I filled in mine with a migraine and I barely remember what I wrote. But a few things I do remember:
That scoring chart of sites made no sense to me. I use Daz3D primarily and have issues, I sometimes use Rendo and have to use Content Wizard to upload. The others, some I never heard of. 

How to improve Daz Studio - bring back the dates that the sort function in Smart Content is based on. It was messed up when the store was 'upgraded' in the Fall of 2020 or 2019 not sure if it was pre-Covid or not. What dates are there are often wrong.

Get Filament working for the Mac computers since Iray doesn't. I think I also asked if attention could be given to the older software sold by Daz.

Did ask for documentation, but also tutorials for each section by Jay Versalis (sp?). I found his You Tube sessions highly instructive and easy to follow. (Just at a horribly busy time for me personnally.) He didn't talk down, nor over my head with techno talk and lose me five words in. And yeah, I can see keeping up with what is going on in D|S is probably hard, just look at how many updates we have had in the past few months.

Clothing for the average, man or boy, either today, historical, or science fiction that is not a noble or a mercenary. (esha did some wonderful medieval ones for M4, would love to see more like that in different periods, ethnicities, regions, seasons.) But women too. Sets for average people in history or in the future. And yeah, women need real working clothes too. Unless they are all hookers or party girls or mercenaries. I also put a word in for aliens that physiology makes sense, with matching males and females. And less monsters for the males and sex pots for the females.

NFTs are a total buzz kill for me. I don't like to see them on sales pages, on the emails, or shoved down my throat. Same with DAZCentral. Give people a choice and leave them alone. And if they pick that sucky DAZCentral, well, they will learn the hard way like a lot of us. My recommendation is to get rid of it altogether. Stick with DIM or Daz Connect. 

I am on the borderline right now if I am going to renew my DAZ+ membership. Things are costing more, the two week release price is not lasting even a week, before it gets booted up a dollar. Sales are scewed so our coupons are not able to be used very often. I think 3 months I never used them. But, the freebies are good, but are generally available to non-DAZ+ customers too, if they buy X# items. So what is the incentive?

Marketing just closed out five reports I made, saying they were fixed. I had to check them out, sent two back to DAZ, one saying I had given up one of them, but with a very pointed comment that this teen looked like a traffick child sex worker, instead of an older sister to other characters, coming in at 3'1" and dark red makeup. Both are back in Tech Support who was very nice about it. Quality control seriously needs to be brought back up to the standards I found when I first started in 2016.

Get over kids showing shoulders, and make sure Thumbnails show up, or the metadata makes sense or doesn't create new categories or go back to old-style Poser ones. 

Test things before you install and break the public systems. (Store framework, Forums, Gallery)

That is what I can remember.

All of the Filament products do this.. is this due to some change in DS 4.20? Everything looks better by default when it's created, and the original Iray stuff is autoconverted. As soon as I apply any sort of Filament shader, all sorts of weird normal and backplane issues happen.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

it doesn't play well on my computer or I would have grabbed many of the presets when they were cheap, Filament works well on its own but with this it is very very laggy, pity it cannot use openGL view to show all the controls.

Did you remove the eyelashes from the characters as recommended in the tutorial? Removing the eyelashes eliminates MetaMixer lagginess for me.

And the controls work fine for me in Texture Shaded viewport. What problems are you having?

I bought that product too and am trying it next. I have removed the SF Beautiful Skin Filament and requested a refund.

it doesn't play well on my computer or I would have grabbed many of the presets when they were cheap, Filament works well on its own but with this it is very very laggy, pity it cannot use openGL view to show all the controls.

Hi all,

I'm using SF Beautiful Skin Filament with the latest version of DS, and I'm following the manual, but any preset I apply makes everything look like the visible man project, or a human anatomy science diagram. Is this a known issue? Is there a fix? I'm trying to learn Filament and make it my primary renderer. Thanks for any help!
 

this is why Filament native shaders should be a priority, there is emission but it has not been implimented in DAZ.

The Cutout opacity culling is the other huge issue

While Filament does not compare to iray it is the only PBR option not reliant on a Nvidia graphics card for many with lesser hardware

I did mention this in my survey reply

I'm with you. I also hope to see updates to the Filament Renderer. Iray is a great render engine but a resource hog and Open GL is an outdated technology. I love the fact that Filament can render an HDRI Image in realtime. Especially handy when adjusting sun angle.

Thank you, I'll check that product out. I hadn't seen it. I use Iray when I can, and my next laptop purchase will have an nVidia chip for sure. The one I'm on now became my main machine because I can use it for work, retro computing (my original and only purchase reason), research, shopping, etc. pretty much everything but high-CPU/GPU stuff. My previous reply got deleted, so I will clarify. I appreciate that we have Filament. I hope to see it get the same love that Iray and 3Delight have enjoyed in the past. Even if it never escapes its status as an alternate renderer, I dig the video game aesthetic anyway.

juvesatriani said:

vrba79 said:

vrba79 said:

Here's the Photoshop filters recipe for it.

I came up with it specfically for renders that already have a toon shaded look to them, so your results may vary.

I agree with @vrba79 about to make render output  which react better with Photoshop filter first, than we`re forcing Photoshop to work with our render  . Of course those mindset only work if we know from start that NPR is our end goal .  

My tips for anyone who want to get NPR styles form IRAY or standad 3Delight render, is look and grab several render style images from Store/Product promo, then run your filter stacks or action  . After you find result you like ,  try to mimic those styles in your base render 

I also have a seperate one I use exclusively for scenery I render with Filament. That one has more moving parts.

Most of us choose the Iray renderer because of it's superior results and product support from vendors in the Daz Store. Unfortunately Iray requires an investment in hardware to take full advantage of it. One of the biggest hurdles with Filament is creating accurate shadows. For scene preview: Filament is faster and smoother when navigating a scene than Iray and more accurate than OGL. You might want to check out this product---> RSSY 3Delight And Iray To Filament <---in the Daz3d Store. I've learned a lot from it through it's documentation and experimentation.

juvesatriani said:

Geminii23 said:

Wow!  So many inspirational posts in this thread.  I'm primarily a screenwriter but used DAZ to storyboard my latest film project and it was a lot of fun.  I'm now exploring the possibilty of turning one or two of my scripts into comics or graphic novels.  I already have most of the tools necessary (Photoshop, Comic Life 3, CSP) but it all feels so overwhelming and daunting.  Especially figuring out how to achieve that perfect inked comic look and style.  One of my fellow screenwriting friends is working on a horror comic series, but he partnered up with an artist and just sticks to writing.  Does everyone here write their own stuff or do any of you collaborate with writers and focus on the art side?

I`ve been using/learning ( and still in learning phase right now )   poser and daz with goal to help my dream creating comic or sequential art come true , just because i dont have manual drawing skill  . 

Sadly In the end , my stories get abandoned  right now ! LOL , I`m like you and always hope someday some artist decide to partnering with me 

That's interesting, and it's true, I'm still looking for the best "postwork" process on PSD and by on by I'm getting close, what's the most important it's confident and with help from other DAZ's users it's better, that's reason I'm always here despite lack of time.

Has someone tried the DAZ's "Filament" viewport?

Last month I discovered it since I changed my old laptop for a computer with 32GB RAM, I tried some Filament render on PSd and looks like interesting, isn't Iray render but good to play with. 

NotAnArtist said: stuff...

PS-
Just want to note that the Grab Bag today has several nice items, at least from my perspective. I want to mention two:

*Ladybug by Sylvan is so well done, and so potentially useful in a variety of image ideas, that I don't know why I haven't noticed it before.

*Dancing Animations for G8 would be hilarious if applied to inappropriate characters! If my Iray & Filament hopes are dead, then it might at least be fun to create loony toons in 3DL or Blender :)

Anyway, it's nice seeing things that generate hope now and then, and I found some today. Lots of good PC+, I mean, Daz+ sales here, too.
Cheers!

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I tried saving a starting scene with an environment node, a tone mapper node and a Filament node with suitable settings

That´s exactly what I do as well and it works without any problems for me even after updating DS.
Only difference seems to be the HDRI. I´m using the standard ruins in my base scene.

DAZ_Rawb said:

Hi everyone. Drum roll please...

As Director of Technology for Daz 3D, I wanted to give you some big news.  The Daz Studio team has been hard at work on a massive foundation change for Daz Studio that will be released as Daz Studio 5! Our project has been the #1 priority for the team for quite some time now, and it's almost done. Since we know how important getting a Mac version of Daz Studio is to all of you, we are switching up our release plans (from our normal releases) to get you a look at the upcoming Daz Studio 5 as soon as possible.

Details of the upcoming Daz Studio 5 early-access Pre-Beta:
- Release timing for this early-access preview is coming soon, at the very end of this month (July) or sometime next month (August).
- This will be a pre-beta release. Normally we wait until the software is completely finished before releasing it.
- Major Update will be Daz Studio release running for Macs, no other major features in the Pre-Beta.
- All Plugins and some scripts will be broken. The SDK won't be available with this first release, but will be following it up at a later date. Some other less used features won't work at launch, but will be coming online throughout the year.
- This release will work on at least x86 Macs (with both Filament and Iray). We are still investigating if this initial early-access release will run either natively or through emulation on M1 macs, but M1 support will come during the continued development of Daz Studio 5.
- It will install into a new location, so you can run it along your current Daz Studio (release/beta) without problems.

As for the final Daz Studio 5 release:
- The timeline for this is to have it out near the very end of this year.
- Features and enhancements will be rolling in through the rest of the year.
- Anyone who has Daz Studio 4 in their account will be able to keep it. You'll be able to continue to download and use it for the foreseeable future.

I hope everyone is just as excited about Daz Studio 5 as we are.

Do a better optimization for big libraries please!!! DAZ studio becomes very slow when opening!!

if you could create your own shaders from the source it would be a godsend, consider selling them on ShareCG or something too, we all need this because MDL and RSL shaders in Filament quite frranky suck. 

Hi all,

What is the best way to get started with Filament? If I create my own FIlament shaders based on the source from GitHub, how do I apply those to a model in DS? Is it better to use 3DL or Iray shaders for Filament renders? I'm using a Pentium Gold 6405U with the Intel HD graphics, and the OpenGL flies, but rendering is out of the question other than viewport/realtime. Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers!

I tried saving a starting scene with an environment node, a tone mapper node and a Filament node with suitable settings

with a distant light not visible in render (iray)  for Filament only

but it took forever to load and gave errors after every D|S update

 because it never could find my chosen HDR each new version

Is that a Filament render? The hair is designed for the Iray render engine. Filament often has issues with rendering hair.

Or is it just a viewport preview and not a render at all? Render it in Iray and it should look fine.

I suspected it would be rough, because you need CUDA to render on a GPU, and CUDA is proprietary to Nvidia. Only Nvidia GPUs can use it, so anything else is stuck to CPU hell for rendering Iray. Even the fastest CPUs in the world pale in comparison to GPU rendering with Iray. Iray was designed for GPUs, and in fact its CPU mode is a fallback built by Intel.

The benchmark may take longer because it is meant to be at least a little challenging, but it has to be small enough to run on GPUs that have low VRAM. The comment that they had scenes render in a few minutes reminded me of my GTX 670 days. I could render some scenes in a few minutes, as long as they were single characters with a hdri background. Trying to render anything with a simple 3d background crushed it, though, even when it fit VRAM.

At this point the bench scene has become trivial with nearly all Ampere cards. A single 3090 can complete the test in roughly 90 to 95 seconds. That is approximately 34 times faster than the M1 CPU. A 3060 ran it in 219 seconds, roughly 14 to 15 times faster. A 1080ti ran it in 450 seconds, which is over 7 times faster.

These comparisons may not apply to every single scene, but they should give a general idea of what the differences can be in this hardware. When I render a character with a basic hdri background, my 3090 can render it in just a few seconds compared to the time I had a 670. It takes longer to load a Genesis 8 DUF than to render it in scenes like that. Unless you are sticking to the most basic scenes, when it comes to CPU rendering I would either use 3DL, Filament, or export to another render engine that will run faster on your given hardware.

External GPUs are not an option to Apple, either, because Nvidia stopped supplying drivers to Apple years ago.