Scene Optimizer doesn't seem to be available in Daz Central, I just purchased this week. I submitted a ticket.

Diet Mountain Dew is the best soda. But I would put A&W a close second, if I'm feeling like a cola.

A&W isn't a cola, it's a root beer.  Cola's contain the essence of the Kola nut while root beer's distinctive flavor is originally based on a root extract from the sassafrass plant.*    Cola's are also natually caffeinated (unless they've been specifically decaffeinated) whereas Root Beers are naturally caffeine free... though a few brands, like Barq's, actually add caffeine.  A&W is caffeine free, btw.  

*and then there is birch beer, which tastes almost identical,but is based on birch rather than sassafrass.

I know. But I'm one of those weirdos who calls all brown sodas "cola". 

US regionalisms on this are weirdly interesting. There's a big stretch across the southeast where all carbonated soft drinks are "coke" or "cola", no matter what they actually are. (Not unusual to hear "I'd like a 7up coke, thanks" or something like that.) Northeast is soda, I think; midwest is "pop" (or sometimes "soda pop", and the west pretty much does all of it. I don't remember the theories about why this is so.

(Also, this thread is like the weirdest lite beer commercial ever. "Soda pop! new store software!" And the only actual disagreement of any type is in the "Soda pop!" section.)

I live in South Central Pennsylvania. Here, we all call it soda. In the western part of the state toward Pittsburgh, they call it pop.

Not all subscription software is bad, it really depends on the company. Having a subscription only model may mean more developers and more new features each year.

Plus the web site states that the personal license will be less than the current monthly charge so you may all be getting excited over nothing. What if it ends up being the equivalent of the cost of Netflix or Hulu?

Finally, they did give you plenty of advanced notice so if you're interested you can still upgrade the perpetual license as far as version 12. At one major version update that is 3 years before you have to switch since 10 is in 2020, 11 is in 2021, and 12 is in 2022. You won't have to worry about subscription only until version 13 in 2023. And there's nothing saying that you can't continue to use the latest version that you have.

 

I agree that the advanced notice is fair; in affect I get to purchase the full copy 3 times if i wish.

I disagree over the subscription software being not all bad; as a consumer, it's all bad.

... But they were committed to that as I'd bought 9.5; I would be entitled under the current system to purchase later versions at varying discounts; the notice just halts that at version 12 at the latest.

If it is the cost of Netflix or Hulu then a month when I need it is fine for those that don't mind.

Netflix and Hulu and similar services work on a subscription because of the products they offer. I still cancel them at times if I find myself not watching much - because my cash is better in my account.

If the alternative is stagnant software (Daz Studio, Hexagon, Bryce, Carrera) then I don't mind paying a reasonable fee. When was the last time we got any major new features for any of the mentioned software packages from Daz? There are plenty of features that I would love to see but have little hope of ever seeing them. If the software is stagnant and requires a monthly subscription then yes, I would be inclined to go elsewhere. For the time being I will reserve judgement until I see what we get between now and 2023.

dForce Hair, last year? Animation enhancements (though they are seriously buggy with respect to saved scenes right now)? The difference between 4.12 and 4.5, the first official release, are enormous - hardly stagnation just because the leading number hasn't changed for some years.

 

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on the stagnant part. Sorry. And I don't care what the version number is as long as they're continuing to innovate and push the software forward.

Stagnant? Would not agree with that...at all.

Myself, joined Daz Feb 2019.
In that time:

- implement RTX ( and reecently NvLink & MemoryPooling)
- SBH
- work behind the scenes on Maya plugin
- drop to CPU issues (OPtix etc)- trying to deal with that & Iray being a 3rd Party product
- dForce updates continual in background
- Overhaul animation ongoing
- shader redesign (bricks) in background to match Nvidia Iray latest (based on changelog)
- Now rumors of Google Filament for RT
- QT updates
- new shopping cart coming
- DazCentral
- and more if you follow changelog details

At worst, Daz seems to be implenting too much new stuff at same time with too many bugs leading to less than Optimal user experiences.
For me, for example, i don't use the published SBH hair, despite liking many of the styles, cos they aren't optimized to work with many actor scenes.  And that's with a better PC system.  But that's my usage, and will likely be addressed sometime in future.

But implementing all that stuff takes lots of time.
And they are funding that out of store receipts, in addition to paying the content artists and all the staff incolved with store products, and support.

Maya or MD you are paying lump sum for product only.  And they want update fees.

On the Internet see this daily trend, of what appears to be many users disregarding all the stuff that is done in background, complex stuff that takes lots of time and iterations, and some users focus on specifics wants instead.  And the rest doesn't count at all.  Or that's how it appears to me.

When I say stagnant I'm referring to the implementation of new features not the implementation of bug fixes or updating to the latest version of 3rd party controls (i.e. QT)

Given the fact that they have limited time and resources I would have preferred they invest it into Daz Studio instead of creating Daz Central

The new shopping cart is not a feature of Daz Studio (or Hexagon or Bryce or Carrera)

I picked up Scene Optimizer finally during the sale and went to install today to find that it's not in my Daz Central. It does appear in DIM to install.

I would say NO, don't click on them and download them.

First you need to realize that there are at least 4 ways to install Daz content products:

1. Daz Install Manager (DIM), a standalone application that can install Daz Studio, plugins, and content. It installs the content into your Content Library. 
2. Daz Central, a graphic oriented, stripped down and simplified version of DIM, designed for new users who aren't familiar enough with Daz to know how to use DIM. It installs into a default locations (as I understand it). If you already use DIM, these Daz Central location might be different and reconfigure your DIM settings without you being aware of it. If you are comfortable with DIM already, don't try Daz Central, until they fix that problem anyway.
3. Manual installation, where you download the product from your account Product Library, unzip the download and copy the files and folders to the correct place in your Content Library.
4. Daz Connect, which is what you are using when you install a product from inside Daz Studio. This installs the products into a completely different location and folder structure than DIM uses. Everything installed by Daz Connect falls under a "cloud" folder, which isn't in the cloud, but is on your own computer. The name "cloud" is a continuing source of customer confusion. Daz Connect was originally designed to be required in order to install encrypted products. After a few months, Daz gave up on encrypting product downloads, but never explained why. Encryption was supposed to combat piracy, but it caused a lot of customer outrage and anger about suspected "DRM" issues. If you install a product with DIM and then install it with from inside Daz Studio with Daz Connect, you will end up with the product installed twice in two different places. Daz Studio will always use the Daz Connect version in that case. Any  updates to that product installed with DIM after that will be ignored.

Some products cannot be installed by all 4 methods. For example, some script products and plugin products don't work properly when installed with Daz Connect. I'm not aware of any products that can ONLY be installed with Daz Connect, but it is possible that you found some. I doubt it, though.It is more likely that the product is tagged incorrectly in DIM or that you have download filtering configured to hide those products. 

I let it install DS and it destroyed my install (no graphical components at all, just a white screen with words where buttons would be....very big mess). I had to redownload DS and reinstall manually to be able to use it again. On top of that, everything I installed via DAZ Central is missing stuff. A few items are actually legit mistakes on store items, but most work fine after I reinstall them via DIM. I've decided not to use it again for a while. Oddly, reinstalling didn't wipe any of my settings away, as far as I can tell. 

That almost certainly means DS was running (possibly only in the background as it cleared up) when you installed.

Just gonna ask how many of those who are scared of the store migrating to a new software have complained within the last month or two about the various issues in the current store?  I know these kinda big changes can be worrying, but there are real problems in the status quo too.

I'm in general of the complain/critic crowd, but i think this is a needed change and for this go as smooth as possible in a timely manner it will need user help.

If anyone expects a migration of this magnitud without any issues at all, that would be almost unrealistic. It does not matter how much testing / staging is done before pulling the trigger, there will be issues. There is always a transition period, so better prepare to give feedback. 

Of course i would recomend the improvement of the submit ticket form, as it is now is rubbish and adding all the potential issues that this migration may have it will be chaotic for any help desk team to properly sort it out. Yes, i know, not going to happen.

Does it mean i'm not afraid? Nope. But besides the transition period, what i'm more afraid is what may come next: Daz Central + Store Bridge. Since the moment i tested central beta the UI screamed one word: STORE. DIM is probably a 100 times better but daz insist on forcing central as much as possible. It would not be strange if eventually we get Central only offers/coupons. Daz currently deletes codes that people share from facebook/instagram so don't tell me that could not happen.

Got to be better than what they are using now...

You greatly underestimate the power for "new and improved" to completely destroy things that were working perfectly well.  In all honesty, I can't remember a website upgrade in the last ten year that didn't make the user experience worse.   United Airlines used to be a breeze to work with until they "improved it", and now I have to answer my security questions every time I check in from a device other than my phone.  Anyone who's worked in I.T. knows that the vast majority of website work isn't done to make things better, but to force up the number of page views being tracked.  

That is true, most of new trends are to help tracking and user/customer control. Still, this website has its base so outdated that it needs to change. Every time i read that because of very minor changes to products pages (like replacing a pic) may make the product either temporarily unavailable or its price/discount to be inconsistent, i can only facepalm. i can almost even smell how old this site is. And i'm from a country that lived the 80's during the 90's.

Coke used to be soooo goooood in Georgia when they still used cane sugar. There really is a big difference. Did you know cane sugar is grown in central Georgia? Or at least it was. We were taken on a field trip once to a Coca-Cola bottling plant all the way in Atlanta and no surprise they gve us all a bottle of 6 oz bottle of coke and one or two other advertising trinkets.

I am running a older workstation a HP Z400 with a Xeon W3540 processor and 16 gigabytes of memory. Graphic card is a Quadro FX 1800/PCIe/SSE2.  The clock speed is 2.93GHz and the chip set is Intel X58 Express. The operating system is Windows 10.  It take along time to load the DAZ Central before I can launch DAZ Studio.  My internet connection is DSL runs at 92 Kbps download speed.  It takes about 10 to 15 minutes for all the picture to load.  I cannot lauch DAZ Studio the old way it give me a error code and I have to wait for the entire program to load to lauch DAZ Studio.  I wouldn't mind using DAZ Central if I could lauch DAZ Studio seperately from DAZ Central.  

6:07PM  I'm still here, but not sure for how long.  Tornado warning for this immediate area.  Sky looks iffy.   Tornado spotted on radar 6 miles west of here at 6:00PM, moving east at 25 mph, so just about now...

6:16 PM  I'm back.  Went outside for a look-see.  Definitely swirly angry looking clouds but they are now to the east of me.  Actually it looks very much like a central big gray funnel with about 5 or 6 smaller gray funnels dancing around it.  All coming about halfway to the ground.  Lightning & thunder in the darkest parts around the funnel ensemble.  Based on previous experience of tornados in this area, it could complete the formation and reach the ground in the broad valley just east of town and hit the town of Randolph again like did a few years ago.  Our tornados are not the midwest monsters that level buildings and toss tractors like toys.  However, they do uproot trees, damage roofs and make a mess of the wooded areas.

Yep, when I came back in I checked the weather report and found an update.  At 6:14PM the tornado was 7 miles east of Falconer which puts it 1 mile east of me, just as I saw.  So, this is 6th or 7th tornado/waterspout I've actually seen or been impacted by.

I let it install DS and it destroyed my install (no graphical components at all, just a white screen with words where buttons would be....very big mess). I had to redownload DS and reinstall manually to be able to use it again. On top of that, everything I installed via DAZ Central is missing stuff. A few items are actually legit mistakes on store items, but most work fine after I reinstall them via DIM. I've decided not to use it again for a while. Oddly, reinstalling didn't wipe any of my settings away, as far as I can tell. 

I decided to instal Daz Central and try it out. It has completely changed the layout of D|S, and I can't figure out how to change it back. Is there a way to go back to to old layout without completley unistalling and reinstalling D|S?

With Threadripper, for the most part if you are doing Iray rendering/GPU only, as others and myself haveI noted previously, the extra cores are kind of a waste.  For me, I'm mainly after the extra PCIe Gen 4 lanes.  Sure, we may only be talking a couple of percentage points improvement in performance, but if one is building a new system anyways...

That's why the 12 and 16 core parts interest me.  As I noted, the AM4 boards are a bit anemic on the PCIe for quad GPU setups, assuming you can even find an AM4 board with 4 PCIe 16 slots (MSI has one), but those will be running at much slower PCIe speeds, and sharing those lanes with storage and other things.  THAT is the point of Threadripper, for us 'power user' types...

Sure, EPYC Rome is out there, but those CPUs are a bit slower than Threadrippers, and the EPYC motherboard options for a workstation setup are less inspiring ATM...

Quad GPU is just over 3.6x faster than a single GPU in Daz Studio, according to the Iray benchmarking thread, and of course in other similar rendering benchmarks.  I'd rather direct my pennies to an extra GPU versus more CPU cores given the option, but I'm not interested in the older Threadrippers ATM.  That 8 core 1900X Threadrippper part is a lot of bang for the buck though, even if it is 'just' 1st Gen Threadripper, but the earlier Threadrippers are significantly slower than the 7nm parts, which comes into play when using other apps that rely on the CPU more, say when converting animations into different, more efficient video formats.

I'd probably use animation more in Daz Studio if rendering all those individual frames didn't take so long.  With a quad GPU setup, well cutting down the time to render all those frames becomes very significant...

TRX 40 otherwise would be just fine for me, but as I type this, while the 24 core Threadripper is getting cheaper, it is still well over $1000.  And as I and others have noted, a lot of those cores essentially go to waste most of the time in Daz studio.  It's nice if your render goes CPU only, but usually at that point I just quit the render and do some scene  optimizations, or set up two render passes, as two passes on GPU will still be much faster than a single pass CPU only render.

the 1000 and 2000 series Threadrippers are, well, dated at this point.  I'm looking forward a bit with this purchase, to when PCIe gen 4 becomes more of a big deal with the next gen GPUs, and of course faster storage options.  Sure, SSD's are plenty fast now, but shaving a few seconds off here and there adds up over time. 

If I was doing 3Delight, then those 24 cores on the 3960X would be very nice to have, but I'm on the Iray bandwagon, and pinching my pennies for additional video cards, soooo....

Those 12 and 16 core 7nm Threadripper parts should be fairly affordable, IF they ever end up in the retail channel.  Hopefully enough people are able to convince AMD to do this eventually.  And of course eventually in the next year or so there will be new and improved Threadrippers hitting the market, as the 'Vermeer' CPUs are expected shortly, as are their EPYC counterparts.

As I noted above, I'm really interested to see if Nvidia comes up with a single slot GPU option for the next gen CPUs later this year/early next year.  If they could squeeze say a 3080 Ti into a single slot config, or otherwise make a single slot card with say 12GB or more of VRAM, yeah I'd be looking really seriously at said card.  There's NVLink as well, but so far the single slot card (RTX Quadro 4000) doesn't do the NVlink thing, as I noted above.

As for why not Intel, yeah they've been overcharging for CPUs for well over a decade now, and are just now lowering their prices to counter a resurgent AMD.  And I've enjoyed woking with all of my previous and current AMD systems, so brand loyalty and all that...

Enough ramblling.  Just explaining my logic as to why 64 or 128 PCIe lanes matters to me, and why the 24 core parts seem like a bit of a waste for my usage case, which is why the 16 core 128 PCIe lane Threadripper part is so intriguing...

 

@tj_1ca9500b I'm in complete agreement, and my experience has been the same. Threadrippers are a dream come true if you actually throw a parallel task at it, like compiling a large C++ project, but they just aren't any better suited for, say, running Daz Studio.

As you said, the real benefit is in the generous pool of PCIe lanes, and my (in)experience has taught me that it is best not to end up being your motherboard vendor's QA team by testing a configuration that approaches the limits of the motherboard, or areas the vendor did not test well: when I put 4 GPUs into my system at 16x 8x 16x 8x, on paper it should have just barely worked. But at boot time, PCIe negotiation killed my SATA ports and the vendor could not resolve the problem. If I had a TR with 128 lanes, my configuration would have represented a much smaller fraction of the available PCIe lanes.

I was unaware of the 16 core, 128 lane product. It would make a lot more sense for Daz Studio and my particular setup.

Thanks, @tj_1ca9500b this information was extremely valuable... I know what to do next year :)

You are most welcome!  COVID killed my upgrade budget, otherwise I'd have pulled the trigger by now, probably with some EPYC Rome system I cobbled together, so in this case the extra wait will help in the long run.  Obviously, I've been giving this a lot of thought.

BTW, the reason the single slot GPUs interest me is because of the other add in cards I may need besides 4 GPUs.  Sure, I can fall back on ribbon cables or something, but that introduces another point of failure, plus then there is the question of how to secure those devices attached to ribbon cables, so I'd rather just use the motherboard PCIe slots directly if possible.  I have other uses in mind besides rendering for my next system, so extra flexibility will be helpful.  I'd also rather not have to uninstall 'extra' GPUs just to install some other card if I otherwise have the PCIe slots.

I just want the moon and the stars.  Don't mind me...

If the rumors are true, the greatest problem you, I, and a few others will face is the 1600W power budget before you have to upgrade your panel and run dual PSUs or something similarly exotic. It might be cheaper to just run two systems with two GPUs each. It'd certainly be simpler to build.

Well, with 2 PSU's you can always run a suitably beefy extension cord from a nearby circuit group that is underutilized, so that you aren't plugging both power supplies into the same 15A or 20A circuit...

Fortunately, I already have some pretty beefy extension cords that I used to power up some 1200 watt amplifiers back when I was doing the live music thing.  I still needed someone to wire in a 100 amp drop from the main box for the outdoor gigs, but yeah...

I am hoping that Nvidia's 7nm parts are more power efficient as well as speedier, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.  Not looking to overclock/not my thing, I'm already underclocking the1080 Ti I'm currently using to manage heat.  This actually works out better, as at 100% wattage/load, it throttles pretty heavily, so dropping the power by say 20% or so actually results in higher clock speeds after the heat load peaks.  It's still hotter than I'd like at 78c (note that I don't have AC, and my HTPC box isn't the most ideal cooling situation), but at least I get my renders done in the meantime.

I also do most of my rendering at night and during the early morning, when the indoor temps are cooler... I might invest in a new central air conditioner someday, but the heat doesn't really bother me/doesn't get above say the mid-80s indoors on the hot days.  Not really relevant to this discussion, but different strokes for different folks and all that!

It has been years since I tried a multi PSU setup outside of a server rack but back in the day there were no end of issues. Even in servers the redundant PSU's don't run at the same time. They are fail overs.

You can exceed 1600W though. You'll just need a higher amp circuit. In the US standard household voltage is 120V (in reality it is 115 but call it 120 to stop certain people from freaking out). 1600W is roughly the draw from a 15A circuit with a margin for the efficiency loss for the PSU. But there is no reason not to go to a 20A circuit. which can safely support a 2000w PSU (assuming nothing else is on it). There are a few 2000W PSU's out there if you really want to build a rig like that. Just get an electrician to come in check over your wiring and do the wiring needed. You don't want a fire.

With Threadripper, for the most part if you are doing Iray rendering/GPU only, as others and myself haveI noted previously, the extra cores are kind of a waste.  For me, I'm mainly after the extra PCIe Gen 4 lanes.  Sure, we may only be talking a couple of percentage points improvement in performance, but if one is building a new system anyways...

That's why the 12 and 16 core parts interest me.  As I noted, the AM4 boards are a bit anemic on the PCIe for quad GPU setups, assuming you can even find an AM4 board with 4 PCIe 16 slots (MSI has one), but those will be running at much slower PCIe speeds, and sharing those lanes with storage and other things.  THAT is the point of Threadripper, for us 'power user' types...

Sure, EPYC Rome is out there, but those CPUs are a bit slower than Threadrippers, and the EPYC motherboard options for a workstation setup are less inspiring ATM...

Quad GPU is just over 3.6x faster than a single GPU in Daz Studio, according to the Iray benchmarking thread, and of course in other similar rendering benchmarks.  I'd rather direct my pennies to an extra GPU versus more CPU cores given the option, but I'm not interested in the older Threadrippers ATM.  That 8 core 1900X Threadrippper part is a lot of bang for the buck though, even if it is 'just' 1st Gen Threadripper, but the earlier Threadrippers are significantly slower than the 7nm parts, which comes into play when using other apps that rely on the CPU more, say when converting animations into different, more efficient video formats.

I'd probably use animation more in Daz Studio if rendering all those individual frames didn't take so long.  With a quad GPU setup, well cutting down the time to render all those frames becomes very significant...

TRX 40 otherwise would be just fine for me, but as I type this, while the 24 core Threadripper is getting cheaper, it is still well over $1000.  And as I and others have noted, a lot of those cores essentially go to waste most of the time in Daz studio.  It's nice if your render goes CPU only, but usually at that point I just quit the render and do some scene  optimizations, or set up two render passes, as two passes on GPU will still be much faster than a single pass CPU only render.

the 1000 and 2000 series Threadrippers are, well, dated at this point.  I'm looking forward a bit with this purchase, to when PCIe gen 4 becomes more of a big deal with the next gen GPUs, and of course faster storage options.  Sure, SSD's are plenty fast now, but shaving a few seconds off here and there adds up over time. 

If I was doing 3Delight, then those 24 cores on the 3960X would be very nice to have, but I'm on the Iray bandwagon, and pinching my pennies for additional video cards, soooo....

Those 12 and 16 core 7nm Threadripper parts should be fairly affordable, IF they ever end up in the retail channel.  Hopefully enough people are able to convince AMD to do this eventually.  And of course eventually in the next year or so there will be new and improved Threadrippers hitting the market, as the 'Vermeer' CPUs are expected shortly, as are their EPYC counterparts.

As I noted above, I'm really interested to see if Nvidia comes up with a single slot GPU option for the next gen CPUs later this year/early next year.  If they could squeeze say a 3080 Ti into a single slot config, or otherwise make a single slot card with say 12GB or more of VRAM, yeah I'd be looking really seriously at said card.  There's NVLink as well, but so far the single slot card (RTX Quadro 4000) doesn't do the NVlink thing, as I noted above.

As for why not Intel, yeah they've been overcharging for CPUs for well over a decade now, and are just now lowering their prices to counter a resurgent AMD.  And I've enjoyed woking with all of my previous and current AMD systems, so brand loyalty and all that...

Enough ramblling.  Just explaining my logic as to why 64 or 128 PCIe lanes matters to me, and why the 24 core parts seem like a bit of a waste for my usage case, which is why the 16 core 128 PCIe lane Threadripper part is so intriguing...

 

@tj_1ca9500b I'm in complete agreement, and my experience has been the same. Threadrippers are a dream come true if you actually throw a parallel task at it, like compiling a large C++ project, but they just aren't any better suited for, say, running Daz Studio.

As you said, the real benefit is in the generous pool of PCIe lanes, and my (in)experience has taught me that it is best not to end up being your motherboard vendor's QA team by testing a configuration that approaches the limits of the motherboard, or areas the vendor did not test well: when I put 4 GPUs into my system at 16x 8x 16x 8x, on paper it should have just barely worked. But at boot time, PCIe negotiation killed my SATA ports and the vendor could not resolve the problem. If I had a TR with 128 lanes, my configuration would have represented a much smaller fraction of the available PCIe lanes.

I was unaware of the 16 core, 128 lane product. It would make a lot more sense for Daz Studio and my particular setup.

Thanks, @tj_1ca9500b this information was extremely valuable... I know what to do next year :)

You are most welcome!  COVID killed my upgrade budget, otherwise I'd have pulled the trigger by now, probably with some EPYC Rome system I cobbled together, so in this case the extra wait will help in the long run.  Obviously, I've been giving this a lot of thought.

BTW, the reason the single slot GPUs interest me is because of the other add in cards I may need besides 4 GPUs.  Sure, I can fall back on ribbon cables or something, but that introduces another point of failure, plus then there is the question of how to secure those devices attached to ribbon cables, so I'd rather just use the motherboard PCIe slots directly if possible.  I have other uses in mind besides rendering for my next system, so extra flexibility will be helpful.  I'd also rather not have to uninstall 'extra' GPUs just to install some other card if I otherwise have the PCIe slots.

I just want the moon and the stars.  Don't mind me...

If the rumors are true, the greatest problem you, I, and a few others will face is the 1600W power budget before you have to upgrade your panel and run dual PSUs or something similarly exotic. It might be cheaper to just run two systems with two GPUs each. It'd certainly be simpler to build.

Well, with 2 PSU's you can always run a suitably beefy extension cord from a nearby circuit group that is underutilized, so that you aren't plugging both power supplies into the same 15A or 20A circuit...

Fortunately, I already have some pretty beefy extension cords that I used to power up some 1200 watt amplifiers back when I was doing the live music thing.  I still needed someone to wire in a 100 amp drop from the main box for the outdoor gigs, but yeah...

I am hoping that Nvidia's 7nm parts are more power efficient as well as speedier, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.  Not looking to overclock/not my thing, I'm already underclocking the1080 Ti I'm currently using to manage heat.  This actually works out better, as at 100% wattage/load, it throttles pretty heavily, so dropping the power by say 20% or so actually results in higher clock speeds after the heat load peaks.  It's still hotter than I'd like at 78c (note that I don't have AC, and my HTPC box isn't the most ideal cooling situation), but at least I get my renders done in the meantime.

I also do most of my rendering at night and during the early morning, when the indoor temps are cooler... I might invest in a new central air conditioner someday, but the heat doesn't really bother me/doesn't get above say the mid-80s (F, not C, obviously, otherwise I'd be dead!) indoors on the hot days.  Not really relevant to this discussion, but different strokes for different folks and all that!

Whatever you decide to do, DON"T install Daz Central. DIM users have had way too much trouble with Daz Central messing up their DIM paths.

That's precious advice from you which I retained since the beginning! As well as ensuring that all my installation paths are as desired prior to starting DIM!
HEY! Why didn't I realise that I could actually have used DS while DIM was working in the background? Never thought of that until you mentioned it!! duhhhhh... going right now to try it!!

Whatever you decide to do, DON"T install Daz Central. DIM users have had way too much trouble with Daz Central messing up their DIM paths.

That's precious advice from you which I retained since the beginning! As well as ensuring that all my installation paths are as desired prior to starting DIM!
HEY! Why didn't I realise that I could actually have used DS while DIM was working in the background? Never thought of that until you mentioned it!! duhhhhh... going right now to try it!!

Whatever you decide to do, DON"T install Daz Central. DIM users have had way too much trouble with Daz Central messing up their DIM paths.

Easy one first - Daz Central isn't saying you don't have the Daz Studio application installed, it's saying you don't have all the add-ons which it is set to install as a package.

For the rest, it sounds like issues with content directories - where is your content installled, and whata re your current content directories inside DS (Edit>Preferences>Content tab, click the Content Directory Manager button)?

Just because wiping and starting form scratch strikes me as a nuclear option, but if you don't have much content, then might be best.

Is it possible to uninstall only Daz Central? (I've avoided that one as I read on these forums of folks having issues with it.)

I don't know if it's possible, but I imagine you can uninstall using DIM?

Start install manager (Not studio, don't have both open at the same time)

Go to the installed tab, find Daz Central, Click uninstall

Then the next step redownload through DIM content.that is missing.

I have been having a fair amount of issues with Daz Studio and purchased items not installing or even showing up as an option to be installed.

Most recently, I purchased the Kayo Pro Bundle and installed it. It worked fine at first and then disappeared from my character list along with almost all of my character content. When I select the option from Daz central to install it, it tells me that it has been installed but is still not in my content folders. I receive an error message stating that the Kayo content is missing with a link to download it. The download and install option does not work. I mean, why would it? Instead, I have to manually download it and re-install it in the correct folder. Although that might seem simple enough, I would have to repeat this step with 100+ items in my assets folder in order to add them all.

Beyond that, Skin Builder 8 is not showing up in my asset folder in Daz Central. Can this be retrieved some other way? When I try to add it to my cart, it wants me to pay a second time. What's an extra 50 bucks, right? I have so many items purchased from this site, that I don't even know if that is the only one missing.

From Daz Central, I have also been receiving occasional alerts that I do not have Daz Studio. This is obviously incorrect.

Am I missing an easy solution to get back on track or is it best to delete Daz Studio, Daz Central, the install manager, and associated folders so I can start from scratch? Obviously, that is not appealing but I am very frustrated. I understand that the software is free, but the assets are far from it.

Help me out here. I appreciate any advice moving forward on this issue.