Defiantly a difference between iray and filament render quality.  i wonder if filament baked/render,what ever you want to call it longer if it would clear up the artifacts?  I'm holding off on over writing my copy of the beta I have for now so maybe after i know you guys are not getting any bugs I'll update  my copy.

@3Diva Nice job on your first animation

my first look at Filament

can see artifacts but considering that same render just the dressed animated Viking maiden took 8 hours in iray

about 30 mins with the Red crow architecture prop pretty fast

It looks like Filament Renders just about as fast as Open GL (at least on my machine). With the same animation, the Open GL render animation took 11 minutes and 5 seconds, the Filament render animation took 11 minutes and 28 seconds.

Texture Shaded Open GL (11 minutes, 5 seconds):

https://player.vimeo.com/video/467992557

Filament Render (11 minutes, 28 seconds):

https://player.vimeo.com/video/467993040

The hair looks weird in the Filament render, but that might just be my shaders. And I couldn't figure out how to get the Environment Backdrop to show up in the Filament render. I'll have to do some more experimenting.

Filament has arrived for the beta 

Downloaded the beta, loaded up an animated scene, switched to Filament, hit play. I can actually see it move through all the frames instead of just bouncing around. This is so much better.

With that said, ahem, it's not a complete substitute for texture-shaded, especially if you depend heavily on emissives for your lighting.

Filament

Photoreal

So I'm liking the Filiament preview feature in the DS beta.  It's not Photoreal, but it's what I'll be using instead of texture-shaded, for sure.  Very fast, and gives a better idea of what's going on.

Texture-shaded

Filament

Photoreal

I'll keep an open mind about Filament, but the fact that it's designed for mobile devices is worth noting. For those interested in more info:

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

- Greg

I'm expecting it to be somewhat between Eevee and Radeon ProRender. I expect it won't be half bad actually, even with intel integrated GPUs or 3 year old AMD Radeon GPUs. I haven't actually tried to find an app to install on my Windows 10 PC that renders using Filament already though.

I'll keep an open mind about Filament, but the fact that it's designed for mobile devices is worth noting. For those interested in more info:

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

- Greg

They're up to 45 private builds since the last public build update. 20 since Ampere support was added. Not sure what the holdup is. At least one of those has to be stable enough for us peons.

Hold up is called Google Filament...

Probably.  Based on the changelog, it appears that Daz is looking to update the DS preview with a PBR engine.  Maybe we'll get closer to a realtime PBR preview?  That and the animation fixes would be nice to see, as long as Filament plays nice with Iray materials.

If the preview speed will be similar to iray's preview mode with all the recompiling, then I don't see it as viable option,rather waste of time. Will turbo fast change it back to gl as soon as I see the first hickup.

They had best take all the time they need and get it right then!

They're up to 45 private builds since the last public build update. 20 since Ampere support was added. Not sure what the holdup is. At least one of those has to be stable enough for us peons.

Hold up is called Google Filament...

Probably.  Based on the changelog, it appears that Daz is looking to update the DS preview with a PBR engine.  Maybe we'll get closer to a realtime PBR preview?  That and the animation fixes would be nice to see, as long as Filament plays nice with Iray materials.

If the preview speed will be similar to iray's preview mode with all the recompiling, then I don't see it as viable option,rather waste of time. Will turbo fast change it back to gl as soon as I see the first hickup.

They're up to 45 private builds since the last public build update. 20 since Ampere support was added. Not sure what the holdup is. At least one of those has to be stable enough for us peons.

Hold up is called Google Filament...

Probably.  Based on the changelog, it appears that Daz is looking to update the DS preview with a PBR engine.  Maybe we'll get closer to a realtime PBR preview?  That and the animation fixes would be nice to see, as long as Filament plays nice with Iray materials.

They're up to 45 private builds since the last public build update. 20 since Ampere support was added. Not sure what the holdup is. At least one of those has to be stable enough for us peons.

Hold up is called Google Filament...

The thing about adding render engines is that each will handle textures differently.  DS uses 3DL and Iray, and the PAs mostly supply only Iray-compliant materials, shaders, etc.  DS already works with the Optane plug-in, but you don't see Optane materials for DS assets in the Daz store or anywhere else.  Everyone has to weigh whether they would rather spend the money on an Nvida GPU or the time to fiddle with materials.

Daz has been tight-lipped about Filament.  For all we know it might just be an additional preview mode.  Every reference to Filament in the ChangeLog comes right before "DrawStyle".

They've said "No" before but they have also been working on Google Filament renderer with can use AMD GPU hardware directly to render as well as different types of mobile hardward and Apple hardware. It's all reliant of the multiple backend graphics libraries the Filament renderer uses on the different platforms.

https://github.com/google/filament

see the backend support list about 1/2 way down the page.

Clearly the animators here know more tricks than I do so I have a couple of questions. Has anyone seen Google Filament in action - I mean is it integrated in some application that we can look at? I have not found one yet and am wondering whether DAZ Studio might be the first.

Otherwise, I'm not sure about the posing/animation capabilities of game engines. I mean, it seems to me when I look at the videos out there that the animations are a series of stock movements strung together. Does Unity or Unreal have a timeline, keyframes and character posing like you would find in Blender or even DAZ Studio or is it more like the aniblock approach? The kite video above would suggest that there is some pretty advanced posing capability in Unreal but are we sure that the animation was done in Unreal or just the rendering?

So, distance-dependent SubD levels?

Tell me more of this Distance-dependent Sub D, as I'm really not aware of this feature.

Sorry, I was asking if that was what you meant - it isn't, as far as I know, something that DS has (and i'm not sure how much use it would be, unless Iray supported it to allow more vertices for nearby polygons for displacement/smoothing - more vertices alone are not a good thing, there has to be a way to differentiate them from the base position or there will be no extra detail; 3Delight already divides the mesh as needed for displacement/SubD so the feature isn't really needed there, I'd think).

Thanks for the answer, yeah I was hoping to have it supported like the heaven benchmark's engine, but then again, iray doesn't support displacement maps either, so I suppose I have my answer!

I thought tesselation was just basically displacement maps in DAZ Studio. In game engines if the object is too distant from the viewport camera then the details in the displacement maps aren't applied to the same subD levels as objects close to the viewport camera. DAZ Studio iRay or 3DL doesn't do that but maybe that Google Filament render engine does so though.

Yeah, I suppose it is somewhat as it does add topographical info with the models, but if iray doesn't even allow for displacement maps then... thanks both for your insight, it was very informative!

Iray does support distplacement - however, unlike 3delight (but like many other render engines) it needs explicit vertices to move (from the base mesh or the SubD interpolation). 3Delight will generate points as needed, so it can add fine displacement detail even if all it is given is a single, non-SubD, polygon.

So, distance-dependent SubD levels?

Tell me more of this Distance-dependent Sub D, as I'm really not aware of this feature.

Sorry, I was asking if that was what you meant - it isn't, as far as I know, something that DS has (and i'm not sure how much use it would be, unless Iray supported it to allow more vertices for nearby polygons for displacement/smoothing - more vertices alone are not a good thing, there has to be a way to differentiate them from the base position or there will be no extra detail; 3Delight already divides the mesh as needed for displacement/SubD so the feature isn't really needed there, I'd think).

Thanks for the answer, yeah I was hoping to have it supported like the heaven benchmark's engine, but then again, iray doesn't support displacement maps either, so I suppose I have my answer!

I thought tesselation was just basically displacement maps in DAZ Studio. In game engines if the object is too distant from the viewport camera then the details in the displacement maps aren't applied to the same subD levels as objects close to the viewport camera. DAZ Studio iRay or 3DL doesn't do that but maybe that Google Filament render engine does so though.

Yeah, I suppose it is somewhat as it does add topographical info with the models, but if iray doesn't even allow for displacement maps then... thanks both for your insight, it was very informative!

I thought tesselation was just basically displacement maps in DAZ Studio. In game engines if the object is too distant from the viewport camera then the details in the displacement maps aren't applied to the same subD levels as objects close to the viewport camera. DAZ Studio iRay or 3DL doesn't do that but maybe that Google Filament render engine does so though.

Not render engines, draw styles. I can certainly see the logic of the request, but if you want to suggest it to Daz you should do so via Technical Support ticket https://www.daz3d.com/help

We will probably see Filament before they would look at such a request. Maybe, with Filament, the suggestion would be unnecessary.

I was thinking about that too!