DA Let it Snow

DMax

Thank you so much @ DesignAnvil-Razor42 for all your help! I have, once again, learned so much about DS through this product - every day is such a learning opportunity and I do not regret having put in two days of work for this! More importantly, I am so happy to have chanced upon a PA who's so inspired and supportive of his product! I just looked through your store and have added a couple of dragons and horses to my wishlist :)

Let It Snow is truly a very versatile and amazing product and to show its capabilities as well as my adoration of your post-sales support, here are before-and-after renders (with no post-work and the only difference being the LIS geolayers on the face, hands, beard and scarf) so that potential customers can see for themselves an example of what this product can do for their projects. This thread will hopefully also help them learn the ropes expeditiously. Thank you once again! Let It Snow! <3

 

Design Anvil - Razor42

You're very welcome @Dmax and many thanks for your kind words, it really is appreciated.

The render looks awesome you can really feel the chill. The added snow effects really bring out the depth in the render, especially on the beard.

A few of my products have a fairly steep learning curve which is something I work as hard as I can to mitigate. It's always great to see people who see new challenges as opportunities to learn more about DS, so thank you for bringing up the issues you experienced and for your perseverance. Hopefully others may find the info useful also and your feedback will be taken on board for future product development for myself.

Thanks 

Lothar Weber

Strange things are happening: i used let it snow a lot since i bought it. Now in my latest scene i get a duplicate formula error:

2020-08-19 08:09:29.476 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\sdksource\fileinput\dzassetdaz.cpp(6870): Duplicate formula found linking Value & Snow Thickness in G:/Users/Public/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/data/Design Anvil/DA Let it Snow/DA Snow Shell/Morphs/Design Anvil/Snow Thickness.dsf.

2020-08-19 08:09:29.476 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\sdksource\fileinput\dzassetdaz.cpp(6871): owner: Geometry Shell 1

2020-08-19 08:09:29.478 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\sdksource\fileinput\dzassetdaz.cpp(6872): output: Geometry%20Shell%201:/Props/DA%20Let%20It%20Snow%20/DA%20Snow%20Shell.duf#Offset?extra/studio_modifier_channels/channels/Value

2020-08-19 08:09:29.478 WARNING: ..\..\..\..\..\src\sdksource\fileinput\dzassetdaz.cpp(6873): input: Geometry%20Shell%201:/data/Design%20Anvil/DA%20Let%20it%20Snow/DA%20Snow%20Shell/Morphs/Design%20Anvil/Snow%20Thickness.dsf#Snow%20Thickness?value

Any advice?

barbult

Did you by one of the other DA shader products, like the Moss shader? When I bought the Moss I started getting those errors. I submitted a help request, but nothing has been fixed by QA.

Lothar Weber

barbult said:

Did you by one of the other DA shader products, like the Moss shader? When I bought the Moss I started getting those errors. I submitted a help request, but nothing has been fixed by QA.

Yes i have the DA Stonework texture product too. But strange that i never encountered problems before, because i own both products a long time now and never had any issues...

Design Anvil - Razor42

Hi Lothar, I have been doing a little research into this and the best description for what a "duplicate formula" is was provided by Richard Haseltine which helped a lot.

 

1. A formula links (usually) two properties - for example a full body controlller might be linked, by separate formulae, to the head morph and the body morph. These links refer to the property names to establish what needs linking to (the link is stored with one of the properties in its .dsf file)
2. If two different proeprties use the same name then DS is going to be confused - the .dsf for the proeprty will usually have the name of the property, but it's the property name that matters.
3. If two different proerpties with the same name each have a formula linking to a second proeprty, both using the same name for the target (whether that means there are another two properties using the same name, as I suspect is the case with your Daphnes, or both linking to the same proeprty (as, for example, with experssion correction morphs having a link to the expression they correct) then that is a duplicate formula issue.

 

This took me a little to get my head around, but I was able to reproduce the error by adding 2 Snow Shells to a single prop and then saving the scene.

It seems when reloading the scene it triggers the duplicate formula error, the custom snow geo shells would trigger the duplicate formulas error as they do share naming of properties.

The good new is I have done a few tests and this is basically a false positive from what I can tell, as the error has no effect on the settings and correct functioning of either Geometry Shell.

It can be a little annoyng but appears to have no impact on the scene itself or the functioning of the snow shells, so can be ignored.

You would likely only experience this when reloading a scene with multiple shells placed onto a single object.

Design Anvil - Razor42

After a little more testing. The error does also appear when using more than 1 shell in a saved scene, not just with multiples on the same prop. I have never noticed this before so maybe something has changed within DS at some point.

The reason I believe it doesn't cause any issues in this case is the error is primarily generated when two formulas share names but are actually different. For example two different characters called Daphne from two different creators. When DS loads the scene into memory with both Daphnes there would for example be two morphs with associated formulas called DaphneFBM, this can cause DS some confusion and it is likely that one of the DaphneFBMs would be misapplied and non functional or just discarded becaause of the conflict. In this case there is no real issue or chance of the formula failing or being misapplied as the formulas are meant to be duplicated as they are the same. Honestly I am not sure if there is a technical fix to correct this and leave out the error but it's good to know that it is just a false positive and won't effect your scenes.

Anyways I hope this helps.