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I thought this thread was going to be about HDRIs.
I have to agree. I am on the DAZ discord as well as about 20 or so game and VR discords and I hate using it to communicate, it just moves to fast and I like to think about what I am about to post like how i do on forums before hitting the submit button..
I mainly only use it for Midjourney and if I need tech support for something that only uses Discord. I find it pretty annoying and convoluted. That said, what are some good VR Discord Channels? I would like a way to create a cool art gallery for VR with my art blown up on the walls. I had a great one in AltspaceVR that I didn't save before it went down unfortunately.
I think the decline of forum interest has three main causes:
1. The slow pace of significant new features added to Daz Studio. Daz went multiple years between dForce and FilaToon. The introduction of Genesis 9 provided a temporary uptick. but the long gap between major developments has been discouraging in more ways than one.
2. The forum's rules/terms of service/moderation discourage a frank, meaningful discussion about Daz business decisions, and how those decisions directly or indirectly determine the content for sale at the store and the evolution (or lack thereof) of Daz Studio. Combine this with Daz's/Tafi's lack of non-marketing communication with its customer base, and it shouldn't be surprising that there isn't much to discuss.
3. The forum has always been extremely limited in its discussion of art theory, and the discussion of art history has been negligible. How involved should we be with "Help me identify this hair" or "I'm buying a new graphics card" posts? The percentage of thought-provoking posts was never very high, and the percentage of trivial posts without general interest has been increasing.
It's like some old marriage, where ideas and visions go part ways. DAZ has its vision where to go and I have mine.
G9, AI, toons and a new subscription model are a clear indicator, that my time is up here.
The releases of content by vendors is also a reason, I'm not that excited anymore. While the quality is still top, the released themes and topics are just not my cup of tea anymore.
So my excitement has gone.
All I'm missing is an alternative and an opportunity to take my work with me, without spending another 10 years in order to catch up, where I am now.
Don't get me wrong. Neither DAZ nor vendors are to blame. They are just not matching my needs anymore.
I don't think the atmosphere is ruined, but has clearly changed, given that some folks have left and new folks came in.
I will say that while I think the quality of the items for sale is superb (and probably as good as it ever has been), I do feel that the breadth of imagination in V3 days was wider. Possibly due to everything being new & limits being explored. Though it could all be rose tinted spectacles, I suppose.
Regards,
Richard
@Wonderland
Thanks!
for animation I am using Cartoon animator mostly but I have MOHO and Adobe Character animator.
For my latest graphic novel
(available on Amazon for kindle) I used Daz assets to set up the scenes for basic openGL renders that I
“re-styled” with AI.
This is the area of AI that has me the most excited ATM
@wolf359 That looks very nice! Genius move to turn a glaring limitation into the major plot device.
I agree, @rcourtri_789f4b1c6b. The recent increase in activity due to FilaToon seems to obviously support the idea.
I joined about a decade ago when Genesis 1 was brand-spankin new. My fondest memories of the forums over the years always coincided with major features being introduced. The Iray threads, dForce threads, and SBH threads all come to mind. The threads were extremely fast moving as we were all exploring the new tools and sharing our findings.
The forums were a great environment for me to blab about my NPR algos, show my work, and encourage others to show their work as well, in the NPR threads I started.
- Greg
@xyer0
Thanks, there are other AI sites/options that are better at “forcing” consistency via custom trained LORA’s etc But I really loved one particular toon style over at mage.space so much so that I violated my own pledge to “never pay for generative AI”, and payed. $15 for a month of full access, during which time I finished my 92 page book and hoarded hundreds of images to use in my 2D cartoon animation work as well.
My hope & ream is that image to image AI will very soon become so consistent that We can feed in rendered animation movie frames with one style and consistently
output them in a different style
I don't think the atmopshere is ruined, it has certainly changed though. Years ago something like Newfemalefigure 9 would be released and there'd be pages of discussions and plenty of renders that helped me decide if I liked a figure or not, then they became less and less about posting renders and more about how people didn't like the release/bundle. Quite a bit of things I used to find useful here just aren't as prevalent so my activity here is much less as a result.
Also with the change to Daz+ going to the stupid monthly thing I let my Daz+ expire for the first time in years and I haven't bothered looking at the store page since then. So no inclination to buy anything means even less time spent here. I'm not a brand loyalist, they're not operating in a manner that I would support financially at this point, so I don't. If they changed back to the original Daz+ plan I would reconsider but until then I'm fine with the content I have and that means right now I don't spend any money here.
I'm almost in the same situation with the same viewpoint, except I'm relieved to not feel driven any more to buy things I like but don't need. I simply don't see new items appear here very often that interest me. And I have far more than I need, props-wise, anyway.
There's only one other source now, the R word, that keeps my attention, but it's mostly due to a specific few of their vendors who still regularly offer new high quality landscape props, animals, insects and birds.
There are other venders there I keep a check on, like the vendor with the freaky scary props, like skulls, etc, who I love to buy from, but they seldom present new products anymore.
So maybe there's another issue here, for me at least. I'm in my upper 70's and have lost interest in our culture as it is now. Love the technology, not the culture. So I should assume the products offered now are based on testing that has shown what would be popular today, not 20 or even 10 years ago. Is that possibly what's happening here?
Let the "kids" have fun, I guess! We had our time.
Let it be, ♫ let it be...
[I CANNOT BELIEVE that song was so long ago!]
As one of the old-timers here (I joined Rendo when it was still Poser Forum Online and have been a Daz customer since it was Zygote), I was relatively young when I started in 3D. I'm old now...lol. Part of it is 3D fatigue, part of it is the rise of AI (something I have less than zero interest in - and I tried it just to make sure), part of it is that I just have gotten other interests which steal my time from 3D, but mostly it's that the style of the medium has changed. By that I mean that the market is not aimed at my personal interests these days. For one, I tend to use male figures more than female, and for awhile it looked promising for males and male items, but it has again dropped off the cliff. For another, the type of items in the Daz store just don't apeal to me at all anymore. I don't do skimpy outfits (for females OR males), I don't do fairies much, I truly dislike anime in all it's forms, I don't do toons very often, and images with a sexual bent are not my thing ;) To take it a step further, and some may disagree and that's ok, the Daz store has somewhat turned into the second coming of the Rendo "flea market" - great products mixed in with some truly awful products (not naming names) which, in my mind, cheapen the really good things and drown out the superior artists. Believe me, that's hard for me to say, because as a freebie creator myself and not very sure of my own work, some of the things I've seen in the store I wouldn't even download as a freebie. I used to come to Daz to get the best of the best and that is no longer true. I remember a day when a product hit the store there was very rarely an issue with it, and when there was, it was fixed promptly. Somewhere along the line, more things were released with issues that even now have never been fixed. The NFT debacle was also incredibly disappointing. All in all, I guess I'm just old, fatigued with the art form and too interested in other things now. I guess all good things do come to an end...
Ugh I can't believe this thread is still going, it should have been shut down shortly after it was opened.
You want to have a positive forum, start making positive posts instead of complaining. You want to have a helpful forum, be helpful yourself, instead of (1) complaining about the lack of help, (2) never looking for answers yourself, expecing others to do the work for you and (3) adding to the down mood of the forum with contanst complaint threads.
Tell me the name of any business that doesn't do things to bring them more money, bring them more customers. Daz is no different. All the complaints against Daz can be made against any business online and real life.
I think silencing anyone who disagrees with you may create an illusion that everything is fine, but it would not make everything fine. It would just mean you are the only one who gets to say anything. And a company that wants people to give it money would have a lot of nerve to ignore the people saying what they will and will not pay for.
Yes to all of this
I hope to get into rendering again, DAZ products still have my interest and they have improved too but I want to make model addons to get my renders that last mile of being exactly what I want, something Tancrede seems to do quite well (although I don't know how satisfied he is with his renders they are super impressive to me).
I just stopped by after not visiting for a few weeks... one of the biggest problems for me visiting the forums is that I generally only visit using either my iPad or iPhone... I genuinely got tired of all the issues using the website with these devices... I honestly feel like the forums worked better in 2010 than now... I don't feel like the community input and participation is valued enough by whoever makes the decisions and it just wore out my interest.
I was hoping for a screed about the ozone layer or global warming. I guess the dream is over.
I'm a very very naughty boy I get into trouble a lot I often get
Maybe have the link go to the last page with the newest posts... page one can be months behind and you think "well no ones been here".
Richard mentioned "discord" as a possible reason... they do have voice for live conversation.
I think a lot of them have moved to the Facebook Groups. I have seen more action on FB.
They tend to get particularly nasty at times on Facebook, so I don't go around there much anymore. I have enough Discord groups associated with work so no need for another and us being in there wouldn't be very welcoming.
Forum thread links gnerally do go to #latest, the first new post since your last visit (though that can be broken by mod actions).
I think there are bad things and good things on the forums, and there always were. But if you focus on the bad things, that's all you'll see. So far as facebook is concerned I avoid it like the plague, as I do all social media. I'm quite capable of making up my own mind on things, and don't need the 'opinions' of people who are just trying to generate viewers. Edited to add:- Regarding social media I also don't feel the need for other people to pat me on the back.
Of course it will look like that when you pick out a single sentence from an entire post. Maybe you should go read the original post and the first page of comments to it, then you will understand the reason's for my post. Oh and I wasn't silencing anyone, I offered some suggestions for change.
that is very true can get get pretty nasty on facebook over anything everything andnothing. Actually recently got attacked over one of my renders from a "friend" there accussed my my render as being another piece of AI soulless generated fluff, I commented back saying it was created in Daz and listed some of the products used and he replied back someone lied to you and added letters numbers as saying it was coded which I replied I created it and repiled I coded it- anyway I unfriended and blocked him - oh yeah he's a bitter artist btw had few of his paintings/drawings ripped off
oh and on deviant art had someone comment I should kill myself turns out the troll trolled others too even picked on a 16 year old girl that loved unicorns mother of who wrote angry letter to troll who just laughed at it said they'll keep going even create new accounts if banned sadly how it is online nowdays that is one of the good things here mods wont allow this here but I'm sure there have been some here too but still some still get through some negativity/put downs
Rule nr. 1:
Never go to the DA forum.
Rule nr. 2:
Never, ever go to the DA forum.
Rule nr. 3:
Never, ever, ever go to the DA forum.
oh this wasn't on a forum this was commented on my page on my images same with the others the troll left comments on