Announcement about phasing out 3Delight - do we lose our 3Delight products?
katywhite
Posts: 495
Hi, I'm a bit confused about the announcement in regards to 3Delight (https://www.daz3d.com/blog/daz-studio-2025-alpha-updates) - I don't really use 3Delight but there are a lot of older products that only have 3Delight materials. And the announcment said:
Back up your version of Daz Studio 4.24 Save any 3Delight-related plug-ins or add-ons you rely on Consider saving important 3Delight scenes or assets for future use
So does this mean if I don't back up any assets that only have 3Delight textures I won't be able to use them anymore? Because right now I usually just load it with their 3Delight texture and then add the Uber Iray shader on top to use it. And I think anything genesis 2 and under have 3Delight only so that's a lot for me to back up anywhere.
If anyone can clarify this announcement I would highly appreciate it!
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Seems to me store assets would continue to exist, but Daz Studio 4.25 and up will no longer have the 3Delight engine capable of rendering those assets AS IS. But hopefully a real clarification will come. I would be surprised if the assets went away. But I also could be dead wrong. :shrug:
Read the Renderers section
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/727631/daz-studio-2025-6-25-2025-x-evergreen ;
I honestly don't understand why Daz refuses to just give out direct links for past versions of Studio.
Their instructions in that page are found all the way at the bottom. Shouldn't this be placed at the very top of the page since it, IMO, classifies as a critical warning? The instructions also doesn't work for people who delete packages after installation. It's better to just manual download the files from your account's product libary.
That is why the announcement was made back in July, and posts have been made today to remind 3Delight users. It provides them with an opportunity to download and keep the packages somewhere safely.
Daz will no longer have the right to distribute 3Delight after the end of the year, so any older version that was avaialble would require exactly the same update to remove the render engine as 4.24.x.x.
According to the change log only the Private Build has so far been updated in this way, so uninstal DS and the plug-ins - which won't touch settings - so that they appear in the ready To Download tab in DIM, download them, and back them up, then reinstall.
Some of us don't bother going to the site's main page and blog section. My bookmark just points to the store page. This is also the first I saw that orange warning. I guess that's my fault.
I already back up older versions a long time ago since Daz refuses to give out links. I find it interesting Studio 4.24 is almost twice the size of Studio 4.15
And speaking of 3Delight, will Daz now put up warnings in every product page of non-Iray products (some Genesis 3 and everything older than it) for compatibility issues?
First time I heard of this as well and I visit DAZ at least weekly and sometimes daily.
I would not want to lose any 3Delight items since they render fine in Vue.
Aren't you guys going to stop updates to 4.24 soon anyway? Why bother updating it at all to remove the 3DL if it's being updated no more since you've never allowed downloads of old versions anyway.
Once I download the new DAZ Studio 4* without the 3DL and install that, can I just copy the saved *DAZSTUDIO424* into DIM & then have DIM reinstall the old 424 version so that it coexists with the new version & doesn't get erased by further new DAZ Studio 4* versions?
You will not lose content, as far as I underdstand it - what is being removed is the application component, and you need to back up the daz own-brand plug-ins too as they are version specific.
Older versions of a given major version are not available, older major versions are - DS 4 will remain available (just as well as we know some plug-ins etc. will not be updated). Daz will not be allowed to distribute 3Delight after the end of the year (they have to pay for it, and cannot integrate it into DS 2025 in a useful way - any version of 3Delight that could be binary compatible lacks the RSL shader support that DS 3Delight content needs). If daz continued to distribute DS 4 with 3Delight they would be in breach of the license terms.
You can reinstalll the old version by coipying its installers into the DIM Downloads folder and working with DIM offline, but installing two vesions of the same major version and release channel is not supported.
I feel for people without a good Nvidia card, but at least with Filament you can tame Iray materials to kinda work right with it. It's better than nothing.
I feel for all those who love their LAMH furred animals that are not covered by catalyzer
(only AMs are)
I would love all the furry things fur freebies to be added too even if it meant selling them to us
I still use 3Delight specifically to render png images of the furred critters, it's painfully slow but I am slowly building up a collection of differently posed animals if not animated
I resort to using Ai to often animate them
of course if retro Dforce hairs were sold for everything that would also be an option but I don't think it's possible for Poser format/legacy cr2 characters
now, if LAMH curves could be made to render in iray
this would be a nonissue
Can I back it up manually by simply downloading files? If so could some one point me to exactly what files I need to download?
tried doing what it says basic settings navigate to package archive which only shows photoshop bridge and GOZ typed in the DazStudio424 and nothing shows guess I am too late so from this the hdrs in 3delight are useless as well as shaders/materials, lights, what about all the clothing, props, characters extra I've got around 3TB of products installed lot of old content the 4 gen models, some gen1, heaps of gen 2 and gen 3 still use and yeah I do iray uber them but will they still be usable accessable last time reinstalled everything got screwed up still got to uninstall reinstall update meta several times with several products to be able to access them several times in fact
https://www.daz3d.com/downloader/customer/files#prod_13176
That's a link to your product library for Daz Studio. The manual downloads are there.
Many thanks, @y3kman!
Doesn't https://www.daz3d.com/linerender9000 rely on 3Delight?
...so if you saved the installer for 4.24.03 that will still have the current 3DL engine, correct?
I an unable to install it until my system can be upgraded to meet Win 11 requirements due to Nvidia longer supporting driver updates for WIn 7 since Daz ver. 4.21.0.5, .With the recent spike in DRAM prices, it will take a while longer scrape up the funds needed.
With the plugins I have for 3DL it renders just about as well and in less time than Iray on the CPU.
Given Nvidia's announcement that they will be scaling back production of consumer GPUs next year, 3DL could become more attractive as a smaller supply of GPUs will cause prices to skyrocket as they did during the Cypto mining craze several years ago. We will likely see scalpers buy up large lots as happened back then, to sell them at ridiculously high prices again.
The main problem with 3DL w/respect to DS is, the version of 3DL in DS is quite out of date and the language has changed in ways that would make all existing DS 3DL scenes unusable - They would not render. IRAY has also changed, and that's why 4.x versions of DS won't work with RTX 50xx graphics cards. It's all sort of a mess right now.
OK, thanks. So no more updates foor my DAZ Studioo 4.24 Release, only DAZ Studio 4.24 Public Beta
This begs the question: How will Daz3D help out users who can't realistically do much Iray? Some artists use 3Delight, because they don't have a GPU that can cut the mustard, and Filament has some pretty glaring deficiencies when it comes to things like strand hair and transparencies.
The following filter in DIM will give you a list of the product/package IDs for the General Release
sku::18869,13176,16558,10673,9032,13173,16684,13000,16773,6952 && type::rx::^(?:Software|Plugin)$As the SDK version did not change, the 4.24.0.4 plugins are compatible with the 4.24.0.3 application, so the only one you actually need to backup for 4.24.0.3 to retain a version with 3Delight is
sku::13176I'm still quite fuzzy about whether we need to archive each and every bit of 3Delight content and whether unbought content will disappear from the store. I get that Daz can't redistribute unlicensed 3Delight property but that sort of begs the question whether plugins or assets for it are also scoped to that same expiring license.
From the orange banner link: https://www.daz3d.com/blog/daz-studio-2025-alpha-updates
It specifically says:
Which seems to cover the versions of Daz Studio with that render engine, all plugins, all store and purchased assets. (Daz would still be distributing 3Delight content by letting us download our orders, no?) Will everything but the zips I've manually archived from my DIM downloads suddenly disappear on December 29? If I buy 3Delight content on December 28 will it disappear before I can download it?
In simple terms, you need to backup the Daz Studio application and it's associated plugins (you get a new set with each update but there are a few plugins that are third party and version specific like GenX which won't be updated to the new Daz Studio 5 so I would back up all of the plugins). Other content like materials and lights you have purchased will continue to be there in your library. If you do nothing, your version of Daz Studio will work as it had until you have a crash and need to redownload Daz Studio and find that there isn't a version that runs non iray stuff. By backing up your current version, you can replace it if your computer crashes but you must do it by the deadline.
The licensing agreement which was not renewed is for 3DL render engine, not content.
Content from your product library won’t disappear.
Content made for 3DL will certainly continue to be sold the store, though Daz might retire the 3DL custom shaders and lights that can't be used with anything else but 3DL.
3DL content will still work in the next version of DS 4.x without the 3DL render engine, with the same automatic conversion for Iray as before and the same limitations (source: that's how it works in DS2025 which already doesn't have 3DL).
...yeah, GenX/GenX2 along with utilities like Zev0's XTransfer and Skin Builder are sort of my "bread and butter" toolls for original custom, character design. This is the primary reason I pretty much let the G9 train drop me off at the next station as there is little to no compatibility with older generation characters in this respect,
I may just stay with 4.x.x, not only because of having access to 3DL, but also the tools above I depend on.
That makes sense, plus it doesn't seem likely that they'd sign any agreements tying third party content to the render engine license. It's frustrating not having a list of specific content (if any) that will be affected, or how (store availability, order downloads, etc).
At any rate, I'll make sure to back everything up before the 29th!
The good thing about GenX, XTransfer and Skinbuilder is that they do not have to be run when building a scene to render. You can transfers morphs or generate skins in an older version of DS, then use the generated assets inside a more modern version of DS.
this kind of scares me a bit when the new DS version comes out, I'm talking 2025, 6 or whatever its to be called. I have too much money invested in plugins, etc to lose it all when it won;t work any more in the new versions. Same with this thing going on now. If I don;t upgrade DS to whatever is now coming out, what will happen to my current installation?