SydneyInPeril posted at 7:09 AM Mon, 14 October 2024 - #4490323

Do note that I have a friend who used DAZ Studio that did attempt to make their comments on the rapid downhill slide towards mining the userbase for additional profit streams (advertising), and they got their comments deleted for effectively being critical of DAZ staff and management... and couldn't even comment on that they had comments deleted for it without getting those deleted for "questioning moderator decisions". Or, as they put it to me, they were expected to be so milquetoast in their comments because of the way the TOS was being applied on the forum, that there was no way to provide good constructive criticism about the direction of the company they had been giving money to.

No support for products bought with real money that don't work right... and no complaining about it.

Oh I can prove it happens.
I was toe to toe with one of their mods(in email), for ages! Showing him explicate examples of people saying WAY worse things than I ever did and their posts being allowed to stand.(the favouritism that exists is shocking and blatant)
They would back and forth over the reasons why those comments were ok, but stating "some companies will nail you for it (IP infringement) and some wont" was removed, and I was put on being moderated before I could post.
I even have the email still, stating it was not directly in the ToS...but the moderator felt it was needed to be removed.
(So basically stating, even if it is not against the ToS they can just…delete your post if they dont like you or it)

I was a happy wee camper at Daz...till that crap started. Till I bought a package for eyes and noted a rather glaring issue. That made it near unusable.
I went to tech. Found out…it was originally brought up 2018.

Did they do anything? Nope. Did they remove the package? Nope.

Have they responded to support? NOPE.

Then there was the issue of the VDB file and I had several screenshots of progress showing it was, literally, the ONLY item in the scene as an issue.
Completely ignored. Still an open ticket. Still an item I can't use.
Then I made the comment in regard to IP infringement, and that was the straw on the camels back.
(To be perfectly honest. I did have one post deleted, but that did deserve to be.)
But one post that was removed, it was noted I “inferred” that the DAZ staff didn't do something right.
(This was testing the roll out of a discount that everyone was complaining about. I said that every site I know of, tests the roll-out first to catch glitches before making it "live"so they dont get an entire customer base ticked off.)
Apparently I “inferred” daz wasn't doing their job.
(Please someone tell me when the Daz employees became gods or people that should -never- be questioned?)

What exactly are they so scared of?
WHY NOT JUST ADDRESS THE VALID CONCERNS OF YOUR CLIENT BASE?

RHaseltine posted at 5:24 PM Sun, 13 October 2024 - #4490292

DarkElegance posted at 4:13 PM Sun, 13 October 2024 - #4490286

Removal of posts, ignored by support and having their concerns twisted around...

Very few posts have had to be removed, none for objecting to Premier per se.

Nice to completely ignore the direct question about the support...rather, lack of it.
NICE!
Not surprised.

And none removed for objecting to Premier..per se?

You sure on that?
You...really sure about that?

Here is the thing, why should any customer that has dropped money into your (euphemistic, your) company NOT have a clear and valid say?
Why shouldn't they be allowed to complain and voice/air concerns?
What exactly is Daz so scared of?
If their (Daz) standing is solid and sound…why not just answer the concerns, questions etc?
The questions in regard to IP permissions? IGNORED and oh how they were censored.
Why not just…release a nice banner with the licence permissions? Or heck! Even partnerships! You don't think your customers would be over the moon if you did? That would mean they could use products with a solid conscience!
Heck, if I knew for -=fact=- that your company had the licence/permission to certain IP material, I would pay for it!
People bring up concerns about the lack of support? Shut them down! Delete and warn them!
Don't like premier or how the company did it?
SHUT THEM DOWN!

Can you see WHY customers are questioning the situations?

Any company that is solid in its methods...answer valid questions. They don't censor their client based!

They dont need to censor their customers!

SO...

I'll ask again
WHY DOES IT TAKE SUPPORT FOR DAZ, A YEAR OR MORE TO REPLY TO REQUEST FOR VALID SUPPORT. ON ITEMS THAT WERE BROUGHT UP TO BE PROBLEMATIC IN 2018? (why was it not fixed back then or pulled from sale?)

OR CONTENT THAT IS NOT PERFORMING CORRECTLY?

WHY OVER A YEAR?
(and I know...Im not the only one)

GGreen posted at 2:30 PM Sun, 13 October 2024 - #4490281

I have the previous collection of Mesh grabber, what is so great about mesh grabber 4? Is there really such a big difference.  Daz is being a bit selfish, we should be allowed to purchase it if we want it.  I do not think Daz staff has learned much in its 25 years of business. At least now it looks like they do not care about their long term customers. We are the reason they lasted these 25 years.

Business model: let's offer an enhanced buying experience for 70 a year. Able to be paid annually, and you can even get discounts at certain times of the year.
Pretty good. Customers stay the year, they spend money on reduced items(though, I have noticed those items are not that reduced recently. I think the last basket was reduced by about 2$)

So…they then go:
"Lets make it double, and not give them an option to pay annually and then take a poo on them for complaining"
Will get customers, some yes, will stay and swallow the 20 a month…others will just not do that and maybe…MAYBE pay once or twice for a month here and there
Their solution?

"Let's make it so some of the content will ONLY work if they STAY with premier…."

So penalizing customers that are already getting bitten with the cost of living....

AND trying to FORCE customers to stay....


What a way to listen to your customers and show appreciation for those that have stuck with your company for 25 years!
And I know what will be said "yes even if we lose some of the customers the upswing in cost will cover those we lost"....so considerate of those customers that made Daz a name past zygote....
When the irate customers ask a VALID question like "Hey! why cant I just buy it annually?" or "Hey why is there no support for items"
what happens?

Removal of posts, ignored by support and having their concerns twisted around...

BRILLIANT!!

DexterF posted at 8:11 AM Sun, 13 October 2024 - #4490268

You mean paint hair onto the model in 'shop or Gimp? 

Gimp, procreate, photoshop, corel...anything. Wet hair has this....smoothness that doesnt really translate well into 3d. THOUGH, with that said, there is an artist on DA that got Dforce hair to look WET in the symo. It is beautiful and it looked lovely, wet, shiny....I believe they posted the settings they used too.

He did this image next to this green water...beautiful. Really beautiful and the hair...

Katsuyaki posted at 1:13 PM Sun, 13 October 2024 - #4490279

SydneyInPeril posted at 8:54 PM Fri, 11 October 2024 - #4490212

Ugh, I deal with the Rent-Ware thing as part of my day job, and it frustrates me there at what they do to attempt to make us be online to them all the time. I shudder to think of what a much smaller company will do to attempt to force someone to be online all the time to let their activity with the product be viewed, especially with their dalliance with generative engines.

Other options are looking so much more viable by the day.

Note that I deliberately killed DAZStudio's ability to phone home on my system when I found out about the generative image engine thing.

My work machine is completely isolated from the internet. I use a different machine to go online with, and transfer over whatever files I need on the work machine manually with a portable hard-drive. Not very hi-tech, but it works. However, it also means that I probably can't use the Premier version of DAZ Studio on that machine, since it seems like it would need to phone home at least once (and probably periodically) to verify your membership status to use the Premier content. Another reason I won't be subscribing. 

I have my "faffing about" puter, then I have my graphics puter. The graphics puter only connects for me to install Daz content and that is about it. It is -only- for graphic work. Nothing else.

DexterF posted at 9:49 AM Sun, 13 October 2024 - #4490274

Look what other software can do these days. The reason people stick to Daz is that they sunk considerable amounts of money into a software ecosystem that's large and by compatible to only itself. You are hardware locked into NV (unless you are seriously willing to software render, which I can only recommend to high elves and other eternals) and is riddled with ridiculous feature lackings, such as the main mode in the editor being actually software rendered which means large resp. complex scenes are impossible. Their forum is from last millenium, their shop is magnitued behind the competition (Rendo, Rhub), support is practically non-existent, so is documentation. You can only run multiple instances with a 3rd party script that can break any day and if you use it a plugins like Bookmark Manager don't work as only the UI of the main instance saves them to disk, the others won't merge. And we haven't started on how out of nowhere cryptic erroneous entries appear overnight which only gives you a glimpse of what a patchwork the underlying code must be. The content libraries are void of useful search functions or display options. I could go on and on. 

All of this I could stomach as long as it was free, but now 18.99 a month to get a handful of good features while the rest stays a ruin and questions about DS5 roadmaps get deleted?

I wish there was an up vote feature here....

Rottenham posted at 2:26 PM Sat, 12 October 2024 - #4490230

SydneyInPeril posted at 11:32 AM Sat, 12 October 2024 - #4490226

About the only prep I can effectively do for the future, is make sure that I have full unadulterated control over my own hardware that I've paid for, wherever I can do so, and that does mean stepping away from just about all commercial software offerings involving it. There is no such thing as a "perpetual" software license, at best it only effectively lasts as long as you have a computer that can run the software.

Legality will always be connected to money. Look at Disney, getting copyright extended to 70 years. Most younger people today have never seen any of the films I grew up on, never heard of any of the great actors and actresses. The purpose of copyright law was to protect the artists. Now it's used to make them disappear.

About copyright, the Chinese say "How can I steal it if there isn't anything missing?" Any good idea can look ridiculous when taken to an extreme. Al Gore passed a law in 1996, the DMCA, that says anything we post on a website becomes the PROPERTY of that website. What was he thinking.

I've tried to read about these laws, but every other word is Maybe and Sometimes and Possibly.

...........................................................

When the Music Industry turned against the music video, Popular Music as we knew it devolved into cursing and shouting. Today, rentware is having a negative effect on our definition of Art.

I LOVE LA --- LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD --- HOT FOR TEACHER

Theft of digital product is not about something "missing" but rather the right to copy/duplicate it.

That is the difference.

You arent "taking the item away" but you are "copying it" without permission.

I think as digital artists we have ran across that from time to time. Finding our work earning someone else money without us getting a red cent!

The current IP laws are to protect artists from having their work "copied" without consent. And depending on the country they can be good laws or bad...

I know I have and its why I really dont like pirating....

plainsimplejoel posted at 6:29 PM Fri, 11 October 2024 - #4490209

DarkElegance posted at 10:45 AM Wed, 9 October 2024 - #4490117

plainsimplejoel posted at 4:01 AM Tue, 8 October 2024 - #4490088

I hope that one day there is a tool that converts G9 Hair to G8. Like Sickleyield made for other figures. I can wait.

I could have sworn there was one.
But as noted by @Torquinox its easy to fit a hair to other figures.
Using it more as a prop than a conforming figure.

Seen a few of those. But they make the base file much larger. Some G9 hairstyles on a G8 model can be over 100MB - when generally the base for most models with G8 Hair is less than 500kb. What I found this does is make the render time longer, especially if you have multiple figures in a scene.

The pain of working with 3d.

If you add almost anything to the file, it gets "heavier". You want it to morph a certain way, to move a certain way...added data.
Sadly, its the pain of working in 3d.
You can paint hair, but...that can be an ache. Though, for "wet hair" works better than almost all models.

RHaseltine posted at 8:04 PM Sat, 12 October 2024 - #4490248

DexterF posted at 2:19 PM Sat, 12 October 2024 - #4490229

RHaseltine posted at 6:28 PM Thu, 10 October 2024 - #4490171

Five plug-ins, four previously available commercial items and one a planned upgrade for a stil-available commercial plug-in have been purjhcased by Daz and are now available to Premier subscribers. Nothing has been removed from the Standard(free, no serial)/Pro(free, enter serial) versions - indeed, they have new features from the latest update and a batch of free (but previously purchasable, so some people may already have some or all of it) content has been added to support updated interactive lessons and scene builder. An odd way to move to subscription-only.

So keeping one of the most awaited feature (MG4 or whatever the new name) exclusively to the 18.99/mo subscribers is not strongarming users into the subscription to you?

No - the previous version is still available, I think, as a PA product and even if it isn't I have usually found dForms with a weight map adequate (so no, for me Mesh Grabber 4 was not an eagerly awaited product). Also, the SDK is free, there is nothing to stop another person or team from developing their own tool with similar features and selling it for some small number of months subscription - especially if there is as much demand as you say.

SO..

MAYBE youll answer HERE!

So why is it customers have to wait a year or more for a support ticket to even get a reply? Much less help?

The eye package I brought to notice over a YEAR ago in the tech forum, and it was noted the issue has been known of since 2018...is STILL without support, I cant get money back or anything. Your "team" just ignores the open ticket. You are saying since 2018 the support team doesnt know how to fix the package?

(or rather..not saying as there is deafening silence)

OR...I dont know...the VDB issue I raised, complete with screen shots?

A YEAR on...and no support, no answer, no reply.


PLEASE tell me why ANYONE should pay MORE for LACK of support?

DexterF posted at 2:19 PM Sat, 12 October 2024 - #4490229

RHaseltine posted at 6:28 PM Thu, 10 October 2024 - #4490171

Five plug-ins, four previously available commercial items and one a planned upgrade for a stil-available commercial plug-in have been purjhcased by Daz and are now available to Premier subscribers. Nothing has been removed from the Standard(free, no serial)/Pro(free, enter serial) versions - indeed, they have new features from the latest update and a batch of free (but previously purchasable, so some people may already have some or all of it) content has been added to support updated interactive lessons and scene builder. An odd way to move to subscription-only.

So keeping one of the most awaited feature (MG4 or whatever the new name) exclusively to the 18.99/mo subscribers is not strongarming users into the subscription to you?

I am stuck between shock and laughing at having the….to come and pitch that premier upgrade.

Talk about not hearing the tone of the room.

If I didnt think Daz mods were tone-deaf...I do now....

WOW...

"hey, there are angry customers, deeply unsatisfied with the service we are providing or rather NOT providing...LETS PUSH THEM TO PAY MORE!"

SMH

Rottenham posted at 6:29 PM Thu, 10 October 2024 - #4490172

DarkElegance posted at 5:15 PM Thu, 10 October 2024 - #4490168

           The one thing people keep forgetting…is their voice CAN be heard.

---

Me, I don't want to be heard. Not there, anyway. I just want the models.

I was finally able to log in to my actual account. There's no cancel button anywhere. I know somebody here was able to see one, but I can't. I tried to engage DAZ Tech Support over it, but their interest was short lived. I even sent them screen shots, with no response. Zzzz.....

Then I discovered they had blocked my credit card, the one they've been using happily for a few years. It's a fine card, nobody else has a problem with it, but they did. I used a different card, and it worked. Will it work tomorrow? Who can say. You just can't use a marketing person as a project manager, it's obvious that's what they've done. It's a miracle they've lasted this long.

---

FWIW, here's something I'm working on. I found I had an old Genesis Aniblock that was a "Zombie Walk." I broke it up into poses, I can get a dozen poses out of it. Then I found, here on Renderosity, a script that can apply an old pose to a new character. It works very well, and the price was right. Here the old poses are applied to a G8. Ugly faces have been added. Only torn, filthy clothing is missing. DAZ has an Iray shader for that. I have a plan for these characters. It will be a surprise.

Aye, there is no cancel button for daz+ I have tried various browsers etc.
Under the free daz membership, there is a cancel button(why? It's free!)
but under the daz+ nope...


"Me, I don't want to be heard. Not there, anyway. I just want the models."

And that...is how they are still able to do what they do to their customers. Because of that "we have the models".
And as long as people kowtow to it...they will keep at it....

OH! and btw...as of last night before logic took over, and I attempted this odd thing sleep. I had been taking full page screenshots of one of the forums that was raging against the new subscription. So if anyone wants those...let me know.

ALSO…

Feeling helpless? Feeling tired of being ignored by the big mods?
There are other ways to skin cats(no cats have ever been harmed)
There is LinkedIn…
You see, the daz site is an echo chamber. But there is a way to get heard.
I believe…that the name Matt wilburn will ring a bell to a few.

The one thing people keep forgetting…is their voice CAN be heard.

That they CAN make a difference.
Daz is a company reliant on customers. WE are those customers.
If people actually started to take valid complaints up the ladder, someone either has to listen or other people will hear you and start avoiding the situations at Daz.

LuckyStallion posted at 9:18 PM Wed, 9 October 2024 - #4490137

Katsuyaki posted at 8:45 PM Wed, 9 October 2024 - #4490135

Rottenham : "My DAZ login seems to be coming back to life now. I was blocked, and getting an error message I'd never seen before. Only on DAZ though, and only today, so I was suspicious. Now it seems to be clearing up. I'll keep an eye on it."

Take a look at your account once you've logged back in. It looks like any DAZ+ members have been migrated over to DAZ Plus accounts, with its monthly billing. You don't want to get hit with any surprise charges on your credit card or bank account after the first of the month.

I think @Rottenham might be talking about the weird Google "We're sorry..." message that's been popping up randomly since last night.  I looked everywhere to find something about it, but couldn't find a thing.  Seems to be happening sporadically today, too.

And I've had the honor of having one of my very few comments over at their forums deleted.  It was in the thread speculating on whether DS was going to go rentware and I had chimed in with:

"Wanted to add my feelings of dislike for a future of renting the studio and its products.  I'm not keen at all on the idea, but there are signs that it may be creeping closer and I feel like it's important to speak out early with these kinds of things (like with the advent of Daz Connect.)  I've been a loyal customer for quite a long time now, but renting is a bridge too far for me.  Please do reconsider this 'Premier' stuff."

And overnight mine and several others' comments were wholesale deleted by a mod, claiming, "and this is why we do not allow speculation."  I guess the backlash is spooking someone in charge over yonder.  The mod deleted every comment mentioning Premier in a negative light, citing that "there are already multiple threads on the topic," yet interestingly decided to leave the few remarks that were positive/neutral.

Tiring.

Welcome to the club!
Sorry, you do not get a t-shirt or anything. Just the dubious reputation of daring to say something against the Daz Gods.

It says a LOT about a company if they can not listen to criticism without flipping out and deleting/hiding things.

It means they are not caring of customer satisfaction. They do not care about our input. They...do NOT CARE.
While the program is a wee gem, the members of their staff, their team...are not.

It's the black mark on the entire thing.

Criticism is not something that should be ignored. SMART companies, hear it, listen and work WITH their customers. NOT AGAINST THEM.

And as I know their wee eyes are watching these threads...maybe...just MAYBE one of them will have  the guts to stand by customers just ONCE.

Rottenham posted at 7:01 PM Wed, 9 October 2024 - #4490131

I could be wrong, but now it looks like my DAZ account has been intentionally destroyed. This is the risk we take.

What do you mean?

plainsimplejoel posted at 4:01 AM Tue, 8 October 2024 - #4490088

I hope that one day there is a tool that converts G9 Hair to G8. Like Sickleyield made for other figures. I can wait.

I could have sworn there was one.
But as noted by @Torquinox its easy to fit a hair to other figures.
Using it more as a prop than a conforming figure.