Dear content authors: Please continue to support 3delight

Canary3d

The PoserCF files work with Genesis 2 and Genesis 1, but Genesis 3 figures use a different type of weight mapping that makes them more compatible with industry standards but less compatible with Poser rigging. So IIRC that's why there's not Poser CF's for the current generation. 

One thing that may not be apparent if you don't make your own textures, meshes, etc, is that just like Daz Studio has scripts and utilities etc. to make things easier, so do the apps we use for content creation.  For example, if I scan a leaf and make a texture from it, I put the texture into Substance Bitmap2Material and it automatically creates a normal, bump, height, whatever else I want.  I have to tweak things in photoshop to get a realistic effect, but I'm using the Substance app to do the heavy lifting - including the "how does it look on a mesh" part of creation, which is rendered in realtime (!) in Substance. And that app is designed for Iray - I can pull the maps from it, plug them right into the DS Uber Iray shader, and I'm good to go - they will render correctly with minimal fiddling.  Making the 3DL maps look right, figuring out the correct values based on lighting, is much more of a manual process. 

So for me it's not a question of "do I like 3Delight" or "can 3Delight look as good as Iray," but "are there nifty and affordable time-saving creation apps that are optimized for 3Delight?"  Currently I do include 3Delight versions of shaders whenever possible, but only because I use bash, sed, and Notepad++ to automate parts of my process.

If a script to port the cutout opacity setting into the 3DL opacity channel would be a good thing, I will have a poke at it. I've never scripted in Daz Studio, but this gives me an excuse to learn something about it. 

Daywalker Designs

ColemanRugh said:

kyoto kid said:

wolf359 said:

".it is going to move more people away especially a number of long timers who do not have the hardware resoruces to support optimal Iray performance and/or don't want to wait days for a render process to complete, nor want their images looking like everyone elses. "

Customers are lost& gained for a variety of reasons at any given time however ,Like any other consumer product, the number of Daz Content users is not static therefore
it is not a zero sum game...For very user who stops buying daz Content for the reasons stated above there is likely a new user with viable hardware or an existing user with the financial means to upgrade their existing hardware to use Iray.

...I'd like to continue with 3D however it is getting more and more difficult to do so as Iray is apparently taking precedence over 3DL/Renderman. It is not just having the right hardware, it is also not possessing the skill and expertise.  I am not a texture artist, my modelling skills skills are laughable at best, this is why people like myself choose to spend our money purchasing both texture and mesh content. If something is incompatible without say, a few simple fixes (like optimising Poser shaders for 3DL), it won't find it's way into my runtime/library.  Converting Iray shaders to 3DL is not a simple process like optimising 3DL shaders to Iray is. There are channels that have no 3DL parallel, some that do not work the same, and some that are even missing.

Until there is more efficient optimisation that improves CPU render performance and skin/hair textures that match the "realistic" quality of other surfaces in a scene I am not totally sold on Iray.  It's not that I'm looking for a "10 click render", but more, not having to spend weeks (months?) making adjustments to get skin and hair quality to match the rest of the scene while getting little else done..

Long time buyers don't need to quit 3d... they have tons of pre-IRAY content to work with.

 

I think what you're missing is that older content looks out of place in some cases, especially when mixed with newer content.

 

ColemanRugh said:

timmins.william said:

BTW, I downloaded the kettu script, can't figure out how to use it.

And this is a great demonstration of the problem and why, I think, most people are migrating over to Iray (at least for photorealism).

Trying to get 3DL to work in Daz Studio requires a lot of advanced knowledge and constant tinkering to function, with constant mysterious bugs and problems.

Meanwhile, in about 10 minutes, I can have a beautiful scene set up in Iray. And the biggest problems are either fairly intuitive or have real world analogs (like 'good lighting'), or are generally understandable (lots of textures fill memory and dump to CPU, so use less textures)

 

In a thumbnail you can see a render and your mind thinks it's a photo. When you see the large render your mind instantly recognizes it's fake. In the thumbnail the shadows tricked you. In close-up... your mind sees all the fakery in its glory. Symmetrical faces. Symmetrical bodies. Clothes that are too clean or too dirty. Clothes whose wrinkles are a bit off ( because they're modeled in ). Hair that looks more real than the person. Hair that looks like brillo pad strand hair. Hair that looks painted diffuse. Bad expressions. Stiff pose. Unreal pose. Bad hand pose. Eyes looking out into nowhere. Camera takes straight on render which the eye realizes in a nano-second is fakery. Nothing in real life happens straight on in your eyesight. The camera focal is too small. Depth of field cries out fakery. T^he background is more real than the character. Background is pixelated. Background looks painted. Shadows in background make your eye think something is off. realistic shadows cast a darkness across character. And that facial symmetry that just won't let your eye stop thinking... this is fake... no matter how hard you try.

Photorealism is damn damn damn hard. Even with tons of Photoshop touching up.

And that's just one single render. What about the next render and light setting? And expression? And pose? and on and on and on...???

Most folks who think they want realism don't take into account the thousands of details that MUST go right to make it work

And yet many people have difficulty telling the difference these days. I've seen multiple instances of where someone commented on an image that I was looking at that they initially thought it was a photo.

mjc1016

daywalker03 said:

I think what you're missing is that older content looks out of place in some cases, especially when mixed with newer content.

That's more a function of materials/surfaces than it is anything else.

wolf359

"I think what you're missing is that older content looks out of place in some cases, especially when mixed with newer content."

I believe there is a psychological factor of feeling "left behind"
that makes**some** people less content with using 
"older "content.
particularly when being bombarded by the marketing juggernaught
that is designed to Create the feeling of urgency to have the latest

Look at the Smartphone industry.

Chohole

wolf359 said:

"I think what you're missing is that older content looks out of place in some cases, especially when mixed with newer content."

I believe there is a psychological factor of feeling "left behind"
that makes**some** people less content with using 
"older "content.
particularly when being bombarded by the marketing juggernaught
that is designed to Create the feeling of urgency to have the latest

Look at the Smartphone industry.

I'm quite happy with my stupid phone that plugs into a socket in the wall.   In fact I get really miffed when I go to add the extra level of security that is being offred on one site I use, only to discover that I need a so called smart pnone to utilise it. 

Stryder87

wolf359 said:

Look at the Smartphone industry.

Ugh.. Do I have to?

 

DaWaterRat

wolf359 said:

"I think what you're missing is that older content looks out of place in some cases, especially when mixed with newer content."

I believe there is a psychological factor of feeling "left behind"
that makes**some** people less content with using 
"older "content.
particularly when being bombarded by the marketing juggernaught
that is designed to Create the feeling of urgency to have the latest

Well, there is that, and then there's things being made *now* that don't have older versions (or the older versions are no longer available) ... but those new products are Iray only.  For example, the Emergency Room that PerspectX just released.

I could have missed it, but I don't remember seeing an ER before.  There isn't another currently in the Daz Store, and a search at Renderosity turns up nothing. So if I want an ER... that's my only real choice.  (It might be possible to kitbash one... but that might also end up costing more just to get the right parts, if you can't find them as freebies.)

And just at a glance, that's a lot of surfaces to redo.  I don't blame PerspectX for not providing 3DL materials, mind you.  I'm just pointing out that it's not just mixing older and newer content, or trying to keep up with the latest thing.  Sometimes what you want/need just isn't available in an older format anymore - if at all.

Steven-V

I've worked exclusively in iRay since it came out. I much prefer it.

That said, I do not mind at all converting individual props and sets over from 3DL to iRay. With one caveat: Each surface needs to have its own texture map. The older models where all the texture maps are on one big jpg and then get mapped on to railings, walls, windows, etc, drive me up the wall, because in many cases you cannot just select the window and turn it into iRay glass. Or select the railing and make it iRay steel, because you get the WHOLE balcony and back wall when you try to select it, as a single surface.

So IMO, if the PAs could make these surfaces individually selectable, and honestly I have no idea how hard that is to do, I would not mind at all buying things and resurfacing them myself.

Mattymanx

Steven-V said:

I've worked exclusively in iRay since it came out. I much prefer it.

That said, I do not mind at all converting individual props and sets over from 3DL to iRay. With one caveat: Each surface needs to have its own texture map. The older models where all the texture maps are on one big jpg and then get mapped on to railings, walls, windows, etc, drive me up the wall, because in many cases you cannot just select the window and turn it into iRay glass. Or select the railing and make it iRay steel, because you get the WHOLE balcony and back wall when you try to select it, as a single surface.

So IMO, if the PAs could make these surfaces individually selectable, and honestly I have no idea how hard that is to do, I would not mind at all buying things and resurfacing them myself.

In some cases you should be able to use the Geometry Editor tool to reassing polygons to a new surface.  Just depends on how it was modeled.

mjc1016

Steven-V said:

I've worked exclusively in iRay since it came out. I much prefer it.

That said, I do not mind at all converting individual props and sets over from 3DL to iRay. With one caveat: Each surface needs to have its own texture map. The older models where all the texture maps are on one big jpg and then get mapped on to railings, walls, windows, etc, drive me up the wall, because in many cases you cannot just select the window and turn it into iRay glass. Or select the railing and make it iRay steel, because you get the WHOLE balcony and back wall when you try to select it, as a single surface.

So IMO, if the PAs could make these surfaces individually selectable, and honestly I have no idea how hard that is to do, I would not mind at all buying things and resurfacing them myself.

That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be its own map.  A separate surface, sure...but you can assign multiple surfaces to use the same image file...just each surface will be using a different part of the image.   It is actually better, with Iray, to have fewer image files being used...it's a lower memory footprint, that way.  But it makes no sense to have single 'full map' surfaces that encompass large chunks of the model...like your wall, railing, window all being the same surface.

Barefoot Upto My Soul

I have about 2700 items from Daz so far with 50 items left in my wish list and maybe 750 items from other sites. If I can't tell a story with these, I should give up. That recent emergency room would have been a nice addition though. I think I could do an ER scene without it though. Confidence and imagination goes a long way.

kyoto kid

ColemanRugh said:

kyoto kid said:

wolf359 said:

".it is going to move more people away especially a number of long timers who do not have the hardware resoruces to support optimal Iray performance and/or don't want to wait days for a render process to complete, nor want their images looking like everyone elses. "

Customers are lost& gained for a variety of reasons at any given time however ,Like any other consumer product, the number of Daz Content users is not static therefore
it is not a zero sum game...For very user who stops buying daz Content for the reasons stated above there is likely a new user with viable hardware or an existing user with the financial means to upgrade their existing hardware to use Iray.

...I'd like to continue with 3D however it is getting more and more difficult to do so as Iray is apparently taking precedence over 3DL/Renderman. It is not just having the right hardware, it is also not possessing the skill and expertise.  I am not a texture artist, my modelling skills skills are laughable at best, this is why people like myself choose to spend our money purchasing both texture and mesh content. If something is incompatible without say, a few simple fixes (like optimising Poser shaders for 3DL), it won't find it's way into my runtime/library.  Converting Iray shaders to 3DL is not a simple process like optimising 3DL shaders to Iray is. There are channels that have no 3DL parallel, some that do not work the same, and some that are even missing.

Until there is more efficient optimisation that improves CPU render performance and skin/hair textures that match the "realistic" quality of other surfaces in a scene I am not totally sold on Iray.  It's not that I'm looking for a "10 click render", but more, not having to spend weeks (months?) making adjustments to get skin and hair quality to match the rest of the scene while getting little else done..

Long time buyers don't need to quit 3d... they have tons of pre-IRAY content to work with.

 

...yes there is still "life" in the older content, however if something new would work better for a particular scene, one should be able to use it.

For example take Stonemason's Venizia Suite.   This is a perfect fit for a number of scenes for a story of mine and there is nothing else remotely like it that has already come out for 3DL.  Being that it is only optimised for Iray, I have to give it a pass and use something that doesn't fit well with the setting I envisioned.

kyoto kid

DaWaterRat said:

wolf359 said:

"I think what you're missing is that older content looks out of place in some cases, especially when mixed with newer content."

I believe there is a psychological factor of feeling "left behind"
that makes**some** people less content with using 
"older "content.
particularly when being bombarded by the marketing juggernaught
that is designed to Create the feeling of urgency to have the latest

Well, there is that, and then there's things being made *now* that don't have older versions (or the older versions are no longer available) ... but those new products are Iray only.  For example, the Emergency Room that PerspectX just released.

I could have missed it, but I don't remember seeing an ER before.  There isn't another currently in the Daz Store, and a search at Renderosity turns up nothing. So if I want an ER... that's my only real choice.  (It might be possible to kitbash one... but that might also end up costing more just to get the right parts, if you can't find them as freebies.)

And just at a glance, that's a lot of surfaces to redo.  I don't blame PerspectX for not providing 3DL materials, mind you.  I'm just pointing out that it's not just mixing older and newer content, or trying to keep up with the latest thing.  Sometimes what you want/need just isn't available in an older format anymore - if at all.

...

Ron Knights

I understand content creators often must go with whatever makes the most economic sense to them in terms of their content and the formats they choose. I can't argue with that choice. 

My only problem is that I'd really need to eventually stop trying to use my Macintosh for DAZ Studio and buy a PC that I could configure according to my needs. It is hard to justify this expense because my Mac computers satisfy all my other needs. Not only that, but I'm still suffering because DAZ is unwilling to go over their organization scheme and finally make sense of it.

Because of the organization problems and prevalance of iRay, I don't buy much any more. "Making Art" has become a chore that I rarely can endure.

kyoto kid

...I hear you on that.  A lot of the new content, even PC+ and DO items now, more and more are Iray only (I thought those were supposed to also have 3DL shaders as well, save for the PC+ items that are specifically Iray shader utilities).

While I am PC based my once beast of a system is a mere kitten when it comes to Iray. Unless I win a lotto, there will be no new system build. Even upgrading my current workstation to 24 GB just to avoid the render process going into swap mode requires something of a small windfall. (also need an OEM of W7 Pro).

Since I started on a new 3DL scene, I actually find am becoming more excited about this again as I don't have to struggle so much finding ways to shorten render times.  As I mentioned above, my system only has PCI 2.0 slots for which the highest memory card I can get is only 3 GB which is pretty useless for rendering the scenes I create.

 

Daywalker Designs

Ron Knights said:

I understand content creators often must go with whatever makes the most economic sense to them in terms of their content and the formats they choose. I can't argue with that choice. 

My only problem is that I'd really need to eventually stop trying to use my Macintosh for DAZ Studio and buy a PC that I could configure according to my needs. It is hard to justify this expense because my Mac computers satisfy all my other needs. Not only that, but I'm still suffering because DAZ is unwilling to go over their organization scheme and finally make sense of it.

Because of the organization problems and prevalance of iRay, I don't buy much any more. "Making Art" has become a chore that I rarely can endure.

The problem with them redoing the organization is that it will break thousands of users saved scenes, because those will look for the resources in the locations they were when the scenes were created and they will no longer will be there.

Mattymanx

kyoto kid said:

While I am PC based my once beast of a system is a mere kitten when it comes to Iray. Unless I win a lotto, there will be no new system build. Even upgrading my current workstation to 24 GB just to avoid the render process going into swap mode requires something of a small windfall. (also need an OEM of W7 Pro).

 

I dont understand why you have issues rendering in 3DL on your current system.  My old rendering machine was an Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz with 8GB of ram (max the board could take) running Windows XP x64.  The video card was a Radeon 5870.  Though the MB only has a PCIE 1 slot.  I was able to render this image in 3hrs 10min - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48862 - Yes it had to use the swap file but that was to be expected.  I just predefined the swap and rebooted then rendered.

Daywalker Designs

Mattymanx said:

kyoto kid said:

While I am PC based my once beast of a system is a mere kitten when it comes to Iray. Unless I win a lotto, there will be no new system build. Even upgrading my current workstation to 24 GB just to avoid the render process going into swap mode requires something of a small windfall. (also need an OEM of W7 Pro).

 

I dont understand why you have issues rendering in 3DL on your current system.  My old rendering machine was an Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz with 8GB of ram (max the board could take) running Windows XP x64.  The video card was a Radeon 5870.  Though the MB only has a PCIE 1 slot.  I was able to render this image in 3hrs 10min - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48862 - Yes it had to use the swap file but that was to be expected.  I just predefined the swap and rebooted then rendered.

Kyoto Kid isn't having trouble with 3DL on her system,  but rather Iray in CPU mode.

Mattymanx

ah, yes, i misread that.  Thank you

Ron Knights

DAZ could easily reorganize the "face" items that we all see when we work in DAZ Studio. All the supporting files could remain as they are. It would not mess up anyone. Believe me, I've worked extensively on this whole concept.

In the past, I've spent countless hours reorganizing or reinstalling from scratch in order to find the content I bought. Then I'd run across an item that's been updated, only to realize the update wouldn't take hold unless I let DIM do the install.

mjc1016

Ron Knights said:

DAZ could easily reorganize the "face" items that we all see when we work in DAZ Studio. All the supporting files could remain as they are. It would not mess up anyone. Believe me, I've worked extensively on this whole concept.

In the past, I've spent countless hours reorganizing or reinstalling from scratch in order to find the content I bought. Then I'd run across an item that's been updated, only to realize the update wouldn't take hold unless I let DIM do the install.

That's what Categories are for...

Ron Knights

Categories and all that stuff are needless complications. It's better just to organize, alphabetize, etc from the start.

mjc1016

Ron Knights said:

Categories and all that stuff are needless complications. It's better just to organize, alphabetize, etc from the start.

Then every new product and every update of the base software would require massive reorganization of ALL the previous content.  If all you are doing is arranging the user facing files into an order that makes sense to you, then yes categories and a database are the easiest way to go.  Because I can be 100% certain, what makes sense to you will not make sense to someone else.  The current system of using a database and making customizable so that each user, if they so desire, can make up their own order IS the best way to go about the mess that is the content.

AllenArt

I install manually - I arrange everything just the way I want before I drop it in my Daz 3D Content library. I never use Smart Content. I certainly know where everything is. Works well ;).

Laurie

Ivy

mjc1016 said:

Ron Knights said:

Categories and all that stuff are needless complications. It's better just to organize, alphabetize, etc from the start.

Then every new product and every update of the base software would require massive reorganization of ALL the previous content.  If all you are doing is arranging the user facing files into an order that makes sense to you, then yes categories and a database are the easiest way to go.  Because I can be 100% certain, what makes sense to you will not make sense to someone else.  The current system of using a database and making customizable so that each user, if they so desire, can make up their own order IS the best way to go about the mess that is the content.

Totally agree , I like the content to be customizable UI which thanks to Richard.H I have a better grib on that now

kyoto kid

Mattymanx said:

kyoto kid said:

While I am PC based my once beast of a system is a mere kitten when it comes to Iray. Unless I win a lotto, there will be no new system build. Even upgrading my current workstation to 24 GB just to avoid the render process going into swap mode requires something of a small windfall. (also need an OEM of W7 Pro).

 

I dont understand why you have issues rendering in 3DL on your current system.  My old rendering machine was an Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz with 8GB of ram (max the board could take) running Windows XP x64.  The video card was a Radeon 5870.  Though the MB only has a PCIE 1 slot.  I was able to render this image in 3hrs 10min - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48862 - Yes it had to use the swap file but that was to be expected.  I just predefined the swap and rebooted then rendered.

...well for one, I use AoA's lighting system instead of UE. UE takes about as long as Iray does on my system. I have never seen a render job go into swap mode with 3DL except of one I did using an HDR setting, UE, and motion blur.

When I built the system, it was optimised for 3DL rendering which was at all was all that was available at the time

kyoto kid

daywalker03 said:

Mattymanx said:

kyoto kid said:

While I am PC based my once beast of a system is a mere kitten when it comes to Iray. Unless I win a lotto, there will be no new system build. Even upgrading my current workstation to 24 GB just to avoid the render process going into swap mode requires something of a small windfall. (also need an OEM of W7 Pro).

 

I dont understand why you have issues rendering in 3DL on your current system.  My old rendering machine was an Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4GHz with 8GB of ram (max the board could take) running Windows XP x64.  The video card was a Radeon 5870.  Though the MB only has a PCIE 1 slot.  I was able to render this image in 3hrs 10min - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/48862 - Yes it had to use the swap file but that was to be expected.  I just predefined the swap and rebooted then rendered.

Kyoto Kid isn't having trouble with 3DL on her system,  but rather Iray in CPU mode.

...thank you.

Oso3D

Yeah, it finally dawned on me that of COURSE UE is going to take as long as Iray in CPU mode. Because it's doing the same thing!

So, for me, if I want that uber realism I'll go Iray, but otherwise, AoA works very very fast and has a decent ... arty look to it, if you do it right. (And if you are going to use extensive filters, the extra time for uber realism is a waste)

 

SteveBerr3D

Personal, I want a choice of both,if its only Iray I will take my money else where.  I had to bypass a lot of good producducts because of Iray only and I cn;t find any tutrals on HOW to use it si I skip it.

Sb

Daywalker Designs

SteveBerr3D said:

Personal, I want a choice of both,if its only Iray I will take my money else where.  I had to bypass a lot of good producducts because of Iray only and I cn;t find any tutrals on HOW to use it si I skip it.

Sb

How to use what, specifically?