I've decided to lower the price of both bridges to 10$. I hope it'll help boosting VWD sales.

After discuting with Philippe, we decided to lower the price of all the versions linked to VWD. So, I asked to Jenn to set the price of the Full version to 40$ and the price of the Lite version to 30$.

A Daz user had to pay 75$ to buy "VWD for Daz Studio". This price is high, certainly too high for many users. Now, a Daz user will have to pay 50$ to get the full version. This will not prevent us to do some promotions sometimes.

Great! I really hope this will encourage more people to try it.

If only you could 'flatten' the learning curve somehow, and make it less intimidating without sacrificing its stunning possibilities and flexibility. Perhaps it's possible to split the 'basic' settings that work most of the time, and the 'advanced' settings for the tricky cases more than you have now. And perhaps the names for the parameters could be a bit more 'self explanatory' (= less confusing) than they are now. I know I had to read both manuals quite a few times before things started to clear up in my (reasonably old, I'll admit) head.

All that time and effort did pay off BIG time though! Thanks again guys!

Cheers,

Erik

Awesome, this is a toolset that every DAZ user ought to be looking at. I use it constantly!

This is great news and I hope it leads to more Daz and Poser users adopting VWD! I agree about the learning curve, it still feels very intimidating to use because there's so much functionality to understand and then customize to the outfit that is to be simulated.

One idea I had was that maybe VWD should come with some standard wardrobe content? Similar to how when you buy Poser, you get a few gigabytes of free 3d models and figures and basic clothing so that the customer can start rendering right away. Then once they feel confident they can go on to learn about morph brushes, the material room, etc.

So VWD could include a basic business suit for a man, for a woman, a casual shirt and pants, a dress, shorts, socks, cape, tie, perhaps sci-fi outfit, or Victorian-era outfit, etc. The idea is that the wardrobe would be available for the new user to fit onto M4 or V4 or Genesis, Genesis2, 3, etc. simply by scaling it to match the body mesh. Then, each outfit would have a preset that VWD can load, and this will configure the outfit to simulate nicely (instead of making the user read the manual, try out various settings by guessing, retry again and again... the presets let them create a working, impressive simulation instantly without the long learning curve). One outfit might have 2 or more presets so that the user can load each one and see how changing the settings would make the outfit more stiff, or more silky...

Anyway, when there's no clothing included, then the user must begin learning VWD by relying on an item in their own clothing library. By including some standard clothes, it makes it easier to create a more universal tutorial, and gives the user a quick start to getting a working simulation.

Hello Thomas, I am very pleased to read you.

Yes, you are right. VWD would be easier to learn with some clothes and hair included in the program. These clothes and hair could be tested easily using video tutorials themselves included in the program. It is a great idea.

In my mind, VWD has been written to be use with all the clothes or hair sold in all the market places. So, learn to some specific clothes is a good idea, but it is necessary to remember each conforming cloth will have a specific behaviour and all the parameters included in VWD are here to resolve this problem. For me, all the current parameters are useful and all the future parameters I will include in the interface will have the same purpose. It is necessary to understand all these parameters if you want to manage realistic simulations. It is not easy and this asks time.

I want to thanks Biscuits who always includes the RIP files in her cloth packages. I remind that the RIP file is a file, recorded after each simulation, which contains all the settings of this simulation. It is this file which can be launched directly in the interface or which is restarted when you use the simulation history.

As said Erik, VWD needs to have a method to simply the choice of the settings to obtain a behaviour associated to a cloth material. A lot of work in perspective and I am not sure to manage a perfect behaviour.

The problem is that working on VWD asks me a lot of time and I will not be able to add all these elements because I am alone to develop. I want to work on the GPU programming but I work on it by short steps while I should work on it during a full month at full time, at least.

Writing VWD became a passion and I want to finalize it, but I also have a family to support. The price reductions Philippe and I have made, are here to try to restart the sales of VWD. I need that to continue to work on VWD.

My hope is that maybe 2 or 3 freebie creators might allow their clothing items to be included with VWD... it is of course possible to mention a download link to the free cloth item on renderosity (in the manual or in the install instructions) but for more convenience, if the items were installed with VWD, it would be more ideal. I hope someone would be willing to volunteer some of their basic cloth items for this.

Also, maybe to improve sales, is it possible to make VWD compatible with Blender? I know almost nothing about Blender except that it has a huge number of users (probably because it is both free just like Daz, but also has many powerful features... I assume it does not yet have a cloth simulator). If it has an open API that would allow a "Blender bridge" to be created so that VWD can run inside Blender, surely it would entice those users to also consider buying VWD (especially with the lower price now).

edit: I should add that since Gerald is already very busy, if someone from the Blender community were interested and had the skills, they could take on the task (and charge a reasonable cost to buy the bridge, similar to the Daz Bridge is selling for now).

You are right, Thomas. Some clothes and some hair, integrated into the VWD package, could be useful to understand easily VWD. It is true too, Blender is a great program. It could be useful to create a bridge to make VWD compatible with Blender. If I remember correctly, Blender uses Python as scripting language, but I am not sure at all. I will have a look to this.

I also want to make a VWD version for 3D Studio Max because I used MaxScript during many years and this development would not be difficult to do.

The problem is always the same.....TIME.... but I would pay a lot of money to a person who would be able to write a "Time compressor".

Writing a bridge for Blender should be straighforward. I don't have the time for developping it, but I could give a good head start to anybody interested in trying it.

Blender does have cloth

it's just figuring out the damn user interface to use it that's the problem

you can actually stitch cloth together in it rather like Marvelous designer

I did a google search to learn more about Blender's cloth simulator. I was watching this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW5PasvZPFg

Around 4min15 I see that Blender has presets for cloth types e.g. they set it to "cotton", so I wonder how they get around the issues that Gerald mentioned about not knowing the properties of the mesh in order to correctly set up the springs and forces...

edit: for anyone who is curious like me, this tutorial shows Blender being used in a Marvelous Designer way to stitch arms to the torso of the clothing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q06lPp2PNG4

For those interested in dynamic clothing items: I have a set of 39 items ready for you at Content Paradise: http://www.contentparadise.com/productDetails.aspx?id=27622 Items are sheped to fit Antonia figure. This figure works in both Poser and DS and is free for download at various locations: https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/Antonia

I love this program !

sometimes I get everything done in a few minutes - other times it takes 20 mins of experimenting and I abandon what I am trying to do.

That's because there are no presets and I haven't read the manual fully :)

My suggestion would be an additional part of the program that asked you what you want to do.

eg User inputs 1) I want this dress as the 'cloth' - the program would then analyze the poly count etc.

1. I want this mesh as a 'collision target' - program looks at target

2. The program asks you if you want, smooth, wrinkley, stretch, non stretch

3. it then gives you suggested parameters or sets them itself

4. the advantage of this is that it gives things in English/French rather than numbers - and gives users a starting point

At the moment when things don't go right new users are in the dark

As far as

Excuse me to be late to reply.

@tomyee : I agree that many cloth simulator has presets. I want to make presets too. But it is important to remember that others simulators works on Dynamic clothes ie an unimesh cloth with a coherent mesh size. Many conforming clothes have such a difference in their mesh sizes that it is very difficult to predict the behaviour of the global cloth. I would be interested to see a conforming cloth simulated in Blender and I would also be interested to see the behaviour of the same cloth using the same preset on two meshes having a ratio of ten between their mesh sizes. Just to if a cotton cloth stays a cotton cloth.

@FVerbaas : thank you for your proposal. I certainly will download your dynamic clothes.

@headwax : You are right, the program generates sometimes a good simulation very quickly. Sometimes, the result is difficult to obtain. For VWD, there are two ways to resolve this issue :

• Write a mesh analyzer to find the best parameters for a simulation. It is important to remember that many conforming clothes have very complex meshes.
• Write a decimator based on the size of the triangles. Associated to the subdivider, this could allow to generate structured clothes on which a preset would be really efficient.

To ALL, I just ask you a bit of patience. The program will progress slowly but surely.

thanks VWD :)

Lowering the price of the bridge isn't really what people want. What people want is for you to come out with a single product called VWD Daz Studio edition that is a version of VWD without Poser support but with the Daz plugin built-in. That product should come with a single installer that should "just work." You should then work out a deal with philemot where you pay him a percentage of sales or just buy him out outright. You're not spending enough time thinking about what your customers need. They want things to be simple. Having to buy two separate products is too confusing.

We also want easy presets. This isn't just about making things easier for the customers, but about marketing too. You should be releasing free presets for common products onto sharecg and elsewhere once every week/month as part of your marketing. Where are my Wilmap VWD presets? Where are my MFD presets? Where is the easy VWD equivalent to Daz autofit?

Cheer up Gérald, don't be sad, we are not all like that.

I think most of us are very very grateful for what you have done so far creating VWD.

The only, quite reasonable, demand we might have is that you quit your regular job, and, most of all, stop wasting precious time on sleeping. Sleeping is soooo overrated!

Fingers crossed you're not tempted to drop this wonderful project like a brick and get on with your life like it was before venturing into this crazy dynamic virtual world.

Cheers! Erik

@my2iu : I can affirm you that with the time I spent on this project and the incomes I got from it, if I didn't think about what my customers need, I would drop this project from a lot of time. You want to be able to do simple simulations (2 clicks simulations in short). I work in the numerical simulation field since tens years and thousands of researchers try since also tens years to create an way to make finite-elements simulations easier. If you have an idea to resolve this hard problem, I can promise you will quickly be a Multi-billionaire in some short time. Please, don't compare VWD to the Daz autofit. If this tool was really efficient, I would never have started the development of VWD. But, you know, the development of VWD is not finished and I want to add many functions which will simplify the simulations even if a "TWO click simulation" system will never exist.

@erik-nl : Hello Erik, Yes, I know you are not all like that. You are almost right, with the GPU conversion I go to bed at 4:00 or 5:00 AM. About the drop of the project, I can confirm you I thought about it. Now, I can reassure you, I will continue this development independently of my incomes at Renderosity (Excuse me, I speak a lot of incomes but I am as everyone, I have a family to maintain). In fact, the VWD engine seems to interest some companies and this will be a good method to continue this development at Renderosity.

The GPU conversion progresses slowly because this method of development is very different from traditional one.

my2iu posted at 6:24AM Sun, 10 September 2017 - #4312172

Lowering the price of the bridge isn't really what people want. What people want is for you to come out with a single product called VWD Daz Studio edition that is a version of VWD without Poser support but with the Daz plugin built-in. That product should come with a single installer that should "just work." You should then work out a deal with philemot where you pay him a percentage of sales or just buy him out outright. You're not spending enough time thinking about what your customers need. They want things to be simple. Having to buy two separate products is too confusing.

We also want easy presets. This isn't just about making things easier for the customers, but about marketing too. You should be releasing free presets for common products onto sharecg and elsewhere once every week/month as part of your marketing. Where are my Wilmap VWD presets? Where are my MFD presets? Where is the easy VWD equivalent to Daz autofit?

This is a legitimate concern as poser users already have a built-in dynamic hair and cloth solution, yet they pay only $40, while Daz studio users have none yet have to pay $10 more, you would do well to take heed to constructive criticism, (And ignore sycophants) as most love your ideas and would love nothing more than to support your efforts and your family, as do I!

Because the unique thing about our community is that we are all potential vender's (Professional artists) and that means your success is also ours as we are your peers as well as your customers!

Are some people really that cheap that $10 more is considered a dealbreaker? I know times around tough right now (for myself included) but Gerald has lowered the price more than once and even for me, $50 is a fair price for his tool considering all that it does. The lack of a built-in hair and cloth solution is the fault of Daz, not Gerald, and given that users get the Daz software for free, while Poser users are paying $$$ for their program then I'd be grateful any solution exists at all if I were a Daz user, not whine about it.

It's not as if Gerald is a multi-million dollar corporation and has unlimited resources or time. The type of criticism above is more likely to push him to abandon the product if it isn't going to earn enough money to justify the effort and especially so if people make demands that he can't fulfill (he can only work on one feature at a time e.g. GPU support). The only thing I'd agree with is that presets would make things much easier to use (less experimenting and simulating over and over to guess how to achieve a certain cloth behavior) is important. Ease of use is more important than saving $10, to keep the learning curve from being so steep.

tomyee posted at 11:53PM Sun, 10 September 2017 - #4313893

Are some people really that cheap that $10 more is considered a dealbreaker? I know times around tough right now (for myself included) but Gerald has lowered the price more than once and even for me, $50 is a fair price for his tool considering all that it does. The lack of a built-in hair and cloth solution is the fault of Daz, not Gerald, and given that users get the Daz software for free, while Poser users are paying $$$ for their program then I'd be grateful any solution exists at all if I were a Daz user, not whine about it.

It's not as if Gerald is a multi-million dollar corporation and has unlimited resources or time. The type of criticism above is more likely to push him to abandon the product if it isn't going to earn enough money to justify the effort and especially so if people make demands that he can't fulfill (he can only work on one feature at a time e.g. GPU support). The only thing I'd agree with is that presets would make things much easier to use (less experimenting and simulating over and over to guess how to achieve a certain cloth behavior) is important. Ease of use is more important than saving $10, to keep the learning curve from being so steep.

There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism, especially since it's done to better a product and expand its user base, this is not a battle against different teams about who is right, it's to help make a great product available for all users in this community as it's less about price (Simply using it as an example) as much as bundling the product...It is YOUR choice whether or not to take it as a personal attack.

VWD is an one of a kind solution...and worth every penny it costs.

I highly recommend it, it changed my workflow immensly.

my2iu posted at 7:09AM Wed, 20 September 2017 - #4312172

Lowering the price of the bridge isn't really what people want. What people want is for you to come out with a single product called VWD Daz Studio edition that is a version of VWD without Poser support but with the Daz plugin built-in. That product should come with a single installer that should "just work." You should then work out a deal with philemot where you pay him a percentage of sales or just buy him out outright. You're not spending enough time thinking about what your customers need. They want things to be simple. Having to buy two separate products is too confusing.

We also want easy presets. This isn't just about making things easier for the customers, but about marketing too. You should be releasing free presets for common products onto sharecg and elsewhere once every week/month as part of your marketing. Where are my Wilmap VWD presets? Where are my MFD presets? Where is the easy VWD equivalent to Daz autofit?

I use DAZ Carrara and as one of the first users of VWD I have followed Gerard with this program and know what a huge effort has gone into providing this exceptional feature which Daz has not provided and you would love to have so be thankful someone has made it possible as I am.** If I were you I would get Daz Carrara and buy the bridge which launches VWD panel in the Carrara interface and works just fine.** Studio is 'rap IMHO and although Carrara has not been updated for five years [ thanks DAZ ] it is still streets ahead of studio except of course where Daz has moved ahead and NOT updated Carrara to keep pace with Genesis development. If Daz autofit is so wonderful,why do you need VWD ? VWD is more about animating clothand hair or any mesh.

takezo3001 posted at 9:35PM Tue, 19 September 2017 - #4313921

There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism, especially since it's done to better a product and expand its user base, this is not a battle against different teams about who is right, it's to help make a great product available for all users in this community as it's less about price (Simply using it as an example) as much as bundling the product...It is YOUR choice whether or not to take it as a personal attack.

I wasn't responding to those comments as though they were an attack against Gerald. Read my post again. I am responding to the unrealistic expectations by some that he can immediately cater to everyone's wishes as if he were a large corporation. This is just a side venture for him, and anyone who has been following his replies to past constructive criticism is aware that he wants to find a solution to doing presets. I've already raised the desire to see this on several occasions and Gerald has graciously acknowledged that it would be important to have. Right now though, he is focused on implementing GPU support and undoubtedly this is going to take a while.

And it doesn't help your case to refer to those of us who support his product as "sycophants" when you post. Don't interpret those of us who rally behind his product as blindly only lavishing praise without noting areas that need improvement. Even in my past posts, I've asked politely for improvements in certain spots, especially in lowering the learning curve, and he has taken note. I don't expect all of our requests to be addressed overnight. Perhaps there should be a master features request list that the forum admin could paste all requests into so that people won't repeatedly ask for them again and again. Presets was already one that has come up more than once or twice.

Hello,

A giant thanks to Biscuits, Tomyee and Ooseven for their support.

I don't want to create a polemic on VWD. We all have our constraints. If VWD allowed me to have enough money for my familly, I will work at full time on the program. Currently, 300$ a month don't change anything in my life. I work on the program when all my essential work are finished. I reduced the price of VWD, with Philippe for his bridges, to try to have a bit more sales, but nothing happened despite the large number of "Wishlisted". More than 450.

I know I have a lot of work to do on VWD, I thanks a lot all the buyers that gave me their confidence but I just need to live normally, nothing else.

The GPU needs me a lot of time because it is not at all my specialty. I certainly will ask some help to a GPU specialist, but this has a cost. (2000$). Even if I want to convert the program on OpenCL programming, I cannot spend all this money if I don't have any incomes. Only for my pleasure to make my own simulations in real time. Perhaps, A "Pro" version of VWD, with the GPU conversion, would be a solution, with an upgrade feature.

I need your advices to decide what will be the future for VWD. I can reassure you, I will continue to work on the program. The only difference will to time needed to get the final version.

Gérald

Could some kind of 'startup' scheme be an option as a way to generate some cash to speed things up? Nothing too complicated or fancy, just to raise enough to cover the initial cost.

my2iu posted at 3:17PM Sat, 23 September 2017 - #4312172

Lowering the price of the bridge isn't really what people want. What people want is for you to come out with a single product called VWD Daz Studio edition that is a version of VWD without Poser support but with the Daz plugin built-in. That product should come with a single installer that should "just work." You should then work out a deal with philemot where you pay him a percentage of sales or just buy him out outright. You're not spending enough time thinking about what your customers need. They want things to be simple. Having to buy two separate products is too confusing.

We also want easy presets. This isn't just about making things easier for the customers, but about marketing too. You should be releasing free presets for common products onto sharecg and elsewhere once every week/month as part of your marketing. Where are my Wilmap VWD presets? Where are my MFD presets? Where is the easy VWD equivalent to Daz autofit?

Hello,

My 2cents: Installing is not a problem for me as it is very similar with zbrush or photoshop and bridges in DS4. Another example: Octane render: you must buy the bridge you want AND an octane license

All dynamic solutions are not equivalent to autofit/conforming because the results are not the same! Yes there is a learning curve. After learning the different parameters (and i'm far from mastering all of them) I have the results I want (more or less !). I'm also not sure that the standard parameters would be the one I choose for the results I want.

My first question is : how I want the clothe react to my character pose for the render I want ? I still read the manual and still learn new things.

I don't buy a tool for what it will give me in the future but for what it gives now. And VWD was the best tool I bought to improve my level of quality so it's a bargain! Of course I hope that Gerald will improve it.

Some shameless promotion: I wouldn't show the conforming clothe (Vision Silk robe) without VWD you would laugh! I have 4 diiferent renders with the same character, clothes but different poses. The VWD parameters were not the same for each. Here is one :

Cheers!

That is an excellent piece of cloth simulation there.

@Smaker1: That is one of the best cloth simulation results I have seen, it looks absolutely stunning.

Thank you Raven and Tomyee. But also thanks to VWD!

Since VWD appearance, all my renders have something gone through VWD. For this one, I pushed the limit of my computer and VWD was not very responsive but with taking the time (and staying calm !) I was able to do it. I also needed to prevent self collision but the results are there I think.

VWD is also ROBUST as it managed perfectly the body going a little bit through the floor.

No, Gerald doesn't pay me !!!

@Smaker1 : A marvelous rendering as always. I suppose the processor has worked a lot to do such a simulation. I suppose you will be interested by the GPU version. I hope it will not take too much time to finalize it. And, Stef, Yes I can confirm I don't send you any money.

VirtualWorldDynamics posted at 8:45AM Mon, 25 September 2017 - #4314765

@Smaker1 : A marvelous rendering as always. I suppose the processor has worked a lot to do such a simulation. I suppose you will be interested by the GPU version. I hope it will not take too much time to finalize it. And, Stef, Yes I can confirm I don't send you any money.

Thanks Gerald,

Yes, simu took about 30 minutes to complete (1 mn per frame) and drag of vertices was a "little bit" difficult. But I wanted plenty of folds for silk effect. The GPU version will be a plus for me as I invest in graphic card (but only Nvidia) for Octane Render

Hi I noticed that the bridge no longer maintains surfaces when importing cloth to VWD from Daz, after the upgrade from Daz Studio 4.9 to 4.10. All the surface zones get combine into a single default zone which makes it difficult to use when you have cloth with differing surface settings/textures per zone.

I can work around the problem because I have an old Beta version of Daz but was curious if it's something simple to fix in the bridge? Thanks!

zanth77 posted at 11:52AM Tue, 07 November 2017 - #4317486

Hi I noticed that the bridge no longer maintains surfaces when importing cloth to VWD from Daz, after the upgrade from Daz Studio 4.9 to 4.10. All the surface zones get combine into a single default zone which makes it difficult to use when you have cloth with differing surface settings/textures per zone.

I can work around the problem because I have an old Beta version of Daz but was curious if it's something simple to fix in the bridge? Thanks!

I'm working on it, but it's not easy. There is a dedicated thread on the subject in this forum.