JUST TRYING TO KEEP UP!
RomonaJ
Posts: 26
I am forced to write this discussion. I have been a member of DAZ since 2014 and thought I had found my interest and growing talent. I purchased assets and watched videos to learn this craft. I was so inspired by DAZ that I went to Art Institute of Technology and got a B.S. in Game Art and Design. Daz and Second Life was my inspiration. I enjoyed many opportunities to see and use other designer works. Creating renders became a passion. I hungered for more skills. I upgrade my PC and laptops to support my desires and honor the upgrades to DAZ that up until 2020 made sense.
I am a front line medical worker that got thrown into the Pandemic of Covid working tirelessly to do my job. My only escape was DAZ. But what I am seeing and dealing with causes me to believe that you need to be a Tech Support, Software Developer, Photographer and more in order to just get a render. I have spent countless money on hardware to support Daz changes and have over 5,000 assets I have purchased.
What I am experiencing now is DAZ is eating up 2-4Trilibite of memory, not giving me assets that represent Genesis/Genesis 2 without Software skills of re-mapping. New Genesis 8.1 Models that are clearly made for Animation that require you to wait on supporting assets: Clothing, Poses, Animation to utilize because...Well! Sorry! there is just no crossover built in yet for Genesis 8 to Genesis 8.1. As if I needed a newer version when I have an extensive library of Genesis 8/3/2. I was happy using version 4.12 Pro but when I got a new laptop or PC was forced to download 4.15. In walks Filament to make my day even more challenging when all I wanted to do was graduate to animating my already existing models. I thought being able to use the Simulation feature for Dforce was such an accomplishment, never mind I had to wait based on software/hardware 3mins for the hem of a dress to fall in place. I thought I was keeping up. Still feeling proud I had found DAZ.
Really! it is now getting ridiculous to use this product. I am reading the discussion in the forum and it sounds like I am not the only one having issues. But the advice provided is starting to read like coding. I wonder if I am the only one getting lost in DAZ, losing that creative edge and excitement when my Genesis 3 Characters look like x-rays on 4.15 until I discovered I have to switch to "Textured Shaded" to see their skin is realistic normal. I must play with NVDIA Iray render lighting often because designers are adding their own lighting. Or dare I say Filament is best. I just want to understand why we are being forced to use some upgraded features and why we are doing our own mapping of older products. Has everyone exhausted all the features of 4.12 Pro except me. Am I so behind that I need to go back to school for a different type of degree? My B.S is my second degree and yet who needs storage when math may be that class that helps you with nodes/pixels.
I'm sorry you had to read this but who else would understand outside of DAZ why my downtime from the Hospital is stressing me more. I will now go back to trying to find out why my Daz Central is not loading my newly bought assets into version 4.15 on my new purchased Desktop and then find out why the mapping is off on my 4.12 version of Daz on my 1 year old laptop for assets purchased from 2016-2018. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to create some animations before Filament becomes obsolete. Wish! me Luck! I am just trying to keep up.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Items made for Genesis 8 work on Genesis 8.1, there's no need for converters.
You need to use DS 4.15 to use G8 morphs with G8.1 though, the code needed to get that to work is one of the additions of that version (another one being the ability to use the new PBR Skin shader released with G8.1)
Redacted
You don't need a college degree to figure out how to use DAZ Studio. Just play with it a bit and it all makes sense. At least that's the case for me. It doesn't seem too complicated. I think DAZ Studio needs to keep up with Epic Game's Unreal Engine 4. UE4 can do real time ray tracing ang global illumination. Now I am rendering my animations more in UE4 than in DAZ Studio.
I can almost guarantee this thread is going to get deleted lol.
You don't need to utilize every feature DAZ offers. You don't have to use Genesis 8.1 if you don't want to. You don't have to use Filament if you don't want to. If you don't like 3Delight, use Iray, or plugin renderers. You do not need converters for Genesis 8 to Genesis 8.1. It was on the Daz blog (which I'm aware you missed) when Genesis 8.1 was introduced that most Genesis 8 stuff like poses, clothing, etc. will work on Genesis 8.1 with no extra work, however, Genesis 8.1 products to Genesis 8 will require some more work.
No, it's not the end of the world because Daz updated. Daz Studio hasn't changed that much. The version numbers on DAZ aren't just random, it's standard software versioning. The format is major, minor, patch. So, from 4.12 to 4.15, there have been 3 minor updates to Daz. Most of which are just bug fixes and small improvements to animation or whatnot.
You do not need to be a technology enthusiast to understand how Daz Studio works. However, having some intermediate knowledge about computer graphics or technology in general may help you understand how to utilize what's in front of you. There are YouTube videos, forums, etc to help you out. No, it may not have the pitch-perfect solution to your problem, that's where your creativity or problem-solving comes into play. To be honest, I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for some of these YouTube videos providing usual tips and tricks for Daz Studio. I do wish in the future that Daz themselves continue to make their application easier, improve documentation, and add tutorials. Daz Studio application can be great and easy but is very difficult if no one knows how to use their product.
Also, the "coding" you mention, is because people posted a question in the wrong section.
I would just say it's your real world job that is exhausting you. I have a harder time with Daz when I've been working my real job. I'm a stroke survivor and anemic from injured kidneys so it's my own issues rather than Daz.
Every day's an Upsale! It's a business model for a product and I'm not going to bash it as I get everyone needs to make money. The core engine is free in contrast to Autodesk's stranglehold on the other stuff. If you did spend 5k since 2014, that's still MUCH cheaper then the yearly subscriptions you would forked out for Maya or 3DMax with no content to show.
As far as needing to know multiple skills, well yeah! Does a painter just about putting paint on canvas? Is a film maker about just pointing a camera and pushing record? If you did get a BS in art you know there is MUCH MUCH MUCH more to ART then just the medium itself.
As far as keepign up, I get that too, but there are people that do good stuff with minilist assets. I know people who still only work in G3 or V4.
I too have spent $$$$$$ on assets, but am way more picky these days. I don't need every HD model or shader or hair texture addon and I especially don't need any more easy light kits. Hair..umm that's a different matter.
...the first point is why I spent a good amount of time over the years developing my own custom library/runtime organisation. The fact there has never been a content naming standard established has been a real pain for many years particularly as your content collecion grows (and the also reason utilities like Smart Content and the CMS needed to be added in 4.0). Another frustration was the way the old runtime was organised with shaders/materials being routed in the Poses rather than Materials folder (made absolutely no sense) and everythign was separated (the set up adopted in 4.0 onwards for Daz products at least made a little more sense compared to the old Poser runtime structure). As long as textures are in the Runtime/Texture folder (under whatever name) and data ("geometry" for older products) also into their proper folders, it doesn't matter how rest of the library or runtime/library is organised.
Personally I dislike having to rely on a database that often breaks down or becomes corrupted to find what I need (it's also pretty useless for products I purchased at other sites along with freebies).
I've pretty much stopped at G3 as G8 was not early as significant an upgrade to justify the cost of retooling all over again. I do have some G8 assets but mainly the more "interesting" characters like Edie, Mabel, Floyd and Mr. Woo (all perfect for characters in my stories) as well as clothing that I've wanted to see for a long, long time.. I also have the scripts for converting both G8 characters and clothing to G3.
Oh and I still use Aiko3 as well. The later versions just were not as darling as they tried to make her look more "realistic".
...+1
I've been picky ever since I started in this due to pretty much being on a tight budget even when I was working. My interests also do help a bit as well (not into high fantasy [well save for the fee but they figure into my writings, even my cyberworld stuff], horror, or "sexy" which are the major sellers here). In fact my choice of Daz over Poser when I first started in this was because I didn't have to pony up 250$ just for the programme before purchasing content, particularly as at the time I wasn't sure this worked for my needs (back then, 250$ was two and a half months of groceries).I liked Daz's model as I could slowly build up the programme and develop it over time to fit my needs (I went into total sticker shock when I saw the cost of pro software like Photoshop, Modo, C4D, and 3DS).
As I've mentioned elsewhere, save for sets and props (and I'll admit, I'm a sucker for Stonemason, Predatron, and AntFarm content) and clothing (would create my own if Marvelous Designer had not become so expensive and then gone into the cloud) over recent years I've settled down to primarily focusing on purchasing utilities and vendor resources which have saved me a fortune (even after 12 years my content library alone takes up barely over 600 GB). A character or figure really has to add something to what I refer to as my "gene pool" to merit purchase. I've been "dial spinning" (yeah, an old Poser term) my own custom characters for just about as long as I've been at this, Crikey several others and myself embarked on a project to turn buxom 5'11" Vicky 4.2 into a teen and even child (in the days when there was not "autofit", and no GenerationX plugin).as at the time there were only the Gen 3 kids and teens which were not very well supported and looked more like miniature versions of the Mil3 adult figures (see attachment below of my Leela character at 8 years old who was built from Vicky 4.2).
Yeah, being on a limited budget means having to be more resourceful, which is also what led me into a lot of kitbashing as well.
@RomonaJ - Unfortunately, keeping up with constant changes is a constant in any computer technology endeavor. I've had to do it professionally and for personal interests for over 35 years. I realize that doesn't help your stress level a lot, but it is a part of the tech world. I can understand your frustration, "been there, done that" .... hundreds of times. To avoid additional frustration while stressed, I'll postpone upgrades and installing/using software updates when tired or stressed (if possible). It's not that everyone has exceeded the capabilities of the older versions. But any company involved in providing any sort of computer tech needs to continually monitor the industry, strive to improve their software, and add new features to improve their positioning in the market. If they don't do that, they quickly become irrelevant and loose their customer base. It's the nature of the beast.
I teach tech now. I make sure to impress on my students that a career focused on the use of computer technology means you will always need to keep learning new software, interfaces, and workflows, etc. It's not an option if you want to remain relevant and a valuable employee. Again, probably not a lot of help, but just know you aren't alone. As long as we want to keep using the latest (maybe best) technology, we need to keep updating our skills and our hardware. However, since this is a hobby for you, you could decide to stop updating and buying new stuff at any time, At some point you may have to upgrade due to changes in operating systems, hardware, etc. But you can at least get off the tread mill for a year or two (or three, or ten) if you really want to!!