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.

assuming you are doing things correctly, and from what I read it seems you did (well maybe except adding the same content to more then one place, that is not really an error but still useless and redundant - and more important the Connect folder is only for content installed using Daz Studio itself, the feature called Daz Connect, one of the many way to install official resources, others are Daz Central and DIM), once tyou start DS ot hit the refresh button you need to go to Content library tab and browse until you find the hair..

I have those free dforce hairs and they're are for Genesis 8 Female, so you need to double click folders until you reach them.. something like

Default Library/People/Genesis 8 Female/Hair/zoro_d/French Twist Hair

the first item is the hair model, stuffs in subfolder are presets and colors to apply to the hair.. you'll find many other things into those folders (the default resources installed for the genesis figures, at least)

Your product library page within your account should have downloads, and links for Install Manager and Central

I haven't been here in about six years so I do not have the latest version. When I go to download, it asks me for my first and last name and then I put in my login and password. I click on
"download now" and it takes me to my account page. The only thing that is downloadable on my account page is "Daz central"  I do not know what that means. This has happened at least
four times in a row. I click on download now and it keeps sending me to my account page. I would like to download it again but it seems hard to do.  Thanks.

In your product library it should be here https://www.daz3d.com/downloader/customer/files#prod_39625 . You should also be able to find the installers in Daz Central/Daz Install Manager/The Install pane of Daz Studio is the application is on-line. If it's not showing, have you received the email confirming the order?

Because DAZ Central is "designed for new inexperienced users" and it forces the default install paths for everything. If you want control over your content use DIM or Manual Install.

I'm trying to install DAZ Studio and DAZ Central on my second machine.  I bought a nice little hard drive (D:) just for DAZ stuff.

The problem is... DAZ is a control freak.  It tells me I don't have DAZ studio installed.  It is wrong.  I do.  It's install on D: drive.  But, it won't recognize it.

Not problem I thought.  I'm uninstall it and install it through DAZ Central.

DAZ Central installs DAZ Studio on C: and sets up everything to be loaded on C:.

I don't want C: drive.  I want D: drive.  Why won't it let me tell it to do things on D: drive?

Thanks a lot, I was just searching for that ! 

Just wish for once they had a crew that could make the software actually flawless. Something in DAZ is always dying out or breaking

I mean I download and now I can't even have no more than one window of DAZ open, the vignetting dont even work anymore either. I use to be able to have multiple Daz windows open So if one is rendering an image, I can be working on another image in another window of DAZ. But not anymore...I also noticed the lighting is all dimmed and dark as hell too for 4.11 in the preview. So I can barely see anything. I dont mean when I hit "render" I'm talking just the preview window

when I load a scene or a figure, it's dark/dim. Even when I brighten my screen. So I had no choice but to go back to 4.12 again through the Daz Central method

And I hate it because I can't even have multiple windows open anymore like in other versions of DAZ..It just seems like no one really knows what their doing with this program. A lot of stuff just feels disabled, and the beta version is still the same as the full version when the full version is suppose to be better than the beta.

One can still create instances by using the script posted at the end of this post:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5112696/#Comment_5112696

As for the dark scene, did you check the Render Settings? If you set it to Defaults, it should be fine.

I made the same mistake , it did not worked messed up everything , uninstall it and use DIM  for the real instalation , you will have 80% less problems , I did works better , but as you said, Not being able to have multiple DAZ windows open is already a disappointment

but there is a script for I believe , but why make easy stuff difficult , they must have a reason .

Just wish for once they had a crew that could make the software actually flawless or close to it in some way. Something in DAZ is always dying out or breaking

I mean I downloaded to 4.12 from DAZ CENTRAL and now I can't even have no more than one window of DAZ open, the vignetting dont even work anymore either (not that I was using it a lot). I use to be able to have multiple Daz windows open. So if one is rendering an image, I can be working on another image in another window of DAZ. But not anymore...I cant even completely close the program down unless I do it through the Task Manager...It just seems like no one really knows what their doing with this program because there is always something wrong with it. A lot of stuff just feels disabled or non-working, and the beta versions are always the complete version when the complete version is suppose to be better than the beta. Which means all the issues with the beta is going to be in the "complete/finished" version...Not being able to have multiple DAZ windows open is already a disappointment...

Just wish for once they had a crew that could make the software actually flawless. Something in DAZ is always dying out or breaking

I mean I download and now I can't even have no more than one window of DAZ open, the vignetting dont even work anymore either. I use to be able to have multiple Daz windows open So if one is rendering an image, I can be working on another image in another window of DAZ. But not anymore...I also noticed the lighting is all dimmed and dark as hell too for 4.11 in the preview. So I can barely see anything. I dont mean when I hit "render" I'm talking just the preview window

when I load a scene or a figure, it's dark/dim. Even when I brighten my screen. So I had no choice but to go back to 4.12 again through the Daz Central method

And I hate it because I can't even have multiple windows open anymore like in other versions of DAZ..It just seems like no one really knows what their doing with this program. A lot of stuff just feels disabled, and the beta version is still the same as the full version when the full version is suppose to be better than the beta.

One can still create instances by using the script posted at the end of this post:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5112696/#Comment_5112696

As for the dark scene, did you check the Render Settings? If you set it to Defaults, it should be fine.