jbowler said:

The default DAZ Studio spotlight is a "point".  That means the shadows are as hard as hard can be; select the light, go to it's "parameters" pain and check out the "light" sub-tab, the "light geometry" property.

This can be useful; many photographers, typically, almost invariably, working in black and white have taken pictures with light that hard.  It's a thing; "dark", "noir" etc, etc etc.

So change the "light geometry" to "disk" and make an umbrella; portrait lighting in traditional photography often used umbrellas to creat a disk from a hard light source.  The umbrella is about 1m and it's typically 2m or so from the subject.  It's a big disk.

> I managed to achieve something good, but I thought I could improve the scene more with the shadows and lights.

I'm no good at this so what I do is to work light by light.  I turn all the lights off (creepy, eh) then I turn them on one at a time and see what happens.  Iray preview works great, I don't really use filament.  What happens at the end of the day is that I have one or two lights that I can manage and a render that completes in a fraction of the time.  This is when, if I want drama, I add a spot; the render time goes through the roof (I always point the spot at the hair) the result is not typically very good at all (I'm no good at this), but I had a good time!

 In filament you can't modify the shadows, you only get hard shadows.

The default DAZ Studio spotlight is a "point".  That means the shadows are as hard as hard can be; select the light, go to it's "parameters" pain and check out the "light" sub-tab, the "light geometry" property.

This can be useful; many photographers, typically, almost invariably, working in black and white have taken pictures with light that hard.  It's a thing; "dark", "noir" etc, etc etc.

So change the "light geometry" to "disk" and make an umbrella; portrait lighting in traditional photography often used umbrellas to creat a disk from a hard light source.  The umbrella is about 1m and it's typically 2m or so from the subject.  It's a big disk.

> I managed to achieve something good, but I thought I could improve the scene more with the shadows and lights.

I'm no good at this so what I do is to work light by light.  I turn all the lights off (creepy, eh) then I turn them on one at a time and see what happens.  Iray preview works great, I don't really use filament.  What happens at the end of the day is that I have one or two lights that I can manage and a render that completes in a fraction of the time.  This is when, if I want drama, I add a spot; the render time goes through the roof (I always point the spot at the hair) the result is not typically very good at all (I'm no good at this), but I had a good time!

nobody is stopping you

I often run Filament or OpenGL renders through Stable Diffusion Image2Image

It'd be either 3delight or filament. From what I recall Iray doesn't have that because of the way it handles light and shadows

wsterdan said:

Similar to what murgatroyd314 noted, I'm also getting render speeds equal to an older nVidia card from around 2016 or so on my MacBook Pro M4Pro, with 48 gigabytes of RAM.

until they release the next major version of DAZ Studio, you won't have Filament either, or other PC-only items, like HEAT or a few other, recent releases.

I don't use Filament anyway.

Hopefully this helps a bit:

It absolutely did.  Thank you, verify much.

Nyghtfall3D said:

murgatroyd314 said:

For what it's worth, I've tested my high-end M3 on the various benchmark scenes, and I'm getting render speeds comparable to graphics cards that were considered good back when iRay was first released.

Nice... Thank you for that info.  Can you navigate the Viewport with relative ease while in Iray mode?

Similar to what murgatroyd314 noted, I'm also getting render speeds equal to an older nVidia card from around 2016 or so on my MacBook Pro M4Pro, with 48 gigabytes of RAM.

You already know it's never going to render anywhere near as quickly as a current nVidia card; until they release the next major version of DAZ Studio, you won't have Filament either, or other PC-only items, like HEAT or a few other, recent releases.

That said, you were asking about working in iRay preview. I find that it takes a second or two to depixelize when I change my view; not ideal, but nowhwere near the time it used to take to redraw multile multiple 3D figures using 3DL back in pre-iRay times.

 I did a quick test to try and give you a feel for what I'm getting; the scene is an old one (about eight years old) with 20 G3 figures, with 20+ sets of clothing (bodysuit, cape, belt, boots) and hair (mostly toon hair).  

The video has been compressed a bit to make uploading more manageable (I'm limited to 100 gb files on my site) but the original viewport size is 1600 x 1200. If you'd like, I can customize something for you to give you a clearer idea if this isn't enough.

For the first part I zoom in and out, rotate, etc. in iRay mode; it takes a second or two to pop into "focus" from the pixelization effect. For the last little bit, I swapped to Texture Mapped mode and everything is pretty much realtime (which is great for me, since I don't normally use iRay). I wouldn't have a problem zipping around and setting a scene up in Texture Mapped preview and switching to iRay for fine-tuning, if necessary.

I'm not sure how Filament will work once the next DAZ Studio major upgrade comes out, but I imagine it'll be similar to OpenGL now for speed; it's been suggested that it'll use Metal on the Mac platform, and if they actually get it to be silicon-native, eliminating Rosetta should give us a speed-up of somewhere in the 10% range.

Hopefully this helps a bit:

https://sterdan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/UI_Test.mp4

Imago said:

SilverGirl said:

Quick question - are the Portrait Lights products in this batch compatible with Iray?

A light is a light... As I can see, lights works in both Iray and 3Delight (Filament is a bit more limited).

That's not exactly true, 3DL light shaders like these or these (or sets of lights based on those) do not work at all in Iray.

Light sets based on DS default lights can be made to work but will require adjustments as the settings used by both render engines are not the same.

Filatoon is a shader.

Filament is a viewport draw style , not a render engine option. To render with Filament you select "Viewport" as render engine, and Filament as Viewport draw style

Richard Haseltine said:

FrankTheTank said:

Does anyone know is it possible to render animated VDBs in FilaToon?

VDBs are not currently supported in anything but Iray.

Thank you, Richard! Yeah, I found some VDB clouds in my library but I couldn't get them to show up in Filament, so that tracks. Thank you for the confirmation, it's much appreciated. :)

crosswind said:

What shader are you using ? What I showed is Filatoon ~

 No, just regular filament... I wasn't using filatoon. I wanted to try something realistic, although I managed to achieve something good, but I thought I could improve the scene more with the shadows and lights.

FrankTheTank said:

Does anyone know is it possible to render animated VDBs in FilaToon?

I think VDB Volumetrics might be Iray only. I don't think I own any VDB products to test it, but I will try and look through my library later to see if I have any and then could test it. My guess is that it's Iray only, it would be nice if I'm wrong about that though! As it would be cool to use volumetric clouds and explosions in Filament.

3Diva said:

wsterdan said:

Looks like a great product, I'll snap it up if or when the next major version of DAZ Studio 5 allows Mac users to use Filament.

That's a bummer that Mac users still can't use Filament, but I do know that they are working on that. Hopefully it won't be much longer.

We were told that Filament worked on the Mac pre-beta back in the summer of 2021, so it should still work when the DAZ Studio 5/Next/Whatever comes out. I took a gamble back then and bought some Filament scripts and products that have sat for years untouched, but because DAZ hasn't yet – against all odds – destroyed my final iota of optimisim, I broke down and purchased your product with some other Filatoon products. I think that purchases of high-end nVidia cards that don't work in *this* verison of DAZ Studio may spur the release of the Next DAZ Studio to "sooner" rather than "some day".
Hopefully I won't be sitting here in 2026 regretting that last spark of optimism.t 

Wolfwood said:

Rod Wise Driggo said:

As a Mac user I could buy stuff which is only available with Filament shaders.
I could also buy Iray addon textures just to be able to use the stuff on Mac.
Or I could just empty my cart and call it a day.

On top of March Meh Ness now they are asking to pay for iray extra on top of base like it was a addon for an old 3DL product.

I have nothing against toon stuff, but asking extra for iray is a new low by DAZ.

 

Not the first time that's happened. Some of the Astaroth 9 items, the guitars I think, are the same way. I do consider it a money grab. The store has plenty of products released with Iray & 3DL in the same package, and before that, both Poser & 3DL. It's one thing if an artist wants to do a separate shader add-on for an older product (like some of Jack Tomalin's classics), but quite another to split up a new model into 2 products that way.

Rod Wise Driggo said:

As a Mac user I could buy stuff which is only available with Filament shaders.
I could also buy Iray addon textures just to be able to use the stuff on Mac.
Or I could just empty my cart and call it a day.

On top of March Meh Ness now they are asking to pay for iray extra on top of base like it was a addon for an old 3DL product.

I have nothing against toon stuff, but asking extra for iray is a new low by DAZ.

Don't have that hair but tried with another Wolfie hair for V4 "Tarah Hair V4", converts fine to both Iray (Uber Base) and Filament.  First render is with filament base shader, no outline. Second is with the filament Hair preset.

wsterdan said:

Rod Wise Driggo said:

As a Mac user I could buy stuff which is only available with Filament shaders.
I could also buy Iray addon textures just to be able to use the stuff on Mac.
Or I could just empty my cart and call it a day.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I did. At first, I thought I'd invest in them now and use them when the DAZ Studio Whatever comes out, but even with the need to keep new nVidia card users engaged there's still no clue as to when that will lhappen. I did do that back in August, 2021 when we were told that Filament did work on the Mac with the pre-beta; I purchasde a number of Filament products and scripts but those purchases have sat for almost four years untouched. 

I haven't used Genesis 9 very much;I don't see a male version of Willow, can Willow be morphed to "William" to have a male version or do we need to wait for an actual male?

There are mats for male nipples and anatomical elements so if you just add your own male morph, I'm sure you can. I'll try right now.

It lets me use DG Toon Style shader which looks good in iRay but terrible in Filament and I still get the pop up from there when I try to add the FilaToon hair shader. I'll try the V3D converter and see if that works.
Nope. That product just froze Daz and I have to force quit it.

Rod Wise Driggo said:

As a Mac user I could buy stuff which is only available with Filament shaders.
I could also buy Iray addon textures just to be able to use the stuff on Mac.
Or I could just empty my cart and call it a day.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I did. At first, I thought I'd invest in them now and use them when the DAZ Studio Whatever comes out, but even with the need to keep new nVidia card users engaged there's still no clue as to when that will lhappen. I did do that back in August, 2021 when we were told that Filament did work on the Mac with the pre-beta; I purchasde a number of Filament products and scripts but those purchases have sat for almost four years untouched. 

I haven't used Genesis 9 very much;I don't see a male version of Willow, can Willow be morphed to "William" to have a male version or do we need to wait for an actual male?

As a Mac user I could buy stuff which is only available with Filament shaders.
I could also buy Iray addon textures just to be able to use the stuff on Mac.
Or I could just empty my cart and call it a day.

Is there any chance that soft shadows exist in Filament? I tested it again in the latest version of DAZ Studio and now there are hard shadows. That's a huge improvement!