Had I known
Barric
Posts: 24
in The Commons
Had I know that Daz was going to go Iray, I never would have spent as much money as I did. If you guys and gals are getting paid for what you do, good job. I got products that don't work and can't be fixed, I guess. I'm out, sorry I spent so much money on this only to be kicked to the curb for a slower program. In my opinion, the Iray isn't that much better.
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If you purchased something that will not work in 3Delight which you want to use, you can return the item(s)* ... OR there is [somewhere posted in the forums] a free script to change all the Iray settings to 3Delight. Most all if not all the models and texture images work in both. I only saw a couple that because of their fancy skin paintwork were for Iray only.
editing for correction: "as long as they are returned within 30 days."
You can still use 3DL but on some products you have to convert their materials from 3DL. Also, if you have spent so much money on DAZ 3DL products well all those products still work in DAZ Studio as fast or faster then they worked before.
While Daz3D does own, maintain, and improve on Daz Studio, they are mainly, (imo,) a brokerage. They own and make available a significant number of assets as both Daz Originals and PC+, but those are buyouts, (for the most part, at least,) and not authored by Daz3D or Daz3D employees. It is the Artists who are choosing whether or not to support 3Delight. Many of these artists started out with Poser, before there was a Daz Studio, and many of those still support both 3Delight and Iray.
There are also many artists who started after Iray was introduced and never really learned to use 3Delight. Although not a PA, I started using Daz Studio about six months before Iray showed up in the 4.8 beta, when I started using Iray. I never did get any good with 3Delight. (I'm pretty much lost trying to use figures from generation four and earlier, too.)
On the other hand, Daz Studio still has the 3Delight render engine available and has even updated it, and all the older content that worked before continues to work just fine with the 3Delight renderer. Many new assets still provide both Iray and 3Delight materials. In fact, some products use 3Delight materials that have been "optimised" for Iray, which essentially means 3DL materials which have been tested and tweaked as necessary to render correctly in Iray. Today's PC+ items include material presets for both render engines.
Daz3d continues to support the 3Delight render engine, and all indications are they will continue to do so. It is the PAs who are choosing to support 3Delight or not. Just as it is the PAs who are choosing to support Poser or not. And both are sure to be reflected on other content sites as well.
Daz Studio is a great product for composing and rendering scenes, with a lot of features that make it easy, (or easier,) to modify products for a unique result. But it is not a modeler per se. Hexagon and Blender are modelers, and both are free. There is nothing to prevent anyone from creating their own products to use in Daz Studio. And nothing that dictates those products must use materials for one render engine or another.
I think it's a bit unfair to blame the evolution of the software solely on Daz3d, however. It is dictated by the industry and the market.
...also there are PA utilities which open more of the options and features 3DL normally offers to professional users.
@L'Adair and @kyoto kid
If DAZ truly supported 3Delight, they would update their 3DL implementation to include a script for end users to access the built in PATHTRACER. Surely they could do it if end users have done it? They could include a PBR shader, just like the DS default shader, to be used with the pathtracer for PBR rendering. This is in my humble opinion the very least they could do IF they supported 3Delight. However, it is my belief that 3DL is still included in DS as long as there are 3Delight only products in their store.
Correction You can return products and ask for a refund as long as they are returned within 30 days
As they are still selling (or trying to sell) V1 stuff, I can see that being for a very very long time.
Good catch, thank you.
And it being a store we all shop at, I tend to suggest going for store credits too, less hassle* and usually quite quick to be had.
* involves fewer agencies.
"Had I know that Daz was going to go Iray, I never would have spent as much money as I did."
This is like saying "I wouldn't have bought so many Playstation 4 games if I knew Sony was making a Playstation 5". All of the content designed for 3Delight will still work (and work in Iray, most of the stuff I use is ancient and looks great with some new shaders) and 3Delight can still be used even in the latest Studio. You probably will have to adjust the textures of new products to look right with 3Delight, but it can be done.
Technology advances, it's up to each of us to decide whether we chase it or be satisfied with what we're used to. And Iray can give *far* more realistic results than 3Delight, whether you need that or not is again, up to you.
Though if there are problems with a product and they can't/won't fix it they usually offer a refund no matter how old the product is. What a problem is is the question then - is it a problem if it no longer is supported by the latest version of DS?
However, that was not my point. Including 3DL with new DS builds is not the same thing as actively supporting it.
*sigh* and round and round we go. In my opinion a pathtracer is a pathtracer, be it biased or non biased.
I'm in a sometimes precarious position with Daz Studio and shopping, I run Studio through Wine (sort of an emulator) so many extra factors could break Daz Studio for me and I've all this money invested in the associated products (and Iray has seldom worked with the Nvidia GPU on my setup (which isn't great as a desktop driver either).
Iray produces interesting results easily, but 3Delight has it's charms too - I'd like to see the Reality and Luxus plugins not get left behind, and I'm hoping one day we'll get a ProRender plugin - cause each render engine has it's charms, and the more the better.
Ah, if it did break. I could always load the objects in another 3D application, so not a total waste, and there's all this knowledge I've acquired in the meantime.
I agree with this comment by @OnlyLuvsCatz
If you are on Linux and able to afford a second GPU in your PC, you could try running Windows as Kernel Virtual Machine. This allows you to get native GPU performance and native Windows compatibility. I haven't tried it myself but thought you might be interested.
I feel your pain, everyone is so pc today that if you feel like venting you are looked at as a criminal. I don't care what the crowd of lemming like or dislike, just like what you want and unless they are sleeping with you their opinion does not matter. I don't use Iray that much either for my 2d stuff myself. I have bought most of the converters to convert both to and from Iray. I use OpenGL more than anything else and composit in Photoshop so there. Iray look ok, but it is too resource hungry for me and I have very high end equipment to handle it(again this is just my opinion). You earn your money so you are justified to complain about how it is taken from you. Good Luck and from a fellow person who like to gripe: Better out than in: I always say.
You will live longer.
@Barric
Not buying the argument. Legacy stuff from DAZ3D will still work, 3DL is still usable within Studio.
Gotta agree. The Legacy Content still works with 3DL. And if you are willing to dig around for them, you can find Iray textures for V3 and V2 (cruise on over to ShareCG and other freebie sites).
In all fairness, there are pre- IRay products that don't work in the newer DS builds. The AoA lights and effect cameras, to name a few, are partially or completely broken. No way to roll back to an older build if you would like to use them. Waist of money.
Partially, but I still use AoA lights and occasionally camera for 3dl renders, heh
And as this has been settled, people are usually talking about iRay and 3DL "out of the box" in DS.
No idea about what HW you're running but VM's are pretty much the way to go on running Windows programs on a Linux box. I've tried Wine and that is way too hit or miss. With all the multi core CPU's out there now that support virtualization and using GPU passthrough it is pretty seamless.
I might have my concepts mixed up here but I don't see the point of running Windows in a VM. I'd move to Linux in a hearbeat if DAZ Studio had a native Linux version but I'm not going near it with Wine. Seems to me that a VM requires you to buy and install Windows anyway so why not run it in a different partition and dual-boot? Until a couple of weeks ago I had an iMac which I much preferred to using a Windows PC except for the fact that DAZ Studio with IRay was a non-starter, so for the past 3 years I have had a PC under the desk just to run DAZ Studio. Eventually, the 6 year old iMac became obsolete for my purposes and I sold it (great resale value on those, by the way). The point is that DAZ Studio works best in Windows so you are going to lose something by trying to force-fit it into another OS.
I found out I still have the DS 3 Advanced installer the other day.
There are Iray to 3DL converters. They work reasonably well. I've been using them. I'm mildly grumphed that I have to do it, but so long as it is doable, I will.
Admittedly, photorealism isn't my thing. If it were, I have ptrobably picked up enough content since Iray came out to just go ahead and use it. But it isn't.
So far, hair is the worst. Sometimes I can run a converter and re-apply the original transmap and it works -- especially at a distance. But more often, just... not. I admit to being quite jealous of all the lovely add-on hair shaders which came out for Iray. Hair shaders seem to have been a rarity in 3DL.
dForce hair actually looks pretty nice in 3dl, and it doesn't suffer from the transmap bug.
While DS does have the full version of 3DL (yeah I know it's several builds older than the current 3DL), what DAZ doesn't have is a license agreement that allows them to use it all.
It doesn't stop some 3rd party from accessing the full 3DL in DS, but it does hamstring DAZ from doing it.
In what way aren't they working ?
A couple of year back one of my friends was having issues with the ambient lights, turns out DIM wasn't installing the Definition and Shader files properly. They are meant to go in AppData but DIM can make a right mess of getting in there at times, so a quick manual install later and they were working.
So it might be something like that causing them not to work, or they might need to be recompiled to work with the current DS version of 3DL.
Well I have no insight into DAZ agreements for sure, just saying that the pathtracer is hardcoded into 3DL and easily accessed via scripting. Actually this doesn't matter anymore, wowie is sharing his stuff, scripts shaders and whatnot for FREE, for the benefit of the community.
IIRC DAZ upgraded shadermixer and broke the brick that some AoA products utilized. So the effectcameras won't work fully, also the AoA lights have some issues with flagging SS surfaces and some other things. So this is not an install thing, although I know what you're talking about;)
If the Daz license didn't allow its use it wouldn't be available through script - that doesn't get added by accident.
Actually, as far as I know the shaders are set to go to the application folder - the ability to use a folder in AppData was added after the shaders were released and I'm not sure the installer would have been updated. However, if DIM had trouble accessing the AppData folder it souldn't be able to update its own settings so I'm pretty sure whatever happened there was not DIM's fault per se.
if you want to use a newer iray shader on an older v1 or 2 skin, hold the shift key when applying the shader.
you'll get the shader setting but it will retain the texture map.
kewl feature.
i remember when sss was the bee's knees of skin shading.
in the days of fast scatter. or is it knees bees?