OTOY Forums

Are we getting an other update soon? or even a partial update? I really need the bug with that corrupts files fixed. And I have a feeling it's fixed as are many other bugs, but T3 would prefer to wait and release one final version when all the bugs have been fixed. I now have about $700 worth of software collecting dust, let's not even mention the money i spent on video cards....

You'll say go back to version 1.2, this is a pre-release. I can't go back and work with version 1.2 because if I build something complex, chances are it won't load in the new version and everyone will tell me,"It's a new version you can't expect it to load stuff from the old version, things have changed too much,....."
I can't build scenes with the new version of octane because if they contain HDRI images, they will probably crash Daz Studio and never load.

I paid for the upgrade and i'd like to use it. I't s not like I paid a pre-release price. I paid the full price of $139. That's about $200 Canadian.

Spending 30 minutes a week, updating your clients should be part of your schedule.

If you can't deal with keeping your customers up to date. I suggest you drop the project and give it to face_off.

He's supporting 3 platforms. poser, rhinoceros and archicad i'm sure he wouldn't mind handling one more.

I think the issues around the Daz plugin are caused by Daz. Reality 4 for Daz has an exceptionally vibrant complaint department. Reality 4 complaints for Poser is... dead quiet.

Paolo has said a lot of very similar things as the developer here has. Namely, Daz is releasing haphazardly (as in surprising everyone) poorly or undocumented products.

To a user of a Daz product it seems simple to blame the plug in developer, but really the issue is Daz, and the amount of time it takes to reverse engineer what they've done. (Reality 4 uses the same code for much of its plug in for both Poser and Daz. Only the Daz version is crashing and crapping out.)

Hydra wrote:I think the issues around the Daz plugin are caused by Daz. Reality 4 for Daz has an exceptionally vibrant complaint department. Reality 4 complaints for Poser is... dead quiet.

It is one thing to cite flaws in the upstream software as part of the problems with the plugin.

It is something altogether different in not telling your users the status of the plugin, or even why it is taking so long to resolve issues. Silence from the developer is not a flaw in Reality 4.

The developers of other Daz plugins communicate with their user base. People still buy Reality 4, because they feel they have not been abandoned, and there is still hope.

Maybe you are correct about Daz, maybe it's a mish mash of spaghetti code that can't be deciphered in a reasonable amount of time. The point is we paid for a product, that should be delivered in a reasonable amount of time. This was not propositioned to us as a kick starter campaign; that might or might not work.

Meanwhile my 2 780gt cards are depreciating in value every day and my project has been put on hold indefinitely.

What's aggravating me is the lack of communication.

Sorry for the rant.

I get the frustrations... Better communication would probably help.

I never have problems with DS or the other plugins I own. No crashes so far. But even if others do, that doesn't explain why the final OR v2 version seems to take forever to arrive. The only other DS plugin that's taken longer to be developed is Infinito - a complete waste of money imo but that cost a tenth the price of OR without even factoring in the price of GPU's.

I take it you're not a programmer.

Random releases means complete rewrites of code under duress when you least expect it. Undocumented or poorly documented means extensive time spend reverse engineering what's there. All of which tends to result in jumbles of spaghetti code... making it harder to add features. It also takes longer to test. As all of this is undefinable, it is also impossible to schedule.

You see this as schedule slip and frustration.

Think of this as the price for using free software (Daz Studio). Have you considered switching to Poser?

Tried poser, not an option for me, need to work with Genesis characters.

I've been programming for over 30 years, so I know better than most what is involved in releasing software. What I do know is that if I sold someone my accounting package, got paid in full and then disappeared with out a trace for 2 months, I'd probably have some guy with a bad haircut and a cheap suit named Guido after me.

I've sold software that had bugs. But I worked with my clients in resolving those bugs, we had a bug tracker, that got updated daily. There was a list, their were priorities, critical bugs were taken care of immediately. Customer was always kept in the loop, they had to be. I didn't want to waste my time fixing bugs that weren't a priority.

I've solve this problem once before. We were dealing with client who wouldn't define and end point and kept changing his mind. My company wouldn't get paid until it was done. I warned management that this would go on forever and we'd never get paid.

I got the CEO to get the contract amended to state a final revision. To which the client obliged. I built to that rev, and we got paid.

It was funny a few months later when they asked for more changes. I said no. "What? Who's working on the code?" "No one." "Who's responsible for the code?" "No one." "Why?" "We've been paid. We're done."

In this case, Otoy would need to spec some versions. i.e. Daz 4.6, and possibly Octane 1.x. They'd probably get castigated by the larger market for doing that though.

Have you considered doing a mish mash of things with your projects? Keep the components separate and merging them inside Octane proper? I know its a pain, but it might get you going with the least risk.

Another option here is to use the older rev. Only export each separate figure morph in case you need to reconstruct a scene later on. (You are probably right about compatibility, just check out what happened to RedSpec.)

I don't think the complexity of programming software is relevant to customers. They just want it to work. Would a software developer feel sympathy for a customer who couldn't pay a monthly sub because of the complexity of a project that was holding up their business? I doubt it! If I bought a Sony TV and it didn't arrive until many months later and then wasn't fully functional would I feel for the design team? Probably not! It's unrealistic to apply one set of rules to customers and not to oneself.