The Daz Studio and Related Product Deals Thread (Daz3D, Renderosity, Renderotica, etc.)

[Boogie]

This is the second or third year of the Spring PC+ Sale. You guys must not be paying attention.

I always look forward to the Build You Own Bundles but had to laugh this time. All but two items were previous freebies so there is nothing to work with.

 

[glassware]

Do the PC+ discounts and Daz Original discounts for PC+ members (70% and 30% respectivaly) usually stack? I confess I've never really checked closely how PC+ works exactly and just bought things if they look good in the store and take whatever bonus discount I get in the cart, but I'm trying to understand how Daz pricing works and really look for deals since the 50%-off gift card glitch.

Like, if I understand Daz Math correctly, anything from

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(the Select PC deal filtered to only Daz Originals) ought to be 90% off for PC+ members with one debut/still-new release in the cart. It's not currently happening, and I'm not sure if it's because the Daz Original discount for PC+ members doesn't stack with PC+ discount, or it's just because there's a store bug.

Because, if my logic is correct: PC+ (70% off), Daz Originals (45% off today), Select PC+ (40% off with one debut/still-new release). That means 0.30 x 0.55 x 0.60 = 0.099, or 9.9%, or 90.1% off. However things seem to be only getting to 82%, which fits the math for the special Select PC+ deal without the Daz Originals discount.

(Some of the deals they do right after the memorial day sale are so useless. There's a huge list of featured artists on sale, 50% off, another 10% off for PC+, another 10% of with debut/still-new release... which means the Daz Math works out to 60% off, the same as EVERY artist was discounted during the memorial day sales. I guess it's fine for people who missed the memorial day sale at least.)

 

[OhWee]

glassware

PC+ items do NOT have a set base discount. Essentially the Daz sales team picks a target price for the item ($1.99, $2.99, $7.99 etc) that is essentially the new BASE price for PC+ members. The higher base price is for Non-PC+ members, so if you are a PC+ member, you can essentially ignore that higher number.

So the extra 40% off is off of the PC+ Base price, not the full price.

70% off is usually for fast grab items, although rarely vendor stores will go on sale for that high (before discount stacking I mean).

So if your target item's PC+ price is say $7.99 normally, you'd take 40% off of that price.

The 45% off of Daz Originals is confusing. As far as I can tell, it is NOT applying to PC+ items on this page:

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You could call Daz customer service out on that (i.e. there is no asterisk on that listing on the sale page) to try to get the 45% off applied to PC+ items, or you could wait and see if it is a sales glitch. PC+ items go on sale for 50% off or more often enough, so I'd suggest waiting instead unless you are seeing a stacking discount somewhere.

Anyways, there's a forum thread on the Daz forums that covers sales issues:

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Looks like a few people are questioning this issue atm.

My experience with submitting a CS ticket is that if your logic is impeccable (i.e. you illustrate how YOU understand the stacking discounts) that CS will usually give you a refund for the difference as store credit (they often forget the sales tax difference though), but it can take a few days to see a resolution. I grew tired of submitting CS tickets a bit ago, and generally just pass on sales that aren't working as advertised. Still, if you don't mind putting in the effort, they will usually give you a credit to your Daz store credit if you are 'in the right'.

 

[glassware]

PC+ items do NOT have a set base discount. Essentially the Daz sales team picks a target price for the item ($1.99, $2.99, $7.99 etc) that is essentially the new BASE price for PC+ members.

Thanks for clarifying. I 100% believe that it's not really a flat 70%, I was just operating from first principles from this info page on PC+ (note top-left item) to try to figure this out:



Literally the only deal for PC+ items there says "70% off". But you're right, if you click the to the PC+ items page and sort by % off, it turns out there are some that are less. The vast majority are 70% or more though. You make a good point about the $1.99/$2.99/$4.99 price-setting, which is I guess the actual mechanism they use to do this, and it looks like sometimes they miss the 70% mark.

Basically, I was just simplifying the explanation since it was already long. It's hard to do without an actual percentage to represent PC+ prices. The math I give ought to apply (if the discounts stack) to anything on the page I linked that shows as being ~70% off or more; and in fact 95%+ in that listing are 70% off or more. But the more I think about it, the more I think the discounts just don't stack (despite there being nothing on the PC+ description above that says so).

70% off is usually for fast grab items, although rarely vendor stores will go on sale for that high (before discount stacking I mean).

The 70% off for fast grab also applies to non-PC+ members, so that's definitely not what it's referring to in the "Platinum Club+ Benefits" page.

PC+ items go on sale for 50% off or more often enough, so I'd suggest waiting instead unless you are seeing a stacking discount somewhere

Absolutely. The Daz Deals plugin shows a chart with the history of prices for each item, and when I try to construct stacking discounts like this I usually check whether it's been priced more cheaply ever, and if so how often.

 

[amster22]

glassware

PC+ items do NOT have a set base discount. Essentially the Daz sales team picks a target price for the item ($1.99, $2.99, $7.99 etc) that is essentially the new BASE price for PC+ members. The higher base price is for Non-PC+ members, so if you are a PC+ member, you can essentially ignore that higher number.

I definitely agree with OhWee. There is never a stacking discount with PC+ and DO. It would not make sense and could be confusing, as almost all PC+ items are DO (except some very old assets like the RDNA catalog). The displayed price of PC+ items is the final one (except of course some special extra discounts).

In fact, PC+ are regular items that are for some marketing reason transformed to PC+, with a ~70% discount (but frequently more) for PC+ members. But this discount, or the DO discount does not apply twice.

Absolutely. The Daz Deals plugin shows a chart with the history of prices for each item, and when I try to construct stacking discounts like this I usually check whether it's been priced more cheaply ever, and if so how often.

Daz Deals is an excellent tool, but it may be misleading. It considers the minimal price of an items every day and displays it as the price of this asset. But, it does not consider special effects that make this price not reproducible:

• daz glitches and the fact that this item can be much cheaper than daz expected because of unexpected discount stackings or errors. For instance last year during 30mn, a large part of the daz catalog was at $1.99. Some could enjoy that, but it was rapidly fixed. But Daz Deals considers that it was the price of the item at that day.
• buy-ins. If you have to purchase a specific new item or an expensive bundle to get the right to purchase an asset with a heavy discount, this forced purchase should somehow be counted in the asset price.
• special constraints. "Use coupon BLAHBLAH to get up to 3 select items at $1.99". You cannot completely consider that $1.99 was the actual price of the item. If you have 30 items that may interest you in the set, you may have to wait a long time to purchase all of them.

In my opinion, it is more reliable to consider that the minimal price over a year is the minimal one given by Daz Deals that is repeated several times during that period.

 

[OhWee]

Thanks for clarifying. I 100% believe that it's not really a flat 70%, I was just operating from first principles from this info page on PC+ (note top-left item) to try to figure this out:

View attachment 1227191

Literally the only deal for PC+ items there says "70% off". But you're right, if you click the to the PC+ items page and sort by % off, it turns out there are some that are less. The vast majority are 70% or more though. You make a good point about the $1.99/$2.99/$4.99 price-setting, which is I guess the actual mechanism they use to do this, and it looks like sometimes they miss the 70% mark.

(snip)

Oh how fun!

Well, they do say thousands of items, not ALL PC+ items, so on the legalese front they covered themselves. The 70% thing is probably a rule of thumb when picking the new base price for PC+ members. Still, it IS a bit misleading, but then that's par for the course with the Daz sales team.

A few PC+ items actually hit the 90% or higher mark with their 'everyday' price, but those are usually very old items...

As far as what DOs are, those are products that Daz has purchased outright from various venders and added to the Daz Originals category. So the vendors were paid a lump sum at some point, and no longer see a % of sales for those items. At least that's how I understand it. This is why Daz can discount those items pretty much at will, as they don't have to worry about the 'vendor cut' anymore.

This is why PC+ items are always (almost always?) DOs. Again, allows the Daz sales team to discount them at will without having to worry about the vendor cut.

There are a few artists that I think are 'on staff' that create a number of the PC+ items (thinking specifically of Jack Tomalin, there are others), hence why we sometimes see new PC+ items that didn't start out as 'regular' vendor items.


All of this is why I like the Renderosity sales better, but of course the Daz sales team accomplishes their goal by essentially forcing us to check the Daz store daily to make sure we don't miss out on anything. You don't HAVE to look at the page daily, but if you don't, you may miss out on something...

Which is why I love Renderosity, and their policy of giving us end dates on sales. Renderotica does the same as well. The 'cash back' points thing at Renderosity is gimmickey, but every little bit helps. The Renderotica incentive system is definitely a bit weirder...

 

[glassware]

tl;dr: single-use 40% off coupon FORTY-FOR-ME for daz3d.com. Don't know how long it's good for, but don't waste it on a small purchase.

long version:

Watching Honey pointlessly try the MORE-FOR-50 coupon again even though I've already used it, I decided to go googling and see if I could find out what the terms for it were. I found

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which says it's 50% off on orders 50$ or more.

But what else do I see listed there? "FORTY-FOR-ME", 40% off on orders $30 or more. Tested it in my shopping cart and it works, but I didn't use it yet. I recommend saving it, like MORE-FOR-50, for when you have a very big purchase. (Also note that you can't use it to buy a gift card. I checked.) That site's users last used it 2 months ago, so it may be valid for a long time, or it may come and go, same as (I think) MORE-FOR-50.

You may also want to bookmark that page.

 

[OhWee]

Just a mini rant. Usually it's seamanq that does these.

Took a look at the sale briefly early this morning Daz time. Didn't particularly wow me. Took another look just now, lots of older stuff in the categories that I've already passed on.

The most amusing thing for me is the 'BYOB' category. I've literally bought/acquired all of the qualifying items except for one through the Daz store already (in the October/November sales), so there's only one item on my screen when I go to that page. so obviously THAT part of the sale is out for me.

And the anniversary bundle that I don't own I passed on in November because I own over half the bundle and the remaining items aren't worth the price tag to me.

I guess we all get to this point eventually, but yeah even the PC+ for a day category looks like a lot of older stuff that I don't need... there may be newer stuff in there, but I'm too lazy to uncheck the 'already owned' button to see if there are any gems in there for people that haven't bought/acquired those as of yet.

So even with the share of that 40% off if you buy $30 or more (coupon code FORTY-FOR-ME and thanks for the share glassware !) isn't gonna do it for me, at least for today.

But no doubt I'll check the Daz store again Tomorrow. I really do appreciate y'all, that aren't as burned out on Daz shopping as I am ATM, sharing your thoughts on the sales!

Keep up the good work!

 

[seamanq]

Just a mini rant. Usually it's seamanq that does these.

Took a look at the sale briefly early this morning Daz time. Didn't particularly wow me. Took another look just now, lots of older stuff in the categories that I've already passed on.

The most amusing thing for me is the 'BYOB' category. I've literally bought/acquired all of the qualifying items except for one through the Daz store already (in the October/November sales), so there's only one item on my screen when I go to that page. so obviously THAT part of the sale is out for me.

And the anniversary bundle that I don't own I passed on in November because I own over half the bundle and the remaining items aren't worth the price tag to me.

I guess we all get to this point eventually, but yeah even the PC+ for a day category looks like a lot of older stuff that I don't need... there may be newer stuff in there, but I'm too lazy to uncheck the 'already owned' button to see if there are any gems in there for people that haven't bought/acquired those as of yet.

So even with the share of that 40% off if you buy $30 or more (coupon code FORTY-FOR-ME and thanks for the share glassware !) isn't gonna do it for me, at least for today.

But no doubt I'll check the Daz store again Tomorrow. I really do appreciate y'all, that aren't as burned out on Daz shopping as I am ATM, sharing your thoughts on the sales!

Keep up the good work!

Most of the stuff I am seeing hasn't "wowed" me much. I have selectively grabbed a few things by combining 50% off + 10% off for PC+ plus a monthly coupon for Daz Originals to get several nice outfits for around $14. But like OhWee this annual PC sale has been, like most of their sales lately, underwhelming to say the least. I check them out, but there certainly hasn't been much compelling for me to post here. It seems like they are doing a freebie a day for PC members this week, so check the sales cuz they show up in the sales. I have got several freebies this week that way.

 

[seamanq]

It seems like they are doing a freebie a day for PC members this week, so check the sales cuz they show up in the sales. I have got several freebies this week that way.

I forgot to mention this but 2 days into the sale, they started giving a free PC Bundle each day. On today's sale, it's

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. Yesterday the freebie was

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. It's worth at least checking the sale out and scrolling down to see if you could score a free bundle. Those might have something useful.

 

[tk99]

Don't know what to expect, but I will have a look

You're Invited




Don’t forget that you’re invited to a live webinar this Saturday, 4 PM EST with the one and only Jay Versluis!

Enjoy in-depth lighting, camera and expression techniques to get incredible renders!

Use this link to join the live webinar this Saturday, June 5 at 4 PM EST and we will see you there!

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[amster22]

Several sales at renderosity

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50% off

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50% off

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50% off

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50-60% off

Also a 15% off coupon JUNE2021STARTP15B10 (requires a $10 purchase)
The coupon can be stacked with some items in the above sales, but the stacking of coupons at rendo is still a mystery for me. It can be used several times and is valid till wednesday.

 

[glassware]

the stacking of coupons at rendo is still a mystery for me.

Each vendor chooses whether they want to allow coupons on their products or not (maybe per-product). This status is visible on the product page next to the price as a red or green ticket icon. However, renderosity does NOT show that icon in the cart, in the wishlist, or in the store catalog. (But when you apply a coupon on the purchase page it will tell you which items it did not apply to, now that it's too late to do much about it.)

Basically, the web pages seem designed to make it impossible to predict what will happen unless you're just buying one or two things and can keep track in your head. Bottom line, it's still exactly what you describe: I don't even bother trying to plan with renderosity coupons, I just use them when I can.

 

[OhWee]

Don't know what to expect, but I will have a look

You're Invited




Don’t forget that you’re invited to a live webinar this Saturday, 4 PM EST with the one and only Jay Versluis!

Enjoy in-depth lighting, camera and expression techniques to get incredible renders!

Use this link to join the live webinar this Saturday, June 5 at 4 PM EST and we will see you there!

You must be registered to see the links

The puppeteer demonstration towards the end of the video is definitely worth checking out. You can use it to mix expressions, poses, etc. 'on the fly'.

The video is supposed to stay on YouTube for a couple of days at least, so you can still watch it, just not 'live' anymore as Jay ended the video a bit ago.

Also, at the beginning, he mentions the code GET-FAMOUS, which you can use get the

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for an additional 45% off. (62% off without coupon in my cart, 79% with, or $23.07 before tax in my cart). Not sure if there are any other stacking opportunities, but the bundle is still new, so that lowers the odds of stacking...

The coupon doesn't appear to discount anything else (tried an item real quick). If anyone spots other items that are affected by the GET-FAMOUS coupon, call them out. Otherwise, if you are worried about coupon blocking but want this bundle for some reason, might as well grab it as a separate purchase since I'm not seeing any other discounts in play r.e this bundle.

Fred himself is an 8.1 character though. Might be relevant if you are sticking with older versions of Daz for some reason (I've personally been avoiding 8.1 just because, too much stuff in my library already).

 

[tk99]

The puppeteer demonstration towards the end of the video is definitely worth checking out. You can use it to mix expressions, poses, etc. 'on the fly'.

Yeah, I got a few shortcuts I didn't know until know, but I have and will live without them

But Puppeteer .... that was amazing.
Never know what to do with that


I like this guy, even he sometimes talks a little bit too much.
His chanel

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has a lot content regarding 3d, not only daz.

Also, at the beginning, he mentions the code GET-FAMOUS, which you can use get the

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for an additional 45% off. (62% off without coupon in my cart, 79% with, or $23.07 before tax in my cart). Not sure if there are any other stacking opportunities, but the bundle is still new, so that lowers the odds of stacking...

Fred himself is an 8.1 character though. Might be relevant if you are sticking with older versions of Daz for some reason (I've personally been avoiding 8.1 just because, too much stuff in my library already).

That's what I didn't like with this webinar.
I get it, he gets payed by daz to do this. But promoting the bundle like he did ....

Just speaking for me:
There is nothing in this bundle for me.
I don't like the character, I don't like the environment, and poses .... I've got too many already.
And the clothes .... yeah, never seen anyone running around in these sacks.

So I got my weekend rant, have a nice one

 

[OhWee]

Another quick note r.e. the video (I'll also mention this in the freebies thread again).

Jay mentions a paid product to mirror poses by 3DUniverse (Scene Tools). NOTE that IS not a free product, but if you are looking for an easy peasy script tool to mirror poses and 'look at camera', try this one:

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I use the mirror pose and look at camera tools in this script quite often, they just work. No sense paying for functionality you can get for free, although I'm sure the 3DUniverse tools also do other things.

 

[tk99]

If I got this right, he said that he has an old Xeon machine.

For everybody who don't know about CPUs:
A Xeon is a server CPU, with one to four CPUs on one mainboard.
I those times (5-10 years ago) the desktop CPUs had 2 Cores and 4 threads, the server CPUs 4/8 or 8/16.

The CPUs he has are quiet old and any new Ryzen or I9 will outperform them in THIS case.
Because DAZ only needs the cpu power to feed the GPUs and load the scene.

In fact, if you have a decent GPU (RTX 2000TI/Super or 3000) switching on CPU rendering will slow you down!
So don't pay too much attention to the CPU if you are building a new rig for rendering.
The CPU is only important for scene loading, auto fit and so on. Not for rendering.

 

[tk99]

Another quick note r.e. the video (I'll also mention this in the freebies thread again).

Jay mentions a paid product to mirror poses by 3DUniverse (Scene Tools). NOTE that IS not a free product, but if you are looking for an easy peasy script tool to mirror poses and 'look at camera', try this one:

You must be registered to see the links

I use the mirror pose and look at camera tools in this script quite often, they just work. No sense paying for functionality you can get for free, although I'm sure the 3DUniverse tools also do other things.

That's G3, so I have to use g3pose (to G8) only?

Since I bought the "look at" tool ... I won't miss it. I think it's a must have like meshgrabber and a few other things.
Perhaps (don't know if there is already) open a thread "have to have tools"?

 

[OhWee]

If I got this right, he said that he has an old Xeon machine.

For everybody who don't know about CPUs:
A Xeon is a server CPU, with one to four CPUs on one mainboard.
I those times (5-10 years ago) the desktop CPUs had 2 Cores and 4 threads, the server CPUs 4/8 or 8/16.

The CPUs he has are quiet old and any new Ryzen or I9 will outperform them in THIS case.
Because DAZ only needs the cpu power to feed the GPUs and load the scene.

In fact, if you have a decent GPU (RTX 2000TI/Super or 3000) switching on CPU rendering will slow you down!
So don't pay too much attention to the CPU if you are building a new rig for rendering.
The CPU is only important for scene loading, auto fit and so on. Not for rendering.

Daz also doesn't take good advantage of multithreading most of the time, except for rendering and maybe a few scripts. This is why he's able to breeze through the demo scene so quickly. So don't sweat it if you only have a 4 core CPU, at least for Iray, as long as you have a decent graphics Nvidia card (with CUDA cores) for Iray.

Of course, having more cores can be useful for multitasking/running other programs while you are waiting for an Iray render to bake.

As for the free script link I shared, the mirror and look at tools work just fine on G8F. There are some other tools for converting poses between generations in that script, not sure how well those will work, but I don't use those other widgets 99.9% of the time, just the look at camera and mirror pose.

 

[seamanq]

If I got this right, he said that he has an old Xeon machine.

For everybody who don't know about CPUs:
A Xeon is a server CPU, with one to four CPUs on one mainboard.
I those times (5-10 years ago) the desktop CPUs had 2 Cores and 4 threads, the server CPUs 4/8 or 8/16.

The CPUs he has are quiet old and any new Ryzen or I9 will outperform them in THIS case.
Because DAZ only needs the cpu power to feed the GPUs and load the scene.

In fact, if you have a decent GPU (RTX 2000TI/Super or 3000) switching on CPU rendering will slow you down!
So don't pay too much attention to the CPU if you are building a new rig for rendering.
The CPU is only important for scene loading, auto fit and so on. Not for rendering.

I have the Xeon 8/16 (more precisely, the E5-2680 v 2 2.80 GHz 3.40 GHz). Even with 32 GB of ram, it is not particularly fast rendering in Daz, and unfortunately, the video card I have (GTX-740) stopped working a few releases ago. So rendering on this beast is a 2 hour per render affair, which is why I have been exploring using virtual machines on Paperspace, because buying a new video card isn't in the "cards" for me right now.

Just to clarify, I built this rig way before I ever discovered Daz3D ... this was built to do one thing, be able to parse over a million pages on a multinational company's website that I had to do regularly ... and it did it really well.