I had no idea where to ask this question, but since I usually ask all of my questions here in this forum, mostly regarding Poser. This time I just have a quick question about the Prime membership. I realize that a lot of products cost a lot of money if you don't have these memberships, Daz has the best one thus far with items being $1.99 but the Prime membership here isn't too far behind it. What I want to know is, which one has the best benefits and how long does the Prime membership last? Daz's membership will last a year if you pay for the Platinum pass. Either way I plan on getting both the Prime and Daz Pass I forget what its actually called there). There is no way I'll be able to finish my projects without being able to buy a few things, it'll take me some time to learn how to make my own products eventually. So for now, I'll just stick to what other vendors have to offer me. Also I didn't realize how small my text looks on this piece I did some months ago lol, oh well. Figured I'd post one of my own art pieces here. Make it look like their asking questions about the Memberships ~laughs~ I mean Vanessa Clark is just standing there clueless as to what she can do to get these ladies a good set of gear and environments to thrive in with affordable deals.  

Move your camera up  - we don't need to see the chairs... right? Moving the camera up gives you more space on top for the caption boxes and dialogue balloons. Since the chairs aren't the subject of the scene you're not losing anything.

Swivel your zOrbit of your camera - it will create even more room on the right or left top section of your shot and the human eye is fooled into thinking there's motion occuring.

If the main character is speaking, have their mouth open a bit more.

great scene shot.

Prime membership is fantastic! So is Platinum Club and grab a Poserworld membership too. All these stores are fantastic.

Looking forward to your future works.

Well if I do get one of them, Daz will be the first one since they have all the better clothing than Renderosity does. Though it's pretty much a tie when it comes down to Hair and Scenes. And as for the scene, well yeah I wasn't paying attention to the mouth movement, I guess you could say she was beginning to speak but she didn't really get to just yet. The original theme for this art piece was for a Womens Survival Type of theme I was going for. You can look in my gallery for the actual written part to it. Adding Ballon Captions would of ruined it. Also, I'm not really Photoshop Sauve to do that yet. Even though a comic style is what I wanted to do when I started the whole story telling phase with a lot of my renders. 

And you mentioned Content Paradise I think. Content Paradise sales fairly afforable products without membership fees. You can buy a ton of Figures for $30 while on here or Daz your limited to 1 or 2 because they cost more without the passes. The only thing that cost WAY too much on Content Paradise are Animals...For some reason Prehistoric animals that they sell there is over the top expensive. For one Dinosaur it's like $20.00 So imagine if you were to complete the whole set without a pass. You would probably spend over 200 or so to collect them all.. And they are always adding new ones too. I don't really have much use for Prehistoric creatures, but they do look convincing enough to purchase though, so I plan on getting a couple of em if I decide to do a theme in the future that calls for those type of figures. These days a lot of my work is story driven. I rarely do scenes for fun. That is why I only buy what I NEED instead of what I WANT. If I was buying what I wanted? lol man, I'd probably go insane with my wishlist if I had the dough to do that. Its around $20K worth of products in there, combine it with my DAZ wishlist and Renderotica Wishlist, Whew. I wouldn't know what I'd want to use first. But that's why I love poser. Plenty of items on the market that you can use for big or small projects for a variety of reasons. Now all they need to do is improve the male market and we're in business. I recently found out they already have a Victoria 6 now! And I still don't have V5, mostly because V4 is still better than both 5 and 6 because for one, SSS can compete with those models if you have Pro 2012 or Pro 2014, and two V4 has more clothes and hair than V5 and V6 unless they can somehow wear the stuff for V4 without having to use the Fitting Room in Pro 2014..Of course I don't even own Poser Pro, I'm still using crappy P7 lol. 

I did a cost/benefit analysis comparing DAZ's Platinum Club & Renderosity's Prime Membership.  Someone over on the DAZ forums challenged me to prove that Prime was a good deal.

Needless to say, that post was deleted mighty quick, but here is the post:

Challenge Accepted.
Spending from Jun 11 to 13 Sep (2012) - Prime vs. Platinum:
Total paid orders at Renderosity: 48
Total paid orders at DAZ: 57
Total amount spent at Renderosity: $1,935.26 - This number does not include Taxes
Total amount spent at DAZ: $440.36 - this number includes Taxes
Average amount spent per order:
DAZ: $7.73
Renderosity: $40.32
Spent on Prime items (only):
Total Paid: $511.00 USD (146 items)
Total Saved: $1,093.84 USD
Total free items from DAZ: 47
Total free items from Renderosity: 16
Prime looks like a winner in my book, looking at the average spending per order, I’d say ‘Rosity also looks at Prime as a winner.

The basic reality is that if you are not using DS 4 or later, the Platinum Club is no longer a good deal.  DAZ told us that their prices were going up - “It’s not fair” thread at the old forums. They also promised less sales (to ween folks off from waiting for those 90% off sales - which was a damn fine idea - prices were too low during the Gen4 era). The problem was typical DAZ - they didn’t stick with it for more than a couple of months and then went right back to the old way of doing business.

Because DAZ doesn’t look long-term (i.e. over 90 days) or believe in having a “Plan B”; they didn’t see the second & third order effects that auto-fit (along with Wardrobe Wizard - Xdresser - Morphing Clothes combo, and now the fitting room) bring to the party.

A DS4 and/or Poser user could buy that more expensive genesis outfit - or they could pick up a cheaper Gen3/4 outfit and run it through the user’s conversion program of choice. None of them are perfect, but for most people, they are “good enough”.  Especially when one considers how cheap the customer base is. (I am very tired of seeing threads from a customer about a sale they missed. By now, they should understand that sales at DAZ are like buses, there will be another one along in about 15 minutes.)

The vendors are not only competing against each other - they are now competing against everything that has been made before. So what does that actually mean?

In my case, every figure has access to any other figures’ clothing - Anastasia or Mariko or My Michelle has access to any piece of clothing ever made for any DAZ or non-DAZ figure. That means that 2nd item (business suit, lingerie, shoes, whatever) has to be really, really good. Or really, really cheap.

The implications for the vendors is simple - they really, really have to up their game. More vendors need to take the approach Sickleyield is taking with the business suit they are making. It is going to have a lot of morphs (and hopefully a lot of textures, and, if we are real lucky - textures that an adult would wear).

There is a thread here at DAZ about it and Sickleyield is actively seeking input from potential customers - which is a great change from the “If I make it, they will buy it” attitude that many vendors take.

I suspect it will be expensive - I hope so, because something needs to set the price floor on what a great piece of clothing should cost. In comparison - Stonemason’s products are much more expensive than almost (if not all) sets here at DAZ. When he releases something, everyone screams about the price and then goes and gets it, because, well, if you have any of his products - they are “must have”, price be damned. We all go get it.

From my perspective, there were a lot of great vendors that are no longer producing due to the constant “Sale, Sale, Sale” nonsense, and we have been left with a lot of second-stringers. (In economic terms, “bad” money forcing out “good” money.)

Vendors who are just doing low-quality repeats will hopefully be forced out of the market and the bar for quality products will continue to be raised.

As far as giving away DS4P as a panic reaction to Poser9/2012 - at first glance that would seem so, however, it doesn’t fit the facts at hand. DAZ doesn’t make money on software sales, they make it of content. What does DS4P have that DS4A and DS4 not have? Content Creation Tools. From the release of DS4 to the March Madness sale, there were only 300 genesis items at DAZ - that is everything - content - bundles - mislabeled
items, everything. From what I can see (and DAZ certainly isn’t talking), they didn’t sell enough of those tools - and that is probably because there wasn’t any documentation - which is another problem that DAZ has - they really, really don’t get how important that is.

Right now, it is the primary reason I haven’t attempted to integrate DS4 into my workflow - my time is valuable - DAZ doesn’t think so, but I do. And I have no intention of roaming the forums looking for answers to questions like:

Why is it every time I import something into DS4, it disappears when I take the cursor off it?

Stop the presses - I have now seen the first item that would make me seriously consider adding DS4 to my workflow

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/new-releases/cthulhu-rising

Remember earlier in this post when I said:
“That means that 2nd item (business suit, lingerie, shoes, whatever) has to be really, really good. Or really, really cheap.”  This is an example of “really, really good” - It looks much better than my 4 or 5 year old Sixus 1 Cthulhu.  If DS4 had a manual, this would already be in my cart. Since it doesn’t, I am stuck waiting (and not buying)......

Prime memberships last one year.  If you wait patiently, they will occasionally offer them for 50% off.

Whether you use Poser or DS makes a difference, IMO.  A lot of the PC items are for Genesis only these days.  If you don't use Genesis, it might not be worth it.

Of course, there's a pretty hefty back catalog at DAZ.  However, they typically have "PC for everyone" promotions, where everyone gets PC prices, so if you were really disciplined, you could save up your money, wait until one of those promotions, and then buy everything you wanted.  :-)

Another big difference is that Prime items have their low prices only for a certain period of time.  So there's incentive to buy it immediately if you want it.  PC items stay the same price forever, so you can just wait until you need it to buy.

I have been members of both. The PC is much less appealing than it used to be.  I don't use Genesis so there's little at DAZ to spend my money on any more.  I usually don't even use the monthly voucher. 

More than that, the changes to the store have made the PC vouchers much less valuable.  You can no longer use them on PA items.  You have to use them all at once; anything left over is lost.  You have to remember to search the forums for the voucher code each month, where before it was automatically credited to your account, and automatically applied when you made a purchase.

I was going to quit the PC.  But DAZ made me an offer I couldn't refuse.  Basically, they gave me an annual membership for free, so I'm still in.

My Prime membership has lapsed, but it's more out of laziness than anything.  They don't send you reminders or anything.  I didn't even realize it had lapsed until I tried to buy some Prime items and didn't get the Prime price.  Ooops.

I will probably re-up the next time they offer that 50% off deal again.

I still have a plat club membership....still lots of old stuff that I havnet got yet which is in my wishlist. If you plan on using some of the older figures like M3 and V3 there are tons of good stuff for the plat price.

Prime has no start up fee.  You pay the annual fee and get the Prime Pricing.  You also receive exclusive coupons giving you a higher percentage off than regular coupons.

DAZ has a start up fee.  First year is $99.  Subsequent years if you do not allow your membership to lapse, is average of $69.  DAZ will put their PC membership on sale now and again but if you already have a PC membership, it isn't a matter of buying the cheap membership and it adds on as it used to before the new store software.  Now, if you don't auto renew by having a payment method on file (read credit card here as DAZ and PayPal are having issues), you have manually buy the Full Annual PC membership at $99 and they will refund the difference.  Oh, and if you had a payment method on file and removed it, DAZ has been known to charge your payment method when the renewal comes up even if they're not supposed to. 

Canecellation of the PC is now a major headache as well.

And to make things even more fun, with the departure of LisaB and her plants, PC members are finding out that not all of the PC catalog is owned by DAZ.  Seems that if a vendor becomes a DAZ Administrator, their products are really PA products and the vendor can pull them from the PC catalog if they leave.  So far this includes Jack Tomalin, LaurieS, and Moyra.  Seems it took them ten years and major loss to their PC catalog for them to admit that.

DAZ PC also gives you a $6 coupon each month that is only good on DAZ originals.  It is a use once, use it all or lose it coupon.  It does not extend into the next month.  It cannot be used on PC and Value items. 

If you look at new PC releases, they are all the PC price.  However, after 2 weeks, some of them end up in the Value Category at a higher price.  Which ones, they don't tell you that.

You do get a 30% discount all the time as a PC member and DAZ does give some perks to PC members but not as many as they used to.  Oh, and if you are in the PC you do get the weekly freebie for free without having to buy anything.

Prime is pretty straightforward.  Anything labelled Prime is in the Prime catalog at the Prime price.  Period.  Anything labelled Prime Classic I think is in there for 30 days.

One fee and one price.  July is the anniversary and usually when Rendo offers it a half off.  If you get Render Reward, you can use your Render Rewards GC to buy a Prime Membership.  Like DAZ, there is a dedicated forum for Prime members.  I believe you have more gallery space but I don't use galleries so it didn't matter to me.  DAZ hasn't been able to get the galleries up since the changed to the new site.

I may have skipped or missed something but that's the ups and downs of them.

You can tell which PC products will go up in price, though they don't make it easy.  They sent out the link for the Value Priced items in their e-mail promotions (and you can also find it via search - or could, they've been fiddling with their search engine). 

http://www.daz3d.com/value

If you check the Value category, any PC items you see there will go up in price after a couple of weeks.

I have had membership of both in the past but stopped my PC membership as I found a lot of the $1.99 products were not of the quality I wanted, in fairness that is because I had moved on and they had not.  That was before the change to the PC and before Genesis so the quality may have changed but so have the rules.

I have been a member of Prime almost since it's inception and it runs out in August 2013 but I will renew.  So far I have spent $518 with the full price of $1504.19 I have saved $986.19, that is from the Prime Summary that Rendo helpfully add to your account.  I think it is calculated on the full price and does not account for any sale price when a product is first launched.  On the plus side it does not include the extra savings I have made thanks to the higher discounts for Prime members on some vouchers.

Clearly I do not buy every prime product but I have purchased a lot and I have used them all at least once in renders, so for me it is value for money.

Finally you mentioned V5 and V6.  You might also like to have a look at 'Dawn' who should be with us in the near future.  She is weight mapped so you will need at least Poser 9/2012 but I think you had plans in that direction anyway.  My reason for highlighting this is she will be free for a period after launch and will have a version native to Poser which is not the case with V5 or V6.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2868999

Be warned if you have not been there before as the thread it over 30 pages already and growing by the day.

 

I was a charter member of Prime, and so I paid $25 for the first year.  It was worth that, because most of the items were not items from my wishlist, but were ones I picked up because they sort of cool, and were only $3.50.  I missed out on the renewal deal, which was $40,(I was out in the woods for a week) but I was on the fence about renewing anyway, and I don't regret not rejoining.

 

I've been a member of the Platinum Club for almost 6 years, but I think this will be my last year (of course, I said that the last two years!)

 

The old CP Passport Club was awesome, especially back when you could buy all of Renderosity's and RDNA's items through CP, but it must have been too sweet a deal to be profitable...