_ Xatren I think everybody expects it to happen and can agree or disagree with the idea. _

I don't think "everybody" expects it by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who really understands how a brokerage in this industry functions and makes money would know it would be a nightmare. Brokerages are nothing like a software company that sells just the software. Adobe and the others can do it because they are selling/renting a very limited volume of software and they own it all. Brokerages on the other hand carry products from hundreds of people and the brokerage itself only owns a fraction of any of those products. As your staff here how complex payouts already are without adding ongoing charges for products that come and go. And while your asking ask them how likely they are going to go to a cloud based system here. All they would need is a coder to create the download system to poser and studio right?

chaecuna posted at 5:31PM Tue, 17 November 2015 - #4239123

There are 9 just released products for Pauline in Rendo marketplace, many of them developer's oriented. For the first time, I see third party traction on SM figures. Apparently, the nightmare of a market completely monopolized by DAZ and captive in the cloud is spurring content providers to action. "The more you tighten your grip...".

You made a funny!

tparo posted at 1:19PM Wed, 11 November 2015 - #4237682

I agree there is a real need for more filters when shopping here, I would love to be able to filter out Poser items it so annoying and has been for years to click on something and eventually after reading the blurb realize that it doesn't mention DS at all so presumably doesn't work in DS, it would as others have stated save both time and frustration.

Agreed. I also suspect it would benefit content providers if we could only see the products we can use thus seeing more products that would interest us in less time. It isn't so bad looking at the new products but looking through older products can be a bit much.

Tony_Stark posted at 10:43PM Sun, 08 November 2015 - #4237554

I think DAZ's biggest mistake was when they abandoned the individual installers and went to DIM. They totally bungled the whole thing. DIM never totally caught up with DAZ's change in folder structure. DIM still has zip files that put everything under the Content folder. Then DIM moves most stuff out of the Content folder as it's being installed. Just unzip a few of their install files and you'll see! DAZ failed to adopt any standard naming and placement guidelines. DAZ says you don't need to find something easily. Just use Smart Content or Search! Smart Content is dumb. It doesn't show everything I have.

I don't want my content Categorized. I don't want to fool with metadata. I just want to Make Art!

I have seriously loved DIM. I really don't want to fart around installing stuff if I don't have to and I actually really like where DIM installs my Studio stuff. I will never understand people who put more time into organizing content than using content. Nor will I ever understand the concept of a dozen or more "runtimes" (which of course is not even correct phrasing for studio organization) with everything spread hither and yon. I don't want to run from place to place to load things I want it all right there where I can get it as fast as possible. DIM installs it and there it is for me. Actually I feel the same way about connect which I am using. It installs it and I can work. I like things simple and fast.

" Do you mean metadata? Metadata should be a fairly small download if that's the case. It has actually been recommended to wait for the RC before attempting to redownload your entire library as there will be a direct bridge from your installed content to DC."

I did run the maintenance/re-download the meta data. I had nothing to loose because my old smart content was such a mess I had never used it. It took about 2 minutes total and it was all copacetic for the first time ever.

"I agree there has been a lot of speculation; it has been drastically helped by the number of deleted posts.

So you ask you doctor about your heart; he sticks his fingers in his ears (effectively deleting your conversation) and you're left wondering why?"

You left out the part where the doctor has already told you a dozen times what to do about your heart and you just keep asking the him if you could get heart cancer.

In past experience the implementation of simple, small updates have led to a downturn in quality. It turns into meeting a time line release before insuring that all the kinks are worked out. I.e. it is easy to fall into the trap of "let's see what happens, we can always fix it quick."

As they say in the commercial.. that is not how any of this works. First of all before a product is submitted it is finished and has the promos done. You can't rush after, you have to have done all that rushing before it even gets submitted. Nor are products submitted and accepted with a "lets see what happens" attitude. They better see how it works up front in the promos or they won't accept it. Humans can make make mistakes. This will just get those fixed faster since there is less packaging and stuff that has to be done.

Funny how you address everything except what I'm most annoyed at. Deleted posts.

Because I didn't notice it. But I will address it now. The simple fact is people on forums do stupid things. They troll, they say mean things, they cast aspersions at other people, they make direct attacks, and other wise try and pick fights. They use bad words, or use questionable slang, or don't think through what they are saying. They will say things that are not the best choices legally. There are many reasons that posts get pulled. They also get pulled when other people report them for example. Your insinuating that there is something dishonest.. actually no your saying it is dishonest to pull posts. Do the mods delete posts? Yes they do and for all the reasons I listed and more. But there is nothing dishonest in it. Anyone can look at how many dissenting posts there are to tell that they don't pull them just because people disagree, or complain, or even ask the same thing that they know is not true for the half dozenth time.

I bet you want to say that they only pull "some" peoples posts. Well I am telling you right now that is not the case. Not unless I am one of those "some" people you were thinking about. I regularly get posts pulled. Yep, sometimes I rise to the bait (obviously) and get carried away. Do I feel singled out or like they are hiding something just because they have protected someone from my wrath? Not so much. I had a post pulled last week because I talked about thieves. Bet you can figure out what I was talking about. And yea I guess it was needlessly inflammatory. That was not the first post I have ever had pulled and I seriously doubt it will be the last.

Now looking at what you said here that pulling posts "suggests something dishonest". I suspect that if you said that about another brokerage over there they would indeed pull that post. Why? Because it is edging toward slander. I am also sure that they would pull the posts of any mod or pa who chimed in even slightly on the dishonesty thing because they don't want the company to be placed at risk. Nothing dishonest, just CYA.

_ Those products can be placed in a scene, and when they have them arranged as they want - they hit render. Please authorise this payment to download the finished render to your computer..._

Um.. well your making nightmare work for an accounting department that would be larger than the whole company put together right now. And how would it work with the content that people already own? How would that factor into the math? Because that can't change. And how will it navigate user created products and products from other brokerages? How will it break down per use of thousands of individual products by hundreds of individuals and still turn a profit? How many man hours would it take to break every single product down into parts so that they could do the accounting on what got used? How would they convince hundreds of individuals to throw into the plan? How would they ever hope to expand the market the way they currently can with a "free to play" scheme? It would simply ruin all the work they have done to figure out how to bring in new users to the market. When adobe starts charging by the paint brush use we can revisit this because I guess then the accounting tech may be developed enough to even consider it. But until then this is just.. well you know.

It has also been stated that content will continue to be available through account download and DIM.

GeofiX posted at 12:32AM Fri, 06 November 2015 - #4237166

"The people running Daz are not going to make a bad business move that will cost them a lot of customers" REALLY ? You have read the thread at DAZ, most of it is concerned with the DRM aspect of the program. Also it has been repeatedly stated that older content will be will be repackaged to be available through the Connect system. Therefore I can see a time when Connect is the only way to get products into DS thus forcing non-Daz vendors to go that route. leeduva makes an interesting point. I've decided not to upgrade - This means I'll not be buying anything from DAZ.

This'll be the only comment I'll make for the time being (I've got other things to occupy me) Have A Nice Day!

And it has been repeatedly stated that it will be available for other types of download as well. Studio has to use non encrypted files during the creation process and always will have to in order for there to be any content created. Daz is a brokerage and they need content to stay in business. Nor do they want to prevent people who are not Daz PA's from creating content. There are to many benefits to them when content is created and sold elsewhere.

leeduva posted at 11:39PM Thu, 05 November 2015 - #4237122

LPR001 posted at 5:05PM Thu, 05 November 2015 - #4237049

@leeduva How about you try to keep your future comments out of the gutter. I have shown a lot of leniency on this entire thread letting you all blow off a bit of steam, speculate even the odd scrap and considering the circumstances all members have managed things very well. There is no place for comments that can be offensive to other members keep it clean please.

Forgive my comments. An let me rephrase it then. Daz can come out an say in order for me to use Daz 4.9. I have to disclose my Social security,bank account,employment
history,and ten people who can vouch for my character. That I won't pirate,harass,or other activities that Daz don't agree with. That fine. I will not complain,nor will I argue them to change their policy. I will simply not upgrade to 4.9. My biggist concern is that Daz will buy,threaten,or pressure. Site like Rend,Hivewire,rundna,renderotica,and other to comply with Daz connect using their EULA. That is my concern. But again There Poser,Makehuman,Adobe/Mixamo fuse. So if Daz in the future goes that route. Then I just use those 3 software that I mention.

What your talking about is actually impossible. First of all it would make it impossible to actually create any products at all if Studio only used connect downloaded files. When we create we have to use the files we just created and they would not be via connect. Not sure who thought up that rumor but they really did not think it through before they went public with it.

It is unlikely that Daz would buy out any of the other brokerages at this point. I don't think there would be any benefit for them finacialy and there are actually benefits to having the other brokerages around. Threaten...You make them sound like the mob which they are not. And just what threat would they use? "You better try harder to prevent piracy or we are going to break your virtual corporate thumbs"? Like that would work. They have no need and no leverage to try and coerce any other brokerage into adding encryption. It is not their job to cut down pirating for the other brokerages anyway. Nor do they want to have everyone download through them no matter where products are sold. They would incur all the server costs and hassles with no monetary gain on their part. And that would be the only way to get those files connected to connect.

The EULA for every company is a legal document that protects that companies rights. The idea of using any other companies EULA kind of laughable when you think about it. It is like saying you expect Macy's to tell Sears that they need to use their forms from now on. How stupid would that be? They would all still say Macy's and refer to things that Sears does not have.

I have to ask what your intent is with the bit about you having to disclose extra information? Do you anticipate other brokerages to do that in order to track down pirates? It wouldn't really be in any companies best interest to have that information or access to it unless they were a bank or similar. They would then have to safeguard it for one thing. All businesses care about is the information they need to be paid and even try and make sure that the charge company has the cc information rather than that it be on store servers. If your saying they might need that information to turn in pirates that would be unnecessary. Police agencies would be the ones who needed the information and they have ways of finding it out without any store needing to supply it. Just the same way a big box department store does not need that information to turn in a shop lifter.

"Then DAZ is going to lose some PA's since some have expressed the opinion on the Message boards that they do not want their product encrypted."

No one holds PA's in chains to keep them working at any brokerage. If they choose to leave then they leave.

_Since what DAZ is really doing is protecting the PA's, I would have to guess that some PA's will opt for DRM and some will not. _

I don't see that as a viable option. QA has more than enough to do for us as is without having to check some list about final packaging and placement for download of the product. It would also be very confusing for customers.

The store front does not work the way people seem to think it does. First you don't get suggestions based on what is in your scene exactly. It is based on what you have selected in smart content at the time. Right now I have a primitive selected in my scene and am looking at Iray shader presets so I get a selection of products that are shader preset related. If I swap to Figure/Female/Real World I get a selection of realistic female characters and figures. If I load genesis 3 female then and have her selected in the scene I then only get a selection of characters that work on her. If for some reason you have a whip selected in your scene you may get a suggestion of chains. But only if whips and chains are in the same category of props (I have no clue as I don't own either, sorry). Other wise your just going to get a selection of hand held props that will include everything from books to butterfly nets.

Oh. So it's basically a DRM thing, forcing users to install content from inside the client, so that it will be harder to install things obtained in a shady fashion without DAZ knowing about it. I am okay with this.

Partly, they have also really beefed up smart content. Someones been working like crazy getting older stuff better organized and they have added some pluses to the smart content pane as well. One is that the info tab at the bottom contains much more information than it did in the past. It also is suppose to be able to link directly from the product there to the read me information. I did it once and can not for the life of me figure out how I did it so I'm at least nominally confused by that one though. There is also a shop in there that has freaked a few people out because they are afraid it will be invasive or constantly in contact with the store. Of course the reality there is that it is so unobtrusive that I've had to help several people actually locate it. And the information presented is sort of "rote" and related to your category selection rather than exactly what you as an individual might crave. Its kind of cool to see things that way though and I will say that the images are making it much easier for me to locate things in smart content. Something I was resistant to until now.

I did a couple of speed tests the other day. My average download for characters and hair was around 32 second on my fairly middling internet. That also would have been when the servers were pretty slammed.

As an somewhat off-topic aside, whatever happened to Gizmoz' technology? I haven't yet seen caricature heads from photos make it into any DAZ products. Did they license that tech to someone else?

_Darn it; I tried to edit the link and deleted the post! Thank goodness for a local cache!

Chris Creek said this. He of course sold his stake around the time of the Gizmoz merger and left, but was later brought back. The Board by then was controlled by the investors (they had at least a $12 million stake in Gizmoz, plus whatever they had in DAZ; at least $9 Million when the merger was effected... ( http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/15/gizmoz-daz-3d-merges/ ) , and Dan Farr was later forced out (according to Chris) and Chris of course was later let go.

As far as NTT's ownership goes, check the link I posted... :)_

I followed your link and it lists Highway 12 as the investors of that single 4 million dollar funding Daz got back in 2007. Looks like Highway 12 has 2 men who are general partners, 3 that are strategic partners and one principle partner who joined in 2010. None of that indications of a later buy out of the company by NTT. If you have some other indication that there was a purchase of Daz by another company I will be happy to look at it.

What I know about Gizmoz is pretty much what is on the internet. I've never actually heard anyone with Daz talk about it even though I added it as a brokerage right around that time. I do know that some of the Daz models and so forth got used in some of the Gizmoz stuff but beyond that I've never seen or heard anything really indicating that the companies were one. My guess is that it was actually a folding in of Gizmoz into Daz and since the President who came with it left after 9 months to do his own thing (though according to linked in he is still on the board). My best guess is that they sold parts of Gizmoz and may have kept some of the people or tech. I seem to recall something about Gizmoz doing phone apps for the Korean market at some point which I would guess would be an easy sell out. In other words I don't think that there was any real impact on Daz then and certainly not now. I think Gizmoz and the merger has only ever been notable to a few people in forums.

I'm really not going to talk about what Cris said other than to say I have never heard anyone at Daz say anything but nice things about Dan. I know they are all very proud of how well he has done with his Con.

Of course if you ask me looking at anything to do with the company before 2012 is like looking into the dark ages and not really reliant to them today.