Hi all,
Just saw that Daz has version 4 of Studio out. Has anyone given it a go?
Is it worth downloading. I am a bit gunshy after some of the problems in previous versions. Does anyone know if it exports/imports to Bryce or Poser easily??

Fingers XXXX'd

Jenny

The new D|S is 1.4 and it's not Bryce 6 compatible so you need the patch for Bryce 6.  Once that's installed it works fine.  I've not had any problems with it at all and it does a better job of exporting to Bryce than previous versions, IMHO, as it exports the scene the way you have it set up, not at the default view.

so far it's worked fine. a lot faster too. i haven't tried any poser figures yet. i did notice the problem you mentioned in older versions. still the final renders were fine as far as the breaks were concerned.

Not found any probs with the latest version at all Lee :)

only thing I've noticed so far is that you cannot really save your custom shaders!!  DAZ goes through the procedure and you assume the shader has been saved, but when you try to apply it nothing happens!! (it's like it saved a blank file!). I've tried saving in 2 available formats dsb and ds. Your safest bet to save any shaders is to save all materials either as a whole or individually.

Other than that, it seems materials are handled in a much better way, and rendering options have been enhanced with shadow map size and renders are a bit faster and more precise.

overall, great improvement  when compared to the 1.3.10 version!

works well for me. 
you should check out the Daz|Studio Freepozitory and the Developer Discussion forums over at Daz for some extra stuff for D|S.

Quote - only thing I've noticed so far is that you cannot really save your custom shaders!! ...

So here's the thing: D|S uses Renderman shaders and Bryce doesn't. I'm pretty sure that some attributes will come over if you're using the DAZ default shaders, but certainly not if you're using anything custom, like pwShader or Pendragon's skin & environment shaders.

• ed

Major problem here. When you convert .lwo files to .obj files in Bryce 5.0, then import them into Daz 4, then save them as a Daz file, the next time you open the Daz file, it will be all mixed up with parts from other Daz files you saved for other things. For example, I converted a car in Bryce 5.0 to many (32) .obj files with the ungrouping feature in Bryce and saved them as .obj files. Then I imported them one by one into Daz 4. The .obj files imported fine and even located themselves fine for an entire car. I then saved the assembled car to a Daz file. The next time I opened it, it had hair parts, part of a house, part of a basketball goal, and a car body from another car all jumbled up together. I had spent two days doing over 20 cars before I realized this and now I have a total mess. I told Daz about it and they have reported it as a major bug. Be careful when using Daz 4 along with Bryce 5.0 conversions. Check your work!

I just installed DAZ 1.4, having first pulled my content folder and all the runtimes to my external drive so I wouldn't lose them when the updated DAZ got intalled. Now I'm about to do the Bryce patch for Bryce 6. However, as I went to install the patch it says "If you are installing a newer build of Bryce we recommend uninstalling any previous builds to prevent potential conflicts. To install Bryce 6 on this computer, please verify the installation location and click "install" to contiue" I thought this was just some sort of patch script, but it looks like full Bryce 6. Is it safe to install it? Should I pull off all my added objects, mats, sky presets etc. etc. (like I did with my DAZ content) before doing this? Now I'm scared to touch it in case I lose everything.

If you want to go from DAZ Studio to Bryce you don't have a choice, you have to install it.  The installer is very similar to the Bryce 6 installer but it only installs the patch.  I didn't have any issues with it when I installed it and I kept my Bryce 5 and Bryce 5.5 installed on my computer.

So even though its going to install Bryce 6, it just installs a patch? You didn't lose all your presets etc.? It's making me nervous because of the way it's worded, lol.

Nom you don't lose anything.  Like I said, I kept my Bryce 5 and Bryce 5.5 versions installed when I installed Bryce 6 and I didn't lose anything.  Bryce 6 installs to it's own folder so I have my Bryce 5 folder from Corel, my Bryce 5.5 folder from DAZ and my Bryce 6 folder, also from DAZ, and I haven't had any problems at all.  This way I didn't have to move anything, I just imported from the appropriate folder.  I still have and use tons of presets from Bryce 4.

Ok, I'll give it a try tomorrow evening :)