Step Up the Quality Control
nelsonsmith
Posts: 1,337
One sure way to lower sales is flood the market with too many similar items, or items that are below a certain standard.
I know a lot of PAs put a lot of work into their products as well as the presentation of those products, but I'm noticing that I'm having to wade through a lot of stuff to now get to those products. Products that range from stuff I could have done spinning dials on a base figure, to promos that look like something done on poser back in 2000, and every time that I end up having had to spend time on one of these I feel frustrated.
"Is the product actually better than it's picture suggests? Should I take a chance?" Especially if it's an item that there are no alternatives to and that I've been waiting for.
I know people like to be nice and not criticise, but this hurts the really good PAs as well, because when I see a mediocre item first thing when I click on the Shop Page, it means that a really good product is off screen or on another page somewhere.
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I agree that daz store appears to have loosened its standards with content and promo art. However this is likely not a popular view.
FWIW, I have had a similar reaction lately. I can only hope that the PAs who fall into this category (and actually have great products) put more effort into better promo images. For the ones whose products may not be up to par, I hope Daz won't continue to lower their standards and rather encourage these PAs to improve. It would be a real shame to flood the store with mediocre products.
Slightly off topic, this reminds me of what happened in the photography industry when the barriers to entry almost evaporated and suddenly everyone who had a semi-decent DSLR declared themselves professional photographers. Having affordable access to the tools does not automatically make someone an artist any more than having a musical instrument makes someone a musician.
I agree with the OP
I agree too. Its a lot of stuff I can do with out and wouldn't want to begin with. I want clothes, not just skimpy stuff but normal fantasy garbs that dont include stilleto heeled boots. If I could wrap my head around 3D modeling and textureing I would so kill that corner of the market.
this would seem to be a subjective thing, since what one person likes another might consider it mediocre or of low quality, but i do agree about the high heels on fantasy items, what's a heroine gonna do after that jump breaking that heel, dang it hold on mr bad guy i broke a heel dang it all of course women be understanding of them broke heels and probably break out into a conversation about when and where they have broke one.
I once put a hole in a door throwing my mom's high heel at my brother.
I think they are pretty desperate for new content - notice the "Make Money with your Hobby" banner that they've recently added to the front page of the store. So they are likely a bit more lenient on their quality control to get more items into the store.
I think this is just a matter of relativity, considering we've been spoiled by oodles of amazing content here at DAZ. The stuff at other stores doesn't even come close to the quality here most of the time.
Well apparently more of us should try to learn this DAZ stuff to try and make products. I want to but haven't yet because I'm pretty ambitious with what I want my product to be and I don't know DAZ, modeling, and texturing near well to make products. DAZ 3D are just going to grow with the game and simulation markets booming if they don't let their competition completely out manuveur them. There is also a market for 3D printing too. It's a lucrative growing market you can be sure.
Yeah, we're in the same boat, I think there are plenty of uptapped opportunities out there for PA's who are willing to take a chance, and wouldn't obviously not have to worry about a lot of competition, but I know what I'd like, and it's just a matter of learning how to acheive it, but then again I'm looking at it as a sort of supplimentary thing, I don't plan on doing it as a sole source of income.
Very subjective. I've been in this hobby for years, have visited many 3d sites and bought tons of items from them all and can tell you that every site has hits and misses when it comes to content. To say one site is the top dog when it comes to content is just like saying that Dodge builds better trucks then Chevy. You could say that Rawart has the best creature morphs, and yet there is another site (starts with a P) out there that has done crazy things with the simple, old, M4/V4/K4 models that blow me away with their quality. Guess what, I buy from both vendors because they are amazing, not going to let a site's popularity dictate my purchases. This 3d thing used to be a large community as a whole with tons of sites, sadly it is getting smaller and smaller each passing year.
As for that item in general, its use is what you make of it. Like when I buy clothes, I hardly ever use the textures that came with the outfits themselves, I prefer to use other shaders that I bought. So in the promo image, the outfit might look ugly at first glance but I know that I can make it look a lot better with a little work. It all comes down to what you can do with it, the vendor can have the best artists create promo work that will blow you away, and then you may pick the item up expecting the same item in the promos and instead get something that without a little work, is not what you planned to purchase.
I never trust the promo image for quality, only to hopefully see what base item I am purchasing. :)
Now one thing I agree on is the overabundance of skimp wear and high heels for the ladies. Even many poses available to purchase have the model's feet in heels and it's kind of a pain having to repose the feet if your character is wearing reasonable shoes.
I won't comment about the quality of products, but I have noticed promo images that look like the PA couldn't be bothered to let the Iray render run for very long at all. The resultant promo looks poor quality and very grainy which is surprising when you'd think they would be trying to show us their product as attractively as possible. Mind you, the vast majority of promos look excellent IMO.
I do notice an abudance of bikinis, or outfits with cutouts or just barely there I also tend to not use the included textures, either make my own or use shaders since they can be used on any item high heel poses,or, pinups of which i have more than a few of but have yet to ever use them, I much prefer to put them in dresses but prefer dynamic on those since conforming ones just leave alot to be desired, even the draping poses are limited to very limited poses and pain in the behind to try and find one that looks passable, with the abundance of poses makes me kind of wonder exactly how many way can you pose a model before you get poses being taken from already existing packs with very little alteration if any at all throwing it into a another package and calling it new, I use to go by the promos until i got one item was made for daz but for some odd reason textures kept crashing daz just to eliminate what was causing it i did one at a time model then item without texture both worked minute i add texture and try to render it immmediately crashed well ok ask said stores cs about it, what i got was which texture is causing it i said all of them last thing i heard was we will get back to you, so i wont touch another of that pa's items which maybe in this store now since dna items are being moved here. as far as here only gotten one error from item and daz took care of it quite quickly so can't say anything bad about stuff in the store
Actually that ad is about becoming an affiliate, which is more to do with promotion of content rather than the development.
I really enjoy the Art Studio thread (Art of the Promo) that showcases all the really beautiful artwork for promos- kudos to those vendors who take the time to promote their work so we really see the potential! I suggest surfing it and looking at the vendors who are featured.
(And thanks to FirstBastion for starting the thread!)
I guess I was really talking about promos moreso than quality, because if a promo looks bad, in my case which is the perspective of a Daz novice, the actual quality of the item is a moot point since I'm not going to purchase it to find out. I guess if you're targeting the upper intermediate to professional daz artist, a bare bones promo is completely legitimate, but then I'd be really curious as to how large that demographic actually is.
Thnaks Novica for the suggestion about the Art Studio Thread. I wasn't aware of it, but it sounds like a really great idea.
"Bare bones" promotional images are all that's required, and more often than not work better because the focus of the image is the product itself, not whatever is used for the environment.
Not all items are easily recolored it just depends on the availability of mat zones.
When I look at a promo, I am usually looking for realism, whether I believe an outfit will clip, such as whether belts, holsters, guns, grenades etc behave naturally when a character moves. For hair I check out the hairline, and whether the scalp looks good, and for men, whether their are morphs and adjustments or shadows along the sideburn area which indicate a poor fit.
Sometimes, I find men's items do not fit as well as I would like, especially the hair. Some items appear to be designed for women entirely as there is cleavage or missing areas where the male groin should be which is distinctly odd.
I also look to see if it is convincing that a character might be able to get out of the outfit. Are their zippers buttons whatnot? the lack of zippered areas on the front of men's jeans, waistbands, and the poorly designed collars are things I look for that indicate the item does not have the quality I desire.
That banner is an ad for the affiliate program (= advertise DAZ on your site), not for becoming a PA.
As I stated, it's all that is required for a user of a certain skill set; one that is comfortable with shading, retexturing and perhaps morphing an item. If there are a lot of people who are at that level, then that does work, but at least one promo image that shows the end result of that would also be nice for the rest of us.
It's kinda' strange that we've had the conversations where people will not want to give Daz the credit for being used at a professional level, and relegate it to a consumer/hobbyist software, yet "barebones" targeted advertising to me is aimed at a demographic that goes beyond the typical consumer/hobbyist.
I never would have brought his up on my own... But... One thing I've noticed several times over the past year or so, in promos, is brick or stone textures that do not line up around a corner or over a seam... I'm reluctant to criticize people's work, but it's a big peeve to me... most of the models I make are architectural and even the crappy ones I've never released, I make sure the textures don't skip a row or drop half down another... It's very distracting and can ruin an otherwise nice model and the sad thing was, as far as I remember, none of the meshes (in question) were bad, and one in particular was very nice.... But I guess, better to see it in a promo, then to find it after purchase or render.
Not at all: the standard set of images that DAZ wants shows both the item as an ordinary user would see it (the items with textures and shaders on them) and how the items would look for someone that might want to apply their own shaders, if it's a building set (think Urban Sprawl 3) or clothing. Will they necessarily look identical to the promotional shots when a relative new user does a render with them? No, but the images show what they should look like.
I think we're right on the threashold of a markewt collapse, very much like what happened to the stock photography market 10 years ago. A massive flood of new artists and new market places, too many GWC churning out "stock", and prices falling like a rain of bricks.
It does no good to tell customers that have bought and used the products that they are wrong in the perception of the product or that since they are not professional 3D artists; that invalidates their opinion of the product. I'm not a professional farmer either but I know what I like and what I don't like.
Well I have several times purchased items which I sort of liked in general but which didn't look very good on the promos, just to give them a chance. Often I've been pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I've also seen an item on a promo for another item and thought "wow, I want that", only to find out that I've already seen the item before and not bought it because it didn't look good on it's own promos. So I think it's in the artists own interests to make good and well looking promos.
Greetings,
Actually, one of the things that makes me somewhat sad about Iray is that its displacement support is problematic. I understand why. Still, it's sad seeing brick edges of buildings where the edge is sharp all the way down, despite _looking_ like it should be indented for the bricks. There's a few products where I just can't buy them, because they didn't even bother smoothing the edges of walls at all (knife-sharp tables, walls, corners, etc?) and the promos show that pretty clearly. In that sense, they're good promos because they show the limitations of the item, though. If you're using it in games, it probably even helps to know that there isn't excessive detail in the underlying polys. Junk and treasure, swings and roundabouts.
I don't entirely agree that the promos have gone a particularly poor direction; there are a few artists (generally new or who moved over from the recent acquisition) who are still having trouble, but I expect that'll work out. Some of the artists who I felt had pretty poor promos a year ago are doing much better right now.
The important thing, though, is that 'promo art' is not 'quality control'. The QA of the actual DAZ items is one of the big reasons I shop here. I have a certain confidence that I don't have at other shops.
-- Morgan