Upgrade to 4.0 or 4.5?
greghornart_8fc0930be1
Posts: 68
I'm currently using Daz 3 and looking to upgrade this weekend... Can someone tell me the big differences between Daz 4.0 and 4.5? I know that a lot of the new bells and whistles revolve around Genesis, but i am not planning to get into the Genesis figures anytime soon. I'll be using mostly existing V4 and M4 content and I want to get into an upgrade that is going to be the least troublesome.
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Comments
Just go to 4.5 because it uses a new format and a lot of new stuff relies on the new format. No point in going to 4.0 at this point. The main reason people are still on 4.0 is because they are scared to upgrade from 4.0 to 4.5. But upgrading from 3 is a totally different story.(and honestly at this point not much reason to hold to 4.0)
4.5 has a lot of features that 4.0 doesn't. Including features that don't require Genesis. You have geometry shells, a push modifier for clothes(helps with poke-thru), instanced geometry, much faster saving and loading and a variety of other goodies. Also with 4.5 you can now use your daz scene files (in duf format) on different machines easily. I have two machines that both point to the same content folder and I can start work on one machine, just send over the scene file to the other and safely render from there without hunting down for those dso files of the past.
you mean you have two computers rendering from the same .daz file? How is this done? By making the content folder a "sharing" folder across a network?
The new .DUF format doesn't rely on converted objects, etc. like the older .DAZ format meaning just duplicating your runtime is sufficient to be able to open a scene on a second computer.
You wouldn't have them rendering the same scene, its not network rendering, but it allows you to more easily share a file between computers.
Yes you can share a content folder on the network. So if I know I need to render 5 images, maybe at different angels or slightly different poses or whatever I send over the first work file to the slave machine and let it start rendering.
Then on my main machine I tweak the scene and prepare it for the next render. Or in another situation, I can use my slow laptop just to get started on a project, then send the file to my more powerful computer later to finalize and render.
You are saying that instead of 4.5 saving scenes as .daz, it now saves as .duf . So what should I do with old .daz scenes? Can I open them in 4.5 and then save them as .duf?
You are saying that instead of 4.5 saving scenes as .daz, it now saves as .duf . So what should I do with old .daz scenes? Can I open them in 4.5 and then save them as .duf?
By default now it will save as .duf. So you will be fine. And yes it opens .daz files fine for the most part.
By default now it will save as .duf. So you will be fine. And yes it opens .daz files fine for the most part.
Ha! see what i mean? You said "for the most part" which makes me scared. Anyway, thanks for the help on this.
I've never (personally) had issues, though I do understand that there were some issues with shader mixer built surfaces in some versions.
By default now it will save as .duf. So you will be fine. And yes it opens .daz files fine for the most part.
Ha! see what i mean? You said "for the most part" which makes me scared. Anyway, thanks for the help on this.
For a while people were noticing that 4.5 would open old scenes but sometimes shift things around a bit. In the most recent version of 4.5 I don't think I've seen that happen, but I'm not sure it's completely fixed either. The current release of 4.5 has been good to me.
And when I went from 4.0 to 4.5 I had exploding character syndrome for a bit. Old characters would looked mangled when you first loaded them in 4.5. To fix it we had to save the file again and reopen and everything was fine. But that was specific to Genesis characters.
Another option is to leave your DS3 installed and install 4.5 in addition. When you open an older scene and resave it, change the name. That way if anything goes wrong you still have the original.
I thought about that too, but I read somewhere that there are difficulties in having DAZ 3 and Daz 4.5 on the same machine. Is that true?
No problems with DS 3 and DS 4.5 on the same computer.
conflict can occur if you have DS4 and DS4.5 installed on the same Computer,
I have DS3 and DS4.5 installed on the same computer.
By default now it will save as .duf. So you will be fine. And yes it opens .daz files fine for the most part.
Ha! see what i mean? You said "for the most part" which makes me scared. Anyway, thanks for the help on this.
That has always been the case, which is why we are glad to be moving away from .daz files going forward.
DS45 is much faster then DS4 in terms of navigating around the UI and saving and loading.
YOu can use the smoothing modifier on anything in your scene in relations to antoerh item in the scene. Meaning V4 clothes can collide with V4 just as Genesis clothes collide with Genesis.
DS45 will also render faster then DS3
total agree with the others... i haven't had a bit of trouble (that wasn't my fault) with ds4.5 :-) totally different look, but you can get used to it
I have DS3, DS4.5, and DS2 on the same computer!
...this is some sort of contest, right? right?
Haven't had any real problems with DS4.5; it's worked out great for me so far. The main thing I'd be concerned about is the massive change in layout you'll experience going from DS3 to DS4. It's pretty disorienting and takes a bit of fiddling if you'd like it arranged similarly to an old setup.