Daz Studio 4.9 Beta Now Available..
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I still can't find the "Store Tab" in the beta.
Once in smart content tab, you will find it here. Buying content there is essentially the same as buying on the site, just in a smaller window lol. It promps you with the same checkout process.
Thank you for take the time to elaborate with details. Obviously I won't be able to test it out in a real world condition until all of the background work is finished. I am just extremely skeptical at this point.
My DIM start up time is currently my real world measuring stick:
Laptop: 1-2 minutes at most.
Desktop #1: 5-6 minutes.
Desktop #2: About 10 minutes.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, my real world download times with DIM are painfully slow. On a fiber optic connection 40 Gigs in DIM will take all night to download. Meanwhile I can download 300-400 Gigs from Steam in a couple of hours. (I just reinstalled everything last week, so these are current measuring times.)
Not to throw out red herrings or flame bait, but DAZ has not been real... consistent in how these things are approached. I am not going to rehash it all, but over the past few years I have ranted about various sale approachs and lack of attention to detail. Which is the seed of where all my doubt is coming from.
I admit that recently it seems as if things have turned around a bit so I am willing to give this the benefit of a doubt. I don't think that anyone is trying to intentionally harm the customers, but that doesn't mean that it won't happen unintentionally.
I obviously found the store, but where is the download thingy? I thought we were able to download using the studio and not the DIM, so thought I'd try that?
Okay, so my products aren't there until I use them? I thought someone showed an image of the thumbnails grayed out, vs the ones with the cloud, and the cloud ones were installed? All mine are cloudy. (LOL) I tested Summer (Genesis 3) with an outfit a few minutes ago, and they loaded as fast as my studio 4.8 ones.
Thanks Zevo. Found it.
But DS locked up on me anyway when I hit it, so......
So....to categorize something in your content library so it shows up in this "Smart Content" tab.....you righ click on the icon of the product, choose "Categorize...", go through the steps there, hit accept.....and it should show up in your Smart Content pane when you go to the relevent area? IE....I categorize something as Creatures -> Fantasy SciFi -> Land and it'll show there in the Smart Content? Any other steps you need to take, cos it's not showing for me.
Novica, saw this in the first postings about the beta:
Content Library pane
So the greyscale icons are not installed, the others are.
Can't work that out actually...what are they basing it on? In "figures" I've got 16 icons that are coloured, none that are greyscale, and only SOME of my products are listed there.
Sorry for the double post. After posting I realized that I forgot some of my thoughts. Happens more often than I care to admit.
These are the "gotcha goblins" that are standing out in my mind. Some of them have already been commented on, some have not. Most of them won't be answered until I actually try the new software.
1. Shadow downloading. Most of the time I am on a cellular connection and I try to stay vigilant about what is being transferred. That's why I never run Steam while on cellular and I have my Windows Update turned off. (Both of these items are notorious for DLing huge packages with no notification.)
2. Library size, re: meta data download. Terrified of suddenly being forced to download a huge chunk of data just because I put it off too long.
2a. Library size, re: start up. Someone mentioned something about previously DLed content being encrypted once the key is downloaded. 9,000+ content packages suddenly having to be encrypted would be a nightmare.
2b. Library size, re: start up. The impact that the validation of a user's key is going to have on simple things like starting DS, adding items to a scene, browsing content, etc. It is easy to say there is none, but everyone's environment is different. Number of library items, age of those items, size of those items, hardware specifications, directory mapping, etc. These are all variables that cannot be reasonably tested in a lab and unforeseen things always happen.
3. Loss of decryption key. Things happen. Files get corrupted or accidentally deleted. If I loose said key while I am on a trip, I don't want to be crippled until I have a chance to reinitialize everything on the internet.
4. Reality export. I use Reality / Luxrender as my primary render engine. No one has address how this encryption is going to interact with software packages that involve some manner of export.
5. Communication. I am sorry, and this isn't meant as a slam, but DAZ's track record for communication is really poor. It has gotten considerably better in the past couple of months (this thread being a good example), but there were years when there was 0 communication from the company. So I find it hard to take words here on faith and it is easy to expect the worst.
6. DRM, DRM, DRM. I have been burned by this repeatedly for more than 35 years now. It's hard to reassure my 12 year old internal child that still smarts from the pain of not being able to play Bard's Tale because the user manual was "borrowed" by a friend.
I'm just getting to grips with smart content now. What I do like is the options when you right click on an icon, eg I can view all materials regarding the product, and jump to it's location in content library, which I normally use. Actually quite handy. I think this smart content thing along side my content library will be cool.
Well tell them to goto the Carrara forums and make a new post about the future of Carrara. I think it's bad business keep customers in the dark. I don't think its 'smart' but dishonest to keep information from customers. I know if I purchased a program and it got discontinued right after purchasing I would be pretty pissed.
I'm still trying to figure it out - to work out if it's going to be better than the way I organize my stuff now or not.
I right click on the "Deadly NightShade for Gen3F" outfit.....choose "explore product".....i get accessories, poses, props, wardrobes listings. I cannot for the life of me find the MATS it came with nor the add on!!!
I'm glad a poster above raised the issue of trust, because this issue underpins the introduction of 4.9. Daz users are now all treated as would-be pirates who can no longer be trusted to do the right thing. Hence the DRM encryption regime.
So apparently we all need to be watched very closely as potential criminals, for our own good of course. This scatter-gun approach to security is hard to justify at best, and insulting at worst. It's the NSA big brother approach that proved so embarrassing for them. But I would have to agree that in this day and age trust is increasingly hard to come by. And I can understand why so many are cynical when Daz says "trust us with this", when 4.9 means that same level of trust is no longer shown towards its users. I think this is why so many find it hard to express what they actually don't like about 4.9, It isn't the program itself. It's the erosion of trust and wholesale shift in how Daz now views its users.
So does this mean all our credit card data is accessable via a cloud hack due to the keys being stored on that cloud?
CC data is not stored on Daz 3D's store servers. Like most sensible companies it is handled elsewhere.
Last time I checked the CC Security Code function was still broken. Hence why I am concerned about security.
If you chose "Categorize" it will make an entry in the Categories, not in the Smart Content.
Because of all the file mess, Ihave categorized all my content (I don't like Smart content). With Categorize, I have sorted the content all the way I like, without having to work on the file structure. The good thing is that Carrara can also read my Categories. Or at least, it could so far.
OH! Ok i get it now. so what use is Categories?
It's metadata that makes it show up in the Smart Content, is that right?
Yes, when you create metadata for a product you give it a Category. I assume this is what you can change in Smart Content. Not tried it myself as I like to sort my own runtime.
I sort my own runtime too, don't use Smart Content or metadata or categories at all as I know where everything is in my runtime.
But if this connect thing is going to STOP us organizing our runtimes the way we want, I'm looking at the smart content tab to try and figure it out adn see if it'll do the job for me and I won't get so upset over losign the ability to sort my runtime the way I want.
So far, not good.
Okay, that's why I am astonished. Literally, it was only a minute or two after I signed in, when my 4.9 studio came up, and everything is in COLOR for the most part. I haven't compared 4.8 with what is there, vs 4.9. Right now I am doing a test render in Iray with both studios, with the same person, hair, clothing, lightset, and scene- and what a difference. I am checking over and over again to be sure I didn't make a mistake, because the 4.9 is really washing out the background. I'm doing screenshots. The 4.9 reached 100% in 6 minutes 3 seconds, whereas it was only 96% with the 4.8 version at 6 minutes.
Like Wilmap said. :-)
The use of categories is that you can let DIM do the installations, then go to "Content directory", look for all the "New" marked content, and categorize that to your liking. That way, I get my textures (or any texture add on I might buy later), for a product in the same "category folder" with my product, or sort all my room sets into my sub-category "rooms", etc. It's pretty nifty, because I can easily move stuff around, and even duplicate a category with its content if I feel like it. For example, I have the Iray shaders categorized under Shaders, but I also have an Iray category where I categorized them. Which vategory I use depends on my workflow.
Now... categorizing from Smart content into my Category listing, this might turn into a challenge. I haven't really have the time to tet much, but I'll see how it fares with some newly installed content.
Basically, Categorizing is kind of like moving around your content files into different directories, just that it doesn't touch the files. And of course, the mess in the original file structure remains, and it's still difficult to find a file if you access your stuff from elewhere, or if you want to add part of a different skin to a character, and have to look up the actual file for the diffuse map.
I loaded 4.9. I pulled up my scene. I did not login to the connect. It immeadiatly began downloading stuff. Lots of stuff and doing stuff with the cloud. In the background without my consent. What? I had no way to turn that off that I could see. I couldn't see any control panel. I tried to render. Tried to save the render. It froze. Ughh.. Uninstalled. Went back to 4.8
I certainly think that the direction Studio is headed will prevent many of us from moving to future versions of the application. The vast majority of us do not appear to promoting or defending piracy but that group may also feel they are the ones who will ultimately be the losers for trying to remain loyal customers. I hope not, I like Studio but I understand they are trying to combat a problem that is essentially the hydra, I just don't think their plan is thought out as well as it could be at this time.
It immediately started migrating your content from the 4.8 tables to the 4.9 tables. It did not connect, without you logging in it couldn't connect.
I've just downloaded the Beta but now it keeps telling me that Install Failed! Help please.
That works. You can also use the categorize pane to create new categories. And you can drag and drop one or more items into various categories.
Example 1:
When you drag and drop to categorize, if you a product in the scene selected, the drag and drop will also remember that the item is associated with that product.
Example 2:
Thanks to drag and drop, organization of your content, the way you want to organize it, is a snap.
And to make sure your changes are kept through rebuilding of your database, it is a good idea to "Export userdata" after you make changes. This is found under content database maintenance.
Very confusing. Then why did it talk about the cloud? Usually clouds are online storage..... I guess what I like to know is what the software is doing. There really isn't much of an explanation. And migrating to tables where?
The tables have changed to handle things slightly differently and more efficeintly. So the database had to be migrated from the old tables to the new one. I haven't seen a message about a cloud during migration. Where was this message?
On the bottom of the screen should have been a message about migrating content and a progress bar. (Not very noticeable, but it is there and the goal was to make it unobtrusive.)
For what it's worth, I see the exact same behavior from the browser store -- yesterday I got something on sale and it took a refresh or two before it showed the correct sale price.
I strongly suspect this isn't a 4.9 thing but a store system thing.
Is 4.9 better than 4.8? That's really all I need to know.