Genesis 9 Starter Essentials Update Broke Mesh Smoother

fearthefailure

I didn't have this issue before I updated these two kits, and now I regret doing it.  Since taking the March update of the Starter Essentials package, my Mesh Smoothing is no longer effective.  Worse, it produces a bug that causes it to only partly apply.  I'll get the settings, but the software will rapidly keep trying to apply the Mesh Smoother 5 - 7 times per second.  Worse, even if I manage to stop it from doing the latter, just applying more smoothing iterations will make it happen again.  I have to remove the Smoothing Modifier to make it stop entirely.

After learning about the issues in DAZ Studio 4.22, and that we can't rollback, I stayed on DAZ Studio 4.21.  Neither my other software nor my OS version have changed.  I'm not going to debate it, it just appeared this morning when I started a new session.  Everything else is working fine.  I didn't have the problem before I updated that package, then I did.  I'm going to try rolling back that update to see if the issue disappears, but that's what happened.

Also, Genesis 9 Expressions never worked.  It won't even install properly, so I can't use it at all.  It's sitting in the Content Library grayed out and telling me to install it withing DAZ.  But when I do, nothing ever happens.

crosswind

I don't understand... you mean Smoothing Iteration was applied or resolved 5 - 7 times per second even if you did nothing with the figure / wearables... in the scene ?

fearthefailure

crosswind said:

I don't understand... you mean Smoothing Iteration was applied or resolved 5 - 7 times per second even if you did nothing with the figure / wearables... in the scene ?

Something like that.  It says "Applying Smoothing Modifier" at the bottom of the window and keeps flashing the loading bar.  It reaches 80% and starts over several times per second.  It also causes the figure mesh to jitter and deform in the correct area, but in a nonsensical way.  If I use a cube deformer, it'll deform like I used an obtuse triangle deformer.  I followed the instructsions for Ghost Dynamics exactly, and it used to work perfectly fine before I updated Genesis 9 Starter Essentials.  After I updated it, Ghost Dynamics stopped working like it used to.

When I have Ghost Dynamics primatives visible, they're stable.  It's the character mesh that bugs out when I apply the Smoothing Modifier and increase the Smoothing Iterations.

Richard Haseltine

Do you hae the HEAT plug-in installed, and if you do is it the original release or the update? I'm not sure that that would cause the repeated smoothing, but it's possible (until someone tells me otherwise) that its update issue is triggering the signal that says the psoe has changed, which would cause the Smoothing Modifier to rerun.

fearthefailure

Richard Haseltine said:

Do you hae the HEAT plug-in installed, and if you do is it the original release or the update? I'm not sure that that would cause the repeated smoothing, but it's possible (until someone tells me otherwise) that its update issue is triggering the signal that says the psoe has changed, which would cause the Smoothing Modifier to rerun.

Thanks for jumping in here, Richard.  I don't have the HEAT plug-in.  I don't think I heard of it before now.

Zicon

fearthefailure said:

I didn't have this issue before I updated these two kits, and now I regret doing it.  Since taking the March update of the Starter Essentials package, my Mesh Smoothing is no longer effective.  Worse, it produces a bug that causes it to only partly apply.  I'll get the settings, but the software will rapidly keep trying to apply the Mesh Smoother 5 - 7 times per second.  Worse, even if I manage to stop it from doing the latter, just applying more smoothing iterations will make it happen again.  I have to remove the Smoothing Modifier to make it stop entirely.

This sounds like you have two items with smoothing modifiers and each other set as the collision item; this results in the two items constantly trying to collide against each other. I've also seen it happen with geografts set to collide against the figure the graft is applied to (or the other way around). Both of these cases are easy to do by accident (or on purpose if you're not aware of the consequences), so check your scene for these issues.

fearthefailure

Zicon said:

fearthefailure said:

I didn't have this issue before I updated these two kits, and now I regret doing it.  Since taking the March update of the Starter Essentials package, my Mesh Smoothing is no longer effective.  Worse, it produces a bug that causes it to only partly apply.  I'll get the settings, but the software will rapidly keep trying to apply the Mesh Smoother 5 - 7 times per second.  Worse, even if I manage to stop it from doing the latter, just applying more smoothing iterations will make it happen again.  I have to remove the Smoothing Modifier to make it stop entirely.

This sounds like you have two items with smoothing modifiers and each other set as the collision item; this results in the two items constantly trying to collide against each other. I've also seen it happen with geografts set to collide against the figure the graft is applied to (or the other way around). Both of these cases are easy to do by accident (or on purpose if you're not aware of the consequences), so check your scene for these issues.

I don't know what it could be.  I use my normal process.  I make a nude character without adding a Smoothing Modifier.  I add the skin mats, hair, eyebrows, fingernails and toenails if needed, jewelry if needed, and swap in any skin mats I altered with tattoos or additional skin details.  I don't dance around those menus during all of that.  I don't add the Smoothing Modifier until I use Ghost Dynamics.  I suppose something could have spontaneously changed, but it really shouldn't do that because it didn't do that before the update.  I'll dig through to see if something happened though.

crosswind

I've never seen mesh smoothing is automatically applied if there's no manipulation on the figure or its wearables, collision items, etc. If you record and attach a video in here, we might help to check and see how it happend.

fearthefailure

I'll try to capture it.  It's definitely strange behavior.  I did get a pretty convincing result by just clipping the figure through the surface and adjusting the pose to hide those contact points, but I can't use that method for the paralaxing I want to do in my games.  Everyone would notice I cheated straight away lol

The concept is to render the figure and rotating props independent of the rest of the scene and render them from different camera angles, like a slide show, and have the IDE play those stills like a video when players rotate the camera.  It should look like the player is rotating around a statue of the character, but all of the images are actually flat.  The software I'm using can't use the actual mesh, so it's not an option for me.  Then I would render the scene like a 3D apartment tour [we see these more often these days].  This would give the player enough room to actually turn from their vantage point.  So, for example, the room will turn to the right while the figure and props turn to the left, allowing for players to view the scene from different perspectives and pick out clues.  Anyway, at roughly 30 frames per sequence I use this in, it's a rather expensive feature.  However, pulling it off could transform the genre.

So, if we can get this working right again, I can debut that feature and finally launch my crowdfunding campaign.  If successful, I'm going to be shopping for a team of artists who know DAZ much better than I do - especially the titans of DForce, clothing, and hair.