Why are still characters with .dsa material presets released in the DAZ store? Need .duf !!!
linvanchene
Posts: 1,382
As most may know Genesis 2 female accepts only .duf material presets.
Any old character textures in .ds or dsa or any poser formats cannot be used.
The support for new original Genesis 2 characters seems to be rather slow.
The option that remains for the customer is to rely on Genesis or V4 characters and use their textures.
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Unfortunately it now has happened quite some time that even now new characters hit the store that feature only .dsa presets.
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Yes, yes PA can choose to do what ever they want.
But I as a customer hopefully also have the right to say:
I will not be buying any more Genesis or V4 characters that have not .duf material preset.
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I did not even ask PA to go trough the extra work of creating morphs or shapes.
I was asking that PA save their materials in the .duf format.
The .duf format can be used for both Genesis and Genesis 2 female.
So why choose the .dsa format that only is supported by one figure?
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Please take this as what it is:
A customer informing PA what he is going to buy in the future.
Up to the PA to deceide what they want to sell.
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Comments
Umm.. load .dsa on figure, select all in Surfaces and Save as new Material. Pop is now a .duf file. Now use on any figure. Seems easy to me.
I'm going to assume you're referring to the new Megan character. She's for Genesis/V4. If the mats were in DUF, DS4.0 users of Genesis/V4, and even earlier DS versions where V4's concerned, couldn't use them as only 4.5+ can read DUF.
I'm going to assume this was done to maximize compatibility between DS versions and intended figures.
Okay it's not Just that easy, it does need saved as a UV supported by the G2F but that is covered in a thread in the forum.
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I don't use G2F, but I'm curious. Got a link? lol
If it is so easy why are the PA not doing it in the first place?
My original question was and is:
Why are PA not saving the materials as .duf?
DS is free everyone can download it.
V4 and Genesis work in the latests version of DS.
I really do not see a single reason why anyone would still need to save something as .dsa.
That would force people running 4.0, who for some reason can't, to try to upgrade to 4.5+. Only 4.5+ can read *.duf. Maybe those specific PAs don't run 4.5+ themselves?
If it is so easy why are the PA not doing it in the first place?
My original question was and is:
Why are PA not saving the materials as .duf?
DS is free everyone can download it.
V4 and Genesis work in the latests version of DS.
I really do not see a good enough reason why anyone would still need to save materials as .dsa.
As said before by VASK, legacy support. Not everyone is using DS4+ I still use DS3A as well as DS4.6. Because I have over a GRAND ($1000.00) In plugins that only work in DS3.
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Buy the V4 Shape for G2F and then the .dsa files work because the UV is included. So it IS supported if you support the people that make the items sold for the figure. I do agree that extra step of both versions could be done, I also think the PA's should make a little more, as in Charge more, if they go that extra step. I'm willing to spend money for well done things. That is why I bought the V4 set for G2F so I could use my sets with just one click. Here it is http://www.daz3d.com/morphs/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female
Well here is the thing...each PA chooses which "platform" they wish to create for (and even which version) much like some video games are for XBox Only, some only for Playstation 3 and some for PC and some made for all of the above. It would depend on if the person making said pack understood how to utilize the duf format, whether they even knew how to save something as a duf, whether that was the best format for the pack, how many customers they have still using DS3 vs DS4 vs DS4.5 etc, how many using Poser and on and on and then it could also be that the pack was started long before the duf format came out. People seem to think that because something was released today, it must have been made a week or a month ago. We personally have had packs that were worked on over the span of months..even years in one case. So from when we started it to when it was finished there may have been quite a few changes and we have to choose then which are the necessary or most important ones and which may not be as big a deal and can wait until next pack over being redone and taking even longer to do on the current one. I know in our case we do both .dsa and .duf and also mc6 and pz2 now and while it seems like it wouldn't take much to do all those it does especially considering that in DS you can't always tell the differences in all those formats unless you do special thumbs to differentiate each files type etc. and for larger sets that can take far longer then an hour. :(
At the risk of blowing my own trumpet
You still need to use or convert to DUF. From the product page:
"note: Due to a limitation in how DAZ Studio handles presets, only material presets which are in DUF format can be directly applied. Any existing material presets must be re-saved in DUF format from the original Victoria 4."
If it is so easy why are the PA not doing it in the first place?
My original question was and is:
Why are PA not saving the materials as .duf?
DS is free everyone can download it.
V4 and Genesis work in the latests version of DS.
I really do not see a good enough reason why anyone would still need to save materials as .dsa.
DAZ has recently changed. We now have to include duf in all our products. Some stranglers are still out there cause it's new but it is changed now. You can still offer dsa but you have to have corresponding duf
I won't buy non-duf content either. Not dictating what others sell, just don't want to invest the time in converting.
It is fine and relatively simple to convert a skin or two, but sets often have tons of eye color, hair color nail combinations.
I'm not going to do that everytime I want to change a figures look. I simply will opt to use a figure that I can use.
I don't use G2F, but I'm curious. Got a link? lol
Here you go! Lots of useful and otherwise interesting information to be found there.
For one thing, nothing is quite "free", including Freebies. They may not cost money, but they cost drivespace, time (to download, to create, to load, to render...), bandwidth, RAM, processor speed, et cetera. And most of those cost, you guessed it, money. Dollars, Euros, Kroener, Yen, Yap.... I work primarily in D|S 4.5 because 4.6 seemed (when I tried it out) to cost more in computer resources than my system can generally afford. G2F is the only figure I've heard of to date with a native .duf requirement, and I don't use her. I'm confident I could, in 4.5, but I don't see a need to. D|S 4.6 still uses and recognizes (and exports) the older .dsa format, so "use the latest software and support it," as suggested, is irrelevant.
As an aspiring PA (see this thread), I chose early on to publish in .dsa format for backwards-compatibility. As Jaderail said, there are still many users who use DS3 (and even older versions, though my product only goes back to DS3), which cannot use the .duf format. (As it is, the project began under DS 4.0, which cannot use .duf files either.) Exporting presets as .dsa scripts is time-consuming, and I could probably get each set completed thrice as fast if I just saved to .duf format, or if I prepared my presets in DS3. But even if every DS3 customer also uses DS 4.6, they will find the product twice as useful as a shader (all else equal) that only came in .duf files. It's enough of a nuisance to save every preset once, with just the settings it needs and no more, and then render thumbnails for every preset in the directory, I'm not keen to bend over backwards that far just to natively support the one and only figure that fixates to the newest-latest-greatest format.
That would force people running 4.0, who for some reason can't, to try to upgrade to 4.5+. Only 4.5+ can read *.duf. Maybe those specific PAs don't run 4.5+ themselves?
EXACTLY!!!!!
Not everyone who shops in the DAZ store needs, or even wants, anything related to Genesis2, so don't yell at the vendors for not creating everything with DUF textures. As long as you can, as Jade responded, create your own DUF textures, there's no need for EVERY vendor in the DAZ store to create them, especially since not everything in the DAZ store IS Genesis2 related.
I didn't mean for that to sound like a rant, but I don't have/use DS 4.5/4.6 or Genesis2, so having products that only support that DS version and the DUF format is a pure letdown to me, and I'm sure there are others who have been regular shoppers here for many years who feel the same, for whatever reason.
Exactly! Planned obsolescence is a nuisance. Enforced obsolescence amounts to cliquish snobbery.
. . . and as an active beta tester for the ARTCollab store, I'm very grateful that they still offer the DSA format as well as DUF. Luckily there are those of us who do have the later version of DS and can test the DUF formats for Ann and Frank.
That said, I'll continue to support any vendor that offers both. Switching to DUF only is like pulling the rug out from under your feet, so to speak. In a year from now, maybe, but DUF is still too new to be the "only" version offered.
Just my 2¢, FWIW.
If you don't mind, I'd rather have separate installers for each. No need to belabor the content library with duplicate shaders when the customer only needs one or the other to get the job done.
Since this is in regards to my recent character in the store, I will respond and hope that it 'clears' everything up. The reason this character didn't have duf files is actually what someone already mentioned. Not every PA uses the latest version of Studio. My partner, Seven, on this product created the Studio Mats for this product with the version of Studio she uses (4)... we talked about it too before setting it for sale, if it would need .duf
And honestly, we didn't know that you couldn't use the .dsa files on G2 (not that we really thought much about it, since it's not for G2 anyway) but since this product was for G1/V4 -- We made it so that it's as backwards compatible as possible for G1/V4 users. Now that I know that G2 can't use .dsa, I'll make sure to include them, but in the case of this girl since she was created specifically for V4/G1, we didn't think it would be any issue for it to not be included. Seven also doesn't use the most recent version of Studio, because of technical issues with her computer.
So, apologies to you, for you being unable to use Megan on G2~ We certainly didn't intend to exclude the Genesis2/V5 crowd... ;)
-Sabby
Here you go! Lots of useful and otherwise interesting information to be found there.
I think there was some misunderstanding. I was assuming Jade was saying there was a way within DS to easily convert say a V4 map to a V5 UV, which I found nothing about that in that thread (map transfer doesn't exactly yield the best results).
If it is so easy why are the PA not doing it in the first place?
My original question was and is:
Why are PA not saving the materials as .duf?
DS is free everyone can download it.
V4 and Genesis work in the latests version of DS.
I really do not see a good enough reason why anyone would still need to save materials as .dsa.
Thank you for volunteering to buy me a brand-new computer that's powerful enough to run this "free" software.
What?
You're not volunteering to buy me a brand-new computer?
Oh.
Well, then, I guess I'm still stuck with this computer that's powerful enough to run D|S 3, but not DS 4.6.
So .duf files are still completely useless to me.
PAs, keep making those .dsa files, please.
Here you go! Lots of useful and otherwise interesting information to be found there.
I think there was some misunderstanding. I was assuming Jade was saying there was a way within DS to easily convert say a V4 map to a V5 UV, which I found nothing about that in that thread (map transfer doesn't exactly yield the best results).
Ah, yeah maybe I misunderstood. I don't know of a way to convert the UV aside from Texture Converter 2 (which doesn't have V5 or V6 options) or map transfer (which as you said isn't perfect). If anyone wants to try a map transfer, there's some info here...perhaps this is what Jaderail was referring to?
I have in truth been using this method and It does a good enough job for me Map Transfers by Sickleyield. To use any other V4 texture on the G2F with the V4 morph shape you just save the texture out and it is .duf and that will load on the G2F V4 UV properly. I just convert my textures by hand as explained in the SY Tut and By pass that.
Not to mention those of us who simply opt out of G2F.
@Jade- Thanks for the link. :)
Not to mention those of us who simply opt out of G2F.
Well, if you're running 4.5 or 4.6 and using Genesis, you can still use DUF; however, if you're using 4.0 and Genesis, then yes, you'd still need the DSA.
Exactly! Planned obsolescence is a nuisance. Enforced obsolescence amounts to cliquish snobbery.
Just to be clear, this isn't enforced obsolescence.
In the case of G2F, she uses the Surface Sets feature which is new with 4.6, and can only work with .duf's (and you'll note it doesn't have to be .duf's made in 4.6; older .duf's, and even .dsa's converted to .duf's, will work).
As for insisting on having .duf's, the difficulty with .dsa's is that they are scripts. That makes them very powerful (they're effectively programs in themselves), but it also makes them dependent on the scripting platform and quite complex to parse. In Poser, similarly, you can do things with Python that you can't with .pz2's, but if the version of Python changes, older scripts can break. Sometimes it's just a matter of recompiling the source; other times updating is more akin to rewriting from scratch.
In DS3, when they introduced the newer scripting platform, they had to write special code to parse the older .ds scripts, which no doubt was expensive and time-consuming to debug. .ds scripts still work in DS4.6 (at least, most do -- I wouldn't be surprised to find there are some that don't). So while DAZ 3D won't intentionally drop support for reading the older formats (just as DS4.6 still reads .daz files), the risk of some of them not working keeps increasing (as when older .daz files wouldn't work in DS3). So DAZ 3D is insisting that products have .duf's, to ensure they keep working in the future.
Just to clarify this, duf us NOT required for PA Products, only DAZ Buyout products. So anything that is a DAZ Original should have (barring exceptions) .dufs at this point. PAs have the option of choosing what is best for them based on the software they are using or used to, the needs of the set in question etc when it comes to their brokered products (see my previous post) As we do a fair few DAZ Os, for us it makes more sense to just work doing both .dsa and .duf into the workflow of all our packs over having dufs in this one and not in that one but on PA items as of yet I don't believe it is a "requirement" though it's always a bonus to include them if you can and I think DAZ is encouraging PAs to include them at this point..just not requiring them and especially not for products like ones for Gen 4 and Genesis 1 that wouldn't necessarily require them.
Honestly, it is like anything else you buy that can be made for multiple platforms. Sometimes you will find an item that will work for anything and sometimes an item will only work for something specific. If a PA had to account for every app and every version someone "could possibly" want to use the items in a pack could take 5 months to complete something small. In honesty Poser and DS aren't the only 3D Apps out there either. There is Carrara on this website, 3DSMax, C4D, Vue (just to name a few) all of which our content could be made for in addition to Poser and DS just sadly you have to stop somewhere. I know plenty of people on Poser 5, 6, etc still. Some people all the way back still on DS 2. Not because they are being "stubborn" etc but because they can't afford the computer to run the newer versions or can't afford the money to buy the upgrade. As a PA you have to weigh all of those factors when making choices on what you are going to support. In our case, I don't think there is a pack yet where we did not weigh these things in choosing what we were going to include, how the item would need to be textured based on the differences in the apps, how we needed to rig the items, what formats they were going to be saved into etc. The choices are not easy but most choices rarely are and with any choice you are sure to disappoint someone even when you try your very very best not to :(
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