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DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Yeah, hair props are some of the most versatile across generations whether support is officially there or not. I still buy V4 hair for use on G3F (like from the current RDNA sale).
I'd like to just say you're not paying professional prices for hobbyist products, you're paying hobbyist prices for professional products. While the prices may be out of some people's ranges (believe me we've all been there, myself included), you can't easily deny that you're getting a high quality product for an exceptionally cheap price compared to the true 'professional' products. Professional prices start at well over $100, with some easily reaching the thousands.
Not everyone has a big budget, and I sympathise with the rising prices in some cases. That said, each sale supports the artist so they can continue doing what they do best, which is making quality products. For some, it is their sole income and for others a necessary supplement for the amount of hours put into making content. Either way, let's not direct our frustration at people who are just making a living.
Adding G2 support on a hair means making a completely separate hair generally. If it's prop hair, it's no more than making a fit, but then it won't automatically fit any custom characters properly. If it's conforming hair (which most are these days), then that means a separate model with it's own rigging and weight-mapping. All those style and movement morphs have to be redone for the 2nd model, etc. I'm not saying supporting G2 isn't awesome, just that it's a lot of work to do it right. That's why (I would guess) that most of the people that are supporting G2 with hair (or clothes) are putting out 2 packages and a bundle-- G2, G3, and both. I forget what my point was...
I actually don't find a lot of the products I buy to be professional grade personally. some are, some aren't. hobby quality sure. But a lot of the male content is really only hobby grade.
More often than not I am submitting tickets to fix obvious bugs.
most often clothing stretches or fits improperly. Those are hobby quality errors.
I can appreciate for someone starting out and still filling out their runtime that this is a steep investment. Especially with the exciting, shiny new items coming out every day. But that's where freebies, discount bins, and conversion utilities to use heavily-discounted older content from V4 onto G2 and G3 really shine. Then buy the new releases when you just have to have it (and know you will actually use it). I have to pick and choose, wait for sales, and carefully spend my hobby money (same as I buy my knitting yarn out of the clearance bin or on a 2-for-1 sale). This is only as expensive as I let it be.
Well, the products we buy should be priced for the hobbyist, as that's what we are, but make no doubt about it those products should be of professional quality. Sure, it's nice to fanatize about making a graphic novel or a game in your spare time and hitting it big and it's a lot more fun and realistic than your changes of winning the lottery, but you have to be responsible and realistic, you should not be paying prices big businesses pay to use these DAZ Store products in a professional capacity because you are using them in an amateur capacity.
As far as the cost of the Top Model products, well maybe the target market isn't hobbyists? Or maybe it's a probe at trying a new pricing level? Lots of people over spend during the holidays and a marketer will try to take advantage of that. Ultimately, whether their target marget bought or not at those prices will decide if the prices they set are a mistake or not.
Completely skipping a whole generation require more abnegation than I have :) , I'm just using G2 more often than G3 for my renders, but I see your point, even if it sounds hard to do.
Yes, I know, and this has been a kind of "standard" until about 6 months ago, but today the problem is, we can't get G2 support at all, even by paying an extra... There are no more G3-G2 bundle or anything, just G2 treated like a dead figure. That was my concern.
One recent exception was Margot hair by AprilYSH... Props to her for that one :) .
Parenting hair can help a lot indeed, but with hairs like these (very sleek, with hairline and temples/lower neck not covered/visible), usually it doesn't give very clean results.
I think people have a misundertanding of hobby vs professional when it comes to items. Just because a hobbyist can use an item doesn't immediately make a product a designated hobbyist tool. Your computer can play video games, or you could also program a game from scratch with that same machine if you wanted to take the time to learn how. As an example, professional photography equipment and consumer photograpy equipment generally work exactly the same. One might allow for a bit more handholding and automated features which a pro would simply turn off, but as the complexity and specificity of your work increases you're going to have to eventually move up to pro equipment, and that's going to come with a significant price increase.
Mind you a lot of stuff people want to do in Daz with the items available are completely doable, if one is willing to actually to stop thinking of it as a hobbyist tool, and think about it as a pro CG artist might, meaning the idea of drop and drag is going out the window you simply have to learn what all those sliders and settings do. Nor do I think many hobbyists are going to be willing to pay the price if PA's actually put in the work themselves to make professional level clothing and the like hobbyist friendly.
Each individiual simply has to determine themselves when they feel they are ready to move out of the hobbyist arena and they will naturally gravitate to the next level of Daz use, or onto other software.
PA set their own prices, but Daz3d is the reseller. Is it required that the content by unique? I would think uniqueness would be somewhat of a requirement, too much of a good thing makes things dull.
Daz3d should have some sort of recommendation procedure, and a condition for content that has been priced too high by the PA. By this... I mean, Daz3d makes the promotions and runs the shop. If the content doesn't sell at the PA price Daz should have some kind of consideration payment for no or few sales, or Daz should have license to sell for a limited period of time at reduced prices to offset their promotion costs and profit losses. Terms and conditions like this would benefit the PA, Daz and users.
Since there is no tanglble (physical items) inventory requiring storage facilites and handling doesn't mean there aren't costs associated with promoting and selling content. There are some content items that are priced too high, and they aren't included in sales. Maybe they are for a limited period sometime during the year.
Daz does a pretty good job,, but they are a long way from efficient.
Example - right now there are block promotions that have been up for days with the same content items and prices. Those block promotions should have changes, like variations of content and prices changed every day or so. A single or couple promotion blocks go up and the rest of the blocks promotions are the same old same old.
I just look at the first couple blocks, fast grab and PC+ daily. I usually login between 3 and 6 am. I don't waste time with previously posted blocks. This may be Daz intent. Yet, if there was new content or new price offers daz could benefit from more sales.
It is annoying to see a new promotion block go up and it is just a repeat of previous blocks dressed up to look like something else and the content items in the offer are already up as promotion blocks rom days before. This is a common practice. I don't believe I have all the answers, but I do know most people that buy content are keeping up pretty well with content promotions.
There is one other aspect of the pricing to look at. DAZ has been rather agressively selling gift cards at discounts of 10 to 20 per cent in the last six months. I've looked at my order history and the only items I've not purchased with a discounted store credit have been the items required to get the discount on the gift card. So regardless of the final price in the cart, I'm paying (effectively) 85 to 90 percent of the indicated price.
I don't want smacked for saying this..but it would depend on how you look at it. Those professional prices the person was speaking of generally come with an obj...and textures. That is it. No fits, generally no "morphs", no one click options, no "easy texture apply mats" etc. So even with some boo boos (which I would hope get fixed quickly by most PAs around here) you are still getting more than what the "pros" give at much higher prices. I realize that if you compare it to real world...maybe the prices do seem high. As you said a 3D Bra may cost the same or similar to the real thing. That said that real bra is mass produced by machinery that is generally churning out thousands a day. The 3D Bra is taking someone so many weeks by their own hand to create. Then time to map. Then time to texture, Then time to set up mats and materials. Then time to add rig it and add morphs to fit multiple "people" with one bra. Then time to save all that out and make thumbs. Time to test. Time to promo. etc
We each set the prices based on lots of different things usually boiling down to time vs money vs obligations/bills etc. None of us can spend a month of 40 to 80+ hour work weeks and then only make $400.00 for 160 hrs of work 
but we all do equally realize your money is valuable to you as well and you work hard to make it. Most of us work hard on our products trying to make it something worthy of the money you are spending 
All that said I am not sure that prices are "on the rise". They vary year to year from item to item and from PA to PA depending on the time, money, etc each of us has involved in our "workflow". I am sorry if you are finding it difficult to purchase items (I am sure that is not anyone's intent).
Thats one of the reasons I was able to convince the team to buy marvelous designer. It was cheaper than buying premade clothes, and we save more money not having to waste time postworking every image to make it look like the clothes are not floating 2 inches away from the skin. Still looking for a hair solution.
I'm tempted to get the bundle, not that I need it but enough is never enough and I do t think i use even half of what I buy :), I originally wanted just the hair morphs and textures but then the price is so close if not more seperately that the clothing is actually just a bonus in the bundle, I'm waiting on Stan 5 whatever if any goodies that could be released with him as well as Zev0'a skin builder to be released and have failed at trying to spend less money :/ hobbyist here as well, but maybe someday I could figure out a way to make money from renders I make lol
Try parenting the hair prop instead of fittinng it to the character it retains all the hair morphs and style functions while allowing you to use the hair to any of your character . if you do that you can use any hair prop on any charcater generation. no special remaking for anything if you apply your hair to your characters by parenting instead of fitting to. that is the simplest solution in my opinion.
its not that Hard to pass over a generation of content. I still buy a lot of environment content. I passed over genesis until genesis 2 came out. Genesis 3 though broke compatibility with all older generations. which really isn't a big deal if your using daz for just rendering still graphics. But my primary use for daz studio is animation (Ivys Animations) . so I need stuff to be supported across the board or have tools to make them so , Other wise its just a lot of work, work, work trying to get this to work with that. compatibility is a big deal for my needs where as some people it may not matter much. . that is why its not hard for me to skip Genesis 3 to see if genesis 4 is going to be compatible. I already have enough older characters to last a life time
I do tech support for a living and quality control at DAZ store for products has gone down. Products are being released with bad texturing (Lucian's nails, and green brows) and bad modeling too. 2 of Petipet's recent releases have had had textures which don't apply, several male characters by one PA have a repeated flaw in the gentials that is almost comical.... And the list goes on. I agree the PA's time is valuable, but so is the customers. Just figuring out why some recent releases have problems, cuts into my limited time rendering those products. So if PA's are concerned about the valuable time they invest into prodcuts, customers time is also valuable and we shouldn't be troubleshooting a product that clearly QA did not properly examine and should've been evident at a glance by the creators. I'm seriously bothered by the poor QA because it really does push the burden of tech support on us. IF DAZ wants to be considered professional it needs to start acitng like it and not releasing products with errors that any QA person worth their salt could discover n 4 minutes of use.
At any rate, I think it is time to move beyond comparing what DAZ does to OTHER stores. YEs everyone needs to eat, and everyone needs to make money, no one is trying to be mean by raising the cost, and or complaining about the prices. At the same time it is what it is.
Amen $20 bras fall aprat the first time ou wash them ..lol, my bras for my DD girls usually run about $50 to $80 range
Best bra I ever got was $120. My best friend and I both got one (different ones because we are built very differently), and both expected our husbands to freak out at the price tag. Instead, we both got home and got told to go buy another.
Edit: And 7 years later they're still going strong.
DAZ also spent a lot of time this year absorbing a decent portion of the content from RDNA, which quite likely has had an impact on the level of attention they have been able to give to products being submitted through their own system.
Even comparing them to Rendorosity? ;)
Any modern clothing that doesn't pill and bleed out after the 1st wash to make it look like pilled, faded, and stained cotton clothing use to work in the garden you bought at the Goodwill is rare. I used to be embarrassed that I still have clothing that I bought as a teenager but not anymore. The quality of new 'affordable' clothing is poor.
I have mixed feelings about the entire thing. Prices *are* going up a bit, yes, and vendors do set their own pricing. However, we've seen continuous discounts over the entire year -- to the point where we're all conditioned to wait for better sale prices.
Therefore, I feel that the business model that most PAs eventually gravitate towards is:
There are also studies out there that show people are *more* willing to buy something on sale than at full price, even if the sale price is higher than the full price o_o Go figure...
One thing to understand; I've talked elsewhere with PAs and while uniqueness is desirable, sometimes it's the kiss of death for a product. I know of one product that was turned down by DAZ that the PA submitted to another site, and he's only had a few sales on it.
Current PAs know better than I what DAZ has for pricing guidelines (if any), but I do have a copy of the ones for another store and they actually aren't all that different than what I've seen for here. As for "storage costs", they do exist, but not to the same extent as for physical products.
I'll be honest; while I get the daily promotional email, I don't often look at the store itself as I generally don't see anything in the promo that I'm interested in, so I don't notice things like this.
I use to buy $100 Victoria Secret & Maiden form bras when I was much younger. But now days. the Amour bra of playtex & soma does me just fine and those bras run about $50 to $60 bucks a piece and fit good and last for a year or 2. I guess the new flimsy bras would be fine for little boobies, But I need something that can hold my big-ins in place .(blush)
That's pretty funny. Most my work jeans(I do construction) are actually jeans I bought back in HS, that's at least 17 years old! And that's just basic cheap jeans like levi, was around 20. These days jeans cost like 50+ and lucky to get a few years out of them.
Yes I know what you mean. I still got a pair of jeans I can still wear from when I was in college . bras & underwear not so much..lol underwear the worst they just don't last anymore , its like they make them to dissolve in water or something ..lol
I'm still wearing some stuff (not much, of course) that I bought in late 1998.
My wife seems to have some of the problems other ladies here are reporting, yeah. She counts herself lucky if she gets a year or two out of a bra.
Me, I wear stuff until they start getting deoderant buildup or holes, generally. I think 6-7 years is about as long as I'm likely to keep something.
My problem with jeans is my weight has fluctuated a bunch, so they tend to either not fit well and ride low or fit loose and ride low and I end up wearing the back of the cuff.