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Upgrading to Version 4.9 Pros and Cons...or any other version you want to talk about.
- Thread starter Pendraia
- Start date
That's how I like my Vegemite (or Cheesymite).I prefer Marmite, on hot buttered toast, with lots and lots of butter and not too much Marmite...yum - m - y
I hate how people who are getting other people to try it, put it on so it looks like tar and expect them to like it (I expect its for a reaction).
Air of Winter
Inspired
I've recently switched to 4.9, and I mostly like it.
Right now my full version of the Millennium Subdragon is broken; it won't load, even though it looks as if it's been correctly installed. There may be a few other things broken, but it doesn't look like much recent content is. I'm not sure 4.9 is to blame for the Subdragon, because I didn't do anything in 4.8 with it either.
I couldn't get most M3 and V3 morphs to appear anywhere after clicking on them -- they didn't inject and didn't give me sliders either.
Connect works fine with unencrypted content, and it has a very nice feature: if you load up a scene with items that are uninstalled, it will ask you if you want to install the relevant Daz content and download it for you before it finishes loading the scene. And it will list the other files it can't find, and where it was looking for them. This is making it much easier to put some of my scenes back together.
Also, Connect keeps every product in a separate directory in its download folder, so if you need to go poking in the files, it's much easier to figure out what files belong to what product.
I've found reflection or specularity set way up on some surfaces in some old scenes, but it's easy enough just to set them back down. I haven't done anything much with Iray yet, so if anything broke there, I wouldn't notice.
I gave up on recategorizing content a long time ago, so I can't comment on that either. Smart content has never worked correctly for me on any version of Studio, and it still doesn't. I mostly use the old content library.
I've been exporting my models, etc. It looks as if FBX export has been improved, because I can get more models into AutoCAD's FBX Converter successfully in that format -- they used often to crumple or crash it. FBX import into Blender still results in an exploded model, but that's probably Blender's fault, since they're writing their own converter instead of using AutoCAD code. But Collada export into Blender works well.
Right now my full version of the Millennium Subdragon is broken; it won't load, even though it looks as if it's been correctly installed. There may be a few other things broken, but it doesn't look like much recent content is. I'm not sure 4.9 is to blame for the Subdragon, because I didn't do anything in 4.8 with it either.
I couldn't get most M3 and V3 morphs to appear anywhere after clicking on them -- they didn't inject and didn't give me sliders either.
Connect works fine with unencrypted content, and it has a very nice feature: if you load up a scene with items that are uninstalled, it will ask you if you want to install the relevant Daz content and download it for you before it finishes loading the scene. And it will list the other files it can't find, and where it was looking for them. This is making it much easier to put some of my scenes back together.
Also, Connect keeps every product in a separate directory in its download folder, so if you need to go poking in the files, it's much easier to figure out what files belong to what product.
I've found reflection or specularity set way up on some surfaces in some old scenes, but it's easy enough just to set them back down. I haven't done anything much with Iray yet, so if anything broke there, I wouldn't notice.
I gave up on recategorizing content a long time ago, so I can't comment on that either. Smart content has never worked correctly for me on any version of Studio, and it still doesn't. I mostly use the old content library.
I've been exporting my models, etc. It looks as if FBX export has been improved, because I can get more models into AutoCAD's FBX Converter successfully in that format -- they used often to crumple or crash it. FBX import into Blender still results in an exploded model, but that's probably Blender's fault, since they're writing their own converter instead of using AutoCAD code. But Collada export into Blender works well.
To back up you categories in DS...
1. Select the Content Library Tab.
2. Click on the triangle with lines(top right hand corner of the tab)
3. Select Content DB Maintenance
4. Tick the Export User Data box. Click accept.
Air of Winter
Inspired
Thanks for the welcome! I've been poking around off and on, but this is my first time posting.
Air of Winter
Inspired
Amending former remarks: Connect identifies and will automatically install some of the Daz content. It missed a few items, in the scene I'm reassembling now: Age of Armour's cameras and lights, Lisa's Botanicals plants, Opus Magnum, and Magix-101's Worldbase Xtreme. Those I've had to install in other ways. The Age of Armour stuff and Worldbase are only a few years old, so it's not just the older stuff it's not picking up. But it's still making it easier to rebuild this scene.
Sounds pretty involved. I just dropped my class, so effectively the semester is over, and I'm about to embark on upgrading to El Capitan and Studio 4.9 (and the current versions of my Adobe software, if this computer will run them properly).
I've got a swarm of files of character roughs and basic location scene files which makes redoing my content libraries a bit of a no-go. But I am probably going to spend a lot of time going through them all and deleting things that don't show up in the contents lists (mostly freebies), and moving the Mat pose files into subfolders of the Character or props folders, so I can choose the mats when I load the items.Will probably take most of the time until next semester.
I've got a swarm of files of character roughs and basic location scene files which makes redoing my content libraries a bit of a no-go. But I am probably going to spend a lot of time going through them all and deleting things that don't show up in the contents lists (mostly freebies), and moving the Mat pose files into subfolders of the Character or props folders, so I can choose the mats when I load the items.Will probably take most of the time until next semester.
Air of Winter
Inspired
And ... 4.9 lists what it can't find. If it's Daz Connect, it will install it for you. If it isn't, though ... it doesn't do what the old versions did, and let you go hunt for the content, unless I'm missing something.
That's very not handy, because the scene I'm trying to reconstruct is built on Magix-101's Worldbase Xtreme, and 4.9 can't seem to find that even though I've installed it with the Install Manager. It can't find Lisa's Botanicals Climbing Vines, likewise. And I can't tell it where to find the (Renderosity) Flink's plants and sky that are also in the scene.
It's not critical that I rerender this scene, but I'd like to, because there are couple of things in it that don't work if it's rendered large and the viewer examines it carefully. So I've ripped out 4.9 (probably temporarily) and I'm going to try to put it back together in 4.5. If I don't get it working sometime tonight, though, I'll abandon it; the existing renders are decent, if not perfect.
I'm mostly moving to Linux, and mostly moving to Blender (maybe someday modo), so I'm trying to export my models. So I've been reinstalling and rearranging the content libraries this way and that, to make it easier to find the pieces of the products I'm trying to export. The whole library structure of Daz Studio and Poser is a teeter-totter, and I'm not sure exactly where I had every model in this scene last year (itself another reason for wanting to export all my stuff).
That's very not handy, because the scene I'm trying to reconstruct is built on Magix-101's Worldbase Xtreme, and 4.9 can't seem to find that even though I've installed it with the Install Manager. It can't find Lisa's Botanicals Climbing Vines, likewise. And I can't tell it where to find the (Renderosity) Flink's plants and sky that are also in the scene.
It's not critical that I rerender this scene, but I'd like to, because there are couple of things in it that don't work if it's rendered large and the viewer examines it carefully. So I've ripped out 4.9 (probably temporarily) and I'm going to try to put it back together in 4.5. If I don't get it working sometime tonight, though, I'll abandon it; the existing renders are decent, if not perfect.
I'm mostly moving to Linux, and mostly moving to Blender (maybe someday modo), so I'm trying to export my models. So I've been reinstalling and rearranging the content libraries this way and that, to make it easier to find the pieces of the products I'm trying to export. The whole library structure of Daz Studio and Poser is a teeter-totter, and I'm not sure exactly where I had every model in this scene last year (itself another reason for wanting to export all my stuff).
Air of Winter
Inspired
I spent some time trying to edit non-Daz files to put them in the library in a fashion where I could find them, but it turned out to be a pretty big project.
Well, I'm in the process of doing a major re-org of my content libraries. And I keep stumbling over missing files. It's a lot more likely to be due to the OS than anything else, since much of the worst symptoms of the computer hell I've been negotiating through since last June is the problem of the System, or the Finder eating my files. But I've taken the Battle of the iMac to the enemy, and upgraded to ElCapitan, and while I'm not bowled over by improvements, it does appear to be working noticeably better than Yosemite ever did.
However, I'm finding that all sorts of things are just unaccountably missing. Like, products that I purchased within the past month, that I installed (manually, I install everything manually except the things that won't let you), and things like the Mat files are simply not there. Not in the Pose folder that I put them into. Not lurking under some name that I'm not looking for, just simply not there. And in the runtime that I was working on yesterday, nearly all of the .png and .rsr thumbnails were missing. And I've no idea why. I certainly never threw them out. I've not tried to use anything in these particular runtimes for a while, so I didn't notice when they disappeared. But having to stop and copy the thumbnails back from my backup disk is slowing me down considerably.
However, I'm finding that all sorts of things are just unaccountably missing. Like, products that I purchased within the past month, that I installed (manually, I install everything manually except the things that won't let you), and things like the Mat files are simply not there. Not in the Pose folder that I put them into. Not lurking under some name that I'm not looking for, just simply not there. And in the runtime that I was working on yesterday, nearly all of the .png and .rsr thumbnails were missing. And I've no idea why. I certainly never threw them out. I've not tried to use anything in these particular runtimes for a while, so I didn't notice when they disappeared. But having to stop and copy the thumbnails back from my backup disk is slowing me down considerably.
Air of Winter
Inspired
Eek. I wanted to switch to a Mac, but they've done strange things with their recent computer designs, and my mother (who had one) abandoned it after some relatively recent upgrade rendered a lot of her software obsolete. Guess I'm really glad I didn't switch ... too bad, though, because it would've been easier than moving to Linux.
Lorraine
The Wicked Witch of the North
That sucks so much big time. I am sending you lots of commiserating cyber thoughts and a big
Have you tried running Disk Utility? It sounds like you might have an issue with the file system, and that will often fix it. You can find it in the Applications/Utilites. Also you might want to check that somewhere along the way you didn't end up with FileVault on. It encrypts the entire OS and can do strange things from time to time. You can check in System Preferences, Security & Privacy.
Hope that helps.
Back again. Finally. Have finished working my way through the reorg -- which, as comprehensive as it was, was only about half to 2/3 of my content. Eventually I'll need to organize the Studio content too, but that is just going to have to wait. At lest Studio seems to be decent enough to store the texture add-ons in the same place as the actual model instead of scattering everything about among half a dozen different Poser runtime libraries..
As you asked yes, I did run Disk Utility. I do that every few months or so. I also periodically run DiskWarrior to sort out directory glitches. The problem was coming from somewhere else. I'd been hanging onto SnowLeopard, due to a couple of legacy programs that I wanted to be able to keep access to. They wouldn't survive another System upgrade, since Apple did something fairly drastic under the hood with Lion. Which was back in 2011. Everything was fine in SnowLeopard -- except that I couldn't upgrade any of my Adobe apps beyond what would run in it. So I was 2-3 versions behind the curve and it was only going to get worse so long as I was using that computer.
Well, the video card bellied-up just about a year ago. I didn't know that it was only the video card or I'd have fixed that and waited until the end of the year to order a new iMac. If I had, the new one would have shipped with ElCapitan and I might have avoided the worst of the problems. Instead, I ordered the replacement in June and it shipped with Yosemite. Allow me to say that Yosemite is the WORST OS I have ever dealt with. And I've been running Macs since Classic OS 6.5 which didn't even run in multifinder as a default.
Admittedly, something that got ported in from my old system backup (which had odds and ends of stuff that had been floating around since 1998 still lurking in corners) probably destabilized it. But it was vicious. It hid my files, pretended my peripheral disks were empty and "lost" the contents of my projects disk twice, and then TimeMachine never performed a backup on that disk. Even though it *claimed* it was backing up the disk, there was never anything in those backup folders. I haven't noticed sweeping file loss since I upgraded to ElCapitan. I still don't like it as much as SnowLeopard, but I can work with it.
But I am still losing, or at any rate discovering, lost files. In the course of the content reorg, I kept coming across missing files. Not whole disks worth as with Yosemite, but in a sort of scattershot way. Things that I knew I had, knew were supposed to be installed, and which ought to have been there, and simply weren't. And more than half the time the old .rsr thumbnails were just gone.
SO. Back on topic; since I started the reorg DAZ has released another update to 4.9. Once I got my libraries on some kind of order I was intending to upgrade from 4.8. Now they've changed the game again. Is there anything I ought to know about regarding 4.9.2 as opposed to 4.9?
As you asked yes, I did run Disk Utility. I do that every few months or so. I also periodically run DiskWarrior to sort out directory glitches. The problem was coming from somewhere else. I'd been hanging onto SnowLeopard, due to a couple of legacy programs that I wanted to be able to keep access to. They wouldn't survive another System upgrade, since Apple did something fairly drastic under the hood with Lion. Which was back in 2011. Everything was fine in SnowLeopard -- except that I couldn't upgrade any of my Adobe apps beyond what would run in it. So I was 2-3 versions behind the curve and it was only going to get worse so long as I was using that computer.
Well, the video card bellied-up just about a year ago. I didn't know that it was only the video card or I'd have fixed that and waited until the end of the year to order a new iMac. If I had, the new one would have shipped with ElCapitan and I might have avoided the worst of the problems. Instead, I ordered the replacement in June and it shipped with Yosemite. Allow me to say that Yosemite is the WORST OS I have ever dealt with. And I've been running Macs since Classic OS 6.5 which didn't even run in multifinder as a default.
Admittedly, something that got ported in from my old system backup (which had odds and ends of stuff that had been floating around since 1998 still lurking in corners) probably destabilized it. But it was vicious. It hid my files, pretended my peripheral disks were empty and "lost" the contents of my projects disk twice, and then TimeMachine never performed a backup on that disk. Even though it *claimed* it was backing up the disk, there was never anything in those backup folders. I haven't noticed sweeping file loss since I upgraded to ElCapitan. I still don't like it as much as SnowLeopard, but I can work with it.
But I am still losing, or at any rate discovering, lost files. In the course of the content reorg, I kept coming across missing files. Not whole disks worth as with Yosemite, but in a sort of scattershot way. Things that I knew I had, knew were supposed to be installed, and which ought to have been there, and simply weren't. And more than half the time the old .rsr thumbnails were just gone.
SO. Back on topic; since I started the reorg DAZ has released another update to 4.9. Once I got my libraries on some kind of order I was intending to upgrade from 4.8. Now they've changed the game again. Is there anything I ought to know about regarding 4.9.2 as opposed to 4.9?
Bejaymac
Inspired
This is a long standing bug (ie started with 4.0), the problem is Powerloader, it's always been garbage but now it's broken and they don't appear to care enough to fix it. In your case it's loading the LE version that comes with the Genesis Starter Essentials, right click the thumbnail for the full Sub Dragon and choose "browse to file location", in the new window you should see a CR2, a PNG thumbnail and a DSB file, delete the DSB file as that's the one calling Powerloader, Refresh your content directory in DS and the correct Dragon should now load for you.
The Gen 3 figures don't come with Parameter groups for the morphs, with DS 1 to 3 this wasn't a problem as DS would create a "Morphs" group and stick them all in there, DS4 doesn't, instead it shoves them all under General.
Possible solution? If you own Poser. Load them up in Poser, inject all of the morphs. Arrange the morphs into the groups you want. Save that .cr2 back to Poser's library.
From there you can load up your pre-injected M3/V3 in Daz the same as you would any other figure, and the morphs should work. This worked for me in 4.8, as I had already created pre-injected (with organized morph groups) in Poser many years ago for the Generation 3's. Maybe it will work in 4.9 as well?