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
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
This is the test I performed:
So, I cannot reproduce your problem, at least with this particular garment set.
What other panes are open at the same time as the dForce Companion pane? Is the Parameters pane open at the same time? In my workspace, dForce Companion and Parameters are in the same docked group, so they are never active at the same time. Maybe if you have them both open, there is some conflict that I can't see. It seems like I remember some conflict between the Simulation Settings pane and the dForce Companion pane, where I would change settings on one and it would not be reflected on the other. Man Friday said he didn't anticipate anyone having both open at once, if I recall correctly.
As I said, I really appreciate the trouble you are going to to try to narrow down this issue but it is kind of moot now because I am finding it easier to work with the standard Simulation settings (along with the viewport visibility settings) than to try to figure out the quirks of this add-on. It joins a host of other "helpful" plugins and scripts that are sitting in my library unused and essentailly a waste of time and money. I had problems with the version 1 release of this product so it is my own silly fault for falling for the tempting sale price and making the same mistake twice. You are spending more time and effort on my issues than I am and that is very thoughtful of you but I'm already past it.
Just in case it helps anyone else, I'll try to answer a couple of your questions.
1. Yes, my parameters pane is almost always open - it is where I do most of the work. My Parameters and Companion panes are (were) on opposite sides of the Viewport.
2. It is very likely that I tweaked some settings in the Simulation pane as I had the Companion open so, yes, that might have been a factor. TBH, if things like that are a problem, then not enough thought has gone into the design at some point.
3. I had the problem with the bed cover item. I tried a different bed cover (a dForce Duvet) and had the same probelm. I didn't notice anything with clothing though so it might be something to do with non-rigged objects although I was already aware of the check boxes for non-rigged, etc. and my tests were not as extensive as yours seem to be.
You have always been helpful even if you do tend to highlight my ignorance occasionally, so thank you. I tend to hang on to things I bought at a big discount - who knows, I might be tempted to drag it out of mothballs at some point.
If there's a point to my posts highlighting this issue, it is probably to say that the DAZ team should be including better designed tools without the need for PAs to provide add-ons to enable basic tasks. It's now years since dForce appeared and I'll grant that I have fewer explosions now (although part of the reason is that we have all become wary of collisions and intersections) but otherwise, dForce has not improved at all in that time. We need a better cloth sim which allows for dragging cloth during the sim, better (multi-layer) collision detection and, most of all, a dramatic improvement in simulation times.
Well, there are arguments both ways. Here's mine: I pay a lot - almost all of my meagre spending budget - on this hobby. That's buying mostly content, rather than software. The DAZ marketing model is deliberately geared to that spending pattern and why it has been relatively successful compared to the likes of Poser, for example. People with lots of spare cash buy ZBrush, Substance and Maya while I make do with DAZ Studio and Blender. I think that I represent a large proportion of the DAZ demographic and I will keep buying from DAZ as long as DAZ Studio meets my needs. Should an Open Source alternative suddenly arrive which can offer better features than DAZ Studio, of course I would try that - even at the risk of abandoning my considerable content library. I need things like dForce, IRay and the animation tools to keep pace with the technology and the free Blender is already better than DAZ Studio at animating and cloth simulation. Nevertheless, I prefer to work in one application so I don't export to Blender to do those things. That's not to say that the temptation to do so isn't increasing.
So this error pops up when I use DForce Companion SPECIFICALLY when the old props by Jack Tomalin+Daz are in the scene. THe Simulation works fine, it just throws this error.
Some of Jack's sets have non-standard hierarchies (they don't have a single root bone) - it's possible that the plug-in is making an assumption there, or in some other respect, and so getting invalid data. Do you have some specific examples?
West Park Ward Iray, West Park Iray, West Park Lobby Iray.
Basically any promo scene for the iray versions.
Well, the main West Park certainly has multiple root bones, though that doesn't prove that that is the issue.
I just recently bought the dForce Companion 2.0 because it was in the Fastgrab sale, but I don't seem to be able to install it.
Since there doesn't seem to be a way to install it through the Install Manager, I downloaded the executable and executed it, but the plugin doesn't show up in DAZ Studio. There is no option to open the dForce Companion Pane, and under "Help > About Installed Plugins" the plugin doesn't show up.
There is also no matching .dll file in "C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins".
I tried running the installer as administrator, but with the same result.
Is there any other way I can install it?
@ManFriday If you ever do a version 3.0 then having a checkbox that will hide hands would be a great time saver
It installs just fine with DIM. Do you have Plugin enabled in DIM's Download Filters?
And all the finger and thumb bones.