Daz inc. innovating,imitating or stagnating??
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I see Unity, UE4, and to a lesser extent Blender as DAZ 3D competition. I don't really see Poser/Renderosity as competition.
I think the game engines are making strides. People are developing "games" which allow for posing, importing morphs and textures and animating complete with soft-body physics and cloth simulation. Like a combination of DAZ Studio and The Sims where you get to create/modify your own characters, dress them, animate them and build a story around them. I've been pointed to one application already based on Unity but it is of a more adult nature so I won't link it but it shows what can be done. By the way, that is aimed directly at the VR market while having a desktop screen view as an alternative.
As for Blender, I think it is only a matter of time before the feature set now available in DAZ Studio will be part of the comprehensive Blender offering, especially considering the already mentioned extra funding recently made available to the developers. I may be well off the mark with my speculations because I'm only a hobbyist but I see what's happening and draw conclusions - as you can draw your own.
I still encounter people who consider both packages to be stronger than opponent in this or that (though DAZ lately brings more and more to it's table).
I imagine that once this becomes commercially available that daz will be all over it!
But yeah, daz is not sitting on it's laurels, just look at the beta frequent updates compared to just a year ago, hell, we just got 2 general releases in one year!
https://www.daz3d.com/anilip-2
Nothing is free. There are lots of free to play video games out there. Its a very common business practice in today's digital landscape. Even Microsoft has given things away. Daz is not being given away to you out of kindness. It used to be not free, it used to cost several hundred dollars just like Poser. But Daz realized that was not sustainable, they needed people to come to the store, and giving Studio away for free was the Trojan horse it needed to survive.
This is a business. And it is a highly tech focused business. You either innovate or you die. Just look at Poser trying to stay afloat. I don't think anybody can dispute that Daz's decision to go free saved their company.
Daz has made some good moves. I think they understand to some degree that they cannot just sit still. They have to change. Going free was only the start. They developed Genesis, but the big change was bringing in a new render engine, Iray. I wonder how many of us would be here without Iray. That includes me. Poser and Daz before Iray never caught my interest, because 99% of the stuff looked like toons. It was a combination of things. A new renderer that could run on a lot of GPUs, and Daz itself was reasonably easy to use.
Ease of use is Daz Studio's biggest advantage. If you can't do something yourself, well there is almost always a product available that can help you. You can buy purchase a preset for just about anything in Daz, so even the most inexperienced users could come up with something. Very few software do this as well as Daz. This ease of use + Iray also being fairly easy to understand (at least compared to most other renderers), is the killer combo that has driven Daz Studio for the past several years. The other aspect would have to be sales. It looks like Daz saw what Valve was doing with Steam's big sales and do that...like every day, LOL. Even though the sales have become rather incomprehensible at times with weird stacking and conditions, it has obviously worked for them because they still do them.
But even this can only last for so long, and like I said, you must adapt and change or you will find yourself in Poser's position. There needs to be more. It doesn't matter that Daz Studio is free, there are other software that are free too. There needs to be more.
I often talk about gaming engines, and I still feel they are the next big thing. Jack remarked about how much investment Unreal and Unity have had...that doesn't matter. This is a results driven business, it doesn't matter how or why to the customer, the customers are going to use what works best. The gaming engines are developing at a rapid rate. They now support ray tracing, and they are fully capable of rendering images just as realistic as you can with Iray if you dial up all the settings. Gaming engines are very flexible, they can do things that Iray absolutely cannot do. Gaming engines can give you full physics and collision detection, 3D sound, and more, and its all included with the engine. Just like Daz, you can buy assets to get up and running, giving the masses a chance to create something like never before. Like right now, Humble has yet another Unity bundle available, I've lost track of how many game design bundles they have offered. But they are not just for games, you can use these for animation and single frames, too.
I think Daz is missing a big chance with this. While Daz models can clunkily transfer over and Daz has made a few attempts, I just don't see many cases of Daz models in gaming. I saw Daz Facebook claim in 2015 they were the #1 characters on the Unity store, but not today! I often see posts in various places asking about using Daz models in games. A common response is it is not worth it. Daz needs to make it worth it. That is your challenge going forward in the upcoming years. If Daz does not fill this niche, somebody else will. I already know about Morph3D, which BTW has renamed itself...Tafi...??? LOL. That didn't go so well, and I would list my reasons, but that would be a bad idea here. However, regardless of Morph3D that doesn't mean Daz should just give up. They never needed a spin off company for this.
As much as I complain about things, I will say 4.12 is vastly improved in many ways. Overall its been the best performing version of Studio for me, with a variety of QOL improvements. That's good. I am not all doom and gloom 24/7.
Actually, the big slash page yesterday introducing 4.12 was worded in a way that sounded like some of the discussions in our benchmarking threads. I just thought that was interesting. Its too bad they didn't use "game changer" in the description, LOL.
First of all, I think Daz is slowly imitating. Nothing they have brought is really new, but it's not a bad thing. I'm happy with all the improvements they bring in.
Now when it comes to gaming industry, my wet dream is a live link between Daz Studio and Unity/UE. I wish Daz would get rid of those ridiculous interactive licenses, and embrace the possibility to use their products in games. Now if I could pose and animate my characters in the safety of DS, and see instant real-time renders in game engines, that would be amazing development.
I don't disagree with your assessment of Daz being a business, or their reasons for providing DS and now Hexagon free of charge. As for most of the rest of what I didn't quote, it's way beyond my experience… Though I suspect you are right.
However, my statement still stands. It's not bad for a program that's completely free to use.
I got my cell phone for "free", with a contract for cell service for two years.
I got my alarm system for "free", with a contract for monitoring services for five years.
I got an upgraded alarm system for "free", from the same company, with a contract for monitoring services for two years.
I got Daz Studio for free, with a contract, no wait, there's no contract! I don't have to pay a monthly fee for something else in order to use Daz Studio. Nor do I have to pay to upgrade the program. Okay, not all the features are included. If I want unlimited Face Transfers, I have to buy a plugin…
It is more convenient to buy content then to model your own, and the quality of the products you can purchase here are probably better than what is available for free out in the wilds of the internet, (with some notable exceptions, especially Wilmap's clothing.) But no one is forced to buy content in order to use Daz Studio. In fact, DS comes with a surprising amount of basic, premium products, over and above the Starter Essentials for dForce and four generations of Genesis. While DIM is really convenient for downloading and installing content when one isn't really sure where to put anything, we don't have to use DIM and can get our content from any source and install it ourselves. Even if we buy that content from other companies.
Sure, the whole point of not charging for Daz Studio was to grow the market for the content at a much faster pace, and it worked. A brilliant marketing move, I've said many times before. But someone with no money for content could use Hexagon or Blender, (or ?) to model their own content, and then use DS to render stills or animation. No strings attached.
I believe daz studio is good to make comics together with gimp or photoshop for effects. As for animation 4.12 is better, but there is really a lot of work to be done to make it a decent animation platform. As for real-time animation and rendering .. nope it's not.
Personally I do enjoy taking daz assets to blender. And I believe the huge assets library in the shop is really the one and only thing that makes daz so good anyway.
Daz is also quick and painless for the most, while blender users will all have arthritis by the time they are 40 years old
I agree that the key is the assets, and the fact that they are native. I also use Blender/Unity and am a fan of both. However, having limited time to spend on 3D, I don't want to spend it messing with trying to get stuff imported, doing material conversions, etc.
- Greg
Just to let you know that actually the material conversion is quite good for common assets, apart minor modifications that may be needed for some advanced features such as the sss chromatic mode. I can import from G1 to G8 standard content without additional work most of the times.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/123/material-tests
Thanks for the info/link, @Padone!
- Greg
Yeah, and you can use tons of freebies or model stuff yourself in (free) Hexagon :)
Something like this in UE4 looks absolutely lovely
I would love my DAZ ladies and gentlemen in their finery in this, or the servants cleaning, burglar stealing the silverware
+1
That being said what I appreciate about Daz is that its comparatively easy. I love the sbh editor. Sure it's not easy to use but then I only have to figure out how to model the strands right. Hair solutions in blender or 3dmax ornatrix require that I learn those complex programs first. And then I have to learn how to set up materials in order for their render engines to render them so that everything looks good. In Daz I only have to learn how to use Iray and how to do my lighting and not very much else.
Truth be said if we got a more powerful hair tool for Daz and you need to pay hundreds of $ for it I would probably get this, too. I just love to play with hair so much. If ornatrix offers a daz plugin for 500$ i wouldn't hesitate to buy it in an instant. But I wouldn't do this if I have to learn and master a complex program first just to get to the hair part. O want to play with the hair and learn how to make hair and not learn how to navigate through a program that has lots of features I don't really need. Not a make art button but a learn create hair button. This is what I want and the sbh editor gives me that. It's not a perfect solution but currently probably my best solution.
Oh wow will you look at this
I have been animating Daz characters in Cinema 4D since V3, but I've always composed the animations in Poser, since the animation tools have historically been terrible in Daz Studio, plus Poser had PoserFusion and InterPoser Pro (3rd party plugin) to get the figures into Cinema 4D, and DS really only had Riptide obj & mdd importer. Mimic Pro (lip sync) worked well with Poser, too.
Fast-forward to where we are now, and Poser has abandoned PoserFusion, and InterPoser Pro is dead as well. Mimic Pro is so old it won't run on my Mac. Honestly, I was despairing, but the DS 4.12 Timeline looks to be a game-changer as far as animating goes--not only is it vastly better than before, but seems to be even better than Poser's animation tools, so I may finally get to cut loose Poser.
That said, DS is still going to be problematic for me since it doesn't have a PoserFusion equivalent to host Daz figures in Cinema 4D. You can use FBX, and I also bought the iClone suite to see what that could do, but it seems like in both instances the characters lose integrity in terms of mesh and weight-mapping, unless I'm doing something wrong. The truest transfer I have found is still Riptide, but even that is on life support, as the developer is no longer updating it, so it doesn't work in C4Dr20. So for the time being I'm stuck using C4Dr14 and 16.
So, the upshot for me as an animator is that the DS 4.12 timeline is a huge leap forward in animating, but I would give my eye teeth for a "DazFusion" plugin for C4D (or even better, an InterDaz Pro), and an update of Mimic Pro (I'm still using V4 & M4, and like them!). In these two big issues, I can agree with some of Wolf's frustration, and I think I can probably speak for him as well that--as animators--our frustration isn't that DS is a bad program, it's that DS and the Daz figures have such great features and great potential for animation that the hurdles and sometimes flaming hoops we have to jump through to work with them are maddening because it feels like we're constantly almost there....
Hear hear! (pun intended) Mimic Live is like a cruel joke.
I think that s a very subjective question really . because it appears the question is more opinon based
My opinion is it would depend on your needs for a 3d program to whether or not you feel Daz fits those 3 categories . I can see a person with your specialized background in professional animation would find daz confining & lacking in tools & resources of not having the ability of the more powerful or expensive 3d software.
But for myself, as a person that just uses daz for creating the type art & animated media that I do . I can give you the opinion that to me daz has come along way from the daz4.5 days , just this year alone we have got the new integrated timelines which is still being refined. Though some options to customize the ui would be nice. . but again its has come along way from the single line keyframe editor ,
Iray renderer is always going to be dependent on the hardware vs the software abilities , 3dl is still works the same.
Plus just like blender or Maya & vue . you will need 3rd party plugins for better fx and modeling editing , But is daz innovating? maybe not as much as those who have the ability to create content for daz studio. such as the Fludios plugin which has added fluid simulations to daz , The deforce development is still on going with strand base hair and clothing is a huge improvement over dynamic clothing plugin , the new IK chain/ with properties menu is a great a addition to the already working fk in daz studio, very similar to Poser or Maya Ik/FK solutions. which i use the Maya's LT documents to get me through the daz ik-chain . but its still a improvement over the single line timeline editor, so I can only see improvements as development progresses, 3rd party plugings do not discourage me from using the daz software. sometimes 3rd parties can put more effort into refining developments of a daz tool, which to me is innovating.
So like you mentions maybe in the future daz will have hard surface scripting and a editable physic engine and some updated documents on how to ue it all. it will mostly come from a 3rd party
Unfortunately , when it comes to lips syncing , even Maya and blender,poser , & vue have their issues with mouth movements being synchronized with the voice sound and will need tweaking in the pose or joint editor most of the time.
when I need lip synce in daz I do it by hand by importing my wav sound file into daz timeline and hand keyframe the mouth movements according to the sound keyframed into the timeline and get much better results than the 32 byte version of lipsynce can do. Yes it pain & it takes a lot longer to do, but the results are much better IMO because you can also add face expressions into your hand keyframed lip-syncing.
So like i said it would really depend on your demand for the 3d software your using. for a amateur like me Daz does everything i need it to do . for someone with greater needs such as yourself its properly going to be frustrating because of the lack of tools and resources your workflow demands .
The one great thing about daz studio & the 3d market place is, it give the average user like me a inlet or a chance to be able to create and sell 3d content for the daz software market place. without having to buy the expensive 3d software in order to do it.
So Its all relativity to the user & that can be subjective .. That is my 2 cents
This. Exactly this.
Daz really doesn't have any competitors. Their content is first rate. JCMs. HDs. A framework that makes it all work together easily. A reasonably open but poorly supported SDK which I continue to put up with because when I stand back an consider things objectively, there are only two programs that I simply can't do without: Daz Studio and Blender. I haven't used any of my RL software in ages, and I have it all. Literally. If I had to do mocap cleanup in Blender instead of Maya, I could even manage that in a pinch... you can set up IK for a G8 in less than a half an hour even on the first time never having done it before.
There is really no point in asking Daz for better animation tools; that ship has sailed. And that's OK... I still browse the market every day for new content to buy. I'm just not going to use it in Daz Studio.
One could say that the competition is Poser and iClone's Character Creator software. However, it's a bit like comparing apples and oranges as it stands...iClone is obviously geared primarily toward animation and Poser is just, well, not even in the running ;). From where I sit, the new owners are making the exact same mistakes as the old and hopefully it works for them, but it's not something that I'd want currently. All three may have a similar recipe, but the end result (and focus) of each is very different.
Laurie
Don't feel bad. I bought the Garibaldi plug-in years ago and I still can't make it do anything.
...indeed, picked up GE when it first came out and it was wonderful as well as fairly intuitive to learn. The only downside was when Iray was introduced you had to save the hair as an .obj which meant no further styling and a heavy drain on system resources. Now that is no more. Very pleased.
Daz STILL has this ages old quote on its main page...
“...accurate character tolerances made Daz a go-to solution on CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, and IRON MAN.” - RON MENDELL
So obviously Daz likes to position themselves as being something Hollywood might lean on. But in the modern era Hollywood is going to be leaning on game engines more and more. Disney has got into the act as well, using Unreal in a similar way, for live feedback on shots. Some cartoons are being made with game engines. The question is can Daz supply those models?
Single pics can be a thing, but I believe people can get bored with the store. Daz makes their money on content. I feel like there is a general arc for Daz users. The longer they use Daz, the LESS they buy. They eventually learn to make some stuff themselves, and/or they own so much content they don't need new versions of the same stuff. Certainly there are exceptions, but I think most of Daz's business comes from fairly new customers who are getting into it. That's why they can release seemingly similar items. My 2nd year was the year I spent the most as I learned how things worked. It has declined each year since.
That's why Daz needs to keep pushing forward, to get new customers and to keep the old ones spending.
And dude, Iron Man came out over 10 years ago. That's a lifetime in technology, you didn't even have Iray back then. I think you guys need a new quote. Its getting laughable at this point.
The quote refers to the use in character design, it isn't a claim that DS is sued as a final renderer.
Your assumption about purchase histroies may well have some truth in it - but I doubt most people try to learn to do everything. Like people doing this prefessionally I would expect that they will learn and do some aspects while using content from others (other team members in production studios, the store and freebies here) to fill out the areas they are not best suited for (or are not interested in).