Been using the 'test4i' and absolutely love it!  I'm sure everyone has a different workflow but for me, being able to keep the base model at base resolution is huge.  I can now import a base res model, import JCM's, shapekeys, etc. without having to worry about importing an hd version.  With a base res model, I can add multires or subdiv, apply the vector displacement maps, pose, sculpt some final details, then reset everything for the next pose.  Very awesome.

The EXR's make it much simpler by not having to figure out midlevel and scale.  I also like working in EXR when possible so no information is lost. 

@Padone - quick question, I'm not familiar with how the vector displacement maps work as far as what each color means mathematically, which direction, etc.  So, what do you think the best way to combine two VDM's would be?  I used mix RGB and also tried to average them with math nodes, which did work, but obviously took out some of the details since it took the average displacement of two values.  For example, if I'm using an HD character morph like Sydney HD, and want to add an expression like Angry HD, is there any way to combine the VDM's and keep all the details from both maps?

I don't have a bitbucket login, but a big thanks to you(Padone), engetudouiti, and a super big thanks to Xin for this addition. 

Morphs can control other morphs.  You can create master/slave relationships between different parameters via ERC.

In Daz terms, master is the "Controller" and slave is the "Sub-component".  So you would have the Pose Control dial set up as Controller and your morph as Sub-component.

I can't remember how to set them up.  I think you can just drag and drop the relevant morph into the Controller or otherwise Subcomponent slots in the Property Heirarchy.

I've created a piece of clothing for G8F and added a whole bunch of JCMs for necessary joints/bones. But when it comes to the sliders under the Pose Controls sub menu (in the Parameters Tab), I can make a morph to fix the dress, but don't know if there's a way to trigger them automatically, when the relevant Pose Controls dial is used. Those are not inherited by the dress when I transfer the rig transfer as far as I can see. The only thing I can think of is to make visible adjustment morphs that users can set manually when needed. Easy enough to do.

But just in case I thought I'd ask if there was another way to do this, for these morphs to work as other JCMs - automatically. Any advice is appreciated.

jdfox said:

mindsong said:

Thanks for doing that and sharing your efforts!

To anyone interested, I would guess that this should work fine with the older mimic-lite (https://www.daz3d.com/mimic-lite) outputs, so long as you operate it on a V4 figure (as well as the standalone Mimic Pro tool, no longer available, but many folks may still have it...).

cheers,

--ms

Yes it should - any mimic pz2 file generated for V4 using Visemes, Blinking, Eye movement, Head movement should be converted to any Genesis figure.

FWIW, exporting a genesis1 figure (or V4/M4/K4/Aiko4, etc.) with the relevant morph-packs to a CR2 (poser figure format) from DS, and configuring that figure within the poser-style runtime structures of the mimic family of tools works great, and the PZ2 files import back into DS just fine.

I'll mention (warn) if you export the CR2 figure, then look at/edit the paths in that CR2 file so they ultimately match where the exported texture/geometry resources have been placed and (re)named in your mimic runtime, it works.

YMMV, (again, thanks @jdfox for this handy utility).

--ms

barbult said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

@jnwggs

yeah that and not clearing from the processes so the program hangs LONG after being shut down. the refusal to open even if the process was ended. there are a few bugs. but the not using the GPU has been the most annoying.

On the not being able to start a new instance until the old one has finished closing, it is possible but requires the instance have a new name Daz Studio Pro 4.12 - instances

I have been using DAZ long enough to know when a scene will tip the balance and have to fall back to CPU for that kind of heavy scene I'm ok with CPU helping but as a few have been posting the GPU is not being tapped at all and that is a major waste of resources the faster processor for the render is tossed to the side and ignored. you'd think getting them both to work together would have been intuitive.

I'm speaking of DAZ3D the program hanging in processes five-ten minutes after being closed. then the program refuses to start even when the programs process has been terminated and no longer hanging. just two days ago while we were discussing this thread it took nearly 30 tries to get DAZ to open. that I'd call a bug.

It's meant to work that way - the link explains how to set up a command line switch (or use the attached script to do it for you) so that you can launch a new instance of Daz Studio while the other is closing.

So by "overnight", I'm talking about 12 hours later it's still open in the processes and I coudn't open Daz Studio until I terminated. Is it really supposed to stay open indefinately like that? I've never seen a program do this...

It certainly shouldn't usually hang for that long - is it actually doing anything (using CPU, if you check Task Manager) or is it literally hanging? As I said you can set up short cuts to launch a fresh instance of DS even while a previous one iss till closing, but unless you want to hand-craft tghe command line it should be done in advance.

The main process ends, but a second "back ground process" opens below that in Task Manager that never closes. You have to manually close it before Daz will restart. Note though, that this does not always happen. Sometimes that back ground process terminates by itself after 10 minutes or so. If I open Daz and then close it right away, the back ground process starts up and closes again after only a few seconds. But if I create a scene and render it, it's anybody's guess when the background process will close...sometimes, like I've said, it never does and you may only notice that when you go to open up Daz later in the day, or even the next day. I actually pinned Task Manager to my task bar just for shutting down Daz when this happens so that I don't have to press "Control, alt, delete" so much. That's how frustrating this is. I'm hoping, like everyone else, that this latest bug will get cleared up someday...That and the randomly switching back and forth between GPU and CPU I mentioned earlier...

I'm not sure what you mean by background process - when you close DS it goes from the icons on the Task Bar and in the Apps list in Task manager, because it no longer has a UI, but it stays open in Background Processes until it has finished clearing up after itself (which can take a long time with a morph-heavy figure with lots of links, though it really should be a matter of hours - I have masses of characters and morph sets installed for Genesis 8 Female and it takes less than ten minutes, admittedly with a fairly high-end Ryzen CPU and plenty of RAM so there should be little or no disc swapping).

You kind of answered your own question. Yes, I'm talking about the Background Processes that stay open in while it's clearing itself up.

Ok, so you're saying it's normal then for Daz to take "a matter of hours" to clear itself up before you can use it again, but not overnight? I don't think that I know of any other program that takes so long to shut itself down before you can reopen it. Don't most programs let you open up a new instance and take care of "clearing up" the instance you've shut down "in the background?" In fact, a lot of programs let you have several instances of the same program running simultaneously - Such as Firefox...

I think when Richard posted " though it really should be a matter of hours" he accidently left out the "not". 

Oh, well since we're talking hours vs. days in some cases, I didn't make that assumption...

Still, I have a fast computer, and a GTX 1070 and it seems to me that even a complex scene should clear itself out within 10 minutes or less, not still be hung up the next day. I still don't understand why Daz won't open a new instance until the background process finishes. Isn't that the point of it shutting down in the "background?"

I'll share what I understand being a Daz 3D enthusiast extraordinaire as well as a fan of Royal Skies LLC, addicted to soaking up as much of his education as I can:

Using the JCM method utilizes Daz 3D's expert morph makers' joint-controlled-morphs, which is truly an amazing system. [imagined workflow>] Someone takes the rigged figure and poses it in any and every pose possible, setting or suggesting constraints as they test and try to break the mesh or shape through joint rotation. These test notes go to the shape modelers, who bake out the problematic pose shape and model a morph for how it should actually look in that pose, and the rig experts will add that morph as a new JCM only to fire when the necesary conditions are met.

I've studied this process for some time because we can also use Daz Studio's incredible tools for this type of system to add JCMs that cause clothing or hair to change (morph) when the driving actor's pose meets the conditions we give it - like having the top of a blouse fall forward a bit if the shoulder are forward and the hip is bent x amount forward, for a very crude but doable example.

The method Royal Skies uses is more the way one might do it in Maya at a Hollywood animation house - using additional bones with influence and drivers. In a basic sense, it's doing the same thing as JCM but uses drivers to watch for certain conditions and fire the appropriate response, and weight painting to control the amount of mesh to be influenced - in a way doing what the mesh artist did to create the correction morph in the Daz Studio method.

The driver in this method has to be told when to fire. So when it isn't firing, the rig behaves as if the added bone(s) doesn't exist.

=========   The Downside of the Daz Studio Method in anything but Daz Studio   =============

I should say "Potential Downside to Some"

Daz Studio, from version 4.0 on, is designed around this whole new Genesis system that DS users have enjoyed from the start, even though early on the database software was switched (for the better). It uses a database to track what morphs the actor(s) needs when being saved. This keeps the overall saved character incredibly tiny considering the capabilities it has with the power of the database. Okay... that mouthful is about to make perfect sense - bear with me a sec:

In Carrara 8.5, Genesis 1 is fully compatible, 2 partially so and anything newer requires workarounds.

Even though Genesis 1 is fully supported, when Genesis is saved as a Carrara file, evry single morph obj data that IS AVAILABLE to the figure - aka: everything installed for Genesis - gets saved within the Carrara file and can be used fully when opened again in Carrara. See the difference?

So my Rosie 5 character might be 2GB as a Carrara file, but only a few MB in a DS save.

Nearly the same applies to Blender with the exception that Blender doesn't have the sweet Daz 3D developed compatibility - rather, we have to make our Daz 3D figures compatible with Blender - and that's a big difference!

========= Thoughts from a newbie to Blender (me) ==========

I am so new to Blender that many things within it still feel very foreign, like what always happens when starting a new, very different app. So for now I was planning to start with the JCM method and still use my aniBlock animation methods - I always bake to the timeline anyway (required for importing into Blender via Diffeomorphic) and make many tweaks and outright changes.

But eventually (perhaps even very early here) I'd also like to try following Royal Skies LLC's animation tutorials and suggestions to create my own animations from scratch - something I already enjoy doing in Carrara. Royal Skies' method uses IK instead of FK (what we do when setting bend, twist and side-side value sliders) and so his drivers are very much set up to take advantage of IK-style posing and animation.

In other words, I'm thinking that if I really want to animate via aniBlock/Timeline tweaking and/or using pose files or joint rotation methods as I always have, I might just stick with my Carrara/Daz Studio workflow and when I use my characters in Blender try the more "professional animator" style of working.

But that's the beauty - we are all very different individuals with our own preferred ways of working. Having the ability to work in whatever methods feel best to us is the biggest thing I've seen in all of this since I started. I bought Carrara because I had the need to tweak meshes as I animate and Carrara is the only animation/3d modeler software that can simplly load in Daz Figures directly from a Daz 3D library and/or Poser runtime.

Currently, it seems like Diffeomorphic Daz to Blender is kinda doing just that for Blender, which opens up a whole new thing. All it takes is to conduct a simple and fairly quick export after a duf save, and we can now bring it into Blender? I'd call that a pretty big win for all of us!

acdum1857 said:

DrunkMonkeyProductions said:

acdum1857 said:

I searched for 'Thigh' in both Parameters > 'Tika 8' and 'Currently Used' and found the JCMs items. Thank you.

However, as you can see in this image, when the shin is bent and not bent, the thigh muscles change,

but none of the sliders change the value.

I cleared 'Thigh' from the search bar and checked all hidden items, but none of the sliders changed the value.

Weird... the shape of the muscles has changed, but why hasn't any JCMs changed?

Based on the image you posted, it's not a JCM issue, it's just that "FK-Thigh shape" moph you have applied.

Try Changing that to 0 and see if it changes.

If you've got the "Muscularity mophs for G8F" you might be able to clean it up with some specific muscle morphs.

If not, then either you'll have to accept it, or break out the d-formers, or one of the bridges to create a corrective morph.

 

Oh, as you said, those thigh muscle changes weren't JCMs!
When I was about to give up because I couldn't find what I wanted with JCMs,

I searched for 'Flex' just in case, and I finally found a slider that changed the part. It was just a pose.
Thank you so much for giving an important tip! :D

Glad ya found a solution.

Happy rendering.

Figured it out.  I was completely in the wrong direction. 

For future if anyone else is lost on similar.   In blender I made a version of my 'prop' with the door in the open position , exported it (wallopen.obj), then changed the door to closed, and explorted it with a smilar name (wallclosed.obj).  

In DAZ I imported the first file (wallopen.obj), then selected it in the scene.  I then went to EDIT->OBJECTS->Morphloader Pro.   One trick here is that you have to change the scale to custom, then show options button right below that, and change the scale number to the same as your original import scale.   If you use one of the options in the drop down on your original import (DAZ SCALE, etc) make sure you use the same in morphloader, otherwise it will think your morph is between the two sizes.   Then you select your morph file, accept, and BAM.  You now have a slider that slides your door open and closed in the parameters tab.   You can even do multiple doors by doing a blender export with door one closed, door two closed, door one open, door two open, etc.  Save them as different named obj files, and then select all in Morphloader. 

This was easy to find once I realized I was miles down the wrong track with figure import, so apologies if this is very common knowledge.  

DrunkMonkeyProductions said:

acdum1857 said:

I searched for 'Thigh' in both Parameters > 'Tika 8' and 'Currently Used' and found the JCMs items. Thank you.

However, as you can see in this image, when the shin is bent and not bent, the thigh muscles change,

but none of the sliders change the value.

I cleared 'Thigh' from the search bar and checked all hidden items, but none of the sliders changed the value.

Weird... the shape of the muscles has changed, but why hasn't any JCMs changed?

Based on the image you posted, it's not a JCM issue, it's just that "FK-Thigh shape" moph you have applied.

Try Changing that to 0 and see if it changes.

If you've got the "Muscularity mophs for G8F" you might be able to clean it up with some specific muscle morphs.

If not, then either you'll have to accept it, or break out the d-formers, or one of the bridges to create a corrective morph.

 

Oh, as you said, those thigh muscle changes weren't JCMs!
When I was about to give up because I couldn't find what I wanted with JCMs,

I searched for 'Flex' just in case, and I finally found a slider that changed the part. It was just a pose.
Thank you so much for giving an important tip! :D

acdum1857 said:

I searched for 'Thigh' in both Parameters > 'Tika 8' and 'Currently Used' and found the JCMs items. Thank you.

However, as you can see in this image, when the shin is bent and not bent, the thigh muscles change,

but none of the sliders change the value.

I cleared 'Thigh' from the search bar and checked all hidden items, but none of the sliders changed the value.

Weird... the shape of the muscles has changed, but why hasn't any JCMs changed?

Based on the image you posted, it's not a JCM issue, it's just that "FK-Thigh shape" moph you have applied.

Try Changing that to 0 and see if it changes.

If you've got the "Muscularity mophs for G8F" you might be able to clean it up with some specific muscle morphs.

If not, then either you'll have to accept it, or break out the d-formers, or one of the bridges to create a corrective morph.

barbult said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

@jnwggs

yeah that and not clearing from the processes so the program hangs LONG after being shut down. the refusal to open even if the process was ended. there are a few bugs. but the not using the GPU has been the most annoying.

On the not being able to start a new instance until the old one has finished closing, it is possible but requires the instance have a new name Daz Studio Pro 4.12 - instances

I have been using DAZ long enough to know when a scene will tip the balance and have to fall back to CPU for that kind of heavy scene I'm ok with CPU helping but as a few have been posting the GPU is not being tapped at all and that is a major waste of resources the faster processor for the render is tossed to the side and ignored. you'd think getting them both to work together would have been intuitive.

I'm speaking of DAZ3D the program hanging in processes five-ten minutes after being closed. then the program refuses to start even when the programs process has been terminated and no longer hanging. just two days ago while we were discussing this thread it took nearly 30 tries to get DAZ to open. that I'd call a bug.

It's meant to work that way - the link explains how to set up a command line switch (or use the attached script to do it for you) so that you can launch a new instance of Daz Studio while the other is closing.

So by "overnight", I'm talking about 12 hours later it's still open in the processes and I coudn't open Daz Studio until I terminated. Is it really supposed to stay open indefinately like that? I've never seen a program do this...

It certainly shouldn't usually hang for that long - is it actually doing anything (using CPU, if you check Task Manager) or is it literally hanging? As I said you can set up short cuts to launch a fresh instance of DS even while a previous one iss till closing, but unless you want to hand-craft tghe command line it should be done in advance.

The main process ends, but a second "back ground process" opens below that in Task Manager that never closes. You have to manually close it before Daz will restart. Note though, that this does not always happen. Sometimes that back ground process terminates by itself after 10 minutes or so. If I open Daz and then close it right away, the back ground process starts up and closes again after only a few seconds. But if I create a scene and render it, it's anybody's guess when the background process will close...sometimes, like I've said, it never does and you may only notice that when you go to open up Daz later in the day, or even the next day. I actually pinned Task Manager to my task bar just for shutting down Daz when this happens so that I don't have to press "Control, alt, delete" so much. That's how frustrating this is. I'm hoping, like everyone else, that this latest bug will get cleared up someday...That and the randomly switching back and forth between GPU and CPU I mentioned earlier...

I'm not sure what you mean by background process - when you close DS it goes from the icons on the Task Bar and in the Apps list in Task manager, because it no longer has a UI, but it stays open in Background Processes until it has finished clearing up after itself (which can take a long time with a morph-heavy figure with lots of links, though it really should be a matter of hours - I have masses of characters and morph sets installed for Genesis 8 Female and it takes less than ten minutes, admittedly with a fairly high-end Ryzen CPU and plenty of RAM so there should be little or no disc swapping).

You kind of answered your own question. Yes, I'm talking about the Background Processes that stay open in while it's clearing itself up.

Ok, so you're saying it's normal then for Daz to take "a matter of hours" to clear itself up before you can use it again, but not overnight? I don't think that I know of any other program that takes so long to shut itself down before you can reopen it. Don't most programs let you open up a new instance and take care of "clearing up" the instance you've shut down "in the background?" In fact, a lot of programs let you have several instances of the same program running simultaneously - Such as Firefox...

I think when Richard posted " though it really should be a matter of hours" he accidently left out the "not". 

Ah, yes - sorry.

Krisclemson said:

I got the character model to transfer over but none of the textures came with it. :(

There is a known issue being tracked by the team regarding issues with materials for this bridge. To confirm, which character are you experiencing these issues with; or does this texture issue occur regardless of the figure that you import? 

jeff_someone said:

Appreciate the work on DazToC4d, but do you think there will ever be an update to enable the transfer of JCMs to the figure?  Thanks.

I can confirm that this is something that we are looking into and have on our roadmap for future bridge updates. Be sure to keep an eye out for release note posts on any additional information regarding this in the future!

Artini said:

What is included with the updated Daz to Unity bridge?

Will Daz Studio 4.15 transfer properly morphs as blendshapes to Unity with this updated bridge?

 

You can export morphs to Unity with this bridge as blendshapes, you will just need to enable them.

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

@jnwggs

yeah that and not clearing from the processes so the program hangs LONG after being shut down. the refusal to open even if the process was ended. there are a few bugs. but the not using the GPU has been the most annoying.

On the not being able to start a new instance until the old one has finished closing, it is possible but requires the instance have a new name Daz Studio Pro 4.12 - instances

I have been using DAZ long enough to know when a scene will tip the balance and have to fall back to CPU for that kind of heavy scene I'm ok with CPU helping but as a few have been posting the GPU is not being tapped at all and that is a major waste of resources the faster processor for the render is tossed to the side and ignored. you'd think getting them both to work together would have been intuitive.

I'm speaking of DAZ3D the program hanging in processes five-ten minutes after being closed. then the program refuses to start even when the programs process has been terminated and no longer hanging. just two days ago while we were discussing this thread it took nearly 30 tries to get DAZ to open. that I'd call a bug.

It's meant to work that way - the link explains how to set up a command line switch (or use the attached script to do it for you) so that you can launch a new instance of Daz Studio while the other is closing.

So by "overnight", I'm talking about 12 hours later it's still open in the processes and I coudn't open Daz Studio until I terminated. Is it really supposed to stay open indefinately like that? I've never seen a program do this...

It certainly shouldn't usually hang for that long - is it actually doing anything (using CPU, if you check Task Manager) or is it literally hanging? As I said you can set up short cuts to launch a fresh instance of DS even while a previous one iss till closing, but unless you want to hand-craft tghe command line it should be done in advance.

The main process ends, but a second "back ground process" opens below that in Task Manager that never closes. You have to manually close it before Daz will restart. Note though, that this does not always happen. Sometimes that back ground process terminates by itself after 10 minutes or so. If I open Daz and then close it right away, the back ground process starts up and closes again after only a few seconds. But if I create a scene and render it, it's anybody's guess when the background process will close...sometimes, like I've said, it never does and you may only notice that when you go to open up Daz later in the day, or even the next day. I actually pinned Task Manager to my task bar just for shutting down Daz when this happens so that I don't have to press "Control, alt, delete" so much. That's how frustrating this is. I'm hoping, like everyone else, that this latest bug will get cleared up someday...That and the randomly switching back and forth between GPU and CPU I mentioned earlier...

I'm not sure what you mean by background process - when you close DS it goes from the icons on the Task Bar and in the Apps list in Task manager, because it no longer has a UI, but it stays open in Background Processes until it has finished clearing up after itself (which can take a long time with a morph-heavy figure with lots of links, though it really should be a matter of hours - I have masses of characters and morph sets installed for Genesis 8 Female and it takes less than ten minutes, admittedly with a fairly high-end Ryzen CPU and plenty of RAM so there should be little or no disc swapping).

You kind of answered your own question. Yes, I'm talking about the Background Processes that stay open in while it's clearing itself up.

Ok, so you're saying it's normal then for Daz to take "a matter of hours" to clear itself up before you can use it again, but not overnight? I don't think that I know of any other program that takes so long to shut itself down before you can reopen it. Don't most programs let you open up a new instance and take care of "clearing up" the instance you've shut down "in the background?" In fact, a lot of programs let you have several instances of the same program running simultaneously - Such as Firefox...

I think when Richard posted " though it really should be a matter of hours" he accidently left out the "not". 

Hylas said:

Toyen said:

I really like her. :)

Gorgeous! She reminds me a bit of Lilith 7 here.

The head morph is actually 75% White Priestess and 50% Tasha 8 :)

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jnwggs said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

dragoneyes002 said:

@jnwggs

yeah that and not clearing from the processes so the program hangs LONG after being shut down. the refusal to open even if the process was ended. there are a few bugs. but the not using the GPU has been the most annoying.

On the not being able to start a new instance until the old one has finished closing, it is possible but requires the instance have a new name Daz Studio Pro 4.12 - instances

I have been using DAZ long enough to know when a scene will tip the balance and have to fall back to CPU for that kind of heavy scene I'm ok with CPU helping but as a few have been posting the GPU is not being tapped at all and that is a major waste of resources the faster processor for the render is tossed to the side and ignored. you'd think getting them both to work together would have been intuitive.

I'm speaking of DAZ3D the program hanging in processes five-ten minutes after being closed. then the program refuses to start even when the programs process has been terminated and no longer hanging. just two days ago while we were discussing this thread it took nearly 30 tries to get DAZ to open. that I'd call a bug.

It's meant to work that way - the link explains how to set up a command line switch (or use the attached script to do it for you) so that you can launch a new instance of Daz Studio while the other is closing.

So by "overnight", I'm talking about 12 hours later it's still open in the processes and I coudn't open Daz Studio until I terminated. Is it really supposed to stay open indefinately like that? I've never seen a program do this...

It certainly shouldn't usually hang for that long - is it actually doing anything (using CPU, if you check Task Manager) or is it literally hanging? As I said you can set up short cuts to launch a fresh instance of DS even while a previous one iss till closing, but unless you want to hand-craft tghe command line it should be done in advance.

The main process ends, but a second "back ground process" opens below that in Task Manager that never closes. You have to manually close it before Daz will restart. Note though, that this does not always happen. Sometimes that back ground process terminates by itself after 10 minutes or so. If I open Daz and then close it right away, the back ground process starts up and closes again after only a few seconds. But if I create a scene and render it, it's anybody's guess when the background process will close...sometimes, like I've said, it never does and you may only notice that when you go to open up Daz later in the day, or even the next day. I actually pinned Task Manager to my task bar just for shutting down Daz when this happens so that I don't have to press "Control, alt, delete" so much. That's how frustrating this is. I'm hoping, like everyone else, that this latest bug will get cleared up someday...That and the randomly switching back and forth between GPU and CPU I mentioned earlier...

I'm not sure what you mean by background process - when you close DS it goes from the icons on the Task Bar and in the Apps list in Task manager, because it no longer has a UI, but it stays open in Background Processes until it has finished clearing up after itself (which can take a long time with a morph-heavy figure with lots of links, though it really should be a matter of hours - I have masses of characters and morph sets installed for Genesis 8 Female and it takes less than ten minutes, admittedly with a fairly high-end Ryzen CPU and plenty of RAM so there should be little or no disc swapping).

You kind of answered your own question. Yes, I'm talking about the Background Processes that stay open in while it's clearing itself up.

Ok, so you're saying it's normal then for Daz to take "a matter of hours" to clear itself up before you can use it again, but not overnight? I don't think that I know of any other program that takes so long to shut itself down before you can reopen it. Don't most programs let you open up a new instance and take care of "clearing up" the instance you've shut down "in the background?" In fact, a lot of programs let you have several instances of the same program running simultaneously - Such as Firefox...

I would regard an hour as a surprisingly long time, though if you have different base figures loaded (Geensis 8 Female, Genesis 8 male, Genesis 3...) then each could contribute to the time taken. Still, hours would seem a long delay to me - I would be surprised at anything over an hour really.

CO3DR said:

I appreciate the contributions to the thread. I think Richard and PerttiA understand way more about the internals than I will ever. In the other thread I referenced above, PerttiA said it was the creation of the dials that takes the time (and consumes a lot of memory). So, whatever THAT is called is what I would like to defer. Is it possible to just build the set of dials that are visible in the UI, and make me pay the load time penalty when I resize the number of morph dials I can see, or actually CLICK on one in order to use it?

So, maybe it's not "Just-In-Time Morph Loading" that I want. Maybe it's "Just-In-Time Dial Content". The fact of the matter is that I hardly ever load a character and tweak the shape with any more than one or two of the available character dial morphs, and in the vast majority of cases, it's ZERO.

To travel from Earth to Mars, do I need a starmap of the whole galaxy?

As I understasnd it the building of the UI dials that control proeprties is not the principle consumer of time, it's setting up the properties themselves and their relationships.

You have a bone selected.  Select the main figure.  I think the JCMs are on the main figure - hidden morph.

...while I have favourite PAs, I tend buy what I know I will use and get the most "mileage" from (like morph skin, conversion/utility scripts and other vendor resources). 

That said, it's been fairly slim so far as some of the themes (like today's) don't hold any interest for me and definitely not bothering with G8.1. Mostly been doing PC+ for a day, Daz O's and PA store sales.  Not getting much if any of the new stuff. save for PC+ or something that fits an important and longing need.