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Aside from load time (which has received soema ttention in the current public build, if you haven't tried that) those are very vague - though on 2, nothing stops outside vendors or freebie makes from including metadata.
Other than how difficul it is to figure out how these things work. If it were easier, we would have more nice things from said outside vendors, who are mostly just people with families and jobs and limited time to endlessly reverse engineer even the simplest things.
I continue to be of the opinion that the best thing DAZ could do to improve DAZ Studio is just documenting what is already there, instead of adding new features. The enterprising nerds would take over, and most of them would do it for no other reason than it's fun and everyone benefits from a better DAZ Studio.
Thought he went to work on something else?
How many characters do people have installed when they are suffering poor load times? My load times are OK but I'm guessing I have a lot less stuff than some, I'm also only using the beta.
Over ten years ago, I evaluated Poser as my 3D art tool. The only thing I liked about it was the 830 page manual. I then evaluated DAZ Studio. The only thing I didn't like about it was the manual, which at that time was precisely zero pages long.
Cheers,
Alex.
Most of the files are text files, there is nothing difficult in figuring out how to make for example metadata for a product.
As well, Doctor Jellybean's Content Package Assist (still PC-only, sadly) can help people make DIM-compatable packages for anyone seriously making DAZ content for sale outside the DAZ store:
https://www.daz3d.com/content-package-assist
-- Walt Sterdan
Trying to keep up with all the changes DAZ Studio releases would be a nightmare I think. The closest we can get is Jay's Masterclass right now and hopefully he continues to update when DAZ Studio 5 is released. Power users who have been around since day one probably don't need it, but I have been learning a lot. I would like a written guide to go along with it, for things like depth of field, when I need a quick refresh but don't have the time to track it down in the video.
His other series that promote new products, is helpful too. There folks chime in with shortcuts. Again, I can't watch them live and a print out of key things would be nice later.
So that was back in 2021... We are now here in 2023 and there is still no Daz Studio 5 - what happened? Can we get an update?
To be fair, that timeline was based on needing to get a pre-beta to Mac users to be able to use DAZ Studio at all and the end-of-year 2021 version would have been bare bones for everyone, with the bell and whistles being added throughout 2022 so that by now we'd have a fully-functional, all the bells and whistles version with about a half-year of updates by now.
The "good news" was that they got help from Apple and no longer needed to match that hectic, two-year update plan, which puts us here today, waiting. I believe someone heard in the release video for Victoria 9 that they'd hoped to have DAZ Studio 5 out this spring, but it's less than a month until summer so, that's doubtful.
I've been waiting for the Filament rendering engine since November, 2020, but at this point, I've stopped waiting. I've also stopped investing time and money in DAZ until D|S 5 comes out.
I took stock last month and realized that I've spent almost $70,000 over the decades at DAZ and I really have more than enough assets to do what I want without spending another dime (especially when you add in money spent at other sites over the decades).
It all came down to, "What am I waiting for?".
Well, this is what we *know* is coming in DAZ Studio 5:
1. It will use a much-newer version of Qt than D|S 4 uses, which will solve some UI issues some people have and possibly add some new UI features.
2. The Mac version will have Filament available.
3. The Mac version will use Apple's Metal library, but other than possibly replacing OGL, no one has said any more regarding Metal.
4. They were going to *try* to make the Mac version native.
5. ???
As far as I know, that's all that I've heard about what's coming in D|S 5. If anyone knows any more about what's been promised or actually planned, please update the list, I really would like to know.
As it stands, it looks like I'd continued to wait and invest in DAZ for the last couple of years when the only sure-thing coming for me was Filament. I've also started having more and more issues opening old characters due to updates to D|S and/or older base models, like Genesis.
I would love to hear of anything else planned (for whenever) as to what's coming down the pipe, but if that's it, I'm going to pass for now.
My only other big want would be a 64-bit version of their Mimc-based lip sync; I have yet to see anything as well-done out elsewhere. Honestly, I'm getting a little tired of keeping my 2012 machine running just to be able to lip sync.
I'm hoping to hear good news in the near future, but I'm just not investing in the mere possibility anymore.
-- Walt Sterdan
Edited two times for typos.
I'm kind of with you....
If they were at all close to releasing Daz 5 back in Dec-ish 2021... I would have thought the extra year and a half would certainly bring us round the bases and to home...
To be honest, I think they are now in a race with AI.
Will Daz 5 come out before the advances in AI make it irrelevant?
I'm thinking along those lines myself,especially as I'm looking at throwing Windows in the toilet where it belongs and flushing it several times with some liquid plumber.
I'm looking at moving everything I can to Linux which is everything that I use with the exception of 3 or 4 programs
Currently there is no offiical ETA that I am aware of. We have had DS4 updates, which have included features that were part of the DS5 roadmap that - like the MacOS compatibility - could be added to the older version, so it isn't as if nothing has happened. No details about what will be new in DS5, assuming it isn't simply about the new Qt version with actual new features added in later builds, have been released or hinted at that I can recall.
...I hear you on that, Until I can scrape up the 940$ for upgrading my system to support W11, I'm stuck on the 4.21.0.5. General Release as it is the last version that uses an Nvidia driver which supports W7.
Daz themselves may not be requiring W10 or 11 to run their software, but to render on the GPU in Iray it does unless you don't mind going back to glacial CPU render times.
Until something changes "AI" is backed by Machine learning (ML) and ML requires a training set of many, many examples. This is great for "AI" assisted tools.. say crop, mask, maybe a pose assistent, etc. and I hope Daz takes advantage of these. But "AI" ability to generate art is still limited to the example it's trained against and if more and more people use "AI" genrated art, nothing is returned to the pool.. so to speak. IMO Daz stays relevant as a tool to create new art.. art that can be added to the training data.
As a humiliating backup plan, I bought a W10 Pro licence in January if some future version of DS brings something irresistible on the table, but until then, I'm happy with W7+DS 4.15
That keeps you good up to October 14, 2025 when W10 goes end of life
Sadly, that just makes things work worse. I've been having a lot of issues recently opening up old fies using either Genesis 1 characters or Genesis 1 assets.
I was trying out a batch of different characters for my first real lip sync test and was unable to use any of the files I'd set up without "fixing" some issues.
For example, I made a Genesis 1 bridge crew on 2021-April-24 and it's it was fine; I open the same file today and suddenly two of the female heads have shrunk and everyone's eyes are inset in their heads.
I did another crew using Genesis 3 characters using 3DUniverse's Toon Generations 2 male characters but with Hiro 5's hair and eyebrows and on 2022-Sept-28 the generated image was fine, but today? When I render the same file, eyebrows are pushed back into their heads and the Hiro 5 hair is dropped down into the character's hair head.
I haven't made any changes to my system, only updated DAZ Studio but files from a year ago and even only eight months ago are "broken". I can only guess that it's because of some of the things that are being updated for DAZ 5.
So, until now, I was originally holding off starting any major projects until I could use Filament for them, but now I'm not even confident that something I set up right now might not work in six months without fixing, or might not work again six months later.
I think I need to just hold off on DAZ Studio animation competely for a while and maybe come back to it once DAZ Studio 5 comes out and see then if it's worth returning for.
-- Walt Sterdan
..lately I've been getting error messages in 4.21.0.5 that claim certain morphs I used for creating or modifying characters a few weeks ago suddenly could not be found during the loading process.
But that is kind of my point kwerk... AI is improving every day, and will be much further along that it is already in 6 months, 12 Months time... Will we still be using daz 4.15xx then?
Hope not
Do please report these to Daz.
Will do.
-- Walt Sterdan
Thank you.
Hi Chumly!
I'm was waxing on "AI" utilities and "AI" art specifically.
As time progresses and "AI" improves, a Daz stuck in v4.xx without specific "AI" utilities (examples: smart floor detection, prop extraction from images, etc.).. yes, it could become obsolete.
"AI" art replacing Daz.. IMO no.
TL;DR: the term "AI" bothers me, it convolutes a whole host of mathamatic tools with "though". The term "AI art" could easily invoke an imagine of a sentient Skynet with a berret and paint brush when it's more like a database, a randomizer, and some amazing math. The short of it is that "AI" art requires a training set; so, Daz (even one stuck at v 4.xx) will be needed to add new, original, samples to that training set.
In this case, Daz is a tool for expressing a person's imagination into new images; while "AI" art is a tool that creates images from the samples in it's training set. The training set is the weakness... An "AI" art tool cannot create an image of a specific style without a sample in it's training set and too few samples result in an image that lacks uniqueness and mimics the source material. A competitive "AI" art tool could emerge as a Daz rival; but everything it creates is limited to (and derived from) the samples in it's (arguably large) training set.. as derivative works, they add nothing when added to the training set.. So, we still need Daz and creators to add original, new ideas to the training set.
I "upgraded" my W7 pro system to W10 pro just after the first of the year. It took my just under a month to find and fix the spontaneous reboots and blue screen events that turned out to be specific to my dual monitor configuration.
The only components I can salvage for a new W11 system are the drives, the power supply, and (possibly) the CPU cooler. So the current plan, when a Studio update comes out that requires drivers not available for W10 is to get off the update treadmill.
Any W11 or future OS system will not have an internet connection - and I don't think W11 will run that way.
Before sending the report, I thought I'd do a little troubleshooting first, and I've formulated a crazy-ass theory that might explain some of what's happening here, and it might also explain the load times we've seen on figures with lots of character morphs to load. I think we can all agree that the more morphs we have for a given generation, the longer the load times. Recently we've seen that load time drop a little, and that also fits into my theory.
Like everyone else, I fell victim to increased load times a while back, but for me it wasn't some long, drawn-out increase caused by adding morphs. For me, it happened almost overnight (well, from one or two DAZ Studio upgrades), and it affected my Genesis 1 load times as well, even though I hadn't suddenly purchased another 100 morphs (having purchased all that I wanted years earlier). I don't believe I was alone in seeing this very sudden increase in load times that couldn't be explained as simply the number of morphs people owned, since I believe fewer people suddenly increased their character packages tenfold than those who hadn't updated their collection that significantly overnight.
At the time, I suspected that the developers had recognized that people generally had more powerful machines than a few years earlier, and that with iRay and photorealism becoming more and more important to most users, they decided to improve photorealistic "accuracy" by adding an extra decimal places of accuracy in their calculations. Instead of measuring things to one or two decimal places, I suspect they tried measuring things to three or four (I honestly don't know what level of accuracy they're using, I'm just placing example numbers here).
Recently, it was noted that the load times have been improved. I *suspect* that the developers may have dialed back the number of decimal places of accuracy in their calculations (instantly speeding up loading) and that it is *that* that caused my Genesis 1 assets to "lose their place" on the new openings.
When I made the characters, DAZ might have been calculating the Genesis 1/Hiro 5 assets with a higher accuracy for both the Genesis 1 and the Genesis 3 models and now, with the accuracy being calculated with a lesser number of decimal places, things no longer line up.
I attempted to reapply new copies of just the Hiro 5 hair and eyebrows to the old Genesis 3 character and I get a different problem, the eyebrows locate themselves in front of the character's eyes possibly because the saved character is still morphed based on the old calculations?
I attempted to apply just the Genesis 1/Hiro 5 hair and eyebrows to a *NEW* Genesis 3/ToonGen2 male character and everything works without issue, which would suggest that both the new Genesis 1 assets and the new Genesis 3/ToonGen2 meshes are now calculating with the same level of accuracy.
As I said, it's just a half-assed theory of mine, but it sort of explains what's happening to me.
Something similar happend with Adobe InDesign years ago. When they updated InDesign from version CS6 to "CC" they increased the accuracy of their internal calculations, probably while migrating from 32-bit system to 64-bit systems. Text formatted in a justfied block in InDesign would have reflow when pushed back to version CS6; lines that fit nicely in "CC" no longer fit in CS6 (a royal pain when someone accidentally opened a CS6-formatted 72-page parts catalogue with over a thousand text blocks to make a round of corrections and after being checked and approved for delivery, had to be knocked back to CS6 to match the client's software and then had to recheck all 72 pages to fix the flow).
-- Walt Sterdan
Edited to correct grammer and clarify models used.
I don't think that works. Loading doesn't involve much floating point maths, as far as I know - it's reading in the data and building the data structures, and especially the links between properties when accounting for the time taken. In any event, switching data formats (from floats to double-floats or whatever) would break the SDK.
Okay, thanks; it's reading in data and building data structures without much floating point math. It if was using floating point math, though, it wouldn't need to switch data format to calculate using, say, three decimal points instead of two.
At any rate, as I said, it's just a crazy theory I thought of to explain what was happening, it'll be interesting to find out what's actually happening someday.
-- Walt Sterdan
Minor update: the files appear to open perfectly in DAZ Studio 4.15.0.30, so something changed between 4.15.0.30 and 4.21.0.5 to cause my problems.
-- Walt Sterdan
There is an important difference between a generating AI and an AI tool.
If you dislike generating AI, that "creates" based on a data base images on command, then I agree completly.
But AI as a tool, can help to get more out of your software.
Maybe AI can help in the render process, by calculating light rays better. More realistic shaders could be possible.
So AI per se is not all bad, it just shouldn't be used to replace the creative process.
And yes, I am already so fed up with those AI galleries all over the websites.
...I agree, AI that makes tools more efficient and accurate (such as denoising or like mentioned a "smart floor".) is fine. It's the ones that try to act as the proverbial Make Art (music, story, etc) Button, which I dislike.