Why is Hex, Bryce, and Daz Pro free?
Azla
Posts: 0
Does anyone know why these products are now free on Daz3d? And also, why they will not show up in the download account list after getting them?
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I'm assuming they wanted to expand their customer base and offer the tools for free so everyone had a chance to start producing art. I don't know why they wouldn't show up in your "My Downloadable Products".
If you downloaded them directly and did not register them within your account they will not necessarily show up in your account.
Frank was right, we made the decision to be much more of a content company working with 3rd party content creators and some internally to produce products for customers. Making the software available for free opens the door for thousands of more people able to use these great tools.
I was wondering about that :) Will Carrara end up on that list?
There are no plans to give Carrara away for free.
If you downloaded them directly and did not register them within your account they will not necessarily show up in your account.
Frank was right, we made the decision to be much more of a content company working with 3rd party content creators and some internally to produce products for customers. Making the software available for free opens the door for thousands of more people able to use these great tools.
I have long felt that you (DAZ) were masters of King Gillette's marketing philosophy - give away the razor (Studio) and sell the blades (content). You do a pretty good P.T. Barnum, as well (I cite the near-continuous sales and Fastgrab). :-)
If you downloaded them directly and did not register them within your account they will not necessarily show up in your account.
If you did download them directly, I'd highly recommend that you "purchase" them from your Daz account anyway. That way, the serial numbers will show up in your list of S/N, and if you ever need to re-download them after they are no longer free (should that happen), you can.
And I won't count on any of them still being free after a new version is officially released.
The studio base has always been free, as has been said how can DAZ sell you content if you don't have something to use it.
In my opinion Bryce and Hex are free because they are out of production, I'm very pessimistic of ever seeing any further development of these apps.
Most of life's decisions have more than one reason behind them...
I think one reason that DS4 Pro was freebie'd was to get the Content Creation Tools into as many PA and freebie makers' hands as possible.
Most of those folks got there by exploring software, and would gleefully play with something free that they'd never pay for.
And, at the time, you needed CCT where Autofit failed. That increased user acceptance, of Genesis, right there.
But, at last, Autofit is finally keeping morphs. (As far as I know, it still can't do shoes, and CCT can barely roughly-manage it).
Daz doesn't have nearly enough docs for their Genesis tool. Something had to be done to aquire skeptics.
As a corollary, the more folks pulling their hair out, the more how-to's that volunteers get out to the public.
Also consider that when SmithMicro got weary of Genesis, the hopes of making DS4P pay for itself kinda dwindled...
Hex, with its bridge to DS, is useful for content creation, and for fixing some of the imported clothes which break in DS4. (Also useful for clothing converters, for when clothing isn't quite compatible with later generations mesh requirements. That used to matter more when people were converting Generation 3 clothing to Gen4, so autofit could handle them, IIRC). I can't see them stopping here, on Hex, with so much more needed.
2nd-to-finally, this might've been a way to gauge if they could increase Bryce interest and content sales.
(I suspect that if they could've cannibalized code to Cararra, Bryce would've ceased a while back).
Finally, today's free-downloaders are tommorow's potential upgraders.
Officially, Bryce is suspended, until the next development cycle.
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=189861
I think that's the deal with Hex, too, but I can't seem to find a link.
At least that's the plan. Of course, sometimes Daz doesn't stick to plan.*cough* often*cough*
But, right now, their application developers have their hands full with Carrara and DS4, so it's thumb-twiddling time.
There are no plans to give Carrara away for free.
Good! I don't want to be all "I got mine.", but I'd be honked off if Pro went for free, even if there was a substantial refund for current users.
(Basic could be free, I don't care about that).
This is still the situation. Bryce and Hex wait till the next dev cycle, except for the fix for Mac users and OSX Lion (for Bryce), which they hope to do sooner.
Cool news for the Mac folk! I hadn't heard that bit.
By the way, I didn't mean to sound like I was downgrading Bryce.
As long as it's a cheap alternative to Vue's daunting upgrade path, and it makes landscapes better than Carrara's (I hear), has this much content in the store, and fans who put a lot of learning into making it do those delicious renders... I think Daz will be motivated to keep banging away at it.
Just saying, I've heard (for what its worth) that it's a pain to code And I bet they'd always like content to move faster. ;-) If they could've got Carrara to take its content and do its job, I think they would've jumped on it. (Maybe they could've, then, hypothetically made a cheaper 3rd Carrara that was little else than Bryce in functionality).
The strange thing is that, way back when, Carrarra, or what became carrarra started life in the same stable as Bryce, together with Poser. It developed from Ray Dream Studio.
When metacreations decided to give up with the software, the three ended up all with different owners.
If you did download them directly, I'd highly recommend that you "purchase" them from your Daz account anyway. That way, the serial numbers will show up in your list of S/N, and if you ever need to re-download them after they are no longer free (should that happen), you can.
Purchased Hexagon, but no serial number for this appears in my serial no. list. Perhaps it no longer needs a serial?
If you did download them directly, I'd highly recommend that you "purchase" them from your Daz account anyway. That way, the serial numbers will show up in your list of S/N, and if you ever need to re-download them after they are no longer free (should that happen), you can.
Purchased Hexagon, but no serial number for this appears in my serial no. list. Perhaps it no longer needs a serial?
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/home
Please do not send people to Zendesk when it is not an issue that needs a help ticket. This sort of thing will merely jam the supports system up with spurious tickets.
Information about serial numbers is avalilable in the first post in this thread.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/115/
Actually this was to be resolved and the serial numbers added to the Downloads as of yesterday I believe (or by Monday) but they are also in the thread as pointed out above as well :) This shouldn't be an issue in the future though...sorry for any confusion or inconvenience :)
Serial numbers are posted here. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/115/
And if you bothered to check the link you would see that ON that page are all the serial keys. Nobody has to put in a support ticket to see the page.
Serial numbers are in the download of the software for Hex and Bryce. My understanding is that they are in the read me files.
These new zip files should be self contained for SN's.
In the updated ones, yes.
The key is also included in the zips for D/S4Pro.