mike.smith2005 said:

SickleYield said:

No, it just applies base Filament shaders. For it to make everything Filatoon I think we'd need a second product.

Doesn't it have the ability to use a different shader? Like, I use the https://www.daz3d.com/glass-for-filament instead fo the base filament shader by clicking on the surface in the list of shaders and switching it over. Perhaps some scripts for filatoon shaders?

Yes, the script can use a different shader.  You can certainly TRY having the script swap in one of your filatoon shaders.  I have no idea what the result would be.  Sickleyield is the shader writer for our product (and general all around Daz Studio expert; I just write the scripts) and understands better what would happen.  Based on what she said, you may get good results (unknown) but not optimal results.

necroscension said:

TheNathanParable said:

Another experiment with using FilaToon on an older Poser figure, this time Himeko by BillyT!

As much as I love how this model looks, her facial morphs are a bit difficult to use. I had to render this in two passes, one for each eye, due to the winking and eye movement morphs clashing.

I'm very proud of the lighting in this one.

https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#gallery=all&sort=newest&page=1&image=1354659

If you don't mind me asking, how did you get shadows from the hair and on the neck? Even with cast shadows turned on I do not get shadows from the hair nor on the neck. If you look at my Chibi-Bel image, I'd expect to see that and shadows from the skirt.

Never mind... I've apparently been having issues with the deep map shadows on my lights, which appears to be working now. I would get no shadows when it or the other option was selected. Now to retry a couple of renders...

Edit -- the Filament Atmosphere Blur product was the problem. I had used it on the Minion image, and what I've learned is if the subject is in the dome, the shadow type from the distant light works in reverse. I had to set the shadow type to None in order for the shadows to appear. Thought I'd throw that out there if someone else attempted the same thing and wonders why turning on the deep shadow maps appear to turn off the shadows.

TheNathanParable said:

Another experiment with using FilaToon on an older Poser figure, this time Himeko by BillyT!

As much as I love how this model looks, her facial morphs are a bit difficult to use. I had to render this in two passes, one for each eye, due to the winking and eye movement morphs clashing.

I'm very proud of the lighting in this one.

https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#gallery=all&sort=newest&page=1&image=1354659

If you don't mind me asking, how did you get shadows from the hair and on the neck? Even with cast shadows turned on I do not get shadows from the hair nor on the neck. If you look at my Chibi-Bel image, I'd expect to see that and shadows from the skirt.

Never mind... I've apparently been having issues with the deep map shadows on my lights, which appears to be working now. I would get no shadows when it or the other option was selected. Now to retry a couple of renders...

Edit -- the Filament Atmosphere Blur product was the problem. I had used it on the Minion image, and what I've learned is if the subject is in the dome, the shadow type from the distant light works in reverse. I had to set the shadow type to None in order for the shadows to appear. Thought I'd throw that out there if someone else attempted the same thing and wonders why turning on the deep shadow maps appear to turn off the shadows.

DoctorJellybean said:

Support for macOS is improving, maybe not as fast as you would like. It doesn't help that Apple seems to throw a few spanners in the works with each OS update, but I wouldn't lose interest.

I've been waiting over 4 years to run Filament on my Macs, and Filitoon only makes me want it more. Sadly, though, they can improve the MacOS support ten times over and it doesn't make any difference to me until DAZ Studio 5 comes out. 

On the plus side, I saved hundreds of dollars on Filatoon products over the last couple of weeks and since I've stopped my usual spending while I wait to see what DAZ Studio 5 will do, I've saved a few thousand dollars (at least). 

SickleYield said:

No, it just applies base Filament shaders. For it to make everything Filatoon I think we'd need a second product.

Doesn't it have the ability to use a different shader? Like, I use the https://www.daz3d.com/glass-for-filament instead fo the base filament shader by clicking on the surface in the list of shaders and switching it over. Perhaps some scripts for filatoon shaders?

leemoon_c43b45a114 said:

I did purchase a low end gaming PC a couple of years ago.  Tried to use it for DAZ Studio (and some Photoshop.)

The nVidia RTX 3060 (12GB VRAM) was awesome for the type of renders I do.  Less than 20-30 seconds per render.

HOWEVER, Windows 11 is not working out well for me.  A number of months ago, the PC would boot into a black screen.  I would have to force the PC into safe mode and uninstall/reinstall the nVidia drivers to get the display working properly.  This happens every few days and I've given up on the PC.  I don't have the time nor patience to spend 30-45 minutes trying to turn on the PC.  The card works fine during initial boot up, but when it's just getting to the desktop it's all black.  I've messed around with this one PC more than every single Apple/Mac I've owned over the past 30+ years. Combined.

Once upon a time, one of my minor duties as an aerospace software engineer was managing a Windows NT cluster (and developing business related software on them.)  I have no desire to go back to the near constant care that Windows requires to keep it running. :)

The PC feels like a needy child and the Mac feels like a faithful companion.  I just turn the Mac on and it works.

That said, it would be nice for Apple to allow the use of e-GPUs on the new Macs.  Or for them to give the DAZ team assistance on getting DS updated for current Macs.

To recap: the HP Omen desktop PC I got was cheap ($1300-ish), I added a 4TB NVME SSD and 32GB more RAM on top of that.  So if you are more willing and PC-savvy, a PC will go a long way to improving Iray rendering for not a lot of money.  Windows is a bit bothersome and I suspect there's a conflict with the more recent nVidia drivers, the PC, Windows 11, and/or the RTX 3060 that cause the black screen boot up.  Oh, and I had no trouble duplicating the Mac's content library, etc. over to the PC.  It's too bad that I don't have a usable/stable PC platform for accelerated Iray rendering.

I've wanted to throw that PC out the window so many times! LOL!

I love my Macs and even without super fast rendering on the PC, would welcome performance improvements brought by the newest Apple Silicon chips.  But only if DAZ releases a better version of DS than what we have now. Filament and Filatoon looked great on the PC the last time it booted up.  Filament on the Mac would be great.  Too bad the older Qt development system can't support Filament on the Mac.  Hopefully, IF Daz releases DAZ Studio built from a newer version of Qt, Filament, stability, UI fixes, and maybe more feature pairty with the PC will come along - and not be put behind a subscription paywall.  Not holding my breath on any of it.  They had Filament running on the Mac 3 or 4 years ago per the DS 5 forum post from way back.

Anyway, I'll continue to refrain from purchasing much here until we get something acceptable for Mac.  It's been tempting to dive in and buy stuff, but the future of DS on Mac is unknown and uncertain.  The wait has been long and my interest in waiting any more is waning.

Lee

Support for macOS is improving, maybe not as fast as you would like. It doesn't help that Apple seems to throw a few spanners in the works with each OS update, but I wouldn't lose interest.

I did purchase a low end gaming PC a couple of years ago.  Tried to use it for DAZ Studio (and some Photoshop.)

The nVidia RTX 3060 (12GB VRAM) was awesome for the type of renders I do.  Less than 20-30 seconds per render.

HOWEVER, Windows 11 is not working out well for me.  A number of months ago, the PC would boot into a black screen.  I would have to force the PC into safe mode and uninstall/reinstall the nVidia drivers to get the display working properly.  This happens every few days and I've given up on the PC.  I don't have the time nor patience to spend 30-45 minutes trying to turn on the PC.  The card works fine during initial boot up, but when it's just getting to the desktop it's all black.  I've messed around with this one PC more than every single Apple/Mac I've owned over the past 30+ years. Combined.

Once upon a time, one of my minor duties as an aerospace software engineer was managing a Windows NT cluster (and developing business related software on them.)  I have no desire to go back to the near constant care that Windows requires to keep it running. :)

The PC feels like a needy child and the Mac feels like a faithful companion.  I just turn the Mac on and it works.

That said, it would be nice for Apple to allow the use of e-GPUs on the new Macs.  Or for them to give the DAZ team assistance on getting DS updated for current Macs.

To recap: the HP Omen desktop PC I got was cheap ($1300-ish), I added a 4TB NVME SSD and 32GB more RAM on top of that.  So if you are more willing and PC-savvy, a PC will go a long way to improving Iray rendering for not a lot of money.  Windows is a bit bothersome and I suspect there's a conflict with the more recent nVidia drivers, the PC, Windows 11, and/or the RTX 3060 that cause the black screen boot up.  Oh, and I had no trouble duplicating the Mac's content library, etc. over to the PC.  It's too bad that I don't have a usable/stable PC platform for accelerated Iray rendering.

I've wanted to throw that PC out the window so many times! LOL!

I love my Macs and even without super fast rendering on the PC, would welcome performance improvements brought by the newest Apple Silicon chips.  But only if DAZ releases a better version of DS than what we have now. Filament and Filatoon looked great on the PC the last time it booted up.  Filament on the Mac would be great.  Too bad the older Qt development system can't support Filament on the Mac.  Hopefully, IF Daz releases DAZ Studio built from a newer version of Qt, Filament, stability, UI fixes, and maybe more feature pairty with the PC will come along - and not be put behind a subscription paywall.  Not holding my breath on any of it.  They had Filament running on the Mac 3 or 4 years ago per the DS 5 forum post from way back.

Anyway, I'll continue to refrain from purchasing much here until we get something acceptable for Mac.  It's been tempting to dive in and buy stuff, but the future of DS on Mac is unknown and uncertain.  The wait has been long and my interest in waiting any more is waning.

Lee

Rod Wise Driggo said:

Have a M2 Max machine with 96 GB here. Rendering speed is unfortunately still far behind a PC with a decent GPU.
Is OK for my purpose and I think at least dForce is a bit faster than it used to be.
Still once iRay or Studio would provide Metal-support things could be way faster I assume.

Studio will in the future most probably support Metal for viewport (replacing OpenGL) and for Filament (uses Metal on macOS) , but Iray is nVidia's baby and wont support any other GPU hardware, ever.
 

Space Jingoroh said:

paid said:

Hi!

Do I need DAZ 4.23 for toon? I bought the Yakura figure and the toon essentials but all I get in 4.22 is a pitch black figure (no error messages).

　As a test, I loaded a scene created in 4.23 with 4.22.0.19.

　It seems to be impossible.
　The number of settings in the “Filament Draw Option” menu is completely different.

Yes, for General Releases the current build is required - or the later public builds leading up to it.

paid said:

Hi!

Do I need DAZ 4.23 for toon? I bought the Yakura figure and the toon essentials but all I get in 4.22 is a pitch black figure (no error messages).

　As a test, I loaded a scene created in 4.23 with 4.22.0.19.

　It seems to be impossible.
　The number of settings in the “Filament Draw Option” menu is completely different.

Great examples of what Filament / FilaToon can make with the renders.

I love that filament allows for emisive materials.

My next FilaToon experiment was to try and get a saturated watercolor kinda feel right in DAZ. I tweaked the Filament Draw Settings heavily and added some watercolor textures in the scene. I really want to see what's possible and close enough to what a style might evoke, so I can mimize postwork. Especially when animating, that would speed things up a lot. This was just a quick test, no postwork except for the watermark. I'm happy with the possibilities. 

I've been following the animation related threads in the forum for a while (though a lot of the technical aspects are still way over my head right now). 
Last month, I finally decided to dip my toes into some basic animation (some turntable animation and bits sprinkled here and there) with this little music video for a music challenge I did. Rendering stuff was a slow process and my computer wasn't cooperating, so I went with a very low frame rate... But still, I feel very excited at the idea of doing more animating, especially with the addition of faster render times in FilaToon/Filament. Will be starting off very simple though...

This song is called Twin Hearts, but is really about the intertwined relationship between artists and their inner muses. The music video visualizes the idea as twins linked in harmony. (The idea was inspired by the Olympic synchronized swimming duet teams, where 4 out of the 5 top teams were twins).

Artini Thank you! 

SolitarySandpiper and Artini, you're welcome! Glad the explanation was useful. 

Dartanbeck said:

 

When I first saw what the incredible development team did to the Filament Draw Options I couldn't believe my eyes!

At that point I didn't know that there were any changes. I just went in there to do my usual adjustments of Environment and Scene Lighting Intensities. Blew my mind!

As I do animations pretty much exclusively (even my stills are simply a frame from an animation - hence the low resolution) I don't spend a whole lot of time on the specifics within Studio - mainly just keeping the highs from overshooting and the lows from puddling, then I just do my color grading in Fusion. I haven't graduated to Resolve's Color page yet. I mean... I know it's there and how to do a lot in it, but I currently just work in Fusion adding color grading nodes to any layer I want to grade - individually. It's a lot of fun and makes final decisions more flexible. But that's just me and how I work for my video clips. It makes Noir and/or nostalgic Aged looks pretty interesting since we can isolate differences between each layer separately - like a faded brown tint background with a muted, faded, but full color main interest layer, for example. Maybe over accentuate only the reds for one character layer. It's a lot of fun to mess around with!

Dartanbeck I can totally see the benefit of working in layers as you do and then do color grading in Resolve/Fusion. Working in layers and applying fx/color grading to them separately can open up so many possibilies! 
I've been meaning to use Resolve, especially for its color grading abilities, but I've chickened out twice now to return to what I usually go with for video editing (simple, but I know my way around). I just have to bite the bullet and follow some Resolve tutorials and practice!

For some of my projects, especially in Iray, it made a lot of sense to get DAZ to do as much up front. For example, BW in Iray has the added benefit of being so much faster to render than color, that I cut down a lot of time rendering BW directly. Filament's fast. The one big benefit here of rendering directly in BW for a BW project is getting the tonal relationships right in one go. It's harder for me to do that in color. 

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

They are enabled. And then as soon as I add the filaments set they seem to disappear. Does adding the set change the settings on spotlights? I know it only adds a distance light but doesn't set it's shadow property. Or at least in my case it's not.

As far as I can tell, Filament only "reads" one distant light (whichever one is highest up on the list in the Scene Tab) and if it's set to "Shadows >> None" it can override shadows cast by other lights. So that might be what's causing the issues. That's just a guess of course since I can't see your scene tab. 

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

It does seem that like once the distant light was removed and then only adding in the filament options from the set that the shadows returned. I added a few more spotlights to try and spread the light around. Eventually added the distant light back in but at a reduced intensity so it wouldn't wash out the shadows. Also played with environment weight on several items so they weren't so dark. At least now I know of some settings to play with when the shader does something weird or doesn't behave as expected.

It was very easy to recreate your problem... literally load a figure, look at it from above, load in a spotlight to that viewpoint and increase the lumens of that spotlight to the point where only the feet were showing slight colour.

There are some odd characteristics that need to be understood (Vicky's eyebrows are one odd characteristic i'm trying to workout) in asking questions you learn and the people working on the solution learn too, i know i did here. 

It does seem that like once the distant light was removed and then only adding in the filament options from the set that the shadows returned. I added a few more spotlights to try and spread the light around. Eventually added the distant light back in but at a reduced intensity so it wouldn't wash out the shadows. Also played with environment weight on several items so they weren't so dark. At least now I know of some settings to play with when the shader does something weird or doesn't behave as expected.

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

All good suggestions. But what it took was adding in the filament options set from the Genesis 9 toon directory to fix things. Also for some reason when I applied Micky 9 and Vicky 9 a toon outline wasn't added. Once I added a toon outline and then reapplied the material file, everything worked. Now I just need to go back and get my drop shadows back.

It's actually the distant light that was added that filled in the shadows... always good to have the filament draw options available though. 

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

All good suggestions. But what it took was adding in the filament options set from the Genesis 9 toon directory to fix things. Also for some reason when I applied Micky 9 and Vicky 9 a toon outline wasn't added. Once I added a toon outline and then reapplied the material file, everything worked. Now I just need to go back and get my drop shadows back.

Make sure your lights have shadows enabled.