I haven't used D|S very much simply because it frustrates me to no end. No matter what I do, it's so painfully slow. I was so excited about it in the beginning, when DAZ was first letting us in on the whole project, but I have to admit that I haven't been in this latest version more than maybe twice now.

I love the lighting, but getting the lights to where they belong is a slow and agonizing process. Why do the lights come in on the floor under the figure, for crying out loud! Same with applying textures, hair, clothes, and forget about any scenery--it's hopeless for me.

Learning Poser was a snap, it seemed to just fall into place for me overnight, but DAZ Studio is baffling me to tears. Trying to move an object is so aggrivating I have to just give up and bail out. For some reason, the program just doesn't want to cooperate with me.

Will it ever be as easy to use as Poser?

Is there anyone else out there who is as frustrated as I am with this? Or am I just too stupid to figure it all out?

Melanie

Message edited on: 07/18/2004 08:58

Well it's probably an hardware issue. Unlike Poser, DS requires a powerful graphics card. I have a 128 MB card and DS is really smooth on my system. You could also try updating your graphic card's drivers and see if that helps.

I have a Nvidia GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2Pro. Does that mean anything? I'm hopeless with hardware. Melanie

The GF2 is a pretty old card. Mine is a GF4, and now GF6 is out so you might need to upgrade if you want decent performance with DS. Getting a GF6 would be serious overkill though just to run DS. However, try updating the drivers first. DS could get a boost from that.

The latest drivers:

Win 2000/XP:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_56.72

Win 95/98/ME:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_56.64

I find that typing the numbers directly on the sliders makes locating lights and objects fast and easy, I never used Poser so I don't know if that is easier or harder, so far I have been very happy with D|S. Casey, the Old Newbie

Cuba, thanks, I'll check out the driver update. Casey, how do you know what numbers to type in? Melanie

Practice, if the movements are in degrees try 90 first, then see if you want to go more or less, or maybe go -90, if the movements are linear try somethoing along the line of 30 or 40 first, then see if that is enough or maybe too much. as an example, a new light starts out at floor level centered where the objects all first arrive, try moving it y +250 that will place it overhead then move it like z +60 and that will make a scene illumination, rotating it something like x -30 should give great lighting for a sunlight effect. The same method can be used for an added camera, i usually add one i call pose camera and use it instead of the perspective cam for my prefered shots, i find it easier to move it using the numbers typed into the sliders. Casey, the Old Newbie

For the above samples I used stock Egyptian Victoria, the only pose change was to lower her arms to her side, I used a simple three light set up: Overhead light X Trans 0.00, Y Trans 220.00, Z Trans 60.00 X Rot -35.00, Y Rot 0.00, Z Rot 0.00 Footlight X Trans 0.00, Y Trans 60.00 Z Trans 30.00 X Rot 15.00, Y Rot 0.00, Z Rot 0.00 Backlight X Trans 0.00, Y Trans 180.00, Z Trans -100.00 X Rot -108.52, Y Rot 0.00 Z Rot 0.00 Casey, the Old Newbie

Cam settings for sample 1 X Trans 0.00, Y Trans 157, Z Trans 70.00 x Rot 0.00, Y Rot 0.00, Z Rot 0.00 for sample 2 X Trans 60.00, Y Trans 157.00, Z Trans 30.00 X Rot 0.00, Y Rot 65.00, Z Rot 0.00 for sample 3 X Trans 50.00, Y Trans 163.00, Z Trans 30.00 X Rot 0.00, Y Rot 55.00, Z Rot 0.00 I used 50% on the quality slider which accounts for the white eyebrows and eyes. I hope this helps you Melanie. Casey, the Old Newbie

Thanks, Casey. I'll save your posts and experiment with them. Melanie

Being a newbie myself I have felt a lot of frustration trying to learn, I don't know a lot but anything I can help with I will be very happy to. Casey, the Old Newbie

Daz studio is very slow for me, too. I tried switching off the openGL and it was still very slow.

I haven't had time to install the newest incarnation but I have heard it is better at system resources use. Casey, the Old Newbie

Why bother using it at all if you've got Poser. I didn't get the hang of it at first either, but after reading through the manual a bit, I'm getting much more done. The real thing that frustrates me that so much stuff in D/S doesn't work, even DAZ original stuff. A lot of the Mike & Vicky stuff I tried doesn't work out too well. Conforming clothes that don't conform, messed up hair, textures and propos out of place. Also I all seems so slow, especially when it comes to non DAZ stuff, the application just seems to choke on that. So I thought why bother trying it anyway? The only hope I had was using Bryce finally for importing my poser scenes, only to find out that you can't import poser scenes into Bryce directly, but always have to go through D/S. Well most of my Poser scenes don't turn out to well in D/S, so they're not going to look well in Bryce either. Since DAZ dashed all of my hopes on getting native Poser scenes into Bryce (only D/S scenes will do) and D/S still is such a mess, I've decided to stop bothering. DAZ's policy is what frustrates me really. Why not create direct pz3 support in Bryce 5. like Vue 4 has? Why go through all of this hassle in creating all of these tools needed? Why force me to use a application that isn't ready for use and won't be in a long time as far as I can tell. I don't need more applications and tools. Poser works fine for me, Bryce works fine for me, so all that is needed is real Poser support in Bryce. Not more conversion tools and such. Since DAZ is obviously not going to create direct Poser support in Bryce and D/S is very frustrating to use, I've decided to drop Bryce and D/S too. It's just a waiste of time, I don't have time messing all day with an application that's not doing it's job right. From now on I'll just stick to Poser and did get Vue 4 & Mover 5 too, recently. Those are way better then D/S and Bryce, no more messing around, all my time can be put in creating creations. It will take a long time before anyone ever pursuades me to use a DAZ application again and I do fear the worst for Bryce, will it be as frustrating as D/S is too in the near future?

Having never owned or used Poser I am far from an expert on this subject, most of the content I have downloaded that was made for Poser4 works great in DAZ|Studio but I have none that I created in Poser so I don't know how that would work. Some hair and clothing seem to go wild on import but just zeroing the dials (one click does it for all of them) usually cures it.