Is Daz3D Abandonware? Please Overhaul Daz3D Studio and Bryce
tsunami117_3c074c980c
Posts: 4
Seriously the tools have fallen behind, especially the plugins. There is zero documentation for tools like Mimic Live. I purchased Mimic Pro, now its gone, then Live shows up, but does not work at all. Figure compatibility is severely broken all over the place. Adding IRay, but leaving everything else broken makes the tool almost useless for animators. The whole point of the product was to make the workload easier so we could focus on project quality. Now it feels more and more like abandonware. Bryce still has an incredly powerful terrain generator feature inside the edit terrain setting that includes weather and erosion features, yet it is trapped behind abandoned 32bit options and rendering algorithms from the 1990s that even an the latest 16 core cpu and gpus struggle to use. I know Daz Studio is free, but we still pay for plugins and figures that continue to come with severely broken features. At least back in the day of Metacreations and others, it seems like someone cared.
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Comments
maybe ask on forum for help with Mimic live?
quite a few use it successfully but we need to know your exact issues too, two posts since new forum you have not troubleshooted user error very much.
I am not fond of DAZ studio but even can render animations fairly fast using various tricks and settings and apply animations between generations without paid addons too
all of this information is shared freely on the forum
Abandonware? A new beta of DS with major new features has been released something like 2 weeks ago.... DS may not be perfect (though I certainly don’t agree that “everything is broken”) but it’s definitely not abandoned.
Abandonware, when we still have enthusiastic Bryce users, both here and elsewhere on other sites. It may be old, but never abandoned.
Abandoned......not really!
Abandoned, no that is going too far. There are fairly regular updates and some bug fixes. I do agree that more work needs to be done on advanced features because the rest of the world is moving on and DS is in danger of losing ground. How the improvements and advancements should be funded is a matter of debate, though clearly DAZ3d have their own ideas :)
So, abandoned? No, a little neglected maybe.
Not prioritising the areas that interest you isn't the same as abandoned, or even neglected. On animation, dForce (clothes, and now hair in the beta) may well prompt Daz to give that area some extra attention - and the beta does have changes to IK.
Exactly. There have been lots of recent updates. To call it abandoned is ridiculous.
And being honest, changing things around too much is more likely to aggrevate user base than help.
I know I am sticking to the v4.10 for the time being. I never had issues with Mimic Live recently, as I had no problem lip-synching a figure's voice last week.
I'm completely on board for revamping Bryce. The interface is grotesque, with none of the polish or even modernity of Daz Studio. I've never been able to send Bryce compositions to Daz, because no matter where I install either program, Bryce doesn't recognize the Daz install, and there doesn't appear to be an option anywhere within Bryce to locate it. Honestly, Bryce looks and feels like it was designed for Windows XP at the latest, and has only received updates that were necessary to keep it minimally functional. I'm not saying it's a bad program, and I know lots of people love it and can do great work with it; I'm just saying that I find it powerfully frustrating and unsatisfying to use.
Come over and talk to us in our own forum, (click on my signature image for a short cut to get there) and we can help you understandjust how powerful Bryce is.
I'm not disputing that it's a powerful program; I just think it's awul to use as it currently is. Really, even the interface wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me if I could do the one thing I actually want to do in Bryce, which is export to Daz Studio.
Really the bridge was designed to be used the other way, ie prepare, for instance, a figure in DS and then take it into your Bryce scene. It can then be sent back to DS for tweaking if neccesary. I think it could be something to do with the order in which Bryce and DS are installed on your computer has something to do with it, but there are quite a few over in the Bryce forum who can help you, Horo comes to mind instantly but there are many others.
I am not much help because I have not had DS on my system since D|S1, I use Poser as a plugin for Bryce. I am the opposite to you, I could never get on with the DS Interface and it has only got more complimacated as it has grown. I like the Bryce and Poser interfaces, been using the Bryce one for over 20 years and poser since whenever Poser 3 was released, so probably around 20 years
One of our regulars even made a 3d version of the Bryce interface
Daz's interface is why I use it. I've got the whole suite of Autodesk programs, I've tried Blender and iClone, probably a couple other things I don't even remember, and nothing else I've tried is as easy and satisfying to use as Daz, in my opinion. Now, Daz certainly isn't the most comprehensive or powerful program there is, so I still use 3DS and MoBo from time to time, and should really spend more time learning Maya, but for the things I want to do, Daz is the best combination of capable and useable.
That's too clever! (glad it's included, I did catch that.) Just being curious, when WAS the last time Bryce got updates? If Bryce is on 7, what was the timeframe between 6 and 7, if you recall?
That Bryce interface model is awesome
I must admit I always liked its little coloured icons
Daz actually has done far more in updates for Bryce than people realise. Bryce 1 was released in 1994 (Mac only) Br 2 arrived in 1996, but the stable release for PCs didn't arrinve until early 1997. At last I could use Bryce without having to go to the computer shop I haunted and beg 5 minutes on their computer. Updated to Bryce 3 for both platforms later in 1997, Bryce 4 in 1999. In 2000 Bryce was sold to Corel who released Br5 in 2001, having added metaballs and trees. In 2004 they sold Bryce to Daz who straight away released a patch to sort out trans in OBJ imports and then released Br5.5 in 2005 giving the intergration with DS. in 2009 they released Br6.3 and then in 2010 released Br 7, which added a lot of things that Daz had been working on since acquiring Bryce, ie New features include the Instancing Lab and advanced lighting. Updated features include the DAZ Studio Bridge, the improved Sky Lab, clouds, particle emmission, HDRI and Improved Import/Export file formats.
Unfortunately Apple broke the compatability with the Mac platform when they updated to OSX 7.
If you check Dave Savage's Gallery you will find that he actually uses Bryce in a real life commercial manner, Does advert promos for a real life Company, and builds most everything within Bryce https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/users/?q=Dave+Savage&x=8&y=7
I have always admired his model of Big Ben ( St Stephen's Tower )
So if Bryce 7 released in 2010, it's essentially a decade since any work has been done on Bryce. Since it will always work on x6 compatible platforms that's no big deal but you have to figure that going forward Bryce-like functionality is far more likely to be added to DAZ Studio than Bryce is to be updated again. Of course, Bryce really only needs a UI update really and not much else.
Actually, if you ask most Brycers, the thing that Bryce needs is a 64 bit version. There is nothing wrong with the UI imho. And I use it every day.
Daz Studio on the other hand I cannot get my brain round theUIi, so I don't have DS on my computer, as I have already said once in this thread.
Thank you all for your feedback. I am as passionate about these tools as you are, being a long time user and supporter of Daz and even Metacreations when it existed.
Bryce remains a very powerful tool with features that other companies continue to copy and enhance, but remains stuck without any updates for nearly 10 years now. That means that development and its users have been been in fact abandoned. Their terrain and plant creation tools alone warrant giving this tool some development love.
Similarly, Daz3D studio has many neglected features. Having purchased plugins that remain listed on the store, but once you load them, the are simply broken unless you backtrack to 5+ year older versions also looks like abandon in development. I can appreaciate this tool is free, but the plugins and assets are not and we are glad to pay for working software to support the marketplace.
I am currently looking at companies like Reaillusion that are selling very similar tools to what Daz3D already does, but I do not want to move on from Daz when their tools remain very solid and promising, and already have all of the features that other companies are developing.
All I am asking is can the company offer some extra love to both Daz3D and Bryce in bringing them up to the development level of 2019 tools can now offer?
Thanks.
Those older plugins should be removed from the store, I agree, since the reason is that they are no longer compatible with the newest version of the software due to changes in the underlying software development kit. But those things not working do not neccisarily imply that the software itself is abandonware, since DAZ is currently doing quite a bit of source code maintainence in the 4.12 branch.
Tsunami's original post had a series of complaints which would be better considered separately:
1. Is Daz Studio abandonware? No, I think the rate of updates and upgrades is quite reasonable.
2. Mimic Pro is a complaint specific to that, not a reason to consider Daz Studio or Bryce to abandonware.
3. Daz Studio is, in essence, for still renders. It has a lot of functionality that is useful for animation, but its animation capabilities will have some inherent limitations when compared with software specifically designed for animation. I consider the animation capabilities a useful bonus.
4. If Bryce isn't abandonware, it's in the nursing home with no family members visiting. I doubt there are enough potential users for it to ever see a major update/new version. Much more likely to see its features/capabilities incorporated, in some way, in other software.
I would gladly pay to have a Bryce update. I'd also contribute to a kickstarter to raise money so daz can have people working on it concurrently in relation to Daz Studio. Heck even a kickstarter would be a good indication on how much interest there is. I have been using Bryce since version 2 (actually used it for a high school project back in the day). Animating by hand was really tricky and much guess work back then. Going to try and instal v7 on my windows 8 via bootcamp tomorrow. I hope it really works cause I miss using the pogram.
they fixed the scripts menu for custom actions, if you delete all previous scripts and start over, they will all work