Novica & Forum Members Tips & Product Reviews Pt 11
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Well, I finally got rid of Smart Content/Connect. I'd had enough. It was touted as the new shiny thing and must have.....but there have been nothing but problems with it. The amount of products that have incorrect metadata, incorrect categorization, are unbelievable. When metadata/categories are wrong, it makes it a nightmare when using Smart Content to see your products. Files thrown into Lost and Found for no reason at all (seriously, it's a WINE GLASS....the other wine glasses are correctly marked as props...why is this one solitary wine glass marked as lost and found???) - the massive amount of RDNA products that were all categorized as Lost and Found to get them into the store quickly with promises from daz that they would be corrected at a later date...and then reneging on that promise so they remained in the void that is Lost and Found - files categorized incorrectly - products that require you to apply things in a certain order, not broken down into stepped folders so you have no idea what to do - products that contain files for both G3 and G8 not designated as such despite having the figure selected, so you have to actually look at the file name to see which is which...list goes on.
The final straw for me was one of Riversoftart's billboard products - d/ling and installing via Smart Content and discovering that I had continual call outs on 4 of the billboards and when checking the texture folder in data -> cloud, realizing that approx 200+ textures were missing. Submitting a help ticket, explaining the problem, asking them to check the Connect file package to see why all those texture files were missing.....and being told twice that because it has scripts you should download via dim or manualy and do that....despite me telling them that the actual scripts worked perfectly fine, it was the MISSING TEXTURE files that were the problem. This is a 15gb product - there are only so many times that I can download the damn thing.
So I snapped. Uninstalled EVERYTHING, manually deleted the folders in data -> cloud and then fired up DIM and started reinstalling everything. Got rid of the Smart content tab and now I use content library only. Honestly, for something that daz were all excited about and said was great, they put very very little care into it. Barbult will tell you how many damn products have metadata/category errors - and I bow before her in admiration cos I've had enough and can't do it anymore. I'm still installing stuff and the good thing is, I got rid of a heap of stuff that I didn't like and didn't use. LOL.
Also, just to add, Riversoftart was great in trying to help me out with the billboard problem - it was not in any way his problem, it was a daz problem, and I'm very grateful and appreciative he tried to help me with it, when he didn't have to.
I have over 400 products installed that have files in Lost and Found. And I don't even have my Generation 4 products installed. If I did, there'd probably be be many hundreds more.
Given the amount of money I've spent at DAZ 3D since the March 2016 and now DAZ 3D not offering me any discount at all on the Christian 8 Pro Bundle outside the PC+ standard discount they have to offer me I'm thinking it's a good thing I'm wrapping up buying DAZ 3D products. That's just a logical fact, discount or no discount: I don't need Victoria 8 & Stephanie 8 or Edward 8 & Christian 8 and another viariation of half-naked warrior clothing. And it sounds that way also for DAZ 3D collectors that even have spent a lot more than I (nearly DAZ 3D 4000 products in DIM). DAZ 3D is gaining absolutely nothing and likely loosing profit by pricing more modest collectors completely out of the DAZ 3D collecting hobby market. I'm not bitter or jealous about that because I wouldn't have bought the Christian 8 Pro Bundle even at the $33 Toon Dwayne Pro Bundle price or even if it was the Guy 8 Pro Bundle (about the only Pro Bundle I still have an interest in buying if ever produced) but I do find it very odd marketing strategy.
I have never cared for the strategy of offering different discounts to different customers in the same sale. It strikes me as.divisive. It is in human nature to want to get the best deal.
Knowing someone else bought something you just bought for less is irritating. It doesn’t help that people who often get the best deals tend to talk about this fact in the forums making it somewhat hard to ignore.
Yeah, I usually wait until other people have chatted about it (like over in Commons in the main thread) but sometimes I bring up pricing because with as screwy as this site is (glitchy) you want to double check to see if what you're getting is the right thing. It's always interesting when prices are bouncing around like crazy and nice to have people helping you know if the deal is right/best or not.
But yes, when folks can't figure out the rhyme or reason to a deal, and/are not getting an equitable one, it doesn't feel good. I've been on the receiving end of that, not very often- but it limited my buying amount that day. I sure wish this site would let us gift products to other members. All those "free bundles" and "free whatevers" are just a waste for me and I would sure like to be able to gift them to other people when I already own the freebies.
Welcome to the world of DIM and Content Library :) It's all I use. DIM will send you straight to the ReadMe (that "i" over on the far right in the Status section) and it makes it super fast to locate where the product is at. (Or using the Daz Deal app, the ReadMe is linked on the Product Page. I use my Product Library, go to the individual page, and get to the ReadMe from there if my DIM isn't open. But I LOVE DIM for finding products fast.)
man, THIS. i truly don't get why this stupid store software that glitches constantly, can't do a "gift this to someone" thing. Yeah, you can send gift certificates to someone but it's not the same thing. I've seen it mentioned that it would mean a PC member could buy something at the pc price and gift it to a non-PC member...but so what?? PC is still getting the money for it - what does it matter if it's bought and USED by a pc member or bought by a PC member to gift to someone else??? It's not like the PC products are super sekrit and ONLY purchasable by pc members. Gah. Drives me nuts that we can't gift a product to another member - you can do it at the other store, but for some unknown reason, you can't do it here.
i started out with DIM and content library - I LOVED content library cos i can rename folders to something better (i dislike greatly things like 'JoeBlow -> Dresses -> Green Dresses -> SuperCute Dress' etc) and if folders are incorrect IE 'acessories' instead of 'accessories' which holy cow, i see SO OFTEN, I can fix them easily and move them to where they should be. And things like pose sets that are for G8 M and F...instead of leaving them in a folder called "Genesis 8", i copy one and put it in the male folder and one in the female folder.
But i was sucked in by the pretty pictures in smart content, thinking it would be easier to know what i have if i'm scanning images instead of folder names. After a couple of years (or whatever) or sending in constant tickets about incorrect metadata, no icon images, etc etc, I was sucked right back out. LOL.
No more. I'm going back to rearranging folders to where i want them and renaming them to how i want, and Smart Content can just go ..... you know what itself.
I think you should start a thread to let everyone know what doesn't get fixed. Is it customer service who isn't fixing it? Or the vendor?
A few words of advice on the M4/V4 sale, from someone who was there when many of these items were new: https://www.daz3d.com/select-michael-4-and-victoria-4-blowout-sale-items
Easiest items to convert forward to G3 would be the weapons sets: You will probably find them under Content/Runtime/Libraries/Props. they load as props parented to the left or right hand of the figure selected, and from there you can select them, and move them to a better position relative to the figure's hand. This may be more difficult for G8, haven't tried it. Converting the materials to Iray tends to be straightforward: use base Iray shader on everything, Iray emissive on stuff that's supposed to glow, metal shaders on metal bits (possibly using Cntl+Click to retain the original textures), leather with ctrl+click on wood/leather/weathered metal surfaces (then reset the diffuse color in the surfaces tab). You may need to make sure that there are maps in the bump field under surfaces (the base diffuse map will work, if you can't find anything else), and you may also need to set the bump values rather high. Save as wearable or accessory.
Of the weapons in the sale, I strongly recommend anything by Valandar, especially his gorgeous and unique "Rapiers of Legend" set.
Hair is the next easiest, but it will require hair shader kits like OOT's or Slosh's to make them look good: If it's under Content/Runtime/Libraries/Hair, it's a prop that will load as parented to the head of whatever figure you have selected. Select the hair and use y-translate and z-translate to position it better on the character's head. Specifically, you're trying to minimize pokethrough on the forehead and crown areas, and make sure that the area assigned to the ears does in fact line up with the ears on your character. Use a smoothing modifier to deal with any remaing pokethrough. If it loads untextures, go to Content/Runtime/Libraries/Pose to apply a hair color. Now select the hair surfaces and go to work with the shaders. When shopping for older hairs, pay close attention to the individual strands/locks. Do they look realistic, even if the scene overall or the hair texturing does not? If yes, then that usually means that the hair is either modeled well or transmapped well, and one or the other is a requirement for the hair to look good with modern shaders. If the hair is a figure (found under Content/Runtime/Libraries/Character), the easiest thing to to do is to load it without a figure selected, position it relative to your figure's head, parent it to the head, and then go through the rest of the steps. I usually save hairstyles as wearables, in their own subfolder under G3F (or G3M) Hair.
Of the hairstyles in the sale, I have gotten the most use out of Tequila Hair, which has a bunch of useful morphs, and Mon Chevalier Hair, which doesn't look great from behind but holds up well from other angles and takes shaders well.
Clothing: do not bother unless you have clones and templates for bringing them forward to the Genesis Generation of your choice; I mostly rely on Wear Them All and Sickleyield's Ultra Templates. There are several cloth shader kits for Iray that include settings to leave the existing textures in place but change the surface settings to be more Iray friendly; any of these will help. Clothes will usually be found under Content/Runtime/Libraries/Character. Skirts that extend below the knee tend to fare badly in conversion, but in cases where they are a separate object rather than part of a dress, you can skip the autofitting and parent them to the character's hip or lower abdomen, and use built in handles and morphs to position them. High heels do not autofit well; do not bother with them unless you are willing to do a lot of fiddling. High collars do not autofit well.
Of the clothes in the sale, I like V4 Songstress and it converts fairly well to G3F if I remember correctly. V4 Nightshade does not, neither does M4 Warp Master. TOA Legendary, on the other hand, does surprisingly well and has some amazing freebie textures by Chohole. Special shoutout to L75 War Alastair for M4: nothing much to look at but it converts forward well, and converts well to DForce, AND is simple enough to not cause problems when you stick a dforce cloak or robe on top of it.
Optitex Dynamic Clothing: these are designed for an older dynamic plugin, a tiein with a fashion industry clothing simulator. They are modeled in a way that usually works well with DForce, but they do not work with it out of the box. It is recommended that you load the Optitex dynamics (found under content/People/Victoria 4/ Dynamic Clothing or Content/People/Michael 4/Dynamic Clothing), then export them as objects to some place you can find them easily, then import them and treat them the same way you would a poser dynamic outfit that you were trying to add dforce to (turn self-collide off, position the figure inside the clothes at frame 0, run an animated draping simulation with the final pose halfway through the timeline or at the end of the timeline, etc).
Danie/Marforno set complexes: I like their medieval/barbarian/Hellenic work better than their futuristic work, and do not own anything by them with explicit druidic/occult/horror theming, so I can't speak to those. many of their sets are built of individual prop components you can use as building blocks for your own sets, and also include weapon props or V4/M4 pose sets, which means that you can be bouncing back and forth between Content/Runtime/Libraries/Character, Content/Runtime/Libraries/Pose, Content/Runtime/Libraries/Prop, and Content/Runtime/Libraries/Scene to find all the things they have to offer. You will need one of the pose conversion scripts floating around out there, free or paid to make the poses work on Genesis 2, 3, or 8. Their props can be converted like the weapons described above, and their set complexes can be converted to Iray in the same way I described for weapon surfaces above: just going through and seeing which of the base Iray shader presets will work, and using cntrl+click to retain the original texture maps where necessary. The trouble is that the average set has A LOT more surfaces than the average weapon, so this gets old quick. I tended to save out materials presets for the individual prop components of the DM sets as I set them up for Iray, to save time later.
M4/V4 characters: these are the hardest thing to move over. CaymanStudios has some good products (here and at Rendo) for making older skins work on G3 and G8, but they require the material preset to be in .duf format, which M4/V4 materials usually aren't. You will have to first load M4 or V4 and apply the material skin preset, make any tweaks necessary to make it look good in Iray, then save out as a material preset in duf format, and then use on a Genesis 3 or 8 character wearing Cayman's geograft products. The initial adjustments for Iray can be very basic if the skin is already set up for 3Delight (select all, apply Iray base shader preset), but if they are only setup for Poser, they may require the use of Dimension-Z's or JavierMicheal's skin shader tools.
There are relatively few V4 skins worth the trouble of bringing forward, especially given the added hassle of converting the makeup options, IMO, but there are some pretty good M4 skins. Almost anything for either M4 or V4 by Morris, RawArt, Surreality or LiquidRust will hold up reasonably well in Iray after conversion. The "elite" series of m4/v4 skins are also pretty good (some of them are by Morris, others are uncredited but possibly by her as well).
Morphs: the default tool for moving these forward is the no longer supported (creator is deceased) GenerationX2. You can also try this tutorial for moving morphs between Genesis figures and see if it works: https://www.deviantart.com/sickleyield/journal/Tutorial-Transferring-Character-Morphs-G1G2G3G8-409437916
It would probably be deleted, don't you think? I don't know who is responsible for fixing things. For metadata, I'm 99.9% sure it is Daz, not the vendor. For packaging errors (paths and spelling, etc.) I don't know. For missing files, mesh errors, morph errors, stuff like that, I don't know, but I would guess the vendor has to be involved. It is very frustrating when I spend a good deal of time documenting errors and step by step instructions to reproduce the problem, but it doesn't get fixed.
Honestly, they really ought to add you and the others who investigate these issues to the QA/QC team or something, to catch the mistakes before they get out into the wild.
I'm a beta tester for several PAs. We weed out a lot of problems before they even get to Daz QA. We can't fix metadata, though, because that is created by Daz after the product is submitted by the PA, as I understand it.
There are too many file structure errors for me to put in tickets for any longer. If I can’t fix it myself I return it. I want to help but it can take over a month to fix problems where a new product for example..installs under a folder with a typo, it also does not get repaired in my runtime....so the initial weird bug stays. As I have said before Daz store badly needs an editor. This content all needs to be reviewed by a person with an eye for detail, because lately it has gotten worse.
Quality has also slipped in other areas as well.
Another problem, from what I understand, is once Daz buys a product and makes it a DO, the vendor is out of the loop. If something needs to be fixed, it's up to the Daz team to fix it. I've read one vendor, (sorry, I don't remember which one,) who said they would gladly fix the issue discussed in the thread, but because it was a DO, they could no longer make changes.
Remember the recent change in the Mika 8 pro bundle? The Fantastical Sprite Wings for G8M/G8F were removed and anyone buying the bundle now gets FeiFae Fairykini for G8F instead. My theory is the wings have a problem that the Daz team couldn't fix, and rather than pay the PA to fix it, (and if I were the PA, I'd want to fix it at no additional charge,) they chose to pull the product and substitute another product in the bundle.
Of course, that's only a theory. There could be any number of reasons the product was pulled. But those of us who bought the pro bundle before still have the Sprite wings, and the FeiFae product has not shown up in our Product Libraries. Personally, I'm glad. I really don't like that fairykini at all!
There is no problem that Daz can't fix that a PA can :D The folks they have working behind the scenes at Daz are *amazing*.
I can only say from my perspective that I have submitted tickets for things that would require an average ability with studio and photoshop to fix. Unfortunately, either they don't have the ability or the interest in fixing the bugs. I'm not sure which is worse.
I do appreciate the effort involved with doing tech support, since that is what I do for a living as well, but if there are pros working behind the scene my tickets aren't sent to them. My tickets even those that go to bug tracker, sit there, usually for months.
What a great post, Odaa! thank you for this! Very helpful for a lot of people!
One thing I can add here, for the bolded part - if you are using Content Library, you can put the files found in these folders all together - for instance, the character, pose and props you can put in the scene folder, so everything is all together and you don't have to scroll back and forth to find everything. So you'd have Scene -> DM Building and in that folder, you could put the DM Building -> Poses and the DM Building -> Props etc.
Yes, correct. Sorry - i think of them both as the 'same' in my head, as I'm using Connect to download because I am using Smart Content. Thank you for clarifying that.
Connect was good because in theory, for updates you only were downloading the updated files, not the entire product file again. However, even that seemed to be problematic, as it often wouldn't "work" - I would end up uninstalling the product from Smart content, then manually going to data -> cloud and deleting the product folder, and THEN redownloading the product. It often seemed to be the only thing that would actually work and get the updated files.
Yes, that is the technique the customer support recommends for problematic updates, too. Sometimes you also have to track down the cloud meta file and delete that for the product, too. It is a hassle and kills any efficiency related to only downloading the changed files.Sometimes updates (that show up in DIM) never show up in Daz Connect. Again, when asked, customer service says to uninstall, delete and reinstall. That works. But the problem is that most Daz Connect users will never know there was an update to be reinstalled. I only know when it is a fix to a bug report that I wrote, and CS tells me it is fixed, but no update shows up. I am probably missing other fixes that other people reported that never show up as updates for me.
@ChangelingChick, I have had no reason or opportunity to work directly with the folks Daz has "working behind the scenes," so I'll take your experienced word for it.
As for my theory, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I loaded Mika 8 and the Fantastical Sprite Wings and spent some time trying to find something wrong with them. I couldn't. As far as I can tell, they work fine. Their settings load without a hitch; all four sections have morphs to change where they fit on the back; all four sections have their own bones and can be moved separately. And they are really beautiful. In fact, I had more issues with the Dew Drop dress…!
I'm rendering Mika and wings now.
Since daz hasn't given its reasons for swapping the content in the Mika pro Bundle we can't build any good arguments on speculation. I do believe that PAs will be asked to fix issues with cotnent they sold to Daz, and indeed in the past daz has been reluctant to make changes witout going through the PA (but that may no longer be true in all cases).
It was some time back, many months at least, that the PA I referenced said Daz wouldn't allow them to fix the product. I wish I could remember when and who. Regardless, as I stated above, my theory fell apart when I used the wings. I tried, but I could find nothing wrong with them. I didn't try to load them on other figures, though. Still, that would be simple enough to fix, wouldn't it?
Anyway, Daz didn't just swap products in the bundle, they removed the wings from the store. That strikes me as odd, as the product is a DO, but I've noticed the two Bea Griff's shader products I picked up 4th quarter last year were also pulled from the store; Within a month of my picking them up!
Another item that fell out of the store was the Dragon Hunt Weapons. Those were a PC weekly freebie back in March'17. Then they showed up as a freebie again the second week of December. (Obviously a mistake.) They have remained in the store since.
It is all very confusing to me. I would expect any DO product newer than, say, V3/M3 to remain in the store for many years. A good number of the older products in the store are well over a decade old. I even found one, the Charger Horse, that was released 17 years ago this March.
Or as Lewis Carroll's Alice might say, "Curiouser and curiouser!"
The only time I've seen products removed from the store is when someone leaves, or there is a IP violation of some sort. I'm not saying that happened in this case, just that those are the only reasons I've seen that products are yanked.
Wow I bought that when it came out
Bit of a chatter-lull here, so I'll strike up...
Happy 2019, campers! You know what that means: Genocide 9 is coming soon, at least if the 2-year pattern holds up: Victoria 6 (June 2013), V7 (6/2015) and V8 (6/2017). Would anyone here besides me be willing to accept the cost of, say, 8,000 more polygons for a G9 figure, to be spent on improving the HANDS/FINGERS/KNUCKLES and how they flex, bend, bunch up or stretch out according to how they are posed, so that they won't look ridiculous anymore? And I mean, on the base figure, not in the HD skin details add-ons! ETA: I say, 8k, but maybe that's waay too many, maybe 5K (2500 new polys per hand) would be enough. I'd be thrilled to accept the slight figure size increase for better fingers/hands articulation.
It's partly, I suspect, more specific morphing and joint controls or weight mapping etc needed, but I'm thinking polygons have to be added to permit good results, that will look like real hands. Instead of pipe cleaner or toon fingers flexing. IRAY, iray, IRAY. It's the ultimate, yadda yadda. It really is a quantum leap forward in terms of realism--or can be--but only so far as the models and textures support that. Daz has done yeomans work over the years on improving figure articulation, and we can right in DS now simulate the sky, light and fabric so credibly and hair has improved dramatically. But try doing a closeup of a person showing their hands... it's worse than threading a needle to come up with hands that will "pass" for actual hands, and it just is not a particular texture's fault; the model's fingers and knuckles simply do not have enough nuance and detail built in. So with such advances in the state of the art, to me, the fingers/hands of figures are the weakest link in the "realism" chain. (I do feel somehow something went slightly backwards in terms of skins in G8, versus G7, since to me at least most g8 skins look like silicone love dolls/toys surfaces or wax or orange cheese rather than human skin, but still, that can be mediated, where the fundamentallly unconvincing deformations of the fingers just can't be dealt with, just minimized or avoided.)
Love to hear what anyone else has to say about this....
~Gen
Good point, and Thank you!
Well, what they could do is make it an HD option within the base figure(i.e. not as an "HD Add-on") to improve the hands realism for rendering. Actual body hair, "peach fuzz", etc., would be a nice as well, but I could only imagine the number of potential headaches that could cause. Nevertheless, I think when it comes to realism of the hands, depending on what the artist is doing, most would probably settle for touching up still-renders in photoshop over increased render times.
If it already hasn't been mentioned, I hope the next Genesis series doesn't have it where all of the expressions look practically the same on different characters. For example, the smiles seem to yield the same freakish look above a certain parameter and you end up having to use shaping morphs to remedy it.
Not just hands. The feet could use some 'extra' as well...