Another option for the Platinum Club.
Norse Graphics
Posts: 0
The name "Platinum Club" sort of implies that it's something 'extra' for those willing to pay the upfront cost. The general view is that the user gains the option to purchase digital content for $1.99, or get 30% off for new items. That is fine, but it's sort of a limited view. It's just a 'buyers club'.
Let me say that in many ways DAZ3D.Com (the company) is generous, and has created a software that for what it does is very good. Us users, on the other hand is limited in how much hardware and what quality we can get them. And here comes my point; my workstation, which I spent a buck-load of money to buy back in 2008, crashed for the 3'rd time (and it's a memory issue this time as well....Been there, done that..!!).
So, the bottleneck is for us users, is not the price of the goods you good folks at DAZ3D can offer, but what junk we're stuck with at any time. Some of us has good machines, some of us struggles. And some of us (like me!) needs to pay to get (yet another...) machine that has the capacity to do what we need it to do.
So what do I mean? Well, I'm thinking out loud here, and I might have brushed close to this point in previous posts on the old forums - so bear with me for a moment. My idea is that the Platinum Club becomes a cloud-service run by DAZ3D.Com. What the user does is to log onto the DAZ-cloud, and opens a 'session', loads the items s/he has bought (including uploaded common freebies [provided by the creators of such freebies]) from a 'personalized' Content-folder.
Props, characters etc., poses them, tweaks the materials/shaders, lights, camera(s), and renders them using (say) 4 'free' cores (more can be purchased at need). Then all the user needs is to send the picture to his own computer (for post-processing), or upload them to an online picture provider (Flickr, DeviantArt etc.).
This frees the users from getting a render-machine that is worth many thousands, and DAZ could act as a licensee-provider backing up the user in case of copyright infringement claims.
Now, this idea doesn't imply that the user cannot download the digital content, and use it on his/her personal computer as is done right now. But to be more like a service provided by DAZ3D for those willing to pay the upfront cost of staying in the Platinum Club.
Now, you can start screaming at me for posting this idea for it's utter brilliance or sheer stupidity.
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Comments
It's not a bad idea on its face, but it'll never fly.
#1 users here are too paranoid to allow DAZ to have any idea what they want to do/what they own.
#2 transferring content purchased from Rendo, or RDNA, or Freebies probably wouldn't be legal.
#3 the costs incurred for this type of service are not inexpensive, the associated costs to the "users" would probably be more than most
would be willing to pay
#4 the very machines that you are mentioning, are the same machines that won't be able to run this type of application, or the transfer
across the internet of RDP/VNC type remote would be prohibitively slow.
#5 as we constantly hear, there are a significant portion of people on limited bandwidth, dial-up, restricted data quantities, etc
#6 assuming that transfer of 3rd party content is allowed, the time to transfer all of the needed extra content could be considerable
#7 couple #6 with #5
With this said, DAZ ran a demo of a "Web Version" of DS4 some time ago. It was interesting, but other than a short "look at this" we've not seen or heard about it since. I do think, for those with the available resources (lots of bandwidth, decent display hardware, large DAZ purchased libraries, the willingness to pay extra) it would be a neat idea.
Kendall
Actually I was wondering about this the other day as well. Sure would save some working storage space however there would certainly have to be some privacy safeguards in place esp. for businesses ... don't see that happening 'Hello Welcome Back [pick a name any name].
And the main reason this would never fly as far as I'm concerned is the unreliable downloading [uploading would be worse] speeds. If you're calling for ... hmmm ... nice hairy figure that takes 5 to 10 minutes to either load or crash the program ... gee what would that take; 1/2 hour or an hour to get it from the cloud. Don't think so.
I hate clouds ...
Might be interested in this Norse.... http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8110/
The main problem is that many users don't have en needed bandwidth. I'm stuck with 8MBit until christmas when I finally get 100+ MBit connection, bit many are "stuck for real" with 64kbit modem or 256kbit slowbands.
I'm playing with Vue and the "render cow" but the average data send from the client to the render client over the network is over a gigabytes of data. Even if you only had to send non daz items and textures to the renderserver it would be several hundreds of megabytes per render, and it you have a too slow machine you will not have a fast enough connection for that.
But thats not for Daz Studio.
The cloud is a lie.
I would rather eat broken glass than have to use a cloud system to gain access to my content. None of my workstations have access to the internet and NEVER will.
If DAZ went this route I would NEVER shop here again period.
And finally look at the debacle the new store roll out became, can you image the kind of resourses and technical skill required to run a good content focused cloud system...
Indeed as I was writting this the forum froze.Lol.. I rest my case.
S.K.
Thanks for the kind replies! Hmm, yeah, license-transfers for freebies, non-DAZ items might be a problem. The transfer from non-DAZ to the DAZ Cloud wouldn't necessitate a transfer of the actual data from the users computer to the cloud, just the meta-data containing the user-ID with license. The actual data should be transferred from the non-DAZ server(s) to the DAZ Cloud.
The user is viewing the actual stuff remotely, manipulating what he/she needs in the scene in the session, and hit render. The only actual data would be the picture, and that shouldn't necessarily be in the hundreds of megabytes. The only thing that might run into that amount would be animation.
Pendraia, I wasn't thinking of just rendering, but everything else as well. I know you can get such services from Amazon.Com.
The biggest point would be that most wouldn't have the necessary bandwidth to remotely view his/her session. But since I've been able to get video-on-demand through my internet-box, it kind of spurred my idea of actual data manipulation, but using a simple laptop or even a tablet that's connected through wifi or cable.
Patience55, I was also thinking about time-outs, in that the session doesn't close, just the connection. Once, say 5 minutes has passed without a connection, the session is saved as a scene-file (DSON) - including any done render as a tiff-file. If the session is rendering, it isn't closed before the render is done and then the scene is saved with the animation/picture.
So, to sum it up, the biggest points against seems to be: time-outs, lag/connectivity and price/license-transfers.
Thanks for the input, guys and gals!! :)
Edit. Please don't eat glass, swordkensia!!
Plus I still remember the debate when there were rumours flying around about DAZ 3D changing to a "Steam" type download system for products. :roll:
Plus I still remember the debate when there were rumours flying around about DAZ 3D changing to a "Steam" type download system for products. :roll:
As far as I heard it's still in the pipeline that you have to install some Daz3d software to be informed about updates to stuff you bought. I am NOT looking forward to that, as I am renaming the stuff in my runtimes to suit my needs (making the CMS as obsolete as this new whatever).
The downloader app will be optional. You can just download the zips and install them as normal, or download the app, when it is released, and use that. The app only needs being downloaded once, after that it is already on your system. But it is purely optional. Me I am a diy person, always have been.
Problem is: how do you know when things are updated if you don't install that downloader app?
Looking through all the online readme's (remembering what you bought)?
Hoping for people like Jay_NOLA http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3885/
and fixmypcmike http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2602/
(who is more interested in added metadata than updates for functional reasons, but it is better than nothing).
Plus I still remember the debate when there were rumours flying around about DAZ 3D changing to a "Steam" type download system for products. :roll:
She calls that "exchange" a "debate"... Chohole, your sense of understatement is still well honed. :-)
Kendall
OK. To add some numbers to this mix (yes, I know that facts are heresy :-) )
I exported a scene that Alexa created for the September Freepozitory Challenge (shameless plug... come over and play with us!) as a RIB which is the final format that is actually rendered. This scene contained just about a dozen items, almost all freebies. The final size of the collected assets needed to render the scene came up to 1.4 Gigabytes. Yup, 1.4GB.
Anyone want to transfer that kind of data to/from a could server? :-)
Kendall
While I could see some positives and some negatives from being able to do dazzy stuff via cloud and not having to use your own computer capabilities, making it available only to the PC club would be a two edge sword. On one side it gives (possibly) more reason to join the PC, but on the other side it would really annoy all the NON-DAZzites who only purchase the content and DAZ would possibly raise the price of the PC which would annoy even more individuals, especially for those (like me) who would probably never use it.
Sorry, just a quick post for my initial thoughts.
Yeah, for all these reasons, no WAY do I do anything on the cloud let alone my artwork.
If this was a new alternate club, great - those who want it could join, but I sure won't. And I'd hate to see it be something new and shiny that would take anything away from the PC club. This wouldn't be something that would make me say "great, HERE'S a reason to stay as a PC member.....
I prefer using my own hardware for my graphics work. I have the content available 24/7, and I control what actually gets installed or used.
And I do it all on machines that only cost $400 - $600.
That's right, Wal-Mart cheapies with RAM and Video Card upgrades.
I've never bought a computer system worth more than $600, and if I'm lucky, I never will.
You're a few years ahead of your time.
The reason I don't use cloud backup for all my data (just some of the most crucial) is this:
It took me 9 months to upload my data to Mozy. Shortly after that some errors on their end meant that I could not connect for more than 30 days. Unfortunately, their policy was to delete all files that were not available on my machine for 30 days. Since I couldn't connect, that was all of them.
I have over 200 GB of Poser content. How long do you suppose it would take me to upload all that? And Daz isn't going to charge me for perpetual storage?
Heh, if PC club included cloud storage of 200GB of my content, it wouldn't have to render anything. It'd be worth it just to store the zips and exes.
The other thing is: I use Poser to render. Shall we completely alienate all Poser users from the PC once and for all?
< points up > What he said, only I don't think I could have said it as well.
Nope, I just plain don't like or trust the cloud concept. It's too reliant on everything outside my control working perfectly all the time, and can you use it properly with a connection rated at less than "ludicrous speed"? I don't understand the rush to clouds, just like I don't understand the rush to the latest shiny new phone generation that tries to connect everything to everything else. A bit like a cloud, now I think about it. (And yes, I don't have or want a mobile phone.) Sorry, this is a non-starter.
I dislike "the cloud" because it is entirely too similar to an actual cloud. That is to say, it looks impressive at first glance, but on close examination, there just isn't much substance to it. That, and there's always the possibility that the cloud in question is cumulogranite.
Hoo boy, don't I know that... A few months back at work we finally updated from CS3 to 5, and since I'm the Studio/Prepress department (yes, that small a company) it all gets installed on my machine and all the happy shiny spam from Adobe ends up in my mailbox... somehow I don't think we'll be going to CS6 any time soon, even if we hadn't missed the free update period by a few weeks. Think there's any chance of the whole cloud thing fizzling before CS7 comes around?
< not holding breath >
*sniff* And don't forget dialup.... There are still people on the site stuck with dialup still due to it being the only available option in our areas still. It's bad enough that installers have gotten to the point where they are impossible on dialup (at least mine, with a 2.5k/sec download speed and an 8hr session limit, that limits me to about 65mb or less without actual working resume support).
I hate the whole "Cloud" and "Streaming" junk. It's so unfair to all the people that the governments are choosing to forget and ignore when it comes to the newer technology. *cries* :(