Quality of life improvements and automated settings

Endlessdescent

There are a number of features I keep running across in Daz Studio which feel like they could really improve the quality of life for the user if they were changed or added. 

• If the current viewport is set to iRay mode, this uses up some vram which isn't available if you then choose to render. Could not Daz automatically turn off iRay for the viewport for the duration of rendering, then turn it back on?
• Some kind of indication if the render is using CPU or GPU rather than having to guess based on the render time or opening Task Manager. 
• A simple warning telling you that your scene exceeds vram rather than a black render which confuses new users. 
• A single toggle option to automatically apply (or not) IRay section nodes outside the visible range of the camera. They can be a pain to set up manually. You can make a camera preset saved with them but they don't adjust with your lense length or screen ratio. Anything option to hide unseen objects without a lot of manual work on our part would be HUGE.
• Remember last used tool settings. I have to change to "new window" in spot render every time I open the app. 
• Render name file automatically filled in with scene name (Most any application like Photoshop already do this when exporting)
• Pretty much everything from iClone such as ground collision detection for animations, skeleton posing tool etc.
• An option to autosave every X minutes. I know some people don't want this but it could be turned off by default. 
• Number of undo steps option.
• ​Similarly to how eyes can be set to "look at" a node, could a camera be set to a focus on a node? Just choose a figure and the focal length adjusts to them rather than switching to perspective view, finding the figure and adjusting the sliders manually. 
• Toggle option to hide or show all guides such as camera views and some kind of spotlight indicators.
• Adjust content library thumbnail size.
• Content library search by "folder" name, not just "file". It doesn't help if I sort my content by folder names like "Walk" and "Stand" or "Hair" or "Houses" if all the file names inside the folder are something stupid like "W12345xyz.duf" and Daz can't find them. I guess I could make dummy files for each folder then navigate that way...   

margrave

Those are all fine and whatever, but...

#1: INVERSE KINEMATICS

Then we can worry about all the other, less important stuff.

scorpio

• Some kind of indication if the render is using CPU or GPU rather than having to guess based on the render time or opening Task Manager. 

it does in the render progress box 

Richard Haseltine

Endlessdescent said:

There are a number of features I keep running across in Daz Studio which feel like they could really improve the quality of life for the user if they were changed or added. 

• If the current viewport is set to iRay mode, this uses up some vram which isn't available if you then choose to render. Could not Daz automatically turn off iRay for the viewport for the duration of rendering, then turn it back on?

I thought it did.

• Some kind of indication if the render is using CPU or GPU rather than having to guess based on the render time or opening Task Manager. 
• A simple warning telling you that your scene exceeds vram rather than a black render which confuses new users. 

Unfortunately DS doesn't know, as far as I am aware Iray doesn't report that to the host - the render details are obtained by scraping the logged data, but by the time that is received the black render is already there. As for new users, the default is to use CPU fallback anyway.

• A single toggle option to automatically apply (or not) IRay section nodes outside the visible range of the camera. They can be a pain to set up manually. You can make a camera preset saved with them but they don't adjust with your lense length or screen ratio. Anything option to hide unseen objects without a lot of manual work on our part would be HUGE.

Except that items out of the line-of-sight may well have an effect on the render - shadows or relfections, for example.

• Remember last used tool settings. I have to change to "new window" in spot render every time I open the app. 
• Render name file automatically filled in with scene name (Most any application like Photoshop already do this when exporting)

That does sound risky in some ways, though, if there was a name already completed just waiting for the Save button to be clicked

• Pretty much everything from iClone such as ground collision detection for animations, skeleton posing tool etc.
• An option to autosave every X minutes. I know some people don't want this but it could be turned off by default. 
• Number of undo steps option.
• ​Similarly to how eyes can be set to "look at" a node, could a camera be set to a focus on a node? Just choose a figure and the focal length adjusts to them rather than switching to perspective view, finding the figure and adjusting the sliders manually. 

The Aim and Frame commands already do this.

• Toggle option to hide or show all guides such as camera views and some kind of spotlight indicators.
• Adjust content library thumbnail size.

There is a small/large option in the Content Library option menu.

• Content library search by "folder" name, not just "file". It doesn't help if I sort my content by folder names like "Walk" and "Stand" or "Hair" or "Houses" if all the file names inside the folder are something stupid like "W12345xyz.duf" and Daz can't find them. I guess I could make dummy files for each folder then navigate that way...   

hzr

 

• Toggle option to hide or show all guides such as camera views and some kind of spotlight indicators.
• Adjust content library thumbnail size.

There is a small/large option in the Content Library option menu.

I believe the person was asking for a way to properly customize thumbnail size to truly get a good look at things when shown as an icon list. Right now, even the large option is really tiny. A size similar to the size of daz store  thumbnails would probably be best. I know that some vendors add bigger thumbnails and with a hover you can get a popup with a larger image then, but that is not the same as having the items next to each other at an acceptable size, and you are at the mercy of the vendor to actually include the bigger thumbnail to begin with. An actual custom size with image stretching for the thumbnail would be much appreciated.

Btw, did someone remove the option to toggle thumbnail size recently? Because I cannot find it anymore.

Richard Haseltine

hzr said:

 

• Toggle option to hide or show all guides such as camera views and some kind of spotlight indicators.
• Adjust content library thumbnail size.

There is a small/large option in the Content Library option menu.

I believe the person was asking for a way to properly customize thumbnail size to truly get a good look at things when shown as an icon list. Right now, even the large option is really tiny. A size similar to the size of daz store  thumbnails would probably be best. I know that some vendors add bigger thumbnails and with a hover you can get a popup with a larger image then, but that is not the same as having the items next to each other at an acceptable size, and you are at the mercy of the vendor to actually include the bigger thumbnail to begin with. An actual custom size with image stretching for the thumbnail would be much appreciated.

Btw, did someone remove the option to toggle thumbnail size recently? Because I cannot find it anymore.

I was mis-remembering - it's a pair of buttons, for grid or list, on the bar above the file-listing area.

DigitalSteam

• An option to autosave every X minutes. I know some people don't want this but it could be turned off by default. 

The two most annoying and unfathomable things about Studio, to me, are that there is serious creative software that people use for professional work that doesn't have any kind of autosave function, and - only slightly more bizarrely baffling - that there are users who "don't want this".

 Absolutely nothing I love more than losing eight or ten billable hours to a problem everybody else made a non-problem what, ten years ago? Fifteen?  So, now I have to use external mechanical work-arounds from the 90s to remind my ADD-butt to stop working (thanks - my creative flow really appreciates it) and manually do something that I shouldn't even have to worry about on any software programmed after Clinton left office.  >.<

Seriously?