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I know AoA had cited health concerns as a reason he stopped making armor commercially (yes, he makes REAL armor!) I hope he's okay. This might be a reason that it hasn't been updated to 4.7. Daz probably just needs to fix the compatible software label on the product. And if it's something you recently purchased, Daz's refund policy is incredibly flexible.
Yes, I'd fogotten about AoA's website and his reasons for making 3D products. I remember now that he had revitalised his creative enthusiasm with 3d work after his health problems had made his original art practice difficult. I visited his website just now but there wasn't any news. I also hope he's okay.
I certainly wouldn't want to get a refund for the graphic art cameras because they are so useful. I'll just continue firing up an installation of Daz Studio 4.6 I've still got on a flash drive every time I need a render with cross hatching or halftone.
...same here for the Atmospheric Cameras and Advanced lights.
Just to weigh in on this "fix".
I appreciate the effort the poster put into this, but found the post-fix results not worth the bother. The render results I got were nothing like they're supposed to be, (like they are in 4.6, for example.)
Interesting, though. If the problem can at least be addressed "outside" 4.7, then perhaps the code-wizards at daz3d could sort out a real, effective solution for us. After all, they're the one's who changed studio so that AoA products are botched up. I had just purchased the Graphic Arts Camera, and hardly had time to really fall in love with it, before the version update disabled it.
Studio is an amazingly rich program, written by some incredibly talented people. There's no question that if they wanted to find us a solution, it wouldn't take them all day. That they haven't, well, everyone makes their own call about it.
For me, it's the same "maybe a thousand models is, finally, enough" thing. I do have older copies of Studio. They lack some nice features of 4.7, but switching back and forth takes little time. It's just, with such an incredibly dedicated, and patient, customer base, it's bizarre, to me, that Daz didn't just fix the issue already. AoA revolutionized my Studio experience. To not be able to get there without the fuss of reverting anymore makes no genuine sense.
...well said.
Apparently something in the 4.7 update broke all of AoA's cameras and lights
For the Atmospheric Cameras which I used lot, the vignette depth and colour functions no longer work. Yes two of these effects can be done in post (Vignette and colour) however it is just more elegant to do them within the render itself (and not all 2D software handles Vignette effects in the same manner, Gimp doesn't even have it).
The Advanced Lights have been a staple for me ever since they were released. I rarely ever go back to using UE anymore due to the much longer render times and lack of selective flagging. I also find the Advanced Lights work much better with the SSS shaders (which have become a standard feature of the Gen 6 figures). However, flagging with ether the Diffuse channel or IOR (preferable to using the Ambient channel) when using SSS is now broken.
I am interested to know under what circumstances you need to flag skin. I do use the flagging facility of the advanced lights, but mostly to flag hair in order to make it render faster. So far I have not flagged skin, as that normally renders relatively quickly.
...the Distant light, because of it's nature tends to over illuminate the skin that has SSS applied, particularly in the upper chest and shoulder areas. Reducing the intensity to counter this unfortunately also reduces the intensity for the rest of the scene.
My usual remedy is to flag the distant light to not illuminate the skin and position a spotlight at the same angle with a wider spread and flag it to illuminate the skin only (with no shadow) to get a smoother lighting balance. I also use a low intensity spotlight flagged to illuminate just the teeth.of characters who have an open mouth as often they do not show up well in the final render which it makes expressions look unnatural if not hideous (this also occurs with UE a lot). Increasing the ambient light too much to compensate tends to over illuminate the entire scene.
Keep in mind I m not going for "photographic" rendering which with even the Advanced lights is pretty much impossible to achieve as they do not use real lighting physics like the lights in unbiased engines such as LuxRender and Octane do.
I never had these issues with the LDP/LDP2 even using pwSurface SSS, however the lighting plugins were never updated for Daz 4.0, and to tell the truth I am not as impressed with the results I have seen from LDP-R for all the extra work involved as I was with the original plugins. I can (or I should say could until 4.7) pretty much achieve the same effect just with the Fog or EZ Volume Camera and Advanced lights in a single render pass with no other software required.
Ok, thanks for the info, I had not really thought of using the lights for that purpose. I actually had the opposite problem recently where I wanted a character to look brighter in an otherwise dark scene. When I added a spot light to illuminate the character, it also lit up some of the scene immediately around the character, which I did not want. I solved that by rendering the scene twice, one with and one without the spot light, and then combined the images in Gimp after creating a mask for the character using this: http://www.daz3d.com/mask-and-multipass-toolbox
I uploaded a video on YT with the steps to fix the Engrave Camera.
Follow this link
HTH
Absolutely brilliant! Thank you so much! I followed the steps in the video and it worked perfectly. I didn't understand what I was doing but it worked anyway and I saved the camera preset to the same folder as the original Engrave Camera under the name "New Engrave Camera". I was astonished to see that all the presets from the original will still work with the updated version. Thank you jag11! :-D
Absolutely brilliant! Thank you so much! I followed the steps in the video and it worked perfectly. I didn't understand what I was doing but it worked anyway and I saved the camera preset to the same folder as the original Engrave Camera under the name "New Engrave Camera". I was astonished to see that all the presets from the original will still work with the updated version. Thank you jag11! :-D
I'm glad it helped.
These steps would be the same for the Haltone Camera, I just need to test them against a 4.6 render.
I uploaded another video with the steps to fix the Halftone Camera.
These steps are just a little bit more complex than the ones for the Engrave Camera.
It would be great if someone at DAZ fix both cameras, update the product and make available through the DAZ Install Manager.
Click here
...as well as the Vignette, colour and depth functions of the Atmospheric Cameras.
I made this little script that fixes the Engrave Camera original file, so, you must have the Graphics Art Camera content installed. This script needs to be run only once or if you reinstall the Graphic Art Cameras.
Download the file 'Fix for the Engrave Camera.dse' from the provided link and save under /My Library/Scripts, run it inside Daz Studio.
The script does the following actions:
Script download location: http://1drv.ms/1KQV9WO
Posted this in other thread but I think here is more appropriate.
Well, for what it's worth, the depth camera still works perfectly! (I've actually found it extremely useful for cool visual effects in Iray, because the depth camera doesn't give two wet slaps what shaders you are using)
Thanks for your help with this.
You're welcome, I'm working in the Halftone Camera's fix, next the Atmosperic Effects Cameras. Those are the ones I have and still use and are affected by the same problem.
Why is DAZ still selling the cameras without the fix? Or a disclamer? The product page http://www.daz3d.com/graphic-art-cameras has it listed as compatible with 4.8.
I followed the tutorial
Thanks. I was also able to get the half-tone camera working with the same method. There are just more links to reconnect in the half-tone camera.
Here's the fix for the Halftone Camera, you must have the Graphics Art Camera content installed. This script needs to be run only once or if you reinstall the Graphic Art Cameras.
Download the file 'Fix for the Halftone Camera.dse' from the provided link and save under /My Library/Scripts, run it inside Daz Studio.
The script does the following actions:
Script download location:
http://1drv.ms/1FRnf7l
Interesting questions, the thing is this is a great product, extremely usefull.
...we shouldn't be the ones doing this. I would have no idea how to fix the flagging for the Advanced lights so it works again with SSS.
Great product , but how to get circular dots instead of elleptical ones, with a frame at 1920x1080 ? I don't understand the story of ratios on the doc... Logically , if I understand well , I must put 192 dots in horizontal , and 108 vertical , to get a good ratio , no ?
Impossible to obtain circular dots if my render is not a square one... Can somebody help me please ?
Thanx :)
With the added attention this has been getting due to the loss of pwToon, this would be a good opportunity to confirm that the fix previously outlined in the linked videos is still applicable to at least Studio 4.12.
If you follow the procedure outlined in the videos, you will have a fully functional Engrave Camera and Halftone Camera. Before you do anything else, in the Scene tab, rename the new camera to what you want it to be when you add the new camera to a scene (i.e., AoA Engrave Camera_Rev2, AoA Engrave Camera_Beta, AoA Engrave Camera_2, etc.). You can save the resulting camera as a camera preset and be done with it, but camera presets have a few caveats. By default, it will replace any existing cameras unless you intervene by pressing the CTRL key when loading one to get the Preset Load Options dialog to choose how you want to load it. Even if you set your preferred action, you have to remember to press the SHIFT key when you want to apply one. (Maybe saving as a Scene Subset will avoid that problem).
To get the same functionality as the original camera (i.e., load as many as you want without having to take special measures), you need to save it as a Support Asset -> Figure/Prop Asset. Saving as an asset separates the camera's data and inner workings as a file in a /data folder, and leaves a stub in the folder of your choice as the file you actually see and load. Another potential advantage is that the new asset will also have whatever new functionality has been added to saved files with newer version of Studio.
You can simply replace the existing installed files by keeping whatever info is automatically filled in when replacing an existing asset, or make a new data file by following this, admittedly, long procedure. (Just trying to cover all the bases...)
When saving as a Figure/Prop Asset, a little preparation is needed to make the process easier. There are a number of filenames and paths to consider before being confronted with the Asset Save Options dialog. The original path for the data file is: "/data/Age of Armour/Graphic Art Cameras/AoA_EngraveCamera" or ".../AoA_HalftoneCamera". The names you choose for the various entries will affect the path where the new data file is saved.
The Asset Directory is where the /data file is to go. You can set it to the main library, or change it to a safe, empty test library if you are afraid of messing up the main one. You can always move the finished product once you are satisfied with the changes. You don't need to specify more than the root folder of the library, all the rest of the path will be automatically generated.
Vendor Name: it would be respectful to use the original vendors' name (Age of Armour), since you aren't really creating a new product. This is also the name that will be used in the path for the data file, so if you want to store the new camera data in the same folder as the original, use the same name as that used in the installed product. Don't worry about the root folder being different for now, all that counts is the relative placement of the files.
Product Name: Again, if you want to store the data in the same folder as the original, use the same name as in the path for the installed product (Graphic Art Cameras). You can use any name you want, but you can't easily change it after because that path is used in the saved data file and the user-facing file that will be created.
Item Name: Here you might want to use a different name to distinguish the modified version from the original. You don't have to, but if you re-install the original, you will probably overwrite your modifications. By giving it a different name, it will create a different folder for the data file. Following the example of the original camera, call it AoA_EngraveCameraRev2, or AoA_EngraveCameraBeta, or AoA_EngraveCamera_2, or whatever catches your fancy. Note that this is not the same as the Scene name. Having them all the same will lead to confusion later. (I remove the spaces to make it similar without losing track of it).
Metadata: You can add it now, or later. Category should be Default/Cameras. Since you are creating a new asset, it should be added as a new Sub-Compatibility Base to the existing "Graphic Art Cameras" base. Click the ellipsis to the right, and wait for the database to load up. Scroll to, or search for, "Graphic Art Cameras". Right-click on it and select "Add New Sub-Compatibility Base". The name you add here will be the one that you will use when you want to add Compatibilities to the camera properties presets for smart content (a separate task)
Try out your new cameras to see if they work. Make sure you have some lights in the scene, or turn on the camera's headlamp, which has it's own control in the Cameras tab. The Render Settings Auto Headlamp can also be used if there are no scene lights.
Now, if you used a working folder to save the data file (.dsf), you can copy it to the corresponding folder in the main library (i.e., "/data/Age of Armour/Graphic Art Cameras/AoA_EngraveCamera" or ".../AoA_HalftoneCamera") or if you used a different data folder for the Item Name, copy the folder into the appropriate parent folder. Move your original modifications to a safe place as a backup (not in a mapped folder, you want to use the main library now). You might need to purge memory, or restart Studio to ensure the current path for the new data files is used.
And that should be about it. Of course, it would be easier with that script to replace those mysterious 8 bytes, but I don't know which 8 bytes to replace.
is there a way to make this - or the video - understandable for idiots like me? i don't get it at all. i can do very very simple things in shader mixer, here i'm overwhelmed with the sheer number of little windows, and somehow i can't even read which one the person clicks on, too small. also, i can't even concentrate enough to read one single paragraph of the post above by @NorthOf45 , not even mentioning understand what i'm reading... guess what, i'm not very tech gifted, and my focus isn't the best,
in this thread and was it in another too?, there's a script supposed to fix things - when you click on the link you get some browser err msg.
i loved those cams, and i'd love to use them again, but there's no point me trying to fix them myself with the video, i'm just gonna f mess them up beyond recognition...
You don't have to do all that stuff if you don't want to (stop after the second paragraph, but be aware of the implications mentioned), it is all just to have it load like it did originally, as another camera in the scene, and not replace existing cameras, which could be quite annoying, while respecting proper product definition and Scene Identification. Nit-picky, fussbudget stuff, I know, but all products have it.
The videos are quite clear about what to correct, can't really explain it without seeing it. Liberal use of the pause button helps...
lol..i actually better understand what's AFTER the 2 first paragraphs.. i happened to occasionally save assets so it makes sense.
i think i'll try again with the video, maybe i can zoom + the ytube window too otherwise i can't see the details/names of those tiny panels on my laptop screen, and as you say liberal use of pause button...PLUS probably writing down everything i saw between the pauses, otherwise after 20 seconds tops i'll forget everything i saw. my concentration span brings any gnat to hysterical laughter, and when i don't understand things i read (tutorials, i'm looking at you) or see explained because after a short while my focus is shot, i feel like i'm challenged or sth...
EDIT: wow..once i zoomed the ytube/browser window 400% AND got an old magnifying glass out of a drawer.. i could see the manips in the shader mixer - AND IT'S SOOO SIMPLE! actually no need to write down, it's variable fixed 51 (and 52) - like area 51 lol... and u+v like horiz/vert. now i got the cam to work. meanwhilei take back all i said about stuff being simple to save it as the same asset it is. but i can do that later and just for now save it as whatever. focus end and time to get some shut eye. thanks a lot for the long explanation and the last comment too, @NorthOf45 ^^
The following script is a one clic solution to fix the Graphic Art Cameras files, so no more Shader Mixer madness.
1. Make sure to install the Graphics Art Cameras by using DAZ Install Manager, the script won't work with DAZ Connect.
2. Run this script and that's it.
HTH
@jag11 Thanks for the script. where do I install it and how do I run it?