DAZ have assured us all that Bryce 6 is still on track to be issued this year and that they are not going to stop this. why would they? Bryce has a tremendous base of fans and is at a price that people are willing to pay.

Well, assuming that the Evoia team in Mountain View is willing to hang on during the transition, then there wouldn't seem to be any need to dump Bryce, as the support teams are entirely separate. On the other hand, given that DAZ has allegedly inherited a mess of legacy coding that would require a ground-up rebuild to improve upon towards a true 6.0 release, perhaps the ROI on continued Bryce dev wouldn't be worthwhile. As vocally anti-DAZ as some of the longtime Brycers have been, I had the impression that they were resigned to the impending "death of Bryce" prior to DAZ' acquisition of the app anyway. Naturally, more recent adopters may be disappointed if this contingency plays out.

I dunno ... so much speculation in this thread, and now I'm doing it too LOL. I just hope that the Evoia team keeps the faith under DAZ' stewardship. Any acquisition or merger is potentially painful and represents an inevitable change of culture, but those of us in the tech industries are quite accustomed to all that by now.  :-) 

No matter how many years Corel held Bryce in their lifeless hands, Bryce users always hoped that its development would be started up again. The users even started a "Save Bryce" website and petition, I kid you not.

Yeah, the old Bryce code. I would agree that DAZ would probably like to start from the ground up to build a Bryce 7, or as DAZ had called it, "Super" Bryce. But, now after the acquisition of Eovia...only DAZ knows the real gameplan.

But, killing off Bryce or just leaving it behind would be a nightmare for a figure retailer such as DAZ. It would alienate a large portion of the Bryce user base, who would then ignore anything that DAZ would ever want to sell them in the future.

Buisiness wise, it would be better to protect DAZ's investment of Bryce; take Carrara "Basics" and slip its abilities underneath Bryce's (6 or 7's) hood. Keep the 10 year old Bryce user base happy. Keep all their future money interested in DAZ.

bea said: DAZ have assured us all that Bryce 6 is still on track to be issued this year and that they are not going to stop this. why would they? were you replying to me? i agree. :) what i am not holding my breath about is additional features being added to bryce 6.0, or there being a bryce 7.0 that constitutes a major development. i don't know what carrara basics looks like, and whether it has something that would be worth slipping into a bryce 7.0. will have to take a look. how much of a userbase is there for bryce these days? i admit to some nostalgia about bryce -- i loved it in the days when it was the premier landscape generator; i played for hours and hours with the DTE. and i am glad to see it live again, and be affordable for people who're new to 3D art.

"what i am not holding my breath about is additional features being added to bryce 6.0, or there being a bryce 7.0 that constitutes a major development."

Yeah, as far as Bryce 7, the ball is really in DAZ's court now. They had voiced planning a Bryce 7, and I am actually leaning towards them continuing with Bryce and leaving Carrara "Basics" where it is. ("Basics" does have some cool stuff Bryce 6 could use, imo) Time will tell.

"How much of a userbase is there for bryce these days? "

Well, lets just look at the numbers only at Renderosity; as far as the amount of forum posts, & gallery uploads, Bryce is #2. (Poser is #1). as far as 3D users go, no one else is close. And, at 3DC Bryce rules.

*Not saying that Bryce beats other programs out everywhere else, it doesn't, lol. But I'm just showing there is still a strong user base, (that has grown even larger ever since DAZ saved it).

Plus, Daz makes a good deal of change from selling Bryce content, so dumping bryce would amount to throwing away all those sales too as it would make thoir bryce content obsolete. And I seroiusly doubt that Daz would do that to themselves....

Oh yea, DAZ is so damned evil they decided to sell Hexagon at $1.99 to all PC members!! 

Yea, just horribly evil.  Sheesh!!  I'm off to download my copy!

Richard

Me too :) :)

Re: Bryce Future

The official Daz Pre-Announcement to the Eovia Aquisition stated that Bryce was going to stay as a "Premiere" piece of software at Daz. (can someone dig it up? - my craphouse dial-up isn't conducive to digging through multiple forums for a posting of it)

Smartest thing for them to do would be to make poser-figures and products fully poseable/supported in Bryce, so there was no need to swap in and out of different applications. So through D|S, Bryce and Carrara the user gets full use of their Daz products (Materials libraries probably being a point of difference though).

I guess all that depends on what they do with V4's rigging and whatnot...and that may affect some aspects of Carrara also? (Someone said it has the mysterious weight mapping or whatever that functionality is called) I think it was Anton who said that Poser itself has some fundamental problems that prevent figure advancement...

Cheers

Yeah, I now cannot find that either (too many threads in the last few days), but I do remember it.

There was also this slightly relavent Dan Farr quote;

"By bringing together Carrara and Hexagon with the Bryce, Mimic and DAZ|Studio solutions, we will provide a compelling suite of 3D software tools with a unified vision.”

From the article at CG Society;

http://features.cgsociety.org/story.php?story_id=3537

OMG!!!!!!!

They actually put Hex2 out for 1.99!!!!!!! (PC Club members only until May 31 - but looks like you can join and grab it)

I can't find any sign it's a joke...am buying NOW!!!!!!!! (in case they come to their senses!)

Newsletter:

"In the DAZ tradition of giving its customers high quality 3D software at fantastic values, we are now offering the electronic download version (ESD) of Hexagon 2 at the DAZ webstore for the nominal price of US$1.99 for new and current members of the DAZ Platinum Club. This special offer for Hexagon 2 ends May 31, 2006 (23:59:59 EDT), after which the software will be available at the normal retail price of US$269 for the full version or US$119 for the upgrade from Hexagon 1."

Woo!!!

Shh.... No. No.  Nothing to see here.  It is a very belated April Fools joke.  (Sheesh, I'm trying to download the fowl beast - currently at 16.3KB/s and 05:42:00 to finish). ;{P  Don't encourage them - it'll take me a darned week to finish downloading.

D'oh! Yes, it's so huge they actually warn you on the product page. Has decided me to push into broadband this coming week. Dial Up is killing me.

That price is so awesome I actually cleared off a bunch of wishlisted PC Items also.

Talk about creating a wide user base...

Cheers

PS: My heart truly goes out to the Eovia customers who will no doubt feel hurt by this...but blame Eovia, not Daz.

No need for us to feel hurt. Seems the pre-order folk are automatic Platinum Club members and if they don't want to wait (like I didn't want to wait anymore), they can spend 2 bucks more and get the bloody thing right here, right now.

Well, right here, eventually.

When I say 16.3 KB/s (now 15.2 KB/s), this isn't my connection speed.  At max, I can do about 100KB/s.  It's just that there are five-billion people downloading it right now and DAZ's bandwidth is feeling a bit under-the-strain, I think.

Lucky for me, work can continue since I decided that my Mac should be doing the download drudgery.

Wait until they put Carrara up and on sale.  Expect to start downloading an hour before "Data Download Expires" to even have a chance. :)

well, one thing this has taught me is that I need more RAM. lol. I can only go so high in poly count before Hex blows chunks and that's due mostly to ram limitations on the part of my PC. Still, it's pretty cool for texture/displacement work.

I was going to increase my ram anyway for my ZBrush, looks like I'm going to have a second reason...

What is the ram you guys have.  Hex 1 runs like a charm even with a v3 imported to morph. I only have 768Mb. Do vid cards help?

I have 1gb at this point with ZBrush, which imho, is not enough. To be able to sculpt out the 8 million+ poly meshes, one needs to max out their ram (4gb right now)

Good video cards will always help keep your screen refreshed nicely when spinning around those high poly models. Pretty much the same idea behind havind a good card lets you have a better 'view' when you play video games.

I have a half decent vid card 9200 radion. seems to work well with all my software. I don't think I'll worry about it to much then. Plan on buying a new computer in a few months. Cheeper to buy a new , bigger, stronger, faster tower than to add on.

That a very decent card, yes. Needing the bleeding edge in high end video cards is really only a need in seeing a great view in video games, especially the most recent ones.

With cg creation you can be more lax. Although, having a great card (I'm sure) is great all around, lol.

Hrm... Is Hex 2 easier to use than Zbrush 2? After spitting out the chunk of change I spent on that and rarely getting to use it, I pause at buying modeling programs these days. Modeling just doesn't seem to be one of my strong suits. Texturing, programing animation, those I can do. Modeling? Gah! I'm too left brained for it! Or is that right brained? ..... And the first person who jumps in with "no brained" is getting a pickle for Christmas! :m_skull:

I haven't tried Hex 2 as of yet, so dunno. Love ZB, though.

Well, if you're already a PC member, what's $1.99?  Heck, I don't expect to use it (Cinema 4D, Shade 7, Bryce 5.5, Carrara 5 Pro) ;)  If anything, maybe the license can be transfered and I can gift it to someone who isn't PC and needs a modeler.

I feel a DAZ plot here.

:)

Just marketing gone mad, is what it is....

Well,  it's tempting to rejoin the PC just to get this, but I really don't need another modeller (I already have Rhino, 3dsmax, Shade 8 pro, Lightwave and carrara 5 pro)...

mysteriously waves hand in the air

~these are not the excuses you are looking for~

but I really don't need another modeller you're mad, i say. mad! :)

"Well,  it's tempting to rejoin the PC just to get this, but I really don't need another modeller (I already have Rhino, 3dsmax, Shade 8 pro, Lightwave and carrara 5 pro)..."

Might be worth checking out for the more advanced surfacing and mapping functions. And it would give you an upgrade path in the future.

Cheers

o baby I got it ananan 1.99  dos the happy dance

umblefugly, you got in just before them there gold rush.  At just at midnight, zoom, the downloads started to dive bomb.  I started at about 40KB/s, but it stalled.  The next attempt started at about 30KB/s and ended (when I decided better of it) at about 9KB/s with something like 7+ hours to go (at 27% downloaded after about 3 hours).  Lucky b....d. ;0)

The current going rate seems to be about 5KB/s (or less) with 20-30 hours.  I'll just go with Mizrael and wait for another day.

I bought it so I have the full Hex2 and not just the upgrade. Seems better to me to istall that version. It took 45 min. for me to DL from Daz. The site seemed to be slow. Wonder why.

What I was wondering, how will this effect merchants. What effect will this have on sales in the long run. I know I rarely buy anything myself now that I model most of what I need. I started using Wings a couple of years ago and I have Shade 8 and now Hex. Not much I can't model with the combined 3 apps. Shades curves are so easy to use to create quick base mesh in minutes. Say that 5 times real fast., (quick base mesh in minutes) Hex is like Wings in many ways.

So I planned on buying hex2 from eovia for 299.00, it just looked so cool i had to have it, so bada bing daz takes over and it's a buck 99, so i grabbed it, 14 minutes it took for me, which is actually slow, but guess i lucked out, BUT now the question is, i have never modeled anything, so any kind soul out there that got it too, be sure to share your discoveries and tutorials

Quote - If anything, maybe the license can be transfered and I can gift it to someone who isn't PC and needs a modeler.

Pick me! Pick me! :woot:

Yes, someone mentioned in another thread that  they checked with someone from either Daz or Eovia and they said the licens is transferable, so you can give/sell the one you preordered from Eovia to someone else, then buy the $1.99 one from Daz for yourself.

Now, all you have to do is find some deserving soul ...

"Let the sucking up begin!..."

Or if you bought it in the last month, you can just request a refund, and then buy it via the PC club.

My refund's already been processed!

usually DAZ only allows 1 purchase at PC club prices.

the second will default to the normal price

Keep in mind you can not transfer the one bought from the PC; only the one from Eovia.

The vouchers and PC membership are a way of invalidating your opportunity to get your money back if you preordered Hex 2.0 and discover, after downloading, that what DAZ has locked you into is another endless (see history of D|S) cycle of beta testing. Keep an eye on the Hex2.0 bug reports in the Carrara forums.

If you bought Hex 1.0 as your pre-order, I hope you are satisfied. But kiss that feeling goodbye.

Caution: Post uses language.

c'mon already...
Every piece of software purchased today has bugs upon release. We're beta testing all of it.
D|S WAS a beta test until v1.0 was released just recently. That was a fact and everyone knew it. Yes, there are still bugs, but it goes with the territory, not DAZ. At least they're working on fixing them, unlike metacreations/curious LAbs/EFrontier, or a load of other companies that leave glaring bugs in...even Eovia with Carrara. I don't use it anymore, but I see posts about problems that were in RDS5 that are still in there. Any bugs in Hex2 are obviously not caused by DAZ, they were in there from Eovia, so your whole point about endless bug hunting caused by DAZ are moot.

DAZ has already stated they will refund your money if you want to go that route, even though they were not the ones receiving the money.

Quote - The vouchers and PC membership are a way of invalidating your opportunity to get your money back if you preordered Hex 2.0 and discover, after downloading, that what DAZ has locked you into is another endless (see history of D|S) cycle of beta testing. Keep an eye on the Hex2.0 bug reports in the Carrara forums.

If you bought Hex 1.0 as your pre-order, I hope you are satisfied. But kiss that feeling goodbye.

Caution: Post uses language.

I'm not happy about the take over but Daz doesn't have a thing to do with the bugs. The bugs came with the program. Daz has been good enough to give the refunds. I'm one of the Hex1 suckers. It took long enough for them to decide to do give the refund and pulled the typical Daz, we wont give any infomation to anyone untill they have pulled all of thier hair out, again. But they did finally come through.

Now I don't think there will be any SR anytime soon. Looking at the bug report, woh, I have a couple in there myself.

The only thing that I am afraid of, is Daz forcing DS in my face again with Carrara and Hex like they did with bryce. I don't use DS. Idon't know why that is so hard to understand by the majority of DS users. Thier just as bad as Daz getting in you face about DS.

Hopefully It will be a long time before they do that.