I thought I'd post this here instead of the DAZ forum because, well, this isn't controlled by DAZ.

I've noticed DAZ seems to be posting new items and sales, but I have been getting lots of errors in DAZ Studio, and haven't heard ANY response from DAZ in WEEKS regarding a trouble ticket I opened. In fact, after about 3 weeks, I contacted them asking, "What's up? I haven't heard anything."

I got an auto-reply back saying if I didn't reply (to the auto reply), they would assume my problem is fixed and close my ticket.

In the past, customer support has been slow to answer (usually a week), but 3, 4 or more weeks???

I'm really tempted to drive to their HQs and look around to see if anyone is still there.

Hi, I'm sorry to hear that you couldn't get the help you need from Daz. U was in a similar situation. I bought a product from Daz in August. The product was giving me missing files error. I was able to pin point the missing files and sent a ticket to Daz. I got a autoreply after resending the ticket a week later, and then another generic reply that they're looking into it. I wanted to return the product within the 30 days of purchase, however, I was able to contact the Publishing Artist of that product myself and was able to resolve the issue. He explained that Daz has purchased the product outright, but packaged it wrongly. My ticket is still open, and it's been 2 months. I understand you're frustrations, but the last few years, Daz' customer service has gone downhill. I don't know if this help. I joint a Discord service a few months ago, where fellow Daz Users/Artists/Vendor chat with each other, helping each other with issues and sharing art ideas. More often than not, I find my answers at this Discord server faster than roaming the various 3D forums. I can't guarantee you'll find all the answers instantly, but at least there are people with similar issues that can share ideas.

I don't know if this link is allowed. Moderators, please take it off if it's not allowed. Thank you and good luck. https://disboard.org/server/578543104492306432

Thanks for the information. I will check out that forum.

Gone down hill? I left DAZ years ago for just these reasons. DAZ is well known for going full steam ahead and never looking back. So pretty well ignoring issues with content; But then DAZ is just a sales platform not a content creator. If you have issues with content it is best to go right to the actual creator.

The best part of DAZ was the founder, who left to start another CG content site because DAZ turned in to something he didn't recognize.

You can bring up topics like this on Daz boards. People do all the time! I think Daz is having some sort of growing pains. They're putting out more products than ever and trying to do more with their products. Plus they have new demands placed on them thanks to changes in NVidia's graphics cards. Add in the pandemic and it means some stuff slips by. I think they're doing the best they can, and all this will get sorted over time. At least I hope it will!

A Daz staff member "DAZ_Rob" Reccently boasted in the forums they were so busy that they had to " take on new staff".?

Indeed they are attempting to grow there user base beyond the still render portrait & pin-up girl crowd with their new export plugins to Maya ,Blender, C4D, Max etc.

As the front page of the main daz site would indicate, Daz is desparately trying to rebrand themselves and a content resource for the professional CG /Gaming communities

But if you look at their new forums for those apps, it is the same still render portrait & pin-up girl crowd. posting the same early 20's ,Ideal BMI, white genesis girls largely staring into the void of an empty universe.......

Except rendered Blender or Unreal engine etc, instead of DS IRay.?

You can only grow your user base by bringing in new buyers

The professional game companies like ubisoft are using Blender,Maya Max etc but they are creating custom content from scratch for each game title certainly not wasting time with bloated genesis figures chucked out from Kiddie pool toys like Daz studio. .

And the casual hobbiests doing still portraits & pinups, are likely already Daz customers ,waiting for the next big 50% discount sale and saving up for a bigger GPU to keep pace with NIVIDIA and ridiculous 4-8K textures being used in many Daz store products. ?

That's quite a post, Wolf! :D I've no doubt they need a little extra staff. I've no doubt customers are waiting for discounts. That's part of the game here and there.

You surely know Marvel has used Daz for pre-vis on its movies and people use Daz for lots of things. I know some people want to use Daz assets in their indie games. That's done more easily now, I guess. But if I were a vendor there I would not provide the interactive license for that. Daz has discounted those to nothing.

I don't know what protections Daz actually provides against license abuse. I recall they've showed you the pointy end of the stick for making clothing mannequins. But that was before the big inter-program compatibility push. I wonder if that would be such a big deal now?

I would not throw stones at the pinup or stills crowd. They've kept things going for decades! Plus there is a lot of interesting not-pinup content here and at Daz. And I enjoy a good pinup. ;)

The Iray/GPU thing is a problem, but how long did 3D rendering technology seemingly sit still? A long time, I think. Now it's moving forward, but it's moving forward in a big jump and there are research and hardware costs. The pricing on all that will surely produce a divide in the market, especially now. And yet, prices may come down a bit when AMD strikes back in a more meaningful way and when NVidia reaches the limits of this growth spurt.

The giant textures issue is a different problem. Daz QA lets all that go, but I doubt anyone wants gigabyte downloads for throw pillows. Vendors need to be a little more realistic about how their products are used. The part I don't like is, I see compression artifacts in some of these big textures. So, they're offering more resolution than many people need while overcompressing their map files to keep the per-file size down. I think there is room for improved optimization!

Anyway, I find your outlook interesting. Thanks for that :)

LOL So DAZ hasn't really changed in 5 years.

Torquinox I've been banned from the DAZ forums 3 times for bringing up these topics. I can guarantee you none of this is new at DAZ. My opinion is DAZ customers and content producers are an ouroboros.

Just how many lace teddies does Victoria need?

From what I can tell, Vicky needs all the lace teddies she can get. But she also has plenty of sensible attire. I've seen serious complaints that new outfits aren't sexy enough. No pleasing everyone. And as various vendors have said here and there, they need their products to sell in order to make money.

You got banned 3 times? Sounds awful, but you got back in a few times, too. :D IDK what you said to get banned or when that happened. The best I've managed to do so far is get a a few posts deleted, maybe a thread once. NBD, really. It's hard to get along on a forum! There are misunderstandings. People have moments and they wig out. And these are all nice, pleasant forums!

I balance some of the weird things that happen against Daz's generosity, especially during lockdown. I still think they really are doing their best. Things happen that people don't like. People disagree with decisions, people make mistakes, people get disillusioned. I try my best to give the benefit of the doubt. That's all I can do or say about that. And I hope the issues from the OP and others get resolved.

I got back in because of the multiple Emails I had from game alpha testing.

But ya, the demand for slut wear has always out stripped the demand for street wear. You can always tell what movie is in the top slot by the number of produces produced in that theme. When the pirates of the Caribbean was in, there was a new pirate outfit by some one every week or so. But just try to find a pair of bib overalls or a hunting jacket. Same thing every time a new star wars movie comes out. Thing is it is really too easy to make Studio content now. The app is set up to do a lot of it automatically. Practically anyone that wants to take a month or so to learn how to do it, can.

Yet try to find those geographed genitalia on DAZ.Or a fixed version for geneses so they can be used in carrara with out redoing the UVs. That is top of my list of gripes about DAZ. They tend to see only forward and never look back. So there is a very slim chance DAZ will fix broken content; or even remove it from the store knowing it's broke. The UVmapping on Genests male genitalia has been screwed up since it dropped. Never fixed and DAZ is still selling it in the big essentials pack. Hell of a note for the people that bought the bundle FOR the genitalia. Why fix 1 when 2 is up? Why fix 2 when 3 is up? DAZ once had a plug in up for 18 months knowing it was broken. Took multiple people getting refunds on it and threatening lawsuits for them to pull it. And the way it looks DAZ has not changed.

But DAZ wasn't always like this. At one time I conversed regular with the founders. DAZ bought out a company that then took over DAZ and both the founders ended up leaving; one starting his own content store and developing a competing figure. .Dawn https://hivewire3d.com/ Need to book mark that, 2 of my favorite content artists are there;Lisa's Botanicals, and Ken Gilliland.

I got banned because I am a carrarest not a Dazzy. And DAZ was [expleative} carrara hard at the time. My opinion DAZ bought carrara to get the IDK{?} for poser 5-7 and then when DAZ realized they couldn't strip any more out of carrara for Studio they abandoned it, as well as a few hundred customers that used carrara. DAZ did not see us as valued customers. Mostly because we could make or mod what we needed. Thing is I have 36 pages of DAZ content. Imagine what I'd have if DAZ hadn't have abandoned Carrara. And I wasn't the only carraest throwing money at DAZ.

Man, this is weird for me. I don't normally carry a grudge.

You make a lot of good points, a lot to consider.

It seems reasonably easy to set up content in DS, but it still takes modeling and texturing skills to make the content in the first place. It might make sense to make some bib overalls and a hunting jacket.

Carrara has not been well treated, no. It's a deep and well-sorted program with a lot to recommend it, but I think we're all going to die of old age before they update it. At this point, I doubt they have the resources to do anything with it. They'd need to hire a team, and the new Carrara would likely be an entirely different program.

Those other mis-steps are annoying. It's the sort of thing that happens in companies, and who knows why? You could be right about all of it, and It's probably best to let the grudge go.

To be honest I wouldnt be surprised if Daz is being bitten by its own decisions. Yes a centrally managed system doling out files a la Daz Central would cut down on copyright protection problems but it is doing it in the most expensive way possible to imagine. Even an Amazon server farm makes me wait minutes just to get up a favourites list of a couple of hundred items. A central index for thousands of multigigabit daz directories of users is just using so much server processor/ network packet / switch time that I would guess the Daz Central versus the store are fighting each other for resources

Daz Central is just a different front end, underneath it's essentially the same as Install manager (which is still available).

As a bit of a dinosaur, I must admit I use DS4.21 in pretty much the same way as I did DS0.7. The new rendering capability of iRay is nice, but 3DL could do good stuff with effort and attention to detail. LiquidRust showed that years ago (see this 3DL image (https://www.renderosity.com/gallery/items/1040363/testing-lips-and-eye-relfections)). The controllers like 'Right Fingers Grip' save time, but they don't mirror at all, so this is useless for someone like me producing occasional pose sets - and makes me keep on being a dinosaur. The problems that so many have with DIM loaded content and DAZ Central content has convinced me to install stuff the same way I did for DS 0.7 - manually. That way I know who's at fault if it doesn't work. Also, not using the content databases means that I can move stuff around to suit my organisation method.

I am unconvinced by G9. It appears to be worse than G8 for everything except portrait close-ups. G8 Clothing & hair seem to fit G9 worse and more erratically than G3 fits G8, especially after a save & exit then re-load. The joints look like rubber and few PA's seem to be able to get decent muscle definition from the base mesh and rely excessively on HD morphs to get the details already present in the G8 base mesh - it's just ridiculous to make such a massive backwards step while pretending it's a step forwards. I rather feel G9 is a case of the Emperor's New Clothes, people unwilling to admit they've made a mistake. I look forward to G10. Maybe one or two lessons will have been learnt, even if the problems have never been admitted/acknowledged.

As for the skimpwear. That, I fear, is likely to be an enduring feature of all figure animation/rendering programs. Early 20's female characters are much easier on the eye than grumpy old men like me. Take a look at TV adverts, and assess whether 'Early 20's Females' are over-represented (regardless of ethnic origin). I think you will find they are, and these early 20's females will enhance the image/animation/product in an attractive way - it's all described as the 'Halo Effect'. 

Regards,

Richard.

It's interesting the read the history and other experiences.

I quit using their forums last year as frankly it was useless for me to try and get any timely information. Tech Support: Hmmm, they try. They've a Sysiphusian task, caught between management and the programmers. But their arrogance regarding no documentation, which the entire planet apparently knows about judging by youtube postings, is not really excusable.

I use the FBX exporter a lot, and a recent update actually made it worse. The OBJ exporter is rock solid so is truly a Pre-set. Not so with the FBX exporter. You have to check usually reset the options EACH TIME!!!  A real time waster. Have they fixed it?  No. I made comments about that & got censored.  They said I was making "personal attacks".  ??!!?  Interesting, since I don't know anyone to make personal attacks against, nor mentioned any names as I don't know anyone!  I only made comment about the SOFTWARE as it has regressed and gotten worse, AS ANY USER LONG TIME SHOULD!

But the kicker was some months back. I posted a new topic, simply asking about getting a particular product's expressions & morphs to export. I got a reply & replied to that. Checked an hour or so later, and my original posting was gone! I could see the original reply, but any reply I made went into the ether. And then the reply vanished too.

So I guess must be officially persona non grata and didn't know it.  Fine. Don't know, and frankly don't care, not worth my time or effort at this point.

But I still buy their products; they'll take my money but not my questions. ;)

If ya want to talk dinosaurs: Step Right Up!

I export everything out to Lightwave, which is another saga these days. But to do what Daz does with expression morphs, I edit geometry and rename those morphs to get a single control. But the result is that I've a LOT more control over surfacing, lighting, DoF, Motion Blur, etc. A number of other packages can as well of course, but I've a fair amount invested in auxiliary tools (several you can't even get now), & I've gotten my pipeline to where I can handle everything except dForce hair. Blender handles that well, so have to knuckle down & learn Blender.

I'm passing on the Gen 9 stuff too. Gen 9 makes that all the more complicated and so far I've seen very few new characters to make it worth the effort.

I'm not investing in Genesis 9 right now,  mainy because Gen8 had so many great characters that my library has all the variety it needs to tell my stories.

I'm also using 4.16 primarily for rendering and runs well on my system.  I do have 4.21 installed for testing on another computer,  but that's it.

I think the whole market is going through transformations right now,  facing challenges with everything from introduction of AI to the slowing down of the economy. 

G9 feels like a big step backwards from G8 in a lot of ways, much harder to make content for and the over-reliance on high subdivision to get any basic anatomy details. Going back to the androgynous base shape and the simple tube topology of very old figures is baffling.

I don't frequent the DAZ forums very much. I post only very rarely. I'm disappointed that there are very few male clothes for Genesis 9. I don't want pirates, etc. I don't do female pinups either. DAZ made a big claim that Genesis 9 males could wear female clothes. I posted that this wasn't realistic. They deleted my post.

I sometimes complain about "Vanity" folders because it's so hard to find my content. I never keep track of vendor's names. I get some replies from the PAs that tells me their content experience is totally different from mine. Since they're PAs, most of their content is installed under PAs names.

I submitted  a ticket about a problem with a scene from Moonshine's diner. I got a reply announcing a fix, two years later.

"I submitted  a ticket about a problem with a scene from Moonshine's diner. I got a reply announcing a fix, two years later."

YIKES!

I'm disappointed that there are very few male clothes for Genesis 9. I don't want pirates, etc. I don't do female pinups either. DAZ made a big claim that Genesis 9 males could wear female clothes. I posted that this wasn't realistic. They deleted my post.

The marketing of Genesis 9 as unisex is wishful thinking. The reality is that vast majority of content for the figure is what I would consider to be traditionally female clothes. Lots of high heels, blouses, skirts, lingerie and the like. When something is modeled after a men's garment it usually is lacking the details, like a collar band on a men's woven collared button up shirt.

Genesis 9, whether by intent or without realizing it, is optimized for the Daz3D volume customers - people who render women with breasts. The mesh has baked in cleavage between and under the breasts that I haven't seen anyone ZBrush away. 

It makes sense that their largest customer base would be their main focus, but they really don't like anyone saying that in the forums. 

Thumbnails for content are overrated anyway. Just keep clicking on all of the dead icons you see and eventually you'll find what you're looking for, without all of that pesky information, guidance, visual cues and SMART content slowing your workflow down.

G9 feels like a big step backwards from G8 in a lot of ways, much harder to make content for and the over-reliance on high subdivision to get any basic anatomy details. Going back to the androgynous base shape and the simple tube topology of very old figures is baffling.