What Consumers (Buyers) Like to see in Product Descriptions/Promo Pictures
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I wish there was more standardization in how the products were displayed and described in the Daz store.
For this particular exercise, I’ll focus on Character Product Promo Pages.
Now I realize that there are SFW constraints on what PA’s use, but I am continuously befuddled with some of the Character Product Pages that really don’t show you the character, or describe it, very well.
If any others have any suggestions to help make product discovery and ultimately the buying process better, please chime in.
First up for me is, when I am browsing for new characters to spend my money on, I really want to see the… Character!
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve look at character promo pages and “passed” because I couldn’t really see what the character looks like. What they’ll show me is what the character looks like in a Blow up Sumo Wrestler’s costume or put them in a Dive Suit with a helmet… and then to show “action” in the photo we zoom in and tilt the camera 45 degrees….
When I land on a Character’s Promo page, whether it is for a Male or Female, I want to see what I am getting. Put em’ in underwear or in a bathing suit so we can see them. I want to see the artist’s vision for that character in the body shape and skins originally intended.
If I was a PA, part of my work flow would include sending my character to markusmatern for product testing. He is carrying a wonderful thread where he takes characters and renders them so that we can see what they actually look like. Take a look here:
Genesis 8 Female example and improvement discussion
I don’t want to “out” any of the PA’s for Product Pages that are lacking, but I will take an opportunity to commend one I think did a good job of showing me what I am getting.
Carboncrow’s Berenice HD for Genesis 8 Female was done really well… I can read the packaging and really know what is “in the tin”.
It is also nice that it has the Character Preset, Head add/remove and Body add/remove.
The only thing that would make it better is telling us what hair and clothes were used in the promo pics.
If the PA wants to include Action Shot Renders, with tilted camera and space suits, that is ok, as long as all the basics above are covered.
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Comments
I honestly feel like you are over thinking it, but maybe because i have been here so long and have different expectations. While I do like what markusmatern is doing in that thread, since there are no nude promos allowed at DAZ it's always a roll of the dice anyway for me. Luckily there are plenty of other morphs to change anything I need to change, photoshop to fix any texture issues or the wonderful refund policy that DAZ provides.
Some PAs include a dozen or more renders of a character in different makeup configurations, which is fine, but they never show the character without makeup.
Slightly off-topic, I could really do without the tattoos that some PAs include with their characters, because they tend to look less like tattoos and more like decals or paintings on a doll. There are PAs who do it right, but there are far more who just throw them in, apparently as a substitute for giving you a decent (let alone interesting) base skin.
Almost all new characters sold at Daz nowadays have those presets.
This is that PA's second character. I don't think it's a bad character, but won't buy it since the first one still has broken eyebrows after being updated twice already. It took a month to resolve issues with her texture. I communicated the problem to the PA directly and still have an open support ticket over that. The promos for the first character were quite nice, as well, but they didn't represent what was delivered. There's a whole thread about it and this is what Hagar looked like "in the tin".
Anyway, it's not that often that PAs visit Product Suggestions, and their feedback is what sells. Policy suggestions should be addressed to Daz via a Feature Request.
Double Post
I hear you Sevrin (regarding Hagar)... and if the PA in question had sent a pre-release sample to markusmatern for "testing", they probably would have found/solved all issues before it went up in the show room.
It's Daz's job to do quality control. It's what they are paid for.
Agreed... yet - here we are.
For me, the most important thing to look for is the clay renders (besides the no-makeup or no-tattoo options that Gordig mentioned.) I don't really use out-of-the-box characters. So what I care about are the morphs and skins, to figure out how they can customize looks. Recently, I was sold on Freja 8 because they included this. Her shape is different than the other characters I have, including my two other Kayleyss G8Fs (Tara 2 and Aurore look nothing alike either). The more different they look, the less amount of dial spinning I have to do. (Too much sometimes makes it harder figure out what morph percentage needs to be changed.)
Artistic promos rarely sell anything to me. They look like "unrealistic" results because I'll never be able to reproduce them. But also, I'm instinctively critical about art. So I stop looking at it as a potential buyer, and start looking at it as an art critic. Unlike other people, I don't care too much about the promo items. I'm looking at the character and have been shopping long-enough to know those clothes or hair aren't included, unless otherwise stated.
Wow... you said it much better than I did!
Something you learn the hard way...
Clay renders from at least front, back and side would give some idea of what the morphs actually look like, sometimes the body can be so distorted and out of any proportions that you cannot use it for anything, yet it is a potential source for log warnings (problems), much more so if having JCM:s and of course adding a bit to the character loading times...
This. How much of the character is the morph and how much is the texture? That is rarely clear in the promos.
I think every promo of any product should include a clay render myself and polycounts
I think the problem is, as some PAs have said in the past, that they sell "characters". They don't see or treat their creations as assets to be taken part or mixed with others. They're selling their characters to us as art pieces. And they present them as such.
Assuming the OP is like me, we treat our shopping like buying art supplies. We want to see enough to figure out if the characters in question will work well with our own art projects. I don't think it's overthinking at all, it's just a difficult concept to explain.
In that mindset, it would further emphasize the need for clay renders on all three sides of the "character". The promo renders look nice with hair, clothes, pose, expressions, props, background, lighting and camera angles that are not included, but when you load the "character" into the scene, you find out that the clothes were hiding a body that's nowhere near any normal human body and without the hair, makeup, expression and promo-lighting the head is neither something you were expecting.
I'd like to see dforce clothing without dforce since I would like to see how well it conforms.
I think it would be good to have a "flat" render of the character in promo pics; no hair, or anything in the image just exactly what the character looks like out of the box with default render settings.
That would be nice, but also leave both too much and too little to the imagination for Daz..
I've only see a few promos that show the teeth that comes with the character, which I would like to see particularly with a smile.
I'd like that, too. A lot of characters look fine with a plain expression, but when you start dialing in smiles, etc. cracks start to show.
The OP asked what we'd like to see in product promos, and most of the thread is specifically about characters. What I'd like to see as standard doesn't apply to characters. But I sure would like to know where the surface texture zones are, whether it's hair, clothing, props, vehicles, or even architecture. For clothing, I'd like to see what the maximum movement or shaping morphs look like. In other words... I don't care that the outfit can be fit to 20 different body styles. That's not a selling point so much as it is a minimum expectation and thus a wasted promo picture. Not to mention wasted lines of product feature description. Yikes! Give it a rest already. If it's a G8F clothing item, I expect it to fit my G8F characters. If it doesn't, you should advertise THAT.
Instead, can the collar be turned up? Wrinkles added? Sleeves lengthened? Show me. And YES, PLEASE on the clay renders for all the reasons already stated : ) That is SO useful to me, and THANK YOU to all those PAs who routinely include them.
About half of the outfit sets already do this, but I'd love to know what the parts look like independently of each other. I do a lot of kitbashing too so I'd like to gauge from the promo images whether an item might "work" aesthetically with another outfit I'm cobbling together.
Can I just point out something about hair sets? Yes, I'd like to see the surface zones... but I'd also love it if PAs would designate zones that actually make sense. Being able to hide (or select and eliminate in the Geometry Editor) the bangs for example is SO useful. Way too many hairstyles have only "hair 1" which covers the entire head and "hair 2" which covers... other strands of hair on the whole head? What's the point? That doesn't help me at all...
I guess in short what I'd like to see in the promo pictures is what makes that product VERSATILE and above and beyond the minimum expectation if that is indeed a feature of the product. Versatility adds value and justifies paying more for it, and it helps to know that before I buy it.