Many years ago a couple of friends and I saw a sign for an outdoor auction about to take place as we were walking home.  None of us had any money, but we decided to take a look.  For entertainment value it was a good decision.  The auctioneer was a great salesman - he was funny, he had all the patter and he kept things moving, even though he looked and sounded like a sleazy used car salesman.  What I remember the most was that he asked the crowd if anyone wanted to take a £1 gamble on the next lot.  He managed to convince about 15 people to do so and then revealed that they had all just bought a box of laxitives.  No one really cared and there was some good-humoured laughter from the people who knew they had just been conned.  I seem to remember some people getting good bargains on used office equipment that day, but it's the, "Come on, risk a pound on a gamble..." part that I remember.

I mention the story because this is how I felt that day (my friends and I didn't fall for the £1 "deal" because we had no money anyway).  With the Season Pass, Daz is saying, "Give us your money and trust us that we will give you something nice in return."

I made my first Daz purchase in 2004, and then like many others I spent a lot of money here over subsequent years until around 2012-13 when I stopped buying anything here other than an occasional item once or twice per year because I felt very betrayed by the company over the whole Poser/DS thing.  But..I came back to give Daz Studio and Daz3D another chance in 2017 after seeing the results possible with iray and the newer Genesis 3 and 8 models.  In the next few years I bought every pro bundle because of the fantastic deals - usually a few of the Genesis 3 Pro bundles that I had missed in my time away.

Lately though, I haven't bought any of the new bundles.  I've got about half a dozen of the later Genesis 8 pro bundles wishlisted and I bought Victoria 8.1 to take a look at how much of a leap it was from Victoria 8.  This is the first "March Madness" in years where I have not bought anything.  Some of this may be because I have a lot of content to work with now, but a lot of it is because I don't like to feel that I'm been ripped off or taken advantage of and many of the latest bundles are starting to feel like that.  These days I am more likely to go for a PA product such as Ultrascenery or Analglyph3D that adds some more functionality to DS.
Add to this the recent NFT thing and the movement of the Forums and Gallery into a single tab on the front page to accomodate the NFT link.  To me it is the same as what a lot of companies do - "We'll put our old customers over there, they'll put up with anything, whilst we try out a new market and see if we can get some better customers."
Right now, I'm torn between going for what may indeed turn out to be a great deal on new figures and the HD add-one, versus Daz3D's recent history.  Daz3D also have a long history of over-hyping upcoming products/events. 

Like many other people here, I WANT to trust Daz3D and buy the season pass both in the interests of getting a bargain and to support a company that does have the best 3D content available for non-professionals like myself.  But...There is way, way too little information on what we are getting.  I keep thinking back to that auction salesman from 25 years ago and can't help feeling the same way I did then.  Give us all some more information - what will happen to discounts on whole bundles, how many male/female characters will there be in the 5 base figures, what are the 2 free items?  Are they going to be something new, or are they going to be from the ancient back catalogue of items that I don't have because I didn't want them the first time around?

onix said:

Also, not every character is the same. I just now noticed that some very clean and contain just one of a few morphs while others litter everything with correction morphs for an unknown reason. Probably some creators believe that they are super smart when they inject correction morph into existing morph from another vendor rather than inserting that existing morph of another vendor into their own morph.

It's not only JCM's, but also morphs and characters from some other PA, as one cannot copy the work of someone else to one's own product.

If you make a character that is built on top of Victoria 8, then the dial for your character should activate the Victoria 8 dial as well. The same with products like "Growing Up" or even the DAZ Head and Body Morphs.

nicstt said:

I don't need more characters - especially as I'll put money on them being merchant resource textures.

So... Pass.

 

...+1

As I primarily dial spin most of my own characters, unless I see a new character base that will add something unique to what I refer to as the "gene pool" (like custom sculpted facial details or a unique base shape that isn't just another "supermodel" or "hunk") I'll pick it up. 

I work so heavily with morphing (I have lots of morph resource kits for both G2 & G3  which I can combine through GenX2) tothe point that sometimes clothing will not autofit well on some characters.

AbyssalEros said:

Up to Victoria 8.1, I bought every single Pro Bundle since I joined DAZ. Although, the buying enticements for them have deteriorated bundle for bundle while at the same time the quality of the included assets deteriorated noticeably.
Since Genesis 8.1, the bundles are even more expensive with near to null buying enticements at all.
While I was initially curious about 8.1, I read about enough issues with 4.15 to keep my distance from it.
Many creators who depend on a working DAZ Studio installation recommended me not to upgrade, as they regret having done it or have fallen back to an older version, where possible. Thus 8.1 is no question for me before DAZ Productions, Inc. is able to fix all the know issues.
Therefore I have not bought a single 8.1 bundle, and I do not see myself buying one soon.
For not having bought any of those new bundles, even though I own all Genesis 8 Pro Bundles and most of the Genesis 3 ones, and many more assets worth several thousand dollars, DAZ is not offering me anymore "Loyalty" banners on new bundles. I do not count those bundles where DAZ graciously offers me a 70%+ discount when I own every single asset or only miss one.
I really see no good in this Season Pass at all.
And "loyal" but somewhat unruly customers like me that do not have embraced Genesis 8.1 or even Genesis 8 cannot feel differently than feeling affronted by this season pass.

 

 [bold ephasis mine]

...+1 as well.

I have very few character bundles, several of them only because they were offered for free on a banner (or extremely discounted) or, as in the case of V5/M5, was a bonus offer with my purchase of Carrara 8.5.  In the few bundles that I actually purchased, I pretty much everything that was included had a use (which is a rarity).

 I think a short tutorial on ERC formula and how Daz store / find / load / use those formula would be beneficial in this discussion. That way people would understand how things work, why it work that way, the benefit and limitation and possible alternatives.

onix said:

Because of that behavior, I potentially could create a morph that turns on morph A from vendor X if Morph B of vendor Y is activated without the user even being aware of what is happening which is a huge security issue. 

I can see this be very useful for things like clothing fixers or conversion tool.

Also, it seems that the loop could be formed when CM's start correcting each other

This is a bad design in principle which was not that visible in the beginning but now manifesting itself and pretty hard to fix. Probably it would be still the best idea to get rid of all those correctives entirely.  There are better ways to get the same result.

Daz have logic to detect circula references as can be observed by reading log file.

" If you hide morphs how do you know you are dealing with all the associated files? "   

Now I understand what you mean because by the Daz architecture if I load Victoria morph  Daz is supposed to load a Corrective for the smile expression which will change the way how "smile" works specifically when Victoria morph is activated and since this Corrective is not mentioned anywhere in the Victoria morph it cannot be loaded.

Although when we hide files manually this is not an issue.

The most obvious solution would be to add an extra file to each morph which will list all dependencies of what else should be loaded when this morph is activated. 

I think Daz already have those infomation stored with the formula, but the question is what would be the trade off. A system that delay load everything would have less consistant performance when applying a pose or expression as daz have to find missing morphs. It could be slower for people with fewer morphs installed as it makes harder to cache things, resulting in more file I/O that would be slower. Should Daz scan all morphs files to create all the sliders for shapes and poses, because this is very useful for novice user to find things they need. But scanning all those files and creating slider might be half of the required work already and might just as well go ahead and finish creating the formulas so it will just work. 

Hiding stuff from Daz wont fully fix the issue because then you can't use an expression or morph that is not loaded until you reload the character / scene. Some sort of load formulas used by this character / expression / shapes function would be super useful.

With regard to multithreading I can see how to figure out if a formula referenced in another formula already exist or being made in a thread safe way being a difficult problem to tackle and have potential to accidentally make everything single threaded.

In short, any way to solve a complex problem will have advantages and disadvantages. I would prefer things to work correctly over being fast, and beginner friendly over complicated to use but faster for advanced user. But there are definitly still rooms for improvement. For example some sort of rescan a selected base directory to add newly installed morphs functionality would be useful.

In my opinion, MorphSoandso should contain references to JCMSuchandsuch,  and BendThatone.   If not, they should not be loaded.

But by your explanation, it seems, that's exactly what is happening. This JCM gets loaded then it monitors morph changes and possibly does some corrections by itself without getting permission from the user.

Since this JCM can't be aware when a certain morph will be activated until it gets activated, Daz creates some kind of complex structure of signals to trigger appropriate CMs which still slows down everything and takes lots of time to load. (which would explain why you don't want post-loading. as that would require a lot of time again to rebuild all that complex structure)

I would guess that Daz reads all morph files first then it will parse everyone of them and fill the list of controllers and subcomponents for each of them

Because of that behavior, I potentially could create a morph that turns on morph A from vendor X if Morph B of vendor Y is activated without the user even being aware of what is happening which is a huge security issue. 

Also, it seems that the loop could be formed when CM's start correcting each other

This is a bad design in principle which was not that visible in the beginning but now manifesting itself and pretty hard to fix. Probably it would be still the best idea to get rid of all those correctives entirely.  There are better ways to get the same result.

" If you hide morphs how do you know you are dealing with all the associated files? "   

Now I understand what you mean because by the Daz architecture if I load Victoria morph  Daz is supposed to load a Corrective for the smile expression which will change the way how "smile" works specifically when Victoria morph is activated and since this Corrective is not mentioned anywhere in the Victoria morph it cannot be loaded.

Although when we hide files manually this is not an issue.

The most obvious solution would be to add an extra file to each morph which will list all dependencies of what else should be loaded when this morph is activated. 

And actually just now, I noticed what kind of mess is happening with parameters and how some vendors could be potentially screwing up things accidentally or on purpose by adding CMs to various base morphs without me being even aware of that. Many Daz-provided base morphs are littered with various irrelevant CMs that are not going to be used ever. Nobody even knows what effect they may have.

All that stuff could be safely removed without any loss and may even speed up everything.

Ken OBanion said:

I have to wait until my data plan cycles (tomorrow) before I can upload my render; once I hit my bandwidth limit (which typically is about four days into the billing cycle), I get throttled back to damn near dial-up speeds!  Meanwhile, it’s five o’clock (well, five-till; close enough!), and there’s a Martini in front of me (and a little to my left; thank goodness I’m at least semi-ambidextrous -- well, for the important things, anyway!), and that means it’s time to move on to Round 2!

 

The pull:

2963 – Colors for Love Me Hair (Love Me Hair is for V4)

37 – Giselle for V4 (How convenient!)

1724 – Gamine (G3F; that one’s a little freaky-sounding, I don’t know…!)

6574 – Cozy for Day Dreamer (G3F)

 

Victoria 4 and Genesis 3; I haven’t done anything with V4 in ages! 

 

*Sigh*  Whatever….

 

UPDATE: While searching for the Colors for Love Me Hair package, I discovered an entire order that I somehow neglected to download!  From August of 2015!  Thirty-three items, mostly hair and hair textures.  (Practically all Platinum Club, too, so you know I got some really tasty deals on them!)

 

You can blame the Martinis if you want.  I am.

I pretty much knew what I wanted to do with this render from the very start; then, when I saw that nothing in my pull would prove to be an impediment, I just went for it!  I did have to do a bit of experimenting, to get the effect just right, and I made the mistake of thinking the Day Dreamer outfit (required by the Cozy textures) was a Genesis 3 clothing set; it was actually for Genesis.  I tried to fit it to a Genesis 3 figure, and when I imported the clothed figure into the scene, the skirt and blouse kept blowing up!  I couldn’t very well leave her sitting in the car naked (although that is my usual modus operandi), so I swapped her for a genuine Genesis character.

This entry consists of two separate renders: the first is for validation and verification, to demonstrate that I did, in fact, use everything in my pull; because, in the second image (the “money shot”, as it were), a lot of those items are not readily discernable.  And I jacked around with the camera for more than an hour, in an effort to make them so.  Alas…, it didn’t happen.

I gave up on trying to visualize the Mach wave.  I figured out a way to do it using Blender, but it also would have required some seriously inventive shader work, and I really don’t think have the shader chops to pull that off – yet.

Also used:

Divided Highway by First Bastian (purchased explicitly for this entry!)

Jepe’s PillarZ and PillarZ II

Bunny Dazed outfit for Victoria 4 (and dForce worked on it!  I was not expecting that!)

Shiloh HD for Genesis 3 Female

Tinkerbell Hair

Casual Style for Genesis 3 Female (required by the Gamine textures)

Victoria 5

Pure Hair Crazy for Genesis

Day Dreamer Outfit for Genesis (required by the Cozy textures)

Roads Royds (from Renderosity; they had to name it that, due to copyright considerations.  It is, in fact, modeled after the Rolls-Royce Ghost; unfortunately not the Black Badge Edition.  That is one seriously sexy-looking ride!)

(And I re-used the Eliot character from my last render, suit, hair, and all, only I made him lose the face-diaper!  Yeah, I recycle; what’s your point?)

TAG: obanion#2

Title: Well, This Morning Commute Went Seriously South in a Hurry…!

“Um…, you probably ought to take the bypass.  Because that thing is liable to booger-up traffic like you cannot even BEGIN to imagine!”

Up to Victoria 8.1, I bought every single Pro Bundle since I joined DAZ. Although, the buying enticements for them have deteriorated bundle for bundle while at the same time the quality of the included assets deteriorated noticeably.
Since Genesis 8.1, the bundles are even more expensive with near to null buying enticements at all.
While I was initially curious about 8.1, I read about enough issues with 4.15 to keep my distance from it.
Many creators who depend on a working DAZ Studio installation recommended me not to upgrade, as they regret having done it or have fallen back to an older version, where possible. Thus 8.1 is no question for me before DAZ Productions, Inc. is able to fix all the know issues.
Therefore I have not bought a single 8.1 bundle, and I do not see myself buying one soon.
For not having bought any of those new bundles, even though I own all Genesis 8 Pro Bundles and most of the Genesis 3 ones, and many more assets worth several thousand dollars, DAZ is not offering me anymore "Loyalty" banners on new bundles. I do not count those bundles where DAZ graciously offers me a 70%+ discount when I own every single asset or only miss one.
I really see no good in this Season Pass at all.
And "loyal" but somewhat unruly customers like me that do not have embraced Genesis 8.1 or even Genesis 8 cannot feel differently than feeling affronted by this season pass.

Eeyore said:

Does this mean that there may be a new base, such as G9F - Victoria 9(8.1)/G9M - Michael 9(8.1), and then perhaps a couple variations of them provided as those 5 free bases w/their accompanying HD add-ons?  Will they be that much improved?

It has my interest piqued, but I am still questioning if it could be something that substantial.  I'd be disappointed if it were base add-ons to the current 8th generation structure because I have an awful lot of morphs and content for 8 now, some of which doesn't show up or work for 8.1.  I am still comtemplating taking the gamble.

If your G8 content is not showing on your 8.1s then you probably haven't upgraded to Daz 4.15 and PBR skins (what the new characters will use most likely) wouldn't work for you anyway. Also, be aware that if you do move on to 4.15, the program will take a lot more memory to use and that could affect what you can render with your GPU. 

I seriously doubt Daz is anywhere near releasing a G9, since 8.1 just dropped. So don't count on getting a new Victoria or Micheal anytime soon. 

Eeyore said:

Does this mean that there may be a new base, such as G9F - Victoria 9(8.1)/G9M - Michael 9(8.1), and then perhaps a couple variations of them provided as those 5 free bases w/their accompanying HD add-ons?  Will they be that much improved?

It has my interest piqued, but I am still questioning if it could be something that substantial.  I'd be disappointed if it were base add-ons to the current 8th generation structure because I have an awful lot of morphs and content for 8 now, some of which doesn't show up or work for 8.1.  I am still comtemplating taking the gamble.

Base characters usually meansd the Name 8.1s, not base figures like Genesis 8.1

Does this mean that there may be a new base, such as G9F - Victoria 9(8.1)/G9M - Michael 9(8.1), and then perhaps a couple variations of them provided as those 5 free bases w/their accompanying HD add-ons?  Will they be that much improved?

It has my interest piqued, but I am still questioning if it could be something that substantial.  I'd be disappointed if it were base add-ons to the current 8th generation structure because I have an awful lot of morphs and content for 8 now, some of which doesn't show up or work for 8.1.  I am still comtemplating taking the gamble.

Mark_e593e0a5 said:

gerster said:

Mark_e593e0a5 said:

AZDigitalArtist said:

gerster said:

margrave said:

A season pass without a roadmap?

Suddenly I've got chills.

would like to know if we really get just the base char and the hd addon or the complete bundle?

I guess we have still to buy the bundle and get some small discount which is not the money of the pass worth... but I'd like to hear an official statement 

 

Yes, it would be nice to know if they are abandoning the bundle concept before agreeing to something like this.  Or is the thinking that we just get the character early and then get an xx% discount on the bundle(s) in the following days?  I don't think that would work for me.

Well, trying to get some sense into all that marketing bla bla, I would anticipate the following:

• you get the base character plus the HD add-on a day in advance
• You usually get a decent discount (10 to 20%) for a bundle when owning the character, via.the used-to-be-purple-but-now-it's-orange banner 
• Given that you own the character already, you should get a discount on the bundle.

The deal could be worse.... On the other hand, I might be totally on the wrong track, as Daz has proven to be 100% unpredictable.

that's what I also guess. so we would pay $30 per char to get a discount of 10 to 20%. 

sounds for now like a very bad deal.

DAZ, please more infos. try to confince me.

You are correct, a base char is about $30. But You also get the HD add-on, which is about $27, IIRC. Plus you get 2 items for free, but Daz will decide what. Could be some Victoria 4 stuff. 

I would have appreaciated a bit of fine print like "get a minimum of $xxx on Daz items" to make it clear. The current promo leaves too much guesswork.

my math is, normally I pay for a bundle AND the hd addon $40 to $50. 

paying in advance $30 to get 10 to 20% discount is not luring 

gerster said:

Mark_e593e0a5 said:

AZDigitalArtist said:

gerster said:

margrave said:

A season pass without a roadmap?

Suddenly I've got chills.

would like to know if we really get just the base char and the hd addon or the complete bundle?

I guess we have still to buy the bundle and get some small discount which is not the money of the pass worth... but I'd like to hear an official statement 

 

Yes, it would be nice to know if they are abandoning the bundle concept before agreeing to something like this.  Or is the thinking that we just get the character early and then get an xx% discount on the bundle(s) in the following days?  I don't think that would work for me.

Well, trying to get some sense into all that marketing bla bla, I would anticipate the following:

• you get the base character plus the HD add-on a day in advance
• You usually get a decent discount (10 to 20%) for a bundle when owning the character, via.the used-to-be-purple-but-now-it's-orange banner 
• Given that you own the character already, you should get a discount on the bundle.

The deal could be worse.... On the other hand, I might be totally on the wrong track, as Daz has proven to be 100% unpredictable.

that's what I also guess. so we would pay $30 per char to get a discount of 10 to 20%. 

sounds for now like a very bad deal.

DAZ, please more infos. try to confince me.

You are correct, a base char is about $30. But You also get the HD add-on, which is about $27, IIRC. Plus you get 2 items for free, but Daz will decide what. Could be some Victoria 4 stuff. 

I would have appreaciated a bit of fine print like "get a minimum of $xxx on Daz items" to make it clear. The current promo leaves too much guesswork.

[Victoria 8.1 Duf Won't Load] Here is the error message I get. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Edited for Please put your question in the post body and the title - Daz 3D Forums

I think a lot more people are likely to buy this if it works with other generations....but maybe the thing to do is get started with the Genesis 8 product then add more as addons; although, for me, Genesis 3 is a must as that is the generation I have stuck with, at least for the foreseeable. Mind you, I still use everyone back to Michael 4 and Victoria 4, so I'd get better use out of a product that covered all the bases.

Honestly, a lot could be learned from the features of Daz Deals.

One of the features there is one that shows add-ons for products you already have - if I'm buying an outfit that's on sale, but the texture set isn't, these days I try to remember to wishlist the textures for later, but if I forget to do that (or before I did that), it is often permanently forgotten, as it's very hard to find without that.

It'd be nice if that could be implemented alongside a category filter - my experience with the Daz Deals implementation is that it usually ends up dominated by "So-and-so For Victoria 8" characters or anything that uses the base figure head/body morphs, and while there's nothing wrong with those in particular, an extra V8 based character doesn't add to her as much as a texture set can make an outfit more useful, so being able to filter down by "texture sets" would be useful.

What I've heard from PAs is that texture sets are often one of the worst sellers, and while I don't think a feature like that would make them an amazing seller, it would have to improve things.

Genesis (insert whatever number) is for free, and should be more or less installed automatically with Daz Studio.
What that page links to however, are Victoria 8.1 and Michael 8.1, which are "advanced" character packages (with some nice outfits, extra hairs and privates pieces). These are based on the Genesis 8.1 character, and you'd need to have Genesis 8.1 installed to use them, but, these advanced characters do cost money.

So, just instal Daz Studio, log into the DIM installer (don't bother with Daz Central, it only causes headaches), install the Genesis 8.1 Essentials Package, and you should have the Genesis 8.1 figures (male and female) with some basic clothes and hairs.
I strongly advise to DO install the other Genesis figures (Genesis, Genesis 2 and Genesis 3) as well, there are some nice free outfits and hairs in those packages as well, and especially the Genesis 3 outfits are easy to fit onto Genesis 8.1 anyway. Just shoes tend to cause problems.

By the way, what are the hair products Victoria 8.1 & Michael 8.1 are using in that promo?

This reminds me of all those outfit promos that included only Victoria, Monique and Josie as figures.  Those were some sad promos.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Musta been a glitch, everything there is showing a price tag for me. Just for info, the genesis 8.1 are free upgrades, just redownload and install all the g8 starter essentials, and make sure to upgrade daz studio. Word of caution though, the new daz studio has some transparency issues. The victoria 8 and micheal 8 stuff are paid addons.

When I try to send a Genesis 8.1 figure that has either the Victoria 8.1 Eyebrows or the Michael 8.1 Eyebrows to ZBrush with GoZ, it doesn't send the character figure itself, instead it names the eyebrows as the figure. So what arrives in ZBrush is just the eyebrows, with hair, clothes, props, whatever else is on the character. I have to delete the eyebrows to make it work, and then place them back on the character when I'm done with ZBrush. These two eyebrow sets are the first that make this.

Anyone else having this issue?

Thanks.