Attached Link: Recent Files Plugin

I've created a plugin for DAZ Studio 4.6 (should also work in 4.5 but nothing before then, Windows only -- sorry I don't have a Mac) that adds a Recent Files menu that remembers the scene files you work on (doesn't remember/use .daz files though, only the newer .duf scenes).   I've decided to go ahead and release this even though DAZ is now saying they have added something like this a feature in a future version of DS.  You can use this until this and even after, I see no reason it wouldn't work even if they add their own.

You can read a little bit more about it's development on the DAZ Forums (if you care) in this thread here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/25931

I'd love feedback on it, if you have issues with it/etc.  You can reply here or use the support email address on the site.

Holy crap!  This will be awesome!

(funny how something as simple as recent files, becomes such a huge feature, when you dont have it)

Works like a champ, nice job!  I like the little images as well  :)

I'm glad you like it.  I thought the little preview images were a very nice touch.  Just felt right (and was very easy to add).

Truth is I wrote this because I wanted it/needed it.  Which tends to make the best software.  Kind of surprised DAZ is finally adding it to Studio (after years of requests), but that's good too.  If theirs is as good as mine, it's easy to remove the plugin (it's just one file).  And if theirs isn't as good, keep using mine.  It may be weeks before DAZ releases theirs.

I'd still consider this beta since I don't exactly have an army of testers.  If you have any problems with it please let me know

Finally!!! Big props for this fella! This is certainly one feature that has been oh so needed FOREVER... Let you know how it works out for me

At last, a feature I have been wanting for an absolute age - thank you :)

Best plug-in for Studio ever!

Thanks Matthew.

Thank you!  I agree with 3dOutlaw, I'd notice that there was no 'recent files' menu from time to time, but never really thought about it.

Now if I can just find something to give renders a defaul tautoname each time... ;)

Just a quick note, I've uploaded a new build of Recent Files that adds two new commands to it.

Smart Save and Smart Save Increment.  Smart Save is just like regular save, only it won't let you blindly overwrite your default scene file.  Smart Save Increment adds and increments a number at the tail of the scene filename.

I hope you find these two new additions useful.

Matt, great job again! I've been super pleased with the first version. 

I may be asking an unknown but since I'm not uber-talented with writing code, might have you some insight as to why studio might jam up a scene even though my rig has abundant memory (12gb DDR3 at 2100mhz, Win 7 ultimate 64 bit, 6-core AMD 1090T Black)? It's something I've wondered for years, as it happens fairly often; a scene approaches 3.5GB in memory and starts stuttering. I've been guessing it has something to do with a default limit in Studio and a certain vertice limit. 

If you can fix that, I'll start filling up my wheelbarrow with appreciation and preach your good name all across the land. 

I'm glad you like Recent Files.  If anyone downloaded the 2.0.0.1 build you might want to get the new 2.0.0.2 build, since I actually had to fix a bug (file names with ampersands weren't being displayed correctly) -- choover3 found it.  Nice catch on finding it for him.

As for DS having problems with your scenes, most of my scenes eat far more memory than that and I don't have any problems at all.  And my main box is like yours Win 7 Ultimate and only has 12gigs of physical ram.  Different CPU and motherboard though.

Here's my advice: get some tools to monitor your computer and see what the problem is.  Personally I'd most likely use Process Explorer from the SysInternal team at Microsoft http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653  And if that didn't leave me a clue I'd look into it more with their Process Monitor tool  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645

See what is really happening and you might be able to figure out exactly what the problem is. It's very likely there is something about your computer that is causing the issue.  It could be something you can fix.  Just assuming it's a memory issue is likely a wrong path.  When your computer does something, it happens for a reason.  Stalls aren't random.  And things can be monitored.  Then with that data you can work your way to a solution.  Or if not a solution you can understand the problem enough that you might be able to help the developers fix the problem.  And no it's not easy.  But you may be surprised at how much of it is under your control.

I should also point out that graphic card drivers are often an issue with OpenGL applications (like a large scene in DS).  But it depends on the type of stuttering you are seeing, is it in the viewport or the whole computer?  Only while rendering or only when working with the scene?.  I think most people would be surprised at how often open GL stalls end up being driver issues.  To be fair it isn't always the driver writers fault.  Usually it's the app doing something strange that sets it all off.  But you'd be amazed at how often they can make small changes in drivers and suddenly apps can gain impressive speed increases.  But that kind of OpenGL tuning is very hard to do.  DS does have a few options on how it works with your OpenGL card (under Edit->Preferences on the Interface tab).  Finding the right combination for your video card can make a big difference in your interactive speed.

And if you are made of money, you can always throw a better card at it.  I'm currently using an nVidia 680 GTX with 4gigs of ram.  I recommend it easily.   But it wasn't exactly cheap.

Thanks for the lead on the monitoring programs. I've got a few but neither of those two. I don't actually render with Studio or 3Delight, I'm a Lux-head ;-) When it does stall, it is just when working in Studio. When I mean stall in this instance, I should specify that it's more response issues; super-slow to be precise. Sometimes it takes 5 or ten seconds for the viewport cam to respond, which leads me to save shortly before it crashes. But when that happens, it's just Studio, from moving the viewport cams or even adjusting a dial. Running that same scene in Luxrender can often double the memory use with no loss of CPU response on the rest of the system,nd Lux will run all 6 CPU's to 100%. I can still have Chrome open and pages open as normal. The thing that made me suspect memory was that Studio seems to cap my system at a very 32-bit like 4gb, even though everything installed is 64 bit. 

On the driver end, I also use nvidia cards (two older GTS450's; I DO need to upgrade--I have a Titan in my dreams but will likely spring for a 6-series before too long) and keep them up to date to maintain compatability with everything else I use. 

I'll have a poke and see what pops up. Thank you greatly for helping to troubleshoot this! 

What your describing sounds more like video card performance issues than anything to do with memory or CPU.  And all major OpenGL apps will have major slow down if you pile on enough polygons, it's not just studio.  GTS450's aren't that bad, the drivers are at least decent.  But the difference between my old GTX480 and the new GTX680 was night and day.  I played with a Titan for a few hours (it was a loaner from nVidia) and to be honest I don't think it was worth the premium.  But I haven't used any of the 700's yet they may be a better call than my 680.

I'd try changing the settings in DS for the OpenGL.  Move the slider to performance.  Set a low limit on texture size.  Turn off antialiasing.  And change your viewport to bounding box or wireframe mode.  When working with large scenes you may find you can't do the everything is a fully texture shaded mode.

If you can make DS crash and it generates a crash report, save it out and go report it on DAZ's Mantis bug tracker https://bugs.daz3d.com  You will need to create a new account there (it doesn't use your DAZ account).  A crash dump can be very helpful.  I don't think the submit thing works but you can grab the zip and including in your bug report.

Thanks once again! I have a few reports from this last project (a major animation run) and have been to their mantis page in days past. Most often I hear from Richard Hastletine; the man gets around!  Anyway, I work with just the bounding box but the shader idea had never occured to me; makes perfect sense though! Scenes that often throw a fit are Tomalin-sets like Sacrement that are major resource hogs in both Studio and Lux (8.47GB in Lux the other day!) or ones where I've got dozens of little props. Wah hah! 

Just a side note, the only thing that really attracted me to the Titan was that larger 6GB allocation of memory and the higher CUDA cores count, which would come in handy for GPU rendering. I later learned that Lux happens to work much better with 79xx series but the lack of driver support scared me off. Tit for tat I suppose... 

Nice work with this, i always thought it was an overlooked basic function. I'm on a mac so i guess i will need to wait for the daz release.

if only you could add copy and paste functionality ;)

What kind of copy & paste are you missing?  I've seen a couple of scripts that do some copy & paste operations.  So it's certainly an area where an addon could help but you need to be more specific about what you want to copy and paste.

Was thinking along the lines of copying a prop and pasting but I guess instancing pretty much does this now(or you can just keep adding the prop).

I would love to be able to select anything in the scene tab and copy and paste. but I guess there would be a huge amount of varibles to do that.

Pretty much how you can (copy figure) it would be good to be able to (paste to new figure). As a oppose to having to load the figure and then paste the presets to it.

There was a set of scripts:

http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=2909253

It only copies the pose.  But I don't think they are available any more.  I still have them from when they were put up on ShareCG.  cridgit is a merchant here I think.  He might be able to help with locating them (if they are still available).

Its all good, thanks for the reply :)

Thank you so much!  This is a wonderful plugin.

Just a quick update from my user experience. Plug-in works fantastic, and you were dead-on about the shader. Turning it just to smooth-shaded was just the fix for a big scene I did last night! Three Gen4's fully duded up, tons of little props, fiber-grass, and not a hiccup! Thanks for that, big time!! Just switched back to Texture shaded prior to exporting for a quick peek and off it went! 

Quote - Was thinking along the lines of copying a prop and pasting but I guess instancing pretty much does this now(or you can just keep adding the prop).

I would love to be able to select anything in the scene tab and copy and paste. but I guess there would be a huge amount of varibles to do that.

Pretty much how you can (copy figure) it would be good to be able to (paste to new figure). As a oppose to having to load the figure and then paste the presets to it.

There's also the Daz Clone program; kinda sounds like what you want. I finally picked it up last time it went on sale but haven't used it just yet. I think the official product is called Send in the Clones or something along those lines.

Aside from being able to essentially copy+paste, you can add a Random Modifier if you want to change a pose (for a character for instance; I'm going to try a horde of Zombie Genesis' one of these days) or even change the texture sets. I really got it for the horde idea and when I'm placing hundreds of little shell cases for battle scenes. 

Here it is: http://www.daz3d.com/send-in-the-clones-ds4-pro

I'd wait til it pops up on sale again, less you've got a coupon. I rarely buy from Daz anymore after the price hikes and the chincy sale deal (30% when it used to be 50%!) 

I've uploaded a new RecentFiles, version 2.0.0.3.  When using the save increment feature it wouldn't warn the user they were going to overwrite an already existing file.  This seemed kind of bad.  Now it does.  Just replace the old DLL with the new one and you should be good.  You can check the version number in the About Installed Plugins dialog.

http://www.pontari.com/Products/DazStudio/RecentFiles

Ok make that 2.0.0.4!

DS has some issues with how I was saving (it wasn't generating the preview on the increment save if you used the file browser dialog).  It's a bug in DS but I've worked around it.

You can check the version number in the About Installed Plugins dialog.

This build has also been uploaded to the Renderosity free stuff.

Just a quick note: the new Beta DS 4.6.0.81 is out with DAZ's implmentation of Open Recent.  I don't think they have done a very good job (it's showing several bugs I found and had to work around, which is very funny to me).  One thing I will point out is they make their menu item using some magic so you have to exit and restart DS before you'll see it in the Customize dialog so you can remove their's and just use mine.

Things I've seen:  They did the menu implmentation badly.  I can't even find the menu item on the left side of the Customize dialog.  Which means if you remove it you might not be able to add it back.  It also seems to magiclly insert itself on the file menu, 4 or 5 slots down.  No matter what.  I was able to exit and restart and then remove it completely but DS's menu system has always had huge issues with plugins and user customization.  I did notice my plugins often end up with duplicate copies of the menu items at the end of the Edit or File menus.  The dups don't show up except in the customize.  It's a bug but I don't think there is any way for a plugin author to work around it.

Opening a new scene doesn't seem to add anything to the menu.  But reseting the workspace layout does.  Which was strange.  Open recents wouldn't always restore when restarting either.  The whole open recent menu refresh seems kind of buggy.

They also don't show the nifty preview icons like I do!

Note: all of my plugins do seem to work with Beta DS 4.6.0.81  just copy them from your 4.6 Plugin dir into the 4.6.0.81 plugin dir.  You will have to regenerate all your settings and or menu layouts and shortcuts. 

So far I'm less than impressed with the Beta.  It has issues loading lots of my old scenes (still not sure why).  It has rendering issues (tons of little tiny firefly/crosshairs in the render in red and black).  The new OpenGL Texture Shaded 2.0 mode seems much slower than the old Texture Shaded 1.0 mode (even on my killer video card).  And I have no clue how to move over all my settings, which is a giant problem since I have a lot of very custom workspace and command setups.

If you notice any problems with any of my plugins and the new Beta (or the old release) please let me know.

Just installed it time saver

Fantastic! Can't rememeber all the times i wished Studio could have thic function. Thank you very much indeed!

Many thanks! Amazing plugin...

Works perfectly here! Thanks for sharing!