Yes and no. Yes I did what you described, and no, I didn't get a second round of coupons and a second character bundle. Which was OK because I did it just to take advantage of the Holiday sales, which luckily spilled over into January.

Being new to DAZ, I can see why you might like Premier. As someone who has been at DAZ for 20 yrs, I'll list my reasons for being less than impressed with the new subscription plans.

DAZ+ was the only plan (it was called Platinum Club for a long time) until a few months ago. I could typically get DAZ + for $30 - $40 per year. With the new monthly subscription it's close to $120 per year. Having been a member of DAZ+/PC for over 18 years, IMHO for me the new DAZ+ subscription is really not worth the price. That leaves me the options of Premier or nothing.

For background info, I traded in what was left of my DAZ+ for one free month of Premier, then paid for a second month to finish off the holiday sales. As of Jan. 30 I'm now only a Base (free) member for the first time in over 18 years.

I have to disagree with your first point. In reality, if you keep your monthly subscription to Premier going without a break every month, you only get one character bundle per month (or per $20). If you like the character bundles, it's a great deal, especially if you're new to DAZ. For me, most of what is offered for the free character bundles I really don't find desirable. Of the three I got, there was only one that I really wanted, the other two have one or two products I will probably use, the others probably not. That reduces their actual value to me quite a bit (i.e. I would probably not ever purchase anything in the bundle). Of the remaining bundles, there is maybe one Item I might use, the rest probably not. Again, that reduces the value of the bundles quite a bit for me. For the most part I'm not real interested in the characters, meaning they would just clutter up my content library (which already has a lot of clutter). Most of the addon products in the remaining character bundles I would probably never use because it's either a genre I don't do, or the quality/details simply aren't up to a standard I'm looking for (they can work for background figures). So after 2 months, I have what I'm interested in (maybe the Pixie Bundle, but I could re-up for a single moth to get it when it's available again).

Your second point, actually, you only get two $10 off coupons per month. The $10 off a DAZ Original is the best coupon since it doesn't have any buy ins. My average budget for DAZ is $25 - $30 a month. The Premier Sub takes up most of that, which means I would seldom be able to use the save $10 coupon since I would have to spend at least an additional $15 to redeem coupon (making a total minimum of $35 per month without buying anything else).

The monthly freebies are sometimes something I can use, but it's a gamble and usually one I lose. So I can't really count on those offsetting the cost. The weekly freebies are almost always something I don't use, so that's not a plus to the value for me.

Something else that I'm not happy about is DAZ Studio Premium. I, and many other users, were looking forward to the release of Mesh Grabber 4 (now called Geometry Sculptor in DS Premier). I use Mesh Grabber 3 a lot, but it is missing some very useful functionality that was to be included in Mesh Grabber 4. The vendor had a thread in the Daz PA Commercial Products forum showing what would be included in Mesh Grabber 4 and had a lot of people interested, then he went silent for about 3 months. When he finally posted to his thread again it was to announce that Mesh Grabber 4 was bought by DAZ, and was now included in the new DAZ Studio Premier. Needless to say that news wasn't well received at all. A product that could have been purchased as a permanent license for probably less than $40 was now a monthly subscription only product (as well as 3 of his other products). With the current state of DAZ support, the value of this product as a DAZ product versus the original vendor product is much less as well as tech support seems virtually non existent. Additionally the only form of user manual is the thread in the Daz PA Commercial Products forum created by the vendor, which of course he no longer has any obligation to continue support (and doesn't seem to any more). This is also true for the other 3 products that DAZ bought. Plus, I really am not a fan of subscription software. I know many people are OK with it, but typically it seems affordable with a "low" monthly fee, but if you look at that cost over say five to ten years, it ends up costing quite a bit. The only way to get DAZ Studio Premier and these plugins is to spend $20 a month, again not worth it to me (I'll just get better at using Blender to make morphs for free).

The higher discounts are nice, but they are typically designed to provide better value for those who spend more than I do. I've also gotten fairly picky about what I buy, and I simply don't need/want a large percentage of whet is in the store, and most DAZ+ items I have very little interest in.

That is why I canceled my Premier sub. As a continuous sub it simply isn't worth it to me for the value provided. If there was a greater variety/quality in the Character bundles, it might tip the scales a bit in the other direction. I just don't find much value for the "free" stuff to off set the monthly cost. I would rather just focus on spending my very modest monthly budget on products by PA's that produce the detailed quality/versatility I know I will use (Aeon Soul, Strangefate, Linday, Lilflame, etc.). I don't need a lot more non top tier stuff cluttering up my hard drive that I will probably never use (I have enough of that already).

I'm still here, of and on. It probably looks like I'm on all the time because I just leave a Rendo tab open all the time, but I only check it once in a while.

FirstBastion, that's one impressive Water Mill render. Did you have to do much with it to make it look good in Iray? I might have to put it on the Wishlist!

Unfortunately there just isn't a lot of innovation happening in the DS or Poser world right now, which might be part of the reason there isn't much chatter. I don't want to throw any shade, but Poser just doesn't seem to be moving forward much at all. There is one user that has been making some extremely impressive still life style renders with it, so maybe there is hope. DAZ is still moving forward, but there are so many things that could be added to DS to generate more interest. Maybe DS 5 will be out before we all fall off our mortal coils.

Like others have noted, AI has probably re-routed a lot of potential focus on 3D. I played with it for a few hours. It could be fun, but I do enjoy setting things up myself, and AI could get just as costly. Last time I checked installing it on my computer to reduce costs was more work than I was willing to do when I have a lot of stuff to make images in DS.

IMHO Blender has made some real strides. That could be where a lot of people with interest in 3D are going as well. I moved on to Blender from Carrara for projects that don't involve of focus on DS content (mostly landscape scale animation work). Eevee is sooo nice to work with when it can support the project.

Anyway, I just thought I'd stop in and say "Hi". It's nice to see all the familiar "faces"!!

I use Chrome on my PC and Adblock Plus (free) made them go away. Now I need to get an add blocker for my tablet, they are a lot more intrusive on it. I was going to just "go away", but I'm not real happy with the direction DAZ is going either (why I started spending more here).

It's probably time to just go a different direction with my 3D hobby. When time allows,  I might just consider moving everything to Blender. I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy without buying for quite a while.  Definitely time to take another look at other options like Unreal and iClone too.

Well after years of resisting using an add blocker I just installed AdBlock Plus. Woohoo, no more annoying infolinks popups!!!

Agreed, they have to keep the lights on. I wonder if they even watch what is happening elsewhere? DAZ has increased prices and many people are unhappy with that. Additionally many people aren't happy with the their annual March Madness sale. I'm sure many are probably looking for alternative sites to purchase stuff, but these pop up infolink adds make Rendo feel a bit cheap and less desirable, possibly chasing the disgruntled customers right back to DAZ without giving this store a second look.

I know the adds make me not want to do any browsing here. Getting hit with a new popup with every click makes me hesitant to do anything, including looking at the store or my wish list. Hope it works out for Rendo because we need the competition, but I'm afraid it will dramatically reduce my visits and purchases here (not that I buy that much anywhere).

IIRC Rendo tried this same thing with infolinks (or very similar) a year or two ago. It was in your face and very intrusive, just like this new pop-up is. There were a lot of complaints, and we were told they were just "testing" it. After about a month the annoying popups went away. I'm sort of willing to put up with these on free web sites, but honestly over the past few months the in your face advertising on many web sites (especially news and sports news websites) has increased to a point that it is simply unpleasant to visit.

I'm hoping this is another test that will go away, but I'm afraid it won't. This annoying popup on every page you visit here is simply way too intrusive for me (even when re-ordering your wish list you get a new popup). This is honestly a step to far for me right now. I guess I'll wait a day or two to see if this is intentional or an accident. But websites actually can make quite a bit of money annoying their users with infolinks adds, so it might be here to stay.

Not again! Here I was finally warming up to Rendo again. Every page refresh or page click I get a new intrusive  infolinks add that I have to close. I think the DAZ/Poser ecosystems must be quite finacially stressed now??? I guess maybe it's time to finally go all in on Blender and leave the digital Barbie hobby behind. If this doesn't go away, I'll make a final few purchases and probably be done here.

(Yeah, I'm having a bad day/week/month/year. I have to work extra hours to make up for lost income and increasing prices, and now this hobby is getting hit with crazy schemes to increase profits here and at DAZ. I can understand the need to generate more revenue, but this IN YOUR FACE (sorry, not yelling, just an example of being in your face) advertising is an insult.)

I think they really should try reaching out in some way to the user base to let us know what's going on. The forums aren't just for idle chatter, there is a lot of valuable information in them that isn't available anywhere else. I've actually had a bit of time to use DS this weekend and could have really used the forums a couple of times. I finally figured out everything on my own, but a quick google search of the forums no doubt would have saved me a lot of time.

My guess is the server or router is down. Should be really easy redirect requests to an active server/page somewhere to give us a bit of information.

WooHoo!! Thanks so much for selecting one of my images! It's a great honor to be selected and placed in this group of amazing images. Congrats to all everyone else who got selected. Such beautiful and inspirational work!

Where can I find a list of the winners? TIA

And in case you can't find your Poser 5 Manual, here it is (look on page 58)

http://www.dawnstarbooks.com/samples/samples/AnthonyHernandez_TWSample_L.pdf

And finally a tutorial from Nerd3D (AKA Charles, the same Charles who I believe is in charge of Poser development now??) done in 2005, for Poser 5!! http://www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=4

After this big trip down memory lane I remember why I had such high hopes for Poser!!!

Deecey posted at 10:24PM Sun, 22 November 2020 - #4405557

DustRider posted at 10:20PM Sun, 22 November 2020 - #4405555

Deecey posted at 10:11PM Sun, 22 November 2020 - #4405554

Sorry, but you are mistaken, the error is the association of "Dynamic Cloth and Strand Based Hair" with Poser 2010.

That might be when they added bullet physics,

That sounds about right.

Yes, bullet physics was Poser 10/Pro 2014. The people that wrote the Wikipedia blurb for Poser must have gotten it confused with the other dynamics. I have NO idea who kept that up for SM.

No doubt somebody in marketing. it sounds good, and people in the board room wouldn't know it was wrong :)