Well, I really would like to have the Filament render option added to the Mac. That is a disappointment. And I think I read Octane is now able to be used? Haven't pursued that yet. I know I had to turn it off on my Win10 D|S machines. 

Here are a few 'cartoony' pieces... I postworked in a plain curtain backdrop.  Sphynx was rendered with Filament... I thought it would be easier to make into cartoon since it's pretty flat rendering. 

Clothify... Newsprint... and Polarized

ENJOY!!!

 

 

NotAnArtist said:

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said: stuff

...

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

...

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

...

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

 

Wow, your points wipe my points! Maybe I just have some 'love' left over for the Daz team, or maybe I'm insane. I mean, me, defending a corporation?

Seriously, I think my point was that I assume the PAs also get paid more from sales of their old products when they're sold for more, same as the new stuff. I love the PAs, so that's who I felt I was defending. If the corporates get all the booty, I'm out'a here!

I would love the Daz techies as well if they'd provide us with something for higher quality rendering that wouldn't put many of us in debt, though. There are people working on iray, why not give some love to Filament as well, considering the increasing stress we're under? It would help ALL of us in one way or another, PAs included, as I've already been redundant about.

Thanks for your comments. I stand corrected, or at least a bit tilted :)

Simple question, would you prefer to sell 5 units for $2.50 profit, or 20 units for $1 profit? Since these are digital items, it can be easily argued the individual prices are not as important as the overall revenue generated, especially on a product that has been out for several months and has exceeded its typical new product window.

While selling a product for a bit more sounds like a great boon for the seller, if people balk at purchasing that item, is it really such a great thing? I obviously want to support the PAs, too. But I cannot imagine that they are genuinely making more profit off the $5 grab bag items, for the reason we have discussed at this point.

Going back to Steam, there was a small indie game that got marked down to $1 for a weekend sale on the Steam front page. That was a 95% discount on a game normally priced $20. However, the game sold more during that weekend that it did in its entire existance previously, and the studio in turn made more money that weekend than they ever did as well. Additionally, this gave the small studio a lot of exposure, with more people getting to see their work, this in turn had more people interested in their next project. This $1 sale put the team on the map. I cannot locate one of the articles that covered this story, but it happened a couple years ago.

I did find this statement by Valve's President Gabe Newell, who founded the company in 1996. Valve owns Steam, and their success helped set a lot of standards in digital sales. Few people are as well versed as he is on this subject. This comes from a keynote in 2009, which I will also link here. https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/19/dice-2009-gabe-newell-keynote-transcript

"So let's talk about something else. One of the things that really sort of annoys me is the inefficiency of pricing that we have in our industry. And I'm always sort of arguing about whether or not we're pricing our products correctly. So it was nice to actually do an experiment last Christmas. So this is sales for the eight days before Christmas and the eight days after Christmas. After Christmas we implemented discounts. And so the minimum discount on Steam for all the products was 10 percent. We saw 35 percent increase in sales, not in units but in sales. In real dollars or euros or whatever. And the interesting thing is if you want to 25 percent off, you know, every publisher and developer got to make its own decisions about how it wanted to participate. If you go to 25 percent, you see this huge factor of 7 increase in the revenue you're generating. Clearly there was some function that was going on there. Then you go to 50 percent, still seeing increase. That's great. But you go to 75 percent off. And people are making almost 15 times as much money by getting to what apparently is a much more natural price point for our products and our content. This is something that you're going to find that's true of all of these emerging platforms. It gives you much better tools for thinking about experimenting with and managing your business."      --Gabe Newell

I know that Daz3D is not Steam. But I think this gets the point across very well, and I have often compared Daz sales with Steam sales. As Gabe stated, the items that went to 75% off generated almost 1500% more revenue than they normally would. This drastically dwarfs the other discounts mentioned. Soon after this experiment Valve would become known for huge sales with crazy discounts, even 90% discounts on some software. So Steam quickly put this data to use and expanded on it. What this shows is the power of a sale price point that becomes an impulse purchase. The steep discount was not a slap to the face of those games, it made them 15 times more money than usual! Steam figured this stuff out way back in 2009. Steam is a little different than Daz in that they do not do big sales all the time. They have frequent small sales that are focused on a few games, often on weekends, but they only have 4 big sales each year, seasonally. So most games are at their full price for extended periods of time, and I mean months, not a few days, in contrast to the laundry pose set I screenshot earlier. The laundry pose set was never full price for more than a few days in row at any time the past year.

Richard Haseltine said:

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

Prices on Steam are basically the same as they have been for, oh, 10+ years. So I don't buy this argument for one second. These are DIGITAL assets. When you buy gas or food that is product with a finite distribution, and it all has pricing coming from the components that make them a finished product. 

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

Now perhaps the rent went up for Daz. I can get that. But again, as I said earlier, if this was just one thing it would be accepted. If the prices went up a little bit, it would be accepted. But the prices on offer are not even close. We are talking a 2.5x price increase on grab bag items.

2.5X!

That alone outpaces the rate of inflation. Then you add all of the other stuff on top of that, and it gets to be pretty outragious.

You cannot spin the discount being less than some previous discounts in similarly structured offers as the price rising - the base price on these items has not, as far as I am aware, increased. That doesn't mean you cannot comment on or complain about the offer compared to previous offers, but it is not a price rise.

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

And if most people are hobby users, who is going to get hurt more by an economic downturn? Are people going to skip gas or food to keep buying digital goods?

Um, no. Descretionary spending is the first to get pulled back in any downturn. 

So in reality, can Daz truly afford to raise prices? I don't think so. But as I also said earlier, the success of the sale will determine the answer.

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

Semantics. With all due respect, the sale price is the price of the good at a given time. Sure, there is a normal price (which BTW prices on new items have indeed increased,) but the sale price is a price, and those prices have gone up. If you are selling items for $4.99, then $4.99 IS THE PRICE, temporary or not. A number of these items were $1.99, or $2.99 in past sales. THAT WAS THE PRICE.

That is not spin. This is the website where a common catch phrase amung forum users is "There is always another sale". So much so that the sales report thread, which is regarded as an **official sales report thread** according to Daz own staff, has "There is always another sale" in the thread title with a cute little 'TM' in the name as well. Sales are so common that they put 'TM' in there as joke, as if the term is trade marked by Daz3D. That Daz3D staff openly participate in a thread with this title is in fact a form of approval by Daz3D and its staff that sales are so common that they can place a 'TM' sign on them. This is just one of several such threads which I am sure many of us here have seen at one point or another.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/474281/new-2021-sales-thread-report-issues-here-there-s-always-another-sale/p1

I can also point at the screen shot I posted of the laundry pose set in my previous post. The point on the price chart moves CONSTANTLY, because the item is constantly on some kind of sale. That item is frequently on sale, and this is true for many items in the store. Saying the normal price for the laundry pose set has not gone up during this time...I would consider that to be spin, because the item is rarely sold at normal price. If an item is on sale all the time, the normal price is really not valid in this conversation, is it? If an item has a $100 price tage, but is on sale frequently for $25, is that really a $100 product? There are numerous debates that can be had around pricing structures like this, and I would think you would rather not wish to engage in them here.

It would be a massive understatement to say that sales are a massive part of this website's success. I think we can agree on this statement. Otherwise I rather doubt that Daz would have so many sales in the first place, as they have a new sale practically every day with few exceptions.

So with all of this in mind, when we the customers see the sales get progressively worse, we the customers take notice. Thus the large forum opinion of the March Madness sale in this thread as being shall we say, lackluster.

I also stated in multiple posts that ultimately the sales data would determine the success of this new strategy. If I may project a little bit, I would consider the new grab bag price of $3.99 as jusitification for the past 8 pages of posts including mine.

Yeah, I was wondering what rez monitor you use. Sounds like you must have similar resources. Dont know much about PC' s or Daz, but I saw a forum post that claimed hiding geometry with the geometry editor actually made a bigger scene file (if I understood correctly) hence, would use more resources. I would think I have enough resources, but, isn't a geograft essentially hiding geomerty and adding more? Guess I'll do some more tests and hopefully have time to actually have fun with this crazy toy. Anyway, I was thinking of learning to use the geometry editor, cause I like to combine multiple hair, and in Filament if I shut off visibility of a layer it still casts a shadow! I suppose that would be a new thread. Thanks again for your responses! / blessings to all / G

Wow, thanks barbult! Thanks for accuratly reading my lengthy ramble and actually trying to replicate the issue, I much appreciate your help! The time you spent seems like enough! I did some more (exausting) exaustive tests with new confusing results. I just loaded G3F and loaded Lulu Jeans (Lulu outfit for G3F) cause I realised it must have a geograft ( rather than an autofit ). It certainly seems to have a standard geograft that makes most of G3F's pelvis and legs disappear allowing the jeans to replace that space / geometry. So, with just those 2 items in the scene, I added a G8 aniblock (dance Spin , I don't know where the G3 ones are) for G3F in the animate timeline. After repeating it for 30 minutes the figure and clothing were still visible in Filament view! My other tests would usually result in the genesis figure disappearing in 5 to 10 minutes. So, It seems that this geograft must be different in some way and hence not an issue for my system. My other test today was, the V4 Legacy UV Geografts for G8F, same test, just G8F with applied geografts. After the spin aniblock ran for 10 minutes, It was the average result, G8F disappeared - although it did, strangely, leave the eyelashes. Your quote "I previewed several animation presets (are those aniblocks?)" I'm thinking they're aniblocks but even if they're some other ani file I would think the point is that motion was created and that would cause the same issue (now I have something else to test :)  And thanks barbult for posting the render, It's helpful even just to see what someone else can do in Filament - and I'm very impressed with the Dforce, I don't have a clue at this point! Final thought, although I did manage to do some tests, I have wondered if my problem is related to 4K - are you using 4K? Thanks again, have a great day! / blessings to all / G  

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said: stuff

...

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

...

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

...

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

 

Wow, your points wipe my points! Maybe I just have some 'love' left over for the Daz team, or maybe I'm insane. I mean, me, defending a corporation?

Seriously, I think my point was that I assume the PAs also get paid more from sales of their old products when they're sold for more, same as the new stuff. I love the PAs, so that's who I felt I was defending. If the corporates get all the booty, I'm out'a here!

I would love the Daz techies as well if they'd provide us with something for higher quality rendering that wouldn't put many of us in debt, though. There are people working on iray, why not give some love to Filament as well, considering the increasing stress we're under? It would help ALL of us in one way or another, PAs included, as I've already been redundant about.

Thanks for your comments. I stand corrected, or at least a bit tilted :)

robertswww said:

@supernoob Glad to hear your new Mac install went well! Let us know if you run into any issues down-the-road.

I genuinely didn't expect to have Daz working within the first month (if at all) so I'm pleasantly surprised :)

The difference between my old (2014) Macbook Pro and this M1 Max is ridiculous, even without a supported GPU (I assume) it must be hundreds of times faster.

What I really need are some suggestions of things to try out, things that weren't possible before (even dforce hair wasn't possible). Are there any cool new features that I might not know about? I've been away from Daz since before that filament thing arrived.

And for anyone wondering, Daz seems to work pretty well on the latest Monterey update. Most annoying issue I've found is that my custom layout and toolbars reset every time I close it - if anyone has a solution for this I'd be very grateful.

outrider42 said:

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

Prices on Steam are basically the same as they have been for, oh, 10+ years. So I don't buy this argument for one second. These are DIGITAL assets. When you buy gas or food that is product with a finite distribution, and it all has pricing coming from the components that make them a finished product. 

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

Now perhaps the rent went up for Daz. I can get that. But again, as I said earlier, if this was just one thing it would be accepted. If the prices went up a little bit, it would be accepted. But the prices on offer are not even close. We are talking a 2.5x price increase on grab bag items.

2.5X!

That alone outpaces the rate of inflation. Then you add all of the other stuff on top of that, and it gets to be pretty outragious.

You cannot spin the discount being less than some previous discounts in similarly structured offers as the price rising - the base price on these items has not, as far as I am aware, increased. That doesn't mean you cannot comment on or complain about the offer compared to previous offers, but it is not a price rise.

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

And if most people are hobby users, who is going to get hurt more by an economic downturn? Are people going to skip gas or food to keep buying digital goods?

Um, no. Descretionary spending is the first to get pulled back in any downturn. 

So in reality, can Daz truly afford to raise prices? I don't think so. But as I also said earlier, the success of the sale will determine the answer.

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

Prices on Steam are basically the same as they have been for, oh, 10+ years. So I don't buy this argument for one second. These are DIGITAL assets. When you buy gas or food that is product with a finite distribution, and it all has pricing coming from the components that make them a finished product. 

Daz is raising prices on digital goods that already existed before the crisis began. Goods that were already on their servers, and some goods long before a downturn happened.

Now perhaps the rent went up for Daz. I can get that. But again, as I said earlier, if this was just one thing it would be accepted. If the prices went up a little bit, it would be accepted. But the prices on offer are not even close. We are talking a 2.5x price increase on grab bag items.

2.5X!

That alone outpaces the rate of inflation. Then you add all of the other stuff on top of that, and it gets to be pretty outragious.

How is a 2.5 times increase on an old digital good defensible? While there may be a limit of Daz users, there is no actual limit to how many digital goods Daz can sell. If 100 million people wanted to buy Victoria they can do so. There is nothing stopping them as long as the website doesn't crash. But 100 million people cannot buy a high end GPU, because they don't exist in that number. There is a genuine supply and demand there. It is not my problem that Daz does not have 100 million users. Maybe they need to do a better job expanding their customer base.

And if most people are hobby users, who is going to get hurt more by an economic downturn? Are people going to skip gas or food to keep buying digital goods?

Um, no. Descretionary spending is the first to get pulled back in any downturn. 

So in reality, can Daz truly afford to raise prices? I don't think so. But as I also said earlier, the success of the sale will determine the answer.

Also, I don't blame the PAs at all. They don't make these sales up. They can only approve of what products go in what sales.

I'm really not understanding the appeal of Filament, or even how to use it. 

It seems like it's only for viewport rendering? What's the point of that?

And it doesn't like things like Ultrascenery. To me that's a big issue, not being able to use iray preview on Ultrascenery scenes is a real kick in the butt, since you can't see a lot of the props in the scene until it's rendered. So you'll spend a lot of time setting up some figures, only to find that there are trees growing through them that you couldn't see in the texture shaded viewport. Filament does nothing for me here.

Do materials have to be prepped for Filament? If so, how? Also if so, it seems like that would take even more time than just rendering with Iray.

I just don't understand.

 

ok it has occurred to me the wall might have a cutout opacity map for the doors, they don't import into Twinmotion 

since Filament crashed I never looked in studio

NotAnArtist said:

tsarist said:

NotAnArtist said:

Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??...

Well, NotAnArtist, I AM an artist from a family of artists. What you're saying MIGHT make some minute amount of sense for a hobbyist, but not for a professional.

 

After my big corporate media job went away (along with 1000s of other media pros around the world) I found myself in dire straits. I went freelance, but the business community started driving down prices until I finally ended up here doing digital art because the cheapskates wanted to get everything for free.

 

The discounts getting smaller and worsening sale prices are keeping me from buying & they aren't helping Daz because I'm not spending.

 

The Rents go up. Food goes up. Insurance rates & other services go up. Department stores jack up their prices. Don't even mention Petrol & other energy costs. Everybody is making more but me and other freelancers at this end of the business.

 

And before I get hit with an onslaught of comments about the "irony" of me complaining about this that or the other thing, I am not able to raise MY prices. Most of us at this level can't. It costs more to get a client and more to service them. Plus, more of us now than ever before are being forced to work dead end jobs because the economy is so bad that freelance is becoming nearly completely unsustainable for most of us. Rest assured those crappy jobs aren't raising OUR pay either.

 

So, you're probably going to hear complaining because every increase in price hits that much harder for artists down here.

 

Also please save the "they have artists at Daz" arguments, please. I have been an artists advocate (in elected & volunteer positions) so I fight for them too. If we can't spend, they can't get paid.

 

For the record, both of my parents were professionals in music and arts. My Dad was considered a genius as a concert pianist. Made the cut for Juilliard but the war happened. Family crises, my dad's major stroke, etc, ate at most of our family's income and emotional well-being for at least half of our lives as a family.
So I understand your perspective from both an economic and professional angle.

I speak from a hobbyist angle, and I assume most here are hobbyists. Daz3D seems to be set up for hobbyists, doesn't it, more than for professionals?

So who are you talking to? You quoted me, but your arguments have nothing to do with my comments. I feel it's silly for a person to feel he's being treated unfairly by higher prices here when it's happening everywhere. Though I'm NOT a devout capitalist, that is the way the system works, correct?

I specifically described my concern for hobbyists, in that the cost of rendering has gone up obcenely while there is no effort to provide an alternative rendering capability that is high-quality and less-expensive, such as what Filament COULD be if they updated it.

So please, don't create a false battle between artists and professionals. The true issue is what could make DS more useful and economical for all of us. This, I repeat again, is what would help boost sales in spite of the prices, because our efforts at our hobby or profession would become that much more successful...

Though it would probably by more lucrative for you professionals than the rest of us, no?

I'm going to make this brief and not hijack the thread because there are a lot of interesting points people are making and I don't want a moderator to close this down as they tend to do when everyone isn't in total agreement.

I was responding directly to comments you made.

I feel it's silly to claim I said that I was the only one affected negatively by price hikes when I never said any such thing.

I said professional artists at the lowest end are impacted more because there is no way for us to pass the costs down to the next group or raise our prices.

There's a Three Stooges skit where the bad guy slaps Moe, so Moe slaps Larry, who in turn slaps Curly. Curly turns to slap someone, but there is no one left, so he turns to slap Moe, but Moe slaps him first.

I'm the farthest thing from a capitalist. Price hikes don't make sense because ultimately the hike is shouldered by the people at the bottom who can't just raise their prices. All they can do is try to cut their expenses, which is easier said than done.

Lastly, I'm not now or ever setting up a false battle (or any battle) between Professional & hobbyist artists. The reality is that if the hikes get bad enough, a hobbyist can just call it quits because the level of commitment isn't there. They can go away without much pain.

tsarist said:

NotAnArtist said:

Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??...

Well, NotAnArtist, I AM an artist from a family of artists. What you're saying MIGHT make some minute amount of sense for a hobbyist, but not for a professional.

 

After my big corporate media job went away (along with 1000s of other media pros around the world) I found myself in dire straits. I went freelance, but the business community started driving down prices until I finally ended up here doing digital art because the cheapskates wanted to get everything for free.

 

The discounts getting smaller and worsening sale prices are keeping me from buying & they aren't helping Daz because I'm not spending.

 

The Rents go up. Food goes up. Insurance rates & other services go up. Department stores jack up their prices. Don't even mention Petrol & other energy costs. Everybody is making more but me and other freelancers at this end of the business.

 

And before I get hit with an onslaught of comments about the "irony" of me complaining about this that or the other thing, I am not able to raise MY prices. Most of us at this level can't. It costs more to get a client and more to service them. Plus, more of us now than ever before are being forced to work dead end jobs because the economy is so bad that freelance is becoming nearly completely unsustainable for most of us. Rest assured those crappy jobs aren't raising OUR pay either.

 

So, you're probably going to hear complaining because every increase in price hits that much harder for artists down here.

 

Also please save the "they have artists at Daz" arguments, please. I have been an artists advocate (in elected & volunteer positions) so I fight for them too. If we can't spend, they can't get paid.

 

For the record, both of my parents were professionals in music and arts. My Dad was considered a genius as a concert pianist. Made the cut for Juilliard but the war happened. Family crises, my dad's major stroke, etc, ate at most of our family's income and emotional well-being for at least half of our lives as a family.
So I understand your perspective from both an economic and professional angle.

I speak from a hobbyist angle, and I assume most here are hobbyists. Daz3D seems to be set up for hobbyists, doesn't it, more than for professionals?

So who are you talking to? You quoted me, but your arguments have nothing to do with my comments. I feel it's silly for a person to feel he's being treated unfairly by higher prices here when it's happening everywhere. Though I'm NOT a devout capitalist, that is the way the system works, correct?

I specifically described my concern for hobbyists, in that the cost of rendering has gone up obcenely while there is no effort to provide an alternative rendering capability that is high-quality and less-expensive, such as what Filament COULD be if they updated it.

So please, don't create a false battle between artists and professionals. The true issue is what could make DS more useful and economical for all of us. This, I repeat again, is what would help boost sales in spite of the prices, because our efforts at our hobby or profession would become that much more successful...

Though it would probably by more lucrative for you professionals than the rest of us, no?

This won't help you much, but I can't reproduce this problem. I tried to do what you described. I have one G8F with geograft anatomical elements (genitals), The other G8F does not have a geograft. I previewed several animation presets (are those aniblocks? I don't know). I dialed several character morphs. I posed characters. I added clothes and hair. I did dForce simulations on the dress. I changed to different hair and clothing. I changed textures on clothing and hair. I did all that in Filament veiwport draw style. I switched the viewport draw style between Iray, texture shaded and Filament several times. I rendered the Filament veiw. Nothing disappeared and nothing unexpected happened. You said the time to problem is variable. Maybe it just didn't happen in the time I worked on this (30 minutes or so).

NotAnArtist said:

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

I think you raise some very good points here. The fact is that by raising prices very significantly, they've forced me to take a good look at what I actually need, and the answer is, not much. As a consequence, I'm not buying much, and I now wonder if that will change even if the prices go down again?

I feel it's sad they chose to spoil one of the big events, but never mind. Not spending money on things I don't need can't be a bad thing. If Daz believes this is the best way to make money, that's what they should do. I feel they might regret it, but what would I know?

Hello wonderful new friends! (overview): Any generation of genesis containing a geograft can disappear from the viewport when using Filament. (the long story): I have various types of geografts for figures G1, G2M, G3F, G3M, and G8F, when loaded in a figure, while dial spinning morphs or previewing aniblocks, the figures are disappearing from the Filament view, leaving only standard clothes and hair etc. visible - simple scenes mostly with only one figure with clothes and hair, nothing else.  The parameters haven't changed so I finally thought to switch to texture shading and it was all visible again. Note: if there was something in the Filament view that hadn't disappeared,(clothes, hair, a non-geograft figure, etc.) when switching to texture shaded then back to Filament, now nothing was visible at all - it's as if Filament was turned off. This only happens when a geograft is loaded in a figure. I've paid close attention to what I was doing just before the problem happens and there is nothing in the log about the incident. I can work on a figure for a long time, like about an hour, before it disappears, or only minutes. Then I have to reload the scene that, of course, no longer has the undo history. As a test, usually I can force the incident by using a figure, with a geograft, to preview a rather active aniblock, but the time it takes to disappear is quite variable - having a second figure in a scene, that has no geograft preview an aniblock, can also make the geograft one disappear! How strange is that? Seven months ago I bought a much stronger PC exclusively for DS. / win 10 64 bit i7-11700 @2.50 GHz with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and 32gb RAM, driving a cheap 50" 4k TV as the monitor/ I wasn't expecting to have any issues with Filament. I've kept updated with the latest DS versions and now have 4.20. I've just updated the graphics driver too, no change. Are any of you wonderful people experiencing this wackiness? Thanks for reading this / Blessings to all / G
 

I guess I should have made my earlier points here more in the form of a question. Is it a shock that prices go up in economic downturns? Everything else has gone up, why all the complaints??

Again: There are other, more supportive things that could be done for customers like us, while the prices do necessarily remain higher.

Make changes to the software so that we can be more productive with it being less expensive to do so. This is the only thing they could be doing to compensate for our "misery" with inflated pricing.

As I said earlier, I've been working with an old, weak machine. I don't care what the prices of props are because I have little reason to buy them as long as any possible use of them is so extremely limited by the cost of rendering!

I have finally put together a small machine to replace my old, overheating one. It will only handle musical hobbies. It will not handle iray or several tools any better than my old one. Why should I spend money on an outrageously expensive system? I'm only a hobbyist!

I'm frankly amazed at the complaining over prices in this thread. It's like some here are more addicted to buying things than they are to creating things! My only wish is for Filament to be made as fast yet attractive as it could be, and my purchases here will remain at minimum until that happens.

I'm looking at the larger picture, because we're heading for some possibly very bad times.

3DRenderBoy said:

I am having same problems since I installed DAZ Studio (BETA is NOT installed) 1 day ago (via DIM). Every time I start DAZ Studio, it starts with Filament Draw Settings and not Iray or, what I mostly use when I work and close DAZ Studio, in Texture Shaded Mode. I never use Filament! I did Save Workspace As and the Layout but nothing helps. And when I open Workplace to change mode, even so I do NOT do anything, but just close, it changes everything to default and in Filament Mode again. And all my saved files just disappear suddenly from the Windows folder(s). And when I add to Menu new SCRIPTS folder (with adding products) the SCRIPTS menu also disappears.
Everytime DAZ makes new version there is always something wrong and something does not work properly. Full with issues and problems.

This has nothing to do with the original thread topic, and is a known issue in the current general reelase which - it is hoped - is fixed in the current Public Build (Beta). If the Public Build does seem good expect an update for the General Release in short order.

I am having same problems since I installed DAZ Studio (BETA is NOT installed) 1 day ago (via DIM). Every time I start DAZ Studio, it starts with Filament Draw Settings and not Iray or, what I mostly use when I work and close DAZ Studio, in Texture Shaded Mode. I never use Filament! I did Save Workspace As and the Layout but nothing helps. And when I open Workplace to change mode, even so I do NOT do anything, but just close, it changes everything to default and in Filament Mode again. And all my saved files just disappear suddenly from the Windows folder(s). And when I add to Menu new SCRIPTS folder (with adding products) the SCRIPTS menu also disappears.
Everytime DAZ makes new version there is always something wrong and something does not work properly. Full with issues and problems.
PS: I installed 1 day later the BETA. But still the same problems. When I use the BETA there are NO workspace issues.
I made new SCRIPTS menu and the BETA "remembers" when I change the workspace/layout or start the BETA new.
But DAZ Studio (normal product) starts in default Workspace/Layout mode with Filament Draw Settings ON.
I also searched for help here in DAZ Forum but some people say I have to use scripts to solve these issues.
It is not for users like me who have not much knowledge with scripting and solving DAZ's issues. I am not an advanced DAZ Studio user. Using scripts by other users (and not by DAZ Studio itself!) is not a solution because DAZ's new versions have ALWAYS issues and problems. I think it's because since DAZ made Genesis 8.1 (and why not 9?). I use DAZ Studio since years that I really, really love because it gives many many FREE products to start with 3D render animations.