I very much appreciate your taking the time to try and explain the situation. However for myself, as is probably the case for many others we dont have the tech know how to follow the explanations that are offered. For example I have no idea what Qt framework is, or indeed how it differs from QT, and when you tell me that it ( which I didnt understand to begin with ) will take an SDK breaking move to resolve... well you might as well be talking Martian. So let me thank you once again for your time and patience, and I just about can accept that Daz does want to support ALL users, not just one group. It is simply frustrating in the extreme when having waited months for the resolution to the Mac Big Sur/Silicon M1 chip problem to be resolved we find that there still remains a problem with Filament that has been around for maybe as many months also. Hopefully it wont take as long to resolve the Filament issue, and while I find it hard to wish those Windows users happy rendering with Filament while we Mac users sit in the metaphorical dark, its not them that have the smarts to solve the issue. Nor of course is it dummies like me whose money Daz has accrued.

Daz worked with Apple engineers to figure out a way to get some DS 4.15 versions working under Big Sur - it initially seemed to be a fundamental block in the version of the Qt (not QT) framework used in DS 4, which was why it was expected to take an SDK-breaking move to a newer version of Qt to resolve. I don't know what the block on Filament is, but demonstrably Daz does want to support Mac users and is prepared to put effort into doing so.

Mmm... Thank you for the information, yet another example of Daz anti Mac prejudice perhaps. Not sure who is responsible for the fact that Mac users could not use Daz on Big Sur or the new silicon chip for months after its launch, or now the fact that Filament seems to be subject to the same delay or greater. Whoever it is doesnt much matter to Mac users, all we see is the denial of access to this technology which seems most unfair to us. We have after all invested in Daz content, often for many years and often the investement has been considerable. 

Incidentally I waited for ages to finally be able to use Daz on my new mac with the silicon chip and Big Sur, and guess what, its really no different, but of course I am just a hobbyist, so maybe my demands on the technology dont test the new stuff very much...

All I can say is after so many months of being in the wilderness it seems the journey to the light has a long way to go yet...

Filament is still Windows-only, I'm afraid.

I want to give filament a try and the tutorial I found tells me to go to PBR and tick some settings, namely environment, tonemapping and physically based draw options. However there is no PBR option in the viewport om this version of DS. How can I proceed, presumably I need a different versio of studio or these settings are hidden.

Anyone help please

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e said:

wsterdan said:

Redfern said:

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e said:

NIce render.  What set is that exactly?  It's not a direct replica of the ST:TOS bridge, since the monitors and stuff are a different shape and stuff, but I like the way that version of the set looks.

It appears to be this item...

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/sephora-bridge-for-daz-studio/138400/

Confirmed, thanks Redfern! I'm pushing through some 10+ hour days and missed the question entirely.

-- Walt Sterdan

Oooooo... the full set is nice looking...  >>wishlists it over there,,,<<

It really is a nice set, ashleytinger did a fantastic job; I grabbed both the DAZ iRay set and the Poser set (I'm getting a lot of mileage out of using Poser startship bridges for rendering in OpenGL and Filament).

-- Walt Sterdan 

Not being able to look at the hair product in question... was the unsuitability of the toon hair due to the shape, or due to the textures?  There are general hair shaders tht can, for instance, replace the old Poser or 3DLight hair textures off any abritrary hair with iray hair textures.  I've used one or more of these occasionally to good effect.  Might also be useful to make the hair look more real-ish than cartoon-ish, assuming the shape alone of the hair wasn't overly cartoon-stylized in shape.

I have used ColorWerks Hair Shaders for Iray.and also Universal Hair Shader for Iray, tho it appears I've also bought FSL Realistic Hair Shaders for Iray and Filament and also 2021-04 Hair Texture Expansion, tho I don't think I've used those two yet.

AbrahamRockwell said:

Well, I'm new enough to not know what "Increasing the SubD Value"  or using the "FIlament Renderer" is, but thanks for the answers ^_^

I'll do some googling later to get tutorials on those and see if they work, but you are both right: the Poser textures rely heavily on Displacement, as they are not part of tha actual geometry itself.

OK, here's how to go about trying to get those textures to work in Iray...

• Select the item in the Scene tab.
• Open the Surfaces tab and click on the item there to select all its surfaces
• In the Content Library, go to Daz Studio Formats/My Daz3D Library/Shader Presets/Iray/Daz Uber and double-click on !Iray Uber Base. This will convert the all surfaces to use the Iray Uber shader.
• Now, back on the surface tab, work through the surfaces one at a time (you might be able to do several at once if the all use the same settings, but let's assume they don't). It's best to do this bit with the viewport set to Iray preview mode, so you can see the effect of the changes you make
• Looking at that outfit, you might want to experiment with giving it some Metallicity, though for coloured metals like that you can often get a better effect by leaving Metallicity alone, using the Base Color image in Metallic Flakes Color, and using metallic flakes instead.
• You may find maps in the Glossy Layered Weight are useful in controlling metallicity too. You may also find that such maps for Poser are the wrong way round for Daz - in Daz white means most glossy, black means least. I think Poser does it the other way around. 
• Scrolling down, see if the surface has a Normal Map defined, because if it doesn't that gives you a Plan B (see later).
• Keep going till you reach Displacement Strength. This is where your displacement map is, followed by the min/max amount of displacement. But in Iray it only applies that displacement where there's a vertex that can be moved. Meshes are rarely dense enough for that to work well, so you have to subdivide: Increase the SubD Displacement Level till you get the level of displacement detail you want, or your machine collapses in a heap. I rarely try to go beyond 3 or 4, but you might be braver. Probably best to save your work before attempting this step.
• If you can't get the displacement approach to work for you, it's time for Plan B: you may be able to get away with a Normal map instead (assuming there isn't one already). Find the image used as a displacement map, and turn it into a normal map here: https://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ . You can then remove the displacement map from your surface and apply your new image to the Normal Map channel instead.
• Different approaches may work best on different surfaces, which is one reason to tackle them one-by-one.
• Once you've got it looking as good as you can, save it as a Materials Preset.

Good luck!

It's possibly just very over-exposed - try Create>New Filament Draw Options Node (if you don't already have one) and adjust the environment settings through the Parameters pane.

I am now wondering if the Thickener plugin would solve the Filament transparency issue.

Two things leap out at me:

One, you have the hair's hip bone selected instead of the hair itself.

Two, you're applying MDL materials, which are for Iray, but you're using the Filament renderer. I don't use Filament, since it's for mobile games, so I'm not sure if you can do that.

To get the filament renderer to work: In the viewport you can choose the type of display you see. The options are texture mapped, smooth shaded, wire frames, hidden line, iRay etc. The bottom one of the list is the iRay preview. The lightbulb icon above the iRay preview selects the Filament Renderer. After choosing the filament renderer you will find everything looks washed out. To prevent this, you need to create a 'Filament Render Settings'  node (I am away from my machine so I don't remember the exact name, sorry, but it's in the bottom 2 or 3 menu options of the 'Create' menu). Once created, select the Filament Settings node in the scene tree, and under the parameters tab, chose the parameter that says 'Film ISO' or some similar name. This will be set to 1.00, change it to 0.25 to stop the scene being so washed out. Now you are using the filament renderer as your rendering preview. There are ways to use it as the main rendering engine, but I fear someone else will need to tell you how as I have never tried it.

One thing I have never been able to prevent in Filament is back face culling, and as most hair models seem to have normals pointing to the head, back face culling makes hair models, in particular, look a bit odd.

Regards,

Richard

Well, I'm new enough to not know what "Increasing the SubD Value"  or using the "FIlament Renderer" is, but thanks for the answers ^_^

I'll do some googling later to get tutorials on those and see if they work, but you are both right: the Poser textures rely heavily on Displacement, as they are not part of tha actual geometry itself.

takezo_3001 said:

cain-x said:

Seems that point lights do not cast shadows no matter if its deep shadow map or raytraced. Is this intended or a known defect?

Will there be lights that allow softer shadows for filament? Right now all lights are hard shadows.

Also the play/pause which I set to spacebar is very finicky and does not always stop the playback of the timeline.

+1 on emissives question.

My guess is that it's meant for the 3dl render engine... 

EDIT: Again I forgot that the Daz forums don't place you at the beginning or end of the thread when you click on the thread title, but in the bloody middle, as your post was most likely already answered...

It starts you from where you last left off

cain-x said:

Seems that point lights do not cast shadows no matter if its deep shadow map or raytraced. Is this intended or a known defect?

Will there be lights that allow softer shadows for filament? Right now all lights are hard shadows.

Also the play/pause which I set to spacebar is very finicky and does not always stop the playback of the timeline.

+1 on emissives question.

My guess is that it's meant for the 3dl render engine... 

EDIT: Again I forgot that the Daz forums don't place you at the beginning or end of the thread when you click on the thread title, but in the bloody middle, as your post was most likely already answered...

It may also be an artefact of the version of DS being used. I'm sure 4.12 did more displacement with the same setting than 4.14 & 4.15. I haven't done a test to verify, but it is a feeling. I have tried to use displacement in the latest version & been a bit disappointed by the results.

ETA - try it using the Filament Renderer. I noticed I was getting very obvious displacement with Filament yesterday evening. Might even say a 'Disconcerting' amount.

Regards,

Richard

I noticed that Filament crashes when I have missing textures/files in a scene that I load.

It's fine with texture shaded and iray.

But when I switch to Filament it crashes.

So it may be a problem with trying to load something that is not in the library list.

I'll do some more testing to verify.

--tromnek

Richard Haseltine said:

mcorr said:

It's running, but w/out nvidia there is no denoiser, nor filament ....plus the render is  so  S   L    O    W .....

On the plus side, pbr is working and 8.1. renders, but it#s not an industrial type render, just a preview like render given the limitations mentioned (to say nothing of what would happen with larger files .... uselessI imagine).

Daz 5 needs to be finished to get native support, not Rosetta emulation (at least the render would speed up).

Presently,this is only a temp solution, not not one for any serious work on a macmini m1, like mine.

DS is running only in name, not as we a would hope/expect.

Iray would need to be rewritten with native M1 code by nVidia, Daz has no cotnrol over that (or over 3Delight).

I am fully aware of that. As I said, "at least the render would speed up."

mcorr said:

It's running, but w/out nvidia there is no denoiser, nor filament ....plus the render is  so  S   L    O    W .....

On the plus side, pbr is working and 8.1. renders, but it#s not an industrial type render, just a preview like render given the limitations mentioned (to say nothing of what would happen with larger files .... uselessI imagine).

Daz 5 needs to be finished to get native support, not Rosetta emulation (at least the render would speed up).

Presently,this is only a temp solution, not not one for any serious work on a macmini m1, like mine.

DS is running only in name, not as we a would hope/expect.

Iray would need to be rewritten with native M1 code by nVidia, Daz has no cotnrol over that (or over 3Delight).

It's running, but w/out nvidia there is no denoiser, nor filament ....plus the render is  so  S   L    O    W .....

On the plus side, pbr is working and 8.1. renders, but it#s not an industrial type render, just a preview like render given the limitations mentioned (to say nothing of what would happen with larger files .... uselessI imagine).

Daz 5 needs to be finished to get native support, not Rosetta emulation (at least the render would speed up).

Presently,this is only a temp solution, not not one for any serious work on a macmini m1, like mine.

DS is running only in name, not as we a would hope/expect.