The iray interior camera is a good (and free) way to use hdri to light an indoor scene. Its maps the HDRI on several planes around the camera in such a way that the plane are not visible by the cam.

https://www.deviantart.com/heroineadventures/art/Iray-Interior-Camera-V1-4-758604718

You can also look at assets that set up section planes to mask part of the scene to let hdri light enter

https://www.daz3d.com/iray-stand-kit

https://www.daz3d.com/interior-light-pro-for-filament-and-iray

Galaxy said:

PerttiA said:

kyoto kid said:

wsterdan said:

notiusweb said:

With regards to a Daz-Win and a Daz-Mac early access sessions - are the versions exclusive separate-entity products subject to their own tracking-development, or will any findings from early access be applicable to both, as in a 'universal' version.  Wondering if any limitations of a Mac version or a Windows version will be considered such theat the final release is near-identical, or might one be more advanced and "have more" if say one version has an easier time with things than the other.   

Also was imagining could it at somepoint even be web-based so that any user could access on any platform, or is that not possible given individualized user content inventories.

It's been my experience DAZ tries very hard to keep both versions on par with each other; occasionally it's not possible, such as with Filament. Mac users don't have Filament yet, but as it's been explained to me it's not because of Big Sur, it's because of the version of Qt that's currently being used and updated. Filament works on Windows with the current level of Qt, but the Mac requires a newer version. Updarting Qt (which has been in the works for longer than Filament, Big Sur or m1 Macs) kills a number of birds with one stone, Filament for Mac, Big Sur for Mac, newer UI code (which, hopefully, will allow more font size and other interface customization for Windows and Mac users), and a host of other things they no doubt have up their sleeves. With the the pre-beta (and the betas to come) there may be different things working on either platform and not on the other or both working or both not working; the point of the betas is to try to iron out the little quirks. It is probable that a bug in the code will affect both versions and killing the bug will fix both. When they first launched DAZ Studio, the initial release was, if I remember correctly, delayed for a few weeks because the Mac version wasn't ready yet and they wanted a simultanous release; as a Mac user I thought that was very considerate, but I wouldn't have minded the Windows people getting it early as I was confident that the Mac version was "almost there". As to a web version, always possible but I doubt very much they'd go with the cloud-based model. Many people still have fairly slow internet, some people would have to pay for the kind of extra usage that would cause, running anything and I personally abhor the thought of not being able to run a program because the Internet was down. 

-- Walt Sterdan

(emphasis mine)

...and that happened with my provider last night several times. with no reson or warning given (In the old mainfame days, sysops would give useres ample warning to save your their work and sign out whan a shutdown was for scheduled maintenence), and my account with thme is current. 

Would really be fumed to suddenly lose work because of that.  

It's also not only outages, but it would penalise those with download or usage limits as well as with slow connect speeds.  

An online version would also be running on whatever browsers people are using, and they just are not up to the task... I have been trying to explain to the younger, web-addicted IT persons that the browsers just are not up to the task for any serious use and have been several times proven to be right, but who listenes to almost 60 year old geezer that cannot have any knowledge and/or understanding of any things related to computers... Sigh...

I purchase several online apps or webapps, most of them are lifetime versions and the funny thing is I use almost none of them due to feature limitations, instead I use installed software. However online versions are platform independent, example Linux etc. users will experience similar features. 

Yes, but the browser(s) are not up to the task when you start doing heavy lifting...

@Anfy

Io sono partito dal manuale di google https://google.github.io/filament/Materials.html (vediti solo come cambia il materiale al variare dei settaggi) e poi ho provato ad applicarli alla scena Day at Beach facendo prove sui settaggi e ottenendo l'obbrobrio con le palle e la luce rossa (che ti ho messo insieme alla versione "pulita" sempre in Filament per farti vedere i limiti/criticità di Filament).

Alcune fonti utili:

• https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6142992/ Leggiti tutte le risposte di Mec4D che ne capisce moolto e spiega come funziona il motore
•  https://google.github.io/filament/Material%20Properties.pdf  PDF con le principali proprietà dei materiali e su come appaiono diversamente tra Iray e Filament

Inoltre ti lascio alcune note dai miei appunti (ho un bel word di appunti), risalgono alla prima versione di Filament ma qualcosa potrebbe essere cambiato nel frattempo. Alcuni di questi limiti li vedi nell'immagine con le palle:

• Le HDRI vengono trattate come immagini IBL à illuminazione più imprecisa e povera(IBL usa le tonalità di bianco per decidere come illuminare). In compenso l’Environment viene sempre riflesso.
• I riflessi sono solo quelli dell’Environment dunque no riflessi ad altri oggetti
• Materiali emissivi non funzionano
• Nemmeno gli effetti SSS, Top Coat e mettalic Flakes vanno. Funzionano solo:
  • Base Color maps (Albedo)
  • Roughness maps ( micro surface )
  • Bump/Normal maps
  • Metallicity
  • Refraction: IOR e intensità
• Se si vogliono le ombre, bisogna attivarle manualmente nel pannello Parameters delle luci: sia Deep Shadow Map (limitata alla risoluzione di 1024x1024) che Raytraced funzionano.
• Limite di luci: massimo 6 spotlight, massimo 1 distance e 1 IBL (niente di puù). Tutto ciò che è in più (es. seconda distance light) non verrà renderizzato pur se presente nella scena (per attivarla bisogna spegnere la prima distant light). Chi è creato prima nello scene Graph viene attivato sempre prima.

• Le ombre non tengono in conto della trasparency map ma solo della geometria, perciò piani con texture opacity non vanno perché proiettano ombre piene. Stesso discorso per la refraction (ombre piene no semi-trasparenti).

• GENERATE TEXTURE MIPMAPS (Nodo Filament Draw Option): se attivo genera le Mipmaps dalle texture, utili per oggetti distanti e allegerire il rendering.

Ci sono anche altre cose da dire.. ma io ti consiglio di creare delle scene di test e verificare se funziona

Visto che siete così gentili, per Filament invece da dove "partire per non patire"?

PerttiA said:

kyoto kid said:

wsterdan said:

notiusweb said:

With regards to a Daz-Win and a Daz-Mac early access sessions - are the versions exclusive separate-entity products subject to their own tracking-development, or will any findings from early access be applicable to both, as in a 'universal' version.  Wondering if any limitations of a Mac version or a Windows version will be considered such theat the final release is near-identical, or might one be more advanced and "have more" if say one version has an easier time with things than the other.   

Also was imagining could it at somepoint even be web-based so that any user could access on any platform, or is that not possible given individualized user content inventories.

It's been my experience DAZ tries very hard to keep both versions on par with each other; occasionally it's not possible, such as with Filament. Mac users don't have Filament yet, but as it's been explained to me it's not because of Big Sur, it's because of the version of Qt that's currently being used and updated. Filament works on Windows with the current level of Qt, but the Mac requires a newer version. Updarting Qt (which has been in the works for longer than Filament, Big Sur or m1 Macs) kills a number of birds with one stone, Filament for Mac, Big Sur for Mac, newer UI code (which, hopefully, will allow more font size and other interface customization for Windows and Mac users), and a host of other things they no doubt have up their sleeves. With the the pre-beta (and the betas to come) there may be different things working on either platform and not on the other or both working or both not working; the point of the betas is to try to iron out the little quirks. It is probable that a bug in the code will affect both versions and killing the bug will fix both. When they first launched DAZ Studio, the initial release was, if I remember correctly, delayed for a few weeks because the Mac version wasn't ready yet and they wanted a simultanous release; as a Mac user I thought that was very considerate, but I wouldn't have minded the Windows people getting it early as I was confident that the Mac version was "almost there". As to a web version, always possible but I doubt very much they'd go with the cloud-based model. Many people still have fairly slow internet, some people would have to pay for the kind of extra usage that would cause, running anything and I personally abhor the thought of not being able to run a program because the Internet was down. 

-- Walt Sterdan

(emphasis mine)

...and that happened with my provider last night several times. with no reson or warning given (In the old mainfame days, sysops would give useres ample warning to save your their work and sign out whan a shutdown was for scheduled maintenence), and my account with thme is current. 

Would really be fumed to suddenly lose work because of that.  

It's also not only outages, but it would penalise those with download or usage limits as well as with slow connect speeds.  

An online version would also be running on whatever browsers people are using, and they just are not up to the task... I have been trying to explain to the younger, web-addicted IT persons that the browsers just are not up to the task for any serious use and have been several times proven to be right, but who listenes to almost 60 year old geezer that cannot have any knowledge and/or understanding of any things related to computers... Sigh...

I purchase several online apps or webapps, most of them are lifetime versions and the funny thing is I use almost none of them due to feature limitations, instead I use installed software. However online versions are platform independent, example Linux etc. users will experience similar features. 

I am excited to watch it! As I have high hopes of learning something new.

— Still, I'm not too fond of Filament, but the last webinar showed at least enough tricks to make it useable for the viewport so that I do not hate it anymore because I cannot fall back to DAZ 4.12 to get rid of it.
And a few other tricks shown in the last webinar were also convenient.
I am even lucky this time as this bundle is one of the very few 8.1 bundles I bought, but only because of Stonemason. Evonne HD is still hidden in DIM as everything else with an 8.1 tag. I wish I could fall back with the essentials as I update these, believing falsely they offered an update for Genesis 8 and not bringing unwanted 8.1 support.

Piuttosto, su consiglio de facto Imagattesco, e complici alcuni sconti nello store, ho preso degli add-on per Filament: vorrei dargli una chance, visto che Iray - che resta il mio preferito - ha forse veramente bisogno di una macchina da 5.000 cucuzze, come sancito dal predetto, per funzionare a dovere. Per ora non ci capisco molto, ma magari imparo.

kyoto kid said:

wsterdan said:

notiusweb said:

With regards to a Daz-Win and a Daz-Mac early access sessions - are the versions exclusive separate-entity products subject to their own tracking-development, or will any findings from early access be applicable to both, as in a 'universal' version.  Wondering if any limitations of a Mac version or a Windows version will be considered such theat the final release is near-identical, or might one be more advanced and "have more" if say one version has an easier time with things than the other.   

Also was imagining could it at somepoint even be web-based so that any user could access on any platform, or is that not possible given individualized user content inventories.

It's been my experience DAZ tries very hard to keep both versions on par with each other; occasionally it's not possible, such as with Filament. Mac users don't have Filament yet, but as it's been explained to me it's not because of Big Sur, it's because of the version of Qt that's currently being used and updated. Filament works on Windows with the current level of Qt, but the Mac requires a newer version. Updarting Qt (which has been in the works for longer than Filament, Big Sur or m1 Macs) kills a number of birds with one stone, Filament for Mac, Big Sur for Mac, newer UI code (which, hopefully, will allow more font size and other interface customization for Windows and Mac users), and a host of other things they no doubt have up their sleeves. With the the pre-beta (and the betas to come) there may be different things working on either platform and not on the other or both working or both not working; the point of the betas is to try to iron out the little quirks. It is probable that a bug in the code will affect both versions and killing the bug will fix both. When they first launched DAZ Studio, the initial release was, if I remember correctly, delayed for a few weeks because the Mac version wasn't ready yet and they wanted a simultanous release; as a Mac user I thought that was very considerate, but I wouldn't have minded the Windows people getting it early as I was confident that the Mac version was "almost there". As to a web version, always possible but I doubt very much they'd go with the cloud-based model. Many people still have fairly slow internet, some people would have to pay for the kind of extra usage that would cause, running anything and I personally abhor the thought of not being able to run a program because the Internet was down. 

-- Walt Sterdan

(emphasis mine)

...and that happened with my provider last night several times. with no reson or warning given (In the old mainfame days, sysops would give useres ample warning to save your their work and sign out whan a shutdown was for scheduled maintenence), and my account with thme is current. 

Would really be fumed to suddenly lose work because of that.  

It's also not only outages, but it would penalise those with download or usage limits as well as with slow connect speeds.  

An online version would also be running on whatever browsers people are using, and they just are not up to the task... I have been trying to explain to the younger, web-addicted IT persons that the browsers just are not up to the task for any serious use and have been several times proven to be right, but who listenes to almost 60 year old geezer that cannot have any knowledge and/or understanding of any things related to computers... Sigh...

wsterdan said:

notiusweb said:

With regards to a Daz-Win and a Daz-Mac early access sessions - are the versions exclusive separate-entity products subject to their own tracking-development, or will any findings from early access be applicable to both, as in a 'universal' version.  Wondering if any limitations of a Mac version or a Windows version will be considered such theat the final release is near-identical, or might one be more advanced and "have more" if say one version has an easier time with things than the other.   

Also was imagining could it at somepoint even be web-based so that any user could access on any platform, or is that not possible given individualized user content inventories.

It's been my experience DAZ tries very hard to keep both versions on par with each other; occasionally it's not possible, such as with Filament. Mac users don't have Filament yet, but as it's been explained to me it's not because of Big Sur, it's because of the version of Qt that's currently being used and updated. Filament works on Windows with the current level of Qt, but the Mac requires a newer version. Updarting Qt (which has been in the works for longer than Filament, Big Sur or m1 Macs) kills a number of birds with one stone, Filament for Mac, Big Sur for Mac, newer UI code (which, hopefully, will allow more font size and other interface customization for Windows and Mac users), and a host of other things they no doubt have up their sleeves. With the the pre-beta (and the betas to come) there may be different things working on either platform and not on the other or both working or both not working; the point of the betas is to try to iron out the little quirks. It is probable that a bug in the code will affect both versions and killing the bug will fix both. When they first launched DAZ Studio, the initial release was, if I remember correctly, delayed for a few weeks because the Mac version wasn't ready yet and they wanted a simultanous release; as a Mac user I thought that was very considerate, but I wouldn't have minded the Windows people getting it early as I was confident that the Mac version was "almost there". As to a web version, always possible but I doubt very much they'd go with the cloud-based model. Many people still have fairly slow internet, some people would have to pay for the kind of extra usage that would cause, running anything and I personally abhor the thought of not being able to run a program because the Internet was down. 

-- Walt Sterdan

(emphasis mine)

...and that happened with my provider last night several times. with no reson or warning given (In the old mainfame days, sysops would give useres ample warning to save your their work and sign out whan a shutdown was for scheduled maintenence), and my account with thme is current. 

Would really be fumed to suddenly lose work because of that.  

It's also not only outages, but it would penalise those with download or usage limits as well as with slow connect speeds.  

notiusweb said:

With regards to a Daz-Win and a Daz-Mac early access sessions - are the versions exclusive separate-entity products subject to their own tracking-development, or will any findings from early access be applicable to both, as in a 'universal' version.  Wondering if any limitations of a Mac version or a Windows version will be considered such theat the final release is near-identical, or might one be more advanced and "have more" if say one version has an easier time with things than the other.   

Also was imagining could it at somepoint even be web-based so that any user could access on any platform, or is that not possible given individualized user content inventories.

It's been my experience DAZ tries very hard to keep both versions on par with each other; occasionally it's not possible, such as with Filament. Mac users don't have Filament yet, but as it's been explained to me it's not because of Big Sur, it's because of the version of Qt that's currently being used and updated. Filament works on Windows with the current level of Qt, but the Mac requires a newer version. Updarting Qt (which has been in the works for longer than Filament, Big Sur or m1 Macs) kills a number of birds with one stone, Filament for Mac, Big Sur for Mac, newer UI code (which, hopefully, will allow more font size and other interface customization for Windows and Mac users), and a host of other things they no doubt have up their sleeves. With the the pre-beta (and the betas to come) there may be different things working on either platform and not on the other or both working or both not working; the point of the betas is to try to iron out the little quirks. It is probable that a bug in the code will affect both versions and killing the bug will fix both. When they first launched DAZ Studio, the initial release was, if I remember correctly, delayed for a few weeks because the Mac version wasn't ready yet and they wanted a simultanous release; as a Mac user I thought that was very considerate, but I wouldn't have minded the Windows people getting it early as I was confident that the Mac version was "almost there". As to a web version, always possible but I doubt very much they'd go with the cloud-based model. Many people still have fairly slow internet, some people would have to pay for the kind of extra usage that would cause, running anything and I personally abhor the thought of not being able to run a program because the Internet was down. 

-- Walt Sterdan

RH is probably confusing Misty's attitude towards D|S with mine.

I have used hate before because at times it summed up exactly how I felt.

Yet I do use DAZ studio, quite a lot actually.

AFAIK Misty doesn't render in it at all, I do

However it can be very frustratiing for me with it's limitations.

It is always a trade off for me between trying to get content to work in Carrara that is made for DAZ studio versus forgoing features and ease of use absent in DAZ studio.

Still image creators often cannot fully appreciate those limitations.

Things like an animated 360 background image series or animated gels providing lighting D|S cannot do, fiddling arount with MCasual's very welcome Texanim script and trying to get the syntax to work on my images along with D|S limitations to do something which is as as easy as just loading an image series into multple shader's diffuse channels in Carrara.

I won't discus the PA Dforce v user accessable Carrara dynamic hair and fur .that is a topic of it's own.

I use Filament quite a lot now but that has it's own limitations, iray is much slower than Carrara render engine most of the time albeit fully PBR but I honestly don't need PBR,

Filment can be much faster but the transparency and lack of ambient shader issues drive me nuts.

(even 3Delight has ambience/glow you stick a point light by it and that's fine, I do that in Carrara too but a dead unglowing flame looks awful with a light)

we are not even touching Carrara's extra features like particles, modeling rooms, landcape and foliage tools, volumetrics, metaballs, bullet physics yet

Eustace Scrubb said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

there is always Luxrender and Reality is now OpenSource

"Reality" is OpenSource?  Where can I find it?

You will have to strip out the license key logic. He explains that.  That's actually the easiest thing for you to do.

More troublesome is since the open sourcing of Reality, you will need update it as to not violate the now stricter Windows 10 security. Then once you get those working you should strip out and update to use the newest LuxRender renderers but not bundle LuxRenderer with Reality anymore. I suppose you could package the LuxRenderer installer as a DIM installer package installed like DAZ Studio itself but seperate from Reality DIM installer.

Seeing as DAZ Studio is updating to QT 5 you'd also want to update Reality to QT 5 which would likely fix the problem with Windows 10 security in the same go.

I think you should strip out the TCP/IP that Reality uses and use DSON files instead like other DAZ Studio render engines do. It is more secure. It will reduce the amount of code updates you have to do relevant to the network code (because they'll be none unless you integrate the DAZ Studio Render Farm API calls into Reality in the Render Parameters Configuration Options) and QT code both.

So get it working correctly on DAZ Studio 4.15 but at that time, don't update the bundled version of the LuxRenderer just yet, and then when DAZ Studio 5 is released you can update the QT API code and then update the LuxRender API version. You want to write it so that you need not bundle LuxRender with Reality but force the endusers to install the latest version of LuxRenderer themselves.

I'm not sure, if you don't enjoy coding for the sake of a hobby, how much time and effort you spend on Reality; as in DAZ Studio, Filament renderer features will be expanded, bugs fixed, and the memory footprint descreased, optimized, and improved. Ray tracing is ray tracing when it comes down to it and Filament does support muliple types of different vendor hardware that nVidia iRay does not support.

Also, I've noticed I've not got DAZ Studio Public Beta updates for some months now; so I think all DAZ Studio feature and bug fix work is stopped except the updating to QT 5. I could be wrong though.

wsterdan said:

algovincian said:

I personally doubt that DAZ is seeing the number of Mac users on the rise, but like you say, we don't have access to the numbers.

That's great that you're excited about Apple silicone. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes before any of them have enough memory to do any heavy lifting. The unified memory architecture presents some major challenges given how Iray functions, and I'm personally not holding my breath for NVIDIA to write any M1 specific code.

- Greg

 Recent worldwide statitstics show Mac uses in very close numbers with Windows 7 users (both quite small compared to Windows 10). What will happen, though, is that Mac uses are going up and Windows 7 users are going down (dropping by almost half between 2019 and 2020). Now, that also most likely means that Windows 10 users probobably went up by the same number that Windows 7 went down... they had to go somewhere, and any that jumped to Linux or Mac are probalby blips in the stats.

I very, very much doubt there'll ever be an m1/2/x version of a Mac chip that will see its GPUs used by iRay in any significant way (not that it's impossible); if you want fast iRay, get a Windows machine... or rather an NVidea machiine. That's what I'd do.

I'm not sure if we'll see "heavy lifting" Apple Silicon this year or next, but probably next year at the latest. One good thing about the Apple Silicon is that it's evolution isn't shackled to Intel's.

As kyoto kid points out Pro Render could be an option, but Octane already runs and uses the m1's GPUs, as well as the Redshift rendering engine. I'd love to see Cycles or Evee added to D|S, but I have my doubts it will. Personally, I'm in love with Filament. It's what I need.

As you point out, it's still very early days for the m1. Anyone thinking it's going to outperform a high-end graphic card wtih scad of RAM and/or VRAM is fooling themselves, but it's important to remember that the M1 is also the cheapest, lowest-powered Apple Silcon.chip. Anyone racing to compare their high-end video card against the lowest-end, slowest Apple Silicon chip should remember that.

in the meantiem, m1 chips using Rosetta2 have been running faster than their equivalewnt Intel Macs running Maya, C4D, Poser and Blender (some starting in November) which means they'll probably see even better non-GPU preformance down the road... and the next version of chips or the ones after that version will only get better.

I was going to wait to buy an m1 iMac until next year or the year after, but with a chance to test the pre-beta in a month or so (which is almost how long I'd have for the iMac) I'm probably going to order one this week.

-- Walt Sterdan

@wsterdan: Oh, please let us know how that goes. You could even post that info in the Mac Forum: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16599/the-mac-faq#latest

algovincian said:

I personally doubt that DAZ is seeing the number of Mac users on the rise, but like you say, we don't have access to the numbers.

That's great that you're excited about Apple silicone. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes before any of them have enough memory to do any heavy lifting. The unified memory architecture presents some major challenges given how Iray functions, and I'm personally not holding my breath for NVIDIA to write any M1 specific code.

- Greg

 Recent worldwide statitstics show Mac uses in very close numbers with Windows 7 users (both quite small compared to Windows 10). What will happen, though, is that Mac uses are going up and Windows 7 users are going down (dropping by almost half between 2019 and 2020). Now, that also most likely means that Windows 10 users probobably went up by the same number that Windows 7 went down... they had to go somewhere, and any that jumped to Linux or Mac are probalby blips in the stats.

I very, very much doubt there'll ever be an m1/2/x version of a Mac chip that will see its GPUs used by iRay in any significant way (not that it's impossible); if you want fast iRay, get a Windows machine... or rather an NVidea machiine. That's what I'd do.

I'm not sure if we'll see "heavy lifting" Apple Silicon this year or next, but probably next year at the latest. One good thing about the Apple Silicon is that it's evolution isn't shackled to Intel's.

As kyoto kid points out Pro Render could be an option, but Octane already runs and uses the m1's GPUs, as well as the Redshift rendering engine. I'd love to see Cycles or Evee added to D|S, but I have my doubts it will. Personally, I'm in love with Filament. It's what I need.

As you point out, it's still very early days for the m1. Anyone thinking it's going to outperform a high-end graphic card wtih scad of RAM and/or VRAM is fooling themselves, but it's important to remember that the M1 is also the cheapest, lowest-powered Apple Silcon.chip. Anyone racing to compare their high-end video card against the lowest-end, slowest Apple Silicon chip should remember that.

in the meantiem, m1 chips using Rosetta2 have been running faster than their equivalewnt Intel Macs running Maya, C4D, Poser and Blender (some starting in November) which means they'll probably see even better non-GPU preformance down the road... and the next version of chips or the ones after that version will only get better.

I was going to wait to buy an m1 iMac until next year or the year after, but with a chance to test the pre-beta in a month or so (which is almost how long I'd have for the iMac) I'm probably going to order one this week.

-- Walt Sterdan

Artini said:

hacsart said:

heh - i remember paper tape from those days - still have a bit saved... the old days were fun! (although not always ata the time..) First system I was alowed to run- IBM 360/40 (Although we had a 1401, I never got to seriously work with it..)

Artini said:

bytescapes said:

Artini said:

If Daz Studio will run natively on Apple M1 or higher CPUs, than I will be considering getting Apple computer (first time in my life).

Just to see rendering on Apple M1 GPU is worth to wait for...

 You might not see dramatic rendering improvements on M1 (although I'd bet the interface will be a bit zippier).

Apple and Nvidia have fallen out, so you won't find any Nvidia GPUs in future Macs, or even OS support for the Nvidia GPUs found in older Macs. So for Iray renders, you'll be forced to fall back on CPU rendering.

When Iray uses the CPU to render, it seems to create some of the code it needs to do the render 'on the fly'. The code is designed to run on processors using the x86 architecture (i.e. Intel and AMD chips).

To run x86 code on Apple Silicon such as the M1, the code has to be translated into instructions that the Apple chip can execute. Wherever possible, Apple pre-translates the code when the application is first installed. But because the Iray rendering code is generated dynamically when you start the render, they can't do that. Instead, Apple's Rosetta 2 translation engine has to translate it all then and there. I'm simplifying a bit, but the upshot is that Apple has to do a bunch of work to get the rendering code into a form that their chips can work with. That work takes time and the end result is that everything they have to do slows down the rendering process (and CPU rendering is already much slower than GPU rendering).

It's possible that the Apple chips (the M1, and its likely successors the M1X and M2) have so much power to spare that they can do all this extra work and still beat the performance of the old Intel chips. But I think it's more likely that rendering on Apple Silicon will work out a little slower than rendering on an Intel or AMD CPU, and certainly slower than rendering on an Nvidia GPU. Another factor is that the Apple M1 systems we've seen so far have limited memory -- 8GB or 16GB -- which will make things still slower when handling larger scenes.

Note that this all applies to Iray renders. I don't know if 3Delight will be optimized for Apple Silicon, but I think that Octane already has been, and I believe that Filament could be. And Blender has an Apple Silicon version, although I don't know if their renderers have yet been optimized for Apple chips. So anything other than Iray could eventually enjoy some remarkable speed-ups on Apple Silicon (especially if the renderer can make use of Apple's own GPUs rather than the CPU). But Iray probably won't.

I may be very wrong about this, but this is how things stand now, as I understand them.

You have not made a tests with Apple M1 hardware, apparently.

From my own experiments I see 5 to 50 times speed increase in 3D graphics applications on MacBook Pro 13 inches with Apple M1 hardware

while comparing with older Macs, even with Nvidia graphics card.

I know, that iray does not support Apple M1 natively yet, but hopefully Apple will find another solution.

Right now I am amazed by Apple M1 performance and believe me I have started my journey with the computers

like mainframes that were using paper tape as a program and data input, Timex TS1000 with 8 bit CPU and 2 KB RAM

and continue with all possible hardware including the latest ones.

Nice memories. During my university studies, I have used punched paper cards to deliver program and data to the computer centre

and got results just after a week of time. Any error and another week of waiting to get another error report or results.

Imagine wait for the render 1 week and then discover, that some part of the scene you want in different place,

and since you cannot see the preview of results, you need to punch cards with different contents and process them again.

At least the corrections to the data was quite fast, if you only need to replace a couple of the cards.

Each card could carry one line of the data or program (in Fortran in my case).

 I used tape like that on teletype when I was in the military. No kidding. In the 1980s we used radio-teletype for certain communications.I used to be able to read the ASCII characters on the tape just by looking at it.

Richard Haseltine said:

There is a global headlamp setting in Render Settings, what is that set to? Is this the final render, an Iray preview, a Filament preview, or one of the other drawstyles?

If your talking about Auto Headlamp then it is set to When No Scene Lights. 

The 1st picture shows the original camera which use to light up and now doesn't even with Headlamp Intensity cranked all the way up.

The 2nd picture shows the new camera at the same position with the Headlamp Intensity cranked up similar the original camera.

Heres the preview in Iray.

.

There is a global headlamp setting in Render Settings, what is that set to? Is this the final render, an Iray preview, a Filament preview, or one of the other drawstyles?

mcorr said:

Not sure I need the headache (without any form of compensation) to beta test a -- what is already billed as -- buggy pre-beta for the M1. Pass on that.

A more accurate description would be a pre-beta for both Windows and Macs for DAZ Studio 5 while also adding a feature or two for the Mac users to test, features that  Windows users have had for months. Personally, if I were you or another Windows user I'd avoid it like the plague. A beta version, with new featuers, maybe, but a pre-bata? Yuk. Heck, if they weren't giving Mac users a version of Filament to test for the first time, I'd stay away from this one myself. "Headache" is too weak a word.

If it runs under Big Sur, it should automatically run on an m1 chip using Roetta2, like almost all other software has. The ability to run under Big Sur is the more important part for Mac users, eventual m1-native support is the icing on the cake... eventually.

Both Windows and Mac users are going to lose most of the same things like plug-ins, scripts and who knows what else. The only reason a user should be interested in working with something this early in the develpment cycle would be to test something new, which for Mac users and me is Filament on a Mac. I never have enough free time to help with beta testing but in this instance, I've already set aside a computer solely to test it.

-- Walt Sterdan

Panzer Emerald said:

Well hallelujah praise the Lord!

At this point, I'll take what I can get. For all my griping, grousing, and general sourness... thank you. Thank you for finally listen to us Mac users.

I think they've always been listening to Mac users; if you look at the fact that we're getting a pre-beta, not a beta, it helps underscore just how incredibly huge an undertaking updating to DAZ 5 is, and how we'll have the pre-beta (hopefully) in the next month but probably won't see final release of D|S 5 until close to year-end. Even so, giving us just that bit of news to keep Mac users hopeful has already resulted in over 10 forum pages of questions, speculaton, arguements about speculation and so on... that tells me why they're so reluctant to offer us a status report without having something more concrete to report. 

 I've been both vocal and even a little testy with poor Richard at times from the frustration of pausing projects plans for lack of a status update. Like you, I'm very happy to have a ballpark ETA for even the pre-beta. I never normally touch Beta releases as I just don't have enough spare time to help; in this case, I've already set up a machine specifically to start testing the Mac versiion of D|S with Filament as soon as I can.

-- Walt Sterdan

hacsart said:

heh - i remember paper tape from those days - still have a bit saved... the old days were fun! (although not always ata the time..) First system I was alowed to run- IBM 360/40 (Although we had a 1401, I never got to seriously work with it..)

Artini said:

bytescapes said:

Artini said:

If Daz Studio will run natively on Apple M1 or higher CPUs, than I will be considering getting Apple computer (first time in my life).

Just to see rendering on Apple M1 GPU is worth to wait for...

 You might not see dramatic rendering improvements on M1 (although I'd bet the interface will be a bit zippier).

Apple and Nvidia have fallen out, so you won't find any Nvidia GPUs in future Macs, or even OS support for the Nvidia GPUs found in older Macs. So for Iray renders, you'll be forced to fall back on CPU rendering.

When Iray uses the CPU to render, it seems to create some of the code it needs to do the render 'on the fly'. The code is designed to run on processors using the x86 architecture (i.e. Intel and AMD chips).

To run x86 code on Apple Silicon such as the M1, the code has to be translated into instructions that the Apple chip can execute. Wherever possible, Apple pre-translates the code when the application is first installed. But because the Iray rendering code is generated dynamically when you start the render, they can't do that. Instead, Apple's Rosetta 2 translation engine has to translate it all then and there. I'm simplifying a bit, but the upshot is that Apple has to do a bunch of work to get the rendering code into a form that their chips can work with. That work takes time and the end result is that everything they have to do slows down the rendering process (and CPU rendering is already much slower than GPU rendering).

It's possible that the Apple chips (the M1, and its likely successors the M1X and M2) have so much power to spare that they can do all this extra work and still beat the performance of the old Intel chips. But I think it's more likely that rendering on Apple Silicon will work out a little slower than rendering on an Intel or AMD CPU, and certainly slower than rendering on an Nvidia GPU. Another factor is that the Apple M1 systems we've seen so far have limited memory -- 8GB or 16GB -- which will make things still slower when handling larger scenes.

Note that this all applies to Iray renders. I don't know if 3Delight will be optimized for Apple Silicon, but I think that Octane already has been, and I believe that Filament could be. And Blender has an Apple Silicon version, although I don't know if their renderers have yet been optimized for Apple chips. So anything other than Iray could eventually enjoy some remarkable speed-ups on Apple Silicon (especially if the renderer can make use of Apple's own GPUs rather than the CPU). But Iray probably won't.

I may be very wrong about this, but this is how things stand now, as I understand them.

You have not made a tests with Apple M1 hardware, apparently.

From my own experiments I see 5 to 50 times speed increase in 3D graphics applications on MacBook Pro 13 inches with Apple M1 hardware

while comparing with older Macs, even with Nvidia graphics card.

I know, that iray does not support Apple M1 natively yet, but hopefully Apple will find another solution.

Right now I am amazed by Apple M1 performance and believe me I have started my journey with the computers

like mainframes that were using paper tape as a program and data input, Timex TS1000 with 8 bit CPU and 2 KB RAM

and continue with all possible hardware including the latest ones.

Nice memories. During my university studies, I have used punched paper cards to deliver program and data to the computer centre

and got results just after a week of time. Any error and another week of waiting to get another error report or results.

Imagine wait for the render 1 week and then discover, that some part of the scene you want in different place,

and since you cannot see the preview of results, you need to punch cards with different contents and process them again.

At least the corrections to the data was quite fast, if you only need to replace a couple of the cards.

Each card could carry one line of the data or program (in Fortran in my case).