Huge Opportunity for the Future of DAZ if they are bold enough to embrace it.
jdavison67
Posts: 646
I've been reading a lot of the negative comments on the future of DAZ out here, and think people are latching on to the doom and gloom and missing the other possible future for DAZ.
With the constant changes in 3D content development, realtime render capabilities, and the huge advancements in animation evolution, Now is not the time to throw in the towel.
I think of the old saying..."If you can't beat them, join them!"
DAZ is a Mega Monster in content creation, and character creation. This is a win...win!
Many went crazy when they saw the integration of Ai in their bag of tricks. I saw this as a huge, and bold risk. One that may pay off in spades in the future, but maybe not in the way it exists now.
I think it is smart to get into the possibilities of Ai, if only to understand how it can support artists and not replace artists. There are so many things that can be leveraged here to enhance DAZ, and not supplant DAZ.
DAZ needs to take further risks. I think it needs to consider implementing more aspects of gaming engines into their workflow. I would be so bold as to say a marriage between DAZ Studio and Unreal engine 5.
I thnk DAZ and Metahuman could become partners, rather than adversaries. This would benefit everyone.
Content creators would have a fresh market to produce for, and I think this could result in an explosion in creative story telling.
Think of it as a CGI movie making revolution. using DAZ content and a new architecture leveraging the strengths of daz character manipulation, and development, with the realtime rendering capabilities of a gaming engine like...Unreal 5.XXX
Also they should look into other partners in animation such as:
This is just my vision of a positive future for this community.
I hope it happens.
JD
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Comments
Daz already has a FREE bridge to Unreal engine
and I believe that Cascadure supports animation export(to G8 at least.)
I'm an evangelist for Cascadeur, and integrating Cascadeur into DS would be meaningless until Daz figures out how to improve viewport performance. The thing about DS is that it's really, really good at its main value proposition, which is creating and posing characters, but pretty poor at the things that other DCCs excel at, like animation and physics, and utterly lacks a wide swath of functionality. I'd rather the devs focus on optimizing DS's performance at the things it already does rather than try to become a full-stack program in which nothing works particularly well.
Also, I've just started experimenting with MetaHumans, and I find them frustratingly limited. A partnership Daz and Unreal on this front would require more legwork on Epic's part than Daz's.
It's still way too much of a pain in the neck to get DAZ stuff into any other program with all of the functionality and proper material settings that it already has in Studio. The only sort of 'bridge' I'd be excited to see is something like GoZ, where you still pose and morph the figure in Studio while a connection is made to another program, and then the user can immediately send over an updated version. Reallusion has some very impressive pipelines between Character Creator and Zbrush, Substance Painter, and its own iClone, and I'd really like to see that possible with DAZ content (as Reallusion stuff is absurdly expensive and is made for animation and game-quality figures rather than realistic renders).
Reading the comments above, I agree with pretty much everything you guys are saying.
I'm not suggesting that this would be easy or even that it would not require a lot of work from everyone involved.
I agree DAZ needs to optimize it's performance. I think we've all been screaming that for a long time, and yes it is a pain to get DAZ content into other software and to get it all working, but I'm hoping that over time all of this will become easier and more integrated.
I think it has to become more flexible and portable if it has any hope of being relevant going forward.
Metahuman is frustrating at the moment, but it will have to become less so, if it hopes for anyone to adopt it.
Like I said... I wish for a future where we get the best of all worlds, simpler character creation, fluid posability, realtime rendering, and easier, more robust, animation options.
Maybe it will happen before we die...
:)
JD
Honestly, what I want most from Daz is a system where you have access to your entire Daz library to assemble whatever character you want and import that directly to whatever program you want, whether that's a separate program like Kitbash3D's Cargo or a plugin you can use in the host program. To be able not only to get Daz content into other programs easily, but to have Daz's ease-of-use for editing morphs, changing clothing etc without having to completely re-export it.
@Gordig
You get pretty close to this with Diffeo for blender
(excluding HD morphs and easy changing of clothing).
Frankly I do not understand why people continue to ask Daz inc. to provide more interoperability with external programs beyond that which already exist via industry standard formats such as FBX, Alembic etc.
and dedicated plugins such as Diffeomorphic or DTB etc.
This persistent notion that Daz is somehow “missing a great opportunity” to expand their user base seems based on the flawed assumption that the users of the Major 3DCC’s & game engine have no native ecosystems of characters and content of their own in 2024 and will come scampering over ,here with money in hand, if Daz would just make it easier to use Genesis models in external programs.
This simply is NOT the case and Daz need not waste anymore time and resources trying to “court” them.
I have Iclone, Autodesk Maya and Maxon C4DR26 and Blender(of course).
Every one of those user communities prefers to stay within their content eco system comfort bubbles and will even pay premium prices and endure tedious labor to do so because they demand NATIVE solutions for Characters, particularly for animation
Not toiling about with re-rigging a Daz Genesis figure to be compatible with their native animation system.
And Frankly those plugins are to upsell to existing Iclone owners particularly Reallusion content creators who may want to recoup their monthly rental fees for Substance and ZBrush with Content sales in the Reallusion store.
They do NOTHING to attract Autodesk Maya and Maxon C4D and Blender ,Poser, Daz studio or even game engine users user into the expensive Reallusion ecosystem, not for Character animation and certainly not rendering.
Daz content makers seem to be doing a smashing job of creating quality Daz studio content with existing tools & pipelines to Zbrush & substance.
I see no urgent need for Daz to spend more resources developing even more “Bridges” to that end.
DAZ Studio is great for posing and that's the main reason I use it. The characters are pretty damn realistic too - perhaps not Metahuman standards but ok for my purposes.
I think the Viewport will be many times better when DS5 finally arrives.
I would be happy to animate in DS if they could adopt some of the Non-Linear features that are taken for granted in most other animation software. The main problem is rendering animations in IRay. I watched a video on the upcoming Blender "Eevee Next" and that looks impressive and claims to be real-time. Like others have mentioned I would prefer to render in DS rather than going through the uncertain process of exporting to Blender.
Lastly the dForce sim is sooo slow. I have a powerful 4080 GPU and dForce is still orders of magnitude slower than my old version of Marvelous Designer 8 which is CPU only.
Dude, there's no need to shout.
I wasn't saying that that is a thing that I think Daz is likely to do, or even should do, it's just what I want from them.
The plugins to other software were the most positive thing they did.
Reducing friction of using daz in other software is probably key, since daz studio itself cannot really compete with other software's capabilities (and it shouldnt really be expected to).
Most of the best bridges are community-created and not daz-created, so it's hard to give daz too much credit.
Humanify (the blender plugin) uses daz meshes. Again, not sure daz actually had anything to do with that. But developments like this which make it easier to use daz content in other software is what daz needs.
I believe one of the drawbacks of bridges is still the handling of HD meshes. It's still not possible to bake HD meshes into HD shapekeys for Blender (unless im mistaken). Therefore, we cant have HD CBS/JCMs.
A world where you can have your entire content library from Daz Studio seamlessly in the Asset Browser in Blender is what i want. (And to have everything work, including HD morphs and CBSs).
I don't know about Diffeomorphic, but the DazToBlender bridge can bake subdivisions, as can the bridges to C4D and Unreal.
Thats not the same as a diallable morph though. Having a baked subdivision or a baked displacement map is not dynamic, whereas HD morphs are dynamic. In Daz HD morphs can be ERC linked so can be blendshapes for HD facial expressions, and creases, or HD muscle blendshapes and so on.
It's not really a limitation of the bridges anyway, i think it's a limitation of the endpoint softwares. I dont think there is such a thing as a HD shapekeys in Blender for example, but im not a Blender expert.
I see Zero advantage in paying $35 for this 3 gigabyte “humanify” tool and be limited to G9in blender as opposed to using the Free Diffeomorphic Addon ,by Thomas Larson, which supports genesis 2,3,8,9( with JCMs) as well as Daz Props & sets.
Even the Daz bridge is a better value
Morphs you export on a baked HD figure are also HD, at least as far as I can tell.
The point of HD morphs, or their equivalents in other applications, is that you get the rigging for the lower resolution base cage (which helps to avoid some issues with dense meshes) and the details of the HD morphs. Making an HD version of the figure will have an impact on how it poses, a negative impact as far as the original design intent goes.
The advantage i saw was, from the perspective of Blender users, having native support in Blender (a seamless user experience) and, from the perspective of Daz3d, having a community of daz-supported assets outside of the immediate daz sphere, which could help to expand the reach of the daz figures etc.
This thread is about the future opportunities of Daz, not nitpicking specific implementations of the early stages of potential future opportunities.
in blender, ideally you would want the HD morph on a multires modifier, not actually baked out. The higher subdiv mesh is unwieldy for animators and posing. I think diffeomorphic puts the HD on a multires? (I havent used it for a while.)
Anyways, my point was about moving toward a more seamless experience in other softwares (Blender as an example because it is so popular), and the fact that things like HD clearly dont behave exactly the same as in Daz, so its an opportunity for improvement, in line with the purpose of this thread.
I'm not sure how that could be achieved short of making Genesis figures native to other programs (which is my dream scenario described above). To do that as an export from DS, you'd need to bake EVERY subdivision level, not just for the figure but also for all desired morphs, into a multires figure/LOD modifier, which would be rather unwieldy.
You still have to import your (G9 only) into Blender and use his “texture tool” it is no more “seamless" or "blender native" plugin than Daz to Blender or Diffeomorphic except you pay him $35 dollars and have to install 3 gigabytes of his bloatware for his “texture system” to work and it does not import Daz animations or even recreate the Daz JCM’s like Diffeo or Daz to Blender which is why you mostly see facial close up stills in his promo vids.
Read the comments on Jays video here.
My many years in the Blender community have shown me that blender user prefer to stay within their content ecosystem comfort bubble of Blender market & GUMROAD
There really is little opportunity for Daz or Reallusion to capture that demographic no matter what import plugins they might offer
People have paid more for multiple texture sets on the daz store.
Having material presets already in blender is faster than importing them, i would assume.
Regarding your previous point about 3 gigabytes of files. It would be less gigabytes if HD shapekeys were a thing in blender (since daz's dhdm files take up less space than disp maps)
Some older content (objects) is available in native Blender format and I said it in the past that I would love to see newer figures also available in Blender format. So far, Diffeo seems to be the only way to go for me to get my huge Daz library over to Blender. Maybe Daz will go in future with Genesis 10 into that direction and provide it native for Daz and Blender.
Did not read the whole thread, so sorry if somebody wrote something similar.
Daz wasted time (imo) to create a lower featured midjourney/ stable diffusion clone based on a few of their character models - so text to image for hardcore Daz fans.
They should have used the time to create a text to 3D model tool to create unique assets, based on all the stuff (characters, environments, props) they have (as it was announced).
As soon as somebody creates a big 3D- scan database (different ethnics, ages, styles, textures - again characters, environments and props) with some rigged base figures plus an text to 3D tool and let's say an interface to blender, time for traditional 3D artist brokering will getting short in my opinion.
Edit: Sorry, read the thread now, they should have used their time to create something like humanify for DAZ.
What would be the Advantage of Daz providing a Genesis 9 in “Blender format” as opposed to using the Daz to Blender or Diffeo options to get Daz content into Blender
Help me understand?
I don’t use Daz to Blender but with Diffeo you save your scenes in Daz studio and import the .duf from your daz library directly into blender where you can convert the daz rig to a Blender native rigify control rig for animation but still import facial animation from Daz mimic. or Iphone like link or the free face landmarker app that use video facial capture .
Once you save your Blender scene file it is in “Blender format”
Like in this attached pic
What would be the point of Daz exporting Genesis figures over to Blender (via their own free Daz to blender plugin) and selling those .blend files in the marketplace in “Blender format”?
The Base genesis models come free with Daz studio so any content such as morphs,clothings etc
would have to be priced at a point where it would not be more advantageous for a Blender user to just install Daz studio and and buy content as needed and import it himself with D2B or Diffeo.
That would mean undercutting their own PA’s with cheaper
"Blender versions" of competing items or asking them to undercut themselves to try to attract Blender users to the Daz content eco system with cheaper “Blender versions”
while still having to compete with other site’s like Renderhub as well as this product
on Blender market where the majority of Blender users prefer to shop other than GUMROAD.
And yes I know “The Genesis model look way better Blah blah, blah”
But the genesis models also look way better than the Reallusion CC4 models yet the overwhelming majority of the
Iclone user base uses the Iclone/CC4 models despite that fact that you can “import” and shape project G1,2,3,8,9 character models onto the CC4 bases.
Never underestimate the Power of entrenched habits and the ecosystem comfort bubble..ask yourselves why Poser still exists.
Well, I would not require to use Daz3D in future and could work only in Blender. It would be easier to get the HD stuff native in Blender. Diffeo is great, but transfering stuff is sometimes difficult.
OK but what exacty is Daz Inc’s incentive to encourage people to NOT use their software which is closely tied to their commercial store via DIM
But the Daz HD system is proprietary to Daz studio thus "HD" needs to be “emulated” in Blender via separate hacks etc.
their incentive would be new audience and thus more money.
A multires/HD shapekey in Blender would need to be developed. If they made it for Daz they can make it for Blender. If Daz was working with Blender, then they have more cachet to drive implementation or develop it themselves.
DS is just a loss leader for their content, so the incentive is on store content, not on DS. Personally, if I could access my Daz content inside another program, I wouldn't use DS any more, but I would spend exactly as much money on content as I do now.
@Gordig
You can already load Daz figure & prop content directly into Blender from your Daz content library via Diffeomorphic
(,excluding content dependent on third party PA plugins and of course true DAZ HD morph details)
The only way you are going to get Daz content in a delivery format that avoids Daz studio entirely, is in an intermediate format such as FBX etc or program native scene file formats such as .C4D or .blend etc.
Again these other formats would have to be economically more attractive (cheaper)than buying the content from the Daz store and using the FREE Daz bridges for C4D, Maya unity etc. or Diffeo (for blender)
which means undercutting the DAZ native content PA’s.
Daz already tried selling Genesis figures in native Maya formats, years ago ,and it was promptly abandoned.
Ask yourself why
Every other major 3DCC community is aware of Daz studio and Genesis.
Daz does not have an industry awareness, visibility or import compatibility problem.
it is the simpe matter of entrenched pipeline habits and the ecosystem comfort bubble mindsets of those other user bases.
They just Do not care about Daz content just as they largely do not care about Reallusion Iclone/CC4 content.
If Daz wanted to sell figures in other formats it would require a whole lot of extra work for QA, is there spare capacity in that area???
im not sure that systematically converting already QA-tested products into a different format is another QA task. And even if it was, resource would be linked to revenue, so wouldnt be "spare capacity" it would be determined based on return on investment
I am crawling slowly back into Blender tutorials on animation again and I think between the DAZ 3D bridges to Unreal, Unity, and Blender and the Diffeomorphic DAZ bridge to Blender, DAZ bridges work quite well and easily, certainly no comparision to when I was doing it in 2012 with how it's done now.
I has Cascadeur as well but refuse to use it before I get to a certain level of proficiency with Blender animation. ...so maybe never...
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