Renderotica

I have to admit that DAZ making their bridges (3ds/Maya/C4D/Blender) DIM and DAZ Central only really bothered me. I emailed them and asked them when the manual downloads for these products would be available, pointing out to them that all of their previous plug-ins (including all of their other import/export functions, like DSON, GoZ, FBX, etc.) are either built-in and require a purchased serial number to activate or are available via manual download. The answer I received was "no manual downloads are planned, because they need to be DC or DIM only in order to install and run properly".

The customer service rep who emailed me was very nice and professional, but her answer sounds like total bullshit to me. Sure, the new bridges are processing more data than the previous import/export functions, but it seems to me to be more of a difference of degree rather than of kind. For 99.9 to whatever nth degree of users, all of the information that's going to be exported out is going to be located exactly where it needs to be, and arranged exactly as it needs to be. I would think that only someone with an oddball install or a power user like Erogenesis who practically tears the application apart and then rebuilds it to their exact specifications (and he only works in Poser, anyways) would experience some kind of issue with these bridges.

When DAZ started encrypting content several years ago, I deleted my account and stopped buying there like I and lot of others warned them we would. But when they backed away from that about a year later, I gave them the benefit of the doubt, assumed that they had taken their lumps (financially, anyways) and learned their lesson, and signed back up again. This move with the bridges, tho', has me thinking that maybe last time they were simply unprepared for the amount of backlash they received and so they backed off, hunkered down, and bidded their time until they could come up with a different plan to achieve the same goal.

And I think that that different plan is to take a more gradual and more palatable approach, which is to start enticing their customers away from the manual downloads and onto their clients, DAZ Central and DIM. I think that their goal may be to become something similar to Steam or iTunes, only for 3D content. DAZ never really committed themselves to the encryption scheme, judging from the fact that they never released any of their core figures at the time (Rune 7, Ivan 7, etc.) as encrypted-only, and that's because they didn't dare lose out on the sales of those figures that encryption would have cost them. The stuff that they did encrypt were relatively few in number and (IMO) not much in demand, done more to test the waters with DAZ prepared to take the financial hit.

This time, tho', DAZ has a better idea of the opposition it's facing, and I think it may be prepared to grit its teeth, jump in, and weather it out. I believe that DAZ is going to try enticing its customers away from the manual downloads and onto the clients by offering them perks and goodies only available via the clients. Over time, more and more items will be DAZ Central or DIM only, and fewer and fewer will be available via manual download. And the stuff available only through the clients won't be the same piddly crap that DAZ was willing to take a financial hit on like last time -- this time it'll be the big shiny toys that everyone will want. Today, it's the bridges. Sometime in the near future, I wouldn't be surprised if the Genesis 9 figures are DAZ Central or DIM only -- and I'll bet that they're going to be absolutely gorgeous and hard as hell to resist jumping on board for.  

I can see DAZ eventually going the way of Steam or Battle.net, with a relatively small installer program that connects to DAZ's servers to download and install the main app (DAZ Studio), and then use Studio to purchase and install content. (I know -- you can already browse, purchase, and download content through Studio. That was a carrot to the encryption's stick.) The manual downloads, of course, will be discontinued as "outdated", "inefficient", "costing too much time and money to maintain multiple download options, so the old manual downloads have to go", or that old stand-by "to fight content piracy". We'll hear endlessly that the new client way of installing and updating DS and our content is "fast", "easy", and "fun", and we'll be strongly encouraged to forget that DAZ will be acting as gate-keeper all the while.

I know this reads like I'm rehashing the fight with DAZ over content encryption, and that's actually not my intent -- it's just that so much of this is applicable to both situations. DAZ failed last time because they tried too much all at once and it blew up in their face. This time, they're boiling frogs, taking a slower, more incremental approach to the same goal.

Of course, content won't be encrypted this time. (Maybe, or maybe at least not yet.) But DAZ certainly will control the only means to download and install it, and we'll back to the same situation we were four or five years ago with DAZ promising to provide a way to access our libraries in the case of DAZ's sudden demise. (And again, with absolutely no way to guarantee that that will actually be possible.)

What all this means is that keeping copies of content purchased through DAZ backed-up onto disc locally (where it can be accessed at will) will no longer be possible. Keeping copies of previous versions of Studio (in case you need to revert to an earlier version) will no longer be possible. DAZ will control the only means to access or update DS or your purchased content, and God forbid they suspend or terminate your account and you lose EVERYTHING. Remember those stories of Battle.net or Magic the Gathering Online players being locked out of their accounts by Blizzard or Wizards of the Coast, and losing thousands of dollars of purchased content? Exactly. Hard to do when everyone has their manually downloaded content backed up on disc, but oh so easy to do when everything relies on going through a client.

At first I told DAZ that until the bridges were available via manual download, I wasn't going to buy another God damn thing from them. (I spend ~$400 a month or more at DAZ, with a content library there worth ~$10K, and spend about another $100-to-$200 split between other sites like Renderotica, Renderosity, CGTrader, RenderHub, etc.). However, the more I thought about it, the more it pissed me off.

So I'm out. I'm done. I deleted my account at DAZ 3D yesterday, and they won't be getting a second second chance from me. DAZ is just too sneaky, too creepy, too God damn untrustworthy for me to continue with. They just create too much uncertainty for me to want to continue investing time and money with their products.

This is what I think is coming. You may disagree with me and that's fine, but I hadn't seen anyone else talking about this and I thought that it was important to point it out. And if I am right, just remember that you heard it from me first.  

Thanks for your time...

No one is talking about it because the logic behind the whole post is ridiculous. Especially when it's offered for free. 

Question, how exactly would you manually install a plug-in into DAZ and other programs like blender, Maya, etc. When DAZ no longer has an individual installer program? 

This is compiled programming CODE not a 3D bikini. Installation processes would be different. 

So deleting your account because you probably shouldn't use regedit to manually add entries to register dlls and complaining about it on a forum is kind of silly.

Originally Posted by: Dareshiranu

Originally Posted by: terrancew_hod

No one is talking about it because the logic behind the whole post is ridiculous. Especially when it's offered for free. 

Question, how exactly would you manually install a plug-in into DAZ and other programs like blender, Maya, etc. When DAZ no longer has an individual installer program? 

This is compiled programming CODE not a 3D bikini. Installation processes would be different. 

So deleting your account because you probably shouldn't use regedit to manually add entries to register dlls and complaining about it on a forum is kind of silly.

 

You have a point certainly. But the whole encryption thing really got a lot of people's dander up so it isn't really surprising that any move that smacks of that sort of behavior would elicit such a response. And in fact there are manual installs that have no DIM compatibility so they have to be installed individually outside of DS even though they show up in DIM.

Not everything was encrypted or was going to be encrypted. The big advantage that should have been promoted was the faster servers that were connected to download content and the delivery system where if there was an update or fix to the content, you would only download the changed item.. not the whole download. This would have had a benefit to people on metered internet connections and it also would have streamlined the delivery of content. Also there was ability to buy things in the program rather than going to the store. But they mentioned the encryption to be transparent... how was that sneaky again? DAZ could have been silent about it, that would have been sneaky. Just saying. 

Originally Posted by: terrancew_hod

Question, how exactly would you manually install a plug-in into DAZ and other programs like blender, Maya, etc. When DAZ no longer has an individual installer program? This is compiled programming CODE not a 3D bikini. Installation processes would be different.

DAZ provided installers for all of its previous import/export plug-ins (FBX, Alembic, DSON, GoZ, etc.) that can be downloaded manually, and they could easily do so again for the bridges. Other plug-ins (Fluidos, for example) show that complex functionality can be added via a manually-installed file. Or the bridge functionality could even be built-in directly into an updated version of DAZ Studio like aniMate or aniMate Plus, which used to be a stand-alone product. That would have the downside of increasing the size and complexity of DS, but it's something that DAZ has done before and could do so again.

Originally Posted by: Sarsifas

Something I should have asked before going off on this rant is "Are there any other DAZ Central-only/DIM-only items in the DAZ store?". To the best of my knowledge, there aren't, but if there are, I'd love to know what they are and what the reasoning was for making it so.

DAZ's encryption scheme failed because it provided absolutely no benefit to the customer (just the opposite, in fact) -- it was entirely in DAZ's favor in that it made the content impossible to pirate, while making it impossible for the customer to back-up locally. Encryption didn't make the content cheaper, more stable, prettier to look at, easier to use, etc. -- there was absolutely no benefit to the customer, while imposing a lot of new restrictions on them. It was simply bound to fail.

So DAZ won't attempt such a move again until they can convince the customer that it's to their (the customer's) advantage, or at least until they can plausibly demonstrate that the customer doesn't care one way or the other. And to do that, they'll want the numbers to tell a certain story. I believe that if they can get a simple majority of their download traffic over a certain span of time (say, 50.1% or greater over three months or so) to be through the clients (which they can do by enticing their customers with perks, goodies, and hard-to-resist offerings -- "purchase and install the new Genesis 9 figures through DC/DIM and get 50% off"), then that will be all the pretext they need to start phasing out the manual downloads, and at that point, you can kiss goodbye to your control over the content you paid for.

Remember when DAZ tried jumping into the 3D printing market? They restricted everyone's accounts until they agreed to the updated EULA -- you couldn't download your purchased files until you agreed to the new terms DAZ was imposing.

Now imagine six months or a year has passed since DAZ started phasing out the manual downloads. Everyone is now accustomed to using the clients to install their content, and no one is backing up anything to disc, partly because they're being incentivized not to do so and partly because that option no longer exists. In a situation like that, would you even notice if DAZ quietly started encrypting your content again? Or what if, after that six months or a year or so, you go to log into the store or fire up DAZ Studio on your computer, and you get slapped in the face with a demand that you submit to a newly updated EULA -- and one imposing content encryption -- before you can access your content?

THAT'S what I think is coming.

Again, there's a lot of silly logic and conspiracy theories going on in this post. First, the eula's been updated several times and you had to agree to it before accessing your downloads. The 3D printing was not the first time. So you obviously had no problem with it before then.

Also look at the centralized downloaders; if you looked at the download directory, the files you would have manually downloaded exists there. Which you should back up there. You don't have to install the files that you download, the downloaders takes the bandwidth from the website and towards the downloading services that they pay for. Again you're complaining without actually thinking everything through.  

Originally Posted by: BrotherHades

Sarsifas You keep saying how DIM no longer allows a user to back up their files. 

I never said that, but maybe I wasn't explicit enough. What I said is that I believe that DAZ is going to push its users onto the clients, and once a majority of traffic is being handled through them, then DAZ will have the excuse it needs to start eliminating the old school manual downloads (which will more than likely include ZIPs downloaded through DIM), because that's how content gets pirated. It wouldn't make sense for DAZ to close off one avenue for this to occur (the old school manual downloads) only to leave another wide open (ZIPs downloaded and retained via DIM), if fighting piracy is actually their goal. That's like locking all of your doors but leaving your windows wide open. If I'm right (and I believe that I am), once the manual downloads go, then so will retaining files downloaded through DIM.

Do me a favor, if you would. It sounds as though you use DIM (or are at least knowledgeable of how to use it). Download the bridges through DIM, and see what (if anything) DIM retains afterwards. DAZ has already said "DC and DIM are required for them to install and function properly". If this is true, then my guess is that nothing will be retained, or nothing will be retained that can be manually installed later on. If something is left that CAN be manually installed later, then either DAZ lied to me, or they screwed up biggly by not knowing that their own product can be installed manually.

Originally Posted by: terrancew_hod

Note you said "provided"... they're consolidating.

Again, those installer programs don't exist as they're centralizing under a common installer. It takes manpower to create installers for both windows and macs, as well as QA. Reducing redundancy of effort frees up developer time to do other things. 

Exactly. Redundancy/cost/efficiency/etc. WILL be the excuses not to provide the manual downloads, and they'll be able to justify that by pointing to the fact that a majority of their traffic will be handled by the clients. What I'm saying is that -- desirable as that may be for DAZ -- that is not necessarily a desirable situation for DAZ's customers, because that will leave DAZ acting as gate-keeper, with the ability to impose pretty much whatever they can dream up whenever they choose to. I believe that those of you who remain with DAZ are in the process of being boxed in, and that's why I'm out and why I'm telling you all this. You, for one, apparently don't see this happening or don't care if does.

Originally Posted by: Sarsifas

Originally Posted by: terrancew_hod

Note you said "provided"... they're consolidating.

Again, those installer programs don't exist as they're centralizing under a common installer. It takes manpower to create installers for both windows and macs, as well as QA. Reducing redundancy of effort frees up developer time to do other things. 

 

So we'll leave aside the issue of the old EXE installers (which I never seriously considered DAZ resorting to, anyways, altho' it WAS an option, if necessary). DAZ has told me that "DC and DIM are required for the bridges to install and function properly", so if I take them at their word, then I have to believe that installing such complex functionality manually isn't possible, even tho' we KNOW that if CAN be done. It's just not possible for DAZ to do that, apparently, even tho' their own vendors demonstrably can.

DAZ used to sell the old OptiTex plug-in for dynamic cloth (and they probably still do), but they built dForce directly into DAZ Studio itself. Why didn't they do that with the bridges, then? Avoid this whole situation? They obviously didn't care about adding complexity or size to DS enough not to add dForce, and I can't imagine that the bridges are all that large or much more complex, so why not? 

I believe the answer is that this is the first step in DAZ's renewed efforts to start gate-keeping, by enticing its customers with big shiny new toys to abandon manual downloads and to jump onboard its clients.

Do you get it now?

 

 

No, the question is that you get it? I don't do conspiracy theories. If you feel that strongly about imaginary efforts to gate your content, by all means keep your account deleted. That is what you wanted to do right? And your original comment was about manual downloads of plug-ins, so you're really moving the goalposts.. and my comment still stands.

Also the Optitex plug-in was owned by OPTITEX, not DAZ and DAZ spent lots of time trying to convert all those old installers for Mac (remember the ones that only worked for the PowerPC macs?) and PC into new installers. I don't blame them consolidating them into a central location instead of managing tons of files.

EDIT #2: Also you need to make the distinction between plug-ins made by PAs and ones made by DAZ. The code that they own, they should incorporate into their installer program. But since PAs may not have access to that since they are the owner of the code, would have to provide the proper installers and that's where manual installations would come in.

Edited by user Sunday, August 9, 2020 5:21:21 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: Sarsifas

Do me a favor, if you would. It sounds as though you use DIM (or are at least knowledgeable of how to use it). Download the bridges through DIM, and see what (if anything) DIM retains afterwards. DAZ has already said "DC and DIM are required for them to install and function properly". If this is true, then my guess is that nothing will be retained, or nothing will be retained that can be manually installed later on. If something is left that CAN be manually installed later, then either DAZ lied to me, or they screwed up biggly by not knowing that their own product can be installed manually.

Like all DIM downloads (when DIM has been configured NOT to delete the file after installation) it leaves behind the ZIP file for the product which, if you want, you can copy elsewhere and manually install. In the case of the Blender bridge (the only one of the bridges that I have installed) it leaves the file:

IM00070891-01_DazToBlender.zip

Inside are the elements of the bridge plugin organised by the folders where they should be installed. I see no reason why these components could not be installed manually, but DIM does all that for you.

Originally Posted by: Sarsifas

Do me a favor, if you would. It sounds as though you use DIM (or are at least knowledgeable of how to use it). Download the bridges through DIM, and see what (if anything) DIM retains afterwards. DAZ has already said "DC and DIM are required for them to install and function properly". If this is true, then my guess is that nothing will be retained, or nothing will be retained that can be manually installed later on. If something is left that CAN be manually installed later, then either DAZ lied to me, or they screwed up biggly by not knowing that their own product can be installed manually.

No I don't use DIM, I don't have my work machine online, and the machine I access the internet with is a Linux machine so I'm not able to use DIM to download, but I have read enough about it via the forums to know how to adjust and tune it to where it would need to be set up if my using of DIM were to ever change. I manually download and install things because it is much easier to move things where I want them in the installation process rather than relying on a program to install everything and then still having to move things around where I want things.