Ultimate Meadow Update?
vonHobo
Posts: 1,689
https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-grass--meadow-worldbuilder
I purchased this product about 3 years ago and it worked just fine. Beautiful meadow with flowers.
I noticed at some point in the last year or so that DAZ Install Manager had an update for this product. Which I installed and did not think much about it.
That is until I tried to use it today.
The Iray Viewport preview took 20 minutes to finally display, and then when I tried to render it crashed my system.
I'm so dissapointed. I wonder what changed? It's basically unusable now.
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It works OK for me. What graphics card are you using? What version of Daz Studio are you using?
Alien Aurora R7 Desktop.... has not changed since I started using DAZ.
GeForce GTX 1070
DAZ Studio 4.20 Pro
Oh well. It was a nice product when I could get it to work.
Any suggestions on a similar product (meadow with flowers) that I can use?
There is Realistic Grass Evolution, but it might be just as much of a load.
Did you try clearing out the RAM and VRAM (close Studio, and any browser windows, they are such a drain) and starting clean? There are always leftover resources hogging memory.
..or Wild Grass Hyper Kit, a low-poly (5 times less polys than Realistic Grass Evolution) alternative.
Thank you for the suggestions. I will give them a try, especially this Hyper Kit.
https://www.daz3d.com/rainbow-grasslands
I did find this one a while ago, so might use it.
It's not as sprawling as the meadow builder, but at least it renders pretty quick.
Now this has me worried. Can't get to my computer right now unfortunately. Are other people on 4.20 having the same experience with the Meadow Builder?
Works okay for me, and my specs are about the same as the OP. It's not the fastest, but loads and renders with my 1080 GPU. Not that I could add much more to the scene, though.
Curious about this update, though. All my files have dates slightly before the release date (2018-05-05) on all content. DIM reports package dates of 2020-09-26, a few months before I bought it, so if it was updated, I didn't see it, and can't see anything that was changed. No notes in the ReadMe (no surprise).
I tried one of the preset Scenes, and it only used about 1.5 GB of VRAM when rendering.
My system has not changed and Meadow Builder used to work for me.
I can't imagine what could have caused this not to work for me now. I don't fiddle with render settings at all. I vaguely recall seeing an update for Meadow Builder in my DIM I just don't remember when it occured, and I could be mistaken. I may have purchased it before 2020-09-26 and that's why mine updated?
I puchased these two products last night which should get the job done... beautiful scenes and fast to render:
https://www.daz3d.com/simple-grasslands-expanse
https://www.daz3d.com/rainbow-grasslands
Yeah, it's really beautiful.
Another one that looks really natural is this:
https://www.daz3d.com/serenity-forest
I'll try the set tonight again as well, I have two different systems. It would be a pity if it stopped working all of a sudden, it's really very beautifully made.
Turn Iray preview off, you have it on in your screenshot.
Then go into render settings and double check your instancing optimization. You most likely want it on Memory, not Auto or Speed.
If you did have to change the optimization, then try turning the Iray preview back on and see if that improves things.
If not, turn Iray preview back off and go back to Render Settings. Go into Advanced and make sure that the preview window is still using your video card and hasn't been accidentally turned off. That would make it drop to CPU.
Thanks! Please let me know how it goes.
I will try this. Thank you!
The Simple Grasslands Expanse is almost exactly what I was looking for.
https://www.daz3d.com/simple-grasslands-expanse
It's rolling hills with wildflowers and grass that is not waist high.
It has options to add trees too.
Thank you Predatron!
Turn Iray preview off, you have it on in your screenshot.
Then go into render settings and double check your instancing optimization. You most likely want it on Memory, not Auto or Speed.
Fixed it! OMG Thank you so much!!!!!
You're welcome. I'm glad it worked out.
Iray preview can be pretty hardware intense, especially with instancing. I would use it sparingly with your video card. You really want a 2xxx or higher to avoid lags.
Thank you. But every time I exit DAZ Studio and then relaunch it, the setting goes back to "Speed".
Is there any way to permanently change Instancing Optimization to "Memory" so that Studio retains this value?
It'd much like to know the same, it's pretty annoying! - I went and tested Ultimate Meadow on my RTX 2260 system, and it worked fine, despite the memory setting being on auto (I think). But the card is of course a bit stronger, so that was probably the reason. I'm glad in any case that your problem got solved, and that UM is still working properly in general.
I'm going to tell you the way I have fixed this in the past, this might not be the easiest and others might have alternate methods.
Open DS. Set everything the way you normally would want it. Render settings, display settings, etc.
Save this blank scene somewhere easy to find in relation to your DS content. The scene should go somewhere where you will never lose / delete / move it.
In DS, go to Edit > Preferences.
Under Preferences, pick the Start Up tab.
One of the first options under "On Launch" is "Load File." Check this if it isn't checked, then browse to the empty scene you created.
Now every time you open DS, it will open that blank scene with the settings set the way you want.
I like this approach because if I discover other changes I want, I go into that blank scene, change it, then resave it.
I also have a bunch of additional blank scenes that I set up for specific projects.
That's a good method, I know of this already - unfortunately, I tend to forget that I want to keep the 'opening scene' pristine, and then I always go and save right over it ... So that isn't working for me, but it's still a very good way to handle settings like this I think.
Heh. I do the same thing. Too often.
My solution is that I have a directory where I keep this Blank Scene in it. I also have the same scene with a G8F, another one with a G8.1F, etc. So I always have a back up to go to.
I've also forced myself to do manual incremental saves. So I am (somewhat) in the habit of doing a Save As instead of just a Save.
I've been burned too many times with corrupt DS save files.
Thank you! Your help was invaluable. I can actual use the meadow builder now. It's a beautiful product.
My pleasure, happy to help.
I actually own that product and I've never tried it. I'm inspired to give it a go this weekend.
Good luck! It's a nice scene.
I am guessing that if I save the scene with the Optimization set to "Memory" then it will remained that way. So that's kind of a solution.
I have a blank scene saved that I use all the time, so I will set Optimization to "Memory" on that scene. Thanks!
Jason,
I bought Ultimate Grass and Meadow Worldbuilder in 2018 and may have played a very little with it then - or maybe not. Tonight, I decided to give it a try. I loaded a pre-built scene and the Iray preview window was very, very sluggish to update when I moved the camera so much so as to basically be unusable. Accessing anything else in any panel or menu also is very slow when in Iray preview mode. I'm running Daz Studio 4.20 on a Windows 10 Pro laptop with16 Gb of RAM and an Nvidia 2060 GPU with 6 Gb of VRAM. The product page recommends GPU: 970 or greater. I watched the first part of the vendor's video on using the product to see if there was something that I was missing. The video shows the vendor's Iray viewport only being a little slow in updating with almost no lag.
This forum was one of the ones listed in Daz Deals for the product so I came here to see if there was any helpful advice. I used your recommendations regarding instancing optimization and Advanced settings but my Iray preview window is still very slow.
Any advice on what else I might try? Thanks.
Jason's instructions worked for me, but remember Instance Optimization goes back to "Speed" the next time you run DAZ Studio, so you have to reset it to "Memory" each time, or save a default scene that you load with DAZ to "Memory" so that the setting doesn't default again.
I am also using a product that has been a big help in speeding up Iray previews. So I think for me it's the combination of "Memory" and this product:
https://www.daz3d.com/render-throttle-for-iray
When I use the two together, the Meadow Builder works as expected (when I first purchased it).
Hope that helps.