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I for one have always liked texture shaded for the stark way the reduced shading causes the characters to be caricatured and usually looking more like the original character than the fully iRay rendered version does. I guess that's the human brain's natural inclination at reduction hard at work without even really knowing it's going on. That's really only apparent though if you've used FaceGen on a few celebrities. I notice it in other's renders too, so it's not just my approach that is causing that. What I don't like is that transparancy & such doesn't really work in a pleasing preview way, eg all those disappearing trans hairs in a scenes.
I'm not really interesting in Filament for viewport shading but for a much improved version of it being used to final render. If the viewport then had to same higher and improved qualities then yes I'd use it for previewing & scene set up but it's not there yet.
iray cat animation took an hour and 10 mins
no idea now how long my filament one was but I had to really crank up the fur as well as having line tessalation
OK was only 27 minutes on Win10
I reckon Win 7 took longer
1. If I load just G8F into the scene and switch to Filament draw mode in viewport then select Environment -> Scene Only there is still light in the scene.
2. Once you switch the Environment Options node to Sun-Sky Only you can't get rid of Sun-Sky related parameters from the node by switching back to other lighting modes.
3. In Filament draw mode, Environment backdrop and background color do nothing.
4. In Filament draw mode, Base Bump seems to be drawn scaled up (i.e. pores on the skin look about 4 times bigger, most visible on the G8F torso, somewhat less on the face).
5. In Filament draw mode, geoshells are not rendered correctly.
As it is, this mode seems totally useless even for preview, especially considering inaccurate lighting. How can it be called PBR is beyond me.
Comment split from: Why is there a thumbprint pattern on G8F.
Some of these issues appear to be addressed according to the change log http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#4_12_2_52
long video I never could do in iray
So, to spell things out a little more clearly, Filament is not a replacement for Iray.
It's more designed to be a game-engine level renderer with PBR roots. This means that materials using basic PBR properties in Iray should come over and look halfway decent right out of the box. In order to get it looking great it's going typically require some more tricks and "cheats". Even after doing some tweaking Iray is more than likely still going to pull out ahead in quality just because it makes light typically bounce like we expect light to bounce so it looks more real. The trade-off is the rendering time obviously, what takes Iray tens of minutes per frame Filament can run in tenths of a second. So if you are doing a web-comic series or building your own animation without a server-farm of high grade Nvidia equipment, then spending some extra time getting Filament to look good makes sense.
I'm impressed by the work that is being shown off so far in this thread. I know that Filament will likely be a bit more tricky to get looking good but judging by some of the stuff I have seen being passed around internally showing off what it is capable of, I'm sure you all will show off some amazing things in the near future. I've attached one of those images I've seen bouncing around, but it was definitely not made by me because I am not that talented of an artist. Hopefully it can give you a glimpse into what Filament in Daz Studio is capable of if you spend some time learning how to make it sing.
thanks DAZ_Rawb
I am especially thrilled I can now use DAZ studio on my older computer thanks to Filament, that computer was strictly Carrara, Blender and some music apps before as no graphics card, Filament renders very well on it, I will also be using D|S more for animation not just a means to get content into other apps and render backgrounds thanks to this!
I really don't mind not having to export everything to FBX and convert stuff to use it
Perhaps you could share some of those "tricks and cheats"?
Hey guys! The render that rawb dropped is one of my Filament works. I've been working with filament for a while now to try and make it look the best it possibly can (or at least the best i can make it), and I've given daz a load of art and tutorial content for when it properly releases. I really hope you guys like it, it's going to lower the bar of entry for so many budding artists. I know a lot of potential users, especially in developing countries, who find it difficult to get a hold of expensive Nvidia cards. Even fairly affluent people are probably going to think twice about shelling out $2000 for a entry-tier render rig. Even though it's not quite as glamorous as iray, i really enjoy using it, and i hope you guys do too. Remember that it's going to grow and evolve over time, and it's going to get plenty of PA support. I have faith in the creativity of this community, make something awesome!
If you have any questions, or need any help, i'll lurk around this thread and see where i can pitch in.
Here's another couple of renders i'm allowed to share...
thanks for the update Rawb, much appreciated.
The Filament spec is pretty well written, except for the blank page where SSS should be. A blog post sounds like they're faking SSS for performance reasons.
I'm interested in using it as a Eevee-style preview renderer. The biggest gap seems to be lack of Translucency+SSS, which changes the look a lot.
Big question is, is that unfinished, or can subsurface stuff not be translated from MDL to Filament with reasonable effort...
That looks amazing, KA! How did you get the fog, bloom, and light glare effects? Is that postwork or are those raw renders?
It renders incredibly fast and I'm really excited to see what changes and evolution we'll see with Filament! Once some of the bugs are worked out I think this will be quite viable for animators who aren't necessarily after 100% photorealism. I, too, am really looking forward to seeing what the community does with it!
https://opensource.google/projects/filament
Getting Started with Filament on Android ~ written by Philip Rideout Graphics Develope https://medium.com/@philiprideout
I look forward to see what you guys do with it
PBR rendering aims to be photorealistic too, with metallics and other types of materials, but can it do photorealistic skin, as good as iRay?
Hiya!
There's definitely postwork there, but not necessarily more than i'd do with iray. I have a set that will release with filament that will allow you to have one-click fog/smoke effects. However, that doesn't help you right now, so lets walk you through how to do it for free.
Firstly i've opened an environment, this is Poseidon station on my store (any scene will do!)
As you can see, pretty blank and depressing. Your first lighting pass should be your HDRI selection which should be your key scene color. I've planned for a standard blue and orange setup here, so a blue HDRI.
Now for my orange key lights on each side.
Now is where the bloom/atmosphere comes in. Again, this is a bit of a fiddly proccess but i've made this tutorial since you posted, so its not that bad. You need to have a plane in front of the camera, a plane behind the light, and a plane by each of the bunks. I'll show you where i placed this later, but you're basically trying to place them as near to your light sources as you can, whilst also trying to hide them in the scene. Simple black and white gradients in the cutout opacity on your planes will help hide them. This is what it looks like...
Then finally, since its a smokey tutorial, i added some smoke to the center light. I just grabbed a cylinder primitive, placed it around the table, then grabbed a free smoke picture from pixabay (here), and added it to the cutout/opacity of the cylinder. Then, i used a dformer on the bottom of the cylinder to expand the bottom and give that wide falloff. Easy peasy. Here's the setup with the planes/cylinder etc at full opacity.
Thats it, just filament. You can do a little clone stamp clean up, some contrast/color work in photoshop and call it a day. Here's where i put all my planes etc...
Hope this helps!
That's an amazing little introduction there Kindred Arts.
Also, thank you for these great renders, it really shows off the early days of what Filament in Daz Studio is capable of.
@3diva please forgive this question as it's probably something super simple that I'm completely overlooking or not realizing, but how did you get to full screen mode on your viewport to animate this in a pixel size bigger than 977x784, or is this the default setting for you as well and you ran with it? That's the only size I can get my active viewport to set at and when I render that out the line is gone, but when I try to make it like 1920x1080 I get that line. This looks like it could be a gamechanger for many folks as I love the image I'm looking at that I created, but I would love to render it at a bigger resolution if possible right now, or hopefully in a future update. Thank you!
@KindredArts Wonderful tutorial! That's way more than I was hoping for - you went above and beyond!
I'm really excited to try this out! Thank you so much for taking the time to provide a free tutorial - that's REALLY nice you. And it's very much appreciated!
Thank you for sharing all of this, @KindredArts! Can't wait to see the stuff you put out to go with it, I always know it's gonna be quality and also easy enough for a new artist like me to figure out. As someone who currently has a very underpowered rig for Iray (six year old processor, single GTX 1070 Ti are what I've got to work with until money allows and I keep spending all that on content), it's awesome to see that Filament can do lovely work, even if it's not fancy, photorealistic Iray.
I really appreciate what it's offered me in terms of a viewport tool; people have complaints but me and my low bar over here are loving it. Iray cameras work with it, which means I can finally compose scenes using the ones that come with all the ridiculously geometry-heavy stuff I own, and be able to see something other than the black blobs. That's made it possible for me to very quickly find and delete unneeded geometry so that other optimization tools have a chance to get in there, which they just didn't before. I went to bed nearly crying with frustration two nights ago and dreading the returns I was gonna have to do. Woke up to the new beta + Filament and it was like light at the end of the tunnel.
Iray renders, well, those'll still be "leave it overnight and pray," but I'm currently flipping between Textured, Filament, and Iray for previews almost without thinking and the impact on my workflow has been incredible. It's giving me my best shot so far at optimizing for Iray on the rig I've got. I would love to do finished pieces with it some day for a different look, and in the meantime I think it's going to be amazing for doing scene-building and thumbnails for composition prior to switching to Iray for final lighting, tweaks, and rendering.
So, as someone new to renders as art themselves rather than just concepts for other art, I'm appreciating what Filament does already, and looking forward to everything that it brings us as it grows. I like the aesthetic of KindredArts' renders and can see myself doing similar ones and enjoying them a lot!
(P.S. @KindredArts, is it okay if I send you a sitemail? I have a question about something I'd like to buy but don't want to derail things here.)
You have to set the render size to roughly the same size as your viewport size or less, I believe. I THINK it might depend on how big of a screen you have, but I'm not sure. I got a fairly large monitor for my birthday (display resolution 2560x1440) so I was able to get a fairly large preview size by rendering after going to Full-Screen Mode (Shift + F11). You might have to set the render option to a keyboard short cut so that once you go to full-screen mode you can just use the Render shortcut.
I would check to see what size your screen is and set the render size to around the same size or smaller than that.
yeah mine are both1920x1080 so biggest I can go, I use shift +f11 to put it in fullscreen while I render, my windows explorer on other monitor so i can see how many frames rendering
not sure if changing monitor resolution to something bigger temporarily would help, may have issues moving the windows half offscreen
@3diva Ah ha, shift F11! I will give that a whirl once my computer frees up this animation shot I started and see if that works. Sadly I'm using a 27 inch TV for my monitor that's maybe 1920x1080, I don't know as it's like 8 years old, but I am planning on getting myself a really good monitor here soon for my xmas gift to myself. I'll try your idea with setting render to a shortcut, that might just work. Thank you :)
@wendyluvscats two monitors is on the agenda for me too, that would be ideal! I'll double check my TV resolution too to make sure it's as big as can be, but I think I'm stuck with lower res for the time being with filament since I'm using a TV lol.
How are some of you getting such smooth renders? Everything I do comes in super grainy. I must be missing something really important ;). It's things like this that make me really dislike that Daz makes no manual for its software. I have NO idea whatsoever how to use this.
Laurie
Grainy? That's odd, I've not had issues with graininess. Could you post a render so we can see and maybe that can help identify the issue?
It might be the bump causing it? The Filament engine seems to "read" bumps quite a bit differently. Try lowering the Bump in the surfaces tab WAY down and see if that helps.
...now that looked very good Of coruse not many transmaps (save for the flames)
because PBR doesnt mean it is using raytracing, it is just how materials interact with each other, its physical based Shading actually.
Not to be too greedy but I'd love it if that (openGL based I guess) texture shaded mode in the viewport was expaned to be a renderer was made to do the opacities and SBH well enough to produuce a nice claymation sort of final render. I've tried the openGL Advanced selection hoping for a similar look at what I see in the texture shaded viewport but more refined in the the renderer drop-down menu but everytime I've tried to use it DAZ Studio locks up & I have to abort it.
Have you put in a feature request?
@AllenArt
Laurie, if you're getting grain in your saved render, you might want to switch your render output to JPG instead of PNG. Then just save a png for your background cutout. I found there was a couple of scenes that looked fine in viewport, but saved with grain in the PNG version, not sure why. This fixed it for me.