Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/products/studio.php

Check out the latest news and render from DAZ|Studio. The skin shader looks cool. Cant wait to test this puppy!!!

so save and import will be enabled?..hmmm..

I can't wait also, I wonder if they will have that smoothing engine in theirs like Poser has. Sure hope not, but I wonder if they must have it. Sharen

No, no, no! ;0) No smoothing engine like Poser, please. How's about real smoothing, like Phong or Blinn with angle settings and possibly edge breaks?

I know I sure hope not either, NO SMOOTHING ENGINE PLEASE...I actually contacted them and asked them what or if they will be using it...kind of begged them not too....hope they read these posts. Sharen

I like the new smoothing in poser 5...

I just got a memo back regarding the smoothing engine...this is what was in my email: Hi Sharen, DAZ|Studio will have a polygon smoother, so that rendered figures wouldn't look faceted. However, we hope that the engine we use will smooth much better then Poser does! Vicky Tolonen Technical Support

the smoothing in Poser5 works well most of the time, it's on ly a few models that blow up like balloons.

Smoothing (especially displacement smoothing like P5) is a GREAT thing if you know how to use it (you CAN turn it OFF, ya know), because you can get a lot better renders from low poly models if you have real smoothing like P5 (which also has blinn and several other shaders BTW). Of course, the direction DAZ is going with their figures leads me to believe that they think that more polys is better, and you don't need smoothing if your models have oodles of otherwise useless resource-sucking polygons. Plus it is cheaper to make a render engine with shader-smoothing rather than displacement smoothing. And, since few people around here know the difference anyway, I guess most would be perfectly happy to let DAZ continue to lead them around by the nose like they always have.

Well I for one, think that this might be a really great program and am looking forward to testing it. I have Poser 4, Pro Pack and Poser 5, I was very disappointed in Poser 5 and Pro pack, I am a little more happier with Poser 5 since the patch, but still think it has room for improvement. I have been watching DAZ's site carefully and reading alot regarding DAZ Studio and I have to admit it looks and sounds wonderful. I am sure there will be bugs, but that is why we are allowed to test it prior to buying it. I also admit that I have never been upset with any of their works, I feel they sell top notch products. I will be looking forward to see if DAZ Studio takes square edge models and keeps them square and sharp. Time will tell at least regarding the smoothing engine. Sharen

Well, better to be 'led by the nose' then to be led by...

It seems that save will be enabled, but, probably, only to the specific DS format. Basically, it's Poser 4 with a decent library management, multiple levels of undo, Open GL preview and renderman compliant render engine. The multiple levels of undo are a real godsend : I wonder what the ressource needs will be ? I have got used to the poser preview and Vue's Open GL management in Windows makes me weary about the ressources needed, but I'm curious to see this also. The library management is already in Poser 5. As for the render engine, I don't know what renderman does. If I read well, though, the shader use is basic in the beta version : you can edit the same things as in Poser 4 plus refraction, displacement and lighting, and you have more freedom to use maps. We'll have to wait until "further shader developpement" (planned for late stages of beta). It doesn't seem that much above Poser 5 from what is said in this page, but I'm curious to see it nonetheless : it might hold more than what is told there. What really worries me is that it only supports Poser 4 format so far : will I be able to open Poser 5 scenes with it (even if I have to abandon the P5 materials in the process) ? Could this also mean that there is a rift growing between Curious labs + Poser and DAZ + DS ?

"And, since few people around here know the difference anyway, I guess most would be perfectly happy to let DAZ continue to lead them around by the nose like they always have." I know I am! ;-) If being handed a free piece of software that uses an industry-standard-compliant rendering engine to test to see if I like it is leading me around by the nose, then let 'em lead away! Of course, there's always the alternative, CL, who made me wait for almost a year after the Windows version was released before releasing the Mac version, the same people who charged me more for the downloadable versions of P4 & PP than for the shipping boxed version, who keep me waiting for weeks for tech solutions that they can't solve (but are solved here). If my only two choices are being led around by the nose by DAZ with free software or being treated like a second-class citizen by CL, then yeah, I'm happy with DAZ. ;-)

Bravo, Walt.

Yeah Ronstuff why don't you try to sound a little more condescending. :p I'm excited about DS. at the moment Poser 5 is really working well for me, and the ease of use and power of the mat room in P5 may take DS a while to match, however I have no doubt that the DS renderer and open GL preview are gonna be great. I'm pretty darn excited. I'll probably stick with P5 for anything other than stills till DS at least gets a Cel shader though.

ronstuff, I see those "shaders" for P5. We're talking polygon smoothing, right? ;) The only polygon smoothing that I'm aware of in P5 (there are no options in P4/PP), is that little check mark in the Properties. This should dictate what dihedral angle between polygons distinguishes smoothing and no smoothing (like anything less than 30 deg. is smoothed, above, leave transitions sharp). As for the high polygon counts for newer models, I think the answer is right in front of you. It is not for "smoother" looking objects without smoothing, but for the vast (have you checked the number of morphs on V3 and M3?) number of morphs with their detail and accuracy. More morphs controlling more detail require more polygons to control. End of story.

I agree with Walt for the most part, and with all who are anxious to test DAZ studio - every new tool has it's place in the toolbox. I don't agree, however that DAZ's motives for "giving away" this program are purely altruistic and without any thought of monetary gain or industry dominance.

No one here said that Daz is making D|S because they're altruists. :D They're a business! We all know that. One with a pretty good rep for quality. The thing is, one of the guys that is actually working on this program, rbtwhiz I believe, has a thread over at the Daz PC member forum. And he seems to have such... well, joy in his work. It is something he actually uses. That actually makes a difference. Daz does models- Studio is supposed to show them to their best advantage. We can expect good things.

Well... DUH. :P they give you the first taste for free "Hey man... Wanna try this..." Then you get hooked they make you pay. :D I'm still not sure I've seen any RELIABLE statement saying 1.0 will be free though.

kuroyume0161 - for your information, polygon smoothing is a process of SHADING and those "shaders" in P5 can be set to produce almost any type and quality of shaded smoothing (Phong, Blinn, whatever). Micropolygon displacement smoothing is an entirely different thing which can actually bend the mesh where there are no vertices. Likewise it can be used for highly detailed morphs on relatively low-poly meshes. It just isn't in DAZ's interest for you to know that or you would see that geometry with half the polys of V3 could actually be MORE flexible if it is designed to take advantage of advanced capabilities such as those in Poser 5. It also isn't in DAZ's interest to do anything that supports or compliments Poser 5. In any event, I will use Studio for whatever advantages it has and continue to use P5 for its advantages. As for anybody else, I'm sure it makes DAZ feel very happy to see people continually blame CL and P5 for things they just don't understand. It just makes me laugh. :-)

I am leary of Open GL since Vue 4 doesn't play well with everyone's video card. Having an option like Open GL or Direct 3D, as in Carrara would be preferable. In regards to texturing, a more straight forward approach in Studio would be very welcomed. All the wires and connections and floating pallates of cryptic properties in P5 is enough to drive a 3D hobbiest insane. Curious Labs said that P6 will featrue an easier to use texture room. The bottom line with all this is that we will have a viable alternative software for photorealistic human 3D modeling and usually competition is a good thing.

For those who don't know what "Renderman compliant" is, Renderman is the rendering and scene description language created and used by Pixar. If it's been in any of the Pixar movies, it was rendered with a Renderman renderer.

"Renderman Compliant" means that everything it has to offer complies with the Renderman specification. It does not mean that it contains the full compliment of Renderman functionality. There are numerous free engines which are Renderman compliant, but that does not mean that they will render anything near the quality of the Renderman engine. I'm also leary of OpenGL - its great for fast previews and real-time activities, but the price of that speed often means living with some annoying artifacts.

ronstuff, for your information, the Poser 5 Lighting shader nodes have nothing to do with dihedral polygon smoothing, only specular highlights. Check this for yourself in either the app or the manual. No angle settings - only specular highlight settings. That is not polygon smoothing. Polygon smoothing involves gradual changes in lighting/shading in order to remove the hard edges between polygons (dependent upon their dihedral angle). Changing specular highlighting will not do this. I guess those 50 odd books and manuals on 3D CG on my bookshelf contain blank pages...

"In regards to texturing, a more straight forward approach in Studio would be very welcomed. All the wires and connections and floating pallates of cryptic properties in P5 is enough to drive a 3D hobbiest" No offense but this is just wrong. IMO the mat room is WAY easier to comprehend than the old Poser way, once you take the 15 minutes it takes to grasp the concept. The Mat room is hands down the one thing Poser 5 got 120% right, the thought of dumbing it down makes me sad. I feel that many poser users are just too set in their ways to bother even trying to learn it... I have to wonder what they are gonna do when faced with a COMPLETELY new interface in Daz studio... I can't help but think many who held out for DS because they thought P5 was "too hard" (genuine bugs not withstanding) will be sorely sissapointed.

er that's dissapointed. :D

Is that people complaining about a program before it is even out yet. Your bad attitude sickens me...

I don't think anyone is exactly complaining, just speculating based on the info at hand. I think DS will be a big improvement for people currently using P4 to render stills even in the beta stage, But by their own admission DS won't be a full featured competitor with P5 for a good while. Once it reaches maturity I bet it will be something to see, I just hope this community has the patience to LET it reach maturity.

Ah don't mind Ron. He even accused Daz on the Daz forums of basically forgetting that they owe their existance to Curious Labs and Poser. Americans should still pay taxes to the English? ;)

My take on all this is pretty simple. Here's the deal, as I see it 1. Someone else is coming into the market with a software which will handle poser files and figures. This is known as competition which, IMO, is usually good for a kick up the butt to a company which has cornered the market. And make no mistake about it, CL has had a monopoly on the poser software market, up until now. 2. They're giving it away free at the beta stage. This means (to me, at least) that they'll only release it when they're sure it's a working software and they're fairly confident it can be used without causing a major debacle. The beta stage will then shed light on any discrepancies, bugs or incompatabilities. And inevitably, there will be some bugs. 3. They have a fairly generally accepted reputation for quality and customer service. Speaks for itself. 4. It's in their own interests to make it work. Altruism?? DAZ has never claimed altruistic motives. They stated quite clearly at the beginning that their aim was to bring 1 million new users into the 3d market. And they expect most of those new users to buy DAZ products. To me, that's only good business sense. And what's in it to harm us, the current crop of poser users? Nada. DAZ makes more money. They have more resources for R & D, new staff and products, bigger sales, cheaper prices. Am I complaining? 5. They're being smart about plug-ins and SDKs. Letting 3rd party developers in on the action is a sure-fire way to guarantee increased interest in your own product. No disrespect to CL but, not only do they have very few agreements with other software manufacturers for plug-ins, but they won't (or can't) make the plug-ins themselves. The result? Complaints, pleas, threats and begging letters from users of Bryce, Vue, Cararra, et al. Lack of interest in poser from users of high-end apps due to zero support from CL. Bad business sense all round, IMO. If you have a product in a niche market, the best way to expand your sales is to make that product as attractive as possible to as many people as possible. And that's what DAZ are doing. They sell 3d figures. Well, here ya go folks. Here's a free software to use 'em in. What do I say to that? 'Thank ye very kindly, Sirs. I'll see if it works. And if it does, I'll use it and come back for more' mac

Excellent points, Berserga. And I agree with everyone who feels that we don't have to denigrate one product just to make another look better. I'm sure that D/S will have many desirable features, which is why I look forward to trying it. kuroyume0161 you really should study-up on more recent developments in rendering which make dihedral polygon smoothing unnecessary or at least redundant when other methods yield equivalent and possibly superior results. In Poser 5 you don't need to worry about smoothing angles because you have even greater control of the "look and feel" of the material shaders combined with micro polygon displacement which gives you far more control. And BTW, even if you turn OFF "smoothing" in Poser 5 you are not deactivating phong and shader based smoothing, you are only deactivating the micro-polygon displacement smoothing.

"Ah don't mind Ron. He even accused Daz on the Daz forums of basically forgetting that they owe their existance to Curious Labs and Poser."
FYI Caly, it was Ron Knights who said that and not ronstuff! Btw, Ron Knights is that guy who managed to get kicked out of every forum around except RDNA and DAZ Forum.

Oopsie! :) What did Ron Knights do? no one has ever actually said?

Thanks, Puntomaus - I think that more than one person around here confuses me with that other Ron ;-)

You're welcome, ron :-) Caly, ronknights drove everyone mad. I am not sure if you'd still find some of the old threads where he was involved because he deleted a lot of his postings so it looks like some people where attacking him without a reason.

Attached Link: http://www.3delight.com/renderman_features.htm

"As for the render engine, I don't know what renderman does." Renderman is the standard used by Pixar's proprietary rendering engine. More info on the specific rendering engine in DAZ Studio: http://www.3delight.com/renderman_features.htm

Got to agree with maclean on this. DAZ has an opportunity with D|S, and hopefully they will motivate CL to get SR4 out the door.

Renderhawk, By skin shader, are you referring to the AMG render? Rob used the textures and bump maps that come with the AMG product. It was rendered during his tests of one of the surface shaders he is writing for D|S. I think it is the same shader he used to create the dragon image.

Will it have export capabilities?, I need to bring the figures into Bryce and C4D. Regardless, at this time, I still want to play with it!

"And I agree with everyone who feels that we don't have to denigrate one product just to make another look better. I'm sure that D/S will have many desirable features, which is why I look forward to trying it." I agree 100%. "kuroyume0161 you really should study-up on more recent developments in rendering which make dihedral polygon smoothing unnecessary or at least redundant when other methods yield equivalent and possibly superior results." Like anything, there's good and bad aspects to everything. While it might be possible to use micropolygon displacement smoothing to allow lower-poly models to render as well as high poly counts (in both the base mesh and any morph meshes) it also limits what you can actually do regarding rendering engines. Build a very low-poly model that renders well with Firefly, for example, and you're stuck using Firefly to render (no using the P4 engine, or exporting to another program that doesn't have micropolygon displacement smoothing). Build a high-poly model, and you can move it anywhere (or at least almost anywhere). With hardware getting faster and cheaper, the need for super-low poly models isn't as great as it used to be. That's not to say there's not a lot of advantage to being able to use low-poly models either. Depending on them, though, does lower your options come render time. "I'm also leary of OpenGL - its great for fast previews and real-time activities, but the price of that speed often means living with some annoying artifacts." You lost me on this one. None of the 3D programs I own that use OpenGL use it for final renders, only for previews. I'm sure there'll be some problems with somebody's cards or drivers (there always is, regardless of who's making what software) but hopefully they won't be too disasterous. OpenGL previews is one of the things I'm most looking forward to. I figure just being able to actually see where the hair sits, or how and where the clothing falls will save hours a week in set-up time and make a lot of my preview renders unnecessary. Another aspect I'm excited about with DAZ's choice of rendering engine is the possibility of network rendering (using BORG), not only on an animation but the chance of using multiple machines on my home network to render a single large pict (last time I could do that cheaply was with Infini-D). If it works, that could be another huge timesaver. I'm also hoping we'll see batch processing eventually as well, but haven't seen any hint of it yet. I'm certainly not expecting perfection first time out of the gate, but I'm not expecting a total disaster either. I've used Poser since beta testing for version 1.0, and I don't see wiping it from my drive in the next few months. I am excited, though, of the new possibilities on our doorstep. I expect to use both programs for the forseeable future. -- Walt Sterdan, Freelance

"Will it have export capabilities?, I need to bring the figures into Bryce and C4D. Regardless, at this time, I still want to play with it!" Well it will have .obj import, so .obj export is pretty much guaranteed at some point if not in the beta. Daz are also developing Lightwave and Max plugins initially, hopefully Cinema, Vue Bryce etc will follow. Remember DS is designed to enable easy plugin development so there's nothing to prevent someone creating import/export plugs. - Baz

It looks like we all may have the chance to test D/S for ourselves in a week or so. So, it might be a very interesting Thanksgiving this year ;-)

As a P.C. member, I feel honored to have first crack at D/S. I really like the idea of an alternative to Poser (not because I hate it, but because there is currently no other comparable choice).

To ronstuff: Please show me some renders of how the Blinn and Phong shader nodes vary the surface smoothing (i.e.: dihedral polygon smoothing). I have tested this myself and it had no effect on it, only on the specularity. I also did a Google search on "micropolygon displacement smoothing" and it returned a whopping 6 results (mostly disjointed). Not many more if I include the hyphen between 'micro' and 'polygon', most referring to Poser 5. The problem with this wonderful "micropolygon displacement smoothing", in Poser 5 anyway, is the lack of control. I am still unable to tell it what threshold angle will determine sharp or smoothed edges. This might be moot for organics, but in no way moot for other objects. Point in case: I have a model on which I'm currently working that has need of sharp transitions on small angles while also requiring smooth transitions on small curvature angles. Without a threshold angle (and edge breaking in this case), having both smooth and sharp transitions on small angles would be impossible (i.e.: Poser). UV Mapper Pro has been indispensible in transferring my models from C4D/LightWave to Poser and retaining smoothing/edging (to some extent). Without it, I would have pushed aside Poser as a target for my models some time ago. Nonetheless, I feel that this latest model will not be as good in Poser as it is in the originating application due to this lack of control. To return to the thread, this is why I would rather have CONTROL of dihedral polygon smoothing in D/S if I cannot get it within Poser. Kuroyume

Kuroyume, I understand your position, and suggest that you try one of any number of programs which cost 10 to 20 times the price of Poser... I'm sure you would be satisfied. You might also try searching Google for SDS, because that is the basic technology behind MPD (which is just a label used by CL to identify their somewhat modified application of Sub-Division Surfaces). I will also grant you that Poser is not in the same league as Lightwave, Maya or even C4D, but it has borrowed and adapted some pretty nifty features from those higher-priced apps. But I'll also admit that Poser has used some pretty obscure nomenclature which hardly describe the actual functions, so a lot of experimentation is required to figure some of these things out. ;-) Regarding your request for "proof", I doubt that I have an image in my collection that illustrates your situation because I prefer to control such things in the modeling rather than depend on the render engine to disinguish faceted from smooth surfaces. What I do have are a couple of examples of MPD at work. Unfortunately images don't prove anything because there are so many aspects contributing to the overall effect, and without explaination, it is difficult to distinguish lighting properties from shading properties from geometry properties from postwork. So let me explain what you are looking at in this image. First, the lighting is extremely simple - just 3 white infinite lights in a "studio" configuration (key light, fill light and back light). The figure is Michael 1 with a nice texture by Syyd Raven which has NO painted highlights. Additionally, there is NO bumpmap on the texture. And finally, there has been no postwork done on the image. Now, notice that there are a combination of spectral aspects and shading aspects in this image but I should quickly add that the Spectral color, Spectral value and highlight size parameters if this material are all ZERO. So both spectral aspects AND shading aspects here are being generated by a single complex skin shader which is responding (fairly realistically, I'd say) to the actual lighting environment. Now, notice the "texture" of the skin, and note that even in this limited resolution JPG, you can discern pores and minute body hairs as depressions and projections from the surface itself. Finally note that these minute features actually respond to the lighting environment as well (because they are 3 dimensional due to MPD) so this detail is visible (but very different) in shaded areas and highlight areas. Notice also that the highlights are NOT plastic or "oily" as they are when simple spectral components are used. The highlights here are both DIFFUSE AND DETAILED in response to interaction between micro texturing and lighting. This is the combination of Blinn and MPD at work. Finally, although difficult to see in this small image, notice the contours of the figure at the edges. If you are familiar with the Michael mesh you might see that without MPD, the faceting might show slightly at the edges, but the contours are perfectly smooth here - I'll demonstrate this a little better in the next example.

I think when poser first started it was to have characters and poses to be rendered in other programs that may be why the poser renderer is not the best. Im sure it isnt the worst renderer either...

This demonstration of MPD is fairly self-explanatory. The Blue balls are ALL the same low-res mesh, and the pink balls are all high-res mesh. They were rendered side by side in the same scene to insure identical environmental properties. Note the contours of the balls at the edges.

My final sample uses the humble Poser 3 frog. Simple lighting (and the same lighting on all renders) - and exactly the same mesh and mapping. Just shows a bit of the potential of Poser 5 and further demonstrates the combination of complex shading and Micro-polygon Displacement on low poly meshes.

Hi Ronstuff - nice skin shader - could you be so nice and post a screen shot of the shader settings ? Mungo

Ditto, would like to see your shader nodes as well! Nice examples, BTW.

However, I must take issue with your statement: "As for anybody else, I'm sure it makes DAZ feel very happy to see people continually blame CL and P5 for things they just don't understand. It just makes me laugh. :-) "

I'm not laughing, that's for sure. Only after the 3rd SR was Poser 5 acceptable. My frustrations (now and then) with Poser 5 don't come from a lack of knowledge about the software, but rather from a lack of programming skill, annoying (often debilitating) REAL bugs, and broken promises from the authors of P5.

Would I go back to Poser 4? HECK NO!! But to say that Curious Labs isn't at fault for a serious let-down (and downright travesty of a release), causing much of the negativity and cynicism, is going a bit far. Sure there are people who simply don't understand the material room (for example), but that doesn't mean there aren't some VERY SERIOUS problems with Poser 5 and CL's handling of the entire situation.

But hey, I know this ground has been covered a million times before. I'm just baffled there are still people out there defending CL at all costs, like nothing was wrong. Now THAT makes me laugh! ;-)

-Tim

Also, I'm not sure why you're weary of OpenGL either? (one of the inexcuseables of the Poser 5 release.) Just because the people at E-On couldn't get Open-GL support right to save their lives, doesn't mean everyone else has a problem implementing it. All the other software I have that utilizes OpenGL works flawlessly. (Bryce, AE, ParticleIllusion, etc.) Heck even a cheapo program like Cool3D (MorphMaster as well) has it and works fine! I admit an option to use Direct3D, as someone else mentioned, would be nice. -Tim