Status of the plugin?

[Hydra]

I think you are confusing industrial products with commercial products.

I kinda liken this software to industrial software. In the commercial world when you sell in 10k+ quantities you can afford to spend a lot more on R&D since its cost is relatively low compared to the product. (Full team of 5 at $100k each = $50 per unit sold.) Where as in the industrial world volume is low, and labor becomes your most expensive component. If your volume is 1k units, your cost per unit sold shoots up to $500 per unit with a full team.

This forces companies to look at financial games, namely sooner to market means decreased total capital investment which means decreased risk to the company. That means buggier earlier releases with limited capabilities, and customers begging for fixes, updates, and changes.

I was in that boat at my last company. We got an industrial pipeline analyzer out early in order to win support for future sales on a pipeline, but the customer wanted all the other features. They had to wait 6 more months for that, and frankly there were so many other changes, that they had to completely replace the analyzer.

We also had SO2 analyzers (to prevent acid rain) for power plants. One of our suppliers changed their spectral analyzer mid development. It consumed 1 man year of schedule time to figure out what they did, what they did wrong, and get them to do it right. That meant we had to know more about their product than them. In the mean time you can't exactly tell a power plant to shut down 'cause they are out of compliance while you fix it. (Tums, I recommend Tums.)

On the commercial side of things (say Sony TVs), you can do what ever you want and still make money. Except increase the cost of the hardware.

[kibbycabbit]

That's an interesting thread discussion. I see, size of team and qty of the plugin sold...

Does anyone know what it really means when they say v2.0 preview state?

Does it mean we can only render camera movement? With animation rendering, I notice the models are not morphing nor moving. But if I change frame during preview, I can see the changes. What am I doing wrong? Is it the limitation in the plugin...or...?

[sikotik13]

It's a known issue with the current prerelease. Only fix at the moment is to animate in version 1.2 of the plugin, or perhaps exporting to Standalone (unsure, as I don't animate much, and haven't, just recapping what I've read from others who do here).

A quick thread search would likely pull up a plethora of posts detailing the woes of animation at the moment, and likely any workarounds I am forgetting.

[kibbycabbit]

Wish I can use v1.2 but I'm forced to use v2 due to the new Maxwell generation video cards.

The workaround I am unsure if it's a good solution. Can anyone share me their experience working with alembic exporter (DAZ Studio plug-in) for animation, textures, UV mapping, and possible camera?

Since it'll be a film short. My concern is I need to be able to reproduce in later dates if need to correct animation or improving textures.

[Spectralis]

Unfortunately, v1.2 is the best and most practical option to render animation out of DAZ. Alembic and the standalone aren't really viable for rendering DAZ animation atm as far as I'm aware. There are threads in this forum posted by those who've tried exporting to the standalone which might be worth reading.

There should be a sticky about the animation rendering limitations because quite a few people have asked this question and until the next release of v2 the only realistic option is v1.2. I know it's probably not the answer you want to hear but if there was a better option than v1.2 then those of us who render animation would be using it.

As for future cross version compatibility that's not a given. There's no way of knowing if this will be properly implemented. Atm it isn't working. This situation is very frustrating and I wish OTOY would warn people about these limitations before they buy the plugin.

[kibbycabbit]

As for future cross version compatibility that's not a given. There's no way of knowing if this will be properly implemented. Atm it isn't working. This situation is very frustrating and I wish OTOY would warn people about these limitations before they buy the plugin.

I notice "preview state" in bold and red before I buy. But they really need to clarify what it really means. As it being a preview, I'm unconvinced if 99 EURO is the right price. Once it gets out the prerelease with animation support, we don't have to pay again?

[sikotik13]

From what I gathered according to various posts by Otoy staff and t_3, that price includes the finalized version. I believe it's supposed to cover up to the first major revision after pre-release completion (version 3.* would have to be upgraded to).

[Spectralis]

When v2 of the standalone was released those who owned v1.x (of any plugin) were given a free plugin upgrade which gave a little more incentive to upgrade even though development of the DS plugin has taken so long. I think that OTOY should have continued this policy for new customers of the DS plugin at least until the final v2 version of the plugin is released. Maybe then that would have given OTOY more incentive to complete development.