From what I can tell Filament is much faster than 3DL. 

Filament isn't a joke at all. It's quite fun to render animations with, imo.

Well that may be the case, but trading something better for something worse than we already have because it's quicker, but not as good as we had already have seems a zero sum game. I see a drunken da Vinci doing the Mona Lisa with a 4B pencil on the back of a coaster in a bar because he couldn't be bothererd to get his real canvas and paint-set out. Quickness isn't a subsitute for quality. Render in Iray and be done with it... don't expect people not to notice if you've taken a shortcut with some trickery.... they will.

don't tell me what to do mate 

the masters all used charcoal sketches BTW and I don't think much of the Mona Lisa TBH

also those French Impressionists could have used much better resolution for their renders 

From what I can tell Filament is much faster than 3DL. 

Filament isn't a joke at all. It's quite fun to render animations with, imo.

Well that may be the case, but trading something better for something worse than we already have because it's quicker, but not as good as we had already have seems a zero sum game. I see a drunken da Vinci doing the Mona Lisa with a 4B pencil on the back of a coaster in a bar because he couldn't be bothererd to get his real canvas and paint-set out. Quickness isn't a subsitute for quality. Render in Iray and be done with it... don't expect people not to notice if you've taken a shortcut with some trickery.... they will.

Cool animation test.  Is this a sign that you will be doing more animations?

Maybe. I definitely need to work on my skills. It's pitiful how long it takes me to figure out how to do all things animation. Then there's the post production stuff inside HitFilm. Yikes! I have to say I do love how fast an animation renders with Filament. It's a shame it totally trashes hair. I guess that means mostly toon animations for me. I think the more solid toon hairs will render fine in Filament. I haven't tried them yet. Right now, I'm just playing around and having fun learning some new skills.

I might go that series of animations newbies go through to learn how to animate though. You know all those bouncing the ball and creating your own walk cycle type stuff. I had a list somewhere of things a new person should try animating while learning. I need to dig that up.

One wonders why if time could be better spent, if animation and quickness of rendering was the point of quick and dirty Filamant rendering, wouldn't that time be better spent just using 3DL. One step forward and two steps backward, is this Filament thing a joke?

From what I can tell Filament is much faster than 3DL. 

Filament isn't a joke at all. It's quite fun to render animations with, imo.

3Delight cannot be improved because DAZ studio is unable to impliment the latest version without breaking everything made for this one, shaders, scripts etc,  there have been posts on that topic before.

broken record warning

Nobody is stopping you using 3Delight, iray or openGL 

using Filament is optional 

DAZ can spend their time doing what they want, it is not your call Fred and not costing you anything 

I really am getting tired of people complaining about something I actually like using while they still have access to stuff I don't care for as much at no cost whatsoever.

and in some cases even getting very hostile as in one thread no longer here.

One wonders why if time could be better spent, if animation and quickness of rendering was the point of quick and dirty Filamant rendering, wouldn't that time be better spent just using 3DL. One step forward and two steps backward, is this Filament thing a joke?

What on earth are you on about? Comparing the rendering time of Filament and 3DL, Filament mops the floor with it and then some. There's nothing "dirty" about Filament either, it requires different settings just as one would expect when moving from 3DL to Iray or visavis. Some work needs to be done, sure, but to say one step forward and two steps back? That's just utter nonsense.
The hair issue in particular can be fixed, and I'm actually surprised it hasn't been done so quicker, given the plethora of information available on Blender's Eevee renderer, which work much in the same way.

I think that one of the problems seems to be that, according to some opinions in another thread, Filament in DAZ Studio is not the full render engine and is only intended for previews. I don't know whether Filament handles hair properly in the full version but I suspect that we won't get a "fix" because it is working as intended. The fact that DAZ promotes it for animations is another discussion, however.

One wonders why if time could be better spent, if animation and quickness of rendering was the point of quick and dirty Filamant rendering, wouldn't that time be better spent just using 3DL. One step forward and two steps backward, is this Filament thing a joke?

What on earth are you on about? Comparing the rendering time of Filament and 3DL, Filament mops the floor with it and then some. There's nothing "dirty" about Filament either, it requires different settings just as one would expect when moving from 3DL to Iray or visavis. Some work needs to be done, sure, but to say one step forward and two steps back? That's just utter nonsense.
The hair issue in particular can be fixed, and I'm actually surprised it hasn't been done so quicker, given the plethora of information available on Blender's Eevee renderer, which work much in the same way.

I don't know how many of you render at 5000 pixels, but it is something to be aware of. If you happen to try rendering a larger scene that you previously rendered in 4.12 that was close to your VRAM capacity, there is a possibility that it might not fit your VRAM in 4.14.

 

But IMO, I believe the speed is worth that trade. If it was a higher amount of VRAM, maybe I would be more hesitant, but I can work around VRAM limits by optimizing if needed. The performance gains I have seen are just too good to pass on. The benchmark scene does not even do it justice! This is where Iray needs to be to compete with growing competition. Though it is quite interesting to see Daz essentially hedge their bets with the addition of Filament, as finding an alternate render engine for animation is also a topic I and others have discussed at length.

I render at 10,000, 7680, 5120 and other time near 4k pixels. However I do use 2048 in some cases and none of those other sizes are needed for web  videos or images. Not sure if 4.14 is an option for me but if it was, maybe as a beta, but how many plug-ins does one lose with the beta or the Pro version? What would be the gain other than a live OpenGl preview option that surpasses the texture view yet falls short of Iray realism? My understanding is 4.14 is 4.12 with a filamont option to view and render scenes without Iray, by utilizing the CPU not to mention the texture issues regarding blonde balding hair. Also 4.12 broke a few things like IK chains, Strand Based Hair, and Iray Section Nodes, which are still broken in 4.14, but what else might be broken in 4.14? What is the gain vs the cost for those of us who don't have Kepler or Maxwell cards? Some people using 4.14 say it works well while others say it crashes. After reading 150 pages on various forums it seems that some bugs and crashes are avoided and 4.14 runs mush much smoother with CPU enabled. Wondering what your thoughts are.

One wonders why if time could be better spent, if animation and quickness of rendering was the point of quick and dirty Filamant rendering, wouldn't that time be better spent just using 3DL. One step forward and two steps backward, is this Filament thing a joke?

Here's hoping Daz is working on a solution to the "jell-o hair" situation with the filament renderer. In the meantime, for those that can still use Iray, a quick tip would be to set up an Iray canvas to only render out the hair, then swap back to your main scene in filament, hide the hair altogether and render it in filament. From there, make the hair visible again, but this time use the spot render and render out only the hair. With that done, you can combine your 2 renders in your flavor of image editor for some great results. Unfortunately, I cannot possibly imagine using this process for a fullblown animation, though for stills it's a very quick (in terms setup and render time given you only use iray to render the hair) and effective method.

Yeah, as I was reading your comments I was thinking ... animation? After all, that's about the only reason I might have for using Filament. I actually prefer OpenGL for previews (switching into IRay preview for a quick check). 

The Filament hair render is the one thing dissuading me from Filament for animations. I've seen some here that seem to have reasonable hair but they are usually far from the camera and I believe that only very dark hair gives those reasonable results.

Here's hoping Daz is working on a solution to the "jell-o hair" situation with the filament renderer. In the meantime, for those that can still use Iray, a quick tip would be to set up an Iray canvas to only render out the hair, then swap back to your main scene in filament, hide the hair altogether and render it in filament. From there, make the hair visible again, but this time use the spot render and render out only the hair. With that done, you can combine your 2 renders in your flavor of image editor for some great results. Unfortunately, I cannot possibly imagine using this process for a fullblown animation, though for stills it's a very quick (in terms setup and render time given you only use iray to render the hair) and effective method.

I started a render thread in Art studio if anyone interested 

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/452621/filament-bring-out-the-pitchforks-i-mean-renders#latest

too much negativity being posted in other threads by people not wanting to use Filament so wanted one where people just shared renders

(and to stop me padding this one out with all my quickies)

nice thread, I'm on it!

Another test animation using Spring Dynamics and rendering with Filament. It took longer to figure out how to do all the post in HitFilm than it did to set up the shots and render out the video! I got creative and added a background image and used HitFlim's particle simulator for snow. I need to work on my transitions between cameras. The Filament render doesn't look too bad though. I need to see about tweaking the skin a little. I used an IBL lighting from an older 3Delight product. It's not great but not too bad either.

And another test animation using Spring Dynamics applied to a single node on the hat. The settings are too high and the hat is going crazy so I'll have to remember that for the next test. I rendered with Filament and a green plane as a green screen. I tried upping my film editing skills by adding a background and adding snow in HitFilm.

Interesting info on Filament. Thanks for it.

Thanks for your support, just waiting when the Holidays week pass through ( Thanksgiving)  to starting finalizing stuff next week.

I'm saving my Store Credit just for your next release!

I make sure stuff working in both Filament and Iray, so you going to have some fun Wendy , I liked the last video previews you made with the candle smoke , it was very nice , now if DAZ team add the shadow to the point lights in Filament , it would be even better since point lights are the key for indoor scenes in Filament 

I'm saving my Store Credit just for your next release!

I have no store credit but I reckon  it would take a new release by Mec4D to wheedle some money out of me to throw at DAZ before next year

Thank you and congratulations on your new laptop ! 

Can't wait for your new stuff to come out, your experiments look amazing as usal.

Was over the moon, to finally grab some of your shaders during the pc sale last month. Looking forward to playing with them soon, on a shiny new laptop

There are active threads on Filament in the Coomons and Daz Studio Discussion.

I's a Drawstyle, giving a better (but not perfect) visualisation of PBR materials than the old Texture Shaded without the overhead of the Iray drawstyle. You can render with it, though that isn't its primary intent, by setting the Render Enginwe to Viewport in Render Settings.

Is Filament a separate render engine?  If not, how could I get the fast Filament renders to occur?

What would I need in order to install a NVIDIA driver and its corresponding updates?

Could it be possible that my iRay renders may be slow due to the absence of a NVIDIA driver?

I believe it is more like a 2EV difference .. emissive surfaces don't seem to be mapped to anything .. DAZStudio lights seem to penetrate non-transmissive surfaces .. Filament seem to have different fall-off rates

I didn't really tested filament yet since I'm busy with diffeo hair. Thank you for the notes, I guess they need to tune it up. As for emissive surfaces that is expected though since indirect light needs to be baked unless you can raytrace.

I picked up Spring Dynamics during the recent sale. It's interesting. I've also been playing around with Filament a little now that I've got my computer set up to access it. Of course, that meant I had to try the two together to see how they worked. I'm amazed at how fast Filament rendered out a small section of animation. It's very quick. So here's a short animation using Springy. I applied Spring Dynamics to the antenae and manually animated the expressions and the spring itself.