[Grouchy Old Fart]

The irony is kind of hilarious, truth be told.

Gather 'round the campfire children, grab a s'more, and I'll explain:

DAZ Studio was started by DAZ in response to licensing fee demands from Curious Labs (Poser's owner in 2002-2003) so that the Vicky (and Michael) 2 and 3 figures could use the Hair and Face Rooms in the upcoming Poser 5. DAZ instead went out and built their own Poser, just this time with blackjack and hookers, releasing it in 2005. Yes, it took that many years - they built it first as a what-if as negotiations swung back and forth, then they went full guns after Poser 5 failed as a release, Curious Labs collapsed, and Poser got sold to some outfit called EGISys as its future became uncertain. By the time Studio did come out, Poser was on its 2nd-3rd owner, and DAZ Studio went from being the anti-Poser, to being a lifeboat for DAZ' business model.

We all know what happened from there. Vicky 4 came out in 2005, but it was the last DAZ model Poser could fully use (and is still the most-used model in Poser today... among the few who still use it these days.)

As for Pose Studio? alea iacta est - let's see what it can do. I think Renderhub adopted it because it knows DAZ owns DAZ Studio, Renderosity owns Poser (for what that's worth), and Renderhub wants to be one of the big boys. This strategy also (partly) explains why they purged vendors and content so hard a few months ago - can't market an ecosystem if the customers think you're out there permitting DMCA violations and home-grown CSAM.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

You should - I checked my ancient pile of CDs, and discovered that I didn't have it (also, two of my 2004-era CDs are apparently dead and unrecoverable. Yikes.)

[Grouchy Old Fart]

I still have a lot of old Poser Alexa (versions 1 and 2) items, but not the install packages. If I remember right, they came out in 2002-2003 or so? The big difference between the first two versions were the hands and feet - the vendor copied the DAZ-made Posette/P4 Female body parts, which is a no-no, so he went back and re-made those parts (and a few other things, but I cannot remember what).

I still have some ancient Poser packages on CD - I'll rummage through them today if time allows, and see what I can find.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

I'm sure others might find it useful, but the point is that it's not required... and if it's holding him/her up from doing anything, then it should be removed. After that, I hold no value judgement on it.

This leads to a couple of questions - if you use it, did you use the version I linked to? If so, did you see the problem that OP saw?

[Grouchy Old Fart]

I assume you're talking about this item: https://zonegfx.com/bj-rapid-pose-0-6-1/

First off, it's an application that, in my opinion, you 100% do not need to make poses with. It makes the task prettier, sure, but you definitely don't need it. Second, it appears that the thing you downloaded is a trial package, or it's got anti-piracy measures baked in that haven't been cracked (that is, circumvented.)

I could be wrong, but given the limited info (and no screenshots), that's my best guess.

I would personally remove the thing, carefully remove all traces of it, and never install it again.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

One thing that will help prevent losing all of your settings and such? Save a copy of the following directories in their entirety (windows paths - Macs will differ) - and update it periodically:

• C:\Users\{YOUR USERNAME GOES HERE}\AppData\DAZ 3D\ (you may not have this one, it's a legacy/deprecated directory. Check anyway.)
• C:\Users\{YOUR USERNAME GOES HERE}\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\
• C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\

Back them up every time you add a plugin, before you do an upgrade, or whenever you make changes to the interface, to app behavior, viewport arrangements, any app settings, etc.

This way, if you have to reinstall, you can just reinstall the working Studio version you last used, restore those three (or two) directories, and you're right back where you were before it all blew up.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

Awesome - thank you!

While I'm here, there's one thing that folks should keep in mind... if you see the little yellow triangle in the upper right corner of a post preview (example below), it means that the download hasn't been archived yet, so it'll be unavailable. It could be at some point in the future, but not now:

[Grouchy Old Fart]

@ethiopia - I have a workaround for that.

I primarily use DS6 for compositing and rendering (I've sadly become addicted to the 'Universal' viewport setting, and it does render faster), but I still have a copy of DS4 sitting on my computer for building characters up, tweaking things, etc.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

You can make passably pretty characters in G9... but you damned sure have to work at it - and until the Anime/Filatoon characters came out, making a usable toon morph on that figure was fugging near-impossible (Trust me, I tried). I will say that even with the Filatoon setups, it's still a hard slog, and I find myself making G3 and G8 figures, converting them to Filatoon, and just using that.

At least with G8, it comes naturally. Part of that is the cornucopia of existing morphs that you can play off of, sure, but even from scratch G8F is far superior. Even G3F with its limited set of morphs and morph products is far superior, and much easier to create feminine figures (toon or photorealistic) with.

It could be the unimesh, but G1 was unimesh and it's easy to make incredibly feminine figures from it, no problem. No idea why G9 is so hard to work with - it's got gobs more vertices, after all.

So, just to give you an idea: the figure on the left is G8, and took maybe an hour to shape up and assemble, including a trip to Blender for a couple of touches. The figure on the right is a G9 evolution of the same character. Even though I knew exactly what I was working towards, it was a four-hour death march, and don't ask how many times I had to muck around just to smooth out weird wrinkles that would crop up (esp. around the jawline), get the fugging eyes to not explode or fly off in some weird Cartesian direction, etc.

When G9 first came out, I saw the potential, and actually wanted to make it work. Nowadays, I'm seeing more and more that the juice is not worth the squeeze. I mean, I may pull it up occasionally, but it's going to be rare unless something drastic happens to it.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

New one - Goon Goblin: https://pawchive.pw/patreon/user/185629143

[Grouchy Old Fart]

Agreed. It gets spotty before 4.22, but I have versions going back to 4.12.1 (2020-vintage) for some weird reason.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

The problem might have multiple reasons:

• Having two exact copies of a figure may be confusing DS?
• Your base figure may be corrupted. Sometimes a vendor screws up their character package and writes morphs to the base figure. Rare these days, but still happens once in awhile.Re-download the base figure, overwrite the files, should be good (make backups first just in case!)
• Did you modify the rigging or bones at all to the base figure, then save those changes? If so, see above.
• AE package may be corrupt - download and re-install, overwriting all files
  (again, take backups first!)

There's likely other reasons I'm missing, but those are the biggies.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

PS: It's only Windows - I don't have any of the Mac installers.

[Grouchy Old Fart]

I have the standalone installer for 4.24.03, and I just uploaded it; you can get here:

https://mega.nz/file/QesWnShA#9L78Mr-VeadwSvpPQsWtfWMCLsebU2GrcS6DVdUWPDg

[Grouchy Old Fart]

If you come across any issues, I have it on my archive drive as well.

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