Problem with Special effects product

niteowlsky

Hi guys,

so I just bought the Fantasy and Sci-Fi effects product by Blondie9999

 

However, it doesn't seem to work at all. I've been trying for an hour to use the multi-sphere but it either doesn't show up in renders or, if I try to apply shaders on top of the map,  just a few fragments show up, not to mention that it's supposed to consist of 4 spheres you can move independently but instead it just shows one at a time, I get error messages when I try to load some of those and there are other odd things

As far as I know it installed fine, and I can see the sphere in the scene, but it doesn't work in the renders, either Iray or 3Delight... if I just use the default settings, and so far tweaking values hasn't helped

Am I missing something or is this product just not compatible with the current  version of DS? If that's the case it's a bit of a ripoff, it should at least come with warnings. Is there any way to contact vendors to get more info about certain products?

Any help would be really appreciated, so far this just looks like a waste of money... too bad it's supposed to be pretty cool

Leana

Try loading the Poser version of the props and then applying the DS materials to it, IIRC this works in recent versions of DS.

niteowlsky

Leana said:

Try loading the Poser version of the props and then applying the DS materials to it, IIRC this works in recent versions of DS.

I'm not really sure what this means..... I only have DAZ, how am I supposed to download the Poser version of the props?

Fiddling around with it a bit, I got it to show up in a 3Delight render.... but even so it doesn't look good because you are supposed to be able to combine 4 different spheres but that doesn't work at all.... in fact some dials don't even do what they're supposed to....(some dials are supposed to rotate spheres individually, but instead the frame around it moves, and you can only pick one material at a time even though I selected each individual sphere in the scene tab..

 

 

 

sriesch

Can you provide a screenshot, and the exact error messages and steps to reproduce leading up to them?  I don't have the product myself, but others who have it might perhaps be able to help you better with this information.

Are you having the problems in the final render, or only in the preview window?  The preview window is only a rough estimate and is not always an acurate estimate of what it

By "load the poser version of the props", I believe Leanna was referring to content that is shipped in both DAZ Studio (.duf, .daz, .ds, etc) and Poser formats (.pz2, .cr2, etc.) which, while intended for Poser, can usually also be used in DAZ Studio anyway.  So if you were using ProductThumbnailX.duf, instead try ProductThumbnailX.cr2 .  If the product is available in both formats and you download and install everything, you should already have it installed.  I think some installers have it split into multiple installer files though (ones that end in _ds and _ps for example) , and you may have chosen not to install the poser version, or maybe DIM can even be set up to not show these files to you, I forget.

SpottedKitty

Isn't this the one that's never worked right since about D|S2? Note that it is very, very old, dating from the very early days of DAZ|Studio. This also means the materials are set up to work only in 3Delight, if you want them to work in Iray I think you might have to reverse-engineer and rebuild each material.

One thing that sometimes works (not sure why), instead of double-clicking on the material setting to apply it, drag from the content tab onto the prop.

As for the "only seeing one sphere" problem, that's a limitation of the Viewport — it isn't very good at showing multiple overlapping transparencies. Even if the material setting is properly applied, it won't look right until you render. The same thing frequently happens with hair.

niteowlsky

Thanks for the comment guys but yeah, I guess it's so old it doesn't work well with 3Delight either

(btw with Iray yeah, it doesn't work either in the preview or in a render, I tried, that area is just a weird mess of strange fragments when I tried to render)

for 3 delight the problem is that when making the scene if I try to assign different materials to the four spheres I either get error messages or one disappears and the new one is the only visible one (in the render as well). I'll try the trick someone suggested of dragging the material to the prop, see how it works...or to look for individual files and use the CR2 instead.

Regarding the error, a window just pops up saying an error (unspecified) has occurred...

I still think it's a bit lame that they're selling products that don't work with current versions of DAZ anymore without a clear disclaimer, like "might not work with recent versions of the program".... but I guess it is what it is, about twenty bucks down the drain.

I liked a couple of other FX products, also a bit older, but they seem mainly made for poser... fortunately I jsut tried one, considering the results I'll stay away from the others

fixmypcmike

If you purchased it within 30 days, request a refund

sriesch

It is possible they don't know about the issue.  If you could report it as a content problem with steps to reproduce, perhaps someone at DAZ could update the product page to indicate compatibility as you suggest so nobody else will encounter this issue.  (or fix it, if it's actually easily fixable and still saleable.)

fixmypcmike

The product has two versions , a DS version and a Poser version.  If you have DIM set to just show DS products it won't show the Ps version, but you can download the Poser version and load the Poser objects from Content Library > Poser Formats > [content library name] > Figures > B9999_FX_P5, then apply the shader presets from the DS version to them.

Chohole

niteowlsky said:

Fixmypcmike said:

If you purchased it within 30 days, request a refund

How do I ask for a refund?

Use the Contact Us button at the bottom of the page, that takes you here   http://www.daz3d.com/help/help-contact-us   Submit a help ticket, that page tells you what details you need to incude. Sales Support is the dept ypu need from the list.

Chohole

BTW did you know there was a very in depth readme for this product.http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/3913/start

niteowlsky

Chohole said:

BTW did you know there was a very in depth readme for this product.http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/3913/start

I didn't know but I read it now... not sure it helps because I was already doing what they mentioned, since in applying mats I used the icons showed in the smart content, so I don't know the file name offhand but unless I'm mistaken those should be the ones for DAZ (I have a couple of unrelated items that were made for poser and they never show up in the smart content library)