Am I the only one who thinks that DAZ 4 is worthless, I mean I've installed it twice now and in both cases I ended up uninstalling it, a lot of the functions I liked in DAZ 3 are simply gone, replaced by stuff I have no need for, not to mention it being extremely userunfriendly, to say the least.

Yes you are ..

sorry retroDK but i'd have to agree with 26farenheit on that point there are functions missing from the free version as was in ds3.1 free version but there are some functions that ds4 has that ds3 don't that could be useful

I have it and I can't say I'm overcome with delight with it...I also find it user unfriendly..I liked the old Daz Studio format!! If I wanted to learn a new programme I would get Poser etc!!

What features are you missing? Do you have comparable versions (3 basic to 4 basic, or 3 Advanced to 4 Advanced/Pro)?

In order to make Studio appear more newbie friendly they went and dumbed down the default UI.  It bugged me at first too, but my motto has always been, "Push buttons, see want happens."  It took about two weeks of playing with it until I got a layout that I could work with.  The moral of my little tail is don't give up and don't be affraid to ask for help.

askin for help is alwayhs the best way to go if button pushing ain't your thing i did a lil bit on the public testing of the program and in 2 days figured out the gui that was defaujlt with the testing which comes as one of the 5 different gui's that come with the ds4 no matter the version free advanced or pro and it gives you everything findable and easy access no matter what all i know atm is city is part of the name since i don't have it open atm

I for one don't have a problem with it, as I'm a frequent button-presser! I geek-out every time I install a prog, by going down the list of customizing via the preference tab...But I will say that I was more than a bit miffed at the lack of documentation of their specific tools and plugins which no amount of button pressing could've cured the lack of functioning info needed in order to make the tool/plugin operable.

If you wanna check out a UI that's NOT user-friendly, check out Maya, or especially Lightwave...I guarantee you, you'll be running back to Daz with open arms! 

I love Maya, have no problems using it. I bought the Studio 4 Pro and am happy with it, though I do agree that it could use a ton more documentation, not a wiki that no one seems to update.

I cant say that I am 100% thrilled with DS4 either. Theres a lot of great tools and features you just cant get with DS3, or they have made it a lot easier in DS4, however the DS4 library setup (while probably better streamlined) really urkes me! its in no way compatible with my DS3 library without me spending weeks on end creating metafiles and sorting out my library. While you can acess your ds3 library in ds4, the hassle of it just isnt worth it. I constantly find myself going back to DS3 and getting things done much faster. Had I started with DS4, I would probably be thrilled with it, but I wouldnt have thousands of things to write metafiles for. I also find that a lot of the high end plugins I bought for DS3 are not avalible for DS4 at this time, so I have to use DS3 anyways. So, all in all, I think if you are jsut starting, DS4 is great. If you already have a library, its not worth the time investment ... yet.

You're probably right, I bought DS3 but never used it. Picked up the pro version of 4 at the same time I got poser 2012 and 9, husbee let me get them so I grabbed them. I need to spend a lot more time with studio, the more time I spend the more I like it, although poser is easier for me. There is a lot of power in studio and I just see it getting better, so will invest the time in it.

The Content Library is the equivalent of the DS3 Content pane - the only difference is it shows both folder and category views at once, instead of having to switch, and the folders are split between DAZ Studio formats and Poser format (and other import formats) rather than being in a single list distinguished by icons.

I really like Daz Studio 4 Advanced and only had two glitches with it so far.  For those of you who don't like the default interface, you can always change to one of the others.  I think that watching the free tutorial videos helped me a great deal to learn it so far.  I wish that it rendered faster, but other than that I've been pleased.  I love the Genesis figure and like the ability to blend body shapes.

I have been having probelms with legacy content compatibility, Michael 2 doesn't work like he's supposed to  and geometry switching doesn't work currently.   I still like to use Michael 2 and I have a lot of 3rd party figures that still use geometry switching so I'm hoping that's fixed soon.

For someone just getting into 3D I'd definitely reccomend it, as well as those who want to use Genesis content.

When 4 first came out I didn't much care for it. Now when I have to work in version 3 I get really frustrated. I needed to check a fit on V4 in 3 tonight and just cringed at how she looks. I admit that the geometry switching freaked me out once but other than that I have had no real issues in 4.

what i dont like about daz3d 4 : 

1. setting up lights and skin textures is very long and time consuming process and end result is almost never as good as Poser's default render.......

2. Lack of "open recent files" in the file menu. This seemed like a no brainer

3. When you save a scene file, going back to your content directory sometimes doesn't show any content (empty directories). you have to exit the app and start it again to see the content.

What I like:

-Content library that lets you organize your content properly 

-Doing animations was fairly easy to understand... though the available animations packages are a bit goofy (ie, had to struggle finding a decent walking animation that didnt look retarded)

If I were to start a wish list of things I'd like in DS 5 I'd say I would like better backwards compatibility and a faster render engine.  I'm running 64 Bit DS 4 Advanced and it takes a long time to render a full resolution, print quality image--so long intact that I start it at bedtime so that it will fully rendered when I get up in the morning, instead of waiting an hour or more.  But to be fair , Vue doesn't render any faster on my system.  I would like to upgrade my i7 Processor some day, I'm sure that would help.  Mine is a 2.64 ghtz i7, first generation, which was expensive and almost top of the line when I bought it--now they're I'm the 3.3 range or higher.

"1) setting up lights and skin textures is very long and time consuming process and end result is almost never as good as Poser's default render......."

That is very much a your mileage may vary sort of thing. It takes me forever to set up poser lights and half the time I am not pleased with the results. Lights in studio are so much easier and faster to me. And fixing skin textures in poser is a nightmare as far as I am concerned. And I finally realized they did need fixing to go with the lightning I have selected. Because it is such a pain in the behind I tend to just go and get an elite texture and have done with it rather than try and fix other ones. Generally when I do promos for products they take about 4 times as long to do in poser as they took me in studio.

I agree about more backwards compatability. That was always one of my pet peeves though I have had less hassle with it of late.

Faster rendering is always nice, but truth to tell I suspect I would need a newer computer for it to help me out much.

For 5 I'd want a more intuitive set up for shader mixer and dynamic hair. Hey, a girl can dream can't she?

I think the original post, and many of the responses to the post,  are an excellent example of how what works well for one person, dosen't work so well for another. I put off installing DS4 for several months due to all of the negetive feedback on the UI. I was pleasantly suprised that it really wasn't that big of a deal for me.

Learning DS4 has been a fairly simple process for me. I just had to check out all the tabs to see what they did, then go through all the menu items, and I was able to do everything quite well. Every now and then something comes up that I need to search for or think about for a minute, but in general I'm quite happy with DS4A.

I struggle with the lights in both Poser and DS, but UberEnvironment 2 makes lighting much easier. I usually use Carrara, where I find lighting much easier, but the last three images I posted in my gallery here were done with DS4. They could be better, but I think they came out pretty well for someone that is still learning DS, and just testing out Genesis when I hit a couple of combinations I really liked.

I don't have many plugins for DS, so other than Light Dome 2, DS4A has everything I had in DS3A, plus a bit more. I really like Genesis, the ability to blend characters is a fast and easy way to get a unique character. For instance, I made a character with V5 "full strength', and a little bit of Genesis female, V4, G4, Princess, Riley, and some morphs from the evolutions bundle (Link Below - Warning nudity). Figure combining with Genesis will allow users to easily generate very unique characters, plus the ability to scale whole figures, or individual parts of the figure, will enable a lot more variety. 

Faster rendering would be a big plus (after using Carrara - DS seems verrrrrrry sloooow), as would dynamic hair be a welcome addition. Oh, and DAZ would be doing themselves a big favor by making good user manuals for all their products. It's hard to know all the features and capabilities, and how to use them without proper documentation. It really makes them look unprofessional.

(nudity)  http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2286091