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I have a couple of skins I've actually applied a blue tint to, to get a very pale look. I suppose I rarely use the skin and shader as they come, but can image it being tough at times to get them close. I decided to upgrade a few months ago, yet only last week found a character I'd made for the 4.8 version; took a while to get it close to the 4.8; I still have 4.8 Daz saved. I'm kinda paranoid.
I am personally not affected by this 4.8 vs 4.9 issue as I am still on 4.7 with no workflow or hardware related reason to even jump to 4.8 let alone 4.9
Reasons briefly:
I am primarily an Animation/VFX producer who never renders finals in Daz studio but in Maxon C4D
nivdia Iray is Not relevent to me for PBR stills as we have Chaos Group's Vray For C4D to say nothing of "MCteleblender ' for converting DS scenes to cycles.
Since Daz studio is a free application I can see the point of those who say "why not just upgrade to the latest version for full content compatibilty"
But Also I can certainly see the perspective of those who choose not to do so for the whatever reasons personal or technical.
However those of us who choose to run older software or use "older" figures have to accept the reality that the pace of change of getting faster rather than slower.
Your creative objectives may have to be tailored to account for where you have decided to halt your upgrading.
In my case as an animator I have decided to skip Genesis 3 entirely due to its well documented and DAZ acknowledged,limitations for motion creation, not only in Daz studio, but even in Autodesk motionbuilder where it is supposed to be "more compatible"
G3 animates wonderfully in our seat of Iclone pro
and her "Moprh 3D" iteration( the MCS female rig) ,
functions great in Unity.
But we dont render from Iclone and I am not a Game developer.
So for me this means No " Ivan" or "Rune" or "Aiko7 " in any of my animated projects and I am OK with that because
we have not even began to explore the full potential of G2 or even G1 as animated actors in my projects both personal & commercial.
Just like the Iray vs 3Delight shader "situation" I dont really see The PA's
reverting back to previous Daz tech when it comes to the version of DS for which they develop.
I have seen the problem of things created in 4.9 not working in 4.8, not everything just odd things. Not here at Daz but elsewhere.
It might be worth reporting those, if this is a bug more examples may help them to fix it.
Male-M3dia:
Given that upgrades often break stuff, some set of which Daz Studio will never prioritize or take responsibility for fixing (such as the flagging issue KK mentioned), there are some very strong reasons why a number of people might not want to abandon functionality that they've relied on for their workflow.
But also given that upgrades also fix things as well, more often than not, there are more valid reasons to upgrade. As I said, you can choose to stay at one version, but it is unrealistic to expect PAs to support multiple versions of software indefinitely. Eventually the older support will go away, and you have to determine whether or not upgrading works for you. The fixes and new features are always going to be in newer versions and more people are going to demand that over staying at older versions. This really isn't anything new and these diescussions have been going on since version 2.0 of the software. 4.9 fixes several major issues with iray and the new sdk from Nvidia will have fixes to use their new cards as well as a version 2.0 of CUDA, so that's going to be a necessary upgrade as well.
I solved one issue of not being able to find my content by leaving 4.8 on my laptop and putting 4.9 on my main rendering pc. I load everything up in 4.8 so I can see the blue bars then follow the bread crumbs on my 4.9 version. However when I first switched I did lose all of my custom categories. Yes, they fixed it in the newer updates but it took me 6 weeks or more to re do those categories working on them nightly and on the weekends when I wasn't working. And yes, I'm still angry about it. So jumping onto the newest and *best* upgrade is not always the best thing to do.
But all that aside I think what may worry me the most about this discussion (and obviously right now I am not going to have this problem because I render with the newest version is that at some point, a lot of the stuff that I have recently spent thousands of dollars on may not work right tomorrow if there is another upgrade. THAT really concerns me as I can't afford to keep buying new stuff. Its just not feasible for me and probably a majority of the hobby users, to do. I also understand that Studio is free but to be honest, I believe I have more than made up for that in content purchases. If said content isn't going to work from one version to the next its going to be a problem.
Expecting people that don't use certain features to upgrade, or that use features that are known to be broken (for whatever reason) in later versions yo do so isn't good. Yes, I get that support will go away, but as we have seen, the mark of a good PA is to do what they can to help customers using their product even if they aren't using the supported version of the software.
It's unreasonable to expect PAs to continue to support multiple versions indefinitely. It's also unreasonable to, on the one hand, show an unwillingness to fix stuff that breaks with upgrades, and then expect everyone to upgrade.
Yes and we do. But if the majority of the customers want the new features, that's what we have to do, because that's what makes a good PA.
As I said, PAs respond to customer needs; so if those customers are on the newer versions and have no issues with the software, then the PAs have to be responsive to that. Any issues that other users have to be taken up with customer support as we aren't responsible for that. We can only respond to general demand and that's what most PAs are doing.
That depends on who users expect to fix something that broke. The mentioned issues with AoA lights and such may not be something that DAZ can fix, and the PA may not be interested in doing so or able to for whatever reason.
ise having troubles with omnifreak uber soft lights in 4.8.
easy fix was to haul out 4.6.2.118
wanted some nice lowcut jeans for g3m. working at the carwash buffing hoods and fenders
To you maybe, but I'm sorry, but you don't seem to understand that not everyone feels the same.
PAs produce products; customers chose if they want to buy or not.
And while later versions of Daz fix bugs, they also have a history of breaking products or functionality, which never gets fixed.
Version numbers will only go up and I have no problem with keeping up with version numbers going up.
I've always considered this to be a major factor in this compatibility (or not) issue. In short, the "Compatible Software" section of any DAZ product's store page is and always has been broken and not a little misleading. If this was changed to show the actual D|S version the item was created for, it would be more immediately obvious when a version issue comes up. At present, this section does not and never has shown actual compatibility, it shows whatever the current D|S version is, right now when you're looking at the store page.
Fix this, DAZ, and a whole lot of unnecessary confusion that's been going on for years will be immediately much easier to clarify.
This is spot on. Some of the content on sale here will work on DAZ Studio 3a but not on later versions without a lot of work, some works on Poser 4 or later, some on Poser 5 etc. Whatever the content it should correctly state which version or versions it actually works with. This would save DAZ support staff a lot of work once it was done and save some customers a lot of wasted time returning items that don't work in whatever software they are currently using.
This issue is also interesting to those who have investigated the Poser file format. Due to the forward thinking manner in which the Poser file formats are designed almost anything that worked in old versions of Poser right back to version 1 will work in the latest versions. Some of that content would be pointless in the latest versions because other content next to it would make it look very silly, but it would work.
DAZ Studio supports many, but not all, Poser formats; it does not support Poser materials or Poser's pose injection format. In theory, most DAZ Studio 4.0 or later content should be compatible with 4.9 but compatibility in the other direction is not an automatic guarantee unless customers with the older versions are willing to volunteer to help PAs test it and help them find out why such items don't work right.
I have 4.9 But i use 4.8 almost exclusively when I doing animation. . I don't like the interface with 4.9 offers, I don't like the bright bluegreen color for the aniblocks under the darkside style, and I don't like the clunky,chunky interface with the of the rest of the styles. I don;t use genesis3 so I don;t need improvemnt for rigging, and my Iray and 3dlight still work okay for animation use. so thats why I use 4.8 I don't much like the 4.9 interface style.
That would be a great if implemented.
In result of this I will not buy any more new clothes for g3f and g3m from the store from now on because it is not sure that they will work in DS4.8. I have spend a lot money in the past, I will not spend more in the future. And if new clothes will may not work in DS4.8 who can garantuee that older clothes will work in DS4.9???? If DAZ thinks that it is a great thing to change fundamental things from DS4.8 to DS4.9 for the same figures (g3f and g3m) if it comes to clothes fitting. I think it is a good idea to spend no more money.
You can always post a question to the forums to see if somebody else has tried the product in whatever version of DS you are running, then you'll know if it works or not. Alternatively you can purchase, try, refund-if-broken for specific items. I've seen a number of comments indicating whether an item does/doesn't work, people are pretty helpful about doing that.
Well TheJeanZ work now in DS4.8 after running it through the transfer tool like The3DWizzard has shown it in the "JeanZ" threat.
Very good customer support BTW.
Excellent news.
I'm sure if you asked the maker of Project E that, he would tell you something different. No, it's not completely compatible.
I do understand, as I'm a customer too. This is a hobby I make extra money for and having a background in IT for over 20 years I understand the issues with upgrading. However, 3D rendering is a form of IT and it follows the same rules of software development. You do have to weigh ugrading with being left behind. I've recently upgraded to 4.9 2 months ago after finishing my last products, and for me the program has been solid to render and develop, but that also means since I do need to use the current version for the Iray fixes, I most likely won't be supporting 4.8 as I don't have an extra computer to run renders. But that said, 4.9 has been out for half a year and they've been working on most of the issues that users have notated. But as I said, with fixes and updates, you will have to weigh updating as some may not be supported in 4.8.
6 months is nothing. I would fully expect PA's to support an older version of the software for at least a year. Period. What would happen if Microsoft ditched every previous version of Windows 6 months after they launched 10? I don't think that would go over very well.
Daz needs to add the ability for multiple installs. That sure would help this issue. Iray works differently in 4.8 vs 4.9. This is not even debatable and no manner of bug fixes or improvements will change that. And most importantly, Daz needs to list ***ALL*** the versions of Daz that a product works with. No exceptions. It is totally ludicrous that products created years ago are only listed to work in 4.9. That is so misleading and confusing. Frankly I think that is a pretty shady business practice.If microsoft offered a new version of windows and olders programs did not work in it, what happens now? You buy a new version of the program that software company provides, if it's not supported, the software company will say so. You may get a discount on that program, but you don't get automatic and free support on the upgrade for the new program. In this case, the products correctly lists the software works and it didn't work in older versions. PAs can't be responsible to make sure their products work in future products, it doesn't happen now and if they make the updates, as they aren't large corporations, they will charge you as it is cost they have to incur to update older products as a software company would.
Also the issue in this thread is a content created in 4.9 works in 4.9 and was noted the required software is 4.9, not content created a year ago only works in 4.9.
I've been bumbling around with my DAZ Content for 15+ years. I don't remember having an item that wouldn't work in the latest version of DAZ Studio. My general computer experience says it's always best to upgrade your software, including the Operating System & DAZ Studio. My only exception is Poser, since I rarely use it.
It should be common knowledge that you'll eventually lose out on something if you don't keep updated. I remember the old days when vendors provided versions for Poser 4, 5, Poser Pro, etc. What a mess. I'm glad they finally dropped that idea. Same goes for DAZ Studio. Life moves on.