Is Iray Falling Behind?

Kevin Sanderson

I'd say they were more than support. 

2020.1.0 final

(along with a 2020.0.3 update, containing some of the feature fixes :))

Important Changes since the beta:

Automatic use of CUDA for pixel conversions, resulting in more interactive performance

CUDA render targets to avoid downloads to host/uploads to GPU

Many many fixes (features, general stability and memory usage), along with performance improvements in special cases (like many LPEs rendered, many GPUs used, spectral rendering used, materials that feature Perlin noise)

• August 17, 2020, 10:00am

•  

lilweep

Kevin Sanderson said:

 

https://blog.irayrender.com/

 

whats this about fibers?

Kevin Sanderson

I believe they are talking about this.

https://news.developer.nvidia.com/optix-sdk-7-1/

Kevin Sanderson

Some more from their blog...

 

Updated AI denoiser (it will now in addition always use the latest and greatest version that comes builtin with the NVIDIA driver, which results in 90% size reduction of the library!)

(Optional) Use of AI based SSIM prediction to get the current level of quality without the need to have a reference image (which will then be used to predict the remaining render time later-on, see http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/siggraph/2018/video/sig1851-carsten-waechter-adaptive-rendering-powered-by-optix-ai-features.html)

Support for Primitive Variables (PrimVars, or in general: user data)

Support for custom postprocessing added

LenioTG

Kevin Sanderson said:

I'd say they were more than support. 

2020.1.0 final

(along with a 2020.0.3 update, containing some of the feature fixes :))

Important Changes since the beta:

Automatic use of CUDA for pixel conversions, resulting in more interactive performance

CUDA render targets to avoid downloads to host/uploads to GPU

Many many fixes (features, general stability and memory usage), along with performance improvements in special cases (like many LPEs rendered, many GPUs used, spectral rendering used, materials that feature Perlin noise)

• August 17, 2020, 10:00am

•  

Good to know, thanks! :)

nicstt

I've given up on Iray; I moved to Blender purely because Iray was a resource hog requiring high end (or upper mid) Nvidia graphics cards if you wanted at least reasonable performance; if your scenes were large, then there was only two choices Titan or xx80ti, or you spent time optimising and it can be a lot of time.

Don't get me wrong, rendering is a resource hog, but I personally feel Iray was a poor choice for Studio.

Edit

I need to clarify "but I personally feel Iray was a poor choice for Studio."

I feel it was a poor choice for the customer.

brainmuffin

nicstt said:

I've given up on Iray; I moved to Blender purely because Iray was a resource hog requiring high end (or upper mid) Nvidia graphics cards if you wanted at least reasonable performance; if your scenes were large, then there was only two choices Titan or xx80ti, or you spent time optimising and it can be a lot of time.

Don't get me wrong, rendering is a resource hog, but I personally feel Iray was a poor choice for Studio.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. I have an older Linux rig that can give me good results in Blender that are impossilble using Iray. It almost makes me want to try to get Studio to run in WINE again and then export the files to run Blender in Linux native.

LenioTG

Well, that doesn't apply to me: since Iray allows me to have a source of income, I re-invest part of the earning in hardware, so the average lifespan of a component in my PC is around just 2 years.

But, of course, if the hardware is poorly optimized, there's still the argument that, with other software, you could render more in the same time.

Kitsumo

brainmuffin said:

nicstt said:

I've given up on Iray; I moved to Blender purely because Iray was a resource hog requiring high end (or upper mid) Nvidia graphics cards if you wanted at least reasonable performance; if your scenes were large, then there was only two choices Titan or xx80ti, or you spent time optimising and it can be a lot of time.

Don't get me wrong, rendering is a resource hog, but I personally feel Iray was a poor choice for Studio.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. I have an older Linux rig that can give me good results in Blender that are impossilble using Iray. It almost makes me want to try to get Studio to run in WINE again and then export the files to run Blender in Linux native.

That's what I do. It requires some extra time and effort but that's probably because of my inexperience with Linux and Blender.

One thing I can say; I've tried Linux quite a few times over the past 2 decades and Blender a few times as well, but could never really stick with either of them. But now Blender's UI is much more accessible to beginners and Linux is becoming more popular, especially with us tin-foil-hatters who won't touch Windows 10.

One downside is that I do a lot less rendering nowadays. I'm not as motivated to open up DS, knowing that after I create a scene (usually 2-5 hours but could be more) then I'll have to export to Blender and spend probably another 50% of that time tweaking it (materials, fire, smoke, cloth, etc). It leads to better pictures, but it's a bigger time investment.

Blender is much more forgiving with older hardware too. My GTX 770 (4gb) is already listed as deprecated and its starting to have problems in Iray. It's likely to be removed from the next version of Iray, according to the release notes in the Iray thread, but it works fine in Blender. It's not a big deal to me since its only a 4gb card, but the whole family (Kepler) is affected by that, so a few Titan owners are going to be pretty upset after the next Iray upgrade.

TheKD

Kitsumo said:

One downside is that I do a lot less rendering nowadays. I'm not as motivated to open up DS, knowing that after I create a scene (usually 2-5 hours but could be more) then I'll have to export to Blender and spend probably another 50% of that time tweaking it (materials, fire, smoke, cloth, etc). It leads to better pictures, but it's a bigger time investment.

 

On the off chance you haven't tried it yet https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/daz-importer-version-14.html
Makes exporting from DS to blender so much easier. Go with the development version, and there is a thread in blender section https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/365631/diffeomorphic-daz-to-blender#latest that usually has a heads up when a nice update is rolled into it. It's rapidly developing, and as it stands now is very good already. Also another wizard is working on an alembic exporter here. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/428856/sagan-a-daz-to-blender-alembic-exporter#latest  ; It's exciting time for blender renderers that want to use daz assets

Kitsumo

TheKD said:

Kitsumo said:

One downside is that I do a lot less rendering nowadays. I'm not as motivated to open up DS, knowing that after I create a scene (usually 2-5 hours but could be more) then I'll have to export to Blender and spend probably another 50% of that time tweaking it (materials, fire, smoke, cloth, etc). It leads to better pictures, but it's a bigger time investment.

 

On the off chance you haven't tried it yet https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/daz-importer-version-14.html
Makes exporting from DS to blender so much easier. Go with the development version, and there is a thread in blender section https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/365631/diffeomorphic-daz-to-blender#latest that usually has a heads up when a nice update is rolled into it. It's rapidly developing, and as it stands now is very good already. Also another wizard is working on an alembic exporter here. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/428856/sagan-a-daz-to-blender-alembic-exporter#latest  ; It's exciting time for blender renderers that want to use daz assets

yes, I use it.

middle_watch

I only work in Iray now with DAZ, as a photographer it suits my expectations better.... ish.

Downsides are there is if you preview in Iray it flogs the machine, the slightest change is apt to hang the PC for a while, if you preview out of Iray you have to remember to switch some lighting parameters, such as camera lights. There is also the bizarre lack of true Iray lights, you can use Photometric lights, but even cranked up to solar levels they are feeble, Iray seems to need big light sources, large emitting surfaces or IBL sources.

BUT, back in my day this was nothing new, in the studio we used flash guns with preview modelling lights and cameras with poloroid backs to give us some idea of what was likely to turn out, but at the end of the day we had to retire to the dark room (or Boots photo counter) and hope for the best, compared to that the render times for Iray pale into insignifance. But one thing sadly has not changed, that gremlin, that small detail in the scene that only appears when you get the final Render/Print, it looks great in preview, but in the final print a finger is buried in a prop, the eyes are off to one side, whatever. 

I think the main problem with Iray is it in advance of affordable hardware to make it real time, I cannot justify £6,000 for a top of the range graphic card for what is now a hobby, not when I can buy a full studio lighting kit for £130 and hire a model for £30 an hour, or rent both at £50 an hour. I tend to use DAZ for amusement and to test out poses and lighting prior to a live shoot, for that Iray it brilliant, I can turn up for a shoot armed with a set of test shots which once I would have had to do on site, I have worked out light and camera angles and do not bore the poor model to bits holding poses while I try moving kit on the day trying to zero out a bad shadow.

I find it hard to believe this technology is a dead end, if Iray falls by the wayside something else will come along to replace it, hopefully one not as tied to hardware.

LenioTG

middle_watch said:

I only work in Iray now with DAZ, as a photographer it suits my expectations better.... ish.

Downsides are there is if you preview in Iray it flogs the machine, the slightest change is apt to hang the PC for a while, if you preview out of Iray you have to remember to switch some lighting parameters, such as camera lights. There is also the bizarre lack of true Iray lights, you can use Photometric lights, but even cranked up to solar levels they are feeble, Iray seems to need big light sources, large emitting surfaces or IBL sources.

BUT, back in my day this was nothing new, in the studio we used flash guns with preview modelling lights and cameras with poloroid backs to give us some idea of what was likely to turn out, but at the end of the day we had to retire to the dark room (or Boots photo counter) and hope for the best, compared to that the render times for Iray pale into insignifance. But one thing sadly has not changed, that gremlin, that small detail in the scene that only appears when you get the final Render/Print, it looks great in preview, but in the final print a finger is buried in a prop, the eyes are off to one side, whatever. 

I think the main problem with Iray is it in advance of affordable hardware to make it real time, I cannot justify £6,000 for a top of the range graphic card for what is now a hobby, not when I can buy a full studio lighting kit for £130 and hire a model for £30 an hour, or rent both at £50 an hour. I tend to use DAZ for amusement and to test out poses and lighting prior to a live shoot, for that Iray it brilliant, I can turn up for a shoot armed with a set of test shots which once I would have had to do on site, I have worked out light and camera angles and do not bore the poor model to bits holding poses while I try moving kit on the day trying to zero out a bad shadow.

I find it hard to believe this technology is a dead end, if Iray falls by the wayside something else will come along to replace it, hopefully one not as tied to hardware.

I have set "F" as a shortcut to frame on the selected object. It's now automatic for me to frame the perspective on the hands, and to rotate the viewport to check if there is any penetration.

Photometric light is not the way to go with Iray, in my humble opinion. I always go with HDRIs, ghost lights, and a few custom "spotlights".

To move the eyes perfectly, I use "Look At Me Pose Control". If there's nothing where I want the figure to look at, I place there a sphere, and I make it look at it.

You can drastically improve the viewport snappiness lowering, in Draw Settings, the bounce rays. I think 8 is a good value. With a RTX 2060, paid 320€ 2 years ago, the Iray viewport is not that bad. But I only use it before saving the scenes, to fix the exposure and the lights. Otherwise, I'm always on Texture Shaded.

So, you don't need a 6000£ PC. I guess a 1500€ one is more than enough to produce high-quality stuff.
My first 600 renders were made with a GTX 1060 3GB...that was definitely not enough. But even a GTX 1060 6GB could have done much more.
I don't think even a 6000£ PC would give you real-time preview in Iray.
Well, if you use the denoiser, you don't see any black grains, but it all looks too much blurred.

I don't think 3D technology is a dead end by any means: it's improving a lot.
The problem is that, years ago, people have seen a similar product die: Poser. If you listen to people who are still using it, you'll hear them complaining about the horrible quality and about the eternal rendering times. Most of them have switched to Daz Studio by now, but they had to learn completely new software and to change their workflow completely.
I hope that won't happen to us.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

@Kitsumo I thought that some people had gotten that to work with the dev branch of wine-tools, or something? Really nice render, btw...

TheMysteryIsThePoint

nonesuch00 said:

If you saw the other thread about the nVidia Omniverse plans and the technology that involves you know that nVidia isn't abandoning iRay. If you are expecting DAZ Studio to keep pace with UE4, Unity, Blender, and just about any big speculative corporation (or nonprofit supported by speculative corporations like Blender is)  that's already done their IPOs or will be doing IPOs you will be disappointed.

I wonder if all the new bridges is Daz finally coming to that conclusion and realizing that they're still going to sell a crap load of quality assets regardless, and their dev resources are better spent on the framework itself, and not trying to compete feature by feature with even Blender.

zombiewhacker

Funny thing about Iray: I was watching a WP Guru tutorial on Youtube just last night, and he mentioned that Iray offers a real time engine, only that RTE function has never been implemented in DAZ Studio.

brainmuffin

Kitsumo said:

brainmuffin said:

nicstt said:

I've given up on Iray; I moved to Blender purely because Iray was a resource hog requiring high end (or upper mid) Nvidia graphics cards if you wanted at least reasonable performance; if your scenes were large, then there was only two choices Titan or xx80ti, or you spent time optimising and it can be a lot of time.

Don't get me wrong, rendering is a resource hog, but I personally feel Iray was a poor choice for Studio.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. I have an older Linux rig that can give me good results in Blender that are impossilble using Iray. It almost makes me want to try to get Studio to run in WINE again and then export the files to run Blender in Linux native.

That's what I do. It requires some extra time and effort but that's probably because of my inexperience with Linux and Blender.

One thing I can say; I've tried Linux quite a few times over the past 2 decades and Blender a few times as well, but could never really stick with either of them. But now Blender's UI is much more accessible to beginners and Linux is becoming more popular, especially with us tin-foil-hatters who won't touch Windows 10.

One downside is that I do a lot less rendering nowadays. I'm not as motivated to open up DS, knowing that after I create a scene (usually 2-5 hours but could be more) then I'll have to export to Blender and spend probably another 50% of that time tweaking it (materials, fire, smoke, cloth, etc). It leads to better pictures, but it's a bigger time investment.

Blender is much more forgiving with older hardware too. My GTX 770 (4gb) is already listed as deprecated and its starting to have problems in Iray. It's likely to be removed from the next version of Iray, according to the release notes in the Iray thread, but it works fine in Blender. It's not a big deal to me since its only a 4gb card, but the whole family (Kepler) is affected by that, so a few Titan owners are going to be pretty upset after the next Iray upgrade.

My main machine is a 10 year old iMac. For now, I find myself doing basic scene setup in Studio and using Diffeomorphic to export, rsync to my Linux box, and then finish all the parts in Blender. I'm currently working on a scene with Urban Future 3 (Iray materials upgrade thanks to Dreamlight) and some green screen capture (one I downloaded off of YouTube, so the matching is not exact). My Linux box is a Q6600, 4 GB RAM and an NVidia GTX 960. Way underpowered if it was running Win 10.

brainmuffin

middle_watch said:

I only work in Iray now with DAZ, as a photographer it suits my expectations better.... ish.

Downsides are there is if you preview in Iray it flogs the machine, the slightest change is apt to hang the PC for a while,

That's why I switched to Reality and LuxRender years ago. I read up on ray tracing and was learning how to bounce light more realistically, but once physical light render engines became available, I could use light as a photorapher again. Iray is just too much of a resource hog.

brainmuffin

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you saw the other thread about the nVidia Omniverse plans and the technology that involves you know that nVidia isn't abandoning iRay. If you are expecting DAZ Studio to keep pace with UE4, Unity, Blender, and just about any big speculative corporation (or nonprofit supported by speculative corporations like Blender is)  that's already done their IPOs or will be doing IPOs you will be disappointed.

I wonder if all the new bridges is Daz finally coming to that conclusion and realizing that they're still going to sell a crap load of quality assets regardless, and their dev resources are better spent on the framework itself, and not trying to compete feature by feature with even Blender.

If DAZ sold a Blender plugin that read all Studio content natively, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I bought both Reality and Studio Pro back in the day.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

brainmuffin said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

nonesuch00 said:

If you saw the other thread about the nVidia Omniverse plans and the technology that involves you know that nVidia isn't abandoning iRay. If you are expecting DAZ Studio to keep pace with UE4, Unity, Blender, and just about any big speculative corporation (or nonprofit supported by speculative corporations like Blender is)  that's already done their IPOs or will be doing IPOs you will be disappointed.

I wonder if all the new bridges is Daz finally coming to that conclusion and realizing that they're still going to sell a crap load of quality assets regardless, and their dev resources are better spent on the framework itself, and not trying to compete feature by feature with even Blender.

If DAZ sold a Blender plugin that read all Studio content natively, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I bought both Reality and Studio Pro back in the day.

Yeah, I dream about Daz lending all of their devs to the Blender Foundation.

j cade

middle_watch said:

I only work in Iray now with DAZ, as a photographer it suits my expectations better.... ish.

Downsides are there is if you preview in Iray it flogs the machine, the slightest change is apt to hang the PC for a while, if you preview out of Iray you have to remember to switch some lighting parameters, such as camera lights. There is also the bizarre lack of true Iray lights, you can use Photometric lights, but even cranked up to solar levels they are feeble, Iray seems to need big light sources, large emitting surfaces or IBL sources.

BUT, back in my day this was nothing new, in the studio we used flash guns with preview modelling lights and cameras with poloroid backs to give us some idea of what was likely to turn out, but at the end of the day we had to retire to the dark room (or Boots photo counter) and hope for the best, compared to that the render times for Iray pale into insignifance. But one thing sadly has not changed, that gremlin, that small detail in the scene that only appears when you get the final Render/Print, it looks great in preview, but in the final print a finger is buried in a prop, the eyes are off to one side, whatever. 

I think the main problem with Iray is it in advance of affordable hardware to make it real time, I cannot justify £6,000 for a top of the range graphic card for what is now a hobby, not when I can buy a full studio lighting kit for £130 and hire a model for £30 an hour, or rent both at £50 an hour. I tend to use DAZ for amusement and to test out poses and lighting prior to a live shoot, for that Iray it brilliant, I can turn up for a shoot armed with a set of test shots which once I would have had to do on site, I have worked out light and camera angles and do not bore the poor model to bits holding poses while I try moving kit on the day trying to zero out a bad shadow.

I find it hard to believe this technology is a dead end, if Iray falls by the wayside something else will come along to replace it, hopefully one not as tied to hardware.

Set the max render time to something low like 20 seconds, I dont quite have a potato, but I have a pretty midrange computer and when setting up materials and lighting I keep the main viewport running iray preview with ease all I do is make sure I hide extraneous elements (if you're working on skin settings dont have the background on, for instance) and set the max render time. this way iray cuts off quickly and doesnt do a bunch of extra work/start over heating

 

also for the lighting being to dim. Since you do photography take a gander at the exposure settings they're Im pretty sure I once experimented and took a photo with those settings in my room and it came out black adjust those to settings you'd use in the real world and suddenly you wont have to dial the lights up so much

LenioTG

zombiewhacker said:

Funny thing about Iray: I was watching a WP Guru tutorial on Youtube just last night, and he mentioned that Iray offers a real time engine, only that RTE function has never been implemented in DAZ Studio.

What?! In what sense?

Kitsumo

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

@Kitsumo I thought that some people had gotten that to work with the dev branch of wine-tools, or something? Really nice render, btw...

I heard someone talking about that over on the Linux thread, but I haven't bothered to research it. I'm tired of playing Nvidia's upgrade game. This next time around I might buy an AMD card or just get a faster processor - Cycles has pretty good CPU rendering performance and I don't have to worry about driver issues with that.

nicstt

zombiewhacker said:

Funny thing about Iray: I was watching a WP Guru tutorial on Youtube just last night, and he mentioned that Iray offers a real time engine, only that RTE function has never been implemented in DAZ Studio.

Depends when the video is from; it could have since been implemented? I'd be interested in the specifics too.

Richard Haseltine

zombiewhacker said:

Funny thing about Iray: I was watching a WP Guru tutorial on Youtube just last night, and he mentioned that Iray offers a real time engine, only that RTE function has never been implemented in DAZ Studio.

This has come up before - it was not implemented, as I recall, for stability reasons. In any event, it isn't goinf to give full Iray renders - otherwise there would be no point in implementing anything else. We already have the Interactive mode if you are willing to sacrifice some features for some speed.

nonesuch00

I just saw a series of videos comparing eevee, cycles, Radeon Prorender, and Lux Render and I felt eevee was suitable for 99% of the uses people would use a renderer for. Maybe that's what Filament will be for DAZ Studio? 

Sphinx Magoo

I'm hardly any sort of expert, but wanted to ask: I see mentions of Blender's Cycles render engine, but might Blender's Eeevee render engine be more of a way to go?

With the release of the new Blender Bridge, I've been looking into what one could do in Blender. Eevee seems to be part of the newest 2.9 release of Blender. According to one article I spotted, Eevee seems to run 12 times faster than Cycles. (https://blog.render.st/cycles-vs-eevee-rendering-speed-comparison/)

I'd be all for an alternative to Iray. I'm using a MacBook Pro and the speed I can get from using 3Delight compared to Iray has made Iray non-starter for me. If I get anything that is Iray-only, I'll get it and convert it into something I can use in 3Delight.

If we could get Cycles and/or Eevee to work within DS without having to export to Blender, that would be my favorite way to go. I was disappointed that the Blender Bridge was limited to G3 and G8 figures. Being able to render in Cycles and Eevee from within DS with ALL of my years of Poser and DS assets would be my ideal goal. I've learned enough about Blender to see that it is amazingly versatile and powerful while still being open source. Talk about being synergistic with DAZ's free entry point!

j cade

Sphinx Magoo said:

I'm hardly any sort of expert, but wanted to ask: I see mentions of Blender's Cycles render engine, but might Blender's Eeevee render engine be more of a way to go?

With the release of the new Blender Bridge, I've been looking into what one could do in Blender. Eevee seems to be part of the newest 2.9 release of Blender. According to one article I spotted, Eevee seems to run 12 times faster than Cycles. (https://blog.render.st/cycles-vs-eevee-rendering-speed-comparison/)

I'd be all for an alternative to Iray. I'm using a MacBook Pro and the speed I can get from using 3Delight compared to Iray has made Iray non-starter for me. If I get anything that is Iray-only, I'll get it and convert it into something I can use in 3Delight.

If we could get Cycles and/or Eevee to work within DS without having to export to Blender, that would be my favorite way to go. I was disappointed that the Blender Bridge was limited to G3 and G8 figures. Being able to render in Cycles and Eevee from within DS with ALL of my years of Poser and DS assets would be my ideal goal. I've learned enough about Blender to see that it is amazingly versatile and powerful while still being open source. Talk about being synergistic with DAZ's free entry point!

While Cycles could theoretically be added, it would be difficult to implement eevee in DS without making DS open source. Cycles has a different and more permissive licence than the rest of Blender. Eevee does not.

marble

j cade said:

Sphinx Magoo said:

I'm hardly any sort of expert, but wanted to ask: I see mentions of Blender's Cycles render engine, but might Blender's Eeevee render engine be more of a way to go?

With the release of the new Blender Bridge, I've been looking into what one could do in Blender. Eevee seems to be part of the newest 2.9 release of Blender. According to one article I spotted, Eevee seems to run 12 times faster than Cycles. (https://blog.render.st/cycles-vs-eevee-rendering-speed-comparison/)

I'd be all for an alternative to Iray. I'm using a MacBook Pro and the speed I can get from using 3Delight compared to Iray has made Iray non-starter for me. If I get anything that is Iray-only, I'll get it and convert it into something I can use in 3Delight.

If we could get Cycles and/or Eevee to work within DS without having to export to Blender, that would be my favorite way to go. I was disappointed that the Blender Bridge was limited to G3 and G8 figures. Being able to render in Cycles and Eevee from within DS with ALL of my years of Poser and DS assets would be my ideal goal. I've learned enough about Blender to see that it is amazingly versatile and powerful while still being open source. Talk about being synergistic with DAZ's free entry point!

 

While Cycles could theoretically be added, it would be difficult to implement eevee in DS without making DS open source. Cycles has a different and more permissive licence than the rest of Blender. Eevee does not.

Besides, it looks like Google Filament might be the Eevee alternative in DAZ Studio. We shall see.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Sphinx Magoo said:

I'm hardly any sort of expert, but wanted to ask: I see mentions of Blender's Cycles render engine, but might Blender's Eeevee render engine be more of a way to go?

With the release of the new Blender Bridge, I've been looking into what one could do in Blender. Eevee seems to be part of the newest 2.9 release of Blender. According to one article I spotted, Eevee seems to run 12 times faster than Cycles. (https://blog.render.st/cycles-vs-eevee-rendering-speed-comparison/)

I'd be all for an alternative to Iray. I'm using a MacBook Pro and the speed I can get from using 3Delight compared to Iray has made Iray non-starter for me. If I get anything that is Iray-only, I'll get it and convert it into something I can use in 3Delight.

If we could get Cycles and/or Eevee to work within DS without having to export to Blender, that would be my favorite way to go. I was disappointed that the Blender Bridge was limited to G3 and G8 figures. Being able to render in Cycles and Eevee from within DS with ALL of my years of Poser and DS assets would be my ideal goal. I've learned enough about Blender to see that it is amazingly versatile and powerful while still being open source. Talk about being synergistic with DAZ's free entry point!

That kind of integration is unlikely to happen because of the Open Source licenses that Cycles and EEVEE (around for a few years, since the 2.8) are released under.

But keep in mind that DTB is just one way of getting Daz content into Blender. There's also the Diffeomorphic importer, which is highly regarded and is by far the best materials converter we have, the Sagan Alembic Exporter, the Better FBX Importer, and of course even OBJ in a pinch.