New DS Filament Render Engine

AllenArt

I think those Filament skins are if you intend to use Filament and just Filament. I would imagine if you want to use Iray, you would go back to an Iray skin. You might need to reapply the Iray skin if you wanna go back.

NylonGirl

AllenArt said:

I think those Filament skins are if you intend to use Filament and just Filament. I would imagine if you want to use Iray, you would go back to an Iray skin. You might need to reapply the Iray skin if you wanna go back.

The preset also doesn't look right in the Filament preview.

Psyckosama

NylonGirl said:

AllenArt said:

I think those Filament skins are if you intend to use Filament and just Filament. I would imagine if you want to use Iray, you would go back to an Iray skin. You might need to reapply the Iray skin if you wanna go back.

The preset also doesn't look right in the Filament preview.

That's because you need to apply the subsurface scattering shell

OrionPax09

Also, I've noticed that some things really don't work well with Filament. Some Iray settings, as well as things like UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System. Here's hoping that issues like this get squared away soon.

3Diva

NylonGirl said:

So I decided to get a few of those products sold for Filament. And one of them was SF Beautiful Skin Filament. I was under the impression it was meant to make the skin textures look better in the preview window when the filament engine was used for the preview. I started out with the texture shaded preview like this:

 

Then I changed the preview mode to Filament and it looked like this:

 

Then after selecting the character and applying one of the presets it looked like this:
 

And after choosing to "Undo" the texture preset, it made the preview window look again like it did in the second picture, but if I do an IRAY render after applying and undoing the material preset, it renders a character with the skin texture as a semi-transparent green color. It looks kind of nice, but this doesn't seem like it should be the result. It seems like it should return to a normal IRAY render. What's going on?

 

It comes with a PDF tutorial that you should read. There's another step after applying one of the presets - you have to also apply one of the SSS Emulator Shells.

jesusaramenes

it's funny since filament is out there is a series of animation on sale and where it's funny is that the promotion of these animations is made with iray ...

filament is of course a solution for small configurations... although daz released it too early I think, they could have waited to be able to convert the shaders cleanly from iray to filament...

the renderings made by kindred arts are very beautiful for sure but I would like to see a close-up of a face to see ...

OrionPax09

jesusaramenes said:

it's funny since filament is out there is a series of animation on sale and where it's funny is that the promotion of these animations is made with iray ...

filament is of course a solution for small configurations... although daz released it too early I think, they could have waited to be able to convert the shaders cleanly from iray to filament...

the renderings made by kindred arts are very beautiful for sure but I would like to see a close-up of a face to see ...

Exactly. And I really am tired ot things being rushed out too fast.

Still, if they can get Iray textures to work in Filament, I would immediately rejoice. Iray renders are so freaking slow...

Psyckosama

OrionPax09 said:

jesusaramenes said:

it's funny since filament is out there is a series of animation on sale and where it's funny is that the promotion of these animations is made with iray ...

filament is of course a solution for small configurations... although daz released it too early I think, they could have waited to be able to convert the shaders cleanly from iray to filament...

the renderings made by kindred arts are very beautiful for sure but I would like to see a close-up of a face to see ...

Exactly. And I really am tired ot things being rushed out too fast.

Still, if they can get Iray textures to work in Filament, I would immediately rejoice. Iray renders are so freaking slow...

I have an AMD card. :p

yaggiland

N.G.S. Anagenessis 2 with tweaking is not bad for filament

Edit ; Filament_1 remove Glossy Reflectivity

 

Zilvergrafix

I've detected that using for long time activated on viewport, one or more figures disappear when modify pose!! 

I had to reopening DS to avoid this issue.

WendyLuvsCatz

One can always make the transmapped hairs into mesh in Blender

this SAV GoodOboys hair took several hours to convert from a particle hair made mesh to curves afterwards and extruded ended up as a 1.3GB obj

filament with a texture but think no UV and waay too shiny, I need to tweak that hence just a Facebook link

https://www.facebook.com/1653360584/videos/10222344615438259/

update it does have UV mapping

KennethC

I think the new DAZ Filament rendered sequence frames can be of good use for non realistic previz and test animations.  I put together a simple lighted scene using filament and it's looking pretty decent.   I'm going to post some animation samples soon with mocap from mixamo using mixamotion and facial animation using Facemotion. :)  It's waaay faster than Iray and it's waaay better than previous daz OpenGL.   I'm very thankful to DAZ for releasing this realtime renderer.   It feels close to older Unity before Postprocessing volume came out.    Once hair transparency is fixed.. this will be of good use to many if tweaked right. :)  Thumbs up to DaZ.

WendyLuvsCatz

mesh hair either too flat or too shiny using glossy sliders

but at least it's not transparent

WendyLuvsCatz

put on an alternative Youtube channel of mine as still a tad iffy

yaggiland

So many parameters have changed to get the hair right.

yaggiland

WendyLuvsCatz said:

mesh hair either too flat or too shiny using glossy sliders

but at least it's not transparent

I put Cutout Opacity to "0" to eliminate transparency ( but not for all just surface needed)

Taoz

One more

Sevrin

More and more, I'm finding Filament pretty poor for Iray previewing, except, perhaps, for HDRI positioning.  It's really its own thing and we need to decide upfront whether we wanna work in Iray, and use texture-shaded previews, or in Filament.

Taoz

And now for something completely different...

j cade

The one thing I really want from it is ctrl-L to work the way it does in textured mode - at that point it would pretty much be able to replace textured mode for me

yaggiland

Test another skin settings

Edit: Filament_3 with geoshell

Zilvergrafix

First time not crashing my PC getting more than 3 people clothed

Using EasyEnvironment products works instantly, on iRay always did settings.

 

Greywulf

Zilvergrafix, they look fantastic! Filament has really got me excited for this new path that this has opened up in DAZ Studio. 

NylonGirl

Psyckosama said:

NylonGirl said:

AllenArt said:

I think those Filament skins are if you intend to use Filament and just Filament. I would imagine if you want to use Iray, you would go back to an Iray skin. You might need to reapply the Iray skin if you wanna go back.

The preset also doesn't look right in the Filament preview.

That's because you need to apply the subsurface scattering shell

That fixed it.

3Diva said:

It comes with a PDF tutorial that you should read. There's another step after applying one of the presets - you have to also apply one of the SSS Emulator Shells.

I got around to reading it a few minutes ago. I may read a PDF file again one day.

Eustace Scrubb

The good news is that it actually renders shadows now, even without the draped-shadow add-on.  But without raking back through the whole thread, what are these Filament Draw Options and how does one even apply them?

Richard Haseltine said:

N_R Arts said:

Does every item in a scene need a Filament Draw Option added to it?

 

There can be only one - hence the name for these objects, Singletons.

 

Sevrin

Eustace Scrubb said:

The good news is that it actually renders shadows now, even without the draped-shadow add-on.  But without raking back through the whole thread, what are these Filament Draw Options and how does one even apply them?

Richard Haseltine said:

N_R Arts said:

Does every item in a scene need a Filament Draw Option added to it?

 

There can be only one - hence the name for these objects, Singletons.

 

Nathanomir

After working with Filament for three days, I'm going to add my plugged nickel's worth of commentary.

First, my Iray machine melted down about three days before Filament was released. So, I'm currently working on an eight year old laptop, with a Haswell CPU, 16G RAM, and an archaic GTX-940 GPU. It's my old Reality machine. Don't even say the word "Iray" to it or it will have a stroke. The fact that I can render on it using Filament is just pure joy.

Second, I do two types of renders: highly detailed fantasy scenes, and superhero comics. It's always griped me that a panel for a comic takes as long as a detailed standalone action scene. Add to it the fact that a comic page needs four to nine panels and it becomes frustrating. With Filament, I can render faster than I can pose the characters. Meaning, I can make more than one comic page per week. Nice!

Third, for said comics, Filament is good enough. More than good enough, really. Iray looked too darn good! I'm used to comics being hand drawn, with high end pieces either in watercolor, like Alex Ross, or airbrushed, as in Heavy Metal. So, Filament is a major boon in many ways.

Finally, I have been playing with Filament for detailed fantasy images. So far, so good. Yeah, in that type of art, its limitations show. Iray is the better engine for that type of scene. However, I'm getting better results than I did with 3delight (granted, I did not know what I was doing back then ... I didn't even know we had cameras). The transition from Iray to Filament is not near as daunting as 3DL to Reality or Reality to Iray. Sure there's a learning curve, but there was for 3DL, Reality, Iray, and DAZ in general. I'm still learning about Iray for that matter. So, what else is new?

It does have a few missing pieces. The lack of SSS/Translucency leads to flattish looking skin. Ground shadows need to be greatly improved. The mouth of figures looks plastic. Hair is wonky. Learning new lighting techniques takes time because mesh lights don't work. Most of those issues will be resolved either through spending more time with Filament (which I am doing now), and the fact that it's open source and 200 to 300 of us geeks just fell in love with it. It would not surprise me to see Filament develop and improve faster than Iray considering it/we don't have a major corporation that ignores us to contend with (i.e., Nvidia).

Many here are complaining that DAZ "wasted time and resources" on Filament but I say "Good job!" It's another tool in our box of tools we can use for different projects and applications. And really, we can't have enough.

alienarea

KindredArts said:

Hey guys, i thought i'd just throw my 2c in on the conversation here. As i've mentioned elsewhere on the forums, i threw my support behind this endeavor because i coach and train a lot of budding artists and PA's from developing countries where the purchase of high-end Nvidia cards is almost impossible. I wanted broke students to be able to pick this up as a hobby, even if their only available pc is a 10-year-old laptop that's being held together by duct tape. Lowering the bar of entry is good for daz. As it stands right now, you can pick up daz, grab a load of freebies and get started with rendering in filament without spending a dime. If you're lucky enough to be dual-wielding titans and overclocked i9's, then there's still plenty of goodies lined up for you. It's not replacing iray it's just an addition.

I'm also seeing a lot of comparisons to eevee and UE4, which i don't think is a fair comparison. Eevee and UE4's renderers along with Filament *can* look great if you put forth the effort, but none of them are going to do it for you. Whenever you see awesome quality work in eevee or UE4, or any other engine, i guarantee you that there was a seasoned visual effects artist that created it. We have Iray for people with hardware capable of using effectively, we have filament for those who don't have that luxury. Both of them will look terrible if you don't put forth adequate effort. Both will look great if you do.

Early in the port process when FIlament was still crashing regularly and had no documentation, i made these -

They're certainly not avengers level CG obviously, but if i told people they were made in Iray, i'm pretty sure they'd believe me. 

I'm not saying this to cause a flamewar, - i too am looking forward to more high-tier goodies being introduced into daz. The wishlists being presented in this thread are valid, and i'd like to see improvements in a lot of areas too. I'd just like to get my point across that many people will benefit from this, and i hope it will breed a lot of new daz artists who would not have been able to use the software previously. It's the Artist, not the brush, make something awesome.

 

Thank you.

3Diva

Nathanomir said:

After working with Filament for three days, I'm going to add my plugged nickel's worth of commentary.

First, my Iray machine melted down about three days before Filament was released. So, I'm currently working on an eight year old laptop, with a Haswell CPU, 16G RAM, and an archaic GTX-940 GPU. It's my old Reality machine. Don't even say the word "Iray" to it or it will have a stroke. The fact that I can render on it using Filament is just pure joy.

Second, I do two types of renders: highly detailed fantasy scenes, and superhero comics. It's always griped me that a panel for a comic takes as long as a detailed standalone action scene. Add to it the fact that a comic page needs four to nine panels and it becomes frustrating. With Filament, I can render faster than I can pose the characters. Meaning, I can make more than one comic page per week. Nice!

Third, for said comics, Filament is good enough. More than good enough, really. Iray looked too darn good! I'm used to comics being hand drawn, with high end pieces either in watercolor, like Alex Ross, or airbrushed, as in Heavy Metal. So, Filament is a major boon in many ways.

Finally, I have been playing with Filament for detailed fantasy images. So far, so good. Yeah, in that type of art, its limitations show. Iray is the better engine for that type of scene. However, I'm getting better results than I did with 3delight (granted, I did not know what I was doing back then ... I didn't even know we had cameras). The transition from Iray to Filament is not near as daunting as 3DL to Reality or Reality to Iray. Sure there's a learning curve, but there was for 3DL, Reality, Iray, and DAZ in general. I'm still learning about Iray for that matter. So, what else is new?

It does have a few missing pieces. The lack of SSS/Translucency leads to flattish looking skin. Ground shadows need to be greatly improved. The mouth of figures looks plastic. Hair is wonky. Learning new lighting techniques takes time because mesh lights don't work. Most of those issues will be resolved either through spending more time with Filament (which I am doing now), and the fact that it's open source and 200 to 300 of us geeks just fell in love with it. It would not surprise me to see Filament develop and improve faster than Iray considering it/we don't have a major corporation that ignores us to contend with (i.e., Nvidia).

Many here are complaining that DAZ "wasted time and resources" on Filament but I say "Good job!" It's another tool in our box of tools we can use for different projects and applications. And really, we can't have enough.

Well said! :D And yeah, this is a boon for animators for sure and for those who own lower-end computers, as well as those who just need to be able to produce fast renders. Even for those not interested in rendering with it, it can be a big help for setting up scenes. The ability to see exactly where the HDRI is, alone, already a big help. I too am glad that Daz3D brought this to Daz Studio. :)

3Diva

I don't know if anyone is interested in these, but here are the Tonemapper, Environment, and Filament Option Nodes that I currently use for Filament Rendering (in the ZIP attached). Unzip it, open the "Content" folder and drop the "Scene Subsets" folder into your My Library (or wherever you have your Daz3D content installed). You should then be able to find the Filament rendering setup under: "Scene Subsets" >> "Filament Nodes and Distant Light - For Filament Rendering B".

The scene subset allows you to load all three draw option nodes with one click: Tonemapper Options Node, Environment Options Node, and Filament Draw Options Node, as well as a Distant Light with Raytraced Shadows enabled. The nodes have been set up for how I *currently* render in Filament. Here's a quick before and after.

 

Before adding the "Filament Nodes and Distant Light" scene subset:

 

After adding the "Filament Nodes and Distant Light" scenes subset:

 

I hope some of you might find it helpful. :) Of course, feel free to tweak it and make changes to suit your own personal tastes and preferences.

Please let me know if I packed it up correctly and if it works ok. :)