Shade 3D
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This came in my e-mail a couple of days ago..I was waiting for someone more familar with DAZ to comment on it, but it seems to have gone by un-noticed.
The promo seems to reinforce the impression that DAZ's interest maybe farther afield than with Carrara 3d. It does claim that Shade is ideal for preparing your models for 3D printing so perhaps that is why... But isn't that the service that DAZ is offering to Daz customers already. Very puzzling.
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Sorry,
Forgot to post the promo
here's a few to choose from :)
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61685/looks-like-hexagon-is-not-going-to-be-updated-shade-is-here
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61686/shade-3d-system-requirements
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/61771/now-shade-what-a-disappointment
I'm sure I missed a few. but this should get you started.
You missed a thread in this forum actually which, although not strictly about Shade 3D, does mention it quite heavilly in the last few pages
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/891580/#Comment_891580
Sorry ,
I somehow missed those posts. I thought that it was new on the Daz website.
It is, and many people seemed to take it as a new Daz 3D product, which is why it got so much chat about it. It's actually a reseller item.
It is. DAZ3D is now an online 3D store. It only develops DAZ Studio to support the online store, and give customers a free vehicle to use the content they buy in the store. That became even more obvious when DAZ started selling competing 3D apps in their store (iClone was the first i believe). And now Shade is yet another clear indication.
By the way, there is an unwritten rule in the business world: "Don't sell products which compete with your own product".
It's kind of obvious, but if you go to the trouble of investing in and developing and marketing and supporting an item, you don't want to assist competing products in taking away some of your revenue.
Which is why you don't see your Toyota dealer selling the latest line of Ford trucks. The thought is that if you provide assistance to the competing product, it might reduce your overall revenues. You don't want your Toyota sales rep out on the display floor to tell customers, "Hey, we have this cool 2016 Toyota SUV, or for a $3,000 less you can buy this new Ford that everyone seems to like".
And then the customers says "Hmmm...I came in here wanting a Toyota SUV, but I think this Ford might be better".
Not a good idea if you're Toyota.
Same with DAZ. If they spend a lot of money investing in and developing and marketing and supporting Carrara, why would you want to also offer a competing 3D app next to it in the store? Even if the feature list isn't exactly the same. A customer might go into the store wanting to buy Carrara, then find there's this app that sounds cool called iClone, and it sounds like it might be better cuz he likes the cool promo videos they have. And then the customer buys iClone, DAZ only get a relatively small percentage of sales commission and gives the rest to Reallusion, instead of getting the entire $140 sales price of Carrara.
Now, will the customers do a detailed analysis of the two feature lists at the time and conclude that Carrara might be better because it has more features? Well, maybe...and maybe Carrara really would be better for the customer's needs. Maybe not. But why take the chance?
Personally, I think this is clearly an indication that Carrara and Hex and Bryce will no longer be developed. Maybe some tweaks, but nothing major. They won't invest in those apps, and then sell competing apps next to it in the store. Doesn't make sense.
Clearly, IMO, DAZ has decided that it is no longer a software developer as a way to gain revenue, only a 3D online store, and only develops the free D|S to support the online store and content sales.
Daz3D has always been a content store, and iClone was by no means the first competing 3D resale app. There was Lightwave, Poser, and I think Vue at one point.
But for a period it was also a software developer as a means to gain revenue. It sold Hex, and Bryce, and DAZ Studio and Carrara as a means to gain revenue.
That's the important point here. It WAS both a software developer AND online store. It gained revenue from both pursuits. Now it's just an online store.
And the source of a company's revenue is the critical factor in determining future strategy. It no longer has an incentive to invest the big bucks to develop and market and support Hex and Bryce and Carrara.
BTW I'm curious...
During the time of focused development on Bryce, Hex, and Carrara (like with Carrara 8 and before...), were they selling those other apps in the store?
I think DAZ was kind of straddling the two business models...both a software developer and an online store. But I wonder if at the time they decided to buy Hex and Bryce and Carrara and become a software developer did they also decide to stop offering competing apps (LW, Poser...) in the store?
I'm not sure, but ISTR the period when they were reselling Poser was the same time they were activey developing and coming out with new versions of their own software. And I don't think they ever considered software sales as a major revenue source, or even a net revenue source at all. I think they treated it the way they treat Platinum Club membership fees -- the revenue partially covers the costs, but the real revenue is from content sales. However, I obviously don't know this for certain, just an educated guess.
Yeah, you may be right.
But since the decision to invest in software development and support, especially with stuff as complicated and needing specialized expertise as those 3D apps do, is a BIG decision, I doubt it was considered just a "covering costs" venture. We're not talking "yeah, we'll do a little software development on the side". This is a MAJOR commitment, far more, I suspect, that what's needed to develop and run an online store.
I find it hard to believe that DAZ went to all of that trouble without an expectation they'd make serious bucks in return for that investment in software development and support. Especially since they had new outside investors who were probably looking for some serious returns on their investments. I doubt that they'd do all of that just with the expectation that they'd cover their costs.
And the other big question is this: Why?
Why would DAZ decide to invest in development of Carrara, Hex, and Bryce in the first place? If it wasn't to generate serious revenue from the sales of those apps, then why even bother? DAZ Studio could support content sales as well, or maybe better than any of those apps. Like it does today. And it would be FAR less investment to develop some plugins/addons/whatever for the many popular 3D apps already out there that would greatly enhance the market for content. Heck, an addon to Blender and 3DS and Lightwave and so on would likely generate FAR more content sales than spending zillions on concurrent development of Hex and Bryce and Carrara. And heck, did Hex even generate significant content sales? It's a modeller.
I dunno. I suppose the other option was that some strategic mistakes were made. Who knows?
The ROI is from both the sales of software and the corrolary sales of content (both directly to use in the software and just from visiting the store). Whether the revenue from sales of software alone was thought to be a significant part of that is the question. Given that the majority of the development cost was probably for DAZ Studio even when the other apps were all being heavily developed, and that I don't think they considered having a paid Pro version of DS at the time, and that even people who are no longer employees have said that, while the intention was to develop the apps they purchased to keep them current, the primary driver was to have software which would utilize and drive content sales, I don't think software revenues were ever considered a major revenue source. Even Hexagon was being developed to bridge to DAZ Studio, for use in adding morphs to bought content or creating content which would probably be used in conjunction with bought content.
But I've only been here since 2007, when Hexagon was sometimes sold for $1.99 during the PC anniversary, and there was an entry-level Carrara 3D Express being sold cheaply as well.
Ahhh, good point about Hex being used for morphs. I didn't think about that.
And I suppose the landscape changed quite a bit when the investors came on board. I'd imagine the focus and business strategy changed quite a bit. I recall one of the investors (Highway 12) saying on their website that they joined DAZ around 2007. So I image the ship started to slowly change course after that.
And one more thing to keep in mind...
I recall that there were something like 10 software developers listed on the Carrara splash screen, and I believe they all shifted from app to app doing development. They'd work on D|S, then over to Carrara, then to Hex, and so on.
So if you consider that you need to pay those 10 developers a yearly salary, you also need to have content sales that are sufficient to cover those salaries. As with any company. And office space for them to work. And benefits, and utilities, and so on.
So as I've speculated before, if you assume the total cost to keep a developer on the payroll for a year, with all the associated expenses, is somewhere around $100k (I think that's a reasonable industry estimate for software guys and all associated expenses), that means you have a yearly cost of $1 million just to maintain a staff of 10 developers.
Now, how many content items at an average of $10 each would it take to cover that cost? Well, $1 million divided by 10 is 100,000 items need to be sold just to pay for the developers. Or 10,000 copies of the software if it's sold at $100 each. And that's just to cover costs of developers. They'd need significantly more sales to make a decent profit.
So again, the decision to be a software developer is a BIG decision. You're relying on a huge number of sales just to cover the cost of that development. That's very risky, especially in a market with a lot of competing apps, some of which have more features, others which are free, and still others are far more popular. And some are all three of those things.
Again, I'm sure my numbers are off, so you're free to plug in your own numbers. But no matter what numbers you use, I think the point is clear that software development is extremely expensive and risky.
ok,,I'm bored,,I'll give it a try :)
The front page here on the Daz store used to say they have had 2.5 million downloads.
Let's say 25% of those are customers buying $10 items each week.
(25% of 2.5million)*$10
you get 625,000 x $10 which is $6.25 million each week
((25% of 2.5million)*$10)*52)
$325,000,000 for one year
If we use those same number of customers to make one time software sales at $100 each
((25% of 2.5million)*$100)
you get $62,500,000
(((25% of 2.5million)*$100)*1)
$62,500,000 for one year
so...
$325,000,000 (annual content sales) (((25% of 2.5 million)*10)*52)
62,500,000 (annual one time software sales) (((25% of 2.5 million)*100)*1)
Looks to me like being in both markets would be a good idea actually.
...this all of course is based on speculation and made up numbers, like I said,,I'm bored ( waiting for this render to finish lol )
btw...I even typed the math in such a way google will solve it for you,,,no really it will,,,copy paste them in see :)
REALLY ? I never saw that....
Is that 2.5 million download over the life of the store (which I suspect to be the case, not per year or per week?)
I suspect your numbers are a bit off. No way they're a $400 million company
Yes, and I assumed the same thing.That its a total number for the life of the store.I really don't have anyway of knowing just how many downloads of Studio there have been.
I don't see it on the front page just now,,but I see it here http://www.daz3d.com/technology/
Ahhh, okay...that's D|S downloads only, over the life of DAZ Studio I presume. Maybe that's 10 years or so, I forget when D|S started.
So maybe 250k downloads per year or something like that. And part of that time D|S was free, and part of the time it was for a fee.
I'm not really sure that 2.5 million number tells us very much....
As I have read all the posts pertaining to why DAZ is not supporting Carrara - or at least appears not to be., I have had this thought in the back of my mind that there may another factor in play. First let me say that I am in total awe of the kind of mind that can write code for such a complex application such as Carrara. The closest I have come is the substitution of some code in a web application. Carrara is so complex that I don't know if there is even one person on this forum that understands all of its subleties. If that is so, and even if it is not, just tolerate the thought for a minute.... From what I have gathered from the many threads on the subject, DAZ changed its attitude towards Carrara a few years ago and let go many or possibly all of the team of code writers that were famillar with Carrara. To write code for Carrara I would think that you would have to have a real good understanding of how Carrara works in the first place. Now once you have lost this brain trust of Carrara gurus,, how do you update Carrara in any significant way. You would have to assemble a whole new team and they would have to spend some considerable time just getting up to speed on both the application itself and the code. The cost of this may be sufficient for DAZ to abandon any future updates and concentrate its efforts on easier less challenging tasks. Which may be what we are seeing. In other words, Carrara has become too complex for any easy fix.
Of Course if Version 9 comes out tomorrow I will ignominiously take back the above post -
Of course this is true for any application, not just Carrara. I think any company that is outsourcing their coding suffers from this to a greater extent, but certainly there is turnover even in companies that employ their own coders in house.
But I think 3D apps especially suffer from a problem of finding developers who can even understand how to, for example, do stuff in 3D space. Cuz honestly, most of us have no clue how to understand and do stuff in 3D space. I sure don't know the first thing about it.
I mean, take a simple polygon sitting in your scene. It's defined by 4 vertices and lines and one face. How do you define that as something you can manipulate in 3D space? Forget about the coding part, just try to sit down and figure some way to define just that one polygon and find a way to manipulate it. Each vertex is described by 3 coordinates, XYZ. And if the user moves one of those vertices to a new location, you have to figure out the new coordinates. How many of us has a clue how to do even that basic operation in 3D space? Not me. I think it has to do with a lot of matrix operations and stuff.
If you are only on one axis, say the X axis, it's simple. If you're at x=2 and move it 2 units in the + direction you're now at x=4. Easy. But in 3 dimensions you have to figure out the vector (distance and direction) between the old position and new position on 3D space. Complicated.
Now multiply that by a 10,000 polygon object and you have to allow the user to edit any or all of those polygons and vertices and edges. And then what if he does a "soft select" on a polygon, and now you have a falloff vs. distance to figure out? Heck, I can figure out how to move stuff in one axis, but when you have an XYZ to worry about?
And that's just the very basics. Next you need to calculate the normals for all of those, and the UV coordinates for all the textures. How many of us can even make a first step in figuring any of that out, even without worrying about generating C++ or whatever code?
I think that's the problem that most 3D software developers face. Software guys come out of college, or even other industry experience, but the never get a background in advanced, or even basic 3D stuff. So they have to start from scratch and read papers and books and learn from other experts (if you have them).
I think some of that is changing since 3D (gaming and such) has become so popular, so I'm sure a lot of kids in school start focusing on some of that. But there's a big difference between what you learn in school and facing some complex code someone else wrote years ago, which might have his own spin on how to code the algorithms, and might look undecipherable.
And then the really advanced stuff like cloth sims and renderers and particles are each a whole world unto themselves, and each require a very specialized expertise. And THEN you have to go back and figure ways to optimize what you wrote to make it more compact and faster so the user isn't waiting a week to do a render or whatever.
A bit different than writing a spreadsheet or a word processor. At least with those things I understand the basics and can write some simple algorithms. With 3D I'd just sit there with my jaw open looking stupid.
Out of curiousity, I tossed a coin and selected UC Berkeley, which is one of the highly rated computer engineering schools, to see how many classes they offer in 3D. Out of a 100 or so classes (which include CAD, databases, algorithms, networking, security, general programming and algorithms, and a lot of stuff I don't quite understand...) I saw maybe 2 or 3 that seem to directly apply to some of the applicable 3D stuff. Though none actually mention 3D or any of the relevant technologies (cloth, fluids, 3D space, etc.), so I assume it's just basic stuff.
So yeah, you can probably get some teaching in college to start focusing on 3D, but I think most colleges tend to generalize, and expect you to specialize on your own. Maybe some software developers here can chime in and clarify.
Joe - I'm with you on your point about the more advanced stuff but I would think that most coders straight out of college today probably did cover the basics. I studied Computer Science in college in the early 1990's and even then there was at least one undergraduate class on computer graphics and several graduate ones that undergrads could take with the department chairman's approval. They were mainly aimed at CAD type work but the one I took (the undergrad one) also had a section on designing a really basic ray tracing renderer (which has to run on one of the school's big VAX/VMS machines overnight if there was much more than a plane and a couple cubes in the scene). Of course, I never actually worked as a programmer and 25 years later don't remember how to code anything more complex than an Excel macro, but if it was being introduced that far back I would think that today with graphics and gaming so much more common, most people who are studying programming now must at least be learning the basics.
I know I've talked about my hobby to some of the developers where I work now, who are mostly in their 20's and 30's and they seemed to have some understanding of the under-the-hood stuff.
BTW the courses that seem to apply (at least to me...) are
Now none of these seem to directly address the 3D app stuff, other than the animation introduction, which might cover just one aspect.
As I mentioned earlier, I am in awe of the codewriters that created Carrara. I have a hard time comprehending the quality of mind that can write code for something such as dynamic hair with its hundreds of strands..the guide hairs which can go up to triple digit.... and then put them in a controlled motion. Or how about the complexity of all the shaders and their varients. Who thinks this stuff up ? I am having trouble just learning and using a small part of the tools available....and of course my latest failing, remembering what I have learned. When I think of all that comes with Carrara, I can hardly complain about its cost and will gladly pay for an upgrade to 9.
An addendum....I have been looking at the water wave generation of various 3D applications. Last night I took a look at Maya. From what I saw, and I can only judge from what I saw on this forum and what is online in the Maya tutorials and samples. Maya from what I saw, with regards to wave generation, is little or no better than what is available in Carrara.
Well, no...especially with the latest Maya fluid sim engine (named "Bifrost"). Previously, Maya was good at smoke and fire (BTW, these are also a "fluids" effect), but its liquids weren't all that hot IMO. Though you could certainly get much better results than Carrara's meatballs, IMO.
Last year they released Maya 2015 with Bifrost, and it's really very good for fluids.
Here's an article that came out early last year explaining what was coming in the new release. A lot of folks (including me...) were really jazzed at the time. I like and have used Realflow for a very long time, but it's nicer to have something like that in your main app. Especially for fluids, which can be very difficult to composite.
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/bifrost-exclusive-first-in-depth-look/
And BTW..."who thinks this stuff up?"
Typically, it's university professors and R&D folks who come up with the concepts and detailed algorithms. The reason is that you first need to understand the real world, and physics, and light, and materials, and all that stuff. And that means you need university guys who not only understand the stuff in detail, and can write equations for all of that which can be later coded, but they can also take it further and figure out how to make simplified models for real world stuff so that it can be simulated in real time on computers. Which is what Carrara and most of the 3D apps do. It's too complex and intense to expect computers to simulate the fine details of real world stuff, so they need to come up with simplifications. And it takes smart guys who can sit down and analyze and figure this stuff out.
And then, when they figure it out, they write a paper and present it at SIGGRAPH. And all the industry guys "OOoooo..." and "Ahhhhhh..." and run back to their offices and figure out how to write code for it.
Your discussion of wave simulations is a perfect example. Fluid simulations (and hair simulations, as you mentioned) are EXTREMELY complex and difficult to simulate. They've been working on hair simulations for decades. I was beta testing hair sim software probably 20 years ago. And they're still tweaking it. And fluid sims are insanely difficult to figure out. Millions of individual particles, and complex physical interactions that need to be simulated. Generating a breaking wave might look relatively easy, especially after seeing so many of them when we're sailing, but in fact they've been working on this stuff for decades.
Realflow is a good example. They've been working on that single app, which does fluid sims, for a very long time. I think it was the late '90's it was first release. That's like 15 or 20 years ago. And they're still tweaking it.
Is there any good pipeline between Shade3d and Daz3d content?