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

Saint

I never had to save a layout before, up to 4.16.0.3, so if there's something new that has to be enabled, would like to know what I'm missing here.

takezo_3001

Richard Haseltine said:

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.

That's because I cut my post from the original as it was too snarky, basically I was complaining about how they introduced a feature without providing the proper tools/items to use it, as in, there aren't any VDB files included with the new feature package... 

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. 

You're supposed to back up your installation files before you upgrade to a new beta/gen release, (There seriously needs to be a sticky about this!) So unless you write a ticket and request one (No guarantee you'll get one) you're stuck with the version that you already installed; and secondly, it's a beta, that means there aren't any time constraints with how long they are released to the public.

VEGA

Ghost lights in their previous form are not coming back, deal with it. It's not how the real life luminance works. There are workarounds for that, but DAZ has nothing to do with it. No amount of tickets is gonna bring that functionality back.

jbowler

4.20.02:

1. Character load times seem slightly improved.  The first time I ran my "loadtime" script it took 169s with my minimal subset and no DSON cache, but then weirdly the times were all reduced, with and without the cache.  This might be down to disk access/Windows NT file caching.  Anyway I got 18.4s load without the cache, 14.3s with the cache.  Swapping to my full content set the no-cache time is 127s and with the cache and 118s without.  This is still too long for me to use my full content set.   The Windows task manager shows that the load is CPU bound and single threaded.  It seems to me that multi-threading the big hitters, the formula stuff in particular, is required; Qt provides excellent support for multi-threading operations over shared writable data structures (I use it, it works).
2. DAZ closedown is still annoying.  I stand by everything I said before but if no one wants to do that at least put up the splash screen with a "waiting for DAZ to shut down" message rather than simply aborting the launch.  It's not a problem with instances of course, so the other approach is to just use instances and find some way of merging the configuration data on closedown.​
3. I don't see any problem with layouts not being sticky, but since I use instances layout changes aren't normally persistent for me; I have to launch a non-instanced version to make a permanent change.
4. The change to make object emission respect opacity makes complete sense to me; opacity is frequently used to simulate gaps in the geometry while keeping the geometry simple.  For example a chain link fence can be implemented as a plane with carefully constructed normal and opacity maps, but if that fence is heated and starts to emit the light from the emission will be wrong if emission doesn't respect the opacity map.  On the other hand an electric arc has the property that it emits but does not in any way interfere with light that intersects it - the arc is completel transparent.  Personally I don't think it should be an "advanced" property, it should just be a property that, if set on a surface, eliminates everything except from "Bas

jbowler

VEGA said:

Ghost lights in their previous form are not coming back, deal with it. It's not how the real life luminance works. There are workarounds for that, but DAZ has nothing to do with it. No amount of tickets is gonna bring that functionality back.

I suspect it is more the implementation, not the functionality, that won't come back.  The surface "cutout opacity" parameter, more accurately "cutout alpha", is is a measure of the coverage of the various texture maps in the surface derived from the actual coverage of the surface geometry.  So it allows a geometry with holes to be simulated by a simpler one without holes by mapping the holes into the cutout opacity.  The important words are "cut out".  If the object isn't there it can't emit.

However the functionality is to make an object which is purely emissive; it might be a simple plane but it might be a lot more complex (fluorescent tube, electric arc, almost all of a star).  Simply adding a "this object is transparent" on/off setting covers everything that could be done before and, because the opacity can be used to make simple geometries appear complex, a whole lot more.  That might be what is in the programming pipeline.

elbrus1971media

DAZ Studio 4.20 does not save custom layouts, rolled back to versions 4.16

Saint

What's this Top Coat dealie I've been reading about, in 4.20? There a fix for that? G8.1 Tears and another product that adds sweat and moisture are looking really dark now, like diluted squid ink.

Richard Haseltine

Saint said:

What's this Top Coat dealie I've been reading about, in 4.20? There a fix for that? G8.1 Tears and another product that adds sweat and moisture are looking really dark now, like diluted squid ink.

There are workarounds, discussed in teh change log, but the previous behaviour was -like the opacity and emission behaviour - incorrect and so nVidia is likely to stick with the new behaviour. I am surprised they don't provide a toggle for the old behaviours, since they are goingt o affect anytone wanting to reuse old content or saved scenes, but that is where we are.

johndoe_36eb90b0

VEGA said:

Ghost lights in their previous form are not coming back, deal with it. It's not how the real life luminance works. There are workarounds for that, but DAZ has nothing to do with it. No amount of tickets is gonna bring that functionality back.

The problem is not that they aren't coming back -- the problem is that there is no direct replacement for them in Iray now that they are broken.

Furthermore, how the real life luminance works is totally irrelevant to ghost light discussion because ghost light was never meant to be an accurate reproduction of real life lighting.

Lighting in a movie or on a photograph is almost never a result of just "how the real life luminance works", and I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to 3D raytracing.

If it were like in real life it would look neither very appealing nor artistic, and to get an idea how far the movie set lighting is from reality and how hard is to hide unwanted lights, shadows, and reflections in the scene please check this video:

You say that DAZ has nothing to do with it but I disagree -- last time I checked one couldn't just download NVIDIA Iray SDK and write a raytracing application without being a paying customer. So unless DAZ is getting Iray SDK access for free, they should have enough pull with NVIDIA to either request a boolean property which when added to advanced Iray node properties allows reverting to previous opacity behavior, or even better a whole new feature (new light source type -- invisible emissive light node) in Iray itself.

silentkiller346

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

jbowler

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

First step reboot and try again.  Second step check the log file.  Third step clear the log file, restart DAZ, produce a repro sequence, file a feature request including the log file and complete instructions to repro the problem along with hardware software and NVidia Iray version information.  Include screen shots of any error pop-up windows if you can before they disappear.

Runtu

Okay, all was going well, until I went to my Render's Tab, I no longer have Enviornments.....where is that ?  Please help?

IceCrMn

Runtu said:

Okay, all was going well, until I went to my Render's Tab, I no longer have Enviornments.....where is that ?  Please help?

The Environment and Tone mapping options were moved to nodes so they could be saved with scenes and scene subsets several versions ago.

From the main menu

Create>New Environment Options Node

Create>New ToneMapper Options Node

 

Or you can just start the iray preview mode and it will make them for you with default settings.

 

Runtu

Thanks, I found them.....great....now one other thing, I tried a few new images and my renders look kind of pixelated....not smooth like before.  Am I doing somthing wrong? PS:I am updated to 4.20.

Leana

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

Make sure you have updated your GPU drivers.

Runtu

Yup did that first thing....see image, I am pretty sure you will see how the volume does not look smooth.

Richard Haseltine

johndoe_36eb90b0 said:

VEGA said:

Ghost lights in their previous form are not coming back, deal with it. It's not how the real life luminance works. There are workarounds for that, but DAZ has nothing to do with it. No amount of tickets is gonna bring that functionality back.

The problem is not that they aren't coming back -- the problem is that there is no direct replacement for them in Iray now that they are broken.

Furthermore, how the real life luminance works is totally irrelevant to ghost light discussion because ghost light was never meant to be an accurate reproduction of real life lighting.

Ghost lights were never meant to be, at all - they were exploiting what we now know to be a bug, and the bug has been fixed.

Lighting in a movie or on a photograph is almost never a result of just "how the real life luminance works", and I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to 3D raytracing.

If it were like in real life it would look neither very appealing nor artistic, and to get an idea how far the movie set lighting is from reality and how hard is to hide unwanted lights, shadows, and reflections in the scene please check this video:

You say that DAZ has nothing to do with it but I disagree -- last time I checked one couldn't just download NVIDIA Iray SDK and write a raytracing application without being a paying customer. So unless DAZ is getting Iray SDK access for free, they should have enough pull with NVIDIA to either request a boolean property which when added to advanced Iray node properties allows reverting to previous opacity behavior, or even better a whole new feature (new light source type -- invisible emissive light node) in Iray itself.

Daz receives Iray as a sealed package, all it does is interface with it. I doubt it's free, but I would not think they would have the clout to demand anything - and I do note that Iray has added the new node proeprties which do go a considerable way to addressing the base issues, so pehaps Daz did manage to influence them to an extent.

Richard Haseltine

artistb3 said:

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.

This has been confirmed and fixed, there should be an update next week. Thank you to everyone who reported.

chbautist_449450d875

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

I have the same issue, I think... Experimenting I found out that I could use Either oner of my 2x RTX2070 Super SLI setup successfully but not both. I would sometimes get a black render or messed up textures. On black renders, the Log would say I had no devices available.

Tried both of the latest and greatest drivers Studio and Gamer... Same result.

Haven't tried removing the SLI bridge yet, If GPU were not such a hassle to get, I'd be at the store getting a brand new RTX 3080 Ti and call it a day but instead, I'll be doubling my render times... Not halving it.

Do you Havew a SLI setup?

Richard Haseltine

chbautist_449450d875 said:

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

I have the same issue, I think... Experimenting I found out that I could use Either oner of my 2x RTX2070 Super SLI setup successfully but not both. I would sometimes get a black render or messed up textures. On black renders, the Log would say I had no devices available.

Tried both of the latest and greatest drivers Studio and Gamer... Same result.

Haven't tried removing the SLI bridge yet, If GPU were not such a hassle to get, I'd be at the store getting a brand new RTX 3080 Ti and call it a day but instead, I'll be doubling my render times... Not halving it.

Do you Havew a SLI setup?

SLI is not suported, so if it is enabled turn it off for DS (you should be able to disable without physially removing the bridge)

johndoe_36eb90b0

Richard Haseltine said:

Ghost lights were never meant to be, at all - they were exploiting what we now know to be a bug, and the bug has been fixed.

We are well aware of that -- the truth is that Iray could use a truly invisible emissive light source like that because indoor lighting in Iray is insanely difficult as it is.

Richard Haseltine said:

Daz receives Iray as a sealed package, all it does is interface with it. I doubt it's free, but I would not think they would have the clout to demand anything - and I do note that Iray has added the new node proeprties which do go a considerable way to addressing the base issues, so pehaps Daz did manage to influence them to an extent.

As with any SDK you get libraries and header files and documentation so you can call the functions from the library from your own code. If I had a problem with a change my vendor did to the SDK for which I am paying the license fee I would have definitely opened a ticket with them and insist on a proper workaround.

As for the new advanced Iray node property, it only does what was already possible with Render Emitter property on existing built-in light sources -- make it invisibe to primary rays. However, that still leaves them visible in reflections and you want to avoid that when lighting a scene because you are adding invisible lights to speed up convergence and to avoid having to fiddle with tonemapping, not to see them in the final render.

When doing lighting in real life there are various techniques to avoid reflections on shiny surfaces. As a side effect of the bug, the ghost lights weren't visible in reflections so they were perfect for this despite not being true to life.

Now with the new property they are visible in reflections, and without the property with boosted luminosity to compensate for opacity formula change they produce white dot artifacts at any tonemapping setting regardless of how the rest of the scene is lit.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that NVIDIA should undo the bug fix -- they should just add a truly invisible emissive light source (i.e. both to primary rays and in reflections). How is that accomplished (a totally new light node for which DAZ would have to add a new button on the toolbar or an emissive surface property that turns off opacity multiplication) is not important as long as it produces the same results as before. I really don't thing such request would be unreasonable.

IceCrMn

While sorting through a lighting issue in another thread I think I came across a problem with the denoiser found in 

Render Settings>Filtering

It seems to be restarting the render engine after only a few iterations.

Another user also saw the same behavior, but didn't post much more.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/551981/a-different-4-20-render-problem#latest

here's my log of the problem.

I was rendering  Roguey and Strangefate's "ROG Fantasy Home"

the log entries marked

[INFO] :: Failed to load image: I:\Daz Stuff\Runtime\Textures\Roguey\ROG FantasyHome\Black.png

are expected.I renamed that file to test the opacity/luminance issue we were sorting though.

and Yes, an all black map in the opacity slot with emission turned on effects luminance alot :)

 

anyway, can someone else please test this denoiser to see if they can reproduce what I'm seeing?

Saint

Richard Haseltine said:

Saint said:

What's this Top Coat dealie I've been reading about, in 4.20? There a fix for that? G8.1 Tears and another product that adds sweat and moisture are looking really dark now, like diluted squid ink.

There are workarounds, discussed in teh change log, but the previous behaviour was -like the opacity and emission behaviour - incorrect and so nVidia is likely to stick with the new behaviour. I am surprised they don't provide a toggle for the old behaviours, since they are goingt o affect anytone wanting to reuse old content or saved scenes, but that is where we are.

You got a link to those workarounds? Please and thank you. 

chbautist_449450d875

Richard Haseltine said:

chbautist_449450d875 said:

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

I have the same issue, I think... Experimenting I found out that I could use Either oner of my 2x RTX2070 Super SLI setup successfully but not both. I would sometimes get a black render or messed up textures. On black renders, the Log would say I had no devices available.

Tried both of the latest and greatest drivers Studio and Gamer... Same result.

Haven't tried removing the SLI bridge yet, If GPU were not such a hassle to get, I'd be at the store getting a brand new RTX 3080 Ti and call it a day but instead, I'll be doubling my render times... Not halving it.

Do you Havew a SLI setup?

SLI is not suported, so if it is enabled turn it off for DS (you should be able to disable without physially removing the bridge)

Of course they're going to say it's not supported but it used to work and now it doesn't. If that guy's issue was the same as mine and he does run a SLI setup then he may want to try my workaround.

 

DoctorJellybean

chbautist_449450d875 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

chbautist_449450d875 said:

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

I have the same issue, I think... Experimenting I found out that I could use Either oner of my 2x RTX2070 Super SLI setup successfully but not both. I would sometimes get a black render or messed up textures. On black renders, the Log would say I had no devices available.

Tried both of the latest and greatest drivers Studio and Gamer... Same result.

Haven't tried removing the SLI bridge yet, If GPU were not such a hassle to get, I'd be at the store getting a brand new RTX 3080 Ti and call it a day but instead, I'll be doubling my render times... Not halving it.

Do you Havew a SLI setup?

SLI is not suported, so if it is enabled turn it off for DS (you should be able to disable without physially removing the bridge)

Of course they're going to say it's not supported but it used to work and now it doesn't. If that guy's issue was the same as mine and he does run a SLI setup then he may want to try my workaround.

SLI was never supported. The new NVLink bridge for RTX cards however is supported, but only the textures are shared.

chbautist_449450d875

DoctorJellybean said:

chbautist_449450d875 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

chbautist_449450d875 said:

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

I have the same issue, I think... Experimenting I found out that I could use Either oner of my 2x RTX2070 Super SLI setup successfully but not both. I would sometimes get a black render or messed up textures. On black renders, the Log would say I had no devices available.

Tried both of the latest and greatest drivers Studio and Gamer... Same result.

Haven't tried removing the SLI bridge yet, If GPU were not such a hassle to get, I'd be at the store getting a brand new RTX 3080 Ti and call it a day but instead, I'll be doubling my render times... Not halving it.

Do you Havew a SLI setup?

SLI is not suported, so if it is enabled turn it off for DS (you should be able to disable without physially removing the bridge)

Of course they're going to say it's not supported but it used to work and now it doesn't. If that guy's issue was the same as mine and he does run a SLI setup then he may want to try my workaround.

SLI was never supported. The new NVLink bridge for RTX cards however is supported, but only the textures are shared.

OK so I should say I have an NVLink setup... Sorry about the confusion, I'm too old school for school ;-) In my defense, it is still refered to as SLI in the NVIDIA control pannel.

So the textures are shared in memory, I believed only RTX Titan and Quadro cards actually shared resources through the bridge when rendering. Never found the official source saying one way or the other.

I disabled SLI/NVLink through software, although Task manager only reports one card doing the work, the temperature of the 2nd card and the render times are consistant with a 2 GPU job. Textures aren't messed up either. Looks like I might have lost a bit of VRAM headroom for my scenes but I can live with that.

fastbike1

I not sure what you expect. It's a cloud. It won't be "smooth". 

Runtu said:

Yup did that first thing....see image, I am pretty sure you will see how the volume does not look smooth.

jbowler

Saint said:

You got a link to those workarounds? Please and thank you. 

The link to the change log is always (well, so far always) on page 1 of this thread; it's the first link in the first post.  I'm not sure it helps; the reference seems to be to 4.16.1.{3,6} and it suggests that a work-round was implemented inside DAZ Studio.  There is a work-round for the immediate visibility of the light from ghost lights which has to be switched on (same entry), but as pointed out above the actual bug was (I think) that ghost lights modified the behavior of every surface they intersected.  Here are the entries, FWIW:

Public Beta (4.16.1.6)

• Implemented a partial workaround for NVIDIA Iray thin-film changes

  • Approximates (does not replicate) the previous behavior

  • Cannot fully match the previous behavior, but does match color characteristics to some extent

  • Affects reflection and transmission - the previous behavior only affected reflection

  • Cannot match three-or-more color variations

DAZ Studio : Incremented build number to 4.16.1.3

---

 

• Added support for enabling/controlling “Iray Visible to Primary Rays” when NVIDIA Iray is the active renderer

  • If a DzBoolProperty (user) property, named “Iray Visible to Primary Rays”, with the property group path of “Display/Rendering/Iray”, and a default value of true, is added to a node, the value of this property is used to specify whether or not an object is visible to primary rays (i.e., directly from the camera)

    • Does not control visibility to reflection/refraction/etc

    • Does not affect decal nodes

DAZ Studio : Incremented build number to 4.16.1.6

 

areg5

Richard Haseltine said:

johndoe_36eb90b0 said:

VEGA said:

Ghost lights in their previous form are not coming back, deal with it. It's not how the real life luminance works. There are workarounds for that, but DAZ has nothing to do with it. No amount of tickets is gonna bring that functionality back.

The problem is not that they aren't coming back -- the problem is that there is no direct replacement for them in Iray now that they are broken.

Furthermore, how the real life luminance works is totally irrelevant to ghost light discussion because ghost light was never meant to be an accurate reproduction of real life lighting.

Ghost lights were never meant to be, at all - they were exploiting what we now know to be a bug, and the bug has been fixed.

Lighting in a movie or on a photograph is almost never a result of just "how the real life luminance works", and I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to 3D raytracing.

If it were like in real life it would look neither very appealing nor artistic, and to get an idea how far the movie set lighting is from reality and how hard is to hide unwanted lights, shadows, and reflections in the scene please check this video:

You say that DAZ has nothing to do with it but I disagree -- last time I checked one couldn't just download NVIDIA Iray SDK and write a raytracing application without being a paying customer. So unless DAZ is getting Iray SDK access for free, they should have enough pull with NVIDIA to either request a boolean property which when added to advanced Iray node properties allows reverting to previous opacity behavior, or even better a whole new feature (new light source type -- invisible emissive light node) in Iray itself.

Daz receives Iray as a sealed package, all it does is interface with it. I doubt it's free, but I would not think they would have the clout to demand anything - and I do note that Iray has added the new node proeprties which do go a considerable way to addressing the base issues, so pehaps Daz did manage to influence them to an extent.

You know, Richard , many good inventions throughout the course of history are a result of accidental discovery.  They were never supposed to work but exploited a known bug?  Guess what:  they did work and many people, myself included, love them.  The answer should not be "oh, it was a known bug and now it's fixed."  The answer should be "We know what the bug was that made ghost lights work in the last versions and we are doping what we can to put the "bug" in the current release."

 

My opinion.

edwardaoliver68

Richard Haseltine said:

chbautist_449450d875 said:

silentkiller346 said:

I have installed Daz 4.20 and Nvidia Iray not working anymore. How do I fix that?

I have the same issue, I think... Experimenting I found out that I could use Either oner of my 2x RTX2070 Super SLI setup successfully but not both. I would sometimes get a black render or messed up textures. On black renders, the Log would say I had no devices available.

Tried both of the latest and greatest drivers Studio and Gamer... Same result.

Haven't tried removing the SLI bridge yet, If GPU were not such a hassle to get, I'd be at the store getting a brand new RTX 3080 Ti and call it a day but instead, I'll be doubling my render times... Not halving it.

Do you Havew a SLI setup?

SLI is not suported, so if it is enabled turn it off for DS (you should be able to disable without physially removing the bridge)

I have that problem as well !!! is there a way to go back to the previous version ? I have reloaded the entire program and it still does it !!! Someone in laymens terms break it down to me !!!