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Even in 4.16.0.3 general release there was a problem when you enable interactive update for smoothing modifier -- Daz Studio in some situations (i.e. when you hit certain intersections of colliding meshes) becomes totally unresponsive and you cannot even navigate to disable smoothing or interactive update. It keeps trying to reapply smoothing whatever you click and it seems as if it is doing that in the UI thread which is just horrible design because any operation that can take more than a second (and smoothing can take much more) should never be run on UI thread.
Has that been fixed / improved in 4.20?
Discovered this feature in DS.
Morph Deltas are not loaded until needed.
Cool to see this from a user perspective.
Thanks DAZ devs.
2 Screenshots appended with and without Deltas loaded.
I had to uninstall 4.20.1.43. How do I reset DIM so I can download it again? (And, no, it's not hidden. I checked that already.)
Can't you find it under installed, and then click reinstall, or maybe delete.
I uninstalled it in DIM but it didn't reappear in the Ready to Download section. But I did figure out another solution. I checked DS 4.16's preferences and realized I had the Updates notification turned off. So I was able to use the Check for Updates Now button to find it. DS knows the correct skus to put in the DIM search box.
If you don't have DIM set to delete files after install it should have been in the Ready To Install tab.
Good point but not the main one... The original image data are floating point linear light values. Converting to PNG or to JPEG does not have to be lossy per-se; PNG supports 16 bits per channel and JPEG (the original) supports 12 bits. However, in practice, 8 bit truncation is used and that is where most of the loss of the original data happens (unless you choose otherwise with JPEG).
Gamma encoding helps, sRGB is slightly better (it drops resolution in the blacks where we are peceptually less senstive to loss) but both have excessive resolution at high light levels. 8 bits is barely better than 7 bits with a true logarithmic encoding and, frankly, no better if an optimal encoding were used.
Ironically color data can be encoded in about 28 bits (leaving 3 or 4 for alpha, should it be required) completely losslessly, and doing so removes spurious noise that confuses the actual (lossless) compression algorithms in PNG (LZ), GIF (LZW - LZW encoding can be used per channel up to a sufficient number of bits) and JPEG (DCT is lossless; the loss is imposed after the compression in JPEG).
Replying to myself... I did manage to repro the message, after giving up of course; that message appeared when the CW "install" directory was not in the Content Library Manager list. I didn't bother to repro it; it was happening consistently and it stopped after I added the CW install directory back into the list.
DCT is lossless indeed.
However, conversion from RGB to YCbCr which comes before DCT is already a lossy operation both numerically (it's not fully reversible in JPEG standard implementation), and it reduces spatial resolution of chroma components (Cb, Cr), unless chroma subsampling is disabled by saving using higher quality preset.
Also, the main loss is not imposed after compression but before -- the loss comes from quantization of DCT coefficients (discarding of higher image frequencies which amounts to reduction of "noise" and thus reduction of entropy). That also happens before Huffman (or arithmetic coding), both of which are the final and lossless compression steps.
Have we figured out all the quirks/bugs to this new (4.20.1.43) update? There's something strange going on with how video card memory is used and it's confusing me.
Same video card (3080), same two models (two g8s), same environment, same rendering settings. In the past (like three updates ago), achieving 2k iterations took ten minutes. Now? 1 hour.
Hide one of those two g8 characters, the scene takes 7 minutes. Then I hide the one that wasn't hidden and re-show the one I first hid and that scene takes 7 minutes.
No CPU fallback, and it's not failing to render. Why is Daz so much slower now when it uses more video memory? And it's not even that much!
2022-07-05 22:27:21.282 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.8 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080): Scene processed in 11.612s
2022-07-05 22:27:21.294 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.8 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080): Allocated 94.922 MiB for frame buffer
2022-07-05 22:27:21.294 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.8 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080): Allocated 1.906 GiB of work space (2048k active samples in 0.000s)2022-07-05 22:27:21.294 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.8 IRAY rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080): Optimizing for cooperative usage (performance could be sacrificed)
2022-07-05 22:27:23.075 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER :: 1.8 IRAY rend info : Allocating 1-layer frame buffer
That's for the image that's taking an hour. Keep in mind if I hid ONE g8 character (out of the two) it would take 7 minutes to reach 2k iterations. What's going on here?
Everyone still on 4.16.0.3 General Release beware of latest NVIDIA Studio driver 516.59 -- at least for me on RTX 3090 it causes a visible artifact in Iray both in preview and in final render. It looks like a darkened horizontal stripe across the whole image. Furthermore, when zooming out the scene in Iray preview, the geoshells get somewhat darker and take approx. 3 seconds to "blend" into the figure (reach same color / lightness / convergence level).
I tried in 4.20.1.43 and could not reproduce the dark stripe there. It also seems that geoshell flickering when zooming in Iray preview has been reduced to almost unnoticeable (which is probably what broke geoshells in the older Iray in this latest driver the first place).
I guess what I am trying to say is that if you are on 4.16 you should avoid this driver, if you are on 4.20 it may benefit you.
Are DS Beta's time limited or can the installers be saved and installed later at any time?
They can be installed and used at any time, but if they have been superseded you will need to be working with DIM offline or it will see the newer version and want to download and install that rather than the older version.
OK, thanks!
Or save em for as long as you want.
or?
Same here, rtx 3080, the problem is with Hdri, if you use only scene lights the line disappears.
I need to roll back the driver.
I reported this to NVIDIA as a driver bug. The response I got was this:
So, we can either choose to stay forever on NVIDIA Studio Driver 512.96 and Daz Studio 4.16.0.3 General Release and have working Ghostlights, or update to NVIDIA Studio Driver 516.59 and Daz Studio 4.20.1.43 and have broken Ghostlights, noiser image, and slower convergence.
I already reverted to 512.96, I have no intention of manually fixing lights in hundreds of scenes and products.
This notion that Daz Studio can do NOTHING is 100% false. Daz Studio-Tafi could solve many people's issues by giving them what they ask for...the previous version of Daz Studio.
Besides that, why did Daz include the latest version of Iray in the first place? They could have just not used it. Daz can also lend Iray an ear, and suggest to them quite strongly how their customer base might become quite upset at these sudden changes to Iray.
After all, I can understand somewhat that glitches got caught and fixed when Iray was new. Iray was released with a SSS glitch, and it sure did suck when Genesis 3 characters like Tenshi started to look like zombies after this glitch was fixed.
But that was a different situation. Iray was new. Now Iray has established itself for nearly a decade. There are professionals who use Iray in their work, and we see their grievances in this and other threads. It just seems to me to be a very odd time to decide that right now just had to be the time to "fix" these so called glitches that have existed for almost 10 years (keep in mind Iray existed before it was brought to Daz Studio). And is the opacity of mesh not effecting light output truly a glitch in the first place? It doesn't make sense to me to decide this needed to change now after almost 10 years of establishing it to work the way it did.
However, no matter what anybody thinks of that issue, this all goes away instantly if Daz Studio-Tafi would allow users to download the previous version. You have multiple people who use Daz Studio for work who made the very simple mistake of updating. How can you really blame them when they are being TOLD to upgrade by not just huge banners on the store front page, but even within the Daz Studio app itself?
And yet after hyping this weak update that breaks so many features, you REFUSE to offer your own customers who bought into the hype any recourse to go back.
That decision is 100% on YOU, Daz-Tafi Inc. That is your management team's decision to deny your customers a choice.
Why did Daz ship the new version of Iray? There may well be contractual issues, but even if not it has bug fixes (for bugs that weren't featuers) and new features (hair curves, VDBs), and will no doubt have more in future. As for making representations to nVidia, what makes you think they didn't?
The result is what matters.
Adding a couple new things and a few bug fixes does little to sugar coat the fact that this program's behavior since 2014 has been altered in a very dramatic way. Adding VDBs and hair curves does NOTHING for the professional artist who was depending on Daz Studio to produce their art works with this behavior and made the mistake of upgrading. And not only that, we are forgetting the other problems that have been documented here, the long render times in some scenes, and other lighting oddities. So while we focus on the ghost lights, they are NOT the only step backwards in 4.20. These things easily negate the positives that 4.20 may bring. I don't care about smoke or fog. That is cool and all, but doesn't effect me in the slightest. Ghost light do. Long render times do. My lights not having the same properties hits hardest of all.
Let's consider the possibilities here. Shall we.
In one scenario, if Daz did not contact the Iray team over this issue, that would be an obvious disregard for their customers.
In another scenario, if Daz did contact the Iray team, the result again speaks for itself, the Iray team ignored whatever Daz may have suggested to it.
Either situation is bad! The second situation is possibly even worse, as that would make it very clear to people that Iray does what Iray wants to do, and there is nothing Daz can do about it.
If Iray does what it wants to do, then what next? What other massive sudden changes might the Iray team decide to unleash? What is to stop them? What if they removed the CPU fallback mode entirely? What if they required RTX hardware and killed all support for non RTX? Or...what if they just decided to throw in the towel and end Iray all together?
Ultimately, it was Daz-Tafi that made the decision to use Iray. It is not like Nvidia had a gun to the former CEO's head. It was Daz-Tafi's decision to agree to the contract terms. So if they are contractually obligated to always have the latest Iray, that is still on Daz-Tafi for accepting these terms in a contract. As a software company, surely they would have known that problems can pop up with such a stipulation. After all, what if Iray released a truly broken update? And what if Iray released an update that caused mass pushback from the customers? *cough* Surely a smart contract negotiation would have these things covered...right?
Somebody at the top makes these decisions, or agrees to them. So yes, regardless of why the situation is what it is, this still falls on Daz-Tafi for allowing the situation to exist in the first place.
This also ignores the other solution that I keep repeating...providing past versions for download. If people can just revert back nearly all of this goes away..But Daz does not allow this.
Vray supports invisible lights with dedicated options built into the software. https://docs.chaos.com/display/VMAYA/VRayLightRect
Octane can also have lights set up this way.
Blender has a little check box to turn off the light emitter visibility. Easy peasy.
Would people agree that these are popular rendering engines? They show up quite frenquently on any website that discusses 3D rendering, certainly more so than, um, Iray does. This is a pretty standard feature of 3D rendering. Not a glitch.
But even beyond this, the way mesh lights are handled has been altered as well. So even if tomorrow Daz releases an update that adds this checkbox, the scene will still not look the same as it did in past versions.
What makes you think that Daz has any sway over what Nvidia does?
Let's rephrase the question -- what does it matter whether Daz has any sway over NVIDIA or not?
Having no sway over NVIDIA still does not absolve Daz from the responsibility of keeping backward compatibility in Daz Studio.
Imagine the situation if NVIDIA decides to remove thin film just because they can. How many assets and existing scenes would be broken?
Who would be responsible to keep those assets working in next version of Daz Studio? Certainly not NVIDIA.
Daz is clearly not in a position to write its own render engine, it is therefore going to have to partner with someone else. There was certainly no real prospect of getting Vray or Octane embedded in DS at the time, and I'm not sure how plausible to would be now. Daz has not upgraded 3Delight, which means older shader code still works (3Delight dropped RSL support) and people complain about havving an out-of-date version; Daz has, possibly has had to, updated Iray and people are unhappy about the consequences of that. I'm certainly not going to criticise either group's unhappiness, they are entitled to that and to wish that Daz had taken another path, but they need to recognise that there are, and to a greater extent were, limited options from which to choose and that they are not aware oif all the facts relating to the decisions.
people paid for Vray for Modo, but now it is no longer available and is about to lose support (though it will continue to work) - any render engine has the potential to be dropped by its developers, or its developers may cease trading (which may well stop the engine from working if it uses any kind of activation). Open-source should not suffer that fate, though it still depends on having sufficient developer interest, but at the time I think the only PBR open-source option was Luxrender which was CPU-only and slow.
The problem with the bolded part above is that we still don't have an official statement from Daz about the decision that was, (according to what you say) apparently, made.
So, please let us know whether the decision was made to not have fully invisible lights going forward, and if so, is that decision final?
That's all we want to know so that we can adjust our expectations accordingly, and stop investing our time and money into an ecosystem which doesn't care about our needs.
As for the rendering engine, there is another option available now for free and it is apparently also open-source and uses open standards (OpenCL and Metal) so it works on any hardware, not just NVIDIA -- AMD Radeon ProRender.
Reinstating (almost) transparent lights that don't reflect (it's the latter that is currently the big issue) is not something Daz has any control over - if they did I would be pretty sure they would reinstate them.
Prorender came out after Iray was integrated into Daz Studio, and was much less feature-rich than iray for a long time - I don't know it's current status, but it certainly doesn't seem to have much momentum. Changing render engines now would break a lot more than ghost lights, I can't believe it would be the lesser evil (and there is nothing to stop an interested developer from using the SDK to integrate any renderer with a published API).
The easiest and most logical "fix" in terms of keeping people happy and productive is to keep previous versions of DS available for download. Even Blender has watershed moments where major features and functionality were removed in favor of easier maintenance and progress, but you can still download versions of Blender that have those features.
I think this is the best solution, release a second version with minor upgrades overtime that is working just like it used to.
For people using Daz for work, it is a nightmare if a client ask them to make a minor adjustment in an old file. I completely understand that the software needs to go further, and some sacrifices are expected, but having an alternative is not a big deal.
That would slow down development overall, as the team would be trying to juggle different versions - and also ignores the fact that some "minor fixes" are in fact anything but minor and would have just as much potential to break something as a more significant update. And again, we do not know anything about the agreement between Daz and nVidia and so have no idea what constraints daz may be working under (nor do we know how much liberty they have to discuss their agreement with nVidi