I noticed that most of Dreamlight’s items vanished from the store… I can’t get the thumbnail image for my La Piazza Realistic Mediterranean Town meta data any more. :(
Maybe it is just a temporary fluke in the process of taking them off sale, like when the PC items go back to regular price before going back to $1.99. I would have guessed that maybe they got so many complaints about things not working in DAZ 4 that they removed them, but they removed things that DO WORK. Strange. Well, it is the DAZ new store, so strange is the new normal for now.
For your metadata thumbnail you could look on the Dreamlight website. Maybe you will find it there. Otherwise, just render the scene in a small PNG and use that. I’ve done that before to create thumbnails.
While there are obviously issues with Dreamlight plugins in DS4, I’m still regularly using Light Dome Pro 2 setups in DS4 by creating them in DS3, saving them off and then loading the scene in DS4 to add figures to. You lose the LDP2 controls, but can still access the lights as normal DS lights. It’s a little bit more of a faff, but LDP2 isn’t completely lost to you if you have a DS3 installation, or even just some saved scenes.
While there are obviously issues with Dreamlight plugins in DS4, I’m still regularly using Light Dome Pro 2 setups in DS4 by creating them in DS3, saving them off and then loading the scene in DS4 to add figures to. You lose the LDP2 controls, but can still access the lights as normal DS lights. It’s a little bit more of a faff, but LDP2 isn’t completely lost to you if you have a DS3 installation, or even just some saved scenes.
My approach to making use of LDP2 in DS4 has been a little different. I loaded it up in DS3, then exported the skydome as an obj, reimported it and saved it as a prop. Then (in DS3) I went through each of the LDP2 sets, and for each saved the skydome material as a material preset and (just) the sun light as a light preset.
In DS4 I just load the skydome prop, and apply the material preset and matching sun light preset - parenting the sun distant light to the skydome if I want to rotate the sky so the sun stays in the right place for the texture (as it would be in LDP2). I also load a UE2 light, and set that to IDL (bouncelight). The UE2 light, working off the ambient on the skydome, gives the ambient and skylight effects without all tthe actual sky and ambient lights in the actual LDP2 when in DS2 or 3. Works pretty well. In fact using IDL rather than all those many tens of ambient and sky lights is both neater and arguably gives a better result.
It was a bit of a pain spending an evening saving all the skydome material presets and matching sunlight presets, but having done it it’s now easy and quick to use. I am, however, very unimpressed by the PA’s own support for this product. Not having yet made the plugin DS4.5 compatible until the actual release and the definitive 4.5 SDK is perfectly reasonabe; not having made a DS4 version in the entire year after the DS4 release is not, in my opinion. Especially given the PAs frenetic activity in emailing people on his mailing lists usually more than once a day every day trying to entice buying yet more training products, I find his not having spent the time to produce a DS4 update of LDP2 quite inexcusable. He is very unlikely to get any more of my money, and certainly not for anything - like a plugin - that will need future support.
I am, however, very unimpressed by the PA’s own support for this product. ... Especially given the PAs frenetic activity in emailing people on his mailing lists usually more than once a day every day trying to entice buying yet more training products, I find his not having spent the time to produce a DS4 update of LDP2 quite inexcusable. He is very unlikely to get any more of my money, and certainly not for anything - like a plugin - that will need future support.
He inundated my inbox with ads for his other unrelated businesses until I threatened to report him under Sweden’s data protection laws. I think he’s essentially moved on from 3D. I hope I’m wrong and that he’ll return with updates, though, because he really does know lighting inside and out!
So there’s most probably no update for Light Dome Pro 2? I’m waiting for over a year now since I don’t have DS3 installed anymore.
Well maybe it would be a very good idea to mention on the product page that it’s not compatible with DS 4 and DS 4.5. - under additional information there’s a big N/A next to compatible software. Very uncool.
What I wanna know is if the Product “Motion Master for DAZ Studio” will work in DS4.5 pro. I really want that, but if it doesn’t work, I won’t touch it.
