Hello,

I just tried to open Connect in DS 4.9, but there is showing up "Login..." all the time.
My data at progam start have been accepted.

Any clue?

Eddy

Is it normal for layered image presets to take a long time to load?  We're talking 15-20 seconds.  (DS 4.8; 4.9)  Is there anything that can be done to speed that up?  Do the image sizes have a bearing on this?  What about the number of material zones the preset is being applied to?

In my scene I have a prop I created, call it Prop1, then created a dozen instances of the prop (call them Prop1A, Prop1B, etc), and each individual instance is parented to a different bone in a figure/prop with bones.

Is there a way I can swap out/replace the original prop, Prop1, with a different prop, call it Prop2, and then of course have all the parented instances automatically replaced resulting in Prop2A, Prop2B, etc.?

Any thought as to how this can be done would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

I ogt  an  email  "

but  the  price  is  44$

Edited title to clarify

Is there a tears product that will emit from the eyes and drip all the way along the body to the floor?

Thanks,

Martin

Are there fangs for V4 and G2F? With a morph from small to sabre tooth tiger?

ML^3

Where can I find Daz 4.8?

I only have 4.9 and  having issues with contents not showing,  and from reading it seems 4.9 is causing the problem.

How fast will Iray render or should it render with CPU only AMD Radeon card?  I am new to this but not sure of the settings and such for rendering a single character with lights.  I had one that started late at night and rendered through the night when I woke up it was still rendering so it was almost a whole day and half the night and was only at 98% at 4:00 pm that next day.  So I stopped it and saved the character because it looked really good but I can't have them to render for days lol.  What am I doing wrong?  What are good settings? 

I installed the upgrade to 4.9 but now all my figures have really bad skin. I found this info:

A quick adjustment that can be made during the BETA phase is to adjust the "SSS Reflectance Tint" from a light blue to a light yellow—R: 1.00, G: 0.88, B: 0.67.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/929990/#Comment_929990

But it doesn't help and is supposed to be only for beta. Also the skins I use aren't supposed to look like normal ones. Is there a way to disable this feature to get the same look as with 4.8?

Hi,

I'm a beginner. When I open my render settings window there are no presets. I am unable to render my simple animation.

Help please!

Hi is there any way to control the order of the GPUs and/or which GPU is used to build the scene?

This is based on the following Problem:

I have 3 GPU Cards in my  machine

2 x 970s ( lots of CUDA cores 4/3,5GB)
1 x 730 ( few CUDA cores 4GB)

(Monitors are connected to a non NVIDIA onboard GPU)

they are detected (consistently) as

[0] 970

[1] 730

[2] 970

DS seems always to use [0] as the device to build the scene what seem to use up some of the RAM

When I render Scenes that are allready near the RAM limit for the 970s i get Warnings in the log for device [0] and in the final statistic this device does a lot less iterations than the other 970. This significantly increase Render Time (nearly doubles it)

Is there a way to bring DS to use the 730 to build the scene. 1) it has more usable RAM 2) if i loose iterations on it it would have a much smaller impact on the render time.

(4.9 on a Win10 64 bit machine)

I keep seeing the message that Daz Studio is updating metadata for 72 items but then 68 fail. Next time it was 68 items but 66 failed. Maybe eventually it will be down to zero.

Not sure if it could have anything to do with this. But I was in the product library yesterday and I was looking around. There was an icon for M4 that had an exclamation on it. I was trying to figure out what it mean. I right clicked on it and I chose update metadata. Maybe that caused this?

Yesterday when I was doing a test render, it would put information about this into the little panel that registers information about the render and displays the progress bar. It must have shown four attempts to install the metadata. Not sure about what the numbers were for fail or success. The numbers given about were what I saw today.

So is there anything I should do? Why do some items keep failing. I thought maybe it was because I was rendering and possibly using some of the items. But today I wasn't doing anything when it happened. Just opened Studio.

Hi all,

one - maybe naiv/stupid - question: Does anything speaks against rigging a dress in triax for Gen3?

I really don't like the limits of general rigging. Especially for long, wide dresses. It's so limited *sigh*

Assuming the dress fits perfectly and I am satisfied with the movement, could I run into any problems I might not consider, if I rig it the "triax way"?

UberSurface Tutorial, Part 1: Understanding UberSurface

1. UberSurface and other shaders

UberSurface is one of the most powerful shaders available for DAZ Studio...and the best part is, it’s free (it comes with the software). Using UberSurface, you can render realistic skin, hair, fabric, and other materials.

This tutorial covers UberSurface’s basic functions and some of the many more advanced or esoteric ones.

UberSurface is often compared to (and sometimes confused with) certain other shaders:
- HumanSurface (also known as the Elite Human Surface Shader, EHSS, or HSS) was the predecessor to UberSurface, and has much in common with it. You could say that UberSurface is HumanSurface with some additional features (these extra features are listed in Section 4, “More Advanced Functions”). Any tutorials for HumanSurface that you find should also work with UberSurface, with similar results.
- UberSurface2 is a more advanced version of UberSurface. Perhaps the most significant improvement is the ability to handle layered materials. It is available for purchase from the DAZ 3D store.
- UberHair is an add-on for UberSurface
- SubSurface Shader Base is the new (released earlier this year) shader by Age of Armour. It’s available for free with DAZ Studio and contains a more advanced SubSurface Scattering algorithm. A tutorial for the SubSurface Shader Base is available here.
- pwSurface 2 is an alternative to UberSurface, made by PoseWorks instead of omnifreaker, and available from the DAZ store. The functions are mostly similar, but usage is somewhat different.

2. Basic Functions

These same dials exist for many of the shaders commonly in use, including the DS Default Shader. Functionality is similar, though some differences between the specularity model of UberSurface (and HumanSurface) and that of the DS Default Shader deserve mention.

- Diffuse
- Specular
- Glossiness
- Reflection
- Bump
- Displacement
- Opacity

There are other resources for learning what these terms mean, but here are a few quick reminders/rules of thumb:

- A matte surface will have a high diffuse value and a low specular value
- A shiny surface will have a high specular value (it may have a high diffuse value too)
- Specular strength controls the intensity of the highlight; glossiness controls the size of the highlight (with glossier surfaces having smaller highlights)
-Bump creates the illusion of roughness (or bumpiness) while displacement actually changes the geometry to increase roughness (or bumpiness)

Please note that the glossiness setting works differently in UberSurface than it does in the DAZ Default Shader. If you are converting an object to UberSurface, you may need to drop the glossiness value significantly to achieve similar results (for instance, DS Default Shader glossiness of 50% is similar to UberSurface glossiness of 4%, and DS Default Shader glossiness of 85% is similar to UberSurface glossiness of 50%).

3. Advanced Functions

- Tiling

This is particularly useful for textures that are seamless tiles. As the values get higher, the pattern gets smaller and repeats more frequently. You can adjust the horizontal and vertical tiling separately.

- Fresnel

This is perhaps one of the more obscure and arcane settings, but it can really help boost the realism of some types of material, including water and glass. It’s related to reflection and controls how reflection is affected by the viewing angle. For an illustration of how fresnel works, see the renders on this page (note: not DAZ Studio renders--I think they were done in Cinema4D), comparing fresnel reflection to reflection without the fresnel effect.

- Velvet

Some surfaces like velvets and other fabrics, and also human skin, have very fine hairs or fibers that catch the light, especially when viewed at an angle. With the right settings, this can greatly increase the realism of skin and clothing.

For use on skin, it’s worth considering that vellus hair is not evenly distributed on the human body--there’s none on the lips, palms, soles, etc.--and it’s more noticeable on women and especially young children.

Fabrics differ too--velvet itself, of course, will have show a very strong velvet effect, while silk, for instance, will have little to none. Most other natural fabrics such as cotton, wool, and linen, plus some artificial microfiber-type textiles, will benefit from this effect.

- Subsurface Scattering

Subsurface Scattering refers to how light can penetrate a surface and scatter within it rather than merely bouncing off.

First, let's look at a few common myths about SubSurface Scattering (SSS):

Myth: Renders with SSS are more realistic than renders without SSS
Reality: This is often true but not always--SSS is one of many factors that contribute to realism, and a render with SSS that’s been set up poorly will probably look less realistic than one with no SSS at all. And of course, it's not a good idea to apply SSS to surfaces that are not at all translucent.

Myth: Poser has SSS but DAZ Studio does not.
Reality: This may have been true at one time, but not anymore. DAZ Studio has had SSS capabilities for years.

Myth: In order to use SSS in DAZ Studio, you need to use the SubSurface Shader Base by Age of Armour.
Reality: While the SubSurface Shader is an excellent tool for achieving a SSS effect in DAZ Studio, it’s not the only shader capable of SSS. UberSurface, UberSurface2, HumanSurface, and pwSurface2 all have SSS functionality as well. One advantage of the SubSurface Shader is that it allows for automatic backscattering which is difficult to achieve with other shaders. Backscattering refers to the way that ears and other translucent objects seem to glow when lit from behind, due to light passing through them.

The first time SSS was used on a CG character in a major film was in The Two Towers (2002) for the character of Gollum. The lack of SSS prior to this was a big part of the reason why CG characters tended to look plasticy and unrealistic.

The more translucent the surface, the stronger the SSS effect will be. This means that pale-skinned characters will exhibit more SSS than darker-skinned characters.

In human skin, the SSS color should be orangish or reddish due to the presence of blood vessels under the skin. If the creature you’re rendering has green blood, be sure to change the SSS color accordingly!

If you want to have a deeper understanding of how the effect works, here’s the groundbreaking paper that enabled the technology behind SSS in 3D rendering (the paper is very technical in nature, so it might help to have a math, physics, or engineering background).

4. More Advanced Functions

These features are what distinguishes UberSurface from HumanSurface. UberSurface has them, HumanSurface does not.

- Anisotropic Specular

Don’t be scared off by the techspeak...this is a very useful setting. Basically, when this is turned on, the specular reflection will be directionally dependant (the reflection is stretched along one axis). Hair, for instance, tends to look wrong when the specular reflection is not anisotropic. Brushed metal is another example, as well as other surfaces with parallel grooves.

- Diffuse Roughness

It’s easy to see how specular reflections are handled differently by glossy surfaces vs. matte surfaces. But the diffuse response will be affected too, and this setting gives some additional control over that. Very matte surfaces should have a low diffuse roughness value so that the diffuse response is broad; shiny surfaces might need to have a higher diffuse roughness value.

- Fantom

Fantom is useful when you want something to be invisible but still cast a shadow or appear in a reflection. For another use, see the Fantom Occlusion section of my Hair Tutorial for DS4 Users]hair tutorial.

- Raytrace

Turning raytracing OFF on surfaces with transmaps (opacity maps)--hair, for instance--may make your renders faster, especially when using UberEnvironment or other lighting with Ambient Occlusion. A little realism may be sacrificed as a result, but often it’s hard to tell the difference. It’s kind of the opposite of Fantom: the object will be visible, but won’t cast raytraced shadows or appear in reflections.

References:
Omnifreaker page on UberSurface
Omnifreaker page on HumanSurface

Ive been having some trouble trying to export my scene from daz3d to 3dsmax.

Exporting to FBX works, though importing the fbx in 3dsmax gives me a blank scene as if I had never imported the fbx.

Exporting to OBJ works, though importing the obj in 3dsmax and maya gives me a "Error - Invalid Normal Index".

Exporting to COLLADA works. Importing the scene in 3dsmax works except for the fact where it does not import the textures of the figure (Genesis 2) properly. (See http://shortieserv.rstar.link/sharex/2014-08-02_08-38-08.jpg)

When I try to enter the serial number for 4.9, the ok button is greyed out. I have a new computer so this is the only version of Studio on it. I hav copied an pasted  the highest 4.6 pro serial number in my serial numbers list. Any help?

In another discussion, I was thinking of buying a new PC to replace my iMac but it was suggested that I could use both. I have an older PC which will take more memory and, for example, a GTX970 GPU - so that would be a cheaper option than buying a whole new PC and I could keep my beloved iMac (which can't have a GPU upgrade). I would run the PC in headless mode with a remote destop application from the iMac. 

So my question is: what would be the best way to create scenes on the Mac and render them on the PC? Would I need DAZ Studio with a mirrored content or could I save a scene with its content and render it on the PC? My guess is the former and I would need to mirror the library every time it changes (when I buy additional content).

Both myself and the other half are having this issue- I'm on 4.9 and he's on 4.8. Can anybody else confirm this for us?

Load in an object that has it's own normal map and use the Leather Iray Uber shader on it. Now replace the leather's automatic normal map with the object's normal map. The expected behaviour would be that the normal map respects the UVs and shows up as you'd think it would, but on the leather shader it does not and it tiles it like it's a tileable texture.

In the attachment, the gray has been given the default Iray Uber Base and had it's normals applied, and the brown is using the Leather preset with the normals map changed.

If all that makes this a leather preset is the diffuse color and the added normals map, then I can just forgo using it and do my own leather.

For some reason, DS keeps creating a folder called "Iray" within the Categories folder.  Any idea what's causing it?  I've deleted it often enough to be sure I've really deleted it prior to exporting the database, but after I reset my database and reimport, it reappears.  It seems to have one product in it.

I felt it was time this subject got treated to a detailed explanation (with pictures), so I sat down and started making screen grabs. Presented here is what I've got so far, but there's still work to do to make this really usable. I present this in the hope that others will experiment and together we can fill in the missing pieces.

Some of the most impressive use of Iray I've seen so far is the use of Light Path Expressions (LPEs) to do advanced compositing in post. Rather than me explain the cool results, take a look here. I'm sure you've seen methods like this before, but Iray allows us to do it a bit differently. That was all done with a single render pass. I will grant that my 3D experience is rather sparse, being an engineer by trade, but I think that's seriously cool!

First, lets get a scene loaded. I started wth a very simple one, G2F (clothed and posed), A camera directly in front of the character, and a 100cm Photometric Spotlight in each of the four quadrants pointed directly at G2F. On the lights, I set them all to 100x100 rectangles at 100,000 lumens each. No light has a larger contribution than any other. 

The render environment is set to Scene Only in this particular case, but It doesn't matter since we'll be getting separate files for each lights.

DAZ Studio exposes LPEs through the canvas functionality on the Advanced Rendering tab, and makes them much simpler that writing raw expressions as seen in NVidia documentation. By default, canvases are disabled. You turn them on by selecting the Advanced tab, going to the Canvases sub-tab, and turning on canvases.

We start by creating a light group for each of the four lights, named "Key", "Fill", "Rim Left", and "Rim Right". Creating a canvas is done by clicking the "+" right below the check box that enables canvases. Adding a canvas creates a new entry named "Canvas1.Beauty". The beauty pass is what your normal render is created from, so if you don't have that canvas in the list of those you're rendering, you're normal output file will just contain a transparent background.

To create the light group canvases, click on the "Type" dropdown and choose "Light Group". I'd also recommend changing the canvas name to something meaningful, like the names of the light that will be in the group.

Now you have to choose the lights that will be in the group. From the "Nodes" dropdown, you can "Create from Selection..." which will create a Light Group from whatever is currently selected in your scene tab.

You will be prompted for the light groups name.

Alternatively, you can create node lists separately and fill in the light group names later. I find this a bit easier, and at the very least it allows you to check your work when you're done.

Here's the resulting Canvas panel (or sub-sub-panel) with the blank space removed.

Now, we're ready to render. You can render to a new window or directly to file. The canvases will be written when the render is done, or saved as the case may be. Strangely, I've found that if the render runs unnaturally fast, It usually means that I don't have enough light in my scene and the resulting canvases will have fireflys. Strangely enough, you can still get a decent looking low definition result (the PNG, TIF, BMP, JPG), because those are run through a firefly filter. The canvases, though will tell the tale.

Once saved, your canvases should be in a directory named whatever you saved your results as with "_canvases" tagged onto the end. In my case, that directory was "Iray Relighting_canvases".

Now that that's done, we're ready to load the results into Photoshop. I'm running CC 2015, but anything recent should have the functionality we need. GIMP may be usable as well, but I haven't tested it. Either way, your workflow may vary slightly, but the result should be all four EXR files loaded as layers in a single document. I used "File -> Scripts -> Load Files into Stack...", which comes with recent versions of Photoshop, but there are many other ways.

Once your layers are loaded, the Layers panel should look something like this.

and your actual image should look pretty dreadful, no matter which layer is on top.

The order of the layers doesn't matter, just that everything is in one place. Now, before we do anything else, select all four of the layers with CTRL (on PC) or CMD (on MacOS) Click and group them with CTRL/CMD "G". Now with the group selected rather than the individual layers, we need to add an adjustment layer. This is done by clicking the little half-closed circle at the bottom of the Layers panel. We'll be adjusting exposure. You could also do the same by adjusting Curves, Levels, or Brightness/Contrast. Exposure works well enough in this case.

Adjust the exposure downward until things are within the realm of sanity (i.e. you can see your subject). You may need to toggle your individual layers on and off to make sure that they're all exposed correctly. When you are done with that, your layers panel should look like this.

And your individual exposures should look like this.

Now, reselect all your grouped layers with CTRL/CMD Click, and change the Blending mode from "Normal" to "Linear Dodge (Add)". This should result in a file that looks like the one below, very well lit, but rather flat. We create the illusion of 3 dimensions in 2D by how shadows fall. If everything is lit evenly, a subject will look flat.

What we do now is change the contribution of each individual layer to get the effect we want. In this particular case, I just wanted to fill in the shadows a bit and lightly outline the character with rim lights. To do this, I left Key at 100% opacity and reduced Fill to 31%, Left Rim to 37% and Right Rim to 13%. This gives us the resulting image as seen below.

The problem with this method is that with linear dodge, total contributions of the layers must add up to at least 100%, or the subject begins to become transparent. This can be solved by placing a layer filled with black at the bottom.

This may all seem pretty pedestrian at this point, but I spent zero time test rendering to work out the proper contribution of each light. I just blasted away and adjusted the exposure and balance using simple filters and changing layer opacity. With a little bit of Photoshop hackery we could change the color contribution of individual lights, mask them, or anything your imagination can come up with.

Give it a shot, and feel free to share your results and anything you learn along the way.

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