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DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Next month will mark a year since the delay of the preview (which would have given Mac users the ability to finally use Filament), any closer to a possible beta release of DAZ Studio 5.0?
-- Walt Sterdan
Next month will mark two years since the delay of the preview (which would have given Mac users the ability to finally use Filament), is there any timeline for the release of DAZ Studio 5.0? Any hints of possible new features at all?
-- Walt Sterdan
"Soon"
Hopefully "NVIDIA OMNIVERSE coming soon to DAZ 5" is related somehow to "DAZ 5 coming soon to customers". As I posted elsewhere, we were "Filament working on the Mac in the internal versions Daz Studio 5"* in August, 2021.
As well, DAZ "soon" can mean, well, anything, really.
-- Walt Sterdan
*https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6964246/#Comment_6964246
Haven't we leaned THAT over the last 20 some-odd years? LOL
"Daz Studio 5 preview release is delayed and that's good news"
IF that is the good news, well, I'd hate to hear taffi's bad news!
Your teenage son totaled the car last night... and that is good news!
Your dog escaped the yard and attacked an old lady... and that is good news!
A city sized astroid will collide with earth in 3 hours, and that is good news!
Your roof was destroyed in a hail storm.. and that is good news!
sheesh....
Well to be fair, the "good news" for Mac customers at the time, running Big Sur or newer were able to run the full Mac version (Windows minus Filament, basically) rather than be forced to use a barely-running, skeleton version of DAZ Studio 5. That was good news. The "good news" for DAZ was that they didn't have to deal with helping anyone running the pre-Beta instead of focusing on continuing development of DAZ Studio 5, and that they could relax a bit and take their time (for almost two years now) to deliver a full-featured DAZ 5.
I have no doubt that we're closer to that DAZ Studio 5 release, but honestly, we're all closer to the heat death of the sun, too.
We know that NVIDIA OMNIVERSE will be in D|S 5 which, as far as I know, is the first official announcement of what's new coming in D|S 5. Other than Filament running on Macs, the updated Qt interface framework, Apple's Metal API being used for Mac customers and the NVIDIA OMNIVERSE implementation, that's *all* that I'm aware of being different for those years of work. I know little bits and bobbles have been updated here and there to get some of the D|S 5 code into our current version (I know it's happening because things I've counted on and used for years no longer work) but it's a pretty short list of things to look forward to for two or three years of development.
I apologize for continually moaning about this, but it is still affecting what I'm doing and screwing up any long-term planning that I'm able to do for ongoing or new projects. I've dialed back my purchases while I wait (not wanting to invest in something that I may not be able to use in the future) so I'm saving an average of two or three thousand dollars a year, so there is an upside.
I think I'll crawl back into my corner and go back to just checking in occasionally to see if there's any more news. I know that we are closer to release if they're going out on a limb to announce the OMNIVERSE addition, so that is a good sign.
-- Walt Sterdan
Yeah, well, it could be ANOTHER two years, knowing DAZ ;) And I ain't gettin' any younger...
It would have been a nightmare if the pre-beta had been released to the public.
Back around the turn of the century, I was involved in closed beta testing for one of the big players (at the time) and we got the hardware, software and drivers about one year before the product was released to the public. Usually it took at least 2-3 months before the product was at all usable even when we had a direct line of communication to the HQ and all of us were able to track down and separate problems caused by our systems from the ones caused by the product.
No question; the PRE-Beta was a last-ditch effort to allow Mac users to run a version of DAZ Studio at all on an operating system that was about to be replaced with a new version of the OS. It's been almost two years now, though, and like AllenArt, I ain't getting any younger either. I retired last year and I'd been building up assets and setting up characters over the years in preparation for devoting more time to my hobby and working on some larger projects and have been holding off in part for D|S 5, but as mentioned I'm moving away from 3D for now. I'll keep checking in to see if/when D|S 5 is released to see if there's anything of value for what I want to do and if not, I'll just keep saving money.
-- Walt Sterdan
If we are all dead when Daz 5 releases, that kind of doesn't benefit us very much. I guess the children or grandchildren might have a reason to celebrate, but they will be probably too busy trying to survive the apocalypse.
Happy Anniversary!
It's been two years this month that we got the good news that they weren't going to rush the release of DAZ Studio 5.
Hopefully, on this anniversary, we'll get some good news about when we might actually be seeing DAZ Studio 5, or at the very least, what we should be expecting (besides Omnivision) that might make it worth waiting for.
Fingers crossed.
-- Walt Sterdan
Indeed as we're only at version 4.21... wake me up when we finally get to 4.80! xD I predict that it's going to be much longer than 2 years IF version numbers are any indication. :^)
This does get me excited for its arrival, and a neat bonus is that Nvidia omniverse will be much more advanced and feature-rich when DS 5 comes out!
What is interesting in all this time there have been 2 new versions of Poser that have been released in that time. With the latest, Poser 13 being released this year.
The year is 2160 and Daz Studio 5 has just been released, but the alien invaders aren't sure what to make of it.
Here's a thought with Omniverse being used in Daz Studio: Will Daz go through a generation cycle? If Omniverse is going to be feature-rich? Are/will the current Generations of figures be able to use the new features? Or In my opinion, we will see a cycle of G9 similar to G 8.1 before the release of Daz 5 with Genesis 10
It's pretty useless to them; Genesis 47 base figures still only support 1 head, 2 eyes, 2 arms and zero basic tentacles. Alien invaders are notoriously against the need to spend extra for features they believe should be part of the basic package.
-- Walt Sterdan
Depends on what the new features are, but unless they change the character into volume or spline based, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't work with the older figures (at least to some extent)
OK, that was funny.
They would probably also be against buying the entire Pro Bundle just for one single Extremely Large Eyes morph.
ZZZZZZZZZZZING!
I'm going to play dumb here .. (play??
) .. What benefit will I get from having Omniverse in Daz?
I may have missed any other announcements but as far as new "features" I think Omnivese is the first big thing officially announced. We've been told (first page in the thread) that Filiment will finally be available for Mac users (after almost three years), the Qt update should improve the user interface (and possibly make it a little more customizabale), they were trying to make it Apple Silicon Native but weren't sure if they could do it for the DAZ Studio 5 release, and it will make some use of Apple Metal for Mac users (but outside of preview rendering, no idea what, it may just be regarding getting Filament to work).
If anyone else has more info on what we should be excited for, please share. I'm afraid my excitement fizzled out a while back and at this point I'm afraid it's going to take a bit more than Filament to get me jazzed up and buying again.
-- Walt Sterdan
Most likely, the value to Daz Studio will be in other direction, i.e., using Daz in Omniverse. This would just be a continuation of Daz's business practice of moving towards a character/asset store with bridges to other (=better) software.
Im not sure why Daz/Tafi keeps investing their time developing things like VDB support (which they are still adding to in upcoming releases) for Daz Studio, instead of moving the focus to making bridges more seamless and user-friendly.
If I had to guess, it would be that the vast majority of people who buy DAZ assets aren't interested in learning more software and redoing things like texture in that other software; they want to buy the latest outfit or scene from the store and then sit down and make some pictures. As others have noted, the Forum members represent only a small portion of DAZ customers, and even here, how many people spend most of their time working with the bridges to get into Blender, Maya or UE. It comes down to a fairly small fraction, and the Forum represents only a small fracton of their customers.
-- Walt Sterdan
While you are not wrong, I would add that every time I've shown DAZ content at a Blender Meetup, these legit professional animators have been impressed with DAZ assets. So I think to consider only the average DAZ user is as deceiving as considering only the more advanced DAZ user because there is a third, potentially large demographic that, right now, does not even take DAZ seriously at all... but would. But they are simply not going to put up with something as primitive as DAZ Studio when they are accustomed to state of the art environments.
Like lilweep, I do not understand why DAZ doesn't just write a full featured USD exporter. People who are satisfied with DAZ Studio can stay there if they like it. People who want to engage with the innovations of the rest of the industry can talk the Lingua Franca of the rest of the industry (USD). Seems like a no brainer to me. And if I assume, as I am willing to do, that DAZ are not stupid, I do have to wonder what is the reason that this relatively simple step has not been taken already. I mean, I would struggle a little writing a USD exporter, but presumably DAZ has the expertise to do so...
I am seriously concerned about DS's longevity. Sure, I gripe a lot, but DS is still on my list of indispensible tools, and I have a great deal of affection for it. But every time I hear an appeal to the casual user who doesn't want to learn anything else, I fear the growing DAZ ghetto of mediocre functionality relative to the leaps and bounds the rest of the industry is experiencing. At some point, that chasm will be noticeable even to the most casual DAZ user.
Now this is just my personal experience, and you may get totally different results, but I am not nearly as excited now about DAZ content going into Omniverse as I originally was. I installed Omniverse and imported a simple cauldron prop by Merlin into it to test the real-time renderer. As soon as I switched to a two-view layout, I got a memory warning about low VRAM...using a 4090. Maybe that was a fluke, maybe I didn't have something set correctly, but that doesn't exactly make me want to jump ship from Studio...which is pretty much the same experience I had when bringing DAZ content into Blender. Blender rolls over and dies if you try to use the same amount of 4K textures as you can in Studio, and there's still way too much extra work requred to get figures to behave as well as they do natively in Studio.
Of course this makes sense - DAZ content works best *in* DAZ Studio. Of all the programs I've tried, none handle large amounts of high-res textures as well as Studio, and other features like being able to pose lights by looking through them and posing through Powerpose are quickly missed when I try using other programs. JCMs and HD morphs work as they should, material settings don't require navigating insane flowcharts of nodes like UE, Blender, and Omniverse can often make you do, and Studio's GoZ bridge is extremely efficient and easy to use.
I *want* DAZ Studio 5 (I've wanted it for oh, what, 3 years since you guys first mentioned it?), and the only bridges I'm interested in now are ones that let you return the content to Studio. I'd love to be able to make hair in Blender and animation in iClone and send those to Studio rather than trying to jerry-rig DAZ figures to work in programs that are only going to require more still more fixes to get good results. This is also my personal opinion, but I almost never see DAZ content rendered in higher-end programs look better, or even as good as it often does by talented Studio artists. I think if DAZ insists on making their content work in other prorgams, they should make native content *for* those programs - UE materials, Genesis versions with Rigify for Blender, etc.
I'm in 100% on USD, and 110% if they can include a decent USDZ export as well.
I'll defer to your knowledge of Blender artists' interests and how that might be a very large market in the future, there's certainly potential, for sure. I still think they'd be swamped, though, by the huge swarth of hobbyists just wanting ot make pictures and pin-ups and artists wanting to use DAZ Studio for references or starting point for their paintings. I haven't followed the numbers for a long time, but I still think the non-animators would still vastly outnumber the animators, hobbyists or professionals. I would think that the ratio of professional-to-hobbyist still artists is currently higher than the same ratio for animators, and if they did as we hope and make moving the DAZ assets more smoothly to use for animators in other programs I think the ratio of professonal animators to hobbyists will rise to at least match the still artists.
Business-wise, I still believe the hobbyists will tend to buy more cool items as they appear in the store (I've spent over $60,000 so far but have paused until I see what DAZ Studio 5 brings to the table) whereas a professinal will tend to be more selective on their purchases (not purchasing they they can make themselves in Blender, for example) but that's just my bias and I admit I might be 100% wrong (wouldn't be the first time, and certainly it wouldn't be the last).
-- Walt Sterdan
Because some here that I have talked to, including myself want to use their DAZ content inside of DS. I have tried Blender many. many times, the UI just doesn't make sense and subscrption based modeling apps like Maya and C4d are out of the question due to cost. Unity is a pain and I haven't tried Unreal yet, but I don't have high hopes. I have an older version of 3DSMax and use it very often.....to create content to import into DS. I am all for options as long as there is an option for continued dvelopment of DS features.
have some faith in yourself re blender. I actually still use Daz Studio mostly, because it's time consuming to get everything out of it
But anyway, obviously your concerns are valid yada yada. For such holdouts, and i am currently among them, Daz should still do some development, but I guess my concern (which is also valid?) is that further studio development may be coming at the expense of keeping pace with industry. I guess we have to recognise that Daz Studio is not really keeping pace at the moment and unlikely to change, so stands to reason only way forward is to make daz asset library accessible to other software lest it become completely displaced by competitors.
Socializing the use of Daz products outside of daz relies on having seamless exporters (e.g., via USD) and documentation/tutorials to foster buy-in from current and new users.
I'm almost embarassed that I have to ask, but who do you think DAZ's competitors are that they need to keep pace with so as not to be "displaced"?
DAZ sells 3D assets. 3D characters (human, animal and others), clothing for those characters, sets and props for those characters, etc.. As far as I can tell, in their marketplace they're lightyears ahead of anyone that might be considered an actual competitor.
They also give away -- for free -- 3D software to allow their customers to make use of their products, and they're supplying bridges to help customers who want a little more than their free software is capable of to help them use thier products in other people's 3D software. Hopefully they'll build a decent USD interpreter for import and export to make that easier.
They're not competing in any way, shape or form with Maya, Blender, UE, C4D or whoever. People who use those pieces of 3D softare can purchase and use DAZ's products. Every 3D software company who is able to use DAZ products aren't their competitors, they're potential customers. The better and better software like Blender gets and the easier DAZ makes it to help move their product into Blender, the happier both DAZ and Blender users will be.
-- Walt Sterdan
If Blender is rolling over and dying, I think that that indicates that there's some more learning to be done as these are not difficult challenges to overcome. Ignoring that 4K textures are unnecessary for anything other than closeups, you can either use the simplify button an limit everything to 2K or less, or batch convert everything except the facial maps in something like the GIMP. JCMs work perfectly via Diffeo. Material conversion works extremely well too, I seldom have to touch them at all, and when I do, it only takes a little knowledge of a small set of material nodes like BSDF, Color Ramp and RGB Mix, as well as general mknowledge of PBR. I am unaware of anything like Power Pose, but you'd have working IK and your choice of at least 3 professional rigs to choose from.
My point is that while you are correct, it takes a bit of work to get DAZ content into Blender, but when you are done, you've got all of Blender's power. You are know limited only by your own creativity, not someone else's.. If you're going to export to Blender just to do the same things you did in DS, then of course there's not much payoff for the work you invested. I'll even go as far to say that for the still shots you imply by mentioning Power Pose, DS is arguably the best tool in existence (for a year or two at least, until AI overtakes it entirely).