Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 9
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I find the DAZ file structures to be incredibly frustrating. I would love to use the categories provided by DAZ if they were complied with. But folders like environments, lights and props are in multiple locations. Plus the vanity folders are just enough to drive me crazy. When looking for characters I want to look under the character's name not under the creators whose name I may not recall. And not all Pa's do this, so I have some characters by name, some by PA, and don't talk to me about the mispellings which cause multiple folders to be created incorrect.
Yesterday I sat down to work on a render, and everything that I had loaded into my scene said it couldn't find bits of Sarge and that would I like to install them via connect? I tried many things, and basically it all wanted to install via connect because folders and files were missing. It was highly frustrating, especially since this new computer only has 1 T of hard drive space so I have to remove files after I download them.
I'd like to think I haven't bought much re G8, but I know it's all added up.
As well as the V8 Pro Bundle, the haul amounts to...
I also bought Redz' 'Oh My Lashes' and 'Real Curly' (both for G3F) over at Rendo, as free G8 fits were available for both products. I'd have probably bought those sooner if I'd known they were there though. I already had 'Oh My Brows' for G3F (which fits G8 too) and love it, but I'm not a big Rendo shopper.
Other than that it's mostly been freebies, but I did buy Gianni 7 when he was in Fastgrab (and can't believe I overlooked him for so long!), as well as Easy Liquid iRay shaders, Oriental Breeze Pool and Pose Randomizer when they were on sale. I'm probably going to get kicked out of the thread for confessing the following, but I did pay FULL PRICE for the Architectural iRay Shaders (I know. I can't believe I did it either!). As price per usage goes though, they're probably working out a sight cheaper than V8 :) I also bought Canary's Composition Helpers on the day they came out, as anything that inspires me to create stuff from the massive stash I've already got can only be A Very Good Thing.
I'm going to be reining it in for the foreseeable now (every time I say that I end up wishing I could see a bit further than the next sale!), and at the moment the only thing that's really non-negotiable, buy-on-the-day-of-release is the next incarnation of Skin Builder.
I can't advise at all on product organization. I dread it, and have probably categorized about twenty percent of my stuff, coming to a halt when I reached the Poser folders and never getting started again once I realised I'd forgotten which products I'd done and which ones I hadn't. Elvis is rumoured to be hiding in the other eighty percent somewhere.
@astracadia LOL You'll either find Elvis by doing this- even though the file says Character, it will be Figures in Poser. And when looking for the materials in the Poser section, it's Props....
That's what I am dealing with while doing all these Rendo ones for older figures. Oh, and Elvis will be either Elvis, Ellvis, Elviss or ElvisHasntLeftTheStudio
Sonja, I originally thought where you store it didn't relate to doing the backup- but now I'm confused. I thought the backup files went in to something like Support folder, but I can't find one of those either. (Edit: Scripts has a Support file, but that's not it.) So where does that export user data go to? Sheesh. Can of worms.
Lol again, no idea. I have two external drives that I keep all of my content on (I only have the core stuff on my C Drive that would mess too much up if I try and move it, due mostly to the fact that I don't have a clue what I am doing lol) I have one for the laptop and one for the PC, but they have basically the same stuff on them (there may be some freebies that would be on one or the that I missed putting on both) so if I have a catastrophic failure, I can just re install Studio and plug the other external drive in to recover everything. This was not my original intent with these, I got them because I ran out of room for all my content and needed the storage. Since they were just around $100 each on Amazon, I picked up the second one a couple months later. The choice to go with an external drive for back up was the easiest solution for me and the one least likely for me to mess up lol.
That's exactly why I started categorizing as well, it takes me longer to find something than it does to put together a render.
And that is also exactly what happens when my categories contents go missing. One of the Daz peeps said I should do a bug report if it happened again because its not supposed to be happening although IIRC, they were aware that sometimes people are getting a double listing in categories, which is also not supposed to be happening. One for connnect and one for DIM but only if you categorize.
I don't use Connect at all,except for the few products I bought that were Connect only. I think most of them, the year is up. I'm glad I do backups of all the previous versions of the studio, just in case something goes whacky.
Okay, has this been mentioned? I just ran into an outfit that the bones don't work when putting it on Genesis 8. It's Artemis Moon for Genesis 3 Female(s) I couldn't bend that back panel of the flowing top, the first one (blue) I did postwork to fix it somewhat, but the green one I left as-is. So it looks warped. I didn't smooth it as again, these are just tests to see if things load, but that bone-not-working is annoying.
This is showing you the Rendo Fairy Woods backgrounds. A couple do really well so far as blending back, showed the two I like, and some need more work. The foreground were Lisa Botanicals items which were sold here years ago. (All the plants.) I darkened them to a blue, to match the background. Didn't bother to change them when I checked the green background. The hair is Galene Hair for Genesis 3 Female(s)
Well, just, arrrgh! It must have been something with the computer that got fixed when I shut it off, because it's not doing it now. In fact, it looks darn good! But... the teeth were this awful shade of dark brown with speckles in the viewport, and rendered to a sickly shade of black! Now I wish I had saved one of those renders! lol
I mean, I'm glad it's not a real problem, but now I've said something... so embarrassing...
I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread, but it is a known problem. Any time you use auto-fit, you can and usually do lose those bones. Have you checked out Sickleyield's tutorial on Deviant Art? It's incredibly simple to "convert" G3F clothes to G8F without loss of any bones...
[Tutorial] Convert Clothing G3 to G8, G8 to G3
I followed her instructions on the Rune for G3F I recently picked up...
Not a problem. What is embarrassing is that it took me forever the past hour, just to find where hair for Victoria 4 was located, then the materials. I knew it was in the Poser section (Content Library) but I kept looking at V4, Victoria 4, etc. (It's Hair>Daz Victoria 4 and then Materials>Daz Victoria 4)
And that is why I install and organise by hand...
Even if I had started doing that five years ago, I wouldn't have continued to do it for very long with the amount of products I bought in each order. Prices were lower, deals were fantastic, and even when we told them about glitches, they didn't fix many of them. The good old days. And nowadays there's more ReadMes which tell you exactly where to look, so I use those for the later generations. It's the pesky Generation 4 that I never use which is giving me fits due to packaging the Rendo stuff, because I want to put a few Daz products in the mix to showcase. But I definitely can see why organizing it would be a HUGE benefit!
Not to mention files intimidated me when I was a newbie, I was so afraid of messing things up. (And probably would have.) You were much braver than I was from the get-go!
Heads up, check out the freebies. The Repair Team 5 has gloves you may be able to use, even if you don't use the rest of the outfit.
Uhmm... Repair Team 5 is a texture for TEC5 for Genesis 2 Female(s)
Made me sad, 'cause I liked it...
I think organising by hand kept me in check a bit - "No new stuff until I've installed everything I already bought". All the Poser stuff is in separate Runtimes: Clothing, Characters, Hair split per generation and gender, Props, Places, Transport (everything from skateboards to spaceships), etc. Studio is in one place, but subdivided along similar lines.
I'd not recommend my personal system's logic to anyone else, but when half of the buildings are props and the others environments, or when an item of clothing and its textures each have their own vendor's vanity folder, logic is out the window anyway.
Ah, me too. I don't have that one. Oh well, it was free.
And given that the Main set is a DO for G2 you probably can grab it for next to nothing in one of the next big sales
Of course, it could always be in Pose, or Prop or even Figure AND the materials might be in the Daz Content Library side of things while the actual hair is in the Poser side of things (seriously, I have some like that). That's one of the reasons I have stubbornly held onto 4.8 on my laptop, its invaluable to be able to follow those blue bars to the new stuff, although, as you know, it doesn't work for non Daz stuff. I just follow the folder structure when I load non Daz items, when I first load them, but I categorize everything as soon as I get it. I am looking at buying the content organizer thing when it goes on sale though, as it would be nice to be able to have everything even more organized lol.
This is VH Calina (Rendo)which is a V4, wearing Cailin Hair and Amaree for V4 (with DG Iray Fabrics of Asia Shaders) That dress has zones to make it a mini, midi, maxi.
This is FW Monie again wearing Paige Dress This dress comes with 6 different textures and has a good range of movement morphs for the skirt.
You get the blue bars for non-Daz stuff also if you scan for new content.
So Dreamlight Light Set Bundle - 7 in 1 is in fast grab today, it doesn't say iray so I'm guessing it's 3delight lights??? Can someone verify that for me?
From the really old SKU number, I'd assume 3Delight. Probably really Poser lights brought over to DS.
Thanks!
Really.... I did not know this. Thank you!
VHP Limei (Rendo) again with the Iray skin shader, wearing Orion Hair (with Slosh's shaders.) Limei is another V4. If you like short hair, Orion is a cute style.
These were my purchases back in 2014, when they had sales and were usually only $3.50 Well worth transferring up to other generations. I do find many of the brows seem more painted on, didn't zoom in on this to check it, but I've done a few by Godin (coming up) where the brows don't seem to have much bump.
An 895 tall render, this is at 600 px so you can click to enlarge slightly.
Nice job on that Orion hair!
@barbult Thanks, it was easy, no tweaking except the Slosh shader.
Now, speaking of tweaking, if you folks don't have or have these wishlisted, you may want to give them a second look. They're amazingly fun to putz around with- and work really well together for glass and wax.
Here's a Rendo GCD Chandeliers before, then after, using these "glass and wax" products- one for glass, one for wax AND glass.
Rialto Glassworks Shaders and Props for Iray
What was used: I used Partial Opacity, Dove Gray from Rialto for the chandelier. This for the glass.
Decorator Kit: Neutral Shader Presets for Iray
Next I used the gray candle wax for the candles, then Golden Glass Solid for the bulbs. So wax and glass.
So what about render time? 3 minutes without shaders, only 8 minutes with them.
BEFORE (Click to enlarge, 1200 px)
AFTER (Click to enlarge, 1200 px) Be sure and enlarge and look at the glass beading on the bottom.
I've got most of his hairs on my wishlist but haven't yet pulled the plug as I'm unsure whether they'd hog my system. Do you find them very resource intensive (in iray)? Or do they render like any other hair?
I seem to own them all LOL tho i never purchased the bundle. Just confirming they are definitely for 3Delight , not iray. But not poser lights - Dreamlight started out lighting for DS, not poser and his stuff is ds native. They are really good 3delight light sets, if you use it. :)