Hi everyone,

It looks as though I am stepping into a thread with a few people who are not so happy with the latest news. Hoepfully I can respond to a few of the concerns. The acquisition has not changed the delivery date of Hexagon 2.0 at all. The same developers that were working on it are still working on it. We entered into a contract with them to finish it through version 2.1. They are working hard to get it finished and out right away.

We will still continue to develop the different tools as they have previously been scheduled. The major expected change is to see better integration between all the tools in time. DAZ has been joined by some very talented programmers and marketing people who will add to our company. If you liked Eovia in the past, the same people who made it what it was will still be involved.

MichineClaw, Lightwave is a great product and so is Modo (our internal artist use both of them). If you are looking for a good alternative to Hex2 now that DAZ owns it, either of those will be great (albiet pricier) options.

Dan Farr

P.S. For those of you who have not pre-ordered Hex2 don't do it yet. There is some additional news that you should hear before you do.

Hello and thank you so much for the suggestions in this thread. Please keep them coming as that it is very important to us hear your thoughts. For the past 6 months DAZ has been working on the next generation Victoria. We originally began work as a V3 Pro but because of feature creep we may end up with a V4 instead(no promises either way).

From your suggestions it looks like we are moving in the right direction and are willing to modify further as more information comes. Please keep it coming. It is still too early to suggest any expected timelines on her release date either.

Dan Farr

Message edited on: 08/31/2005 13:27

Message edited on: 08/31/2005 13:29

I should know better than to step into the middle of a fire storm like this, but when I see misinformation and rumors being started and proliferated I feel I should set the record straight. Last night when I saw this thread developing, I wanted to step in then and point out that it doesnt need to be a choice of Poser or Studio but I had other obligations that prevented me from doing that.

First of all, from the inception of DAZ|Studio, we have never positioned it as a Studio vs. Poser product. I tried to look for some of my original posts on the subject but I couldnt figure out how to do it. As I recall, our statements were essentially that Studio would be a Posing and Rendering application. It actually reached that level about 1.5 to 2 years ago. Our purpose for Studio was to provide a tool that would help to expand this community and the DAZ customer base. It is doing that. We have had thousands of new people enter this community by way of Studio. (I know that many of them have even gone on to purchase Poser after downloading Studio.) I hope that we have only scratched the surface in this regard. A larger community will bring larger scale development of products and technology and ultimately more choice for customers.

Why did DAZ develop DAZ|Studio? I think a few of the reasons have already been touched on, but I will hit the highlights (not in any particular order). The first is market expansion (as stated above). Second is the opportunity to innovate and have impact on software that our content can be used in. Third is the ability to offer an integrated solution option for customers (DAZ no longer needs to sell Poser in order to sell our content). Fourth is the ability for other developers to significantly contribute to technical functionality through high level scripting and a strong SDK environment. Not to mention, were enjoying the DAZ|Studio project.

I mentioned DAZ|Studios SDK. A key goal is that D|S be an open and friendly environment to other developers, extensible through scripts and plug-ins. Were particularly excited about this because weve seen what this community can produce even without such tools. Innovations such as ERC by Rbtwhiz and Nerd, Mat Pose files by DAZ, morph injection by Drax, full hand scaling by Michael Lane not to mention the consistent improvement of Poser products (in UVs, joints, materials, morphs, etc.) by DAZ and many, many others.

It is also been great to see how this community environment fosters and spreads such innovations, leading to further ideas and improvements. For example, Ajax helped popularize EasyPose (a form of ERC), Anton helped popularize BodyHandles (although I believe someone else created BodyHandles), DAZ helped popularize morph injection (created by Drax). Its easy to see that weve all come a lot further than any of us could have come alone, and DAZ is grateful to be a part of such an innovative and growing community. In fact, one of the major difficulties in this market is just that theres so much to be done. (This is ultimately a good thing.) DAZ Studio is designed from the ground up to open accessibility for enhancements from developers through an amazingly powerful script ability and detailed SDK.

As a result, version 1.0 has taken much longer than expected to develop. It is much more robust than was the original scope. We have ended up with significant feature creep along with underestimated timelines. We expect that a lot of the noticeable growth will come when the SDK is completed and accessible by outside developers. We also have a few unannounced features that will be in the version 1.0 release candidate.

Someone mentioned above To me Studio is to Poser, what Renda was to V3. Actually the two are very different. DAZ|Studio uses the Poser file formats (as well as other formats), and in doing so follows established legal precedent in the software industry. Renda contained actual code from V3 in her files. This topic could be a whole other discussion, but from all of our legal research on the subject DAZ has strong legal footing to be able to use the formats we are using. And as far as the other functionality of DAZ|Studio being an infringement, unless any of the functionality (posing, rendering, etc.) is covered under patent protection, then we are fine. And if we are in trouble for having this functionality then every other 3D application is in trouble as well.

Taylor Wilson left DAZ a few months ago. For about 8 months prior to his departure, his focus had been mostly on Bryce development and other programmers have been working on Studio. Taylor will be missed greatly but is still offering his help to DAZ for any high level concerns that we may have from time to time. Studio is still moving ahead as planned. I am sure that Posers development will also move along now that its original creator, Larry Weinberg has moved on to Adobe.

I hope that this post will be helpful in clearing up misinformation. I also hope that readers can see that a few people contributing to this topic obviously have ulterior motives in what they are saying. Their history of trolling and harassing DAZ is out there for people to read for themselves. Just look back at other posts where DAZ is mentioned and you will see their messages there, too.

DAZ has never hidden our motives. We are a business. We are trying to grow our business and keep it viable and successful. When we do a sale or promotion we want it to be successful. I believe that the majority of our customers actually like our sales. I sure like finding good deals when I go to stores like Costco, and I like knowing that theyre making enough money to provide more value to me in the future. At DAZ we have learned that our success is strictly based on how well we provide what our customers are looking for (good products and service). If we dont provide what they want, they will stop buying our products. DAZ will continue our efforts to provide the best products that we can, knowing that if we dont we will not remain in business. We love what we do. We love the support that we have found in this community. Hopefully DAZ and E-Frontier will both find success in our respective businesses and neither one will have to fail for the other to succeed.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Producitons

Hi Steve,

Just wanted to jump in and echo your comments. I hope that people don't feel that the have to choose between DAZ and CL. There is no reason they need to do that since we are both here for (and because of) this community. Poser 6 looks like a really great product and the community seems to be loving it. Nice job on a very successful release. Keep up the great work. We look forward to a long and positive relationship with CL and this community.

Dan Farr
President DAZ Productions

Mazak, Bryan is no longer associated with DAZ in any way so I should probably address this for you. DAZ has every intention of supporting Poser 6 and we have been supporting Poser 5 for quite some time now (due much in fact from Bryan's encouragements). We expect that the release of Poser 6 will bring a lot of great things to this community and people will really enjoy it. Sincerely, Dan Farr President, DAZ Productions.

Khai Wrote: actually gave up Actually you didn't give up posting your questions again. You have even added some requests. I will try to respond more specifically to your questions and requests. Please note that in my prior responses I was answering some questions specifically and some generally due to the sheer volume being asked. All though your questions may not have been addressed specifically I felt they had been addressed generally. Your requests on the other hand likely were not addressed. Khai Wrote: one of the conditions of L2 being still on release as to be Encoded. Yet, there are other figures with V2 and V3 features availible which are not encoded. My Quote from post 163: I am going try to answer the rest of the questions on a general basis from here on. First of all, we do not spend time pro-actively looking for models that may have problems. Most of the figures that may have concerns are brought to our attention by outside parties. We address them when we are aware of these issues. The creators of Dina V Contacted us very early on and we have an agreement with them that allow her to use Victoria's U.V's I am not personally aware of the other models mentioned in this thread. If the creators of those models are concerned that they may have problems with either DAZ copyright of EULA with them, they may consider either contacting us to discuss it or use the RTE encoder. While I believe the above response accurately addressed your question it may not address what I think might have been your underlying question why has DAZ contacted Sixus1 and not the others? The answer to that is Coolers post number 95. Lilin2 is clearly a derivative work of Victoria based on joint parameters, UV's and topology (referring to it's shape not the polygon cut and layout). Khai Wrote: and for cooler to apologise for his quite frankly appalling behaviour above I assume that you are referring to post 119 and quite frankly speaking, I disagree with you and don't find his behavior appalling and see no reason to ask him to apologize. Especially compared with the tone of many of the other messages in this thread. Khai Wrote: and for DAZ to make known in their EULA that the FAQ on their site is infact legally binding as the EULA on your screen so further mistakes will not happen. (plus having a further legal document that binds you and you don't know about it is bad. it should be part of the EULA or indicated by the EULA. saying well they should read the site... is not enough.) This is unnecessary. The fAQ's on DAZ's website do not and cannot in any way legally bind an end user (you) beyond what they (you) agreed to upon installation of the software. It can on the other hand add terms that in fact make our EULA less restrictive (intended to support developers who develop for our products) if we so desire and make it legally binding upon ourselves. That is what we have done. If there are developers who feel that our FAQ's and other written statements are not legally binding enough on DAZ, they can contact us and we will provide additional agreements for them. Some people reading this may be wondering why I have been so persistent to attempt to answer the questions that are being pitched at me. The answer is that I want to emphasize to them that DAZ is encouraging development of our products that support our products. We completely recognize their value to help make our products more effective and useful. We reserve the right to restrict our products from being used to create new products that circumvent the need for the original from which it was derived. I have done my best to address the questions in this thread. It has been exhausting but hopefully for those observing it has been beneficial in some way. I will ask that rather than continuing to post any further hypothetical questions, that people read the FAQ's on the DAZ page concerning these issues. If there is a need for answers or clarification to specific questions regarding projects that you are working on then please feel free to direct them to us. Sincerely, Dan Farr

Message edited on: 03/20/2005 10:30

Opera

In the scenario that you have mentioned DAZ would not have issues with the new model. No matter how good of a memory an artist may have, in my opinion, it would be impossible to get into what could be considered substantially similar without using the original mesh to get there. The human figure is much more difficult to claim substantially similar than it would be for a character like Micky Mouse. Because a figure has a nose, eyes ears all in humanoid proportions does not mean that a figure is substantially similar. We could make no such assertions.

I believe that the substantially similar clause is there to help us with issues around a model being a derivative of another model. It is to prevent a model (or images of that model) from being taken into a modeling application and used as a template or guide upon which an entirely new wireframe mesh is created or shrunk wrapped to either all or part of it. Even though this method could produce a completely different looking wireframe mesh it would not make it any less of a derivative product. You could potentially have two wireframe meshes that don't share any of the same points or segments but in topology (how it looks shaded) they could be nearly identical. The question that could be asked is, could Shape A have in any way be created without using shape B? If the answer is yes, then it would be difficult to prove that the meshes were substantially similar. Based on this explanation, the probability of someone creating a substantially similar model to another model without using that other model to get there in likely impossible.

I am not an attorney and my opinions are based on my limited understanding of these issues (I have to say that). With that being said, I would encourage people to please not make derivative figures unless they are fine encoding them to the figure from which they were derived.

I sincerely hope that this has clarified our position. :)

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions

John (Opera Guy). Not avoiding the question just as I had stated have been overwhelmed by too many. Here is a specific answer to your scenario. If someone arrives with the character that you have suggested without having to copy DAZ's copyrighted and Eula protected products then I don't see how we would have any claim to protect it. But realistically what are the chances of that randomly happening . Here is a test. Does the new work require the use of the original DAZ file to get to the end goal? For example. If you are building a 3D woman model, do you need to load Victoria into the modeling application while you are modeling to use her as a guide or a template? If it does then it clearly is derivative. The same things goes with JP's, UV's etc. Don't make derivatives of the files. Create it from scratch and then there will be no need to encode it. And to answer the question further, I don't know how you can end up with the same UV's on a different mesh without somehow copying them. I hope that I have addressed your question accurately. If not please rephrase it for me so I can understand better what you are asking. Sincerely, Dan Farr President, DAZ Productions

I have to say that I am happy with the direction this thread has gone. It has been narrowed down to what I believe are very direct, sincere and important questions regarding the issues. Hopefully my response will address them. Some of them specifically and some of them generally.

First of all, I want to address a few of BH's questions directly.

BH wrote:
i hope youll admit that with only daz in-house products to support it, V3/M3 may not have fizzled out but it definitely wouldnt be anywhere near the success it is now.

I could not agree with you more on this statement and in fact acknowledge this belief every chance I get. I do believe there is a true symbiosis in every sense of the word.

BH Wrote:
we create items for your products. and from what i see in this thread according to your EULA once we choose to support any daz models you pretty much own whatever we create

Our claim in on our works not yours. If our work is contained in part of your work then we claim ownership of our portion thereof. For example, if you create an original dress mesh to fit Victoria, we do not claim ownership to that mesh. You may choose to re-fit that dress mesh to a totally different figure (using the other figures JP's). We claim no ownership on your dress.

BH wrote:
Posette shipped with Poser. V2 had a VickyP4 morph that was pretty much V3's head on posette's body, and allowed it to wear all posette clothing. please explain to me the difference between this and what sixus was trying to accomplish with lilin.

While part of Zygote we entered into a non-exclusive license agreement with Metacreations allowing them to use the models within Poser. Zygote retained full rights to the models other than that agreement. When DAZ formed out of Zygote, those rights (along with all other Zygote Poser-ready content) were retained with DAZ via a legal contract. A simple answer to that question is that we own rights to use those figures any way we choose to.

BH wrote:
it was a pretty underhanded move by daz to at one swoop appropriate all of the freestuff that was made for posette

Actually, I am not aware of what situation you are referring to. We have never appropriated works that has been developed by outside parties. We purchase the rights to works but we do not appropriate works.

I am going try to answer the rest of the questions on a more general basis from here on. First of all, we do not spend time pro-actively looking for models that may have problems. Most of the figures that may have concerns are brought to our attention by outside parties. We address them when we are aware of these issues. The creators of Dina V contacted us very early on and we have an agreement with them that allow her to use Victoria's U.V's I am not personally aware of the other models mentioned in this thread. If the creators of those models are concerned that they may have problems with either DAZ copyright or EULA with them, they may consider either contacting us to discuss it or use the RTE encoder.

I want to go back to the statement that Cooler posted from our FAQ sections. I don't know that I could explain this any better than what is said here.

"However, as always, the content of DAZ's CR2 (and other) files remains our proprietary data, and the use of this data in the creation of derivative, competitive products is prohibited. In the case of our human figures this means that the CR2 data may be freely used for the purpose of creating figure add-ons (such as clothing, etc.), but may not be used for the purpose of creating another humanoid figure, which could compete with the original. Please note that Geometry contained in the OBJ files may not be used to create any derivative model, add-on or otherwise."

So to sum it up, DAZ does not propose to claim any rights, ownership entitlement to the human form in general. We do own and retain all rights upon the human figures that we have created or purchased title to (including derivatives thereof).

Concerning the DAZ EULA. I want to mention once again. If any developer is personally concerned with the terms of our EULA reaching beyond what we have made very clear that our intentions are, please contact us directly and we will put in writing privately, what we have put in writing publicly here and in our FAQ's and other forum posts.

2nd hand distribution of Linlin would have the same restrictions of first hand distribution and in fact more. Not only would DAZ require it to be RTE encoded, arrangements would need to be made with Sixus1 pertaining to their rights of the character.

I hope that this has answered most of the questions generally and many of them specifically. It is really difficult to keep up with each specific questions. But I do hope that the message has come across clearly that DAZ not only appreciates the support by outside developers on our projects we recognize that our success depends upon it (Vicky has become a much better product because of the support of products like SMV and others). I also hope the message comes across strongly that we can be contacted directly to help resolve specific concerns that people may have.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions.

Julialynn,

Thank you for asking. Absolutely feel free to continue using her as you have before. The concern that we have had was with the distribution of the model and not the personal use of it. And if others would like to use it to and don't have it, maybe they could appeal to Sixus1 to distribute an RTE encoded version.

Constantine 1234. I appreciate your understanding and support of our position on this. It really means a lot to me and DAZ. I hope others will feel the same way too. The fact that she is free only makes it easier to find a reasonable resolution. Also by the fact that she is free, it doesn't mean that she is any less valuable to DAZ.

Warning. Another long-winded note is coming.

I am surprised that there has not been a lot of replies to the post that I made yet. Either everybody had either gone to bed before reading it or it put a lot of people to sleep :) I just got 3 good hours of sleep in so I am ready to go again (not). I really don't feel that this has to be turned into such a negative situation for anyone.

I wanted to put the shoe on the other foot with an example. CL has the much anticipated release of Poser 6 on Monday. Poser 6 contains the new characters Jesse and James. Jesse and James appear to be a very important reason for the upgrade value for many new users.

What if one to two weeks after the release of Poser 6, DAZ released J and J Unimesh? This could be a unimesh model that looks identical in shape topology to each of the models and could wear all or their clothing and hair items (because we would have morphed the mesh to their shape and copied their new joint parameters identically). This model could wear all of the new clothing that is being developed for them by the artists at RDNA and other places available in CP. We could give her out for free to anyone. If reason number Jesse and James were the main reason that some people are upgrading, we could circumvent the need for them to do upgrade. Both characters could have the option to wear either V3/M3 texture maps (that many people may already own) or Jesse' and James' textures because we would have two .obj options each accepting one or the other set of UV coordinates. The users may not have to pick their favorites because they would have the majority of both in one character. With the tools and modelers at DAZ, we could do all of this in a small fraction of the time that it likely took the original developers to create Jesse and James (because the majority of the work was done by them in the original modeling and rigging that we could benefit from).

Do you think CL would be happy for DAZ to do this? Would it be protected under the terms of their EULA if they weren't? Would they try to stop us from doing it? Might it negatively impact the potential developers market for the new models and help maintain V3/M3 position in the market? Would this community perceive DAZ as the victim or the bad guys if we did this and were asked to stop distributing these models? Would CL be perceived as the Victim or the bad guys if they stopped us from distributing these models? Would they simply just encourage us to use the RTE encoder so that it at least requires the recipient to have a license of the new models first? I really don't know the answers to these questions but they are good ones to consider for those who are upset at DAZ for attempting to protect our rights.

I hope this example helps in some way to clarify our position and will not stir things up further.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions

Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=16133&sid=4a26a22c5b4453c3da457bdcb12b8493

Sometimes peoples agenda's are not always clear. Cooler's agenda is crystal clear. He has been the biggest proponent in this community to protect artist and developer rights than anyone I know (not just for DAZ). He is personally responsible for removing hundreds, if not thousands of illegal wares copies of Poser, and Poser-ready content from websites around the world. He has done this voluntarily for years. Wares kitties and copyright infringer's hate him and artists love and appreciate his efforts. Please re-consider attacking him personally and re-direct your frustrations at me in behalf of DAZ. After all that he has done for the artists in this community he surely does not deserve it.

My agenda is also clear and that is that I am a part of DAZ. I use my real name and don't post things under an alias (although admittedly I have been tempted at times). I have been involved in the content development for Poser from its very inception. I was the one (representing Zygote) who first proposed to Fractal Design the idea of creating an add-on model product for Poser. That product ended up being Parts and Props for Poser 2.0. My business partner, Chris Creek is the one who did the majority of the modeling for the Poser 3 and Poser 4 figures human figures. It was he and I who feeling that we were unable to grow our development in this community sufficiently under the Zygote umbrella who proposed spinning off DAZ. This is not a hobby for us but our very lives and livelihoods are completely intertwined within it. I believe that we have as much at stake in the community as anyone. DAZ has literally invested all of it's resources into development for this community. We may not be the owners of Poser but that doesn't mean that we are any less concerned about the growth and success of this community than anyone.

I mention the above so that you know exactly where I am coming from and what my agenda is. Victoria is DAZ's most valuable 3D model. We have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in her development and marketing. She is our flagship and likely the key to our success or failure as a content company. So if we have a license agreement that protects her from being copied and used in competition against us is that such a bad or draconian thing? Should we not retain the right to protect against that without being publicly slammed by some of you? I believe that anyone else in our position would have done exactly the same thing.

We did not go after and try to damage Sixus1 for their mistake. We simply asked them to encode the model to Victoria 3 (which is available for free from DAZ). Our purpose for this is to let people would know the model from which their model was partly derived from. We also did this to hopefully prevent others from unknowingly making a similar mistake. We did not ask or encourage them to remove the model and in fact tried to encourage them to keep it up. They pulled it for their own reasons.

If artists and developers don't have the right to protect original works, then what incentive is there to continue developing. What is our incentive to continue to put significant resources into future developments if we will be slammed for trying to protect those developments.

We are currently developing Victoria 3 Pro (working title). We have spent thousands of dollars hiring live professional models (of different body shapes) that were scanned and photographed to provide real human shape and texture information. We have spent thousands of dollars to use the scanning facility to get that true to life human shapes (not artistic representations but actual human shapes). We have invested thousands of dollars in payroll for artists to work with those shapes to provide Realshape morph targets. This is a very demanding and tedious project and it continues to go on. Without the knowledge that we have legal (and moral) right to protect those efforts we would have no incentive to continue to innovate.

We hope that developers (whether at DAZ or elsewhere) will support this new project. As always, we will retain our current position of encouraging development for this figure. We recognize that the success of failure of this new figure lies heavily on the support of outside developers. Any developer that may have concerns as to how they can legally develop for this or any other DAZ models may contact us directly and we will gladly put in writing for them what we have put in writing on our website (and in several forum posts before now).

I hope that some of you may better understand our position. I don't expect everyone to categorically agree with it, but I do hope you will try to understand it. I am hopefully going to go to bed now but will try to check back again tomorrow. I do want to personally thank those who have supported and developed for Victoria, or any other DAZ products. We realize your contribution in the success of DAZ and our products.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions.

P.S. Attached is a link to a post on the DAZ forum that addresses some more related copyright issues.

Thank you all so much for sharing your nice thoughts about DAZ. We don't always get a chance to see all threads that are written about us (whether they are love or "hate" threads ;) We sincerely appreciate the nice comments and really hope that we will continue to offer the best service we can.

Thanks,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions

P.S. Very nice images Opera.

I am not trying to be confrontational nor am I trying to defend DAZ. I am simply trying to share some information as to DAZs motives and business practices.

It still baffles me that no matter what DAZ does there are people who try to bring it down as a negative thing. The conspiracy behind our reasoning for releasing Michael and Victoria is spelled out completely within the original post. It is our opinion that this community needs growth and we are making every effort to do that. To those who speculate about the lack of success of other 3D figures, have you considered that maybe it has something to do with the size of this market? I believe market size has more to do with it than anything else. A larger market will make more opportunities for more people and will create more choices for customers.

I find it interesting when people refer to DAZ as a big company in the forums. We may be fairly prominent in this community but relative to other businesses in the U.S. we are tiny and somewhat insignificant. This is yet another sign of the relatively small size of this community.

DAZ is a business and we have never claimed that we were anything else. And as a business, we really are trying our best for our customers. We have learned that if we do not take care of our customers, we will not remain in business and if we do we can succeed.

Our recent decision (please note that it was within the last month) to release Michael and Victory for free was based significantly on our desire to grow this market. Merchants here (Renderosity) as well as other sites will likely benefit significantly from this decision (as will the stores hosting their products).

I look back to the original meeting with fractal design where we first pitched the concept of having add-on models for Poser to where the market is today. It has grown rapidly from that point and I believe it will continue to grow. My hope in writing this letter is that people may consider and focus on the benefits of this decision rather than try to derail it. I hope people put their efforts on encouraging friends and acquaintances to give 3D a try. I hope we all will put our efforts in growing this community together.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few thoughts from my perspective on this.

Sincerely,

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions

Carolly,

It is true that you have complained about the practices of our business and I have contacted you to hear them from you personally. I have never got a response back from you when I have done this. I will ask you again. Please call me to discuss things in person. We have known each other for a long time and I really would like to hear from you personally. Please call me.

Dan Farr
President, DAZ Productions.

P.S. I hear that Steve Kondris has contacted you about the voucher issues as well.

aeilkema, Please don't worry about it. As was pointed out earlier, had we been clearer from the beginning then there would not have been the confusion. We are working on the Poser versions and since we are working to set up P5 materials with them it will likely take us a little longer to get them up. Dan Farr