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The news broke today, Apple is indeed working on hardware raytracing. Woo Hoo!
@TBorNot Are you talking about the overheated A16 chip with ray-tracing?
Apple's 'unprecedented' engineering snafu reportedly spoiled plans for more powerful iPhone 14 Pro chip
According to a new report, Apple worked on an A16 chip that supports ray tracing.
https://www.engadget.com/apple-a16-chip-ray-tracing-mistakes-180839937.html
FYI: Apple has been preparing for ray-tracing for awhile. The Metal Ray-Tracing API was released last year at WWDC21. Apple Video here...
Discover ray tracing with Metal
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10012/
That's great news. I just bought an M1 MacBook Air this past November and by the time that is long in the tooth & needs replacing this new Apple hardware raytracing should be available, then I can relegate the old M1 laptop to FreeBSD.
So what would this hardware ray tracing do? Is it a version of Metal in DS 5? Does this mean there will be more than a very light version of Metal in DS 5?
The fact that an API is available does not mean Daz Studio (or any other application) will use it, especially if it is platform-specific.
OK. But what would it to if that API were to be available in DAZ Studio? What effect would that have?
The API is available to Daz Studio, assumign Qt supprts it (which can't be taken for granted) or that an add-on module (.dylib) has its own access. It would then have to be used in some way - have the data prepared for it, with suitable settings (which, I would think, might well be different from the settings needed for iray or 3delight - quite possibly needing entirely new shaders and material settings using them).
For Apple support of these new features I would look into Blender. They are opensource and have more people working on their software.
OneDrive synchronize "Documents" folder so Daz Studio shouldn't use this folder by default.
Maybe "3D Objects" folder would be more approriate.
I'm just glad that I'm even able to change nearly every default folder without breaking Studio!
Don't forget the neural interface that puts oneself in to the scene with the sentient Genesis X
All I really want out of DS5, is either an updated 3DL, or something that takes it's places as proper jack of all trades render engine. Iray just isn't for everyone.
I don't think there will ever be new generations of programs that require less resources than the previous ones, If one doesn't have powerful enough computer for Iray rendering with DS4, the situation is not going to get any better with DS5.
On the other hand, Iray rendering doesn't require that much. 32GB's of RAM plus an nVidia 3060 12GB and that's it
Nothing Daz has done or said suggests that 3DL will see a renaissance. While additional render engines are a possibility, they likely won't get any more support than Octane or Filamant do.
Daz is an asset store, and Daz Studio is their loss leader. Daz won't ask its vendors to support multiple render engines, and most customers won't want to pay a premium for non-Iray materials.
Iray is not suited for half the things 3DL does handily. That's my real problem with it.
A mirror that one can look through from the backside is the only one I can think of.
There's actually quite a few things I find useful about 3DL due to the fact that it's a biased engine and RSL is a shading language (as opposed to material definition). Personally, some of the things that I make use of are being able to turn on/off shadows on a per mat zone basis or for a given light, or the ability to define how shading is calculated based on information about an incident light ray, the geo, or the mat, etc. Also, the way mapped displacement is handled (not requiring actual geometry/subdivision) is also vastly different and can be useful.
These are just a few off the top of my head. 3DL is not better or worse - just different. As was already mentioned, one of the best things about Iray is the fact that most everything comes with Iray mats in the store. IMHO, this is huge.
- Greg
One could read into the fact that when selecting a render engine in DS, 3DL is listed as 3Delight (RSL), which could seemingly mean that 3Delight (OSL) may be a future option ;)
- Greg
You're probably right. Filament seems forgotten. There are still a lot of options and enhancements available to fans of 3DL, and I don't think converting to 3DL from Iray is all that onerous. There are converters available and one can use the uber shader to span the gap. Some of those options will perish in the transition to DS5. Some are already gone from the store. Even so, Daz has said the final version of DS4 will remain available to current DS4 customers. And some of us may choose to continue using older versions of DS. There are still a surprising number of people in that category, I think.
I would settle for an organized Library instead of the fling at wall system currently in use
I think that is just theer as a reminder - 3Delight presets are tagged RSL (and Iray MDL), the Shader Mixer bricks have RSL or MDL tags etc.
...then there's Wowie's AweShader system which as been producing some very remarkable rsults.
I consider that one of the available options, yes. Very cool, though a bit slower and more render-intensive than I like. The PW shaders are another, though some components have disappeared from the store. I was trying to avoid making a list, though that might be a good idea...
What is the actual purpose of Filament anyway?
I could be wrong, but I think it was supposed to be a really fast real-time renderer like Blender's Eevee. I don't think it reached its potential, though.
My understanding is that Filament was designed for use as a real-time physically based rendering engine for Android mobile devices. I believe it was originally a side project by a few people at Google.
It's being used in DS as an alternative option for viewport previews (as opposed to a full blown render engine meant for final renders).
- Greg
...part of the reason I'm going with a 12 core 3.7GHz Ryzen and 64 GB of memory (upgradable to 128) on my planned upgrade.
It will be the Mac replacement for the Apple-depredated OpenGL, for one thing. Personally, as I've mentioned way too many times, I'm pumped about using it for toon animation. I'm currently using OpenGL and getting 1080p frames for under under half-a-second, Filament should give me the same render times or faster, an will add features like HDRI and better transparency, among other things. For me, at the very least, an OpenGL renderer equivalent but on steroids.
I believe a fully-supported version of Filament has the abilty to cast shadows as well, though I have no idea what features will be provided in DAZ Stuido 5. Fingers crossed, though.
-- Walt Sterdan