Richard Haseltine said:

TheKD said:

The change came around the time they added that filiment stuff in, so I assumed the nodes made it easier to add in filiment, or maybe they were required to in order to add it.

I believe it is somewhat related to Filament in that there were now additional things to which some settings, such as envionment and tone mapping, applied.

I am told:

Eventually settings for Environment, and Simulation (global), will follow in kind... Basically any settings that can be considered to be part of the definition of a scene, and would therefore benefit from all that comes from being a proper node within the scene (e.g., saving/loading, presets, animation (potential), etc). There will continue to be panes that filter what is displayed within them (e.g., Cameras, Lights, Environment, Simulation, Render, etc), but the configuration of these conceptual collections of properties are being promoted to proper members of the scene - such that, if the singleton node that provides access to the properties exists in the scene, their values are used, and if it is not, the defaults for that particular 'engine' are used.

TheKD said:

The change came around the time they added that filiment stuff in, so I assumed the nodes made it easier to add in filiment, or maybe they were required to in order to add it.

I believe it is somewhat related to Filament in that there were now additional things to which some settings, such as envionment and tone mapping, applied.

Filament is not at all a good replacement for iray and forget 3delight. It looks like trash (yeah I'm a bit of a perfectionist) and doesn't support most of my assets

I just can no longer afford the hardware requirements, until I can get a graphics card that works with the latest build I am stuck on D|S 4.11 for rendering iray animations as later builds will use 1-2GB more VRAM and drop me to the CPU, I can use Filament and do but not the best option.

Other softwares the improved technology doesn't export too well especially dforce strand hair (can get a misplaced impossibly highpoly mesh if line tesselation and pbr view enabled) and all the fancy rigid nodes etc (am forever deleting buttons etc on everything and exporting one separately to use attached in iClone particularly, don't get me started on sockets and blueprints in Unreal).

On the brightside the buttons do work in Carrara garment converted to blended weight but G8.1 Misty's character conversion cannot see the G8 morphs so thats pretty much stopped me buying new characters unless there is an G8 version too.

Same issues in D|S4.11 so yeah I buy old stuff now on sale.

There is also additional reasons I am looking more elsewhere than DAZ  I cannot discuss here.

Unfortunately I still spend a fair bit on the older stuff with the sales, bought something nearly every day mostly M3, V3 lately and some Bryce scenes.

Totte said:

I don't know if it's Qt 5 or 6, but one thing with Qt 5 is the depracation of Qt Script, which would kill all product for Studiio that are using Scripts, and as thats deprecated in Qt 5 it's probably gone in Qt 6.
Changing Qt version isn't an easy task, as every plugin will have to be changed, many will never get to new DS as the developers are no longer with us, so it's not an easy ride.
Filament on macOS is built using Metal, that's why you cannot use filament in Qt 4 on macOS as it requires Qt 5 underpinnings.
Another thing regardning Qt that also is something that DAZ has to consider in the licensing model. Today scripts and plugins do not have to pay license fees for Qt, newer versions of Qt has a more rigid lincense policy if you read  about it, which could make scripts and plugins much more expensive, same with Studio itself, if the new owners of Qt decided they want $100/seat/year in runtime licenses plus $10/year for every plugin and $20 / yeasr for every plugin  used.

Ouch! But, of course, this would also be the case for Windows users, would it not? Not only the possibility of more fees, but Windows users would also lose their scripts and plugins unless those were rewritten. Am I correct in thinking this?

TBorNot said:

I would be willing to pay for a version of Daz that used something besides Iray.  Metal would be popular.

What is Metal in this context? The only one I am aware of is an API on Macs, not a rendering engine - and certainly not soemthing that would be available to Windows users.

Daz [Studio] does use soemthing other than Iray - 3Delight, and for some purposes Filament, plus Octane if your OS supports the plug-in. Most of those don't even require you to pay.

RemiliaSutton said:

okay. do i need an iray compatible gpu for filament ie m6000 quadro or newer or is it a whole sseprate thing when it comes to hardware???? and if it is how do i know filament is using said hardware. and what hardware would you recommend?

Filamaent does not use CUDA so it is not tied to nVidia GPUs 

okay. do i need an iray compatible gpu for filament ie m6000 quadro or newer or is it a whole sseprate thing when it comes to hardware???? and if it is how do i know filament is using said hardware. and what hardware would you recommend?

Not sure if you've seen this.

https://google.github.io/filament/Filament.html

Dosen't really matter what devices it was written for.

It runs perfectly well on less powerfull deesktops.

Okay but what is the gpu requirements for filament? I'm looking at gpus now but all the gpus above say 5xx GeForce series and k2xxx series quadros are horrendously priced. $300+ even my old goto cards m4000 quadro and m40 Tesla shot up in price lately. Now I regret getting rid of mine. (I still have my m6000 quadro) and I have another rendering computer that needs a gpu and I'm on a fixed budget. I really don't wanna blow all $350 of my monthly discretionary spending on a gpu if I don't have to. Any chance I could get away with the k2xxx quadro k series Tesla or even better yet a 4xx or 5xx series GeForce gpu for filament????

I don't know if it's Qt 5 or 6, but one thing with Qt 5 is the depracation of Qt Script, which would kill all product for Studiio that are using Scripts, and as thats deprecated in Qt 5 it's probably gone in Qt 6.
Changing Qt version isn't an easy task, as every plugin will have to be changed, many will never get to new DS as the developers are no longer with us, so it's not an easy ride.
Filament on macOS is built using Metal, that's why you cannot use filament in Qt 4 on macOS as it requires Qt 5 underpinnings.
Another thing regardning Qt that also is something that DAZ has to consider in the licensing model. Today scripts and plugins do not have to pay license fees for Qt, newer versions of Qt has a more rigid lincense policy if you read  about it, which could make scripts and plugins much more expensive, same with Studio itself, if the new owners of Qt decided they want $100/seat/year in runtime licenses plus $10/year for every plugin and $20 / yeasr for every plugin  used.

Filament was not written for phones, it is a render engine and also what JamesJAB said.

I'm actually hoping that they're not porting and pausing at Qt5 but instead are porting to Qt6 to possibly give a boost to the Mac people. From their notes:

So while Qt 5 relied on OpenGL for hardware-accelerated graphics, the picture completely changes with Qt 6. All of our 3D graphics in Qt Quick is now built on top of a new abstraction layer for 3D graphics called RHI (Rendering Hardware Interface). RHI makes it possible for Qt to use the native 3D graphics API of the underlying OS/platform. So Qt Quick will now use Direct3D on Windows and Metal on macOS by default

I hosnestly haven't looked into this in any real depsth. What differences would a Mac user see if Qt used Metal on macOS directly? Anything significant? I expect that without creating a rendering engine that used Metal shaders, not much. Would OpenGL previews  or Filament renders go any faster? Would Qt access to the Metal API allow DAZ to possibly have Metal forward some of the 3D calculations to the built-in GPUs for anthing? I konw 3DL and OpenGL don't really use them, but if I remmeber correctly OpenGL might a litlte just for screen redraws? If nothing else, would the viewport be a little quicker when setting up scenes?

Again, no idea what usign Metal automatically would do for Mac users, if anyone has any thoughts I'd be interested in hearing them.

-- Walt Sterdan

Is this the nVidia Iray Drawstyle, or Filament?

I've now managed to watch the whole session (and some parts multiple times). 
It really is excellent. So many little hints. For me the tips on Filament draw options, Scene Navigation and (especially) Puppeteer were incredibly useful.

Thank you!  The best thing that Daz has done this year. 
If you want people to use your product, you have to show them how they can use your product (and then they'll buy more of your product!).  Simple. 

Encore! Encore! 

Gordig said:

AbyssalEros said:

outrider42 said:

If Nvidia ever decided to kill Iray, which I am not saying they will...but they have killed render software before, what would Daz do?

 

I am not knowledgeable enough in that matter to give any prediction, but it is plausible that something like this could or will happen in the future. However, I do not think that Filament or PBR are replacements on the same level. Both have issues and look "toonish" for my taste. Filament is just a viewport mechanic, but nothing more. And PBR seems too complex for software like DAZ Studio and its typical users, and even if you finally manage to get the knack of it, it still looks unrealistic "toonish" - like SuperFly.

What do you mean by "PBR"? Because Iray IS PBR.

I was referring to the shader that comes with DAZ Studio 4.15 and Genesis 8.1; as far as I understand, there is a difference to Iray, as I see a lot of people struggle with it.

AbyssalEros said:

outrider42 said:

If Nvidia ever decided to kill Iray, which I am not saying they will...but they have killed render software before, what would Daz do?

 

I am not knowledgeable enough in that matter to give any prediction, but it is plausible that something like this could or will happen in the future. However, I do not think that Filament or PBR are replacements on the same level. Both have issues and look "toonish" for my taste. Filament is just a viewport mechanic, but nothing more. And PBR seems too complex for software like DAZ Studio and its typical users, and even if you finally manage to get the knack of it, it still looks unrealistic "toonish" - like SuperFly.

What do you mean by "PBR"? Because Iray IS PBR.

outrider42 said:

If Nvidia ever decided to kill Iray, which I am not saying they will...but they have killed render software before, what would Daz do?

 

I am not knowledgeable enough in that matter to give any prediction, but it is plausible that something like this could or will happen in the future. However, I do not think that Filament or PBR are replacements on the same level. Both have issues and look "toonish" for my taste. Filament is just a viewport mechanic, but nothing more. And PBR seems too complex for software like DAZ Studio and its typical users, and even if you finally manage to get the knack of it, it still looks unrealistic "toonish" - like SuperFly.

I'm not sure what the actual requirement is, but filament was written for mobile phones. So it can't need very much or else it wouldn't run on a mobile phone.

What is the minimum system requirements for gpus for filament rendering engine?