Bryce and 10.8

vindazi

Is Bryce going to upgrade to work in Mac os 10.8 + or should we just abandon it? The list of applications I can't use because I want to use Bryce is getting too long. I have been loyal to Bryce but it is starting to feel like a one way love affair :-).

Chohole

This thread will be updated as and when there is any news http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/19948/

caravelle

I am waiting too. I think DAZ has already lost a lot of money - I didn't buy any Bryce stuff for over one year, and I am probably not the only one.

GRK_Astronomer

Here is my reply ...

I have a lot of work invested into Bryce and was mad when DAZ 3D did not address the issues between Bryce 7.1 and OS X 10.7. They have not addressed the issues with 10.8 either. Don't know about the rest of the community; but, I simply cannot afford to have a Mac sitting here on OS X 10.6.8 because DAZ 3D is UNWILLING to get Bryce working with newer versions of OS X and now, Mavericks is soon to be delivered. My take, crap or get off the pot, DAZ!

If you are no longer going to support anymore development of Bryce on an OS X platform, then you owe it to the community of users that are hanging on, to let them know you are no longer supporting it.

I am not a big fan of DAZ 3D Studio (any version). If DAZ won't support it, then it is time for a divorce and to move over to Vue instead.

Oroboros

Every time someone asks that "update" question I get mad. Simply because it's asked.

And any post I make that DOESN'T tell you to keep hope alive gets censored.

GRK: I can empathise, but DAZ owes us nothing. We voluntarily purchased their product, they didn't force it on us.

One of he most valuable lessons my 5th Form economics teacher taught me is that "A dollar is a VOTE." Your choice either empowers or disenfranchises a product or service.

DAZ will not treat this forum with any weight when it comes to company direction :) Bryce users have been distilled into a concentrated fanbase of the product where only the long-time users do the most talking, myself included. The fact is, it doesn't cost DAZ anything to continue to sell Bryce (provided they maintain their notices that the product will not run on modern OSs), and they only thing they can do is make money with it. They can't lose money, as no effort is being devoted to its upkeep. Cloud-based servers don't get paid, and any rental of said service is offset with the other products DAZ peddles.

The most people can hope for is the incorporation or Bryce features into other software, but it won't be Bryce. Bryce can no longer be developed - the underlying code is too difficult/uneconomic to translate into a modern software development process.

In any event, if what you have works, continue using it. If it doesn't, you can do what most people do and hybridise your process (model in Blender, render in Bryce, for instance), or take the hardest road and abandon Bryce completely: learn new software with completely incompatible workflows, file formats and feature sets than Bryce uses.

I am NOT, by any means, trying to talk you into keep using Bryce. I use Bryce for texturing and animation, but I'm modeling in Blender. Blender is not easy. But it's supported, has a very large user base and fantastic support material, both written and video, uses modern languages and workflows, and is free (although I donate: this app really is too amazing to use for nothing).

GRK_Astronomer

Of course it is a matter of choice what you buy and in this case I bought Bryce way back on version 4. Since then EVERY company that has bought Bryce has in-turn made improvements and and marched along with the music of OS upgrades. Corel did it, sold it to DAZ 3D and they pushed out 6 with little difficulty.

The story changes with 7 and 7.1 though. I purchased 7 when it came out (the same day) ... not limitations, etc. It was only after I loaded it and tried to run with it that it was obvious that 7 was not compatible with anything beyond OS X 10.6.8. Having a separate Mac on an older version, at least allows me to use it. It was not until weeks later that they finally posted that Bryce 7 was not compatible with 10.7. After many emails, DAZ 3D did finally reimburse half of the cost as a store credit, and I am satisfied with that.

Frankly, OS X 10.7 was already out on the market before the debut of Bryce 7; and there fore should have at east been tested and proclaimed to be incompatible at the time it was offered, not weeks later when everyone starts to loge issues Second whilst you say that Bryce programming and coding is dead-ended as a product because of modern technology and programming tools, you argument seems to fall a bit short, since that is exactly what DAZ 3D attempted to do just not on the right OS.

Now when it comes to expectations, I could care less about additional bells and whistles and in fact found most of the 7.x additions annoying and cumbersome. What I do expect is that DAZ at least put an upgrade in to anyones had that does work on OS 7 and beyond. Personally, I am not going to hold my breath waiting for them to do it since it has been way beyond 2 years already.

Blender ... yes trying it; but, as you said, is more cumbersome. The are others as well like Vue which I use about 25 to 30 % of the time anymore. So there are options, and they are expensive.

My last point is that EVERYONE is entitled to say what they want to say whether you agree or not. If you are tired of reading about people making some attempt to prod DAZ to looking into the Bryce 7.x compatibility issues, then just skip over it. Your teacher was correct, and so were my parents. "If you do not have anything good to say, then it is probably best to not say anything."

Thus in responding, it is your prerogative and right to disagree and it is mine to state that DAZ should announce that it will be disenfranchising the Bryce community or it will fix the issues. If the are reading and choose to ignore, fine. If the read it and take action we will all celebrate I am sure. With the rapid disappearance of items to be sold for Bryce, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that DAZ has dumped Bryce for DAZ Studio, and even there user believe they should concentrate on Carrara instead.

So, you go do your thing, I will de mine.

Chohole

Bryce 7 released in 2010. OSX 10.7 was released in 2011.

In fact the Bryce dev cycle was ended with 7.1.0.109 before Mac released Lion, and as the Mac Dev was not a full time Daz employee, but on a contract, as his contract had ended he had to be let go.

Oroboros

GRK_Astronomer said:

My last point is that EVERYONE is entitled to say what they want to say whether you agree or not. If you are tired of reading about people making some attempt to prod DAZ to looking into the Bryce 7.x compatibility issues, then just skip over it. Your teacher was correct, and so were my parents. "If you do not have anything good to say, then it is probably best to not say anything."

I'm not denying your rights. I don't think anyone can.

I question why you bothered to gripe in this forum. To what end?

No action can be taken in this forum to DAZ. Basically you're dumping two personal posts in a forum where Bryce-users help each other. Of course, you weren't to know the nature of this forum, because these are the only two posts you've ever made since this site got updated and your frustration overrode the courtesies of examining the nature of the forum beforehand. If you had, you'd know the only thing your post would help is helping you vent your frustration.

Several regulars also ignore these posts, including me. And guess what? The complaints to DAZ keep coming to this forum. So we can safely conclude Ignorance Doesn't Work. I fail to see why people who are here to help others with this crazy hobby called Bryce should have to weather complaints to DAZ. If you have an electronic problem with your television, do you look for salvation from other people that bought that TV? If you're worried about climate change, do you ask weather reporters to fix it? If you have a problem with DAZ, should you take it up with the people who use one of its products? What are we going to do - grab pitchforks and storm the castle?

This forum is hosted by DAZ. But it offers you no influence, nor hotline, to the company. In much the same way, complaining about the design of a snooker table at a tournament hosted by the manufacturers to a bunch of people playing snooker isn't going to do much, other than annoy the snooker players.

[...] it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that DAZ has dumped Bryce for DAZ Studio, and even there user believe they should concentrate on Carrara instead.

So, you go do your thing, I will de mine.

I am doing my thing: helping people get the most of of Bryce, particularly in the field of animation. Let me tell you what 'your thing' has done in the last three years, by people who've said near-identical gripes you've detailed, who have used Bryce longer than you have.

Nothing. Even the manual isn't complete.

Whether Bryce is 'alive' or 'dead' is irrelevant in this forum. If you have a user problem that we can help you with, fire away.

There are active forums around for games that haven't been in production for 13 years, populated by enthusiastic fans, clamouring for their revival in mainstream media. It's not going to happen. Enthusiasm and dedication of a dwindling amount of people, particularly a group of people unwilling to pay more than chickenfeed for 3D design software, is a fool's bet for any company.

No-one here can help with this problem, and DAZ loses nothing by providing a piece of software for legacy OS computers. Either create a partition on a hard-drive that you can boot into 10.6.8 and upgrade the rest of your system, or get software that runs on a modern OS. Your OS shouldn't have to be held hostage by some pretty clunky 3D software.

rbpahl_cde706a00f

Can we at least expect that Daz takes note of the quantity of complaints?

Oroboros

In this forum? No.

Formal complaints? Certainly, and they will be judged on a case-by-case basis to see if reparations are in order.

But here's the point: for the last three years, complaints have been lodged both formally and informally (this forum). Nothing has been done. So either DAZ is simply ignoring a large volume of complaints, OR the number of complaints, while passionately argued, is very small. Either way, the cost of retaining the custom of a few passionate hobbyists doesn't warrant investing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in modernising Bryce as a stand-alone application.

And let's be clear here: DAZ has the ability to pull every Bryce customer's transaction records from their online store and analyse the amount of money coming in vs. the amount of money needed to re-invent Bryce's internal architecture. The only reason Bryce hasn't been taken off the shelf in DAZ's store is that Bryce users still have the ability to purchase ongoing DAZ store inventory for their creations.

In essence, the $20 dollars you currently pay for Bryce is the price of admission into their store to buy more stuff.