SultryLady - 15 September 2012 01:03 PM
For those of you that are leaving, stop and think before you close the door. Without much support from the user community, DAZ, as well as any other software company, will find it hard to evolve. Do not shoot yourselves in the foot. Stick to it and help DAZ be what you want it to be.
...I’ve tried. Yes, sometimes my comments have been a bit on the harsh side but it is not that wish any ill will on Daz, On the contrary were it not for Daz Studio, I’d still be downing Advil like M&Ms; so I could hold a pencil or brush in my stiff arthritic hands for more than ten minutes.
Sometimes those who care say things you don’t really want to hear even though their only intent is to help you look at things from a different perspective. All many of us are asking so for Daz to “slow down” and focus on insuring the core of the application is stable instead of being distracted with the development of the next shiny new feature. I’ve thrown out many analogies to where this sort of practise can lead, and sometimes it is a total fail.
No, I’m not saying that businesses isn’t about not taking risks. Heck if in the 1950s Boeing didn’t commit to the “Billion Dollar Gamble” (the 707 project) they would not have become the world’s leader in aircraft development and manufacturing as well as respected for providing a stable and durable product line. Boeing also has one of the most rigorous and exhaustive testing programmes to insure that their product not only meet, but exceed the established standards and expectations. They actually build a full aeroplane and then proceed to try and physically rip it apart on a testing device known affectionately as ‘The Rack” which is designed to simulate years of service life in a matter of weeks. In one instance the engineers actually celebrated snapping a wing spar of a 747. The stresses that were simulated were akin to the plane trying to pull out of a high Mach number supersonic dive which would never occur in its real service life. Now that is “beta testing” to the extreme.
...back to the matter at hand.
I just as much would like to see Daz succeed, however, unlike Boeing they seem more concerned about the interior seating arrangement and passenger amenities than the airworthiness of the aeroplane itself. The ills with new website “update” (now heading into the fourth month) just reinforce the feelings that Daz still has difficulty focusing on the real needs of their core product and consequently, customer base.
Yes, change, particularly in the digital media world, is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it has to be disruptive.
As a small company Daz needs to focus their resources on one, rather than several projects at the same time. Boeing was already a large, successful, and highly respected company when they began on the 707. On the other hand, in the 3D CG world, Daz is still a relatively small player with little to no respect from the “upper echelons” of the media they are involved in. They cannot hope to do what an Autodesk or Corel can because they just do not have the staff and resources to support it. Yes, maybe focusing primarily on say the Studio application for now may put the Carrara and Bryce camps at odds for a bit, but Studio is Daz’s “baby” so to say. It is what they have staked their future on. Carrara and Bryce were acquisitions from other software developers (and yes, I do have the latest releases of both). Granted, it was an admirable gesture rather than to just let these programmes die, but trying to cover all these bases while attempting to establish it’s own Identity with it’s own product has Daz looking more like the Keystone Kops rather than MI5.
