"Undo" issues with hair and skin shader presets

amysparkles

 

I've encountered a really strange problem when I apply a shader and then 'undo' it to resort to the previous materials setting. Since I'm unsure whether this is a bug in Daz Studio or whether it's something in my settings, I thought I'd share the issue here in hope someone has a way to resolve it. I don't think I'm the only one to encounter issues with 'undo', since there's a thread about it here. Though their issue is with keyframes - I think the underlying cause might be the same.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/584596/problems-with-undo

 

So, here's what I do:

I load a hair into my scene and apply it to a character in the usual way. 

Now comes the shaders. In this case, I apply a hair shader preset (by Colorwerks in the example I'm describing) and make a quick iray render preview. However the color is not quite right and the hair is too shiny, so I hit 'undo' to resort back to the original texture and try again with a different preset. I like to get as closer match as possible to what I have in mind. 

However, upon undo, the hair materials have completely changed. Instead of returning back to the previous setting, it's somewhere in between. From what I can tell, it seems to effect translucency, SSS and top coat the most.

I've occasionally experienced this with mixing and matching  skin materials and shader presets too. I'll apply a skin to my character, add a shader, do an iray preview render and realize it's not quite what I'm looking for and resort back to try again - but then I'll notice arms and ears glowing in iray preview where they hadn't before. So again, I think this relates to something going on with the translucency and SSS channels during the undo process.

So is this a known bug in Daz Studio? Or is it something obvious in my settings that I'm missing? I suspect there's only a limited number of 'undos' Daz Studio stores, and that may be the cause of the shader issue I've described. I just assumed the undo reversed an action, regardless of whether it's moving an arm or a leg or applying a shader, but since a shader has a lot of texture channels, perhaps undo counts each channel seperately? 

 

 

 

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

there are a few things not recorded in the undo and shaders seem to be one of them

 

crosswind

I could not reproduce such an issue with the latest DS version. What's DS version are you using ?

WendyLuvsCatz

I haven't got the shader in question but I know from experience applying some shaders that change the actual type of parameters used there is no going back from

especially between iray and 3Delight

I mean you can go back but the settings will not be the same

amysparkles

I think it's as you mentioned and undo isn't recording the shader changes properly. It's not a huge issue as I can just apply a different shader from the same pack again, but I thought 'undoing' would release the textures from memory. Though I may be wrong with that assumption. 

The shaders I was applying are the Colorwerks hair shaders for iray, by Sloshwerks https://www.daz3d.com/colorwerks-hair-shaders-for-iray

I don't think it's specific to those shaders though as I've sometimes experienced it elsewhere - for instance in applying and undoring some skin shaders by Angel Wings. I'm in that in between zone where I'm mixing and matching existing shaders and textures and making my own from scratch. I do like to create my own where I can. 

However, undo works perfectly fine with applying custom poses, saved morphs, etc, which made me ponder if it's purely a shaders taking up too many 'undo' instances. If my setup only keeps the previous five, six, ten or however many actions, then obviously a shader tree contains a lot more (changing the base, glossy, translucency, bumb, etc), so it's not going to work. 

I'm using Daz Studio 4.21. I'm not "updating" to 4.22 due to all the horror stories I've been reading, and I have no use for it in any case - since I work with Genesis 8 in my character creation. I'm happy with what I have. I believe if it works, don't fix it. ;)

Since I tend to sculpt a character and apply hair, clothing, textures, etc, seperately and then merge them into a scene later, it's not such a big problem for me. But still, I thought I'd put the undo issue out there. 

 

crosswind

I used the very same product from Sloshwerks for the test and compared the properties on a hair surface before / after the Undo action, there was no difference. You can do the comparison in the same to find out the difference. Or you may tell us which hair product you used...

amysparkles

crosswind said:

I used the very same product from Sloshwerks for the test and compared the properties on a hair surface before / after the Undo action, there was no difference. You can do the comparison in the same to find out the difference. Or you may tell us which hair product you used...

 

Hmmm, very strange. If you're unable to replicate the issue, it suggests a setting somewhere is causing this. I'll have to investigate properly when I find the time. 

 

I used Sage Hair by Emma and Jordi. Originally for Genesis 3, but I converted it to G8 using a hair conversion utility. Their Scarlett Hair behaved the same way with undoing an applied shader. An iray spot render clearly shows a difference. 

I'll try different hair products from other content creators and see what they do. However, I think now it's probably something subtle in my daz studio settings that I've missed. 

Of course, there's still the skin shader issue with glowing arms, etc. Again, pointing to a setting in my preferences as the culprit.

 

crosswind

Oh... I don't have those hair products but I'll be pretty easy to compare the properties as I said before...