Is Filament a discontinued project for the Daz Team?
Ben Oaks
Posts: 60
I have purchased all the products pertaining to filament (aside from the wet skin product), and I have noticed that no more products are being introduced into the marketplace. Did the Filament option get abandoned all together? I like it even though it needs some work. Super fast renders, and a lot of room for improvement. Can any developers/staff let me know if it is done with? Thanks in advance.
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Comments
I still use it
but I also wish they would add the emissive shaders listed in the paper on it even if just as an ambient glow
Absolutely! That alone would open up so much more options in the renders. So you also have not heard what their plans are for it? Is this normal in the Daz realm?
I'm looking forward to it being available for Mac when DAZ Studio 5 comes out, though while I wait... and wait... and wait... I'm slowly drifting away from 3D and moving into 2D.
--- Walt Sterdan
Understandable
for the past few years, yes
Perhaps they are more concerned with the professional customers than they are with the enthusiasts.
Daz has never presented Filament as anything other than a Drawstyle. Some PAs chose to make products for it, the lack of further products may simply reflect the way those sold - it certainly wasn't a Daz decision.
Agreed with Richard ~ But TBH, Filament is still useless to many of the users, incl. me. I deactivated the plugin from day one ...
I was very excited about the prospect of using Filament in DAZ Studio but the DAZ implementation was a big disappointment. I also immediately went back to the old OpenGL viewport because it is easier to work with. I just occasionally switch to IRay in the Viewport to check on the look. Filament in DAZ Studio offers me nothing. My initial excitement was after seeing som examples online and I thought it might be competition for Blender's Eevee but, alas, it is not and was never intended (by DAZ) to be. Whether it could be is an open question if DAZ were to go with the full implementation.
I use OpenGL too for some animations
the one thing I don't use is that toon render as it looks hideous
I still use Filament - they do have a repository but unsure if that fork of Filament is for DAZ Studio: https://github.com/daz3d/filament
They made a sparkly info page on it but I have not seen anything else. https://www.daz3d.com/filament-information-page
Filament has a lot of potential as that "middle ground" - especially for animators. It just needs that polishing, like soft shadows, transparancy/alpha fixes, emissives, etc... Even better if the diffuse channel can support alpha.
This implies that there are other implementations of Filament that you don't consider disappointing. Out of curiosity, could you post a link to them so we can check them out?
Thanks.
- Greg
I'm just going on previous comments that inform us that the DAZ version is a partial implementation and that the full version would offer better features. Other than a few sample images of Filament renders elsewhere on the internet, I have nothing to compare it with so I can't satisfy your request. The implication I would draw, however, is that a complete implementation of Filament would be "less dissapointing" than a partial one.
How do you deactivate this plug in? I never have used it as its really ugly with hair
Help>About Installed plug-ins has check boxes, a restart is then required. I would not, however, be inclined to deactivate a core component.
Can't say that I see the point of deactivating it either. I hardly ever use it - occasionally it is easier to see if the feet are on the ground if I switch to Filament but I switch back immediately. Otherwise, it doesn't get in the way of my usual workflow.
A late reaction but oh well...
I'm a rather vivid Filament user and although most has been said above I also want to add that development on the engine is still happening, and new 'features' still find their way into the engine from time to time. For example: a few years back Filament didn't properly support shadows but it does now. My only gripe with the engine is that the intended shortcut doesn't work; neither the keyboard shortcut nor the icon (if you place this on the toolbar).
But other than that.... I more than often use it to give me a rough preview of an Iray render; even though it's not fully comparable you still get a good impression; it most definitely makes you aware of using RSL or MDL based material presets. IMO it's a pretty good engine.
(edit: fixed some typoes and applied a little bit more structure by adding "()").
This is where I disagree. I would rather switch to IRAY in the viewport than Filament even though the latter is much quicker. I'd rather take the extra seconds to get a closer impression of the IRay render than a different render engine entirely. But I should ask you whether you believe we have the full implementation of Filament or just a subset? When I first tried it I was immediately discouraged because the hair looked awful. Then it became clear than anything with opacity/transparency would not render nicely.
Personally I agree with Marble that filament is pretty unuseful without support for transmapped objects. I mean even opengl can do multipass so I doubt filament can't, it rather seems to me like a bug in daz studio.
I simply don't use any cutout opacity with it anymore
use toonier hairs, fibermesh or hoods aand caps and my dresses don't have lace and my trees have geometry leaves
They just have to fix the transparency bug and it would be a good "render engine"
I dare say the alpha channel is the issue as Unreal Engine does exactly the same thing if it's used but a masking brick works
if there is an equivalent brick for the Filament shader available
For a decent realtime engine you can always export to blender with diffeomorphic and use eevee. That works perfectly fine with alpha channels. Also the material conversion from iray to eevee is decent enough.