DAZ3D First Impressions for 5/20/2021

Marketplace Discussions DAZ3D
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Mike’s DAZ3D First Impressions for 5/20/2021

A Collection of Opinions and Observations from the DAZ 3D Marketplace.

So the bundle today is “From The Barracks” and it includes not one, not two, but FIVE products that have already been released. Which is fine, I guess. A way to drum up sales for older products. But the challenge for me, and I expect for you as well, is if I needed or wanted those older products in the first place, I would have already bought them.

Sushane isn’t very unique, and her emissive tattoos are too distracting and unnecessary.

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/sushane-for-genesis-8-1-female/

Collection of 46 expressions for G8.1 with additional parameter dials to slow down your figure’s loading as well!

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/grimaces-dialable-one-click-expressions-for-genesis-8-1/

There are fundamental differences in the anatomy and locomotive capacity between men and women that are unfortunately not represented well in an otherwise decent set of poses.

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/dragging-people-poses-volume-2-for-genesis-8/

Huge sewer/ “storm water” set for Studio is scaled pretty big and is quite expansive.

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/sewer-tunnel/

Collection of 2D plane “billboards” of hills and mountains with varying degrees of trees and lighting provide much needed background and filler for your scenes.

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/osoview-arid-scrub-and-pine-ridge-backdrops/

Set of alternate Iray textures and materials for the 1979 Citroën GS Club automobile for DAZ Studio.

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/teuf-teuf-iray-textures-add-on/

Not a huge fan of long-form videos but this is a webinar of different speakers discussing techniques for overcoming obstacles for creating one’s art.

https://blog.mjc3d.com/2021/05/20/reframing-identifying-and-reframing-limiting-beliefs-for-artists/

Final Thoughts

Kind of a mixed-bag this morning.

  • Sushane is a Barbie Doll, but honestly at this point I expect that to be the norm.
  • The expressions aren’t bad but that just means more parameter dials.
  • Maybe I’m overthinking the dragging poses but I can’t help but not see the same male pose just applied to the female character and yet it’s called a different pose.
  • The sewer/ storm water drainage system is kinda neat even if the pipes and grates are much too big.
  • The hill billboards could be useful; I’m afraid though that the transparency around the edge might be an issue although none of that appeared in the promos.
  • I wish there were better tutorials to show folks how to adjust the surface settings in old props to give them Iray materials rather than release just a pack of Iray only materials for a product.
  • That webinar could be useful for artists that are struggling.

Since there weren’t a lot of “new” products released today, I’m going to try to add a Part 2 and Part 3 later on today if I have time.

I hope you found this useful!

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The PA for Sushane, Dax Avalange, is probably best avoided. They don’t populate the file list/read me page for their products. If they don’t pay attention to detail there, they probably miss important things in their models too.

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I’m going to buy the barracks that is part of the military bundle. Good barracks are hard to come by, and I like that one.

The carrying poses seemed designed less for rescue, and more for those pulp film ‘monster abducts girl’ type renders. I will buy, but the script-based poses require work for me since they don’t run in my old studio.

The discount on dog items is an odd side sale, but I will not say no to the dog parka, the dog waste station, and that house with the cute front porch at large discount

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I am concerned about the business side of DAZ given much of their marketplace choices, as we are all heavily invested in this hobby concern is valid.

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It is a concern that at some point they will fold in the towel. If that happens, our investment in studio is going to be an issue, especially if future drivers make it hard to use.

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I feel as though the reason I was silenced on their forum is I got a bit too close to truths they didn’t want others speculating on, my speculations were the major source of moderator actions, now they can and do vet any posts I make. My response is to try and diversify more into non DAZ software, mostly those owned by Epic Games as far less likely to suffer obsolescence.

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Well, the good news is DAZ has released the bridges. So your content should be able to work with Unreal Engine and Blender. I’m getting better at Blender. Still not at a point where I can make a decent render but I’m getting close. So even if DAZ does go under, it’s not like the content won’t still be there.

Having this unchecked also helps too since I still have all the original ZIPs.

image

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I get modded often for speculation presented as fact, but I’m not often wrong.

I can see the way the wind is blowing and make my own deductions.

I think the moderators know the emperor has no clothing, which is why they seem more permissive to complaints about QA taking a powder. They know it is true.

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I see nothing to indicate Daz has financial troubles. The things I see are more profiteering than desperate money grabs. As far as QA, Daz is stingy on their labor. They don’t like to hire more people even when their profits are healthy. Given what Michael’s said about their income and number of employees, they are pretty much printing money.

At some point someone made the obvious statement: Old stuff doesn’t sell. And someone else said - but people love bundles, if we stick a few old things in the bundles, the old things will sell again. This isn’t desperation, this is monetization of old assets. The reality is, as soon as something is off the front page, it’s not going to sell without some form of hook. Taking actions to move old merchandise is standard retail business.

A true sign of poor financial position would be a premature upgrade to Genesis 9. When they do that, they’ll have $millions in sales that day. Every user than can afford it will drop $100 on it. That they only went up to 8.1 means they didn’t feel there was a sufficient jump in tech to sell it as 9 - and it could have been sold as 9.

I’m sure their sales droop the longer a model number is around, too, so they want to go to Gen 9, but they still have the profit margin to ensure that when they do, Gen 9 is worth a whole number increase.

Lets talk more about their “new” bundles: People buy bundles. Bundles sell. They do it because it works to get money out of their customers’ wallets.

Monetezation of dead assets and looking for more revenue streams isn’t desperation, its growing a business. All those bridges took some serious investing in time and programming - even using open-sourcing for much of the work. Desperate companies don’t invest in expansion.

Daz is a business. They will do everything they can to get your money. Michael isn’t the only artist out there making daily purchases. I look at the daz store every day.

And Daz is hiring. If Daz is hiring, they’re not floundering. Interestingly they’re hiring an e-commerce specialist. Tafi (now Daz’s parent company) is hiring modelers and programmers.

Some worry that Tafi will be profitable enough that they abandon Daz. The Daz store, if it just pares back to PA releases, will still make enough money to warrant keeping the application updated. But they still have Daz Originals on the same 2 week schedule as always and the quality of those is still top notch. And embracing the non-binary gender is not a move a struggling company makes. You don’t risk losing your conservative customers if you’re desperate.

All the signs point to Daz doing fine and really just acting like a business and finding new ways to pull money from your wallet.

Crappy QA is more about inundation with new PA models every day and not enough QA staff to really go through the products with a fine-toothed comb. If you work in QA, you don’t want to be the bottleneck. You may check the bare minimals - does it install and load and render? And the PA may make last minute changes that skip past QA because their last iteration of changes passed. QA is a thankless jobs. The Artists don’t like being rejected and the sales team doesn’t want to wait on the new models. Seriously there are, on average, 10 new models released every day. I couldn’t do a full QA workup on one well-equipped character in 8 hours. The renders from each angle to check for seams would take hours. I do think their QA is overworked and understaffed. I don’t see that changing. And I think a lot of their QA process for PAs is peer/beta testing. Buddy up with another PA and you can both get crap through by vouching for one-another’s work