Huh, I made my horse "jokes" in the other thread. Happy New Year.

Hope your new year gets off to a galloping start, without any nightmares.

If you could post some examples I might be able to see what is happening. One thing that might be catching out is that some sets, mainly +/PC items, were updated to use .duf files instead of .daz sceen files and script-based presets, texture expanion sets might have issues there (but should have been updated themselves).

What folders are missing?

Making the source invisible in relfections is where the Ghost Light factor comes in - set it to 1 to hide reflections in very shiny surfaces, higher values for rougher surfaces. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/609556/creating-a-ghost-light-daz-studio-4-21-1-26

Can anyone confirm whether or not that the latest DS (as of this writing 4.24) supports invisible emissives (ghost lights) as supported in DS version 4.16.0.3 or earlier? For example, in 4.16.0.3, if I set emissive Cutout Opacity=0.000001, then I get transparent geometry that still emits the same as it I set the opacity to 1.0. I use this type of invisible emissive on virtually all of my renders and I have been very reluctant to upgrade DS for two reasons: 1. I don't want residual shadows from emissives plusI don't want reflective surfaces to reflect the geometry,  2. I hope to re-use my existing project files (they go back to the first days of Iray in DS) seamlessly with the current version of DS.  

Thanks for any information you can provide.

That was a bug, nVidia fixed it and it will not revert. We now have the alternative system using advanced node properties which was introduced to restore a form of ghost light, and that still works.

I would suspect that is a spammer testing the waters, though I can't see an illicit link in the post.

LoDs are not saved in .duf files, regardless of how they are made.

You can't get them as they are no longer available for sale (unless the license is transferable and someone sells you their CD, so they no longer have the data, but I doubt that is the case)

A hierarchcial materials preset should apply to both.

Yes, I had forgottoen but there are separate figures for different bird types (to reflect the way the feet and necks behave, principally, if I am recalling correctly - though they differ only in those areas). Sorry to be vague, but I have never got around to updating most of them from the original (or updated) Daz releases, aside from a few I purchased later, so my installations are a bit of a mess right now.

If you open the cr2 in a text editor (you may need to unzip it first, though generally compressed Poser files have extensions ending in z) and search for "deltas" do you get a bunch of entries with a vertex count and then a long(ish) string of numbers in groups of three?

Songbird Remix is not, as I recall, the same figure as the original Songbird, hence the Remix in the name, and it has been further refined over the years from its original release. Make sure you are using the poses on the right figure.

Have you checked the log for errors? 

Those are distant lights, they shine from far away throughout the scene, regardless of where theya re relative to the models; the only thing that matters is their direction.