I was just informed that Daz for what ever reason is currently giving out their main 3D software products for free.
I downloaded and installed them to see if there are any attached strings but well they are the real deal. I assume they try to give them out for free and hope over time people will buy their extra add ons such as human models and props. This is the same business model Amazon is using with their Kindle fire which does not make any revenue at the moment at all.
I personally use Daz Studio quite often simply because it has a great selection of human models and their deformation meshes are perfect for my product design work. Studio also exports into all major file formats so 3D data exchange is very easy and makes is possible to plug the software into your pipeline without any hassle.
Hexagon I know from the time it was called Carrara - it is a pretty decent modeling tool with some seriously useful options compared to Blender.
If you have any use for it go to www.daz3d.com.
The servers are pretty bussy right now so expect some not so fast connections
This move really surprised me. I know Bryce was falling way behind Vue in terms of user base and production quality,so I can understand going for a hook in the market here, or lose all market. But Daz had no competitor (Poser, but, like I said, no competitor) – I don’t know much about Hex,
I am really curious about their business model here… maybe they don’t see much room for further software features without completely changing the software - so they just want users to sell content (like Cekhunen alluded to)
So I am downloading Bryce. I used to use Vue. I am curious to see how it works
I am not sure if there will be a Daz Studio to Blender bridge would be nice.
But collada is supported and works extremely well.
The only problem is that Daz itself has many deformation meshes when posing and those
seem sometimes to get lost. I hence often export a posed position into plain mesh when not
animating it.
Daren - I am not really sure what the reason is but well for a month can download the software for free with a valid serial number and later if you want you can also upgrade paying only the upgrade fee when they will release one.
But I am very sure that they hope to increase revenue through secondary purchases.
I can’t get the GoZ plug-in to register for studio.
Some other people had this problem on the daz forum but said a reinstall worked.
No luck for me so far, but i have only tried a reinstall of the plug-in not the program.
I see Daz more like a content provider which bought some software as the authoring products where as the people behind Vue seriously seems to care more about the software itself. Daz Studio is sometimes not super fast and fells maybe a bit sluggish but then again it is currently also free so if it fits the need = great.
Downloaded the packages but my downloads area said they expire on the 7th, so I’m not so sure if they are available until the 29th or just till the 7th or 5 days after you log in to get the free versions.
Jup, downloaded/upgraded em yesterday, got to say, bryce looks as useless as ever,
thus far any way’s, and considering how vue pioneer’s, in my experience rather useless too,
terragen 2 @ ~230€ still looks like the best bet for advanced terrain/heightmap generation.
I’ll definitely have a lot of use for daz studio pro for human bases and hexagon’s a nice modeler,
although I’m not sure how much I’d use it once bmesh is in trunk…
well the download slot will expire in Feb. 7th as this is only a month they give it away or free.
the serial numbers I got do not see to have any restriction or expiration date with it.
So I downloaded and tried Bryce, I haven’t had time to try DAZStudio yet, but honestly I don’t even know if it was worth getting. The UI was horrible, and it was an all around not good experience. Is it just because I don’t know how to use it correctly, or is it actually that bad?
These programs all have their strong points. Blender does a little of everything but not really optimized for anything. (begin flame war) Bryce is exclusive for landscapes and terrains, and optimized and preset for that. if that’s not your goal, use something else. Daz is a character creation and posing program, heavily optimized for mo cap. if that’s what you’re after, its a decent program. If not go elsewhere.
Now that I’ve had a look at each…
Daz is character manipulation + online clothing store. If you can model and rig a character in blender, you’re better off doing that. Much more control. But I guess it’s nice if you want to populate a scene with random characters quickly.
Bryce is for terrain. Seems like I could potentially use this for something. As soon as I get past the kiddie interface.
Hexagon looks like the most useful of the bunch. Neat little modelling app. Sculpting is nothing to write home about though. Bmesh is going to be merged soon so I don’t think I’ll be getting much use out of it.
