Huge Opportunity for the Future of DAZ if they are bold enough to embrace it.

wolf359

nonesuch00 said:

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...

Also, because you can't have enough free animation software, AKeytsu by Nukeygara, is now out of business and given away free. Make an account, download, order a free former educational license, install SW, activate educational license, and you're done. You'll need to renew the free EDU license yearly.

akeytsu download

Get akeytsu | Free Trial (nukeygara.com)

tutorials

Learn akeytsu | Akeyschool (nukeygara.com)
 

 

WOW !!
I was not aware that this was now freeware.
I looked at it several years ago

My Pipeline is fully stacked with Blender,Maya, Iclone  but I grabbed and installed a Mac OS Akeytsu license for my old Imac just to tinker while I am rendering over on my main PC

Thanks!!

Animated with Akeytsu:

NylonGirl

Gordig said:

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.

Well the part about having everything available is what I think would be the best use of "the cloud". It would be nice if every time a scene was loaded or something was added to a scene, those things were downloaded from a remote server if they're not installed locally, and then they disappear again after the scene is closed. Then there would be no issue wih having a million things installed and most of them forgotten, and less issues with conflicts between installed items. And for the people who are concerned about bandwidth, maybe those items could be stored in a cache so frequently used items don't have to be downloaded every time.

Gordig

@wolf359 Your argument is circular. You keep bringing up entrenched pipeline habits, but what I'm talking about is specifically an improved pipeline. I'm also not talking strictly about drawing in existing Blender/Maya/Unreal etc. users, but more for keeping existing Daz users in the Daz ecosystem when they "outgrow" DS instead of switching to the ecosystem of their current program. I really only touch DS these days to build characters and export characters and other assets out, so the ability to do that natively in Houdini, for example, would be a massive improvement for my workflow. Daz doesn't make money off of me using DS; they make money selling content, which I have continued to buy despite DS being reduced to a necessary evil for me. If I want to use, for example, a MetaHuman in Unreal, I have to:

1. go to a website
2. build a character off an existing base
3. open the Quixel Bridge
4. download the MetaHuman to my hard drive
5. import it into the scene

Even after all that rigamarole, I'm left with a figure that is a well-designed but very limited face (no option for non-human features, for example) on a body over which you have almost no control, with relatively few choices for hair and even fewer for clothing. That is Epic's native workflow for their own character design system, and it SUUUUUUUUUUCKS. Even if Daz operated a website for character creation that functioned largely the same as MetaHuman Creator, you would have far more options for customization and far more control over what your character looked like.

There's also something more basic that you're missing, which is that I'm not saying this is the direction Daz is likely to go, or should go, or that they would be successful if they did. It's just what I want. DS is REALLY, REALLY GOOD for character creation and customization, arguably best-in-class, but other programs are better at basically every other part of a 3D workflow, so why not take what makes DS good and port it into other programs?

N-RArts

Integration into other areas is fine. But Daz should be sorting the issues that they/the customer base already have. Like better customer service (listening to their customers). Removing bits of the program that are defunct (like is Filament still supported?). Having the latest version of the program working on Mac, like it does on Windows. And every other age old gripes that other users have. But hey, that's just how I see it.

wolf359

a MetaHuman in Unreal, I have to:

go to a website
build a character off an existing base
open the Quixel Bridge
download the MetaHuman to my hard drive
import it into the scene
Even after all that rigamarole, I'm left with a figure that is a well-designed but very limited face (no option for non-human features, for example) on a body over which you have almost no control, with relatively few choices for hair and even fewer for clothing. That is Epic's native workflow for their own character design system, and it SUUUUUUUUUUCKS.

@Gordig
I don’t use UE5  but I am sure there are more options now for customization of the Metahumans
(Not free though)
 

I'm also not talking strictly about drawing in existing Blender/Maya/Unreal etc. users, but more for keeping existing Daz users in the Daz ecosystem when they "outgrow" DS instead of switching to the ecosystem of their current program.
 

 

which is a fools gambit because people eventuality realize that in ecosystem content is the best option for their production pipelines as opposed allowing third parties(WHOM THEY DO NOT CONTROL) to be the single point of failure in their productions& business models.

Look at what happen to the poser market after Daz stopped producing the.CR2 based figure formats.
 
Or more recently ,look at what is happening to Insydium now that Maxon finally created a production quality native particle VFX system for C4D.

Reallusion wisely realized the folly of such extreme dependency on third party figure content years ago
hence the creation of Character creator and at present the majority of the Iclone user base uses 
the native CC4 figures despite the fact that  CC4 “imports”
Genesis 1,2,3,8,9 and their clothing.
 

 

 

I really only touch DS these days to build characters and export characters and other assets out, so the ability to do that natively in Houdini, for example, would be a massive improvement for my workflow. Daz doesn't make money off of me using DS; they make money selling content, which I have continued to buy despite DS being reduced to a necessary evil for me..

 

 

I get it..  you do not want to give up the “Daz studio experience” comfort bubble when creating characters for Houdini.

However you seem to be ignoring the burden that Daz would have to endure trying to replicate the “ Daz studio experience” in external programs, that could release a update at any given moment that breaks compatibility.
(do the Daz “bridges” even support the latest version of Maya,C4D or Blender, as July 21 ,2024??
and even where they do you always get a compromised version of genesis in the external app due to proprietary Daz figure tech with DS dependencies.)

This typically forces users to stay with older versions of their main 3DCC (if possible) and forego the latest new features of Maya, Houdini or C4D just to maintain that “ Daz studio experience”.

 

I'm not saying this is the direction Daz is likely to go, or should go, or that they would be successful if they did.  It's just what I want.

 

 

Fair enough, But this thread  was started ,by the OP, on the premise that Daz is somehow missing out on some great
“untapped market/huge opportunity"
I think this is a flawed premise.

And your personal “Ideal scenario” is based on the notion that Daz should try to prevent people from completely migrating away from buying Daz content when they become fully steeped in other Eco systems.(Blender,Maya,C4D,Iclone)

Hobbyists usally cannot afford  to tinker with anything  other than Blender  so their  buying habits are likely not affected any way

Professional studios for games & films will want to own ALL of the rights to their assets for further IP monetization in future,
So trying to keep them on the “content reservation” is probably  a wasted effort IMHO as clinging to the Daz content eco system is more of a hinderance than an advantage due both licensing and the   
long term compatibility  maintainance issues I outlined earlier.

 

 

 

Gordig

You can keep talking, but it's not going to make me stop wanting what I described.

novastrider

Gordig said:

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.

 Yes. Daz3d's biggest weakness after compatibility has always been how heavy it is compared to other engines. They could gain so much if they focused more on optimization tricks, functions that figure out what slows down our renders and gives use options to solve or lessen those issues and bottlenecks. There's many scenes that render easily in Unreal, but that brick Daz unless you buy a super computer.