "vote with their wallets and never visit the forums." If that's the case, it could be whatever we say here makes no difference at all. We're actually not the market. I personally am probably among the worst of the price opportunists. I would not take advantage of changeover glitches in the old store, but I became an active customer at a time when the discounts were fantastic, and I generally buy when the discounts are fantastic. I can't apologize for that. If Daz didn't want me to have fantastic discounts, the price structures would be different.
I won't say "Daz is losing me," because that's not true. I will say, I'm on a break right now, waiting to see what the year brings.
I don't know, but whenever a family member asks about Daz I feel obligated to mention that it costs a lot of money. I think the big problem is that while $40 will get you up and running with knitting, diamond painting, watercolor, or needle felting, it takes considerably more money to have what you want for a project in Daz. By the time you have a library you are happy with, you have invested a lot.
exactly .. a lot invested. That "free" program is anything but, however, I do understand the nature of it. The money has to come from somewhere to support the development of the program. An extrra, it is possible to use core figures for a lot of things as is. Coupled with a lot of free things all over the internet, you can use DS on the cheap if you want to.
I've never have been involved in many hobbies. Used to collect stamps, which gave me great pleasure back in my early years... not cheap either. Everything costs moeny to a certain extent, but there are ways to circumvent a lot of it, even in this 3d world should you want to learn things like modeling, clothes making, hair, etc etc. The tools ar ein the program to do most of what is needed, lighting, posing, rendering and all that.
BUT, you'ver read the rest as well/. its a viewpoint, an opinion.
to OSO: most hobbies such as stamps knitting even train sets you are unlikely to spend tens of thousands on the "needed items for the hobby" sure golf being the outlier of your comment because businessmen will spend thousands on the clubs the gear and the memberships to the Clubs. mostly for business investment to be around people who can become clients or partners...etc... a Person who knits can do so on a string budget and the end product has a value. you buy stamps because their value increases with rarity. 3D renders unless you do it for a JOB has pretty much no value besides "look what I created." the renders will never increase in value, nor will the items you buy to do the renders. if anything they have a limited life span in the industry, since styles and the code they are made with continually changes making the investment obsolete! as an example the people who used Daz early on bought Genesis then came genesis2 then genesis3, genesis8 and they are rolling out 8.1 stuff you bought earlier may not even work with current characters or if it does it looks crappy at best.
Daz 3D is a very expensive hobby because the hobbist is not selling the renders or doing it for commissions and there will never be an increase in value of the items bought to do the hobby. it litterally is the hobby with the least return on the investment for it!
Up to a few months ago, I used to buy at least one product per week or so. Since January, I think I have not bought more than an item per month. I just don't understand how the price of a digital t-shirt costs the same as a physical item. And with things being tough this past year, it is a bit hard to spend money. If prices would be lowered a bit more, at least until the economy can get better, and as more good products are being made, I think it would motivate us to buy more. But maybe it is just me.
True, but hobbies by definition are not meant for making money. To use that argument, you could also say there's no monetary return on golf or skiing or fishing (maybe you eat it?) and at least for my family and friends who quilt, sew, knit, paint, etc. do so to make gifts or just for the joy of it.
golf = business deals
It probably costs USD 40 just to do a single render in TX right now.
I have been working in Daz Studio every singe day for the last 3 years, and Im still excited! But Im not a Dazaholoc so I dont binge buy.
I am a part time working artist, so the assets that I buy pay themselves off, and I only buy what need, when I need it.
Daz lost part of my business because of crappy tech support.
Buying V8.1 forced me to upgrade to 4.15 which did not work well on my main box (Intel i7 9700F, 16GB ram, GTX 1660TI). When I brought this up and asked for an older version, all I got back was "it`s not possible". No other alternatives were given.
If I cant run Daz Studio, then it would be foolish to buy anymore assets.
Well I "found" a copy of 4.12 and installed it on another rig. It works fine.
But i was so pee`d off, that I bought Poser, cancelled PC+, and now spend most of my $$$ over at Rendo.
So the prices are not an issue, but I am "voting with my wallet" to an extent. Voting for better tech support.
Let me add that sales support has always been top notch :)
For me it is the increasing hardware demand. I was excited to get genesis 8.1 since I tend to be an early adopter. But 4.15 requires too much gpu and with nvidia driving the bus I fear I can't even render two figures in a scene without dropping.
So sadly, iam not buying g8.1 or anything that requires 4.15
I am going back to 4.11 which is much less intensive for my gpu. I can't afford a new gpu to run 4.15. Not when 4.11 works fine and runs what I need. I don't want to play the nvidia upgrade game, it's too expensive for me as a hobbyist.
WHAT! knitting is as expensive as my 3D spending .... stomps over to significant other ..... grumbles ... "no wonder we can't afford our low fat high fructose Frappuccino!!! You're as bad as me with all your knitting!!!!" ... stomps away grumbling .... significant other sits there wondering what the heck was that ....
I mostly talk about it to fandom folks, and I compare it to cosplay You can get to the point where you're a full-out costume designer, SFX artist, or model (or all three) even if you never go pro; that takes a lot of money and time, and most people like that make it their primary/only hobby and have been assembling a hoard of resources for years. But you can also have fun with it by using what you've got on hand or can find cheaply, and if you learn to make things yourself there's a community economic ecosystem for services and resources.
I was looking for this thread - or maybe one like it.
I have been hobbyist using DAZ Studio for about seven years. (I started with Blender, moved to Poser and then to DS. I still use Blender and find that and my Poser experience were a good foundation; but, I no longer pay for Poser licenses and my version no longer works: something to do with Adobe and my contnet library and the support desk offered fix not working. ...And being told the version I was using was no longer supported .. . ) I mention this because I am increasingly frustrated with my ability to produce anything. There are a couple of sides to this and I will try to explain.
1. Content seems to be getting more expensive, more and more requires dForce simulation, and sometimes that's because it is really cool and sometimes it is really bad and tries to use dForce to overcome a lack of shaping/fitting morphs.
2. I run 4.15 on a W10, 64 bit, i7 4790, 32 GB RAM, with a GTX 660TI (3GB) and an RTX 2070 (8GB) video cards. Until 4.15, both video cards supported rendering: now only the RTX. But I didn't understand that until after I upgraded so as to use filament.,. 8.1 . . . . . .
So What! Well, 4.15 crashes almost every second render. I have learned (almost) to save prior to any rendering but even though that has reduced some frustration I still endure the restart and reload experience (many many minutes typically) far too frequently. Posing (forget pupetteer or the new face rig thing) has always been a system load, but when you combine that with the need to simulate clothing and hair, perhaps on a timeline, to get it to work at all in some cases . . . . .Simulations take forever. And take loads of tries to get right.
Perhaps the answer is a new system. I think it was another thread here that shamed a comment someone made about needing a high end video card for this to be worth while as a hobby. Then there was a shark attack about 'what do you want to do' and all the options and work arounds. I am not inviting that. But I don't know what a new system might look like. It used to be if you wanted to render nice images, fast, you needed a large NVidia GPU (with current CUDA version it turns out). I think that is still basically true but large is getting larger. And there are other options for a little lower quality (octane (plug in)), or simulations (filament?). Maybe you want two video cards - that dictates a certain mother board. Lots of RAM is good. Some have said 32 GB is the minimum. I have 32 GB and, while watching Task Manager, see it all used very regularly. There are so many aspects of DS that also use the CPU (and in many/most/all? cases are single processor) I often think that is the bottleneck as I watch it max out the one core it is using while watching Task Manager. So a good CPU??? And then there's the ton of storage... Add this up and we are not talking an inexpensive system. And with every significant DS upgrade there is more hardware that needs to be replaced (in my case anyways).
Or maybe the answer is to cast off older content, and avoid new content, reducing storage and system load. I have started that; but, it is disappointing to not be able to use Auto Face Enhancer (after purchasing) as an example because it creates too much load, or some of the new hair because it needs to be simulated or to have retired characters to try to conserve resources.
This all seems quite counter to the idea of selling content as a business model. Not me to say. But it's no good if you cannot use it. So I will need to be far more selective. And I find that unconstrained content creation/design/implementation (from the perspective of system size or system resource requirements) is putting me out of the game. I am not looking to rock the world - but producing only one nice render a day is much less than I was able to do five years ago. . .
It's a ramble I know. Rant ends.
I have 4.15 installed right now, but I have seen my renders dropping to cpu constantly lately. So I just went through my old hard drive and found I have several older versions of Daz kicking around. Now to see if I can have two versions installed at once! I wish Daz made older versions of the program more readably available. I don't see how it could harm their bottom line.