Thanks for the reply!

I've been reading and watching some videos since I sent this message and I'll definitely use FDM. After my research, I'm inclined to buy the Ender 3 S1 Pro:

https://www.creality.com/products/creality-ender-3-s1-pro-fdm-3d-printer ;

Do you reckon it would be a good choice? I've decades of experience with IT (all sorts of things), I build my own PCs, etc; but I have zero experience with 3D printers (apart from the videos I've been watching).

wsterdan said:

You can probably eliminate a lot of research by deciding if you want to print with Resin (SLA, usually) or Filament (FDM). 

Resin printing generally has smaller build sizes and more expensive material (with more clean-up and a greater need for a well-ventilated room) while filament (usually PLA, though there's a wide range of filament types you can use beside PLA) is much, much cheaper and normally has larger build sizes.

Resin has a much higher resolution print quality; PLA doesn't print with as high a resolution, but can still be very decent.

It mostly depends on what sort of things you wnat to print, and at what size.

Once you decide on whether you want to use Resin or Filament materials, it will be easier for someone to suggest a printer and material.

Hope that helps a bit,

Walt Sterdan

You can probably eliminate a lot of research by deciding if you want to print with Resin (SLA, usually) or Filament (FDM). 

Resin printing generally has smaller build sizes and more expensive material (with more clean-up and a greater need for a well-ventilated room) while filament (usually PLA, though there's a wide range of filament types you can use beside PLA) is much, much cheaper and normally has larger build sizes.

Resin has a much higher resolution print quality; PLA doesn't print with as high a resolution, but can still be very decent.

It mostly depends on what sort of things you wnat to print, and at what size.

Once you decide on whether you want to use Resin or Filament materials, it will be easier for someone to suggest a printer and material.

Hope that helps a bit,

Walt Sterdan

I have been in Texture Shaded mostly. but it has also happened in Filament and Iray draw modes.I'm wondering if my daz script library (dzscript) is corrupt.

It is interesting that things that seem rather catastrophic, like repeated recursive operations,unhandled error, and stack push/pop mismatch are only WARNING, not error. The only real clue to where this trouble is happening is the [WARNING] :: ..\..\..\..\..\src\sdksource\general\dzscript.cpp(1189), but that doesn't even seem to be a line reference in the Render Doctor script, but maybe some generic script function it calls?????

My log corresponding to the snippet you posted is here:

In that test I tried different geometry (trash bag) to apply the granite prest to and a different lighting HDRI. That made no difference.

After "Pausing at least 5000", mine says "Finished Pausing". Yours starts getting warning messages. I have my viewport in Texture Shaded mode. How about You? I wonder if using Iray Preview or Filament viewport could have an impact.

At this point we don't know if the m1 GPU will be used in the near future, but if it is (but probably won't) it won't be until DAZ Studio 5 is released. We have been told at one point that DAZ Studio 5 uses Metal, but that may just be that it's needed as a back-end to supply the Filament rendering engine to the Mac platform.

-- Walt Sterdan

SofaCitizen said:

I would probably avoid using Daz Central or Connect in that situation - infact if you setup the base library on the external drive properly you won't even have to run DIM after Daz Studio is installed. Once DS is installed, immediately go into the list of base libraries and remove the pre-created ones which will be on C: - you will probably want to manually remove those folders. Then you can add the base library from your external drive and within Content DB Maintenance you can check Process Metadata Queue and Re-import Metadata and this will import everything into Smart Content (after several minutes).

However, even if you fully clean up and uninstall everything before you go home you would have to check the T&Cs to see if that is allowed. It probably would be since you would not be loading paid assets onto your friends computer but it's best to check for sure.

Iray preview does run on non-nvidia cards - albeit slowly. However, I don't know what the minimum spec would be for that, or filament or even just textured preview.

I don't want to screw up my existing DS (which already has multiple issues!) so I'd bring a fresh HD and install probably just what I needed on the new HD or who knows, maybe a fresh install would clear up my current issues. I don't see another way except through DIM but I have issues with DIM when I want to install into different folders (ie; I have a separate G9 folder) it will not show the items (all greyed out) on the folder that was not used in the last download. So if I download G9 items into its folder through DIM then open DS all my other content is greyed out and vice versa. I'm having so many issues with DS I 

I would probably avoid using Daz Central or Connect in that situation - infact if you setup the base library on the external drive properly you won't even have to run DIM after Daz Studio is installed. Once DS is installed, immediately go into the list of base libraries and remove the pre-created ones which will be on C: - you will probably want to manually remove those folders. Then you can add the base library from your external drive and within Content DB Maintenance you can check Process Metadata Queue and Re-import Metadata and this will import everything into Smart Content (after several minutes).

However, even if you fully clean up and uninstall everything before you go home you would have to check the T&Cs to see if that is allowed. It probably would be since you would not be loading paid assets onto your friends computer but it's best to check for sure.

Iray preview does run on non-nvidia cards - albeit slowly. However, I don't know what the minimum spec would be for that, or filament or even just textured preview.

ShelLuser said:

Can you mention some of those limitations?  Considering that Filament is an open source project I fail to see why Daz would use a lite version.

See, the engine itself is already lacking a bit, especially when compared to Iray for example. It was never meant to be a full blown render engine, merely something usable for realtime rendering, which is useful with animations.

This may be a good read:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/479476/filament-may-not-be-a-good-choice-for-daz-studio

(edit)

Also interesting to know is that Filament is still being developed and gets constant updates. For example not too long ago Filament was unable to cast shadows, but that has eventually also made it into the engine.

Here's the full feature list. I'm guessing Daz chose to keep the feature set light since it's supposed to be a real time preview. It's a shame because it can produce halfway decent renders.

The interesting thing is that the materials guide provides examples of how to write filament material models (I think that might be what they're calling shaders), but I don't know if Daz's Shader Mixer will accept anything besides RSL/MDL. I'm going to have a look at the DS SDK and see if it has any examples.

Can you mention some of those limitations?  Considering that Filament is an open source project I fail to see why Daz would use a lite version.

See, the engine itself is already lacking a bit, especially when compared to Iray for example. It was never meant to be a full blown render engine, merely something usable for realtime rendering, which is useful with animations.

This may be a good read:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/479476/filament-may-not-be-a-good-choice-for-daz-studio

(edit)

Also interesting to know is that Filament is still being developed and gets constant updates. For example not too long ago Filament was unable to cast shadows, but that has eventually also made it into the engine.

Greetings All,

From what i know, Daz Studio 4.x implements a "lite" version of Filament, which shows noticeable limitations. Since we can't unfortunately be sure if Daz Studio 5.x will implement the full-featured version of Filament (i REALLY hope so), do someone know if there's a feasible way to install "Full Filament" in Daz?

Thank You in advance.

fStop is available on cameras (to control depth of field) and in the Tone Mapping settings (to cotnrol exposure). Unlike a real camera it is possible to set them independently.

The Tone mapping options in Render Settings will not bea vailable until the is a Tonemapper Options node in the scene. You can add onee xplicitly from the Create menu, or just do an Iray render on use the Iray or Filament Drawstyle.

I am not sure whether this has been mentioned already nor whether it is a real "fix" but what I generally do is 

set the "Intensity" in the "Render Settings" tab down real low (around 0.3 or even 0.2) or the other way is to set the

intensity (percentage) for your scene lights down quite a bit. Of course when you than go back to "Iray Shader"

you'll find now the scene is too dark :(

 But that's what I did, in particular if rendering out to a "Filament render" image - you will also find that if you

select "Viewport" as the output, and save your scene file, the icon generated will be of similar appearnce to your

filament view settings. I haven't really toyed around with filament that much but hopefully this can at least let you

appreciate that actually filament renders are fairly good quality even for "demo quality" renders, though you'd probably 

wany Iray (or Octane maybe? Haven't installed it myself) but filament can be a very fast choice for testing animations

although I still have some "odd" problems with light artifacts though I am sure these could be reduced with good lighting 

rigs, and good light setup choices. best regards and have a safe and merry season :)

Michael K.

Good day, you are right to be concerned ... but there is hope.

First, avoid installing the regular Daz Studio update since it will replace your current version. Instead, you can install the ones labeled BETA - this is a separate version and you will have both your old and new versions available on your machine which allows you to test the new one and see what does and does not work.

Second, a number of things have been addeded since 4.12 - including the facial posing options. The big change that will effect you is the addition of PBR (physical based rendering) shaders. So far, these have mostly appeared on characters and not scenes. But this will not render in the older versions. Also, autofit will not work on the newer(est) generations.Also, I am guessing that the Filament rendering was added after 4.12 ... that takes some getting used to also.

Third, more than likely, when you update Studio you will need to update your graphic card drivers. This is usually not a problem ... but sometimes it is. Keep your old driver updates handy. 

EDIT:  Yes, I think it is possible to have a separate version of Daz Studio on a separate drive ... but when installing you must be cautious to direct things to the right drive. Since you are manually installing, that is less of a problem.

TBorNot said:

A while back I stumbled across this beta documentation which was later pulled, but grabbed it before it left.  The mispelllings are in the Apple Docs.  Metal could always return true in using software, no need for this new call unless it's to return if there is Metal hardware Ray Tracing.

From the Metal 3 Documentation:
suppoprtRayTracing
Declaration
var suppportRayTracing:Bool{get set}
Beta Software
This documentation contains preliminary information about an API or technology in development.  This
information is subject to change, and software implemented according to this documentation should be
tested with final operating system software.

I think it's really important not to read too much into that, nor into the mention that DAZ Studio 5 will be "using metal". Apple's Metal isa  low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API. It's used, for example, to implement the Filament rendering engine; by the DAZ developers stating they're "using metal" it's entirely possible that's all they meant.

It's way too easy to over-speculate on what's coming out and almost impossible not to hope for or expect too much, so I'm just going to sit back and be happy knowing that Mac users will at the very least get Filament (since it was working in the development verson 18 months ago).

We'll see what we get when it gets here, but as always, even some minor development updates would be appreciated. Hopefully we'll be pleasantly surprised.

-- Walt Sterdan

Oh, you are on a Mac.

I don't know how/if Filament work on those.

But what happens if you just set Aux Viewport to 'Texture Shaded'?

Hello,

Thank you for your help. I did everything as you described, but unfortunately it didn't work. The filament window is not responding. The Filament Draw option does not come up. Maybe it has to do with new filament rendering. I've attached a few pictures as attachments. thank you again and all the best to you.

Reza from Berlin

If you hoover your mouse over the Aux Viewer, there should be a dropdown for drawstyle visible (the icon left to 'perspective view'), similar to what you have in your Viewport.

Click that and change drawstyle to 'texture shaded'. It looks like it is in Filament with too high intensity.

If it is Filament, you can also Create > New Filament Draw Option and lower the intensity in parameters (will be created in the scene tab).

https://www.daz3d.com/laguna-mermaid-set-for-genesis-3-female-s

OK. So I have the Laguna Mermaid Set and want to apply it to a G3 Female figure.

The figure displays just fine in the viewport using the NVIDIA Iray Drawstyle, including the Fanta Sea Hair.

But as soon as I load the mermaid tail, it just causes my computer to run at high speed, fans spinning like crazy (thus the pun in the post's title) and never ever get to the point where it displays the Iray preview.

Is there something I can adjust on the Laguna Mermaid Set that will make it display in the Iray Viewport Preview fairly quickly? The system just runs and runs and never displays Iray. 

I don't have this problem with any other geoshell or clothing items, and I have hundreds (the mermaid tail is a geoshell) with fitted tail wardrobe?

Also want to mention when I change the Viewport Drawstyle to Filament, the mermaid tail keeps cycling about like a Christmas tree lights blinking on and off where the tail sections are highlighted in consecutive order. I'm not sure how to describe it but it seems to be stuck in a loop in Filament and never gets to the point of rendering the preview either.

Please help!

Check if your viewport set to "Filament" when the skin is 'glowing'.

lilweep said:

vrba79 said:

It's never a good look when the end users are expected to fix problems with the finished version of a product. You payed good money for that, you're not a beta tester. Why are you expected to supply what should have come out of the box?

that's one way to characterise it, or you could just recognise you are a small minority of users and are expected to take a few extra steps to get it to work on your bespoke or obsolete shader set up.

(There's also Filament as an alternative to Iray and 3dlite, which also isn't 100% supported by PA's or frankly Daz Studio, but is still there for users to use if they want to tweak things.)

..well with those decided to stay with W7 or 8.1, and/or have older hardware, it's already the end of the line for Iray GPU rendering as of the 4.21.1.13  Beta as it requires a driver that no longer supports the older operating systems..  Qt6 which i what Daz5 is being built on will end support for both as it only supports W10 and up.

So it's either going back to glacial CPU rendering or grabbing Wowie's AweShader system and moving back to 3DL (there are some incredible images on the Show us more of your 3Delight renders thread that use the AweShader).  If you have a decent core count CPU you should get much better render times than Iray CPU rendering.  I did one a couple years ago that took only 14 min (on a 4 core 2.8 GHz i7) and looked better than the same scene optimised for Iray which took over 2hr:45m on the same CPU.

There is a conversion tool for Iray to 3DL by Riversoft Art that does a decent job but it still requires some adjustment to get the desired  quality