What does the DSON Installer do?

[eclark1894]

Honestly, I'm just asking a question here, but yeah, I'd like to know. As I've been going through the Daz store lately I've noticed something which has me a bit concerned. I've noticed an awful lot , well at least more than just a few, new products, and I'm talking props and scenes, not figure assets, which seem to be for DS4.9 only. I don't use DSON for Poser, but I have seen a DSON installer, so maybe I have it wrong. I thought DSON was developed specifically for Poser, so now I'm totally confused.

 

[phdubrov]

As far as I understand:

DSON is the name of the format of the DS files.
This product includes: 1 DSON Core Installer - means that all files in a product will be in this format. Not exactly true for textures and so on, but it means no obj, or cr2, or other formats. .duf and previous versions only.

DSON importer is an addon for Poser.
Product with DSON Importer support will include:
DSON Core Installer
Poser Companion Files Installer (cr2 or pp2 to load duf files, materials and so on)

Other types of products could have General installer (for OBJs for example), or Carara installer...

 

[eclark1894]

As I said, I've noticed a lot of these products showing up with no Poser installer. I thought maybe they were just new creators who hadn't learned Poser, but then I saw a product from Faveral today. That'd be a shame if Faveral abandoned Poser. I really like his stuff and have most of his Medieval Village stuff. In fact the Scene on my website is several of his sets.

 

[phdubrov]

Alsace was last Poser support, so... And yes, I like his stuff too.

 

[Sunfire]

In order to use the DSON files in Poser, even with the Poser Companion files you need the DSON importer as well.

Someone is convincing the artists that there is no money in continuing to support Poser, you might try writing the artist(s) who used to support Poser and find out why they stopped and let them know that their no longer supporting Poser means you won't be buying as you don't use DS.

 

[eclark1894]

In order to use the DSON files in Poser, even with the Poser Companion files you need the DSON importer as well.

Someone is convincing the artists that there is no money in continuing to support Poser, you might try writing the artist(s) who used to support Poser and find out why they stopped and let them know that their no longer supporting Poser means you won't be buying as you don't use DS.

To be honest, I think that's the wrong approach. One of the reasons I'm doing my directory, which launches this Friday, btw, is to direct Poser users to where they can find Poser content. My hope is that the vendors will notice the upsurge in Poser content being bought, and they will, in turn, start making Poser content once again. I think this is a more positive way to get them to support Poser because, otherwise, they'll just say well I'm leaving Poser anyway, so I don't care if you don't buy my stuff.

 

[Sunfire]

Never hurts to try to talk to the artist.

 

[Pendraia]

I don't know if someone is actively convincing people that there is no money or if that is simply what they are finding with sales. I do know that people who I've known for a long time and believe have told me that their sales were better for DS products in the past.

I think vendors are in a very difficult place as they need to produce enough money to live on as this is often their only income. I think the fact that so many vendors who used to create only for Poser now going over to DS is very concerning for the community.

The only site where the reverse seems to happen is here from all accounts as some vendors no longer do DS versions as it wasn't worth their while. Whereas elsewhere the trend is the reverse.

 

[eclark1894]

Ithink at DAZ there is pressure for the vendors to only support Studio. Honestly, I don't see where vendors who only do props, especially the simple static ones, or poses should have that much of a problem making products for both Poser and DS. I can understand it from the perspective of someone who's never used Poser before. I have the same problem understanding DS. But someone like Faveral who's had experience with both...

 

[Pendraia]

I think the issue with props is the sheer amount of work creating shaders for not 2 shader systems but for 4. Since Iray came out there was a lot of rumbling initially about being twice the work to do shaders for all the engines. You know yourself how long it can take to create a product from start to completion and then think about how much money vendors get for each sale. If making shaders for that many engines doubles the hours but not the income it would make me think twice about it, especially if I was dependent on the money to survive.

 

[eclark1894]

I think the issue with props is the sheer amount of work creating shaders for not 2 shader systems but for 4. Since Iray came out there was a lot of rumbling initially about being twice the work to do shaders for all the engines. You know yourself how long it can take to create a product from start to completion and then think about how much money vendors get for each sale. If making shaders for that many engines doubles the hours but not the income it would make me think twice about it, especially if I was dependent on the money to survive.

I had this talk with Deecey at the SM forum. If I thought I deserved more money, I'd charge more money. I also think Daz should pay more money to compensate the vendors for the extra work.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Funny thing is that with most Poser props I purchased from DAZ, the shaders were generally rather simple ... like a diffuse map and a bump map ... maybe a displacement map. But, certainly nothing anywhere near as complex as a character texture.

Or in some cases, even simpler than that. This is Faveral's Medieval Inn, which is an older product. But I also checked one of the last Faveral products I purchased, and it was pretty much the same setup.

 

[Pendraia]

Thing is Satira, that is an older product. These days I find that most people have way higher expectations about the end results especially when using a physical based renderer like Iray or Superfly. Look at the shaders Phd is doing they are amazing.

I think that if vendors charged for the actual hours that it took them to make something the prices would need to be a lot higher and I think that vendors then worry that they might price themselves out of the market doing this.

The other issue that they have is that they can't predict reliably how many units a product will sell. I've seen vendors who I consider first class complain of lack of sales and when I think about what goes into creating their products I think that is so sad.

I did some textures for Luna's long sleeve top and the sales for that weren't worth it in terms of return. If I was doing this as my main income I would be creating for the Daz figures not because I like them better but because the sales would be higher but I'm lucky that I can afford to pick and choose so I make stuff for Dawn and family. I also would focus on the adult female figure simply because that is what seems to sell.

I hope that with the stuff happening over at Content Paradise and here that we will see a pick up in the number of Poser products released I really do.

 

[eclark1894]

Thing is Satira, that is an older product. These days I find that most people have way higher expectations about the end results especially when using a physical based renderer like Iray or Superfly. Look at the shaders Phd is doing they are amazing.

I think that if vendors charged for the actual hours that it took them to make something the prices would need to be a lot higher and I think that vendors then worry that they might price themselves out of the market doing this.

The other issue that they have is that they can't predict reliably how many units a product will sell. I've seen vendors who I consider first class complain of lack of sales and when I think about what goes into creating their products I think that is so sad.

I did some textures for Luna's long sleeve top and the sales for that weren't worth it in terms of return. If I was doing this as my main income I would be creating for the Daz figures not because I like them better but because the sales would be higher but I'm lucky that I can afford to pick and choose so I make stuff for Dawn and family. I also would focus on the adult female figure simply because that is what seems to sell.

I hope that with the stuff happening over at Content Paradise and here that we will see a pick up in the number of Poser products released I really do.

Thing is, Pendraia, is it's not the hours that are worked but the quality of the work done. While I consider most of the vendors in our community to be very talented, very few of them could make a living outside of this market. Stonemason and maybe VanishingPoint and Meshbox being notable exceptions.

 

[Pendraia]

I think sometimes quality work does take longer though.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Pretty much all my architectural products are older products. December 2014 is the last time I purchased anything from DAZ (Faveral's Lake Village). Well, no. I'm wrong about that. Seems I purchased Stonemason's The Path To Cloud Temple in February 2016. I don't think I've ever used it.

Faveral's Lake Village was one of the last Poser products he did, and after checking it, it's the same as the Medieval Inn and Le Faubourg ... where most of the materials are a single diffuse map. I wonder how complex his DS 4.9 shaders are in comparison ... or how complex his Poser materials would be if he still supported Poser. I love Le Faubourg, as well as all Favoral's products, and have never been disappointed in how they render in Poser.

I think the HiveWire Fantasy Gazebo is the most complex shader/material wise architectural building in my runtime.


Phd does amazing shaders. No doubt about that.

I hear you about vendoring. Since I work full time, I'm not dependant on my sales. However, once I retire, sales will be more important. I didn't start working till my son was in grade school, and I didn't start contributing toward retirement until six years later when I went to work for a company that matched our contributions. Unfortunately, when I was 40, I was unemployed for a year, and I had to withdraw the money out of my 401k to live on. So, I only have 25 years into my 403b (the non profit version of the 401k). That with Social Security isn't supposed to be enough. That is ... if I live to be in my 90s ... and I stay in Philadelphia!

Of course, I could always beg my brother to let me move in with him (or park a tiny house in their backyard in Portland, Oregon) :wink: Both he and his wife have pensions as they were school teachers.

 

[Pendraia]

I wish school teachers here got pensions but I'll be relying on Superannuation myself. Just had a visit with the financial advisor and if I work full-time next year and things keep going the way they have this year I'll hopefully be able to go down to 4 days a week.

 

[eclark1894]

Hmmpf, I'm working on something from another thread I started right now and I'm being stumped on how to model a knot.

 

[Pendraia]

Just posted my thoughts on that in the other thread...not sure how helpful it is though.

 

[phdubrov]

Warning: a bit of rant.
About all DS->Poser conversion thing and troubles with multiple render engines compatibility.
Short version: it can be done, but seems there are not enough interest in it.
I have Iray->Superfly conversion nodegroup in making. It would be good enough or simple good for buildings and furniture, not so good without manual adjustments for plants and cloth, and not working for skin, hairs, refractives (glass, water, gems) without a lot of additional scripting.
It even can be done without DS for non-encrypted props. (Buildings and furniture usually don't use collisions of smooth modifier or push modifier.)
But honestly, as I see it, it should be done only as sponsored/crowdfunded project.
Why "should"? Well, I have pale hope that something could switch in the collective mind of Poser/DS community. So good ideas could stop dying with overburn of enthusiasts. So needed scripts and tools could be maintained across versions of soft...