Hi Abraham. What version of Daz Studio are you using? Genesis 8.1 was introduced along with an updated PBR shader for the skin that requires Daz Studio 4.15 or higher. You can read about it on this page here. My guess would be that Bekka uses the new shaders and you might need to update to a newer version of Daz Studio to use it. I first tried using Victoria 8.1 in an older version and she rendered white just like your attached image. After updating, that problem went away.

I have been trying to work a skin on the GF8 to place on the GF8.1. So far this has been a fustrating endeavor. I was trying to start with the GF8.1 face skin for Victoria. I just wanted to develop some makeup for my character but when I saved it and applyed it to the GF8.1 model the skin tones all changed.

Is there some think like a skin builder for GF8.1 in the works?

Does anyone know of another technique or product I am missing?

Thanks

barrieM said:

 I looked for the GeForce driver extension in my mac and found it was installed but not loaded. Do you think this is worth another session with Apple?

You could give it a try, but my suspicion is that their reaction is likely to be either "I have no idea what that is" or, if you get someone a little better informed, "Sorry, we don't support that any more."

In any case, I don't think your issue is the GeForce driver. If I recall correctly, you either don't have an Nvidia card in your system, or it has very limited VRAM. This means that even if you could get a GeForce driver loaded, it won't change your render speed. And I don't think the absence of the driver is what's causing crashes when you try to render.

For the record, I finally got DAZ Studio 4.16 installed on my Mac (and that was a journey, let me tell you). It's an Intel Mac (a 2019 MacBook Pro with an i9) running OS X Monterey, and DAZ Studio 4.16 works just fine on it, including Iray renders. It uses the CPU for rendering, of course -- the onboard graphics is an AMD Radeon, not an Nvidia GPU -- but it renders successfully without crashing.

Obviously, it's not the same type of machine as yours and is running a slightly different OS. But I think this proves that Intel Mac + modern version of MacOS + DAZ Studio is a workable combination.

Which doesn't get us much closer to figure out why DAZ Studio is crashing when you try to render. It ought to work ... but apparently it doesn't.

At this point I'd suggest opening a ticket with DAZ Support (if you haven't already). Remember to include as much information as possible, including the Crash Reporter logs and the DAZ Studio log. If you can reproduce the crash on the simplest possible scene (say, a naked and hairless Victoria 8, or even just a primitive sphere) then that would help rule out the possibility that some specific piece of content is blowing up the renderer.

1. The bases for Genesis (1) & male/female Genesis 2 are part of D/S 4.x; you don't buy them. (They are called Starter Essentials).

Now for older base figures (e.g.Hiro 3, Victoria 4) you must buy those in the store. 

2. These older/clothing and pose items were designed for the model/actor listed. Clothing MAY be fitted to other figures (autofit but you will need to buy the "clone"for that old model most likely).  You can find  pose converters, free or for sale, for the poses.

That said, you may not get much use out of Vault items, other than props or environments if you are new to DS and using the latest generation/s, G3/8/8.1. The base models are different tech and the shaders aren't Iray. You probably will have trouble getting clothing for later generations to fit. Even for props and environments the lack of Iray shaders might be an issue

I imagine it's 'falling sideways' in the +X direction. The same is visible ocurring to the Victoria 3 hair converted to a G8F model in the image below:

It's not exploding is about all I could say for it... It could be that the facets are too close together (below the collision distance) and dForce is trying to fix it. Either way, I didn't find a solution that worked for this model, and just claimed it was windy from the character's right to left.

dForce failures can sometimes be used serendipitously. The non-dForce dress below was caught and rescued as an explosion started. I was able to use it as a 'windy day' image.

Regards,

Richard

Thank you both for the info. I appreciate the help.

OK, so a script can handle the add-on like lashes. I will work on figuring out the script language next. That shouldn't be too hard if I can find the right docs.

It's seem odd that Save As -> Character Preset creates and Actor labeled DUF file as opposed to a Character labeled DUF. What is used... I wonder... to create Character labeled DUF files? I suppose some super secret tool only available to employees of Daz?

BTW There is very inconsitent behavior between my Actor file, the Victoria 8 Actor file (wich actaully loads with lashes attached but not brows) and others purchased on the Daz store the load with both lashes and brows like Alabama HD for Sydney 8 from Mousso and Rosita 8.1 from Jessaii?

Tugpsx said:

I'm not sure who thst character is or where you got the image. That would help in tracking down the asset. You are best getting any of iSorceTexture characters if you are looking for good character textures.

https://www.daz3d.com/isourcetextures

Also MelissaGT in the forums has a full tutorial on how you can make your own shaders to accomplish realistic looking skin shaders. Don't forget the Victoria 8/8.1 has a serious shader set along with some starting points to build on. 

The character is called Jane & she is from the game Glamour.

Looks a lot like the FWSA in terms of the morph style (even though they don't recognize it) , especially the FWSA Genesis 3 characters.

For instance :
https://www.daz3d.com/fwsa-nancy-hd-for-genesis-3-female
or https://www.daz3d.com/fwsa-keira-hd-for-victoria-7

You could probably come close with that and a face morph pack. The skin is a bit different though, but looks a lot like the type on G3s. Would look into that generation further for the skin.

I'm not sure who thst character is or where you got the image. That would help in tracking down the asset. You are best getting any of iSorceTexture characters if you are looking for good character textures.

https://www.daz3d.com/isourcetextures

Also MelissaGT in the forums has a full tutorial on how you can make your own shaders to accomplish realistic looking skin shaders. Don't forget the Victoria 8/8.1 has a serious shader set along with some starting points to build on. 

Richard Haseltine said:

I can't check at the moment but it may be the way they are implemented - Diffuse overlay vs on the map, or you may be using painted Diffuse Overlay brows on Stephanie and mesh brows on Victoria 8

Thx Richard, I'm to noob to have tweaked the settings of Stephanie 8, so I have it as it was on purchase and installation. The mesh/overlay difference is not entirely clear to me. I have noticed that the RSL stuff does show eyebrows in "Texture Shaded" but I tend to avoid RSL at all costs, I don't understand why it is even there (RSL), it makes the figures ridiculously hideous like they are wearing a cheap mask, causing a huge skin tone difference and on top of that it is often shockingly slow in application almost making my system hang...

Hey, @barrieM, I don't believe that those messages are the cause of the crash. You'll notice that they are marked as '[WARNING]', which in software development is usually shorthand for "Something not-so-great happened but I'm OK to carry on anyway." As opposed to '[ERROR]', which means "Oh crap, we're screwed, I'm getting out before anything worse happens."

What those particular messages are saying is that the renderer isn't able to find an Nvidia card that it can use, so it's going to do the render in CPU mode. That's exactly what it should do: your 2018 MacMini has an Intel integrated graphics card, and no Nvidia card.

CUDA is Nvidia's programming platform: when DAZ Studio does a render, it talks to the CUDA interface, and CUDA turns the instructions that Studio gives it into low-level code that runs (very fast) on the GPU. I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of that first warning line. I'd expect there not to be a CUDA driver at all on your system, but what it seems to be saying is "There's a CUDA driver, but it's old as dirt, so I'm not going to use it." Overall, though, what those lines are telling us is "It's not possible to do a GPU render, so we're going to do it on the CPU instead." This is exactly what ought to happen, which is why I think those warning messages aren't anything to worry about.

"Please update your driver" is a red herring: there are no Nvidia drivers available for recent versions of the Mac OS (because Nvidia and Apple are no longer BFFs, and have both taken their ball and gone home in a huff). So you couldn't even if you wanted to.

The short answer is that I don't believe those three lines are a problem. It looks to me as if DAZ Studio is doing what it should do at that point. On the other hand, your render is still crashing, which is Not Good, and Not What is Supposed to Happen.

As far as I know DAZ Studio 4.16 is supposed to be compatible with recent versions of MacOS. I can't swear to that, because I haven't run Studio on my Mac since I upgraded from Catalina, and all my attempts to install the new version are failing (DIM just says "Install Failed" and won't tell me any more than that).

My advice would be to start with the very simplest scene you can -- literally just Victoria 8 and nothing else. Try to render that. If that works, work your way toward more complex scenes. Sometimes one specific piece of content can break a render. If it doesn't work, open a ticket with DAZ Support and see if they can help you. Make sure to send them the entire log, both the DAZ Studio log and the Crash Reporter log. They know the insides of DAZ Studio much better than I do, and may be able to pinpoint the issue for you.

I can't check at the moment but it may be the way they are implemented - Diffuse overlay vs on the map, or you may be using painted Diffuse Overlay brows on Stephanie and mesh brows on Victoria 8

Stephanie 8 does not show her (MDL) eyebrows in 'Texture Shaded' work env. but most other figures do

Hi all would be great if you could help me with this one, can't find an answer in the forum or anywhere else.

I had an entire forum question prepared why my Stephanie 8 does not show her eyebrows even when I click on her a dedicated "MDL Eyebrows ON" tile while e.g. Victoria 8 never has this problem, but then I found out that Stephanie 8 does show the eyebrows from her own Smart Content tiles but you just can't see them in the 'Texture Shaded' work environment, but as soon as you switch to 'Filament (PBR)' or 'NVIDIA Iray' you can actually see them. Victoria 8's eyebrows show just fine in the 'Texture Shaded' work environment even when I put them on Stephanie 8's face (which I did as a workaround thinking the eyebrows were really absent on Stephanie 8).

Is there a way to show Stephanie 8's own eyebrows in the  'Texture Shaded' work environment and why doesn't Victoria 8 eyebrows (and many other figures) have the same 'visibilty' problem in the 'Texture Shaded' work environment?

Different issue, somewhat related, part from my initially prepared forum question:
"I know that expert users often do not have much use for standard eyebrows, but beginners like me are befuddled why anyone at DAZ corp. thought that making browless figures default was a good idea; I so wish there was a global setting to get rid of all that browless craziness until I am ready to do my own artsy eyebrows customization etc."

Is there such a setting? 

Thx!

How do you load a Victoria 4 base in Daz?  I don't understand anything Victoria as it seems the installation gives "runtime" files but nothing in figures...  The instructions say it should be in "daz people", but install has no such folder...  I have the Victoria 4 starter Bundle and it has the folders:  Geometries, libraries, support, textures and weblinks.

JasonSWrench said:

I think part of the problem is the target market for DAZ seems to have changed on their end. At one point, they really were targeting hobbyists and people wanting to get into 3D art. Overtime, this model seems to have shifted. I don’t know many hobbiests who could keep up purchasing at these prices. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to see what was new (and more often than not buy something). I have 16,600+ pieces in my install manager. Honestly, I have enough content to play with till the cows come home (hell, I have a DAZ cow). But I’ve watched as my buying power at DAZ has dwindled. The prices have gone up and amount of content one gets has simply dwindled. I used to flock to the new pro releases. Now, I rarely purchase a new DAZ figure because they’re outlandishly priced with hardly any supporting content. DAZ also does not seem to appreciate its customers any more. Maybe I was just lucky to start DAZ when I did, but they’ve changed, and not for the better, in the last few years. I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Great post!

So true.

JasonSWrench said:

I think part of the problem is the target market for DAZ seems to have changed on their end. At one point, they really were targeting hobbyists and people wanting to get into 3D art. Overtime, this model seems to have shifted. I don’t know many hobbiests who could keep up purchasing at these prices. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to see what was new (and more often than not buy something). I have 16,600+ pieces in my install manager. Honestly, I have enough content to play with till the cows come home (hell, I have a DAZ cow). But I’ve watched as my buying power at DAZ has dwindled. The prices have gone up and amount of content one gets has simply dwindled. I used to flock to the new pro releases. Now, I rarely purchase a new DAZ figure because they’re outlandishly priced with hardly any supporting content. DAZ also does not seem to appreciate its customers any more. Maybe I was just lucky to start DAZ when I did, but they’ve changed, and not for the better, in the last few years. I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

...agreed.  

I've been here long enough to remember 99¢ PC items, straightforward sales without a bunch of gimmicks or hoops to jump through, and vouchers for having a gallery submission accepted, as well as for those in the PC (that didn't have a minimum purchase limit). I remember when March Madness was the biggest sale event of the year next to the PA sale in fall. Today both are pretty much  "ho hum" and even the PC (or Daz+) sales have been losing their lustre (last year's PC+ sale frequently required buying themed bundles as the key to unlock additional savings and specials).  I can understand the effects of inflation on prices, like PC items going up in price from .99¢ over time (though adjusted for inflation alone, a 99¢ item in 2007 would be about 1.35$ today instead of 4.99$).  All this branching into other realms like Avatars, NFTs, merchandising, and Enterprise licensing  has been leaving the original core of community behind more and more. 

Hobbyists don't usually make much if anything off their work and a good many of us are on limited incomes as well and feel we are being feeling priced out of the hobby with some of the moves and changes that have occurred over the years.

JasonSWrench said:

Rod Wise Driggo said:

JasonSWrench said:

I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Those have been the days. Unfortunately I stored my 3D printed Vicky in a box with other stuff so that her hands came off. Need to fix that with some plastic glue someday ;-)

 

Rod: My Vicki only lost one hand. Thankfully, glue worked just fine. She’s still sitting on a shelf in my living room.

J

Mine has been in the wars too, lost both hands at various times and is currently awaiting futher surgery to reattach the right hand :(

Rod Wise Driggo said:

JasonSWrench said:

I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Those have been the days. Unfortunately I stored my 3D printed Vicky in a box with other stuff so that her hands came off. Need to fix that with some plastic glue someday ;-)

 

Rod: My Vicki only lost one hand. Thankfully, glue worked just fine. She’s still sitting on a shelf in my living room.

J

JasonSWrench said:

I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Those have been the days. Unfortunately I stored my 3D printed Vicky in a box with other stuff so that her hands came off. Need to fix that with some plastic glue someday ;-)

There are a few exceptions - the old Anne Marie Goddard Digitial Clone for Victoria 3 and cotnent from Flipped Normals come to mind, they should all have a note on the product page - but generally your 2D renders of 3D content are yours to use as you wish, including for commercial purposes.