What is the future of DAZ Studio?
Masterstroke
Posts: 2,415
It seems, that the future closer colaboration between Microsoft and NVidea brings more computing power and shared memory on one hand, but also more cloud services, tokens and AI on the other hand.
Since Microsoft is already highly controversial for its handling of privacy and AI, this anoounced new future of home computing looks more like a dystopian nightmare to me.
How can DAZ help, to keep us, still purchasing and using DAZ content, with DAZ software and bridges the way we used to?
How can we keep using DAZ Studio, when we are not willing to follow Nvidea and Microsoft into their dystopian madness?
On an extra note:
What keeps DAZ from making future DAZ content to be used nativly in Blender, without a bridge needed?
I'm assuming, that a lot of vendors are already using Blender for content creation exclusivly.
Since Blender has been originally designed for Linux systems, this could provide a possible solution to the upper problem.
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Comments
I assume you are talking about NVIDIA.
yup, and I think it is scary.
The Microsoft Win 11 and the required AI chip are already scary and now there is the Nvidea anouncement on top of it.
Where do we go from here?
well, Filatoon suggests NPR might be one direction DAZ has elected for in a world of increasingly excruciatingly realistic AI images
it certainly requires much less hardware expense
Required AI chip? What is that all about? First I've heard of it. Removing any trace of AI (Cortana, etc.) from W11 was easy enough during my PC build.
(Edited by mod)
Help me out here, please.
What is "NPR" ?
Non Photorealistic Rendering
Thank you. :-)
Since I am only interrested in "Photorealistic Rendering" and I am designated hater of Generative AI, I see myself in a pretty difficult position, then.
I seem to be somewhat handicapped by the Victorian build of my house. It's opaque to Wi-fi and I can't use LAN due to where the cable would have to run. So, I am forced to have an offline machine in the only place I can put a tower PC. It's starting to feel like an advantage, TBH.
Regards,
Richard
Unless you intend being a commercial sheep and buying the newest bling that Daz or Nvidia puts out, I don't see why you are in a difficult position. Stick with DS4 and a 30 or 40 series GPU and you're fine.
One scary point is, that Microsoft and Nvidea don't want you to have an offline machiene.
This is a very common motto nowadays, starting way back with the streaming. I think it's good to bring the subject up here, because the stance DAZ will take in this respect is indeed important to many here. But I feel it's kinda futile to speculate if DAZ themselves will not join in the discussion (which would br very cool).
For what it's worth though, my take on all this forced online-ness is simple, I don't do it. If anything has online parts that need to stay online, I don't buy and I don't subscribe. Got a 5x card for my work PC recently, that's a bummer, but I'll probably just take the card out and use it externally on my Windows 10 bootcamp. And if push came to shove, I'd rather follow Wendy's route and start learning how to create really cool NPR images than put everything into the hands of some scary tech giants.
Just wait until they have caught up with the music industries, where nowadays most decent plugin only run if you are connected to the internet despite you have to download a massive amount of data to make it work and it only works with an USB authenticator key. At least you can load them all on the same one. And also some have changed from rightful ownership to a subscription model and if you want to update them you practically lose the ownership of what you have bought. And there is another one if you want updates you pay again around £200 despite their not updating everything. And Cubase is another money grabbing company. Each year they have 2 major updates and you PAY. The midyear one a little less. It's not a subscription. It's something in between. My husband who's not making any money with his music. It's his hobby to keep him sane. I have no idea how much money he has spent on this stuff. But he decided Cubase had enough money of him. He now mainly uses Reaper. They only ask for donations. I really don't know what some these companies think how much money musicians have. But somehow they think it grows out of their backside.
The keeping people online has only one single purpose, training AI. And we need to stop this. We already know the impact AI has. It's making people dumber. Don't let that happen to you or anyone you care for.
None of my machines have EVER been set up with an internet connected user account. I even spent weeks coding a workaround for the latest version of W11 when the previous bypass failed to work. There is NO WAY I will EVER have a machine connected to Microsoft, or anyone else. They can go duck themselves.
These concerns are valid. And good for you doing this for you. But they have little to do with Daz. Daz only requires a connection if you pay for Premiere and want access to the plugins that come with Premiere.
Hardware is getting more and more expensive, and it's all because of... (I can't say those two words). My current Daz purchases have filled up my SSD to the brim, and SSD prices are so high that I can't afford them anymore. I've even had to stop buying Daz products because of this. My motherboard also has some issues. Now is truly the worst time to replace my computer.
If prices continue to rise like this, eventually consumers will be unable to afford the hardware and will have no choice but to subscribe to streaming services from large companies. Perhaps this is the future, and the goal of many companies (but not for a lowly consumer like me).
Probably refering to the ARM based CPUs in most modern laptops, desktop users are still using the x86 based CPUs and the AI crap doesn't work on them.
AI does work perfectly fine on x64 (there's no x86 anymore), but as an interconnector to NVidia's AI silicon they don't provide the speed for communication between dies, hence NVidia started to provide their own ARM CPU a while back simply for performance. Added bonus: rids them of license dependencies from AMD or intel. Entire platform in their hands. Not sure if that MS co-op will play out as Windows 11 is about as popular as skin rash with anybody with a slight ense of privacy, then any software would have to be ported to ARM or emulated with losses like Apple did. Looking at NVidia's stock price I don't see the fireworks.
I for one couldn't think of why I'd want that RTX PC in my home, anything I want I can do with the x64 rig I have on Win10+ESU, any when Win10 is not an option anymore the machine will become another of my Linux boxen. What works works, what doesn't I'll let sail, and to ge back to thread topic: if that's Daz Studio (which I use solely for hobby purposes) then so be it. That goes for the x64 machine as well.
Is this the announcement in question? https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-windows-pcs-agents-rtx-spark
IMHO, the future is Blender. DAZ has good figures and Blender all the features. I use DAZ only for posing and than bring the figure to Blender for anything else.
That might well be true.
They just should make DAZ content native to Blender.
That would have only advantages.
DAZ could save money, by no longer having to invest into their software DAZ Studio, and only providing content toBlender.
Lot's of content has been already designed in Blender anyway.
Users and maybe even DAZ itself would become independant from Nvidea and Microsoft.
Handling DAZ content in Blender natively could teach users, who are less familliar with Blender more of the software, which in the end could increase DAZ's vendor community.
EDIT:
Yup, I'm repeating myself
So to people who have used both substantially, how do the posing features of Studio and Blender compare (assume you can export the rig as well)?
With iray render tied to nvidia cards I've been wondering about the same question. On top of this the storage and memory price hike and shortage will make it harder too to buy/own new machines capable of 3d stuff.
And then there is that AI agent processor bs Jensen just announced.
Will not work, Blender is lacking some features which DAZ have:
* Shapekeys as assets
* Shapekeys with HD (displacement/multires details) support
* Shapekeys that can change the armature
* Something like Geocrafts (can be done with Geo-nodes, but there is a bug which than breakedisplacement maps (and I think also normals)
* Blender has very bad viewport performance when posing high res mesh, espically with hair (high res = G9 base mesh...)
While Blender is far above DAZ in many many many areas, there are still some points where Blender sucks compared to DAZ :(
Best thing which could happen is that DAZ is moving to Cycles, so that we are sharing at least the same shaders.
This is more likley that all this issues will be fixed in Blender ;)