No encrypted for me.
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Thank you! THAT is exactly what I needed to know. I am in process of backing up 4.8 on my pc now (had to split it in half to get it to fit lol) It shoudl be done in another 5 hours or so.
Any clear answear here?So we can blacklist and stop paying vendors who agreed selling their content through a way that is insulting to their customers?
It was this thread, the general release, a page or two back, this post.
The biggest problem with almost every drm solution is that it ultimately seves to punish the honest people more than those who pirate. Odds are pretty high that this drm will only be a modest barrier to piracy. The moment they figure it out, they will keep on pirating away, while the honest people are still saddled with a drm scheme that prevents them from doing a number of things they should be able to do with the content they rightfully purchased (as has been described numerous times here.)
Secondly, there has never been a single conclusive study that shows exactly how much money is lost to piracy. There is no way to know. There are certainly people out there who think anything on the internet can be gotten for free, and I've met people like that. But these people also never bought anything at all, and I think the vast majority of pirates fit that catagory. They wouldn't be buyers to begin with, and therefor are not lost sales. There are also a lot of people who pirate different software as a demo, and well, Daz has no demos of their paid products (of course, I know there is no practical way of doing so, but still.) So a number of those pirated copies can very well end up being paid for copies. If they don't like a product, they delete it, or never use it again. I've ran into people like this, too. If you look at some of the stuff out there in the wild, you'll often see it say that, "Buy it if you like it!" Is that something a real pirate would say?
I will always believe that quality products will sell. If people enjoy a product, it will be rewarded with sales. To be frank, if you find a lot of people are pirating your product and you have very low sales, then perhaps you need a better product. That can be a tough pill to swallow, but that is how it is, and no form of drm would help that situation.
There is no such thing as "good" drm. Some of them may be less intrusive, but they always cause a problem to honest people at some point. I have 300+ games in my Steam account, which is possibly one of the more successful forms of drm out there. However, there have been a few times when my internet connection went down suddenly (its always a surprise, who expects their internet to die???) and I get locked out. In Steam, you have to sign in first and then enable offline mode. Thus if your internet dies suddenly, you do not have the chance to enable offline mode. Some games will keep working, they don't have drm. But some games do use Steam as drm, and require you to sign in to Steam before playing. I was unable to touch these games while my internet was out. Would Daz Connect do this as well? When it says I must log in ONE time, does that mean each time I open Daz? So if my internet died before I could open up Daz, am I locked out of the drm (Daz Connect) locked products?
Now you may ask if I don't like drm, why do I have so many games on Steam? Because I never buy them full price, I never have. I wait for the big sales on Steam and other sites. I also have a bunch of games that came in bundles from places like Humble, sometimes 10 for a $1. Those can really build a library fast. Anyway, that is exactly how Steam was able to win people over. If you recall, the PC gaming industry was disasterous for a number of years, with analysts predicting the death of PC gaming entirely. Why was PC gaming dying? Well, in large part due to the insane drm publishers tried doing. Steam changed that, and they did so with their sales. But also, aside from the sales, Steam drm is amung the least intrusive drm schemes out there. Less is always more. Plus I admit I do lower my standards a bit when stuff gets dirt cheap. It is also important to note that GOG is a very well respected game seller, with no drm on anything they sell, and guess what? They have become extremely successful. They have their own game studio, and their recent Witcher 3 game was a hit, selling millions of copies, all while being drm free. It was one of the biggest games of 2015. GOG is living proof that quality will always sell. And more game publishers are starting to warm up to this crazy idea and put their catalogs on GOG. I do believe that Daz has a little bit of this problem. It isn't that your new products are bad, but that your old products are still very good. If there is a decline in sales, it quite likely is because the newer stuff simply isn't different enough from the older stuff, and to make matters worse, it isn't all compatible. That part drives me bananas. And unlike say, games, there isn't a story or something like that to drive the sales of sequel products on Daz. Daz products are simply assets. How many figures does a person really need? And lets be honest, some venders have a lot of very similar looking figures, just by looking at their store pages. I really think that going forward, Daz needs to look at more than just 2d art, like that Morph3d thing you have on the side. That seriously should be more integrated with Daz. I know, I know, that isn't what you want, but I think it would be HUGE for Daz to have rigged and ready to rock figures in the future, like Genesis 4 could be more "game ready" than any previous gen. It would certainly be more successful than Morph3d will ever be, even if the figures are exactly the same. Why? Because Daz is the better known name, it has a history, and you wouldn't need another account to buy them. I'd buy that in a heartbeat (assuming it wasn't stupid expensive)...and then mod it into some of my games, lol. But this is whole different argument, sorry to get off track a bit.
I also have a question: What about editing textures? I see people cannot edit text files, but I like to edit textures (usually to get rid of painted on shadows that Iray will be taking care of anyway.) Not being able to edit textures would be a massive deal breaker to me.
I would rather pay more to be able to control my content. I've paid thousands of dollars here, so you know that I'm not some kind of thief, the way Daz is now casting us all out to be.
I hit quote to capture what Mike said, don't know how that got in there. Honest, all I did was hit quote to get HIS post! I'll go up and see if I can edit the quote section.
You know, having said that... the more I think about it, the more I think I'd WANT the shader pack I'm hoping to sell protected.
Because it would be trivially simple for just about anyone to copy it and transfer it to others.
Wanting it is fine. Not having a choice is concerning.
Yes. Notably, there are some products I'd be less concerned about and might have more utility leaving open, like models. If you want people to be able to use scripts and do funky things with morphs, clothes, etc...
AFAIR at least some older versions of DS asked if you would let them track your usage and stuff (anonymously), has this feature been removed (don't recall being asked about this in 4.8) ?
Blastedlabs: I'm still torn between selling here or making it free and hoping people donate at Paypal.
I mean, I don't plan on making a living on this, but...
My experience (as limited as it may be - I've never tried to ask for donations) is that if you make some good stuff some people actually offer to donate even if you don't have an option for donations. I like the idea of donations but have no idea how the income compares to selling your stuff (which I have no experience with either, yet).
I manually download and install all my files. Will 4.9 mess up my content folder when it downloads encrypted only content? I've backed up my content folder but it's huge and it would take ages to reinstall if it got messed up. I'm petrified that 4.9 will somehow corrupt my content folder. How can 4.9 tell whether products have already been installed so that it doesn't install encrypted stuff over my manual installations? This is my biggest concern and one that I also had with DIM so I stayed well away from it and carried on manually installing content. If I understand correctly it's no longer possible to avoid the new encrypted system after upgrading to 4.9. Will I still be able to transfer files to iClone via the pipeline? Colour me confused about 4.9!
Whoa...DAZ is committing financial suicide and the vendors may be drinking the kool-aide. My subscription is up in a month fortunately. I'd bet that other content sites are rubbing their hands together.
What no
Encrypted content is part of Connect (but not all of it) which is completely separate to your current stuff. 4.9 doesn't actually have anything to do with your current content. Buying encrypted content also won't make your old content encrypted.
There are super justifiable worries about encrypted content but seriously most of these posts are just misinformed worries who don't read or understand the faq and then spread more misinformation to others.
THIS is the biggest reason DRM is bad. It doesn't matter what the facts are about the changes; only peoples' perception on what those changes mean to them. If it's a hassle or confusing, they'll stop shopping, whether they should have or not (compared to their personal needs.)
Remember there is a FAQ for Daz Connect. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/65509/daz-connect-faq/p1
Greetings,
[...stock justifications and excusing of piracy deleted...]
This, they've addressed. Textures, for various reasons (including it being important to be able to edit them) will apparently not be part of the data that gets encrypted when stored in the data/ directory.
-- Morgan
I don't have a problem with encryption, I do, however, have a problem with using Daz Connect. I hate to create another DazConnect folder just to make things work. You could always encrypt the files and create a manual download. I've purchased $40 worth of product today, taking advance of the 50% sale. I've avoided all three Daz Connect only products eventho I really like two of them. I will continue buying products with the manual download options. I'm using DS4.8 with a custom tailored library system. It took me a year to perfect it. I've all my poser runtimes , my daz runtimes and my DSON runtimes at my finger tip. I'm not about to change any of that for awhile. The newer features on DS 4.9 doesn't really benefit me. I don't use 3Delight, I don't use Iray. I've been using Octane for awhile now. (Iray speed or better skin shader don't really play a signaficant role)
I know it is a business decision for DAZ . I hope them the best of luck. With more restrictive products here, I may be spending more of my money at RDNA or Rendo.
Does Studio 4.8 read files made with studio 4.9?
The official documentation center of DAZ says: Lynsey is a High-Quality, beautiful character for use in Daz Studio 4.8 and up. So far I see no way to use Linsey in 4.8.
You mean this? http://prntscr.com/9ta06v
I've made an enquiry.
Yes, like that.. I would buy products with those choices. In fact, I've bought 7 items today with those choices.
JV
I want nothing to do with encrypted content either.
I'm deeply concerned over DAZ Connect. Seeing the first wave of content going exclusive to DAZ Connect on launch day threw a big red flag for me personally. Encryption throws a big wrench into my current pipelines and workflow with other programs; even worse than Genesis 3 already has (with it's incompatibility with Poser 11 Pro etc.)
Content needs to be open for customization and remain interoperable with all of the 3D programs that I have licensed, or it will basically be rendered useless to me by these newfangled encryption and/or obfuscation methods. Any convenience offered by faster incremental updates and installation to a "smarter" content library is lost if I can't read or load the files in other 3D applications and game engines.
Over the past 12 years, I have been a very loyal customer that has paid dearly for licensed content, software, plugins, indie and commercial game developer licenses from DAZ with the intention of having the freedom to use this content more broadly with emerging creative applications, like games and VR. Interoperability with other real-time rendering/game engines and high end animation software is critical.
DIM was a life saver when it came out — DAZ Connect is looking like a death sentence.
@kaleb242
Out of curiousity which other apps are you using .duf files with?
Sentence designed by DAZ legal counsellors. Translation into English:
I am going to bankrupt myself on popcorn.
Kaleb242, I suggest you try the 4.9 Beta to see how the encrypted content works, and how it interferes with your work pipeline. You can easily download some of our already bought items through DAz Connect, and see how they are stored and how the encryption works. Your other content files are not touched by this, as the DC download is installed in its own folder not the regular content structure. To me, it was very helpful to see what is happening first hand, and understand how my workflow was actually influenced.
Even with DRM it would be trivial to copy a shader pack. Just apply and then select save as "Material Preset". An enterprising hacker could even write a script that does this for you.
Texture add on's will suffer the same issue, particularly as all the image files are unecrypted. The products that are harder to rip off will be the morph packs, particularly those with ERC fixes etc for certain shapes, although the basic shape will be copied by selecting save Morph Asset As.
Blacksmith3D reads duf files. When you load a character or material duf, it populates all the correct surfaces, bump maps etc on the figure. Very useful, and it is a program I use a fair bit.
Ask Wilmap in a PM.:)
Interesting.
What are the advantedges in using a .duf format in blacksmith3d over a cr2? As it reads cr2 as well right?