Hi all,

I'm posting here because it's a little more tolerant than the Daz forum...

Firstly, the Daz "premier" thing is worrying me : Is it a little step to a rental scheme ? 200 USD a year is quite a lot for my limited income.

Then G9 is an absolute memory hog, and it seems they were not prepared for Nividia 5 series, Not to speak of the price of an out of stock 5090. 

Opening a relatively simple scene takes several minutes, and closing the program is also extremely slow. I regularly have crashes, I suppose that even the official releases are semi-beta.

All in all, it's quite a bunch of money and time for a hobbyist use.

So I'm looking for the same type of software : I'm very sorry to say that Poser is aging (I have P13), Blender has a too steep learning curve for my aging brain, Cinema 4D seems more user-friendly but way out of my financial reach.

Any suggestion ?

Thanks

The only other alternative I can think of is Reallusion's Character Creator 4 (it's pricier than DS and Poser, and you'd also need iClone for animation). Not as pricey as C4D, but you may want to research it a little as an alternative.

They are having a sale till end of month. Might be a good time to check out any bundles that include Character Creator 4, iClone, and perhaps the Headshot plugin so you can generate faces from photos)

@Yvesab - Which version of Daz Studio are you using? You do not have to have the premier version, if you do not want the basic just go to the next one. Watch for sales on the membership, I think they just had one. You do not have to use G9, stick the the older versions. You say that opening the program is extremely slow. Do you have any outdated plugins installed, if so disable them/uninstall them. Update your graphic card drivers. Install the latest version of Daz, not the beta version. You might try running something like CCleaner to optimize your system. If your registry is corrupted it can affect Daz Studio.  Look at your Daz log to see what is causing your problems.

Something else to check is your hard drive. I had an SSD so I thought I was good. But there was something wrong with it. When I replaced it, I couldn't believe how much faster everything loaded.

It's possible that Daz made a mistake hitching their wagon so tightly to IRAY and NVidia. It does seem to be an increasing problem. Nevertheless, Daz has gone out of its way to make assets exportable to other programs. That may be the key to using Daz assets going forward. It's more work, more bother; but it may extend the life of Daz assets. I don't like it, but it may be the way of things.

For now, I've downloaded 4.23 builds and have not installed them because of the Premiere exclusive nonsense. It's a causal relationship. I run a 4.22 build. Also, Richard has made very clear that the 50xx series will not run on any DS4 build - We're waiting for DS5. But there is no timeline for DS5. It could appear tomorrow, or it could appear in 2030. No one knows! And no one knows how DS5 will behave when it arrives - It could be an additional year or more until the problems are resolved. If DS5 takes long enough to drop, we could be talking about 60xx cards. So, yeah... I think there is a bit of a problem in DazLand.

I feel your anguish. Or rather, I used to.

Basic rule of thumb has always been to "stay at least one version back from Bleeding Edge". You'll pay much less for what was "Bleeding Edge" last year, but with the updates.

When I was prepping for retirement, one of my first priorities was to allow for a system that wasn't skimping. I knew the beloved Windows 7 OS was soon to be phased out too.

3D graphics has always been hardware needy but the curve has definitely flattened. I'd been researching graphics systems for some years and kept coming back to one company and went with them. That was in 2019 and haven't regretted the decision a moment. Point is, buy quality as it will more that make up the $$$ in time saved in so many ways. Much less frustration being one of those.

Sorry to break it to you, but just jumping to & learning new software, you'll be running into pretty much the same issues if your systems not up to snuff.

That being said, I've found 4.23 quite stable. I always keep the previous version on my laptop though until a version has "proven" itself stable. As others state, make sure everything is up to date where you can stay away from Beta versions.

And I only use the Basic version. Pthhhhpt on their "Premium".  And I ONLY buy something if it hits 50% or more off in the wishlist. Doesn't cost me to wait. No clock 'a ticking. I also export all assets out of DS, but Daz is the starting point. They've literally the best artists on the planet. POS company, but ya can't have everything.

I've a few Gen9 characters, but avoid them mostly. Too much work to recombine things that have always been together.

Probably your G9 memory hog issue is using any dForce hair. Try swapping out to more conventional hair & see if that helps.

Gen9 wardrobe is another story though with the newer Autofit scripts available, and work well with Gen3 through Gen8.1 characters.

Unreal Engine and Twinmotion which is built on it are free, you can export props and animated DAZ characters as FBX to both

@yvesab - If you arae suing Daz 4.16, it is know to have problems so stop using it. 

Unreal Engine and Twinmotion which is built on it are free, you can export props and animated DAZ characters as FBX to both

I'M using Daz 42 3 01

64 Gb of DDR4, an Intel Skylake i9 7920x, Two RTX 2080 8Gb which are using an NV Link pooling memory (I just bought a 4060 with 16 Gb, the only avalaibe at a decent price 4 serie)

My Daz library is on a 4 Tb SSD Samsung Evo

and the Windows boot disk is an NVME

It's not top-notch but correct.

I'M using Daz 42 3 01

Were you having problems with the previous version of Daz Studio? If no, go back to the version that did not give you any trouble. Did you look at the Daz Studio log to see what messages you get. Right off the top of my head it sounds like you have some kind of conflict. 

Try this- Close all programs that are running, including your virus software.  Now run Daz

I suspect that when Daz opens, your virus software might be checking all of the files, you will need to add Daz to the exception list, you might also need to add your runtime to the exception list.

I will try this.

Another big problem, is the duplicate formulas.  Since G9 I have a lot. I use quite a few characters from various sites. These are really probably slowing loading figures, even if the daz people are not immune to this problem.  Daz G9 are really bland from my point of view, lacking skin defects and details, and are mostly very similar.

My main source is nowadays Render...b

May I say that my renderings are "really" NSFW ?

I have not had any problems with the duplicate formulas.  You may find a solution here -https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=duplicate+formulas+in+daz+studio

Lack of Skin defects and detail can be fixed by some of these - https://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result?pp=40&q=genesis+9&category%5B%5D=Characters+%3E+Modifiers+%3E+Skin+textures&s=score&p=1&guid=

This is a really good one-https://www.daz3d.com/skin-detailer-for-genesis-9-merchant-resource

Scroll through the pages and you will see different things that might interest you.

Also check out the Genesis 9 morphs.

Your duplicates could be causing the slowdowns. Something else I learned is some of the vendors create characters that reference characters or morphs that you may not own, and this slows Daz down because it is trying to locate the missing information. If this is the case, you will see it in the log file.

Torquinox posted at 4:07 PM Sat, 22 March 2025 - #4494456

WendyLuvsCatz posted at 12:40 AM Sat, 22 March 2025 - #4494439

Unreal Engine and Twinmotion which is built on it are free, you can export props and animated DAZ characters as FBX to both

Wendy, I know you're plugged into all that stuff! What gets lost in the translation? What has to be redone? Are there "gotchas" with it?

Unreal the plugin if it works addresses the former (not working for me since replacing my C drive as I don't know how to compile it and for some reason needs to be)

can use the cloth function in Unreal and Grooms though

DocPhoton posted at 11:21 PM Fri, 21 March 2025 - #4494438

I feel your anguish. Or rather, I used to.

Basic rule of thumb has always been to "stay at least one version back from Bleeding Edge". You'll pay much less for what was "Bleeding Edge" last year, but with the updates.

When I was prepping for retirement, one of my first priorities was to allow for a system that wasn't skimping. I knew the beloved Windows 7 OS was soon to be phased out too.

3D graphics has always been hardware needy but the curve has definitely flattened. I'd been researching graphics systems for some years and kept coming back to one company and went with them. That was in 2019 and haven't regretted the decision a moment. Point is, buy quality as it will more that make up the $$$ in time saved in so many ways. Much less frustration being one of those.

Sorry to break it to you, but just jumping to & learning new software, you'll be running into pretty much the same issues if your systems not up to snuff.

That being said, I've found 4.23 quite stable. I always keep the previous version on my laptop though until a version has "proven" itself stable. As others state, make sure everything is up to date where you can stay away from Beta versions.

And I only use the Basic version. Pthhhhpt on their "Premium".  And I ONLY buy something if it hits 50% or more off in the wishlist. Doesn't cost me to wait. No clock 'a ticking. I also export all assets out of DS, but Daz is the starting point. They've literally the best artists on the planet. POS company, but ya can't have everything.

I've a few Gen9 characters, but avoid them mostly. Too much work to recombine things that have always been together.

Probably your G9 memory hog issue is using any dForce hair. Try swapping out to more conventional hair & see if that helps.

Gen9 wardrobe is another story though with the newer Autofit scripts available, and work well with Gen3 through Gen8.1 characters.

My wife wants to move, for a more lenient climate and a less remote place : that means selling the house, buy a new one, with all the expenses attached to renovate.

My 2 other hobbies are cycle touring (cheap but with an age limit) and High-end audio (costly) even if I bought way too much stuff, that I'm reluctant to sell. 

As for Computers and programs I'm a parcimonious buyer, waiting for a good deal. I was expecting  to buy an Nvidia 4090 video card, thinking that the 50 seris would lower the price, instead proces when up to a crazy level.

I'm probably end up with paper and pens ! Meanwhile I'll train my brain with Blender.

Hi all,

I'm posting here because it's a little more tolerant than the Daz forum...

Firstly, the Daz "premier" thing is worrying me : Is it a little step to a rental scheme ? 200 USD a year is quite a lot for my limited income.

No. There are new features (or modified vesions of old PA plug-ins, which still work if you have them) enabled by Premier membership but nothing has been removed from the Base/Pro versions - indeed new stuff has been added.

Then G9 is an absolute memory hog, and it seems they were not prepared for Nividia 5 series, Not to speak of the price of an out of stock 5090. 

Daz is fully supporting the new cards - that is, the stuff Daz has control over (dForce, Filament)  works. Iray has had a wait for Iray support in every new card set since it was added to DS; in this case the first supporting version, 2024.0, had serious bugs and was not be added to DS while the next version, 2024.1, uses a new compile system which cannot be made to work with DS 4.x.x.x. As  a result Iray will not be available until the next major version of DS.

Opening a relatively simple scene takes several minutes, and closing the program is also extremely slow. I regularly have crashes, I suppose that even the official releases are semi-beta.

Hopefully people will be able to figure this out if you continue to give more information. The original statement didn't really give anything to go on, though load times in gernal have been worked on and, for most users, improved.

All in all, it's quite a bunch of money and time for a hobbyist use.

So I'm looking for the same type of software : I'm very sorry to say that Poser is aging (I have P13), Blender has a too steep learning curve for my aging brain, Cinema 4D seems more user-friendly but way out of my financial reach.

Any suggestion ?

Thanks

I will try this.

Another big problem, is the duplicate formulas.  Since G9 I have a lot. I use quite a few characters from various sites. These are really probably slowing loading figures, even if the daz people are not immune to this problem.  Daz G9 are really bland from my point of view, lacking skin defects and details, and are mostly very similar.

Duplicate formulas are content issues - usually not making property names unique (though recent versions of DS do enforce adding characters to the names to  greatly reduce the odds of this happening; unfortunately some content creators either copy an old file and just update the names for the new character, so that they don't have to ebuild the links, or if they do build in DS they then edit out the extra characters to be tidy. The log file should enable you to track down the conflicting properties and ideally the artist(s) involved should be able to fix the issue.

My main source is nowadays Render...b

May I say that my renderings are "really" NSFW ?

I'M using Daz 42 3 01

64 Gb of DDR4, an Intel Skylake i9 7920x, Two RTX 2080 8Gb which are using an NV Link pooling memory (I just bought a 4060 with 16 Gb, the only avalaibe at a decent price 4 serie)

Remember that nVlink helps only with materials. Granted those are often those are often the major part of the data, but 8GB is pretty tight so you may find that a share of the materials plus all the stuff that isn't shared is enoguh to cause issues. If you have managed to get a 4060 16GB (well done, I was thinking of upgrading this year and they all seem to have vanished) then that should be much more productive.

My Daz library is on a 4 Tb SSD Samsung Evo

and the Windows boot disk is an NVME

It's not top-notch but correct.

Honestly very satisfied with G8 and D|S 4.2, but I have no interest at all in their subscription/content sale stuff since I generally make my own stuff and give it away, and I feel like G9 is a baffling collection of terrible ideas that make it much harder to make content for. It kind of blows my mind how D|S has become Actually Good, without need for any extra plugins, and how good it has gotten at things like dynamic cloth and rigging your own conforming clothing. I have a super modest machine (a 10+ year old HP business desktop with a very low-power fan-less video card) and it does pretty well for the fairly narrow focus I have for a posing and rendering environment app- generally I render one or two characters in a pretty simple scene, although I sometimes do some fairly complicated stuff with dynamic simulations and lighting. It sucks a bit at a couple of things (glaring lack of a morph brush or general purpose sculpting tool to reshape meshes comes to mind) but I regret very little of the time and money I've put into D|S.

Hugely valuable single items I spent money on:

G8 morphs

Skin Builder for G8

protip: a lot of paid assets use insanely high resolution bitmaps on things like hair, and while it's not super obvious, a lot of overhead is spent loading and shifting around texture memory that you may not (will not) ever benefit from or perceive. some of the hairs out there use 4k maps for insane things like normal map or flood fill blend layers. whether or not you are rendering an extreme closeup of a patch of hair the size of a postage stamp at movie screen size, your graphics card has to load all of those referenced maps and hold them in memory just while moving around the scene in preview - some hairs use 10+ 4k maps - literally ten maps or more, 4k resolution, this is an enormous amount of texture memory - and this is essentially impossible for a normal person graphics card to do without a lot of texture swapping overhead.

SOLUTION: identify these and reduce texture sizes, just scale them down to 1K or 512x512. Back up the originals and load these bitmaps into an image editor and just resize them, it's easier than you might think. Whenever you are downloading something like a hair model and it's more than 10mb or so, that is a red flag.

Torquinox posted at 4:07 PM Sat, 22 March 2025 - #4494456

WendyLuvsCatz posted at 12:40 AM Sat, 22 March 2025 - #4494439

Unreal Engine and Twinmotion which is built on it are free, you can export props and animated DAZ characters as FBX to both

Wendy, I know you're plugged into all that stuff! What gets lost in the translation? What has to be redone? Are there "gotchas" with it?

only bone animation in Twinmotion so that may be an issue if you want correctives and other JCMs or Dforce etc

Unreal the plugin if it works addresses the former (not working for me since replacing my C drive as I don't know how to compile it and for some reason needs to be)

can use the cloth function in Unreal and Grooms though

protip: a lot of paid assets use insanely high resolution bitmaps on things like hair, and while it's not super obvious, a lot of overhead is spent loading and shifting around texture memory that you may not (will not) ever benefit from or perceive. some of the hairs out there use 4k maps for insane things like normal map or flood fill blend layers. whether or not you are rendering an extreme closeup of a patch of hair the size of a postage stamp at movie screen size, your graphics card has to load all of those referenced maps and hold them in memory just while moving around the scene in preview - some hairs use 10+ 4k maps - literally ten maps or more, 4k resolution, this is an enormous amount of texture memory - and this is essentially impossible for a normal person graphics card to do without a lot of texture swapping overhead.

SOLUTION: identify these and reduce texture sizes, just scale them down to 1K or 512x512. Back up the originals and load these bitmaps into an image editor and just resize them, it's easier than you might think. Whenever you are downloading something like a hair model and it's more than 10mb or so, that is a red flag.

It's annoying how common that is, like here's an example of a hair that I bought from DAZ - and don't get me wrong, it looks great and I don't regret it - but there are several monochrome flood fill maps that are 4k:

while the file size is small because it can be compressed, each of those has to be uncompressed to full color depth when loaded into video memory. insane!

It's annoying how common that is, like here's an example of a hair that I bought from DAZ - and don't get me wrong, it looks great and I don't regret it - but there are several monochrome flood fill maps that are 4k:

while the file size is small because it can be compressed, each of those has to be uncompressed to full color depth when loaded into video memory. insane!

Daz's Future?

I just got a message this morning from Daz Tech Support that a support ticket, filed in May, 2023, was "deemed solved", their words. Tested the item (AM's Porcupine) with DS4.23, same immediate error.

So, nearly two years w/o a peep. So, how exactly did Daz Tech Support deem that case was solved? And how would ANY customer respond to their "We'd love to hear what you think of our customer service" question.

I use this to help me - https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer with the problems you mentioned above.

DocPhoton posted at 1:23 PM Thu, 27 March 2025 - #4494552

Daz's Future?

I just got a message this morning from Daz Tech Support that a support ticket, filed in May, 2023, was "deemed solved", their words. Tested the item (AM's Porcupine) with DS4.23, same immediate error.

So, nearly two years w/o a peep. So, how exactly did Daz Tech Support deem that case was solved? And how would ANY customer respond to their "We'd love to hear what you think of our customer service" question.

Do you own the base as well as the https://www.daz3d.com/look-at-my-hair? Plugin

You might need to download the base figure for the https://www.daz3d.com/rodent-base-by-am again.  

If you are using this product with Iray you will need this as well - https://www.daz3d.com/lamh-2-iray-catalyzer

Yes to all your questions. I've all of the LAMH products including the Editor.

It opens in the editor, but crashes instantly when the Export FiberHair is clicked, with or without the Send to Studio box checked.

Todays error:
DAZStudio.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION in module "D:\Program Files\Daz 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins\lamhPlugin.64.dll" at 0033:000000001E6E7313, DzMatrix3::`default constructor closure'()+136003 byte(s)

There's no "solved" version that I know of, certainly not mentioned by "Tech Support". Perhaps I'll try an uninstall/reinstall.

Which version of LAMH are you using 1.5 or 1.6?

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=DAZStudio.exe+caused+ACCESS_VIOLATION+in+module+%22D%3A%5CProgram+Files%5CDaz+3D%5CDAZStudio4%5Cplugins%5ClamhPlugin.64.dll%22+at+0033%3A000000001E6E7313%2C+DzMatrix3%3A%3A%60default+constructor+closure%27%28%29%2B136003+byte%28s%29

1.6

Did a full back to re D/Ling the package and no help

But the distinguishing feature are the quills and those are fine. He just looks a bit nekkid without it is all.

The fur is really just short body fur so might be a worthwhile project to make from scratch.

The point though is the "Tech Support" response. That should be worrying. 

Maybe they think it is solved because they can not recreate the problem you are having. Upload a picture so we can see the problem.

Maybe they think it is solved because they can not recreate the problem you are having. Upload a picture so we can see the problem.

How often do people do what we think they should do. lol

I guess I have been fortunate with them because when they tell me something is solved, it really is solved. When I report something as a problem, I provide all of the screen shots that I can so they can see from my end what is taking place. This leaves no room for anyone to assume anything or guess anything. It is right there for them to see it. Some people are visual and a lengthy description of what you are experiencing does not help them understand what is wrong. If they can see it in an image, that helps them see the problem and even helps them  solve the problem. I say this because I am a visual person and when I see the problem, then I understand the problem.

How about those cases, when You get a "We were able to replicate that bug and contacted the bug hunters about it" message and then either silent and a "problem solved" marking (without it being REALLY solved) a year or two years later?

I have several products, which got no "solved problems" entries for which I did bug reports (sometimes with possible solutions) and received the confirmation that the bug could reproduced, but still nothing was really solved, but the bug report was "solved".

Yeah, I know it's often the PAs that do nothing about the bugs when they get informed about them. But still just marking them solved silently leaves a certain taste.

I'm quite happy using DS 4.10 and DS 4.16  with G8F and G8M and all other previous generations of figures.  I have a large content library,  then model whatever else I need,  and can render whatever i want  in 5-20 minutes. 

I never got on the gen9 train. I thought the HD method of detail was exactly a resource hog,  which i had no intention to buy into.  I don't believe in any software that demand subscription,  whether its abode or any other provider. I do use Unreal and Unity game engines.  They are certainly exceptions to the rule. But their value added makes it worth it.

A number of concepts in G9 are just baffling, I don't know why they went back to an androgynous base (but not really!) and the simple tube topology everywhere that utterly relies on high subdivision for any shape details, the dramatically higher vertex count of the base mesh, the even higher density in the feet (???) the dramatically different shape of the head, the different base pose

it feels like a direct, angry response to pretty much everything good about the G8 figures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@pjz99 A lot of text about G9 has been spilled in Daz forums. G9 has been surprisingly polarizing! There are people who love everything about G9, especially a couple of Daz PAs. Others, not so much. I've accumulated enough G9 stuff without especially trying to simply accept it as it is. Not my favorite, but some gorgeous content available for it. As with anything Daz-related, if I like it and the price is right, I get it. And people are solving the problems. So, it is what it is!

As a content maker I can't find any aspect that makes it easier to make content for, the major differences just add quite a bit of work for me (especially the default shape). No thanks  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oddly, (or ironically ?) I've always avoided G9's, but of late I'm finding some aspects of G9's less problematic.  That may be as I export out everything from Daz via FBX or OBJ (I use Lightwave), so that could be a factor somehow. 

Not figures, unless they are really, REALLY unique, but poses now, thanks to the new converters, and most clothing, thanks to the latest AutoFit scripts (& thanx to GGreen for bringing those to my attention).

For example, I picked up some wardrobe recently that was for G9 & G8, and applied it to a G8 figure. It has LOTS of buttons. Usually, they have to all be tweeked a bit as the parenting or Followers are just a slightly off. Easy to correct, just time consuming. But this time, I didn't have to adjust a single one. A very pleasant surprise.

yeah the autofitting and smoothing/collision modifier have gotten really good these days, and if you have geografted bits underneath clothing it just ... does a pretty good job of fitting over them! 

Jumped on to DAZ a few years ago, and have invested quite a bit (for a hobbyist), but I'm not on the DAZ sub train in the slightest now. I picked up the odd bit that saves me a lot of time like BJs Camera Manager, quite a bit by Riversoftart, Scene Tools and a few more besides. Always during a sale mind you.

I have a couple of G9 characters, but I try not to use them too often. I run a 12 GB 4070(wish it had twice the RAM) and am quite happy with my G8 and G8.1(miles better face posing for me). In fact, any character I do get that isn't at a bargain bin price on DAZ is usually from Renderhub or Renderosity, and it's always G8/8.1.

Any clothing items I get have to support G8 at the very least.

Btw, they splooged a two week DAZ+ membership on us a few days ago, but I'm not in the market for anything right now but freebies to be honest. I let me DAZ+ membership run out last December, but they have reintroduced yearly memberships (DAZ+/DAZp 100/200). If they do a sale on those, like the year I got for 35 once, I might for a year for 50% off. Apart from that, Premier is for heavy users. I'm not that.

As for Renderosity, I'm a big fan of clothes shopping here. Once again, it has to support G8. G9 support is a bonus to me.

As for hair slowing down stuff, it seems to be random. Once hair slows the session down you have to delete it to fix that. Hiding it won't help. I love AprilYSH hair. Efficient, and you can always jazz it up with Sloshwerks DyeAnotherDay textures. I haven't had this slowdown problem with Biscuits hair though.

@pjz99 , thanks for the freebies. They're one of the reasons I keep checking back to Renderosity.

regarding texture memory, by the way I noticed in the specs for G9 the default texture resolutions are 8k. lmao

regarding texture memory, by the way I noticed in the specs for G9 the default texture resolutions are 8k. lmao

Ok yeah looking at the files actually on my computer, that's true, but the website makes it sound otherwise:

https://www.daz3d.com/introducing-genesis-9

The only other alternative I can think of is Reallusion's Character Creator 4 (it's pricier than DS and Poser, and you'd also need iClone for animation). Not as pricey as C4D, but you may want to research it a little as an alternative.

They are having a sale till end of month. Might be a good time to check out any bundles that include Character Creator 4, iClone, and perhaps the Headshot plugin so you can generate faces from photos)