Bug Report: Animators Beware, DS 4.12.1.117 deletes values keyframes en masse
Diaspora
Posts: 411
Example of how to reproduce the issue:
1: In a blank scene, open up keyMate and load in an instance of Genesis 2 Female.
2: Set keyMate to TRSV, Select the root node of Genesis 2 Female, and then make a keyframe every 5 frames.
3: in keyMate click the dropdown arrow next to Genesis 2 Female, then click the dropdown arrow next to values and you should see something like what you see on the left image.
4: Save the scene and then close daz studio and then reopen it and open the scene
5: Open up keyMate and set to TRSV and then go through the dropdowns back to the Genesis 2 Female root node values.
Scroll Down and you'll see now that half of the keyframes in the values dropdown have been scrubbed from the scene.
So, for example, if you did an animation with a lot of keyframes related to, a lot of facial expressions, all of that data gets lost as soon as you close DAZ Studio.
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Comments
Example image
Just tested this with Genesis 8 male, same exact issues.
Last Comment: I managed to revert to DS 4.12.0.86
I attempted to replicate the issues in the older version and I was unable to, 4.12.0.86 sets keyframes and saves and opens scene files correctly as expected.
It's fine to describe your experience in the forum, but to get the attention of Daz employees, you need to submit all these details in a help request. Forums are for users to converse and help each other. Daz does not monitor the forums, we are told.
Thanks, I did just send this link to them via the help center.
Good. Customer Service will attempt to reproduce the problem following your instructions. If the can, they will pass it on to the developers. If they can't, they will ask you for more information.
Have you tried the latest Public Build (beta) 4.12.2.6? I had a similar problem with keyframes disappearing when opening a saved file in 4.12.1.117. I have not been able to reproduce that problem in 4.12.2.6. Maybe I did something in a different way. Maybe it is intermittent. Maybe they fixed something. Who knows. I'm interested in whether 4.12.2.6 works better for you, too.
Edited to add: I was using the Timeline pane, not Keymate. Richard Haseltine hypothesized that there might be a conflict between the Daz timeline and keymate. It is something to consider, but still just a hypothesis at this point.
I don't have the public build installed. As for keymate, I mean, just speaking for myself, coming from an autodesk maya workflow, I definitely feel like it's gotta be keymate.
Daz has tried to incorporate Keymate and Graphmate features into the Timeline pane. The Timeline pane is still buggy, IMO. I have unresolved help requests open. I think it is their intent that the Timeline will replace Keymate and Graphmate. Keymate and Graphmate are no longer available in the Daz Store.
And I am petty glad that I bought them years ago because the new timeline needs a lot of work so I rely on KeyMate/Graphmate. But the problem with saving a scene and losing settings is particularly annoying. I found it happened on morph dials but probably on other things too.
The long term trend really is that DAZ Studio is becoming better as an animation program, but I really hope they fix this bug very soon because it definitely felt like the rug was pulled out from under me when I opened my project file and saw the equivalent of at least three hours of work just vanished without explanation.
I do think when they do an update, they should allow people to revert to a previous version in case a bug like this gets through. I am definitely going to always keep backups of DAZ Studio versions going forward and probably won't update again when I'm in the middle of a project.
Be aware that there is a Timeline bug that causes all of the "O" keyframes to be invisible when you open a saved file. They are still there, but not shown on the timeline. Go down to the keyframe types and toggle "O" off and back on and your "O" type keyframes will reappear on the timeline. I believe this bug is independent of the completely lost keyframes. I think the "A" and "H" have some strange things going on, too.
Faced the same problem yesterday. By experimenting, I found the following: the timeline does not save everything regarding morphs (which is usually 80% of the animation), the usual parameters such as transform, rotate and size are saved normally. Preserving the entire animation separately with the help of the pose preset does not give any effect (keyframes are also deleted after saving and loading the scene). Created aniBlok retain all the animation together with morphs, but working with them is not always convenient. And the first frame (zero frame) saves any information normally.
Moved to Daz Studio Discussion.
Have those of you with this issue tried disabling KeyMate (and GraphMate, to be safe) in Help>About Installed plug-ins, restarted DS, and reproduced the issue using just the Timeline (assuming that you have those plug-ins installed in the first place)? Given the steps in the first post I'm goign to try this now.
Yes, I see this in 4.12.1.117 using just the Timeline following the steps in the first post (and I also see barbult's issue with the property groups not showing unless their display is toggled off then on).
Happened for me in the Public Build too, with a fresh scene.
Lord ... And here is generally displaying a keyframe? This is just ANOTHER bug that only creates a lish of inconvenience. But a bug that after reloading the scene erases all the keys related to the morph parameter is a serious problem, which makes it impossible to work. I have to use castles.
Aha! It has been pointed out to me that you can right-click in the name/relationships area on the left of the Dopesheet and select Refresh, which redisplays the missing types. The Timeline is not intended to be done yet, so don't despair of these issues being addressed
Thanks.
I only despair the lack of documentation on how things are supposed to work and the lack of a list of known current deficiencies, so we don't waste so much of our time, moderators time, and CS time.
+
That's only of comfort to those who have the option of reverting to KeyMate/GraphMate, it seems to me. Fortunately I do so I continue to use them but I was under the impression that the missing morph adjustments are part of the save/reload bug whether or not KeyMate was used.
My take-away is that they are not actually missing, just inaccessible without doing toggling/setting gymnastics. Not sure if a save after the visibility issues occurs would 'confirm' the preceived loss, but that could go either way.
I think the Keymate relationship is that plugin can still 'see' the data if it is there to see.
To the user, the data that was there appears to not be there, and that is scary, and certainly not good for productivity - obviously changing the course of a workflow, if you think your recent work is gone.
Also - I noted elsewhere that the timeline framecount is doing the same thing.
A recent 1200 frame effort of mine gave me a start when it was 'truncated' in the timeline to 269 frames (no idea why 269) when reloaded into a 4.12 DS instance. I reset that to 1200 and the frames and my keyframes were still there, even though the scene/timeline *appeared* to be truncated.
And, for the last 5 or so DS general updates, my timeline 'active zoom?' was reset to 217 frames, meaning I would save something at X and restart/reload it to refresh DS memory (...) and when rendering the series I would find that it stopped at 217 (of the 1000+) that was/were set. Irritating, but probably in related code. All project-driven DS animators know about this quirk, but ... well I can't mention devs and actually using tools without deletion.
--ms
We also have a thread about this problem here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/404711/many-object-properties-will-not-save-keyframes-anymore-and-other-problems
I already heard back from Daz support about this. They said that the developers have been able to reproduce the issue and are working on a fix, so hopefully, we won't have to wait long.
To those of you blaming KeyMate or the timeline in general, that's not what this is about (apparently). I don't even have to look at that part of the screen to see the bug in action. The morphs and their key data are erased from the scene completely upon saving and reloading. You can observe this on the 3D models themselves.
Version 4.12.0.86 works fine.
Interesting and good to know they've replicated it.
I don't think folks are blaming Keymate/Graphmate (for me, it was the only way I could 'see' the data that wasn't otherwise obviously visible in the interface), I think they are simply wondering if those tools still work or are relevant, as the timeline gets updated, etc.
As I was noticing that my data 'seemed' to be gone, but using the tricks described above, I was able to 'find' some of it, I'm still curious if the data is really gone, or simply there and unavailable to me. I could also see that with each save/reload, that the 'lost' data is more likely to become orphaned and truly lost in a follow-on save - e.g. the first save may work, even if you can't see it, but the second save really drops the data and it's ... gone.
Glad they've replicated it and are debugging. Real data loss is a 'bad thing' (tm).
--ms
So, checking in, cause it's been a few weeks, is this still an unresolved issue?
I'm asking because I finished a project recently and am going to start another one soon and want to know if I should stick with 0.86.
Judging by the patch notes, it doesn't look like it has been fixed yet. I wish this would get prioritized higher. In my three years of using Daz Studio, this is the most serious bug I've seen by a massive margin.
Yes I am glad i bought them when they were avilable as well. Graph-mate is way better than daz graph editor Though the animate2 built in graph editor works pretty good too.
I am still on 4.12.0.85 .. Not bugs to report
The new timeline had potential but I really wish
the dope sheet could have resided in a separate tab from the spline graph editor
as it does with GraphMate/KeyMate.
Towards the end of my last movie production, I had no choice
but to revert back to using graphMate/keymate for efficiency.
Good point. Agreed.
I totally agree. I'm getting tired of checking back here daily to find barely a mention of the issue. I've always liked Daz and for a free program, I think they do an excellent job. However, I do wish this would be resolved because it's a big one. It essentially makes the program useless to animators. At least give us a headsup as to where they are in the process of fixing it.