Daz Studio 5 development update

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  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,271

    I am not going to whine anymore about hardware compatibility but will have a good old whinge about customer accessibility to new features.

    I was so unbelievably excited when the dynamic Dforce Fiber hair was announced as a constant user of Carrara hair and longtime user of Poser dynamics only to have my face drop with utter disappointment to learn its creation was limited to DAZ Premier Artists only.

    OK the static image crowd can still style their own for free but as an animator it is pretty useless to me, the ones the PAs release are far too complex for my hardware and mostly unsuitable for animation too as that's not their interest.

    I sighed and went back to Carrara, nothing to see here.

    I use hair on many things other than heads BTW, not stuff PAs are interested in at all.

  • autodolorautodolor Posts: 70

    Really, I am concerned about scripts and SDK abandonment. Daz has long been known to use QTscript, but it is a fairly unknown platform among "normal" users. As a Cinema 4D user, after the r20 version, they did switch to Python 3, (which is something much more understandable than QT ...), and they made a dll to bridge between the previous versions. That effort would be appreciated. (Not to mention the fbx and bvh importer, who are pitiful ...)

  • ImagoImago Posts: 5,175

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    I am not going to whine anymore about hardware compatibility but will have a good old whinge about customer accessibility to new features.

    I was so unbelievably excited when the dynamic Dforce Fiber hair was announced as a constant user of Carrara hair and longtime user of Poser dynamics only to have my face drop with utter disappointment to learn its creation was limited to DAZ Premier Artists only.

    OK the static image crowd can still style their own for free but as an animator it is pretty useless to me, the ones the PAs release are far too complex for my hardware and mostly unsuitable for animation too as that's not their interest.

    I sighed and went back to Carrara, nothing to see here.

    I use hair on many things other than heads BTW, not stuff PAs are interested in at all.

    Yes, I can feel it too... sad

    Animators are a bit neglected lately... crying

  • Do you think that daz abonded 3Dlight in Daz 5 .!!??
    that's why DAZ Rawb said : Anyone who has Daz Studio 4 in their account will be able to keep it. You'll be able to continue to download and use it for the foreseeable future .

  • caravellecaravelle Posts: 2,471

    Mendoman said:

    @DAZ_Rawb Hmmm, I'm actually quite concerned about these news. I'm sure that 5% of your userbase is happy, but I'm going to be selfish and think how this is going to affect my workflow and my wallet? If all the plugins and scrips will be broken, who will fix them, when and is it free?

    Seriously, do you think Daz would develop its Studio 5 for Mac if the market share was only 5%? The 5% is an age-old calculation that is long outdated. If you look at the development from 2009 to 2021, it is very clear that Windows has lost and is still losing significant market share. Mac, on the other hand, has made significant gains; the worldwide market share of the Mac OS has more than quadrupled to 15.87% since 2009, according to Statista. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/157902/umfrage/marktanteil-der-genutzten-betriebssysteme-weltweit-seit-2009/

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235

    The RED Crown said:

    Do you think that daz abonded 3Dlight in Daz 5 .!!??
    that's why DAZ Rawb said : Anyone who has Daz Studio 4 in their account will be able to keep it. You'll be able to continue to download and use it for the foreseeable future .

    The issue theer is plug-in (and some script and shader) compatibility, nothing has been said to indicate that 3Delight will be going.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235

    shadowhawk1 said:

    Daz Jack Tomalin said:

    With all the major programs going cloud based subscription it seems like a reasonable question to ask at this point.

    How many have gone from free to subscription models though?

    I'm not sure what makes people think Daz are going down that path.

    I am not going to speculate or guess about other software as they are not being discussed on this thread, and I am an end user and don't have the numbers or information to speculate on your question. All I am asking is will 5.0 remain a free to download unthrottled program or are there plans to go back to the free/pro format that studio once was? 

    This is why we are down on speculation - a question like yours turns into a worry turns into a conviction that the end is nigh.

    Jack has alrady address the main point of your original query, but for the record Daz Studio had only a very brief spell of having a limited free version with a paid-for full version when DS 4 launched; before that DS 3 had an Advanced version and a Pro version, but they were essentially bundles of the application and the content tools and a few others (which could also be purchased separately).

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235

    marcelocaparoz said:

    DAZ_Rawb said:

    Hi everyone. Drum roll please...

    As Director of Technology for Daz 3D, I wanted to give you some big news.  The Daz Studio team has been hard at work on a massive foundation change for Daz Studio that will be released as Daz Studio 5! Our project has been the #1 priority for the team for quite some time now, and it's almost done. Since we know how important getting a Mac version of Daz Studio is to all of you, we are switching up our release plans (from our normal releases) to get you a look at the upcoming Daz Studio 5 as soon as possible.

     

    Sometimes I find small bugs, but I don't find a well-targeted place to report them. With version 5 in beta it would be great to have a better planned place for us to report the bugs found.

    Bug reports should go to https://www.daz3d.com/help

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235

    spuffy said:

    Gusf1 said:

        What I'ld like to see is the ability to adjust the fonts in the program like EVERY other windows program.  I've been using Studio for many years and I'm getting older and my eyes aren't as good as the used to be. 

                                  Gus

    Me too!  I'm REALLY old and the font is teensy, I have a big screen and it doesn't help.  And, yay for the MAC.....I've waited patiently ;-)

    This new version may be reelvant to you - we know from previous statements that a Qt update was required to support UI-scaling, so DS 5 will at least be a step on the way towards its implementation.

  • bytescapesbytescapes Posts: 1,843

    Artini said:

    If Daz Studio will run natively on Apple M1 or higher CPUs, than I will be considering getting Apple computer (first time in my life).

    Just to see rendering on Apple M1 GPU is worth to wait for...

     You might not see dramatic rendering improvements on M1 (although I'd bet the interface will be a bit zippier).

    Apple and Nvidia have fallen out, so you won't find any Nvidia GPUs in future Macs, or even OS support for the Nvidia GPUs found in older Macs. So for Iray renders, you'll be forced to fall back on CPU rendering.

    When Iray uses the CPU to render, it seems to create some of the code it needs to do the render 'on the fly'. The code is designed to run on processors using the x86 architecture (i.e. Intel and AMD chips).

    To run x86 code on Apple Silicon such as the M1, the code has to be translated into instructions that the Apple chip can execute. Wherever possible, Apple pre-translates the code when the application is first installed. But because the Iray rendering code is generated dynamically when you start the render, they can't do that. Instead, Apple's Rosetta 2 translation engine has to translate it all then and there. I'm simplifying a bit, but the upshot is that Apple has to do a bunch of work to get the rendering code into a form that their chips can work with. That work takes time and the end result is that everything they have to do slows down the rendering process (and CPU rendering is already much slower than GPU rendering).

    It's possible that the Apple chips (the M1, and its likely successors the M1X and M2) have so much power to spare that they can do all this extra work and still beat the performance of the old Intel chips. But I think it's more likely that rendering on Apple Silicon will work out a little slower than rendering on an Intel or AMD CPU, and certainly slower than rendering on an Nvidia GPU. Another factor is that the Apple M1 systems we've seen so far have limited memory -- 8GB or 16GB -- which will make things still slower when handling larger scenes.

    Note that this all applies to Iray renders. I don't know if 3Delight will be optimized for Apple Silicon, but I think that Octane already has been, and I believe that Filament could be. And Blender has an Apple Silicon version, although I don't know if their renderers have yet been optimized for Apple chips. So anything other than Iray could eventually enjoy some remarkable speed-ups on Apple Silicon (especially if the renderer can make use of Apple's own GPUs rather than the CPU). But Iray probably won't.

    I may be very wrong about this, but this is how things stand now, as I understand them.

  • 3dOutlaw3dOutlaw Posts: 2,471

    It would be comforting to see Daz officially just say, "Daz Studio 5 will continue to be a free software, just like DS4" or something of the sort.  Most of the rest I can live with, and in fact look forward to!  :)  They've been doing a good job with new features and technologies so far.  yes  Unfortunately, the lack of that particular statement is what is worrying, along with the intentional mention of keeping your old version.

  • DVoidDVoid Posts: 40

    bytescapes said:

    Artini said:

    If Daz Studio will run natively on Apple M1 or higher CPUs, than I will be considering getting Apple computer (first time in my life).

    Just to see rendering on Apple M1 GPU is worth to wait for...

     You might not see dramatic rendering improvements on M1 (although I'd bet the interface will be a bit zippier).

    Apple and Nvidia have fallen out, so you won't find any Nvidia GPUs in future Macs, or even OS support for the Nvidia GPUs found in older Macs. So for Iray renders, you'll be forced to fall back on CPU rendering.

    When Iray uses the CPU to render, it seems to create some of the code it needs to do the render 'on the fly'. The code is designed to run on processors using the x86 architecture (i.e. Intel and AMD chips).

    To run x86 code on Apple Silicon such as the M1, the code has to be translated into instructions that the Apple chip can execute. Wherever possible, Apple pre-translates the code when the application is first installed. But because the Iray rendering code is generated dynamically when you start the render, they can't do that. Instead, Apple's Rosetta 2 translation engine has to translate it all then and there. I'm simplifying a bit, but the upshot is that Apple has to do a bunch of work to get the rendering code into a form that their chips can work with. That work takes time and the end result is that everything they have to do slows down the rendering process (and CPU rendering is already much slower than GPU rendering).

    It's possible that the Apple chips (the M1, and its likely successors the M1X and M2) have so much power to spare that they can do all this extra work and still beat the performance of the old Intel chips. But I think it's more likely that rendering on Apple Silicon will work out a little slower than rendering on an Intel or AMD CPU, and certainly slower than rendering on an Nvidia GPU. Another factor is that the Apple M1 systems we've seen so far have limited memory -- 8GB or 16GB -- which will make things still slower when handling larger scenes.

    Note that this all applies to Iray renders. I don't know if 3Delight will be optimized for Apple Silicon, but I think that Octane already has been, and I believe that Filament could be. And Blender has an Apple Silicon version, although I don't know if their renderers have yet been optimized for Apple chips. So anything other than Iray could eventually enjoy some remarkable speed-ups on Apple Silicon (especially if the renderer can make use of Apple's own GPUs rather than the CPU). But Iray probably won't.

    I may be very wrong about this, but this is how things stand now, as I understand them.

    This is an extremely well-written and worded post. Consider this my 'upvote'. 

  • takezo_3001takezo_3001 Posts: 1,988
    edited July 2021

    3dOutlaw said:

    It would be comforting to see Daz officially just say, "Daz Studio 5 will continue to be a free software, just like DS4" or something of the sort.  Most of the rest I can live with, and in fact look forward to!  :)  They've been doing a good job with new features and technologies so far.  yes  Unfortunately, the lack of that particular statement is what is worrying, along with the intentional mention of keeping your old version.

    Yeah, I actually was the one that bought the 4th "pro" version when it came out and graciously refused the refund as I wanted Daz to keep doing what they are doing, but I will not look forward to buying Studio 5!

    Call me spoiled...

    IF we do, however, let up hope that it's not part of the wretched rent-ware trend set by adobe, curse their souls!

    Post edited by takezo_3001 on
  • wsterdanwsterdan Posts: 2,349

    I'm going to go out on a limb and expect the CPU-based iRay rendering to be slightly faster, solely based on how every other non-optimized 3D rendering engine seems to be responding to an m1 chip under Rosetta2.

    Both Octane and Redshift have been optimized for m1, but the rendering engines in Poser and Blender haven't been, and people are still seeing minor gains. I expect that once optimization is done we'll see even more gains, but if anyone is expecting to be able to super-fast iRay rendering, I just don't see it happening (though not 100% impossible). If you really need iRay rendering, you will need an NVdia machine; for everything else, an m1 Mac might be more than enough.

    -- Walt Sterdan

  • twitchewtwitchew Posts: 123
    i do with that someone would pick up xtransfer - i didn't bring over some M4 things that i now sorely wish i had

    Gordig said:

    Hylas said:

    Sounds like this will potentially break some stuff I hold dear. GenX, XTransfer, Fluidos, Mesh Grabber, Scene Optimizer, Ultra Scatter, Instancify... (to be honest I don´t know what the difference between a script and a plug-in is.) So I reeeeally hope that we can keep using version 4 without problems and possibly receive support for a looooong time. I like what I´m reading so far.

    The good news is that the creators of all but one of those are still alive and active, and so could potentially have a DS5-compatible version ready quickly. 

     

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235
    edited July 2021

    PerttiA said:

    Mystiara said:

    CARRARA NINE??

    If you look back... They have bought Carrara, Bryce, Hexagon, without doing much updating to them - Why, as those were not competitors of DS?...

    When was the last time any of those programs received any attention? Did they buy those programs to incorporate some parts/ideas in them into DS?

    Daz bought Bryce 5 and released Bryce 5.5, 6, and 7

    Daz bought Carrara, I think, just as 5 was about to release and then added 6, 7, 8, and 8.5

    Daz didn't release a major version of hexagon, but it did go through several 2.x releases.

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • SeraSera Posts: 1,675
    @ j cade and others: I asked Daz for a copy of 4.14 and they said no. As far as I know, they no longer offer any older versions for download. I would not assume the offer to keep 4.15 available to last forever. Besides, backing up is easy, so I don't see a reason not to.
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235

    certaintree38 said:

    @ j cade and others: I asked Daz for a copy of 4.14 and they said no. As far as I know, they no longer offer any older versions for download. I would not assume the offer to keep 4.15 available to last forever. Besides, backing up is easy, so I don't see a reason not to.

    The DS 4 page in your Product Library should remain, though it will have only the latest version. Those of us who purchased one of the bundled versions of DS 3 likewise have that in our Product Libraries still. I'm not sure where DS 2 was found on the Daz site.

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,411

    Richard Haseltine said:

    certaintree38 said:

    @ j cade and others: I asked Daz for a copy of 4.14 and they said no. As far as I know, they no longer offer any older versions for download. I would not assume the offer to keep 4.15 available to last forever. Besides, backing up is easy, so I don't see a reason not to.

    The DS 4 page in your Product Library should remain, though it will have only the latest version. Those of us who purchased one of the bundled versions of DS 3 likewise have that in our Product Libraries still. I'm not sure where DS 2 was found on the Daz site.

    I still have DS2.3.xxx in my account, which seems to be downloadable still. 

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  • PrefoXPrefoX Posts: 241

    I hope we get a build in scatterer, an uncomplicated way to make instances/arrays, better viewport performance because even with a 3090 I get just  5-6fps in some scenes. A normal way to navigate like in all other DCCs would be nice!.A way to safe VRAM during rendering with iray, like using compressed textures, freeing up the used VRAM from the viewport etc and swap it in the normal RAM during iray rendering.

  • j cadej cade Posts: 2,310
    And DS2 in my product library. I feel a sudden inexplicable urge to see what that v3 fairy scene would look like in iray.... Although installing DS2 for it might be excessive enough to forgo the urge
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  • margravemargrave Posts: 1,822

    PrefoX said:

    I hope we get a build in scatterer, an uncomplicated way to make instances/arrays, better viewport performance because even with a 3090 I get just  5-6fps in some scenes. A normal way to navigate like in all other DCCs would be nice!.A way to safe VRAM during rendering with iray, like using compressed textures, freeing up the used VRAM from the viewport etc and swap it in the normal RAM during iray rendering.

    Do you mean a volume scatterer or an instance scatterer? Iray has a built-in volume scatterer, but it's hidden in the shader mixer. 

  • MasterstrokeMasterstroke Posts: 1,989

    DAZ Studio 4.15 and DAZ Studio 5 go along side by side just like any beta release. Why should I worry?
    I just hope, that the final release of DAZ Studio 5 will respond to the pressure coming from competetors like Reallusion, by introducing better animation tools, and/or reducing render times.
    It would also be nice to have direct access from DS to the Nvidea Omniverse Launcher, since we've already have Iray after all.

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,169

    PerttiA said:

    Silas3D said:

    This is fantastic news, I've had to hold off upgrading my iMac for the last two OS versions and also hold off upgrading hardware because of no DS support. Amazing!

    For those asking for continued Win 7 support, bear in mind that Microsoft marked it EOL (end of life) January last year, so you really ought to think about upgrading if you want your systems to stay secure. Even Windows 10 has been marked as EOL for Oct 2025, barely four years away.

    Does not matter what MS thinks we should be using - We would update, if they came up with a version that does not treat users with 30+ year experience on MS products like little children.

    If DS would replace Windows 7 support with Linux support, that would give us an upgrade path we would accept.

    This. 

  • IvyIvy Posts: 7,165

    I have some questions. that seemed to be passed over .

    1)  Will Daz5 still read. DUF, ? or support pz3 like daz4?

    2)  Will there be a offer for downloads of older version of daz 4 such as 4.11 or  4.12 ?

    3) Will the Daz bridges to blender still work?

    4) Will GoZ still work or a new zbrush bridge for us zbrush users?

    5) Will the animate2 timeline and the .GFA scripts for aniblock still work in the new daz 5?

  • TirickTirick Posts: 230

    margrave said:

    Do you mean a volume scatterer or an instance scatterer? Iray has a built-in volume scatterer, but it's hidden in the shader mixer. 

    You have just blown my mind... Is this a material on a cube (like in the SSS method)?

  • ImagoImago Posts: 5,175

    Ivy said:

    2)  Will there be a offer for downloads of older version of daz 4 such as 4.11 or  4.12 ?

    For that you have to ask the helpdesk and hope they answer.

    I did that today for version 4.12.0.86, I hope they will answer me positively.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 101,235

    Ivy said:

    I have some questions. that seemed to be passed over .

    1)  Will Daz5 still read. DUF, ? or support pz3 like daz4?

    Given the comments on compatibility I would say that was a clear yes for .duf at least

    2)  Will there be a offer for downloads of older version of daz 4 such as 4.11 or  4.12 ?

    I wouldn't expect that to change, it will be the latest DS 4 on the DS product page and in DIM/Central

    3) Will the Daz bridges to blender still work?

    That we won't know, but I'm sure they will be updated if necessary

    4) Will GoZ still work or a new zbrush bridge for us zbrush users?

    GoZ is a plug-in so it will need a new file, to go to the new location, but I have no doubt it will be updated (though I've no idea if that will be immediate, or if the two will be different enough to have both GoZ afor DS 4 and GoZ for DS 5 installed at the same time).

    5) Will the animate2 timeline and the .GFA scripts for aniblock still work in the new daz 5?

    Nothing has been said to indicate otherwise, though it is possible from what was said that not all features may be in the initial release.

  • AlmightyQUESTAlmightyQUEST Posts: 2,003

    marble said:

    shadowhawk1 said:

    Here are a few things that I saw in the announcement that concern me and haven’t been properly addressed yet:

    No backwards compatibility… Is this just for the add ons or will this also mean that all products going forward will be 5.0 only?

    Cost/Subscription… In this world of cloud based software subscriptions is 5.0 going to remain free, or will daz be following the market trend and going cloud based subscription as well?

    If it is going to be a cloud based subscription, will there be a free version that has reduced abilities and a Pro or subscription version that gives you full access to the program?

    Core support… Currently Studio only uses the first core and the more advanced the cores like the i9 are actually slower than the i7, will this be addressed in 5.0?

     

    Subscription would be the end of the line for me. I have enough content to play with 4.x for a good while and, meanwhile, I'll finally make the effort and learn Blender. 

    It would be for me as well. At one point in time studio had a free version and a 'PRO' version that had to be purchased in order to unlock its full program. With all the major programs going cloud based subscription it seems like a reasonable question to ask at this point.

    The "Pro" version was a collection of plugins that added on to the free base, of which I believe most of not all of them eventually became part of the free base in DS4? So the only difference from plugins they sell now is that they bundled them together and have them the "pro" name, and it's something they tried in the past and moved away from.
  • margravemargrave Posts: 1,822

    Tirick said:

    margrave said:

    Do you mean a volume scatterer or an instance scatterer? Iray has a built-in volume scatterer, but it's hidden in the shader mixer. 

    You have just blown my mind... Is this a material on a cube (like in the SSS method)?

    Yes. The Uber shader combines dozens of Nvidia's MDL functions into one "uber" shader. People then use its SSS functionality to cobble together a workable volumetric lighting feature. This shader setup cuts out all the stuff you don't need and just implements what you do.

    There's more info in my Shader Mixer tutorial/deep dive thread:

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/505581/the-shader-mixer-deciphered-blender-to-daz-conversion

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