margrave said:

Filament is a real-time physically based rendering engine for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, and WebGL2

-https://github.com/google/filament

It's basically something Google made for Android phones, and I suspect Daz3D implemented it to have something to compete with Blender's Eevee. If so, uh...Daz3D lost that competition.

Truth be told, I think 3Delight is dead. Their website hasn't been updated since 2018, and I remember hearing the codebase went through major changes that'd render most 3Delight scripts useless if Daz3D upgraded.

If you have no interest in Iray, why not try Blender? Creating NPR shaders is pretty easy with a simple color ramp node in the Shader Editor.

3DL is Not dead:

https://documentation.3delightcloud.com/display/3DSP/Changelog

*The Apple M1 timing was obtained by running the benchmark on a Mac mini through Rosetta 2. A native version of 3Delight will be available sometime in 2021 and one should expect a speed improvement between 20% to 70%. Since the M1 CPU is not sold separately, its cost for comparison was marked at 1/3rd of the price of the Mac mini. For the cost+ table, the actual cost of the Mac mini was used.

The above quote taken from the following page on their website:

https://www.3delight.com/page/features/2020-10-06-CPUbenchmark

- Greg

Filament is a real-time physically based rendering engine for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, and WebGL2

-https://github.com/google/filament

It's basically something Google made for Android phones, and I suspect Daz3D implemented it to have something to compete with Blender's Eevee. If so, uh...Daz3D lost that competition.

Truth be told, I think 3Delight is dead. Their website hasn't been updated since 2018, and I remember hearing the codebase went through major changes that'd render most 3Delight scripts useless if Daz3D upgraded.

If you have no interest in Iray, why not try Blender? Creating NPR shaders is pretty easy with a simple color ramp node in the Shader Editor.

Yeah Filament does just kinda exist. I still don't understand what it actually is for. Its absolute pants at transparencies.

I'm hoping Daz3D does keep 3Delight around. For people without a powerful Nvidia card, or those of us who primarily work in NPR renders, Iray just isn't it.

No, Iray won't be the only rendering engine Daz 5 supports.

...

You forgot about Filament, but then don't we all?

A character I just bought has both PBR and UBER skin texture I assume the PBR is for filament? and not the 8.1 skin while the uber is gen 8 skin or anything like that?

WendyLuvsCatz said:

yeah some DAZ studio users posting here, you don't need a 6+GB card for Carrara 

I am running my Win7 i7 machine off it's intergrated intel graphics just fine (it has 2GB dedicated) the viewport a bit more laggy than my 980Ti was but not much,

I even use DAZ studio on that machine with Filament and unlike my one with the Nvidia graphics card my CPU can handle iray but of course that is slower and it gets hot, it is the machine of choice if stuff exceeds the card on the other one though and will even show heavy scenes in the interactive viewport, yours has a much better CPU than mine.

This was a custom build from a  PC place Chohole put me onto them here in the UK. It ran great for some time with no problems.  https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

How do I find/access an integrated graphics card? When I disconnected from the Quadro, I only got VGA. Where do I even find that listed in my hardware directory?

 SIlene

yeah some DAZ studio users posting here, you don't need a 6+GB card for Carrara 

I am running my Win7 i7 machine off it's intergrated intel graphics just fine (it has 2GB dedicated) the viewport a bit more laggy than my 980Ti was but not much,

I even use DAZ studio on that machine with Filament and unlike my one with the Nvidia graphics card my CPU can handle iray but of course that is slower and it gets hot, it is the machine of choice if stuff exceeds the card on the other one though and will even show heavy scenes in the interactive viewport, yours has a much better CPU than mine.

DoctorJellybean said:

mikmod said:

I noticed that Tone Mapping and Environment sections are missing from the Rendering pane upon creating new, empty scene in this beta (4.15.1.84), until the moment of using Iray preview.

You can also create them from the Create menu options.

Rendering with Filament also creates them.  The weird inconsistency is that the "Filament Draw Options" node does not seem to ever get auto-created, even though the settings it contains are certainly used for Filament renders.  It's necessary to use the "Create" menu and, once that is done, it becomes easy to match filament rendering light levels to Iray rendering light levels.

This has always been the case - it's true of the 4.15.0.30 General Release/Beta.  I don't think it has change in .1.84, it hadn't in .1.72

@vrba79 , I`m afraid so . But I think even without pwToon other pwShader in that bundle worth to collect, especially if we need Stylized FX like Fire -Smoke etc . And also pwCatch for composite in graphic or video editor

In meantime , here test images from my future photoshop  freebie ( IRAY /Filament render into Dirty and Paper NPR style)

Auroratrek said:

Thanks, Zombie! Yes, the first installment of Aurora was over 10 years ago, tho completed 9 years ago, if that makes you feel better. ;-) When I started it, I estimated it would take about a year and a half to complete, but was more like six!

Wolf: those sequences look great, and 16 seconds/frame? Nice! I've been adding motion blur in After Effects, which isn't perfect, but gets the job done.

Padone, what you're saying may be technically correct in some respects if I were Pixar, but if I were Pixar, I wouldn't be on this forum or using Daz at all, I'd have 500 animators and modelers and coders writing custom software. Technically speaking, my first Aurora movie was a "dinosaur" even 10 years ago--much of the animation is stiff, the lighting, textures and effects pretty minimal, the characters--V3 and M3--were primitive compared to Hollywood standards even at the time, but that hasn't stopped 700k people checking it out, or give it 5000+ "likes", or continue to comment on how much they liked it even now. The other day a viewer commented "A charming and well told tale worthy of the Star Trek Universe." I don't say that to toot my own horn (and not that 700k is that impressive compared to many wacky cat videos), just to say that having "substandard" aspects to an animation doesn't negate the ability for an average viewer to enjoy it--I don't get comments or emails complaining about the animation, just that they liked the story, which is the point. And since this is a forum where we're sharing advice, my advice would be to listen to the old adage about "perfect is the enemy of good." When I set out working on my first Aurora project, my goal wasn't 15 seconds of perfect animation, it was 55 minutes of finished animation to tell a complete story. From the very start I was aware the animation could be better if I put in a lot more time on it, but--as noted above--even with compromises it still took 6 years. If I fretted over every pixel, I'd still be working on it today. My consideration at the time was whether the animation was good enough to not interfere with the story, and judging by the response I've gotten where the vast majority of the audience talks about the story and almost nobody even mentions the animation except to occasionally praise it, I think it worked. Of course, this is all in context of a free animation uploaded to Youtube, not a feature released in theatres. Again, if that was my goal--or that of anyone on this forum--we wouldn't be using Daz. None of this is to say that you shouldn't bother trying to do a good job, but you have to make choices in order to get things done within the limitations of the software and abilities, and especially time. I am perfectly capable of creating hair textures without painted reflections or making sure the character's hair bounces and the scabbard hangs correctly, but those things take time that could I be using to get the next shot done.

Very nice breakdown, thanks. This is very similar to  how I"m approaching this. My goal is simple cartoon animation. I'm not shooting for Pixar-quality (not by a couple of light-years). It's funny that if I chose to do it in 2D using Cartoon Animator, most people would focus on how realistic the character movement is and absolutely no one would be focused on how accurate the reflections in the eyes would be. Do it in 3D, and suddenly it's going to be screencapped to see how photorealistically accurate everything is, even if stylized. 

I'll be absolutely thrilled if I can get 5 minutes of even lower than dinosaur-quality animation done in a month especially approaching it with almost zero animation experience.

Thanks to everyone so far for their contributions to this thread; like the original poster, I’m looking at taking a run at some character animation in the future as I near retirement; I (theoretically) have the first two weeks of November off (after months of 9-12 hour work days) to try my hand at doing a real animation for the first time, but due to lack of time for testing and the need to take advantage of this downtime while I have it (it may not last the whole two weeks) I am sticking with DAZ Studio for now as it has everything I need for now. The last thing I have time to do in this window is install and test two more software packages.

I’ve been looking at different long-term systems for the future, though, and Maya and Blender were the only other 3D systems I’ve been considering. I was disappointed that Maya LT didn’t have a way to easily get DAZ character imported into it, but Maya Indie is a reasonable price. I like their library system, similar enough to D|S’s that I’d feel at home. My main concern with it, though, is whether they’ll maintain an Indie license going forward; the last thing I’d want is to invest a couple of years in moving things over and modifying everything in Maya only to find out that down the road they’ll either drop the Indie license or scale up the price to my “out of reach”  range after I’ve retired.

Blender looks pretty decent as well, and while their library system doesn’t appear to be as robust (from the one or two videos I’ve watched) the fact that they’ll have Cycles running under Metal in the very near feature is a big draw especially after Apple’s latest MacBook Pros just released.

For my animation, for now, rendering engines don’t matter; I’m going to be using either OpenGL or Filament for the time being, as they both work very well for the style of non-realistic cartoon I’m aiming for. I may inject a little 3Delight if needed, but iRay for me is a nonstarter; I don’t mind the long render times, but just don’t need nor want photorealistic renders.

The animation samples shown by Auroratrek and Ivy are inspiring, and are far better than I’m initially aiming at. I’m just shooting for a proof-of-concept at this point.

I especially appreciate Wolf359’s videos insights that really show very well what’s involved with the bridges and such.

A few questions regarding Maya and Blender:

1. Does moving characters from DAZ to Blender or Maya require any re-rigging? I haven’t delved too deeply but noticed the part about matching the armature in Blender for applying the animation, but I assume that’s just if I’m importing animation from a different source, not if I’m actually doing the animation in Blender.
2. If I move a clothed character to either, and I want to change their clothes, does this mean a completely new move of the same character with the second set of clothes?
3. Is there any way to build up a “closet” of clothing that can be applied to the characters  moved into Maya or Blender, or will it always be a matter of going back to DAZ to change costumes and back through the bridge?

I’ve taken note of comments about how Maya and Blender make animating much easier, but I do wonder if the time saved using either offsets the time taken to move everything from DAZ Studio and set up to work well (rigging and/or texturing/shading?), especially when you have a DAZ library with hundreds of characters and thousands of morphs and poses at your fingertips and ready to go almost instantly.

As mentioned I have some time in the first two weeks of November where I want to see how far I can get. To this end, I’m using an Intel-based MacBook Air; not very powerful, but it allows me to have three versions of DAZ Studio running simultaneously, the latest 64- and 32-bit Mac versions for DAZ’s lip sync and general set up and animation, and 64-bit Windows 10 version for if I decide to render in Filament.

The other reason for going with a laptop is that after a year-and-a-half of a long days sitting at my home workstation, I want to sit somewhere else while on holidays but still want to work on a computer.

Any extra information or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

— Walt Sterdan

Iray decals are part of the Iray rendering engine, not Daz Studio. If they were going to make Filament support them, it'd have to be through some hackery by the Daz developers.

well mine was not so much an opinion than a workflow 

Geoshells work better for me in Studio itself 

decals? not sure what it actually is but an option used a lot that annoys me as it doesn't always render in Filament or openGL

UHF said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I have been looking at the weird world of Vtubers.

Most use Anime type programs like Vroid, MikuMikuDance and Live 2D Cubism

some make their own mesh from scratch like the one mentioned here in this video below

(which also briefly shows Shudu hence my post)

 

I am wondering if DAZ characters are going to take off as VTubers since they too can be live linked with Unreal Engine and Apple ARkit

and if DAZ wants to maybe wants some of that sweet Vlogging pie by incorporating it into DAZ studio itself maybe using Filament for realtime rendering overlayable on a video stream

since Mimic Live is gone maybe realtime facial capture is the future?

 

 

 

At 4:42 minutes in... that's Young Minto's outfit.

She uses many Daz products. She uses that sexy Nun outfit and a new one. Can't remember whats its called. Its Purple tight scitfi outfit with visor glasses. 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I have been looking at the weird world of Vtubers.

Most use Anime type programs like Vroid, MikuMikuDance and Live 2D Cubism

some make their own mesh from scratch like the one mentioned here in this video below

(which also briefly shows Shudu hence my post)

 

I am wondering if DAZ characters are going to take off as VTubers since they too can be live linked with Unreal Engine and Apple ARkit

and if DAZ wants to maybe wants some of that sweet Vlogging pie by incorporating it into DAZ studio itself maybe using Filament for realtime rendering overlayable on a video stream

since Mimic Live is gone maybe realtime facial capture is the future?

At 4:42 minutes in... that's Young Minto's outfit.

Thanks, again.  

I render almost exclusively in 3Delight.  I did check all of the iRay environment settings and they are correct.  The skysphere/skybox/stardome backgrounds are all retail products purchased from DAZ and render perfectly either under 3Delight or iRay.  Only the ViewPort display of the background is affected when switched from Filament back into Texture Shaded mode.  All ojects and figures are fully illuminated and visible in any Viewport mode and render perfectly with the background in a final render.

maybe it is different for other programs but I honestly don't see much difference between my i7 Win7 machine and my Ryzen3 Win10 with DAZ studio having used the same Nvidia 980Ti in both

I do in Carrara as the i7 has a considerably more powerful CPU but since it no longer has a graphics card the viewport can be laggy

Filament works just as well on both

iray will render an identical scene  faster on the i7 if it exceeds the VRAM on my Ryzen3 which has the 980ti that used to be in the i7 (and sadly no longer works in it since damaging the motherboard)

bottom line is the Nvidia graphics card seems to be far more important than the rest of the hardware 

ah look under the environment tab, background 

also is dome or sky enabled  and set to show

another possibly is the HDR used is not 2:1 in ratio and Filament is very fussy (should still work in iray though)

I'm having a similar issue with Filament switching back to Texture Shaded mode.  Also, observed different icons in Viewport DrawStyle options menu.

Switching the Viewport from Filament (PBR) back to Texture Shaded turns the background black. - Daz 3D Forums

Thanks for all the feedback, folks.  It would be good to get to the bottom of this issue.

I tried the CTRL+9 suggestion, and it had the same effect as switching to Filament and then back to Texture Shaded - background turns black.

I tried capturing a Log sequence while performing the steps, but the results don't provide much insight.  It seems as though re-enabling Texture Shaded mode requires an additional programming step that has been overlooked.

Commented Log file attached.

Ok, so it's looking like OpenGL is only capable of one draw style at a time while the Filament renderer is in use.  This same situation seems to be at play in another thread currently as well.  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/527691/what-shader-render-is-used-in-new-viewport-windows#latest

Is Filament very closely related to OpenGL in some way?