Not sure about 4.9
melanie
Posts: 806
Well, I haven't decided yet to upgrade, because I'm seeing mixed comments about it. Some say it's not a big deal, others seem to be panicking about it. Is there anyone out there who is not a DAZ employee, but just an ordinary user like me, who has actually given it a try and what is your opinion after trying it? I'm assuming that I will probably end up going ahead with the upgrade, but as with any software out there in computer land, I'm always hesitant to upgrade. I haven't upgraded to Windows 10 yet for the same reason. Anyone have any positive experience with DAZ Studio 4.9 yet, or is it too soon to be asking this?
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I upgraded and nothing seems to have impacted what I do.
I'm in the middle of installing the new version. The installer has been stuck on "Installing Content Management Service" for about 5 minutes now. We'll see how it goes.
EDIT: The installer has been running for 50 minutes now; it still hasn't installed. After closing the installer, 4.8 won't start.
I had that problem. I had to cancel, then manually uninstall PostgreSQL using the uninstaller in the Program Files directory (which involves a restart) and then install 4.9
As someone with all my content from DAZ apparently installed, and who doesn't use Smart content (because I'm too lazy to finish categorizing my own/old/3rd pary stuff further than I already have upon installation)... I have no advances to evaluate. I'm probably only disapponited in it because it wound up being a pain to install.
I tried installing again from DIM, and it seemed to intall ok. When I open D/S, I get the following message: "A valid PostgreSQL CMS connection could not be established. Several DAZ Studio features that require a valid PostgreSQL CMS connection, such as context aware content views and loading content installed using the DAZ Connect service, will not be available. Check your network, anti-virus, and firewall settings for conflicts."
Nothing is showing in Smart Content or the Content library, but CMS is running. A little box appeared for me to log in to my DAZ account, but repeatedly trying with the correct email address and password doesn't work.
I didn't install with DIM, I used the manual download (always do for DS upgrades)
Sounds similar to a problem RamWolf was having, you may want to check the thread in the DAZ Studio Discussion forum.
Manual install is where I have the installer stick at the CMS installation stage. That's where I am again. I'll look at the other thread.
Up and running here as well. No problems at all.
I didn't do anytying special. I just exported my user data from 4.8.Closed it.Then did the upgrade in DIM.
When I first started the new 4.9 it update a huge amount of metadata I was missing.I let that finish , then I re-imported my user data from 4.8.I let that finsih then I restarted DS and was off any running.All my custom catagories were right where they should be.
I use Smart Content all the time. LOVE IT ! :)
Huge time saver when I can click my character, then in Smart Content click "hair" and see all 200 hairs I have installed that fit her.Much faster than old school directory diving to find stuff. I don't always rememebr who made an item , or what they called it.
I can get more people and props into my scenes now.Something changed with the memory use.It's much better in 4.9. I can get 4 fully clothed G2 characters into an iray render with a fully furnished apartment with lights, glass, reflective mirrors, and not crash Studio anymore :)
3Delight got an upgrade to it's already fantastic displacement abilities. The products that have displacement maps ( you can make basic ones yourself pretty easy if they don't) will have much more detail than one that has just bump and normal maps.
Both render engines got small performance increases and lots of bug fixes.
as for some of the other stuff you've been reading about, all I can offer is my opinion and my experiences. Personally, don't care if the content I buy is one file format or another.I use it all in Studio anyway. Everything I bought from Daz and several other stores all work in 4.9 with no problems. Encryption may or may not help stop people from stealing from the PAs. I hope it does. Silver posted in another thread that she was 5 months pregnant.She doesn't deserve to be robbed at a time like that. So I hope Daz can find a way to at least slow down the thieves for long enough to make a difference. Either way, this new encryption system has no affect on anything I can imagine wanting to do with the stuff I bought, and I really don't believe anyone at Daz would want to lock me out of anything I legitimately have access too.
I have hexagon and bryce, so far I've been able to send stuff between them and DS with the bridges.I also have Cararra, but I'm not very good with it yet. I had trouble getting stuff to load and work in that one anyway, so I'm not a good judge of what would work with that one.
I've also been able to export stuff to other file formats. I don't do much of this type of thing anyway, so I really don't know if anything has changed at a technical level that would make the exported objects not work in some other program. I exported a motorcycle today from DS to blender as an obj and it imported back into Studio just fine with no problems. So import and export works for as much as I can tell.
Textures and control maps we can still edit if we want. I do this alot. I like to make my own displacement maps and things like that. We have to save the new maps someplace other than the default product folder now.That's not really bad thing though. If that folder gets deleted during a reinstall or an upgrade, all the custom textures and stuff in it would be lost.So not a bad thing to find a different spot for those anyway.
I like 4.9, It's a nice improvement over 4.8.
hey ice if i understand right you got your metadata also through connect
as i did everything like you but did not connect i got my categories empty
and daz people say i do not have to connect
i think theres the problem with metadata
they do not work offline
We would like to see any questions you have put into this thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/69752/no-encrypted-for-me/p1
There is also an FAQ: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/65509/daz-connect-faq#latest
The Daz folks are monitoring the first thread and responding as they can. They may miss other threads.
The general complaints, apart from the DRM thing, is that you can't move encrypted contend around in your file structure, nor have access directly to their DUF. But you can arrange your content interface by some sort of shortcuts method. The overwhelming concern as I see it is about where things are heading and what might happen in the future. Based mostly on previous assurances that "We have no plans to..." and then they do just that.
My major concern is that there dosen't seem to be any long-term strategic marketing plan in place, with decisions being made on an ad hoc and whimsical basis, perhaps late at night after work over a few drinks. Evidenced by their arbitrary decision to release encrypted ony content a few days after having "no plans to do so". And while it is fair for them to say that decisions will be made on the basis of future sales, this very uncertainty and this back-tracking by Daz is breeding a lot of anxiety about whether they actually know what they're going to do from one day to the next. The natives are restless but not without good cause I'd say.
..this whole Daz Connect feels like MS's Auto Update.
The part that really bothers me is this:
..so, if you stay with 4.8, you may be out of luck. Sounds even more llike MS and Win 10.
I find DAZ_Rawb's explanation of encryption vs. drm to be pretty good: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/993417/#Comment_993417
Well it used to say "New products WILL begin to migrate toward a Daz Connect-only delivery. Not the word "may". They have since edited the phrase. So you can see what I'm talking about above, about policy making on the run. It hardly inspires confidence that they have a clear vision of where they are going.
Yes, I was logged in.
I don't know if those updates came thru Connect or not.I really don't care how they got distributed.
Logged in or logged out. It's all the same to me.
I've been logging in to desktop programs (mostly video games) for the better part of the last 15 years.
I login to my computer, I login to my email, I login to my bank account, I login to my twitter, I login to my tumblr, I login to various forum accounts.
Logging in to my account on Studio is no different than logging in to any one of my many different MMOs and online games or my Steam account.I really don't understand the things people are saying about logging in to their accounts.
I installed DS 4.9 on one of my machines Thursday evening, and my experience has been..., well, let's just say that I won't make that mistake again. Given the choice, you'd probably have a better experience just biting the bullet and upgrading to Windows 10; I've upgraded three systems already, and all are running flawlessly. I wish I could say that about DAZ Studio 4.9.
Most of my issues have been content-related. I keep my content on an external drive, and getting DS to recognize it at all was a bit of a struggle -- and my problems only got weirder from there. Roughly two-thirds of my content was unavailable: the icons in Smart Content are greyed-out, and double-clicking one requires me to log in to DAZ Connect to "install" it. (Excrete me? It already IS installed!) One item, FW Alfred for Michael 6, had to download a total of 528 items before it was usable. So much for being able to work offline.
I'm currently running the 'Re-import metadata' function -- and have been for more than two hours! Task Manager is telling me that DAZ Studio is running, and doing something -- something that is consuming about 32% of the CPU -- but DAZ Studio isn't telling me what. You know that dialog box that comes up when you re-imported the metadata in Studio 4.8, that gave you a running "Processing metadata for...," for every selected product? Well, they took that out in 4.9. Yeah, that's an improvement! Not. So it's just sitting there, with the progress bar sitting at 100%, and it has been like that for the past two hours, 43 minutes, and eighteen seconds -- and counting. I have no clue what's happening under the hood, and there is no 'Cancel' button.
Bottom line: my first impression is..., I'm not impressed. This machine will have DS 4.9 installed on it, but this is likely to be the only one. I even tried uninstalling it last night. Then, this morning, I tried putting 4.8 back: I ran the installer; it completed. I clicked the Start Menu icon for DS 4.8. Guess what splash screen was displayed? That's right -- DS 4.9! The 4.8 installer merely revived 4.9 -- pulled it out of the recycle bin, I guess. What's it going to take to get rid of this POS, a stake through the hard disk!? Does MacAfee know about this?
I'll continue to use 4.8 for as long as I can get content for it. After that, I guess it'll be back to Poser.
You can use 4.9 and refuse to buy encryption-only products.
In some possible future where all new content is encryption-only and you have all the past store items you could possibly want, you could still use Daz Studio and refuse to get the new stuff and, instead, shop elsewhere.
I don't expect it to change much for me. I'm skeptical that "Smart Content" will now work. It hasn't worked for me since it was introduced. I've no opinion yet on being able to install content from within Studio.
I enountered that issue when I installed and tried running the Beta, and was never able to get past it. (Actually, I scarcely even tried; I just figured that the program wasn't ready for prime-time (it still isn't, as far as I'm concerned), and backed it out. Add to that the fact that the 4.9 install overwrote my 4.8 installation -- despite assurances that this would not happen, and that the two installations could peacefully coexist -- made me decide to wait until the program was ready for release.
Looks like I'm going to be waiting for rather a while....
@Ken What you are seeing is the "Products" page of the Smart content. Click the tab just to the left of it on the top called "Files" and you will see the Smart Content catagories.If you right click one of those products in "Products" view, you will have several options, one of them is to install. This is the Connect download manager.There will be other Connect features as well in that right click menu.
No problems here either. I left all my old data structure the way it was and works just like in 4.8 and earlier (I never used DIM for anything but installing beta versions of DS). The only things I have installed via Connect so far are the free items. That worked well and straight forward. No issues what's however.
I find connect actually extremely useful even for the stuff that's not installed via connect, because it can show me all the DAZ stuff I have and I can quickly get more info (for example the install structure to quickly find it in my content library tab. You just right click on one of your product (doesn't matter if it is installed or not) and select "More information". That pops up a window with the readme and all the info I need to quickly find it. See attached screenshot. The search also works pretty well in the product tab. I like it.
Ciao
TD
I'll try that -- when DAZ Studio comes back from it's alternate universe. (The re-import metadata process is still running, after three-and-a-half hours, and still sucking up about 30% of the CPU.)
At the moment, I'm inclined to just kill it from Task Manager, reset the CMS database, re-install the PostGRE SQL service, and try a fresh install of DS. The way I'm looking at is, 'What's the worst that could happen?' From where I'm sitting, it already has.
It will not erase your 4.8 as 4.9 goes in that folder, so I decided to test it. Glad I did, it's rather cool. It kept my custom categories that I had created (Using Content Library, right click and Categorize. NO moving of file paths.)
Enjoyed the custom categories in 4.9, read about other people whose custom stuff was messed up from the getgo. Then another gal mentioned her custom part went poof, after it was there. I opened and closed my studio probably 25 times since I downloaded the regular (not beta) 4.9. No problem. We've discussed this thoroughly in my art studio thread, and I said I would do screen shots to show folks who hadn't tried it yet, what it looked like with "real usage." I closed the studio, then opened it up.
Well, problem. MY CUSTOM STUFF HAD GONE POOF BUT ALL OF IT WAS THERE FIVE MINUTES BEFORE THAT! Compare the top one, my 4.8, with how 4.9 butchered it , after days of having it correctly. It changed the order, put things in such as "Head apply" , etc.
Can't recommend 4.9 except to download free Connect stuff. At this point, keep your 4.8! (I do want to emphasize, I haven't lost anything. Nothing in my 4.8 was changed when I installed 4.9.)
Would you please be so kind as to contacting customer support with this. Be sure to include lots of details because this is obviously very odd behavior. My question is if you had 4.8 open at the same time, or if you installed something through DIM while something was happening in 4.9. I'm sure we can get this all sorted out, but in the mean time you should be able to reimport your user data that you exported in 4.8 and that should put everything right again.
Hey Rawb- just so you know- I hadn't used 4.8 after I installed 4.9.
They weren't open at the same time, ever.
The 4.9 was not open when using the DIM (I developed that habit a LONG time ago.)
Want to emphasize to everyone that my 4.8 IS FINE, no need to do anything. I don't want people to panic and think if they try 4.9 that it bulldozes the 4.8. (I did backup everything before installing 4.9, always a good idea regardless of what version it is.)
I will share this with customer service, but it was a simple right click>categorize in Content Library. No paths were changed. Off I go! (I won't reimport the data in 4.9 because they might want to look at it before anything is changed. I'll use 4.8)
I'm sure I won't be installing 4.9 until they have the CMS problems cleared up. I'm getting satisfactory results with 4.8's IRAY that I can wait to upgrade to the 4.9 version that fixes SSS until I know my categories won't get clobbered (which they did when I tried 4.9 beta a few months back).
I'm going to sit this one out and stay with 4.8. My question is can I still buy 4.9 content (manual downloads) and use them on 4.8?
JV
How did you manage that? I created new folders for 4.9 and content, but it still wanted to zap 4.8. Maybe I should try again.
I guess I should move 4.8 from the default location?
if you are going to use that hack to get both release versions installed at the same time you should keep in mind that it doesn't take into account the operational files that are made and placed in AppData and the other Local and roaming profile folders.
Some of these hard to track problems that are poping up maybe a result of playing with that hack and not understanding the problems it causes.
My understanding is that as long as its not encrypted only content then yes, you can. I just loaded a bunch of stuff I bought yesterday and its fine, loaded just like normal with Dim (or manually if you prefer) and works as it should. I don't have 4.9 on my machines as of yet. Its JUST the ones that are ecrypted only like the freebies yesterday and today.
IRAY shaders targeting 4.9 might not look good/right in 4.8 by default. Nothing earthshattering, you can adjust the shaders in 4.8 if that's the case.