DAZ is losing me

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  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,559

    Sevrin said:

    It's no use urinating against the air current or to  expect the world to stand still.  The cycle of more powerful hardware leading to software that pushes its limits thing leading to yet more powerful has been the rule in the computer game since forever.  We wouldn't be doing all this stuff on the interwebs if that wasn't the case.  My first computer ran on an 8080 processor, and I'm glad I don't use it anymore.

    eh, I don't think that's the case really. My machine is a year old not ancient. I think there is expecting the world to stand still and letting nvidia drive the bus are two different things.

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 11,164
    edited February 2021

    certaintree38 said:

    Oso3D said:

    ...

    ...

    ...

     Also... Who makes a comforter with yarn? I guess you could... But it is easily the biggest project I can imagine for knitting. The biggest project I can imagine for Daz is MUCH more expensive wink

     

     

     

    I'm a 72 year old male.  My mother knitted a wonderful "comforter" (Afghan) for me 40 years ago.  And one for my brother.  I call it my "granny blanket".  It's looking a little worn now.  Not yet had any broken threads but I treat it gently and get it dry-cleaned once in a while.  Sometimes it's on my bed, but mostly I snuggle under it on cold winter nights while in my recliner chair vegging out on TV, pistachios & brandy.  No, it's not a sandwich of cloth with a layer of insulation in the middle, but more of a flat rectangular heavy sweater, but it is a lot of yarn and even 40 years ago that much yarn was a drain on my mother's cash.   It's a major memory of my mother, sitting in her rocking chair, knitting, feet on the hot air vent, watching out the window at the snow, cat curled up at her feet.  And she was not just a homebody, she was active in local politics, was the first woman legislator in our county.  She fought the oil companies poisoning the watertable with natural gas caused by their "fracking" techniques, decades before the rest of the nation realized it was a problem.  She also created a library of maps and documents of the history of our county.  There is a roadside plaque dedicated to her memory.  All good stuff.  But most importantly, she knitted me a comforter.heart

    Very similar to this: 

    RippleAfghanPattern.png
    201 x 251 - 115K
    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • Oso3D said:

    I always find it puzzling when people think this is an expensive hobby and wonder what hobbies they've encountered that are significantly cheaper.

    It's not golf, miniatures, trains, knitting, or painting, I'll tell you that much.

    I stopped buying DAZ content after Gen2 came out and only returned midway through last year. In the intervening time I was able to buy 21 asian ball-jointed dolls and clothes for them, and yet it's still a cheaper hobby than 3D. Best of all, I can sell any of the dolls on any time I want.

     

    Serene Night said:

    For me it is the increasing hardware demand. I was excited to get genesis 8.1 since I tend to be an early adopter. But 4.15 requires too much gpu and with nvidia driving the bus I fear I can't even render two figures in a scene without dropping.

    In 4.12 I rendered a scene with three characters and some scenery, and with a little jiggling things around it all fit on my puny GFX card.  In 4.15 I can't render a single naked figure and hair without it dropping to CPU.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,926

    Oso3D said:

    I always find it puzzling when people think this is an expensive hobby and wonder what hobbies they've encountered that are significantly cheaper.

    It's not golf, miniatures, trains, knitting, or painting, I'll tell you that much.

    Gardening, but people are loathe to garden and many people can't for lack of a suitable yard. Painting, if you use supplies from, surprise, Walmart. Learning and playing music, if you buy the books with public domain music sheets in it. There are a lot, but you have to avoid going to hobby specialty shops, to avoid the huge markups they do. Anyway, I've always been happy to squander (not really squandering but that's what people that save up for relatively luxurious retirements call it) 90% of my discretionary money on hobbies so no matter. It seems the #1 hobby in the US in the last 15 years has changed to be traveling, nationally and internationally, and nothing uses money faster than that, unless you're shopping in millionaire specialty boutiques in the big metros of the world. DAZ 3D model collecting seems cheap until you realistically consider all the products of clothing, sets, hair, and characters you need to avoid doing the same render over and over (and over). I'm not complaining, but realistically collecting a representative sample of DAZ models for story telling is more expensive than most of the hobbies I listed above. 

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,140

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    Nath said:

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    barbult said:

    certaintree38 said:

     Also... Who makes a comforter with yarn? 

     I had to giggle at that idea, too. laugh

    this was pretty cheap to knit and crochet, all synthetic, took me a year,  I remembered as a result of this discussion that I better wash, it, it was in my car for years, laid it on my bed for this photo and it stinks! 

     

    I'd call that a blanket or a bed spread. As an ESL speaker I'd come to understand that comforter is a regional term for duvet (or the other way around perhaps)....

    (Edit: also: nice work!)

    well another year and I could have had the other side cheeky

    I know it's a blanket, the comment just made me remember I had it and get it out to look at it

    and I haven't knitted or crocheted for many years now, I get arthritis if I do

    That's where I'm at now :'( And I really loved it too. Made afghans, hats, sweaters and mittens for every member of my family. 

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,140
    edited February 2021

    Woke up this morning, looked at the sale page and thought "Thank you Daz for saving me money lately, yet again." More cyber, steam, whatever stuff that we've had way too much of lately that I have less than zero interest in ;). LOL I'm sure I'm the odd man out tho ;).

    Post edited by AllenArt on
  • I think they are preparing something big and exciting .

  • mmalbertmmalbert Posts: 412

    Serene Night said:

    You can run 4.11 quite well with 4.15. 4.15 requires newer drivers. I downgraded to 4.11 and restored an earlier driver. 4.11 does not drop to cpu or is as memory intensive  since I believe it uses an earlier version of Iray. Of course you can't use newer technologies that only run in the later studio, but such is life. You may have 4.11 in your product library

    Thanks; I'll give that a try. I have installers saved back to DS 3.1 -- still have that oldie installed and use it from time to time. Mostly for Poser PMD-related things. :)

  • j cadej cade Posts: 2,310

    tsarist said:

     

    I agree with a lot of the things you're saying.

     

    I'm a professional, so I can't actually be through with Daz. I'm not that good at modelling my own stuff,
    and these cheapskate customers I have to deal with don't want to pay fairly for work anyway, so it wouldn't be feasible to do anything else.

     

    The prices have been climbing & the bundles haven't really been appealing for the most part.

     

    I did pick up the Sci-fi bundles, but really wasn't that excited about them. I wish they had created a new character for the bundles rather than recycling characters I already own.

     

    The buy ins are pretty obnoxious. I prefer a straight discount because these "deals" get confusing and aren't much of a deal once I crunch the numbers.

     

     

     

    tsarist said:

    FSMCDesigns said:

    So what do you want daveso, for them to just give you the products? the problem with shoppers is once they get a deal they want that same deal all the time and then want an even better deal

    I don't think Daveso wants it all to be free.
    The prices HAVE gone up! The deals aren't as robust as they had been. I think when shoppers are squeezed then you get a lot of that "penny pinching" behaviour. I know it costs me more to get and service a client. My bills go up, utilities, petrol, rent. Everything goes up and I can't pass off the costs. When times were good, I had a savings & didn't worry so much. ==================================
     

     

     

    You do realize a big chunk of what you're saying also applies to vendors here too right? You are simultaneously talking about your customers not wanting to pay as much for your work and you not wanting to pay as much for work done by others.

     

    You have less discressionary income because of rising rent utilities etc - vendors at daz arent immune from rising costs of living 

     

    Personally I'm not the biggest fan of the new bundle setup either so I've bought less of them. IDK it doesn't feel all that dramatic

  • The RED Crown said:

    I think they are preparing something big and exciting .

    Not too much of an effort. Currently, even watching paint dry is more exiting than the daily promos... 

  • tsaristtsarist Posts: 1,606
    edited February 2021
    j cade said:

    tsarist said:

     

    I agree with a lot of the things you're saying.

     

    I'm a professional, so I can't actually be through with Daz. I'm not that good at modelling my own stuff,
    and these cheapskate customers I have to deal with don't want to pay fairly for work anyway, so it wouldn't be feasible to do anything else.

     

    The prices have been climbing & the bundles haven't really been appealing for the most part.

     

    I did pick up the Sci-fi bundles, but really wasn't that excited about them. I wish they had created a new character for the bundles rather than recycling characters I already own.

     

    The buy ins are pretty obnoxious. I prefer a straight discount because these "deals" get confusing and aren't much of a deal once I crunch the numbers.

     

     

     

    tsarist said:

    FSMCDesigns said:

    So what do you want daveso, for them to just give you the products? the problem with shoppers is once they get a deal they want that same deal all the time and then want an even better deal

    I don't think Daveso wants it all to be free.
    The prices HAVE gone up! The deals aren't as robust as they had been. I think when shoppers are squeezed then you get a lot of that "penny pinching" behaviour. I know it costs me more to get and service a client. My bills go up, utilities, petrol, rent. Everything goes up and I can't pass off the costs. When times were good, I had a savings & didn't worry so much. ==================================
     

     

     

    You do realize a big chunk of what you're saying also applies to vendors here too right? You are simultaneously talking about your customers not wanting to pay as much for your work and you not wanting to pay as much for work done by others.

     

    You have less discressionary income because of rising rent utilities etc - vendors at daz arent immune from rising costs of living 

     

    Personally I'm not the biggest fan of the new bundle setup either so I've bought less of them. IDK it doesn't feel all that dramatic

    Yeah.

    I used to be work for an arts organisation. People throw out this seeming contradiction rather than actually see the problem. So yeah I know it sounds like a contradiction.

    I don't personally mind paying for something. I still have to deal with the rising costs. PLUS I am not now, discussing random artists. The cheapskates I'm discussing HAVE the money!

    One cheapskate had the money to put a Persian rug in a supply closet, but didn't want to pay my discount day rate for a TON of work.

    Then there was the client who paid $250 to wash his Maseratti, but thought it was unreasonable to pay $5000 for a 2 Day photo/video shoot with locations, scripts, wardrobe, hair, makeup, models, etc. Yeah, that was "supposed to" cost only $500.

    All this "gotcha" nonsense is why I refuse to ever hold office again. You lot who do this aren't actually helping.

    Boring
    Post edited by tsarist on
  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 11,164
    edited February 2021

    It's been so dull here for the last year that I got excited when my roadside rural mailbox was run over yesterday.  Wheee...smiley

    Post edited by LeatherGryphon on
  • tsaristtsarist Posts: 1,606

    It's been so dull here for the last year that I got excited when my roadside rural mailbox was run over yesterday.  Wheee...smiley

    Now THAT'S bored.
  • Rebuild it with a reinforced concrete pier. Mailboxes deserve something formidable.

  • So at first I wasn't sure if I should comment but now that some others have gone there before me I just can't resist! wink

    Jack Tomalin said:

    West Park will be continuing :)

    Yusss! yes

    Had to vent...  I bought my first 'West Park' assets in 2013 (I just looked it up) and I was quite the newbie back then, I had fun with it (3d modelling is a hobby for me) but other than some "forced" poses I didn't use it all that much, not at first.. Fast forward a few years later (= gaining more experience enlightened) and I finally started realizing what potential this stuff has. Not just talking about the whole sets (which I used until then), but also the things you can do with the individual parts. That's when I started realizing the obvious: what all this stuff has to offer, and thus I also started to appreciate it even more than I already did (being one of my first 'real' purchases this stuff will always be special to me).

    Then I gained more experience with lighting which opened up even more potential for me!

    And well, I guess here we are. I just "stole" some stuff from you just now (not really of course! wink) after I noticed that some of your work is available with a sweet discount, and yah; $1,99 honestly feels like a steal to me because of my past experiences with West Park so far. I can't wait to set up some scenes using the vandalized west park (darn hooligans, lol!).

    But I love the whole idea because the vandalizing will also account for creating a more grim atmosphere, which should be good for some of my scenes.

    One last comment... although I understand that iRay is very popular (and I'm honestly considering to grab some of your iRay west park addons because of that (no promises though)) but having said that I just wanted to share that I also hope you're not going to ignore the people who still enjoy 3Delight (or other render engines).

    So yeah, I'm very happy to see that there will be more West Park because I really love your work on this!

  • Well, I just realized March Madness is coming so hopefully there will be irresistible sales and I can get back to buying more often (fingers crossed).
  • hjakehjake Posts: 812

    AllenArt said:

    hjake said:

    Oso3D said:

    I always find it puzzling when people think this is an expensive hobby and wonder what hobbies they've encountered that are significantly cheaper.

    It's not golf, miniatures, trains, knitting, or painting, I'll tell you that much.

     

    WHAT! knitting is as expensive as my 3D spending ....  stomps over to significant other ..... grumbles ... "no wonder we can't afford our low fat high fructose Frappuccino!!! You're as bad as me with all your knitting!!!!"   ...  stomps away grumbling   .... significant other sits there wondering what the heck was that  ....

    I'm a crocheter and I can make my granny square afghans for a little bit of nothing buying yarn remnants. It's dirt cheap compared to my Daz habit. LOL 

     

    So I guess you can afford all the low fat high fructose Frappuccino's you want  laugh

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,449

    Looking through this thread, I think of other threads that start up whenever something new hits the store and, it seems to me, there's always a rush to buy anything and everything. For me, 90% of what is sold here has no attraction - I just can't inderstand the enthusiasm for buying repetitious products. Even more astounding to me is the fact that bundles are so popular. From the outset, many years ago, I determined that bundles were a waste of money. Most contained one or two items that I might use - the rest being "stocking fillers". I do get the impression that many people on this forum have money to burn. 

    I never buy at full price, never buy bundles and rarely buy anything new because, if I wait a while, it will be on sale at 50% discount or greater. So I probably average one purchase per week and those purchases are all subject to those conditions just described. Yet DAZ still gets more of my meagre income than my other hobbies or than any other hobby that I can think of going back decades.

    I'm still using G3M because those males have been good enough for my needs and a man's wardrobe is generally far more limited than a woman's. I will probably stay with G8F for a long time, even if we see G9F in the near future - unless there is some astonishing advance in technology akin to the Unreal MakeHuman release. 

  • davesodaveso Posts: 6,422

    mwokee said:

    Very clever, Oso. You got them talking about knitting and golf and off the subject of Daz going in the wrong direction.

    misdirection is a great tactic. My wife does it a lot. so do politicians :) 

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,886

    Marble: Not every sale is going to be for every person. If I go to a store and there's some bundle promotion where I don't want many things in the bundle... then yeah, it's not something I'm interested.

    If you ARE interested if most/all of what's in a bundle, on the other hand, great!

     

  • davesodaveso Posts: 6,422

    XpiderMan said:

    Well, I just realized March Madness is coming so hopefully there will be irresistible sales and I can get back to buying more often (fingers crossed).

    its coming...gift certicates discounted, so something coming 

  • tsroemitsroemi Posts: 2,342

    Pax Asteriae said:

    Oso3D said:

    I always find it puzzling when people think this is an expensive hobby and wonder what hobbies they've encountered that are significantly cheaper.

    It's not golf, miniatures, trains, knitting, or painting, I'll tell you that much.

    I stopped buying DAZ content after Gen2 came out and only returned midway through last year. In the intervening time I was able to buy 21 asian ball-jointed dolls and clothes for them, and yet it's still a cheaper hobby than 3D. Best of all, I can sell any of the dolls on any time I want.

    Oooh, why did you even have to mention miniatures ...! They do the exact same thing to me and my wallet as the 3D hobby: empty it mercilessly while I still stand there scratching my head, going, Oh, but that little (3D / porcelain) dolly there cost only 40 bucks ... and then she had to have some clothes of course, but they were all really cheap ... Well, and of course she needed to live some place, but I got a real great discount on the house ... and ... why ... I just don't understand what the credit company is so riled up about right now ... 

    Serene Night said:

    For me it is the increasing hardware demand. I was excited to get genesis 8.1 since I tend to be an early adopter. But 4.15 requires too much gpu and with nvidia driving the bus I fear I can't even render two figures in a scene without dropping.

    In 4.12 I rendered a scene with three characters and some scenery, and with a little jiggling things around it all fit on my puny GFX card.  In 4.15 I can't render a single naked figure and hair without it dropping to CPU.

    Just an idea, 4.15 did not work well for me either, but I went back to 4.14 instead of much further, and it seems to me that that version does actually works quite well with Genesis 8.1. I don't know about the shaders, but the Genesis 8 morphs are all there and present on the 8.1 without a problem, I can use the new tear thingy just fine and all that. Might want to give it a try as well!

  • xyer0xyer0 Posts: 5,677

    LeatherGryphon said:

    I'm a 72 year old male.  My mother knitted a wonderful "comforter" (Afghan) for me 40 years ago.  And one for my brother.  I call it my "granny blanket".  It's looking a little worn now.  Not yet had any broken threads but I treat it gently and get it dry-cleaned once in a while.  Sometimes it's on my bed, but mostly I snuggle under it on cold winter nights while in my recliner chair vegging out on TV, pistachios & brandy.  No, it's not a sandwich of cloth with a layer of insulation in the middle, but more of a flat rectangular heavy sweater, but it is a lot of yarn and even 40 years ago that much yarn was a drain on my mother's cash.   It's a major memory of my mother, sitting in her rocking chair, knitting, feet on the hot air vent, watching out the window at the snow, cat curled up at her feet.  And she was not just a homebody, she was active in local politics, was the first woman legislator in our county.  She fought the oil companies poisoning the watertable with natural gas caused by their "fracking" techniques, decades before the rest of the nation realized it was a problem.  She also created a library of maps and documents of the history of our county.  There is a roadside plaque dedicated to her memory.  All good stuff.  But most importantly, she knitted me a comforter.heart

     Thanks for the memories.

  • IvyIvy Posts: 7,153
    edited February 2021

    melissastjames said:

    Ivy said:

    certaintree38 said:

    Serene Night said:

    For me it is the increasing hardware demand. I was excited to get genesis 8.1 since I tend to be an early adopter. But 4.15 requires too much gpu and with nvidia driving the bus I fear I can't even render two figures in a scene without dropping.

    So sadly, iam not buying g8.1 or anything that requires 4.15 

    I am going back to 4.11 which is much less intensive for my gpu. I can't afford a new gpu to run 4.15. Not when 4.11 works fine and runs what I need. I don't want to play the nvidia upgrade game, it's too expensive for me as a hobbyist.

    I have 4.15 installed right now, but I have seen my renders dropping to cpu constantly lately. So I just went through my old hard drive and found I have several older versions of Daz kicking around. Now to see if I can have two versions installed at once! I wish Daz made older versions of the program more readably available. I don't see how it could harm their bottom line. 

     

    If you have a GTX gpu and not a RTX gpu you will experience that drop tp cpu issues is because of the NVIDIA driver after 436.7 have the Opitex prime accelerator always on by default  to compensate for the Raytrace values in RTX cards so if you have a GTX  Opitex prime uses more vram .  in the older versions of daz before 4.12.0.86 you could turn off opitex prime as a option in the render settings . But my understanding is the NVIDIA driver has as more to do with the opitex prime accelerator being the major issue and that not daz fault .. Maybe why Daz Studio has started adding Filament as a Renderer because a lot of people can get access to daz studio  But can't get a graphics card . But yeah if you got aa GTX  GPU  I would suspect its the opitex prime making your renders throw to CPU , other wise if you want to use a RTX card  you got have at least 8gigs of vrams to use iray in 4.15

    I'm on 4.15 with a GTX 1080TI and the most recent NVIDIA driver and don't have any more issues with dropping to CPU than I did on 4.12 or 4.14. I've never really had renders dropping to CPU while baking. Sometimes I can't get a large scene to fit right at the start, but then Scene Optimizer generally takes care of that. But once I'm able to get it onto the GPU, I've never had problems with it staying there. I think with 4.11, I was able to fit more into a scene before it hit that threshold of not fitting on the card, and yeah that is annoying. Thankfully, my scenes these days pretty much consist of only one character, so I haven't had many instances where the lower ceiling gets hit. 

    That being said, I'm on the lookout for the 3080TI when it comes out...so hopefully sometime this year I'll have a new system.  

    I have 1080ti's as well.   You must be one of the lucky one's that didn't get effected by the change .  alot of us GTX users were not so lucky  .I'd Be Happy smiley

    Post edited by Ivy on
  • I stopped buying items for females a long time back and now only purchase the occasional male product if it's super nice, and concentrate my minute budget on props, shaders and scripts. I have enough clothing to dress the city of Auckland and really do not need any more...and I mean DRESS, not undress in skimpwear, and I can give each of those Aucklanders a different character so no more of them either unless it's something outstanding and priced really well...an exchange rate like NZs is not conducive to splashing out.

  • N-RArtsN-RArts Posts: 1,436
    edited February 2021

    I'm not buying as much. Having said that, I bought most of the Aiko 3 items in this week's Vault sale (so Thanks Daz, for giving people the chance to buy those items, before they're removed from the store).

    I've noticed that the prices have gone up. Its not the reason why my spending has reduced. But, if I'm lacking in "funds" and, if I see anything that's too expensive, it gets wishlisted.

    I know that I will have to cut down on buying stuff anyway, in order to fix (or replace) my rendering computer.

    Plus, as that well known thread title says, "There's always another sale". wink

     

     

    Post edited by N-RArts on
  • Yeah, DAZ is losing me too for all of the reasons other folks have already expressed. March madness better be good!

  • Victor_BVictor_B Posts: 391
    edited February 2021

    You'll never know how cheap products in store are if you'll never try to make them ;)

    Post edited by Victor_B on
  • With a number of hobbyists, time making stuff is less of an issue than money. Definitely applies to this hobbiest. I am in the process of modelling a big project & hope it'll be ready by July. But pay for something like it? At the moment I simply couldn't.

    Regards,

    Richard.

     

  • RowanessqueRowanessque Posts: 130
    edited February 2021

    N_R Arts said:

    I'm not buying as much. Having said that, I bought most of the Aiko 3 items in this week's Vault sale (so Thanks Daz, for giving people the chance to buy those items, before they're removed from the store).

    I've noticed that the prices have gone up. Its not the reason why my spending has reduced. But, if I'm lacking in "funds" and, if I see anything that's too expensive, it gets wishlisted.

    I know that I will have to cut down on buying stuff anyway, in order to fix (or replace) my rendering computer.

    Plus, as that well known thread title says, "There's always another sale". wink

    Yep I think I did that too, if something is too expensive wishlist it, its going to come down with patience.

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
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