Hello Everyone,

First, let me give a special thanks to  PerttiA and Richard Haseltine, who went above and beyond to assist me with the problem with loading my Genesis 8 and 8.1 female characters.  Now to my issue,  I have Daz3D installed on my C: hard drive with a copy of My Daz3D Library. Because of the years of content I have purchased and downloaded, the hard drive was filling up. But with the help of this forum, I was able to find a solution to fix the problem by using the Content Directory Manager to connect my external hard drive with a copy of My Daz3D Library that I copied before redoing the previous C: drive onto a 6TB external hard drive to my current Daz3D on the C: drive. The solution worked great with Daz3D 4.12 although slow loading sometimes. I upgraded to Daz3D 4.15 to try Filament andGeneis 8.1 characters. I began to have problems such as Genesis 8 and 8.1 female characters not loading.  PerttiA and Richard Haseltine assisted with that issue but I am experiencing major issues. My question is since I have characters and content I no longer use can I remove them from the external drive and would the problems I am having are because the Daz3D is on the C: drive and the other My Daz3D Library is on the external hard drive.

DarkElf said:

A question for you all:

I have an Asus ROG G752VY laptop with an Nvidia GTX 980M. I bought this when Iray first came out just so I could use Iray. Right now I am using DAZ Studio version 4.12.1.117 and everything works well for me.

I too cannot justify spending the money to upgrade to a new PC with an RTX. They are SUPER expensive.

My question to you all:

Is there any point to upgrading to DS 4.14 ? Will Filament even work with my Nvidia GTX 980M? Is there any advantage? Would I see any increase in render speeds?

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I don't see much advantage to filament personally. The newer studios are more memory intensive and require more card memory and include newer versions of iray which also require more memory. plus you will need to update your drivers.

of course you can just test it and see. Back up your drivers and studio installers and run the installer.

DarkElf, I'm sorry that I did see your post. I am definately not an expert on the matter but I don't think filament requires a high performance GPU. I have gotten faster renders in DS 4.14 but it does like to crash on occasion.

mindsong said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

yeah my GTX 780 is no longer supported so I never bothered putting it back in my Win7 box after moving the 980ti to the Win10, that machine handles Filament quite well and the card overheats it so not just D|S influenced my decision.

I only use the beta for the latest

that machine actually has D|S4.7 on it! for release build as iray a waste of time on it and I can use some 3Delight scripts later versions don't support

doesn't your 780 work in DS4.11, or is it the betas that are out-running your (our) hardware? I believe my older 760 render hosts ran up to DS4.12.x and maybe even later (I use CPU when my scenes are (usually) too big), so it's a blur of whether or not I actually tested the 760s w anything more recent.

I know my NV drivers (445.87) haven't been updated so as to work with the latest, and was about to update to 451.x to try 4.15, etc. Now I'm not sure I should mess with it.

I suppose I can still learn a bit about the animation tools in the betas if I ignore the NV card...

hmm,

--ms

it would work for 4.11 but at this point it is not installed in my rig as I had blackscreen issues with any card after shorting my PCIE lane with a metal air nozzle I lost.

I was going to take it to the shop and have it looked at but this development makes that a waste of money as it as the end of the road for future DAZ studio use now anyway

I would be better off waiting until Bitcoin tanks and buy a better card for my Win10 then putting my 980ti back in the Win7 rig

I am more concerned GTX 9## support will be dropped soon too

WendyLuvsCatz said:

yeah my GTX 780 is no longer supported so I never bothered putting it back in my Win7 box after moving the 980ti to the Win10, that machine handles Filament quite well and the card overheats it so not just D|S influenced my decision.

I only use the beta for the latest

that machine actually has D|S4.7 on it! for release build as iray a waste of time on it and I can use some 3Delight scripts later versions don't support

doesn't your 780 work in DS4.11, or is it the betas that are out-running your (our) hardware? I believe my older 760 render hosts ran up to DS4.12.x and maybe even later (I use CPU when my scenes are (usually) too big), so it's a blur of whether or not I actually tested the 760s w anything more recent.

I know my NV drivers (445.87) haven't been updated so as to work with the latest, and was about to update to 451.x to try 4.15, etc. Now I'm not sure I should mess with it.

I suppose I can still learn a bit about the animation tools in the betas if I ignore the NV card...

hmm,

--ms

yeah my GTX 780 is no longer supported so I never bothered putting it back in my Win7 box after moving the 980ti to the Win10, that machine handles Filament quite well and the card overheats it so not just D|S influenced my decision.

I only use the beta for the latest

that machine actually has D|S4.7 on it! for release build as iray a waste of time on it and I can use some 3Delight scripts later versions don't support

Richard Haseltine said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

their DAZ studio development is just  ensuring it remains only an exporter to other softwares for me for DAZ content.

I have been trying to use it as a rendering software but it's proving too frustrating, everytime they do something that could be useful such as adding Filament, they drop the ball on something else.

They need to warn people support for hardware is going to be ceased before doing so too.

I don't know when the 9### series will be dropped and expect one update I will encounter a nasty surprise, 7### quickly followed 6### with no prior warning so my spare card I was going to try to mount again in my other computer is already junk.

The release notes do include details of driver/supported platform changes - as do the entries in the separate thread on Iray updates.

So there's a published 'recommended and minimum required hardware/driver' stanza available for each public and beta release?

eta: I've always had to dig back in the notes to find those sorts of changes - as such requirements might be mentioned say 5 releases back, and I've never seen any mention of hardware requirements, assuming that if NVidia lists the driver for my card specs, that it must still have some support.

--ms

WendyLuvsCatz said:

their DAZ studio development is just  ensuring it remains only an exporter to other softwares for me for DAZ content.

I have been trying to use it as a rendering software but it's proving too frustrating, everytime they do something that could be useful such as adding Filament, they drop the ball on something else.

They need to warn people support for hardware is going to be ceased before doing so too.

I don't know when the 9### series will be dropped and expect one update I will encounter a nasty surprise, 7### quickly followed 6### with no prior warning so my spare card I was going to try to mount again in my other computer is already junk.

The release notes do include details of driver/supported platform changes - as do the entries in the separate thread on Iray updates.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

their DAZ studio development is just  ensuring it remains only an exporter to other softwares for me for DAZ content.

I have been trying to use it as a rendering software but it's proving too frustrating, everytime they do something that could be useful such as adding Filament, they drop the ball on something else.

They need to warn people support for hardware is going to be ceased before doing so too.

I don't know when the 9### series will be dropped and expect one update I will encounter a nasty surprise, 7### quickly followed 6### with no prior warning so my spare card I was going to try to mount again in my other computer is already junk.

wait, I saw in the beta thread that we had recently lost the GTX-6xx support, but is the GTX-7xx family obsolete now too? I was about to update my NV driver to the listed DS minimum of 451.48 (I'm at 445.87 w DS4.12).

What's the last GTX-7xx capable DS version? (my entire thread may be moot to my own situation, as my last 'working' DS version may have already come and gone! lol).

Seriously - what's the latest in the NV hardware family that the current DS version(s) w/ IRAY support will operate? Is there a way to tell from anything the DS-devs publish?

tnx,

--ms

their DAZ studio development is just  ensuring it remains only an exporter to other softwares for me for DAZ content.

I have been trying to use it as a rendering software but it's proving too frustrating, everytime they do something that could be useful such as adding Filament, they drop the ball on something else.

They need to warn people support for hardware is going to be ceased before doing so too.

I don't know when the 9## series will be dropped and expect one update I will encounter a nasty surprise, 7## quickly followed 6## with no prior warning so my spare card I was going to try to mount again in my other computer is already junk.

kyoto kid said:

melissastjames said:

kyoto kid said:

Nyghtfall said:

kyoto kid said:

...but if you have an Nvida GPU, why not just use Nvidia View mode?  Seems Filament needs a few add ons for features that are already part of either Iray or 3DL.

Because Filament doesn't need processing time like nVidia Iray mode.  Any changes you make to your scene are instantly drawn, and you can navigate your scene as smoothly as you do in Texture Shaded mode.

,,.the downside, to get Filament I need to install 4.15 which I have heard has some annoying bugs that I really don't care to deal with (the 4.12.0.47 beta release has been surprisingly extremely stable) and which does not support GTX GPUs as well as it does RTX ones.  Apologies, I cannot afford even a 20xx card let alone a 30xx one (If I can even find one) and I like being able to render with optitex acceleration off as it consumes more VRAM.  I don't find the few moments it takes to refresh on my Titan-X to really be much of a bother like it was when I was still rendering on the CPU.  As is, I generally use Texture Shaded mode for the most part and only switch to Iray when I need to check lighting, in render effects (such as fog, smoke, bloom, & such), and camera settings (like DOF) without having to set up test renders. 

Filament has proven useful when using a HDRI background...it will render in the preview, so you can freely adjust the dome to line things up rather than having to adjust and wait...adjust and wait...adjust and wait with the Iray preview.

You could always save a copy of your preferred Daz version and then install 4.15 just to try it. I have several versions of the .exe saved...they all use the same content directories.  

Opening a scene in a newer version and making/saving any changes to it will prevent it from opening in an older one.

I've gone from the current version to an older version before on the same scene...just did that today actually because 4.15 was giving me grief and I wanted to see if it would behave in an older version.  

melissastjames said:

kyoto kid said:

Nyghtfall said:

kyoto kid said:

...but if you have an Nvida GPU, why not just use Nvidia View mode?  Seems Filament needs a few add ons for features that are already part of either Iray or 3DL.

Because Filament doesn't need processing time like nVidia Iray mode.  Any changes you make to your scene are instantly drawn, and you can navigate your scene as smoothly as you do in Texture Shaded mode.

,,.the downside, to get Filament I need to install 4.15 which I have heard has some annoying bugs that I really don't care to deal with (the 4.12.0.47 beta release has been surprisingly extremely stable) and which does not support GTX GPUs as well as it does RTX ones.  Apologies, I cannot afford even a 20xx card let alone a 30xx one (If I can even find one) and I like being able to render with optitex acceleration off as it consumes more VRAM.  I don't find the few moments it takes to refresh on my Titan-X to really be much of a bother like it was when I was still rendering on the CPU.  As is, I generally use Texture Shaded mode for the most part and only switch to Iray when I need to check lighting, in render effects (such as fog, smoke, bloom, & such), and camera settings (like DOF) without having to set up test renders. 

Filament has proven useful when using a HDRI background...it will render in the preview, so you can freely adjust the dome to line things up rather than having to adjust and wait...adjust and wait...adjust and wait with the Iray preview.

You could always save a copy of your preferred Daz version and then install 4.15 just to try it. I have several versions of the .exe saved...they all use the same content directories.  

..I have IBL Master which lets me see and adjust the positioning of HDRIs in Texture Shaded mode. 

Opening a scene in a newer version and making/saving any changes to it will prevent it from opening in an older one.

richardandtracy said:

kyoto kid said:

,,.the downside, to get Filament I need to install 4.15 which I have heard has some annoying bugs that I really don't care to deal with ... 

I have Filament on my 4.14 version, which doesn't seem equipped with all the bugs in 4.15.

Regards,

Richard

...however 4.14 is no longer available as it's been superseded by 4.15  

Philemo_Carrara said:

I share Wendy's opinion.

So, no, I have no plan for implementing Filament as a renderer in Carrara. Being able to import Filament PBR shaders in Carrara is another matter.

In any case, I'm not entirely happy with the current import process, so a new version of the PBR plugin is planned.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

chickenman said:

@Philemo_Carrara

Would you be interested in trying to create a bridge from Carrara to Filament to provide us this new PBR render engine?

Now tht DAZ is supporting Filament in Studio and the fact that it it is free found here https://google.github.io/filament/

Then we would be able to utilize any of the filiment shaders with out any hassles..

IMO this is pointless.

Carrara native engine runs absolue rings around Filament which handles transmaps and shadows so badly.

I use Filament a lot in DAZ studio because it is better than OpenGL which I used to use a lot because the alternatives IE iray and 3Delight are so incredibly slow and resource demanding on my hardware 

but

given the option I prefer Carrara native any day

that said for speed and PBR Octane is my choice but obviously not affordable to everyone (including me if I didn't already own it)

now if one was looking at integrating Cycles and Eevee I would say please go for it!

adding I can render Carrara at less than one frame a second if transmapping and raytraced shadows is totally avoided, my only problem is my CPU gets too hot!

Thank you for your thoughts, I was looking more towards the shaders anyway as they are starting to make thier way into the store.

kyoto kid said:

,,.the downside, to get Filament I need to install 4.15 which I have heard has some annoying bugs that I really don't care to deal with ... 

I have Filament on my 4.14 version, which doesn't seem equipped with all the bugs in 4.15.

Regards,

Richard

kyoto kid said:

Nyghtfall said:

kyoto kid said:

...but if you have an Nvida GPU, why not just use Nvidia View mode?  Seems Filament needs a few add ons for features that are already part of either Iray or 3DL.

Because Filament doesn't need processing time like nVidia Iray mode.  Any changes you make to your scene are instantly drawn, and you can navigate your scene as smoothly as you do in Texture Shaded mode.

,,.the downside, to get Filament I need to install 4.15 which I have heard has some annoying bugs that I really don't care to deal with (the 4.12.0.47 beta release has been surprisingly extremely stable) and which does not support GTX GPUs as well as it does RTX ones.  Apologies, I cannot afford even a 20xx card let alone a 30xx one (If I can even find one) and I like being able to render with optitex acceleration off as it consumes more VRAM.  I don't find the few moments it takes to refresh on my Titan-X to really be much of a bother like it was when I was still rendering on the CPU.  As is, I generally use Texture Shaded mode for the most part and only switch to Iray when I need to check lighting, in render effects (such as fog, smoke, bloom, & such), and camera settings (like DOF) without having to set up test renders. 

Filament has proven useful when using a HDRI background...it will render in the preview, so you can freely adjust the dome to line things up rather than having to adjust and wait...adjust and wait...adjust and wait with the Iray preview.

You could always save a copy of your preferred Daz version and then install 4.15 just to try it. I have several versions of the .exe saved...they all use the same content directories.  

Nyghtfall said:

kyoto kid said:

...but if you have an Nvida GPU, why not just use Nvidia View mode?  Seems Filament needs a few add ons for features that are already part of either Iray or 3DL.

Because Filament doesn't need processing time like nVidia Iray mode.  Any changes you make to your scene are instantly drawn, and you can navigate your scene as smoothly as you do in Texture Shaded mode.

..the downside, to get Filament I need to install 4.15 which I have heard has some annoying bugs that I really don't care to deal with (the 4.12.0.47 beta release has been surprisingly extremely stable) and which does not support GTX GPUs as well as it does RTX ones.  Apologies, I cannot afford even a 20xx card let alone a 30xx one (If I can even find one) and I like being able to render with optitex acceleration off as it consumes more VRAM.  I don't find the few moments it takes to refresh on my Titan-X to really be much of a bother like it was when I was still rendering on the CPU.  As is, I generally use Texture Shaded mode for the most part and only switch to Iray when I need to check lighting, in render effects (such as fog, smoke, bloom, & such), and camera settings (like DOF) without having to set up test renders. 

KyotoKid: With my GTX1060 a simple scene can take about 10 seconds to be usably visible in iRay preview mode. In filament it's about 3 seconds. When posing, I must admit neither is fast enough to be usable. So, I use texture preview then pop over to iRay preview to check lighting.

kyoto kid said:

...but if you have an Nvida GPU, why not just use Nvidia View mode?  Seems Filament needs a few add ons for features that are already part of either Iray or 3DL.

Because Filament doesn't need processing time like nVidia Iray mode.  Any changes you make to your scene are instantly drawn, and you can navigate your scene as smoothly as you do in Texture Shaded mode.

...but if you have an Nvida GPU, why not just use Nvidia View mode?  Seems Filament needs a few add ons for features that are already included in Iray.

Ivy said:

Maybe this one of the  reason why daz is trying to move to Filament.

Filament wasn't designed to be an alternative to Iray or 3DL for production renders.  It's a PBR viewport draw option designed to provide real-time shaded previews of your work before you render them out.