What is the deal with those creepy DAZ YouTube commercials?
Cybersox
Posts: 8,745
in The Commons
Am I the only one who finds most of these to be both a.) really creepy and b.) frequently really bad examples of hoiw good DAZ figures can look. The older ones like the dforce promotion through the T-rex one were okay, but then the next set started to get weird beginning one with the lizard, the guy with the telescope and the one with the clowns. This latest set, though, especially the one with all the dancing knights and the one with the one eyed creature in the lab make all the human skin look like like glistening raw meat...I mean, seriously... ugh.
Comments
Considering I use AdBlock for YouTube, I feel oddly grateful I’ve never seen these...
Link please? If they are on the DAZ 3D YouTube Channel though and not being offered as an ad (or sponsored content), then they aren't really ads.
I don't think I've ever seen any of those. LOL Then again, I use an ad blocker too ;).
Laurie
Don't say I didn't warn you, but here are some of the wierder ones... These are on the DAZ channel if you look, but they're being used as animated ads that pop up in front of actual programs. I do a lot of my YouTube watching on my TCL TVs, which have built in Roku boxes, and since I watch a lot of tutorials about DAZ products, the "smart" programing that targets ads at specific customer bases keeps running them over and over.
I watched the first one...yeah, it's nicely done, but I can't imagine that appealing to a completely new potential 3D artist . Really think a good slideshow of the gallery's best art would be a lot more productive.
..well the dance one was not too bad. The others, hmm....
What about just a nice sedate street scene?
Or even a (nearly) NVIaTWaS sequence?
Uhhh...
Alrighty then! :D
Laurie
DAZ's commercials are the only thing that've ever made me feel embarrassed to use it. They need to hire a professional marketing firm. If they already have one, they need to either replace it or be more selective with the idea's they're pitched.
Those are... pretty strange. What is it they were going for, I wonder? Because what they achieved is kinda a mix between "uncanny valley" and The Twilight Zone. The stuff of nightmares! But then, maybe that's what they wanted?
If they air on the sci-fi network or during Black Mirror then I get it, sorta.
But I agree, some fabulous renders is much more attractive- and since ANIMATION isn't it's strong point, I don't know why you'd lead with that.
I'd make one that touts what all the users are doing with it - from Grandma making a greeting card to a graphic designer doing Fx for Film to a traditional artist painting over the models to a teenager make memes to.....comic books....to an executive making a power point presentation.
Wow...
Just.. Wow...
These are utterly disturbing...
OTT to hide lack of imagination.
They can serve a unique purpose (beyond being kind of hilarious). All of them are pretty complex scenes when you consider how much work goes into even a very simple hand-drawn animation, but they don't look unbelievably polished; they look like something a hobbyist could accomplish without the best software in the world. I'm not sure any of these would've hooked me, but if I didn't know what DAZ was when I saw the dForce ad, there's a good chance I'd have assumed it was over my head and way beyond anything my home computer could handle.
That said, it's a little weird to focus so heavily on animation when it doesn't seem like the majority of users get into it.
It'd be cool to see an refreshed version of this, which I think does a really good job of showing off what the program can do and how it works in a fun, aspirational way.
they are very much like the work of Cool 3D world but using DAZ content
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzNZlJzmjomyl00ewlxHqOA
they show a lot of these on their facebook page they have others too btw like a platinum club page, https://www.facebook.com/DAZ3D.FanPage/ and I believe most of these are made by daz users like the rest of us
I did not like the clown one especially.
this is what I myself find disturbing
the rendering is impeccable
the "story lines" are what is a worry in most cases
if They had skipped trying to create a story and just rendered the content even if just doing idles and walk cycles it would have looked quite awesome
I kind of thought DAZ was a professional marketing firm, no?
- Greg
Nope. They're a content and software company.
I don’t find the videos creepy. They are kind of odd and quirky but generally amusing, I just don’t view them as really displaying the range of capacity of what Studio can do. Most people don’t use studio for animation, and it’s animation component is not really as good as other software. Most buyers use the program to make artistic stills and none of the videos show this aspect. If I were someone viewing those I’d think studio is a low budget animation program which did nothing else.
I have a soft touch for the one using my figure. ;)
https://www.daz3d.com/oso-bocular-man-hd-for-genesis-8-male
It wasn't an actual question, but more tongue in cheek. What DAZ primarily does is market and sell content (the bulk of which is created by out-of-house PAs), which in my way of thinking makes them professional marketers.
- Greg
As someone that that works with just daz for animation . I actually enjoyed all those animation. the the clown one was a bit creepy though
I have cute animations I did completely with daz you guys may like. these are just a few i have
I like yours better.
+1
I like yours much better too. LOL
Laurie
Thanks guys
this is another cute ratty mouse this little bugger is hard to animate but fun
I think their YouTube account got hacked
I agree with Cybersox. With no disrespect to the animators, I think these ads show off the weaknesses rather than the strengths of DAZ Studio and DAZ content. To a YouTube audience raised on near feature-film-quality videogame trailers and cut-scenes, these must look clunky and unimpressive. None of the ones I've seen would make me go, "Hell, yes, I must get into this 3D graphics stuff."
I'm just baffled by the choices here. Standard figures that you can buy in the DAZ store can look practically photorealistic when properly lit, yet instead of using Genesis 8, they choose odd, cartoonish figures with crude textures. Even the figure motions look clunky and awkward, but there are Aniblocks for sale in the store that simulate actual human movement impressively well. It's not that DAZ doesn't have access to truly state-of-the-art resources: the store is full of it!
I think the direction of the videos is also particularly unfavorable. We know that there are limits to what you can do in Studio, powerful though it is. There'll always be stuff that doesn't look quite right, especially when it comes to figure motion. As a very lazy and rather unskilled artist myself, I try to hide the flaws in my scenes by careful lighting. If I were making animations, I'd probably cover up the flaws by judicious editing and cutting. Yet the video style is really unforgiving: long sequences that give the eye time to see everything that doesn't work, plus full-on lighting that reveals all the weaknesses of the modeling and texturing.
To be honest, I think you could make a better ad for DAZ in about forty-five minutes just by taking the twenty current best pictures from the Gallery and cross-fading and Ken Burns-ing them together. There are images in the Gallery every day that make me go "Oh my God!" The Youtube ads just make me shake my head and wonder what DAZ are thinking.
Finally, they're not getting best value for their advertising dollar. I see those damn ads every time I go to YouTube now. But I already spend about seven tenths of my disposable income in the DAZ Store anyway. Showing me these ads is preaching to the converted; they're not getting any of my money that they wouldn't have had already. This may not be DAZ's fault -- we're probably seeing the limitations of YouTube's targeting algorithms -- but it's just one more thing that makes me think that their return-on-investment from these ads must be miserable.