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https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Daz_Studio_To_UE4_(Tutorial)_Part_1
Porting Genesis from Daz to UE doesn't seem too bad, but it's far from a smooth process
Professional animation work is typically more labor intensive than a live action film.
Lol
Live action film is now increasingly relying on animation. In 10 years they'll have films that look live action but are completely animated I'd guess. Maybe being a movie star will be a thing of the past. Theatre has traditionally been story telling by an individual or two to small groups anyway & it's quite possible the tools like Unity, UE4, DAZ 3D, and Poser will be playing a big rle in making story telling what it was before the invention of motion picture technology.
I've been saying for years that eventually "actors" will just be really attractive people that sell the rights to their likeness and everything will be CG. The actor will play the part of going to the galas and all that jazz to keep the brand recognition and all that.
Unlikely. The vast majority of movies don't really gain anything by removing actors. CG really only makes sense where the same thing cannot be done in real life. The average character drama or a comedy doesn't need CG, let alone CG humans. Not to mention it's a lot more work in CG when you could just stick a camera in someone's face. And the actors are needed anyway, even with CG characters you have real people doing the mocap and the actual performance.
Yuck,
I've been saying for years that eventually "actors" will just be really attractive people that sell the rights to their likeness and everything will be CG.
Double yuck. This is already the case with stunt doubles, body doubles and TONS of CGI work. We're already there. lol
But that's also saying ACTORS are replacing animation/animators/CGI as ACTORS are used for mocap and facial sync and voice acting and and and....
And it still takes their industry to create an ACTOR that you will care to see breathe-life into the CGI or animated figure.
Making a totally unknown, generated CGI figure is the same as casting an unknown. Aint nobody (I don't really mean NOBODY) banking on that.
What you mean is - - someday, Famous and Known actors will be replaced by their CGI counterparts - no wait, that's already happened in a dozen movies.
--------------------
That said:
I would LOVE to see a Star Wars movie with younger, generated characters telling a better story that the recent offerings.
I woudl LOVE to see a Star Trek with the original cast have another adventure [Wrath of Khan era]
Those actors and properties have left such an impression, that I woudl settle for a pale live+CGI imitation.
CGI and animation, alone can't get it done.
You gotta get the human part right too.
And that aint gonna come from a more powerful video card or faster rendering engine.
At some point it'll be cheaper to hire a real human instead.
What I said was they'd beneifit as DAZ Studio users. Whether it's a 'pressing need' or not is not something I would not know for those DAZ Studio users personally. It's DAZ Studio, not a self-driving car. DAZ Studio users I realize aren't necessarily the same people as DAZ 3D shoppers. I have a mountain of content bought at DAZ 3D because of the long time it takes to render in iRay. The typical forum user is not a heavy DAZ 3D user judging by how many of them that have said anything at all about the amount of DAZ 3D products they own, have said they have thousands of DAZ products that they have never used. Unless one is doing renders in the pwToon shader that are super fast to render, there is no such thing as a heavy DAZ Studio user because DAZ Studio is too slow to make heavy use of.
Anyway, from the massive amounts of money the others in the forums speak of spending on repeated upgrades of their nVidiea video cards those users at least want renders done much faster than they are done now. They aren't spending that money because they want prettier renders as the glacially CPU renders are just as pretty. They're spending that money because they want their renders done faster.
Whether customers say they want real time realistical rendering or not; having a real time realistic render finish in 10 seconds is beneficial to them, as opposed to 30 minutes, an hour, or more, especially if one must CPU render like I must, it takes to iRay render. DAZ Studio users could work through multiple cycles of the pose, render, evaluate render. edit, and repeat of scene creation so much faster than with iRay. And that's to say nothing of the expensive problem CPUs & GPUs being ruined by excessive heat by repeatedly long rendering times essentially being halted.
Not necessarily aniamtion, but a lot of real-world films, even if set in the mdoern world, use CGI for things like set extensions, crowds, and other stuff that would be too pricey/awkward to film (an ocean liner entering or leaving port in the city hosting the action, say).
What?!. I do renders daily and see images posted daily in the galleries. I also have lots of products I haven't used yet. Not sure where you are getting your info from, but I don't see it. Iray may be slow, but it's faster than reality and Lux and certainly usuable on a daily basis. It's human natuire, everyone wants more than they have, including render speeds. Just because we are complaining doesn't mean it isn't being used. I am sure we are all open to faster/better solutions for rendering, but to assume that iray is unusable to the general 3d public is just wrong.
Realtime rendering tech is very exciting but you have to parse the variables
befor thinking its that relevent to the average Daz user,
I doubt Daz will make any internal investments in a realtime renderer of their own
Why"reinvent the wheel"??
Reallusion has publicly announced that they already have a working live link to unreal
much like the existing Maya's live link
in the video below:
A largely wasted effort IMHO, because while 100 percent of the iclone user base are animators but I would estimate only
about 4 percent actually export to other 3DCC programs for rendering.
Even with the Free availability of unity & unreal
the majority of the Iclone user base prefers to stay in the frankly, myopic little comfort bubble of Iclone.
AAA game companies Like Activision/Blizzard or Epic will NEVER use an Iclone
Avatar or Daz genesis model in a title release as every thing is tailored in house
per title.
The indie market wont rush to buy Iclone just to have a live link to unreal IMHO.
They would be limited to the expensive Iclone ecosystem content or have to buy the expensive
Pipeline version to import their own content befor "live linking" to unreal
I seriously Doubt Daz would even bother with an official bridge or Link to Unreal or Unity
considering that most Daz Studio users wont use the built in Daz studio morph sliders but
instead depend on PA 's to Make "Characters" Like "Bethany"
for them.
Looking at the Maya video above makes it clear that you will not be able to sit in your Daz studio comfort bubble
completely insulated from
LEARNING TO USE the unreal engine.
And those few Daz users, so inclined, are not waiting for Daz to "get into the realtime game"
They are already exporting Daz Content to other engines and doing the
work themselves just as us tiny minority of Iclone users have already been doing
with the pipeline versions of iclone and other engines.
And the indy game devs would not care about any Daz Live link to unreal
They are GAME developers not Still render producers who
Ultimatetly will still need a professional animation platform (Like Maya )
to send animated figures to Unreal
and Daz studio is not such a platform.
We could said that about Marvelous Designer too, Why D-force for clothing if there are good cloths sims available now, to protect the shop?
Why keep the system closed ???
Realtime render is the future, and not join the platforms available = going down with the system.
Where is daz's ROADMAP ???
Yeah the bridge I was talking about was to get the OTHER rendering engine to work inside of Daz.
Not to get Daz assets (rendered) outside of Daz. I'm still re-reading posts in this thread and trying to figure how Daz users spend a good amount of their time trying to reduce render times and ANYTHING that almost eliminates render-waits wouldn't be a paramount fantasy. I know the kind of investments I've already made to cut them down and what kind of money I'd be willing to spend to cut down the times even further.
I do think we're talking past each other now or at least mixing threads in this topic.
I think the 'average Daz user' wants shorter render times - image per image.
I thought the point of this thread was that possibility being glimpsed over the horizon.
I'd rather have a 'better' rendering engine that can take advantage of a current pro-sumer card in new ways than another PIPELINE (pun intended) to always keep buying faster computers and video Cards for speed gains.
I completely agree that the average DS user wants to do things natively. I also think that the majority of DS users don’t want to deal with material conversions that leave a lot to be desired.
Personally, I would be all for a new render engine if it was MDL based and the Iray materials for current content rendered looking the same (which was the whole idea behind a “material” definition language as opposed to a “shader” definition language).
That being said, I personally don’t see the vast majority of content sold in the DAZ store as being game ready (and ready for real time rendering) anyhow.
- Greg
And if people are unwilling or unable to update their video card hardware to support the Faster GTX or RTX cards for Iray, what makes you think they will do it to get real-time rendering, especially when many people are trying to avoid upgrading to Windows 10, which is a requirement listed in the linked thread?
If you are a content provider your objective is to grow the number of people who buy your content
beyond your existing user base,
That is the whole purpose of having all of the industry standard export formats
That is likely Why Daz is now jointly developing the DSON based DEX plugin for Autodesk Maya.
They are trying to get MAYA users to come here to buy Daz content to use it directly in Maya
from their Daz content libraries.
From a strategic planning point of view, it makes no sense to try to start competing with Unity,Unreal VRay RT ,EEVEE
with your own unproven internal Realtime engine that wont actually foment new content sales and possibly force your existing user base
and PA's to support a new Shader system and possibly have to upgrade hardware.
That is only possible if that other engine is open source Like Cycles and Poser
or their owners are willing to strike some bundle agreement that benefits them
as NVIDA did with Daz, and recently Reallusion, to foment sales of their graphics hardware.
In any other case you can only legally create an export bridge or link to the external environment
and hope your users are willing to endure the vicissitudes of learning that other environment.
How many people truly fit that description? Are that many people totally unwilling to upgrade ANYTHING on their computer at all? How much content is actually being purchased by this demographic? The key demos are going to be those who buy the most. If you have enough disposable income to buy a lot of content from Daz, odds are you have enough income to buy new hardware, I do not believe that is a leap of reasoning. There are certainly some hardcore WIn 7 users out there, but there were also many hardcore XP users back in the day, so this situation is nothing new. It is my opinion that a company really cannot be too concerned about people who refuse to upgrade. It is just basic business. You have to innovate in order to stay relevant. Several new features in Daz Studio require newer Nvidia drivers, and you cannot get these on very old hardware. 32 bit OS's no longer get GPU drivers. Newer versions of Iray do not support Fermi and older GPUs.
Many people on Daz are concerned about render times. There is a very long running thread dedicated to the subject. People go out and buy the very best hardware they can afford just for this single purpose, whether it be for hobby or professional use. I've built my PC far more than I would have if were just simply playing video games. If I was only playing video games, I probably would have been pretty happy buying a 1070. But because of Daz Studio Iray, I now own two 1080ti's. Just so I can render a little faster, and I am not super wealthy.
Real time rendering, or anything close to it would be huge in any capacity. The company that takes advantage of this best is very likely to profit handsomely. I do believe that still renders and animation overlap quite a bit. Because if I could animate, I would totally animate! I know I would not create a major Hollywood production or the "Adam" video from Unity. And I don't care.
Animation does not have to be so scary. You can purchase premade animations and other sorts of animations for Unreal and Unity just like Daz. And animation is a thing that is happening. Many big movie studios are working with gaming engines more and more every day. Some cartoons are being rendered completely in gaming engines, and no, you do not need to spend massive amounts of time making pre production. Again, I reiterate that an asset store can help with these things. You do not need to be Disney to animate with Unreal or Unity.
This is a little cartoon series I found. No, it is not photoreal, but that is not my point. This whole series was animated in Unreal by a single person. This is a quote from its animator, Peter Monga:
"Unreal is great! I'm currently making my own little series, and I don't think it would have been possible without Unreal. I hope you don't mind me sharing, but I think my show is a good example of how Unreal can help speed up production for tiny teams (in this case, just me). And because all the assets are already in a game engine, I have also made a VR episode that I hope to release soon."
If you look into his videos, you will find the 360 versions he speaks of. This guy is living his dream, thanks to Unreal.
This is the potential that real time rendering brings. It is allowing people like Mr Monga to follow their dreams in ways not possible before, and that is wonderful. Now real time ray tracing is coming to these engines, there are whole new possibilities with more photoreal animations. This tech is moving very fast. This is what I cannot stress enough. So many people are still yammering about how far away this tech is, and that it is not ready yet. What I am trying to tell you all is that this day is coming far sooner than most of you think. For the most part, it already here, it is a matter of getting things ironed out. As I have said before, hardware is leaping quite a bit right now. AMD has invigorated CPUs, and ray tracing is now on GPU. I believe the next gen Nvidia will be a significant leap as well. Consider that Nvidia was able to get a ~50% IPC gain over last gen while remaining on the same process node. The jump to 7nm should see a big boost. I strongly believe that the ray tracing cores will be far more powerful next generation, as Nvidia refines them. Turing is only the first generation, there will be lots of room for improvement. I believe that we will see at least double the ray tracing performance across the board.
And keep in mind that I was the one who predicted that gaming cards would get ray tracing and tensor cores last year, and many people railed against my predictions. I also called for pooled VRAM, which has since been proven to be possible, and that Nvidia would release a card that exceeds the normal 11 GB "barrier" that gaming cards have. That card being the RTX Titan with 24 GB of VRAM, and though it is $2400, it is still much cheaper than Quadros in its performance range.
So both hardware and software are moving very fast right now. Will Iray join that conversation?
Iray does support the RTX Cards, but that support is not in the current main release version of DAZ Studio. Now, to what extent that support takes, I do not know. I also know, that for me personally, at this time, I cannot afford such a hardware update, but that may change.
I can understand your enthusiam, but in all reality we should probably keep in mind there are two camps in play here, the larger 3D world with multiple apps and tech that allows creative users to design and develop all kinds of wonderful things for many types of purposes and the DS/poser community in which the majority are hobby users with mid range hardware and a fondness for plug and play content. Until/unless DAZ decides to add these new features to DS, this whole conversation is of little use to them and might even drive DS users to using other apps which hurts PA sales. Sure, DAZ can come out with a new DS to maya or whatever app they want, but the majority of users here don't have legal access to Maya or many of the other high end apps, so who wins there.
My own CPU renders take hours & I've read many posters in these forums complaining about their nVidia aided renders taking 10 - 30 minutes and occasionaly much longer. Compare that to a real-time render via bridges to Unity and UE4 by DAZ Studio that would be done almost instantly. That is far more desireable I think.
Awesome video.
That video "Morgan Lives in A Rocket House" reminds me of the early videos from Martin Hash's Animation:Master which had been around since at least the early 90s and which I jumped on the band wagon in 1994. The good stuff we all saw then was made by Will Vinton's team (California Raisins commercials after claymation) and a few talented solo guys. It made it look so simple. But in reality it wasn't. You needed a bunch of PCs to render out stuff like that. An adequate PC for that back then was around $4,000 if memory serves.
The still images rendered in DAZ Studio by the really good artists have pushed the bar up for what a quality render should look like. I have yet to see that in any affordably made real time renders. So it's probably a bit off. I'm getting older and who knows how much longer I'll be around. You younger folks can dream. Maybe you'll see it happen. I hope the costs aren't too high. And from what has seemed the big resistance and inablity to spend more money that's harped on weekly in the forums, I kinda doubt there will be a big rush to buy new video cards. There are many new users (and old) posting on the forums about their woeful systems and how can they affordably get their render times down, and the same advice is always optimize the scene, because otherwise, you will have to buy a new expensive card... which always seems like no hope.
From a Daz Studio point of view, I can't follow an argument that real time raytracing is somehow going to cause a dramatic shift when real time rendering per se hasn't caused such a shift, and that was a way bigger deal. The availabilty of Unity and UE4 and the fact that the stuff has looked amazing for a long time now, real time ray tracing is hardly going to be a catalyst for much of anything by itself. Are we honestly suggesting that people will have an epiphany along the lines of "I can now real time raytrace hence I need this content in a game engine"? I just find that really hard to believe. Most Daz people probably don't even know or care about what raytracing is. Is that what's happeing when you hit the render button?
I think the average Daz user wants to hit render and see something pretty appear, not get the content into a game engine that is a complex piece of software meant for developing entire games. If Daz can give them a nicer real time viewport or even complete real time rendering, that's great and I think something like that should probably happen at some point. It might even happen without Daz having to do much of anything because as mentioned I think those companies who create render engines will have to come up with ways to hop on that bandwagon or die. If a traditional renderer isn't capable of producing prettier renders than a real time render engine anymore then obviously they will become irrelevant.
It's possible though that once both renderers actually do produce the same quality of image, both will also render in the same amount time because they'd both essentially be doing the same thing?
faster renders, absolutely! a bridge to a game engine, not really. Many users complain about render times, either because of older hardware or inefficient addon designs. the hardware issue can be fixed if the users can afford it and in many cases they can't, at least not right away. so they complain and we get to read about it.. I would think it wouldn't be desireable to DAZ to have it's DS users all migrate to a game engine instead, that is just poor business practice in my mind, but then again they do offer ways to get content into maya, so who knows what they are thinking other than ways to pay the bills. Sometimes I get the impression that DAZ wants to just sell content only and abandon DS altogether with some of the marketing ideas they come up with like letting Unity and Reallusion have as much access to their content as they do.
Agreed.
That's the core of the issue; most people either don't want to spend the money for the hardware or they don't have it to spend, so even if DAZ added such a thing, people wouldn't be able to take advantage of it without the required hardware. Which is what some folks insist on overlooking.
If people cannot afford new hardware how do they afford to buy items from Daz? This is a serious question. Even if they do buy some things, their spending must be restricted by their income. Lets say someone spends about $50 per month, it would only take few months of curbing that to buy an ok card like a 1060 or a 2060, which in most cases would be an instant upgrade even in the crappiest of PC's. Now if these people spend far less than $50, then what does it matter? I am not suggesting these people do not matter, but in the overall scheme of things, I feel they are a small minority of the Daz user base at best. I am talking about the movers and shakers, the people who are willing to spend for hardware, and more importantly, Daz content. We have people who buy every pro bundle without fail, along with other stuff. These are the users driving the most money for Daz.
There will always be those that don't want to upgrade. There are a handful of people still using Daz 3.X or whatever. Some people hang on to Poser or Carrara. But Daz as a business should not be held back simply because a small group of people refuse to upgrade. People who use those old softwares cannot use Genesis 3 or 8. Many items on the store are Iray only now as well, so this goes beyond just characters. So if there people using such old software and hardware, again I must ask how much are they really spending in the Daz Store? Since Daz Studio is free, obviously they only make money on those who buy content, and as such the store will always cater to that demand.
And part of my argument here is that if Unreal starts to offer something as user friendly as Daz that renders darn near instantly with easily accessible content, would you not expect a portion of people to go there? Perhaps they would still use Daz to an extent, but as their Unreal library grows they'll see less and less use of the old items.
I am not trying to talk down about those not upgrading. I clung to Daz 4.8 for as quite a while, but eased myself into 4.9 and then 4.10 in beta form. I really do wish Daz would keep some legacy versions of its software up for download though, instead of only the current version of 4.X. That policy does irritate me. At any rate, upgrades are a necessity. If you wish to use Pascal you must use 4.9+. The user base got extremely lucky that RTX cards work with the Daz Studio beta, because official Turing support has NOT happened. I assume Iray works with Turing thanks to Volta drivers that were added in a recent beta. I am guessing that Turing has enough similarities to Volta that Iray can run on its drivers for now. Take note that OptiX acceleration has not been working well with Turing, which is an indication to me that Turing is not optimized for Iray. And while Turing does work with Iray, the ray tracing cores do nothing, and it appears that Tensor is not enabled, either.
I read documentation on OptiX Prime that discusses how it it is necessary to update OptiX Prime for new GPUs. This is why when Pascal launched, it took a long time for Iray to work because the plugin needs to be compiled for the new GPU. Yet Turing is an exception somehow. But the Iray plugin that comes with Daz Studio has not been updated since well before the Turing launch, the beta was updated months before Turing, even before Turing's official reveal if my memory is correct. So with this information I conclude that Turing is running on Volta drivers with Iray, as there is no other explanation and Turing is not mentioned anywhere in Iray patch notes.
An interesting side to this is that from what I read of Optix, the full version of Optix (as in NOT Optix Prime that Iray uses) does not need to be updated for new GPU architectures. While Optix and its Prime sibling are similar, they are also very different in how they manage the rays getting cast. Prime is actually faster, which is perhaps why Iray uses it. This is due to how Prime manages memory. Prime uses more memory because of this, an interesting trade off. Another perk of Prime is that it has a CPU fallback mode, allowing users to render on CPU. The full Optix does not actually have any CPU support, it is purely a GPU renderer, so that was probably another reason why Prime was used in Iray. However, a big problem is created with the new ray tracing cards. The rays cast by Turing's RT cores would overwhelm Optix Prime's memory buffer and inflate it to crazy levels beyond what most GPUs have for VRAM. And this is why Iray has not been updated yet to use those cores. Somebody has stated that some update is in the works, so something is going to happen. However this sounds like a pretty big change. If Iray is given the full Optix plugin, then that means that CPU rendering is no longer possible. So perhaps Iray will have both plugins, that would be a nice option, unless Prime is totally changed. I don't want to make a prediction about that. And perhaps Iray could even get a real time mode of its own, that would be excellent. However I still think Unreal and Unity will pose the largest threats in the coming years. That is a prediction I am willing to make.
For me it's really hard to quess what Daz really is doing, since they always keep their cards so close to their chest. For the most part, I think they haven't made up their mind about game platforms yet. It looks like that most of the time Daz wants to keep on supporting old customers ( like Daz orginal characters still have 3Delight shaders ), but in other cases ( when character generation changes ) they don't really care if you jump off the train. I can only assume, that they know their demographics, and think most of their customers don't have state-of-the-art GPUs, since why else would they develop a CPU based clothing simulation system, when others are reaching for real-time GPU simulations elsewhere? I think Iray jump was necessary, because they knew that PBR renderers were able to produce so much better looking still images, that they would have lost customers if they'd do nothing. Now they have a PBR renderer, so I don't expect to see any radical changes on that front anytime soon. Real-time ray tracing requires latest tech, and more than likely tons of money and resources to develop, so I don't think Daz is going to do any of that.
Personally I think that native bridge between Daz studio and game platforms would be a profitable thing. Also I'd really love a Blender bridge, but I suppose that's so out of topic that I'll leave it that. But anyways, number of other companies like Reallusion, Maya, Allegoritmic and Quixel have done that already. Even pure rendering solution like Octane is offering free plugins for game platforms, so obviously they also want game developers to know that they exist. I have no illusions that those companies are doing that for the goodness of their hearts, but they just know there's money to be made from game devs, and they use that chance. It takes absolutely nothing out of their old users, but offers extra revenue to be made. Of course there is risks involved also. When Daz customers become more aware what else is out there, there is chance, that they spend their money elsewhere. At least I have already started buying environments etc. from Unity shop, so I don't have to pay extra interactive licenses and I can use those products wherever I want. Those that do not know what those archiviz/environments made for game engines look like, I suggest you to take a look. We have some really talented PAs here, but they are not only shows in town.
But before Daz really have any future in game platforms, those interactive licences really have to go. Let's be honest, those are just greedy money grabs. Yeah, yeah, pirates this and pirates that... Come on, I doubt anybody really believes that they are fighting piracy or anything with those. It's like those super annoying anti-piracy programs in games, that just make legitimate use harder, while pirates are still having a field day. If somebody wants a Daz characters/assets for free, they are not going to rip it out of games, but they will download the real deal from number of pirate sites with high quality textures etc. So please, let's stop pretending. In my fantasy world, I'd have my Daz shop, and then I was able to use all my Daz stuff in Morph3D and move them to Unity/UE.
The only way to restrict access to your content is with closed garden
formats and no options to export.
Closed garden paradigms only work if you are Apple technologies with Multi-Billions
of Dollars and only one other major competitor on the planet (Android)
Daz has many competitors in the 3D human figure market right now
and the list is growing .
People can bang on, all they want, about Genesis and JCM's & HD morphs etc.
however in 2019, nearly every program has acesss to some version of young Ideal BMI, white women
along with Hero Tough guys, aliens and monsters etc.
You will not increase your market share by making your content LESS available to people outside
your primary framework
(Just ask Sony).
You are correct,
however it does not matter how much canned motions and characters you make available.
The click/load and render a still portrait/pinup Demographic will never become animators
if it is not their area of interest.
I have Seen "Umotion pro" and "final IK" for Unity But looking at the costs you will have to spend at least
$300 USD to get a decent Character animation tool set in Unity and those are really designed for simplified Game character rigs.
The Basic non import /export version of Iclone is around $250 USD
and has many advanced Character motion building options.
The reallusion Character creator 3 progam is $200 USD and even promises
Access to the coveted golden unicorn (Daz genesis)....sort of.
Reallusion partnered with renderosity to sell their CC3 program
and was met with a wall of silence from the tThe click/load and render a still portrait/pinup
demographic in the poser community who associates Iclone with animation&motion building
The new CC3 forum over there is a ghost town.
I seriously doubt the animation aspect of Unity & Unreal would be any incentive
for Daz or poser users to leave their comfort bubbles and likely have to spend more money
in so doing.