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Not everyone is a programmer. I know I can't really do code any harder than hex code or html ;). Some can model, but not really texture well, others the opposite. It's impossible for one person to be all things. FWIW, the Poser community is the same way - only a handful of people who really understand the shader system. It's not unique.
Laurie
The bulk of the community does not need to be able to code. All that's needed is for either those who have done the hard part to get it accepted by the community and adopted for general use OR to have that work some how folded into the 'base'. For everyone else thngs will go on 'normally'.
I was doing some research for a render technique for using a plugin I have to see if i can change some settings in Maya to make it work the same way in blender. and came across this article in the RenderMan Technical FAQ..https://renderman.pixar.com/view/DP25847
Perhaps Pixar will move to gpu rendering sometime in the future.. from this iot sounds like their looking at it hard,
Does RenderMan support GPU rendering?
The current version of RenderMan is a multi-threaded software application that generally does not rely on GPU's due to their additional expense and the current fluidity of graphics hardware and supporting software standards. However GPU's are an important aspect of the future direction of rendering that Pixar is currently researching, some of which has already demonstrated in public. For the first time, RenderMan 21 introduces GPU accelerated denoising, and as GPU's mature for comprehensive production usage, we will reveal more in future.
I should have mention you can try Renderman21 GPU for free if you have supporting apps to plug it into.
https://renderman.pixar.com/view/non-commercial-renderman
Yeah, that's the thing. If Daz doesn't encourage/drive some sort of core standard of shaders and language, they've _functionally_ contributed to a barrier preventing most people from making use of those functions.
It needs to be accessible, standardized, and promoted, or it's just an odd one-off. And the very nature of what we're talking about CAN'T be done as a one-off and make any headway.
Like, ToonyCam, PWToon, and LineRender9000, each of those can exist in isolation. You use it, or you don't.
But if you are expecting most vendors to start using a shader, it can't be some buy-in shader that might disappear if the vendor changes their mind a few years from now.
Yeah, we are scattered all over. I *think* the majority is in the U.S or Canada, with the next largest group being in the U.K. and then Australia and New Zealand, so that's very many time zones for the native English speakers. If you factor in all the European countries like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, we have multiple languages too.
Yes, we compete with each other "for real." Example, if two light sets come out a week apart, people who like light sets will most likely buy both of them. If they are released on the same day, people pick one or the other, and then *maybe* come back for the other one at a later time. Then there is the competition with Daz Originals that are quality items at a much lower price if you are PC+ member.
I've done more testing, because honestly, I love testing (I also honestly sort of like rigging too, maybe I should learn coding)
I must have had some weird setting in my render settings, so I loaded up a saved scene with my favorite 3delight lighting it was indeed UE2 with multiple bounces, better yet, some of the energy conservation problems it had (in the original scene as you upped light bounces via raytrace depth, the whole image got progressively whiter and whiter, until at 5 bounces it was just all white) were actually a product of gamma correction being off, yay learning things! Render speed is straight up apalling though,. And it really reminded my how I dont miss finding the balance of shading rate and samples, to not have errors but also actually render.
Its still pretty though, and if it were faster it would have some definite advantages (like being able to easily turn up the indirect lighting without affecting the rest of the lighting)
I agree here wholeheartedly, Although I am less certain that its a problem that Daz can fully solve, the proliferation of different shaders does lead to a certain amount of market fracture, and unless Daz can somehow buy every shader and then bundle it for free, its always going to remain to an extent. Way back most skins at the store used the Human Surface Shader, Then things switched over to the AOA Subsurface shader, why? because these are the ones that come bundled with studio, so everyone has them. I dont think Daz actually mandates that you need to use these shaders either, but everyone does. Now, personally, I have always prefered Ubershader2 for skin I have a better handle on sss for it, and I think its faster than AOA, since its not shader mixer based. However if I were selling a character, I probably wouldnt use it, for the resons you mentioned, and man would that be frustrating, since that would mean I was selling a product I knew wasnt the best it could be, because I had to balance appearence with utility.
"For real". I just got hit badly from being released the day after a Stonemason, for example. (it's like trying to release any other movie the same weekend as Star Wars - nobody's gonna see it.) Sure there are niches that don't comptete so much - environments / clothes / lighting and so on, but for a little environments guy, being put day & date against Stonemason is a disaster, and day after is pretty much as bad. Of course we don't know what else is being released at the same time as us, and we rely on marketing to schedule the best dates for everyone. Sometimes it doesn't work.
It's not always about competing with each other that we can't purchase assets on the day they come out. In my case, real life gets in the way of cash flow. One of my cats got very sick and I had to get him to the vet. His stay in the hospital came to $700 with tests and medication etc. He is home now and recovering. I consider him my child.
I suppose in my 3D world, there would be socialized health care for animals and humans as well as some aliens. Well, there goes the healthcare system.
Last month, I almost wiped out my wish list of 70 items now back up to 95 because of these useful items you and the other PA have been creating towards my films. Again it was real life cash flow. I finally purchased a Western Digital 6TB NAS Pro hard drive for my server. This will backup all those smaller (I'm calling 1.5TB and 500GB small, sheesh.) drives which will come out of daily use and be the backups till I can buy another two 6TB drives. Hopefully the room will be cooler. I never realized how much space 1080HD and 2K images took up for making movies. Plus the HD and normal sound files.
Still slowly building my DAZ computer that will be separate from the other computers that contain other programs with licenses. The DAZ CGI PC burns out often taking just about everything with it. (I know what you mean and feel for you Ivy and others). Fortunately they and the render farm were cheap. Also fortunately the renders and downloads along with the installs are on a separate computer server so I don't lose like I once did.
I will probably have to get those assets that came out this month in a month or two. I may have missed the sale but will finish up completing the purchases of the wish list over this next year.
And I didn't buy Stonemason's Castle. So it's really about other real life cash flow at times.
Barefoot, we all completely understand about real life cash flow issues. We really, really, do. I hope your kitty has a speedy recovery.
Supposing we filed a number of customer support requests asking if the implementation of the API required for OSL is in the works or not - how many do you think we'd need to really get a "yes or no" answer?
Can someone point me in the direction of an uncompiled RSL Shader sample please? ;)
But there does exist a dedicated PA forum, or am I mistaken? I mean, there is still a chance to get in touch right here through the DAZ website, even if it's not realtime, correct?
And semi-OT: Matty mentioned being friends. I do think that for professional consulting realtime works better, but for being friends, it's not a requirement, is it =)))
This sounds extremely unfortunate for everyone involved =(( Those lost sales are DAZ's lost sales, too.
But it's not like that, say, a lighting artist would totally refuse to help an environment artist who might ask for some pointers to improve their little light set that might be coming with the environment? Like, "so I have this nice sunrise here but my night looks very boring, what should I do".
I'm wondering if it's worth it to fish the GI environment light shader out of my kit and release it separately as something of a "teaser", so that "interested parties" might play with it. It's simple enough not to require extensive docs or a gazillion presets.
But without the "scripted renderer" scripts that add in diffuse ray caching, it won't work to its full potential (will be noticeably slower than with caching).
I think there was also a time when free UberSurface was used for most Gen5 skins; it was a brief period, though.
You want to try what shader builder is like? =)
I have a few tutorials up, they all tell you where to get the source code:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/75671/gallery/3/PDF-Tutorial/Alternative-Image-Based-Lighting-in-DAZ-Studio
https://mustakettu85.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/importing-larry-gritzs-lens-flare-shader-into-daz-studio/
https://mustakettu85.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/3delights-physical-sun-into-daz-studio-a-yet-another-shader-builder-mini-tutorial/
The EnvLight2 shader is a useful alternative to UberEnvironment...and the PhysicalSun Shader is a nice sun. It's accompanying sky shader doesn't import into Studio, due to limitations discussed earlier.
While no doubt true, the principles behind the shader can likely be applied to shaders that will work in DAZ Studio. And it seems there are plenty of tutorials on writing RSL shaders out there, so it's not like people couldn't do it if they were so inclined. Let's see what I can scare up... ;)
It has everything to do with the lack of full RSL 2 support in Studio and the way Shader Builder is set up, you will always error out on trying to build it...or similar to it. Porting shaders into Studio without using ShaderBuilder, while doable is not easy nor is it always going to actually work, even hand crafting the support files. I've done enough porting/writing of RSL shaders to know that imager class shaders are nearly impossible to port into Studio/write for it. Basically anything more complex than the couple of mostly working imager shaders already in Studio is a lost cause...
...my longest 3DL render was sixteen and a half hours, however it was using UE with GI, as well as with two instances of Bolina Hair and five frames of motion blur.
...and for those of us using Carrara, Iray shaders are more of a pain in the backside to convert than they are in Daz..
...unless more Carrara specific content and content shaders are released which frankly I do not see happening.
...I investigated 3D computer graphics in the 80s. Back then everything was coded from scratch. Just to create a simple primitive with a simple colour texture and a simple background setting took far longer than putting together the Railway Station scene I created in Daz a few months ago. All I can say is I was glad I could still use a pencil, pen, or paint and brushes back then as I bailed out and went back to traditional art media feeling that the process was more "technical" than "creative".
New Carrara-specific content is likely
But if you mean Carrara shaders for existing sets, no I don't see that happening.
TangoAlpha, I really appreciate your making 3DL and Cararra materials in addition to Iray. I have three of your items wishlisted, now I just need some money, lol.
I do wonder about the comparison between the number of new customers to DAZ3D now with Iray default to when 3DL was the default. I know Iray makes it easier for a one click solution to make a decent render, but I think most normal people would not have the more expensive hardware to run Iray renders. So if they try it for the first time and find it overloads their systems, would they not be discouraged from continuing? Without increasing new customers would DAZ's initial increased profits from new Iray products eventually deminish? Most people would tend to upgrade their systems only after they discover they like playing with 3D rendering. Just curious.
There's a TON of content I love and I just DON'T BUY because of iRay only textures. It's really sad.
Every time DAZ3d makes any decision to make their content LESS compatible, they lose me a little more.
I just wish they'd update 3delight skin shaders to make use of the latest abiities of the engine.. I actually prefer using 3delight over iray, since the style of art I do, I want to play tricks with the lighting, and iray runs really painfully slow for me sometimes all the figures are really optimized to look nicely in iray.
...so basically sets like Venezia Suite and Winter Castle would be pretty much unusable in Carrara unless you want to go through all the trouble of manually converting Iray materials (and again, there are channels that don't match up between the two).
Meanwhile your Tangy Apple Orchard would be a lot simpler to convert as it still has 3DL materials as well since both render engines use the same shader channels and employ the same maps.
This also ,easd me to believe that G3 and any new Genesis figures/characters will not be Carrara compatible as the skin shaders are also going to Iray. I know there were Carrara character material sets for I believe, the G2 figures but have seen none for G3 and I get the feeling G4 is possibly "waiting in the wings".
Iray doesn't require expensive equipment. It does tend to be slower than a basic 3Delight render, but a 3Delight render (using currently available shaders, at least) will slow down as you add features to match what Iray will always do. That's not to say that there are not benefits to 3Delight, just that hardware requirements are not the driving factor that is sometiems suggested.
Like my post above showed, Iray, in CPU mode was faster than the slowest 3Delight mode...which is the 'default'/'vanilla' with no tweaks. So no, hardware isn't really a factor. Although having the hardware speeds up the Iray times considerably.
Doing a straight up one for one match up of Iray vs 3DL is very hard to do without resorting to external/additional/not widely available shaders...and I can can say, when they are as closely matched (surface materials/lighting) as possible in Studio...times are very similar, in CPU mode. Think of the CPU mode renders as 'normal' and adding in the GPU is 'turbo'. If you don't have the high-end GPU, then 2+ hrs renders, like with 3DL for most things, is 'normal'. But, to compare them, you do need to match feature for feature...and optimize the heck out of what 3DL can do in Studio.
...well, when I am reading comments on another thread from someone who is having to perform CPU rendering as they are working on a Mac (and one with more memory as well as a newer faster more powerful CPU than my PC workstation has) and relatively simple renderings are taking upwards of nearly a day while not even reaching 20% convergence, I find that somewhat discouraging as I am in the same boat since I only have a 1 GB GPU that actually renders slower than in CPU mode (I ran a simple test a few nights ago). Unless I win a lotto or receive an inheritance form some relative I never knew, this will most likely not change.