Digital Art Zone

There’s been a lot for me to like in DS4 - namely, the “auto-fit” feature that allows me to use all the legacy clothing items I’ve aquired since V3. Not perfect - and not great if one is attempting photo-realistic renders, but for my “cartoon” work, it does quite well.

That said, DS4 is a HORRIBLE resource hog. I have a high-end machine with 8 GB of RAM, but whenever I attempt to load more than four figures, the application slows to a crawl.

Has this been addressed? Will any of the GenX plug-ins and the auto-fit still work in 4.5?

Other annoyances - the way the feet and hands get deformed when I apply certain non-Genesis poses (yes, I have the fix for this, but it’s still an extra step) and the way figures periodically “jump away” when I select a body part and attempt to move a parameter dial.

Mostly however, I want to know if I will still be able to open my old scene files with 4.5 once it’s overwritten 4.0. This is the one thing I have HATED about DS - if you wind up re-installing the application or upgrading to a new version, old scene files won’t open anymore (unless you want to go through the scene tab and re-load everything, then copy and paste - and with a scene containing dozens of props and figures, this get’s VERY cumbersome).

I haven’t followed the beta threads, but:

3rd-party plugins, like Gen-X and Reality, have to be recompiled, but that sounds like it’ll be a fairly trivial task. Paulo expected to update Reality right right after he got back from vacation. Updates normally don’t cost extra (upgrades do).

The included plugins are already updated.

I haven’t seen exclamation marks flying around, so I’d be shocked if Autofit doesn’t work.

Edit: And then I have to go back and change single-spaces to double, so they’ll show as single. Gets me everytime. *weary sigh*...
.

Viewport performance should be better in 4.5, though how much so will depend on local factors of course.

so far autofit works wonderfully for me in 4.5 as it now preserves the morphs in the source

because of this I have now finally decided to move to genesis because I can now carry over clothing onto genesis via autofit which I couldn’t before

at the moment I am doing a lot of experimenting with autofit just to be sure

I haven’t noticed any appreciable difference in speed though, to me the interface is still quite sluggish

I still don’t feel up to converting over till at least GenX will work.

have you been having problems with GenX or are you just refering to the need for it to be recompiled for 4.5?

I haven’t used it for a while but was successful with the Gen4 version in getting M4 characters across to genesis (I abandoned it because I decided I wasn’t going to move over to genesis)

One annoying little thing DS4 does in create render widows in such a way that they must be re-sized to see the whole render.  I’m sure this was an oversight on the part of Daz, but I hope its resolved now…

Nice to hear that Autofit now keeps morphs so I can stop using the Transfer Utility and deleting bones.

I think I’m going to wait for Gen X to be recompiled too.  I have a fair number of characters I developed for Gen4 that I still need to transfer over, and I’d hate to be in the middle of something and discover I forgot one before I upgraded.

They fixed some issues and broke a lot of things in the process. Morph Loader is useless as it only works in vertex mode. Option to change that is locked. Paths are screwed up and there’s constant “Can not locate this or that” messages as well as the old “Duplicate blah blah blah” messages. Last used render settings are not saved and it keeps reverting back to whatever you used before you installed 4.5. Autofit imports morphs now yes but it still messes up long dresses and skirts and still has no support for shoes.

Improvements worth writing about is the much faster preview window, new file format, the more organised shader mixer interface, instancing and geometry shell. If these things are of interest to you then you might want to try it out. If not I suggest waiting for the final release as this in my eyes is sub standard fare.

Of course I’m open to the possibility that I should have maybe done a full un-install of 4.0.x and a clean install of 4.5 and I will try this to rule out a botched installation. Does anyone else experience the same issues?

On the duplicate IDs, a lot of products were updated in March and April to correct that.  If your installer is older, reset and see if that fixes it.  If not, bug report it.

fixmypcmike - 29 May 2012 11:07 AM

On the duplicate IDs, a lot of products were updated in March and April to correct that.  If your installer is older, reset and see if that fixes it.  If not, bug report it.

Ah…that would explain why it’s just certain products. Will check installers, thanks Mike.

And I have a scriptt hat will mostly fix duplicate IDs on things that haven’t been updated. It’s listed in the index.

Paths are screwed up

Which ones?

Last used render settings are not saved and it keeps reverting back to whatever you used before you installed 4.5.

This works as usual for me.