To the Blender users
Rev2019
Posts: 167
tell me an reason to change from Daz 3D to Blender
what will i get that i dont get in daz 3d?
better animation tools? body physics? better and more photoreal lighting?
i use Iray btw
Post edited by Chohole on
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One obvious thing is that Blender is a full 3D application, with modelling tools and more simulation types than DS. DS is a tool for staging and animating content, so its UI can focus on those tasks; with Blender you can do everything 3D in the one application (texture creation would be an external task, for the most part, and there are specialist tools like Marvellous Designer) but that means that the experience is less focussed. It'sd a matter of trade offs in what you want, and in what you do.
One of the biggest things I like about blender cycles render is I am able to render larger size images without running out of vram, and it's typically faster. The AI denoiser is amazing, gets rid of noise, without blasting details away.
sounds great
since you can export Genesis models to blender can anyone post an comparision renderer with Daz 3d iray so i can have a look?
but the best rendering quality in blender is with V-Ray right?
If you render with Eevee, then you absolutely will get faster renders, even with slower GPU or CPU, while still getting high level of realism. I've seen Eevee renders that looked almost as good as iRay or Cycles. Yes, you will also get better animation tools and physics.
The downside is, of course, the learning curve. It's quite steep. Also you will not get instant gratification with things like stock models that just "work" in a drag and drop way. The only reason to switch is if you're looking for more powerful tools and MUCH more control over your work. If you are an animator, then I would suggest this by far. If you do work where you need to produce lots of realistic, high quality renders fast, then I'd suggest this also. If you're just playing around and making renders for your friends or just for fun, then probably stick with DS.
I haven't seen too many people working with Vray in Blender. Vray is a professional level VFX and studio render engine that was originally designed for Architectural Visualization in 3dsmax. It's been used in dozens of VFX movies over the years, but I don't know too many people who use it in Blender. Cycles can make things look as good as any other path tracing render engine. They all do basically the same stuff and produce similar results. The difference is how fast they are. Cycles, if used with RTX/Optix GPU and Intel Open Image Denoiser can be extremely fast, because you don't need as many samples with that denoiser to be effective.
Eevee was created for the same reason that Daz adopted Filament. The difference is, Blender isn't depending on the community and its users to develop the realtime render engine for them through plugins and such. The features are robust and extremely powerful right out of the box. You can get near photorealism with Eevee, if you know what you're doing, that have results that are close to Cycles for still images, and pretty darn good for animations too. Render times for Eevee are literally fractions of that in Cycles, but it takes a little more know-how to get comparable quality.
It depends on the scene. I'm using a cycle fork called e-cycles from mathieu.
https://blenderartists.org/t/e-cycles-2021-2x-faster-rendering-with-up-to-100-off-during-winter-sales/1139717
Have a look on the new. 91 denoiser capability, next .92 shot on 4th jan.2020...
Last time I tested rtx e-cycles and blender side by side, it's wasn't all that much faster anymore. Not sure it's worth paying for now that regular blender has the AI denoiser, e-cycles used to be the only way to access it.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/451661/daz-vs-blender-help-me-understand
There isnt really any sort of objective renderer quality scale - different renderers have different features sure, but the idea that one renderer is objectively better and in particular that switching to x "better renderer" is going to instantly improve your renders is generally misguided
generally the "best renderer" the renderer you know how to leverage and get the most out of.
now renderers do have features - for instance Iray can do spectral rendering while cycles does not - Meanwhile in Cycles you can make objects not cast shadows (which is something I definitely miss in Iray) I'd say on the whole Cycles is a bit more feature rich you can make it do things that are impossible in Iray - but it has more complexities to learn - If you don't like nodes you're going to have a hard time.
The programs also have features outside the render engine that will efect your renders DS, for instance, has HD JCMs (though the creation thereof is restricted to PAs) Blender has the multiresolution modifier which is similar but is limited to one modifier rather than a bunch of sliders - no dialable HD expressions (of course you can add a multires modifier and sculpt on top of an expression for stills), on the other hand Blender is much better at handling instanced geometry. I can create hundreds of instances all visible right in the viewport and it barely even slows down - try to do similar in DS and the and the entire program slows to a crawl- to say nothing of the renders. I've rendered ammounts of paricles and hair in Blender that would probably make my computer explode if I tried it in DS.
But for an actual visual comparison here's 2 renders I did at roughly the same time that feature similar elements (the hairs are simialr styles but bear 0 relation as both were creaed with each programs respective stand hair tools, I am one of very few people who really likes blender's hair tools and pretty much the only person who likes DS SBH) Can you tell which is Cycles and which is Iray?
e-Cycles is still a bit faster and opens up some access to different features under the hood that the standard version doesn't readily provide in the interface. The render times for me with e-Cycles is still faster than standard Cycles, but not significantly for still renders. It really makes a difference with animated renders though, because it does shave a couple of seconds off each frame.
I use the Intel Denoiser node in the compositor, which I find much, much better than the Optix AI denoiser. The Intel denoiser node was made available before e-Cycles was released, but e-Cycles does a clever "nesting" of the nodes that seems to clean up the render even more. Although it seems to come at an expense of a few seconds per frame, so I typically just add it manually anyway.
I'm gonna guess. Cycles on the left, Iray on the right. If I'm right or wrong, I'd still say it's not wise to make these types of renders to compare because someone with more experience in Cycles could probably adjust the exposure, lights, and materials to look more identical to the other render and vice-versa. As you alluded to, every render engine nowadays is high quality. If it is a path tracing render engine, then it does basically the same thing, just like "raytracing" used to be in the old days. One might be faster at certain things, while the other might be more efficient at something else, but the "quality" is going to be about the same and depends entirely on your skill and knowledge of how to leverage the features.
Which graphic card did you use and how complex were your lights and scene?
I use 2080 super, Wasn't a super complex scene I guess, it was a elf girl in like a dungeon type setup. It's on page 10 of the blender render thread.
Ok, I've seen that scene. When back from my project field trip I will post some of my images there with some specs. (Hope this is okay, there are no Daz products in my blender scenes, just my own assets)
deleted as duplicate
Best rendering quality is from the render engine you most like and feel comfortable with - as long as it is physically capable of producing the style you're looking for.
Cycles, Eevee and Octane are all capable of truly amazing results: are you?
I'm certainly not, but I find Cycles suits me.
cycles is on the right actually - the obvious tell for me is how much finer the fuzz on the shirt is. Its much coarser in the Iray render
TBF I didn't actually make the renders to compare. Its actually just 2 renders I did around the same time and realized after the fact that they had the same clothes and similar hair, but they are different morphs textures and lighting so clearly not a full comparison - setting up that takes way more effort than I feel like doing. Where I do think it works as a comparison is there isn't one thats obviously better they're both (to my mind) about the same quality because the same person made both.
I actually have "more experience" with Cycles than Iray - I've used both pretty much since they dropped and Cycles is older (before Iray I had fully switched over to rendering in Cycles) Its fun. I get to be a crochety old person I remember when there wasn't diffeomorphic making exporting so easy... I had to roll my own 3 layer skin shader, there wasnt this newfangled chromatic sss, and I had to walk uphill both ways
That was the only reason I guessed incorrectly. Because I just assumed you had more experience with iray than cycles, but it was the other way around. It's obvious that the one on the right is the one you have more experience with. The overexposure on the render to the left indicates that, although it can be done purposefully for a certain "look".
I mean the over exposure was intentional - exposure level is pretty much renderer agnostic (especially since both were tonemapped in blender) aesetically I tend to go either dramatic lighting or high key. The cycles render is actually pretty unusual for me (and I wasn't really satisfied with how the lighting turned out)
That's fair, but since you were making a comparison render between the two render engines, I assumed you were trying to keep both render results as raw and equal as possible. It's difficult for people to actually judge the output of a render engine if artistic stylings or visual aesthetics are incorporated into the results. Typically, exposure can be adjusted equally in both engines before the render begins (or by adjusting camera exposure settings) so that the levels are as close to each other as possible. Both engines will handle lighting the same way (if you set Cycles to use the proper number of bounces), so the differences really would be evident in how each engine handles the material system it's given. Ie, how volumes are handled, or caustics, or reflections and refractions. That type of thing. Of course, when dealing with DAZ, I think most people would be interested also in the SSS for skin shaders, displacement and normals.
I think "switching" is the wrong way to look at it. There are things, like character creation, that Daz Studio is much, much better at than Blender. The Genesis 8 framework puts the work of many, many talented PAs at your mouse clicks. But virtually everything else, I find Blender to be much, much better. Better in the sense that the more you've learned how to use it, the easier it gets to simply do things that would be awkward, difficult, impossible, or would give poor results in Daz Studio. But the two applications complement each other so crazily well... it's like they were made for each other.
If you really want to see what Blender can do with your own eyes, you can check blendernation.com every day.
Studio isn't better at character creation.
It provides tools, allowing almost a novice to get something they like. It is, however, limited by the morphs available (although there are a couple of add-ons offering more now - but still limited). Blender (and other 3D packages in its ilk), are what might be termed better as they allow one to push the verts around endlessly.
... But it isn't a case of one being better; they both offer great tools; Studio allows beginners to render something quickly - and the more experieced to do more; Blender (etc) allows those with experience to render something when they're fed up of tweaking,
and have a finer, more granular control over the process.
The downside of character "creation" in Daz is that everyone is starting with the same geometry, and while it's very convenient to shape a character using morphs and packaged assets, there's a limitation to how customized you can get. For example, when you start creating characters from the ground up, you can decide how many polygons to use, and where it's best to put them. You can decide how to rig the character with manipulators and helper objects in the rig itself that make animation much, much faster and easier than playing around with dials. You get to paint textures that match the geometry from scratch, so there's no warping or stretching of the UV's which is very often a problem with morphed characters. Texture stretching becomes very much noticeable on models if the morphs are extreme.
So in that regard, when it comes to custom character creation, Blender does offer the tools to do it the right way. It's not as fast or easy as DS, but it's certainly more powerful and as long as you know what you're doing you will get exactly what you want or need, right down to the last pixel and polygon, with little to no wasted geometry or textures.
????? or you can export genesis, sculpt it however you want, and import it back as a morph. You aren't limited to dial spinning. you could also paint textures on a morphed shape, make new uvs, create a different rig if you feel like it - now some of these things you need an external program (tbf if we're talking texture painting odds are you're using an external program for blender too - blender's texture painting tools are less than great) but you need external programs to do stuff is very different than "can't be done" if you're completely excluding external programs then the real problem is that you can only render primitives morphed with dforms as ever mesh was imported from another program.
You don't even have to start with the same geometry - you could import a completey custom figure rig them etc (there are several non genesis figures right in the store)
edit: I would say access to the sort of equivalent of being able to make HD morphs for non-pas in blender (via multiresolution sculpting) is a tick in blender's favor on the character creation front
you can definitely do custom uvs for genesis though - I've even made some
Exporting Genesis and sculpting however you want then importing it back as a morph is still starting out with the same mesh, manipulating the mesh, and using a morph to change that same mesh. No matter how you look at it, making new characters from a base mesh via morphs is still being limited to the given number of polygons. In other words, you need a lot of polygons to shape a base mesh into a completely new character, and in some cases not all of those verts or polygons are necessary to the shape. In other words, there are often extraneous polys on the character that aren't doing anything but taking up resources. If you model a character the way you want it to begin with, this isn't usually a problem, if you know what you're doing.
Very true. However, where do you do all that work aside from rigging? Probably you'd need something like Blender. So again, modeling and making a character the way you need it to begin with is probably more efficient, and you can be very specific with polygon count. If you're going to go through all that trouble of making completely new UV sets and rig on a high poly character morph, it seems to make sense then to just create a new one from scratch. I'd have to assume you would if you can do all that anyway. Making one from scratch allows you to be much more efficient with polygons and UV's anyway.
I didn't mean to suggest stuff like this can't be done with DS, but most of this type of work would require an app like Blender anyway. And sure, texture painting is often done in other packages with Blender but it doesn't have to be. That's just an option and a choice. Are there texture painting options built into DS that equal those available in Blender? I honestly don't know that answer, I'm not being a wise guy there.
DS can absolutely create characters. No doubt about it. However, the efficiency and specificity of character design in Blender (or other software packages like Blender) are what makes it stand apart. Maybe I don't need a character with 19,000 polygons (or whatever Genesis is these days) for a particular project. With DS, I'm kind of stuck with the Genesis base mesh no matter what amount of morphing I do to it unless I turn to an outside application like Blender and generate a brand new base mesh. Then you are correct in that I can import that back into DS and rig it, etc.
@jcade @greg
There are also limits with the daz eula. Then for games we need separate licenses.
As for character creation I agree morphing the genesis figures is very limiting, especially for fantasy creatures where we may need more freedom. But we can start from genesis and add the extra geometry as needed, this will not be a morph anymore of course. And it'll still under the daz eula since it's a derivative work.
Point taken. Because of its power, one could probably say that there is literally nothing that Daz is better at than Blender, without having exaggerated; the capability is vertainly in there. But from my POV, as someone without the atistic talent to model organic things, character creation in Blender is not an option. In that sense, the Genesis framework, which transposes into me the talents of many, many PAs, Daz is better at character creation. You're right, though.
I still disagree.
Studio is easier to use; it also has a great array of tools allowing someone (especially with experience and skills) to create some great characters.
There is a point to the argument that some put forward that everyone starts with the same base mesh; even so, there is considerable variety in tweaking the available vertices.
All my custom figures were modeled in Blender and rigged in Daz Studio. I tried different software for rigging including Blender, but found that Studio was the most useful for that purposes. At least for me.
PS: Genesis consists of between 16000 and 17000 polygons these days.