2.0 plugin for Daz studio - when? (guesstimate)

[Spectralis]

I've recently bought Poser and already own Lightwave so I'm seriously considering transferring to those platforms. I'm not keen on buying new plugins but both are v2 so they're up to date. I can transfer DAZ scenes into Lightwave and then render with the latest version of OR. It's not ideal but doable.

I agree that all the Photoshop features are irrelevant to my needs. If they're creating distractions from finishing a stable version 2 of the DAZ plugin then I think that's a mistake. Right now any information about how development is progressing would be better than nothing. I'd rather know if the next release is not going to be for months than be left in limbo like this. I don't think it's fair to showcase new features and then remain silent for months.

[aturbanotoy]

I feel that Otoy is culpable here as well. Either they should be providing customer service, or they need to have better oversight on their contract plugin developers. I wonder if they know how badly this reflects on them as a company. Hope to hear something positive soon. Cheers!

[linvanchene]

edited.
removed now obsolete speculation.

[t_3]

Unfortunately t_3 doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes and has gone completely quiet again. It's just a matter of time until people start bashing him again.

quite right. i'm going to take that bashing. i must admit i much more like to stay in my lunatic coding trance than to confront discussions about why there isn't that already or this. good idea? probably not. still i'm doing that work with a long term targets - and it is that much of it that i from time to time need to sort out any distraction.

As far as I remember he said that he's preparing the 1.5 version of the plugin, which will also mean the end of the beta stage. With that in mind, going beyond beta means there has to be a complete manual available, which at this stage is virtually non-existent and that doesn't bode too well.

correct. having a manual (and even better short explanatory video clips) is not a small project either. i'm searching for a 2nd dev/doc-writer/spokesperson for a while now, but had not much luck as lots of work and little money isn't that appealing for most ppl

As for the material compatibility, t_3 said that he had to rewrite most of the code (apparently partly inherited from another programmer) prior to v1.2 and that caused the incompatibility. Myself, I wouldn't be too concerned with the compatibility with future plugins.

as from 1.5/2.0 on there should be less problems in this direction; octane itself contains methods to convert node data between versions, the plugin-internal data format is flexible enough to keep up with future changes (in technical terms it is now an id/key/value system with no hardcoded relationships like there were before) and i'm going to read back pre-1.2 data also; might be not of interest for some, for others it apparently is. should i try to make everybody happy? i'll happily get on this point in an extra -philosophical- discussion...

I think its crazy that we are so far behind with our plugin and 2.0 is out and I'll probably never be able to use it. I'm going to upgrade anyway but something needs to be done about the state of the Daz plugin...

it is not crazy, it is like it is. i lost the 2nd dev when the plugin was released in a not quite good shape last year. i had to do everything from scratch, based on a workload for 2 ppl, not one. being halfways through it (this was 1.2), a completely changed octane api appeared. i decided to not trash everything again, but finish the work on 1.2 (around november). when working on post 1.2 from january on, 2.0 appeared in the midst of it, heavily pushed by otoy as you probably know. not so much code changes but being a payed upgrade i had concerns if it was a good idea to again skip past a stable 1.x update. thus have built a code base to at least allow new 1.x builds when necessary. so, probably you are right: this is crazy. a can of worms altogether mostly caused by the fact i had started the 1.x rewrite at the must unfortunate time last summer. probably have made unfortunate decisions also what to do when, but afterwards you always know better. in a short: i kept and keep working on it for as much is i physically be able to, and you will probably able to use it - if you can stand the wait for it, but i can't do much about the amount of time things need to be done.

The only reason I'm updating is because I don't even trust we will have a functional stable version of the plugin prior a 2.0 release(cause where is 1.5? where is a version that supports old materials? Why do I have to lose a year worth of materials I've worked on?). The way things have been working 1.5 will just be skipped altogether. and our dev hasn't even chimed in yet.

if there is demand it will be possible to release 1.5 without extra work (but a few switches the turn off 2.0 specific stuff). will it be ever stable? it in fact got more stable already, and it will continue to do. will it be ever bug-free? probably not...

I just forked over another $140 as a gamble...hoping one day I'll actually be able to take advantage of 2.0. I'm still using the old DS plugin from last year because the current one doesn't support my old materials...

I hope 1.5 or whatever does actually support the old materials as promised, but who knows if that is going to happen either. I've been sticking with 1.1 for now.

as already stated, this day will come. with 1.1 mats read back. if not for anybody else, than at least for you.

As for the material compatibility, t_3 said that he had to rewrite most of the code (apparently partly inherited from another programmer) prior to v1.2 and that caused the incompatibility.

Yeah I know this, but it doesn't mean that any future versions will work with older data(we would like to assume but that's not safe)... I asked this directly and did not get a reply so unless there is an official statement who knows whats going to happen.

well, you told me about your frustration... not exactly a question, is it? i added it on top of my personal amount of frustration and turned back to work...

I agree that all the Photoshop features are irrelevant to my needs. If they're creating distractions from finishing a stable version 2 of the DAZ plugin then I think that's a mistake.

they don't. there was about 2 weeks work on a proof of concept for the gtc, and nothing more since then. it is to be done only after the ds plugin is mature enough.

Right now any information about how development is progressing would be better than nothing. I'd rather know if the next release is not going to be for months than be left in limbo like this. I don't think it's fair to showcase new features and then remain silent for months.

as you may have noticed, i have at least already stopped showcasing upcoming stuff (even it there is quite some amount to tell). it turned out that presenting new upcoming (ocds exclusive) features leads to comments like "work on the basic stuff instead adding fancy features". even if this is not completely untrue, it is not the way it works... for me. if it was that easy to do the "basic" stuff in studio environment, it would have been completed long ago. in fact it isn't (more of that below). and i, as a person, need from time to time to do things that make _me_ happy - as i otherwise would have quit a work that some already called undoable. and in particular that is to here and then start implementing a feature i have thought about long ago, and i'm pretty sure everybody will like once done. and i also do invest plenty, plenty time in the interface, how it looks, how it is to interact with, into ease of workflow, into the raw speed of processing and into keeping all the complex stuff behind the curtain, that needs to be done to marry studio and octane. i'm pretty sure most ppl will like the outcome of this efforts (give it is an reliable outcome), but of course nobody likes the time it needs. so in short: my decision is to favor sophisticated handling over development speed. or in other words: i work on an application i personally would like to work with (usually means high demands), and will continue to do that until the point is reached.

I think T_3 is a good guy as well, but I'll be honest: I'd rather have him cut the useless experiments and focus on a strong stable version of the plugin ( talking about the 2.0 version here ).

talking about experiments: the whole plugin development is just experimenting - all the time. there is no guide in how to reach a specific goal. from the simplest terms in studio (how does studio handle material applying), over the medium heavy (how dows studio handle geo grafts) to the most complex (what happens in studio, when and why) - all this can only be found out by trial and error and trial and error and trial and error and... and it is pretty much the same in octane (but with more in-depth support of course) = trial and error to 2nd power.

Sure, everything that was shown is interesting and I may end up using it at some point in the future. But what is needed now is first to have T_3 communicate with his customers ( I'd be out of business if I were to handle my work communications like that ) and then, support the Octane 2.0 new features that are essential ( displacement, motion blur, region rendering, hdri+sky ).

displacement: done (won't make daz ppl happy anyway, since displacement doesn't work well or at all together with bump/normal mapping)

motion blur: done for cameras. not done for objects. ds geometry access doesn't allow an easy way to provide complete object motion blur. for example: the way the poser plugin currently handles it is to export the whole animation as alembic file, than re-import it into the plugin, to get the velocity vectors calculated by octane; haven't made up my mind yet how to to it for ocds.

region rendering: done (during the last week btw). still had invested much more time into this than i should have, to work around some specifics of how region rendering works... if somebody likes to talk about region rendering "what and how", just open a new thread/discussion, and i'm going to join it. ps: region rendering isn't a method to allow tiled rendering of large images - this has to be still done by some camera shifting tango (with some limitations regarding environment size; and which i haven't implemented yet).

hdri (background) + sky; roughly a no-brainer (= it just works in 2.0 without much extra coding from my side).

and i also have network rendering almost done, since i of course also need to support this for a 2.0 release, again with doing a nbr. of extras that nobody had asked me to do

I may be in the minority here since I use this plugin+Octane for my work almost every day

no, you aren't; at least what i get from that usage stats, this is rather a majority.

but what I need is a stable plugin that doesn't hang Studio out of the blue so often. He needs to focus on delivering a strong stable barebone, and most importantly he needs to deliver.

of course right for the first part. in order to do this i do over and over review prev. code and try to tighten and rework stuff that somehow wonky = refer to the experiment thing above. and 2nd: it will be delivered when ~ready.

Some years ago I had a subscription website and I know how easily it is to wrongly focus on the nice stuff. But reality quickly kicked back: customers want a strong/stable/fast experience first before even wishing for some bells and whistles.

yes. of course. i'm going to do both in some manner, and rest assured that stability is my main focus; as written above: i personally would not like to work with an application that all to often crashes (well, sometimes i have to, like visual studio with + svn plugin + pvs plugin which in combination crashes about 5-10 times a day, or ps5.1 which hangs about every 2nd start and refuses to work when i don't restart windows at least once every 12hrs).

Please T_3, communicate more frequently ( at this point, just communicating would be a huge step in the right direction ), even just to post a quick update and deliver a strong plugin without all the unnecessary stuff. I check the website every single day, and at some point, I'm wondering if buying a Ouija board would be more effective at getting some information...

Keep up the good work mate though

at this point i can't guarantee sthg. substantial better comms, at least until release. will try to tune in a little more often though.

if the updates are more than a month away please ask t_3 to let us know. Because then I'll stop wasting my time checking the site every day if I know the updates are not coming any time soon.

i currently don't think it is more than a month away, but i still have one major point to put together, in order to push something to the outside world.

If you know that it will be July or August until the plugin is ready PLEASE TELL US!!!

i don't know it. i don't think it needs that much time. i can spend 16-18hrs a day (no joke) and 'am doing it until it is done.

On the one hand I still believe that T_3 may surprise us all and a release could be days away.
But after everything I experienced between June 2013 and February 2014 I would also not be surprised if this summer passes without release as it happend in 2013.[/i]

i know this kind of expectation i had myself into others. and guess what - this is exactly what i tried to achive with no much luck. but i'm defenitely not going to let the summer pass without a release. can't happen...

[Spectralis]

Thanks for the update t_3! I realise you're working very hard on this. Just a few words every couple of weeks or each month about how things are going would be great. You don't need to go into great detail each time but thanks for doing so today. Now that I know it'll be at least a month or more b4 a release I can stop checking the site for awhile.

[linvanchene]

edited and removed by user

[xxdanbrowne]

t_3:

Thanks man. Appreciate the update and all the hard work you are doing.

Just out of curiosity: what platform do you use for developing code for the plugin? c++/C# visual studio/something else?

[AtticusBones]

Everyone be nice. The last thing any of us want is for t_3 to do a Phil Fish.

[AlfaseeD]

Everyone be nice. The last thing any of us want is for t_3 to do a Phil Fish.

Maybe he is Phil Fish !

displacement: done (won't make daz ppl happy anyway, since displacement doesn't work well or at all together with bump/normal mapping)

The problems may come from the geometries right ?

[joelegecko]

Sooooo... What news from the Mark?