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So my own point of view as a PA
I do support 3Delight where possible but to be honest as an artist i like pretty.
I spend a lot of time deciding how the materials look and as a lot of my stuff is based on 'real world' i try and get that look as close as i can.
the simple fact is 3DL is old tech and i forsee less and less PA's producing for it as time goes on.
as i said i do create 3DL versions of my stuff where possible or where it makes sense to but some things are just not possible to deliver the same level of quality or functionality that you can achieve in Iray
If 3DL materials are feasible, I include them in a product. But I have to admit, it's something I don't enjoy doing, partly because the results are seldom on a par with Iray and partly because it's pretty tedious work.
As Serum says, 3DL is now 'old tech' and I don't know how long I'll stick with it, but for the foreseeable future, I'm hanging on. I'm kind of old school myself, and I stuck with Poser versions of products after many PAs had given it up. But to be brutally honest, when I did abandon Poser, the difference in my workflow was tremendous (not to mention the stress). I have a sort of feeling that sooner or later, the same thing will happen with 3Delight.
I stopped buying from some of my favourite vendors because their new products are Iray only. Daz/Rendo and those vendors lost a neat sum of money, and I am just one customer; maybe not the only one. But why should I give up a good render engine and be forced to work with an OS I don't like?
Because your hobby is more important than the choice of OS? After all an OS in and of itself doesn't entertain or fulfill you creatively, it's just there for you to interact with your software. Just like the computer. Assuming you're talking Mac, a much better question to ask would be "why should I stick to Mac if it doesn't do what I want because Apple can't be bothered giving me capable hardware"? That would be my line of thinking at least.
As for 3DL support, in my case I have to admit I simply don't understand it. The lack of real time preview would also drive me crazy, no idea how people put up with that. Especially while tweaking shaders. Even in Iray I can sometimes take weeks just doing that. Inconceivable that I would have to restart a render every time, all for a result that seldom looks good to my eyes.
bluejaunte, nice arguments, but there are at least two errors. Following your line of arguments would presume that
1. I have enough money to buy a special computer for every single one of my needs and hobbies, and
2. I really want to work with Iray, which is not the case. Iray has some nice effects, but the whole thing is still too clumsy for my taste. Too much technical ado is killing my creativity. After all, many effects which are sold as 'Iray specials' can be achieved with 3DL as well.
I am working with Mac for 25 years, with Windows I worked 'only' 14 years. I know them both quite well, and I made my choice.
That might be true for the version included with DS.
Eventually it will happen with Iray too.
Thanks for supporting my fav. render engine!
I don't see myself as an artist but I like pretty too. And I am totally happy with 3Delight.
Just saying, biased rendering can give you more artistic freedom in some cases.
Thank You!
Well there seem to be quite a few people out there thinking the same way as you and me. That fact is obviously not enough to make publishing artists support us in general. They find it tedious, boring and may have various reasons for not doing it which I know nothing about, being a consumer. This is the paradox I still don't get:
Including presets for 3DL takes too long so not worth it/ converting mats from Iray to 3dL is one click away so why not buy our great Iray only stuff
Because while you might be happy with base default 3dl settings, it looks like poo compared to default Iray settings.
Getting those results to look anywhere near as polished as Iray takes work and often specific bits you can’t count on a customer having.
That said, I like a challenge and waste my time doing it anyway.
But when you say ‘you aren’t getting my dollars,’ you have to realize that PAs have to work off the number of dollars, not who they come from.
It seems to me the obvious answer is "using the script does not produce a product the artists are proud to put their names on'. The script exists for the people who want the artists to do ANY 3DL work no matter how bad it looks. The artists have both a reputation and personal pride in their work at stake. The 3DL-lovers admit they'll probably tweak the materials anyhow because of that creative freedom. I honestly don't understand your confusion here.
People who are putting down 3DL *do* realize that not everyone wants photoreal, right?
I mean, I completely get it if the PA's don't like the results becuase they have their artistic vision and 3DL doesn't let them get there. Fine.
And for *years* the big push has been to get CGI looking photoreal. I've seen some fantastic photoreal images, especially since the development of Iray. (the eyes and hand posing are usually all that give it away)
I've also seen stuff that shouldn't try to be photoreal try to be, and have it smack me right into the uncanney valley. (Note - the exact boundaries of the Uncanney valley are unique to each person. So what bugs me may not bug someone else.)
The simple fact is that Iray out of the box *doesn't* give me the look I want. Because what I want isn't photoreal. Now, I'm leanring how to change that, because 3DL support is going away, and because Iray is indeed faster on my computer (this being another thing in this argument that drives me crazy. Iray is only faster if you have a computer to support it.) But there's at least one set of images I'm working on where I will continue to use 3DL because that's how I started and because *that* gives me the base I want. Not the photorealism of Iray.
3DL isn't *worse* it's just not photoreal. And I am continually tired of "photoreal = Better" Because for some things, it's just not.
Yes, this is one of the deep secrets of the Iray world...
Sorry but I disagree on a few of these points, Iray does not have to be photoreal, I don't usually aim for photoreal but prefer to render in Iray. Its just as annoying to hear the 3dl fans constantly refer to Iray as doing Photoreal and nothing else.
I had a computer that didn't support Iray but rendering in Iray was still often faster than rendering in 3dl had been.
I didn't say Iray only did photoreal. I said Iray out of the box tries to be photoreal. As with many things, to get it to look otherwise requires work, either changing the render settings or the surface settings or both.
3DL is very photoreal out there in the CG industry. If it appears that it's not in Daz Studio I think that must mean it's either severly gimped or lacks proper shaders. If crappy shaders is all it takes to create what is considered none-photoreal, you can do that perfectly well in Iray too. Remove some bump and spec maps.
Are you saying I could render faster on my Mac in CPU mode with Iray than in 3DL? Without stripping it down to look like an early poser render?
I don't think I ever said that. And making people look real is a challenge no matter what engine you use. My personal opinion.
Well I believe you of course but that's not my experience. I've done a lot of animating which would have taken 5-10 times longer in Iray. But I admit I have very limited experience of using Iray. So not saying it's impossible.
Ya, that much I figured out all by myself.
Really? Well it's not for me then.
Being a musician and producer/sound engineer I get this perfectly well.
If the conversion script does such a bad job, why bring it up as a solution to anything in the first place? Of course I tweak my settings, I tweak everything. Who doesn't? And I'm not confused anymore, my dollars don't count, that's a good thing as I've saved a LOT of money since the introduction of Iray.
But I think both of you do remember too well that even the simplest settings never translated perfectly even back then, even between DS and Poser, let alone Carrara. Different glossiness curves, different bump/disp amplitude interpretations... that alone was enough to throw off many a beginning user.
But why would you think this way?? Even if we are talking about "oldschool" shading that is currently all that vanilla DS can do. A proper albedo with light cancellation is still a vastly better choice than a 1998-style cheatfest with baked-in highlights and AO.
I have not done the 3Delight materials for her yet, but this scene is probably the most believable I've ever done.
Very nice indeed
Kinda both. The shaders supplied with DS are... from 2010 at their newest, I think? And the render settings tab only exposes like a small fraction of the options there is.
"My" 3Delight is photoreal enough. When it´s not, the issue lies with my "artistic" skills and not the renderer.
My two cents worth (and that's what it's worth).
When I was making character packages 4+ years ago, the market was split between Poser and Daz Studio. Although I had been using Daz Studio since 2.3, I preferred Poser (still do in all honesty). I understood the Material and Cloth Room, loving how dynamic clothing drapped so much better. So when I started making characters, I felt very comfortable doing Poser only mats. My good friend, a Daz Studio user (and one of many back then who found it normal operating procedures to tweak mats to make things look good in DS). suggested I do both. And he definitely helped me get a better (but not great) handle on DS. So I did both, but dreaded making the DS mats because I could never quite get them to look as good as my Poser ones (not saying they couldn't look better in DS, but that I couldn't do it to my satisfaction).
After a forced break of four years, I come back to this and find Poser all but gone. I thought it would now be a matter of making a Daz Studio only version of the product, but lo and behold, there were two camps again: 3Delight and Iray. Since I was relearning 3Delight again, it was on equal footing with Iray for me since my computer could handle Iray. In the end, Iray was easier for me to pick up than relearning 3Delight. That being said, for my first product back, I supported both, but that old feeling of dread returned when making the 3Delight mats because I wasn't as happy with my results as I was with the Iray ones.
When making the next two characters, each one had options that required a certain glowing effect. It was easy for me to create that in Iray, but I was not pleased at all with my efforts in 3Delight. So I made the decision to onlly support Iray and not offer a mediocre 3dl version and see what happened in terms of sales. For the first Iray-only version, I saw no appreciable change in sales, so I felt much more comfortable making the next one Iray only as well and I enjoyed working on it more.
I can totally understand wanting to support what works best for you, especially when wanting this part of your workflow to run as smoothly as possible. I feel the same way and yet have very little Poser content to support any longer as much as I would like to. I can't see into the future, but if the past is any indication, eventually one "way" seems to win out...until the next shiny thing comes along.
Sven: 3dl content out of the box looks dated and not very good. It only looks good with stuff not standard.
Which is why the script is mentioned. Because it’s going to give you about as good as you’re likely to get from actual 3dl materials.
The big exception is, of course, shader and light ‘tech’ 3dl content, which is selling stuff that looks better.
As for photo realism, Iray can do cartoon or sketch shading, invisible lights, and lots of other tricks.
The only thing I can think of that 3dl can do that Iray can’t is lights that light over arbitrary distance and AO ambient light, and it’s possible Interactive mode can.
All I was trying to say is that when I've tried to convert the mats for a character (whose original mats were designed for Iray with an albedo map) to 3DL (specifically, using the DS default shader), I have not had good luck producing good results using the same maps without editing them in Photoshop. There may be other 3DL shaders that would allow for better results, but, IMHO, it needs to be the DS default 3DL shader that is used. Otherwise, I just don't see PAs producing content supporting 3DL.
- Greg
There's a scale between cartoon and photoreal. I find 3DL better for things in the middle of that scale.
Iray can't do things that don't cast shadows. Iray can't do things that cast shadows only and don't show up in the render Iray can't do ghost effects without setting up a Pepper's ghost. All of these require postwork in Iray, though to be fair, the last two require plug ins for 3DL. Plug-ins that I don't expect to ever see the Iray eqivalent of. Just like I don't expect to see an Iray equivalent of the rest of pwEffect.
‘Doesn’t cast shadow’ I’ll give you, and I have yet to figure out a ‘front surfaces only’ way to do ghosting... but Fantom is possible.
...
There are always going to be people that prefer one render engine over the other.
I dont hold anything against those who stick with 3DL and i will cater for them as long as i am able to.
Sometimes though there are things that Iray can do that 3DL just cannot and sometimes that thing is detrimental to a product to get the product through testing.
In the past i have done a paint job on something and Daz has actually requested the paint job be done with Iray shaders instead. (it has only happened once but none the less it has happened)
so its not always the PA's
When one of the things comes up that iray gets the vision across that 3DL cannot and i feel that it is essential to a product then that is when I make the product Iray only.