The only other thing I can think of and it's more time consuming then a script, take the Genesis you're working on and the outfit and bring them into Blender or Hexagon or whatever program you use and just make the outfit fit the model and export the outfit only to obj and import to Daz and apply the Transfer Utility and, if you're game, dforce options.

PixelSploiting said:

He looks great, but I think the only interesting items from the bundle are explosion FX and the unifom (and the uniform is only basic everyday overalls no other kit). I've no shortage of gun props.

Ditto for me. The single item discount stacking and tokens make it feasible to make my own bundle rather than buying the April Inanity bundles. I haven't seen the stovepipe hairstyle since the 80's, but I hear it's being recycled. The raggedy Antoine yarn braids seem to be a more common hairstyle than that.

Lawrence's skin looks just like Angela's skin with different normals. If we still had separate genders, then repeating a skin for both genders would be defensible. But this doesn't make much sense. His head morph seems well-made (since he looks stoic, perhaps it won't matter how well he takes expressions), but his bends look like they need some FBM/CBS love. Don't know what's up with the clotshot calamari vascularity.

Still, Genesis 8 black men were so obviously painted that I only used them at distance. Genesis 8.1 black skin looked great, and Genesis 9 now has two versions of one skin that looks amazing.

stripe6499_9253833ae8 said:

I had something similar with a G8 figure, and that turned out to be the DForce Sea Salt hair I was using on the figure. Even with a massively upgraded pc, I still can't move a figure around, using that hair. Try removing any hair products and see if you still have that issue?

That could certainly be one culprit, as when one uses the dial on the character the first time (reading the deltas for the morph), the morph is also transfered to any and all fitted items and if the item (hair) has a dense geometry it may very well take some time.

Is it possible to parent a garment to a genesis character using transfer utliity - but without deforming the garment?
This leaves a lot of artefacts, predominantly on buttons, that can't be cleaned up with weight mapping because the mesh becomes deformed as a default state post transferring weights.

[attached imgs showing before transfer, after transfer, and transfer settings]
I'm more familiar with Blender's 'Parent with Automatic Weights'  feature and then adjusting weight maps. In Blender, parenting/weighting an asset to an armeture doesn't deform the model. For this use case I can't really do the weight painting in Blender unfortunately.

I've tried to deselect the 'Fit to Source Figure' option, which solves my problem to some degree but that means I can't move the garment or apply morphs.
Does anyone with some experience with Transfer Utility have any suggestions to help with this issue please?
Thanks
 

Lantia Vertel said:

After reading the asset in the first step, it should be trivial to check what you should unload/destroy, and what you shoud load/create...

That's absolutely non-trivial and from your assumption it seems that you do not understand how Daz Studio, and 3D assets in general, work.

In order to compare two scenes, you have to compare the full scene tree hierarchy (recursion). That's already computationaly more expensive than just deleting and loading everything from scratch.

For the sake of an argument, let's say you have a simple scene with just one G8F figure.

In your current scene she is wearing a bikini, in the one you want to load she is wearing a dress. When you start loading new scene Daz Studio would according to you need to somehow determine that the figures are the same. Let's say that's an easy task (even if it isn't). Your ideal outcome would be Daz Studio unloading bikini and loading dress. How do you propose they determine what should be kept? What if the figure is also wearing sunglasses with the bikini? Should they remain and be paired with a dress or be removed? What if the new figure differs in just one morph state or it has different face texture (makeup)? Is it still the same figure?

That is already a complex and hard to define task, and we haven't even considered world XYZ coordinates of the figure (what should happen if they aren't the same? Should the figure move to a new position or not?), morphs which are dialed in (should old morphs remain and be combined with new morphs or be fully replaced with new morphs?), geografts, geoshells, deformers, cameras, lights, multiple objects, instancing, etc, etc.

Trust me when I say this, doing that would just make things slower.

Right now, the only things that make scene loading slow are:

1. Having too much installed 3D assets (the less you have the faster your scenes load, and this is especially true for figure morphs)
2. The efficiency of find/add/remove operations on data structures used to represent scene objects as GUI elements in memory (this is what could probably be further optimized by Daz 3D)

So if you want your scene load time to be faster my advice is to have two separate Daz Studio installs (release and beta), and two separate content folders. In release content you keep only the minimum amount of 3D assets required for working on your current project, and everything else keep in beta content.

Most people complaining about slow scene loading have hundreds of gigabytes of accumulated 3D assets installed -- it's like having a cluttered desk and then complaining you can't find that one particular paper you need quickly.

You can easily test if doing what I suggest would help in your particular workflow -- just move everything out of your content directory to a safe place, then load the scene, scroll through the missing files dialog, and copy only those missing files from the safe place to your content directory. Once you have all the files used by the scene try loading it, I'd be surprised if you reported back that it isn't considerably faster.

Hope this helps.

Faeryl Womyn said:

There is a converter from G8 to G9
https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/93219/g8fm-pose-transfer-to-g9

I do have a convertor, and it's great for poses, but sadly useless for wearables.   

the villain

daz studio

intermediate

Modifying characters with blender's sculpting function is my main interest in the moment.

Creating the scar in the face of the rat and the full body morph for the kitten was easyer than the controle of dForce hair in DS,

Slowly I'm getting an idea, what all the parameters under "simulate" are doing.

He's so pretty and exactly the morph I needed for a character I couldn't nail down. I have exactly zero use for military stuff, so he's all I'm getting; I might wait a day and see if they spring an alternate theme or something.

So, Angela's brother is into the store. He's had morph fits in a few things, so it was clear he was coming, if not when. (Been a while since they let that happen.)

Don't think I want all of either bundle, but we shall see.

The combinations with him look pretty good.

As example, If I load a scene and I load the same scene again without changing anything, it takes 23 seconds to load, according to the logs this is what happens:

2023-04-19 15:52:43.881 [INFO] :: Prepare asset load (open): PATH_TO_MY_SCENE
2023-04-19 15:52:43.881 [INFO] :: Locking viewport redraw...
2023-04-19 15:52:43.881 [INFO] :: Viewport redraw locked.
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Native format content directories: 4
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Poser format content directories: 3
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Other import format content directories: 0
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Begin asset load (open): PATH_TO_MY_SCENE
2023-04-19 15:52:44.562 [INFO] :: Clearing the scene...
2023-04-19 15:52:47.812 [INFO] :: *** Scene Cleared ***
2023-04-19 15:52:47.812 [INFO] :: Determining missing assets... (4 seconds!! glad to see this line here, but it takes a lot :( )
2023-04-19 15:52:51.136 [INFO] :: Setting textures...
2023-04-19 15:52:51.292 [INFO] :: Scanning for addons...
2023-04-19 15:52:53.488 [INFO] :: Creating node geometry...
2023-04-19 15:52:53.543 [INFO] :: Creating UV sets...
2023-04-19 15:52:53.543 [INFO] :: Creating materials... (3 seconds!! do we need to create the same materials again?)
2023-04-19 15:52:56.382 [INFO] :: Resolving legacy figures...
2023-04-19 15:52:56.382 [INFO] :: Preparing modifiers...
....

 

I think it really depends on the assets / resources that need to be loaded... My single V9 scene is even slower: ( latest Public Build )

Asset loading time 17.6s, total loading time 34.6s before viewport redraw, even if my computer is pretty robust... But the loading time in latest Public build was shortened by 10% at least comparing to General release, I was still a bit satisfied...

Ken OBanion said:

While entry #2 is rendering (and after 30 minutes, and only 2% complete, it's liable to take a while), I thought I'd get a jump on #3.  So here's my (pseudo-)random draw for round 3:

8301 - Fairytale Collection - Charming For David
7452 - Fantasy Castle 2011 - Castle Keep 2
7413 - Trail Scouts
2656 - Agila

Man, that 'blast from the past' vibe is still going strong, isn't it!?

So..., okay; challenge accepted!

 This one came together surprisingly quickly!

I had to do it as three separate images, and then composited them, due to the scale of the scene, plus the fact that the various figures are all facing in different directions.  (And for the record, I don't recommend it, and I hope I don't have to do it again!)

Anyway, here it is.

Also used:

David (obviously; otherwise that Charming outfit would be just another empty suit!)

Donavan (MAT and morphs by LA3D - a ShareCG freebie)

Jamie Hair by AprilYSH

Michael 3 Sr2

Level Hype (another LA3D morph package for M3)

Shelby textures (LA3D again)

Prince Charming Hair for M3

The Scout for M3 (required for Trail Scout textures)

Marauder for M3 (Rifle; yeah, it's an AR-15 -- what's your point?)

Victoria 4.2

DMR Lynette (MAT and morphs)

V4 Ranger Hair

Vandra (required for Agila textures)

V4 Morphing Cloak and Cape

DMs Courage Realm (Weapons and hand poses)

Dark Tales textures for Castle Keep 2

Easy Environments Witchcraft: Eclipse (Skydome)

With a little bit of postwork in GIMP.  (Okay, a lot of postwork in GIMP!)

Tag: OBanion_03

Title: A Little Unfinished Business

Long believed dead, Agila had instead been relentlessly hunting down the man who murdered her father.  In the course of her travels, she encountered a man out of his place, and out of his time who, lacking anything better to do, had joined her in her quest for justice and retribution.

At long last, much to Prince Humperdinck's surprise, the two travellers arrived at his castle.

Agila: "My name is Agila Montoya!  You killed my father!  Prepare to die!"

Michael: "Seriously...!?"

If a scene loads in 23 seconds, that's lightning fast... 

For a comparison, if loading a G8 character takes 3minutes, that's just normal for someone with many installed morph packs and characters. Loading a scene with several characters, environment and architechture, can easily take 10-20 minutes.

chris-2599934 said:

I don't think you'd see a big improvement in performance from this change, and probably a degradation in performance when the scene you're loading isn't a version of the one you already have. Think about what you have to do.

• Retain the old scene in memory.
• Load the new scene, and for each element it contains determine (somehow) if it's already in the old scene. If so, retain the old element, otherwise load the new one.
• When you've got to the end of the new scene, unload anything from the old one that wasn't retained.

If you're actually loading a new and different scene, you'll end up with both of them in memory at the same time as laoding nears completion - which might be more than your machine can handle. And the whole process is made more complex, which means potential bugs can be introduced. You don't want bugs in something as fundamental as loading a new scene.

If you have scenes that have a large number of never-changing objects, and a small number of changing ones, it might be possible to rig up an approximation of the set-up you propose using scene subsets. Produce the big background scene and call it stage.duf. Pose your foreground figures, put them in a group and save it as a scene subset called actors01.duf. Move them around and save them as actors02.duf. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. You can get to any scene by deleting the actors group and loading a new one from the appropriate subset. You might even be able to use a hierarchical pose preset instead of a subset. It's probably not worth the added complication for the amount of time it would save.

It's not exactly like that, this is just the old and well known cache invalidation problem. From what you said:

chris-2599934 said:

• Retain the old scene in memory.

No need to retain anything, the old scene is already loaded in memory when you are using it (obviously) and that doesn't need to change. It remains as it is today.

chris-2599934 said:

• Load the new scene, and for each element it contains determine (somehow) if it's already in the old scene. If so, retain the old element, otherwise load the new one.
• When you've got to the end of the new scene, unload anything from the old one that wasn't retained.

The steps in Daz are different. At the moment Daz does:

• Reading asset
• Clearing the scene
• Deleting objects
• Load new scene

Basically it deletes data generated from the current scene, just... (in most cases) to load and generate it again. After reading the asset in the first step, it should be trivial to check what you should unload/destroy, and what you shoud load/create, actually Daz do this for some assets (I believe), as in the logs you can see a "Determining missing assets..." line when loading a new scene.

Unfurtunatelly without access to the source code or more detailed logs I can just guess what is really happening behind the scenes, but all I see makes me think it shouldn't be complicated reuse more stuff and not only the assets Daz reuses now.

As example, If I load a scene and I load the same scene again without changing anything, it takes 23 seconds to load, according to the logs this is what happens:

2023-04-19 15:52:43.881 [INFO] :: Prepare asset load (open): PATH_TO_MY_SCENE
2023-04-19 15:52:43.881 [INFO] :: Locking viewport redraw...
2023-04-19 15:52:43.881 [INFO] :: Viewport redraw locked.
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Native format content directories: 4
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Poser format content directories: 3
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Other import format content directories: 0
2023-04-19 15:52:43.928 [INFO] :: Begin asset load (open): PATH_TO_MY_SCENE
2023-04-19 15:52:44.562 [INFO] :: Clearing the scene...
2023-04-19 15:52:47.812 [INFO] :: *** Scene Cleared ***
2023-04-19 15:52:47.812 [INFO] :: Determining missing assets... (4 seconds!! glad to see this line here, but it takes a lot :( )
2023-04-19 15:52:51.136 [INFO] :: Setting textures...
2023-04-19 15:52:51.292 [INFO] :: Scanning for addons...
2023-04-19 15:52:53.488 [INFO] :: Creating node geometry...
2023-04-19 15:52:53.543 [INFO] :: Creating UV sets...
2023-04-19 15:52:53.543 [INFO] :: Creating materials... (3 seconds!! do we need to create the same materials again?)
2023-04-19 15:52:56.382 [INFO] :: Resolving legacy figures...
2023-04-19 15:52:56.382 [INFO] :: Preparing modifiers...
2023-04-19 15:52:56.407 [INFO] :: Creating modifiers...
2023-04-19 15:52:56.939 [INFO] :: Creating property aliases...
2023-04-19 15:52:56.946 [INFO] :: Resolving 164038 formulas...
2023-04-19 15:52:56.946 [INFO] :: Finding formula properties...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.000 [INFO] :: Sorting formula properties...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.002 [INFO] :: Creating ERC Links...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.493 [INFO] :: Finished resolving formulas.
2023-04-19 15:52:57.504 [INFO] :: Applying animations...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.915 [INFO] :: Processing scene data...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.923 [INFO] :: Finalizing modifiers...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.924 [INFO] :: Finalizing channels...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.924 [INFO] :: Finalizing materials...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.924 [INFO] :: Finalizing simulation providers...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.924 [INFO] :: Sorting property groups...
2023-04-19 15:52:57.930 [INFO] :: Setting up follow targets...
2023-04-19 15:52:58.150 [INFO] :: Setting current camera...
2023-04-19 15:52:58.150 [INFO] :: Finalizing scene data...
2023-04-19 15:52:58.151 [INFO] :: Finished asset load (open): PATH_TO_MY_SCENE
2023-04-19 15:52:58.152 [INFO] :: Processing morph projection queue (7 seconds!! Do we need to process this again?)
2023-04-19 15:53:05.684 [INFO] :: Unlocking viewport redraw...
2023-04-19 15:53:05.684 [INFO] :: Viewport redraw unlocked.
2023-04-19 15:53:05.743 [INFO] :: Loaded morph deltas
2023-04-19 15:53:06.436 [INFO] :: Processing morph projection queue
2023-04-19 15:53:06.754 [INFO] :: Morph projection queue processed

be', se utilizziamo personaggi base e morph, che abbiamo tutti, animazioni personalizzate, set scenici e props comuni... le licenze le abbiamo già acquisite

quanto al corto, sarebbe da organizzare insieme, ma se viene bene, consideralo una vetrina, un investimento per la tua attività di animatore. Considera che la parte più importante è proprio la gran quantità di personaggi animati, in una produzione amatoriale ma con una resa "quasi" cinematografica.

Imago said:

magaremoto said:

veramente faccio parecchi test, ma, credimi, assemblare e preparare una scena complessa con figure animate in d/s è molto faticoso (zoom, camera, gestione della timeline..)

Ragazzo... Non sai con chi stai parlando...

Io realizzo animazioni con DAZ Studio giornalmente da dieci anni. 

Tutte le animazioni sono fatte da me, nessun BVH o altri formati pronti, tutto nuovo di zecca e cucito sul personaggio. Nessun billborad statico per ambiente o personaggi di sfondo, solo modelli animati e prop completi.

Tutti i miei modelli sono mix di morph specifici e abiti studiati appositamente per il personaggio. Creo appositamente da zero textures animate da applicare a determinati modelli.

Tutti gli ambienti sono non-stock ma mix di parti di set e kitbash creati per rendere ogni ambientazione unica e specifica per la storia che devo realizzare.

Tutte le inquadrature sono studiate appositamente per cogliere il massimo da ogni scena, nessun preset pronto, solo Regola dei Terzi, Regola aurea e un pizzico di pazienza.

Ti assicuro che so perfettamente come si fanno le animazioni di scene complesse con DAZ Studio.

 

ma certo che ti conosco, qualche anno fa ti ho assoldato su fiverr per una camminata furtiva, se ricordi. Bei tempi, quando si potevano fare belle cose 3d in Italia

tu sei animatore di talento ma non tutti ci sono portati, perciò su d/s non mi muovo agevolmente come in carrara

magaremoto said:

veramente faccio parecchi test, ma, credimi, assemblare e preparare una scena complessa con figure animate in d/s è molto faticoso (zoom, camera, gestione della timeline..)

Ragazzo... Non sai con chi stai parlando...

Io realizzo animazioni con DAZ Studio giornalmente da dieci anni. 

Tutte le animazioni sono fatte da me, nessun BVH o altri formati pronti, tutto nuovo di zecca e cucito sul personaggio. Nessun billborad statico per ambiente o personaggi di sfondo, solo modelli animati e prop completi.

Tutti i miei modelli sono mix di morph specifici e abiti studiati appositamente per il personaggio. Creo appositamente da zero textures animate da applicare a determinati modelli.

Tutti gli ambienti sono non-stock ma mix di parti di set e kitbash creati per rendere ogni ambientazione unica e specifica per la storia che devo realizzare.

Tutte le inquadrature sono studiate appositamente per cogliere il massimo da ogni scena, nessun preset pronto, solo Regola dei Terzi, Regola aurea e un pizzico di pazienza.

Ti assicuro che so perfettamente come si fanno le animazioni di scene complesse con DAZ Studio.

https://www.daz3d.com/natural-eyes-9-merchant-resource-for-genesis-9 (for eyes)

https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-9-starter-essentials-expansion (for eyebrows, eyelashes)

https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-and-8-to-9-batch-pose-converter (pose converter)

the built-in Transfer Utility (to transfer all G8 morphs to G9)

Thanks for the input everyone, so are the G9 essentials such as head shapes, body shapes, expressions and starter essentials expansion actually needed to use any of these other options that everyone has suggested?  I am going to try transferring some of my G8 characters to G9 using transfer utility would I need any of the above mentioned for that?

Kainjy said:

@magaremoto

Potresti anche lavorare a pezzi:

Uno Acquista i modelli (morph, vestiti, accessori...) di cui ha bisogno in DAZ mentre agli altri bastano le figure base.
Tutti gli altri si occupano di animare e la salvano in un file.. poi chi ha la libreria completa assegna a ogni singola figura le varie animazioni già pronte.
Inoltre se non usi camere che inquadrano il pavimento, potresti renderizzare le figure su sfondo trasparente e poi qualcun altro può occuparsi dei fondali per poi unire in post-produzione. 

teoricamente potrebbe funzionare, la collaborazione a distanza si fa da sempre, soprattutto nelle fase germinali; l'ideale sarebbe un browser o una piattaforma su cloud dove visualizzare il processo di realizzazione collaborativa per apportare modifiche in tempo reale come unity collaborate

@magaremoto

Potresti anche lavorare a pezzi:

Uno Acquista i modelli (morph, vestiti, accessori...) di cui ha bisogno in DAZ mentre agli altri bastano le figure base.
Tutti gli altri si occupano di animare e la salvano in un file.. poi chi ha la libreria completa assegna a ogni singola figura le varie animazioni già pronte.
Inoltre se non usi camere che inquadrano il pavimento, potresti renderizzare le figure su sfondo trasparente e poi qualcun altro può occuparsi dei fondali per poi unire in post-produzione.