Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Thanks for helping me with my PC etiquette, anyone will take offense, all offense is equal, people obsessed with taking the moral highground, bow out and let thread descend, hope it doesn't get too ugly.
I think the rest of us are capable of having a mature conversation, thank you!
All offense is equal?
Anyways, okay mate, have fun with it :)
Why do the "black" folk have to be from Africa. Totally could have characters from America that have dark skin :)
Yea, not sure why the merchants have to always go that extra step into Hollywood. Just spend the day out watching people, go the city and observe who's walking around. you don't need fantasy because there are allot of really fantastical people out there to inspire you! I live in a very diverse area of the USA, I can go up to San Fransico's South of Market and look at such a wide variety of people it's scary sometimes that they all get along for the most part. From leathermen to high fashion, all there. Castro Street, the Shopping areas up closer to 1st Street... it's crazy... Even down here in Redwood City there are some interesting people with clothing choices, hair styles, jewelry, tattoo's and all that rest. Instead of Kung Fu or Bells of the Ball go for some INTERESTING real people... They won't sell? Sure they will if the time and effort to research is put into it. MAKE it interesting without all the skimp and what ever this is these days. Eva just saved me more money by the way DAZ... not a fan. Sorry!
Yes, supporting G3M instead of a specific character looks like the best option to me. For promotions, it could then focus on how the clothing looks on various characters. For example, the promo pictures for Eldritch Seeker - what sold me was seeing it on all the different G2M characters.
But then, that is just me.
I don't know what country Design Anvil is from but the issue with a lot of the negative portrayals of blacks and asians, at least within the USA, is that they're comparatively recent. A "barbarian" doesn't register as offensive in the same vein as "witch doctor" due to not being connected to race in modern views and because there have been a large number of heroic barbarian characters. Something in the vein of a witch doctor is almost portrayed villainously. Asians and martial arts winds up being a little different since it's the problem of all of the wide variety of countries being lumped into the same thing, along with assumptions that all asians know martial arts.
I do think that vendors are being put into a mild bind by virtue of poor bundle structure. There should be more smaller themed bundles instead of only trying to stick all options in one pro bundle and calling it a day. There's also the fact that the male and female bundles are weirdly uneven. Darius 6 has a decent modern outfit, a basketball outfit, and the tribal outfit. The tribal outfit might have taken up too many promos for its own good but the other clothes were fine. Monique 6 had a somewhat fantasy style piece of lingerie, swamp witch, and the skimpy tribal outfit. Swapping one of those out for a more modern outfit, even something themed like a disco outfit or lounge singer, would have helped make that a better bundle.
Unfortunately removing what you perceive as the stereotype generally requires you to make the effort. If artists want to portray an Asian in a karate gi or medieval Nordic warrior with a horned helmet (which historically Vikings did not wear, they're too impractical for battle) as long as that art is not coming (or going) to a place of hate what is the impetus to correct the artist? Your morality vs. theirs? Stereotype does not automatically denote a negative, sometimes it reinforces a cultural identify. Is it necessary to put an Inuit in a bank presidents office because you do not want to show them ice fishing because morality says we now have to dismiss the notion that Inuit's hunted for their food or lived where it was cold? I don't find many stereotypes offensive, what I do find offensive is when we deliberately show one ethnicity as the opposite of a perceived stereotype which only draws to the negative stereotype as foundation behind the reasoning.
With that I would like to see more redners of endomorphic pasty middle aged men with impractical armor exploring a nondenominational temple for GMO soybeans.
Before this thread gets deleted, I think it bears saying that a person who is not of a specific ethnic or racial group cannot tell someone of that racial or ethnic group what is or is not offensive.
Perhaps, figures should not be "bundled" with themed clothing of anykind. After all we all come into the world in a specific way, any type of clothing is a later addition. Maybe Figure "bundles" should just be figure, skintone, underpants of some kind, and poses; then various clothing packs, relesed seperately could be themed. That seems to me a slightly better way to calm some issues people may have. And a way for PAs to make more money.
/my 2 cents
I'm completely agree with you.
Also, I find completely offensive that some african cultural piece (fantasy or not) is being classified as unappropriated for african people, and only "good stuff" are those from a caucasian or generic origine. I'm afro descendant (plus indigena with a little bit spanish too) and actually living in a culture where santeria is part of the pop culture: fashion/tradition/religion, so, some stuffs in Monique/Darius packs fascinated me. I would like to see also more ethnic realistic or ethnic modern pieces of cloth on 60s-70s-80s and 90s, as well as other fantasy ideas.
delete me
It is very disappointing to learn that the only way to sell non-white characters is to have some kind of exotic stereotype to sell them and that fact that some people appear to be only inspired by thinking of some exotic stereotype is also disappointing but I suppose not really that surprising.
I would also like to see some content which didn't conform to sterotypes or was the same as everything else. Yeah I understand that vendors create what sells but there can be too much of a good thing and eventually the market becomes saturated.
Lifting America's baggage does get tiresome.
Even specific ethnic group can have different opinion due geographical or historical differences.
That is also very true.
I will say, its not only Daz that has this issue. However, it doesn't mean its OK. Paraphrasing what a popular fashion designers has said "Black men don't sell business suits well, so it doesn't work. They sell Sports Jackets so we use them there."
They weren't talking about their own personal preferance.
So while us forumites are saying one thing, the silent majority buying stuff may be behaving differently. However, I still think what I asked for is reasonable.
I wanted to be funny and say give a dawg a bone, but no one would find that humorous right now.
Just for the sake of clariity the "All offense is equal comment?" was aimed at the rather criptic comment by Timmins before mine. And I was in no way inferring that all offense is the same. There are definitely many different levels of offense and many, many different versions of what is offensive dependant on background, age, gender, ethincity, beliefs, location, tolerance, passion, sensitivity, culture, history, current affairs, ... ...
And that is part of the problem how to maintain creative freedoms, yet not offend anyone in the process.
You will offend someone always. Like I already have by typing this. Because I have a demongirl Avatar. Because she's kinda tanned, but not too dark. She has horns. My name is Lars. People are offended!
That isn't the issue. Lets be mature adults with some ability to filter BS from real issues. You must be willing to do that. But maybe it's impossible for people very close to the core products to do so.
I showed the Daz store to unaffiliated artists. They work in the architectural scene. They know nothing of Daz or Poser other than the company names. They had no clue why an American company is so lacking in diversity and only featured people of color as "joke" characters. Now I never called them jokes. But that is the perspective of people of some people unfamiliar with this dazsphere.
Sadly, while these professionals were in need of quality stock figures to help populate their amazing renderings, they do not wish to do business with Daz for several reasons. The skimpwear, the disproportionate representation of ethinicities and how they are depicted when used. I live in an American city where people of color are just as powerful and influiential as "colorless" people. (Bad joke, please laugh). The quality of the promotional materials for people of color is far behind the others. I know Richard will say"its the Pa's" and I get it. PA's who care enough to try the brown people haven't refined their skills there much and the results are crappy looking in many examples.
I know from practice the promo renders are not representative of what a user can get from the base product once they use it themselves. But for the Interior Design/ArchViz world they don't have much skill with humans and do depend on stock renders to sell them.
For the record. I know earlier we talked about the Mayan stuff, that isn't the artworks I am talking about bad promo art in this case. There are some other pieces where people unfamiliar with Daz couldn't understand why the dark people just did not look up to snuff with the renderings of the white folk. I couldn't really explain to them why things where the way they were, even though I knew a lot of the equation. But it's hard for outsiders to understand.
This is a really interesting point that I'm going to pull out. Darker skinned individuals actually require different lighting techniques and/or different shader settings. This is based on the fact that real life photography requires different lighting for some skin tones.
Good points Lars, any idea what the solution is? On an implementable kind of level for an individual PA or even as a single business entity in a competitive market?
As you mentioned this is just as much a societal issue as a DAZ issue, if not more so. Quite often it's market forces and target demographics that are the driving forces that reinforce these type of issues.
So is it the PA's fault, DAZ's fault, the end consumers fault or society in generals fault? Who's job is to fix the issues if that is even possible?
Cola is bad for you, but business's make millions of cans a day and people buy them. Business's fault? Government's fault? Consumer's fault? Educater's fault?
••• ••• •••
From a PA's point of few can you not see how hard it is to do the "right" thing with issues like this.
For example in this thread alone there are three different points of view from three different people about ethnic themed costumes. From - Not okay, okay as long as it's not a single representation of the ethinicity to more ethnic based themed outfits please. As an individual PA which do I act on in the scope of content creation?
Doing anything or nothing will likely result in some type of criticism. Trying to understand the issue in a tangible and implemetable way for a PA is very difficult.
Even discussing the issue in a forum like this comes with more risk then any real chance for reward for a PA. Most will avoid the issue totally for that very reason.
..I frequently go to cafes and pubs to do just that, mainly for character development and design as my modelling skills are...well,...best not to discuss that.
Portland, OR is an especially fertile ground for this, as you get just about every type of personality and fashion imaginable. Crikey, we have one fellow here who rides down the streets on a unicycle wearing a Darth Vader mask, cape, and a kilt, while playing the war pipes with flames coming out of the drones.
...I would go for that, much more than a bunch of skimp and fantasy wear that I'll rarely if ever use.
Since the introduction of Genesis, I usually just purchase the base figure and what clothing I like, the only bundle I purchased being the YoungTeen 5 Pro one. I only ended up with the M5/V5 Pro bundles because they were included with the Carrara 8.5 Pro upgrade. Also since Genesis, I rarely go for different character morph sets unless there is something truly unique about them or they have a really nice skin map I'll use as I usually just rely on the main body/head morph kits as well as merchant resource morph content.
I'm disappointed figure bundles no longer include just a set of different skin maps (like wth the V4/M4 bundles had), and that basic poses have been eliminated.
TLDR: I don't need a dedicated flagship "Black" Character for V7/M7. We can't use legacy materials, so support this void with priority, but I do not think dedicated "figures" are needed. I especially don't want to wait 2 years. Give me a small trickle of quality tanned and Asian characters for the duration of the next 2 years instead of waiting till you have milked the white girls to death.
I think the core issue is making a "black pack" or "false blend Asian pack" and not ethnicity morphs and textures outside of said packs frankly.
If you ask me, I think the route that is most modern, and SHOULD result in the least criticism is a balanced approach. Maybe we don't even need dedicated ethnic bundles that get poor support and take too long to release. All items in pro packs are typically sold separately. So even if I hate V7, or Eva (or theoretical dark character) I could buy a clothing item by itself and not the pack. Or that dark skinned gal and not the clothes. Potential for money. Maybe.
If you did make a "black" character and they got a new fancy business suit it would also work on white guy! Heck you could even show promo art of the suit with a white guy standing next to the dark guy, or a toon when those come out! But if you make the black guy nearly 2 years after the launch of Micheal, sure the suit market may be over saturated by then...why did you wait? If there is that much of a lack of interest, don't waste time with a "figure". I don't want some sub-Sahara African kit. Vast majority of people who want dark people don't need that. You need to understand how niche that is, and that many Artists just want to put brown people in other settings.
You don't need an all white Micheal 7 (or v7). Micheal Jordan is blackish, Micheal Jackson was whitish. RIP, but lets joke a bit OK? I might be wrong but I thought Freak 5 pro came with a black variant? Those Freak dudes were all able to use the same morphs and clothes. Can't a dark or Asian gal wear V7/Eva clothes?
Personally I can't understand why it isn't feasible to just encourage a few ethnic characters early (not figures, just secondary support materials and shapes for the flagship characters like V7 or Eva) and return to the old days of packs of Ethnic morphs. I know for the Generation 4 figures I never had a "black" or Asian Daz flagship figure. I had ethnicity morphs. I bought from a handful of carefully crafted ethnic skins on the market. For Generation 1 Genesis(G5) it was the same. We had no Darius or what's her face. We had skins for Stephanie that were dark though. Back then I never even thought to complain. Because V4 UVs were always a reliable fallback texture.
For how many generations did we survive without a dedicated watered down mixed Asian or incredibly specific "African" character?
The massive difference with Generation 3 Genesis, is our old MATERIALS NO LONGER WORK. While someone may be able to use Marie from V4 on Genesis, or Genesis 2. This no longer applies. And if you look at DeviantArt you may notice Marie Elite was probably the MOST popular black (Haitian) skin ever crafted for a Daz figure. We don't have that for V7 and based on history we won't for another 16 months, if we are lucky to ever get someone that amazing. Cause it takes several brown textures to come out before one of them actually looks right.
...Genesis and G2 have a full set of ethnic morphs, it would only make sense that such is also provided for G3. What gets me is why just no Genesis/G2/G3 skin sets that would work with the morphs? Again these were available for Gen4.
Apologies for the slight tangent.
Design Anvil, I do want to convey to you that we do understand the dilemma that merchants have in the store partly dealing with a world market. Realistically, Daz3d mirrors the digital world which is is rather monoculture and unfamiliar with how varied the world's population is. I do think there are some common threads from everyone's comments that would be helpful for the creators to understand. Daz3d's characters fit roughly into two categories: the stylized fantasy characters and the realistic generic characters. Victoria and Moninique are the "girl next door" who might be a supermodel or superhero and Micheal, Lee, and Darius are just normal guys. For most of these characters, the bundles include everyday clothes, swimwear, some fantasy and science fiction outfit and some hair. They thus are sortt of the scaffold of scenes such as the knight who fights the dragon, the astronaut etc... The stylized characters get stylized bundles which are heavily themed such as Aiko and her anime products. Where it becomes troubling is when someone like Lee is treated like like Hiro with tons of fantasy ethnic gard which is strange considering Lee is probably the closest thing to a generic human male in the store (7 out of 10 people in the world live in Asia) and more people who look like Lee wear jeans, tee shirt and trainers than all the poeople in Europe put together. It is a hard slog expaining that people of other races are not exotics.
That being said, most of the buying audience of Daz3d is probably in Europe and the US and buy ethnic characters as a novelty and the novelty factor gets pushed to 11. For someone like me, it is confusing that there are people in DAZ's audience who get enraged about errors in armor or boot heels but don't notice that ethnic clothing (Lee's in particular) is wildly inaccurate. Someone mentioned how glad they were to see a depiction of voodoon in the products; there have been products like those since victoria 3 and many remain in the store. The question is how to move characters how merely differ by having different features and skin hue from being treated as a novelty (with the limited product selection and short shelf life associated with novelty; I don't expect tons on Nineve products in the coming year) and treat more like the generic figures they are. One thing I would like is that creators use the characters as generics from time to time. You have a superhero costume, no reason that Monique can't model it as well as Victoria.
I realize there has been a running assumption that you are not from America and I just checked....so I give you this story.... There is the popular doll, Barbie, made by Mattel, a US toy company.... In the sixties by the middle of the civil rights movement, there was clamor a doll for black girls. Mattel created Christie, Barbie's friend. Christie languished because she was merely an accesory to Barbie and not an equal. Eventually, Mattel figured out that you could make Barbie and Ken in different ethnicies and a star was born. So, think of Darius as another flavor of Michael and Monique as another flavor of Victoria.
I for one didn't like Mei Lin or Lee's confusing products. I chose not to speak as I bought neither. China and Japan are not the same..but their packs made it seem so. I don't panic over fantasy blends of real world inspiration. Like I said earliler, boob windows don't make me flip out. But you can easily see how they were "mix blend generic Asian" and I wasn't a fan.
Darius showed that dark men are voodoo doctors. Even if that's not the case. If they would have accidentially mixed African, Creole and COMMON AMERICAN into Darius maybe I would not have been annoyed.
If as you say, most buyers are Eurpean or American, as I think as well, why not demonstrate that? Or do the people in Utah not see dark people in thier town? They should visit New York, Atlanta, the Black Danes or Black English. Or I could show them what I know of Black Indians. :) Wouldn not sell. Cause I can't do naked Black Indians. I have only a few rules *chuckles*
That's a great post, but I can particularly relate to this last part. The character that I use in almost all of my serious renders uses the Elite Marie texture. I've bought other black textures and none were as good as that one.
Being unable to use her on Genesis 3 means I will have to stick with Genesis 2 at least until we get a texture similar enough to replace it. If DAZ wants to get people using Genesis 3, wouldn't it make sense to put out content that would make it easier for Genesis 2 users to make the switch? If we really do not get a good black skin texture for 16 months, that's 16 months that at least one customer (me) won't be all that interested in buying anything for Genesis 3. A lot of us *want* to jump right in with Genesis 3, but just can't until we get specific content. That's why the call for a variety of content right off the bat would seem to be a smart plan.
I actually rarely use Mei-lin or Monique.I do use Darius and Lee, base.
I don't think there needs to be an ethnic base. Would rather have an asian morph V6,. Black morphed M6.
I think unless the morph is extreme, the whole idea of the base defeats the purpose of having a versatile genesis figure.
Good posts, I am listening.
Though it does seem that the solutions your suggesting while sensible and plausible, do seem a little to broadly focused to actually be practically bought into kind of effect. So we can agree that the points are relevent and are valid concerns, that doesn't really mean we will see any form of change from them. Or some points seem more driven from what is needed or wanted as an individual rather then from an ethical or sensitivity stand point. Most do seem like they are further expanding on defining the problem and less into defining any potential solutions.
So a little like saying we can get rid of war, if we all just love each other a little more and be a bit more considerate of each other. Sounds easy but almost impossible to realise in reality. If we "all" sounds a lot like herding cats.
"The question is how to move characters who merely differ by having different features and skin hue from being treated as a novelty (with the limited product selection and short shelf life associated with novelty; I don't expect tons on Nineve products in the coming year) and treated more like the generic figures they are." Can you expand more on this?
Also Lars what is that you mean by "COMMON AMERICAN" I'm not familiar with the expression, I did a google search but nothing came up?
Something else to consider is that as a business Daz is probably unlikely to implement broad change based solely on an ethical issue. For example if they were contacted by a group complaining about the weapons, semi-nudity or other morale based issues. Would there be an expectation to implement change to store based on these facets as well?
SnowSultan: I've been using Benjamin for almost all my black characters, men and women. That and skin builder, depending.
Would you still suggest elite marie? How about the Rob as part of Marie/Rob bundle?