Some Questions About 'Duplicate Formulas Found' - Solved
I have only gotten this message since the debut of Genesis 9, and until now I've only seen it when loading a G9. Within the last day, I've started to see it when loading some Genesis 8 characters. So far these Genesis 8 characters were purchased on another site (though the G9 characters are all from DAZ).
My first question is why would these duplicate formulas start to occur- what's causing the duplicate formulas, and how do I prevent them? Other threads on this forum (at least the ones I've found) have indicated the fix is to uninstall, then reinstall the characters. This isn't really a fix if it is just going to start up again.
My second question is, how much of a problem is this- how does this affect DAZ on my system? For G9 I've always just dismissed the notification; I haven't noticed any effect on performance. I'm just wondering what might happen if an increasing number of characters start exhibiting this error.
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Firstly, uninstalling and re-installing such products is not a fix at all since nothing will change. This is because the cause for this is two products that each have a component that uses the same "unique ID" - so this is why uninstalling one of the products IS a fix - but then reinstalling (so you still have both again) is NOT a fix as you are putting the exact same problem back again.
As a user you cannot really prevent them as such - ideally if you exclusively buy things from the same store then these should have been caught by that store's QA process. If you do encounter duplicates from products in the same store tho you can and should raise a support ticket since in this scenario whichever is the later-released product is technically "broken" and should be fixed (unless that store has a highly visible warning that the two products are incompatible).
However, if it is two products from two different stores then you are somewhat on your own since niether product is technically wrong or broken. You can try to contact support for either product but I imagine you would have less luck convincing them it needs to be changed.
For a more detailed example, imagine that you bought a charater called "Bob" from one store and then saw another character in a different store that you liked who also happened to be called "Bob". In most instances this is not a problem since it is common for PAs to use their Vendor names in the paths to the relevant files and so you do not get a conflict or files being overwritten there. However, they do not always use the same care when naming their "unique IDs" and so both of these products may contain an expression which has the "unique ID" of "Bob_Smile_01" - so that value can easily have been good enough for testing and is reasonably specific so as to assume it would be fine. However, unfortunately, you are the only person who bought both Bobs and so you now find yourself in a situation where only you have this issue. Then, there are some situations where the chosen "Unique ID" has been far less specific which ends up being an issue for more people.
This will start to become a non-issue with newer products as Daz has put a fix into a later version of Studio that generates a proper unique ID when needed. However, that is not something that can be retro-actively applied to older products.
For how much of an issue this is: if you have not upated Daz Studio in a while it will slow down the loading of affected figures a LOT. If you have updated recently (or are using the public beta) then they have less of an issue speed wise. However, as the highlander's say: "there can be only one!" and so if you have two morphs trying to use the same unique ID then they both cannot work. Therefore, you will have one product that has a component that cannot function correctly (while the conflicting product is installed).
There are a few options if you need one of these to work and are either waiting for an update to a bug ticket or they are from different stores and so are unlikely to be changed:
*Note, the last option is only if you are reasonably confident editing JSON files and is not a perfect solution since there may be other files that use the morph that you edit which use the Unique ID as part of their function and so will now be broken after you change that to something else.
check log file for offending parameter
Thank you so much for the detailed explanation, SofaCitizen!
So far the duplicate files are from the same vendor on one store. I'll submit a support ticket.
I'm running DS 4.22, though there has been an update in DIM for a couple days now. I'll install it, just to keep things current.
I appreciate the warning for Fix#3; I don't know anything about editing JSON files. I'm better off leaving that to people who do have those skills.
LIlweep, does the log file specify the offending parameter? What little I've seen of log files hasn't been very helpful; I can't seem to make much out of what information they have.
yes
Okay, I've brought up the log file. I assume that the entries with [WARNING] are the ones I need to pay attention to, is that correct? If so, they all seem to address issues with G8 Male Morphs. I don't see anything that deals with "Duplicate Forumulas", but then this thing is like reading a phone book (yes, I'm old enough to remember those tomes).
Just search the log for Duplicate - theer will be a lot of harmless warnings that you need to skip if you search for that.
OP may post the full log of DS in here. We may help to check. And editing DSON file, at least for fixing duplicate formulas issue, is simple and easy... more or less just like you edit / replace something in Microsoft Word...
I actually got lucky with this. Since I knew about when the issue started, I looked at what I had downloaded recently. I decided to use the basic troubleshooting technique of uninstalling the recent downloads one at a time to see which one was affecting DAZ. It turns out the first one I uninstalled was the culprit. I informed the site and the artist of what I found. The artist had already been informed of the issue and has released an updated version of the product, which I had missed.
Now I've learned how to bring up the log file and to search for this problem. Thanks for all the help!