Many object properties will not save keyframes anymore (and other problems)
Slartibartfast
Posts: 40
Hi,
I've been using Daz Studio professionally now for almost 3 years. During that time, I've had very few problems with it. My day job is as a software engineer, so I consider myself reasonably technically savvy. Having said that, I have been running into major issues since yesterday, and to a certain degree, for several days.
A few days ago (I can't recall exactly when), I started noticing that moving the camera (or perspective view) around with the keyboard suffered from lag. It wouldn't start moving until half a second or so after I hit the button, and then it would start with a jerk. I've never seen this happen before as this functionality has always been smooth for me. This is not the major issue I'm talking about, however. I merely mention this because someone might spot some kind of link between this and the other issues.
The big problems started yesterday. I had been working on a scene for a couple of days, and it had no issues whatsoever. I was tipped about the Play All Frames functionality on the timeline and decided to try it out. That's when things started going wrong.
As soon as I checked that option, a random assortment of object properties got blanked out, so to say. It was as if their keyframes had never existed. Only the keyframe of the frame that I saved on would exist upon loading that file again. It broke the projects I have been working on recently. Even going back in and recreating the now missing data for these properties didn't work. Sure, it'd appear to work, but as soon as I reload that project file, those same properties get blanked out again as if they were never saved to begin with.
I have since toggled off Play All Frames again, to no effect. I honestly can't say 100% for sure that this was what triggered the problem, to begin with, but I never noticed anything wrong until I used it.
To add more confusion to my pile of problems, DIM lists a new version of Daz Studio available for download. I can download it, but curiously, it does not automatically install. Going to the Install pane, I can click the Install button for it which goes through the normal process with no apparent issues that I can spot. However, refreshing DIM brings that same product version back up for download again, as if I never installed anything.
I have tried Content DB Maintenance (using the options to Process Metadata Queue and Re-Import Metadata), but it made no difference. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Daz Studio through DIM. It made no difference.
For the record, the beta version displays all the same problems as the public version. This seems to imply a database problem.
I'm lost here. As I said, I use Daz professionally, so this is a disaster for me. I can't do my work if the application doesn't function. Does anyone have the slightest idea what is happening here and how I can fix it?
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Comments
On the update, what does Help>About Daz Studio say you are running?
Are the keysa ctually gone (clicking play you get no aniamtion) or are they not showing in the Timeline?
Thank you for responding.
I am currently running version 4.12.1.117 of Daz Studio, according to the About dialog box.
Since I wrote my original post, I have done some experimentation. First and foremost, I followed the advice in a different thread about database corruption and did an export of user data followed by a database reset. I then re-imported metadata. This should, in theory, give me a somewhat blank slate. Or so I believed.
I don't know how widespread the problem is across the Daz content I have installed. I have instead focused on morphs that have issues that are easy to reproduce and experiment with. For this example, I have focused on the Breast Control products, both for Genesis 3 and 8, but the problem is not isolated to this product alone. Here is one way I can reproduce these problems and how they appear when I do so:
1) Load a base Genesis 3 Female model. It looks like the problem occurs for all Genesis 3 female models, though I cannot tell if it will occur for other models in different circumstances.
2) Go to frame 1. I use keyMate because I'm so used to its workflow, but I can't see why it would be related to any of this since the only thing I use it for in this example does not directly affect the problem area.
3) Under Pose Controls and Breast Control, set the "!TogetherApart" slider to 100%.
4) Move to frame 2 and set the "1 Move UpDown" slider to 100%.
5) There are now keyframes on frames 0, 1, and 2, as expected.
6) Set the frames to constant interpolation so that we can easier observe the results.
7) Clicking back and forth between the frames shows that everything is still working as expected. The morphs apply correctly.
8) Go to frame 0 (this is important. The results vary depending on which frame I'm on when I save) and save the project.
9) Reload the project. (restarting Daz makes no difference to this step)
10) There is no keyframe on frame 1. There is a keyframe on frames 0 and 2.
11) Clicking back and forth reveals that the "!TogetherApart" slider does not move at all in any of the frames. It is 0% on every frame.
Repeating this process with a Genesis 8 model does NOT cause the same issue. There might be other morphs that affect Gen8 models in this way, but I haven't experimented enough to see that in action.
Notably, on step 8, if I go to frame 1 and save there instead, the results are different. In that case, the "!TogetherApart" morph is set to 100% across all frames. There is still no keyframe on frame 1. It is as if that particular morph only saves its current state and is unable to save keyframes. The "1 Move UpDown" morph from the same product does not demonstrate any of these issues and works as expected.
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the Breast Control for Genesis 3 product, but this did not help.
Honestly, I'm at a loss here. I still suspect database shenanigans, but at this point, I can't really see what else I can do to fix it.
For the record, I had none of these problems before yesterday. It appears to me that the "Play All Frames" toggle corrupted something in my install.
Hey, just wanted to note that I'm having the same issue. It only started occurring after I upgraded to version 4.12.1.117 last week. Though I don't believe it's related to the Play All Frames toggle, as I haven't used that feature at all.
I have several scenes set up where a character's parameters change during the timeline. Any scene that was saved in the previous version of Studio opens up fine and has the parameters set up how I wanted in the first and last frames of the timeline. But if I immediately save that scene to a new file (without making any changes), and then open that new file, most of the parameter changes are no longer there. As mentioned above, it appears that it resets many of the parameters to match whatever frame was "active" at the time of saving.
Interesting. I tried opening an older version of a scene that is having issues, and that one actually worked fine. I'm afraid of doing any work in Daz now until I'm sure this is working again, especially if this is destructive, as you say.
I have submitted a ticket about this to customer support.
While waiting for a fix to this problem, is it possible to "downgrade" to a previous version of Daz Studio? I can't see any obvious way of doing this.
Did you save a copy of the DIM download files for the previous version before updating? If not, you can submit a help request and ask if Customer Service will give you an old version. There is no place to legally download prior versions of Daz Studio directly.
No, and there doesn't seem to be anything remaining of previous install files in the DIM download folder either. I expect it might take days to get a response from the Daz team during this time, but I guess it's my only option besides waiting even longer.
This is an issue that will be fixed in a forthcoming build:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#4_12_2_5
In the meantime, all I can suggest is waitng for support to get back to you if you don't have a back up of a suitable version of DS (and plug-ins)
The quoted patch notes are, as far as I can tell, about an unrelated issue I mentioned in the original post, but it's not what this thread is about. The issue here is keyframes not being saved to disk, which is way, way more critical than sluggish viewport navigation.
Maybe Richard posted in the wrong thread, because you are correct; that is another issue entirely.
Sorry, I was sure I'd seen the navigation issue listed here.
I mentioned it at the beginning of my original post as an incidental observation, but it was far from the focus of the thread.
If anyone is still struggling with this and doesn't want to mess with downgrading their version of Studio, I've found a decent workaround that has allowed me to continue using the latest version. I realized a few days ago that a temporary fix would be to create a new "meta" parameter that contains all of the parameter changes I wanted the figure to have at the end of the timeline. That way, whenever I load the scene, I can just go to the first frame and dial out the new parameter (or the last frame and dial it in, whichever is necessary).
However, after doing some testing, it appears that Studio actually saves the new meta parameter to the timeline properly, so the timelines will remain intact through the save/load process using this method.
Do aniblocks work with genesis 3 figures because I tried this but I'm having some serious translation issues after creating an aniblock via animate 2. It messes the animation up and the only way to undo it is to reload the file.
Most likely for 3 generations it works well too (I do not work with 3 generations). It all depends on how you use the blocks. If they are not used correctly, they will easily break the animation.
Now I use blocks only for saving morphs.
Interesting. I spent all yesterday trying to get it to work. In small tests where I loaded a single genesis 3 figure into the scene and added simple arm and leg movements, figure translation, and muscle morph animations, it worked. Unfortunately for more complex scenes, once I created the blocks, the figure would sink down and the limbs would not be set at the right angles. It would essentially destroy the animation. I think my best bet is to just wait for this to be fixed.
Note that if you want to copy only morphs into blocks, you need to remove all checkmarks from the edge of the morph when creating a block from the time line. In fact, your timeline should be responsible for simple movements, and blocks for morphs (they should work in pairs).
Hey Andrucorax! I'm not sure what you mean when you say "remove all checkmarks from the edge of the morph." Do you mean in the timeline? Or is there a feature in animate 2? I have both checked and unchecked scale, rotation, and translation in my experiments and that doesn't work. Could you perhaps do a step by step for me since I'm not as knowledgeable as many people here are?
I did, of the last version of 4.11, which is installed on my older iMac. But now I need it on my new iMac, so I copied it over to the correct folder—but DIM won't see it or install it! Arrrrrrrrgh!
I've had untold hours of work I was doing for a client destroyed now by this infernal animation bug in 4.12.
And for anybody wondering, yes, the morph keyframes are gone. The item does not morph. I even tried going back through and manually keyframing every single morphing change, with the all the morph keyframes visible in the dope sheet as I want, and I actually watched them disappear before my very eyes!
How?
I am having the same problem, running version 4.12.1.118. I have tried reinstalling Daz Studio and removing Keymate and working only with the built-in timeline without success. One thing I have noticed is (as best I can tell), properies that have an icon with a P inside a dotted box work correctly, but those with an M inside a dotted box show the behavior decribed above - when written to a save file, all keyframes are lost, and the property is set to the value it has when the timeline cursor is at the moment of the save. I probably should know what the P and M icons mean, but I don't remember and was unable to find it in the Studio documentation or with web searches.
Can anyone enlighten me as to the meaning of the P and M icons? Does that provide a clue to the keyframe problem or a possible work around?
Hi guys, sorry I'm late to the party. I just recently encountered the problem myself and have figured out some sort of workaround that works fine if you're having issues with only a few individual parameters. The way I solved it was by saving the animation as a pose preset and loading that on my figure whenever I loaded up my scene. The solution had it's issues that I think might be related to the main problem though, so here's how I went about it in the end.
1. Animate your parameter as usual (for reference, I use keymate myself for workflow reasons)
2. Once ready to save, select the figure and go to File > Save as > Pose preset...
3. Now here's the key: Check that your animated parameters are in the list of parameters being saved
The parameters causing trouble weren't on that list for me, so I had to do the following to make them show up:
4. If your parameters aren't on the list, cancel the save and go locate them in the parameters tab.
5. Click the little cog at the top right of your parameter to open it's settings
6. Next to "Type", make sure the parameter is defined as "Modifier/Pose" from the drop down menu. This was never the case with me when I checked the parameters causing trouble. Most of them were defined as Parameter/Shape
7. Try steps 1-3 again. If everything's there now, make sure it's all checked and save
8. Load the pose preset onto your figure each time you load up the scene
This obviously is a huge hassle if you're having issues with a ton of parameters, and I bet there's a better way to go about it. I just hope this helps some of you, or at least provides a hint as to what's wrong. At least it saved my rear once I found it. I did try saving and loading my scene normally again to see if the changes were the root of the problem, but no luck on my end. If the issue has already been resolved, I would love to hear it!
This has been driving me nuts for days. I am waiting for a bug fix from daz. saving shaping presets work as well, and saving property presets saves both shape and joint animation so that helps too
See the (currently) latest entry in the change Log http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#4_12_2_40
I thought installing the Beta would help me out, but the bug is still in the current public build as far as I can tell.
I can't make any animations with the current build and beta... I'm getting so bored. Pls fix soon
It is really annoying that with newest version the problem with keyframes still exists. Soft, where you can't trust any keyframe (also deleted keyframes that are continuing to make ghost moves messing all up), is useless for animations. For what keyframes in timeline actually are - keypoints for animation. Annoying annoying annoying!!!