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. . and then cry foul when their load times become ridiculous. What would you expect?
the same i expect from every other software in this department, basic functionality that doesn't break itself. especially when the company that develops the software, wants you to buy more and more of that what cause it to break.
Fixing this would certainly be easier than trying to integrate blockchain smart contracts and NFTs into the program…
yeah for sure, every time you load a G8 it parses the directory with all the morphs just to create sliders for instant access. it's a very simple and also stupid approach and there are many way's to fix this. it reminds me so much of all the free to play games out there were the programmers also only invest time to integrate new stuff that bring some sort of profit and never fix even the basic things ... and since poser isn't a real competitor anymore, they get along with it because the people don't have choice.
indeed. at that point we might as well ask them to open-source the program and fix it ourselves... not like they treat it as valuable anyway, they seem all-in on their digital asset catalog being their source of economic value added.
When you say the competitors (unreal and Reallusion) use "real-time" rendering, what exactly does that mean? Instant renders without eternal waiting? (im new to this stuff lol). Do they also handle the DAZ assets and characters? There's an abundance of pre-made assets already out there for DAZ and if the alternatives can handle them it seems like a no-brainer to convert over to them.
@Littlepleasures thanks for a detailed and well-reasoned post. To clarify when I said 'fix it ourselves' I meant the obvious loading times elephant in the room (and possibly include basic runtime versioning for recovery, git-style, as @Amberkat once mentioned).
As for the coding, you make my CS101 point for me - I hinted in a post above at the MySpace-esque level of software engineering in play. Daz is never gonna be Maya/Arnold or even Blender/K-Cycles for that matter. But assuming a beefy GPU and minus maybe 3 4 glitches less, it could be a functional toy.
I do AI research for a day job. The stuff I see is 20 years ahead of the QT nonsense Daz offers. It is progressively percolating in the 3D community and already offers tantalizing possibilities like machine-learning powered shader conversion (to get out of the Daz ecosystem conundrum) and the like. Of course, nobody's willing to pay the upfront development costs. Razor and blades, like you said.
I enjoy playing with Daz but it should not be considered as anything more than a toy.
I'm not too deep into the hobby (mostly DAZ on and off the past six-ish years, but my once-mighty desktop is now 10, so that pumps the breaks). If DAZ is the toy, then what is the next step up? I see Cinema 4D, 3DS Max, etc. but when you go from freemium to a few hundred dollars a month, that's a tough pill to swallow. Is there a program that could use DAZ assets (I'm guessing through a bridge plugin) that the hobbyist can afford and do it better?
@viai, try Blender. It's also freeware, has a great community and is very well maintained. Added bonus is that you get to use all the DAZ contents with some tweaking.
Best way I have found to reduce loading time is to keep a folder, separate from the main library with only the morphs I use regularly in it. I have a second folder with all the other unused character morphs and when I want to experiment, I add it to daz, load a G8 and create a character. I then save it, unlink the "creation" folder and reload the one I just made. I then only move the morphs it whines about missing into my "permanent" character data folder. I am more of a slider user than using premade shapes so you can guess that I have extremely few full body morphs or head morphs in my permanent folder. DAZ3D Michael 8? I don't use the full body shape, I just got him as I collect skins. Some characters I only use PBMs or PHMs, no MCMs or eJCMs. Like Michael 8 has none so none of his morphs are in my main morph folder.
I look at it like this. Let's say you have a closet with a few things in it. Easy to find what you want. Now fill the closet with all sorts of random stuff. Harder to find things. Let's admit it, we all probably have a whole boatload of random stuff thanks to this site.
Will having a lot of assets and morphs in my content library slow down renders?
No. No impact on render time. Only on the loading time of chars & scenes.
To keep things quick I normally install everything else except characters/models/figures (whatever the technical term is). For characters I use DIM installers as needed at the time I need it.. and then Un-install as soon as finished with it.
It appears that the morphs from clothing, etc. do not really affect speed much, because they never appear as sliders unless you have that asset in use. But with characters, ALL character sliders will appear for every character, whether you are using that slider or not, because it NEEDS to be available to use for that character if you choose to.
DAZ STUDIO INDEXES EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IN YOUR RUNTIME
This is what causes Daz Studio to be SLOW as Molasses.
The best way to solve this is to not INSTALL everything into your DS Runtime, but to CREATE individual Runtimes for Individual purposes and projects, or create runtimes for specific stuff you use on a project but not all the time.
To get fastest optimal use of DS, what I do is this:
My Main Daz Runtime (the one Daz forces you to install) contains Daz Studio plugins, and the base figures G1, G2, G3, G8, G8.1 and the Daz Morphpacks and things which are Daz specific, but not all the special things - like custom characters, or custom hairstyles or custom scenes.
The way DAZ STUDIO works - it literally looks in the DATA folder which contains myriads of instructions for the figures and other things - and the biggest time consumer is, this:
- You install the Base Figures for example G8
- You find a bunch of girls (or guy) characters you like, and they contain instructions for imbedding tons of morphs and dials and fits and god knows what INTO the Base G8 figures.
- If you install these characters (from outside vendors - not Daz internal Core Figures) they could contain errors and tons of duplicate morphs you will never use, especially if you were just Zealous and MUST HAVE the character but actually will NEVER USE IT.- ON LOAD - EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER YOU INSTALL - goes thru and IMBEDS literally HUNDREDS OF NEW DIALS and CONTROLS into EVERY BODY PART OF EVERY DAZ BASE FIGURE you load.
- This is HEAVY ON MEMORY, and as you can imagine it is like putting EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK INTO YOUR G8 or G8.1 figures without you even using the basic stuff.
I think maybe I will one day make a video of how this stuff all happens.
BUT TO KEEP IT SIMPLE AT THE MOMENT:
If I am making a comic or digital graphic novel, and I have custom characters and products I need to use for that set of Renders - I make a extra RUNTIME, and attach it in my DS Preferences under the CONTENT MANAGER, as an Added DS/Poser Runtime, and can swap into it and see only those items when I need them. The main Runtime contains all the figures I may use and customize in my CUSTOM RUNTIME, so you can cross-reference the G8 or G8.1 base figures and make custom versions of characters, hair, clothing, scenes, etc in the CUSTOM RUNTIME, and when you are DONE doing all your rendering, you can DISCONNECT that runtime from the PREFERENCES, but NOT DELETE THE PHYSICAL RUNTIME on your HARD DRIVE. If you want to go back and use it again, you simply define it again in the PREFERENCES->CONTENT MANAGER.
This way you can HOOK and UNHOOK your porn runtimes, or your Roman Runtimes, or your Resident Evil runtimes, or your slutty Victoria with Futanari runtimes without issues and they don't always LOAD every time.
It takes time to learn this but eventually you'll get the hang of it.
DAZ STUDIO IS SO NOT PERFECT - IT CAN SOMETIMES BE A MAJOR CLUSTERFUCK !!!
Hope this helps someone!
Cheers
AnjaBearYeah, I'm way overdue on a hardware upgrade - I'm (impatiently) waiting for the new motherboards/CPUs/GPUs that are set to be out near the the end of the year.
I'll have to give Blender a try again - when I last used it the interface was pretty rough. Thanks for the suggestion!
I think you might be supporting my "spring cleaning" recommendation Larry @Gelstat. I know that any prog worth it's salt shouldn't slow to a crawl like DS, but we have to live with what we've got. Others have made different work-arounds about split runtimes etc.
I can't explain why but I've never had anything disappear from my content library, but it may be because I don't have the population of China in my character data folder.
Because I usually make comics and work on specific projects, I categorise my characters like toon/game/realistic, etc. I'm wondering if it would help if when installing one could also install characters/clothing to separate runtimes so not everything it lumped together and bloat the data folder. That would require a bit of forethought about how you want to use the content in the future. And might lead to a mess of runtimes where you forget where things are.
It would obviously be much better if the long awaited DS5 was to fix the issue of loading all morphs, but given their record, I'm not exactly holding my breath on that prospect. Personally I reckon we won't see any DS5 and DS as we know it will disappear and will become a cloud-based subscription app. like Photoshop that can scan for and detect pirated software. The sell-out of Daz.com to Tafi pretty much confirms that direction.Thanks Larry. I didn't know that separated runtimes would load other runtime data on all connected disks. It kind of makes the idea splitting runtimes for anything other than G3 worthless. I welcome other opinions.
So back to my "spring cleaning" suggestion? These days I usually only DL characters for their textures if they're good. I have enough morphs for what I want considering that most Daz characters are basically from the same sausage factor. And you have to appreciate the Chinese... the new superpower that has replaced the US as top dog.
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