Is DAZ Studio too expensive for casual artists?

I've been using DAZ products since the beginning. I've remained a bumbling beginner. I'll never make money from my art. I just want to have fun, create some silly and fun art. In my better days, I've made a few people in the "Poser" forums laugh. These days, we really need a lot of money just to "make art."

I took a quick look for rtx 2080 video cards. I think the cheapest one is around $720. Of course, you need a new and powerful computer system to support the graphics card. I live on a fixed and limited income. Maybe DAZ Studio is too rich for my blood!?

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Comments

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,749

    Hi Ron it is not so much Daz studio as it is the  hardware cost of using the IRay
    render engine.
    These Days such costs are essentially unavoidable unless you want to stay with 3DL 
    and  endure the vicissitudes of trying to find content with 3DL materials
    or using the various converters etc etc.

  • ebergerlyebergerly Posts: 3,255
    Contrary to popular hype you dont NEED the latest and most expensive hardware. All it gives you is faster renders. A year ago the old cards were awesome, but now they're not?
  • Ron KnightsRon Knights Posts: 1,723

    wolf359 & ebergerly, yes, it really comes down to the fact that iRay & DAZ Studio are an essential combination. More & more content features only iRay materials. Products with 3DL materials are becoming harder if not impossible to find. I can't get anything done if I need to wait so long to get a picture rendered.

  • ParadigmParadigm Posts: 421

    Well, it kind of depends where you're at with finances. Being a rich casual artist is easier than being a poor casual artist. Some people here have multiple top end GPUs, Threadrippers, 128 GB of RAM, etc.

    It also depends on what else you do. I'm not a rich casual artist (unfortunately) but it's not too expensive for me because I already have nice hardware because I'm a gamer and didn't build a rig purely for DS so the cost is spread out over a very large part of my life already. Buying content can get expensive, but I just pick what I want carefully.

  • PadonePadone Posts: 3,437

    Maybe DAZ Studio is too rich for my blood!?

    If you use the scene optimizer a 1060 6G will do fine and you can build a daz studio rig around $700. I did it myself and it's working great. So no, you don't need to be rich at all.

     

  • OstadanOstadan Posts: 1,123

    As I say over and over on these forums (as a former NASA employee):  Better.  Faster.  Cheaper.   Choose two.

  • chris-2599934chris-2599934 Posts: 1,765

    Whilst you need an nvidia card to make iray usable, you emphatically don't need the latest and greatest one.

    I have a GTX 960 card, as it was all my rather ancient (Windows 7 era) PC could handle. It works well enough to show iray through the viewport if I want to preview a render (texture shaded view is better for actually setting up the scene). A quick render might take 10 to 15 minutes, an average one takes an hour or two, sometimes I have to run them overnight.

    One day I'll buy a souped-up rig with a massive GPU and wonder how I coped with the slow set-up that I have now, but right now it's working fine for me. I set up my scene, I start it rendering, I go and do something else. No need for some megabucks machine.

    And beyond hardware costs, it's free! Go look at some of the stuff produced for the monthly freebies competition in the freebies forum. Great images, no cost.

  • ZilvergrafixZilvergrafix Posts: 1,385

    in my perspective I've been in both sides, being rich and being poor and my knowledge states that:

    1-when you have a "poor PC" you are more creative because you have limited resources, you are more scientific and your results are more sustainable.

    2-when you have a "richie rich PC" (actually) you have excess or power but lack of creative ways to do something, the only thing you do is remaking old daz files from 3Dlight to iRay, buying a ton of Pro Bundles and doing nothing with them.

    which side are you now?

     

     

  • Ron KnightsRon Knights Posts: 1,723

    Zilvergrafix, don't get me wrong. I admire your ingenuity, etc. But it doesn't work for me. I want the ability to take items I purchased, and to make art. I don't want to spend countless time adapting and calculating.

     

  • RobinsonRobinson Posts: 751
    edited April 2019

    There's no RTX in iRay (yet), so it's just CUDA performance that counts right now.  There's a cheaper 2060 (currently the best price-performance for rendering) or 2070.  I got on OK with a GTX 970 for quite a while.  You probably need to run some kind of script to reduce texture sizes and so forth if you've got more than 2 or 3 characters in a scene with that.  The 2080 and up are for ballers imho.  Personally I can't justify the cost for a hobby.  If I was a professional the calculation would be different of course.

     

    Edit:  Of course you need a render farm if you want to make movies rather than just stills.  That would be very expensive indeed.

    Post edited by Robinson on
  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,040

    Ron - A fast state of the art gpu will speed up iray renders. A 3.5 or 4 GHz cpu with multiple cores will also speed up renders  - 3DL and any iray render that doesn't fit on the gpu. Do you need them? Not really. You trade money for patience. Get used to using the spot render tool to check textures and shaders before you launch the all-night render and go to bed. I've found the Scene Optimizer from V3digitimes to be a valuable part of my tool kit to get scenes to fit on my 6 GB 980 ti but there have still been times I've run a render for hours.

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,586

    in my perspective I've been in both sides, being rich and being poor and my knowledge states that:

    1-when you have a "poor PC" you are more creative because you have limited resources, you are more scientific and your results are more sustainable.

    2-when you have a "richie rich PC" (actually) you have excess or power but lack of creative ways to do something, the only thing you do is remaking old daz files from 3Dlight to iRay, buying a ton of Pro Bundles and doing nothing with them.

    which side are you now?

     

     

    If people want to create art, they have to understand it first! Tools are just that tools, without know how it is just useless! I would suggest walking away from daz and taking the money and invest in art & photography classes at a community college, if this is too expensive. I would suggest the library and art museum! Then, do some new renders and see the world of difference!!! My best photos were the ones that were accidents and crops of something I was too focused on!!!!   ~just my 2 cents

  • Ron KnightsRon Knights Posts: 1,723
    edited April 2019

    Robinson, yeah I know iRay in the RTx just yet. I just don't want to waste money on old video cards if the RTX support might come reasonably soon.

    namffuak, I do my best work in a spontaneous, perhaps manic manner. I have an idea, and keep creating scenes as I go along. 

    Silver Dolphin, maybe your advice is good for some people. But let me share a true story from my own life. Many years ago, I was staying temporarily with my parents while I was trying to rebuild my life and reclaim my marriage. My step mother had a bunch of women from her church over to my parents' house. These women were trying to justify whether they thought of themselves as artists. I was not a part of the group, but heard them talking when I went to the rest room, and then into my Dad's home office to use his computer. My response was simple, but I kept it to myself.

    I was born an artist and a writer. It's who I am, and what I do. My knowledge and talent are my own. I had no real formal art schooling, except for a freshman art class that I took when I was a senior. I had no formal training in writing, except one class as a high school senior. But the words flow from my heart, my feelings, and the results are rewarding.

    When it comes to DAZ Studio, I've found my calling. My best work is spontaneous, absurd, silly and entertaining.

    As a post script to this story, I eventually reunited with my wife, and moved back to Maine from Florida. The marriage lasted another year or two before we parted as friends. Once again, I rebuilt my life. I applied for Social Security Disability, and got the money after 2.5 years. I bought my first Macintosh computer. I started doing YouTube videos, and got some minor semblance of celebrity for a few years till I finally retired.

    Post edited by Ron Knights on
  • I have to admit, DAZ Studio is, in the long run, expensive, if it is a one time cost.  When I officially started DAZ Studio in March 2017, I seemed to get a grasp on how the figures work.  I even got several outfits and hairstyles around that time too.  By September of that year, I had decided to launch an animation project, which is still in development, and development had been laggy due to lack of certain items.  Initially I had a very limited inventory, but now my inventory is quite vast, having nearly everything I want, and development seems to run more smoothly now.

    Thankfully, as of lately, I am running out of ideas for new props and scenes, and I have pretty much run out of desired ideas for clothing and hairstyles, so pretty soon, there is not much to acquire any longer, as I will soon have everything I want.

     

  • KitsumoKitsumo Posts: 1,210

    Robinson, yeah I know iRay in the RTx just yet. I just don't want to waste money on old video cards if the RTX support might come reasonably soon.

    Well, if you want to roll the dice on RTX, the 2060 6Gb can be had for around $350 and the 2070 8Gb for $475 or so. Personally if I was buying one, I'd want to wait till Daz Studio has support for it in the regular release, but that's just a personal preference. Of course if you already have an Nvidia card, it will still work fine, just not as fast. If you don't upgrade, you'll still be in good company, there are a lot of people sticking with their 10 series and not paying Nvidia's new prices.

    Slightly off topic: If you want to express yourself as an artist, have you tried 3d modeling? It doesn't require any more hardware than you have now. Hexagon, UVmapper Classic, GIMP and all the basic stuff are free. I just released my first freebie (shameless plug) and it really was satisfying to produce something from scratch.

  • PadonePadone Posts: 3,437
    edited April 2019

    In my opinion there's an important factor in production that's reliability.

    I just can't waste my time with betas and driver issues. This is the reason why I built my new rig with a 1060 instead of a 1660 or a 2060. WHEN rtx features will be supported without issues AND there will be a documented sensible gain in performances AND the price/performance ratio will be fine enough THEN it will be time for upgrading.

    Post edited by Padone on
  • ParadigmParadigm Posts: 421
    Padone said:

    In my opinion there's an important factor in production that's reliability.

    I just can't waste my time with betas and driver issues. This is the reason why I built my new rig with a 1060 instead of a 1660 or a 2060. WHEN rtx features will be supported without issues AND there will be a documented sensible gain in performances AND the price/performance ratio will be fine enough THEN it will be time for upgrading.

    I'm on 4.11 and I have seen no bugs that I'm aware of nor had any kind of driver issues, so that might be an overly cautious take.

  • RobinsonRobinson Posts: 751
    Paradigm said:

    I'm on 4.11 and I have seen no bugs that I'm aware of nor had any kind of driver issues, so that might be an overly cautious take.

    Agreed.  I've been using it for six months and the only crashes I've had involved d-force + the occassional iRay issue, which is not any different from the current release build.

  • rrwardrrward Posts: 555
    edited April 2019

    For me the cost isn't the hardware (I bought it with the idea I was going to migrate from Poser to Octane), it's the content. I have Poser content from the end of Victoria 2, through Victoria 4, more than 13 years worth of stuff. I don't even like to think about what all that cost me. I'm moving to Studio and most of that content is going to be mothballed. But yes, Studio is an expensive proposition.

    As for new GPUs, I'm holding onto my 1080ti's until RTX and whatever other whiz-bang tech is fully supported and shown to be worth the cost.

    Post edited by rrward on
  • ZilvergrafixZilvergrafix Posts: 1,385

    My best photos were the ones that were accidents and crops of something I was too focused on!!!!   ~just my 2 cents

    good for ones who are focused on make art, not my case, I do rendered images, that's for me enough, not interested in looking for applause or being  the 3D artist of the year. devil

  • ZilvergrafixZilvergrafix Posts: 1,385

     I don't want to spend countless time adapting and calculating.

     

    ok but...it is fun! 

  • Mr ScottMr Scott Posts: 51
    ebergerly said:
    Contrary to popular hype you dont NEED the latest and most expensive hardware. All it gives you is faster renders. A year ago the old cards were awesome, but now they're not?

    I 100% agree. I am a hobbiest too and I have 6GB 1060 card installed in a 2011 Windows 7 machine. I use a batch rendering program so I can render 8-10 hours at a time when I am sleeping or at work. I spend a lot of time away from DS so I have plenty of time to do batch renders. 

  • Mr ScottMr Scott Posts: 51
    Kitsumo said:

    Robinson, yeah I know iRay in the RTx just yet. I just don't want to waste money on old video cards if the RTX support might come reasonably soon.

    Slightly off topic: If you want to express yourself as an artist, have you tried 3d modeling? It doesn't require any more hardware than you have now. Hexagon, UVmapper Classic, GIMP and all the basic stuff are free. I just released my first freebie (shameless plug) and it really was satisfying to produce something from scratch.

    Another understated point. Daz, Hexagon, and GIMP are very powerful together. The biggest investment is time to learn it as there are many free videos online. I know I prefer to make my own props and scenes. Also invest in building block products, like shaders, slider morphs, certain utility apps, and get a work flow setup. Like someone else said if you buy all your content that gets expensive fast. 

  • ParadigmParadigm Posts: 421
    edited April 2019

    Another understated point. Daz, Hexagon, and GIMP are very powerful together. The biggest investment is time to learn it as there are many free videos online. I know I prefer to make my own props and scenes. Also invest in building block products, like shaders, slider morphs, certain utility apps, and get a work flow setup. Like someone else said if you buy all your content that gets expensive fast. 
     

    As someone who purely renders I can definitely say there is certain level of talent that seperates modelers and renderers. People who only render existing models are more compositionists than artists imo. I'd never call myself an artist.

    In the 3D realm I feel it kind of goes stills-renderer < animator < content creator in terms of actual artistry.  I also don't think photographers are artists. Anyone can take a picture. Anyone can render an image. It's composition. Calling either an artist is just an insult to actual artists. This is a personal philosophy though and surely many people disagree.

    Post edited by Paradigm on
  • RobinsonRobinson Posts: 751
    Paradigm said:

    It's composition. Calling either an artist is just an insult to actual artists. This is a personal philosophy though and surely many people disagree.

    I think when people say "art" they can mean "there's an art in it".  There's definitely an art in composition, animation, lighting and so forth.  I would say content creation is a deep skill, whereas the former are fairly shallow as you can get reasonably good results without years of practice.

  • rrwardrrward Posts: 555
    Paradigm said:

     Anyone can render an image. It's composition. Calling either an artist is just an insult to actual artists. This is a personal philosophy though and surely many people disagree

     

    And I'm to have to disagree. It's not the tool that determines wether it's art, it's the eye of the artist. I know people who've been banging away on Poser/Studio for years and can't create a good picture to save their lives. All the tools in the world and they don't have the eye to make anything with them.

    Your argument has been made regarding the invention of any new technology, be it the piano or the camera.

  • Seven193Seven193 Posts: 1,061

    I live on a fixed and limited income. Maybe DAZ Studio is too rich for my blood!?

    Start up a GoFundMe page and ask for donations.  Call it "help me buy a new computer". Seriously, no joking.  People do this all the time.  "Help me pay my bills", "Help me buy whatever", etc... As long as you're honest, it's perfectly legit.

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,586
    Paradigm said:

    Another understated point. Daz, Hexagon, and GIMP are very powerful together. The biggest investment is time to learn it as there are many free videos online. I know I prefer to make my own props and scenes. Also invest in building block products, like shaders, slider morphs, certain utility apps, and get a work flow setup. Like someone else said if you buy all your content that gets expensive fast. 
     

    As someone who purely renders I can definitely say there is certain level of talent that seperates modelers and renderers. People who only render existing models are more compositionists than artists imo. I'd never call myself an artist.

    In the 3D realm I feel it kind of goes stills-renderer < animator < content creator in terms of actual artistry.  I also don't think photographers are artists. Anyone can take a picture. Anyone can render an image. It's composition. Calling either an artist is just an insult to actual artists. This is a personal philosophy though and surely many people disagree.

    No, they can't!!! Sorry, but you can give the same camera to two strangers and ask them to photograph something and you will get very different results sometimes shocking. Your style and mindset have alot to do how you see things. Yes, composition is key in photography, but it is also key in art! Otherwise it is just a mess. Now some people like mess and call it art so you can't really define art. Hahahaha

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,514
    edited April 2019
    rrward said:
    Paradigm said:

     Anyone can render an image. It's composition. Calling either an artist is just an insult to actual artists. This is a personal philosophy though and surely many people disagree

     

    And I'm to have to disagree. It's not the tool that determines wether it's art, it's the eye of the artist. I know people who've been banging away on Poser/Studio for years and can't create a good picture to save their lives. All the tools in the world and they don't have the eye to make anything with them.

    Your argument has been made regarding the invention of any new technology, be it the piano or the camera.

    ..+1.

    As to working under relatively severe limitations I have done that ever since I started in this.  I didn't have a good paying job (when I did it was a years before even Poser was was around and I was playing around with PS3 before the Creative Suite days) so my content library, even after all these years is a fraction of what others have.  I completed a lot of my work and experimentation on a 32 bit 1.6 GHz duo core notebook with 4 GB of DDR memory and Intel integrated graphics in Daz 1.8 to 3.1 Advanced.  I constantly dealt with crashes during render processes and there were a number of scenes I never completed as they were just too big to render with the system resources I had. 

    When the 64 bit version of 3.1 was released, I realised that is where I needed to head so for nearly 18 months as I began saving up what I could for a new system, during which time I took on the task of learning how to design and build one myself (back then it cost less than going to a custom house or even buying "off the shelf"). Back then 3DL was still the only render engine we had so a pricey GPU wasn't as important as memory memory channels and CPU threads and CPU speed (I ended up with a 1 GB GTX 460 to drive the display which cost me something like 290$ at the time). I believe in total I spent something like 1,400$ for all the parts (sans display as I already had one), and for a while, had a beast of a rig. Crikey, I could even render with UE which I avoided like the plague on the notebook as it was a sure trip to a render crash. 

    That "beast" today is a kitten compared to what some people have. Yeah I modified and upgraded it as best I could, Maxwell Titan-X GPU, full 24 GB of memory, 6 core Xeon and most recently, both an SSD and 2 GB data drive. Still it is a far cry from what some have today, but it still does the job and a lot faster than before with that 12 GB Titan GPU when rendering in Iray.  With 3DL it shreds", particularly with many of the new scripts and utilities available. When I can render a large format highly detailed scene with all sorts of elements like transmaps, reflectivity, SSS, and IBL lighting (that would normally slow the process down), in around 12 - 14 min, I find that impressive. 

    But yes, less and less is being released with 3DL materials (Stonemason, Ant Farm and Jack Tomalin are a few of the PAs who still provide both) as Iray has pretty much become the standard for Daz.  So I don't have RTX, probably won't unless I get a windfall to build a new rig. Not really worried though.  COmparedto what I started with I have a pretty nice setup now with two systems, one for scene setup and the other for rendering and both which can have their resources pooled for rendering in Carrara.

    This image is still my most favourite, done many years ago on the old notebook with only three light sources and having to delete about 75% of the set (that was not in the view of the camera) to get it to finally render without crashing (click for full size).

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    Dave230 said:

    I live on a fixed and limited income. Maybe DAZ Studio is too rich for my blood!?

    Start up a GoFundMe page and ask for donations.  Call it "help me buy a new computer". Seriously, no joking.  People do this all the time.  "Help me pay my bills", "Help me buy whatever", etc... As long as you're honest, it's perfectly legit.

    Suggesting that people misuse a system set up to help people in genuine need is one of the best ways of making sure that the system disappears.  What you are suggesting is not a lot different than sitting on the street with a begging bowl . Go Fund me is meant for things like the one I link to in my signature bar, where it could truly have been a case of life or death.

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