Daz3D

I've used Daz Studio for quite a few years and while I do like it for a lot of it's features, it could do with a LOT of improvement. Specifically, it is not free. If you intend to do anything meaningful with it, you will need to pay. If you want content, you will pay. It does not export to or play well with other software packages easily like it's rival Poser does. It is a resource hog that will quickly chew up CPU and ram. Cararra (another Daz3D product that has been abandoned) had an option to limit how many cpu cores were accessed by the program. There is no such option with Daz. Likewise, there is no option for rendering at higher DPI if you want a render for print. There is NO manual, and very little documentation. Daz3D is rather famous for this. Lastly, tech support is iffy at best. If a problem has an easy fix, you can expect a solution. If it cannot be resolved after an email (two at most) your ticket will be marked as solved and shut down anyway.

Content from the marketplace can look good, but very often used high density resource hogging meshes instead of normal maps. Texture maps also can be too bloated.

On a positive note, you CAN get the program for free and do some basic fiddling. If you have an Nvidia card, the Iray renderer works very well, and much faster than the entirely CPU driven 3Delight renderer. While it doesn't have all the features native to Poser Pro, it does have quite a bit of purchasable features that work fairly well. The interface is customisable and I've experienced relatively few software crashes, although it can very quickly bog down and get clunky after adding one of their HD figures.

Overall, it's not a bad program, but the support could be a lot better, and Daz3D needs to learn that manuals are actually a thing. Real software ships with those.

The new update to the store is atrocious. The Daz deals plug-in is broken so filtering by wishlist didn't work on anything except the 3 dollar deal, for some reason it worked on that one, but I really didn't wade through pages in the other categories. But then you click the next page and it doesn't go to the top, you have to scroll to the top. Then you guys made the product images smaller and now it feels super claustrophobic, and I'm looking at it on a 48" TV, so if I'm saying it looks cramped on that, I can't imagine how it feels on a smaller monitor.

There's a ton of comments from unhappy people about the new update in the forum section in the website update thread in the commons section, you guys might want to see how unhappy folks are.

I can't access the content that I spent lots of money on. Don't waste your time and money here. It worked fine, when I used Install Manager, but since it switched over to DazCentral, I haven't been able to use a lot of my stuff. There are a ton of similar complaints on the forum, but no concrete answers. I sent an email to them, and Daz3D responded that it would take them 4-6 WEEKS, before they could answer. I love how much work is put into the technology, but if users can't use it, then it's useless.

Great software for newbies to 3D designs - If you have any interest in learning how to create all of those cool 3D graphic effects you see in movies, this software can have you creating amazing landscapes and images in just a matter of hours. It really is quite amazing and you can merge these images with photoshop too. Bryce has been around for a long time and is extensively used by advanced amateurs to make 3D models. Poser is another application and is used to make very lifelike 3D human models. Anyone interested in learning more about this type of artwork should definitely try their software.

I love using DAZ Studio. I find the tools easier to use. With DAZ Studio I can make the stories that my pens write on paper less abstract. The world of mysteries and science fiction have always attracted me, were and are part of my life. It's my hobby. With DAZ Studio I can create illustrations for all my stories. Or simply pay homage to some other classics and new stories. And, enjoy each of them.

First off let me say that I have done so much research, watched countless tutorial videos trying not to give up on this platform over the course of several years, coming from Poser to DAZ I can definitely see why DAZ is free and Poser costs money, while both platforms are not perfect, certain little features that I took for granted on Poser are non-existent on DAZ and what's worse is that the "work-around" of these features in DAZ are NOT helpful. Things like hands and feet NOT having a "Translation" axis, which makes for a pain in the but time trying to pose a hand or a foot with any precision in 3d space, to say nothing about getting any effective results in DAZ with Inverse Kinematics. Symmetry posing does not make it easy at all to make both sides of a pose symmetrical, to and forget about saving intricate poses than took you hours to set, no, you have to go through a host of drop-down-menu's, check-boxes and Daz3D STILL won't pose the fingers symmetrically unless you select every-single-joint, you heard me right; you have to select every-single-joint and then check symmetry and check all the correct boxes and drop down menu's and then... after you spent hours getting just the right pose... DAZ will NOT save every-single-joint by clicking on the pose preset you just saved, no, no, no my dear 3d artist... you have to select every-single-joint again then click ONCE on the preset in your library and then hold "Control" and double click on the preset you saved and then, depending on how DAZ feels that day you may or may not get the exact pose for your fingers that you spent hours posing and saving. And that is just ONE of the 50 things that annoyed me. Like parented props NOT saving parented, even though you saved it as a parented pose... no, no, no, that is too simple my dear 3d artist, you have to convert your object into a Figure, then save the bones as children to a parent bone on your main figure and then save them BOTH in order for this "money-pit-of-garbage-program" even recognizes the new figure as a parented prop. In short... DAZ is a free-software-money-bait-through-selling-you-content scam, and I am probably going back to Poser... it's not perfect, and there are plenty of things that annoy me about Poser (in particular the, rare but devastating, memory leaks that can wipe out any custom content you create, never to be seen again) but it is definitely superior to this DAZ crap in many ways. Thank you.

I never used this, but looking at the trailers and stuff around it it's some Roblox avatar editor clone for animating characters and made only for dancing?

This doesn't look fantastic, although the models are realistic and kinda good and Daz3D "are rigged", it's animations look choppy and clippy.

Thank goodness I've used blender for 7 months (today) and basically I've been learning rigging and modeling, I have models of them below me, but I just can't get the gifs to load :/

Daz as a company has lost touch with its customers. You seem more interested in pushing gaming and NFT's instead of trying to keep your 3D art costumers around.
Your QA has slipped over the years and you are on par with how bad Renderosity was 10 years ago and appear to have no interest in fixing the issue and treating your customers better.
You also have a serious issue with some of your moderators. Richard seems to be more interested in delivering snarky or snide comments than helping people.

Not sure why all the negative reviews, software is free and kicks butt if you have basic knowledge of computers and graphics software. No company technical support because Hey! It's free!. Lots of add-ons and a large product base. I have been using about 10 years mainly for medical visualization. Now I am building some simply games and visual effects with my videos. My toolbox contains Daz Studio, Blender, Unreal Engine, iClone, Photoshop and After effects. And Bridges between different applications. Current hardware is behind the times but what I can afford these days as I am retired. DELL Precision T3610 XEON 6 Core 12 threads@ 3.5 Ghz 128 GB DDR-3 Ram Samsung 1TB SSD Hitachi 2TB Hard Drive NVIDIA Titan RTX 24gb Video. 650 watt Pwr Supply. My workflow is kinda hap-hazard as I move around from app to app importing and exporting to get what I like, I'm sure I am not doing it right but works for me. I build most of my characters from scratch and sometimes use face gen. I am a photographer so I create a lot of HDRIs. I know my work is amateurish but I'm having a good time.

Ok so let's stop calling it free software because if you want to do anything meaningful it will cost you money which in itself is not a bad thing. I don't have a problem with that. I own 3ds Max and Zbrush which I paid a lot of money for. Here is where my problem is, let's say you buy something from an Amazon seller and when you receive that product it is missing things. When you go to that seller's site it doesn't even appear as though anyone even monitors the site. So if you contact Amazon about the issue and Daz3D said "Well we didn't sell you the product actually so we aren't really going to do anything for you." Would you buy from that Amazon ever again? Daz3D has some awesome capabilities from what I have "read" because I haven't been able to produce a single render since installing that software. Here is my issue if someone purchases something like all of the addins they expect support. So I really wanted to use the software and I expressed that things in the tutorials don't match up and documentation is out of date. I downloaded an item that I purchased and it was missing over half the files it was supposed to have according the documentation and the software because it threw errors all over the place. So I said I really want to use your software for my projects and I don't mind the money if I can make it work but we have to come up with a support option to fix my issue. So you would think they would send me an email and setup a phone call or something. Nope sent me another email saying "try this" of course it didn't work so I responded to it in 5 minutes and never heard back. This was on a product I paid for that wasn't working. So for those who might say well your computer might not be good enough. So in response I have an MSI GT83VR GRE Titan SLI. I have an 8 core i7 2.7 GHZ processor that overclocks at 4 GHZ, 32 GB of RAM and dual GeFroce 1070 Graphic cards with close to 4000 cudas. So there shouldn't be anything I can't run. The problem it seems like no one checks to see if anything sold actually works the way it is supposed. There doesn't seem to be any product testing at all. I don't think I have ever begged anyone do business with me for something I have paid for. They just don't seem to care, horrible business model. The Iray stuff makes me laugh because I own a license for Iray for 3ds Max 2018 and even it spits out errors when I import it into 3ds Max 2018. So I am not sure what version of Iray they are using but they don't act right. That is my two cents for what it is worth. I have honestly never seen anything like it. I know that if someone contacted my sales team and asked for a refund of two hundred or more, I would do what I could to fix the issue even if that meant logging in to see if what the settings looked like or something. I had three open tickets over the past week for three different items I purchased. Just seems more of just a catalog company. Not really sure what works with what to be honest. I couldn't get anything to import correctly in 3ds Max or Zbrush.

I placed an order and expected to have the items added to my account. Instead, the order says, "processing" and I've never received the items. The charge is on my credit card, and I haven't received the items. I opened a ticket and "Gunnar" says Daz3D can't do anything. I asked them to cancel the order and refund it. Here's what he said: "Unfortunately that is not possible for me to do. There is no option for me to cancel an order on my end of the transaction. You must notify me of any updates that are made on your end."

This is totally not consistent with their own help pages on the subject that say, "Step 2: Submit a Sales Support Ticket and include the following: purchase order number, the name of the product(s) that you wish to have refunded..."

Truly, your online shop is broken if you can't refund an order.

Now, I have to dispute this with my Credit Card company

Shop itself could have better searching and filtering. Sometimes it is hard to find asset for specific fugura and of its kind (like when I am trying to find hair and what shop offers me are faces - not good).
Also, sometimes it is not obvous what is actually in the package so I accidentaly several times bought something that is actrually useless (like when I was after christmass tree and it turns out the package only contains decorations.
About the Studio itself I cannot say nothing bad. Absolutelly got into this!

It takes a real man to admit when he is wrong, and I consider myself every inch a real man. I was wrong in the negative review I left here & in how I acted towards one of the Customer Service Reps who tried to help me. In spite of my unseemly conduct, she remained courteous, respectful, and graceful "under fire" and worked with me to reach a highly satisfying conclusion. She bestowed upon me a great gift and, most importantly, restored my trust in Daz Studio in particular and humanity in general. I found out that the transactional difficulties I'd been experiencing wasn't the fault of Daz Studio or its servers, but some kind of glitch by my own "trusted" financial institution. Long story short, "eating crow" isn't a favorite pasttime of mine but it is what real adults sometimes do. Many thanks to Britney and Daz Studio!

There are a lot of good offers in the DAZ Shop, including today's Gift Card offer. But there are too many sales in the DAZ Shop and so it takes too long looking through them! Could we please have fewer sales per day, to simplify things a bit? Some of the sales require looking through long sale lists of products, and this can become very tedious when there are 2 or 3 or more sale lists to look through.

Pros

Daz3D is pretty much all dreams come true if you have a Quadro graphic card (NOT a game card) It works well with one model, but not 4, and clothes. Not to mention trees and stones ect ect. With a good workstation card you can create series, games and even movies.

Cons

The problem I see is the content. When a model like Genesis 3 finally starting to work decent with all body morphs that is finally released the Daz3D team creates a new model which pretty much supports nothing. If the team would have continued to support the other models like Genesis 1-2 and now 3 then there would have been no problems.

Daz3D only work on the model that now can't be used very good because of lack of content. Perhaps that is how they want things to be done, but if you ask me, it's a poor buisness decission because people wont be able to afford that in the long run. Just uppgrading from Genesis 1 to 3 with the base I needed costed me 800 euro.

And they REALLY need to stop removing posts that gives constructive criticism on the forums!

Otherwise it's VERY good. Give it a shot.

If only you didnt had "interactive fees" for everything. Also while some of the products are advertised as working for Unity it doesnt. For photos or comics it may be fine but for Games we need one less interactive fees for everything and more quality clothes and hair. Oh my hair. Hair should be a part of the model or if Daz3D are going to make it customizable(which is fine) they really need to test it on everything.

Also the hair types should be included in their description. Because some of this assets will be used in games.

I've always had a good experience with Daz. No issues checking out or downloading the products. This time was the same, and I was able to see the item I bought in my content folder in minutes. Overall, good products, decent prices, and it's easy to find what I need here. Also, the times I've spoken with people, they've been kind, courteous, and prompt with replies. That's the kind of customer service I like. Feels like Daz3D care about their customers.

I am a member for years on Daz3D. With the installation of your software I had severe troubles after the summer when I Installed Daz3D on a new Desktop computer. I did not solve this yet, but will find time in the last week of this year. With all the software I got I installed it on my C drive and that had not to be because I run out my C drive this way. So I need to install it again, but the software has to go to another path. I think am still a novice user and hope to get better in the years to come when I reach my pension.

For two years DAZ has not stopped lurching from one side to the other. Daz3D take one step forward and one step back. It seems that they focus less and less on the needs of users and increasingly care to have a higher bottom line in the short term. It is as if the future of what they have built so far matters little or very little to them in order to earn more right now. The product quality control department is still missing. The DAZ Studio application continues to evolve, only with small patches that nobody knows how long it will last. They have not implemented a decent node module or for Iray materials, or animation, or anything at all,... As a user there has come a time that gives me the feeling that I need a thousand things to do the same or something similar. They still do not advance in the native compatibility of use of DAZ products in Blender. There comes a time when you don't know if the DAZ Studio application will disappear, there will be a way or not to use all the money and effort invested in DAZ products. We also don't have an official place to download an old version of DAZ Studio. Give the signal that in DAZ they go like headless chickens.

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Desde hace dos años DAZ no para de dar bandazos de un lado a otro. Dan un paso hacia adelante y otro hacia atrás. Da la sensación que cada vez se enfocan menos en las necesidades de los usuarios y cada vez más les importa tener una cuenta de resultados mayor a corto plazo. Es como si el futuro de lo que han construido hasta ahora les importa poco o muy poco con tal de ganar más ahora mísmo. El departamento de control de calidad de los productos sigue desaparecido. La aplicación de DAZ Studio sigue sin evolucionar, solo con pequeños parches que nadie sabe hasta cuando aguantará. Ni han implementado un modulo de nodos decente ni para materiales Iray, ni animación, ni nada de nada,... Como usuario ha llegado un momento que me da la sensación que necesito un millar de cosas para hacer lo mísmo o algo parecido. Siguen sin avanzar en la compativilidad nativa de uso de los productos de DAZ en Blender. Llega un momento que no sabes si desaparece la aplicación DAZ Studio va a haber una forma o no de usar todo el dinero y el esfuerzo invertido en productos de DAZ. Tampoco tenemos un lugar oficial de donde descargar una versión antigua de DAZ Studio. Da la senación que en DAZ van como pollos sin cabeza.

I think a lot of the reviews here are from the inexperienced who are unhappy about their lack of intuitiveness when it comes to using DAZ and its products. I personally do not use Studio. I'm not very comfortable with the interface and do indeed find it hard to put and find products in the library. But I have always believed that has more to do with me than DAZ's program.

The fact is novices and professionals around the globe are both turning out amazing works for everything from movies to graphic novels. I'm simply one of the many who can't. But I have created very basic scenes in Studio. (The software comes with a nice library of products so I'm not sure why there are complaints about having to spend money to use it out the box.) It renders fast and provides a range of options for lighting, camera operation and more.

I'm a Poser user. This is the platform DAZ chose to support for years. My inventory contains thousands of dollars worth of DAZ products. I rarely visit DAZ these days because Daz3D are all-Studio all the time. Since I don't use DAZ Studio, I can no longer use their products. But, unless their policies have changed dramatically, I have always found their support incredible. My association with them lasted well over a decade and I never had an issue that wasn't resolved to my satisfaction. Support was always quick to find a way to solve my problem quickly. Never had a ticket that wasn't resolved within a business day or two.

But those were my experiences. I certainly know of many stories about consumer unhappiness with DAZ. Their forums are filled with people that want to help though. They're an argumentative, supportive bunch, but they love DAZ and will try to walk you through any problems. And veiled threats aside, you can't blame DAZ for trying to protect its reputation. Would you sit back and let someone bad mouth your services -- on your own site?!?

I'm a professional writer and 3D hobbyist. I love Poser and, while I no longer purchase their products, still have a great respect for DAZ. I've been paid to write several reviews by third-parties who had no idea about my history with the company. Going back to see what they're doing still impresses the hell outta me. If I could figure out how to use Studio, I know I'd be having a great time with Genesis and some of Stonemason's new stuff.

I'm sorry so many of you seem to see DAZ as some sort of scam or hustler. I think that's as far from the truth as it gets.

Overall, the site and store are working well but still need improvement. For example, the TAGs in the blue line (top of the site) should also be visible when you are on a product page. Furthermore, the latest updates have worsened the visibility of the products in the list while instead the product covers should be larger to give greater visibility.!
Finally, in the "items" section there are no tags like "hair or clothes" which makes searching even more cumbersome.
In any case, the DAZ site remains one of the most complete and updated stores but I hope it will improve further soon!

Daz3D will up and cancel orders at random and it was very weird it was an ethnic items that was removed I guess they felt I was using it too much and they canceled my order for no reason and no email or explanation. I always heard they were racist I never believed it but after this, I am a believer now. I paid and it came off my atm card as paid and they just up and deleted my order for no reason.

The program is free and Daz3D have offered many other sister-programs for free, since I have been with them. To date, I have over 1875 "free items", in my collection, directly from Daz3D, in the store. There is another couple thousand items that I have gotten online, legally, for free, from other sources. Daz3D opens them and renders them fine.

Honestly, no other program I have ever used for rendering has been this easy to use and looked this great and realistic, out of the box. For "paid content", it is top of the line stuff that is available, right along items that are just a few notches above the bottom line. The number of professional items is growing fast, quickly pushing out all the older content.

However, don't let the high prices fool you. That is like looking at a cars sticker price. Few actually pay that price. Most things in the Daz store often go on sale for 40-80% off. More often if you are a platinum member. However, to date, using only the free items, I have already done so much. (You honestly only need a hand-full of paid items to have millions of decent variations available to you, with little effort. With the free items, you have the same amount of variation too, but a little less control with the morphs and skins.)

Yes, this can be used for schools, offices or just for fun, as a hobby, without spending a penny. It can even be used professionally, to make renderings that will make you look like an actual professional, even when you are not. (I know, I do it all the time.)

Just be patient if things don't go as planned and take a moment to ask for help, as clearly and calmly and as civil as possible. You WILL get fast responses and solutions, to most issues in the live forums. (The help tickets are more for alerting them of technical issues with the software, not for one-on-one personal help with "learning curves".)

The artists that make the content are great, unfortunately Daz3D as well as the consumers are completely let down by a complete lack of customer service. The help desk might respond within a couple of months and thats if your lucky. However the response is usually non relevant resulting in another huge waiting period for another follow up response. I cant understand how a company can be run in such a pathetic way and not go out of business.

If you are already very experienced in 3D art, you will have your own workflow and Daz3D probably isn't for you. You will be creating your own art in all sorts of exciting, complex ways.

Daz3D is for novices who want to be able to begin making art with little or no existing 3D technical skills and who didn't go to art school. For these people, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that the Daz3D program is free, there are lots of free tutorial videos on using it, the Daz3D forum community is helpful (and free), and you can import 3d items obtained elsewhere into Daz, meaning you don't have to rely on the Daz3D marketplace, at least not entirely. There are places on the internet where you can get cheap or free 3d resources. However, you will need to spend time sifting the flea markets of the internet to get them.

The bad news is that in order to make good quality art, you are going to have to spend some money. There are ways to minimize this. Use Daz-Deals to see the price history of items. Make the best use of the (constant) Daz sales. Aim to buy items at a 60% discount or better. Above all, don't outspend your ability. You will end up with products you don't know how to use or that you will regret having bought. Don't buy a product for one prop. You can get that prop cheaper individually elsewhere. Join the PC club if you do start buying because the fee is more than compensated for by the extra discounts.

Overall, though? I have 3 pieces of advice.

1.
Daz is an art tool. It can make the process easier, but the art comes from you. Daz won't make you a great 3D artist. Not overnight. No more than a paint set will make you a great painter. Or a fancy camera will make you a great photographer.

In order to produce decent 3D art with Daz you will need to learn a lot about the program, about how 3D models work, render settings, layering and lighting. You would be well advised to learn the basics of blender, at least.

2.
All the great looking images out there have been post worked. This can be as simple as applying filters, fiddling with exposure and color balance. Or it can mean using the Daz output as a base for significant additional work in photoshop.

3.
Daz runs on a computer and is subject to all the same hair tearing, rage inducing, "I'm going back to pen and paper" moments that computers induce in all of us from time to time.

If you are willing to invest the hours and some money and watch the videos and - most important, this - ask for help when you need it on the forums (don't bother with support tickets for technical issues), and learn how to use some of the ancillary programs for post work (Gimp is free), then you can make some respectable looking art with Daz. But appreciate you will have to learn a lot. Art is hard. But if (like me) you never could draw a straight line with a pencil, this is not a bad trade off.

However, if you want to match the output of a professional artist you will basically need to become one. Daz won't turn you into Leonardo DaVinci.

The Technical Support has no telephone number and may take the whole week or two just to respond; if Daz3D choose to at all. It has been my experience that they don't care about their customers. You have to be proactive in learning the software because you are alone and they could care less. They are not part of the Better Business Bureau. Research and read before you jump into this one. Good companies cave about their customers. I believe that if you put the cart before the horse, then, you have to deal with it. Yes. Like Me.

Buying today was frustrating. The sale with the core figures for 5,- wasn't good, as I owned them already. I discovered the included bundles, picked one, picked 7 other items from the featured artists' list, discovered that the coupon wasn't working any longer because the bundles were pulled, was so annoyed that I emptied my shopping cart immediately, because, as I wrote already, I owned all the core figures and couldn't use the coupon. Another screwed up sale.

This is not referring to this special order but is to be seen as a general "critic" There are many products on DAZ3D that seem to be very useful, but often creators spend only little time in explaining how to use them. It was often i have seen the usage of products being discussed in the forums and if it would be worth buying them. I ask myself how can Daz3D even be sold when people have to ask that question? Seems there were other users also that experienced such poorly explained products. There sure are explanations but the creators should elaborate them much better. Mostly they are only explaining what the features do but not how to get them to do it - if that makes sense. I think you as DAZ3D should push creators to make an effort that also users that are no pro's in using DAZ will understand it. That will benefit you in the end as well, because how it is now it makes you hesitate to buy an item when it even just seems like you would need an explanation in how to use it.

It would be 5 stars BUT: Search is horrible. I need a way to see, in the HUGE sale categories, to filter out the items I've added to my wish list. Secondly, the wishlist needs a way to remove items I've bought. And third, the wishlist needs a way to filter by 'on sale'. I'd buy a lot more stuff. I realize your marketing people probably want to have me look at page after page of stuff, but instead I just leave without buying ANYTHING.

I often find it discouraging that discounts are tied to new products. This is especially frustrating if none of the new products appeal to me.

Given how good of a customer I am (and I'm sure there are others like me too), I would think the best discounts would go to the return customers, like me, and not be tied to purchasing a product that you have zero interest in. If it weren't for that, I'd probably give my DAZ experience 5 stars.

The Plus membership is really nice. My only suggestion there is to make it easier to find products that are coupon eligible. I know about the ATI plug in for my browser, and it helps, but it isn't 100% accurate. For example, the December coupons completely failed with clicking the ATI plug in links for the coupons. I felt like I was hunting for a needle in a haystack.

I'm an old retired guy who does DAZ creations in 2D for simple enjoyment and a creative outlet. I don't sell my work, do work for hire, or any thing to make money. It's my hobby, and one that I love.

Oh, one last suggestion for improvement - customer service. I can find answers on the forum for technical and how-to questions, but when it comes to sales and shopping cart issues, I find the response time really sucks.