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Folks,
Forgive a stupid old man, but my main machine went south and in reinstalling everything I now find there is no more "Daz Studio" but rather a "Daz Central". Okay, but while I have ALL my content (stored in the main "Content" directory) backup up will I still be able to use it? And, more importantly, can I still download stuff here and just put it into that content directory and still access it in Daz?
I most just drag and drop DUF files from my Content directory anyway, but they need other resources (data and runtime stuff, for example) that Daz will access. Does it still work that way? Or should I install an old version of Daz instead (there IS such a version on this site).
TIA for any info.
Don't be taken in by the hype railroading you into using Daz Central.
It is only a content managing software, which presumably will only work with Daz's own content rather than that sourced elsewhere.
It is another grand attempt to monopilise your runtime, after the unsuccessful Connect attempt.*** Daz Studio 4.14 is still available as a standalone. ***
IMO Central & Connect are the spawn of the devil and should be avoided at all costs. 😉Okay, but do you have a link to where I can get Daz Studio 4.14, as I can't find them anywhere?
Wow! They do love to make it awkward for folk not follow their railroading!!
https://www.daz3d.com/downloader/customer/files#prod_13176
Click 'Description'
Then scroll down to manual zip downloads.
There is also DIM ready downloads if you prefer ( I don't 😉 )
🙂
Thanks!! I actually saw that in my content links but I did not open up the description so never saw how to download it. Boy, they sure DO try and screw you.
I had a similar issue with Smartsound == I've bought lots of music from them over the years, much of it on CD, but now the new software will only recognize the software you've bought from them online, meaning literally thousands of dollars worth of stuff is useless. Luckily I found an old version to install that recognizes my older stuff, and you can be sure I'm going to keep it AND this Daz install software backed up.
There must be something in the water that makes Daz employees stupid. They've implemented several schemes/scams over the years in an attempt to control Studio users and content, that have all been miserable failures. You'd think that they'd smarten up by now. I understand that Jack Tomalin is now working there, perhaps he'll inject some common sense into the damn place.
E.All software companies have been trying to do this for decades. Most software companies which have noticed piracy actually harmed their products popularity by rigging them to attack anyone who uses them without licenses. This is why so many software packages now have those pay month for month and you must be online logged in and verified or the software won't work at all.
Many of us who share or pirate software actually are not rich people, and cannot afford the horrendous costs of buying software like that. Look at the pricetags for the Adobe Suites and for MarvelousDesigner, or Maya or 3DSMax.
If DAZ did that for its free base product - they would be out of business pretty quick actually. They are using a business concept called the "Razors & Blades" system. What that means is - (and men will maybe know this better than women, but I think everyone will understand) if you want to by a shaving razor, many companies sell the basic Razor Handle with 1 included blade in the pack. But if you need more replacement blades they are sold in either packs of 4, 8 or 12, at exhorbitant prices. Sometimes its cheaper to just buy the starter pack if you wish to replace the blade, but then you just keep getting more holders, razors, but only one plastic blade that goes dull after a short time (the included blades are short shelf life and go dull soon).
To apply this to Daz Studio, the RAZOR and starter BLADE is the FREE SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD and some mediocre content, basic but useable to get you started. The BLADES REFILLS are the DAZ CONTENT in the CONTENT STORE... meaning the sales and content and add-on items and new characters, clothing, figures and plugins you must buy to use with the RAZOR (DS).
They give you the base product for FREE... you are hooked... and need more content over time... that is how Daz makes its money.
As opposed to Poser - they make an initial $299-$499 off the initial main program, and the "content you get with it is sometimes products made for Poser 3-Poser 11, from stores and vendors who no longer exist, or are no longer in business. This still leaves you to go out and buy content, and most Poser content at the moment out there is still for Victoria 4 and Michael 4, as they were the last real Daz Figures that worked best with Poser, and since their release in 2005 have the most cheap content available. Poser takes your money, gives you old stuff, and then you need to go to Renderosity or elsewhere to buy Poser oriented content as much Daz content no longer works in Poser.
Daz started several ways to TRY to put keys into their content, including the wierd Content where the DUF files were encrypted and you needed to put an encryption key into them from the product library backend. This failed miserably because users had to be logged into their Daz Account and their DS had to "phone home" and constantly verify you actually bought the item from them. This caused DS to stop working for so many people, and even for those who were Published Artists who traded products with one another... and many who had products didn't actually pirate them, they were given them from friends or shared with friends. And like myself, I had a dial-up connection and my internet was horribly slow. Staying connected to Daz was nearly impossible so I ended up working offline. I heard from many others they could not connect to Daz with any form of high-speed connectivity, and Daz eventually realized it was killing their "BLADES" part of the deal. What good is a free base when you have nothing to use with it. And when the main program had people seeking out pirates and accidentally accusing innocent people.
Over the years I have seen some of the most embarrassing accusations made by vendors towards customers using their products, claiming they stole them, when in reality we all use nicknames online, and those nicknames don't match our credit cards or PayPal account names etc... This happened years ago with SA (Sanctum Arts) where they attacked people in various forums accusing them of being pirates, when in fact they bought from them from their OWN store, using their REAL NAMES, and posted images with their "nicknames"... That was a huge fiasco, and caused Sanctum Arts to close up shop, take all their products down and leave the community (mostly as they didn't apologise and brought their business to a shameful end).
The Daz Connect thing is another PHONE HOME technology, which literally shows you the products listed in your product library using the SKU number with a hidden tick-box saying what order was it in, did they buy this, do they own it. If not report them to Daz Abuse and set flags, depending on how many items you have flagged, they will amass a list of them over there and at one point when they consider it enough proof of theft, they will file a piracy lawsuit against you using your account data as proof.
I highly recommend installing one of two ways:
MANUALLY
or USING DIM, but OFFLINEWe can talk about the DIM offline in another message thread if people are interested.
So if you use ZONEGFX or any other site sharing Daz products, DO NOT USE DAZ CENTRAL, unless you want to eventually deal with Daz Abuse folks suing your pants off you. Remember you gave your real information and IP to Daz when you downloaded the product and setup a Daz Account and bought your first "BLADES" or content, and you ended up attached to Daz at the hip. It's impossible to get past that. It is also the main reason we as Moderators and Admins tell you NEVER to use your DAZ NICKNAME here on ZoneGFX.
Hugs everyone, and I hope I explained that well.
AnjaBear
Quick question, but does that also mean that anything bought from Renderosity won't work either?
Well written explanation @anjabear. I knew most of that from a few marketing courses. Printer companies love to use the same scheme. Thankfully, Russian hackers seem to be enthusiastic about breaking Western encryption. There's a hack floating around to allow owners to fix their own tractors and others that let printer owners use third party ink. When I was still working, we had a large format printer that was reasonably priced but the cost of the ink cartridges was obscene. I found a hack and we used a third party bulk ink
system that even came with colour profiles for colour management. It was a LOT cheaper.I don't see Daz ever going after a pirate since the litigation costs would be high, and many of us are outside the States. If you follow the news on TorrentFreak you'll have seen that these cases against individuals rarely succeed because judges now (mostly) realize that an IP address doesn't necessarily point to one individual. What they do do is ban you.
If they where much more consumer friendly I'll bet they'd see fewer products pirated. I feel that this is why you never see items from the smaller private vendors being shared. People realize that they are small time artists who do it for the love of their art, NOT to make a ton of money. They also create a personal relationship with the customer by being involved in the forums and answering questions quickly. Daz's refusal to allow contact with content artists surely drives people to pirate sites. This is why I never share anything from Jack Tomalin (for one). He and a few others, are decent folks who hang around the forums and do their own product support.
I guess what's ironic is that while I well understand the downside of piracy (hell, I made a living as a software developer) I think I have a pretty clear handle on what is good business practice. Just like brick and mortar retailers accept a certain amount of theft (it's built in to their business model) so do software folks need to understand that not everyone can or will buy their products. Making them so hard to use that no one can reasonably buy them is just shooting themselves in the foot.
I have spent thousands of dollars on Daz stuff (a quick glance at my account indicates something in the range of 8K in the last three or four years), and will most likely continue to do so. Not everything I want is available here but even stuff that is I often buy to support a developer I like and certainly anything I do to make money is purchased. And while I do get a lot of things here about 90% of it is stuff I would NEVER buy otherwise. IOW, if I didn't get it free, I wouldn't get it at all, so they lose no money from me that way.
But I also will not take the chance a company will be around in the future and thus negate ALL that I have bought from them. Right now Smartsound is having their annual music sale and I'm about to drop about $1K but ONLY because I found a version of SonicFire (their music playing software) that does not check your account online to make sure you own that music. If they went out of business I'd be SOL. So I suspect a lot of their customers may well abandon them (which, ironically, increases the chances of them going under). Sometimes companies are just plain stupid - their greed and paranoia causes them the very problems they were trying to avoid.
Nice synopsis AB. But I would never give my real name to DAZ and I always use a VPN when on the net. If someone did give DAZ their real info, I recommend that they create a new account (just need a free protonmail address) and start using that. Even if you buy stuff from the DS store and then share it here, use VISA gift cards to buy it using your new account that can't be traced back to you. The less DAZ knows about you, the better.
@themuse Ellie,
Renderosity and Renderotica and Hivewire do not use the Daz DIM system and you cannot use Daz Central for those items because they are not at Daz. So there is no download link to them which your Daz account accesses.
Daz Central is only for Daz purchased products only.
AnjaBear
You sound like you are a seasoned pirate... I assume you don't buy anything directly at Daz ever? I mean, they have info about you either via your PayPal account, or your Credit Card info; or do you only use externally purchased Gift Cards? I will assume your entire Daz account is setup under a fake email address, and fake home address etc based on what you have stated above. That is fine with me, but no matter what - my point with not using the same "nickname" on ZoneGFX is more about the user on the Daz site named "Ulysses" and the user on ZoneGFX aren't the same people, right? So if someone at Daz finds a user on ZoneGFX caling themselves "Ulysses" they cannot be matched up to whomever is using the name "Ulysses" at Daz, with all of their serial numbers and products purchased. Get my point? Some people have used the same nicknames and Daz could literally look at the list of items they shared at ZoneGFX under the name Ulysses and prove that they shared products they bought at Daz3D over time. Get my point?
If you are using phony names for your Daz/Rendo/Rotica/etc accounts then another on ZoneGFX you are in the clear, I guess.
I was only suggesting to others reading these posts to be CAREFUL with the ability for Daz3D and elsewhere to track them by nickname.
AnjaBear
You're assuming exactly correctly Anja. I don't use my real name or address and use VISA gift cards to buy stuff. I've never had a problem. I know you buy a lot of stuff (I've only bought a few SY things because I really like her as an PA), so that might not work well for you tho.
Agree 100% with you about the nicknames. I only use 'ulysses' here. Even if I wanted to use it somewhere else, it probably wouldn't be available. It's not as common as "John", but when I've tried to register it with other sites, it's always taken.
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