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Some of the recent items could easily have been created with Meshy. I noticed that they all had some of those Mayan sculptures. I checked Dreamlight's Rocky Outcrop scene. That's absolutely the Trona Pinnicles near the Mojave in California. My Flickr page has a pile of images and HDRIs I made while working in the area a few years ago. It wouldn't be beneath him to use some else's imagery. Nothing matched.
Of course they'll all deny it.JFC I had no idea about the Tafi thing. Reading about it is really sad. NFTs, Metaverse... how the hell did Daz3D get conflated with Crypto! FFS.
Something I don't see brought up is how AI is going to massively effect animations in DAZ.
Almost every single visual novel author I know, and I know most of them, are moving to AI animations. It's simple. You generate keyframes, then AI animates the scene. No janky animation inside Daz studio. No frames. Just a smooth, finished AI animation. The tech is still in infancy. Most people haven't figured out how to make good animations yet. But it is evolving. quickly.
Hello, this thread about the DAZ decline is as informative as depressing. I was not aware that there were already AI generated assets on the store. It also leads me to a bit of an off-topic question: Let´s say DAZ goes down or new versions become unusable because an always online requirement or whatever. Even if we have older installers, what would happen with IRay? Will newer nVidia cards support the iRay version those installers require? If not, how would we render an scene?
Apologies if the questions don't make any sense. I know next to nothing about rendering technical stuff...
Best regards,
@keab, I'm sure we're all thinking along those lines. There's no doubt that Daz will eventually sink but I feel that our saviour (as hobbyists) will be other programs that are similar. There's already the diffeomorphic thing-a-ma-jig that takes Daz stuff into Blender. We have iClone and Reality that we might be able to use and of course, you know that no matter what the Daz/Tafi cancer does to Studio, it'll be hacked in a second. Look at Poser, only three people actually use it yet every version has been cracked and is available everywhere.
I’ve read from several PAs that the “economy is bad and it’s getting harder and harder to make a living,” so they feel forced to move on to greener pastures (Patreon, less oppressive storefronts) or to push out even more products at a faster pace, usually at the expense of quality.
The truth is, if today’s quality matched what we had back then (things like the ROG Crow Inn, the dragons, the uniqueness of each DO figure, etc.), these issues wouldn’t be nearly as severe.
Instead, they began mistreating the artists who made the site stand out, replaced them with cheaper, faster alternatives, and burned out the few artists who are still working with them.
So many products in January 2026 look like a 2010s student’s first 3D mesh and texture.
I was just reading the thread over at RenderHub about their intention to force artists to label items made with AI...
https://www.renderhub.com/forum/14347/feedback-request-marketplace-ai-policy-update
I doubt that anyone who uses AI in an item's production will admit it.An interesting read there.
I think where their attention needs to be needs to be on the quality of the end product, be it AI generated or not.
It is only fair to be honest as to when you have used AI in the process, and IMO that should be reflected in the pricing of the item ie. lower.
"Let´s say DAZ goes down or new versions become unusable because an always online requirement or whatever. Even if we have older installers, what would happen with IRay? Will newer nVidia cards support the iRay version those installers require? If not, how would we render an scene?"
Consider that as of DS v.$latest, 3Delight is no longer an option. All those ancient files that use 3DL will now have to be converted (to varying degrees) unless you have an older DS install.
As the ultimate fallback on that aspect, there's always CPU rendering if necessary. Or, you do it old-school - put it all together in DS, export the scene as FBX or .obj, import into something else, and render it there. We did that in the good old days with apps like Vue d'Esprit, Cararra, Bryce - or anything else that had a render engine superior to the Basic Betty render engine found in Poser versions 3 through 5. What's old is new again?
Insofar as AI, at least on my end, I'm kind of ambivalent about it.
I enjoy directly manipulating mesh and figures in a scene just so... and not hand that aspect off to a prompt that might or might not get things the way I want it. I already see a lot of homogenization in images and image styles - especially insofar as toons go (though for awhile someone got the brilliant idea of having the LLM do it, say, Ghibli-style, and similar... but you're making an LLM imitate someone else's style, and not forging your own.)
Dunno - prompt engineering just seems less personal to me. I can't be alone in this.
I am starting to think about going back into Blender. It's been years - too many years. If I can find a workflow and (most importantly) a UX in Blender that approximates what DS/Poser has, I could see myself going that route.
Thank you all for your answers and suggestions!. It is a bit reassuring to know that, in case of a DAZpocalypse, there is some kind of plan B. I'll have to try that Diffeomorphic thing...
Dreamlight has certainly used AI for a few of his HDRI sets. The 'tell' is the caveat:
"NOTE: Due to technical limitations during designing these HDRI maps, there is a visible edge where the far left and far right of each map meets."
That's a clear indicator of AI use.
Personally, I'm not bothered by AI HDRI maps. I consider them to be one of the best uses of AI for DS. They aren't subject to bad topology and can offer spectacular environments.
I would also be fine with AI generated mesh clothes and environments PROVIDED there was some skillful handiwork employed to optimize the topology.
And while people continue to pay for substandard products without complaint, then vendors will continue to provide substandard products without concern. The thing is that vendors, like any good entrepreneurs, take advantage of the unwillingness of people to do the work themselves.
As they say, "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two." I've gotten to the point that I'd rather just do the work myself and decrease my costs by saving the money I used to pay them. And the end result is having the skills to potentially provide quality products that can more than compete with theirs. There is so much explanation and instruction available these days that it's borderline irresponsible to ignore taking advantage of it.
You can't deny that if you have the time, then you can develop the skill. Once that is accomplished, you're no longer tethered to what vendors choose to produce. Or when. Which is especially significant when those vendors are producing dreck. Hell, we're already spending significant amounts time to develop DS/Blender/etc. skills, looking for workarounds and solutions to problems at the limit of our current skill level.
And every single one of those vendors has speculated the same concept. They took the time to develop the skill, believing most people wouldn't and would instead simply buy their products. As the options increase to more easily develop products (options such as AI; programs; plugins; scripts; tutorials; etc.) the competition for the existing vendors has increased dramatically, forcing them to find a way to break the good/fast/cheap paradigm. Which they can't. The laws of economics are as unlikely to break as the laws of physics.
Forgive me if I'm repeating myself. Or blathering 🙂
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