Interactive License?

17810121315

Comments

  • You're kind of missing the point though. The odds are that most people won't finish building anything, however if you know that licensing will prevent you from earning an income if you actually do start making money, it's a good way to stop you dead in your tracks and halt any progress you're making. That's the point. 

    People want to create something that excites them, but they also want the potential to earn a living from it. If you know it's suddenly going to cost you more than you earn (after taxes, other software licensing, distribution, cost of life, etc.. etc..), as soon as you make a penny over $100,000, it changes the nature of the thing from a potentially worthwhile pursuit to an excercise in stupidity (entering into a relationship where you're basically paying for licensing rent on the tools to make your art rather than earning any income from it). 

    Thankfully, there's still iClone and other options, albeit maybe less pretty than DAZ. I'll wait until I hear back from support on the status of Game Dev licenses (whether they're merging Indie and Commercial, or will otherwise allow an upgrade), but short of that, I'll likely abandon DAZ altogether and just go with iClone.

  • CypherFOX said:

    Greetings,

    (yes I am a hobbiest game developer with indie dreams)

    Look...as a hobbyist game dev, don't stress over licensing.  It's so laughably unimportant, I can't even...

    Most folks won't finish building a game.  They. Just. Won't.  It sucks to say it out loud, and EVERY person thinks they're the exception to the rule, but it's true.

    For your first game, instead of anguish over the license changes, just build a small, self-contained game.  Give yourself ~3 months before it MUST be complete.  'I've been working on my first game for years!' is not an excuse.  That's procrastinating, not developing a first game.  If you need to buy more than a few pieces of content, you're trying to do too much in your early games.  Don't even buy the Unity license, if you're using Unity.  Use the free version until you've FINISHED a game; you truly don't need the extra features.  (Once your first game is done, and ready to ship, then you can upgrade to get rid of the splash screen.)

    Games that are fun, are still fun without the content.  I did software development for a game company where this lesson was SEARED into their DNA, after a few spectacular, expensive, beautiful, brilliantly visualized games with innovative technology but relatively dull gameplay nearly destroyed the company.  By the time I came onboard, they had a person whose sole job was to create one to two week prototypes of all new core gameplay ideas using a very simple set of tools and geometric shapes.  If you couldn't show that the core gameplay was fun without ANY additional content, it didn't get past being a one-pager proposal.

    Seriously, don't stress or spend money on a massive library of 3D content until you've NAILED gameplay, AND you've nailed the ability to FINISH.  Getting that first (second, and third!) game to 'done' is SO much harder than dealing with licensing...

    One of my favorite posts on the Unity forums puts this SO much better than I can.  It's worth reading and re-reading on a regular basis.

    --  Morgan

     

    Hey! I really apreciate the comments and the time you take to write it, and I am sorry but Eglish is not my main languaje, so probably I express brong myself

    I must say that I am actually working in game dev companies as programer (unity and unreal engine) with a couple of games in the market.

    When I said hobby with indie dreams I was meaning with my own projects,  but at this point I am using DAZ as a hobby game dev.

    So all what you said is totally true, the problem is just me trying to use and build my asset pipeline realistically. (Technical and money in mind).

  • You're kind of missing the point though. The odds are that most people won't finish building anything, however if you know that licensing will prevent you from earning an income if you actually do start making money, it's a good way to stop you dead in your tracks and halt any progress you're making. That's the point. 

    People want to create something that excites them, but they also want the potential to earn a living from it. If you know it's suddenly going to cost you more than you earn (after taxes, other software licensing, distribution, cost of life, etc.. etc..), as soon as you make a penny over $100,000, it changes the nature of the thing from a potentially worthwhile pursuit to an excercise in stupidity (entering into a relationship where you're basically paying for licensing rent on the tools to make your art rather than earning any income from it). 

    Thankfully, there's still iClone and other options, albeit maybe less pretty than DAZ. I'll wait until I hear back from support on the status of Game Dev licenses (whether they're merging Indie and Commercial, or will otherwise allow an upgrade), but short of that, I'll likely abandon DAZ altogether and just go with iClone.

    Why does the increase in licensing costs have to be an issue? Why is it so important that you pay them out of your own pocket, instead to taking advantage of sites like indigogo or Kickstarter to share the burden?

  • Why does the increase in licensing costs have to be an issue? Why is it so important that you pay them out of your own pocket, instead to taking advantage of sites like indigogo or Kickstarter to share the burden?

    Are you aware that most kickstarter campaigns actually go nowehere? Unless you're an established entity with a long track record (think made AA / AAA games in the past), you're unlikely to get any significant funding.

    The reality is that any passion or artistic pursuit you may have will be self-funded until you start making money from it unless a) you have a legitimate tear-jerker of a personal story ( "I'm dieing of cancer / help me acheive my lifelong dream" ) or b) have a massive social network. The majority of people you know / are connected to will talk up what you're doing, maybe even share it with other people, but few of them will actually contribute anything financially to a kickstarter or indiegogo.

    If you want a successful campaign like that, you have to go full time marketing / promoting it, which means you're spending however months it's up for doing something other than programming or art, and even then will still likely not succeed in getting the funding you want.

    That's the long answer.

    The short answer is this: previously, licensing used to cost $1000-2500 for the commercial license depending on whether you could get it on sale. Now you have to pay $50 per item, which easily can stretch into tens of, or even a hundred thousand, depending on how much content you need / use.

    You're talking a minimum licensing increase of around $9,000 (200 assets) to anywhere in the $100,000 range.

    So yes, something costing $10,000 or $100,000 more to be able to use will most definitely be an issue for 99% of people here. If you have that kind of pocket change, good on you, but most of us don't.

  •  

    Edit: I think I understand now. This part is not specific to the Interactive license but general terms of use about selling in other stores for example (i.e. selling a mod by requiring assets from the DAZ store like a base model). It's in chapters 1.5 and replaced in 3. Thanks, I think you helped me understand it!

    Yeah that was my mistake I should have been more clear. When I said create Tina from Victoria 8 I dd not mean a game character named Tina. I was talking about taking Victoria 8 into zbrush and altering her to sell the new base shape as a character named Tina on the Daz store

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    The thing about Kickstarters is that backers want to see that you have a track record of finishing things. This is where 'making a three room game' comes in handy: it's something to do while polishing your skills and building the connections to make your dream game and it makes the game of your heart more likely to happen, too. You make what you can make on YOUR budget, and you do it well, and you show it off... and then maybe you do it AGAIN... and then you work up a good proof of concept for your big project and you take THAT to Kickstarter or whatever.

    And yeah-- if you feel like you're really going to spend 100k on license fees, you've got a spreadsheet full of assets and how you're going to use them, you can almost certainly take the same proof of concept to Daz and negotiate a bulk rate directly with them.

  • @CypherFOX While it's true that most people won't release a game, they still worked on them. Having said that, you'd be surprised how many games actually do get released. And using DAZ assets was a viable path since you could go and buy the license when you were done. You can't do that anymore. It's too expensive. In the past, you could get even the commercial license for as low as $175 (I once saw it this low). But now, there are no discounts. So that's $50 for every item. G3F/G8F, expressions, body morphs, head morphs... you're already at $200 which is the usual price for the Indie license when it was on sale. And if you want some guys in there, that's another $200. These characters are still naked mind you and they're base characters. This stops any project in its tracks for most of these people that wanted to use these assets.

     

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128
    edited November 2017

    Could anybody point me at an existing game that uses assets like this? Like.... a bunch of different human people, with different clothes, as an essential gameplay element? In my own Steam library I'm mostly coming up with stuff like... Skyrim, and other big-setting RPGs. Big budget stuff. All the indie stuff is... small, hardly any characters at all ((if any). But I don't see everything, of course. What exactly is the model here?

    *

    The thing about 'working on a game' instead of 'releasing a game' is that you can STILL WORK ON A GAME. You can use stand-in assets or whatever. A license is not needed to Work On A Game. And I doubt anybody who looks at Steam regularly is going to be surprised at how many games do get released. It's still a drop in the bucket to how many people are 'working on a game'. Heck, I'm working on THREE games and I have ideas for about three more (although none of them require 3d mesh).

    OK, so you're thinking: why should I 'work on a game' if I don't KNOW that I'll SOMEDAY be able to release it and sell it? And, well... ultimately everybody has to find their own answer to that but I think a good one is: to see if you can make a game. And you know, then, if you actually complete a game and all you need is that darn license, I bet a license can be acquired. Or somebody else will start selling the perfect assets you can swap in. Or you get a volunteer modeler. Or you pitch it somewhere and a small indie team gets excited by it. But if you stop the journey because you can't see the end, well... you'll never see the end. But if you make the journey and then you have to trunk a finished game because you couldn't get the licensing right, well, for one, you've finished a game! and learned a lot! and for two.... you're a lot like a number of independent creators, who worked really, really hard on something, for months and years, and then just... couldn't... sell it. For whatever reason. It isn't strange or unusual. It's just... the process of being a creator.

    Yeah, the license being changed sucks. But I really, really hope it won't stop anybody from actually making a game. Because releasing that game is the very last step, and often a long road away, and so much can happen between here and there and there's so much to see along the way.... that it's really worth it, even if what you get is a game nobody ever plays. Go ahead, ask me how I know. :-)

    Post edited by dreamfarmer on
  • Could anybody point me at an existing game that uses assets like this? Like.... a bunch of different human people, with different clothes, as an essential gameplay element? In my own Steam library I'm mostly coming up with stuff like... Skyrim, and other big-setting RPGs. Big budget stuff. All the indie stuff is... small, hardly any characters at all ((if any). But I don't see everything, of course. What exactly is the model here?

     

    Is The Sims a big budget title? Even so many big budget titles do not have alot of different outfits. Look at large crowds and you will see maybe 5 different outfits for both women and men 

    I will say it again, if you are going into indie dev you should really learn how to make assets or team up with someone who can. Not saying you should make every asset but no need to buy every little thing.. You will save money and will not be screwed if you source for assets dries up. 

  • have you actually looked at Skyrim mesh?

    there is no comparison with DAZ content

    what is awesome is the texture maps!

    I extracted all my Skyrim content with BSAopt and export it from nifskope to render.

     to rig and pose anything you need to subdivide the crap out of it, its incredibly low poly and breaks apart rigged with the transfer utility as is.

    but it is highly optimised for game use as intended 

  • PadonePadone Posts: 3,437
    edited November 2017

    I don't care about the interactive license since I believe DAZ assets don't fit for game engines anyway. I use them just for rendering and animation. But the more I look into this, just out of curiosity, the more strange it seems to me.

    The first issue is the "no refunds" term that, as I asked in my first post and didn't get any reply yet, I don't know if it's even legal (https://www.daz3d.com/interactive-license-info "these licenses are not eligible for returns or refunds"). At least here in Italy we have a refund granted by law for online purchases.

    The second issue is with assets that can't work with game engines, but they sell an interactive license anyway. For example the HD Addons. They can't work with game engines. And as far as I know DS doesn't provide any tool to export them to normal maps. https://www.daz3d.com/olympia-8-hd-add-on.

    Post edited by Padone on
  • 3DMinh3DMinh Posts: 218
    edited November 2017
    Padone said:

    I don't care about the interactive license since I believe DAZ assets don't fit for game engines anyway. I use them just for rendering and animation. But the more I look into this, just out of curiosity, the more strange it seems to me.

    The first issue is the "no refunds" term that, as I asked in my first post and didn't get any reply yet, I don't know if it's even legal (https://www.daz3d.com/interactive-license-info "these licenses are not eligible for returns or refunds"). At least here in Italy we have a refund granted by law for online purchases.

    The second issue is with assets that can't work with game engines, but they sell an interactive license anyway. For example the HD Addons. They can't work with game engines. And as far as I know DS doesn't provide any tool to export them to normal maps. https://www.daz3d.com/olympia-8-hd-add-on.

    I think that Daz3d has the right to say which items you can return and which you can't. I know in EU there is a rule that in 14 days, you can return any items you bought online without any reason, but there are exceptions for many digital content, and I suggest you look into it. Also how is this rule enforced outside EU is also a question, since Daz3D is a U.S company. In my opinion, you won't get a refund for these licenses, legally, because simply you agree to forfeit this right the moment purchase them, according to their TOS or EULA or whatever we checked when we registered.

    For the second issue, I thought HD Add-ons are morphs? If you include them (the 3d content, the mesh) when you export the character to your game engine, then you have to buy licenses for them. If you don't use them, or can't use them, then don't buy. It's quite simple. For content that actually cannot be used in game engines, or only contain "2D" information, like 3DL Skydome (basically an image), you don't need to, and can't, buy licenses for them (I checked in the store page, no box to buy license for them for example https://www.daz3d.com/easy-environments-snowy-mountains).

    Post edited by 3DMinh on
  • mikekmikek Posts: 192
    edited November 2017

    Could anybody point me at an existing game that uses assets like this? Like.... a bunch of different human people, with different clothes, as an essential gameplay element? In my own Steam library I'm mostly coming up with stuff like... Skyrim, and other big-setting RPGs. Big budget stuff. All the indie stuff is... small, hardly any characters at all ((if any). But I don't see everything, of course. What exactly is the model here?

     

    The majority of games I see with daz content are in a dating kind of genre. There was also one posted in this forum when it was in the steam charts. I don't remember the name but it was a dating game. The reason for them being popular with daz content is probably the requirement of having good human models for which one goes first to daz. But having a dating game with two characters and one cloth set won't get you far.
    My own game was an exploration type with non humans, having battles and such. Exploration also doesn't work when around every corner there is the same character standing like the last 100. I would have needed a couple different characters (the more the better), clothes , hair,  items, vehicles and such which are easy to distinguish as they act and/or attack differently to which the player has to adjust. Doesn't work with 2 characters.
     

    Post edited by mikek on
  • PadonePadone Posts: 3,437
    edited November 2017

    I think that Daz3d has the right to say which items you can return and which you can't. ..  according to their TOS or EULA or whatever we checked when we registered.

    For the second issue, I thought HD Add-ons are morphs?

    I don't know .. I believe if a company want to sell in some country then they have to obey that country laws. And I don't know if it's possible to give up rights just by a TOS or EULA. This would mean that a private act is superior to law. I don't believe so. But I may be wrong since I'm not a lawyer.

    As for HD Addons, as I already said, as far as I know there is no tool to export them to normal maps, that's the format used in games. You can only export them to real geometry using the obj format but that will not be usable in a game engine. So I can't see the point in selling the interactive license for them.

     

    EDIT: Put it another way, if I am a customer and I purchase the interactive license for a HD Addon, then I have no way to use it and I have no way to return it back. This does not seem a customer friendly sales policy to me.

    Post edited by Padone on
  • Could anybody point me at an existing game that uses assets like this? Like.... a bunch of different human people, with different clothes, as an essential gameplay element?

    Here's one. You'll probably recognize some of the assets as coming from Daz. It's apparently a pretty terrible game according to a preview at Rock-Paper-Shotgun, but I was surprised the first time I saw Vicky7 appear in a game screen shot. Didn't know that these sorts of games existed.

  • 3DMinh3DMinh Posts: 218
    edited November 2017
    Padone said:

    I think that Daz3d has the right to say which items you can return and which you can't. ..  according to their TOS or EULA or whatever we checked when we registered.

    For the second issue, I thought HD Add-ons are morphs?

    I don't know .. I believe if a company want to sell in some country then they have to obey that country laws. And I don't know if it's possible to give up rights just by a TOS or EULA. This would mean that a private act is superior to law. I don't believe so. But I may be wrong since I'm not a lawyer.

    As for HD Addons, as I already said, as far as I know there is no tool to export them to normal maps, that's the format used in games. You can only export them to real geometry using the obj format but that will not be usable in a game engine. So I can't see the point in selling the interactive license for them.

     

    EDIT: Put it another way, if I am a customer and I purchase the interactive license for a HD Addon, then I have no way to use it and I have no way to return it back. This does not seem a customer friendly sales policy to me.

    Hi,

    For the refund part, I think you should contact DAZ3d, I'm sure they will make things clear for you. I'm not saying that "a private act is superior to law". When I was in Germany I read somewhere that for some digital content like "streaming music" v.v you cannot actually return it, because you have used it the moment you play. There are exceptions with the return and refund law in EU for online purchasing.

    All I'm saying is that maybe this return law is not applicable in this case, and/or EU cannot enforcing it on DAZ3d, legally. But my opinion means nothing, you should check with DAZ3d and maybe a lawyer :D.

    For the HD Add-on:

    + You said that OBJ files are useless in game engine, but I read somewhere you can import them to some game engines like Unity. That doesn't sound useless to me. Again these HD Add-on contain new 3d mesh, and they can be used in games. Maybe it doesn't suit your needs, but for some it does, and they have to pay to use it in 3D games.

    + Interractive License is not only for games. They are for any application that use the "3D Data", or the mesh of the product, and distribute it to the end users. Maybe you don't use it, but there are people who do, and DAZ3D can sell it.

    + You have all the information about these licenses, including the fact that they cannot be return for a refund. You are also encouraged to send a support ticket if you need more information about any products before you buy. 

    I'm not trying to defend DAZ3D for their new license policy. But for the rule that license cannot be return, I agree with them, and there's nothing "customer unfriendly" about it. 

     

    Post edited by 3DMinh on
  • mikekmikek Posts: 192

     

    + You said that OBJ files are useless in game engine, but I read somewhere you can import them to some game engines like Unity. That doesn't sound useless to me. Again these HD Add-on contain new 3d mesh, and they can be used in games. Maybe it doesn't suit your needs, but for some it does, and they have to pay to use it in 3D games.

     

    HD morphs don't export. Its a inhouse solution by daz which only PAs have access to. If you export a model to obj or fbx from DS it exports without the HD morphs. 

  • Padone said:

     

    I'm not trying to defend DAZ3D for their new license policy. But for the rule that license cannot be return, I agree with them, and there's nothing "customer unfriendly" about it. 

    Valve, the people who own Steam, is an American company and they had to change their refund policy due to other nations laws

    I doubt this would be the case here since buying the license you are entering into a legal contract. I do not know Italian law but not sure how a country could function without strong contract laws

  • Solar DreamerSolar Dreamer Posts: 33
    edited November 2017

    Could anybody point me at an existing game that uses assets like this? Like.... a bunch of different human people, with different clothes, as an essential gameplay element? In my own Steam library I'm mostly coming up with stuff like... Skyrim, and other big-setting RPGs. Big budget stuff. All the indie stuff is... small, hardly any characters at all ((if any). But I don't see everything, of course. What exactly is the model here?

    Well this is sort of the point, isn't it?

    Without the ability to have a bunch of different characters and / or outfits (without spending massive time on modeling), it's unlilely you'll "see any games that actually use content that way".

    Which is to say, unless people have the flexibility to create something with more characters, you aren't likely to see anything with more characters (outside of the dating sims you mentioned previously).

    The whole point in why people invest in DAZ is the ability to quickly morph / create / mix a bunch of different characters without having to model everything from scratch. It's literally been one of their prominently advertised selling points of Genesis onward that things sold / made / or rigged for one character can be easily adapted to another, and that morphs etc.. apply to a range of characters. Saying "well why did you need that functionality anyway" is a bit daft, IMHO, since this is LITERALLY why so many people find DAZ appealing.

    How would you feel if they started charging $50 / item for any kind of use (not just interactive)? I assume you'd be pretty jaded about that. Just because your use case is different from other people's doesn't make theirs less valid, or that they deserve to have tools they thought were going to be integral to their workflow pushed out of reach.

    There are a lot more use cases for having a lot of characters outside of dating sims and pornos. Pretty much anyone who wants to create somthing with a HUMAN story element (pretty much prerequisite for any 3D game that's actually borderline interesting), will want to have a bunch of characters and / or variety of outfits, etc.. I don't find walking games like Gone Home etc.. particularly appealing, so I don't see why being limited to that is suddenly a practical solution.

    Why do you keep insisting that it's suddenly palatable to limit yourself to artificial restrictions on how many items you can use in a game, when previously you didn't have to? The other issue you're missing here is that once you're paying for content licenses, it means they're free to raise prices on the individual licenses if they feel they'll make more profit that way. So you say just make something without a lot of characters, but what if they decide to eventually raise prices to $1000 / character if they feel they aren't making enough profit from the indie market? What if they decide to introduce similar licensing for the 2D market segment?

    I assume you would be very upset, to say the least (assuming you didn't already have a library of content to work with). Saying "I've got mine for what I need" isn't a very becoming or compassionate attitude.

    A better solution (for me at least) is to just go with iClone or something that gives you a ton of content to use without needing to spend tens of thousands of dollars, or more, on licensing. It's what I plan on doing if DAZ doesn't offer me a reasonable resolution to this. DAZ is a fantastic resource, and very versatile, but this change means I'll have to look elswhere if the income restriction still exists on the indie licenses (effectively neutering them for any real 3D use).

    Instead of questioning why your fellow DAZ users want to use more than a few characters, wouldn't it be better to just accept that they do (afterall, you may mix a number of characters and / or props just to create a single character), and be supportive, the way that you would want them to be supportive of you if DAZ suddenly changed their pricing structure so that it would cost you tens of thousands if you wanted to keep using your library for 2D work. We're all in this together.

    Post edited by Solar Dreamer on
  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    Huh. Dating games? I can see those would require a lot of human art but I know for a fact they don’t actually require 3D. I wonder if it’s preferred just because in some ways using directable 3D mesh is easier than making animations?

    FPS: yeah, can see the problem there. There’s only so many times one can use the ol’ ‘Infected and turned into a clone’ gimmick. 

    (And yes, The Sims is a big game. It’s even a Huge Game. The indie equivalent would be a 2d stat raiser made in Ren’py.)

  • 3DMinh3DMinh Posts: 218
    mikek said:

     

    + You said that OBJ files are useless in game engine, but I read somewhere you can import them to some game engines like Unity. That doesn't sound useless to me. Again these HD Add-on contain new 3d mesh, and they can be used in games. Maybe it doesn't suit your needs, but for some it does, and they have to pay to use it in 3D games.

     

    HD morphs don't export. Its a inhouse solution by daz which only PAs have access to. If you export a model to obj or fbx from DS it exports without the HD morphs. 

    Ok thanks for informing me this. My mistake then.

  • 3DMinh3DMinh Posts: 218
    Padone said:

     

    I'm not trying to defend DAZ3D for their new license policy. But for the rule that license cannot be return, I agree with them, and there's nothing "customer unfriendly" about it. 

    Valve, the people who own Steam, is an American company and they had to change their refund policy due to other nations laws

    I doubt this would be the case here since buying the license you are entering into a legal contract. I do not know Italian law but not sure how a country could function without strong contract laws

    Well I'm not saying any company can do anything outside of the law. I'm saying that in the law there is exception for what cannot be returned.

    Let's forget it since this is only my opinion, and I don't know Italian law. Good luck to Padone with these issues :D

     

  • If someone really sees the need to spend 10,000 + on assets for their game I would strongly suggest you 

        1. Contact Daz as many have already said for that kind of many they will probably offer you some bulk price

       2. If 1 fails look into hiring a 3d artist. For tha kind of money you should be able to get custom assets 

    @dreamfarmer

        Sims is really that big? I know it is still around but it doesn't seem to market the way it used to

  • Padone said:

     

     

    Let's forget it since this is only my opinion, and I don't know Italian law. Good luck to Padone with these issues :D

     

    Come one play internet lawyer, international edition with us. 

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    Well EA only sells it digitally via their own store/launcher these days. But EA is like... the biggest PC game publisher in the Western world. I think it’s mostly played by a group of gamers who don’t play a ton of other games, but there’s a lot of them and   they spend a lot of money in the Sims content store and participate in Sims communities and so on. Fourth version of main game, each with a half dozen expansions, failed MMO spin-off, several mobile spin-offs, specialty focused spin-offs, portable spin-offs, it might actually be harder to be bigger in some ways... it’s just not the same target audience as a lot of other games because the gameplay is so distinct. 

    Anyhow sorry for the tangent. Just a technical interest of mine— my household has been working in the games industry for over a decade and we have a lot of local conversations about what sorts of elements are required for what sorts of games, and why. ‘Fun gameplay’ is actually why so many mid-tier games have trouble meeting schedules — it’s so important and so hard to quantify that sometimes something gets implemented and then they discover it’s not fun and have to take a few steps back to tweak and re-implement and test again.

  • 3DMinh3DMinh Posts: 218
    Padone said:

     

     

    Let's forget it since this is only my opinion, and I don't know Italian law. Good luck to Padone with these issues :D

     

    Come one play internet lawyer, international edition with us. 

    Lol.... My bad

  • You're kind of missing the point though. The odds are that most people won't finish building anything, however if you know that licensing will prevent you from earning an income if you actually do start making money, it's a good way to stop you dead in your tracks and halt any progress you're making. That's the point. 

    People want to create something that excites them, but they also want the potential to earn a living from it. If you know it's suddenly going to cost you more than you earn (after taxes, other software licensing, distribution, cost of life, etc.. etc..), as soon as you make a penny over $100,000, it changes the nature of the thing from a potentially worthwhile pursuit to an excercise in stupidity (entering into a relationship where you're basically paying for licensing rent on the tools to make your art rather than earning any income from it). 

    Thankfully, there's still iClone and other options, albeit maybe less pretty than DAZ. I'll wait until I hear back from support on the status of Game Dev licenses (whether they're merging Indie and Commercial, or will otherwise allow an upgrade), but short of that, I'll likely abandon DAZ altogether and just go with iClone.

    RE: GAME Dev - Yeah its a helluva commitment but thats the point of adjusting the license to include "Ineractive Projects"  a webgl scene walkthrogh or interactive animation, simulation is bupkis comared to developing a full game. So taking advantage of an interactive license does not necessairily involve a ton of design and gameplay coding.  This is an important and worthy improvement of the new license offering.

  • Dream CutterDream Cutter Posts: 1,222
    edited November 2017
    Padone said:

    I don't care about the interactive license since I believe DAZ assets don't fit for game engines anyway. I use them just for rendering and animation. But the more I look into this, just out of curiosity, the more strange it seems to me.

    The first issue is the "no refunds" term that, as I asked in my first post and didn't get any reply yet, I don't know if it's even legal (https://www.daz3d.com/interactive-license-info "these licenses are not eligible for returns or refunds"). At least here in Italy we have a refund granted by law for online purchases.

    The second issue is with assets that can't work with game engines, but they sell an interactive license anyway. For example the HD Addons. They can't work with game engines. And as far as I know DS doesn't provide any tool to export them to normal maps. https://www.daz3d.com/olympia-8-hd-add-on.

    You are buying the license to use the design - not the convenience of having the design ready in the format and criteria needed by YOUR chouce publishing technlogy. This si the same predicament as with redering DAZ figures in 2d, with different tools - ever try a Genesis figure in Keyshot? 

    FWIW as a gamedev you will find aquired  3D Assets will ALWAYS NEED OPTIMIZATION - no matter where you buy it unless you want to accept compromises.  How much copromise? UP 2 YOU.   If asset LOD is to much for todays engine it an be reduced, would you be pleaed yu bought a LOW POLY desig that cant be improved for TOMMOROWS game engine that supports a higher level of detail/etc?

    Most 3d modeller/riggers worth thier salt can optimize a figure for thier systems, - but not evryone has the artistic talent to create a cmpelling designs. Compellig design is the differentiator that counts most when buying content.

    Post edited by Dream Cutter on
  • @DreamCutter

       Quick question. When you look at your past purchases what license does it say you have? ALl mine say standard license 

  • mikekmikek Posts: 192
    edited November 2017

    I wonder if it’s preferred just because in some ways using directable 3D mesh is easier than making animations?

     

    It's one of the reasons to use it. 3D is more work to set up but after everything runs there is hardly any limitation beside performance. Most can be changed on the fly from adjusting materials or animations and even physics while with 2D a simple perspective, or lighting change can already require recreation of all affected images.

    Post edited by mikek on
Sign In or Register to comment.