Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

The old Texture Shaded preview didn't do faqlloff on lights (or shadows) so a more sophisticated version is likely to be dimmer. Turning Preview Lights off is the way you are intended to get a clear light for scene setup without regard to the actual lighting.

You are probably correct but what I said is actually what I do so I was confused. I decided to test my settings in both 4.23 and 2025. In each version I set the view to 'Texture Shaded' and then turned the 'Preview Lights' on and off a few times. What I found is that 'Preview Lights' does not make any difference in either 4.23 or 2025. My best guess is that the menu item "Window > Preview Lights (Ctrl+L)" does not have any effect when in 'Texture Shaded' mode and that in 4.23 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' OFF and in 2025 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' ON. I'm not sure about this but the bottom line is that in 4.23 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it remains light and I can see everything clearly but in 2025 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it gets dark and I can no longer see anything. I'm attaching a PDF file showing the effect clearly.

Do youn in fact have light nodes (Point, Spot, or Distant) in the scene? Those are the only ones that DS will try to preview, so if you don't have any of them disabling preview Lights will have no effect on them. If you do have the ehadlamp on the Preivew Lights off will look the same as Preview Lights on.

I have components in the scene that emit light that came with products used to build the scene but I did not add any point, spot, or distant lights and none of these items appear in the 'Scene' tab. Perhaps that is why 'Preview Lights' has no effect.

Regarding 'Headlamps' I was using the 'Perspective View' in my examples which is not a camera. I believe headlamps apply only to cameras but perhaps I'm mistaken? Is there a 'Headlamp' setting that works when you are using 'Perspective View'?

The Headlamp is, by default, on when there are no actual light nodes (as oposed to emissive objects or the environmrnt map or sun/sky) in the scene, regardless of whether you are viewing through a camera or a view. It can be switched off or on in Render Settings>Editor tab, in the General group, which will afect anything but cameras with a local setting overriding the global.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand how things work in DAZ Studio very well but I was doing exactly the same thing using the exact same scene with the exact same components and the behavior in 2025 is quite different than it is in 4.23. I'd like to know if there are any settings I can change in 2025 to make it behave the same way that 4.23 does.

Thank you for pointing out the setting for 'Auto Headlamp' on the 'Render Settings' tab. If I ever knew about it I've forgotten! Unfortunately this doesn't address my problem because this setting is set to 'Never' in my scene so it was off in both 4.23 and 2025 unless somehow the setting is overwritten.

You have been very helpful, thank you for taking the time to chat about this issue. DAZ is complex software and it's nice to chat with someone who knows it far better than I do. I feel bad for taking so much of your time and for all the posts on the same subject. Thanks again!

jjb24 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

The old Texture Shaded preview didn't do faqlloff on lights (or shadows) so a more sophisticated version is likely to be dimmer. Turning Preview Lights off is the way you are intended to get a clear light for scene setup without regard to the actual lighting.

You are probably correct but what I said is actually what I do so I was confused. I decided to test my settings in both 4.23 and 2025. In each version I set the view to 'Texture Shaded' and then turned the 'Preview Lights' on and off a few times. What I found is that 'Preview Lights' does not make any difference in either 4.23 or 2025. My best guess is that the menu item "Window > Preview Lights (Ctrl+L)" does not have any effect when in 'Texture Shaded' mode and that in 4.23 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' OFF and in 2025 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' ON. I'm not sure about this but the bottom line is that in 4.23 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it remains light and I can see everything clearly but in 2025 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it gets dark and I can no longer see anything. I'm attaching a PDF file showing the effect clearly.

Do youn in fact have light nodes (Point, Spot, or Distant) in the scene? Those are the only ones that DS will try to preview, so if you don't have any of them disabling preview Lights will have no effect on them. If you do have the ehadlamp on the Preivew Lights off will look the same as Preview Lights on.

I have components in the scene that emit light that came with products used to build the scene but I did not add any point, spot, or distant lights and none of these items appear in the 'Scene' tab. Perhaps that is why 'Preview Lights' has no effect.

Regarding 'Headlamps' I was using the 'Perspective View' in my examples which is not a camera. I believe headlamps apply only to cameras but perhaps I'm mistaken? Is there a 'Headlamp' setting that works when you are using 'Perspective View'?

The Headlamp is, by default, on when there are no actual light nodes (as oposed to emissive objects or the environmrnt map or sun/sky) in the scene, regardless of whether you are viewing through a camera or a view. It can be switched off or on in Render Settings>Editor tab, in the General group, which will afect anything but cameras with a local setting overriding the global.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand how things work in DAZ Studio very well but I was doing exactly the same thing using the exact same scene with the exact same components and the behavior in 2025 is quite different than it is in 4.23. I'd like to know if there are any settings I can change in 2025 to make it behave the same way that 4.23 does.

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

The old Texture Shaded preview didn't do faqlloff on lights (or shadows) so a more sophisticated version is likely to be dimmer. Turning Preview Lights off is the way you are intended to get a clear light for scene setup without regard to the actual lighting.

You are probably correct but what I said is actually what I do so I was confused. I decided to test my settings in both 4.23 and 2025. In each version I set the view to 'Texture Shaded' and then turned the 'Preview Lights' on and off a few times. What I found is that 'Preview Lights' does not make any difference in either 4.23 or 2025. My best guess is that the menu item "Window > Preview Lights (Ctrl+L)" does not have any effect when in 'Texture Shaded' mode and that in 4.23 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' OFF and in 2025 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' ON. I'm not sure about this but the bottom line is that in 4.23 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it remains light and I can see everything clearly but in 2025 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it gets dark and I can no longer see anything. I'm attaching a PDF file showing the effect clearly.

Do youn in fact have light nodes (Point, Spot, or Distant) in the scene? Those are the only ones that DS will try to preview, so if you don't have any of them disabling preview Lights will have no effect on them. If you do have the ehadlamp on the Preivew Lights off will look the same as Preview Lights on.

I have components in the scene that emit light that came with products used to build the scene but I did not add any point, spot, or distant lights and none of these items appear in the 'Scene' tab. Perhaps that is why 'Preview Lights' has no effect.

Regarding 'Headlamps' I was using the 'Perspective View' in my examples which is not a camera. I believe headlamps apply only to cameras but perhaps I'm mistaken? Is there a 'Headlamp' setting that works when you are using 'Perspective View'?
I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand how things work in DAZ Studio very well but I was doing exactly the same thing using the exact same scene with the exact same components and the behavior in 2025 is quite different than it is in 4.23. I'd like to know if there are any settings I can change in 2025 to make it behave the same way that 4.23 does.

jjb24 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

The old Texture Shaded preview didn't do faqlloff on lights (or shadows) so a more sophisticated version is likely to be dimmer. Turning Preview Lights off is the way you are intended to get a clear light for scene setup without regard to the actual lighting.

You are probably correct but what I said is actually what I do so I was confused. I decided to test my settings in both 4.23 and 2025. In each version I set the view to 'Texture Shaded' and then turned the 'Preview Lights' on and off a few times. What I found is that 'Preview Lights' does not make any difference in either 4.23 or 2025. My best guess is that the menu item "Window > Preview Lights (Ctrl+L)" does not have any effect when in 'Texture Shaded' mode and that in 4.23 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' OFF and in 2025 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' ON. I'm not sure about this but the bottom line is that in 4.23 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it remains light and I can see everything clearly but in 2025 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it gets dark and I can no longer see anything. I'm attaching a PDF file showing the effect clearly.

Do youn in fact have light nodes (Point, Spot, or Distant) in the scene? Those are the only ones that DS will try to preview, so if you don't have any of them disabling preview Lights will have no effect on them. If you do have the ehadlamp on the Preivew Lights off will look the same as Preview Lights on.

wsterdan said:

Best. Tuesday. Ever.

Thanks for the great news and your notes.

Super pumped, as you can imagine. I've been waiting 4.5 years to use Filament on my Macs and of course, Filatoon. Your Easy Filatoon will also be getting a workout.

HAHAH I'm really happy to hear that! I'm looking forward to seeing the adventures and stories you create with Easy FilaToon! :D

Richard Haseltine said:

jjb24 said:

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

The old Texture Shaded preview didn't do faqlloff on lights (or shadows) so a more sophisticated version is likely to be dimmer. Turning Preview Lights off is the way you are intended to get a clear light for scene setup without regard to the actual lighting.

You are probably correct but what I said is actually what I do so I was confused. I decided to test my settings in both 4.23 and 2025. In each version I set the view to 'Texture Shaded' and then turned the 'Preview Lights' on and off a few times. What I found is that 'Preview Lights' does not make any difference in either 4.23 or 2025. My best guess is that the menu item "Window > Preview Lights (Ctrl+L)" does not have any effect when in 'Texture Shaded' mode and that in 4.23 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' OFF and in 2025 the behavior is 'Preview Lights' ON. I'm not sure about this but the bottom line is that in 4.23 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it remains light and I can see everything clearly but in 2025 when I zoom in on a scene in a dark corner it gets dark and I can no longer see anything. I'm attaching a PDF file showing the effect clearly.
 

jjb24 said:

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

The old Texture Shaded preview didn't do faqlloff on lights (or shadows) so a more sophisticated version is likely to be dimmer. Turning Preview Lights off is the way you are intended to get a clear light for scene setup without regard to the actual lighting.

I normally use the 'Texture Shaded' view with the 'Preview Lights' in the main Viewport when I'm working on a scene and I'm curious about the changes to the lighting. It's typically much darker than it was in 4.23 which makes it harder to work on the scene. It does appear to be more realistic, i.e. closer to what a render will look like, because when you look at places that are not near lights in the scene it gets darker. I want a view that is well lit regardless of the scene lighting when I work on it. You can't see small clothing poke through problems or feet slightly off the floor in the dark. When I want to see a more realistic view I change to 'Filament' or 'NVIDIA Iray' view. I'm not sure if this is related to the lighting change making it more realistic but moving the view around or zooming in and out are much slower in 2025 than they are in 4.23 which is frustrating when working on a scene.
Am I missing something? There must be some advantage to the change but I don't know what it is. Also, is there a way to lighten things up so I can see everything clearly when working on the scene? Perhaps there is another view setting I should be using instead of 'Texture Shaded'?
On a positive note, I was unaware that 4.23 would not use a 50xx graphics card and stretched my budget way out of shape a month ago to buy a new PC with a 5090 and I'm glad it's no longer a very expensive paper weight. My first challenge for DAZ Studio 2025 was a scene that used 27BG of VRAM and it rendered in 3 minutes. (Previously I used the CPU to render the scene and went to bed while it worked.) Unless someone has some good advice for me about the Viewport my plan is to build scenes in 4.23 and then render them in 2025 alpha.

almahiedra said:

Leana said:

Peter Wade said:

It's not showing me an option to render in 3Delight. If this is going to be a permanent feature and not just something they haven't implemented yet then I will be keeping verion 4.23, I'd better download and backup the installer before they take it away.

Unfortunately 3DL render engine is listed as "retired" in this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/727631/daz-studio-2025-6-25-2025-x-evergreen#latest

The latest version of DS4 will remain available in your product library for download (like they did with DS2 and 3).

All modules for Renderman construction are displayed in Shader Mixer. Of course, if they can no longer be compiled, their utility is null. It would be great if they added an IDE to write our own material files (.mat) and the ability to compile them into custom .filamat files. 

bricks show which shader language(s) they are compatible with, and there is a filter option in the brickyard. Bricks (Default) > Functions > Filament > Custom Filament provides access to choosing a custom filamat file. As noted in http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log_4_23_0_1#4_22_1_94 it is possible to compile, using ./bin/matc.exe

With DAZ Studio 2025 out, I can finally use Filament and Filatoon on my Mac.

Besides the new rendering options, D|S also works much, much better for the type of animation I do. If I were doing anything more action-oriented or special effects heavy, I'd definitely work in Blender, it's hands down superior for *real* animation.

My stuff, though, is more dialogue heavy, and doesn't ask for a lot of animation chops... which is lucky for me, since I don't have any.

When I made my first attempts at 3D animation a few years ago, DAZ Studio forced me to output frames instead of movies (not a huge drawback); it also wouldn't import audio, something that I'd like to have to help with the minor action that does occur in conversations.

And finally, the only Mimic-based lip synch was only available in the 32-bit version. 

Mimic's still just 32-bit, sadly (I'd pay big bucks to have it in DAZ Studio 64 bit someday), but everything else works so much better for me.

I started testing Filatoon yesterday, and using 3Diva's Easy Filatoon I'm slowly working out my toon style and setting up my characters, sort of bringing over the 2D characters I used previously.

The biggest changes (other than Filament/toon) is that now I can import audio into my DAZ Scenes, and I can export a .mov file that *kinda* has the audio included.

The .mov file DAZ exports for me is a very simple container file (1 megabyte, roughly) that only links to the rendered frames in the temp folder. If I take the .mov file and drag it into iMovie (I haven't tested any other movie editing software yet), it imports the frames AND the audio into a single asset file in iMovie, which I can then export as an mp4, with sound.

Huge time saver

I took a run at manually lip syncing yesterday, and I am horrible at it. I know I'd get better with time and practice, but it took me almost 90 minutes to lip sync the mouth movements, then add some eye blinks and minor head movement (that was more like nervous ticks) for nine seconds of movie. The thought of working five or six hours just to key frame a minute of movie seemed way, way too much like "work" and not "fun"... but "fun" was what I signed up for when I retired.

I dug out my trusty old 2012 iMac and installed a content library for just Genesis 3 for lip syncing. I access the iMac over wifi and screen-share it, so I'm basically running 32-bit DAZ Studio  on my MacBook Pro M4PRo.

I'm still defining the 2D Toon style I'm going for, so the shaders and such aren't final, but I grabbed two audio tracks from the first 2D animation I did, lip synced them to a female Science officer, saved out the two pose presets (I save out *just* the upper neck and head parts so that applying the pose doesn't change anything else on the character... if they're walking, after the pose is applied they're walking and talking) and rendered out the two files at 720p for testing purposes.

Here's the 22 seconds of animation; from the time I started the lip syncs to the time I uploaded the video to my website only about 35 minutes had transpired, so I'm getting about 20 seconds of video (with sound) in roughly 30 minutes.

https://sterdan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/103-104-Science-Explains.mp4

I'm a very happy camper right now. Still an awful lot of practice and learning ahead, but it's suddenly fun again. 

meaznet said:

Also see the viewport doesn't have an option for Cartoon Shaded anymore.

It is expected that users go into Filament and use Filatoon for toon-style images, though this is of course more steps than just switching Drawstyle for a quick look-see.

Ruthven said:

Coi coupon di oggi non è male, comunque. Ho preso un po' di roba caruccia spendendo molto poco. Credo che proverò la alpha 2025, più che altro per togliermi il gusto di pastrugnare con Filament e FilaToon

Aspetta la beta, al momento è tutto sfasciato, mal funzionante oppure del tutto rimosso. A me non funzionano i controlli di camera o i modificatori di tastiera, per esempio.

Però, indovina, hanno aggiustato il Frame Selected dopo sette anni di richieste...

Coi coupon di oggi non è male, comunque. Ho preso un po' di roba caruccia spendendo molto poco. Credo che proverò la alpha 2025, più che altro per togliermi il gusto di pastrugnare con Filament e FilaToon

hjake said:

Imago said:

FrankTheTank said:

Well, that is discouraging if true. Many of us have been reconsidering Daz for animation now that Filament has made many recent improvements. If they abandon animation support, then I have zero use for Daz 2025, and I will just stick with DS 4.23.x and they will lose me as a customer going forward.

But I was expecting to see much more support for animation now that Filament allows real time rendering and viewport playback. Animation with iray was a non-starter for me, but now with Filament it has given me hope. I've dabbled in Blender, Unreal & Unity in the past, trying to use the various bridges, and to be honest Daz is not bad when you buy all the plugins and add-ons. I'd much rather animate in Daz Studio. it is very capable once you figure out the tricks, and there are some very good tutorials on this as well.

So Daz should really not abandon animation! Stop teasing us with Filament if you are going to abandon animation.

Exaclty. Once you grasp the full potential, DAZ Studio is great for animations. I really hope that's just the alpha to be missing those tools.

 

Well if 3Delight does not move to DS 5, then DS 4 will still be available and 3Delight is integrated into other progams including a cloud version ( https://www.3delight.com/signup-landing-page ). So if your business depends on 3Delight, then you are not out of options as of today. DAZ 3D shifted to iRay several years ago and promoted iRay materials for new products. As a business, that was a pretty good indication that they were moving away from a 3Delight centric platform. More render platforms means divided development resources. Also, I did not see any DAZ Studio 3Delight innovations over the last few years.

Businesses must change and innovate or die, especially in in an industry that is always rapidly moving forward. 3Delight moved away from REYES compliance with 3Delight NSI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Delight ) because 3Delight could not innovate.

If DAZ does drop 3Delight from DS, it might mean more resources applied to improving animation in filemant or iRay. Although I will be honest, I don't hold a lot of hope for that scenario since it seems the team developing/maintaining DS4 was the same team developing DS 5 which is still in alpha after more than 4 years. My understanding was that DS 5 was a re-write of DS using DS 4 as a guideline instead of an incremental build. If that is true, then 4 years at ALPHA level is a long time.

DS 2025 is DS 6 technically. I'm not sure what you mean by the rest, but be wary of attaching too much weight to things that were not written by the devs.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-alpha-and-beta-testing/

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-black-box-vs-white-vs-grey-box-testing/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

At some point iRay may go bye-bye and DAZ 3D will have to find some other render engine to use. This is the cycle of software life Simba.

 

hjake said:

So if your business depends on 3Delight, then you are not out of options as of today.

There's still a little issue... You need 3Delight working inside DAZ Studio in order to create the .RIB files to be sent to the Stand Alone application or any other compatible one. So that's not a suitable solution, sadly.

Unless there is some kind of .RIB exporter that doesn't need the 3Delight plugin, but I don't think someone will develop something like that.

I'll keep my 4.12 and 4.21 installations really dear and wait for the next news. Who knows, maybe NVidia will stop supporting IRay and DAZ3D will return to 3Delight... Or make Filament fully usable.

Imago said:

FrankTheTank said:

Well, that is discouraging if true. Many of us have been reconsidering Daz for animation now that Filament has made many recent improvements. If they abandon animation support, then I have zero use for Daz 2025, and I will just stick with DS 4.23.x and they will lose me as a customer going forward.

But I was expecting to see much more support for animation now that Filament allows real time rendering and viewport playback. Animation with iray was a non-starter for me, but now with Filament it has given me hope. I've dabbled in Blender, Unreal & Unity in the past, trying to use the various bridges, and to be honest Daz is not bad when you buy all the plugins and add-ons. I'd much rather animate in Daz Studio. it is very capable once you figure out the tricks, and there are some very good tutorials on this as well.

So Daz should really not abandon animation! Stop teasing us with Filament if you are going to abandon animation.

Exaclty. Once you grasp the full potential, DAZ Studio is great for animations. I really hope that's just the alpha to be missing those tools.

Well if 3Delight does not move to DS 5, then DS 4 will still be available and 3Delight is integrated into other progams including a cloud version ( https://www.3delight.com/signup-landing-page ). So if your business depends on 3Delight, then you are not out of options as of today. DAZ 3D shifted to iRay several years ago and promoted iRay materials for new products. As a business, that was a pretty good indication that they were moving away from a 3Delight centric platform. More render platforms means divided development resources. Also, I did not see any DAZ Studio 3Delight innovations over the last few years.

Businesses must change and innovate or die, especially in in an industry that is always rapidly moving forward. 3Delight moved away from REYES compliance with 3Delight NSI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Delight ) because 3Delight could not innovate.

If DAZ does drop 3Delight from DS, it might mean more resources applied to improving animation in filemant or iRay. Although I will be honest, I don't hold a lot of hope for that scenario since it seems the team developing/maintaining DS4 was the same team developing DS 5 which is still in alpha after more than 4 years. My understanding was that DS 5 was a re-write of DS using DS 4 as a guideline instead of an incremental build. If that is true, then 4 years at ALPHA level is a long time.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-alpha-and-beta-testing/

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-black-box-vs-white-vs-grey-box-testing/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

At some point iRay may go bye-bye and DAZ 3D will have to find some other render engine to use. This is the cycle of software life Simba.

Leana said:

FrankTheTank said:

Imago said:

So... AniMate, GraphMate and KeyMate doesn't work anymore, the Timeline is broken, 3Delight has been removed forever...

Basically you guys are planning to totally kill animation in DAZ Studio 6.

Thanks a lot DAZ3D!

I guess there's no left reason to keep buying from the store since, in the terrible case I lose my DAZ Studio backups, I will simply close my business.

Well, that is discouraging if true. Many of us have been reconsidering Daz for animation now that Filament has made many recent improvements. If they abandon animation support, then I have zero use for Daz 2025, and I will just stick with DS 4.23.x and they will lose me as a customer going forward.

But I was expecting to see much more support for animation now that Filament allows real time rendering and viewport playback. Animation with iray was a non-starter for me, but now with Filament it has given me hope. I've dabbled in Blender, Unreal & Unity in the past, trying to use the various bridges, and to be honest Daz is not bad when you buy all the plugins and add-ons. I'd much rather animate in Daz Studio. it is very capable once you figure out the tricks, and there are some very good tutorials on this as well.

So Daz should really not abandon animation! Stop teasing us with Filament if you are going to abandon animation.

Last I checked Daz never said they would abandon animation.

This is an ALPHA version of DS2025, so having some features not working completely is to be expected.

Moreover Animate, as well as the GraphMate and KeyMate standalone plugins, are not developped by Daz, it would be up to their creator to build a DS2025 version of the plugin, just like for all 3rd-party plugins.
That may or may not happen once Daz releases an updated SDK, but they will probably wait for DS2025 to be more stable before they do that (again, this is an alpha version).

KeyMate and GraphMate were purchased by Daz, and are integrated into the Timeline now. So it is unlikely daz will update them. AniMate is still a third-party add-on and so does depend on the owners for updating, which will depend on a stable SDK.

FrankTheTank said:

Imago said:

So... AniMate, GraphMate and KeyMate doesn't work anymore, the Timeline is broken, 3Delight has been removed forever...

Basically you guys are planning to totally kill animation in DAZ Studio 6.

Thanks a lot DAZ3D!

I guess there's no left reason to keep buying from the store since, in the terrible case I lose my DAZ Studio backups, I will simply close my business.

Well, that is discouraging if true. Many of us have been reconsidering Daz for animation now that Filament has made many recent improvements. If they abandon animation support, then I have zero use for Daz 2025, and I will just stick with DS 4.23.x and they will lose me as a customer going forward.

But I was expecting to see much more support for animation now that Filament allows real time rendering and viewport playback. Animation with iray was a non-starter for me, but now with Filament it has given me hope. I've dabbled in Blender, Unreal & Unity in the past, trying to use the various bridges, and to be honest Daz is not bad when you buy all the plugins and add-ons. I'd much rather animate in Daz Studio. it is very capable once you figure out the tricks, and there are some very good tutorials on this as well.

So Daz should really not abandon animation! Stop teasing us with Filament if you are going to abandon animation.

Last I checked Daz never said they would abandon animation.

This is an ALPHA version of DS2025, so having some features not working completely is to be expected.

Moreover Animate, as well as the GraphMate and KeyMate standalone plugins, are not developped by Daz, it would be up to their creator to build a DS2025 version of the plugin, just like for all 3rd-party plugins.
That may or may not happen once Daz releases an updated SDK, but they will probably wait for DS2025 to be more stable before they do that (again, this is an alpha version).

FrankTheTank said:

Well, that is discouraging if true. Many of us have been reconsidering Daz for animation now that Filament has made many recent improvements. If they abandon animation support, then I have zero use for Daz 2025, and I will just stick with DS 4.23.x and they will lose me as a customer going forward.

But I was expecting to see much more support for animation now that Filament allows real time rendering and viewport playback. Animation with iray was a non-starter for me, but now with Filament it has given me hope. I've dabbled in Blender, Unreal & Unity in the past, trying to use the various bridges, and to be honest Daz is not bad when you buy all the plugins and add-ons. I'd much rather animate in Daz Studio. it is very capable once you figure out the tricks, and there are some very good tutorials on this as well.

So Daz should really not abandon animation! Stop teasing us with Filament if you are going to abandon animation.

Exaclty. Once you grasp the full potential, DAZ Studio is great for animations. I really hope that's just the alpha to be missing those tools.

Imago said:

So... AniMate, GraphMate and KeyMate doesn't work anymore, the Timeline is broken, 3Delight has been removed forever...

Basically you guys are planning to totally kill animation in DAZ Studio 6.

Thanks a lot DAZ3D!

I guess there's no left reason to keep buying from the store since, in the terrible case I lose my DAZ Studio backups, I will simply close my business.

Well, that is discouraging if true. Many of us have been reconsidering Daz for animation now that Filament has made many recent improvements. If they abandon animation support, then I have zero use for Daz 2025, and I will just stick with DS 4.23.x and they will lose me as a customer going forward.

But I was expecting to see much more support for animation now that Filament allows real time rendering and viewport playback. Animation with iray was a non-starter for me, but now with Filament it has given me hope. I've dabbled in Blender, Unreal & Unity in the past, trying to use the various bridges, and to be honest Daz is not bad when you buy all the plugins and add-ons. I'd much rather animate in Daz Studio. it is very capable once you figure out the tricks, and there are some very good tutorials on this as well.

So Daz should really not abandon animation! Stop teasing us with Filament if you are going to abandon animation.