I am rendering image sequences.The K220 Quatro is an NVIDIA 4 gig card quad core. It is quite old but it does the job. It is just that it takes a long time to render an image sequence. I was wondering if NVIDEA's RTX Series might be a way to go? I can get a  Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 Windforce, 8GB for under $800 AUST. Would this be suitable? Cheers

Maybe wait a while and see what Google Filament can do. Looking at the DAZ Studio change log it seems it may be implemented in the next release. Might be good enough for animations and should be much quicker than IRay.

At some point in the hopefully not too distant future, there will be a new viewport display mode called filament, which should be a vast improvement over DAZ|Studio's woefully outdated OpenGL viewport mode. See this thread for a bit more info/discussion.

 

Which will make those that like to use OpenGL renders quite unhappy ...

At some point in the hopefully not too distant future, there will be a new viewport display mode called filament, which should be a vast improvement over DAZ|Studio's woefully outdated OpenGL viewport mode. See this thread for a bit more info/discussion.

Some interesting entries in the Change Log. Several mentions of Filament, for example.

I'm sure others have had these issues.  Setting up a scene, or even a single figure and getting it lit the way you want is a nightmare in this application.
If you use the iray renderer.. which is the only one on this app that makes what I'd call a reasonably good render as compared to lightwave, formz, modo or other apps I use, is very very frustrating.   The interactive renderer is absolutely zero help.  It doesn't give even close to a representation of the general light balances, brightness, etc.  Sometimes I make a small change to one light and the test render is completely blown.  Then any subsequent change to that light makes no change, I have to delete the light and start over.  I've gotten to the point where I write down the numercial placement xyz and rotational values of each light so I can quickly set one back up when this happens.   Even with a fairly robust computer (dual core 3.2gh cpu with an nvidia geforce gpu with 4 gb of ram, solid state hard drive etc) even small test renders (like 400x500px) take 10-15 mins to get any feedback from.

Ypu may want to compare the Render Settings (cotrnol the render) and dDraw Settings (control the Iray preview, if that is what you are using) - if you are usign Texture Shaded then you really can't expect a match for lighting and the more advanced material settings used by recent content.

A 4GB geforce card, or unspeicifed model, is not - for Iray - at all hefty I'm afraid - especially if it's a pre-RTX model as Iray now passes extra code to such cards.

Certain UI issues abound.  The ISO/ Shutterspeed, focal length etc are CAMERA attributes, and each camera should have them.  Not the render UI.  It took me forever to figure that out.  This is one out of dozens of glaring examples of real confusing things about daz studio.   I usually use the renders I do as reference for art work I then hand paint analog (on paper / board etc) or bring into photoshop.  This means print res files are needed.   I can render a simple figure for DAYS and it never gets close to 100% rendered at 3000x4000px.  God forbid I'd ever need to render something for actual print output at sizes over 8x10.

The camera settings control both exposure and optics. Since Iray allows them to be split they have, for user convenience. If that doesn't suit your workflow someone might be able to write a script that would sync them, so that adjusting exposure would also affect depth of field (or if you wanted ISO to affect noise you could always stop the render early).

I see that Daz now has a bridge to some of the higher end packages like 3DS and Maya.   What it really needs is a simple export to LightWave with texture and UV's intact.  I saw some scripts somewhere that do this, but they are no very intuative to use. 

I fear Lightwave (and modo) have a more limited user-base. of course the bridges are open source so you could adpapt one of them for Lightwave, or hire someone else to do so.

Are their plans to improve or fix the interactive vs rendered lighting problems?  Or do I need to just accept an entire day to correctly light a figure as part of my workflow?

As I said above, some at least of your issues may well be a matter of settimgs. According to the change log Daz is working on implementing Google's Filament - given your limited hardware that may offer a partial solution, it depends on how closely it can match Iray.

I wonder if some of the issues is that one/some of the posters is using the technical definition of HDRI, which does require a large number of exposure stops to get complete lighting information, while other posters are using a more casual "definition" in Studio. The common Studio usage I observe seems to relate more to  a backgroun scene associated with lighting. I also wonder how many people understand that the DR stands for Dynamic Range, rather Defintion, resolution or some such.

I'm going to have to disagree with @Drip in that color range has nothing to do with a true HDRI. It is exposure range that makes the HDRI, not the resolution of the image or the "number of colors". One can make a decent HDRI from a single photographic image but must make a number of exposure changes within the editing program to do so. This is what the HDR presets do in such programs.

Exposure range is stored within the color range of the fileformat. Where 256,256,256 is white in a regular image, it also displays as white in a HDRI. However, a HDRI can go way beyond that range, depending on the format, it can go to 1024,1024,1024 or even 4096,4096,4096. One could for example boost the red range to 1024 and leave the others at 256, so you'd get 1024,256,256. What your screen displays then will be white.
So, what's the point if it's all white anyway? Light degrades as it moves away from the source and bounces around objects. After a short while, that 1024,256,256 light will degrade to (for example) 256,64,64. Which just happens to no longer be white, but a shade of red. The original 1024,256,256 color that was set to emisive actually wasn't white, but the red was too intense to see. Only after the light suffered falloff (or, otherwise, if you just darkened the image), or had some of its intensity absorbed by objects, will the high range of red become apparant.

So, what's up with making images at different exposures then?
Those images at different exposures are used to calculate how far above 256 the red from our example is stored.
You make one image at normal exposure, a white light gets stored as 256,256,256. Next, you add an image at low exposure, and for one reason or another, the light is less bright and slightly red. The software to merge those images of different exposures then knows that:
A. The light is a light, and should have a colorrange beyond 256
and
B. The light leans towards the red spectrum, and because of that, the red component will be assigned a higher value than the other 2 colors.
The more exposure images you give to the software, the better it will be able to pinpoint the exact shape and intensity of the lights, to the point that it will recognize some parts it first thought to be emissive to be non-emissive at all (for example, the bulb from a lightbulb, which doesn't emit light, it's the wire filament inside that's actually emissive), but suffer from overlighting and scatter by the actual lightsource.

 

Now back to the beauty canvas: the beautycanvas *is* one of these high range fileformats, and yes, it will properly store that 1024,256,256 light as 1024,256,256. It doesn't need these low exposure shots to figure that out. Daz Studio already knows how much light and at what intensity it is emitting, and the beauty canvas is storing exactly that. And unlike the regular render output, values above 256 do not get cut off. This is why the various canvasses are so important for artists, to do their post-processing in photoshop, because there is so much more information within those canvasses than what meets the eye. As a side-effect, this allows those who require HDRIs that are impossible to create in real life (simply because the environments may not exist in real life, like alien worlds, or because visiting such an environment might not be possible because it's private property) to create high quality HDRI's for such environments.

For HDRI's from real life, yes, you will need multiple shots with different exposures, with a good modern HDR camera, you'll need less seperate shots (3 is usually enough for the top cameras, and they're often made to create all three shots at once too) than you'd need using an older digital camera (5 or even 7 shots used to be recommended, and they couldn't take multiple exposure shots at once).
Daz Studio already knows all the exact details for what is within the shot, Daz has the entire topography of the objects, the emitters and their intensity, materials and their absorbtion. And the results of all that can be stored on the beauty canvas, if only you enable the option. Alternatively, one can still use and combine the other canvasses, to get the special high-detail effects often associated with HDR images. But that moves into a slightly different use of HDR images: to emphasize details that the naked eye would normally not see in such a way that they become visible. This use of HDR is not what defines HDR, it's just an application of it. But it does generate pretty pictures, which people have come to associate with HDR.

 

As a daily user of Daz & Blender for a huge project, all I ask for Christmas (or soon) is a BETTER DAZ. More professional animation tools, object selection, more responsive interface. I want to select, move and animate faster and with precision. 

Honestly, as much as I love working in Blender, I agree with you 100% on this. Nothing will ever beat Daz when it comes to rendering and posing Daz characters. Animation tools are the last missing piece of the puzzle. If Daz devs can manage to get rid of the timeline / IK bugs, and improve playback performance, they'll be heroes.

Maybe include Google Filament too ... or some similar real-time render engine. But yes, I'll add my vote to this sentiment. I'm making some progress with Blender but I do feel more comfortable in DAZ Studio. As you say, the animation tools need some TLC.

I'm not saying anything, but: https://github.com/daz3d/DazToUnreal

There's also a github fork of Google Filament there so I hope this means that DAZ didn't abandon the idea of adding Filament as a render option.

there are plenty of existing PBR solutions available. Like mentioned above, Filament is great. 

From another thread, this might be interesting: https://github.com/daz3d

There is a project called DazToBlender and a filament project.

Thats only a fork, but its interesting tha they're looking at it. That they're publishing  open source bridges is fantastic. Hopefully they'll see the error of their ways and stop encrypting their dazscript files aswell. (it gains them absolutely nothing and literally no-one else in the industry does it)

 

 

 

 

It depends on the type of printer you use.

I actually had a moderate amount of sucess with an Anycubic Photon LCD DLP/SLA printer and the hair in this product: https://www.daz3d.com/glamorous-vicki-set-for-victoria-3-0. Shame it has been retired now.

I think the reason why it worked was that the hair was modelled as tubes and the slicer solidified the tubes. If that was the case and you can get dForce hair to export as obj files, then I suspect it'll be exported as tubes, which would be perfect for a slicer like the one for the Anycubic - just need an obj to stl convertor (I wrote a windows program to do that for me, and it's available here: http://www.chestnutpens.co.uk/misc/objtostl.html The program does not check that it's a valid complete solid, just simply converting obj facets to stl triangles) . In fact, may even be good for a filament printer. I have tried exporting other hair, but never printed it as I found I was allergic to the solidified resin.

Regards,

Richard

 

Vabbè, adesso mi esce il codice HTML per commentare...

E' tutto rotto.

Sto leggendo altro sulle RTX 3000, sembra che vogliano fare delle versioni dalla 3050 alla 3090.
Secondo "gli esperti" la nuova 3060 avrà prestazioni del 60% superiori alla 2080ti a 280-320€ di costo sia nel gaming che nella produttività.

Ci sono già un paio di community di appassionati di GPU che stanno ridendo come pazzi a leggere questo. Se davvero fosse così, faranno come con la GTX 780ti, che è risultata troppo potente e hanno dovuto "limitarla" con soli 2-3Gb di VRAM per evitare di rovinare il mercato.

Quanto a Filament, stanno già implementandolo in DAZ Studio ufficialmente, ho letto qualcosa in una nota di versione poco tempo fa. Inizio a pensare che stiano cercando una "scappatoia" ad IRay.

Sì, sicuramente per un'azienda come loro conviene affidarsi a qualcosa di open source, piuttosto che aspettare che Nvidia faccia i suoi comodi ogni volta.
E l'industria sta andando avanti a ritmi vertiginosi: andate a vedere Unreal Engine 5! Qualità anche superiore ad Iray... in real time!!! :O :O

I vari siti possono dire quello che vogliono, ma non succederà.
Ho letto più volte nei mesi, da fonti attendibili, che la 3080 andrà il 20% meglio della 2080 ti, e questo mi sembra molto più credibile.

Nvidia già sa quanto andranno le "Big Navi" e si regola su quello. E' normale che le faccia più potenti, ma poi sbloccherà le prestazioni pian piano con i driver, così come è sempre stato.

Comunque TSMC ha cessato il rapporto con Huawei, per via delle pressioni americane. Huawei prendeva il 14% della loro linea produttiva.
Gli altri clienti di TSMC sono Nvidia, AMD e Apple: significa che avranno a disposizione più capacità produttiva.
Pertanto spero che si riescano a trovare sul mercato queste RTX 3000 quando usciranno!

Vabbè, adesso mi esce il codice HTML per commentare...

E' tutto rotto.

Sto leggendo altro sulle RTX 3000, sembra che vogliano fare delle versioni dalla 3050 alla 3090.
Secondo "gli esperti" la nuova 3060 avrà prestazioni del 60% superiori alla 2080ti a 280-320€ di costo sia nel gaming che nella produttività.

Ci sono già un paio di community di appassionati di GPU che stanno ridendo come pazzi a leggere questo. Se davvero fosse così, faranno come con la GTX 780ti, che è risultata troppo potente e hanno dovuto "limitarla" con soli 2-3Gb di VRAM per evitare di rovinare il mercato.

Quanto a Filament, stanno già implementandolo in DAZ Studio ufficialmente, ho letto qualcosa in una nota di versione poco tempo fa. Inizio a pensare che stiano cercando una "scappatoia" ad IRay.

When DAZ finishes the integration of the Filament renderer with render troubles should be history in DAZ on osX, Filament is more like eevee than iRay but still mostly realistic PBR renderer.

Have you seen any info that DAZ has actually even started this task?

Actually yes. It's been talked about in the forums.

And look at the GitHub for DAZ 3D: https://github.com/daz3d/filament

Supposedly it fell somewhat short of being good enough to release in public beta about a month or so ago but that it was even mentioned then means it must be probably successfully released in public beta at least, by the end of this year.

 

Interesting, first time I have seen this

Imago said:

Allora sono riusciti a sistemare qualcosa almeno per i giochi. Io mi riferivo proprio a NVidia che ancora non contempla l'uso della RAM di sistema in aiuto alla VRAM nel 2020. So che per i giochi è necessaria quella superveloce della GPU ma almeno dai la possibilità di usare la RAM in altri ambiti. Ogni giorno ti ritrovi scollegato da DAZ.com? Sei fortunato, a me lo fa ogni due ore, passo più tempo a riloggare che a fare spese.

Vabbè, adesso mi esce il codice HTML per commentare... Il fatto che non supporti la RAM di sistema è una scelta: se non ti basta la VRAM, spendi soldi per una nuova GPU. Tant'è che la differenza fondamentale fra GPU consumer e professional è proprio la VRAM. Perderebbero una marea di soldi se alle persone bastasse semplicemente installare un paio di banchi di RAM in più. Questo è chiaramente dal punto di vista Nvidia. Poi se Daz ha scelto il loro motore, ripeto regalato (anziché spendere anni e montagne di soldi a sviluppare il proprio) sarà perché all'epoca conveniva. Ma credo che un pensierino all'open-source, con Filament ecc. lo stiano facendo. Anche perché in quel thread, i moderatori hanno risposto, senza negare nulla: non possono sbilanciarsi, ma è chiaro che qualcosa bolle in pentola.

When DAZ finishes the integration of the Filament renderer with render troubles should be history in DAZ on osX, Filament is more like eevee than iRay but still mostly realistic PBR renderer.

Have you seen any info that DAZ has actually even started this task?

Actually yes. It's been talked about in the forums.

And look at the GitHub for DAZ 3D: https://github.com/daz3d/filament

Supposedly it fell somewhat short of being good enough to release in public beta about a month or so ago but that it was even mentioned then means it must be probably successfully released in public beta at least, by the end of this year.

 

When DAZ finishes the integration of the Filament renderer with render troubles should be history in DAZ on osX, Filament is more like eevee than iRay but still mostly realistic PBR renderer.

Have you seen any info that DAZ has actually even started this task?

Well my MBP sports a 5500M 8 GB. Think there was no 5600 M option once I got it. Would be really cool to use this one for rendering.
Never heard about Filament before. Question is whether it has Metal support.

When DAZ finishes the integration of the Filament renderer with render troubles should be history in DAZ on osX, Filament is more like eevee than iRay but still mostly realistic PBR renderer.

I've recently read some 3rd party (so NOT nVidia's word) about the coming nVidia Ampere GPU 30XX series and the best value for money is if the 3rd party was right isd going to be the 3070 series of Ampere GPUs at sub $500. Those are supposed to give slightly better performance that the correct nVidia GEForce RTX 2080 TIs GPUs. Of course, they'll be a 3080 lines of GPUs as well. 

Also, remember that DAZ 3D has unequivically stated they are working on integrating the Google Filament renderer into DAZ Studio so that would be a realtime renderer (so not quite 100% as nice as iRay or other by the books PBR renderers) so you'd think even if they have to contract out the integration to get it done in a timely manner the integration will be happening.

They've not announced but by their github page they at least indicate they'd like to build bridges to Blender, Unity, UE4, and probably Crytek, Lumberyard and the others. It's the most sunsible thing to do to make their huge library of models available to game maker and animation hobbyists.

I think it would be a big financial saving to wait at least for the November sales of computer components and computers to you though.

Not all subscription software is bad, it really depends on the company. Having a subscription only model may mean more developers and more new features each year.

Plus the web site states that the personal license will be less than the current monthly charge so you may all be getting excited over nothing. What if it ends up being the equivalent of the cost of Netflix or Hulu?

Finally, they did give you plenty of advanced notice so if you're interested you can still upgrade the perpetual license as far as version 12. At one major version update that is 3 years before you have to switch since 10 is in 2020, 11 is in 2021, and 12 is in 2022. You won't have to worry about subscription only until version 13 in 2023. And there's nothing saying that you can't continue to use the latest version that you have.

 

I agree that the advanced notice is fair; in affect I get to purchase the full copy 3 times if i wish.

I disagree over the subscription software being not all bad; as a consumer, it's all bad.

... But they were committed to that as I'd bought 9.5; I would be entitled under the current system to purchase later versions at varying discounts; the notice just halts that at version 12 at the latest.

If it is the cost of Netflix or Hulu then a month when I need it is fine for those that don't mind.

Netflix and Hulu and similar services work on a subscription because of the products they offer. I still cancel them at times if I find myself not watching much - because my cash is better in my account.

If the alternative is stagnant software (Daz Studio, Hexagon, Bryce, Carrera) then I don't mind paying a reasonable fee. When was the last time we got any major new features for any of the mentioned software packages from Daz? There are plenty of features that I would love to see but have little hope of ever seeing them. If the software is stagnant and requires a monthly subscription then yes, I would be inclined to go elsewhere. For the time being I will reserve judgement until I see what we get between now and 2023.

dForce Hair, last year? Animation enhancements (though they are seriously buggy with respect to saved scenes right now)? The difference between 4.12 and 4.5, the first official release, are enormous - hardly stagnation just because the leading number hasn't changed for some years.

 

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you on the stagnant part. Sorry. And I don't care what the version number is as long as they're continuing to innovate and push the software forward.

Stagnant? Would not agree with that...at all.

Myself, joined Daz Feb 2019.
In that time:

- implement RTX ( and reecently NvLink & MemoryPooling)
- SBH
- work behind the scenes on Maya plugin
- drop to CPU issues (OPtix etc)- trying to deal with that & Iray being a 3rd Party product
- dForce updates continual in background
- Overhaul animation ongoing
- shader redesign (bricks) in background to match Nvidia Iray latest (based on changelog)
- Now rumors of Google Filament for RT
- QT updates
- new shopping cart coming
- DazCentral
- and more if you follow changelog details

At worst, Daz seems to be implenting too much new stuff at same time with too many bugs leading to less than Optimal user experiences.
For me, for example, i don't use the published SBH hair, despite liking many of the styles, cos they aren't optimized to work with many actor scenes.  And that's with a better PC system.  But that's my usage, and will likely be addressed sometime in future.

But implementing all that stuff takes lots of time.
And they are funding that out of store receipts, in addition to paying the content artists and all the staff incolved with store products, and support.

Maya or MD you are paying lump sum for product only.  And they want update fees.

On the Internet see this daily trend, of what appears to be many users disregarding all the stuff that is done in background, complex stuff that takes lots of time and iterations, and some users focus on specifics wants instead.  And the rest doesn't count at all.  Or that's how it appears to me.

When I say stagnant I'm referring to the implementation of new features not the implementation of bug fixes or updating to the latest version of 3rd party controls (i.e. QT)

Given the fact that they have limited time and resources I would have preferred they invest it into Daz Studio instead of creating Daz Central

The new shopping cart is not a feature of Daz Studio (or Hexagon or Bryce or Carrera)