Filament is Official - Need Answers from Daz

Sevrin

So now that Filament has made it to the release version of DS, some answers from Daz are in order, so that we don't waste time on promise that will never be fulfilled.

• What about hair?
• What about emissives?
• What about non-working sliders in Filament render settings, which will only confuse and frustrate users?
• Will transparency ever work like in Iray?
• Will HDRI resolution be fixed?
• Will there ever be translucency or SSS?

In short: what do we have to look forward to, and what don't we?

Cerrag

I was wondering how I can get Filament to render the lights in an Iray scene.   I've seen others posting their images with Filament and it appears to render the iray lighting where emmisives would be used but how are they doing it if emmisives aren't being rendered by Filament?

<edit> This was answered over here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6203476#Comment_6203476

scorpio Posts: 7,520

8:25AM Flag

Cerrag said:

I was wondering how I can get Filament to render the lights in an Iray scene.   I've seen others posting their images with Filament and it appears to render the iray lighting where emmisives would be used but how are they doing it if emmisives aren't being rendered by Filament?

HDRI's and point, spot and distance lights work.

 

Ghosty12

I am wondering if Daz are planning on doing with Filament, what Poser has done with their Superfly renderer that is based on Blender Cycles.. Since both are open source renderers, and that Blender Cycles has the ability to use AMD GPU's..

daveso

I'm wondering how bad the new update will hose up my current setup? It seems like the last couple or more of DAZ updates, that content managment system, their website is a total mess. Not sure i want to change what sort of works now, other than constant crashes. 

 

TheRetiredSailor

I am late to the Filament scene as I have not been using the beta. I'm gathering that emissives don't work in Filament?  That's a bit of a problem for me (if not a show stopper).  I've spent a fair amount of time creating table lamps, floor lamps, recessed ceiling lights, drop ceiling troffers and wall sconces to provide a somewhat realistic lighting effect in my scenes. These all work off of an emissive surface like the glass on a light bulb or a globe surrounding the bulb. 
 

Sigh.

TheRetiredSailor

TheRetiredSailor said:

 

Deleted, posted in error.

Drip

My mayor question: What's the point of Filament, or, what use does it have? That's a question I didn't see really answered in the info pages, just some ambigious hints.

Is it a replacement for iRay?
Is it an alternative to iRay?
Is it primarily meant as a viewport renderer to get a more iRay-like preview within your viewport, but way faster, making it easier to work on your scene until you eventually make the final render in iRay?

I figure it's probably closest to the last one, as it does look way better than texture shaded, but nowhere near as good as iRay. But, I might be wrong, so would appreciate some information or explanation.

darth_giles8167653

So, as a Mac user on a system that doesn't have a slot for an nVidia card, Filament would let me use iRay materials without having to worry about converting. And since it's open source, Daz can tinker with it and contribute improvements upstream- something it can't do with blobs like iRay.

Then again, Filament isn't ready for the Mac yet (and Daz did say "yet" in there), so I guess I'm sticking to 3Delight for now.

Cerrag

From what I can see, what you see in the viewport is exactly what's rendered with Filament (WYSIWYG).  With the exception of added point, distant, spot, etc lights.  I was super excited at first but now am not sure because I use a lot of emmisive lighting also and can't figure out how to mimic that effect or even if it's worth the time over just going with iray.  I wish there was more information on how to light scenes and even though there are some cool looking new products for it, they don't look like they address this issue. It'd be great if someone could post a simple tutuorial on how they set up an interior lighting scene cause I'd love to use this over iray since it's so fast.

Leana

Drip said:

My mayor question: What's the point of Filament, or, what use does it have? That's a question I didn't see really answered in the info pages, just some ambigious hints.

Is it a replacement for iRay?
Is it an alternative to iRay?
Is it primarily meant as a viewport renderer to get a more iRay-like preview within your viewport, but way faster, making it easier to work on your scene until you eventually make the final render in iRay?

I figure it's probably closest to the last one, as it does look way better than texture shaded, but nowhere near as good as iRay. But, I might be wrong, so would appreciate some information or explanation.

It's not a replacement for Iray, 3DL or OpenGL, it's an additional option. It's fast so can be used for viewport, but you can also use it to render.

Richard Haseltine

Drip said:

My mayor question: What's the point of Filament, or, what use does it have? That's a question I didn't see really answered in the info pages, just some ambigious hints.

Is it a replacement for iRay?
Is it an alternative to iRay?
Is it primarily meant as a viewport renderer to get a more iRay-like preview within your viewport, but way faster, making it easier to work on your scene until you eventually make the final render in iRay?

I figure it's probably closest to the last one, as it does look way better than texture shaded, but nowhere near as good as iRay. But, I might be wrong, so would appreciate some information or explanation.

Yes, I think the last is broadly correct - though it certainly can be used forr enders (by setting the Render Engien to Viewport) and the speed may be worth the quality/feature limitations (especially for animators).

WendyLuvsCatz

it works fine on my older Win7 machine without a graphics card so for those without Nvidia hardware it is a good fast alternative to 3Delight

treat it as you used to do 3Delight and add point lights and a distant light, we survived for a decade without emitters 

FntsyArt

Personally, I think it is great. While I really really wish it did emissives, it is far superior as a viewport renderer. I can actually see my HDRIs and adjust them without guessing. And I can add lights and get a pretty close idea to how they are going to render in Iray.

The lack of emissives will keep me from using it much as a final renderer since so much of what I do uses them.

nonesuch00

Drip said:

My mayor question: What's the point of Filament, or, what use does it have? That's a question I didn't see really answered in the info pages, just some ambigious hints.

Is it a replacement for iRay?
Is it an alternative to iRay?
Is it primarily meant as a viewport renderer to get a more iRay-like preview within your viewport, but way faster, making it easier to work on your scene until you eventually make the final render in iRay?

I figure it's probably closest to the last one, as it does look way better than texture shaded, but nowhere near as good as iRay. But, I might be wrong, so would appreciate some information or explanation.

It's also meant to greatly assist making PBR compliant shader materials in DAZ Studio and to be used to render animations.

Richard Haseltine

It would be best to use the existing thread https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/442982/new-ds-filament-render-engine#latest , or the threads on the new DS versions in the Daz Studio Discussion forum, rather than have mutliple threads covering ther topic.