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Particles, particles, or an animatable point-cloud object. Lens flares and other in-camera effects. VFX-y stuff. ;-P
I know, I should just go buy Houdini... :red:
Never say never, or we could pass up legitimate ideas. I believe we can indeed use an independent process with affinity set to a specific available but less-used core, especially if DAZ developers start to think of the project file not as "a file", but instead as a related group of objects. A database, if you will. Current databases free and paid already do a very good job to manage locking, buffer flushing, and change commits (plus rollbacks and recoveries) all the time, and quickly too.
Commit the changes to the in-memory copy of the project file, and set a checkpoint or log record. Then dispatch the "save" thread off to another core to begin the save operation. Let it take however the hell long it takes to save the file from RAM to disk, SSD, or Flintstone stone tablet by way of prehistoric woodpecker, freeing up the main task (the UI task) for availability to respond to the user on one or more of the other cores. When the copy-to-disk operation has finished, then perform another checkpoint and compare the in-memory project file with the one you just saved. If the one in memory has changed due to user interaction, then those changes need to be flushed to disk too. The objective is to end up with a disk project file that has data and relationship consistency. Like a database!
And that comes to a possibility that DAZ may need to rethink the project file format, and instead of saving it as one big monolithc chunk, maybe it needs to be compartmentalized into logical groupings. Sort of like a database with related objects such as tables, views, and even indexes to speed up read operations, with recoverable pieces/parts stored in memory and on disk, and a logging system to manage changes for efficient rollback.
If the database idea is distasteful, then have a look at Microsoft's own "System Restore" which uses Volume Shadow Service (VSS) to do this on a disk partition basis.
My point is, there are ways. Good programmers are can-do artists.
I'd love to be able to import rigged FBX models and have them remain intact and useable.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/6963 ...but the rig is messed up and unusable with orientation all screwy, hehehe
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/6963 ...but the rig is messed up and unusable with orientation all screwy, heheheAgain, it depends based on which software the rig was created in.
Ah, so there might just be an import setting I need to adjust?
So this thread is 49 pages, and I've not looked through it all, so forgive me if this has already been mentioned.
The #1 thing I'd like to see in Studio is the smoothing & collision tool getting smarter. This includes a couple things, but in a way they are all aspects of the same core problem: the collision engine only supports one collision target. As such, you have to play games with using an invisible bodysuit/whatever as the collision target when you want something to lay over multiple items (like skin and clothing, or over two different clothing items (such as a sash that has to go over shirt and bolero)). But just as important, the engine needs to support self collision. I can't tell you how frustrating it is that it will move the inside surface of a clothing item through the outside surface (which it doesn't move at all) in its attempt to perform collision avoidance, making an utter mess of things. This happens a lot with boots/footwear, for example, as they are frequently modeled with both an interior and exterior surface (as opposed to say shirts, which are often just a single plane with no true 3D thickness modeled).
Also in the frustration department with S&C is when it just won't fix poke-through collisions, even when subd is turned up to give it plenty of vertices to move around (though I don't know if S&C only works on the base mesh or the subd' mesh). Even if you crank collision detection and/or smoothing up to insane values, you still get areas of poke-through. I experience this all the time with female breasts poking through their shirt (if you look at my dA gallery, you can see that I dial breast size up a bit though none of that crazy extreme "breast expansion" crap). If the top is 100% opaque, I can fix this by going in and hiding the offending faces of the figure's breasts. But that doesn't work when the top is see-through... And push modifier doesn't help either, as it ends up floating the entire shirt away, which again when see-through results in really unrealistic, terrible looking renders. Stockings are another area where this happens a lot. Stockings are frequently semi-transparent and look terrible when floating above the figure's legs, so I scale them down slightly and then use S&C to shrink-wrap them to the figure.
I would also really like to see a way to store mesh visibility for non-Triax figures. Pretty much every render I do has select facets of meshes hidden to facilitate kitbashing different clothing sets together. With Triax, you can create a primitive, convert it to a figure, and then use it as a target for 'hide facets for conformed object' (or whatever its called in the PGE) and then fit the primitive figure to your main figure and then turn off the visibility of the primitive. But this doesn't work for non-Triax figures (e.g., V4) and I still have a bunch of characters built around V4 that have parts of clothing hidden to facilitate a given kitbash look. (And just setting Opacity to 0 is not sufficient since I render with Luxrender, and this still sends the geometry to Lux whereas hidden geometry is not exported.) I can't redo these figures with G/G2F since autofit is completely useless when it comes to footwear (and many other things, but footwear is by far the thing it is worst at). I won't ask for an autofit that actually works, since I think that's pretty much an impossible request to fulfill, anyway...
Here is an idea make a Linux distribution Operating system that is optimized for daz studio and other daz products. The Daz Linux Operating system with all native daz products. Use a Ubuntu like download installer for daz products and software. Just a though!
That's a bit odd, I've always managed to get rid of even the most stubborn pokethrough eventually by some combination of tweaked smoothing/collision values. It does take a while sometimes to settle on the right values, though, so some improvement here would be welcome.
Several solutions. Use the Geometry Editor tool, select the facets and hide them.
Second option, up convert to triax weight mapping.
Third option, use the Hex bridge and move the offending facets. :)
Several solutions. Use the Geometry Editor tool, select the facets and hide them.
Second option, up convert to triax weight mapping.
Third option, use the Hex bridge and move the offending facets. :)
Key word: STORE
Editing these with the PGE and turning off the visibility is not saved with the scene (I opened a ticket on this a while back and was given the "working as intended" answer). Thus, for now, I end up moving the facets into a new 'Hidden' surface that I have to remember to go and turn the visibility off on every time I reload. (And that happens reasonably frequently since I have tweaked characters saved as sub-scenes for reuse, merging into a full scene.)
Converting to Triax would break the figure when using V4 conformers, would it not? And break V4 herself when facets need to be hidden on the base figure itself. (And doesn't converting to Triax also mean going through that retched autofit conversion, which is only good for wrecking clothing?)
Hex is an issue since 1) I find the interface baffling and usually just give up in frustration any time I've tried loading it, and 2) moving facets away/deleting them breaks all the morphs in the conformer. (At least deleting facets using the PGE breaks all the morphs when the scene is reloaded.)
Just gonna through my thoughts in here...
Someone mentioned Kinect support and having a simple MoCap option in Daz5. Seeing as animation is becoming a larger audience and more people are wanting to get into it, I see having a MoCap option in the next version of Daz as a natural progression really. If we could get body, face and hand options, like what Brekel offers... than that would blow us away.
In addition, I'd like to see Mimic moved to the 64-bit version.
Lastly, I agree with the Dynamic Cloth. Been real disappointed with it's implementation so far and would love to see the goal of it finally be reached.
Obviously all of these are more related to animation going forward, so for people still interested in just stills, I can see only the Dynamic Cloth being something they would be interested in. Still, as someone who does stills currently but would like to venture into animation, I'm hoping to see these features in Daz5.
i'm like totally wishing i could clothify the mfd skirt in ds, and the clothes line sheet in washing day. and add a breeze
I would really like to see a linux version of dazstudio 5(or any version really) released. Wine just isn't good enough.
I'm having trouble with some HD dials, knowing what is actually HD. Characters and morphs on figures in particular when they don't offer standard resolution morphs sometimes don't even have HD in the name, and unless I am rendering a close up of the character I certainly don't want to waste resources with HD on a character which is as a fare distance from the camera. So I would love it if the dials had a little HD icon next to the Lock and favorite toggles that appear when the mouse hovers it, or better still on there permanently visible, could even be an overlay of some sort that only appears on morphs using the HD feature. That way we don't need to rely on it being in the name on any given slider.
Animatable shader parameters! :coolsmile:
ow, this thread is still alive :) after almost 2 years..
i only hope that there is someone over at daz offices that's taking notes of all these great idea's.
...good idea. Maybe even a sub category under "Actor" that is labelled "HD" just like how any morphs loaded through "GenX" are presented in the "Actor" parameters.
...how about .3ds import? I've been on ShareCG a lot and seeing more and more really nice free models only being released in .3ds format. Converting through Hexagon only gives you an untextured .obj. with no MAT zones/surfaces.
Have you tried PoseRay? That's pretty much the only converter I use regularly, and it does a good job with .3ds meshes. Except when the model's been exported the wrong way out of 3DS MAX and any attempt to convert it causes bits of mesh to fly off in all directions... :shut:
...I could never get it to work quite right for some reason.
As I mentioned I can import .3ds format into Hexagon, but it leaves me with having to figure out how to set up surfaces and material zones on my own without a good mapping tool (the free version of UV Mapper crams everything onto one .jpg making it hard to determine what belongs with what on a very detailed mesh and rescaling the image distorts the maps).
We can already export to .3ds via the SDK, we need to be able to finally import the format as well.
The ability to copy and paste whole fignot just videosures (I.e. duplicate figures with ALL morphs, textures and features).
A fix that will allow me to fit/confirm old Poser Psyopus without having them rotate or fly all over the place.
And, of course, WRITTEN documentation, not just videos.
Proper solid, won't move, can't move under any circumstances, rock solid, pins please.
I like Spryo's suggestion about HD morphs. In general I do not use them, since they make my computer cry, but would love to know which is which, and if there are also standard morphs in a package.
One thing I would like is better viewports for lights. I really cannot see when trying to place lights where they are in regards to the figure. Everything seems so tiny to me,.
I would love to see the "select by map" feature available from the surface tab rather than having to locate each surface within the viewport to right-click and "select by map". It doesn't really fit in the 'gear' icon since that's the (advanced) properties for each surface parameter. But right-clicking on the surface parameter header should have "select all matching" as an option in addition to the current copy/paste options.
Edit>Duplicate>Duplicate Node Hierarchy.
Under the hood / Major Changes
—HIGHEST PRIORITY: Get “OpenMP” working on OS X again; Studio is PAINFULLY slow on even high-end Macs without this feature!
—SECOND HIGHEST PRIORITY — *FIX* the brokenness of the FBX importers/exporters
—Support for Full Screen mode on OS X
—Let me have more than just ONE scene open at a time; if I’ve got the RAM, I should be able to use it.
—Speed up the Viewport considerably somehow when working with large or complex scenes. Currently in my machine, I have TWO FirePro D300 cards, each with 2GB of texture ram . . . let me unleash their full power!
Use of OpenCL (where possible) to accelerate functions such as smoothing, collision iterations, Fit To, dynamics, etc. Those two D300’s are just sitting there “idle” while my poor CPU works itself to death!
—Redesign the user interface: Consolidation of menu options (see below), COLORFUL icons that convey intuitive meanings; better use of interface “prettiness", such as translucency, bevels and drop-shadows on UI elements; interface should be automatically intuitive, the way Carrara's is— with a UI that is almost “touchable,” with lots of skeumorphic elements, subtle texturing and shadow-use, and all implemented with a succinct simplicity that DOESN”T sacrifice easy access to “pro" features. Expose the editable parts of the UI to the user, so they can customize — and save and share (and SELL!) — their own styles and workspaces.
—More keyboard shortcuts (in the Mac version at least) for advanced functions like Transfer Utility Figure Setup, and Polygon Editor.
—Let me use the “delete” key — in ALL contexts — to do exactly what its name implies, delete things, be they surfaces, bones/joints, figure setup geometries, polygons, objects, etc.
— Content Browser & Management —
— Let me ‘rate” my content with one to five stars (allowing for half-star ratings, even), and let me search and organize my content by its “rating"
— Let me mark items as favorites (or frequently used), and . . .
— Keep track of recently used (and/or frequently used) items/figures/poses/materials/shaders
— Let me “save” my searches and group *those* into categories
— Reorganize the way content is displayed; the names of the creators/artists do not convey any useful, actionable information, so instead aggressively mine content for metadata, even content that doesn’t have any, in order to create directory-like data-structures that are grouped appropriately, sort of like what Smart Content does already, but for ALL content, taking into account favorites, ratings, and frequently used items.
— There should be a LOT more varied categories of items in Smart Content and the “Fit to” dialogues (and in the Transfer Utility) to better and more intuitivelty represent the broad spectrum of content available from the DAZ3D store.
Files and Projects
—Should have the option to re-open the last scene that was open on quit when upon launch (useful for “crash" scenarios)
—Should have the option to “Revert to Last Saved Version” of a scene.
—Should have some form of Autosave, and some form of file-versioning
—Better, more full-featured (and accurate) FBX import and export, “export selected” in right-click Viewport menu (and Scene pane) when the Select tool is in use.
—Transfer Utility (and other intensive operations) should feature a “Cancel” button in the progress dialogue. Escape key should be able to cancel ALL operations, even camera movements.
—Loading (or applying) a new figure/prop/etc should be an UNDOABLE action; come to think of it, EVERYTHING in Studio ought to be undoable.
—Option to have current tool settings (i.e., “bounding box only”) apply to ALL tools
—Selection & Viewport
—Selecting and deselecting an object/surface/geometry/etc should ALWAYS be an undoable and re-doable action like any other.
—Selecting an object in the outliner should also select that object’s surface in the Viewport, if the surface selection tool is in use
—Should have the ability to “marquee” select objects/surfaces/etc and should have a "select via lasso”-type tool for doing so, just like in the Geometry Editor.
—Should have the option to switch between default lighting and user-created lighting, and options to quickly load and save custom light presets.
—Undo history should be navigable, as it is in Photoshop. (I.e., so I can scroll through it and undo an arbitrary number of actions.) Should also be “delete-able”, so that histories can be frozen.
—Transfer utility, adding geometry to figure setup, and other transformative actions should all be undoable.
—Need to have the option to “Center Pivot” on all imported objects and props quickly and intuitively, without using the joint editor.
—Need to have the option to “Freeze Transformations” and “Freeze Morphs,” i.e., to quickly set new “zero” poses for people and things.
—Texture Shaded mode in the Viewport should have three sub-settings: Low Quality, Game Quality, High Quality (to speed up operations with complex scenes)
—For simplicity’s sake, it might be better to take a cue from Bryce and Poser here, and have a 3D “trackball”-like interface for camera controls (i.e. skeumorphic controls), with quick access to camera and Viewport shading settings in a popup panel.
— Figure Setup —
— Needs to be compatible with 3rd party bones and rigging structures and adhere to industry standard methods for bone/joint creation and manipulation, such as those found in Lightwave 3D, Autodesk Maya, Cinema 4D, and others.
— Needs to be a graphically interactive process with its very own UI, not just a pane.
— Needs to be more intuitive for beginners and more familiar to professionals coming from other software.
— Need to be able to move, delete, rename (etc). bones, regions, etc. "EN MASSE”; i.e., more than one at a time.
— Need to be able to undo adding geometry, figure creation, etc.
— Need to be able to undo operations with the joint editor tool.
— Need a quick and interactive way to bind skins to bones, without using the weight brush.
— Need to be able to SEARCH the list of available geometries (and selection groups) in the Figure Setup pane.
— Need to be able to define Geometry groups from WITHIN Figure Setup, without switching to the Geometry Editor.
— Scene Pane —
—Should be able to *easily* “deconstruct” props or imported objects, so that pieces can be deleted or moved independently, without going through the Polygon Group Editor tool; also, having the Scene pane keep track of surfaces and render-partitions would be helpful, too.
—Should be able to save searches into customizable presets
—Right-click menu in Scene pane should contain all the same items from the right-click menu available when in right-clicking in the Viewport. In other words, anything I can do to something in the Viewport, I should be able to do from the Scene pane as well, depending upon the tool selected.
—Should be able to "view Polygon Groups" within the Scene pane, if this option is selected.
You can currently have more than one scene open by having more than one instance of DAZ Studio open. And you can create your own shortcuts using Window > Workspace > Customize... (or shortcut F3).