DAZ live chat August 10th

[zaxxon]

Dan Farr and Chris Creek, the co-founders of DAZ and Artzone will be part of a live chat, here is the link:

http://artzone.daz3d.com/index.php?mode=featured_chat

This may be the best opportunity to get some issues being discussed on this forum resolved (hopefully).

[Nichod]

Likely no. They moderate that chat very rigidly. Its not like the old Eovia chat events. Perhaps this one will be different, but I don't think we'll be able to voice any complaints.

[Thomas]

well.. always the chat at an hour that only americans can be up...

[canvasjoe]

Hi everyone,

I have not been around for a long time. I went to eovia.com and found the daz site instead. Very different....

Forgive me... but please catch me up on what seems to be the obvious.
Did Daz buy out eovia? Eovia.com was such a beautiful site just to browse around and dream. I will miss it. I noticed many of the carrara 5 video links don't work yet at the daz site and I couldn't find a Carrara gallery there. Oh well... I hope Carrara, Hexagon and Amapi keeps evolving and growing.

Joe

[manleystanley]

Ampi went to E-frontiers. Don't expect much from Daz when it comes to Carrara or Hex, as we seem to be second class members of the Daz community. We don't spend $$$ on content every month so.......
Daz also seems to move at a snails pace, and is as well orgenized as a 4 year old. About the only thing they do fast and well is make and sell content.
yes, I'm going to try to be at the chat.

[Pete Exxtreme]

how many seconds do you expect to be in before being kicked by Daz's watchdogs if you raise such questions ?

[zaxxon]

Nichod, I am sorry to hear that is how DAZ has run the chats. I am not surprised. I suspect that this one will also will be as you say. Nevertheless, I shall attend and at least attempt to submit some questions. I have recently voiced some criticisms on the DAZ forum, only to be accused of violating the TOS for being rude to an individual in the thread, so I may be already be 'flagged' as persona non grata. Sadly, I believe hex to be a sweet app that has been 'captured' by the wrong hands, I suspect the Carrara users here are also suffering. Apparently the Bryce users are also upset with DAZ's lack of information on the update of Bryce shown by DAZ at Siggraph, discussed on non-DAZ boards, but still not mentioned on DAZ's own site. So it goes.

[canvasjoe]

Did the Carrara and Hex programmers stay with their programs in the company switch? If so then newer versions should be coming out.
What happen to the owners and administration of Eovia? Did they vanish
into thin air... or have some of them moved over to Daz?

I'm sure Daz would like respect from the Carrara community as they try to accomodate their needs. Hope for the best and support them in their efforts to support you. That sounds like an ideal approach. Help them grow, too, by being supportive and then things will improve. At least this sounds like the right way to merge two communities. However you folks know the reality here. I just hope that Carrara and Hexagon keep on keepin on.

Best of luck.

[jbshorty]

Zaxxon, the V.I.'s post was just begging to be challenged. You didn't say anything undeserved IMO... It's unfortunate for the French cummunity about the chat schedule, but many hobbyist users can't participate in a (US) daytime chat. And hobbyist's are the majority of DAZ's base... I also expect that any confrontational questions will be ignored. So we all have to play nice for just one hour ...

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by canvasjoe

Did the Carrara and Hex programmers stay with their programs in the company switch? If so then newer versions should be coming out.
What happen to the owners and administration of Eovia? Did they vanish
into thin air... or have some of them moved over to Daz?

Carrara team moved to DAZ, and is working on Hex and Carrara.
Amapi team moved to e-frontier.
Hex team, i suspect they now have time to practice for Tour De France.

[zaxxon]

Thanks for the comments jbshorty regarding the DAZ thread:

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=41667

Thomas, if this link causes a problem for you and Polyloop, please delete my post.

I believe the main issue is that DAZ runs a very different kind of 3D company, not bad, just different. The moderators for the most part at DAZ are 'brokered artists', meaning they make a profit from the majority of the DAZ forum visitors, it certainly would be in their (the mods) interests to defend their customer base from any real or implied criticisms of DAZ, not to mention championing the viewpoints of the content users over the opinions of users of the productivity apps at DAZ. The question I believe that most of the folks here at Polyloop would like to ask in the upcoming chat would be: what is the future paths of Hex and Carrara? Mine specifically, in addition, would be the unfixed seams problem in hex2. DAZ seems to pride itself on having a minimal level of communication with their customers, their perogative. My perogative as a customer is to not bother with DAZ, I doubt if they would miss me. I still think hex2 is a sweet app!

[Thomas]

No problems for your message Zaxxon.
jbshorty: Amapi Team and Hexagon Team is the same team (and Tour de France is now finish ;))

[Inspireology]

I am worried for Carrara, it is a program that I love dearly. Hexagon 2 is an application that has lots of potential but just needs some love and time. I am going to wait and see before I judge DAZ but I wish that Eovia were still around.

[-ash-]

Originally Posted by zaxxon

Thanks for the comments jbshorty regarding the DAZ thread:

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=41667

Thomas, if this link causes a problem for you and Polyloop, please delete my post.

I believe the main issue is that DAZ runs a very different kind of 3D company, not bad, just different. The moderators for the most part at DAZ are 'brokered artists', meaning they make a profit from the majority of the DAZ forum visitors, it certainly would be in their (the mods) interests to defend their customer base from any real or implied criticisms of DAZ, not to mention championing the viewpoints of the content users over the opinions of users of the productivity apps at DAZ. The question I believe that most of the folks here at Polyloop would like to ask in the upcoming chat would be: what is the future paths of Hex and Carrara? Mine specifically, in addition, would be the unfixed seams problem in hex2. DAZ seems to pride itself on having a minimal level of communication with their customers, their perogative. My perogative as a customer is to not bother with DAZ, I doubt if they would miss me. I still think hex2 is a sweet app!

I think you have hit the nail on the head here, zaxxon. Up to now, DAZ's business has been about 3D content. But, they now have a stable of software in the form of Carrara, Hexagon, Bryce and Studio. This puts them in the business of application developer and I don't think their communication philosophy matches that business.

Selling software is different from selling content. I belive a large part of what keeps customers coming back for updates is the feeling that their investment in the application (both time and money) is still worthwhile. This feeling is largely driven by communication of development direction to the user. Look at Nevercenter and Luxology for good examples of this. If users begin to feel the developer is not interested in talking to them then they are going to think about other applications, especially ones that are letting people know what the future direction is. Pixologic were good to start with but you could see their customers starting to get annoyed at the lack of info on ZB 2.5. Loads of talk about Mudbox until info on 2.5 appeared and was communicated on ZBrushCentral and at Siggraph.

DAZ have set up a forum that is about user to user communications and there are a number of posts stating that they do not monitor the threads. By the looks of it many of the content developers post there too, though. Up to now this appears to have worked well for the core business. But look at the Bryce forum, there is that loooong thread about waiting for Bryce 6. There’s no info about the intentions, possible features, or anything on the DAZ site at all even though it was there in big letters on the Siggraph booth.

Now they have Carrara and Hex, they appear to be using the same practice and those of us who came from Eovia don’t like it. The result? For myself, I was ready to drop Silo in favour of Hex (hardly used Silo after Hex got mirror modelling). Now, I’ve been avidly watching the Silo forum waiting for the beta of Silo2 to come out. I still like Hex but I have no idea where it is headed or if/when current bugs will be fixed (especially seams) and I like Nevercenter’s communication approach a lot better. I’m less concerned about Carrara as this fits much more with the core business and Charles is still driving development at this time.

I still think DAZ need to set up another site to sell their software (I think this was mentioned somewhere but I've not heard anything about it since). This should include both application specific and communication forums. It would have been better to have had this at the start and the longer it goes without one, the worse this bad rep is going to get. When that happens I will be really worried about my favourite apps.

I'm still up for giving DAZ a chance but it’s been 3 months since Hexagon 2 was released and, unless I’ve missed it, DAZ have done little to indicate the direction they want to take this application. The lack of info on Bryce 6 doesn't fill me with confidence either. I'm hoping Bob will drive some change into DAZ’s communication philosophy regarding their software and DAZ will show us that they care about the applications they own and the people who use them.

My tuppence worth.

[jbshorty]

Originally Posted by Thomas

No problems for your message Zaxxon.
jbshorty: Amapi Team and Hexagon Team is the same team (and Tour de France is now finish ;))

that's great, i thought they were currently "between jobs".

Correction that is not the live chat that we had promise to you guys.

The livechat event that is design to target those issues is this one:

============================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Live chatroom event with DAZ Productions Inc.

Draper, UT – August 7, 2006 - DAZ Productions Inc., a leading developer of professional quality 3D models and software will be having a live chatroom event hosted by Ringo Monfort via EFNET.

Location: EFNET

channel #carrara questions
channel #carrara2 answers

Date and time: Tuesday, August 22nd. 8am Pacific, 9am Mountain time.

DAZ special guests:

Dan Farr, President/Co-Founder

Bob Stockwell, Vice President of Sales and Marketing

Charles Brissart, Director of Software R&D

Chad Smith, Vice President of Creative


The DAZ executive team will be addressing current concerns of the online user communities in addition to sharing future plans to better serve its customers.

[jbshorty]

hi ringo. that's good news. Is this a Carrara-specific chat? Hopefully you can arrange a Hex-specific chat sometime soon...

[HeavyHanded]

How did the live chat turn out? Where can we read the transcript?

[tonytrout]

It has changed to 22nd Aug,

[Narration]

And it was good. I think they are getting the logs together to put them up.