Getting priced out of this hobby
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KyotoKid, I only got that add a PC membership message when I was not in the PC
so even if you think you are logged in, you are not
the site does that crap
I've only been shopping here for about two years but I've seen V4 stuff go on sale frequently and go for SUPER cheap. I'm talking like 50 cents or less for a lot of the older V4 stuff.
And not just V4 stuff, a lot of the stuff goes on sale frequently - and much of the time there can be incredible deals to be found.
When I first started shopping here I was on a SUPER tight budget and rarely bought anything unless it was super cheap - but I've built a huge library of content just on the super cheap sales items. So yes, while the prices have gone up, there are so many sales and so many great deals that it really is only a mater of being patient. If something is out of your budget, chances are you'll be able to get it at an awesome price if you're just patient.
As a PA I greatly appreciate the people who buy the new content as soon as it comes out - but as someone who's been on a tight budget most of her life, I get that some people can't do that and there's nothing wrong with waiting for the best deals if you're not able to buy the stuff at the release prices. In my opinion, given how many good sales come (the very recent Coupon-o-copia 80% off deals ring to mind) plus the frequent freebies that are had here, freebies at Rendo, the Wiki, and several of the other 3D places that frequently have freebies, there really isn't much reason to ever be "priced out of this hobby" for most people who enjoy 3D content and 3D art.
When I first started doing 3D art I mainly used freebies (heck, Adam Thwaites amazing freebies alone are enough to keep one busy for months! lol) and only bought very rarely when huge discounts where to be had. I had a thread dedicated to mainly using freebies in 3D art. Given the years and years worth of great freebies available and the fairly frequent deep discounts that can be had through sales, I don't see how anyone who really enjoys doing 3D art would ever truly be "priced out of this hobby". That's just my opinion though. :)
There's some clever folks in the bargain threads!
For real! :)
I'm willing to bet, given the massive amount of freebies one can acquire from the years and years of freebies put out at places like Rendo, Adam Thwaite's site, ShareCG, the Wiki, the freebies sometimes released here, etc, that one could probably never spend a penny and still acquire an awesome library of 3D content.
..."massive" is an understatement. A good part of my runtime setup is built on freebies. I even have an extensive .obj runtime on of its own.
For the first couple months while I was still trying this out I used the what was then the "free" 3D bridge pack which had the "lite" versions of Aiko3 Mil Cat, Mil Dog, Mil Dragon, a few props and the Toonamal animals. Along with the old Daz Freebie Vault, I was also was constantly hitting sites like ShareCG, Rendo, RDNA, and Vanishing Point as well as Adam Thwaite's collection.
What I would like more are vehicles. There are a lot of nice freebies available but they are all pretty much in either .3ds, .lwo, or one of the game formats which don't import directly to Daz without a lot of conversion of both the meshes and UVs (which I am terrible at and don't have all the tools for). One person who has a lot of nice models over on ShareCG is Bridman but all his models are .3ds only with a few in .vob (Vue) which also will not import in Daz.
http://www.greentoken.de/onlineconv/
https://www.meshconvert.com/
blender might be helpful also
Not seeing the 60% off in my cart for the Featured Artist's items.
Probably be there later.
Neighborhood Block bundle will be the first item I've bought at
only 30% off in, like, forever.
Thank you
Prices are right now.
C3D just cleaned my budget for the rest of the month.
...I can already convert .3ds and .lwo meshes to .obj in Hexagon and Carrara, just that grouping is not always preserved (hence the meshes are split into smaller components that require this to be done manually which can be a very laborious process depending on the model) and I still have to remap the model to add textures and I really don''t have any decent mapping/texturing tools. For example I have an old highway bus I converted in Hexagon but there are something like 300 individual mesh components and everything is labelled with just a number to which there seems to be no rhyme or reason (part "50" and part "51" have no relation to each other which effectively turns it into a 3D jigsaw puzzle).
Oh, and mentioning Blender as an option to me is best left alone.
Besides the freebie sites you've mentioned, I've always been impressed with Wendy's creations at https://www.wilmapsdigitalcreations.co.uk/introduction.php . Not only free, but also great when you need some normal clothing instead of the skimpwear. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I've sure you're aware of that site, but thought I'd mention it for any newcomers.
@Peter Fulford: Goes by the name "Gregory" I'd guess, right?
@SickleYield: I never expected anything else. And I guess, you PAs also have little to say about when and how a product goes into any kind of sale (except maybe for being able to opt out of sales completely?) so any discussion about prices and getting priced out shouldn't (and hopefully isn't supposed to) be directed at the PAs
Oh.. and that comment about doing a job that other's wouldn't do full-time made me think about some really interesting jobs that could fall into that category... some of them even kinda legal
Nope
Have to use real cash to get a $10 gift card for free; in effect a good discount, but not good enough for me to use real cash with the credit limit I already have; so cleared cart.
Given the nearly endless sales running here at Daz, I never once have paid full price for any content I own... and I don't intend to! With no disrespect to the PAs who put their hard earned time and talent into their products, I am a cheap *@# (or broke *!%, you could argue either) with a limited budget for discretionary purchases. I have to maximize my purchases here by considering only those items that are on deep sale - lucky for me that's nearly always!. As others have said before me, v4/m4 and now even genesis1 content can be had for dirt cheap! Learn how to use smoothing modifiers and subdivision, and you can get some excellent results with even older content. Even for those vendors I love, it's rare that I can give them support on their newest products. I hope they see a fair share of the proceeds when I buy older stuff on sale, though.
As far as the endless churn of "new" generations, I largely ignore this. I'm not threatened or offended if Volkswagen releases a 2018 model car, even though I own a 2015 model that works perfectly well. Someone somewhere has need for a new car, so how does it harm me if they buy a newer model than what I own? The big draw of Genesis 8 is the built-in muscularity morphs, which is why I am very frugally investing in this lineup - I've been mostly on the sidelines since the original Genesis days. I'm curious to see if Genesis 9 brings anything new to the table (besides "bends better" - ya, whatever), otherwise I will sit out that generation as well.
the answer everyone hates but is the obvious solution is to model your own stuff
if you cannot you have to buy it from someone else or go without
that simple
this hobby can be very cheap for those who model, texture, do postwork, labourous, time consuming but cheap
No, that's new today; and also amazing value (baked in highlights, though). I was looking at a recent clothing set. It's worth watching the video to see how good it is. Or you could spend more here and get a bizarre looking hoody that just, well, hangs there.
SickleYield was talking about minimum pricing. Other PAs have talked here about how they choose where to price something (high) to take account of all the store discount variables. It appears PAs can set their own prices so long as they're not too low.
I buy elsewhere these days. Plus there are now a few patreon folks providing male content. Since the store and it’s pas make mostly female clothing and content I am picking up less here anyway.
what is interesting, I am in same boat. looked at the bundle deal..but...i figured I could just buy a couple items I like and would use..but overall, the price ends up getting pretty close to the entire bundle deal anyway. i ended up doing a bundle awhile back, and even added quarterly PC+ ... the end price was pretty much the same with the PC+ within a couple of bucks.
One deal they had not long ago, buy 2 items and get PC+ 30% off..it actually became more expensive to do the discount. You have to really add and subtract, try different stuff to see how it all plays. Overall way too confusing.
I'm thinking Daveso, that its more time-consuming than confusing; and often annoying.
All this stacking and buying 1 or 2 or 3, etc etc is a real pita, quite frankly.
That''s a lot of what I've done in the past. I buy the main figure from the bundle and if there's a hair and/or outfit I know I'd use a lot or be able to kitbash with something I already have, I do that.
I did buy Floyd Pro Bundle because he's unusual and can morph into lots of other characters, same with Ollie who I also got. In the case of Floyd, I did buy the living room set cuz I can get tons of use out of that as opporsed to other addons.
But like many here, I have most all the bundles in the 'free' category, or at least some of the items from most of them, so I have no need for any more. I got the Nerdy kids which are ok, and I can use the library for other stuff, and I didn't have the Asian River bundle but always wanted it, And the Breakfast in Bed bundle cuz it has the bed, the food and some poses. You can break these kind of bundles down and use that stuff in any render. Figure bundles...meh....don't need any more of them.
But for many of us time IS money, and every minute spend building an asset is time taken away from time spent using it. And, in the end, that's really DAZ Studio and DAZ's whole reason for existence. Granted, there are probably a lot of DAZ users who are retired, still in school, living off their parents/spouse or have lifestyles that otherwise afford them a lot of extra time to play on the computer, but there is also a large portion, most likely the majority, of users who are doing good to sneak in a few hours at a time in between all the other aspects of running their lives.
So, no, that's not the obvious solution because it isn't practical for a lot of folks, even before we get into the subject of relative skill sets and what it is that people actually enjoy doing.
All that said, the price of CG is going up because the price of EVERYTHING is going up. McDonald's, Amazon Prime, Netflix... there was an article on CNN the other day http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/21/pf/applenews-consumer-prices/index.html that showed that 43% of the U.S. population doesn't earn enough to cover their monthly budget adequately, so it's unwise to expect CG not to follow the path of gas and hamburgers. DAZ Employees have to eat too, though, to be honest, the fact that there's so much coming out from DAZ these days is perhaps part of the problem and I expect there to be a "market correction" that will shake some of the smaller PAs out of the trees in the near future.
I also rarely buy anything at full price, and not that much at release price. However I recoken there are a fair few customers that do buy at full price, particularly for a high quality and/or innovative product.
One example is this: https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-grass--meadow-worldbuilder
It was released on 5th May, and lost its 30% new discount over a week ago. However it is still flying high in the What's Hot list, which is only really possible if there is a fair few new buyers coming along and paying full price for it. Also V8 pro bundle sits permanently in a reasonably high position, even during times when it has no further discount than just the PC+ one. I can only conclude that people are buying it at full price (or 30% off via PC) throughout the year.
No interest in such a low discount - I get gift cards frequently when they are on sale, but I don't do less than 8% and I seldom do that. I'm fortunate in that I'm on a fixed but not really low income and have enough salted away I can drop real money when the gift card sales show up - with the net result being that everything I've purchased so far this year has cost me 10% to 12% less than the indicated checkout total.
I think that's exactly why they do it. Human nature is a funny beast. If they released a product at $11 (That's worth $11), most people would wait until it's going for at least 50% off. If they released it at $20, most people would wait until it is going for at least 50% off. There are products on *the other store* that are significantly cheaper, and yet, there they sit on my wishlist, waiting for a sale to come up.
70%-80% off wishlisted items is an instabuy, so it makes more sense from a business perspective to up the price and then offer deeper discounts.
Well, I don't know how the "What's hot" is determined, but I guess it's by "numbers sold in total"... so the grass meadows could have sold extremely well during the low price period.. so well, that it still manages to stay up there, until the next items - which will also lose their low price sooner or later - catch up... or don't.
Same goes for Vicky 8. There has probably been sold such an enormous amount of Vickies, that any other item will have a hard time catching up...
And sometimes the choice of "do it yourself" or "kitbash" is made quite easy. Right now there's a "Officer Hopps" outfit plus Hair and bunny ears sold at Rendo. Very tempting, but I've overdrawn my budget already due to other stuff. So I just checked what is needed to kitbash:
A Carrot - available as a freebie.
Bunny ears - in my runtime as a G2F item that came as a freebie from DAZ
Police uniform stuff (vest, pants, shirt, belt etc) - in my runtime due to having bought the "Law Enforcement Outfits" for G3M a while ago because I needed it.
So... time to put all that stuff together on a G3F (with some fitting hair..) and including the download of the carrot that would be done in a couple of minutes...
Sure, doesn't look exactly the same, but for my tast Hoppsy enough...
And that is where DAZ will lose sales. Yes, DAZ employees have to eat, but so do the rest of us, because food is a necessity. DAZ products are not. The argument that prices must go up because the cost of living is going up, so DAZ employees need more income falls flat for the customers like most of us who's incomes aren't going up to match prices. I have little sympathy for anyone in that boat because I'm in it also and I get no sympathy from them.
Most of us seem to be cutting back on luxuries because essentials are going up, and Studio content is, for most of us, a luxury. So raising prices in this case will not result in increased income, but at best fewer sales resulting in the same income.
The only people to be hurt will be the customers and the less popular PAs.
I've asked this question before, and never got an answer.
If DAZ would drop prices on everything permanently by, say, 60%, but stop having sales for items until the items are, like, two years old... would you still buy? Or buy more than now? Or would it be "I don't buy until I get 70% discount"?
Bee: the problem is people are terrible at measuring probability and behavior.