New DS Filament Render Engine

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Comments

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,287

    This is another quick animation experiment with the new DS Filament Render Engine in DAZ Studio. This time I added a distance light with shadows turned on. It rendered in 12 minutes for 216 frames in 1920 X 1080. I added a little pixel motion blur in After Effects.

    hahah Cool! yes I can almost hear the director yelling "Cut!". :)

  • JoepingletonJoepingleton Posts: 746
    edited November 2020
    3Diva said:

    This is another quick animation experiment with the new DS Filament Render Engine in DAZ Studio. This time I added a distance light with shadows turned on. It rendered in 12 minutes for 216 frames in 1920 X 1080. I added a little pixel motion blur in After Effects.

    hahah Cool! yes I can almost hear the director yelling "Cut!". :)

    Thank you for your info on getting SBH to render in Filament. I still can't get the hair from "Husky For Daz Dog 8" to render, but it seems all I have to do with the others is increase the line tessalation to anything above 0 to get them to show up in the render. Additionally,  I couldn't get shadows from point lights but it worked on a distance light.

    Post edited by Joepingleton on
  • cain-xcain-x Posts: 164
    3Diva said:

    This is another quick animation experiment with the new DS Filament Render Engine in DAZ Studio. This time I added a distance light with shadows turned on. It rendered in 12 minutes for 216 frames in 1920 X 1080. I added a little pixel motion blur in After Effects.

    hahah Cool! yes I can almost hear the director yelling "Cut!". :)

    Thank you for your info on getting SBH to render in Filament. I still can't get the hair from "Husky For Daz Dog 8" to render, but it seems all I have to do with the others is increase the line tessalation to anything above 0 to get them to show up in the render. Additionally,  I couldn't get shadows from point lights but it worked on a distance light.

    I am getting the same results with point lights - no shadows.

  • cain-xcain-x Posts: 164

    I am getting used to the SSAO settings - I do like the way it is looking for "fake shadows" for overcast soft lighting.

    https://imgur.com/a/ZOlqoyL

    Unfortunately, the environment vars are not animatable - that's a shame.

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,287
    3Diva said:
    barbult said:

    This is the first release of Filament in Daz Studio. If Daz3D doesn't abandon their work on it and run off to the next shiny thing, Filament will probably be improved. I think it is already improved from the first Beta that included it. If it doesn't work for your workflow, don't use it. All the other choices are still there. We have no right to tell Daz3D what to spend their time and money on. Daz Studio is free. We get what we get. Daz3D is really a content brokerage. With all the bridges they are providing, I'm kind of surprised (but happy) that Daz Studio development is continuing. 

    +1

    Daz Studio has just added a new PREVIEW OPTION draw style that people can use only IF THEY WANT. And they can even render with it IF THEY WANT TO (because it renders crazy fast animations), but it's 100% OPTIONAL to use and some people are freaking out. lol It's hilarious. I'd go make some popcorn but I'm having too much fun playing with Filament right now. lol It's a preview draw style. That's all. You can use it to render with if you want to but I think most people will use Iray. It's not meant to be a replacement for Iray. It's cool to have options. No one is forcing anyone to use Filament if they don't want to. I think people who do animations will enjoy it (I'm enjoying it) and I'm sure it will be improved upon with time. :) People can decide for themselves if they'd like to use it or not. Options are nice to have. Give it a chance or don't, no one is forced to use the new preview option nor is anyone forced to render with it. :)

    First of all, this isn't a PREVIEW OPTION

     

    Sure it is. Just like Texture Shaded and Cartoon Shaded, Filament is also a preview draw style. :)

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,753

    I think it's a nice addition, photorealism isn't important to me, just want renders to look good and this has a certain style I like.  Here's a couple of test renders with different lighting and settings.

    filament_test_01.png
    796 x 901 - 1M
    filament_test_02.png
    796 x 901 - 1M
  • khorneV2khorneV2 Posts: 146
    Nice ones
  • Joining the club with my first animation, using an old animate blocks with Genesis 1

    don't bother with detecting mistakes...it has, a lot.

  • Joining the club with my first animation, using an old animate blocks with Genesis 1

    don't bother with detecting mistakes...it has, a lot.

    pretty good especially for a first go yes

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,107
    edited November 2020

    First of all, this isn't a PREVIEW OPTION draw style because it doesn't match Iray's lighting.

    Neither does texture shaded viewport, and yet...

    We need improvements to the photoreal aspects of Daz, and that simply isn't happening 

    Could people please stop saying "we need" for "I want"?
    Not everyone is interested in "the photoreal aspects of Daz", and the fact that you want it doesn't actually mean it's "something better" for Daz to work on as an absolute, it's just your opinion. 

    Post edited by Leana on
  • pretty good especially for a first go yes

    Thanks for your words!, I made a second one using Aiko3

  • Leonides02Leonides02 Posts: 1,379
    edited November 2020
    Leana said:

    and the fact that you want it doesn't actually mean it's "something better" for Daz to work on as an absolute, it's just your opinion. 

    Of course it's my opinion. What else would it be? You are free to have (and voice) yours, and so am I. 

    Post edited by Leonides02 on
  • ChumlyChumly Posts: 793

    I dunno... I like options.

    Methinks though, if Filiment is nutured, given water and sunlight, it might have a chance to grow.

    And if it can grow into something that cuts the cord of dependency on Nvidias products, to give us a real choice... then all the better.

    Or am I reading it wrong?

    Cheers!

     

     

     

    No Artists were harmed in the writing/reading of this post.

  • chromchrom Posts: 254

    pretty good especially for a first go yes

    Thanks for your words!, I made a second one using Aiko3

    looks really nice

    where do the anim come from? Is it a product on DAZ?

    how long took the render time? 

    is it single pngs or can it produced as single png? I ask regarding postprocessing / batch processing with 2D software

     

     

     

     

  • chromchrom Posts: 254

    Hi,

    there is mentioned and shown that filament render is very fast - in seconds.

    What is regarding the new  filament products athmosphere, fire , light pro?  Some pics looks really nice.

     

    How much time lasts rendering with these products?

     

    & How much time lasts setting up the items / presets within these products? I mean if you have a scene built without this product elements the time it takes to setup product items/presets that it looks like in product pics.

     

    I mean especially if using this products to come to such pics lasts seconds, minutes or hours. 

  • ZilvergrafixZilvergrafix Posts: 1,385
    edited November 2020
    chrom said:

    looks really nice

    where do the anim come from? Is it a product on DAZ?

    how long took the render time? 

    is it single pngs or can it produced as single png? I ask regarding postprocessing / batch processing with 2D software

    Thanks! your answers:

    • the product is AniMate for M4, being compatible with Aiko3: https://www.daz3d.com/animate-martial-arts-combos
    • Took 14minutes 
    • Was rendered using the "Image Series" Option, and compiled in VirtualDub using X264 codec for small size file, is better than produce a video directly on DS because can crash and all your time wasted.
    • thus, if crash even in image series you can retake rendering on the sequence of frames to render and not from the beggining.

    Post edited by Zilvergrafix on
  • chromchrom Posts: 254
    chrom said:

    looks really nice

    where do the anim come from? Is it a product on DAZ?

    how long took the render time? 

    is it single pngs or can it produced as single png? I ask regarding postprocessing / batch processing with 2D software

    Thanks! your answers:

    • the product is AniMate for M4, being compatible with Aiko3: https://www.daz3d.com/animate-martial-arts-combos
    • Took 14minutes 
    • Was rendered using the "Image Series" Option, and compiled in VirtualDub using X264 codec for small size file, is better than produce a video directly on DS because can crash and all your time wasted.
    • thus, if crash even in image series you can retake rendering on the sequence of frames to render and not from the beggining.

    thank you for the answer and the fourth point is a very good hint

  •  

    Of course it's my opinion. What else would it be? You are free to have (and voice) yours, and so am I. 

    It probably be alot more "fun" around here in the forums if we all wrote "we need" to introduce our individual opinons.  Proverbial Kitchens can never be hot enough.  /maybe bit sarcasm?  angel

    On another note am excited about Filament for designing/preparing/testing animations.  For me, rendering the final product will still be Iray.   Idea of moving all my content to Blender and losing so many great in-house DS features is just too onerous ATM.  So filament is a big plus for me.  Thanks Daz. smiley

  • I think this is the end for linux users .. in my case I tried it and it seems to work for a while but then daz studio freezes ... this is my relationship with daz studio .... the only way to continue using the software is disabling the render filament option ... I just hope that the developers don't change the viewport .. or it will be my end ..

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,956
    Paintbox said:

    I love to see Vulkan support myself, although if they implement the full Filament spec, that's not bad either. The only thing is that Filament is made by Google, and they have a tendency to drop support for their products unexpectedly and when not performing.

    Your worries are over then because Filament is just the PBR renderer as the frontend.

    The backend is:

    • OpenGL 4.1+ for Linux, macOS and Windows
    • OpenGL ES 3.0+ for Android and iOS
    • Metal for macOS and iOS
    • Vulkan 1.0 for Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows
    • WebGL 2.0 for all platforms

    So technically DAZ Studio could be written to render directly to a webpage in your browser using WebGL or be ported to anyone of the operating systems above (sans 3DL and iRay support). Not bad because changes are very good than Filament will only improve and the future hardware that runs it faster and more capable. Pretty sweet deal really if you're DAZ 3D or as DAZ 3D customer.

  • ImagoImago Posts: 4,953

    I don't now if anyone else already reported this, but the shadows in Filament seems to not work properly for me.
    They get partly "cut" by the camera angle, like in the video I linked, and also if I move the props too much distant form world's center, the shadows doesn't even appear. However, I can see the shadows of far objects if I use a camera next to the world's center. It's a bit complicated to explain...
    In more crowded scenes, with more elements, the shadows gets suddenly and totally blocked if I orient the distant lights "overhead", it's like something big goes in front of the light source.
    I tried all the options with no results, in all the pissible panes and tabs, even in the DAZ Studio's viewport options (f2 button). I don't know if it's an hardware issue, since the VRAM is pretty empty and my GPU fully supports OpenGL 4.6.

  • changes that do not demand more expensive hardware are always good as far as I am concerned.

    hopefully the Mac implementation and possibly even native Linux D|S can be also done.

    for me rendering stuff is just fun and an escape and a means in itself, my way of exploring nice sets and trying on virtual clothes, I am not trying to impress anyone and believe me I get put in my place told how I am of a simple mind by many, especially on youtube, hence the comment earlier about Filament making D|S look bad is a moot point as I already have done so in spades blush not intentionally as I actually use lots of different softwares, its the journey not the destination, Filament is just like riding a motorcycle instead of hobbling with a walking stick around my purchased 3D sets!

    if we all have to showcase DAZ studio just shoot me now and all the others not up to the task devil

  • psfilipepsfilipe Posts: 164

    Well I can see you must have an 20X0 or 30X0 RTX GPU already to render a scene with that resolution and that much refraction, reflection, and opacity in an hour & a half.

    You might try reducing the render resolution to FHD or 2K and then using DLSS to upscale to your desired final resolution.

    What DAZ 3D could help with that is add a configurable automatic post-processing step to scale our render(s) (renders as it might be an animation) from the rendered resolution to the scaled resolution using DLSS if the GPU supports it. Now that should be comparitively easy for DAZ 3D to implement.


    Never tried DLSS. From my understanding it is usually used in animation/gaming pipelines, right?

    Generally speaking I can't upscale my work, ever. That would be less than ideal for my purposes.
    I sell my digital art at print on demand sites (art prints, wall murals, t-shirts, etc..) and licensing and download sites (music cd covers, posters).
    Basically all my work is prepared to be printed in the highest quality I can provide.
    My renders are usually 10000x10000px (Daz maximum size) so that they can print at 300dpi (a 84,67x84,67cm final print).

     

     

    psfilipe said:

    Why not optimize Iray further?

    They ARE optimizing iRay further judging from the faster and in my opinion, improved results of my scenes' iRay renders, those that I've done.


    That's great news, nonesuch00.
    Let's hope they go even further.

     

  • So, my review of Filament. I was excited at the thought of another renderer, and spent about 4 hours trying out a variety of scenes and comparing them with Iray. I have a 2080Ti and get fast Iray previews, so it was easy to swap back and forward and I covered a fair bit of ground.

    1. I like the figure renders. It is in no way photoreal but there is a painterly quality to them that appeals to me.

    2. Figures in wide-view scenes often look rubbish. You have this decent figure rendered in a scene with no shadows and the effect is unreal and jarring. It looks like a scene from a game a few generations back.

    3. It is largely useless for setting up lighting. I tried a character in "Hypostyle Hallway" and the lack of ambient or HDRI shadows meant a huge difference between Filament and Iray. Surfaces react to light, but don't cast shadows on other surfaces, so a character can look fine in Filament and be in deep shadow in Iray.

    4. Individual lights can cast shadows. The option for this is squirreled away in the light parameters. Obviously switching on ray-traced shadows for every light sets you back on the road towards IRay.

    5. The discrepancy in overall perceived illumination between Filament and Iray is avoidable and irritating. So a typical Iray outdoor setting in tone is 13.00, while the same scene in Filament is 15-16.

    6. Opacity is flaky.

    7. It can crash my system. I ultrascattered some grassy tufts, switched to Filament, and Studio divebombed into the dirt. Studio is normally one of the most reliable programs I have used.

    Many of the deficiencies in Filament are not fixable. It is fast because it doesn't do slow stuff. Duh. From my reading it is a Google one-man-band 10% time side project, and while that doesn't invalidate it at all, it suggests the longer term direction may be unclear (I can cite examples of many open source projects where divergence rather than convergence is the trend).

    So, I can see it useful when used with animated figures in a "green screen" context. When used with more complete scenes it may look limited compared with cutting-edge game engines. I have no prejudice against anyone using it, but for the time being, I will stick to Iray and use postwork if I want a painterly effect. Herein ends my opinion :-)

     

  • gniiialgniiial Posts: 207
    edited November 2020
    AllenArt said:

    I dunno what the big deal is. If you want to use it, do. If you don't, don't. You still have everything you had before. I'm sure it'll improve over time.

    Laurie

    What could be the deal here?!
    Paying money again for some materials, just to make something look right in a new "engine" may be a point (...not to mention new texture packs for the new hot filament shape, character whatever...) 
    Losing time (again) because of the lack of references, tutorials and so on (biggest community = biggest possibility to SOLVE problems we run into and if you ask me, Blender is the way to go...)
    Losing maybe even ressources to the real problems many different features have, that should be solved (...the bridges are also new but still not there yet and they are a real improvement, when they work)

    I mean they could have maybe cleaned up the library, writing a script that tells us if we have all our content, fixing missing texture paths, improving rendertimes, by adding a free feature for "best rendering results", because it is possible to render faster and if this is possible, even the iray viewport can be improved by a lot. They also could have changed the database structure, adding features like "Environment, Cars, Motorcycles, Kitchens, Roofs, Socks... whatever...) The library like it is, is a mess. And it seems materials for clothes, hairs, whatever can be here and there... nobody cares it seems. Setting up a scene could be so much faster, just by reorganizing everything there is. I mean i have nothing against vendors, that have their small link in the product, but why does daz allows to have items all over the place with nearly NO real system to it?! 
    There is so much that could be improved in the program, that it's even hard to tell where to start... 

    If i look at Blender: The crowd works for them, creating addons, materials, features and so on... If something is used really often and is helpful, they add it to their standart and push further with nearly every update there was in the past. Evee can now render real time alike photorealism and it does not make to much of a difference to render then again with cycles. There are differences yes, but you can rely on the fact that if it looks good in evee, it will work in cycles even better, just by tweaking some little things for the shaders. 

    The complexity is also a big point here. It's still far from easy to create skins, arrange a scene, setup lights, rendering settings and so on... In blender you learn one time how things work and you can be sure of the fact that will not change in years! Also on the SHB changes broke the shaders of the hair in general. I cannot use the materials - one click - like i set them up a while ago... Things like that is like messing with the user. Do it to often and the user will say: "You know what, i transfer the model, environment and so on and use my shaders of my faforite render engine, because there everything works properly scince day one!" 

    And animation and posing is not worth the pain... Sorry but that would only be the case if daz would have features like "no wrong bending", free partial animation sets and so on. So to speak: Features that nobody has an would make it easier to do realistic animations, without breaking a sweat. If daz would have realized a few years ago, that animating features like a closing hand, a bending arm, a scratching on the head, would be powerful it would have been a lot more crowded here, since it was hard to transfer the animations into another program. Right now even that is possible. But now it's way to late, since nearly every bigger 3D editing program has them already in a good quality and even realistic ones are totally free to get and easy to transfer.

    So in the end, Daz is still slower when it comes to rendering - even if they know how to improve it for sure - but they don't share it for free, same with the shaders, lights, camera settings, same with the poses, same with scripts and so on... just the wrong way to go, when nearly everyone arround them rushes into open source. Everyone should think of content creating more in a manner of "time saving". Someone build a pirate, someone a dog, someone a unicorn, dragon... whatever. That's what someone pays for, not for some textures, some shaders, some scripts... because everything is already out there and most things are out there for free too. You cannot even tell the difference anymore, this much content is out there. But who needs 500 wood textures, shaders... who needs 100 - similar - hands, that close to a fist, winks, smiles?!  Right, nobody. But our whole texture, pose, shader or material database is full of those similiar things. What do you think is the reason the library is so extreme big?!  Because it's a mess... And everyone claims to have "the wood texture...", creates a folder for themselves ... yeah slightly changed, often not even noticable but still probably from somewhere else. 
    I mean look at the hairs... just take a look at the textures of the hairs... do you notice something?! A few blurry lines all over again and again and again... mostly only black and white. Why do we need hundreds of them, if 10 would be enough?! And you wonder why a scene gets too big... i tell you, no wonder if you use 20 different hair textures in 2-4K and could not even tell the real difference, when you would just choose to take one of these blurried line textures on all the hairs... same goes with wood, metal, glas, fabrics of any kind... 
    Daz would be amazing if they would realize what they are really doing wrong! And would become faster on it's own in the process...

    Post edited by gniiial on
  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,753
    gniiial said:
    AllenArt said:

    I dunno what the big deal is. If you want to use it, do. If you don't, don't. You still have everything you had before. I'm sure it'll improve over time.

    Laurie

    What could be the deal here?!
    Paying money again for some materials, just to make something look right in a new "engine" may be a point (...not to mention new texture packs for the new hot filament shape, character whatever...) 
    Losing time (again) because of the lack of references, tutorials and so on (biggest community = biggest possibility to SOLVE problems we run into and if you ask me, Blender is the way to go...)
    Losing maybe even ressources to the real problems many different features have, that should be solved (...the bridges are also new but still not there yet and they are a real improvement, when they work)

    I mean they could have maybe cleaned up the library, writing a script that tells us if we have all our content, fixing missing texture paths, improving rendertimes, by adding a free feature for "best rendering results", because it is possible to render faster and if this is possible, even the iray viewport can be improved by a lot. They also could have changed the database structure, adding features like "Environment, Cars, Motorcycles, Kitchens, Roofs, Socks... whatever...) The library like it is, is a mess. And it seems materials for clothes, hairs, whatever can be here and there... nobody cares it seems. Setting up a scene could be so much faster, just by reorganizing everything there is. I mean i have nothing against vendors, that have their small link in the product, but why does daz allows to have items all over the place with nearly NO real system to it?! 
    There is so much that could be improved in the program, that it's even hard to tell where to start... 

    If i look at Blender: The crowd works for them, creating addons, materials, features and so on... If something is used really often and is helpful, they add it to their standart and push further with nearly every update there was in the past. Evee can now render real time alike photorealism and it does not make to much of a difference to render then again with cycles. There are differences yes, but you can rely on the fact that if it looks good in evee, it will work in cycles even better, just by tweaking some little things for the shaders. 

    The complexity is also a big point here. It's still far from easy to create skins, arrange a scene, setup lights, rendering settings and so on... In blender you learn one time how things work and you can be sure of the fact that will not change in years! Also on the SHB changes broke the shaders of the hair in general. I cannot use the materials - one click - like i set them up a while ago... Things like that is like messing with the user. Do it to often and the user will say: "You know what, i transfer the model, environment and so on and use my shaders of my faforite render engine, because there everything works properly scince day one!" 

    And animation and posing is not worth the pain... Sorry but that would only be the case if daz would have features like "no wrong bending", free partial animation sets and so on. So to speak: Features that nobody has an would make it easier to do realistic animations, without breaking a sweat. If daz would have realized a few years ago, that animating features like a closing hand, a bending arm, a scratching on the head, would be powerful it would have been a lot more crowded here, since it was hard to transfer the animations into another program. Right now even that is possible. But now it's way to late, since nearly every bigger 3D editing program has them already in a good quality and even realistic ones are totally free to get and easy to transfer.

    So in the end, Daz is still slower when it comes to rendering - even if they know how to improve it for sure - but they don't share it for free, same with the shaders, lights, camera settings, same with the poses, same with scripts and so on... just the wrong way to go, when nearly everyone arround them rushes into open source. Everyone should think of content creating more in a manner of "time saving". Someone build a pirate, someone a dog, someone a unicorn, dragon... whatever. That's what someone pays for, not for some textures, some shaders, some scripts... because everything is already out there and most things are out there for free too. You cannot even tell the difference anymore, this much content is out there. But who needs 500 wood textures, shaders... who needs 100 - similar - hands, that close to a fist, winks, smiles?!  Right, nobody. But our whole texture, pose, shader or material database is full of those similiar things. What do you think is the reason the library is so extreme big?!  Because it's a mess... And everyone claims to have "the wood texture...", creates a folder for themselves ... yeah slightly changed, often not even noticable but still probably from somewhere else. 
    I mean look at the hairs... just take a look at the textures of the hairs... do you notice something?! A few blurry lines all over again and again and again... mostly only black and white. Why do we need hundreds of them, if 10 would be enough?! And you wonder why a scene gets too big... i tell you, no wonder if you use 20 different hair textures in 2-4K and could not even tell the real difference, when you would just choose to take one of these blurried line textures on all the hairs... same goes with wood, metal, glas, fabrics of any kind... 
    Daz would be amazing if they would realize what they are really doing wrong! And would become faster on it's own in the process...

    Good points, but fixing all this would probably require that they start all over from scratch, plus reduce their income so much that they can't afford it.  So it's sort of a catch 22 I think.

  • TATSU 3DTATSU 3D Posts: 224

    I've skimmed through the documentation I can find, but at the risk of asking a daft question - how do you get DS to render using Filament? I see no options in the engine dropdown menu.  I tried setting it to 'Viewport' and it renders litrerally instantly, but looks very 'toonish' and hairs are sort of transparent. Am I missing something? Or are Iray materials not necessarily going to work with Filament?

  • TATSU 3DTATSU 3D Posts: 224

    Forgot to add, I have downloaded and installed 4.14

  • Gniiial, very good valid points, i would reply but probably mods will kill me like in the past.

  • psfilipepsfilipe Posts: 164
    gniiial said:
    AllenArt said:

    I dunno what the big deal is. If you want to use it, do. If you don't, don't. You still have everything you had before. I'm sure it'll improve over time.

    Laurie

    What could be the deal here?!
    Paying money again for some materials, just to make something look right in a new "engine" may be a point (...not to mention new texture packs for the new hot filament shape, character whatever...) 
    Losing time (again) because of the lack of references, tutorials and so on (biggest community = biggest possibility to SOLVE problems we run into and if you ask me, Blender is the way to go...)
    Losing maybe even ressources to the real problems many different features have, that should be solved (...the bridges are also new but still not there yet and they are a real improvement, when they work)

    I mean they could have maybe cleaned up the library, writing a script that tells us if we have all our content, fixing missing texture paths, improving rendertimes, by adding a free feature for "best rendering results", because it is possible to render faster and if this is possible, even the iray viewport can be improved by a lot. They also could have changed the database structure, adding features like "Environment, Cars, Motorcycles, Kitchens, Roofs, Socks... whatever...) The library like it is, is a mess. And it seems materials for clothes, hairs, whatever can be here and there... nobody cares it seems. Setting up a scene could be so much faster, just by reorganizing everything there is. I mean i have nothing against vendors, that have their small link in the product, but why does daz allows to have items all over the place with nearly NO real system to it?! 
    There is so much that could be improved in the program, that it's even hard to tell where to start... 

    If i look at Blender: The crowd works for them, creating addons, materials, features and so on... If something is used really often and is helpful, they add it to their standart and push further with nearly every update there was in the past. Evee can now render real time alike photorealism and it does not make to much of a difference to render then again with cycles. There are differences yes, but you can rely on the fact that if it looks good in evee, it will work in cycles even better, just by tweaking some little things for the shaders. 

    The complexity is also a big point here. It's still far from easy to create skins, arrange a scene, setup lights, rendering settings and so on... In blender you learn one time how things work and you can be sure of the fact that will not change in years! Also on the SHB changes broke the shaders of the hair in general. I cannot use the materials - one click - like i set them up a while ago... Things like that is like messing with the user. Do it to often and the user will say: "You know what, i transfer the model, environment and so on and use my shaders of my faforite render engine, because there everything works properly scince day one!" 

    And animation and posing is not worth the pain... Sorry but that would only be the case if daz would have features like "no wrong bending", free partial animation sets and so on. So to speak: Features that nobody has an would make it easier to do realistic animations, without breaking a sweat. If daz would have realized a few years ago, that animating features like a closing hand, a bending arm, a scratching on the head, would be powerful it would have been a lot more crowded here, since it was hard to transfer the animations into another program. Right now even that is possible. But now it's way to late, since nearly every bigger 3D editing program has them already in a good quality and even realistic ones are totally free to get and easy to transfer.

    So in the end, Daz is still slower when it comes to rendering - even if they know how to improve it for sure - but they don't share it for free, same with the shaders, lights, camera settings, same with the poses, same with scripts and so on... just the wrong way to go, when nearly everyone arround them rushes into open source. Everyone should think of content creating more in a manner of "time saving". Someone build a pirate, someone a dog, someone a unicorn, dragon... whatever. That's what someone pays for, not for some textures, some shaders, some scripts... because everything is already out there and most things are out there for free too. You cannot even tell the difference anymore, this much content is out there. But who needs 500 wood textures, shaders... who needs 100 - similar - hands, that close to a fist, winks, smiles?!  Right, nobody. But our whole texture, pose, shader or material database is full of those similiar things. What do you think is the reason the library is so extreme big?!  Because it's a mess... And everyone claims to have "the wood texture...", creates a folder for themselves ... yeah slightly changed, often not even noticable but still probably from somewhere else. 
    I mean look at the hairs... just take a look at the textures of the hairs... do you notice something?! A few blurry lines all over again and again and again... mostly only black and white. Why do we need hundreds of them, if 10 would be enough?! And you wonder why a scene gets too big... i tell you, no wonder if you use 20 different hair textures in 2-4K and could not even tell the real difference, when you would just choose to take one of these blurried line textures on all the hairs... same goes with wood, metal, glas, fabrics of any kind... 
    Daz would be amazing if they would realize what they are really doing wrong! And would become faster on it's own in the process...


    Valid points here, gniiial.

    Not really on topic here but I would add that I just wish 3D apps, in general, had a more friendly approach to rendering.

    3D is a hard enough discipline and having to render things 'outside' of the box and then have that outside box play with a different set of rules from the main 3D app is extremely frustrating.
    For instance... A while ago I was trying to learn C4D. But then I discovered that in order to have those beautiful renders, that I appreciated and saw in the best portfolios, I had to use Octane (or another 3rd party engine).
    That is unfortunate because Octane comes with its own set of 'rules' and learning curve. Not to mention the economic aspect...

    In my opinion things should, generally, become more intuitive with time. Not less.
    A 3D app should be selfsufficient. Think Photoshop or Gimp.
    Ideally you would model (or setup a scene, like in Daz), light it and render.

    End of 3D rant.

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