Why only destroyed version of sets REDUX
Cybersox
Posts: 9,058
I started another discussion a while back about how many warehouse sets/environments at DAZ were only being made available in extremely damaged conditions (missing roofs, plants growing through floor, etc.) This is a similar thread that expands the subject, prompted by the latest clacydarch release, the "obsolete server room" the name of which had me excited at the promise of a bunch of old school workstations, etc.... until I saw that the actual product is not what any normal person would define as being "obsolete". Let's try totally trashed, decayed, rusted, covered with mold and undergrowth, and generally destroyed until barely recognizeable. As with the other discussion, the question is WHY do PAs make products that could be an incredibly useful and versatile set if presented in a new/moderately used state and instead go bonkers on turning it into something that could only be used in a retro-apocalyptic movie? I'm not against the super-destroyed versions per se, but wouldn't it obviously be a much better seller if a clean version was made and then the destroyed version presented as an alternate?
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to be fair there are plenty of warehouses and server rooms around that are not destroyed as well, I have both so you likely as you own much more have too
it may be an issue of owning too much and not finding them
both versions of the same thing would be nice though like JT did with his West Park and East Park hospital sets
I'll second this. I'm buying assets to make images for a story series set in an early-mid 20th century setting and many otherwise useful settings for me (eg, era-appropriate hospitals, places of business, etc) only come with a "zombie apocalypse" material set. I get that abandoned/demolished has a wider market as it suits the dystopian future/catastrophic event/zombie horde genres but it would be great if there were a material set option for new or at least good repair/ordinary use for those of us who could use a retro setting in decent condition. Asking as I have no idea: When creating a product like this, would it be a large amount of work to do that? Is an "obsolete server room" created in obsolete/demolished form, or does it start out as a room with stuff, that gets modifications to make it demolished?
The reason is simple... Apocalyptic and Cyberpunk is what sells.
Great points! Likewiae on that vein, there could time-travel scenarios from haivng both demolished and pristine versions of the various sets.
I do own all the server rooms that are available here at DAZ as well as several from elsewhere and know exactly where to find them. If this had been presented clean it would have joined the collection. Even if the damage had been only minimal I probably would have still picked it up if there were salvagable elements within it. As it is, though, it's pretty much worthless to me. That's a sale lost to the PA and I imagine mine wasn't the only one. As you noted, JT's approach with the East and West Park series was the perfect approach to this.
Firstly, I will say that I agree with your sentiment that it would be great for products like this to perhaps include a before & after version as this would increase the possible uses of such products. However, I would imagine that it would also drastically increase the work that has to be done and so have a major effect on the pricepoint. Also, there is the possibility that the PA may in the future release an addon product that uses some of the objects/assets to make a non-destroyed version. Although, usually when that happens it's usually the other way around.
However, I suspect that even for the PAs that sell here as a full-time job that an element of what they create is driven by the things they personally enjoy creating.
++ That is a totally great point that I didn't even think of. That would be valuable for a time-travel story, or a story set over a sufficiently long period of time (or before/after a catastrophe), in which we see it in both good and dilapidated condition in the course of the story.
One hears this repeated constantly, but if that was true, then the logical corallary would be that a huge percentage of the clothing items sold here would be rags or heavily distressed, and Science Fiction would be the biggest category in the store. But, of course, neither of those statements are true and the Science Fiction category in the genres section is less than half the size of the Fantasy category and only a sixth of the size of Contemporary.
@Cybersox - I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think vendors create for sale what appears to sell well already. Venturing into untested areas might not prove to be profitable. A few years ago, I posed the same thoughts to a vendor in Renderosity about a boat figure that interested me but it was quite rusted and dilapidated. The vendor apparently had not thought of creating a set of clean textures for the product but did do and made them available in the store. As a courtesy to me for taking him in a new direction, he gave me the original product and the clean textures for free.
I totally hear your pain. I'm doing a set of images set in the 1940s right now and it's really annoying how many DAZ sets, even ones lableled as being "period" pieces, use recessed lighting fixtures in the ceilings (which, while invented in the 30s, didn't come into common use in commercial settings until the late 50s/early 60s and only appeared in homes towards the 70's) or sport other glaring anachronistic touches.
My story is set in a fictional world with technology generally comparable to 1940. Since this world's reality is what I say it is, I have some wiggle room; there are a few inventions running ahead of or behind schedule compared to our world. Era-appropriate is still a major goal though.
Sometimes the best solution is taking the existing clean and nice set, and grunging it up with shaders, and disrupting the placements of the props to mess it up a bit.
Another example of this is the following set: https://www.daz3d.com/restaurant-crime-scene
I really like Dekogon Studio sets, as they are very detailed and have realistic textures (I am aware the originals were not made for Daz Studio). After a bunch of stacking discounts I remember having the opportunity of getting this for a few dollars, but I did not particular want to use it as a crime scene. I considered how much work it would be to make this usable as a restaurant, a bit grungy is fine, as that can look more realistic. However I abandoned the idea when I realised just how much work it would be to make it look even half normal.
Absolutely, which is why PAs making things that are only available in hopelessly degraded versions drives me crazy. Textures I can change, undoing a hole in a wall, ceiling, or floor is doable, but when everything looks like a blow-torch was taken to it, it's rarely going to be worth the effort.
I had to go back and rewatch the 2018 Last of Us 2 Gameplay (I've never played it though). In my head this was the set lol but totally different
Yeah, I like to collect retro-styled tech pieces, to use in retro-future stories and whatnot... and was looking at some of the computer modules that appeared in this set, thinking how much I'd love to have an undamaged version of, for instance, that large, free-standing, control-panel-looking module. I might still get this one, since I also sometimes do post-zombie-appocolypse stuff... but I mainly want an intact version of these machines. (Goes and checks the product page again...) Oh, I did get it already! >>giggles<<
Searching for "server" in the store leads to 4 "working" server rooms and a set of clean, but vintage, props. There is only one damaged server room product in those results, and it's the one that was released today. Sometimes it isn't about just releasing what's already available.
There are more than that, as more than a few don't actually have the word server used in the name like https://www.daz3d.com/hackers-room and https://www.daz3d.com/hacker-hideout-room and others are hidden in other products, or are no longer in the store here... and then and I've got a bunch more I've picked up at Renderosity. But let's be clear - this discussion isn't about server rooms but ANY category of props or sets, and there are a number of cases where the only one of a type of item in the store has been partially destroyed... like the jet engine test tunnel , for example. It's just extremely frustrating when you see something that you could have used in different ways had the PA not pre-empted those options.
+1
Well, it turns out it's trivially easy to retexture many of the devices in the Obsolete Server Room package and they look fine. This render was made after just a few moments of me plopping down some of the props and then retexturing them with DAZ Uber shaders.
Sorry... you are correct. I should have said CURRENTLY sells. Fantasy is historically the largest cash cow. When I first started using Poser/Daz in the mid 2000s. I was DYING for more appocalyptic stuff. Everything was spaceships and knights.
On a related note, I played around with the Obsolete Server Room server props' surfaces a little more, and discovered that the display screens, and the guages (those black circle thingies), are each one larger surface, so that each screen, or each guage, is a seperate section of whatever single image you might apply onto that surface of the prop... which makes it possible to make one image that places different things onto the diffferent screens or guages by simply figuring out what part of the overall image coresponds to which screen or guage. Fiddly, but workable. What's goofy is that the different guages have their respective part of the texture rotated around into different angles.
Simplest way to figure out what goes where on them is to apply a numbered-grid onto their respective surface, which is what I've done here.