Digital Art Zone

Kyoto Kid - 12 September 2012 10:10 PM

Richard Haseltine - 12 September 2012 03:20 PM

Genesis Essentials is just the content, with tweaks, that has been in the main DAZ Studio installer previously. The content is expected to be more stable (not to need as many updates) going forward, so it was split out to reduce download sizes next time the application is updated.

...Richard thanks.  So installing this should have no impact on the application’s actual performance then.

So as to the texture map issues and scene corruption after saving, does this mean I need to re-map all my directories again?

I have no idea - I’ve not seen your problem, at least with respect to renders, before. it’s not that it can’t find the content, it’s that it’s applying the wrong maps to some things. I have seen that with the preview, when memory is running low (for example when I’d been plodding through trying out a batch of new V4 texture sets), but not, as I recall, in renders.

Cymbidium - 13 September 2012 03:44 AM

Bobvan - 12 September 2012 02:58 PM

Cymbidium - 12 September 2012 11:42 AM

Bobvan - 12 September 2012 09:41 AM

Kerya - 12 September 2012 06:28 AM

Cymbidium - 12 September 2012 06:22 AM

fixmypcmike - 12 September 2012 05:50 AM

Kerya - 12 September 2012 02:25 AM

For those missing LDP2:
Mr. Belwon made a survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FT7HKFS
I added in the blank field: update of older products like the LDP2
If enough people tell him ...

I did the same

So did I…..but I don’t hold up much hope, since he said somewhere in the forums (in answer to someone asking him if LDP2 was getting an update) that he was now concentrating on training, and he didn’t seem interested currently in updating any plugins. :(  Guess it would be too much work for too little return…...

Well - that will mean that I will tell everybody not to buy things from Dreamlight!

Lux is you’re friend…

For those who may not be interested in Reality / Lux Latinos & Dimension Theory have pretty killer lights

I did try to use Reality for a while, right before the update to DSPro 4.5, but I can’t say I got any really good renders out of it - guess I need a LOT more practice…......

Its really not that complicated and one can really get nice renders. One of my fans commented recently “You are really getting good at this everything looks so real”  Some of my renders http://fav.me/d5drfel  http://fav.me/d5dhr30 I really like the dramatic lighting I can get and its not much different then when I was using UE a few well placed lights and adjustments. Even though Lux renders can take longer one can queue them so you can start 3 or 4 then fire em up in 2 hour cycles and lit err rip! The adjustment of lighting and film response settings can give some nice results. But I also had gotten alot of decent renders with LDP2…

Thanks for the links - very nice renders!  Yes, I have seen lots of great renders with Reality, and it doesn’t seem that complicated, but I guess I’m just too darn impatient to wait a couple of hours for a render…..   That said, I will most probably try again soon - I have downloaded the updated Reality.

I used to think that way too but here I am a little over 6 months of using Reality / Lux 5 to 600 renders later….

Another thing I like is Lux will bring life to some older content

Kyoto Kid - 12 September 2012 12:34 AM

...OK so decided to install 4.5P just to see how it would react to my “ancient” system (did not install the Genesis Starter Essentials as the installer was over 400MB).

Also loaded and applied the Darkside UI.

First a few pluses.

The application loads much faster
Scenes load much faster
And yes,, the new 3Delight is very fast compared to 3A.

Managed to rework the scene in question so it finally rendered.  Lighting used was a UE preset.  Size 800 x 800. Had to substitute a default V4 Map on Leela for the Tindra one (nothing I did seemed to correct the facial and leg Map errors). The scene rendered in 1 min 22sec + about 25 sec for the shadow mapping. In 3a (with a basic “non UE” light set), It took nearly 8 minutes plus another 1:10 for shadow mapping.

(while originally created in 3A the scene was saved in 4.0.3).

Rendered scene attached below.

OK now a couple things that didn’t work.

Tried to open a version of the same scene created in 3A (which wasn’t saved in 4.0) and discovered the maps of the Baroque Grandeur set and Harpsichord were totally messed up (see attached SS below) .  Reloading the textures in 4.5 did nothing so apparently apparently there is a conflict with the UV mapping between 3A and 4.5.

Deleting an item and reloading a fresh version in 4.5 presented the same UV mapping error.

All directory mapping was preserved in the update so not sure how this occurred.

Saving a .daz scene in 4.5 apparently corrupts the original scene file as apparently the only format option for saving a scene is .duf. While reloading the saved 4.5 version (after closing the application down and reopening it to clear memory), there were multiple ““clearing scene” messages, and when the load was complete, parts of the set (like the window glass and some frame details) were missing. Not sure if this has to do with the fact that my content is all installed to my 3A runtime rather than the 4.5 Library, but supposedly 4.5 should be able to read from all runtimes mapped under Preferences/Content Management.

I still wonder if this is a memory issue, you have a large set and two figures and a prop in there, I couldn’t have done that in 32bit.

Have you tried saving the scene in sections, one figure and the piano for instance.

RAMWolff - 11 September 2012 01:13 PM

Yea, in touch with Flaming Pear right now.  Seems their plugins DO work with CS6 64 bit.  So waiting to hear back from Lloyd about downloads.

A quote from “Photoshop CS6: The Missing Manual” which I’ve just started reading:

“...since most third-party plug-ins (Chapter 19) and filters (Chapter 15) have now been upgraded to work in 64-bit mode, there’s little reason to cast a single glance backward.”

Well most of the older plugins don’t work in 64 bit and still don’t.  I’ve pretty much given in and use what’s available.  It’s really no big deal at this point.

installed 4.5 and am having all kinds of fun with it now :D love the new features… but i have one very serious question that has stopped me using DAZ all together!

Please tell me i’m being dense with this… but i open a save to one of my old projects, edit it, save it as a DUF…
next time i load it, all the figures are in different locations!
i don’t want to have to re-position every figure in a scene each time i load… is there something in the settings i ned to change? a way to set the world co-ordinates? i don’t even understand why they move to where they do! there’s no logical reason. some seem to raise to the same levell on the Y axis, others move to the Z or X axis… seriously, what am I doing wrong? i can’t justify re-posing EVERY save i have each time i want to load…

issue aside, the morph-follower is so much faster! i love these new features and plan on using them all the best i can once this is sorted out and i’ve stopped being a neurotic nutter…

Taozen - 11 September 2012 12:46 PM

64 bit OS hasn’t been that popular either until recently. Eventually everything will go 64 bit so I think there is a good chance that many filters will be updated.

64 bit has been used in CG since XP Pro 64. Running anything else with any of the newer processors is a true waste.

What happened is the software developers fell a full generation behind the hardware by choice. At least some did, while others kept up with it as they wanted a pro market.

My current machine is over three years old and the day I bought it 100% of the machines on the store shelves were 64 bit. All of them. Only little mini laptops and such were even available in 32 bit because who wanted them? Limited RAM and slooooooooooooow performance when you could have the opposite for a few dollars more?

In CG 32 bit is and has been a dinosaur for some time now.

If developers are not keeping up with it, it’s not because it’s not popular. It’s purely financial with them in mind and not the customer.

The parts in my machine are 3-4 years old I think too. When we bought the new motherboard at the time and got everything setup we found out that Windows ME wasn’t supported and it forced us to upgrade finally to XP. I wanted to get the 64bit since the hardware supported it and I did a lot of work with Photoshop and was getting playing around with Daz but there wasn’t a single store that was selling the 64bit OS around here so I was forced to go with the 32bit :(  I’m surprised that at least OfficeMax didn’t have it but they didn’t :(

I hate 32bit but I can live with the limits it sets and haven’t had any problems from Studio 2.0 all the way up to Studio 4.5   The only thing I have ever had a big problem with the limits was Bryce… got a little to happy with the Instance Lab when that first came out and crashed the program before I could even try and render my big field of flowers LoL

Okay, this is just plain weird.

Most of my Genesis content is from DAZ, since they are the main place to get Genesis content. But there are some vendors at Rendo that support Genesis, and there are some Genesis freebies. I’ve picked up a few of them in the past year, and installed them.

Well, all of my runtimes—and that includes the Genesis ‘My Library’ are on an external drive. The Studio program of course gets installed in the Applications folder on the internal hard drive.

Well, I did the upgrade to 4.5. The Genesis essentials content I installed on my Desktop and moved it into the Genesis runtimes on the external. I found it a bit odd that while quite a bit of it just overwrote the older copies, quite a few of the data files didn’t overwrite anything.

Well, like I said, I launched the program and hardly any of my characters would load and I got a mess of missing file alerts. Some of them gave the the missing file alerts and then loaded anyway.

After reinstalling all the Genesis character content (morph packs, etc) from DAZ most of that went away, but when I loaded some of the stuff from Rendo I still got the missing file alerts—even though it did load.

So, okay, obviously I needed to reinstall that too.

Well I spent a couple of hours doing that yesterday evening, and what do you suppose I found?

I found that *all* of the files of *all* of those products that had data files that belonged in the data/DAZ3D/Genesis/Base/Morphs folder were missing. Now, some of the freebies consist of nothing *but* those data files. And I know that I had installed them when I got them. But they were nowhere in sight now.

Evidently, 4.5 *removed* all of the previous data files from the Genesis/Morphs folder when I installed it, even though they were on a different hard drive. Nothing of the upgrade got installed to the content hard drive.

I *think* those are the only MiAs. I’ve had no trouble loading hair or clothing, althoug I may trip over something later. But, c’mon! Removing all the data files?!

Sheesh!

I still have all of my morphs, and I haven’t had to reinstall them. I’m not sure what could have gone wrong to cause them, to vanish - I assume you aren’t a Mac user?

I am. Is this a Mac issue? I think that’s even weirder.

In older versions of the Mac OS, drop[ping a folder (such as \Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis) on top of another folder with the same name replaces, rather than merging. Lion and on have changed this, but I’m not sure if it’s now the default to merge or if it has to be triggered. In any event, it appears the OS ddi replace rather than merge for you.

Can someone please help me find old products for DSA3/DS4?

I bought a bunch of things that were on sale during the MM and the Cust Appreciation sales. But honestly with the new customer order history bungle, I can’t look by date, and I cannot remember the names of every product that was in those sales related to DSA3/DS4Pro. Did anyone else also make purchases of these items? And if you did could you just post the names so I can try to find them in my HUGE, BLOATED purchase history? I swear if it was by date I could find them without help, but the dates are all over the map and I am getting a massive headache just trying to sort through these.

And if you know, can you let me know if they are updated for the new DS4? (*not a necessity, but it might help).

Thank you ever so much!
Ariana

OH!!! And I see there is a new file extension of .DUS, does anyone know if old DS downloads auto convert when reset?

Yeah, I know about overwriting rather than merging folders, since I’ve used a Mac for over 20 years, and am currently sticking with Snow Leopard because of other legacy software issues. But generally DAZ installers don’t just drop subfolders into the main folders, they actually move their files into the subfolders. Unless they’ve redone the scripts for their installers that assume everyone is using OS X.7 or later. That is seriously not cool.

And I didn’t install *anything* onto that particular content drive, anyway. Although 4.5 knows about it. Because it kept my database of runtimes and I didn’t have to point the program at the drive to re-enter it.

RAMWolff - 13 September 2012 02:55 PM

Well most of the older plugins don’t work in 64 bit and still don’t.  I’ve pretty much given in and use what’s available.  It’s really no big deal at this point.

This is absolutely true! I have some very expensive plugins that not only do not work in my CS5, but those companies have no intention of updating, that means buying new all over again!

So I keep CS2 on my puter so that if needed I can use older plugins that were created for PS7 and CS2. CS3 started being very selective on what it would load. So I would say keep CS2 active and add in certain plugins there, and refine in CS5/6. Does anyone one know if PS Bridge(*for CS3) works with CS5?

Ariana