Why is everything so expensive?
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...I've noticed this with the current PC sale that often the trigger for a "free item" or extra discount is one of the new character bundles not an individual new product. I have rarely purchased pro or character bundles as too often they include content I have little to no interest in, like high fantasy, horror, or "sexy". Hence I haven't purchased as much in this year's sale as last year.(most of the PC+ For a Day is fairly old content).
Ever since I became involved in 3D I have been on a fairly tight budget (low wage job and now meagre retirement pension), so spending 50$ or more on a new character bundle is a "big ticket purchase" . Even the the cost of individual new releases (usually priced in double digits) often offsets or even exceeds the additional discount they grant (save for PC+ items which I'll admit is nice they apply during this sale).
...in my eight + years here, the only two pro bundles I bought at introductory price were Victoria 4.2 one and Young Teens 5. The other ones I have I either purchased at a deep discount or were free.(I received both the Vicky5 and Mike5 Pro bundles free with the purchase of Carrara 8.5, and Vicky7 Pro as a "free" loyalty offer).
...+1
...and I've seen items of questionable quality there as well.
You also have to be aware of the file formats available and licensing restrictions. The former is a concern as most other file formats sold there don't translate to Daz without conversion, or in some cases, at all (for example .MAX which is proprietary to the 3DS Max software). The latter is particularly important if you plan to do commission work, a graphic novel, or otherwise make a few zloty's off your work (such as selling prints or even entering art contests with cash value prizes).
...I used to paint in oils and watercolours as well as do pencil drawings (B&W and colour), Had it not been for a summer job at an art supply warehouse (where I got a 30% discount) I wouldn't have been able to afford nearly the selection of brushes, paints, pencil sets and other tools I had . Even so, it was still a major investment. A high quality sable hair brush could easily set you back 15$ - 25$ (and this was in the 1970s).
For musical entrapments it depends on what you play. A fairly serviceable second hand violin or guitar can be bought for around 50$ while a decent piano (acoustic or digital) gets into in the multiple hundreds and even thousands. Now if you are an organist, it usually means either renting practise time at the local church on off days, or dumping 8,000$ -10,000$ or more into a virtual organ rig (including the keyboard/pedal board set-up, software, speakers, and computer).
I know that Turbosquid is always brought up in this kind of discussion but who actually buys from them? I have a feeling it is aimed purely at the professional market - those people can write off expenses. Otherwise I can't see any justification for paying hundreds of dollars for something you could buy at any DAZ/Poser store, not to mention Artstation which is generally even cheaper. I once watched an Andrew Price video tutorial and he was using a human figure he said he picked up online (I think it was Turbosquid) for, say $200 - as though that would be the fair and expected price for such a model. It looked way inferior to most of the content at this store.
So I don't think that Turbsquid is a fair comparison when we have several other outlets which offer sculpted and rigged objects for a fraction of their price.
My trigger is 70% or better off...so I used to buy a lot in PC club, but rarely at all now that I'm out. Since the last flash sale was at 68% I am wondering if they are catching on, lol! I am not a whale, so no big loss. I am just patient.
It seems to me that things have become more expensive. Perhaps that's just my perception, and it may be a false one. I dunno. I do know I have been spending far too much money here, but I'm also fortunate at the moment to be able to do so without it having much impact on my bank balance - which has been fairly even for a few years.
Now, with no significant change in income or other expenditure, I have around £5,000 more in my current account than I had four or five months ago. This is almost entirely due to my greatly reduced spending on Daz products.
I'm not entirely sure why this is so. Maybe because the prices seem to have increased to the point where I cannot justify spending £x.00 on a particular product, or perhaps because of other issues such as the (again, perceived) lack of quality control, stupid sales, NFT crap, and a few other things which don't immediately spring to mind after a few glasses of Kentucky's finest.
I know I'm not the only person who spends stupid amounts of money here - very far from it. But I feel that in any other business people who spend like we do are treated like royalty. Why do I always feel that here at Daz we are considered just a bloody nuisance?
...they do have some lower cost items and would pick up a couple now and then as long as they were in .obj format with textures.
I did consider purchasing a grand piano model there for 125$ as it was the only completely accurate model I had seen anywhere at teh time. However I would have needed to secure permission from the actual piano company (likely for extra $$), to use it for illustrations in my story (as I mentioned that is one of the "rubs" with using models from there). Then Protozoon announced he was coming out with a grand piano model for Daz (at 1/12th the price) and after seeing some of the promo images in the preview thread, my years long search was over. The nice part his piano has a fully rigged keyboard as well as poses for G3/G8, whereas on the one at Turbosquid only lid and keyboard cover were articulated and of course there were no poses.
I think g8 is a much better product than g2 or g3 and worth the money. That said, I wish new products were still produced for previous generations and didn't stop when a new generation came out.
I have bought a few items at TurboSquid, mostly on their sale days like Black Friday. I bought a cute stroller there for the babies, and a boba tea set, since it was cool looking. Mostly they don't have anything I want. And their prices are ridiculous.
Would you be willing to share a link to the boba tea set? I happen to love boba tea.
I don't buy from Turbosquid do to an incident where they wanted me to provide my driver's license and a scan of my credit card to prove my identity because I reset my password (Lolwhat?). I do buy from cgtrader quite often. You can find good deals there and a lot of items you just won't find here on Daz or Rendo because they're too niche. CGtrader credits from most items usually gives you a 30% discount. Quite a few Daz vendors sell products (sometimes the same products as at daz) at Cgtrader.
Even funnier is that Daz itself sells Daz content at Cgtrader: https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/exterior/cityscape/japanese-alley
Daz also has a new minimum price level that's getting implemented.
...I stopped with G3 as I didn't see enough advancement in G8 to warrant having to reinvest in all the morphs, utilities, characters, skins, and merchant resource material all over again. I already had a hefty investment in G3 as well as my custom designed characters for my stories developed and wasn't about to just toss it all in the "digital dustbin" and start over. it actually ot ridiculous as every two years there was a new Genesis figure just after I felt I got the previous one to where it was versatile enough. G3 moved to a more standard weight map system as well as posed better and was lighter on the resources than G2. That was a significant change.
That said, I do agree about how support for a previous Genesis generation is abandoned so quickly when a new one is released. I have the G8 - G3 clothing conversion scripts but at best, I find it they are fairly "hit or miss". Some clothing sets will content convert fine others, only a few parts seem to do so (with one I could only get the boots to convert, nothing else would). Simply autofitting is even worse even though there is the autofit clone. I get some really odd results at times. Genesis and G2 clothing does autofit better, but sometimes there is still distortion particularly in the mid-front area of skirts.
...I'm on their notification list and get emails form them for their sales. I've also bought a few items from there during their frequent 50% off sales.. They do have a nice collection of "real world" vehicles and aircraft. Unfortunately most of those are fairly expensive.
I think you mean "shouldn't be sold at all because they're copyrighted material". I looked for five minutes and found dozens of figures based on game and other established characters, most not even bothering to change the names. Not to mention half of the environments I looked at were over $100.
That I'd like to know more about. Can you tell us a little about where you heard that and what it might be?
While your scenario is true, there's other things way too niche. I bought a whole slew of different windows for $8 that I used for kitbashing room walls. Electrical outlets for countries other than the US. Foreign post box, fire hydrants, etc. Background buildings for under $5 or even free in some cases.
I heard it from a reliable source and $15 is the new minimum for products.
Right, and that's good; I'm not saying the whole store is full of stuff that shouldn't be sold...it just shouldn't be *that* easy to find it.
Interesting about the price, kinda hope it isn't true. There are definitely things about DAZ that I disagree with (new bundles full of pose sets and old content, simplistic clothing textures, NFT nonsense), but overall, the products are generally better than any other place I've shopped, the sales make most things affordable, and there really isn't any alternative for those who want to use Studio and not have to mess with incompatibilities in other programs.
It is possible the $15 dollar min price rule has been true for a while, since if you look down the list of new products the base price is 14.95 or higher for all the recent releases.
I did however find one exception: https://www.daz3d.com/big-apple-style-poses-for-genesis-81--8--3
32 poses for just 6.95 base price. I have no idea why it is that cheap, as pose packs are normally around 15.
You're not wrong about the flagrant copyright violations. Same with other stores that sell the game assets ported to Daz. I just always find the relentless crapping on CG trader/Turbosquid tiresome. Yes, they have many overpriced items and massive copyright violations, but they also have a lot of reasonably priced sets and items and textures. And standalone objects for kitbashing.
And when you consider that a lot of the building/room props being sold here in Daz now no longer have door or window open morphs, and all the couches and chairs comes without sitting/squish morphs... Is there really any difference between buying an obj of a room on CGT/TS or buying a duf scene that basically is one object with a bunch of misellaneous objects parented to it here in Daz?
This is exactly it. The artists set the prices and TS doesn't interfere. Those who post in the artist forum, their attitude is that their customer is that professional with an unlimited budget and a time constraint that prevents them from waiting for a sale or price shopping. They would rather sell one model to one customer at a ridiculous price, than to sell to a broader audience at a more reasonable price.
When TS started running sales a couple years ago, there was a massive outrage in the forums. Artists complained their sales disappeared from the discounts. They posted screencaps of their dashboards showing the decline in their sales. "I used to sell x number of products a month, now I only sell one!" Even though they can opt their catalog out of the sales, they still believe TS is trying to steal their sales. And if they're not complaining about the sales killing their income, they complain because there are always other artists creating knock-offs of their expensive products and selling them at a more reasonable price, if not offerring them for free. There is just no concept of adaptation to changing market conditions. There is no concept of adapting to competition. There is no understanding of how capitalism or free market or whatever you want to call it works. They genuinely believe their assets are worth what they price them, and if they don't find that professional to buy them, they blame everyone and everything else instead of looking inward.
That's the difference here, Daz targets the hobbyist and the budding commercialist looking to break out on a budget. It definitely feels like they're trying to balance affordability with their own profitiability, but the target audience here is completely different from the target audience over there.
And as a disclaimer, you do see a lot items at TS that are reasonably priced, as well as hundreds, if not thousands for free. But those artists are not the ones posting in TS's forums.
@certaintree38 I looked at my order history and I bought a frap model instead and just altered it. I am really surprised no one has made some boba props. They can be very cool and trendy especially cute with anime. And I love Milk/Boba. This was originally a frappucino model. But with different shaders, a thicker straw, and a bunch of round primitives in it, it made a really good Boba Milk Tea. I will send you the link.
You could probably buy Brain Freeze: https://www.daz3d.com/brain-freeze-props-poses-and-expressions-for-genesis-8-female
And use that cup. I think I saw another possibility as well.
Oh yeah. This set is even better. And its on sale right now. There is a Frapp Model in this which would be perfect
https://www.daz3d.com/burger-restaurant
That looks really good. And I already have burger restaurant, so I will give it a shot. Thanks!
I just did and it look quite good. I rendered it in my art studio thread.
DId you notice the response time on thier store at CG Tader lolololololololololololol
I have bought couple dozen toon style rigged animal kingdom models at TurboSquid after checking they weren't existing commercial IP and that had already converted them to the model format I wanted to use. There is really not much choice there that isn't ridiculously overpriced.
Probably a lot of "personal opinion/taste involved with that. I have about the same number of PAs I nearly blindly buy from when the come out with a new item (and the price is right) here at DAZ and at Rendo. And about the same number of PAs that fall in the category "free is still to expensive, as it wastes diskspace" here and at Rendo. Aeon Soul's stuff is great, but usually too SciFi for my needs. More PAs at Rendo offer clothes with undress/open/close morphs than here at DAZ. And getting into contact with a PA if needed is easier at Rendo. Only the sales are better at DAZ, even one often ends with a lemon of a product in the end...
Here even comparable products in the same shop are of significant different quality, but equal price... 90% of the time it doesn't seem to be the quality that decides about the price, because if it were so, quite a few releases of the last months would have been given away for free...
I don't think that I would have been able to drop that price that low, even if I would have had the wish to buy that product... which I haven't... which makes it just another personal tast thingy, and not an valid argument for all people wanting to buy here.
There always be sale practically every week. Daz store prices are in constant flux and the only thing you can be sure about is that full price is way too much for everything.
Basically this. Unless it's something I really want/need now, I'll just wait until it's 50% off or more.
Exactly. 'Nuff said.
The only thing that really annoys me is the separate HD morphs for the Number characters. It's like being forced to buy the character a second time.
The HD characters and creatures by PAs don't make me buy the HD morphs separately, so why does DAZ? And why are some HD morphs included with the base Number character but not others? What's the deciding point?
Because this annoys me so much I only buy the HD morphs when they're deeply on sale. I'm still waiting to pick these up for Lee 6 and Lee 7. I know they were recently in a flash sale but of course I managed to miss that one. So...still waiting.
I stopped buying DAZ things at full price about 15 years ago. DAZ is still in business. Which says something about either me or DAZ's need of me.