Credo che l'idea della DAZ, per quanto riguardi i motori di rendering, sia sulla diversificazione degli stessi. Mi spiego meglio, per anni è stata legata al Renderman, poi ha iniziato a usare l'Iray. Nulla vieta che in un futuro non molto lontano possa usare addirittura un altro motore. Cosi venderà altri shader e farà impazzire altri utenti. Questo non lo dico io, ma mio cognato ;)

Tuo cognato ha ragione....

Allora vogliono davvero implementare Filament? O hanno intenzione di aggiornare 3DLight?

Giusto per aggiungere altre lamentele, voi riuscite a comprare dallo store correttamente? Ancora io mi becco i soliti "Cannot load personalised data" e non vado da nessuna parte.

...non so cosa faranno, ma prima o poi ci saranno novità. Comunque anche io ho problemi, ho già riportato le tue e le mie lamentele e mi hanno detto che in qualche ora dovrebbero sistemare tutto

Spero che risolvano con lo store.

Quanto alle novità, tu sei un PA e pure uno di quelli ben stagionati... Non dovresti avere il "privilegio" di sapere cosa combinano?
Tipo che ti mandano un messaggio dicendoti "Ragazzone, stiamo facendo questo e quello, prepara qualcosa pure tu per il lancio."

Si, lo fanno. Per mia fortuna :D però non posso dire molto, ecco

I'm hardly any sort of expert, but wanted to ask: I see mentions of Blender's Cycles render engine, but might Blender's Eeevee render engine be more of a way to go?

With the release of the new Blender Bridge, I've been looking into what one could do in Blender. Eevee seems to be part of the newest 2.9 release of Blender. According to one article I spotted, Eevee seems to run 12 times faster than Cycles. (https://blog.render.st/cycles-vs-eevee-rendering-speed-comparison/)

I'd be all for an alternative to Iray. I'm using a MacBook Pro and the speed I can get from using 3Delight compared to Iray has made Iray non-starter for me. If I get anything that is Iray-only, I'll get it and convert it into something I can use in 3Delight.

If we could get Cycles and/or Eevee to work within DS without having to export to Blender, that would be my favorite way to go. I was disappointed that the Blender Bridge was limited to G3 and G8 figures. Being able to render in Cycles and Eevee from within DS with ALL of my years of Poser and DS assets would be my ideal goal. I've learned enough about Blender to see that it is amazingly versatile and powerful while still being open source. Talk about being synergistic with DAZ's free entry point!

 

While Cycles could theoretically be added, it would be difficult to implement eevee in DS without making DS open source. Cycles has a different and more permissive licence than the rest of Blender. Eevee does not.

Besides, it looks like Google Filament might be the Eevee alternative in DAZ Studio. We shall see.

I just saw a series of videos comparing eevee, cycles, Radeon Prorender, and Lux Render and I felt eevee was suitable for 99% of the uses people would use a renderer for. Maybe that's what Filament will be for DAZ Studio? 

Credo che l'idea della DAZ, per quanto riguardi i motori di rendering, sia sulla diversificazione degli stessi. Mi spiego meglio, per anni è stata legata al Renderman, poi ha iniziato a usare l'Iray. Nulla vieta che in un futuro non molto lontano possa usare addirittura un altro motore. Cosi venderà altri shader e farà impazzire altri utenti. Questo non lo dico io, ma mio cognato ;)

Tuo cognato ha ragione....

Allora vogliono davvero implementare Filament? O hanno intenzione di aggiornare 3DLight?

Giusto per aggiungere altre lamentele, voi riuscite a comprare dallo store correttamente? Ancora io mi becco i soliti "Cannot load personalised data" e non vado da nessuna parte.

...non so cosa faranno, ma prima o poi ci saranno novità. Comunque anche io ho problemi, ho già riportato le tue e le mie lamentele e mi hanno detto che in qualche ora dovrebbero sistemare tutto

Spero che risolvano con lo store.

Quanto alle novità, tu sei un PA e pure uno di quelli ben stagionati... Non dovresti avere il "privilegio" di sapere cosa combinano?
Tipo che ti mandano un messaggio dicendoti "Ragazzone, stiamo facendo questo e quello, prepara qualcosa pure tu per il lancio."

Credo che l'idea della DAZ, per quanto riguardi i motori di rendering, sia sulla diversificazione degli stessi. Mi spiego meglio, per anni è stata legata al Renderman, poi ha iniziato a usare l'Iray. Nulla vieta che in un futuro non molto lontano possa usare addirittura un altro motore. Cosi venderà altri shader e farà impazzire altri utenti. Questo non lo dico io, ma mio cognato ;)

Tuo cognato ha ragione....

Allora vogliono davvero implementare Filament? O hanno intenzione di aggiornare 3DLight?

Giusto per aggiungere altre lamentele, voi riuscite a comprare dallo store correttamente? Ancora io mi becco i soliti "Cannot load personalised data" e non vado da nessuna parte.

...non so cosa faranno, ma prima o poi ci saranno novità. Comunque anche io ho problemi, ho già riportato le tue e le mie lamentele e mi hanno detto che in qualche ora dovrebbero sistemare tutto

Credo che l'idea della DAZ, per quanto riguardi i motori di rendering, sia sulla diversificazione degli stessi. Mi spiego meglio, per anni è stata legata al Renderman, poi ha iniziato a usare l'Iray. Nulla vieta che in un futuro non molto lontano possa usare addirittura un altro motore. Cosi venderà altri shader e farà impazzire altri utenti. Questo non lo dico io, ma mio cognato ;)

Tuo cognato ha ragione....

Allora vogliono davvero implementare Filament? O hanno intenzione di aggiornare 3DLight?

Giusto per aggiungere altre lamentele, voi riuscite a comprare dallo store correttamente? Ancora io mi becco i soliti "Cannot load personalised data" e non vado da nessuna parte.

@Crios usa Iray, ha una GTX 1660 nel portatile (se ricordo bene)

Sull'illuminazione dicevo le stesse cose di @Tiziano

Ne abbiamo già parlato @Imago : certo, puoi farle da solo, ma personalmente quelle che fa KindredArts sono anni avanti alle mie. Quindi, per i miei lettori, non sono affatto pentito di aver comprato tutti i suoi set! xD

Piuttosto Imago, parlavo con un tipo sul forum e diceva che 3Delight è ancora attivissimo, ma che la Daz non lo aggiorna più...perché? Ne sai qualcosa?
Questa roba sembra mooolto meglio degli shader che abbiamo a disposizione noi: https://www.3delight.com/documentation/display/3DFM9/Hair+And+Fur

Però a quanto pare non desistono su Filament, c'è praticamente in ogni versione della Private Build: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log

Thanks for your explanation @PDSmith

Filament looks interesting indeed.
My perception is that, when an engine is open source, if the developers want to improve it, they can.
With a 3rd party one, on the other hand, they can only hope the producer has future projects for it.
The 3D industry has changed a lot since 2014, and what looked perfect back then, may not be perfect anymore.

I surely don't want to see Daz slowly die, as it happened to Poser, that fell really behind the competition.

Apparently, Daz developers are continuously updating Filament, so something is probably happening: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log

@Sven Dullah Sorry, I agree with what has been said about 3Delight: I just don't care about it, if Daz hadn't had a photorealistic rendering engine, I probably wouldn't even have started rendering at all.

@i53750k Yes, I've read about it! I still haven't understood if Filament will be just for the viewport, or if it'll be a rendering engine. It looks good enough for me, and it's crazy fast. The mystery is how it'll be with human figures, a field where not every rendering engine does a good job as Iray does. And I think most of us are rendering people.
I've read they're trying to make MDL materials work in it, so I hope @Kitsumo is right about the switch.

@brainmuffin And there's also Octane nowadays, that's even free now, if you just want to use a GPU. It even has an auto-conversion for the materials. And it can achieve great things.
But...it needs a lot of tweaking. It just looks HORRIBLE if you auto-convert materials. So, in order for me to consider using another rendering engine, it has to bee as easy and immediate to use as Iray is.

@lilweep That's the whole point, Daz can't do a thing about Iray! It's all in Nvidia hands, and they don't seem to care much anymore. I wonder if switching to something open-source, such as Filament or Cycles, would give them better control over the rendering engine they're using.

So, I notice a lot of you have switched to Blender lately. That's said to read.

I read somewhere that Daz has added Google's open source PBR Filament in the latest beta.  What does it mean for us?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going anywhere.
I love Daz Studio, and it's perfect for what I do: I don't want to rig and to model assets when that's not necessary, because I want to focus on my stories as much as I can.

Furthermore, Iray allows us to produce high-quality renders.
And, with the right hardware, it's not terrible in a matter of time.

Then, why am I worried?

• I feel like Nvidia has forgotten about Iray.

I know it's not Daz fault if Nvidia is not putting as much attention as it could on Iray.

For example, in the latest slides about the upcoming RTX 3000, Nvidia has talked about Cycles, Arnold and Vray...not a single world about their own creature.

Do you remember how long it took for Daz to implement Iray 2019, to finally use the RT and tensor cores?

• The competition is faster, requires less powerful hardware, and sometimes it looks even better.

I love technology, but I don't have the expertise to truly understand this rendering engines world. That's why I'm opening this thread: to ask for your opinion on the matter.

It looks to me like other rendering engines require less powerful hardware: ultimately, I think that Nvidia has started this Iray project to sell more GPUs, making it so that you can't render if you go over you VRAM. That trick has worked on me, at least.

Then, it feels like Iray is crazy slow, compared to other famous rendering engines. I have a RTX 2060, and it takes me around 40 minutes to get to 1500 iterations for an average scene. I can do that because of the external Intel denoiser, because Nvidia's one blurs things too much IMHO.
Take a look, for example, at the viewport. We live in a world with awesome real-time graphics, like that marble movie from yesterday's Nvidia conference. Yet, even with modern GPUs, the Iray viewport is unusable, compared to the Texture Shaded one.
Let's not talk about animations, that I don't consider very doable in Iray nowadays.

Sometimes, the competition looks even better. I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw the Unreal Engine 5 demo: in real-time, it looked much better than what we can do with Iray, in hours. Even for stuff like hair physics, a field that has received a lot of attention lately.
I can imagine how different those two engines are. But, ultimately, I honestly only care about the result, not about how I get to it: I just want the best possible renders to represent my stories.
And I know we have bridges now, but it doesn't feel very easy and immediate to me to continuously transfer assets from one software to the other, and to have to tweak all surfaces and lights.

I know it would be a complete mess to change render engine in Daz, because of the materials that all the products have.
Plus, they can't just abandon Iray, because a lot of people will continue to use it indefinitely. So, PA should create tons of different materials for each product, and that's not convenient.
On top of that, we shouldn't fix what's not broken, and Iray still works fairly well.

But aren't you worried about its future?
Do you think Daz is looking for alternatives (look at Filament, or at the new bridges)?

I'm curious to hear your opinion! :)

 

Frankly, all the talk about power and speed, while perhaps interesting, is of no consequence to me. My only concern is VRAM. It doesn't matter how fast the card is if the scene I want to render will not fit and drops to CPU. What's the point of spending over $1,000 for a piece of high-technology that is just not up to the task? And it looks increasingly probable that the VRAM increase, if it happens at all, will be significantly delayed. Which all prompts the search for alternatives such as rendering in other software or hoping for something like Google Filament to be a gift from the gods.

Very much why I've cherished my TITAN RTX and will probably add another over buying one of these new cards. Of course, I'd need to see the new cards' NVLINK performance, but I'm willing to bet I'd be set with two TITAN RTXs for a good while!

 

You might find them going up in cost as it's discovered they are actually good at what they do versus the new 3000 series being disappointing.

I have the cash for one, but after moving my rendering to Blender, decided to wait and see. My Threadripper outperforms my 980ti, and it's a first gen Threadripper .

A 1660 also out performs a 980ti in the iray benchmark thread. That is not the 1660ti or 1660 Super, that is the plain jane 1660, a sub $200 GPU. The 980ti is quite old and out dated now. It is great that Threadripper can beat a 980ti, but the entire RTX lineup does as well, all the way down to the 2060, which utterly destroys the 980ti in Iray. 

I think it will depend on what AMD does for the 3070 to get 16 GB of VRAM, too. Looks like sometime in October according to some. Maybe you can get some more money saved up by then and get a little better Nvidia card and we'll maybe know how they work with Iray by then.

I wish. I don't have spare cash as I'm on a fixed state pension so my annual holiday comes out of my life savings and if I choose not to take a holiday (meaning a trip somewhere), I use that money for a luxury such as a computer upgrade. With the pandemic, travel is limited so this year I'm spending on the computer.

I'd wait on some user reviews then before making the leap. You've had continuous problems with Blender so I don't recommend it. Likewise the jury is still out on UE though it shows some promise with high quality renders, it still is rather complicated in some ways, but reports of using FBX export  with the Daz rig works better than the Epic rig. The current bridge seems focused on games and not the film production part of UE which may be closer to Iray in results. Anything game related isn't going to get you the quality you've said before that you want. Filament causes hesitation for me because of the game focus. It's still early though.

I'm 64 and have been trying to do some quality work before I die like you. My stroke last year has slowed me down. But I'm still wary of fools errands which we see a lot of around here. I'm fortunate that I still have a job but who knows how long it will last. Good luck, Marble!

This is my hobby in retirement. I was a techie for my whole working career, supporting computer hardware and networking in the  latter years. So I'm not afraid of technology but I find that I'm slow to grasp new techniques these days so learning Blender, for example, has become a slog and my comfort zone is still DAZ Studio. If DAZ could improve the timeline, speed up dForce, add soft body physics and allow me to render a scene with 4 characters for the cost of a 3070, I would look forward to enjoying this hobby for my remaining years. I didn't have a stroke but I did need a quadruple bypass in my mid-40's so I know about being slowed down. 
 

 

Frankly, all the talk about power and speed, while perhaps interesting, is of no consequence to me. My only concern is VRAM. It doesn't matter how fast the card is if the scene I want to render will not fit and drops to CPU. What's the point of spending over $1,000 for a piece of high-technology that is just not up to the task? And it looks increasingly probable that the VRAM increase, if it happens at all, will be significantly delayed. Which all prompts the search for alternatives such as rendering in other software or hoping for something like Google Filament to be a gift from the gods.

Very much why I've cherished my TITAN RTX and will probably add another over buying one of these new cards. Of course, I'd need to see the new cards' NVLINK performance, but I'm willing to bet I'd be set with two TITAN RTXs for a good while!

 

You might find them going up in cost as it's discovered they are actually good at what they do versus the new 3000 series being disappointing.

I have the cash for one, but after moving my rendering to Blender, decided to wait and see. My Threadripper outperforms my 980ti, and it's a first gen Threadripper .

Frankly, all the talk about power and speed, while perhaps interesting, is of no consequence to me. My only concern is VRAM. It doesn't matter how fast the card is if the scene I want to render will not fit and drops to CPU. What's the point of spending over $1,000 for a piece of high-technology that is just not up to the task? And it looks increasingly probable that the VRAM increase, if it happens at all, will be significantly delayed. Which all prompts the search for alternatives such as rendering in other software or hoping for something like Google Filament to be a gift from the gods.

Very much why I've cherished my TITAN RTX and will probably add another over buying one of these new cards. Of course, I'd need to see the new cards' NVLINK performance, but I'm willing to bet I'd be set with two TITAN RTXs for a good while!

I think it will depend on what AMD does for the 3070 to get 16 GB of VRAM, too. Looks like sometime in October according to some. Maybe you can get some more money saved up by then and get a little better Nvidia card and we'll maybe know how they work with Iray by then.

I wish. I don't have spare cash as I'm on a fixed state pension so my annual holiday comes out of my life savings and if I choose not to take a holiday (meaning a trip somewhere), I use that money for a luxury such as a computer upgrade. With the pandemic, travel is limited so this year I'm spending on the computer.

I'd wait on some user reviews then before making the leap. You've had continuous problems with Blender so I don't recommend it. Likewise the jury is still out on UE though it shows some promise with high quality renders, it still is rather complicated in some ways, but reports of using FBX export  with the Daz rig works better than the Epic rig. The current bridge seems focused on games and not the film production part of UE which may be closer to Iray in results. Anything game related isn't going to get you the quality you've said before that you want. Filament causes hesitation for me because of the game focus. It's still early though.

I'm 64 and have been trying to do some quality work before I die like you. My stroke last year has slowed me down. But I'm still wary of fools errands which we see a lot of around here. I'm fortunate that I still have a job but who knows how long it will last. Good luck, Marble!

Frankly, all the talk about power and speed, while perhaps interesting, is of no consequence to me. My only concern is VRAM. It doesn't matter how fast the card is if the scene I want to render will not fit and drops to CPU. What's the point of spending over $1,000 for a piece of high-technology that is just not up to the task? And it looks increasingly probable that the VRAM increase, if it happens at all, will be significantly delayed. Which all prompts the search for alternatives such as rendering in other software or hoping for something like Google Filament to be a gift from the gods.

Seriously, try Blender.

Frankly, all the talk about power and speed, while perhaps interesting, is of no consequence to me. My only concern is VRAM. It doesn't matter how fast the card is if the scene I want to render will not fit and drops to CPU. What's the point of spending over $1,000 for a piece of high-technology that is just not up to the task? And it looks increasingly probable that the VRAM increase, if it happens at all, will be significantly delayed. Which all prompts the search for alternatives such as rendering in other software or hoping for something like Google Filament to be a gift from the gods.

Bisogna che ti decidi, ragazzo... Una volta mi dici che non importa se ci metti sei giorni a renderizzare un francobollo, la volta successiva che IRay è troppo lento, successivamente mi dici che si può aspettare tanto non importano i tempi di render e subito dopo che hai comprato altre due GPU per fare prima.

Ma sto IRay ti va bene o non ti va bene?

Perchè se davvero non ti importa della piattaforma di render, hai una decina di alternative per i render statici.
Per esempio Blender (ma senza il "Nostro" bridge perchè non sembra esportare le pose applicate nè esporta prop o personaggi diversi da G8) ti basta esportare in OBJ l'intera scena o usare il tool di MCasual (che esporta anche le telecamere, le luci e converte i materiali in modo corretto) per importarci la tua scena e andare di Cycles, Arnold o Eevee come un matto. Da qualche parte mi pare esista un sistema per automatizzare i render di più scene ma so che va solo per gli still ( le sequenze di immagini non sono contemplate e l'output video è sempre corrotto.) per cui per te è perfetto.
Inoltre i motori di render di Blender sono meno esigenti e più veloci di IRay, per funzionare basta anche "solo" una 1060 e non ha i limiti della VRAM.

Se non sbaglio, da qualche parte nel web, esiste anche un programmino per importare OBJ e utilizzare Filament, ma non sono certo di questo. Prova a dare un occhio.

C'è perfino Photoshop che ti permette di importare un OBJ texturizzato e renderizzare una immagine con il suo motore interno (anche se non so quanto buono) e puoi fare la post produzione direttamente da lì.

E ce ne sono ancora, basta indagare un poco.

Scusa la confusione, cerco di spiegarmi meglio!

Mentre lavori su una scena in Iray, è da irresponsabili non usare il viewport prima di salvarla, per aggiustare le luci, l'esposizione e per renderla la più bella possibile: se non lo fai, molto spesso uscirà qualche difettuccio che non avevi considerato, e dovrai buttar via tempo ad aggiustarla in Photoshop, o a ri-renderizzarla da capo.

Vedo che molti motori grafici hanno un viewport real-time, mentre io in real-time uso sempre il texture shaded, perché quello Iray è lentissimo.
Più potente è la tua GPU, e più veloce è il tipo di memoria che monta (scheda madre permettendo), e più scattante sarà il viewport Iray, quindi più fluida sarà la tua esperienza.

Per quanto riguarda il tempo di renderizzazione, certamente fa piacere che sia veloce, o poter fare più iterazioni, ma non è la fine del mondo se non lo è.

Interessante questo script di cui stai parlando!

E' secondario il tempo di renderizzazione, come già detto non mi infastidisce troppo, semplicemente faccio altro nel frattempo.

mi sto rendendo conto che Iray è limitato e, soprattutto, estremamente lento.

Bisogna che ti decidi, ragazzo... Una volta mi dici che non importa se ci metti sei giorni a renderizzare un francobollo, la volta successiva che IRay è troppo lento, successivamente mi dici che si può aspettare tanto non importano i tempi di render e subito dopo che hai comprato altre due GPU per fare prima.

Ma sto IRay ti va bene o non ti va bene?

Perchè se davvero non ti importa della piattaforma di render, hai una decina di alternative per i render statici.
Per esempio Blender (ma senza il "Nostro" bridge perchè non sembra esportare le pose applicate nè esporta prop o personaggi diversi da G8) ti basta esportare in OBJ l'intera scena o usare il tool di MCasual (che esporta anche le telecamere, le luci e converte i materiali in modo corretto) per importarci la tua scena e andare di Cycles, Arnold o Eevee come un matto. Da qualche parte mi pare esista un sistema per automatizzare i render di più scene ma so che va solo per gli still ( le sequenze di immagini non sono contemplate e l'output video è sempre corrotto.) per cui per te è perfetto.
Inoltre i motori di render di Blender sono meno esigenti e più veloci di IRay, per funzionare basta anche "solo" una 1060 e non ha i limiti della VRAM.

Se non sbaglio, da qualche parte nel web, esiste anche un programmino per importare OBJ e utilizzare Filament, ma non sono certo di questo. Prova a dare un occhio.

C'è perfino Photoshop che ti permette di importare un OBJ texturizzato e renderizzare una immagine con il suo motore interno (anche se non so quanto buono) e puoi fare la post produzione direttamente da lì.

E ce ne sono ancora, basta indagare un poco.