[RANT] Sick and tired of the lack of support from daz!
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Wanting realistic 3DL renders isn't 'emulating Iray' -- Iray didn't invent realism.
Personally, I use and like both. There are advantages to each over the other.
I guess that in some way might be part of it with me, I am unimpressed with G3. I find that it doesn't look as well and in my opinion doesn't bend as well as G2 does. For what I am doing 3DLite works perfectly for me and hence my question about lack of support for it and other programs sold by daz. It just seems all anyone wants to latch onto is the render engine part of this.
I don't mind vendors not supporting 3DL so much as the lack of development of stuff in 3DL. Like, I'd love to see AoA lights' flagging fixed. Or some new shaders or shader updates to handle a few things 3DL doesn't handle well (like, seriously, refractive transparent substance with SSS... argh).
I'd also love to see shaders updated to incorporate good ideas, like independently tileable textures. (There is a shader that does that, but then you are forced to choose between shaders that do one thing vs. another)
Much like the arrival of Barbie's Ken look-a-like M7 has knocked most of the chances of much new appearing for M6 on the head. Thankfully my bank account thinks this is a whole lot less tragic than I do :) When Daz starts moving in a direction different to the one that they've already persuaded me to spend a ton of cash on, I just start thinking of it as a separate thing that's different to what's gone before and make do with what I've got. I'm not about to knock myself out to keep up with it any more than I'd buy in if they suddenly announced we needed to protect M7's wooden looks with a hefty coat of creosote.
I suppose the market will decide at the end of the day, but even in an industry where it couldn't be easier to collect and analyse data, it doesnt take much to read the market wrong. Just ask Beenz, Yahho Auctions, Friends Reunited etc. I don't think it would hurt for Daz to keep their hand in a bit with customers who don't just want the latest and greatest. Daz can only make assumptions about their motives, and they might not be what they seem.
EXACTLY my point of this rant!! A lot of us have purchased items in good faith that they would continue to work as long as 3DLite and Studio were around. Items that daz no longer supports, or updates. That is the whole reason for this rant not just render engines!
I've been watching this thread and I've been biting my tongue but I'm starting to bleed.
The motivation is to sell. DAZ wants to sell, the PAs want to sell. The old DAZ company bought up a bunch of competitor's products perhaps with grand plans of making them all work together but quickly found out that the old products had flaws that were expensive to upgrade. (a rusty Volkswagon beetle doesn't replace a new Lexus minivan) The new DAZ seems to have very little interest in a fleet of old Volkswagons and now seems to just keep them in the shop window for show. The new DAZ Studio is actually quite an awesome product for what it does, but DAZ gives it away so they have to keep people buying new content. In order to keep people buying new content they have to have some scheme to stay fresh. What better way to stay fresh than periodically change the base product so that we are tempted to re-buy much of what we already have. The new Iray rendering technology has its advantages. One of which is that it provides yet another opening for new demand. I don't expect 3Delight support to improve by DAZ or the PA's. Time marches on.
However, as an old-timer here I've grown tired of the changes and refuse to play the game anymore. I have no need for more realism I have a library that will keep me busy for years to come if I can keep my current DAZ applications running, because I'm not moving beyond Studio4.8 or my current copies of Carrara, Bryce and Hexagon.
I do understand that it's the new timers and the professionals that DAZ seems to be targeting. Fine. Time marches on. The newbies still have closets to fill. The professionals now have new tools with which to hone their craft. But there are a lot of us old-timers who are unwilling to re-program their brains and build new closets and throw more money at DAZ.
This is a relatively closed market. At some point, technology and selling gimmicks are going to be hard pressed to keep this train running. But until then we can expect to see continued marketing decisions that may not please us old-timers. I've given up ranting about it and have stopped buying into the new stuff. I don't expect my absence to mean squat to DAZ, I'm just watching the show and poking it with a stick now and then to see if it still breathes.
Tongue bandaged!
Well said Walt and my feelings exactly! I don't use either as I render in Luxrender and Octane so I ALWAYS have to tweak textures for every render, so I don't get the issue. If a product comes with actual textures, it will work in either renderer with some tweaking. There are quite a few products that use DS specific plugins i can't use such as LIE, but I don't complain, just try to find another solution or another product.
I honestly feel many here have become too reliant on plug and play and as such are lost when it comes to figuring out other options that are not plug and play.
How... how is purchasing encrypted data that is instantly unencrypted on demand a violation of freedom of expression? How is that any different in practical usage to unencrypted data?
Ha! Sorry, we're bitching about the artists, my mistake.
Yeah, c'mon you feckless artists, why haven't you made the exact perfect character yet? You know, the one I'm thinking about, but give you no clues or feedback on what they look like. You're not even trying.
They're hardly in the shop window; you have to know about them first just to search for them. A newcomer to DAZ and 3D would probably never come across the VW Carrara and the VW Bryce, unless they searched the store by popularity. For, bizarrely, those two are always near the top. Bless 'em.
Much more elegant.
You made me smile..lol +1
I understand what you are saying Gryphon, but I guess that I am seeing an option others are not so I will explain. There are plenty of PA's that were outstanding 3DLite shader makers, why not have daz contract THEM to make the 3DLite shaders to keep bothThat way the PA's that don't wish to support 3DLite are not being forced to and allow those that wish to support it to continue supporting it?
I haven't used Bryce since 2003,last I checked the render still hadn't finished
Alright, I'm through biting my tongue on this too.
Why does Sony no longer make games for the original Playstation? Why does Microsoft no longer support Windows XP? Because time and progress march on. Because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If no one is buying anything for Bryce or Hexagon or there's a whole dozen of us who actually use Powerpose, they're obviously not going to get any attention - and frankly, it's a waste of creator time if almost no one will make use of it or result in profits for the PA and/or DAZ.
I will never understand threads like this, they always come across as "you shouldn't change because I personally don't like it".
As for Iray, it's just more progress. I was reluctant to make the switch myself, but you're familiar with my work and I don't use Iray for attempts at photorealism. We're still not getting *true* Iray materials with most products anyway; we're getting conversions of 3Delight ones that give similar results. Most PAs don't have the time to make two complete sets of shaders optimized for each rendering method, so they're likely going with the one that research says customers are most interested in.
I disagree with your last statement Snow. They are buying thembecause they are NEW and there aren;t many out there. The market is quickly getting flooded with them and you are going to see them slow like Poser Shaders and 3DLite shaders did as the market reaces saturation point. that is all we are seeing right now, the intial flood of new items.
Who was it who said, "talk software and carry a big stick"? Ah yes, Chohole, I think it was...
No I don't think this will be a fad or reach a saturation point because Iray is the new standard for DAZ Studio. It's renderer, surface, and light behavior are core parts of the program now and it's essential that Iray support actually increase.
If you're talking about shader sets int the store reaching a saturation point, that's possible. Lots of people are going to adjust glossiness settings and package something up as an "Iray shader". However, optimized Iray shader support for products (and perhaps PBR if possible) is something we need more of.
Who me?
:D :D :D
ROFL!!!!!!
The difference between this situation and Windows NT is that Daz is still selling Hexagon and other content in the store and 3DL is still ostensibly supported.
Microsoft, on the other hand, makes it very clear that new versions are where their focus is.
I mean, consider DS 4.6. Daz makes no bones about the fact that they don't actively support prior versions of their software. And while some folks might be frustrated, nobody is particularly surprised or confounded by this.
But 3DL, Hexagon, Carrara, Bryce? We can GUESS they won't update them, but ... they haven't officially said that.
There were several of we Brycers that did enter that huge StoneMason contest a year or so back, and some even won prizes. We actually find SM stuff goes into Bryce easily, or it used to. Which was one reason we asked SM to proved OBJs, which he has done, Thank you SM.
Enchanted Forest in Bryce, render time, not very long.
I was under the impression that 3DL was updated in both 4.8 and 4.9. However the last updates for Bryce and Hexagon were years ago, and I would be surprised if they were updated again.
I can't understand why anyone would find this confusing. Iray does realistic renders and 3delight has a more painterly artistic light. I do both but on balance prefer 3delight. I suppose if we got stuck with only Iray then we could treat our pictures with Topaz Impression instead but I hope they keep doing both.
I like it when products support both. Primarily because my workflow currently is set up the scene in 3DL, render, change surfaces to Iray, render, composite and postwork in GIMP for a nicely lit, nicely colored, painterly final image.
As of yet, I haven't had to re-build something from Iray for 3DL, but I know that day will come. And I plan to deal with it, because I know that despite my lack of interest in photorealisim, I'm in the minority. I know that some PA's will decide that if they can't get it looking nearly the same in both, it's not worth it (Note to those PA's - Most people don't actually expect it to look the same in both, and while I don't want the 3DL settings to be half-a****, I don't need them to be as aweseomely photoreal as the Iray settings. I'm aiming for Pixar, not ILM.) Some will just not choose to do 3DL because that doesn't suit their vision for the product. And some just won't think the extra sales are worth the extra time.
All I ask is that the PA of whatever product that ends up being have labled their image maps clearly enough so that I can figure out where to put everything. :)
Edit to answer this:
I can only speak for myself on this, but honestly? Yes, the PA's are trying to do more than I want out of 3DL. They actually have been for a while. I don't use the HSS/UberShader if I don't have to - because I don't need or want that level of Realisim. I'll often "reset" HSS/Ubershader to Daz Default or AoA Subsurface and then re-assign the texture maps.
What I'm looking for is a painterly realisim look with a minimum of postwork, and most of that post work to be easily repeatable with few variables to maintain a similar look between images. Not toon. I'm actually not interested in toon that much. But not photoreal either.
3Delight is still supported by Daz3D in Daz Studio. However, as its already been pointed out, the PAs have a choice as to what all we support in our sets and what we dont. Daz3D does not force us to do these things though they can make suggestions. We are their business partners, not their employees. This is a business, as content creators who have bills to pay and need food to eat, it is in our best interest to do what is most profitable in a reasonable amount of time. But we dont try to please everyone as that is completely futile.
This is precicely why I like 3DL. When I do render I prefer it to be toon renders.
I like that Iray makes my chibi figure look like it's a plastic toy figure. It's kinda cute. Lighting is a bit of a pain in the ass with Iray though. It took my awhile just to figure out how to get the lighting at render to match what the lighting in the preview panel is.
Let me see if I understand the OP's issue... He would like for 3Delight materials to be required for all products in the Daz store. He is not looking for realistic renders from 3Delight. He just wants materials provided, rather than convert the Iray materials himself. He would like PAs to make some unrealistic 3Delight materials rather than try to make realistic materials because he prefers a different style of rendering. I would like to point out that, if I'm going to spend days making 3Delight materials for my products, I am going to try to make them look as close to the Iray materials as I can, so that users of either render engine will get the same look that the product intended from the beginning. I won't spend the time providing an "unrealistic" version of my materials for a small handful of people that prefer that look, but don't want to learn to convert the materials themselves. I'm sure that last statement might have sounded rude, but that's not my intention. I just don't know another way to phrase it. Honestly, if you want to use 3Delight, it makes perfect sense to me that you continue to use it. However, getting frustrated with Daz or PAs because they are not providing you with these materials is not productive. I'm pretty sure I am the PA that Cris Palomino was referring to on Page 1, and I did finally make some very nice 3Delight materials for the current project. I will continue to try to do that, despite the frustration I feel when trying to make the textures look as good as they do in 3Delight. But, I will NOT provide 3Delight materials if they do not meet my own standards simply for the sake of having some presets in the content library. It is not that difficult to convert an Iray material to a 3Delight material if you are not concerned with a realistic look. You can do that quite easily on your own. I use "you" as a third person pronoun, not "you" as in the OP directly.