Getting priced out of this hobby
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Actually less than that. You can getthe Photography plan which includes both Photoshop and Lightroom for $10 per month.
I suppose the relevance of those complaints would depend on which heads it is that are tripled.
I sure hope it works. This would be a huge help!
Cybersox: haa!
I can understand being tapped out, but I think it has more to do with the economy than with rising prices. For years now, salaries have been stagnant while bills keep going up.
I’ve been in this business for 15 years, if anything, for what you get, prices have come way down.
You would have to do the subscription plan but at $9.99 per month, and with all the added value bits ( lightroom, storage, portfolio,website and social media tools) the Photography Plan is more than do-able
As to being priced out of a hobby, well, prices have gone up of late. I really noticed it with that March Madness sale that really was not so "mad". Prices have gone up on lots of things not just art assets. It has affected my spending patterns to a degree. While I did eventually pick up Mika 8 ( the deal was really just too good) I kinda feel as if I am going to be slowing down quite a bit and only purchasing things like shaders and lights and props for the foreseeable future unless we get some more male themed characters and content releases.
...one still needs the body/head morph kits to get the most mileage out of the base Genesis figures. For the original Genesis they bundled the two which was nice, for G2 and on they didn't (not even within the genders) which is a shame. That oulw make adoption of a new Genesis figure a little more cost effective. With those and maybe something like the Growing Up morphs up you have a wide range to work with for not a lot of Zlotys (less than the cost of a new Pro Bundle). I believe I posted one experiment I did years ago earlier in this thread which only used G2F, the head + body morphs and Growing Up morphs.
Didn't move to G8 as it isn't just the expense of a new shiny, it's that I really don't see that much of an advantage over G3 (uses the same weight mapping and bone structure). I ended up getting the G8 - G3 fit clone so if I see clothing I like (that iin't just a re-issue of something I already have) I can use it.
I agree that prices in recent months have risen. And the dforce things are even more expensive. I didn't think that March Madness was that great either. Sure, prices have gone up on real world things too, but those are necessities lke groceries, utilities, insurance, etc. But for the hobbyist like me and many others here, I just can't do it anymore. 3D isn't a necessity for me. I let go of my PC+ and will consider doing a 3 month one just for Oct, Nov, Dec if the prices are right for those sales. Just have to wait.
...not just salaries but Social Security (what I am living on) had no living cost increase for two years. This last year we got a 2% one yet basic costs where I live went up more than twice that already.
Yeah, mine went up a big whopping $14.00 this fiscal yeaf. BFD.
I went back into my history and see that yup, many things did cost in that $20-$30 range. But Ihave orders that totaled up to nearly $200 with a $180 discount. So much stuff and I paid chump change for it because the sales back then were crazy. On the other hand, I did pay full price for stuff I really wanted, like Jim Burton's stuff which was primo quality at the time and that was in that $25 per product range. But that was certainlly an exception. For example the V3 morph pack was $20 and it was basically the only one you could get so that $20 was it. Now there are a million morph packs, that's better but if you try to buy them all it's pretty pricey.
On reflection I think the thing is that if you've been doing this forever then you say "I have so much already, no way I'm paying that much for that! It's just like that other one I already have" or even "I have the tools now to just make it myself". And you naturally get very selective. On the other hand iIf it's a new hobby, you just see potential and open the wallet. They won't complain until five years down the road when they see the same morph pack they bought for Genesis 8 and again for Genesis 9 and again for Genesis 10 being needed yet again for Genesis 11. This is the "DAZ maturity cycle".
...rents alone where I live have been going up about 11% annually.
What is the true value of a Daz product to you personally??
What Actual utility are you getting from your
"Alexa 8" model since you scampered over and bought it on day one?
That is the only factor to consider for most of you here IMHO
Looking at the Daz content market objectively
I am amazed that this Company remains
in business at its current RIDICULOUSLY LOW prices.
Can anyone show me an example anywhere,
That the overall quality ,volume and service
is equal to Daz content at similarly LOW pricing?
The only thing cheaper I can find are
Smart phone apps and at least they have actual real world
uitility.
How many professional Illustrators/Animators are there here that need NEW Daz 3D content
constantly to service specific clients needs??
Yes Most here are hobbysts
But this "Hobby "is only as expensive as you make it
and you make it more expensive by engaging in
compulsive digital hoarding of content you merely desire instead of actually needing it for any practical utilitarian purpose
But alas, that is the very essence of this Business model is it not??.
and if you cannot afford it you are no longer part of the target demographic of this market, so your comlpaints dont really matter.
As for product prices I have no objections in general, considering it's a niche market with a fairly limited number of copies sold.
The main issue I have with the prices is that some things cost way too much and others way too little, if you consider the amount of work and skills it takes to produce them. That's not fair to the PAs, IMO.
I think DAZ needs to improve it's Metadata tags and filtering for models in one's library and improve DAZ Studio's ease of use so that's it's not so difficult or time consuming to use the DAZ content that is purchased. Also computer HW needs t improve so that a completed high quality render of a finished scene never takes longer than 10 minutes.
True. A lot of the prices seem to be dictated by the general category of the item rather than the amount of effort that goes into it. It seems that I'm seeing more sets with only 2 walls, non functioning doors and fixed props selling for the same price as complete sets, as well as more "outfits" that come without shoes and only a single set of textures with price tags equivalent to full multi-piece ensembles with smartprops. And to be clear, I'm talking about new items, not older products or things brought in via the RDNA buy in.
...for HW to even come close to a big high quality 10 min render (indoor or outdoor scene) it means producing a GPU with the same performance as a Quadro GV100 with at least the VRAM of the Quadro P6000 as well as Tensor cores for AI denoising, and all for under 1,000$. The more complex and larger the scene resolution size (particularly at high quality settings) the more memory it requires to stay on the GPU and not dump to the CPU. It would also require a faster "pipeline" between GPU and CPU than we currently have. Don't think that will happen until the top end Quadro/Tesla cards and the Titan get a hefty VRAM/core boost along with the NVLink interface replacing PCIe on the MB for the professional workstation.
No, i think that is most like to result in competition between AMD & Intel but that's the general direction HW improvements are going in...nVidia is likely to be a bystander.
And there exists already 8K and I think even 16K resolutions for video content so that actually have a long way to go to get to that resolution density.
If there is something I think I really need, I pay full price if it's not on sale when I need it. For everything else that I may (or may not) use, I wait for sales. I have so much stuff now that I'm at the point where I'm getting very choosy about what I buy. So, in the end, the vendors may be in the same boat I'm afraid that they were in before the prices went up. Prices low, you make up for it in volume. Prices high, you get more per unit but you don't sell as many. It all evens out.
Laurie
I don't really see the need for this on the DS side of things. I don't use smart content and install everything manually and have no issues finding content, maybe because i don't use smart content or have to rely on metadata. I'd love to have a render finish in 10 munutes, but that is highly unrealistic IMO
Well that's good but I hear more folk wanting improvements than not.
Please do not convince PA's to reduce texture size. For goodness' sake, that would be a horrible idea. It's easy enough to reduce texture sizes. There's a plugin that will do it automatically. And DAZ Studio should be smarter about using proper texture sizes or automatically reducing the texture size (of which there is a general setting), but if it could automatically detect the resolution it needs or automatically produce mipmaps, that would be the optimal solution.
Unity Game engine does reduce texture sizes automatically depending on the platform characteristics the game compiled with it is running on...
...again I doubt Nvidia will make the mistake a second time of having their enthusiast cards compete against their top line professional grade ones in performance and specs as happened during the Maxwell era. It would take more than just a different set of drivers to keep pros from jumping to less expensive cards that offer the same (or even better) performance. Software like 3DS Max or C4D doesn't care whether you have say an 900$ (est.) 16 GB 1180 or a multi thousand dollar 16 GB Quadro V-(whatever the P5000 replacement will be), it isn't going to refuse to work because you have a GTX card instead of a Quadro. Maybe Nvida might put some kind of code into the Iray plugin for these programmes to do that (of course that would cause an uproar as there are some [a few I know of right here in our community] who use pro grade software but still render on enthusiast grade GPUs), but that could easily be bypassed by going to a different render engine like Octane or V-ray (the latter which soon will support GPU rendering). If people, whether at the pro or enthusiast level, know they can get the same job done for less of an investment, they'll choose to save some zlotys unless it is a "status" thing.
For example we know that the 1080 Ti was better than the Titan Xp in many respects save for 1 GB difference in VRAM which really didn't justify spending the additional 500$ unless it was for "bragging rights". During the Founders Edition "drought", the only GTX card often available in their store was the Titan Xp. Of course with Volta they raised the bar and released the Titan-V, breaking whatever ties were left with the GTX line and making it it's own exclusive brand. Basically the Titan-V is an "entry level" card for Deep Learning research, though hamstrung in the respects it still only has 12 GB of VRAM [albeit HBM2], doesn't support NVLink for memory pooling, and is priced 1,000$ more than the 16 GB Quadro P5000 (I view it as sort of the "middle child" between the GTX and Quadro/Tesla lines).
I feel removing the Titan from the GTX line may have been a mistake i the long run as they tried to make it an "exclusive" brand of its own but with only one model and at a price many really were not ready or willing to pay for what is roughly a small increase in specifications, capability, and performance. I wouldn't be surprised if the Titan-V is the last card we will see bearing the "Titan" name with future generation NVidia GPUs bearing only the GTX and Quadro/Tesla brands.
I'm only paying $10 a month. Full photoshop, ligthwave and a couple other things i don't use.
I think I simply hit saturation point, I have so much stuff very little new tempts me unless it is cheap
for newcomers its no dearer IMO
also the high specs needed for newer stuff especially HD morphs in DS with iray makes it a struggle to render anything animated at that level of detail and I don't do much static art.
HD is pretty much wasted on me, I love the look of all the fantasy creatures but once I found it was impossible to fit more than 3 on my 980ti I soon gave up on grabbing more.
I've been following DAZ on a sporadic basis for 18 years. In all that time I've found so many products to be undesirable. I've been forced to abandon many projects due to the lack of the proper clothing, props, whatever. In that time, I've been married, divorced, and retired. My income dropped dramatically and stayed down. A few years ago I got my last new computer. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't work with iRay for so many reasons. Now in addition to my own weaknesses, confusion and lack of funds, I need to face the fact that DAZ Studio leaves my iMac in the dust.
I gave up on PC Club years ago. In the beginning it was nice if I didn't have much of anything. Sometimes it might be nice if DAZ introduces a new Genesis Generaiton, etc. Beyond that the PC club is a waste to me. I haven't used DAZ Studio in months. I wiped all my DAZ stuff of one external 3TB, but still have it one a clone backup drive.
I appreciate artists who make free stuff. It can be invaluable to many starving artists. But I haven't seen any free stuff that appeals to me, in the past few years.
That's a dog chasing its tail! If/when we achieve a 10 minute render, we'll just make our scenes more complex/detailed until the hardware needs to catch up again.
...my feeling exactly. It's like building a freeway with the notion of easing traffic flow, which only ends up clogged with traffic in a few months as it entices more people to commute by car.
Now I can render some pretty big scenes in around 10 min in 3DL at a pretty high quality (as long as I don't use UE) thanks to IBL Master, but rendering in Iray (using Iray optomised materials) even on my Titan X, those same scenes will at least take to three to four times that. Still much better than 6 - 8 hours on the CPU.