NyX said:

I know it's not popular, but if you use (or check) Smart Content, items that have an update available will show a little circle type thing on the thumbnail. If you click on the thumbnail to open the product, there will be an "update" button underneath the main thumbnail.

That is only if they are installed through Daz Connect, and Daz Studio has been online since the update was issued. If the content was installed through DIM, Daz Central, or Daz Studio itself then an update (any change from the downloaded version) should be flagged.

AI has become the most game-changing movement since the Industrial Revolution.  Is it surprising that the resulting paradigm shift will potentially upend society as mechanical automation did?  Nevertheless, most people who discuss this topic inevitably focus on the wrong aspect, IMO.  Again, not surprising, since artists are the ones who are most passionate about the changes that will take place.  But, as Bluejaunte noted, it's an interesting conundrum and it will cause many to rethink issues that previously went unnoticed.  For example:

   If commissioned to create an image of a Kakapo, what is the first thing you would do?  The vast majority of you would probably Google it for lack of awareness of this rare flightless bird.  Can any of you draw or paint a picture of it without such a reference?  Would you go as far as to hire a photographer to stalk one in the wild or would an internet image search suffice? After you had gathered several different photos of the bird (as every good artist would) and completed your artwork for your client, would you consider tracking down the creators of the reference images to compensate them?  To take things further, as an artist, could you create anything at all without some sort of visual reference?  There is a very interesting article about a man who was born blind, yet created paintings (https://theconversation.com/how-a-blind-artist-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-colour-93872) with accurate colors.  It is a very outstanding example of human creativity, but what shouldn't be overlooked is his father's role in training him to "see" images and colors.  The obvious, yet often missed message in all this is that the same rule applies to machines as to humans: if there is no input, there is no output.  Conversely, if the input is substantial, meaningful results can happen. For humans as well as machines.

  So why haven't artists historically charged fees to human onlookers of their intellectual property?  Primarily precisely because we are humans. Art, most art, is meant to be shared and admired - the wider the outreach, the better.  When patrons walk into a gallery, the artists aren't suspicious that they are examining their work in order to duplicate their style. Even if they were, it takes humans years of examining and experiencing inputs for us to develop our artistic talent to the level of professionals.  Humans need more time.  Humans love to admire art.  And many humans eventually pay for it in some fashion or form.  So historically, humans looking at an artist's work have not been perceived as a threat but was actually their goal.  Then came the machines.

Let's be clear: Machines don't love art. They are not attracted by aesthetics. Their primary (only?) objective is to analyze it in order to fulfill their programming.  They are not consumers or patrons who wish to one day purchase or even create art of their own.  They were designed to do one thing and do it well - to assimilate input and create output defined according to prescribed algorithms.  While it used a roughly similar method, gathering data from sources outside itself to reach seemingly independent conclusions, it does it way faster than humans...and therein lies the threat.  The efficiency and blistering speed of machine learning has turned an innocuous action, examining artwork, into an existential crisis for many artists.  But for all such paradigm shifts in the history of mankind, the central issue has never changed and it doesn't change here.  The machines aren't the problem.  The problem is us.

AI isn't evil.  It isn't good.  It doesn't need rights because it doesn't desire anything.  Too many people are focusing on the "I" in AI and not enough mention of the "A". The "A" stands for artificial.  It isn't really intelligent.  It doesn't want to "steal" your art.  It has no motivations or dreams or inherent goals.  AI is a tool and therefore an extension of the user.  Let's not forget that.  If you feel your IP is being stolen, it isn't AI that is doing it.  Stealing implies a thief.  Thieves are motivated by greed or need.  AI has neither feeling.  It was created to accomplish a general task.  Humans use it for specific purposes, whether to enhance their own creativity or to duplicate Disney characters for illicit intentions.  This is an age-old problem.  As humans, we are our own worst enemy.  Someone created a hammer, we use it to bludgeon our neighbor.  The Chinese invented explosive powder, we use it to create mass destruction.  A new computer technology arises, and many will use it to foment chaos and for selfish gain.  Because this is who we are. 

Nevertheless, AI isn't going away.  Even if the court cases are found in favor of artists, the economics of creating art will change more in favor of the corporations and those who are inventive enough to take advantage.  We can gripe and complain, but the future is as crystal clear as the past.  Jobs will disappear (remember the Shoemaker and the Coachmaker?  I thought not) and other professions will arise. And people will use this technology to do nefarious things. AI is groundbreaking tech and I plan to use it as far as it helps me meet my creative requirements but let's not mistake the villain in this story.  Mankind always takes the low road.

nabob21 said:

Thanks Sevrin and melanie for the replies. 

One final question I have is will DIM recognize the products that have been installed through DazCentral? Hopefully that will be the case so that I don't have to 're-install' everything again in order for DIM to see and recognize it.

Install Manager will pick up the settings and actions from Daz Central, and vice versa (if you chnage the paths in Install manager, so they no longer match the options Daz Central gives, then its settings will say that the paths are being managed by Install Manager).

Sevrin said:

The launchable thing is kind of silly, but otherwise I like the new DIM.  Startup is much faster.

It's a feature Daz Central has that some segment of users seem to use. The whole thing can be turned off 9well, hidden) - see the change log for 1.4.1.18.

nabob21 said:

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply. So based on the answers that have been provided, it seems that people prefer to use DIM which does provide notifications of updates. Does anyone know why DazCentral doesn't flag products that have updates? I thought DazCentral was the downlaod application that was supposed to replace DIM.

And as I had asked in the other threads, what are the ways that product updates are communicated to us, i.e. how do folks find out about updates? Is the only avenue available to us through DIM and possibly by monitoring the forums? 

 

Daz Central is a simplified version of DIM - think of it as a pen knife compared to DIM's Swiss Army knife.

Back in the day, after making a purchase you pulled up your product library listing and started downloading. One item at a time. And every item was an executable installer, which began to cause problems with Macs as older installers became obsolete and had to be rebuilt. We found out about updates mostly by accident. There were requests - in some cases, demands - for a better way.

We got DIM.

When you log in to the store it walks your product library and compares it to what you have on your  system and shows you what has been updated. It gives flexibility on where to put things - downloads, executables, installtion directories - and it can restart interrupted downloads.It was - glorious. It has been expanded and updated, adding features like pulling down thumbnails and linking to a product's readme page.

Some people were overwhelmed with the flexibility - so two (three?) years ago Daz added Central - effectively a stripped down version of DIM, that was easier to configure. Central should be notifying you about updates but I'm not sure. I looked at it when it came out and realized it wouldn't work for me - I have my executables on the C: drive and content on the D:, E:, and F: drives, with my downloads on an external K: drive - so I haven't paid any real attention to Central since it came out.

Daz central is rubbish, I don't even go online when using daz as I cannot even stand Daz connect, so it's DIM all the way!

Download Daz Install Manager (DIM). This will let you install all your content, wherever you want it, in a very streamlined fashion. You can use Daz Connect (downloading content inside DS) or Daz Central, which is essentially DIM for newbies, but DIM really is the recommended way to install content unless you choose to install manually.

Hi Richard, I honestly can't remember how I installed it, long time ago, all I know is the path MAC SSD/Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library. So that's the path I chose when asked, is there another path?

Everything I've ever bought I install through Daz Central, is this different?

Hi team, I have just purchased the Mesh Grabber bundle and installed via Daz Central. 1. It says Select Daz Studio version - only one available is 4.5 (I have 4.12} 2. Pursued anyway by Selecting Path - My DAZ 3D Library (IS this correct?)

Having completed this nothing shows up in Tools menu or Plug ins section.

Searched relentlessly through the forums. Lots about dlls, folder, plug in thingys and wotnots. Most advice was to install vis DIM. So uninstalled and tried through DIM but get lots of things to choose (Pics attached) Deleted from DIM

Went back to DAZ Central but faced witht the select this and that issues (Pics attached (I hope)

This is an edited version of what I have gone through as I am very tired now.

Can anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong? It cannot be this difficult

thank you

My DAZ Studio program says 4.21 Pro along the top. I do not recall the program version changing. The update I previously mentioned was the outoftouch items specifically having updates made available. There was a different thread in the commons recently discussing the massive updates, apparently accross tons of items, but I didn't see anyone mention this kind of problem there.

I totally see what you mean about the images being too small. I had attached them to the bottom and dragged them from there into the post, perhaps incorrectly. I mistakenly thought the attached files would remain and be displayed as well. Based on a thread I was reading that explained how to add a picture from the tool bar at the top of the text editor, it seems like I need to upload an image somewhere else and link it through a URL? Not sure about posting a bunch of technical renders to the gallery. Seems like that's intended for finished stuff. Maybe I can upload to somewhere like DeviantArt and link from there. I'll see if I can try to edit it or fix that since the problem is fundamentally a bunch of really thin lines that do not display well on such small images.

I'll check my renders again and see if they are undercooked. Although I've not had this problem previously, it's worth checking up on. Thanks, for responding! 

**Also further tried deleting all six hair items, restarting PC to reset the whole system as a precaution, and reinstalled each item individually, one at a time, by way of the Install Manager instead of DAZ Central. The problem persists. No change. I am casually experimenting with different lighting conditions to try to better understand what is happening. Shall update this thread if a solution is found.**

Firstly, I wish to express how much I love the quality of Out of Touch's products and appreciate the updates and fixes that have been made for us. It really shows they care about the items working properly. Furthermore, I do not want to come across as though I am assuming that any fault here is beyond my own capacity to cause. I failed to find anyone else mentioning this problem here and that may very well indicate that it is only an issue with my stuff, but I would greatly appreciate if anyone might take the time to run a test render of their version on their end and let me know if this is local to me or a universal problem.

I have recently found a strange type of artifact or error in several of the half dozen Out of Touch hair models I have in my library. It is as though the top level of flyaways, those wisps of this hair in the outermost layers, are completely solid and failing to blend as they usually do. This is most sharply evident in the Everyday Updo 2 and Messy Braids models, as they both feature a dense layer of outer flyaways. I've reset my render settings, compared other artist items (AprilYSH, Linday, etc.), uninstalled and reinstalled all six models, and fully restarted my PC trying to debug this. Unless it is something else on my end, I suspect that the recent OOT update changed something as I have renders from not long before that which do not show these visual artifacts.

I do wonder if it could be one of the many new items and plugins I have installed over the new year, but to test that, I would need to uninstall everything to see if the problem disappears.

(sorry, if the following images do not display properly as it is my first time posting here)

Below (left) is a render I made today showing the stark highlighting of the flyaway/wisp layer of hair compared to a test render for the same character from a couple months ago (right).

Has anyone else had this issue before or currently have it as well? It could very well just be me and something I've done wrong, but I am failing to figure out where and how.

As far as I can tell, it seems to technically affect all materials, yet only shows brightly on lighter colors like blonde and red hair with medium brunettes being noticable but not nearly as sharp. Additionally, some older models seem unaffected. Adjusting "translucency weight" had no effect, and while altering the "cutout opacity" image texture fixed the highlighting issue, it also severly distorted the strand opacity, making the flyaways fully blend in with the main hair and lose all the original wisp detail. I've recently stopped trying to convert my items from Daz to Blender and shifted to mainly using Daz. Hence, I am still quite lacking in my understanding of how the materials work. I do miss my node editor. I wonder if there is a missing file somewhere that told those flyaway materials how to blend in properly and was lost in the update or, possibly, is not downloading for me correctly. I've been using DAZ Central to manage installations. Perhaps, I should uninstall again and use the Install Manager?

Below is a close up comparison between the Everyday Updo 2 (left) and the Linda Ponytail (right) models.

Below are all six OOT hair models I own in one shot. (default render settings / basic G8.1F / dark blonde material)

(From left to right and oldest to newest: Linda Ponytail, MEGA Updo, Hannah Ponytail, Turbulent Tail, Everyday Updo 2, and Messy Braids)

The oldest two seem visibly unaffected, while the messier styles practically light up like neon. I'm not sure if the images here convey it fully, but the high contrast is visibly jarring. It might work from a distance, but up close it's like razer wire, where it used to be strands of silk.

Hopefully, this is either some novice thing I am missing, or is something easy to fix from the official source. I really do love these models, and was looking forward to using them in an animated project, but I don't know if I can do so until I figure out how to get them back to normal, or until they are fixed, should the source be broken.

Thanks, for taking the time to read this, and I greatly appreciate any help on the matter.

Edit: fixed grammar error & reattached images at the bottom

Mod edit: duplicate thread was somehow created and has been deleted.

I had this issue where, I clicked 'cancel' at startup after having installed a fresh copy of Daz. It apparently prompted to include the library where Daz Central was already installing things. 

Eventually, I followed this advice, from, RH above.
What are you content directories? Go to Daz Studio>Preferences, in the dialogue go to the Content tab, click the Content Directory Manager button, and in the next dialogue expand the entries under the Current Set to show all the paths

Then, added the folder manually to the existing list. Specifically this folder.
C:\Daz 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D\My DAZ 3D Library
under, Daz Studio Formats under Current Directories.
Jay. 

Got it proceed, it seems to require some package that comes with Daz Central only

Yes it's really not practical but you get used to it, I use an external ssd and a secondary computer just to download during the night. Means that I must must be wrong before clicking on download.

Otherwise I found another culprit, my antivirus it delete the dlls from the DIM folder once it was installed without warning.

So I deleted it for another, it was panda antivirus.

Even disabling there was some process running in the background and it went away when I disabled them.

It works now and suddenly daz also, I even started the tutorials. (too well done!) On the other hand, I can't manage to connect Daz with my account, but DIM installs everything for me properly, so that's fine. I also tried the central daz again, the download crashes but it's the connection so I'll stay with DIM.

It was long but I finally got there.

Richard Haseltine said:

Currently Used shows properties with non-default values, not non-zero (I would like to have an option to show all non-zero - I thought it was possible at one time).

Load the Genesis 8.1 Female Dev Build figure. Edit>Figure>Zero>Zero Figure Shape. Edit>Memorise>Memorise Figure Shape. File>Save As>Support Assets>Save Modified Assets - if you install through Install manager, Daz Central, or manually let that complete; if you install through Daz Studio itself note the problem products and uninstall them or save a Character preset and use that to load the figure.

Thank you for responding! I understand the step-by-step instructions for zeroing the figure and saving the modified assets, if I assume correctly that you are referring to the Dev Build figure that I circled in the attached image.

However, I am not sure what you are telling me to do in the part after that. What is it that I am supposed to 'let complete' at that point?

Currently Used shows properties with non-default values, not non-zero (I would like to have an option to show all non-zero - I thought it was possible at one time).

Load the Genesis 8.1 Female Dev Build figure. Edit>Figure>Zero>Zero Figure Shape. Edit>Memorise>Memorise Figure Shape. File>Save As>Support Assets>Save Modified Assets - if you install through Install manager, Daz Central, or manually let that complete; if you install through Daz Studio itself note the problem products and uninstall them or save a Character preset and use that to load the figure.

Hello -

I've purchased this product: https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-beginner-to-advanced

I've downloaded the two parts via the installer.

Does anyone know how I can access the videos themselves? I can't find any reference to them in Daz Central or in Daz Studio.

Many thanks!

Ash

Well, that doesn't sound like the ideal situation - although if you are working with a very limited internet connection then I guess doing much with 3D will be tricky regardless - most 3D assets do require a chunky amount of space and all that data has to be downloaded somehow.

I can't say for certain if this is the cause of the issues you are having as while my internet connection can be a little tempermental occasionally it is generally quite good.  Are you able to maybe head to a cafe or library where they may have a better internet connection and wifi that you can borrow/use?

Also, if your connection is limited, if you did get Daz to install and function, it may very well be best for you to not use DIM or Central but instead use Daz Connect - it causes problems for may people but I believe it's one stand-out feature is that it can download "update deltas" - i.e. if a product is updated it can download ONLY the parts that have changed whereas the other installers will re-download the entire new package. Of cource that doesn't help if you cannot get Daz working in the first place.

It is a bit of a shame that these days you cannot purchase software on physical media anymore for those that cannot so easily download large packages.

Richard Haseltine said:

Korentin said:

My DIM app hasn't worked on this account since the start of November last year. Like the OP it seems to be connected to a refund I requested. I've had two responses since then, the last one at the start of December. Recently I created a new account to see if that would solve the problem, which it did. So I'm fairly sure that whatever is wrong is on DAZ's end and not with my installation.

If it is only DIM affected have you tried removing the account.ini file from

%appdata%/daz 3d/InstallManager/UserAccounts/

No, it's Daz central too.

But yeah, I deleted app data and everything else DAZ in December and re-installed but it made no difference. By this point I'm fairly certain there is nothing else I can do on my end to fix this account. Thanks for the tip though :)

kyoto kid said:

Wonderland said:

kyoto kid said:

...well the "big freeze here in Portland is finally over as it got up to nearly 50° (F) today after being in the mid to high 30s with lows in the low 20s that last couple days. 

The apartment has one of those "in the wall" heater units which are usually found in cheap motels and in the south  (yay, government subsidised housing) that are barely sufficient to warm up main area when it's in the 40s even on the high setting.. Usually I put an extra layer on but it was so cold these last few days my hands were freezing and once that happens I feel cold all over (difficult to type or work on scenes in Daz while wearing gloves). so I had to leave it run for hours to get any semblance of heat by my desks.  Why they never designed the building with a central boiler and steam heat, particularly in a building that is home to a fair number of seniors (who not just are more susceptible to temperature extremes, but also usually on a very tight fixed income) makes no sense as electric heating is probably the most cost inefficient way to heat the volume air in a room.  This of course translates to ridiculously high power bills in winter

Baseboard heating is bad enough (and you can't have anything blocking the units ao so arranging furniture is an interesting challenge), but those in the wall ones like we have here are definitely not up to the task.   On top of that even though this is a fairly new building I question just how good the insulation as it gets really cold inside this time of year (and conversely., very hot in mid summer).. 

Fortunately it's going stay more seasonable in the low to mid 50s this weekend through next week.

Have you tried a portable desk heater? My apartment came with no heater whatsoever and I find the little portable heater is all I need, if that.  But my apartment must be very well insulated because even when it's like 40 degrees out, it's not really cold in the apartment. I just wear leggings, socks, a T-shirt and hoodie and it's totally comfortable. 

...unfortunately it would only dd to my already high winter power bills. 

I grew up in Wisconsin with a gas furnace, stove, and water heater.  So much more efficient for heating the volume of air (better for baking things in the oven as well) and our bills were not as high as homes in the area that had electric heat and the house was over a halfcentury old (nobiody bothered about "R-Factor" back then).  The first apartment  I had here in Portland (a large 1 BR) had a gas heater (one of the large wall mounted forced air ones) and stove.  That heater kept the entire apartment nice and warm all winter.  My gas bill in winter never exceeded 16$ a month. 

Steam heat is the best though  WHne I was in college in North Central Wisconin in the 70s, I shared a 3 BR apartment in an old mansion with a couple freinds that was dived up into a cpiple apartments and several single rooms. . The building had a central boiler in the cellar and the apartments as wel as single rooms all had those old fashioned iron radiators.  Even on -15° to -20² (F) nights the apartments and single rooms was toasty warm. Some nights I even had to turn the radiator in my bedroom down a bit.  

For a while in the 80s I lived in one of those cheaply built  "cookie cutter" wood framed apartment buildings built (I should say "slapped together") in the 70s which had electric baseboard heating that you couldn't put anything in front of (made for some creative furniture arranging).  One of the things I always wondered about those places is why the heating units were always placed right under the largest window in each room rather than on an interior wall. I always felt the contractor must have invested in the local power utility as the windows in those places were all single pane glass which offered zero insulation and made a perfect "heat leak". 

That's exactly why they place them under windows.  Heats the air before the draft can go far into the room.  Single pane?  Yikes!

Dana