Daz Studio Pro BETA - version 4.9.0.29!

DAZ_VinceDAZ_Vince Posts: 114
edited November 2015 in Daz Studio Discussion

Daz 3D is pleased to announce Daz Studio Pro BETA - version 4.9.0.29!

 

!! IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU BACKUP YOUR CONTENT DATABASE IN DAZ STUDIO 4.8 BEFORE LAUNCHING DAZ STUDIO 4.9 !!

How do I backup my User Data in Daz Studio?

Important Notes:

Content Database / Metadata related

  • The first time you launch Daz Studio 4.9, any data that exists in the content database is migrated so that it can be used in Daz Studio 4.9.
  • The amount of time the database migration operation takes is proportional to the amount of data to be migrated.
  • The database migration operation does not delete the data that it migrates from the previous location so that it remains accessible by earlier versions and other applications, such as Carrara.
  • Daz Studio 4.9 uses the same PostgreSQL database as Daz Studio 4.6 and later, and/or other applications, such as Carrara.
  • A portion of the data contained within the database is shared amongst versions but not entirely. For example:
    • Creating a category in either Daz Studio 4.9 or 4.8 will cause that category to exist in the other version
    • Assigning a file to that category in Daz Studio 4.9 will NOT cause that file to be assigned to that category in Daz Studio 4.8
    • Assigning a file to that category in Daz Studio 4.8 WILL cause the file to be assigned to the category in Daz Studio 4.9
  • Reseting the database in any version of Daz Studio that uses PostgreSQL (4.6 or later) will purge all of data in the database, including any data that may be used by earlier versions or other applications, such as Carrara.
  • After the initial migration operation, edited metadata in Daz Studio 4.8 will not be migrated to Daz Studio 4.9.
    • A workaround is to export User Data from Daz Studio 4.8 and reimport User Data in Daz Studio 4.9.

NVIDIA Iray related

  • Fixes made to the implementation of Sub Surface Scattering (SSS) in the NVIDIA Iray renderer affect materials which have "Translucency Weight" active—not set to 0. This manifests in skin tones appearing more blue than they do in 4.8. A quick adjustment that can be made during the BETA phase is to adjust the "SSS Reflectance Tint" from a light blue to a light yellow—R: 1.00, G: 0.88, B: 0.67. Adjust this value to your liking.
    • After the BETA phase, Daz 3D products will be updated to include this change.
  • The Mac version now requires OS X 10.7 or later.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Frequently Asked Daz Connect Questions:

Previous Threads:

Post edited by rbtwhiz on
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Comments

  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162
    edited November 2015

    What is new in Daz Studio 4.9? Do I need to update my copy?

    Daz Studio 4.9 resolves many issues and implements many improvements since the 4.8.0.59 General Release.  More detail on specific fixes/changes/improvements can be found in the Change Log, which can be viewed online within the Documentation Center portion of our site.  All new downloads of the Daz Studio Pro BETA product (SKU: 12000) will be of this version.

    1. Smart Content pane (and other smart content views)
      • Files page:
        • Easily explore the product an asset is in
          • Select "Explore Product..." from the context menu of any asset
        • Explore the LOCAL_USER "product"
          • Consists of files that do not have metadata to indicate that they belong to a particular product
          • Right-click an asset you've created, or which was not installed with metadata, and choose "Explore User Assets..."
        • Easily explore related assets
          • Redesigned Associated Asset Views
            • Navigate and filter the contents of a product the same way you navaigate and/or filter products and assets
          • Context menu > "Explore Add-Ons..."
          • Context menu > "Explore Targets..."
      • Products page:
        • View products in your account that are "available via Daz Connect"
          • All - All products, regardless of installed state
          • Installed - All products that are installed (not limited to only those installed via Daz Connect)
          • Available - All products that are NOT currently installed, but are available via Daz Connect
          • Updates - Products that were installed via Daz Connect and have an update available
          • Pending - Products that are currently in the queue for a Daz Connect install operation; install, update, uninstall
        • Install products in your account that are available via Daz Connect
          • Double-click to download/install
          • Context menu > "Install"
          • Supports mass install via multiple selection + context menu
        • Update products in your account that were installed via Daz Connect
          • Context menu > "Install Update"
          • Supports mass update via multiple selection + context menu
        • Uninstall products that were installed via Daz Connect
          • Context menu > "Uninstall"
            Supports mass uninstall via multiple selection + context menu
        • Quick access to online ReadMe
          • Context menu > "More Information..."
          • Double-click the product icon to explore the product, then click the product icon in the product view
        • Easily explore the contents of product
          • Redesigned Product View
            • Navigate and filter the contents of a product the same way you navaigate and/or filter products and assets
            • Single click access to the online ReadMe
          • Double-click
          • Context menu > "Explore Product..."
        • Explore the LOCAL_USER "product"
          • Consists of files that do not have metadata to indicate that they belong to a particular product
        • Product icons
          • Color = Installed
          • Color/Grayscale = Installation progress
          • Grayscale = Available via Daz Connect, but not installed
        • Tooltip
          • Large color image for products available via Daz Connect
      • Filter By Context option:
        • While enabled, filtering occurs based on what is selected [or not] in the scene, the content type assigned to a given asset, the category that is currently selected and the keyword(s) that are entered into the filter field.
        • When disabled, filtering occurs based on the category that is currently selected and the keyword(s) that are entered into the filter field.
      • Categories:
        • All
          • When "Filter By Context" is enabled (see above), displays all assets/products—including those that are not associated with a category.
          • When "Filter By Context" is disabled (see above), displays all assets/products that have metadata.
        • Lost and Found
          • User-facing assets with metadata provided by Daz Connect which are not assigned to a category in the provided metadata
          • Initial placement of locally created user-facing assets (this will be changed in a subsequent build)
          • Local user-facing assets dicovered during a content scan (this will be changed in a subsequent build)
      • Sync Pages action:
        • Synchronizes the selected category between the Files and Products pages
          • Falls back to the first common ancestor if the category path is missing from the opposite page
        • Synchronizes the filter field value between the Files and Products pages
        • Syncronizes the state of the "Filter By Context" option
      • Information Panel:
        • Store page
          • Browse products you don't already own
          • Filtered based on which object in the scene you currently have selected and which category you're currently navigated to
        • Info page
          • Selected asset Info
          • Selected product Info
        • Tags page
          • Clickable Tags—easy keyword filtering
    2. Content Library pane
      • Products:
        • Lists all products in your account that are available via Daz Connect
        • Product icons
          • Color = Installed
          • Color/Grayscale = Installation progress
          • Grayscale = Available via Daz Connect, but not installed
        • Tooltip
          • Large color image for products available via Daz Connect
        • Install products in your account that are available via Daz Connect
          • Select, then double-click "Install <Product_Name>" icon
          • Context menu > "Install"
        • Update products in your account that were installed via Daz Connect
          • Context menu > "Install Update"
        • Uninstall products that were installed via Daz Connect
          • Context menu > "Uninstall"
        • Quick access to online ReadMe
          • Context menu > "More Information..."
      • Categories:
        • Lost and Found
          • User-facing assets with metadata provided by Daz Connect which are not assigned to a category in the provided metadata
          • Initial placement of locally created user-facing assets (this will be changed in a subsequent build)
          • Local user-facing assets dicovered during a content scan (this will be changed in a subsequent build)
    3. NVIDIA Iray 2015.3.2
      • Fixes made to the implementation of Sub Surface Scattering (SSS) in the NVIDIA Iray renderer affect materials which have "Translucency Weight" active—not set to 0. This manifests in skin tones appearing more blue than they do in 4.8. A quick adjustment that can be made during the BETA phase is to adjust the "SSS Reflectance Tint" from a light blue to a light yellow—R: 1.00, G: 0.88, B: 0.67. Adjust this value to your liking.
        • After the BETA phase, Daz 3D products will be updated to include this change.
      • The Mac version now requires OS X 10.7 or later.
      • Scenes that would cause crashes while rendering no longer do.
      • See "Has the NVIDIA Iray renderer been updated?" for more in-depth information.
    4. 3Delight 12.0.27
    5. OpenSubdiv3
    Post edited by rbtwhiz on
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162
    edited November 2015

    Has the NVIDIA Iray renderer been updated?

    Yes, it has.

    Iray 2015.3.3, build 246000.7491

    Added and Changed Features

    • Iray Photoreal
      • Anti-aliasing if the gauss filter is used has been improved.

    Fixed Bugs

    • General
      • The creation of presets with defaults of type array where functions are attached to individual array
        slots has been fixed.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • Wrong behavior of ground plane in combination with a set backplate background color has been fixed.
      • Pattern issues with caustic sampler enabled have been fixed.
    • Iray Bridge
      • A bug has been fixed where Bridge jobs referencing elements that don’t exist would still execute without error. Now the execution will fail with error code -4.
      • A Bridge memory leak that occurred for Bridge clients on Linux only has been fixed.
      • A small client side Bridge memory leak has been fixed.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • The priority of MDL expressions in the MDL exporter has been fixed.
      • Rare crashes when array index expressions were used inside an MDL material have been fixed.
      • Cases where an invalid MDL preset was created when exporting it have been fixed.
      • Some rare cases where imports of enum types were missing after anMDLmodule/preset was exported
        have been fixed.
      • The core MDL compiler now correctly produces an error if the default initializer of an array-types
        parameter is not array typed.
      • Array typed expression are now correctly handles when used inside a material preset.

    See Also

    Post edited by rbtwhiz on
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Iray 2015.3.2, build 246000.4498

    Added and Changed Features

    • General
      • Tailored error number reporting during .mi import has been enabled. Each error now gets a specific error number assigned. Currently, only .mi syntax errors get reported with error number 4001, other .mi parser internal errors with 4002 and all others are defaulting to 4000. This will be extended in the future.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • As a performance optimization, MDL jit-compilation for simple color math is now avoided for Iray Photoreal and Iray Interactive.

    Fixed Bugs

    • .mi exporter
      • MDL parameters of array type are now properly exported including their dependencies.
      • The MDL module name "<builtins>" will not be listed in the list of MDL includes.
      • A bug in the export of parametric approximations has been fixed.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • Convergence issues with the caustic sampler enabled have been fixed.
      • A memory corruption when running out of device memory while uploading scene data has been fixed.
      • Various issues have been fixed that would show when disabling emissive geometry or moving emissive geometry around while other emissive geometry was disabled.
      • The incorrect orientation swaps for MDL emission (with EDFs that have global "global distribution" set) in case the transform changes the handedness of the light source's object space has been fixed.
      • Picking in case "mip lens focus" is 0.0 and "mip lens radius" is not 0.0 has been fixed.
    • Iray Bridge
      • A client side memory leak when rendering using Iray Bridge and loading multiple scenes in succession has been fixed.
      • A threading issue has been fixed where Iray Bridge could assign the same session ID to multiple sessions under certain circumstances. This could lead to weird errors if multiple sessions with the same ID were connected to the same Bridge server.
      • A bug has been fixed where sending very large frames, for instance high resolution PNG, would trigger a warning that the channel send buffer soft limit was exceeded. This had no negative impact and is part of normal operation so this warning has been removed.
      • Wrong timing for the "canvas update" progress message when rendering with one of the cloud render modes has been fixed. Now this progress message will be issued just after the frame has been written to the canvas.
      • A problem occurred when the render termination criteria was reached for the cloud render modes. In this case the next call to render() would always return 1 (render criteria reached) even if the scene was changed. This has been fixed.
      • A bug, where the client log would warn about having to pause the video stream for 0.0 seconds because of video congestion, has been fixed. Iray Bridge will now only warn if the congestion was long enough to affect the framerate noticeably.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • The MDL inliner got confused in some rare cases when the result of an inlined function was used as an argument to the same function, i.e. f(f(), g()) and f was inlined. This has been fixed.
      • Rendering a scene over Iray Bridge would occasionally fail with a missing operator*(color,float). This has been fixed.
      • Reading of uniform int and resource parameters if the parameter was a uniform function call and not a literal when a MDL material was instantiated has been fixed.
      • Using the select operator inside the body of a MDL material would sometimes lead to a crash. This has been fixed.
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Iray 2015.3.1, build 246000.3782

    Added and Changed Features

    • General
      • The .cb importer now accepts the string option "cache override" which will override the cache location specified in the .cb file.
      • The structure type name used in the method IQueue manager connection::submit job() has been renamed from "Name and pixel type" to "Canvas type" and the field "output name" has been added. The fields in the structure type "Snapshot data" have been renamed from "name" and "file name" to "snapshot name" and "result name", respectively. See the documentation for details.

    Fixed Bugs

    • Iray Photoreal
      • Fixed at bug in light sampling using uninitialized memory if a MDL material has both front and backside explicitly set but only the front is emitting.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • Fixed handling of MDL 1.0 usage of spot edf(): The default value of the spread parameter is now π, not 2π as it was before.
      • Fixed crashes when uniform functions are added to some uniform parameters of various ::base functions.
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Iray 2015.3, build 246000.3341

    Added and Changed Features

    • General
      • Iray Bridge video will now fall back on using the software h264 encoder (if available) if the hardware encoder fails to encode, for instance because the resolution is too high. Previously, the software encoder fallback would only work if the hardware encoder was not loaded or failed to initialize because there were no suitable GPUs available.
      • Iray Bridge Video hardware h264 decoding now requires an NVIDIA GPU with compute 2.0 or above (Fermi and newer).
      • Proper GPU detection support for vGPUs has been added. vGPUs are now correctly handled by Iray's device detection which prior to this change ignored all GPUs of PCI bus type.
      • The structure type name used in the method IQueue manager connection::submit job() has been renamed from "Name and pixel type" to "Canvas type" and the field "output name" has been added. The fields in the structure type "Snapshot data" have been renamed from "name" and "file name" to "snapshot name" and "result name", respectively. See the documentation for details.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • Support for light emitting geometry to the material id and generated material id render target canvases has been added.
      • The memory page in the HTTP admin server has been improved. All devices in the system are listed together with their status. Memory is listed in human-readable form.
      • The output of the generated material id canvas has been changed to contain values that match the input data rather than synthesized data, leading to slightly more stable output in animations. However, note that users who require stable values should always use the material id canvas together with explicitly assigned material IDs.
    • Iray Interactive
      • Support for per-object settings for shadow terminator compensation has been added.
      • Glossy reflections on the virtual ground plane are now disabled in network rendering.
      • Virtual ground plane shadows are not filtered in network rendering.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • Support for texture resources with non-const gamma mode has been added.

    Fixed Bugs

    • General
      • A bug has been fixed that could block the Iray Bridge Server system thread for a long time during session shutdown if a scene contained a very large number of elements. This could cause a new connection attempt, while the previous session was cleaning up, to time out and fail.
      • Rendering aborts on Iray Bridge Server that could occur non-deterministically when parameters of an MDL material were changed in some materials have been fixed.
    • .mi Exporter
      • The export of rectangle lights resulted in incorrect orientation of the light. This has been fixed.
      • An issue in the export of the approximate attribute on instances has been fixed.
      • Exporting parametric approximation settings now works for all supported types.
      • Empty tonemapper settings (a tonemapper attribute without values) are no longer exported.
      • An issue in the export of the approximate attribute for subdivision surfaces has been fixed.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • The ground plane was visible from below if the infinite dome mode and the respective flag was set. This has been fixed.
      • The backside material's emission if the emitting light material was flagged as two-sided has been fixed.
      • Crashes and unintended light source intensity changes when moving around light sources have been fixed.
      • Potential destruction order issues after rendering with renderer data on remote hosts is now avoided by following the behaviour of the master host in terms of unpinning.
    • Iray Interactive
      • An issue with "progressive rendering samples" > 1 leading to different result images when "indirect lighting mode" was set to 1 or 2 has been fixed.
      • A bug causing visual artifacts in the environment dome when using section planes has been fixed.
      • A crash when using virtual ground shadows in network rendering has been fixed.
      • A crash when using virtual ground glossy reflections in network rendering has been fixed.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • A bug in the MDL exporter has been fixed that allowed to create files whose names were not a valid MDL identifier.
      • A bug in the MDL exporter has been fixed that caused the copying of filed-based resources to fail under certain conditions.
      • The name of the ternary operator when used on the tex::gamma mode type has been fixed. This fixes possible render aborts because of missing operators.
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Iray 2015.3 beta, build 246000.1253

    Added and Changed Features

    • General
      • A new licensing scheme has been added. Most notably, without any license, neuray will not start anymore, while current licenses continue to work without any change.
      • In Iray Bridge, per element logging when importing .cb files is now set to the highest verbosity.
      • OptiX Prime has been updated to version 3.8.1. It primarily resolves hierarchy construction problems for some scenes.
      • Due to the OptiX Prime update, Iray now requires a CUDA 7.0 compatible driver if using CUDA accelerated rendering.
      • Iray now logs information about its identity, version, build date and platform at startup of the library.
      • The shutdown of Iray when all hosts in a cluster stop at the same time has been sped up.
      • Rendering speed when doing multi-hosted rendering with many hosts has been improved.
      • It's now possible for a WebSocket client (e.g. Iray Viewer) to connect to a WebSocket server (e.g. VCA or Bridge Server) via an HTTP proxy. To do this, IGeneral configuration::set http proxy address can be called to specify the HTTP proxy address. If the HTTP proxy requires authentication, IGeneral config::set http proxy authentication should be called to set the username/password. Currently, basic and digest authentication schemes are supported.
      • The Iray admin page now contains all CUDA devices in the system, not just the ones currently used for rendering. A new label indicates the status of the device.
      • Support for exporting memory-based MDL modules has been added. The .mi exporter now triggers the export of memory-based MDL modules.
      • A warning about 'select' elements has been added to the .mi importer. Whenever a 'select' scene element is found, the .mi importer warns that this type is no longer supported and ignores it.
      • I/O and scene handling support for new 'matte shadow intensity' attribute has been added. You can, for instance, now specify in .mi
      • attribute scalar "matte shadow intensity" 1.23
      • .mi language support for materials at scene elements of group type has been added. The .mi language has been enhanced such that an instance group, similar to instances, can have materials. This removes an incompatibility between the API and the .mi language, where the former supported that feature already.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • The performance for scenes with cutout has been improved.
      • QMC sampling has been improved. It is now less prone to temporal artifacts and shows less patterns in difficult scenes if the caustic sampler is used.
      • matte shadow intensity has been added as a new attribute. It has the same effect as the already existing ground plane shadow darkening factor, but has been extended to work on all matte objects in general.
      • shadow terminator offset has been added as a new attribute. It is a workaround for the classic shadow terminator problem on low tessellation geometry. Note that it is not recommended to always enable this, as it can lead to new artifacts in corners or if other geometry is nearby.
      • iray shadow terminator offset has been added as an attribute in the scene options to globally disable the above attribute.
      • The randomness of Worley noise mode 2 has been improved.
      • The convergence rate for some difficult lighting setups has been improved.
      • Instance transform updates have been sped up.
    • Iray Interactive
      • Instancing support has been added.
      • Glossy reflections on the virtual ground plane have been added. Please note that the shadow buffer does not contain glossy reflections of shadow computations on the virtual ground plane.
      • irt env lighting mode and irt env approx color to approximate direct environment lighting have been added.
      • The convergence in all Iray Interactive modes has been improved.
      • The iteration speed has been improved by 50% when using irt indirect light mode==2.
      • Support for shadow terminator correction using iray shadow terminator offset has been added.
      • The maximum ray depth has been increased from 16 to 64.
      • The Iray Interactive instancing render option has been changed to iray instancing, so it's shared with
      • Iray Photoreal now.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • JIT compilation for systems with several equal GPUs is now done per GPU class, not per GPU device anymore.
      • The interface mi::neuraylib::IBackend to access the MDL JIT backend from the MDL SDK has been added. Users of the MDL SDK can now compile parts of MDL material instances into LL VM-IR or PTX code.
      • The creation of MDL modules with forbidden module names will now be rejected. Such modules cannot be imported into MDL either.
      • The MDL exporter has been significantly improved. As a consequence, the export of MDL modules is no longer limited to presets, but is now also possible for MDL modules that were imported from file or via string. Resources in such modules are also handled correctly.

    Fixed Bugs

    • General
      • A crash has been fixed that was seen in some cases when doing multi-hosted rendering with many hosts.
      • A crash in geometry attribute retrieval has been fixed. When creating an empty mesh (i.e., no vertices) but creating a texture mesh attribute nevertheless, internal accesses of the mesh led to a crash. This has been fixed.
    • ​Iray Photoreal
      • The compatibility of base::gradient3 with the Iray builtin has been fixed.
      • Wrong gamma conversion for RGB(A) textures reduced to a single channel via the average operator has been fixed.
      • Several memory leaks have been fixed.
      • A deadlock seen with a low cpu limit has been fixed.
      • Crashes in Iray Photoreal after a device runs out of memory has been fixed.
      • Matte shadows in scenes with both emitting geometry and finite light sources have been fixed.
      • A crash when rendering only alpha with the architectural sampler has been fixed.
    • Iray Interactive
      • Global illumination with multiple GPUs has been fixed.
      • A bug causing erroneous indirect lighting in irt indirect light mode==2 has been fixed.
      • A bug causing missing direct lighting from large area light sources in irt indirect light mode==2 has been fixed.
      • A bug causing light splotches to appear after a large number of iterations when using irt indirect light mode!=0 has been fixed.
      • A potential crash when all devices failed during scene setup has been fixed.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • A potential crash in the disk cache when a very old database was updated has been fixed.
      • A rare crash when an MDL material used a user defined function that accessed a non-existing texture but no other state function has been fixed.
      • The MDL compiler's thin-walled analysis has been fixed. It reported different transmissions for front side and back side in some rare cases because 'no transmission' wasn't detected properly.
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Iray 2015.2.1, build 243400.2118

    Added and Changed Features

    • General
      • The .mi export of ITriangle mesh has been updated. Due to the deprecation of per-point and per-vertex attributes on the triangle mesh, exporting a triangle mesh could have led to numerous warnings. The .mi exporter is now using a more general way of retrieving the attribute values.
      • Note that the debug option "use rdma" has been removed in a previous release. There is an official option in the INetwork configuration API component, now.

    Fixed Bugs

    • General
      • Path handling of light profiles in .mi files has been fixed. When trying to locate light profiles given with relative paths, the current working directory was sometimes not taken into account.
      • A crash when updating decals has been fixed. For instance, when updating a decal by removing and re-adding it in one step, the internal scene update sometimes kept two copies of it around, which finally could have led to a crash.
      • The initialization order of internal libraries has been fixed. Before starting neuray, some libraries were already started. This led to problems when trying to customize their behavior, e.g. providing a custom logging facility.
      • Network rendering problems seen with some scenes with huge instance groups have been fixed.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • Textured emission material changes on other objects' materials could lead to an invalid texture reference, causing the wrong texture to be used for emission or, in the worst case, a crash. This has been fixed.
      • If parts (but not all) of a MDL function were supported by builtin procedurals this could lead to undefined results. This has been fixed.
      • An alpha issue for the caustic sampler has been fixed.
      • Potential CUDA out of memory problems if a render call and a ray tracing hierarchy build happen at the same time have been fixed.
      • Timeout handling has been improved. Sample data loss for the mega kernel in case of timeouts is now avoided.
    • Iray Interactive
      • A bug causing cutout opacity to be ignored when the opacity wasn't defined by a texture has been fixed.
      • A bug causing a crash when preprocessing environments on the GPU using a GeForce Titan X has been fixed.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • Some indeterminism in the MDL serialization has been fixed, which caused unnecessary data uploads to the VCA when rendering.
      • Unused textures in JIT compiled code are no longer referenced. This fixes a crash in rendering scenes after a texture in a material was changed in Iray Interactive.
      • The handling of JITed materials has been fixed: JIT compilation of MDL expressions that got compiled into zeros/random numbers under some conditions has been fixed.
      • The compilation of MDL material presets that do not override all parameter defaults has been fixed. Previously, using such a preset could cause the VCA to abort the rendering (lost connection).
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Iray 2015.2, build 243400.1151

    Added and Changed Features

    • General
      • The blend render mode now supports setting render context options for the preview and refined render mode.
      • The Queue Manager API to manage render jobs has been added for the future use with Iray Server.
      • The Bridge API interface method IIray bridge server::delete snapshot(const char* snapshot path) has been added. This method can be called by the bridge server to remove a .cb scene snapshot file and release the corresponding cached data.
      • The .mi importer now checks for invalid light settings during .mi import. When it finds a directional light with area settings, the area settings will now be ignored.
      • A proper implementation for verbatim texture I/O in the .mi format has been added. All supported formats are now implemented. Verbatim textures of "vector texture" type are not supported by the .mi exporter anymore. For backwards compatibility, the .mi importer will still handle verbatim textures of that type which were incorrectly exported.
      • The .mi export of instance/group approximation settings has been improved. This avoids creating .mi syntax errors when exporting instance/group approximation settings.
      • The .mi exporter now handles stand-alone decal materials, i.e. those that are not in a material array. Prior to this, stand-alone decal materials were ignored during the .mi export.
      • Access to per-point or per-vertex attributes from the triangle mesh itself has been deprecated. Using this deprecated feature will not result in a compile-time error, but generates a warning at runtime (since the methods are still used for per-primitive attributes). Please use the corresponding connectivity instead (as it is already done for polygon meshes and subdivision surfaces).
      • The debug option "use rdma" has been removed. To enable RDMA, INetwork configuration::set use rdma(true) replaces IDebug configuration::set option("use rdma=1"). Likewise, to disable RDMA, INet-work configuration::set use rdma(false) replaces IDebug configuration::set option("use rdma=0"). Node manager
      • A flag has been added to INode manager client::join or create cluster which marks the cluster that is being created as 'reusable'. With a reusable cluster, the worker program may be shut down and a different worker program may be started.
      • If worker reservations have to be unrolled for some reason, there's now a check for workers that may have dropped out of the netgroup in the meantime.
      • Logging during cluster creation has been improved to make the decisions taken by the node manager more transparent.
      • A new callback, IShutdown cluster callback, has been added that can be registered with IN-ode manager client. It will be called whenever a request to shutdown a cluster is received within the netgroup.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • The precision for all builtin noise functions has been improved, especially visible in bumps derived from noise.
      • New environment dome options have been added:
        • environment dome ground visible from below flags the ground to be always opaque, default: on.
        • dome ground legacy reflection reenables the now deprecated way of doing limited ground reflections (no reflection of the ground in other reflections), default: off.
      • Emission in Iray Photoreal now respects the shading normal of the emitting object / light source.
      • Emitting objects now have MDL programmability support for the material emission slot "intensity".
      • The implementation of procedural bump maps has been improved for world and object space coordinates resulting in no more seams and higher performance.
      • The robustness of nested volume rendering has been improved.
      • Support for camera and/or light sources in volumes has been added.
    • Iray Interactive
      • Iray Interactive has been sped up in cases where the jitted code of all scene materials has not changed.
      • The convergence of environment sampling has been improved.
      • Support of firefly filtering parameters iray firefly filter and iray nominal luminance has been added.
      • Glossy transmission has been implemented.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • The MDL compiler now supports inlining of function calls at material instantiation time. This reduces the need for JIT compilation in many places, especially inside the core definitions package.
      • The MDL compiler does not inline material instances inside default parameters anymore. This allows better inspection of material parameter defaults because other material instances are still visible here.
      • Calls of base::tangent space normal texture() and base::file texture() can now always be JIT compiled. The previous restrictions have been removed.
      • The MDL core compiler detects C-style now and produces a meaningful error (they are now allowed in MDL).
      • The MDL core compiler now issues an error if an extra type qualifier is used on a MDL constant declaration.

    Fixed Bugs

    • General
      • An attempt to remove a sub-scene containing the scene camera will not remove the scene camera anymore.
      • Label update handling has been fixed. Removing the label attribute went undetected by the scene update. This now gets properly handled and reported.
    • [Server] Node Manager
      • A potential hang of the client in case a recruited worker is unexpectedly running a worker process during cluster startup has been fixed.
      • A potential crash in the membership callback for leaving hosts has been fixed.
      • Getting the value of an unknown cluster property has been fixed.
      • If cluster creation failed, the new cluster instance and reserved workers could be leaked in several cases. This has been addressed.
      • A potential hang when joining the netgroup has been fixed.
      • A problem with shutting down and restarting a cluster, where the cluster could no longer be joined, has been fixed.
      • Worker node descriptor::get address no longer returns a port number with the address.
    • Iray Photoreal
      • An issue if both caustic sampler and object attributes that affect visibility were used has been fixed.
      • Sun & sky evaluation issues with large sun sizes have been fixed.
      • For bitmap textures in base.mdl, the modes base::mono luminance and base::mono average now respect gamma correctly.
      • The parameter mono source of base::blend color layers is now supported correctly.
      • Setting global distribution = false is no longer ignored for df::measured edf.
      • Changes to the camera transform's x and z-scale were sometimes not recognized by Iray Photoreal, leading to "ghosting" with the previous camera. This has been fixed.
      • A potential crash with infinite texture coordinates has been fixed.
      • In case that an object has multiple regions but only a single material, in the sense that the same material
      • is specified multiple times ([mat1, mat1, mat1, ...]) Iray Photoreal potentially tried to allocate huge amounts of memory. This has been fixed.
      • Wrong brightness of emitting objects with MDL light intensity mode "intensity mode power" in case multiple instances of the same object / material are present has been fixed.
      • A crash in the architectural sampler when rendering multiple alpha light path expressions has been fixed.
      • The iterations-per-frame reset on cancel has been removed. This caused the iteration count to stay fixed at 1 if the user was creating a new render transactiona inside the render loop.
      • Bright moon-shaped artifacts when rendering with the caustic sampler have been fixed.
      • Very large texture coordinate values are now handled properly.
    • Iray Interactive
      • A bug causing ground shadows to be visible also on the lower side of the ground plane has been fixed.
      • A bug causing bright spots to spread over the image when using irt indirect light mode==2 and glossy materials has been fixed.
      • Rendering stopped immediately with progressive rendering max time==-1. This has been fixed.
      • A bug has been fixed that caused firefly filtering to be disabled with the tonemapper parameter setting burn highlights==0.
      • Missing contributions from internal reflections for specular reflection light path expression have been fixed.
      • A bug when multiple objects were added at once after a scene was already loaded has been fixed.
      • Broken normals after transforming an object have been fixed.
      • Missing glossy contributions in light path expressions have been fixed.
    • Material Definition Language (MDL)
      • The reachability analysis in the MDL core compiler for case statements without child statement has been fixed.
        For instance:
        export enum E { A, B };export int func(E e){	switch(e) {	default: // &lt;----	case A:		return 1;	}	//dead here, no return needed}

        The compiler erroneously assumed, that the default case has a reachable exit, hence code after the switch is not dead.

      • When base::blend color layers() was used in a jitted expression, the modes color layer hue and color layer saturation failed. This has been fixed.

      • Type checking for default parameters of array type in the MDL core compiler that result in over-restricted type checking has been fixed. This fixes errors like:
        f(uniform T[X] = T[](...))

        where the compiler complains that a T[] array cannot be transformed into a uniform T[] array.

  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162

    Is there any documentation?

    Yes, there is.  And we're actively working on more.

    Check out the User Guide and QuickStart Guide that we've posted in the DAZ Studio 4.x Documentation section.

    The Reference Guide is also in the process of being populated/updated—updates will be posted over the course of the beta.

    *Note: Some pages are still being built. If you see "permission denied" for a page, that page is not live yet.

  • lx_2807502lx_2807502 Posts: 2,996
    edited November 2015

    v4.9.0.29

    Autofit / merge into scene appears to be completely broken.

    Example:

    Load Genesis Female, move her back a bit, load magus item via double clicking on it as normal (character still selected) clothing doesn't parent.

    Load G2F, move her back a bit, load basicwear via double click as usual, parents in place properly fit as expected
    Load Toulouse Hair same way, doesn't parent or fit. Selecting the unparented hair and then clicking materials to change the colours also does not work.

    Of the items I've tested so far, only G2F basicwear and persian beauty default items actually went onto the character. Nothing else has fit any other character that I've tried so far.

    Also, new content in Smart Content highlights as "New" but while clicking on a file removes the new setting, there doesn't appear to be any intuitive way to remove it from the actual product. I feel like this will confuse a lot of people. 

    On the bright side, creating Category folders now works, so thank you.

     

     

     

    Post edited by lx_2807502 on
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162
    lx said:

    v4.9.0.29

    Autofit / merge into scene appears to be completely broken.

    Example:

    Load Genesis Female, move her back a bit, load magus item via double clicking on it as normal (character still selected) clothing doesn't parent.

    Load G2F, move her back a bit, load basicwear via double click as usual, parents in place properly fit as expected
    Load Toulouse Hair same way, doesn't parent or fit. Selecting the unparented hair and then clicking materials to change the colours also does not work.

    Of the items I've tested so far, only G2F basicwear and persian beauty default items actually went onto the character. Nothing else has fit any other character that I've tried so far.

    The issue that has been causing Auto-Fit (and other path dependent support file add-ons) trouble was in the process of being fixed being earlier today—i.e. 4.9.0.37. That build still has to go through some testing internally, and then in the Private Build channel before the public will get a chance to try it. The Public Build does not have everything we've worked on in it, yet—see FAQ: General Release, Public Build, BETA... What is the difference? for more information on the various build channels. The Private Build channel recieved 4.9.0.36 shortly before 4.9.0.29 was posted to the Public Build channel. If you would like more information about what isn't in the Public Build, but has been worked on and is currently being tested, take a look at the Private Build section of the Change Log.

    -Rob

  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162
    edited November 2015
    lx said:

    Also, new content in Smart Content highlights as "New" but while clicking on a file removes the new setting, there doesn't appear to be any intuitive way to remove it from the actual product. I feel like this will confuse a lot of people. 

    Whether or not new assets/products installed via Daz Connect are assigned to the "New" group is controlled by the Edit > Preferences... (F2) : Content Library : Assign New Product to "New" Group option.  The Import Metadata dialog also now provides options for whether a product is assigned to the "New" group (i.e. Group As "New") as well as whether the asset(s) within the product(s) are assigned to the "New" group (i.e. Group Contents As "New") upon import.

    To manually change group assignment, right-click on any asset/product and choose Group As > %id.label%. By default there are two groups: "New" and "None".

    The asset/product grouping feature is intentionally extensible by end users, but it does have a few rules that must be followed. To add a custom group to the list of available options, you must create a pair of identically named PNG files—one for assets, and one for products. The files must follow the naming pattern id.label.png, where id is a unique postive numeric identifier for the group, and label is the text you want to appear within the menu—negative numeric identifiers are reserved for the application. You must place these identically named PNG files in specific parallel folders of your 4.9 installation—i.e ./resources/images/groups/assets and ./resources/images/groups/products. Regardless of size the PNG image will overlay, and be anchored to the bottom right corner of, the asset/product icon. Groups are currently only added to the menu when the application launches, however this may change.

    -Rob

    Post edited by rbtwhiz on
  • lx_2807502lx_2807502 Posts: 2,996
    edited November 2015

    Okay, first - if I launch a new public beta and find what appears to be a fairly crippling bug, I have no way of knowing that it's a known issue that's been in the following 10 private versions of the program I don't have. Nothing in that changelog mentions that issue that I can see, probably because I can't understand a lot of the technical details mentioned, so I feel like it was worth reporting here. If you know about it and are fixing it, great. Personally speaking, I was going to solely use the beta for this build now that categories were fixed, but this renders the entire program pretty much unusable for me.

    I understand how to assign things to the New group and how to manually remove each product, but it seems like something that should automatically remove itself, the same way it does on the individual file. Other than changing the display, the Group doesn't seem to do anything else? From what I can see, it isn't rearranging the order of products displayed, nor is there any clear way to only view one group at a time, etc. It all works, but I can easily see a new user being confused by their products being new forever if they don't go to a menu and adjust them.

    TLDR version: If I click on a file, it removes itself from new. If I click on a product, it doesn't. This behaviour is confusing and feels inconsistent as a user. In the old sensible Content folder setup, a folder would remove its new status when its contents had all been highlighted. I expected products to do the same thing.

     

    Post edited by lx_2807502 on
  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401

    Greetings,

    This:

    • Update to DzCloud 1.0.0.166; attempt to clone files installed via Install Manager to data/cloud when installing via cloud to save on [user] bandwidth

    Wantsies. :)

    Also this:

    • Optimized database queries in Content DB Editor, Content Library pane and the DzAsset API

    It'd be interesting to see the ChangeLog for DzCloud, but that's probably too inside-baseball.

    It's been a bit since I've had a good read over your changelog.  Sounds like you hired some new devs.

    I know this one just came out, and I've already installed it, but I can't wait for the next public beta! :)

    --  Morgan

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,437
    edited November 2015
    lx said:

    TLDR version: If I click on a file, it removes itself from new. If I click on a product, it doesn't. This behaviour is confusing and feels inconsistent as a user. In the old sensible Content folder setup, a folder would remove its new status when its contents had all been highlighted. I expected products to do the same thing.

     

    Um... isn't this functioning exactly the same way as it did previously? Its marked as new until you access each item? Product acts like the folder in the content tree...I never cared for the behavior myself, but sometimes found it useful.  Can't you clear the flag from the Product with a right-click option like you could on the folder?

    //edit: uncalled for, contentious comment removed

    Post edited by evilded777 on
  • lx_2807502lx_2807502 Posts: 2,996

    That's what I said you'd expect to happen, and it's what isn't happening.

    Folder marked New contains content marked New, click on content and New is removed. When no New content in folder, folder no longer marked New.

    Product marked New contains content marked New, click on content and New is removed. When no New content in product, product REMAINS marked New.

    This remains after restart too, so it's not the only on launch limitation.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,437
    lx said:

    That's what I said you'd expect to happen, and it's what isn't happening.

    Folder marked New contains content marked New, click on content and New is removed. When no New content in folder, folder no longer marked New.

    Product marked New contains content marked New, click on content and New is removed. When no New content in product, product REMAINS marked New.

    This remains after restart too, so it's not the only on launch limitation.

     

    Ahh, I see... I guess I did not follow.

  • jag11jag11 Posts: 885

    I found the reason I can't find content. The products that can't be found in Smart Content are the ones that lack a field "content_type" in the .json file in the data\cloud\meta folder. I think that if they default to:

    "content_type" : "Prop"

    all content would appear.

  • linvanchenelinvanchene Posts: 1,303
    edited November 2015
    rbtwhiz said:
    lx said:

     

    To manually change group assignment, right-click on any asset/product and choose Group As > %id.label%. By default there are two groups: "New" and "None".

    [...]

    The asset/product grouping feature is intentionally extensible by end users, but it does have a few rules that must be followed. To add a custom group to the list of available options, you must create a pair of identically named PNG files—one for assets, and one for products. The files must follow the naming pattern id.label.png, where id is a unique postive numeric identifier for the group, and label is the text you want to appear within the menu—negative numeric identifiers are reserved for the application. You must place these identically named PNG files in specific parallel folders of your 4.9 installation—i.e ./resources/images/groups/assets and ./resources/images/groups/products. Regardless of size the PNG image will overlay, and be anchored to the bottom right corner of, the asset/product icon. Groups are currently only added to the menu when the application launches, however this may change.

    -Rob

    Also a bit confused about the "New" group especially what it is actually supposed to do and how it is intended to be used.

     

    What worked:

    - In the smart content pane I went to the tab "Updates"

    - CTRL + A

    - rightclick "Install Updates"

    All updates were marked as "New"

    image

     

    What did not work (as expected):

    I made it a point to purchase some new items in the store and then check if and how they would show up in BETA 4.9.0.29

    It seems none of the new purchased items are marked as new in the available tab.

    In this example Westpark Treatment Room Iray:

    image

     

    What I expected how the "New" Group could be used:

    - There could be a tab "New" next to "Updates" or "Pending" so the users can quickly find the latest items they purchased.

    alternatively

    - There would be a way to display all "New" items in one place so one can quickly create a selection with CTRL+A or CTRL + C and then rightclick "install from cloud"

     

    Other things I noticed:

    You must place these identically named PNG files in specific parallel folders of your 4.9 installation—i.e ./resources/images/groups/assets and ./resources/images/groups/products.

    - I was not able to find a folder called /groups in /resources/images

    image

     

    - When starting DS BETA 4.9.0.29 for the first time it seemed to take a minute or longer until any products were displayed in the Smart Content tab ALL.

    - In general it seems to take 5-6 seconds to load the products in the tab ALL or AVAILABLE

    I did not notice such a loading delay in the last beta.

    image

    Remaining Questions:

    1) Is there quick way to display and install with DAZ connect all products purchased in the last order?

    In one of the last beta threads there was written that it is planed to add a similar sorting function like in the DIM. I guess sorting by "Purchase Date" would do the trick in the future. But is there allready in the current version some kind of workflow to group items of the same order together to install them with a quick selection?

    2) What is the difference between: "Group as" and "Group Content as" ?

    image

    I noticed in both cases that when I make a selection with CTRL+A all products and then use either right click command "group as" or "group content as" - new just seemed to add the new tag on all products.

    - - -

    Update / Edit:

    Rephrased question 1) to make it more clear:

    I purchased the products in the store and now I am looking for a quick workflow  to find them all grouped together in some way to install them directly inside DAZ Studio (instead of using the DIM).

    updates tab New items.jpg
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    New purchased product not marked as new.jpg
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    Post edited by linvanchene on
  • rbtwhizrbtwhiz Posts: 2,162
    edited November 2015

    What did not work (as expected):

    I made it a point to purchase some new items in the store and then check if and how they would show up in BETA 4.9.0.29

    It seems none of the new purchased items are marked as new in the available tab.

    That is the intention, but it does not work that way yet. There are many moving pieces and we have to iterate to get everything working the way it is designed to.

    What I expected how the "New" Group could be used:

    - There could be a tab "New" next to "Updates" or "Pending" so the users can quickly find the latest items they purchased.

    alternatively

    - There would be a way to display all "New" items in one place so one can quickly create a selection with CTRL+A or CTRL + C and then rightclick "install from cloud"

    "New" is now one of many possible asset groups—an "Asset Group" is an abstraction of the concept that "New" was serving in very limited form. Basically, it is simply tagging by way of visual indicator—a bit like putting color coded stickers on things to indicate a relationship between them or a similarity in purpose. For instance, using a series of adjacent outlined/filled stars to indicate how much you like a certain song/album/movie in a playlist.

    A product can be assigned to a group regardless of its installed state. The pages (tabs) you suggest adding "New" next to are there for filtering by a product's installed state, so adding a "New" page there does not fit into the intended scope of that filter.

    Instead, what is coming—but is not there yet—is something very similar to the Advanced Filtering found in the Filter Field of Install Manager. This mechanism allows you to do things like filter by group, or by a specific date, or before a specific date, or within a specific date range, or before/after a dynamic "distance"  date, or within a range that is a dynamic "distance" date from a dynamic "distance" date... and many that I haven't mentioned.  Grouping, in conjunction with advanced filtering, is exponentially more powerful/flexible than what "new" was doing.

    You essentially end up with a mechanism whereby you can use the category selection with a keyword filter and a group filter to find the cross-section of products/assets that meet your specific criteria... or you leave out the group filter so that you can see the distribution of products/assets assigned to the group within the category and keyword cross-section.

    Other things I noticed:

    You must place these identically named PNG files in specific parallel folders of your 4.9 installation—i.e ./resources/images/groups/assets and ./resources/images/groups/products.

    - I was not able to find a folder called /groups in /resources/images

    They are not created by default. Create the paths I described yourself and then add/create the images I described and you'll be "off to the races."

    - When starting DS BETA 4.9.0.29 for the first time it seemed to take a minute or longer until any products were displayed in the Smart Content tab ALL.

    - In general it seems to take 5-6 seconds to load the products in the tab ALL or AVAILABLE

    I did not notice such a loading delay in the last beta.

    "All" can be rather a lot. Before we limited the result set to 1200 it took even longer. Could it be faster? Sure. Will we continue to improve it? Yes. Is it going to be done tomorrow? No.

    Remaining Questions:

    1) Is there a fast and quick way to install all products I just purchased with DAZ connect in the current beta version?

    In one of the last beta threads there was written that it is planed to add a similar sorting function like in the DIM. I guess sorting by "Purchase Date" would do the trick in the future.

    The Change Log indicates that sorting has been added in the 4.9.0.32 build. The advanced filtering and grouping I mentioned above puts even more power in the hands of the user.

    2) What is the difference between: "Group as" and "Group Content as" ?

    I noticed in both cases that when I make a selection with CTRL+A all products and then use either right click command "group as" or "group content as" - new just seemed to add the new tag on all products.

    Group As applies to the product itself. Group Contents As applies to the product and all of the assets in it.

    -Rob

    Post edited by rbtwhiz on
  • linvanchenelinvanchene Posts: 1,303
    edited November 2015
    rbtwhiz said:

     

    Other things I noticed:

    You must place these identically named PNG files in specific parallel folders of your 4.9 installation—i.e ./resources/images/groups/assets and ./resources/images/groups/products.

    - I was not able to find a folder called /groups in /resources/images

    They are not created by default. Create the paths I described yourself and then add/create the images I described and you'll be "off to the races."

    Awesome. Thank you for taking the time to explain!

    As a test I was able to create a custom group called "cruiser" by placing a png labeled 1.cruiser.png in ./resources/images/groups/assets and ./resources/images/groups/products.

    In the screenshot you can see the custom overlay image in the lower right corner of the product Arabella 7 HD Add-on. To get it at that size I choose 30x30 pixels.

    image

    I can allready think of some ideas how to use that feature but for now its probably best to wait until the final release version before I get too crazy creating groups on my own.

    Custom group 1.cruiser.jpg
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    Post edited by linvanchene on
  • MBuschMBusch Posts: 547
    edited November 2015

    Hum, I am having problems to create custom metadata for third party products. Generally, my workflow is:

    1. Copy the product assets to my empty Temp directory which is mapped in Studio
    2. Using Content Directory Manager I load my Temp directory as the first content installed directory
    3. I navigate to the Temp directory folders and using Content DB Editor I assign Content Types, Categories, and compatibilities to the assets
    4. From a top level folder which surround all assets I choose Create a Product and enter the product's name
    5. Next I right-clicki in some product's asset and choose Show in>Products to go to the new Product entry
    6. In the new Product entry I open the Content DB Editor and fill the blanks (Token, Artists, Description) and using the Add from Directory (recursive) I add the product files
    7. I click Accept and the metadata is exported

     

    Now, after the last step, the Product entry shows empty and all assets shows in LOCAL_USER. Looking inside the dsx file I can see it is correct, so maybe is just a matter of re-import it. Is this how it works now?

    Edited: In fact I found that the problem starts in the step 4. When you open the new product entry in Content DB Editor after Create a Product the assests lost all categorization and compatibilities done in previous step.

    Post edited by MBusch on
  • ChatjdChatjd Posts: 152

    Looks like the "The" issue with metadata is still a problem as importing metadata that have a name that starts with "The" still does not work.  It can be imported fine in 4.8, just doesn't import/display in this beta.  I'm assuming (hoping?) the line item in the private build log 4.9.0.34 "Cleaned up placement/grouping/labeling/population of Smart Content and Content Library context menus for products." is referring to a fix for this issue?

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,412
    edited November 2015

    First cup of coffee, just waking up here.

    jag11 said:

    I found the reason I can't find content. The products that can't be found in Smart Content are the ones that lack a field "content_type" in the .json file in the data\cloud\meta folder. I think that if they default to:

    "content_type" : "Prop"

    all content would appear.

    I think, for the sake of the people working on Meta Data for products, It may be better for all, If the default was not something of a normal product (as in prop), rather "Undefined" or "Not Set Yet" may be better. It would make life easier for many, not just the users. It's a thought.

    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • As a software developer, I am all too familar with only ever hearing about the negative things, what is wrong and what is broken, so I would like to state that I really like a majority of the changes and updates to the Smart Content tab. There has been some really great improvements and the little problems seem to be getting addressed as new beta builds come up. Keep up the good work!

    I am going to download and install 4.9.0.29 and see what has been addressed before making any further comment.

  • jag11jag11 Posts: 885
    edited November 2015

    Finally I managed to make my Desk Clocks to appear, it required a few SQL statements to set content_type_id to type 238 (Set). First image is before changing database. Second image after.

    So, I'm sure if we are given some way to manually change the content type por assets we can make them to appear.

     

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    Post edited by jag11 on
  • BurstAngelBurstAngel Posts: 761
    edited November 2015

    I have a question, I want to add folders/files to smart how do I go about doing that? I created a "product" but where do I find it in smart?

    Nevermind, I found it, but I would like to find a tutorial in creating smart content.

    Post edited by BurstAngel on
  • linvanchenelinvanchene Posts: 1,303
    edited November 2015

    I repost in this thread because other users pointed out that the beta thread may be more suited to discuss changes in folder structure and its effect on the workflow.

    Challenges and possible solutions to work with the new SKUNUMBER/runtime/textures folder structure

     

    I  installed a selection of 600+ product with DAZ connect which all went perfectly fine and was saving me hours of time installing as compared to installing with the DIM.

    Nevertheless when I was trying to manually browse to some textures I did notice one road block that may cause me to loose a lot of time searching for textures in the future:

    BEFORE with 4.8:

    All textures were placed in one library folder in a more or less logical way:

    My DAZ 3D Library\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME

    This made it possible that I was able to quickly browse to other textures of my favorite artists directly inside the "browse / load image" dialogue that uses the default windows explorer save / load windows.

    Example:

    All textures of the addon sets were in many cases placed directly in a subfolder of the parent product:

    My DAZ 3D Library\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME

    My DAZ 3D Library\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME/ADDON_NAME_ONE

    My DAZ 3D Library\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME/ADDON_NAME TWO

    My DAZ 3D Library\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME/ADDON_NAME THREE

    In some cases textures of the addons were even placed in the same folder as the parent product.

    - - -

    An example of a standard workflow before:

    - load figure

    - use smart content to browse to wardrobe

    - use preset to add body suit

    - use smart content to browse the available presets

    - make test render

    - check surface zones

    - manually browse to different diffuse maps for specific surface zones

    - manually browse to different displacement maps for specific surface zones

    - manually browse to a different HDR image for the skydome or render setting

    - manually browse to some tile able textures from different shader products of the same artist

    You end up with a fully customized outfit that uses different maps from several different addons and products on different surface zones

    DAZ connect 4.9 BETA

    The new folder structure seems to be:

    In general:

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\SKUNUMBER\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME

    Specific example:

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\1_2281\runtime\textures\stonemason\skycar

    The issue now is that there is not anymore one /runtime/texture folder but there seems to be one SKUNUMBER folder for each product and inside that a unique texture folder.

    image

     

    Example:

    the product is placed in

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\1-34190\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME

    The addons are placed in

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\1-34798\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\ADDON_NAME_ONE

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\1-34363\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\ADDON_NAME TWO

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\1-35334\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\ADDON_NAME TWO

    I used some random numbers for the SKU.

     

    In practice this means:

    - It is not anymore possible to quickly browse to other folders of the same artists to mix and match different textures of products and addon products with the windows explorer load window

    - It is not anymore possible to quickly browse to a  favorite artists to look for a sykmap or HDR image with the windows explorer load window

    - Especially when working with other render engine plugins it is especially for experienced users faster to directly load a texture into an image slot with the windows explorer load window

    - DS material presets often apply a whole selection of textures. Manually loading textures has the benefit of applying just one new texture to one surface zone

     

    The new challenges are when searching for textures and maps in windows explorer:

    - you actually have to know the SKU number of the product and as well the SKU number for the addons.

    - even IF you do know the number you are wasting valuable time switching between multiple folders in different locations

    - you may know the artist that created that one tiled map, skydome, HDR image you are looking for but you do not remember the product and have no way of figuring out the SKU

     

    Which user groups are affected by this change in the texture folder structure?

    - If you are just loading presets without ever fine tuning materials or shaders you will not be affected by this change in the texture folder structure and maybe even not notice it is there.

    - If you are a person who actually creates your own custom version of clothing by mixing and matching textures and bump, displacement and normal maps the way textures are now spread over multiple folders sorted by the SKU number has a  negative impact on your workflow.

    Especially for users who try to use DAZ Studio for client work and are looking to customize content in a reasonable time to quality relationship the old folder structure who used /ARTISTNAME/PRODUCTNAME was a more time efficient way to find textures.

    In addition it is important to remember that some users do not only want to use the products in DAZ Studio.

    When using DAZ Connect it should still be possible to find tile able textures or HDR backgrounds also quickly from other applications by using the windows explorer load windows.

     

    Benefits of placing all assets of a product in one product folder

    What I gathered from other threads the benefit of having all assets of a product in one folder is that users can move the SKUNUMBER folder around to another location.

    - - -

    Alternative solutions:

     

    1) Placing all textures in one cloud/runtime/textures location

    An alternative option could be to place all encrypted content in the SKU folder and then to place all unencrypted content in one location as before

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME

    Doing that would allow the users to navigate the textures in just one place with a logical order as before.

    As a downside it would not be possible to just move the SKU folder to another harddrive. the textures would be missing.

    Personally I would not mind not being able to move around SKU folders.

    I value the ability to have all textures in one place higher than to move around product folders.

     

    2) Placing "shortcuts" to all textures into cloud/runtime/textures

    Basically the installer would place all assets inside the SKU folder as before but at the same time shortcuts to all textures would be placed into /cloud/runtime/textures

    This means the user would still have a way to manually browse the textues in a logical way in the windows explorer load window.

    Maybe not that efficient but still a start to at least have some kind of alternative to browse textures and maps in one location as before.

     

    3) DS IMAGE BROWSER

    An alternative would be to add something like an image browser to DAZ Studio itself.

    The OctaneRender plugin developer t_3 came up with the feature of the OctaneRender image browser for the OR plugin for DAZ Studio.

    When loading images manually inside DS the user has two options

    - load with the default windows explorer loading window

    - open up the " IMAGE BROWSER" to load textures from folders in a special user interface

    The benfit of the image browser is that it is also possible to display image formats that would not be previewed in windows explorer like HDR images.

    The Image browser is also a very efficient way to show and browse all the rendered images of an animation sequence.

    image

     

    Note: I used some product preview images instead of showing maps or textures in this screenshot

    A similar solution could be developed for DAZ Studio with the added feature that the Image Browser would "rebuild" a logicial way to browse and display all textures and maps that are spread over different SKU folders.

    While the downloaded product assets would still all remain in one fixed location in the SKU folder an Image browser would give the users a new option to browse their unencrypted textures and maps in a logical way.

    Basically all the tags and metadata that is added to the product could also be added to the textures and maps so it is possible

    - to sort textures and maps by product

    - show textures and maps for addon products

    - show textures and maps by the same artist

    - show textures and maps working with the same UV

    - show textures and maps under the DAZ Original license

    In addtion the DS IMAGE BROWSER could be connected with allready existing features like the photoshop bridge to make searching, editing and saving of user edited textures and maps even more time efficient.

    Side Note:

    Instead of developing a DS Image Browser from scratch maybe the plugin developer known as t_3 might be interested to adjust his version to be directly integrated with DAZ Studio either as official part of DAZ Studio or as an addon product sold in the store.

    I do not have a way to contact him and ask. Maybe DAZ3D still has a connection...

    - - -

    I hope other users intall DS4.9 BETA and try it out themselves and see what works for them and what not.

    I do not enjoy the role to "play the bad guy" pointing out possible issues all the time.

    It would be rather more efficient if other users would test as well and add their opinion.

     

     

    runtime texture location spread over 700 folders.jpg
    527K
    IMAGE BROWSER.jpg
    178K
    Post edited by linvanchene on
  • MBusch said:

    Hum, I am having problems to create custom metadata for third party products. Generally, my workflow is:

    1. Copy the product assets to my empty Temp directory which is mapped in Studio
    2. Using Content Directory Manager I load my Temp directory as the first content installed directory
    3. I navigate to the Temp directory folders and using Content DB Editor I assign Content Types, Categories, and compatibilities to the assets
    4. From a top level folder which surround all assets I choose Create a Product and enter the product's name
    5. Next I right-clicki in some product's asset and choose Show in>Products to go to the new Product entry
    6. In the new Product entry I open the Content DB Editor and fill the blanks (Token, Artists, Description) and using the Add from Directory (recursive) I add the product files
    7. I click Accept and the metadata is exported

     

    Now, after the last step, the Product entry shows empty and all assets shows in LOCAL_USER. Looking inside the dsx file I can see it is correct, so maybe is just a matter of re-import it. Is this how it works now?

    Edited: In fact I found that the problem starts in the step 4. When you open the new product entry in Content DB Editor after Create a Product the assests lost all categorization and compatibilities done in previous step.

    I follow a different work flow, that worked great in versions 4.5 to 4.8, but NOT SO MUCH in 4.9

    Although my process differs from yours, I get the same result, the product is empty and I have to re-import the meta data in order to populate it.

    Now, since updating the 4.9.0.29, I not longer see a 'LOCAL_USER' product, I simply don't see the content until I re-import the dsx file. It would appear that we need to wait until the dev team has a chance to finish the refactoring in this section of the code stream before any of this is going to work smoothly.

  • The new folder structure seems to be:

    In general:

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\SKUNUMBER\runtime\textures\ARTISTNAME\PRODUCTNAME

    Specific example:

    My DAZ 3D Library\data\cloud\1_2281\runtime\textures\stonemason\skycar

    The issue now is that there is not anymore one /runtime/texture folder but there seems to be one SKUNUMBER folder for each product and inside that a unique texture folder

    Okay, this confirms my earlier opinion.

    I will never, ever use Connect in any way, shape or form. This extreme change to a system that has been standard for many years is stupid.

    Why can't there be a single /textures/ folder?

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