Fantasy and Sci-Fi Effects - not working any more?
SpottedKitty
Posts: 7,232
It's been a while since I last used B9999's Fantasy and Sci-Fi Effects set. I have a "standard" figure using one of them and it consistently loads OK in both D|S3 and D|S4. Tonight I loaded up a few of the items to see what I could still do with them. Not a lot.
None of the D|S MATs worked in D|S4.6 — all the FX props load, but nothing happens when I apply one of the MATs.
Some of them work in D|S3.1 — again, the props load, but apparently only the Flared Flash MATs work properly. Flex Effect and MultiSquare MATs make them turn invisible, MultiCylinder has something really weird going on in the Opacity, and many of the MultiSphere MATs don't look quite right. I don't understand this in particular, I was sure the last time I used them was in D|S3, and I had no problems then.
Anyone know what's happening here? I know it's an old set (bought nearly 8 years ago), with old .dsb MAT files, but if a D|S file's too old to work I expect some kind of error message. This is just weird. I hope I don't have to give them up as useless, these are still very nice SFX props.
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Comments
check the diffuse settings and the ambient settings once the mat is applied, I haven't used them in months but I do recall having to tweak things to get them to show up
Now this is interesting — the whole thing should never have worked, but I just loaded up D|S2.3 for the first time in nearly a year and all the MATs I've tried so far work perfectly... despite the diffuse being set at 0% with a texture applied. Ambient is at 100% with no texture, but if the diffuse is effectively off, should I be able to see anything? I'm more confused now. :-S
Ambient seems to be multiplied with the Diffuse colour but not the Diffuse strength, in some shaders.
Spotted how you loading the mat, double click? Try dragging the mats to the figure. Doubling clcikcing on the mat presets don't seems to work for me at all.
Top on is a .daz loaded mesh and dragging the .dsb mat to the mesh.
The bottom is the .Cr2 and same thing dragged the mat .dsb preset to the mesh.
Opps yes I should read your opening post better.
yes I am having some trouble with come of the mats like you are.
Fliexies all work
Cylnders all work
All the Planes work
Sphere any mat preset that has a P at the end of the name won't work at all. All the others work no problem.
This is of course Daz Studio dsb mat presets. The Poser presets seem to be all over the place in Daz Studio.
yep the spheres do require much tweaking and testing,
here I used them in Studio 4.5, in 4.6 the same scene renders differently, so I have to re-tweak things.
(4.6 test is rendering now..)
4.6 test with the sphere, only change is the camera angle, everything else is identical to the DS4.5 image posted previously.
Now that is weird — never seen that before, where click-applying a D|S MAT doesn't work but drag-applying does (mostly) work, I thought they'd both do the same thing.
BTW, about the "-M" and "-P" sphere MATs, the "-P" ones seem to have code at the end to reset the sphere scale and position. Pretty useless, since there are already reset scripts (that don't work).
Even weirder, the scene I have that loads perfectly in D|S3 and D|S4 is one of the sphere MATs. Maybe it's because the surface settings were already applied when the scene was originally created way back when?
Thanks for the help, I think I can work on from here.
Yeah sorry I should have added once you drag on drop the first mat on to the mesh then doube click should work for the rest.
Thank about the P I didn't give it much thought to be honest. I just tired them all.
That works for you? Odd, it doesn't for me, I have to use the drag every time.
Weirderer and weirderer, said Vicky. ;-)
LOL Yeah it really does need updating. I wonder, I will go and see if there is a bug report for it if not I will add one and report back. I am off to bed soon so I will do it tomorrow.
A discouraging thought — how many other items in the DAZ store have D|S files of a similar vintage, or even older? How old does a script or scene have to be before it verges into "works oddly" and then nothing? This one item has five figures and about a hundred MATs. Would it be considered "too much bother to fix"? :-S
Best way to use Right now in DS4.6 (I have them also) is to apply all the Textures by hand from the Textures folder in the Surfaces tab. I then adjusted to DS instead of Poser and Saved new Mat files. And I'm pretty sure the Item will not get a Update as I think it was dropped from the PA's support soon after it went on sale.
Bummer... I wish I had seen this thread before I bought this... NOTHING is working.. grrrrrrrrr.. No update??? WHY bother selling it then??? sheesh
There is a workaround (not a complete fix, unfortunately), check this recent thread with some tips on how I got all the bits and pieces to work. A bit fiddly, but the end result is the renders look pretty much as good as they did back in D|S2 — the last version where the .daz scenes and the materials files all worked properly.
Thank you SpottedKitty.. I'll have a look... Seems though.. if it's old content... something should be written on the sale page so people know about it BEFORE they buy. Or take it off the market so I'm not looking at it and wishing. It's been on my wish list foreeeeeeeeeever... and with the sale on special effects I decided to buy it. Not sure I would have if I knew it was broken :(
I have just tried them in Daz Studio 4.7 Pro and all works well if you just load the props from Poser files
and drag shaders over the props from Daz Studio folder. Below is the render and the scene setup.
ok.. Artini... i've been playing all day... my eyes are tired... i've tried all the suggestions above... and yes... it works.. sort of... but it's not perfect... I can see you are having the same problem as me with the spheres... there are little boxes all around the sphere... they are not supposed to be there... (see below)
I'm willing to spend the time to fix this issue if SOMEONE would tell me how to do it... ALL i need to be shown is once and I can work on them in my spare time. It doesn't seem right that there is no warning on the product page and those of us that have 4.7 are told to just USE THIS FIX. When I buy a product I expect it to work as advertized. :)
If someone is willing to show me how to fix this for other 4.7 users.. i will spend the time. :)
Yes, I see that problem with multisphere. I have rendered it without shaders and it looks like it has a lot of rectangles.
I have also rendered one of the layers on the sphere primitive and it looks better,
so may be it is possible to recreate the multisphere with 4 sphere primitives.
Like I said Artini... gonna take a lot of work.. I can see why DAZ doesn't want to take the time for only a few sales.. but... there'd be more sales if the product worked correctly.. maybe???? lol. Anyway... my eyes are tired from playing with this all day... I'm gonna grab a rest. Hugzzzzzzzz :)
I've avoided installing DS versions of old products into Studio and install the PS version into a separate runtime (in case I decide to install the DS version as well just to get the mat files.) Back then there weren't fancy shaders so tweaking surfaces wasn't much of a big deal so I rarely bother installing both.
But basically it was to avoid loading old .dsf's in Studio.
I got this product when it first came out, but shortly after that a new version of Studio seemed to break it and it would crash my Studio so I put it away and forgot about it. Just mentioning how I treat older files in general. (they're redoing many old PC files so they aren't so old anymore but this product wasn't PC)
problem is.. i didn't know it was old til it didn't work... it's not like they put dates on the products. It's.. ok.. I'm done buying for a while anyway... time to use what I have. I'll see about working on this in my spare time :)
Happy rendering!