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And this is pretty much how it goes for me too. I am past that first year of oh my gosh this stuff is all so awesome and have become far more discerning in my purchases. Although I will admit to a certain weakness for shaders, and beasties, and weapons...
I was once dumb enough to think i could solely create and maintain 3 webcomic series all by my lonesome, of which all had varying genres and thus so did my content (Toon Modern/Sci-Fi, Realistic D&D/Fantasy, Realistic Modern/Fantasy). About 3 or 4 years ago, i abandoned that mentality to just one webcomic series and i attempt to utilize content from the other genres i purchased content for.
But for the things I cant incorporate, i plan to do renders for those genre's in my spare, need a break, downtime.
With all that said, i think i have plenty of content from the Gen3/4 (Not Genesis3, but Generation3 & 4) era and figures to last me a lifetime, and now i only purchase things here and there that is compatible with my rendering app as i also still use the version of DS from that same Gen3 era (DS2.3).
-MJ
Toon Modern/Sci-Fi, Realistic D&D/Fantasy, Realistic Modern/Fantasy
I'd love to see your web comics. I'm doing the same. It is weird though. I started with Midieval and then switched to Sci-fi so I have everything from that period - like three months of intense purchasing to now suddenly need a whole new library. But I'll get back to it.
If I stopped buying now, I'm sure I have enough content to last me a lifetime. I'm admittedly a DAZ-Addict. This is my #1 hobby, and I've gone through a ton of hobbies over the years. I've purchased most of the Genesis 3 character's pro bundles, so I get a lot of content that way I'll never use. I'm getting better at putting things on my wishlist though.
J
You can always have a series that runs in two time zones parallel, so to speak, where the past sets up the present. It's interesting in so far as your audience will know the outcomeof the Major events (because it's the present of the scifi one), but still will wonder just how they ended up there.
That said, I also have entirely too much content. I do test out things I buy after I buy them, and also do renders (because of DAZ 30 Day guarantee), but some content waits longer than other before being used again.
All I'll admit to is that twice in the last week I've thought that the sale could mean a cheap price for products I've been meaning to purchase for renders that I've had in the back of my mind for a while, only to find I owned both items already and have absolutely no memory of buying either of them. Neither of them were necessary enough or desirable enough to make my wishlist, but I'd have thought I'd have some idea that I had them!
If I buy something as a standalone asset, I will almost certainly use it in a render. If I buy something as part of a bundle, the odds of me using a specific asset drop a bit. The odds drop much further if the asset was an interesting-looking-at-the-time freebie.
I didn't use every pastel in my box in every drawing I made when I was sketching, so I don't use every asset I use in rendering all the time either. I might download an asset, use it in a render immediately and then not revisit that asset again for many months.
Well, its not web comicS, just a single web comic. I liked the idea of the Toon Modern/Sci-Fi one the most, and it was also the one most "developed", so thats the only one im doing now. The first issue was released late last year and so far has been well received. You can find it here at: http://www.DominoChronicles.com If you like it, please leave a comment and dont forget to subscribe.
-MJ
There's a good chance my acquisitions will always outpace my usage because I'm constantly buying things for renders I'm planning while they're on sale, yet I don't have all the items I need. I keep a Moleskin notebook of all the ideas I want to do, and the ideas keep coming while I'm getting the items piecemeal.
Funny I can remember also the time I thought I'd run out of ideas.
I don't even want to try to figure it out. I have over 8000 items just from DAZ in my runtimes and until recently I was only turning out 10 or so new finished renders a month, so it's going to be ridiculously low...
I try to only buy what I feel I can or will use in the near future. And then a good offer comes along and I'm cleaning out the store of everything that could potentially be used in a post-apocalyptic render just because it's on sale. It's amazing, though, how you can have all of that content, and none of it is ever "right" for the mood of the moment. So back to the store I go looking for what jumps out at me as that ah-hah item.
I can say no to all of the fantasy items and binkinis without thinking twice, but throw me a vehicle that looks like it came out of Mad Max, and my credit card will scream in terror at how fast it was whipped out of my wallet.
I've probably rendered about 1% of what I own LOL. I buy a lot of stuff in deep sales "in case" I need them and before I buy something, I imagine what I'd do with it, and my subconscious mind thinks I've already created it, but it's just in my head... I have products from like 5 different stores, some not even installed. I have to just start saying no! I'm not buying any more sets or environments because I just can't render them without NVIDIA capable machines. So I'm sticking only to characters, props, hair and clothes which I already have a ton of!
About half of what I buy gets loaded once to be sure everything is where it should be, and then languishes on my HD ... just in case. (I have a lot of sci-Fi stuff that way. I don't write Sci-Fi, I don't run Sci-Fi games, so unless I'm playing in one, they don't get used.)
The other half actually was purchased with a project in mind, though even then only about half my projects that require that sort of planning actually make it to fully rendered and posted.
We will not discuss my Freebie Downloads folder... :)
You can find here at: http://www.DominoChronicles.com If you like it, please leave a comment and dont forget to subscribe.
Subscribed. Very cool. (check my stuff(s) too
I've probably rendered about 1% of what I own LOL.
I almost want to start a new thread.
Does everyone render scenes based on WHAT'S SOLD on Daz that's worth making a creative vision for, or
Does everyone have a favorite genre OUTSIDE of DAZ and mostly stick to one theme?
Like Mika is ELF/lord of the rings..so fantasy would be the thing....
Others seem to like horror and there's probably a wave that does work by comission and buy whatever they need.
And another group seems to do almost no artistic rendering but focus on commerical art.
Greetings,
_whew_ I was afraid I was going to be the only person who came back with a tiny percentage. At the MOST, I've used ~2% of the products I've bought.
I have two deeply consuming hobbies (programming (which is also my day job) and 3D rendering), and the first makes money for the second. Unfortunately I also have (and love all of) a full time job, two kids, and a spouse, so time to create scenes ends up...falling by the wayside. :( I can browse the store from anywhere, get excited about items and buy them, but building an actual scene takes hours of uninterrupted time to get all the details right. I recently bought an nVidia 1080 specifically so that my turnaround time between 'try' and 'see' is faster, so I can do more with the epic amount of items I have. I have 30% of the DAZ store according to the 'Hide Items I Own' feature, and I only started with Genesis. Without a huge amount of free time to dedicate to building scenes, it's pretty much impossible to render more than a few percent of the items.
So why buy more? Why HAVE so many?
(There's a joke about Microsoft word, that no users use more than 10% of its capabilities...but no two users use exactly the same 10%, which is why it continues to have all the features in the world.)
Because I can't predict which 1-2% of items I'm going to need. My partner wanted to build a book cover with a girl in a library wearing a kimono and jeans, with a stuffed bear familiar, casting a spell. I was able to pull together all the pieces almost trivially. I'm proud of that; that if someone can imagine a scene, I can have almost everything to at least approximate it available almost instantly.
I am constrained far more by the interface used to FIND my content than the content itself. I've been considering applying my first hobby to that, and trying to use the file names plus some ontological databases to allow me to search for 'toys' or 'balls' and get back everything that has a 'baseball' object, or other stuff like that. Building cool tools like that also takes away from time spent doing images, but I love programming, so it's all time well spent. :)
-- Morgan
At least I now know I'm not the only one that collects cool stuff that I may not ever use
My purchased runtime is around 2000, not includingthe freebies I collect with only some discrimination. Over the last 6 months, I have decided to only purchase stuff from DAZ where the paid price is over 50% less than list price. That has reduced my purchases greatly!! As one of the long time threads is titled: There's always another Sale at DAZ
Now to have more time to use all those cool products.
While I try to strategize, I do go into aggressive sales, counting on possibly using it down the road.
And there have been a few times where I find myself in dire need of a type of content, and thankfully that sale a year ago provided.
This. This is what I do. It turns out that limiting myself to genres I'm actively writing in (woodland fantasy and urban fantasy) does very little to help, for all practical purposes. I have many kinds of wings produced pre-2017. But lo, I now also have 2 pairs of Genesis 3 feathered wings and 3 pairs of fairy wings for same. In my search for the perfect fairy tale cottage, I've now got many different varieties. I suppose the main benefit is that I do eventually run out of back catalog to buy but it doesn't save me from new releases.
And one day I will write some scifi and/or steampunk and then the back catalog will be there again and my catalog will _grow_.
I generally try to use anything I paid more than $3 for within a couple of months, at least for experimental renders. I have SO MUCH stuff I got on big discount though. I picked up stuff during the PC+ sale I'm not sure I'll ever load. And if I got a bundle I may only use one item from the bundle. Like... I've used the Daz Horse but not any of the stuff that came with it.
Actually, I did already. I really liked "The Annihilators". Good Luck with your projects.
As for me, all my purchases are for my current Webcomic. I have enough content to cover any other genre I may decide I want to make a render for, so no need to purchase anything additional for those purposes.
-MJ
For the past several years I've been quite ...... ummmm .... maybe thoughtful is the right word with regard to my purchases. I've never had that much to spend on the DAZ/Poser hobby, so I haven't bought that much anyway. I just looked at my product library, and have a total of 2080 items (includes everything, even free items), so obviously I'm a real light weight compared to others (especially when you consider that includes all the free stuff from joining the PC, and being a PC member for 12+ years). But that does average out to over 170 items per year
Anyway, I noticed several years back that I had all this stuff in my runtime, but repeatedly didn't have what I needed (wanted) to use to create the image I was working on. That was when I realized I was getting things that were inexpensive, looked great, and I might use some day. But many of these items didn't fit with what I like to render. After evaluating what I had, and my buying habits, I realized that the whole "might use someday" notion was more like "will probably never use". So I started to focus my purchasing more on items that I could say "I will use it". I still buy some might use items, but they are things that come in bundles, or something that gives me a ridiculous discount on something I will use.
Just for grins, I went through my G3F cloths to see how I'm doing, especially with all the great sales lately. But first, ya'll go ta promise not ta snicker too much at how little I have!! So out of the 27 clothing items, 7 I got as freebies, 4 came with the V7 Pro bundle (which I got for $6 and change, and passed on originally because the clothing was in the "I might use" category), and 3 with other offers (where I was interested in the other item, but these I "might" use someday). Out of the 27 items, I've use 16 in final renders, 3 more are being used in images I'm working on, and 3 I just got in MM and haven't had time to use them yet, but I definitely will use them. So that's 60% I have used in a final render, %70 if you include the projects I'm working on, and 81.5% if you include the items I picked upp that I definitely will use. I'm happy with those figure, because the freebies are 27% of them.
Now it won't be quite as good with Genesis or Genesis 2, because I've picked up a lot of freebies recently that are in the "possibly might use some day" category, and I got a bunch of stuff in the PC sale BYOB where I got things for less than a dollar to finish off the bundle, and Pro Bundles that were insanely cheap but had stuff that were of moderate interest. I was surprised to see that I have used 37 out of 56 G2F clothing Items (56%). That was much better than expected since I definitely have much more G2F staff that I may never use from some crazy sale, insanely cheap pro bundle, or freebie give away.
Another reason, other than being "cheap", that I try to only by what I will use, as opposed to what I might use, is I got tired of going through everything trying to find that perfect item for the scene I was working on, only to realize that all this stuff I got that didn't have what I wanted/needed, but did have a lot of stuff I "might" use some time (but probably never will). I do still get caught by something that looks really interesting, and I might just use it, but haven't. I almost got the Mika Pro bundle, but after about the 30th serious look at it last night, I decided not to get it because the clothing was in all in the might probably use category, the hair was a maybe I'd use it someday category, and Mika and one of the characters were in the probably would use category (with other figures/morphs), so I decided I better wait to see if anything else comes up in the will use category. I may kick myself later for not getting it at such a great discount, but hopefully I won't (kinda waiting for the new Medieval Interior Construction Kit by Faveral to come out).
I don't like to think how much stuff I've got that I've never used. When I started using Poser, years ago, I was always trying to create scenes and finding I didn't have some prop, set or clothes that I needed. I think that started me buying stuff so I had a wide selection of things to cover all sorts of scenes. I really ought to slow down now but there is always one more thing that I just have to have.
I suppose one solution would be to improve my modelling skills so I can make the stuff I need. It would take more time but it might be more fun as well. Of course I'll probably be banned from Daz forums for suggesting this
Actually there are quite a few of us who are trying to learn to model ourselves. Some great threads in the Carrara side of hte forums and a new Blender thread in the Art Studio forus if you want to have a look.
Hi, I'a Jazzy Bear, and I am a DAZaholic. Damn this thread! LOL
I have about 9000 items, about 100 renders averaging 4.5 items so just 5%!
Surprisingly I stick to just a few niches, but my average purchase price is just 20%... I guess I am addicted to killer deals.
I am trying to move to making money with renders, but as we all know that takes a while starting from scratch.
It's amazing how a brand new item will spark my imagination more than the 2000+ items I already own.
I am amazed at people that have managed to use 80-90% of their content. I have created roughly a couple of hundred commercial renders I have needed in the past year or so, and I reckon I have used 10-20% of my products at best. Even the products I have used, I have likely only used a small amount of some of them. Some products contain 100 or so props, and it would be impressive if anyone has used all of them. The renders I create tend to be varied, not a web comic or the like, so they do use a good variety of stuff, but it is still only a small percentage of what I have in the library.
Like many others here I tend to buy when things are cheap (often super cheap), with the belief it "may" be useful in the future. I sometimes wonder if I had only bought what I had actually used at full price whether the total would be less than everything that I bought cheap to "save money".
What I would say is that a lot of what I have not used are freebies, or stuff I picked up for less than a dollar. Most of my more expensive purchases (say $8 and above) are included in the percentage of stuff I have used. The Mec4D IRay shaders I use in almost every render.
Hi I am surprised at the candor in this thread.
If every casual Daz user only purchased items they planned on using Daz's actual business model could not work.
Frankly ALL of the marketing and sales are designed to appeal to the "impulse buyer",this is the only way they could do enough volume to justify the low prices of their relatively decent quality 3d model content.
Add up the actual cost of all of that unused digital hoard
you own and compare it to the seemingly "outrageous" cost of some$400 dollar FBX rig file of a female model on turbosquid or similar.
The difference is that the person who pays for the $400 FBX rig
Likely had a specific paid project/game/animation for which he was going to deploy that asset.
He was not just buying it because: wow!! someone actually did a decent latin,asian female model etc. and it will "add Variety" to his still web gallery art
I had an animation client who wanted a highly detailed model of a skateboard who paid over $300 for it just so Icould use it in in animation of a simulated video game sequence in a live action film.
of course Daz could never sell a Skateboard model for that much but it simply a different usage & economy of scale.
I've been buying from DAZ3D since 1999. In almost two decades, I've made very few decent renders. I've made a few silly ones. But I've used only a small percentage of my actual purchaes.
Wow. I think you might be me! I could have written every word of that, but the bit in bold especially.
In addition, I've got things that I know will never see the light of day now because they've been replaced by something better before I've even got round to using them. M4's business suit springs to mind. I think I bought it with every addon for it in a sale, and then only used a part of it once (and hated the result so much that I scrapped the render!). These days I can wait ages for M4 and his loader thingys to dump him on my screen, find the the geometry for his suit and then eventually find the mats for it in another folder half a mile away, then resurface it all with the iRay uber shader. Or I can just load up an iRay-ready G3M, stick his iRay-ready suit on him and I'm ready to go. That M4 suit and all the items associated with it are so never going to get used again (or at all). Like you, though I use Mec 4D's iRay shaders in almost every render so the price-per-use must be next to nothing now, and I have other favourites who are doing there best to redress any waste of money on the product library front. Looking at the size of it though, it might be a long haul :)
Oh... oh dear. I wasn't buying any sci-fi... but somehow I spent $35 on 9 items (at 2am no less) and 3 of them were spaceship sets. But they cost me $0 if I had 3 new releases! But I had to buy a very old set to make one of the new releases usable. It was Asian! Also not among my genres!
(But I'll probably load them all up today. I notice that some of you seem more discriminating than I am re: what counts as a render? I have much less than 100 available publicly but my render library is full of test renders, sketches, 'digital stock photos' and that doesn't include the hundreds of renders I dump unsaved because I just wanted to experiment with shaders or light or kitbashing... or do people with low utilization not even do those?)
Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in my runtime I bought because when I was looking for something specific, and someone inevitably suggests some product that came out for M4, or something around that time that I relented and bought, and then either found that it took too much trouble to try to fit into my current workflow, I simply didn't possess the skills and the apps in order to make it work, or the quality was incredibly bad. I really wish people would stop doing that.