Whyyyyyyyyy??!!
acecombs_b317c01b8d
Posts: 100
...doesn't Daz have auto-save? There are literally no other programs I use that don't have an auto-save feature. Almost all of them save much bigger files than DAZ--Photoshop backs up my 2 gigabyte files in the background. I haven't lost more than a minute or two of Adobe work in the last 5 years and Photoshop is in use for at least 6 hours a day on my computer. It makes no sense to me that the only program that doesn't have auto-save is the one most likely to crash my rig. I know someone in these forums will say, "Just save every ten minutes." Right, that's the reason every modern software has auto-save. Because people will never become so wrapped up in the work that they ever forget to do that every ten minutes. That's an antiquated argument that belongs in the 1980s. It's time DS put on its big-boy pants and started acting like a professional program.
Oh, and if Studio 5 is going to have auto-save...never mind.
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Given how long it can take to save a scene, I sure as hell don't want DS autosaving.
The best autosave's are user controllable, in that the user can decide on the interval & turn it on-off when they need it. The default should be on, turn off by user intervention. Seems a really sensible feature to have. I wonder why most other programs have it and DS doesn't?
Regards,
Richard.
Agreed. I am used to saving my projects along the way and in multiple versions. I actually turn autosave off on other apps that have it.
I have no issues with DS having it as long as it's easy to turn off.
Same here, but there are no problems with DS crashing either.
I've lost so much work over the years in various programs because of crashing in between auto saves I make it a habit to save my scene before and after I make any changes or adjustment. In turns, I save about every 5-10 minutes, depending. In modeling apps I've been known to save every 2 minutes or so. I'd prefer to manage it myself cause some programs have a tendency of crashing on auto saves. We have a couple of them so we turn them off and save ourselves. The only 2 programs I don't mind auto save is Photoshop and Substance, because when you get going on something you tend to forget and you can get a long way in 2 minutes in both of those.
yep, DS is pretty stable for me as well, then again I am still on 4.12, LOL
None of the auto-save features in the programs I use are out of the user's control--they can all be turned on or off. They best ones also allow control over the time period between saves or the number of changes made or background save without interrupting the flow of work. A complex scene in Daz often crashes---it's gotten much better over the years but if you push it, it will bite back. That's a fact with all 3D programs I have ever used--I use Modo, Zbrush, Substance Painter and the 3D features in Photoshop and I've been a Maya, Blender, Sketchup, and Mudbox user. All of them crash and all of them have autosave. I appreciate that some people have had a crash-free experience, but one only needs to look at other posts in the forums to realize that is most certainly not the case for everyone--far from it. I don't think there are any disadvantages to having a user-controlled autosave and the advantages for those of us who do more complex scenes is obvious. Daz presents some of the professional work being done in Studio--if they want to expand that market, autosave would only be a plus.
While I was writing this, the forum software autosaved this post a couple of times. To those who don't want DS autosaving, you should be able to turn an autosave off. No one is forced to use a modern auto-save and most can be adjusted to the user's needs. I really don't understand why other users are resistant to the idea--have they never lost work to a crash?
Usually saving is one of the safest operations on computers and I can't recall any problems I've had with autosaves in the last 5 years, but as with all computer stuff YMMV. As an artist, I get wrapped up in all the work I do, so auto save has been a lifesaver for me. I've lost maybe a minute or two of work in Photoshop over the past year and that's with long hours of daily use and some huge file sizes. As you pointed out, you can turn the auto save off in software that has a less than exemplary implementation. It's rare for software not to have auto save these days.
One potential issue with AutoSave is that it needs to have stable data, so either it has to lock editing, make a copy of the data (and given how long a morph-heavy figure takes to load that may take a while - during which editing would have to be locked,) or queue any chnages the user made until saving was complete. I can see all of those being a pain for the user, and the second and third might well introduce new stability issues. I'm not anti-autosave, for what little that is worth, but I'm not sure how practical it would be in this case; most of the other applications, even the other 3D ones, are likely to have much simpler data structures than DS.
If a user saves every ten minutes, doesn't that do exactly the same thing as an autosave would every ten minutes? I'm not sure how auto-save differs from save, except that it's automatic. When programs with autosave operate, there isn't any time difference and, I'm fairly sure, no data difference from a manual save. Wouldn't manual saving introduce the same stability issues as an autosave which is just a timed or iterative save? I have several programs where the saves do take a while, but not nearly as long as it would take me to reconstruct the work from a crash--that split second of pain from being interrupted quickly passes and I'm grateful when I think about the fact that I'll never lose more than 15 minutes of work. There are also autosaves that do incremental and background saves, so time isn't necessarily a constraint. I'm not a software engineer, but it seems odd that a full-featured program like Maya, with its vast array of options, contextual menus, and far more robust rendering engine has a simpler data structure than Daz.
How long do thos application take to do a save, compared to Daz Studio? I would suspect that DS is unusual in the extent to which it uses disparae external assets, with many relationships between them. Still, I wasn't saying Autosave wouldn't work - just pointing out something that may well make implementation challenging, and might possibly be severe enough to be a block on a useable autosave..
I take it then that the issue isn't so much with autosave, per se, as it is with the long save times in DS, which is I think the root of the problem. In the cases of most 3D programs, since I am not doing animation but rather 2D finish, save time seems to depend mostly on one factor--polycount. This is controllable to a certain extent--you can reference, remesh, reduce, retopologize, defer, hide, instance, convert to static mesh, etc to reduce polycount. So you have some control over save times in most 3D programs---animation and render times are a whole other kettle of sharks. Zbrush seems to be able to handle massive poly counts with ease, others do not. I'm not sure what leads to the long save times in Daz, but as I understand it, Daz loads a character with all of its possible morphs, materials, etc. and references those during the save process. I find the actual file sizes and polycounts in DS are very small compared to files in other 3D programs. I'm not real clear on the mechanics of this, but it seems that there is a lot of extra work being done by DS that has no bearing on the finished process. What I don't get is why that's necessary. Is there a way to simply make the program stop referring to those resources once you're satisfied with a character or to just load the resources you request?
It also makes it far far easier to ensure the data is formally correct and and to use pre-existing methods and libraries to handle, maintain and verify the data structures.
I don't know, I'm not a developer. I was merely pointing out a way in which DS may differ from the other applications you cite.
Yes, though it would be a lot of work, would not be sharable, would not be extensible with new content, and would not benefit from any updates or bug fixes to the original content used.
an easily toggle-able autosave feature would be nice.... no?