Hi Gérald

Sorry not to reply sooner, I have not been on here recently.

I would be very happy to try a test version. I sent you my email address.

Many thanks

Hi Gérald

If there are developments coming, I have a suggestion. Could there be an option to save the results of a dynamic simulation as VWD steps through each of the frames? 

I have a lot of great success with VWD in Daz, but it's not unusual for it to freeze part way through, at an apparently random point (ie not the same point when re-run). If I had the simulation result up to the point where it failed, I would be very very much happier! (EG I'm running a simulation of 500 frames today).

I suggest it as a user selectable option, because I guess it may be hungry on disk space, and maybe computation time. (Being able to use the last frame before failure as the start point for a subsequent simulation might make this option even more useful).

Thanks again for your great program and support!

Hi Gérald

It's great to see you back. As I think you know already, my priorities would be for VWD to be a bit more robust (and maybe more informative when it breaks), and just to continue being available!

I've used Blender for cloth, and mostly I find VWD much better.

Best Regards

I think you need to be sure to try using CPU (multithread) rather than GPU. (I'm not sure whether "Restore default parameters" does that for you?)

For some people, including me, GPU doesn't do anything.

Hi tomasball

I'm not an expert, but a keen user. What you are doing sounds ok, but when I did it I got the same result - nothing moved. Then I noticed I had GPU selected for the simulation, which seems to be a problem nowadays.

So I changed to CPU for the simulation and it worked perfectly.

Other things to consider if it still has problems (sorry if this is obvious): Try restoring default parameters; and make sure your primitives have a good number of divisions when you create them.

Hi Snarlygribbly, 

That's great news! I'm so pleased to hear Gérald is in good spirits. I'll see if I can find/make some VWD examples for posting in the future. Hopefully others will too.

Do you have any yourself?

If you click on "Virtual World Dynamics faq" near the top of the page, there seem to be no other threads than yours (Snarlygribbly), BUT if you change the start date to some time ago (eg 2020) and click "browse archives" you'll see there are dozens of threads and lots of people using VWD over recent years. I suspect you didn't get much response to your post because it is very open-ended! (and, as MikeO says, Gérald the creator of VWD has had some personal problems recently otherwise he would likely have replied. We wish him well).

That's a shame  - especially with such a high spec system. Makes me wonder whether I should stick with what I have rather than upgrading - Maybe hang on to what I have just for VWD simulations!

Sorry if you already know this, but I've found that crashing is much less likely when following these working practices. (And I'm always using CPU):

- Restart the computer and don't have any other optional apps/programs running. (Although I don't think I've had to do this since starting using v2)

- Create the VWD sim with the scene stripped down to the minimum. IE just the figure and cloth/hair item involved in the sim. Merge with rest of scene afterwards.

- Have the figure and cloth/hair in base resolution for the sim.

- Simplify the clothing/hair with a decimator if it has a large mesh, and/or do the sim on one element at a time. EG shirt body and sleeves, or bangs and ponytail, separately. (I do this by having the elements as separate items (duplicate, delete part of mesh geometry in one, rest of mesh geometry in the other. Animate by Host where they join)).

- "Restore default parameters" in VWD, unless you are confident they are all how you want them!

- Exclude parts of the figure which are not involved in the sim using "no collide for current collision". EG Exclude all of body except head and shoulders for hair simulation.

- Use "Animated by host" on those parts of the mesh which are best kept the same as before the simulation.

I'm sure I saw a longer list than this somewhere in the past but I can't find it now!

Let me guess - You did all that and it still crashed!

In case anyone else is remotely interested (!), I found an answer to my own question. It is a fair bit of work...

- You can export the VWD animated item from Daz  (base resolution) as both an obj (first frame) and an mdd (lightwave) animation and import those to Blender.

- Then export from Blender as an obj animation. (Select the options to keep vertex order and don't split)

- Import the first frame obj back into Daz and use Morph Loader Pro to create one morph per frame on it for the animation.

- Use the AniMorph script to set the Morphs so only the correct one is at 100% for each frame.

I got this process from Jay Versluis' youtube guide, which has much better explanation: How to import OBJ Sequences into DAZ Studio with animMorph - YouTube

I guess the end result is similar to Philemot's Daz bridge used with v1 of VWD.

I intend to reduce the frame rate when exporting to and from Blender, which should result in a smoother simulation, and smaller file size. When finished I would change keyframe interpolation to linear on all the new morphs, and increase the frame rate. 

The downside is that it creates a big scene file when saved in Daz. Also, AniMorph seems to create keyframes on everything on every frame which shouldn't be necessary.

marble posted at 8:20 PM Fri, 10 February 2023 - #4455656

Yep, I can get VWD to work partially using CPU but it crashes with GPU. I do hope development is resumed but Gérald has gone quiet again.

It doesn't sound like your failure is like Sepiasiren's - Which looked as if it might be related to having  "VWD exchange_x32" in the list of plugins (which I don't have in mine - attached).

Sepiasiren - I guess you don't get as far as being able to select CPU/GPU processing?

I think I must be living in a parallel universe!

I'm using VWD "v2.2" in DS 4.21.0.5 in Windows10 without any significant problems.

I don't have an nvidia graphics card - Everything is done with CPU - but that wouldn't make any difference would it?

I've attempted to upload a crude gif as evidence! (All done with VWD on a basic walk animation)...

Sepiasiren

I'll apologise first: I haven't read back through all the history so I'm sorry if some of this has already been said, and I'm definitely not an expert in any of this and could be wrong...

I'm using VWD "v2.2" in DS 4.21.0.5 in Windows10 without any significant problems. (It falls over when I try to do impossible things with it, or if I have too many other applications open.) I think that you would be wasting your time and efforts to go back to an earlier version of DS.

In my list of plugins VWD appears as "VWD Cloth and Hair Bridge" (I checked this by disabling it, and it stopped working. Re-enabled it and it started working again).

I don't have "VWD exchange_x32" in my list of plugins because I'm using the 64 bit version.

I suggest you try removing the x32 file from your plugins folder as that seems to be upsetting DS.

Did you see Dan's video tutorial on installing? That's what I used for my installation. It's on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-DvUNKDXdk

Hope that helps

VirtualWorldDynamics posted at 11:19 AM Sun, 2 October 2022 - #4445715

Hi there,

I realize that the most urgent work is to make the program compatible for its two hosts: Poser and Daz Studio.

The program is more and more directed towards Daz Studio... sorry for Poser users, but I will start by making it compatible with Daz.
I know the program is not working properly since version 4.14 of Daz Studio.
For the moment, I do not know exactly the problem which appeared since this version but I think that it is possible to use it with some changes of practices.
First, I'll try to show how to use the current version of VWD with the latest versions of Daz. Then I will modify the program to make it fully compatible.

VWD modifications for its use in Poser will come just next.

Can you say specifically what is not working correctly since DS 4.14?

Many thanks!

Hi Gérald

It's good to hear from you again. So sorry to hear about your eye - Hoping for the best for you.

I still use VWD all the time (animations) and would be very sad to lose the capability we have now. 

I don't think I understand where you are saying you might take VWD in the future. I use Daz Studio but I am very happy manipulating meshes in Blender, either changing existing meshes or making new ones, so I don't think I want another program to do that!

I seem to be getting fewer crashes in VWD these days, (I don't know why), but that could still be improved.

For me, your English is absolutely fine. (But I hope my English is ok for you!)

Best regards