Make promo credit mandatory

Zicon

joanna said:

Also, "what's currently available" can become quickly outdated as vendors move and remove their products. So even if, the time of its creation, the promo picture had only available products included, a month or three later that might not be true anymore. What would you do then? Have Daz remove those promo pictures? Have vendors/their artists remake their promo pictures? And who is supposed to keep track of what needs to be changed/removed?

While the concept itself might be nice, I can't see it applied in any sensible way.

All of this, twice.

I do keep track of assets I use for a given work, and I have a pretty smooth workflow for keeping track of assets and where they can be found. And guess what? It's still a metric donkey ton of work, and I can only keep up because this is my particular brand of insanity. I wouldn't fault anyone else for not managing or simply not wanting to do all the extra work to keep track.

Wolfwood

Fauvist said:

Zicon said:

Because this comes up a lot, I keep a handy list of various reasons I have encountered why a PA has not listed additional assets used in promo images for a product:

• the asset is sold in a different store
• the asset isn't sold anywhere anymore
• the asset was created specifically for the promos and is not available
• the asset is an early version of a different product and looks different from the finished version
• the asset was modified so heavily by the promo artist that it's not representative of the product used
• the PA does not remember what assets were used
• the promo was made by someone else and the PA does not know what assets were used
• creating a product is a lot of work and listing assets used is yet another chore
• the "additional asset" is part of the product

In other words, listing assets used is an extra service and should be treated as such.

I'd be more than happy to pay $5 to get an answer.  Or DAZ can change their policy for promo images and limit the content in them to only what's currently available in the DAZ store.  Surely you can make an effective promo image using the thousands and thousands of products available on this site.

Unless an item is adquired with a license that clearly states that you are forced to credit the author/dev, then what you ask would be in complete violation of comercial use licenses.

When you purchase a product that allows commercial user, forcing them to state what the product is/from would be in violation of most of those type of licenses (including daz standard as far as i know) unless is specifically stated that way (very rarely that is enforced, speciall in non freebies).

Also, PAs may have a few perks, but i don't think a full access to DAZ library (without purchasing the assets) for usage in promos is included. So i really don't see any way to naturally enforce something like that and i would not agree with that even then; it may be promotational images, but is still art and should not be artifically restricted without reason.

Matt_Castle

Fauvist said:

Or DAZ can change their policy for promo images and limit the content in them to only what's currently available in the DAZ store.  Surely you can make an effective promo image using the thousands and thousands of products available on this site.

You're kidding, right? Not only would vendors have to keep track of what they're using, they have to check each and every thing they use every time they use it to make sure it's still on the store? That promo character look you've been developing for ages? Whoops, the vendor closed up shop, you've got to change it.

And what happens if a product's promos were published when an asset was available, but now isn't? The promo now isn't using content currently available on the store, does the entire product need repromoing??

~~~~~

Even if you don't have a restriction that it has to be currently available, I don't think you appreciate how restrictive "use only products you got from the store" actually is once you come down to it.

• Your new alien character with odd proportions? Sorry, you can't publish that, you had to edit the poses so they didn't clip through the floor, so now it's not using store assets.
• You want to publish new clothing textures? Nope, you edited the skin textures of those two characters so that the work of two vendors more closely matched.
• Nope, can't use that car in your promo, it was originally 3DL and you changed the shaders on it to make it look okay in Iray.

You might say "well, those are only small changes, they're fine"... but if you have fuzzy boundaries, now you've got to have a whole load of guidelines about what's a small enough change, and vendors have got to sweat every time they get near those guidelines.

Fauvist

No no no.  What I mean is if there's a product in a promo image that isn't identified, and I wanted to know what it is, I would pay the artist or DAZ $5 just to answer my email and tell me what it is and where to get it, or tell me "it's custom, not for sale" or "it's AI", so I don't have to search through thousands of products on multiple sites trying to find it.  I don't mean to suggest they would have to list every piece of content in every image for $5.  Just answer ONE email to identify ONE item. And they'd get the $5 whether they knew what the product is, or not.

When I was in college and working at a high-end department store, every day I would answer literally 300 to 400 questions from that number of customers - in person.  If I had received $5 for every question I answered, I wouldn't have had to go to college.

xyer0

We're not entitled to know anything about promos other than what the artists wish to tell us. The sense of entitlement is the root issue, and the authoritarian idea of coercing an artist through a mandate is antithetical to the artistic mindset. In a world of automatons and NPCs, art is one of the last bastions for benevolent free spirits, and artists have to assert their freedom---even through pyrrhic pique---since the machines and anti-humans are destroying their way of life anyway.

Matt_Castle

Fauvist said:

Just answer ONE email to identify ONE item. And they'd get the $5 whether they knew what the product is, or not.

There's no way a system like that would survive the amount of fury users would direct at it when they kept paying $5 to get "I don't have the scene file any more, I don't know" or "someone else did that render, and I forget who" responses, which would be a significant portion of the answers. 

When I was in college and working at a high-end department store, every day I would answer literally 300 to 400 questions from that number of customers - in person.  If I had received $5 for every question I answered, I wouldn't have had to go to college.

To borrow an Italian idiom: "If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike."

RawArt

Keep in mind that when asking about products that are used in promos....often the products dont get released till months after the promos are done, so trying to remember what is in them is difficult......and if you ask about a product that has been in the store a while, it becomes geometrically harder to remember.

I will be honest, most times while rendering I will not even pay attention because I keep swapping things in and out till I get the look I want, and by the end i have no clue what the name of the product I did keep in the shot is.

 

Fauvist

xyer0 said:

We're not entitled to know anything about promos other than what the artists wish to tell us. The sense of entitlement is the root issue, and the authoritarian idea of coercing an artist through a mandate is antithetical to the artistic mindset. In a world of automatons and NPCs, art is one of the last bastions for benevolent free spirits, and artists have to assert their freedom---even through pyrrhic pique---since the machines and anti-humans are destroying their way of life anyway. 

You're absolutely right!  Thank you for writing such a poetically worded post.   

WendyLuvsCatz

just ask in the commons like everyone else without demanding

can anyone tell me the character and clothing in this image?  link image like you did

then as you see, many people will give links or tell you where to look

some PAs have also said they listed products but when they submitted it DAZ did not publish that bit

but since this image is at Renderosity I am puzzled why you even asked for it to be mandatory here 

Richard Haseltine

WendyLuvsCatz said:

just ask in the commons like everyone else without demanding

can anyone tell me the character and clothing in this image?  link image like you did

then as you see, many people will give links or tell you where to look

some PAs have also said they listed products but when they submitted it DAZ did not publish that bit

but since this image is at Renderosity I am puzzled why you even asked for it to be mandatory here 

or, better, ask in Product Suggestions.

FSMCDesigns

Wolfwood said:

Is nice to have the details. But i don't think it should be mandatory.

Agreed. I can clount on one hand the times I wanted to know what was used in a promo image.

nemesis10

FSMCDesigns said:

Wolfwood said:

Is nice to have the details. But i don't think it should be mandatory.

Agreed. I can clount on one hand the times I wanted to know what was used in a promo image.

Ha!  I recently had a set of messages with one of my favorite creators because I was curious about one of the hairstyles in her promos.  It seemed so familiar and turned out to be a Frankenstein of some hair products I had and major editing.  So, it happens.

geordiesharp

Richard Haseltine said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

just ask in the commons like everyone else without demanding

can anyone tell me the character and clothing in this image?  link image like you did

then as you see, many people will give links or tell you where to look

some PAs have also said they listed products but when they submitted it DAZ did not publish that bit

but since this image is at Renderosity I am puzzled why you even asked for it to be mandatory here 

or, better, ask in Product Suggestions.

Just to clarify , My original statement of making listing assets used mandatory, was not just DAZ or RENDO, but many sites I have found with the same issue, and at the time I did not know that RENDO had a forum, or I would have gone straight there. 

And my original post was posted in the PRODUCT SUGGESTIONS forums, as it is a suggestions regarding products, however it was moved to COMMONS, stating it was not a daz studio applicable topic, while I do understand the moving of the post, I do think it is applicable to DAZ aswell as many other sites of this nature

gfdamron1

Personally, I'm grateful that such a requirement doesn't exist, and hopefully never does become reality. So far, I haven't seen any justification for it.

Grafitaleblu

In the age of generative AI, one could go from prompt to image and vice versa.  Surely it is possible to train an AI to identify assets used in promos.  I wonder then why it hasn't been done yet.

SnowSultan

What needs to be mandatory is for PAs to follow DAZ's content structure so we don't end up with a motorcycle helmet in "Figures", MAT files for skydomes and throne rooms in "Scenes", folders named "Genesis 8 Females" or wizard wands and their MATs in it's own vendor-named folder in the middle of the full Genesis 8 Female directory.  Reject the product if it doesn't adhere to the structure; this has been going on for years and it's freaking ridiculous.

richardandtracy

I will confess, as a provider of a few freebie bits, guidance of DAZ origin on library location for poses, props, prop specific materials, wearables for props etc would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Richard.

 

background

I think it would be great if DAZ created one ( or more ) free 'sets' that can be used for promotional images, and that at least one promotional image for each product should use one of these free 'sets' and no other items that are not included in the PA product. That would allow me to reproduce the promotional image with the PA product and check that it looks correct..  ( I included the proper word promotional because I hate this modern trend to save a few characters in a word, such a s promo, app )

Gordig

background said:

( I included the proper word promotional because I hate this modern trend to save a few characters in a word, such a s promo, app )

Abbreviation is far from a recent trend.

Richard Haseltine

geordiesharp said:

Richard Haseltine said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

just ask in the commons like everyone else without demanding

can anyone tell me the character and clothing in this image?  link image like you did

then as you see, many people will give links or tell you where to look

some PAs have also said they listed products but when they submitted it DAZ did not publish that bit

but since this image is at Renderosity I am puzzled why you even asked for it to be mandatory here 

or, better, ask in Product Suggestions.

Just to clarify , My original statement of making listing assets used mandatory, was not just DAZ or RENDO, but many sites I have found with the same issue, and at the time I did not know that RENDO had a forum, or I would have gone straight there. 

And my original post was posted in the PRODUCT SUGGESTIONS forums, as it is a suggestions regarding products, however it was moved to COMMONS, stating it was not a daz studio applicable topic, while I do understand the moving of the post, I do think it is applicable to DAZ aswell as many other sites of this nature

This isn't a product suggestion, though - which we stretch to include in-search-of and what is the so-and-so in this promo threads since suggestion are frequently met with a  link to an existing product. Though by my reply it may have ended up in daz Studio Discussion (or I may have typed on auto-pilot).

frank0314

Fauvist said:

Then there are artist selling content that have characters that are spectacular and they don't want anybody to know the character or the texture beause they want an exclusive look to their promo images.  Their own personal supermodel wearing something extraordinary - to capture attention and elevate the perceived desirability of the actual prodcut they're selling.  

That's called marketing. PA's are only interested in selling their product and, not advertise for others which is very understandable

Gogger

SnowSultan said:

What needs to be mandatory is for PAs to follow DAZ's content structure so we don't end up with a motorcycle helmet in "Figures", MAT files for skydomes and throne rooms in "Scenes", folders named "Genesis 8 Females" or wizard wands and their MATs in it's own vendor-named folder in the middle of the full Genesis 8 Female directory.  Reject the product if it doesn't adhere to the structure; this has been going on for years and it's freaking ridiculous.

^ THIS! A THOUSAND TIMES THIS!!!!

xyer0

We've been asking for standardisation in PA file management on new products for years, to no evident avail. The Daz store doesn't even faithfully follow its own product categorisation scheme. Those facts lead me to a conclusion; you can draw your own. @Fauvist, thank you for your kind words and thumbnail image.