Iray in DAZ or migrating to Blender?
Ryselle-Ryssa
Posts: 147
Hi,
I was wondering, with the current release of all the bridges, if DAZ may be on the path of letting iray slowly die, like Haxagon and Carrara.
Do you think this may be the case? Would you recommend switching to another renderer\software, or already have done so?
Best wishes
ryselle
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Comments
I really doubt Daz has any plan to ditch their own app and go back to a model where they depend on others to provide programs where their content can be used.
The bridges are ways for them to expand their customer base, not any indication they will stop developping DS.
For the record, Daz does not develop Iray, Nvidia does.
I do all my rendering in Blender; I prefer cycles.
I have done about 4 renders in Iray in the last 5 or 6 months; I use the Diffeo plugin btw.
I don't like Iray, and I don't like Studio being Nvidia only, which is one reason I moved. Just a heads up as that dislike influenced my decision to move.
I think whether IRay dies or not is irrelevant. Migrating to Blender is still the correct choice. I can't remember the last time that I did an actual render is DS; it's too easy to get content out now. I continue giving Daz my money for thier assets, their value proposition is unparalleled and it's their due, but I use other software for everything else. I can't even stand the clunky Daz user interface anymore.
Unreal Engine - fast, easly, best! And come with a HUGE improv next version (UE5). Everyone are changing,
Daz has to rely on other engines, not just one
Especially the 3Delight engine is neglected or on downhill.
Daz must stand on two legs, not one, to continue his journey in the 3D world
Sadly this hasn't been my experience. Maybe if you're simply exporting one figure. Diffeo is great, but it still has trouble with some skin's (for example, anything by Bluejuante) and importing a scene with lots of props takes many minutes. For those of us who use Daz to generate images for comics and such, exporting to Blender and then fiddling with the materials just takes too long.
It's a shame, because although I love Daz, it'd be great to have other options.
You're just using it the wrong way.
The thing with blender is once you import your content you can do whatever you want. Especially with effects and simulations that are great in blender. But also for sculpting and character customizations. Plus there's eevee that's great to render fast and that's good for comics as well as for animations. This is worth fiddling a bit. A viable comics workflow will be to first export the assets, then use them in blender and work in blender to pose the characters and setup the scene and lights. Sticking to work in daz studio then exporting every single scene just to render it in eevee or cycles does not make much sense.
My understanding - which could very well be wrong - is that the JCM's aren't exported with the figures to Blender. I use a lot of morphs like the Crease, Folds, and Bends by Zev0, or Autoshape, to make the characters look more realistic. That is functionality that, to my knowledge, can't be utilized in Blender.
It's too bad because Cycles is definitely faster than Iray by a country mile.
But in another discussion I asked about creating a library of figures, props, environments, etc., in Blender and I understood the response to say that there is no such concept as a content library in Blender. I don't get how to compile scenes within Blender without access to the DAZ Studio library.
@Leonides02
As for diffeo, jcms and custom morphs are imported just fine. What is not imported are HD morphs. That is, you can import (and sculpt !) the HD shape, but actually you can't import the HD morphs, only the base mesh morphs are supported. This is because the multires modifier in blender doesn't support shapekeys. It is not a diffeo limit, it is a blender limit. This may be improved in a next version of blender.
Then diffeo also gives you the option to import the HD shape alone and you can add HD morphs there. But you will need to rig it yourself so it's not much useful in my opinion. Also HD characters are not very handful for animation anyway, that's probably why HD shapekeys are not considered a priority in blender.
@marble
Content libraries are fully supported and commonly used in blender. They work the very same as the regular content library in daz studio. Everything is just integrated in the blender browser. I already discussed this with @SnowSultan that had the same request.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6010037/#Comment_6010037
As for avoiding the studio library I don't see why you would do that. I'd share the textures there rather than duplicating them. But of course you can do it in blender if you want to. Just use the pack and unpack features for external data.
The Blender devs have recognized that asset management is an area that needs work, and as I understand it improvements are coming. Not sure what it will look like. Meanwhile, the old school method of organizing your content in folders and within library .blend files for different types of content still works.
Keep in mind Blender is not designed primarily as part of a marketing strategy for content from one particular online store. It has to encompass content from any source, including self-made. So a content library very like Daz Studio's isn't possible: I don't think you will ever have a BIM and Blender Central to work alongside a Blender content library.
Dont see why a Blender Central/BIM equivalent is a necessary component for a library system.
In Daz, we can create our own assets, presets, etc in a library system; we can do this with assets from any external website that we import into Daz. So Blender should have this too and having marketplaces dictate its design is not a relevant point of discussion really.
I think its useful from a customer support standpoint that they have their own platform where they can tell someone putting a support ticket it, "look - load it in our system with default settings and it does look like the promo pictures. You haven't been miss sold".
In fact, iray has affected the development of DAZ, especially the rendering of the skin is very rigid, but if you integrate other renderers, you will pay a lot of extra money, such as OC Arnold.
A BIM/Blender Central isn't necessary for a generic asset library system, but it is if you want content management in Blender to work as it does in Daz Studio. That appeared to me to be what Marble would like.
The only content management features Daz Studio has that Blender (without addons) does not is Smart Content/CMS. You need DIM/Daz Central to load the metadata for Smart Content for products from the Daz store. So if you want content management like that in Blender, you need something to load the metadata for the assets into a database, i.e. a DIM/Daz Central equivalent. You also need creators to provide metadata. Everything else (Content Library) is just files in folders.
Any asset manager for Blender would have to handle content from any source, in various formats (not just DUF files), which is a much wider and more complicated remit. When Blender has an asset manager included, a specification for metadata may be published with a means to load it, so asset creators can provide the metadata if they so wish. Or it may not.
We are agreed that Blender will benefit from improved asset management. I am not at all convinced that Blender needs to be more like Daz Studio in this area, or many other areas.
A manual install places metadata files that can be imported into the database using the Content Database Management dialogue.
Ok, thanks for the replies but I'm left in some confusion still. @Padone says:
And then @andya_b341b7c5f5 says:
Isn't there a contradiction there or is it a case of how we define a library? I'm not sure I get the concept of .blend files ... something fundamental to the way Blender works and fundamentally different to the way I'm used to with DAZ Studio. I see .blend files being the equivalent to a DAZ Studio scene file - everything in that file pertains to that scene and if you want to use something from that scene in a different scene, you save out the figure or prop as a subset or some other kind of preset.
A library, on the other hand, is something similar to what I would see in my Windows Explorer folder tree. It is a storage space on disk with files grouped into props, figures, materials, poses and so on. I can scan through these files and pick what I want to include in a scene from the relevant category of content. Exactly how does this work in Blender?
By the way, shouldn't this thread be in the Blender discussion?
Thanks. Clearly I need to change the way I think about content libraries. This is what happens when I spend 15 years using a particular software - other methods feel either strange or plain wrong. I'll look for some videos on .blend libraries.
EDIT: I found this description of how the Asset Library is being developed - now that's more like what I had expected (apologies if this link has been included elsewhere).
https://www.blendernation.com/2020/03/07/asset-libraries-in-blender-2-83-and-beyond/
@marble
As far as "common" content is concerned, the custom library system you pointed out just adds drag and drop features but the rest is all there already in the blender browser. You have automatic previews and a search box the same as the daz content library. Then there are parametric libraries that are another concept and goes far beyond the daz content library. That's the real news.
If you are confused because a blend file can be used itself as a library to contain multiple assets, then just save one asset for blend file that's all.
The Asset Library being developed, that I linked above, seems to me to be what I was hoping for. I did also find out how to save the contents of a .blend file so that they appear as loadable assets. As I said, it is a bit of a change in the way of thinking about a Content Library but Blender often seems to have peculiar ways of doing things.
@marble
I'm sure we've had this discussion before.
However, a blend file is you first port-of-call when you want to open/append (think of append as merging in Studio - the analogy is pretty close)
I keep blend files of assets I've exported, which are then available for me to use again; I do this with props/scenes and hair, and technically characters too. I also have a blend file that contains a variety of materials. Just Append when required. I even have poses I've created in blender (and some adjusted, but I usually use rigify now).
As an example, take Contemporary Vignette 3, which I have previously exported and imported in Blender; Append > navigate to, open the file and then everything I need is in the Collection folder (because I placed the items there).
Second image shows the vignette loaded.
Third image shows the wall I added moved to better demonstrate the versatility. I also added a ceiling, a side wall and changed the texture on the side wall before saving the Blend file. You'll also see in the collection on the right hand side I've named the extra items in a way that makes some sense to me.
Blender isn't an asset management system able to render items once loaded and placed. It's a 3D modelling application. Studio was designed to manage products created for it in a variety of applications. Blender is designed (amongst other things) to create those products - for anyone not just Studio.
Yes, I have asked before but I have not been able to grasp the idea of .blend files with respect to a content library. I'm still finding it difficult to understand the logic of doing it the Blender way but, having watched a few more videos I can see how it is done. As I said, if that new Asset Management system is adopted in the standard release, I will be much more comfortable if it works they way it is shown in that video.
There's still one thing that is unclear to me. If you first need to put your assets into a .blend file (or multiple .blend files) does that mean that you can't have a library of installed assets (as we have with DAZ Studio) without first having loaded each and every one into a .blend file and stored it somewhere? So I could not, for instance, purchase an asset from somewhere or grab one from my DAZ Studio Content Library and have it available to Blender without having first loaded it into a .blend file in order to be able to append it into any other .blend file? Then the further question arises - how do I get it into the first .blend file if it already needs to be in a .blend file in order to append it? I have to admit that the only way I have imported objects into Blender so far is from DAZ Studio, either by .OBJ import or by Diffeomorphic.
DAZ Bridges is a Plan B in case Nvidia is abondoning Iray (which is quite possible) The Blender GUI has improved greatly in the past couple of releases. However it's still a proverbial pain in the a55. I keep trying to migrate to Blender but keep leaving out of frustration.
It's a matter of perspective; I've like Blender's UI since 2.50; I don't like Studio's. I can work with it, but I don't like it.
Of course not.
Just like Studio assets need creating - which PAs do for most people, Blender files also need creating. However, we can also create our own Studio assets. They can be morph assets, pose assets and others. Now, there are Blend files available from Daz, but last time I checked they were broken - wrong scale and wrong position; materials also weren't the best. Diffeo does a brilliant job.
Blender works differently, I usually suggest folks stop thinking about how it's done in Studio, and learn how it is done in Blender; then they can look at corrolations to help them better transfer and manage assets.
If you want to create a blender asset; load up something - pick something relatively simple as a learning process.
Load it Studio; export using Diffeo plugin (remembering to run the script).
Import into Blender using the Diffeo plugin.
Optionally make any adjustments you feel would be useful including making sure all items are in a Collection and that the Collection has a name.
... Then save as a Blend file. You can then append the collection as I describe.
EDIT:
My advice is don't save local textures or pack them into the blend file; use the original location.
If you create any custom textures, have those in a custom folder, which I also have accessible by Studio.
Well, it does seem to me that, despite staring with "Of course not ..." you go on to confirm what I suggested - that assets need to be loaded into Blender and saved as .blend files. I understand that Blender works differently to DAZ Studio, I just wanted confirmation that the way I described it was they way to do it. I'm like all the others who find Blender somewhat confusing - I'm just trying to learn its idiosyncrasies.
By the way, someone else mentioned "save and pack" in another post and I spent a good while trying to figure out what "pack" meant. I eventually found it and what it does:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/blend/packed_data.html
for me, is very practical using iRay inside DazStudio, that "thing of bridges" is not new for me, I've ported in the past to Maxwell Render, Keyshot, Modo, UnrealEngine when even Daz never tought about them,
and my experience is better using the original render engine, I don't care if is much easier now simply is not my workflow for now.
I put in bold the part my post mainly related to. That was saying that blend files don't magically appear just like studio files don't magically appear. They both have to be created. I'll be more clear and add an addendum: Daz does provide Blend files, although I've not had any work that I've tried.
If money was no object, and I liked being restricted to what I can do, and what render engine I could use, I would agree. But this is why we have options, we can all do what suits us best. We can even change our minds about what suits us as time passes for no other reason than we fancy changing something.
We certainly shouldn't do what other's think we should do.
Yes. Honestly, I do get what you are saying - I can see that .blend files do need to be created. I was just trying to explain my confusion over the way Blender uses .blend files for a scene and also as containers or even as an asset library. I'm still not sure I have my head around that that - especially when it comes to things like poses and materials.