Silver Dolphin said:

There is a Daz to Blender bridge. You could use cycles there. I would just use Opengl or Filament  with Daz Studio 4 and use ComfyUI to fix your renders with Qwen Image edit. Locally don't spend any money. If you can't afford a 16gb video card you can use a  SXM2 Nvidia V100 tesla 16gb of vram with a SXM2 to PCIE adapter. This card does not have video out but if your PC has built in video you are golden. If you can find one a 3090 is a great card but they are hard to get now.

Quite honestly, although I am not a PC newbee and I have done several installations like Poser to VUE or C4d, DAZ to Zbrush or Hexagon, all the DS Bridges to Blender are to complicate for me.
Not that I won't make it in the end, but it takes too much effort. with a new Blender release, you'll have to do it all over again.
I like what I can do with Genesis 8 in DAZ Studio, but I don't like the limitations coming with IRAY and dforce.

There is a Daz to Blender bridge. You could use cycles there. I would just use Opengl or Filament  with Daz Studio 4 and use ComfyUI to fix your renders with Qwen Image edit. Locally don't spend any money. If you can't afford a 16gb video card you can use a  SXM2 Nvidia V100 tesla 16gb of vram with a SXM2 to PCIE adapter. This card does not have video out but if your PC has built in video you are golden. If you can find one a 3090 is a great card but they are hard to get now.

you can install D|S4 as well and indeed should for the plugins and render the saved scenes in 6

you also need 4 to convert stuff to blended weight for Carrara

Filament still works in it too

It's possble, but if history is any indication, highly unlikely.

The main problem is going to be product support.

Are PA's/content cretors going to develop for two different render engines?

Are Ds users going to even use it?

And, are devs going commit to it?

Prior to Iray coming along, we had acces to Lux Render(which is also open source), via Paolo Ciccone's Reality plug in, and later Luxus by Spheric labs.

AFaik, neither received any support from other PA's, and both had been developmentally dead for years prior to their removal form the daz store in 2021 and 2020 repectively.

Relaity went open source long before it was NLA'd and is up on github.  I've seen a few attemptes to update it, but those have also been dead for years.

Not sure if Luxus still works, but it's NLA and locked to an almost 10 year old version of lux render, iirc.

We currently have accesss to Octane render, and again, PA support is basically non-existent, with 3 whole products that come up when i search the daz store for Octane render.

3delight support had massively declined prior to it's removal, with very few(if any) products having 3delight presets for several years.

Filament(which is open source) is an iffy. it's gotten some PA support, but it's not all that much for something that's been around for ~5 years.

Coming from a user perspective, the only thing that matters is if it's signifiantly faster at rendering on the same hardware than iray(wth indistinguishable results),  that render savings isn't completely lost in the conversion process, and, ti's stupid easy to convert the assets(one click, done).

Short of that, user support is going to be non-existent, except for some of the more hardcore types.

Yes filament is advertised by DAZ as a fast preview for iray, in this sense it is compatible with the standard iray shaders. However, it may have issues with custom shaders, and also has limitations as others already pointed out. But as it is intended as a fast preview the limitations are expected.

donniekeidic said:

generally speaking most iray shaders work fine in Filament, the issue is when you have opacity maps. A quick way to find problem areas without looking at every surface map is to rotate the scene in the viewport. then look for areas that "glitter" indicating an opacity map is in use. Usually areas with windows, water, leaves, hair obviously, etc. I use Filatoon base shaders on all those types of surfaces and generally leave other iray surfaces alone (with the exception of adjusting base surface color and gloss settings). And once you have Filatoon shaders in any part of the scene, you will need to make sure to have a distant light in order to see those Filatoon shaded areas, otherwise they show up as black.

Thank you for the tips! I'll give the distant light a try. 

jmucchiello said:

I've never used Filament as a "fast IRAY preview" So I'm not sure what to tell you. If that's the case you don't want to convert the shaders at all. Sorry.

I will point out you get "useless" previews when using strand-based hair. So Daz previews aren't meant to be perfect.

I may have to stick to Texture Shaded previews despite the fact that I have been really looking forward to Filament on my Mac. Plus, I'm told that the Texture Shaded draw mode of the Viewport in DS6  is not too far off the old Filament in DS4. I'll keep trying, though! 

generally speaking most iray shaders work fine in Filament, the issue is when you have opacity maps. A quick way to find problem areas without looking at every surface map is to rotate the scene in the viewport. then look for areas that "glitter" indicating an opacity map is in use. Usually areas with windows, water, leaves, hair obviously, etc. I use Filatoon base shaders on all those types of surfaces and generally leave other iray surfaces alone (with the exception of adjusting base surface color and gloss settings). And once you have Filatoon shaders in any part of the scene, you will need to make sure to have a distant light in order to see those Filatoon shaded areas, otherwise they show up as black.

I've never used Filament as a "fast IRAY preview" So I'm not sure what to tell you. If that's the case you don't want to convert the shaders at all. Sorry.

I will point out you get "useless" previews when using strand-based hair. So Daz previews aren't meant to be perfect.

jmucchiello said:

You need to set filament shaders on the surfaces. https://www.daz3d.com/city-office-block has IRAY shaders. In filament mode, it doesn't render them correctly.

I expected lighing issues when Studio translates Iray shaders to Filament. What I didn't expect was the completely black rendering of only certain faces of an object that uses the same material over its entire geometry. A Google search seems to indicate that the only real difference between Iray and Filament is how they react to light. If this is wrong, please let me know.

I'm really just trying to fix the preview; I want my final render to be Iray. A colleague has tested these same models on his Windows box, and none of these solid black surfaces appear when he uses Filament in the Viewport. I suspect this is a Mac-only problem, but as usual, I could be very wrong.

What steps would you take to convert an Iray shader to a Filament shader, please? Thanks!

You need to set filament shaders on the surfaces. https://www.daz3d.com/city-office-block has IRAY shaders. In filament mode, it doesn't render them correctly.

Studio version: 6.25.2026.14722

OS: macOS Tahoe 26.5.1 

System: Apple M2 Ultra with 128 GB RAM

Products tested:

City Office Blocks SKU: 64915

1971 AM Muscle Car 2n1 SKU: 2217

TL;DR: Some surfaces are textured black in the Viewport when using Filament in Studio 6 on a Mac. Light rays from any light source (headlamp or scene light) must fall on the affected surfaces to see the problem.

It doesn’t happen when using Texture Shaded or Iray in the Viewport, and full Iray renders are normal. The easiest(?) workaround for Filament is to rotate the entire model slightly around the Y- or Z-axis, or both.

Steps to Reproduce:

• Load the City Office Blocks model into an empty default scene. Set Viewport draw mode to Texture Shaded.
  • Image: RefTexShadedNoRotation
• Verify the default auto headlamp setting of only working when there are no scene lights.
• Set Viewport draw mode to Filament. Observe the solid black texturing of some surfaces.
  • Image: HeadlampNoLights
• Set Auto Headlamp to Never. Observe that the problem goes away.
  • Image: NoHeadlampNoLights
• (Optional) Add a Filament Draw Node and set the Environment Scale to 6000 to keep the Viewport from looking blown out.
  • Image: NoHeadlampNoLightsAddFilDrawNode
• Add a point light to the scene. Observe solid black texturing on some surfaces that receive rays from the point light.
  • Image: NoHeadlampAddPointLight
• Rotate the entire model around the Y-axis very slightly. Observe that the problem is partially remedied on some surfaces.
  • RotateModelYonly
• Reset the Y-axis rotation and rotate the model around the Z-axis. Observe that the problem disappears completely.
  • Image: RotateModelZonly
• Load the 1971 AM Muscle Car 2n1 model into a new, empty default scene. Set Viewport draw mode to Texture Shaded.
  • Image: HemiRefTexShaded
• Set Viewport draw mode to Filament. Observe solid black texturing on some surfaces.
  • Image: HemiNoRotate
• Rotate the model around either the Y-axis. Observe that the problem still exists for some surfaces.
  • Image: HemiRotateY
• Add a slight rotation around the Z-axis and observe that the problem is solved for all surfaces.
  • Image: HemiRotateZ

I experimented with flipping the Normals of the affected polygons, but it was more tedious and much less effective than rotating the entire model. No matter what I did to the Normals, I could never get the problem to go away completely.

Leana said:

jmucchiello said:

Beating a dead horse, if there were filament shaders included I bet those ships and outfits would look cool. But I don't hold my breath for filament support.

I would love a Filatoon add-on for these, it would look great! 

Agree. If we're lucky, we get to pay extra for Filatoon add-on sets. For years, most products sold here included both Iray & 3DL, and before that Daz & Poser materials. So why not offer both Iray and Filatoon presets?

Since that isn't happening, Ihighly recommend 3Diva's https://www.daz3d.com/easy-filatoon which lives up to it's name & converts everything very quickly. The results are lovely.

jmucchiello said:

Beating a dead horse, if there were filament shaders included I bet those ships and outfits would look cool. But I don't hold my breath for filament support.

I would love a Filatoon add-on for these, it would look great! 

Not my theme. Sydney looks good. But I already have plenty of figures that look good. She'll be discounted eventually.

Beating a dead horse, if there were filament shaders included I bet those ships and outfits would look cool. But I don't hold my breath for filament support.

Bunyip02 said:

Uh-oh, was looking at getting a high-end graphics computer with a 5060Ti card, might need to reconsider .....

you can still have DS|4 installed too, in fact you need it for all the plugins,

Also,

Filament will use your onboard graphics and actually the 5060Ti card OpenGL component, I think too.

I like Daz Studio 6.  I downloaded the Beta version so I could keep my Daz Studio 4.24.  I rendered Victoria 7 , both took just 2 mins.  My graphics card is RTX 3050 .  Basic default Daz lighting on both pictures.  Filament seems different.  Better in my opinion on Daz 6, when used as draw style.  The biggest pull is the font size.  I have my font scale set on windows at 125% .  And the font in Daz studio 6 is now noticeable larger and clearer.  BTW: Uncheck CPU from both Photoreal and Interactive modes — counterintuitively, having the CPU enabled alongside the GPU can sometimes slow Iray down rather than help it.

camilodiezr said:

I wanted to share my experience with DS 6 (6.25.2026.14722 (64 bit) running on WIN 11 Pro (25H2)

1. Installation didn't throw any issues or errors. It automatically recognized one (out of several) of my custom content paths.

2. When first opening the software, was prompted to login, but when I tried I got a pop-up message that reads "Server did not accept username/password". Tried several times, nothing changes

3. Character:

• I imported a base HD character (Neanderthal 9 and alt-shapes), without issue.
• Shaping works OK, including upping the View SubD level to 4 (no crashes nor slowdowns)
• Changing MATS works OK (tried with Karmen all MAT and Nipples Masculine)

4. DrawStyles (this is where things start to fall apart for me):

• The default (filament) works OK.
• None of the "shaded"  drawstyles work for me (I get an empty bouding box - mouse hover highlights the body parts but nothing else)
• The (new?) Universal style does not work either (same as with the "shaded" styles)

What is your hardware? If you hae a GPU on the CPU and a standalone GPU whiich is drawing the DS window (that is a driver setting, not anything set in DS)?

5. ViewPort navigation: No issues whatsoever. Feels basically identical to my experience with 4.24 (Filament, wireframe and iray)

6. Saving and export: Saving scenes (default format) works OK. Haven't tried exporting or bridging (the official Blender Bridge and Diffeomorphic are not compatible with Daz 6 yet)

7. Rendering: I'm CPU bound at the moment, but iray render does work (also in viewport), no crashes (again, I have only used with one character and default lights, have not done any stress tests whatsoever)

8. Scripts: I read none currently work with this release so I didn't bother testing.

Now here's one recurrent issue for me: Whenever i try to close the software, whether by clicking the X or going to File - Exit, I get an error message (Screenshot attached).

The image isn't there.

Overall.... It's a mixed bag. While it technically works, not been able to do basic things realiably (like login or closing the software!) doesn't leave a very good first impression. I do hope by the time I get to install for us with 50 series GPUs.

(Disclaimer: I haven't read this entire thread for any fixes and workarounds to the problems mentioned above)

I wanted to share my experience with DS 6 (6.25.2026.14722 (64 bit) running on WIN 11 Pro (25H2)

1. Installation didn't throw any issues or errors. It automatically recognized one (out of several) of my custom content paths.

2. When first opening the software, was prompted to login, but when I tried I got a pop-up message that reads "Server did not accept username/password". Tried several times, nothing changes

3. Character:

• I imported a base HD character (Neanderthal 9 and alt-shapes), without issue.
• Shaping works OK, including upping the View SubD level to 4 (no crashes nor slowdowns)
• Changing MATS works OK (tried with Karmen all MAT and Nipples Masculine)

4. DrawStyles (this is where things start to fall apart for me):

• The default (filament) works OK.
• None of the "shaded"  drawstyles work for me (I get an empty bouding box - mouse hover highlights the body parts but nothing else)
• The (new?) Universal style does not work either (same as with the "shaded" styles)

5. ViewPort navigation: No issues whatsoever. Feels basically identical to my experience with 4.24 (Filament, wireframe and iray)

6. Saving and export: Saving scenes (default format) works OK. Haven't tried exporting or bridging (the official Blender Bridge and Diffeomorphic are not compatible with Daz 6 yet)

7. Rendering: I'm CPU bound at the moment, but iray render does work (also in viewport), no crashes (again, I have only used with one character and default lights, have not done any stress tests whatsoever)

8. Scripts: I read none currently work with this release so I didn't bother testing.

Now here's one recurrent issue for me: Whenever i try to close the software, whether by clicking the X or going to File - Exit, I get an error message (Screenshot attached).

Overall.... It's a mixed bag. While it technically works, not been able to do basic things realiably (like login or closing the software!) doesn't leave a very good first impression. I do hope by the time I get to install for us with 50 series GPUs.

(Disclaimer: I haven't read this entire thread for any fixes and workarounds to the problems mentioned above)

Thank you very much, I don't plan on using Daz Studio 6 anytime soon. LOL, need the community to beta test the bugs out of this new software before taking the plunge. The truth is DS4 with OpenGL or Filament is enough for my renders, because I use ComfyUI and Qwen Image Edit to fix my renders and lighting. I do I use my Space Mouse alot and it is a great tool for getting around in 3D space and working on modeling and stuff. Thanks this is a life saver.