Daz Studio Pro BETA - version 4.9.0.21!
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I would wager it's not always this simple. Why? Because this has bitten me, too.
You see, there are users who know how to arrange user-facing files. But we can't read the minds of PAs who increasingly release product with absolutely no readme or other documentation. MANY times I've had to basically search the zip to find what the morphs are called. The info is often not on the product page, and increasingly, there is no readme. Even for more experienced users there will be questions.
I have a feeling your tech support group may be misclassifying some of these. The culprit can be Daz itself. "Where's my stuff?" also comes down to (just a partial list):
A) Poor or no documentation of the product, such as the location and names of morphs. Daz could rectify this by requiring PAs to provide even a rudimentary readme. (The forum is full of examples of this problem.)
B) Missing or inadequate product pages that fail to list all dependencies and other requirements. This happened to me recently, where a package for an older product required the use of morephs for a completely different character. There was no mention on the product page about this dependency. So, this wasn't a "where's my stuff?" question, but a, "why doesn't this product say it requires another in order to work?"
Your comment insinuates "where's my stuff?" is always customer-based. Things like better documentation, increased QA of product pages, and requiring more consistent folder structures for user-facing files, would likely go a long way to mitigating much of this problem.
It would take the "easy" out of easy money for a week, a month at most. And even if it's six months, that'll be the end of it. I haven't seen anything under the sun that can't get cracked or hacked at some point and being an IT, I keep a close eye on how these things evolve. I also preach a lot to my customers, telling them to avoid the temptation of piracy. All the more if they run a legitimate business. Not only doing it would be wrong, but it would inevitably show. I try to prevent them from doing the wrong thing by *educating* them. I've had a few successful moments with this. I do what I can. Still, piracy is so tempting that someone will ALWAYS find a way through whatever measures you take. Ask Adobe. Aske EA Games, ask Ubisoft, hell, ask ANY major company dealing in computery things. DRM fails. Oh wait. There IS a group of people it works very well for: those who sell the stupid drm to companies, promising it'll protect their assets. If you guy develop your encryption inside DAZ3D as opposed to buying a solution from a third party company, that's the only thing you'll achive: not being conned by some greedy security company.
The whole thing about how the "like it's 1995" comment and how vexed some people have felt about it somehow got me thinking tonight about another issue: how people react to what a company says or does, on an emotional level. Yeah, DAZ, sorry to say: we're not just your cash cows, we're people too. So, sometimes, even if that is truly not your intention, you can piss off people. DRM can piss off people who buy and do it in two different manners. First, you'll force theml to use a method of purchase and validation they DO NOT WANT in the first place, telling them that THEIR way is not the right one. In my experience, telling people how to do things in their own home doesn't work well, neither in a personal or professional relationship. Secondly, honest buyers will have to "show their badge" to prove they bought the item they just paid for, if you get my meaning. It's just like these ads when you launch a dvd. You bought the thing on Amazon, it arrives at your place and you have to stomach the "PIRACY IS A CRIIIIIME!" warning every bloody time. I bought the movie, jackass. Don't remind me that I have to, you just cashed in my money alright? Although...
Although there IS a difference between the DVD warning and what you guys are going to implement. This is going on inside a *software* package. Now... what will Daz Connect really do? Will it just verify a product and allow people to update, download, "organise (I am trying not to laugh here, about that one, but after 19 pages of autistic answers, I wiill mark it as a dead horse)" our files? Not only am I an IT, but I am a paranoid one. Otherwise, I'd be a shitty IT. What will be done with all that info? At the very least, you'd probably use it as a statisitical tool to see what kind of products clinch it for this or that user. If ads make it into DS one day, well... targeted ads anyone? Now with the really unpleasant bit. I think that, following the "let's protect the merchants" concept, another one, more nefarious, might follow suit. "Let's find out who stole our shit". Yes, guys. Home search. Daz going through your dirty socks basket just to make sure you didn't turn to the dark side and pirate the latest G3 swimsuit with the pink frills. While on a strictly logical point of view, this could be very effective when it comes to nail people who use pirated stuff, on a moral level, it's as bad as piracy itself. It's invasion of privacy. You can't just invade someone's privacy based on the postulate that they hypothetically COULD have pirated content in their runtime. That would be like kicking down all the doors in a neighborhood, assuming that one of the locals could be a drug dealer. Oh I am sure your legal counselors could slip something sneaky and almost unnoticeable in your TOS and stuff to cover your legal ass. After all, nobody reads that stuff, right?
Now... I am not saying you WILL do this. I am not saying you're the devil or anything. The problem is, nobody's ever seen a nation build a weapon and not get an itch to use it. And with this, we don't only risk a breach of security but also risk a breach of TRUST. Your customers need to trust you. We know this is a business. We should know: we buy from you. I am an old visitor, but a very small buyer, for one reason: Until recently as I initially mentionned, I was running Poser. M4, V4, most of my stuff came from Renderosity... I sure have a HUGE list of purchase in their store. A bit from RDNA too, especially in Halloween times. Recently though, you guys tempted me sooooo much with the iRay renderer. I HAD to get into that. I a ok with putting my money in your pocket from now on for all my architecturals and characters and I LOVE Genesis 3. I really do. I might go with her all the way, I've already bought a few things for her and some G2 stuff too just in case I buy her. I love the fact that I can move clothes from the intended figure to another and they'll fit. So far, doing this in Poser is a no-no except with shitty tricks and it doesn't even look good. The only other figures I realkly care for right now that are not out yet are Mike 7 and, on an alternate front, Project E by Erogenesis. So, despite a few exceptions, I really want to do business with you and I bought that shiny new video board and pumped up my RAM to 32GB as well, especially for Daz Studio. I don't like the interface, but I am working hard on learning to live with it. Still... if you're going to treat your old customers, your new customers and your future customers like potential felons, we'll all have a problem.
I think we really need to know what are Daz Connect's true capabilities and what you will use it for on your end. And even if you tell us, we'll only have your word on it.
If it was simply a lack of documentation support would be able to say "Look here, use this". In the cases Spooky is mentioning the users had moved files and so they were no longer in the (possibly undocumented) right place. The new system should avoid, or at least reduce, such instances.
There is a leap of logic here.
1. Daz says the majority (I've read 80% to 90%) of users install without making changes to folders. We've been repeatedly told those of us who move folders are in the minority. Some are saying vast minority.
2. Yet, now we're told that many (most?) tech support questions are "where's my stuff?"
So either it's the above minority of users who make the majority of "where's my stuff?" tickets -- which I seriously doubt -- or else the real problem lies somewhere else. Tell me how any improvement to the content delivery and management system will deal with issues such as (an example here) undocumented placement of third-party morphs into a wide swath of categories available for the currently selected character. I can't tell you how many recent purchases have required my extra time to research this.
Granted, support may not initially know if the problem is user-caused. But if the majority of users don't make changes, then it makes sense to direct the customer to the specific part of the the documentation that answers the problem.
Oh, wait ... there's no documentation! Knew there was a catch someplace.
All I see is Daz creating its own content ecosystem.
Apple has its own.
Steam has it own.
Daz appears to be creating its own. With the move of almost all new content being studio only (yes, I understand that vendors choose what they make) and the comments I have read, all signs point towards it.
It pays off if done right (see Apple and Steam) but the problem is users like me. I don't use studio and don't care about a content ecosystem. At least with video games, you play them and that is that. With movies, books, music....you play them, read them, watch them and that is that. At least Apple music and movies can be easily converted to use with other products through automated software tools. With 3D content, well I pull it into other software, make my own library system, add mats, change mats, add other content to scenes. This doesn't work so well with a one program ecosystem for me but, hey, this isn't about me apparently. After Studio and Poser branched off to separate paths, Daz has been full steam ahead on its own thing.
Everyone is suppose to be enjoying the ride, have fun.
As far as the comment about the possibilty of all content being delivered by connect, well that may be another reason why all content is now poping up as studio only. *shrug*
Several people have posted that us DRM/Daz Connect hating dinosaurs should still download 4.9 cos it has other cool stuff. My question: if I have no intention of ever (as in never, nada, not at all, over my dead body) using Daz Connect, do I still need to verify my computer and get a key? Or does 4.9 work just the same as previous iterations with just the serial number?
I don't post much any more, but hope that the more people who express their concerns about the way DAZ Connect is scheduled to work, it may mean things will change.
Richard Haseltine said: ". In the cases Spooky is mentioning the users had moved files and so they were no longer in the (possibly undocumented) right place. The new system should avoid, or at least reduce, such instances."
Respectfully, that is saying "Some people move files and don't know what they're doing. Instead of nicely explaining to them, or maybe putting a note on the product pages like Please note - if you move files from where the zip file places them, we can not provide support to help you find them, our solution is to make it so those who move files and DO know what they're doing no longer have the ability to do so."
That doesn't seem to be a good solution.
If you want to provide the ability for people to have their content arranged for them by an installer, that's fine - provide it as an OPTION as you do now, with DIM. I have the ability to download via the Content Library or DIM, I have the ability to let DIM install content or to install itmyself. I urge you to ALSO continue to have these options for those who want them:
a) ability to arrange our content as we desire
b) ability to use the Content Library tab for ALL our content and not be forced into using the Smart Content tab/Categories for new content
c) ability to edit the DAZ Studio format files in text editor or similar program
Here is true little story about piracy i just remembered. Some years ago, do not know if you can remember it: Daz3d sold content using some nasty .exe installers. Some of them were really old, i suspect Windows3.11-age old. Somebody bought some models from daz3d with those age-old installers, tried to install them on a relatively new system, and every other installer simply crashed. Some missing DLLs or something like that. Impossible to install content, the perfect copy protection! Of course, the rightful way would be for Somebody to buy an old Windows3.11 System, and use that to install the files, but for some reason that did not sound very attractive to Somebody. So Somebody used google to search if anybody else had that problem, and surprise! Other people had already filled that gap and provided the same content from the installer free of charge, repacked in comfortably usable zip-files, easily to be downloaded by anyone. How nice of them! Those people were called pirates by the way. Somebody did not care. Somebody was just thankful, that those pirates were making something simple (using that content from zip-files) what daz3d had made very hard (requiring to use windows3.11 for the installers). Somebody even donated some money to the pirates, so they could keep up their good work. Sometime later daz3d switched to distribution via zip-files themselves and Somebody never felt the need to consult those pirates again. Bad for them.
The teaching of this story? It does not really matter what the motivation of those pirates is (or was). But if they provide services that are hard to get otherwise, people, even honest paying customers will support them. Even if it does not mean lost sales for the vendors. Personally, i have never played a computer game i did not buy the DVD for. But i also never bought a Game-DVD without making sure there was a crack that disabled that annoying noise that this DVD makes in my drive; before buying the DVD.
Are there similarities to this new Smart-Content scheme? Perhaps. As far as i have read, daz3d has pretty much near to no idea of how many users are running without the contentn management service. And if installing new daz models means to dig deep into the innards of their ever-crashing postgresql server and firewalls, i can imagine a lot users would look for alternatives. Currently pirates have no advantage over using content directly from daz3d. It is up to daz3d to invent enough inconveniences to even out the market.
Yeah, the Documention Center suck pretty bad, I think I tried using it once for the new features that came out for Studio 4.8, but it has is the over view, and no how to use it.
IRAY!!! It was IRAY I was trying to figure out .... I still havn't touched IRAY ....
Nice to read a well thought out post.
Acutally whenever (i.e. most of the time) when I wanted to find something in the "My DAZ" folder, I just opened it in the Mac OS X finder and ... well look for it and find it. As far as the "documentation" for the location of installed items, wrongly I assumed it was in the same state as the rest of the eternal WIP documents and never really looked for that documentation. One thing I'd like to point out is that it's not a far stretch to say that someone, oh let's say me, had many issues with incomplete info for stuff in the documentation center would just assume that all the documentation is in a state of "eternal WIP" and just open up a ticket (if one had time to do so) or just muck around and try to make things work and in the process make things worse. It's like if the several blocks of a street I always travel on to get from place A to place B was always under construction, I would assume that the entire street is under construction from my experience.
And one more thing, it would help a bit if peeps from DAZ would practice writing in less terse terms. It's okay to use a few extra words or even a sentence. about 70% of all replies were because DAZ peeps were either quippy or way too terse. Like your comment, Spooky, if you had just added in your reply that you were specifically refering to Installation Documentation it would be one thing, but without that descriptive phrase it seemed as if you were talking about ALL DAZ documentation. IOW, If I say "throw out the apples" and you throw them all out and then I say "But I meant 'throw out the bad apples.'" Just by adding one single word the entire meaning changes. Just like you guys don't have crystal balls and can't foretell the future, we can't read your minds or divine just what terse statements really mean.
I'd rather have to read a long-winded and clear reply/comment than one that's so terse it's missing vital descriptive phrases that's just "assumed" I would know what the writer means.
And to circle around to the topic of this thread, I can't help but to think that if we just heard from one DAZ peep instead of several, things may have gone smoother in a number of places. You guys kinda stumbled over each other's replies and in a few instances almost contradicted each other. And that kind of mal-communication doesn't put a community on edge at ease.
No I'm not.
I miss a complete, working manual very much.
And one thing among many should be a simple, working way for people how to install (if they wish to do it manually) and where to install, and how to easily organize it, and for that to really work we need readme-files which actually give information and a file system which makes sense even without a database.
After first leaving everything to install manager, I soon learned to make different runtimes and organize things better. And I do find things in the content library now, after tweaking it, not in smart content.
Or can you explain why the smart content puts the arctic fox under figures, but not under animals? The ultimate Butterfly under Props, not under animals? Why I find a ceiling fan under environment? A skydome under props? There is no logic in these examples at all.
In this system we can change such things. In the new one????
Besides if these are examples of the perfect organisation Daz tells us it uses (which we customers fail to understand), well ...
Edit:
And remember, a customer who complains is looking for a reason to stay. Those who do not complain leave instead.
No, login is not required to use DS in general just for the Connect features, and you can use your DIM or Product Library content as normal.
Thank you! Your answer to #1 will make 4.9 a must-download for me :)
Thank you Richard. I will now download 4.9 ashore and bring it back to the boat for installation and a look see but not till December cos my generator fried the ups and I gotta buy a new one. Sigh.
Yea, Thats kinda funny because I have done this to make a base mesh using the Genesis 1 character (for my own use) but ,morphed into a different shape. Thing is taking out the export will be the end of me updating because I own so many other software licenses......and daz already makes it hard for those users that are less knowledgeable. Some older users like myself might have started out on the Atari computers of the 80's (atari ST). If it wasnt for the MIDI file extention I wouldnt have my files from way back then .......Yes thats right some of my music files are 27 plus years old. You know why? Because I wrote them on a system that died but made it easy to convert to other Music platforms on IBM computers (MS DOS computers). I had to Emulate back then and I am doing the same now just in case people. Like I said early the record player still scratches let me add that The guitar still screams. I will find a way to play But my songs and art are in my soul not on this media. My point? I hope Daz keeps remembering where the true art comes from and why people buy in the first place.. (Everything for sale on here are art tools and brushes, the people make those tools either more or less complex depending on how they make their art).
I would find it hard to believe that they would even try a total all in one system way of doing art (they just arent that good unless they want to be the HIP HOP music of the art world) compared to other more expensive softwares. So yea they are free for now but they have a long way to go.... Physics, hair cloth, morphs, ...lol they are more like a video game editing thing like XNA, so i doubt they will stop all import exporting from their side.
Edit....
I have to add this I love using Studio it is my current favorite and I hope it will remain my favorite.
On moving content within the Content Library to a new organization:
Why not do all this in D|S? Time and again folks have said it's the content, not where it's located, that matters. This is true, but the location has only mattered in the past because this was the only way to manually organize in a way that made sense to the individual artist. We had to resort to the OS and its folders to re-arrange the content.
(Yes, you can make presets of items, but please consider some of these packages may contain a hundred or more user-facing files.)
* It would be much better to simply drag-and-drop the files between categories in the Content Library. (Poser allows for this, but it's clumsy. It's entirely possible to do a better job.)
* It would be even better if the content manager was aware of what you just did, and updated it's file tables to keep track of it.
This way, if an update is later applied, the content manager knows where you've moved these user-facing files. It was all done inside D|S, so D|S should be able to keep track of it.
I'm interested in the customablity of Connect. I havn't tried the Beta, I am debating since my external harddrive is dying, I'm seeing this as an opportunity to streamline and update how I structure my Library.
Once I download through Connect, where is the actual folder? Is it sitting in a DAZ server in Idaho or is it sitting in a harddrive of my choice?
With Connect, if we download our purchases through it, Can we dictate multiple folders? For example, I download V7, put her in GENESIS FEMALE 3 folder, in my next download I put some trees in an ENVIROMENT Folder? Will it maintain the metadata? Or before download, will we get a prompt in choosing its location? Personally, I rather have several smaller folders instead of one massive one. My concern is the data folder and the texture folder getting too bloated, slowing everything down while Studio looks for the right folder.
I do nearly everything on my desktop computer, but I do have a laptop. If I install 4.9 to my laptop and try out DAZ Connect, will content on my desktop be affected and start requiring DAZ Connect if and when I upgrade to 4.9? Or will the fact the two computers won't be using the same database be sufficient to prevent that?
I'm reluctant to install the beta to my desktop until such time database changes in one version are seen and used by the other. According to the initial post in this thread, that isn't yet the case:
Because then it is organized only in DS, so when I use my content library in Poser (not that I do it often) it's still a mess.
edit: another thing is that my content is already organized on the file system level, and redoing all that inside DS would be too much work for too little benefit.
No is the scene that I want to prioritize; is the question of ownership of content. Or license of the content. If so, then the new reality of DAZ is not selling content, sell a service with different implications for a "content". If it will be so, you should specify. For example, If I buy a song in a "tunes" store, this does not have DRM and I can make my security copy, Can Itunes disappear and my music still be mine because not require drm validation. In this case, I really bought a content.
It's on your hard drive, which means you can use it when you're offline aftewards.
Right now it puts everything in a subfolder in the first DS content directory listed, but it can read DAZ connect content from any content directory listed so if you change the directory order you can download to multiple directories. I think I've read they would work on a better way to handle multiple install directories.
Basically, the way Smart Content categorizes things is based on the metadata and little else. I've been told that making/changing that metadata is going to be a lot easier. I haven't tried the beta, yet...because I don't have the space to do a complete separate install of it (complete with its own content...at least the Starter Essentials).
I made a script to fix the Graphic Art Cameras 'cause a fix was never made available, did this script by studing the DSF file, this is just one example, have more:
var contentMgr = App.getContentMgr(); var CAMERA_NAME = "/data/Age of Armour/Graphic Art Cameras/AoA_EngraveCamera/AoA Engraving Camera"; var srcFilePath = contentMgr.findFile(CAMERA_NAME + ".dsf"); function doFix() { if (srcFilePath.length == 0) { MessageBox.critical("Can't continue because you don't have the required 'Engrave Camera'.", "Content not installed", "&OK", ""); return; } var srcFile = new DzFile(srcFilePath); var bakFilePath = Path.changeExtension(srcFilePath, ".bak"); var bakFile = new DzFile(bakFilePath); if (!bakFile.exists()) { srcFile.copy(bakFilePath); } if (!srcFile.open(DzFile.ReadOnly)) { MessageBox.critical("Could not open file.", "Open File", "&OK", ""); return; } var lines = srcFile.readLines(); srcFile.close(); if (lines[11].trim() != '"modified" : "2013-08-17T18:42:17Z"') { MessageBox.critical("Date check failed", "Modified check", "&OK", ""); return; } lines[9761] = lines[9761].replace('40', '42'); lines[9764] = lines[9764].replace('39', '41'); lines[9853] = lines[9853].replace('40', '42'); lines[9856] = lines[9856].replace('40', '42'); if (!srcFile.open(DzFile.WriteOnly)) { MessageBox.critical("Could not open file.", "Writing Changes", "&OK", ""); return; } lines.forEach(function (l) { srcFile.write(l); }); srcFile.close(); MessageBox.information("The fix for 'Engrave Camera' was applied successfully.", "File Updated", "&OK", ""); } doFix(); //# sourceMappingURL=FixCamera.js.mapImporting non-User Data from DSX files does NOT function correctly in the 4.9.0.21 build and is, therefore, NOT recommended—this is fixed in a subsequent build.
About a year or so ago, I decided I had enough of manually managing my runtimes from a file directory level and decided to give DIM/Smart Content a try. I won't get into all the issues I had but after having my "user database" corrupted and the saved copies turning out to be corrupted so I lost all of my work more than once, I changed my methods and started editing the products individually, saving/exporting the changes to their dsx files so everything could be synchronized locally (and yes, updates can be a pain as it would try to add the Daz metadata structure so I would occaisionally have to go back and remove those categorizations). When the Content DB starts getting flaky, I wipe out the database, and reimport everything from the support folder (*.dsx), giving me a clean db without the artifacts of all the changes I engage in. I also created Daz Content Database products for each product I purchased from other vendor stores (RDNA, Rendo, etc.), making sure there was metadata for all of them and saving/exporting them out to the dsx. In addition, sometimes, depending on the product, I will delete the metadata from the content library, do a search/replace in the metadata file itself to recategorize, the reimport the product--can save a lot of time in my categorization workflow (especially when it comes to poses). I have probably in excess of 8500-9000 products in my library that are in various states of categorizations (and yes, all are legally purchased products, no freebies, nothing pirated).
If I'm understanding correctly (and maybe I'm not), with this beta version, my ability to use my method of smart content "categorizing" doesn't work because I can't reimport the dsx files and it won't recognize the products I purchased elsewhere if I were to wipe the db to start fresh without prior artifacts in the db. Two questions come to mind:
1. When you say that it will be fixed in a "subsequent build" how subsequent?
2. Will this "cloud" synchronization wipe out my categorizations and change how metadata is stored locally (no longer can edit dsx files, etc.)?
I just want to let you all know that I have read every post in this thread. I don't have enough time to reply to all of them but it seems like the truth is getting out there more and more so I can start getting back to my real job. Thank you for those that are taking the time to understand what all of this 4.9 and Daz Connect stuff actually means, and thank you even more to those that are installing it and giving it a try and letting us know what they think of the actual experience instead of just assuming for the worst (or best, I guess).
I've made a wrap up post because I still see some repeated concerns over here that could use some clarification:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/935783/#Comment_935783
Thanks for the reply!
I really love using DAZ Studio. As a pastime, it's given me a lot of good times. I keep buying as much as possible before the implementation of virtual fiefdom. It really hurts
. Microsoft had to learn from the bad way so that the PC are not tablets or phones. . I'm too old to see my PC become a "tablet" closed ecosystem. And the rent of apps today is the worst of the worst. DAZ I hope to succeed with their new customer base.
According to the responses in this and the other threads there are ways to do it without having to read the file (I think this may be one of the ones that only can be found by reading the files).
And we have been told that the encrypted files aren't going to be editable by the editor...and I'm wondering if the encryption and lock is going to extend to Shader Mixer networks...certain scripts have been encrypted for a while and were not fixable, but it's definitely being extended.
The only option seems to be 'wait for a fix'...