I agree with you, but still there are some features (especially in the department of posing) that work so much easier then in poser. I'll doubt I'll ever go for D/S and leave Poser (too much invested into it), but seeing something like easypose in Poser would be very helpful.

Quote - I agree with you, but still there are some features (especially in the department of posing) that work so much easier then in poser. I'll doubt I'll ever go for D/S and leave Poser (too much invested into it), but seeing something like easypose in Poser would be very helpful.

Agreed and as an animator I must say that aniMate+ is an incredibly useful tool for
putting together complex  character animations quickly
and the FREE DS 3 base comes with a stripped down version of "aniMate" included.

Quote - I'm glad I'm wrong about the GI. Up until now, 3D Delight in Daz Studio hasn't had this feature. Still, the one-processor limit (without an insane expenditure) is a major weakness--64 bit version notwithstanding. . 

What exactly are you talking about? What insane expenditure? $40 bucks?
Where are you getting this one processor limit? DS has had multi threaded rendering for some time now.
Can you point me to your sources, because I can't find the same info on DAZ site.

"One processor" is not the same as "one core".  The way (for example) Windows licenses are handled is each license works on "two processors" - regardless of how many cores each processor has.

Quote - > Quote - I'm glad I'm wrong about the GI. Up until now, 3D Delight in Daz Studio hasn't had this feature. Still, the one-processor limit (without an insane expenditure) is a major weakness--64 bit version notwithstanding. . 

What exactly are you talking about? What insane expenditure? $40 bucks?
Where are you getting this one processor limit? DS has had multi threaded rendering for some time now.
Can you point me to your sources, because I can't find the same info on DAZ site.

*to quote from 3Delight :

The first 3Delight license is free of charge. This is a fully functional two threads license that is liable for commercial use and can be downloaded * here*. No support is included with the free license but can be purchased for 250 USD.*

*For all additional licenses:
 
*- The cost is 1,000 USD for a two threads license and 1,500 USD for a four threads license.

• Support is 190 USD per license per year for the two threads license and 285 USD for the four threads license. Support includes free upgrades and e-mail support.
• All licenses are floating.

Daz Studio counts as 1 3Delight License. looks like Daz made a deal to increase the threads, but the additionals still cost...

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - I'm glad I'm wrong about the GI. Up until now, 3D Delight in Daz Studio hasn't had this feature. Still, the one-processor limit (without an insane expenditure) is a major weakness--64 bit version notwithstanding. . 

What exactly are you talking about? What insane expenditure? $40 bucks?
Where are you getting this one processor limit? DS has had multi threaded rendering for some time now.
Can you point me to your sources, because I can't find the same info on DAZ site.

*to quote from 3Delight :

The first 3Delight license is free of charge. This is a fully functional two threads license that is liable for commercial use and can be downloaded * here*. No support is included with the free license but can be purchased for 250 USD.*

*For all additional licenses:
 
*- The cost is 1,000 USD for a two threads license and 1,500 USD for a four threads license.

• Support is 190 USD per license per year for the two threads license and 285 USD for the four threads license. Support includes free upgrades and e-mail support.
• All licenses are floating.

Daz Studio counts as 1 3Delight License. looks like Daz made a deal to increase the threads, but the additionals still cost...

You're not buying the license from 3Delight. You seem to be reading something that doesn't apply to DAZ. That's total misinformation.

40 dollar versions of Daz Studio 3, both 32 and 64 bit versions render on four threads (on quad core computers) that I've seen, with no additional renderer purchase.

Sounds like you guys are talking about 3D Delight  plugin for Maya or Max or one of those, which has nothing to do with what's included with DAZ Studio.

no I'm talking about 3Delight as quoted by their site.

please don't tell me what I'm saying. thats very annoying.

and yes it IS included with Daz Studio. I remember when 3Delight changed their Licencing and it affected Daz's use in Daz Studio so I DO know what I'm talking about.

so I'm NOT spreading 'disinformation' at all.

I am quoting facts as they have been presented over time.

Connie, what he's saying is that you can only run the ONE copy of 3Delight, regardless of how you got it. It's the license, and it's in the license agreement that you agree to when you install DS.  What's being confused is multi-processor and multi-core.  If you want to run it on separate processes, you have to buy another license, per the license agreement.  If you want to render using multiple cores, you just have to be running an OS capable of using as many as you have.

Quote - Connie, what he's saying is that you can only run the ONE copy of 3Delight, regardless of how you got it. It's the license, and it's in the license agreement that you agree to when you install DS.  What's being confused is multi-processor and multi-core.  If you want to run it on separate processes, you have to buy another license, per the license agreement.  If you want to render using multiple cores, you just have to be running an OS capable of using as many as you have.

Yea, I know. Where misinformation comes in a form of omission. These statements already confused a bunch of people whom don't differentiate between those two, and are being led to believe that they have to shell out a thousand dollars to be able to use more then one thread on a quad core processor.
Let's be realistic here, large part of poserdom isn't very likely to have the ability or the need for multi processor use.

Sort of like saying, OMG, Poser doesn't do modeling, and if you want to do modeling, you have to spend a thousand dollars on another application.  :rolleyes:
See what I'm getting at?

The limitation in Daz Studio's 3delight renderer license is just the lack of network rendering. If you have a multi-processor system like Xeon or the new Mac Pro, daz studio(provided the OS also supports it) can make use of both processors and all cores.

Anyone know if the new DS3 handles python scripting? (I use a lot of Python utilities in poser)
Can the DS3 renderer handle ambient occlusion?

DS3 does not use python scripting that I am aware of.  3Delight has always been able to render ambient occlusion, but, until Dreamlight's lightscripts came out, DS's was all material based, and even that was based on plugins from Poseworks. 

Quote - Anyone know if the new DS3 handles python scripting? (I use a lot of Python utilities in poser)
Can the DS3 renderer handle ambient occlusion?

DS has it's own scripting, different from python.

DS3Advanced has several lights and environments included with it, which give you AO, DOF, GI and IBL, soft shadows, light edge falloff, color bleeding and even volumetric lighting. (I saw a blurb somewhere about caustics too, but I'm not sure about that yet) It has Gamma correction too. That's the $40 version.

I haven't tried the free version, so I don't know if all of this is included or not.

Actually, Connie, all of those lighting settings are in the basic DS, and Gamma Correction is in the render settings, and you can set the degree of correction you want. ;)

Quote - Actually, Connie, all of those lighting settings are in the basic DS, and Gamma Correction is in the render settings, and you can set the degree of correction you want. ;)

Cool, Even better!

If anyone is curious, I just made a render with it - it's by no means a really good render taking good advantage of all of it's abilities.  It's more like what you get with about 20 minutes of fiddling... sort of an average result.
It's a mix of low intensity whit-ish IBL, single spotlight and 'uber surface' shader on the skin with almost no tweaks. I think Uber curface somes with the free version too?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1901886

Here are the area lights.  I'm still learning how to use them, so, no example shots yet, lol.

I love the "Uber environment"  That's the one that does AO and IBL, just depending on which setting is turned on or off.

What I really like is that AO doesn't have to be set by material. (Like we have to in Poser, for best results)

Another thing I really like about DS is the ability to select multiple materials and change shader settings all at once. Same with posing and morphing body parts, and placing items in the scene. For me, it makes the scene building work much faster.

Believe it or not, I've encountered more then one piece out there that is not super conforming, and morph dials are not at the body level, but in individual body parts. In Poser, that would drive me batty. In DS, it's no big deal.

Anyway, those are all the little reasons I'm gravitating towards DS and away from Poser more and more.

Quote - in case users want area lites in poser, this is what an area lite currently looks like in poser.  I converted the cloth plane (upper left) into a lite emitter with medium-quality poser GI settings.

GI is not the same as area lighting, having a surface that emits an ambient color is just GI.  Area lights and area shadows are a function of raytracing that is independent of GI.  This is why you "can't control shadows" with ambient color.

Quote - > Quote - This is probably my misconception, but I always get the feeling that D/S limits certain options in order to twist the user's arm into buying something extra. This seems to be less the case with this version (hence the price for D/S Advanced, which I'm all in favour of and which appears very reasonable), but I'd need more convincing.

That's not a misconception, that's the way they've always pushed the plugins for DAZ|Studio.  The base version is "free" but really it's just an introduction to the DAZ store, they've always made their money off of brokering/selling content.  Frankly if they were REALLY clever they'd give the new version of D|S away truly for free and (unless it's terrible, which would be a bit of a surprise) suddenly "Poser Pro" would be junk.  The real problem with getting people to take Poser content seriously in the larger world is not the content itself, it's getting it into a render engine that doesn't produce 1990's quality results.  Video games render with higher quality than base D|S!

I thought Poser started the whole content thing.  No other program can output a rigged Poser figure, nor can it read one from any other program either.  Even little things like edge creases and poly groups are so specific to the way it works as to necessitate 3rd party tools and editors.  
As for giving away D|S Pro, why would they?  They've been giving away the regular version for years and I assume will continue to do so.  That's all they need to get people hooked on content and then they can start grooming them to buy the Pro version later.  

Many modern video games do render better than base Studio, and also quite faster than firefly.  Yet it seems like I'm the only one here who thinks that Poser's OpenGL viewport should be brought up to Unreal Engine 3 quality so that I could render animations in near-real time.  Bumpmaps and soft shadows in the viewport are all I've ever asked for, but don't seem to be of any use to anyone else here.

Actually DAZ has rigging tools now that can output a rigged Poser figure, although the point I was making was that D|S has mainly been used to get people hooked on their content (which you got) and offering a GI-capable version FREE would be a rather massive boost to that money stream (which you didn't get).  The very large improvement in image appeal that you get with minimal effort when working with GI would mean their Poser content - which is overwhelmingly their main revenue, not D|S plugins - would be shown in a far better light by many more people, making that content more attractive and thus making big bags of money.  Pun intented ;)

Certainly some people will buy the GI-capable version, but I'll bet you literally 10 times as many will stick with the free one.

o.k., thx fr the info, pj.  I tried the poser area light with raytracing unchecked, and there was no illumination (black scene).  however, yer correct: according to one of the developers, GI includes any lighting effects where light is being transferred from one surface to another surface (area light, caustics (indirect specular), radiosity (indirect diffuse), reflections, refractions, et al.).  so it means that an area light is a GI fx, but that GI fx require raytracing calculations.  it's possible that there's no shadow options with the new daz area lights, either.  in versions prior to poser 8, they allowed the users to select shadow options for directional lights, which means they could select wrong, bad or no shadows.

"it's possible that there's no shadow options with the new daz area lights, either"

There are shadows for area lights in DS. All you do is add a Shadow brick (aka node in Poser) and connect it to the area light brick.

It'll add considerably to the render time, of course.

mac

Quote - Actually DAZ has rigging tools now that can output a rigged Poser figure, although the point I was making was that D|S has mainly been used to get people hooked on their content (which you got) and offering a GI-capable version FREE would be a rather massive boost to that money stream (which you didn't get).  The very large improvement in image appeal that you get with minimal effort when working with GI would mean their Poser content - which is overwhelmingly their main revenue, not D|S plugins - would be shown in a far better light by many more people, making that content more attractive and thus making big bags of money.  Pun intented ;)

Certainly some people will buy the GI-capable version, but I'll bet you literally 10 times as many will stick with the free one.

I got it, but I wasn't sure if I agreed with it.  You make a good point, that better renders equals happier users, and that happier users will stick with the hobby and likely buy more new content.  I think their assumption (as well as mine) is that GI is a feature many new users might not see the value of initially, though they would no doubt notice the increased render times.  It surely can't be easy deciding which features should be in the free version and which should be in the pay version, especially when higher quality almost always requires longer render times and higher performance hardware that new users may not expect to have to invest the time and money into.  Many people, especially gamers, are often shocked to learn that a good render may still take hours or even days to produce, even on the same hardware that runs the latest 3D shoot 'em up at 60+ frames per second.

moogal: I concur. In fact, rendering on the GPU instead of on the CPU would be a HUGE plus. Even with a fairly modest graphics card you could get near realtime render times, say 5-10 frames/sec. The render QUALITY won't be as high as a still render, though.

The whole idea of using a high quality gaming render engine to render out animation is brilliant. No, you don't need 60 FPS realtime rendering, you need the highest quality the game render engine can deliver, and devil may care if frame rate drops to 5 FPS!
Recording an animation with the Crysis engine at highest settings, and then playing back at the correct framerate should result in a stunning animation.

There's one big caveat that I know of. Rendering on the GPU is certainly possible, but how does one capture the output? nVidia has CUDA and Gelato, which only works on the 8xxx and higher series of graphics cards. I don't know whether ATI has a comparable library to program/access the GPU. Anyway, if they have, it is most certainly totally incompatible with nVidia's solution.
While ATI and nVidia dominate the graphics market, there's also Intel for embedded graphics. Yet another totally different GPU, and I'm pretty certain that the Intel embedded graphics chips can't be used for anything else than just plain graphics.
Matrox is another player, and how about the professional high end cards? I remember a card called Wildcat, not from ATI or nVidia or Matrox, that was quite popular at the time.

The advantage of OpenGL is that it's just OpenGL. Write a graphics program against OpenGL and you don't have to worry about the hardware. You can't do that when using CUDA or similar libraries, those are very hardware specific.

Once a general hardware abstraction standard for GPU processing is established (hopefully as an OpenGL extension, that would be the most "acceptable" standard IMO), GPU based calculations, including rendering will flourish. After all, 128 parallel streaming processors in a GPU will be QUITE a lot faster than 4 or 8 cores in a CPU!

Quote - o.k., thx fr the info, pj.  I tried the poser area light with raytracing unchecked, and there was no illumination (black scene).  however, yer correct: according to one of the developers, GI includes any lighting effects where light is being transferred from one surface to another surface (area light, caustics (indirect specular), radiosity (indirect diffuse), reflections, refractions, et al.).  so it means that an area light is a GI fx, but that GI fx require raytracing calculations.  it's possible that there's no shadow options with the new daz area lights, either.  in versions prior to poser 8, they allowed the users to select shadow options for directional lights, which means they could select wrong, bad or no shadows.

No, you're confusing the normal behavior of Global Illumination with the common use of the term "Area Lights", and they don't have anything to do with each other.  Many other 3D apps offer area lights that are independent of Global Illumination.

edit: Ambient Occlusion has a lot more in common with Global Illumination than area lights do.

I won't lie .. I'm quite interested in this. But I agree with above. I'd like to see it out alittle longer before I wonder off that way.

Quote - Certainly some people will buy the GI-capable version, but I'll bet you literally 10 times as many will stick with the free one.

AFAIK you don't need the pay version to get GI. The biggest advantage of the pay version is the ability to MAKE shaders with the new node based shader ability. The free version can still read and render them, but not make them.

Looks like the bulk of the pay version abilities is targeting content makers.

Quote - Looks like the bulk of the pay version abilities is targeting content makers

Now that would be a good idea indeed - if the included tools are good. Haven't looked, haven't tested, so I have no opinion on D|S 3
But I do hope that Smith Micro will go the same way with Poser. Poser has content creation featuers (Setup room, hierarchy editor, hair room, cloth room) but they need quite a lot of work. And I suspect that only content creators ever touch the Setup room.

II bet the Poser team at SM is highly interested in D|S 3, and I sure hope it'll prod them to come up with a thorougly improved Poser 8!

Quote - AFAIK you don't need the pay version to get GI. The biggest advantage of the pay version is the ability to MAKE shaders with the new node based shader ability. The free version can still read and render them, but not make them.

As of now the free version does not include GI/IBL.  Also, limiting the shading tools to read-only is really, really limiting.  For those using the free version only, D|S 3 offers almost nothing new, although I expect that DAZ will be selling content with D|S baked shaders a lot more often now.

It's a moot point anyways. They can't give away D|S adv for free even if they wanted to as that would invite a nice little lawsuit for predatory pricing. It works for D|S base precisely because it is so limited in comparison with poser or other such apps.

  Not really.  You can charge whatever you want, even nothing, for your product, and no one can say a thing.  DS doesn't do the same things as Poser does, never has.  That's like saying the folks who write Blender could be sued for predatory pricing because it does the same thing that Cinema 4D does.  

And, the comparisons between how "good" the outcome is moot.  It's not the program, it's how you use it.  

Quote -   And, the comparisons between how "good" the outcome is moot.  It's not the program, it's how you use it.  

A good point. A random tour of the galleries shows, to my eyes, that the artist has a greater input into the resulting artwork than the product used in it's creation.

I intend to stick with Poser and Vue as I don't have the time to learn another interface and still haven't scratched the surface of what these programs are capable of.

Quote - Also, limiting the shading tools to read-only is really, really limiting

That needs a little qualification. Although a materials or shader (mc6 and mt5 equivalents, respectively) preset saved from surfaces created in Shader Mixer do not allow the brick layout to be edited in DS 3 base and so the basic function is fixed, the parameters are accessible in the Surfaces palette so there is still scope for adjustment, depending on what options the maker has left exposed and how clearly they are labelled and explained. Shader Builder is a GUI for building regular RSL shaders and their DS support scripts, so those will again work like any other shader with parameters in the Surfaces palette that will allow as much configuration as the author was willing and able to provide.

area lights look amazing. we need this.

Quote - > Quote - Also, limiting the shading tools to read-only is really, really limiting

That needs a little qualification. Although a materials or shader (mc6 and mt5 equivalents, respectively) preset saved from surfaces created in Shader Mixer do not allow the brick layout to be edited in DS 3 base and so the basic function is fixed, the parameters are accessible in the Surfaces palette so there is still scope for adjustment, depending on what options the maker has left exposed and how clearly they are labelled and explained. Shader Builder is a GUI for building regular RSL shaders and their DS support scripts, so those will again work like any other shader with parameters in the Surfaces palette that will allow as much configuration as the author was willing and able to provide.

This leaves the door open for people to write shaders by hand, which is likely to be extremely painful but I assure you they'll do it anyway (people being stingy and all that) and then complain about it.  Have fun with that.  A lot of people would have been wetting their pants with happiness if shader editing was included in the free version.

Please note, I'm not trying to say "DAZ are poopie heads for not giving everything away for free" - what I was getting at was, a couple of key features (procedural shading and GI) would have left future versions of Poser pretty much moot if they were included in the free version of D|S.  I don't blame DAZ for not wanting to buy out the third parties that wrote those plugins (fairly sure they are not DAZ in-house people) or wanting to make money off of selling their software, I just think they would make a lot more money in the long run if they had done things a little differently.

"A lot of people would have been wetting their pants with happiness if shader editing was included in the free version"

True. But if these same people are so desperate to have this function, it'll cost them about $47 right now. If they don't want to pay..... well, it's a bit like saying 'Poser should make the SDK free so we could make lots of plug-ins for it'. It's a nice thought, but I doubt it'll ever happen.

DAZ have made DS 3 as affordable as possible, and considering what's included, (especially for developers) the price is phenomenally cheap. They've also wangled a deal where the Trolltech SDK is now completely free. (It used to cost $995) and anyone who's capable can write and sell plug-ins for DS with no financial outlay. So honestly, I really don't see what more they could do to accomodate people's wallets.

"I don't blame DAZ for not wanting to buy out the third parties that wrote those plugins (fairly sure they are not DAZ in-house people) or wanting to make money off of selling their software, I just think they would make a lot more money in the long run if they had done things a little differently"

Actually, as far as I know, other than dynamic cloth (Optitex), everything else in DS 3 is in-house. Shader Mixer started out in life as a 3rd-party app (Eilir), but chris jones rewrote it completely in consultation with DAZ. I'm not sure if he now works for DAZ, but he certainly works very closely with them.

I don't think that any of the DS 3 features will leave Poser lying in the dust. Not because they're not great features, but because the choice is still pretty much what it's always been. People either love/hate the DS/Poser interfaces. That's the one reason I don't see a mass exodus towards DS. It'll be taken more seriously as a competitor to Poser, that's for sure, and I bet a lot of people will try it out, and even make it a part of their toolset. But in the end, users will still have their own preference, and if Poser 8 ups the bar even higher, all the better.

mac

Quote - > Quote - Looks like the bulk of the pay version abilities is targeting content makers

Now that would be a good idea indeed - if the included tools are good. Haven't looked, haven't tested, so I have no opinion on D|S 3
But I do hope that Smith Micro will go the same way with Poser. Poser has content creation featuers (Setup room, hierarchy editor, hair room, cloth room) but they need quite a lot of work. And I suspect that only content creators ever touch the Setup room.

II bet the Poser team at SM is highly interested in D|S 3, and I sure hope it'll prod them to come up with a thorougly improved Poser 8!

Since DS came out with the figure setup tools bundle, I hardly touch poser any more. I don't have a huge need for a lot of CR2 editing and hacking utilities too. I'm really digging it. They really left Poser content making ability in the dust.

Quote - > Quote - AFAIK you don't need the pay version to get GI. The biggest advantage of the pay version is the ability to MAKE shaders with the new node based shader ability. The free version can still read and render them, but not make them.

As of now the free version does not include GI/IBL.  Also, limiting the shading tools to read-only is really, really limiting.  For those using the free version only, D|S 3 offers almost nothing new, although I expect that DAZ will be selling content with D|S baked shaders a lot more often now.

I thought JenX p[osted screenshots from the free version, and I see uber environment in there. Uber environment is what gives you IBL and GI.

As for free version vs. pay version, are you seriously bellyaching here over $40 bucks for all those features? Seriously, it's not like they're all of a sudden charging $500 for it.

 Connie's correct, I do only have the free version at this time.  I don't get paid until the beginning of the month ;)

Do you have the free version, or do you have a trial copy of the pay version?  In the free version of D|S 3 that I downloaded yesterday and installed, I don't have the same content folders as in your screen capture shown earlier.  Also I'm fairly familiar with GI rendering, having worked with it in Cinema, Vue, Max and Maya, and I don't see any render options or lighting options that appear to have anything to do with Global Illumination (or area lighting either, although there is a max shadow samples setting that is promising).

People are not hearing me about pricing despite my explaining it three or so times, so that's fine, it must be me that's the poopie head here.

I have the free version.  Did you download your free content that is in your account at DAZ, as well?  I haven't installed anything other than those 2 things to my DS3 yet (well, now, I have to reinstall all of my programs thanks to a hard drive crash...luckily all of my content is on external drives ;) )

I'll go take a look there, I hadn't thought to do that.  I installed the free content packaged with the download.
edit: hmm a 53mb chunk o.O

Well sure enough, I had to dig around for it - it also seems the layout option I had would not show the specific folders you were getting but when I reset the layout to "Classic" I could find it.  That's quite cool :)  So Global Illumination/Area Lights ARE included in the free version after all, quite surprising (and pleasing).  I'll be damned if I can figure out how to get a render out of them though, I will spend a little time with the tutorial info:
http://www.omnifreaker.com/tiki-index.php?page=UberEnvironment

Yup :)  I just reinstalled, without any of my other plugins, and found it :)  

I found it in every layout, but I'm probably more used to using DS than you are.  I know it sounds weird and nerdy, but I try to switch the layout to get comfortable using the other layouts, just in case someone asks me a question about them ;)

I've actually been having a lot of frustration with the content browser, I haven't been able to get it to behave consistently at all.  Yesterday I spent about 20 minutes trying to find a combination that would show me file contents in folders AND the surfaces tab and could not - I could see the surfaces tab, but no files would be visible (folders showed, but no files) or the other way around, but not both.  It had me wanting to throw things towards the end.

Give me a little bit to reinstall Photoshop, and I'll try to help you with that.  First, I have to figure out what clamshell I put the disc in :P