A Roadmap for Daz Studio Would be Helpful

Sevrin

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

margrave

Well, we know the first step on the roadmap is to upgrade from Qt4 so Daz Studio can actually run on one of the three major operating systems.

According to the stickied thread, it'll take them until mid-2021 to fix it.

FSMCDesigns

I wonder is the new bridges system has helped or hurt sales. I am still a firm believer in keeping DAZ assets DS specific and doing more work to make DS a better product as opposed to opeing up new ways to use DAZ assets outside of DS. So in that aspect I would be very interested in knowing what they have in store for DS and it's future.

Daz_Jessica

Sevrin said:

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

We have actually shared a great deal about our current development.  As every Mac user knows, we are currently working on a major update to Studio to work with Mac Big Sur (it's stickied at the top o of the forums).  Secondly, we publish updates at least monthly on the bridges.  There is an entire forum and beta period dedicated to soliciting feedback to those updates.  Third, we have a beta for studio where you can see and get our near constant updates and see release notes.

Major updates in the previous 4 months:

• Daz Studio 4.14 (brand new Filament render engine) and 4.15 - We discuss and publish specifics here.
• Genesis 8.1
• Blender Bridge Update for Environments 
• Tons of Bridge Updates for Maya, 3ds Max,Cinema 4D, Unreal, Unity.

We have also done major updates on the store, highly focused on stability (in both purchasing and checkout) and did a major update to the gallery.  As many customers will remember, there would be days of either inability to checkout for lack of loading and unable to download in Studio, due to site issues, that's been solved.  We make updates daily to the website, including search updates, gallery, etc. 

We hope that you all continue to give us feedback and help our products improve, whether on forums, surveys, customer service outreach, calls, etc. 

McGyver

It's all top secret... you need at priority 9A, level 328 clearance to be privy to these details... this all above our pay grades so just let's pretend this never happened and remember loose lips sink chimps... Move on, there's nothing to see here.

margrave

Daz_Jessica said:

Sevrin said:

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

We have actually shared a great deal about our current development.  As every Mac user knows, we are currently working on a major update to Studio to work with Mac Big Sur (it's stickied at the top o of the forums).  Secondly, we publish updates at least monthly on the bridges.  There is an entire forum and beta period dedicated to soliciting feedback to those updates.  Third, we have a beta for studio where you can see and get our near constant updates and see release notes.

Major updates in the previous 4 months:

• Daz Studio 4.14 (brand new Filament render engine) and 4.15 - We discuss and publish specifics here.
• Genesis 8.1
• Blender Bridge Update for Environments 
• Tons of Bridge Updates for Maya, 3ds Max,Cinema 4D, Unreal, Unity.

We have also done major updates on the store, highly focused on stability (in both purchasing and checkout) and did a major update to the gallery.  As many customers will remember, there would be days of either inability to checkout for lack of loading and unable to download in Studio, due to site issues, that's been solved.  We make updates daily to the website, including search updates, gallery, etc. 

We hope that you all continue to give us feedback and help our products improve, whether on forums, surveys, customer service outreach, calls, etc. 

What's the five-year plan, though? I don't remember hearing zip about Genesis 8.1 until it dropped overnight.

Wolfwood

Daz_Jessica said:

Sevrin said:

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

We have actually shared a great deal about our current development.  As every Mac user knows, we are currently working on a major update to Studio to work with Mac Big Sur (it's stickied at the top o of the forums).  Secondly, we publish updates at least monthly on the bridges.  There is an entire forum and beta period dedicated to soliciting feedback to those updates.  Third, we have a beta for studio where you can see and get our near constant updates and see release notes.

Major updates in the previous 4 months:

• Daz Studio 4.14 (brand new Filament render engine) and 4.15 - We discuss and publish specifics here.
• Genesis 8.1
• Blender Bridge Update for Environments 
• Tons of Bridge Updates for Maya, 3ds Max,Cinema 4D, Unreal, Unity.

We have also done major updates on the store, highly focused on stability (in both purchasing and checkout) and did a major update to the gallery.  As many customers will remember, there would be days of either inability to checkout for lack of loading and unable to download in Studio, due to site issues, that's been solved.  We make updates daily to the website, including search updates, gallery, etc. 

We hope that you all continue to give us feedback and help our products improve, whether on forums, surveys, customer service outreach, calls, etc. 

A roadmap Is not simply what we are working or what we have ready to test. You are missing mid and long term goals.

 

benniewoodell

FSMCDesigns said:

I wonder is the new bridges system has helped or hurt sales. I am still a firm believer in keeping DAZ assets DS specific and doing more work to make DS a better product as opposed to opeing up new ways to use DAZ assets outside of DS. So in that aspect I would be very interested in knowing what they have in store for DS and it's future.

I've been seeing more and more Daz assets pop up in the Blender group I'm a part of since the Bridge came out, and I've seen some questions pop up in the Maya group I'm in. Personally, I use both Daz and Blender because each has it's own pros and cons. What I can't wait for though is for the bridge to work like Maya's where you can animate in Blender and port that animation back into Daz. It's awesome for Maya, I did the free month trial to test it out, so I'm patiently waiting for it to pop up in Blender's bridge. 

TheRetiredSailor

From my experience as an IT worker, those roadmaps are often shared only with business partners with the understanding that it is confidential information. I had product roadmaps from the PC manufacturer that we used but I was not at liberty to share it outside my company. 

margrave

FSMCDesigns said:

I wonder is the new bridges system has helped or hurt sales. I am still a firm believer in keeping DAZ assets DS specific and doing more work to make DS a better product as opposed to opeing up new ways to use DAZ assets outside of DS.

As somebody who invested in Daz specificially because MakeHuman's crowd-sourced community asset library was a dumpster fire full of hot garbage, I disagree. Strongly. 

margrave

TheRetiredSailor said:

From my experience as an IT worker, those roadmaps are often shared only with business partners with the understanding that it is confidential information. I had product roadmaps from the PC manufacturer that we used but I was not at liberty to share it outside my company. 

Unfortunately, Daz3D has to compete with the openness and transparency of open-source projects like Blender, where roadmaps frequently tell the users what's happening years in advance.

Sevrin

Daz_Jessica said:

Sevrin said:

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

We have actually shared a great deal about our current development.  As every Mac user knows, we are currently working on a major update to Studio to work with Mac Big Sur (it's stickied at the top o of the forums).  Secondly, we publish updates at least monthly on the bridges.  There is an entire forum and beta period dedicated to soliciting feedback to those updates.  Third, we have a beta for studio where you can see and get our near constant updates and see release notes.

Major updates in the previous 4 months:

• Daz Studio 4.14 (brand new Filament render engine) and 4.15 - We discuss and publish specifics here.
• Genesis 8.1
• Blender Bridge Update for Environments 
• Tons of Bridge Updates for Maya, 3ds Max,Cinema 4D, Unreal, Unity.

We have also done major updates on the store, highly focused on stability (in both purchasing and checkout) and did a major update to the gallery.  As many customers will remember, there would be days of either inability to checkout for lack of loading and unable to download in Studio, due to site issues, that's been solved.  We make updates daily to the website, including search updates, gallery, etc. 

We hope that you all continue to give us feedback and help our products improve, whether on forums, surveys, customer service outreach, calls, etc. 

It will, ofc, be nice that Mac users who have invested in the Daz ecosystem will be able to use Daz Studio going forward.  And bug fixes are alwasy welcome.  This falls under basic maintenance.  And the bridges will help expand the market for Daz assets, which is great.  But Blender and Maya and Unreal Engine are not Daz Studio.

None of those things have anything to do with adding functionality to Daz Studio, or the Genesis figure.  G8.1 wasn't that exciting TBH.  The eye change is nice, but the PBR skin has yet to impress, and the UV change is mostly making life more complicated, so far.

CHWT

margrave said:

Daz_Jessica said:

Sevrin said:

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

We have actually shared a great deal about our current development.  As every Mac user knows, we are currently working on a major update to Studio to work with Mac Big Sur (it's stickied at the top o of the forums).  Secondly, we publish updates at least monthly on the bridges.  There is an entire forum and beta period dedicated to soliciting feedback to those updates.  Third, we have a beta for studio where you can see and get our near constant updates and see release notes.

Major updates in the previous 4 months:

• Daz Studio 4.14 (brand new Filament render engine) and 4.15 - We discuss and publish specifics here.
• Genesis 8.1
• Blender Bridge Update for Environments 
• Tons of Bridge Updates for Maya, 3ds Max,Cinema 4D, Unreal, Unity.

We have also done major updates on the store, highly focused on stability (in both purchasing and checkout) and did a major update to the gallery.  As many customers will remember, there would be days of either inability to checkout for lack of loading and unable to download in Studio, due to site issues, that's been solved.  We make updates daily to the website, including search updates, gallery, etc. 

We hope that you all continue to give us feedback and help our products improve, whether on forums, surveys, customer service outreach, calls, etc. 

What's the five-year plan, though? I don't remember hearing zip about Genesis 8.1 until it dropped overnight.

THIS.

Mattymanx

margrave said:

What's the five-year plan, though? I don't remember hearing zip about Genesis 8.1 until it dropped overnight.

There is good reason for keeping certain informaion quiet.  In any business, to share in advance info on upcomming products can severely hurt the sales of current products.

 

Torquinox

I'm curious how the Daz team overcomes Apple's complete rejection of NVidia and AMD.

margrave

Mattymanx said:

margrave said:

What's the five-year plan, though? I don't remember hearing zip about Genesis 8.1 until it dropped overnight.

There is good reason for keeping certain informaion quiet.  In any business, to share in advance info on upcomming products can severely hurt the sales of current products.

And there's also a good reason for revealing certain information, such as making your user base enthusiastic about the future of the software.

It's a spectrum, and businesses need to decide where their position is.

I would like better IK controls than the floaty nonsense Daz Studio currently has, and saying "Here's a third-party script that fixes it" reminds me of what happened with Fallout 76, where Bethesda got so complacent about users creating bug-fixing patches for their single-player games that they shipped a broken, unfinished mess that couldn't be patched (since it was online only). If Daz were to publish a roadmap that says "These are our improvements for IK coming in 4.16", then we could say to ourselves, "Alright, Daz3D knows it's a problem and they're working on it." Otherwise, we're left with the impression--fair or not--that they're just ignoring or avoiding it.

plasma_ring

Mattymanx said:

margrave said:

What's the five-year plan, though? I don't remember hearing zip about Genesis 8.1 until it dropped overnight.

There is good reason for keeping certain informaion quiet.  In any business, to share in advance info on upcomming products can severely hurt the sales of current products.

This is totally understandable, and I don't expect to be told about upcoming promotions or anything. I would however like to hear what the company's vision is for the future, what they consider their priorities, and information on how they plan to support existing users and acquire new ones. I don't really expect this from any company, but I'm curious since they seem to be trying to find a niche. 

j cade

Sevrin said:

Daz_Jessica said:

Sevrin said:

Companies often share their plans and goals, to let customers know what kind of things they're working on, or considering working on.  Daz hasn't been overly forthcoming in that department.  One alternative is to rely on vested users to keep buying stuff, but a lot of new users aren't in that position, and not yet having made a substantial financial investment in Daz assets, they have a lot of other options, depending on their interests.

We have seen Daz striving to open up their library to other platforms with bridges, and with the recent Unreal grant, that type of thing will probably continue.  That focus may [SPECULATION!!!!] shape the direction they will take in designing future generations of Daz figures, but doesn't tell us much about their plans with Daz Studio.

So Daz, please clue your users into your thinking about the future of Daz Studio, or if it even has one.

We have actually shared a great deal about our current development.  As every Mac user knows, we are currently working on a major update to Studio to work with Mac Big Sur (it's stickied at the top o of the forums).  Secondly, we publish updates at least monthly on the bridges.  There is an entire forum and beta period dedicated to soliciting feedback to those updates.  Third, we have a beta for studio where you can see and get our near constant updates and see release notes.

Major updates in the previous 4 months:

• Daz Studio 4.14 (brand new Filament render engine) and 4.15 - We discuss and publish specifics here.
• Genesis 8.1
• Blender Bridge Update for Environments 
• Tons of Bridge Updates for Maya, 3ds Max,Cinema 4D, Unreal, Unity.

We have also done major updates on the store, highly focused on stability (in both purchasing and checkout) and did a major update to the gallery.  As many customers will remember, there would be days of either inability to checkout for lack of loading and unable to download in Studio, due to site issues, that's been solved.  We make updates daily to the website, including search updates, gallery, etc. 

We hope that you all continue to give us feedback and help our products improve, whether on forums, surveys, customer service outreach, calls, etc. 

It will, ofc, be nice that Mac users who have invested in the Daz ecosystem will be able to use Daz Studio going forward.  And bug fixes are alwasy welcome.  This falls under basic maintenance.  And the bridges will help expand the market for Daz assets, which is great.  But Blender and Maya and Unreal Engine are not Daz Studio.

None of those things have anything to do with adding functionality to Daz Studio, or the Genesis figure.  G8.1 wasn't that exciting TBH.  The eye change is nice, but the PBR skin has yet to impress, and the UV change is mostly making life more complicated, so far.

Rewriting the entire underlying structure to work in a new system might be a basic necessity but that doesn't make it basic *maintenance* they're not maintaining something as is, they're having to rewrite large chunks. Blender recentlyish rewrote some of their underlying data structures gigantic overhaul, massive changes that will enable future additions to work, but zero user facing changes.

And disirregardless of how impressive you find it G8.1 did in fact rely on changes to the program, as evidenced by the fact it doesn't work correctly in older versions

PerttiA

margrave said:

And there's also a good reason for revealing certain information, such as making your user base enthusiastic about the future of the software.

It's a spectrum, and businesses need to decide where their position is.

I would like better IK controls than the floaty nonsense Daz Studio currently has, and saying "Here's a third-party script that fixes it" 

I would be thrilled if they came up with a message that IK would finally work, it is the one and only thing I miss from Poser. But looking back at how many years has gone without fixes to IK, I'm not expecting any miracles.

j cade

margrave said:

TheRetiredSailor said:

From my experience as an IT worker, those roadmaps are often shared only with business partners with the understanding that it is confidential information. I had product roadmaps from the PC manufacturer that we used but I was not at liberty to share it outside my company. 

Unfortunately, Daz3D has to compete with the openness and transparency of open-source projects like Blender, where roadmaps frequently tell the users what's happening years in advance.

On the other hand have you seen the moaning if blender doesn't hit their roadmap goals to the day? Or when people disagree with the roadmap? Or something on the roadmap gets pushed back? Or something gets it's priority lowered? Or something gets it's priority raised? Or they change the font of the roadmap?

I can sort of sympathize with not wanting to deal with that. With your plans hidden the moaning is contained until whatever good new (or ill advised new)feature is announced and not also the entire lead up as well. Imagine if Daz put in on their roadmap and then it got delayed or after the anticipation it didnt work as well as people wanted etc.

Edit: not saying I wouldn't like a roadmap mind you, just I can understand the reasoning a company might have to not put one out to the public .

xyer0

A useful store search would be even more helpful.

Torquinox

xyer0 said:

A useful store search would be even more helpful.

That's the truth!

CHWT

xyer0 said:

A useful store search would be even more helpful.

Especially when you can't view the products you have bought in the search result and need to do another search in the product library to avoid buying something similar (let's be honest, the similarity between daily new products and existing products has been shocking for the past few months)

Sevrin

The folks doing Daz store website stuff and the folks doing Daz Studio stuff would normally be different people.

Wolfwood

j cade said:

margrave said:

TheRetiredSailor said:

From my experience as an IT worker, those roadmaps are often shared only with business partners with the understanding that it is confidential information. I had product roadmaps from the PC manufacturer that we used but I was not at liberty to share it outside my company. 

Unfortunately, Daz3D has to compete with the openness and transparency of open-source projects like Blender, where roadmaps frequently tell the users what's happening years in advance.

On the other hand have you seen the moaning if blender doesn't hit their roadmap goals to the day? Or when people disagree with the roadmap? Or something on the roadmap gets pushed back? Or something gets it's priority lowered? Or something gets it's priority raised? Or they change the font of the roadmap?

It is called Feedback.

 

 

I can sort of sympathize with not wanting to deal with that. With your plans hidden the moaning is contained until whatever good new (or ill advised new)feature is announced and not also the entire lead up as well. Imagine if Daz put in on their roadmap and then it got delayed or after the anticipation it didnt work as well as people wanted etc.

You can have roadmaps without deadlines. DAZ currently does not even share a vision, actually not even a mission or values. We do get hints here and there of the values....not looking very good sadly.

And all the heat for potencial features addition/removal/priorities is something that is better dealt with before it actually happens. DAZ is too comfortable removing and ignoring "negativity" instead of dealing with what causes it; that comfort is what leads to things like NFT fiasco.

CHWT

Wolfwood said:

j cade said:

margrave said:

TheRetiredSailor said:

From my experience as an IT worker, those roadmaps are often shared only with business partners with the understanding that it is confidential information. I had product roadmaps from the PC manufacturer that we used but I was not at liberty to share it outside my company. 

Unfortunately, Daz3D has to compete with the openness and transparency of open-source projects like Blender, where roadmaps frequently tell the users what's happening years in advance.

On the other hand have you seen the moaning if blender doesn't hit their roadmap goals to the day? Or when people disagree with the roadmap? Or something on the roadmap gets pushed back? Or something gets it's priority lowered? Or something gets it's priority raised? Or they change the font of the roadmap?

It is called Feedback.

 

 

I can sort of sympathize with not wanting to deal with that. With your plans hidden the moaning is contained until whatever good new (or ill advised new)feature is announced and not also the entire lead up as well. Imagine if Daz put in on their roadmap and then it got delayed or after the anticipation it didnt work as well as people wanted etc.

You can have roadmaps without deadlines. DAZ currently does not even share a vision, actually not even a mission or values. We do get hints here and there of the values....not looking very good sadly.

And all the heat for potencial features addition/removal/priorities is something that is better dealt with before it actually happens. DAZ is too comfortable removing and ignoring "negativity" instead of dealing with what causes it; that comfort is what leads to things like NFT fiasco.

THIS.

margrave

A season pass without a roadmap?

Suddenly I've got chills.

Richard Haseltine

And if there is a road map with, for example, IK update in 4.16.x.x people will start building castles in the air as they think what it might amount to, then be disappointed when not everything they hoped for appears.

Wolfwood

margrave said:

A season pass without a roadmap?

Suddenly I've got chills.

Me too. I was about to ask jessica about the "flare" below the avatar when i realised the release promo for this was already linked in today's promo. If i wasn't liking DAZ up to this point, now the feeling is worst.

margrave

Richard Haseltine said:

And if there is a road map with, for example, IK update in 4.16.x.x people will start building castles in the air as they think what it might amount to, then be disappointed when not everything they hoped for appears.

Depends how much they explain what each stop on the roadmap is. If they explain, "Adding control handles to ensure limbs remain fixed in place," then we know exactly what to expect.

AllenArt

Wolfwood said:

margrave said:

A season pass without a roadmap?

Suddenly I've got chills.

Me too. I was about to ask jessica about the "flare" below the avatar when i realised the release promo for this was already linked in today's promo. If i wasn't liking DAZ up to this point, now the feeling is worst.

Definitely not falling for this....