Daz Studio Pro BETA - version 4.20.0.17! (*UPDATED*)

DoctorJellybean

artistb3 said:

So, for those of us who use emissive lights, DAZ has a "solution" that may cause every single Iray scene we ever worked on to no longer work, as is.  The first thing I did after installing 4.20 was to render a scene I created yesterday.  I immediately noticed a change in the lighting.  I use emmisive planes extensively for scene lighting.  In order to insure that the light geometry does not show in the render, I set the opacity on the emissive light object to 0.000001. DAZ appears to have changed the behavior of these lights such that the light will no longer emit unless the opacity is set to 1.0. 

But if the emissive object opacity is set to 1.0, then light geometry will show in the render if the emitter is in the cameras field of view (depending on how many sides of the light object one elects to emit and from which 3D position the camera views it).

Attached are two images rendered with DS 4.20. In both cases there is a single sided emissive plane pointing at the G8M head. Image1 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 0.000001. It does not emit and the the emissive light geometry does not render (I took Iray preview screen-shots so that you can see where the light is in relation to the figure). The previous DS release would have rendered the scene with light on the G8M figure but without the emissive light geometry also rendering. Image2 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 1.0.  It emits, but the light geometry shows up in the render. I use variations of this light in nearly every scene I created since Iray was introduced in DS.

One can search "ghost light" for information on this "solution". I will submit a ticket and hope to obtain an install of the previous version until they release a real solution.

 

You need to bump up the luminanace value. See the post before yours for a link to a post by KindredArts.

Richard Haseltine

artistb3 said:

So, for those of us who use emissive lights, DAZ has a "solution" that may cause every single Iray scene we ever worked on to no longer work, as is.  The first thing I did after installing 4.20 was to render a scene I created yesterday.  I immediately noticed a change in the lighting.  I use emmisive planes extensively for scene lighting.  In order to insure that the light geometry does not show in the render, I set the opacity on the emissive light object to 0.000001. DAZ appears to have changed the behavior of these lights such that the light will no longer emit unless the opacity is set to 1.0. 

But if the emissive object opacity is set to 1.0, then light geometry will show in the render if the emitter is in the cameras field of view (depending on how many sides of the light object one elects to emit and from which 3D position the camera views it).

Attached are two images rendered with DS 4.20. In both cases there is a single sided emissive plane pointing at the G8M head. Image1 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 0.000001. It does not emit and the the emissive light geometry does not render (I took Iray preview screen-shots so that you can see where the light is in relation to the figure). The previous DS release would have rendered the scene with light on the G8M figure but without the emissive light geometry also rendering. Image2 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 1.0.  It emits, but the light geometry shows up in the render. I used variations of this light in nearly every scene I created since Iray was introduced in DS.

One can search "ghost light" for information on this "solution". I will submit a ticket and hope to obtain an install of the previous version until they release a real solution.

Daz has not changed this, nVidia has. Now the luminosity is multiplied by the opacity, so ghost lights become much dimmer - you can turn up the luminosity to compensate, or for soem cases you can apply the Advanced Iray Node Properties script and then set the ghost light to be invisible to primary rays (but it will still show in reflections) - or use this fre script to do the configuration https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/548061/iray-ghost-light-fix-dse-for-daz-studio-4-20-o-later#latest .

Damsel

Can I keep 4.16 and run 4.20? Because I want to keep 4.16.

takezo_3001

Richard Haseltine said:

Joe2018 said:

Any news when 4.16.1.x gets Alpha Status?

And can someone confirm that load times of a G8F/G8.1F with a large content library are much faster?

Alpha comes before beta - I assume you mean general release, in which case we don't know.

Call me crazy, but whenever Richard publically voices any opinion about the next gen/beta release there's soon a release, I've seen this way too often for it to be a coincidence... Therefore, I must conclude that Richard is psychic, but doesn't really know it yet!  Thanks Daz for bringing us closer to Daz Studio 5!

Now, if someone could let me know where to find the volumetric settings, that would be excellent; thanks in advance!

takezo_3001

Damsel said:

Can I keep 4.16 and run 4.20? Because I want to keep 4.16.

Yes, but you have to BACK UP your previous installation zips/dsx files before you do, too many people here don't back up their installation files before the upgrade, as too many people are complaining that they can't roll back their new installations!

It's under downloads in your DIM folder!

Paintbox said:

So I got DAZ 4.15 Public BETA and the normal 4.15.

If I install 4.20 main branch that just been released, would the public beta 4.15 keep on working?

You have to back up your previous beta installation zips/dsx files before you do the upgrade! 

artistb3

Richard Haseltine said:

artistb3 said:

So, for those of us who use emissive lights, DAZ has a "solution" that may cause every single Iray scene we ever worked on to no longer work, as is.  The first thing I did after installing 4.20 was to render a scene I created yesterday.  I immediately noticed a change in the lighting.  I use emmisive planes extensively for scene lighting.  In order to insure that the light geometry does not show in the render, I set the opacity on the emissive light object to 0.000001. DAZ appears to have changed the behavior of these lights such that the light will no longer emit unless the opacity is set to 1.0. 

But if the emissive object opacity is set to 1.0, then light geometry will show in the render if the emitter is in the cameras field of view (depending on how many sides of the light object one elects to emit and from which 3D position the camera views it).

Attached are two images rendered with DS 4.20. In both cases there is a single sided emissive plane pointing at the G8M head. Image1 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 0.000001. It does not emit and the the emissive light geometry does not render (I took Iray preview screen-shots so that you can see where the light is in relation to the figure). The previous DS release would have rendered the scene with light on the G8M figure but without the emissive light geometry also rendering. Image2 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 1.0.  It emits, but the light geometry shows up in the render. I used variations of this light in nearly every scene I created since Iray was introduced in DS.

One can search "ghost light" for information on this "solution". I will submit a ticket and hope to obtain an install of the previous version until they release a real solution.

Daz has not changed this, nVidia has. Now the luminosity is multiplied by the opacity, so ghost lights become much dimmer - you can turn up the luminosity to compensate, or for soem cases you can apply the Advanced Iray Node Properties script and then set the ghost light to be invisible to primary rays (but it will still show in reflections) - or use this fre script to do the configuration https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/548061/iray-ghost-light-fix-dse-for-daz-studio-4-20-o-later#latest .

Daz has not changed this, nVidia has. Now the luminosity is multiplied by the opacity, so ghost lights become much dimmer - you can turn up the luminosity to compensate, or for soem cases you can apply the Advanced Iray Node Properties script and then set the ghost light to be invisible to primary rays (but it will still show in reflections) - or use this fre script to do the configuration https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/548061/iray-ghost-light-fix-dse-for-daz-studio-4-20-o-later#latest .

This no longer points to the script.  If it is one I tried (IrayGhostLightFix.dse), it does not appear to work. I hope DAZ understands how important this issue is and how important backward/forward compatbility issue are, in general. There are many, many days that I spend more time working around these sorts of issues than I do in creating art. When DAZ sees this sort of thing, it would be extremely helpful if there were an email that notifies us--those of who pay for DS by buying DAZ content--of the change/defect and how to work around it.

DoctorJellybean

takezo_3001 said:

Now, if someone could let me know where to find the volumetric settings, that would be excellent; thanks in advance!

You need the updated Default Resources package, the shader preset is in Shader Presets\Iray\Volume.

takezo_3001

DoctorJellybean said:

takezo_3001 said:

Now, if someone could let me know where to find the volumetric settings, that would be excellent; thanks in advance!

You need the updated Default Resources package, the shader preset is in Shader Presets\Iray\Volume.

Thanks for the info! Can't wait to give it a go! 

marble

takezo_3001 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Joe2018 said:

Any news when 4.16.1.x gets Alpha Status?

And can someone confirm that load times of a G8F/G8.1F with a large content library are much faster?

Alpha comes before beta - I assume you mean general release, in which case we don't know.

!  Thanks Daz for bringing us closer to Daz Studio 5!

 

I have been trying to find the thread but I'm sure I read that DAZ developers are now less optimistic about DS5 and there was even talk of it taking years. If someone has that thread bookmarked, please share. 

Richard Haseltine

Richard Haseltine said:

artistb3 said:

So, for those of us who use emissive lights, DAZ has a "solution" that may cause every single Iray scene we ever worked on to no longer work, as is.  The first thing I did after installing 4.20 was to render a scene I created yesterday.  I immediately noticed a change in the lighting.  I use emmisive planes extensively for scene lighting.  In order to insure that the light geometry does not show in the render, I set the opacity on the emissive light object to 0.000001. DAZ appears to have changed the behavior of these lights such that the light will no longer emit unless the opacity is set to 1.0. 

But if the emissive object opacity is set to 1.0, then light geometry will show in the render if the emitter is in the cameras field of view (depending on how many sides of the light object one elects to emit and from which 3D position the camera views it).

Attached are two images rendered with DS 4.20. In both cases there is a single sided emissive plane pointing at the G8M head. Image1 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 0.000001. It does not emit and the the emissive light geometry does not render (I took Iray preview screen-shots so that you can see where the light is in relation to the figure). The previous DS release would have rendered the scene with light on the G8M figure but without the emissive light geometry also rendering. Image2 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 1.0.  It emits, but the light geometry shows up in the render. I used variations of this light in nearly every scene I created since Iray was introduced in DS.

One can search "ghost light" for information on this "solution". I will submit a ticket and hope to obtain an install of the previous version until they release a real solution.

Daz has not changed this, nVidia has. Now the luminosity is multiplied by the opacity, so ghost lights become much dimmer - you can turn up the luminosity to compensate, or for soem cases you can apply the Advanced Iray Node Properties script and then set the ghost light to be invisible to primary rays (but it will still show in reflections) - or use this fre script to do the configuration https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/548061/iray-ghost-light-fix-dse-for-daz-studio-4-20-o-later#latest .

I am told that there wil be further updates to the Default Resources that will expand the Advanced Iray Node Properties, though I don't have any details about how.

Ivy

Hi Guys I been playing with the volumetrics , I have a few questions,

How did you daz guys get the Volumetric to animate? Did you create the scene and then turn volume into a mesh or something? In your demo you have a tornado animations https://www.daz3d.com/introducing-volumetrics

how did you get that to animate? Did you use fludios for the torrnado or was it done in volumetrics?   when I animated a airplane flying through the clouds the volumetric's looks good if i am pulling props through it moving the prop.  but i can't get the volume part to move or keyframe the volumetric area like you guys did am I missing something?  Is there any directions on how to use it?

when i tired something similar the cloud just stayed static like a HDRi reacts when trying to animate it I see the volume in the timeline but its not keyframing? . I am pretty sure I am not doing something right. or missing something

I've been trying all evening to duplicate your demo.   the demo was very impressive & I am very interested in how did you guys animated the volumetrics within daz studio so I can do it as well.

Thank you for any advice

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

in case nobody answers, I looked at this too and think they had several Volumetric primitives they rotated at different speeds and directions for the tornado and transformed the clouds

maybe some morphing on the primitives too

takezo_3001

Apparently, you need specific shapes/items in order to use the shader as vdb files comes in many forms as you need a specific obj for certain VDB files, unless Daz themselves provide some for us this feature is pretty useless on its own!

EDIT: Unless they already provided them yet did not tell us where to find them!

Ivy

Hi Wendy  Thats good advice,  "primitives "duh!   I wonder why didn't i see of that   I'll give it a whirl .. so to speak and see if that works 

Ivy

Thanks again Wendy, That was exactly what I was looking for now I can keyframe the clouds or volume I create . this was just a quick throw together to see if your advice work which is does you do animate the primitives .   now just refine the cloud shape

Thanks for being so smart

Ivy

yup that was it . if you make the primitives into a group  the effect is much better

WendyLuvsCatz

You might be able to even make a matching mesh in Blender and export it as an obj for more accuracy in animating it.

I have done the animating using transmapped planes moved around in the past for clouds so it wasn't hard to guess that was what DAZ did because they were not changing shape

nonesuch00

It appears to me that DS Pro 4.20.X CPU iRay rendering has been sped up again, even over the gains already in DS Pro 4.16.x. 

donkle12

Where i can find the last 4.16 version to rollback ? I don't understand why they cut the last release so quickly. 

Richard Haseltine

takezo_3001 said:

Apparently, you need specific shapes/items in order to use the shader as vdb files comes in many forms as you need a specific obj for certain VDB files, unless Daz themselves provide some for us this feature is pretty useless on its own!

EDIT: Unless they already provided them yet did not tell us where to find them!

I don't understand that.

artistb3

Richard Haseltine said:

Richard Haseltine said:

artistb3 said:

So, for those of us who use emissive lights, DAZ has a "solution" that may cause every single Iray scene we ever worked on to no longer work, as is.  The first thing I did after installing 4.20 was to render a scene I created yesterday.  I immediately noticed a change in the lighting.  I use emmisive planes extensively for scene lighting.  In order to insure that the light geometry does not show in the render, I set the opacity on the emissive light object to 0.000001. DAZ appears to have changed the behavior of these lights such that the light will no longer emit unless the opacity is set to 1.0. 

But if the emissive object opacity is set to 1.0, then light geometry will show in the render if the emitter is in the cameras field of view (depending on how many sides of the light object one elects to emit and from which 3D position the camera views it).

Attached are two images rendered with DS 4.20. In both cases there is a single sided emissive plane pointing at the G8M head. Image1 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 0.000001. It does not emit and the the emissive light geometry does not render (I took Iray preview screen-shots so that you can see where the light is in relation to the figure). The previous DS release would have rendered the scene with light on the G8M figure but without the emissive light geometry also rendering. Image2 shows how the render looks with the emissive light opacity set to 1.0.  It emits, but the light geometry shows up in the render. I used variations of this light in nearly every scene I created since Iray was introduced in DS.

One can search "ghost light" for information on this "solution". I will submit a ticket and hope to obtain an install of the previous version until they release a real solution.

Daz has not changed this, nVidia has. Now the luminosity is multiplied by the opacity, so ghost lights become much dimmer - you can turn up the luminosity to compensate, or for soem cases you can apply the Advanced Iray Node Properties script and then set the ghost light to be invisible to primary rays (but it will still show in reflections) - or use this fre script to do the configuration https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/548061/iray-ghost-light-fix-dse-for-daz-studio-4-20-o-later#latest .

I am told that there wil be further updates to the Default Resources that will expand the Advanced Iray Node Properties, though I don't have any details about how.

For those of us with lots of Iray scenes and scene subsets, this is going to be major pain to deal with.  I use "ghosted" emissive lights in nearly every scene created since Iray was introduced into DS many years ago. Hundreds.

There should be a settings selection somewhere in DS that permits the user to select how this is handled so that the defect is transparent when a prior-created scene is loaded and rendered. We have been told "You need to bump up the luminanace value." and "Daz has not changed this, nVidia has.".  Are we supposed to go through every scene created/re-used, search for "ghosted" emissive lights, and then trial-and-error how much to "bump up the luminanace value"?!? I don't care who is at fault for this debacle--DAZ or nVidia--DAZ should be providing a solution within DS. Can you imagine buying a new car from GM and them telling you that you are responsible for any defects in parts that are supplied to GM by 2nd or 3rd tier parts suppliers? 

I noticed this problem immediately after rendering a scene with 4.20. And now I have wasted half a day trying track down the issue and find a workaround.  I typically don't spend any time on this forum unless I have to track down a solution.  And usually, it's a solution to a an issue that DAZ injected into a revision (e.g. the file-save defect with Dome and Scene plus no Environment Map is still not fixed!!) or some new feature that is not fully baked (e.g. dForce).  This tells me a lot about how DAZ views it's end users. It is simply not right for DAZ to place the burden of dealing with this on the end user. Anyone who thinks DS is free is not paying attention.  We pay for it every time we buy content. In fact, I have self-illiminating propsets--puchased from the DAZ store--that include "ghosted" emissive primitives provided for lighting the scene.

I suggest that every single person affected by this submit a ticket.  I, for one, intend to ask for a rollback version of DS until there is a real fix to this issue.

johndoe_36eb90b0

Paintbox said:

johndoe_36eb90b0 said:

We need clarification for "A fully supported ghost light solution" claim in 4.20 features and fixes.

If this is talking about that boolean property and if they are still visible in mirrors and reflections than that's not a solution we were looking for.

KindredArts just posted, an update to his products will be provided and work like before as I understand it.

I just did a quick test with 4.20 beta using KindredArts' instructions, and I already have a case where there are undesirable fireflies forming in darker scenes due to insane luminance needed for the ghost light kit to work in new Iray version. I posted steps to reproduce and renders in that thread for those of you who want to check it out.

One part of the problem is that 1000000000 kcd/m^2 luminance is just two orders of magnitude below the numerical limit for luminance value -- i.e. if you add two zeros to get the equivalent of DAZ 4.16 10000 kcd/m^2 ghost light luminance, the resulting value of 1.0e+11 (which is perfectly capable of being represented in double-precision floating point) will get clamped to 99999997952.0 implying that between the value you entered and the value shown there is some operation involving single-precision floating point which is responsible for the value truncation.

Furthermore, when you are adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing such large numbers to/with very small numbers (think low luminosity of overall scene light + high luminosity from ghost light kit), numerical errors start accumulating due to the nature of IEEE754 floating point number format -- it can either represent small numbers with a lot of decimal places, or it can represent large numbers with almost no decimal places, but mixing those two kinds of values in the same formula results in numerical errors hence the (in this particular case unavoidable) fireflies.

So yeah, ghost lights mostly work fine in DAZ Studio 4.20 if you just multiply your previous kcd/m^2 luminance value in all your scenes with 10000000 (provided that said value wasn't larger than 1000 kcd/m^2 to begin with), but they are more prone to causing fireflies in darker scenes which may or may not impact you depending on whether they are in camera field of view.

vtrifonov_ee84768858

DAZ Studio 4.20 does not save custom layouts. It says "Your layout saved, you can find it under the Select Layout menu"; but it is not there. Restarting Daz Studio gets you back to the default one.

Leana

donkle12 said:

Where i can find the last 4.16 version to rollback ? I don't understand why they cut the last release so quickly. 

Older versions are not available for download once a new one is released. You can try opening a support ticket to ask them if they can provide you with a copy, but there’s no guarantee they will.

DoctorJellybean

vtrifonov_ee84768858 said:

DAZ Studio 4.20 does not save custom layouts. It says "Your layout saved, you can find it under the Select Layout menu"; but it is not there. Restarting Daz Studio gets you back to the default one.

 Check in this directory and see if your saved layout is there:

C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts

artistb3

DoctorJellybean said:

vtrifonov_ee84768858 said:

DAZ Studio 4.20 does not save custom layouts. It says "Your layout saved, you can find it under the Select Layout menu"; but it is not there. Restarting Daz Studio gets you back to the default one.

 Check in this directory and see if your saved layout is there:

C:\Users\your user name\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\user layouts

The Workspace->Customize->Export it is no longer working correctly, so it might be messed up in other ways. You might want to try it.  I found that in order to save layout, etc., I have to save to an previously-created backup file.  Any attempted save with a new filename saves nothing at all.

DreamWeever

Just as an FYI, in doing some experaments I found that ghost lights made using the little fixer script posted by Jag11 will still work the same in older verstions of DS

Saint

I'm having that same issue with the layout, the whole thing resets every time I restart now, in Version 4.20. That's a pretty big problem.

barbult

Saint said:

I'm having that same issue with the layout, the whole thing resets every time I restart now, in Version 4.20. That's a pretty big problem.

I can open and close DS 4.20 and my layout stays the same, so this problem is not affecting everyone. I use a custom layout. I don't know if that makes a difference.

Edit: Are you using Mac or Windows? Maybe that matters. I use Windows 10. Also, I executed the Update and Merge Menus command in one of the previous recent 4.16.1 Beta versions. Maybe that helped.

Saint

Windows 10 as well. I'm not updating from a previous version today, this is a post-Windows reset reinstall from the latest version.

I tried saving a custom layout as well and experienced the same issue I've heard from others. Tempted to drop a support ticket but you know how long those can take.