3D Software Help and Assistance. Ask Away.

[MissFortune]

loading the same character causes it to take longer to load. Looking into the log i found this

2022-05-23 20:41:43.716 [INFO] :: Creating materials...
2022-05-23 20:41:43.734
2022-05-23 20:42:18.872 [INFO] :: Finished asset load (open): 0m 59.114s

2022-05-23 20:43:48.933 [INFO] :: Creating materials...
2022-05-23 20:45:07.299
2022-05-23 20:45:29.136 [INFO] :: Finished asset load (merge): 1m 52.885

2022-05-23 20:46:37.441 [INFO] :: Creating materials...
2022-05-23 20:49:02.575
2022-05-23 20:49:24.671 [INFO] :: Finished asset load (merge): 2m 59.888s

I loaded the same character just to try and isolate the issue but the same happens with every new character i add regardless.

Any ideas ? having a char load in 1 minute is one thing, having every other character take one minute more for each character you load is insane.

I will have to say that this happens when i load custom characters that are saved as scene subset.
loading standard characters doesn't make them take progressively longer to load.

A minute or so is completely normal.

It'll only get longer as the models get higher quality, unless Daz decides to rebuild the software foundationally. Even with a faster computer. It's usually the character being loaded with all the morphs and such. I believe there are some plugins/scripts/etc. that can take care of this. Other things can be causing this as well, some of the Inked Tattoo assets cause quite long loading times, for one reason another. Couldn't tell you why.

As for saving characters as a scene subset, I personally find that quite inefficient, but that's totally subjective. Try saving your character and his/her clothes as their respective presets (File > Save As > Character Preset and File > Save As > Wearables Preset, respectively.). My speeds seem a bit faster doing it that way, but that's completely circumstantial.

 

[osanaiko]

Could it be related to LIEs? Are those re-calculated at load time?

The other thing could be if you have a lot of morphs installed that are applicable to the figure type - Daz has* to load every morph just in case the saved figure has one of them applied.

*a very interesting architectural decision that makes using the software a much worse experience.

 

[MissFortune]

*a very interesting architectural decision that makes using the software a much worse experience.

I saw a discussion in a thread on the Daz forum talking about delaying Daz Studio 5, and there were some who were speculating that they're doing it to work on stuff like the way morphs were loaded, the timeline, and other known problematic areas of the software. Though, with Daz being. . .well, Daz, it's also just as likely that they break a bunch of stuff on release.

 

[3DReaver]

A minute or so is completely normal.

It'll only get longer as the models get higher quality, unless Daz decides to rebuild the software foundationally. Even with a faster computer. It's usually the character being loaded with all the morphs and such. I believe there are some plugins/scripts/etc. that can take care of this. Other things can be causing this as well, some of the Inked Tattoo assets cause quite long loading times, for one reason another. Couldn't tell you why.

As for saving characters as a scene subset, I personally find that quite inefficient, but that's totally subjective. Try saving your character and his/her clothes as their respective presets (File > Save As > Character Preset and File > Save As > Wearables Preset, respectively.). My speeds seem a bit faster doing it that way, but that's completely circumstantial.

its not that it takes a minute. its the fact that loading it takes more and more time for no aparent reason. I was loading the same model, it wasn't higher quallity. Look at the timings. it takes 20 ms loading the materials the first time, over a minute the second and over 2 minutes the 3rd time. I tried using material preset and it does the same thing. it hangs for minutes at end for no apparent reason. if i just go and load a character asset made by someone else it takes like 30-1 minute regardless of how many characters there are in the scene.

loading a scene with an environment and 7 characters took me 6m 8.473s or about as much as it takes to load 3 individual characters.

 

[MissFortune]

its not that it takes a minute. its the fact that loading it takes more and more time for no aparent reason. I was loading the same model, it wasn't higher quallity. Look at the timings. it takes 20 ms loading the materials the first time, over a minute the second and over 2 minutes the 3rd time. I tried using material preset and it does the same thing. it hangs for minutes at end for no apparent reason. if i just go and load a character asset made by someone else it takes like 30-1 minute regardless of how many characters there are in the scene.

It almost sounds like it could be a hardware bottleneck somewhere (or it could just be Daz.) or, as osanaiko implied, something outside the base model causing it (since you say it doesn't do it with standard characters/figures.). What's your RAM/CPU like? I'm no tech-wizard, but prior to rendering, I believe (could be wrong) that Daz uses more of the CPU and RAM then the GPU (outside of Iray Preview.). You bring a figure. and that takes a minute. You bring in another, and since there's less resources for the system to work with, it goes a little slower. Then so forth. Even if the patternistic nature of it is a bit odd.

Think of it like towing a boat. Your 4-Cylinder Toyota may be able to tow a boat, but for how long before the engine gives out?

 

[osanaiko]

its not that it takes a minute. its the fact that loading it takes more and more time for no aparent reason. I was loading the same model, it wasn't higher quallity. Look at the timings. it takes 20 ms loading the materials the first time, over a minute the second and over 2 minutes the 3rd time. I tried using material preset and it does the same thing. it hangs for minutes at end for no apparent reason. if i just go and load a character asset made by someone else it takes like 30-1 minute regardless of how many characters there are in the scene.

That is a really interesting observation, I missed it in your first post.

The fact you were reloading the same character and got wildly different times.... clearly there is no "oh I already have asset YYY's materials in memory, i'll just copy them..." code.

One difference is the first character had " Finished asset load (open) " and the others had " Finished asset load (merge) ". Open and Merge may behave differently?

I wonder if Daz is doing some very dodgy linked-list memory allocation thing. I have noticed that after loading a lot of stuff, it takes nearly as long as it did to load the scene when you try to fully QUIT daz (the UI goes away but there is a still a process running that is holding the memory and verrrrrrry slowly reducing the memory).

The sad thing is there is literally nothing we can do about it: the Daz developers are few in number, labouring under a massively complex c++ legacy code base, and the company is not particularly profitable. I recall hearing that they were bought out by an investor not long ago, but no real change in their product so far...

 

[3DReaver]

I figured out what is triggering it but it still makes no sense. The loading times on the character itself is consistent. The problem is loading the materials. Loading the Uber skin material on a character is near instant, loading the PBR material causes the progressively longer loading times.
Vast majority of the characters that i have do not start with the PBR skin shader even if they do have it in the product. Thats why i could load them with no issues.

The product that i found that starts with the BPR skin shader is victoria 8.1. Can anyone just load it a couple of times and see if they can replicate the progressively longer loading time? i need to know if its just daz being crap or if i somehow fucked up.

just for clarity on my latest test
i loaded the same character 3 times (non PBR skin)
1- 33.955s
2- 33.568s
3- 33.722s
i then applied the details from surfaces tab via a material preset on those characters.
1- 19.567s
2- 34.996s
3- 50.590s

 

[10xRecoil]

I need help to understand how this desired effect on her breast portion is achieved. I tried the mesh grabber tool and it helps with the depression part of it but I was also hoping for the bulging effect due to it like a poisson's ratio lol.
I am wondering if there's a different way of doing the depression and bulging effect within the confinements of daz software only.
Thanks in advance.

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[MissFortune]

I need help to understand how this desired effect on her breast portion is achieved. I tried the mesh grabber tool and it helps with the depression part of it but I was also hoping for the bulging effect due to it like a poisson's ratio lol.
I am wondering if there's a different way of doing the depression and bulging effect within the confinements of daz software only.
Thanks in advance.

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Looks like the image used

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or

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. At first look, at least.

 

[amster22]

Looks like the image used

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or

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. At first look, at least.

Maybe breastacular, it is very good for squished breasts

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[MissFortune]

Maybe breastacular, it is very good for squished breasts

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Could very well be that, as well. Didn't know that existed, honestly.

 

[10xRecoil]

Looks like the image used

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or

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. At first look, at least.

all right I went through a quick try of using Ghost Dynamics, applying smoothing modifier myself and then using grasp helper.
Ghost Dynamics worked well to my expectations but one have to work with the presets alone.
I restarted the whole thing and applied smoothing modifier and collision target to the scene, well it worked like meh.
Grasp helper though is what I liked the most.

Spoiler: Grasp Helper

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Thanks for the assist MissFortune

Maybe breastacular, it is very good for squished breasts

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Amster, I tried to understand the long glove invisible stockings..what? but the whole thing just flew above my head . Can you help me follow it in layman's term, I mean in simple steps.

 

[osanaiko]

The product that i found that starts with the BPR skin shader is victoria 8.1. Can anyone just load it a couple of times and see if they can replicate the progressively longer loading time? i need to know if its just daz being crap or if i somehow fucked up.

just for clarity on my latest test
i loaded the same character 3 times (non PBR skin)
1- 33.955s
2- 33.568s
3- 33.722s
i then applied the details from surfaces tab via a material preset on those characters.
1- 19.567s
2- 34.996s
3- 50.590s

I'm not using Daz 4.20 yet so I can't test to confirm your numbers. But it clearly looks like some sort of bug with PBR surfaces.

 

[3DReaver]

I'm not using Daz 4.20 yet so I can't test to confirm your numbers. But it clearly looks like some sort of bug with PBR surfaces.

You don't need Daz 4.2 just load a character that has the PBR skin shader on like victoria 8.1 multiple times and see if the loading time is consistent or not

 

[osanaiko]

You don't need Daz 4.2 just load a character that has the PBR skin shader on like victoria 8.1 multiple times and see if the loading time is consistent or not

I'm pretty sure Daz 4.15 does not have PBR support, and I haven't upgraded yet.

 

[amster22]

Amster, I tried to understand the long glove invisible stockings..what? but the whole thing just flew above my head . Can you help me follow it in layman's term, I mean in simple steps.

What problem do you have with the gloves or stockings? They are only useful if you want to deform the breast with the char own hands/arms/legs.
Breastacular is a breast morph collection and you can fine tune the shape with a smoothing modifier (like the tool used for cloth fitting). The only problem is that a limitation of DS is that the collision item that determines the shape for an object with a smoothing modifier cannot be the item him/her/itself. So one char hand cannot collide with her own breast. To solve this problem, you put some invisible clothing (gloves or stockings depending on what you want to do) on the char in order to allow "self collide" (that will actually be a collision of the glove with the breasts).
But to do what was in your initial image (a male groping a female), nothing is required.

 

[10xRecoil]

What problem do you have with the gloves or stockings? They are only useful if you want to deform the breast with the char own hands/arms/legs.
Breastacular is a breast morph collection and you can fine tune the shape with a smoothing modifier (like the tool used for cloth fitting). The only problem is that a limitation of DS is that the collision item that determines the shape for an object with a smoothing modifier cannot be the item him/her/itself. So one char hand cannot collide with her own breast. To solve this problem, you put some invisible clothing (gloves or stockings depending on what you want to do) on the char in order to allow "self collide" (that will actually be a collision of the glove with the breasts).
But to do what was in your initial image (a male groping a female), nothing is required.

hmm it brings some clarity as to why use the gloves and its purpose. I have seen so much in the reference pictures that I have to try it out. I hope there are some preset poses to go with it. Thanks.

 

[RoutineNL]

Hello, I have a question about DAZ: can I (forcefully) use both CPU and GPU for rendering? Sometimes it just randomly works that way and both of them skyrocket to 100% usage, and sometimes it doesn't and DAZ uses CPU only, it's so weird how inconsistent that is. Because I'm usually trying to render big scenes with lots of light and my poor 1050 ti can't handle the pressure (even with the optimization it's too heavy for it), so my CPU helps with that and I get much faster renders. Thanks for the tips in advance.

 

[osanaiko]

Hello, I have a question about DAZ: can I (forcefully) use both CPU and GPU for rendering? Sometimes it just randomly works that way and both of them skyrocket to 100% usage, and sometimes it doesn't and DAZ uses CPU only, it's so weird how inconsistent that is. Because I'm usually trying to render big scenes with lots of light and my poor 1050 ti can't handle the pressure (even with the optimization it's too heavy for it), so my CPU helps with that and I get much faster renders. Thanks for the tips in advance.

With my 3060, enabling cpu as well (Ryzen 7 5800X) only gives about 2-4% faster renders. So I mostly don't bother enabling CPU - it makes the PC unresponsive during the render which sucks.

For a 1050ti, if paired with a powerful CPU you might get a bigger relative improvement.

But because rendering is such an "embarrassingly parallel" operation, the GPU is so much better at doing it than CPU you'll get far better "bang for buck" from a GPU.

Also, about this: "Sometimes it just randomly works that way and both of them skyrocket to 100% usage, and sometimes it doesn't and DAZ uses CPU only, it's so weird how inconsistent that is."

This would be because of the GPU Texture memory is exceeded for some of those scenes, so the render CAN'T be processed on the GPU. Those are the ones that fall back to CPU only.

 

[10xRecoil]

Problem : Silhouette render like this

Solution : change the Max Path length.

if this help someone, all well and good.