Nexy said:

Cool to see the new Alpha update! Got a few issues I'd like to flag up that are still ongoing issues (I've posted about them ages ago, so just want to keep them in the cycle in case they've been forgotten about).
Please don't take this as me being negative or complaining, I understand this is a whole process and am night trying to throw shade at all, this is purely me pointing out the pressure points I run into the most 
1. Keyboard shortcuts are still broken, a couple in particular that I use a lot in my workflow that works strangely:
-I have 'collapse all' bound to a keyboard letter (c), and if I am using the scene panel and press it, nothing happens. The ony way to make it work is to click elsewhere such as the viewport and THEN press it to make the thing collapse.
-Same with the keybinds I have for the scene tools. I have to specifically have to click on the viewport first for them to work, which makes it very frustrating if I'm for example fiddling with the sliders in parameters, then hit the shirtcut for my tool I want to use and then go to use it... but don't realise nothing happened to I end up dragging my character instead which locks up the computer while it 'thinks' and then I have to undo it... ugh. Can be so frustrating!
-None of this is an issue in the 4.24 version as keybinds work anywhere, so if I'm missing something like a box I need to tick somewhere to make keyboard shortcuts work anywhere, I'd love to know! 

2. There is still a very frustrating issue (this is actually with ALL the DAZ versions) where if I open the program, there is roughly about a 50/50 shot on if it gives me the Premiere tools or not.
I pay for Premiere and it's attached to my account and all that, but for example it happens often where I'll open DAZ, load a scene (you guys know that's not a short process and I work with big scenes), then during my work I go to tuse the Geometry Sculpter tool for example and it's just not there as an option. In order to fix this I have to close DAZ completely and reopen it again and hope this time it 'registers' and then re-load that scene all over again.
Not only that, but if I've opened a scene that's has a prop or clothing or whatever that had the GS tool used on it, those changes are reset. This is a big issue when I render out a whole bunch of panels over night (I'm a comic artist so this is a common practice) and in the morning I see that when I loaded the Alpha version to render out, I hadn't checked to see if GS was 'active' and so all the GS effects are missing and I have to re-render them.
3. Just adding on to the discussion above about the glass shaders, I have this issue constantly too, not just for glass though.
I use 'slime' shaders a lot, and it happens with those too where I can see and pose a 'slime' shaded figure or prop fine in 4.24, but then if I flip to Alpha to review it I can either not see it until the bounding box is there, or there's only like a... 'sheen'?... like a ghostly reflection mark on the outside rim of the object almost like just the specular highlight?
it makes tweaking any poses very difficult to see and do. If anyone has the 'lady goo' gifure for Gen 9, or 'nightmare ooze' kit or any of those, it's very easy to see what I mean with that... basically any fluids are impossible to see when you load in the prop.
And none of the viewport options work other than MAYBE filament?... but it's very marinally better (of course you can see it in iray, but making poses with iray is so slow it's essentially uselss)

4. Lastly the spotlights being 'blacked out' is one of my other frustrations.
If you have more than like... 8 or so spotlights in a scene, the 'preview lights' (control+L) simply doesn't work on any of the spotlights beyond that.
I know that sounds like a lot of spotlights, but I frequently use spotlights to light environments to create pockets of light and other effects, as well as use them as 'three point lighting' on characters, and when you have multiple characters in a scene they add up!
It seems like DAZ picks the first 8 (or however many it is) lights to be viewable in the 'preview lights' toggle, and the rest are completely black. This makes that feature essentially useless for me which is fine when just working on the scene and posing... but then when I want to adjust the spotlights on the characters I usually select them in the viewport to 'look through them' to line up where it is pointing and hitting the character. In this mode if that spotlight isn't one of those first 8 or so, then it's completely pitch black dark, and if there is none of 'first 8' lights around this area, then the figure is ALSO completely black and so I literally can't see anything in the scene and can't line up the lights without going to iray... which means the whole process takes AGES because moving stuff in iray CHUGS. 
Some possibly solutions would be:
-Allow us to expand the amount of 'preview' cablable lights in the viewport settings like we can adjust the texture quality
-Somehow allow us to toggle which spotlights are the viewable ones instead of the first 8 or however, because currently the only "solution" would be to delete all the env lights so that the 3-point ones are "first", and then re-set up the env lights which is super annoying... and also still breaks if I then want to add more lights in future comic panels as I'd have to do that all again...
-Just have it behave like the camera does where if you toggle the 'preview lights' it does the usual blackness thing, but if it's NOT toggled you can just universally see everything in a flat light so I can actually see whenre it's pointing

So they are my current pressure points of friction!
As I said before, don't take this as me bitching or throwing shade, this is meant to be me just making sure these issues aren't lost in the noise. 
I totally get that it's an Alpha an you guys are doing a great job bringing consistent updates! I do follow a lot of the conversation that happens in here and I see when there's people who 'blow up' about their frustrations, and I think although sometimes the response of it's an Alpha, it's to be expected' is valid... this is a very different situation than say a game Alpha where testing it out is volountary. This Alpha is forced on anyone with a 5000 series, and people may not have the ability to 'wait it out' for a while if it's their livelihood (such as myself), so the frictions can be a lot more grinding than if it was a video game Alpha or something.

So thank you for your hard work, and I look forward to more updates! For such a small software dev team (from what I hear), you're doing a great job 

2) Premier will require that you login to your account regularly, as that is hot it checks that your subscription is still valid.
4) If you go to "About Your Video Card" under Help->Troubleshooting, you see how many light sources your videocard supports in preview ( Open GL/ DriectX / Metal ) mode.
/ Totte

Cool to see the new Alpha update! Got a few issues I'd like to flag up that are still ongoing issues (I've posted about them ages ago, so just want to keep them in the cycle in case they've been forgotten about).
Please don't take this as me being negative or complaining, I understand this is a whole process and am night trying to throw shade at all, this is purely me pointing out the pressure points I run into the most 
1. Keyboard shortcuts are still broken, a couple in particular that I use a lot in my workflow that works strangely:
-I have 'collapse all' bound to a keyboard letter (c), and if I am using the scene panel and press it, nothing happens. The ony way to make it work is to click elsewhere such as the viewport and THEN press it to make the thing collapse.
-Same with the keybinds I have for the scene tools. I have to specifically have to click on the viewport first for them to work, which makes it very frustrating if I'm for example fiddling with the sliders in parameters, then hit the shirtcut for my tool I want to use and then go to use it... but don't realise nothing happened to I end up dragging my character instead which locks up the computer while it 'thinks' and then I have to undo it... ugh. Can be so frustrating!
-None of this is an issue in the 4.24 version as keybinds work anywhere, so if I'm missing something like a box I need to tick somewhere to make keyboard shortcuts work anywhere, I'd love to know! 

2. There is still a very frustrating issue (this is actually with ALL the DAZ versions) where if I open the program, there is roughly about a 50/50 shot on if it gives me the Premiere tools or not.
I pay for Premiere and it's attached to my account and all that, but for example it happens often where I'll open DAZ, load a scene (you guys know that's not a short process and I work with big scenes), then during my work I go to tuse the Geometry Sculpter tool for example and it's just not there as an option. In order to fix this I have to close DAZ completely and reopen it again and hope this time it 'registers' and then re-load that scene all over again.
Not only that, but if I've opened a scene that's has a prop or clothing or whatever that had the GS tool used on it, those changes are reset. This is a big issue when I render out a whole bunch of panels over night (I'm a comic artist so this is a common practice) and in the morning I see that when I loaded the Alpha version to render out, I hadn't checked to see if GS was 'active' and so all the GS effects are missing and I have to re-render them.
3. Just adding on to the discussion above about the glass shaders, I have this issue constantly too, not just for glass though.
I use 'slime' shaders a lot, and it happens with those too where I can see and pose a 'slime' shaded figure or prop fine in 4.24, but then if I flip to Alpha to review it I can either not see it until the bounding box is there, or there's only like a... 'sheen'?... like a ghostly reflection mark on the outside rim of the object almost like just the specular highlight?
it makes tweaking any poses very difficult to see and do. If anyone has the 'lady goo' gifure for Gen 9, or 'nightmare ooze' kit or any of those, it's very easy to see what I mean with that... basically any fluids are impossible to see when you load in the prop.
And none of the viewport options work other than MAYBE filament?... but it's very marinally better (of course you can see it in iray, but making poses with iray is so slow it's essentially uselss)

4. Lastly the spotlights being 'blacked out' is one of my other frustrations.
If you have more than like... 8 or so spotlights in a scene, the 'preview lights' (control+L) simply doesn't work on any of the spotlights beyond that.
I know that sounds like a lot of spotlights, but I frequently use spotlights to light environments to create pockets of light and other effects, as well as use them as 'three point lighting' on characters, and when you have multiple characters in a scene they add up!
It seems like DAZ picks the first 8 (or however many it is) lights to be viewable in the 'preview lights' toggle, and the rest are completely black. This makes that feature essentially useless for me which is fine when just working on the scene and posing... but then when I want to adjust the spotlights on the characters I usually select them in the viewport to 'look through them' to line up where it is pointing and hitting the character. In this mode if that spotlight isn't one of those first 8 or so, then it's completely pitch black dark, and if there is none of 'first 8' lights around this area, then the figure is ALSO completely black and so I literally can't see anything in the scene and can't line up the lights without going to iray... which means the whole process takes AGES because moving stuff in iray CHUGS. 
Some possibly solutions would be:
-Allow us to expand the amount of 'preview' cablable lights in the viewport settings like we can adjust the texture quality
-Somehow allow us to toggle which spotlights are the viewable ones instead of the first 8 or however, because currently the only "solution" would be to delete all the env lights so that the 3-point ones are "first", and then re-set up the env lights which is super annoying... and also still breaks if I then want to add more lights in future comic panels as I'd have to do that all again...
-Just have it behave like the camera does where if you toggle the 'preview lights' it does the usual blackness thing, but if it's NOT toggled you can just universally see everything in a flat light so I can actually see whenre it's pointing

So they are my current pressure points of friction!
As I said before, don't take this as me bitching or throwing shade, this is meant to be me just making sure these issues aren't lost in the noise. 
I totally get that it's an Alpha an you guys are doing a great job bringing consistent updates! I do follow a lot of the conversation that happens in here and I see when there's people who 'blow up' about their frustrations, and I think although sometimes the response of it's an Alpha, it's to be expected' is valid... this is a very different situation than say a game Alpha where testing it out is volountary. This Alpha is forced on anyone with a 5000 series, and people may not have the ability to 'wait it out' for a while if it's their livelihood (such as myself), so the frictions can be a lot more grinding than if it was a video game Alpha or something.

So thank you for your hard work, and I look forward to more updates! For such a small software dev team (from what I hear), you're doing a great job 

I've been off the wagon for a couple months save for a $4 buy last weekend. If you are interested in filament for its speed, I do recommend https://www.daz3d.com/filament-pro-lights-and-rendering-secrets--2-new-lights--video-tutorial . It's not exhaustive, but it's a good start point and it was worth the money as a bottom tier QG item. 

I feel like a one-month membership and a spin through outlet and OS would be really nice. But I also feel like I could just work with something wonderful from the 5300 items already in my library. And as I still need to develop my filament fu, I may just sit out a while longer.

Have you checked the end of the log (Help>Troubleshooting>View Log File) after trying to use the iray Drawstyle? Does Filament work?

algovincian said:

wsterdan said:

algovincian said:

inquire said:

Think of how this seems to an Apple Macintosh user when scripts  don't work in DS 4 and the software runs in emulation, and Rosetta 2, the emulation tool, will soon be dropped by Apple.

I'm curious - what percentage of users do you think are running DS on a Mac? 

- Greg

A more pertinent question might be what percentage of the profits are generated by Mac users, wouldn't it? 

Sure, but I was trying to keep it simple. Maybe not 100% correlated, but surely the 2 are related.

What would do you think is the percentage of users that run DS on a Mac?

Also, what do you think the answer to your own question would be?

These questions are interesting to me because as somebody who writes scripts, supporting Macs (whether or not it's worth the added time/cost of buying a mac and developing on it) has been an issue in the past.

- Greg 

My apologies, my first thought was that we were going down the "there are so fewer Mac users that you can't expect DAZ to spend too much time supporting them" scenario, one I've heard too many times in the past.
I honestly have no idea on either, as it's no doubt changed over the years. I suspect the numbers weren't that far apart in the early days, but focusing on NVidea as they have has probably reduced the numbers of Mac users. Not being able to provide things like Filament as a partial solution for over four years while the Windows users enjoyed it and Filatoon didn't help either, and some of the script issues also slowed down new purchases and adoption.

Inquire shows concern that without a native Mac version soon, new Macs or Macs updated to the new OS next year won't be able to run DAZ Studio at all so when someone essesntially seems to ask how important is Mac support to DAZ if there's only a small number of users, I jumped to the wrong conclusion; again, my apologies.

Most DAZ-based scripts should run in most cases on both, but there've been issues in recent years where a new upgrade comes out and suddenly scripts that worked previiously stopped working. 

I suspect, based on observations on how Mac users spend on small entertainment items (DAZ assets, app store games, etc.) compared to their Windows cousins that a Mac user might spend more per person in an even market, but that would no doubt shift when those assets are designed to work better on a Windows machine, so even that comparison is out the window.

All that said, my personal feelings are that all of the money I've spent here at the DAZ store has been worth it, that at no time did I expect that everything would work perfectly forever and that upgrading my machine or operating system might cause issues in no way should be blamed on DAZ, everything still works as promised on my older machines. If at any point DAZ deems that the cost/profit ratio determines that supporting Mac users loses them money, then I'd have absolutely no problem with them dropping Mac support, despite my being a Mac user. It's just business. In the meantime, one area where they might focus would be on providing an alternative to iRay, not only for Mac users but for Windows users who can't always afford a new video card just to render images. For far less than the price of a high-end NVidea card I puchased a new 3D printer that prints in 8 colours, along with a year or two worth of material to print with. Ironically, I invested heavily in being able to print far, far slower than an iRay image on a Mac.

Iray will work on the CPU, it's just much slower. However, Daz wrote neither 3Deliight nor Iray - developing a new render engine would be a huge undertaking, and of course it would - to a greater or lesser extent - break all existing materials, which is a strong disincentive to switch even though there are existing alternatives which are open source and so could in principle be added (there is aof course already Filament for toon-style).

kenmo said:

Thanks @milliethegreat for your comments. Truly appreciated. 

I often hear many proclaim loudly that Nvidia is superior to AMD for 3D graphics!

I will ask the Nvidia fans, if the that is the cause, why are AMD gpus prefered over Nvidia by 3Dgamers?

After all are not 3D games quite gpu intensive?

Cheers and take care

Kenmo

nVidia has a proprietary set of eatures 9not available on other GPUs) that can be used to make the GPU power available for computation tasks, and those are used by a lot of tools. There are open-source alternatives, but they are not as widely used. If you want to use aplications that require the nVidiia featues then you need an nVidia GPU. It isn't a matter of better, it's a matter of works. Iray uses only nVidia GPUs. dForce and Filament use (broadly) cross-platform featues.

barbult said:

Richard Haseltine said:

barbult said:

Richard Haseltine said:

 

I wonder if Milly is going to aquire a new bicycle.

I wondered the same thing, but it looks way too small for her. She is growing, I guess. You are the same size as always.  

I am optimist reliably told I am slim https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/9531271/#Comment_9531271

Nice work by Artini.
You are especially slim when rendered in Filament, as you noticed. One could say skinny. I used to be skinny. Then I met chocolate..

Chocolate has led many of us to the dark side.

Richard Haseltine said:

barbult said:

Richard Haseltine said:

 

I wonder if Milly is going to aquire a new bicycle.

I wondered the same thing, but it looks way too small for her. She is growing, I guess. You are the same size as always.  

I am optimist reliably told I am slim https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/9531271/#Comment_9531271

Nice work by Artini.
You are especially slim when rendered in Filament, as you noticed. One could say skinny. I used to be skinny. Then I met chocolate..

Richard Haseltine said:

You migfht want to post this to the beta thjread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/728111/daz-studio-2026-beta-version-6-25-2026-12107-updated-may-04-2026#latest - there has been some dicussion of performance, but I am not sure anyone has compared GPU with CPU (I assume you are using Iray or Filament?)

Will fix now, and IRAY 

You migfht want to post this to the beta thjread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/728111/daz-studio-2026-beta-version-6-25-2026-12107-updated-may-04-2026#latest - there has been some dicussion of performance, but I am not sure anyone has compared GPU with CPU (I assume you are using Iray or Filament?)

3DIO said:

@Wendy
It's jaw dropping to think you don't have it.  It's a 'Wendy Toolkit Essential' for sure is that one  :-D
Out of curiosity, are the videos attached to my post not showing in your browser?  If they are and you've not seen them, at least watch the second video which is less than a minute and shows a couple walking and holding hands among other examples.  

 

videos show, no hadn't clicked 

I haven't used it because I didn't really render many videos in DAZ studio  until Filament and then when I was given a decent video card by TheMysteryIsThePoint

before that, nearly every thing I did was Carrara, Unreal, iClone, Poser and everything else except DAZ studio 

it was just too slow

even now I mostly use Twinmotion backgrounds and png series rendered in DAZ studio added in post

I have asked a lot about Limbstick and other plugins, scripts etc but the answers I get are very vague and unhelpful 

I even asked specifically if it could do stuff like hold hands only to be told by people who own it I don't think so

so yeah

its quite amazing how many people buy stuff and don't actually use it

and I can't afford to buy stuff I can't use so pick and chose carefully 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

Ron Knights said:

Maybe it's just me, but I won't put much effort into a Beta version of any software.

Yeah, I'll load something and maybe Render an image.

But that's about it. It's a Beta.

some users, (better off than you or me) have new 5### cards and little choice  

Or they have Macs and want to use Filament or Filatoon...

I actually like both a strandbased and mesh based version of any hairdo

Strandbased is awesome for Filament and where I mostly use it

iray however I prefer cutout opacity based hair as it can be very voluminous and complex (I use 3 or more hairs on a head sometimes)

strandbased simply is too coarse or heavy if made fine and dense enough 

I love Lindsay's tube hairs with transparency

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/562676/list-of-filament-resources <-- Helpful Forum Folk

Just in case you haven't found it (not that it is massively useful): https://www.daz3d.com/filament-information-page <-- ten min video - by KA - is worth a watch of the basics

If you want to spend money, Dartan's tutorial(s) is less than 2 years old: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/106629/start

Many of the Filatoon threads are worth a read, because 'it' is a shader that uses Filament (though much also won't apply) <-- use a search engine, not the forum search, to find many of them

(But) To be clear...

WendyLuvsCatz said:there is no manual 

PS. The only tutorial about Filament I've seen is one from around 3 years by Daz3D when the Filment Node wasn't even called Filmanment Draw Options node. It was called  PHyscially Based Draw options. Now i'm in Daz 4.24

Hi people, 

This is puzzling. I set the environment to have very low Environment lighting and then i add a Spotlight If i have the spot light very close to the character( or object) it does createshadows on ground/walls when i turn Raytrace shadows on. If i Set the spread angle too big the Sharp of the shadow is lost and becomes really blocky. But what if i want to light up a scene and get most of the character lighten . Is my only option to switch to a Distance light?

I provide some Images 

1) I set the Environment Map value low

2) I create a New Spot light. And show that if it's very close to the character i do see shadows on ground( walls if available) but this solution is very limited as i  can only get shadows of the stuff within the cone in the light and upping up the spread angle will erase all shadows

3) I show how i can Move the spot light quite further away to try to capture more of the character and even increase the Ray Distance, now there's no light at all coming from the spot light even if i Increase the lumen. And of course Shadows dont work at all. 

So what is there to do. How do i get shadows and even light when i move the light back( and i move it so that i can light up more of the character instead of just the face or upper torso. upping the Spread Angle has proven to not work either when keeping the Light close

DoctorJellybean said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I tried reading through if this had been answered 

what is Universal Drawstyle?

a compromise between Textured and Filament or something new?

I noticed Depth been added too

As Richard posted.

Universal Draw Style allows you to specify one scene wide draw style (in draw settings) and then override that draw style on individual nodes and materials ("DrawStyle Override" override property on these respective element).
Depth is used to make an image recording the depth of the scene, which can be useful for some post processing. 

I know what depth is, I used it with the iray render on facebook for a 3D image

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I tried reading through if this had been answered 

what is Universal Drawstyle?

a compromise between Textured and Filament or something new?

I noticed Depth been added too

As Richard posted.

Universal Draw Style allows you to specify one scene wide draw style (in draw settings) and then override that draw style on individual nodes and materials ("DrawStyle Override" override property on these respective element).
Depth is used to make an image recording the depth of the scene, which can be useful for some post processing. 

barbult said:

DoctorJellybean said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I tried reading through if this had been answered 

what is Universal Drawstyle?

a compromise between Textured and Filament or something new?

I noticed Depth been added too

https://docs.daz3d.com/public/software/dazstudio/6/change_log#6_25_2025_15923

But where is the explanation of what they do? A link to the change log is not very helpful. 

It allows you to mix drwastyles, so you can override individual objects to have them in differnt styles - for example, one might be smooth shaded and another wire shaded so that you could readily see when the two were begining to intersect 9and so have the lines of the wire shaded disappear inside the other). I believe it is "universal" because it can use any standard style (not Iray or Filament, which are totally different engines).