Epic Games acquires Quixel
RobotHeadArt
Posts: 911
in The Commons
Epic has aquired Quixel and will be making their tools availble for free and granting access to the megascans library for free in Unreal and reduced price outside of Unreal. It's also interesting that they are positioning themselves to be a competiter to Adobe's Substance suite.
http://www.cgchannel.com/2019/11/epic-games-acquires-quixel/
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LOL I just shared this in the Carrara forum
they are adding 3D paint to it too next release
edited to add simultaneously
popped up in my video reconmendations and shared it in our free software thread
before seeing you had in case it's considered a duplicate
diffrerent forum targets
A lot of people have been seeing Mixer as a possible rival to Substance Painter since the latter was purchased by Adobe, and then went subscription only.
I wish they'd buy Carrara
Excellent. I'm building my new AMD Ryzen computer just in time. My old laptop couldn't handle UE4 but the new PC will be able too.
In a funny (possibly planned) coincidence, the Humble Store just started an Unreal Engine Development bundle. It includes a few assets and several training course videos, plus Qube 1 and 2, games which were developed in Unreal.
And yeah, poor Carrara wouldn't fit there. The focus is on games and real time animation.
Yep! Epic Unreal 4.24 now includes Epic Studio and Datasmith (Industrial Design, Archviz, CAD import), Quixel Bridge, Mixer, Megascans, everything is now completely free for all users. In combination with Quixel, this might be a gamechanger. Bridge supports Blender out of the box, Blender got an Epic Megagrant for the next couple of years. We'll see what happens next :) As Jonatan said over in the Quixel forum, you might use all materials for free, as long as you're using them in Unreal...
I'm still in the dark when it comes to these game engines. I downloaded Unity a few days ago but I'm not a coder and most of the tutorials I have found include coding, so I switch off at that point. What, if anything, would be the attraction of this new Unreal announcement to DAZ Studio users? I'm guessing that I'm not alone in being a stranger to code or in not wanting to become a coder, so is there anything in it for the likes of myself?
It is possible to import Daz models into Unreal.
I do think that Daz should be very seriously looking at ways to make that process as easy and painless as possible. It is in Daz's best interest to have as much of a bridge as possible to Unreal, which would directly translate to more sales. Unity would work as well, but I personally think that Epic's aggressive moves will lead to more people using it long term, plus Epic is constantly reinvesting in their engine to make it better. If Epic is lacking something, they WILL go buy it. The way they do business is sort of like Amazon, in that they do not necessarily chase after pure profit, they are constantly doing more stuff to grow and expand. They are also willing to cut margins thin to entice people to use their products, like this example right here of just giving away Quixel content for free when using their Epic engine.
So they are not just offering Epic for free, they are even offering a bunch of content for free. That would be like Daz offering Victoria for free, no stacking sale needed, just free all the time as long as you use Daz Studio to render her.
Ok, I get that but what can I do with my DAZ character or scene once I have imported it into Unreal? The reason I downloaded Unity was because I am told it has a VR viewer and I have just bought a VR headset but when it comes to doing anything in Unity, I seem to run into the need to do some coding, which is just not going to happen. I avoided coding in a long career in computer support and don't intend to start now. My son is a senior software engineer so I could ask him to help but he sees DAZ Studio as some kind of Ken & Barbie game and thinks it is funny that his old man is playing with dolls.
for what it is worth there is this thread I have been mostly only posting in lately
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53357/unreal-engine-4-now-free-updated#latest
I think it's a positive thing for them as they have been treading water for 3-4 years.
So this might get them going again !
Whatever you want. Unreal is a game engine, but it can be used for animating or even taking single frame shots. Being a game engine, it is designed to render quickly, that is big difference between Unreal and Iray. With any half decent GPU you can render in real time. It does support ray tracing, but without a RTX card that is not is a good idea to try. But you can still create fairly realistic renders if you know what you are doing. You do not need to know coding so much. Its like Daz in that a GIU can handle most things. Coding is an option if you want to dig deeper into the finer workings for full control, but not absolutely necessary. Just like Daz, you can buy or import assets you have bought and take the easier path. That includes animations, plus you can buy things like physics simulations, music, and more in the Unreal asset store. If you just want to take pictures, then you don't need to know too much about how things work. Again, since this is a game engine, those pictures can be rendered nearly as fast as you can press the button. I believe there are options for more photo real effects, which do take longer, but not Iray long. Game engines can be super versatile.
There are video tutorials on importing Daz characters to Unity. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=daz+to+unreal There are also some sold here in the Daz store.
Just found this clip on youtube of somebody messing with Daz to iclone to Unreal.
So you can do stuff like that.
Ha ha, it may be as easy as drag and drop but the results are professional quality and character is a custom character also vs. who make a custom character from scratch by investing lot of time.
I can do little bit modeling with Blender but gave up, who will invest time to make a model when all models are ready for me and sometimes just need custom morphing if my goal is just the end result.
Time is very important. Therefore rendering is becoming faster day by day, e.g. Ray Tracing GPU, Realtime rendering etc.
Nothing, mostly commercially, although as a DAZ Studio user you could create material for use in your personal non-commercial renders practically speaking.
As far as UE4 goes as a trained coder they have in UE4 a method of visual schematic state flow diagram programming called "Blueprint" that you might want to watch videos of to see if you might like learning it.
It's true, Unity wasted no time making Unity Pro free after UE4 went free.
What will happen if DAZ Studio implement Unreal Engine or similar Engine along with other render option? Daz need to pay them? I think animation on Daz Studio will become painless.
Why, does Daz want to pay anyone for quick animation rendering? Just make a bridge to Blender evee and it is free, or just add evee to Daz studio. No need to pay a license fee to Unity or Epic. Marble, the game engine render software is only useful for those who do animations or wants to play with 3d assets in real time VR. If you just want 2D stills Daz Iray can not be beat, except by Octaine but that is a subscription service and Daz Iray is free. IF YOU MAKE YOUR SOFTWARE SUBSCRIPTION BASED I STOP USING IT PERIOD! Case in point I used to upgrade my Adobe Photoshop for years now I just use GIMP! Is gimp as good as photoshop? No, but I don't have to pay a subscription for it!!! If the owners of DAZ were not so afraid of piracy they would get more business from the blender community by making their stuff bridge to blender. Maybe they have a agreement with Iclone not to make competive problems for them by making this bridge? I think the only people who would complain are the OpenSource crowd at Blender because the bridge would not be opensourse, and of course iclone.
I crashed my video driver multiple times using the megascan assets I added to my project in the foliage brush
just saying
was not even a big terrain just a plane, and only some plants the sample map loaded OK
I do huge lush terrains with lesser assets no worries
Sounds like you have those famous nVidia drivers. It was the same in the early 2000s and it's the same 20 years later.
_ which Adobe or Epic _??
So, we are rare breed, like mammuthus?
Is pre-render gfx becomes more and more niche for enthusiast circles?
everybody goes realtime and/or vr?
i like both pre-render and realtime
even in games
Epic
Adobe would be the death of it
Thanks for the explanation. In short, I can't afford the time it takes IRay to render even very short animations and I have not had much success with getting scenes into Blender to do that in Eevee. I know that there is documentation for the Diffeomorphic tool but I found following it difficult because I probably don't know some stuff that the designer considers too basic to bother explaining. So I have yet to get a scene into Blender. Same goes for the Teleblender script (the latest) - very little explanation and a lot assumed about the knowledge of the user.
Then I bought this VR headset and I read in various posts that Unity was the way to go if I want to view my DAZ Studio scenes in VR. Not only that but, as you say, rendering is close to real time so that's great for animations. But I hit a wall when it came to figuring out how to do all that because I kept finding tutorials involving coding. Fair enough, it is a game engine and it is meant to be a coding platform - not a DAZ Studio alternative. I don't know if Unity has soft body physics or cloth simulation and without those I would be much less interested in spending time learning how to use the GUI. Same goes for Unreal - I just don't know the advantages of one over the other when it comes to game engines.
Let's just all pray neither Adobe or Epic set their sights on DAZ!
Don't even think it ! if they get their hands on it then it goes to subscription straight away and you can kiss all the low price sales goodby !
From how things look, not exactly. More probable, the base Genesis generations would become free, Daz Studio would be discontinued, new figures would be optimized for the Unreal game engine (meaning different rigging, less polys on a model, and some other minor changes), iray rendering would go out the window, half our PAs would have to find another job, the other half would be restricted to contract work with very specified projects and deadlines and whatnot. It'd be a disaster for this form of art and its community.
The market here at Daz3D and the Unreal market is completely different. I dont see what bennefit Adobe or Epic would get by aquirering Daz3D.