Daz Studio 5 development update

Richard Haseltine

wsterdan said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Plug-ins, unlike scripts, call on functions by their location in the application - so anything that changes that (the API, if I have my initialism correct) wil cause the plug-in to fail (at best). Daz has been very careful to keep the API constant through DS 4 since the betas (and before that through DS 3, and through the latter stages of DS 2) but a major chnage, like a new Qt framework and new application features, will break that. To some extent all that may be required may be a recompile against the new SDK/API, but if Daz wants to add or expand features (and prsumably we want them to do so) then some rewriting or refactoring may be required (see, for example, the way the the figure/skeleton class changed between DS 3 and DS 4 in order to add full weightmapping).

Totally understandable, but how do we deal with it? They've gone from a working, bare-bones application in three and a half years to what? It sounds like the difficulties of 2021 are still there. It doesn't sound like they have any solution to dealing with the broken plug-ins and scripts by third party developers any different than they did four years ago; if they keep doing what they're doing how much further along will we be in another three or four years? The plug-ins and scripts aren't going to fix themselves. 

What could they do to deal with the plug-ins, other than what they are going to do - keep DS 4 available so that people can do whatever they need with the plug-in/script there and then ttransfer to DS 5 for rendering if they have a  card unsupported in 4. But as I said above, it would seem likely to me that the non-Daz developers of scripts and plug-ins would not be willing to do many additional rewrite/recompile cycles for compatibility so I would not expect them to start working until at least close to a final version (and if they are already working they would not be alowed to discuss that).

Richard Haseltine

richardandtracy said:

Looks like I need to make known the magnitude of my unknown unknowns (as Donald Rumsfeldt famously put it). However, the question remains, how does WINE do it? The way I've had it described to me in the past is the it's a double ended plugin, no... more like an extension lead where the internal wires are to different pins at each end. At the 'front end' is Linux (or as we'd hope DS5), and the 'back end' it has a socket for a Windows plugin/exe file (or as we'd hope a DS4 plugin). This is the start of what would be needed to keep plugins unchanged. Regards, Richard

I don't know how it works, but the Qt framework isn't Windows so it may well be different enough to allow translation where Qt doesn't (or would be unacceptable slow/would have stability issues/would break some kind of protection in licnesed plug-ins/would have any number of other possible issues). It's not as if WINE is a panacea, see the many issues and limitations discussed in the long thread on using DS under WINE in Lunux.

wsterdan

Richard Haseltine said:

It would seem that the need to support 50x0 cards may well be like the need to support M# chips - an impetus to make the next version releasable, hopefully in a rather less bare-bones state than seemed likely earlier, but Daz is not going to specify a date precisely because of the way the previous comments have come back to haunt them.

wsterdan said: 

 If, after three and a half years they're still at the "bare bones" state, then they have much bigger problems. DAZ Studio already supports M# chips via Rosetta 2, not ideal, but it's not impossible that they'll release an updated Qt version to support new Nvidia cards and *still* not be Apple Silicon native. Mac users are the minority.

Where did I say that? Again, I haven't seen the next major version, or read its specifications, but that doesn't mean it isn't far more developed than whatever was referred to in the first post here.

I was referring to your "...hopefully in a rather less bare-bones state than seemed likely earler..." and only saying that if they were still at a bare bones state they were in trouble, not saying that they actually were at that state.

wsterdan

Richard Haseltine said:

wsterdan said:

Totally understandable, but how do we deal with it? They've gone from a working, bare-bones application in three and a half years to what? It sounds like the difficulties of 2021 are still there. It doesn't sound like they have any solution to dealing with the broken plug-ins and scripts by third party developers any different than they did four years ago; if they keep doing what they're doing how much further along will we be in another three or four years? The plug-ins and scripts aren't going to fix themselves. 

What could they do to deal with the plug-ins, other than what they are going to do - keep DS 4 available so that people can do whatever they need with the plug-in/script there and then ttransfer to DS 5 for rendering if they have a  card unsupported in 4. But as I said above, it would seem likely to me that the non-Daz developers of scripts and plug-ins would not be willing to do many additional rewrite/recompile cycles for compatibility so I would not expect them to start working until at least close to a final version (and if they are already working they would not be alowed to discuss that).

Thanks, that does catch us up to where we are now. Based on some of the change logs over the last few years, I wonder if maybe there *should* be two versions of the program, a "DAZ Studio" and an "Nvidia Studio" where the latter deals with all of the many Nvidia-related updates and the former is a more limited, 3DL/Filament-oriented software with an Apple Silicon-native version with less reliance on 3rd party plug-ins. On the one hand, it would mean supporting two versions, but on the other, they're already -- theoretically -- supporting two versions anyway.

I know, this solution is specifically Walt-oriented and wouldn't necessarily please even Mac users very much if there's a loss of features in a stripped-down version, so it's not a serious suggestion.

When DAZ Studio 5 was announced, I hoped that it would be released by the time I retired. Missed that date. Now? Without any excess drama, I'm hoping it wil be released before I die... I'm just not holding my breath.

Richard Haseltine

wsterdan said:

Richard Haseltine said:

wsterdan said:

Totally understandable, but how do we deal with it? They've gone from a working, bare-bones application in three and a half years to what? It sounds like the difficulties of 2021 are still there. It doesn't sound like they have any solution to dealing with the broken plug-ins and scripts by third party developers any different than they did four years ago; if they keep doing what they're doing how much further along will we be in another three or four years? The plug-ins and scripts aren't going to fix themselves. 

What could they do to deal with the plug-ins, other than what they are going to do - keep DS 4 available so that people can do whatever they need with the plug-in/script there and then ttransfer to DS 5 for rendering if they have a  card unsupported in 4. But as I said above, it would seem likely to me that the non-Daz developers of scripts and plug-ins would not be willing to do many additional rewrite/recompile cycles for compatibility so I would not expect them to start working until at least close to a final version (and if they are already working they would not be alowed to discuss that).

Thanks, that does catch us up to where we are now. Based on some of the change logs over the last few years, I wonder if maybe there *should* be two versions of the program, a "DAZ Studio" and an "Nvidia Studio" where the latter deals with all of the many Nvidia-related updates and the former is a more limited, 3DL/Filament-oriented software with an Apple Silicon-native version with less reliance on 3rd party plug-ins. On the one hand, it would mean supporting two versions, but on the other, they're already -- theoretically -- supporting two versions anyway.

Two versions? Despite the Premier marketing there is only one DS version - the question is which features are activated and which additional plug-ins can be enabled.

I know, this solution is specifically Walt-oriented and wouldn't necessarily please even Mac users very much if there's a loss of features in a stripped-down version, so it's not a serious suggestion.

When DAZ Studio 5 was announced, I hoped that it would be released by the time I retired. Missed that date. Now? Without any excess drama, I'm hoping it wil be released before I die... I'm just not holding my breath.

wsterdan

Richard Haseltine said:

Two versions? Despite the Premier marketing there is only one DS version - the question is which features are activated and which additional plug-ins can be enabled.

Sorry, I should have expanded on that. I was thinking of there being the current version and DAZ Studio Next (the DAZ Studio formerly known as "5"). You've mentioned that every time they add a new feature or make some fix to the current version that they're also adding the feature or fixing the bug in DAZ Studio Next. In essence, they're working on two versions of the program at the same time, one of them unreleased but still lbeing maintained to align with the released version.

Ron Knights

People are speculating a lot. I'd safely say we won't know any details until DAZ officially releases them. I just don't have the time to think on it.

DAZ is one huge reason why I gave up on Macs, and switched back to Windows PCs. I currently have a PC that runs DAZ Studio nicely.

I've thought of getting a more powerful PC. I think the timing would be wrong. I'll wait and see what happens when DAZ Studio 5 has been around for awhile.

ainm.sloinneadh

There are ways you can get around the plugin problem - you can even decompile C++ DLLs these days - but my, it isn't half a ton of work for each individual plugin. There's also likely a legality aspect to it (with the caveat that I don't know the contracting agreements between plugin vendors and Daz). It's relatively common in the gaming community in order to keep old games running, but like the people who probably do Wine, it's an act of love not commerce. Except maybe for GoG, who I believe dabble in this and for whom it may be an act of both. But even they benefit from building on the efforts of an open source community, as well as the efforts of their lawyers to keep everything legit.

nonesuch00

QT I thought was supposed to be the generic interface between the APP and the OS, just like Vulkan and openGL was suppsed to be the generic interface between graphics hardware and the OS and apps. Of course, we know Microsoft went with DirectX and Apple with Metal.

Richard Haseltine

ainm.sloinneadh said:

There are ways you can get around the plugin problem - you can even decompile C++ DLLs these days - but my, it isn't half a ton of work for each individual plugin. There's also likely a legality aspect to it (with the caveat that I don't know the contracting agreements between plugin vendors and Daz).

In the case of PA plug-ins (those which don't list Daz as a vendor) then no-one but the artist would have the right to make changes. It is the PA-owned plug-ins that are the issue.

It's relatively common in the gaming community in order to keep old games running, but like the people who probably do Wine, it's an act of love not commerce. Except maybe for GoG, who I believe dabble in this and for whom it may be an act of both. But even they benefit from building on the efforts of an open source community, as well as the efforts of their lawyers to keep everything legit.

Richard Haseltine

nonesuch00 said:

QT I thought was supposed to be the generic interface between the APP and the OS, just like Vulkan and openGL was suppsed to be the generic interface between graphics hardware and the OS and apps. Of course, we know Microsoft went with DirectX and Apple with Metal.

Qt is aframework that can allow developers, to an extent, to write platform-agnostic code. However, different versions of Qt are not hot-swappable.

wsterdan

Richard Haseltine said:

ainm.sloinneadh said:

There are ways you can get around the plugin problem - you can even decompile C++ DLLs these days - but my, it isn't half a ton of work for each individual plugin. There's also likely a legality aspect to it (with the caveat that I don't know the contracting agreements between plugin vendors and Daz).

In the case of PA plug-ins (those which don't list Daz as a vendor) then no-one but the artist would have the right to make changes. It is the PA-owned plug-ins that are the issue.

It sounds like the only way that issue will ever be resolved is with the updated version being released. If the DAZ-owned plug-ins are all working, then it's stable enough to get plug-ins working, right?

Moreover, the original plan was to keep version 4.x.x.x alive so that people who are dependent on the older plug-ins could still work. For that matter, it should probably be kept alive for older PC operating systems and video cards regardless.

Sure, some vendors might feel that they don't want to update their plug-ins for limited payback... but, those vendors would have decided that last year, or would decide that next year. I don't see there being a "sweet spot" where they'd decide otherwise. 

Plus, the sooner the updated version is out, the sooner *new* plug-ins might be developed to take advantage of new features.

Thanks again, Richard, for all of your patience. I respect that you have to play devil's advocate to some of our more outrageous suggestions while at the same time -- due to your inability to share company specifics -- you're playing the role with one hand tied behind your back. You're a better man than I.