Daz Studio 5 development update

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  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,146

    Ron Knights said:

    This is so confusing. Are we talking about a pre-beta version of DAZ Studio 5, for  Macintosh only? If that's the case, why not post that info in the subject name? You could save many of us some reading time.

    This is a major rework of Studio, primarily updated to support the Mac platform - but the rewrite will affect all users, so the more eyes on it the better. I would hope that the pre-beta (or barring that, the first true beta) would include the text sizing changes people have been looking for.

  • AbyssalErosAbyssalEros Posts: 289

    anahita347 said:

    As 3D artist I love to define the sex (male/female) of my characters my self, I hate predefined characters . so I hope to see unisex figures with hairless body textures ( there are good body hair systemes ) in a unisex figure you decide the role by applying anatomical elements and morphes like "more female" or " more masculine" like what we see in "August 8.1"

    The skin of a typical male and a typical female differ hugely. So I do not think it is really a good way to use the same skin texture for both genders for people who strive for reality. And August 8.1 looks everything but realistic or even halfway good.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,058
    edited July 2021

    ...however the driver situation is still an issue. It would mean having to stay with an older version of Daz that has an older version of Iray particularly as the final general release of 5 will be after Nvidia dumps driver support for W7. Likely any new version of Iray introduced afterwards will no longer be compatible so it would be back to glacial CPU rendering. 

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • AlmightyQUESTAlmightyQUEST Posts: 2,003
    RAMWolff said:

    DoctorJellybean said:

    Ron Knights said:

    This is so confusing. Are we talking about a pre-beta version of DAZ Studio 5, for  Macintosh only? If that's the case, why not post that info in the subject name? You could save many of us some reading time.

    No, it's not Mac only.

    Thanks for clarifying.  I agree with Ron.  Seems very confusing when reading through all these posts that it SEEMS like it's all about MAC and no mention of Windows!   

    The main item that the initial, pre-beta release of DS5 has is up to date Mac support. Other than being part of the basic framework updates, there won't be new features in the *first* release. The part that several posts talking about this only being for Macs missed is that features will be rolling out throughout the rest of the year. Instead of leaving it as a closed beta and not telling the general user base anything until a later release, they are being more transparent and involving more users earlier on.
  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,146

    The big question  I have - will we need to "purchase" the pre-beta, or will it magically appear in our product library?

  • LynnInDenverLynnInDenver Posts: 147

    kyoto kid said:

    ...however the driver situation is still an issue. It would mean having to stay with an older version of Daz that has an older version of Iray particularly as the final general release of 5 will be after Nvidia dumps driver support for W7. Likely any new version of Iray introduced afterwards will no longer be compatible so it would be back to glacial CPU rendering.

    I'd put money on DS5 not supporting W7 specifically because of the iRay driver issue. nVidia may decide that's a stipulation of a newer version of the engine.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,648

    Will the new update work with intel 11 processors? There are issues with the 4.15 version and the OpenSSL coding which needs to be patched to work with the intel 11 processor.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,965

    Platnumk said:

    IceCrMn said:

    64bit hexagon from 2017

    https://www.daz3d.com/hexagon-beta

     

    They have never released a 64bit version of Hexagon for MacOS (not even a beta version) even tho they made a lot of promises that a Mac version was coming

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/256961/hexagon-beta-version-2-5-2-137-updated/p1

    Mac

    • Not yet available - still under development

    Doesn't seem to be promising anything

  • Ron KnightsRon Knights Posts: 1,785

    So my first impression is correct. The first release of the pre-beta is for Mac only.

  • namffuaknamffuak Posts: 4,146

    LynnInDenver said:

    kyoto kid said:

    ...however the driver situation is still an issue. It would mean having to stay with an older version of Daz that has an older version of Iray particularly as the final general release of 5 will be after Nvidia dumps driver support for W7. Likely any new version of Iray introduced afterwards will no longer be compatible so it would be back to glacial CPU rendering.

    I'd put money on DS5 not supporting W7 specifically because of the iRay driver issue. nVidia may decide that's a stipulation of a newer version of the engine.

    I don't expect Daz to explicitly drop W7 support. True, at some point early in the DS5 release schedule it will include an Iray that no longer supports GPU rendering on W7 because the required drivers aren't available, but 3DL and Iray CPU will both still work. There may come a point where some function in DS proper will be upgraded and no longer be supported by W7 - like the upgrade to support canvases and the exr image format reduced XP to not supporting several image formats.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,058

    namffuak said:

    LynnInDenver said:

    kyoto kid said:

    ...however the driver situation is still an issue. It would mean having to stay with an older version of Daz that has an older version of Iray particularly as the final general release of 5 will be after Nvidia dumps driver support for W7. Likely any new version of Iray introduced afterwards will no longer be compatible so it would be back to glacial CPU rendering.

    I'd put money on DS5 not supporting W7 specifically because of the iRay driver issue. nVidia may decide that's a stipulation of a newer version of the engine.

    I don't expect Daz to explicitly drop W7 support. True, at some point early in the DS5 release schedule it will include an Iray that no longer supports GPU rendering on W7 because the required drivers aren't available, but 3DL and Iray CPU will both still work. There may come a point where some function in DS proper will be upgraded and no longer be supported by W7 - like the upgrade to support canvases and the exr image format reduced XP to not supporting several image formats.

    ....that's more my thinking, just won't be able to do GPU rendering in Iray. Not about to go back to glacial render times again.

    This may make me break my moratorium on subscription software and go with Octane4.  

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,169

    Ron Knights said:

    So my first impression is correct. The first release of the pre-beta is for Mac only.

    No. I believe it's Mac AND PC. 

  • Ron Knights said:

    So my first impression is correct. The first release of the pre-beta is for Mac only.

    While the greatest initial benefit will be for Mac users, I would not characterize it that way. The framework update is necessary for all users, regardless of OS. The C++ libraries shipped with even the Windows version of Studio are long out of date and past mainstream support by Microsoft (If I remember correctly it's still deploying the VS 2010 runtime; end of mainstream support was in 2015). Similarly, support for QT4 ended in 2015.

  • hacsart said:

    heh - i remember paper tape from those days - still have a bit saved... the old days were fun! (although not always ata the time..) First system I was alowed to run- IBM 360/40 (Although we had a 1401, I never got to seriously work with it..)

    Wow - haven't seen that in a while. The first 'Personal Computer' i ever used was a Heathkit H8 - and this was a very expensive option on it that we did not get. We settled for loading programs via audio cassette. 

  • VisuimagVisuimag Posts: 569
    edited July 2021

    shadowhawk1 said:

    Visuimag said:

    DAZ_Rawb said:

    I'm out of town on a vacation to celebrate my wife's birthday (which is why I'm not responding more) but just wanted to step in and say that keeping Daz Studio free is definitely the plan.

    I'm not sure why the discussion was dragged out in the first place, but I appreciate you and Richard for killing even the potential for speculation.

     Ho was it dragged out? I asked got an answer from someone that had the knowledge to answer and I walked away. And just for the record, I asked because it is not uncommon for companies to start charging for a service or program after a major rework or update. It may not have been an important question in your mind but it was in mine and several others.

    Whether it was a concern of mine didn't matter. They gave no reason to assume an additional expense would be on the way and the thought that it could be was shot down early on. I'm not going to assume what other companies may do is something DAZ3D may do.


    All that addressed, we can move on now.

     

    On a different subject - to the user who mentioned figure load times, I'm with you. I try not to complain about Studio (DAZ have enough on their plates), but if anything would truly improve my workflow, it would be improved figure (posing included) and scene loading.

    Post edited by Visuimag on
  • wsterdan said:

    It is possible to create a Metal-based rendering engine, though, where GPUs could be used both by Apple and Windows machines, but that means looking at still another texturing system; while it has a few nice ray-tracing features (like motion blur).

    -- Walt Sterdan

    Not just possible. It is already here: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-prorender

    ProRender 2.0 is free, open-source, supports Vulkan, OpenCL and Metal.

    There are also three Filament-like modes. One is for pure reasterization, which is good for viewport rendering, one with baised GI on rasterization, and some ray traced effects (reflection, refraction, ambient occlusion, etc.), and one ray-traced mode, where the base rendering is still rasterization, but ray tracing is applied to achieve biased photorealistic rendering.

  • shadowhawk1shadowhawk1 Posts: 2,195
    edited July 2021

    On a different subject - to the user who mentioned figure load times, I'm with you. I try not to complain about Studio (DAZ have enough on their plates), but if anything would truly improve my workflow, it would be improved figure (posing included) and scene loading.

    The easist work around for slow load times is to go into the data file and hide all of the character morphs you are not using for a given character. You will have to unhide them whenever you want to create a new character, but until there is a better fix it is a work around.  

    Post edited by shadowhawk1 on
  • SeraSera Posts: 1,675

    shadowhawk1 said:

    On a different subject - to the user who mentioned figure load times, I'm with you. I try not to complain about Studio (DAZ have enough on their plates), but if anything would truly improve my workflow, it would be improved figure (posing included) and scene loading.

    The easist work around for slow load times is to go into the data file and hide all of the character morphs you are not using for a given character. You will have to unhide them whenever you want to create a new character, but until there is a better fix it is a work around.  

    Just going to put this here, in case anyone is interested (morph hiding script freebie): https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/505201/long-load-times-this-may-help#latest

     

  • shadowhawk1shadowhawk1 Posts: 2,195

    certaintree38 said:

    shadowhawk1 said:

    On a different subject - to the user who mentioned figure load times, I'm with you. I try not to complain about Studio (DAZ have enough on their plates), but if anything would truly improve my workflow, it would be improved figure (posing included) and scene loading.

    The easist work around for slow load times is to go into the data file and hide all of the character morphs you are not using for a given character. You will have to unhide them whenever you want to create a new character, but until there is a better fix it is a work around.  

    Just going to put this here, in case anyone is interested (morph hiding script freebie): https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/505201/long-load-times-this-may-help#latest

     

    I wasn't aware of that thread, good looking out and posting a link here.  

  • So looking forward to having Daz back again. 

     

  • AbyssalErosAbyssalEros Posts: 289
    edited July 2021

    What bothers me the most is not the announcement and its lack of clear communication regarding any future developments, aside from the support for the up-to-date iOS, but that it seems to be just a UI-overhaul with the potential to break a lot of old stuff (scripts, plugins, etc.) without bringing any new features.
    If you take into account that DAZ just released Genesis 8.1 — at least for those people who do not bother a set-back in quality (plastic look due to the new skin shader) despite adding a new but still buggy expression system — I doubt that DAZ 5 will bring us any new features for Genesis figures. Softbody physics and all this would most likely require a new Genesis generation. And I doubt Genesis 9 is hiding behind the horizon.
    I think the main feature of DAZ 5 is just a new UI and iOS support.
    This means, as long as you are not on a Mac, it will be primarily uninteresting.
     For me, this will mean that I stay on my stable 4.14 and pray to my gods that DAZ Productions Inc. will not mess up my library by updating assets that damage compatibility with DAZ 4.

    Post edited by AbyssalEros on
  • Ron KnightsRon Knights Posts: 1,785

    Will I be able to run the Pre-beta version of DS5 on a PC?!

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,965

    Ron Knights said:

    Will I be able to run the Pre-beta version of DS5 on a PC?!

    From what has been said, yes.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,965

    While we are glad that a rapprochement was achieved, it is in general best to leave the mods to decide what should or shouldn't be posted rather than divert the thread into a debate on the topic.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,965

    AbyssalEros said:

    What bothers me the most is not the announcement and its lack of clear communication regarding any future developments, aside from the support for the up-to-date iOS, but that it seems to be just a UI-overhaul with the potential to break a lot of old stuff (scripts, plugins, etc.) without bringing any new features.
    If you take into account that DAZ just released Genesis 8.1 — at least for those people who do not bother a set-back in quality (plastic look due to the new skin shader) — despite adding a new but still buggy expression system, I doubt that DAZ 5 will bring us any new features for Genesis figures. Softbody physics and all this would most likely require a new Genesis generation. And I doubt Genesis 9 is hiding behind the horizon.
    I think the main feature of DAZ 5 is just a new UI and iOS support.
    This means, as long as you are not on a Mac, it will be primarily uninteresting.
     For me, this will mean that I stay on my stable 4.14 and pray to my gods that DAZ Productions Inc. will not mess up my library by updating assets that damage compatibility with DAZ 4.

    It seems likely that the new framework will require quite a bit of debugging 9which is no doubt part of the reason for the pre-beta release). Daz doesn't like to leak feature details too early, so they are probably not going to drop hints about the actual new features planned for DS 5 until they are nearer to showing them.

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,089

    shadowhawk1 said:

    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.

    And me too

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,462

    hacsart said:

    heh - i remember paper tape from those days - still have a bit saved... the old days were fun! (although not always ata the time..) First system I was alowed to run- IBM 360/40 (Although we had a 1401, I never got to seriously work with it..)

    Artini said:

    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.

    You have not made a tests with Apple M1 hardware, apparently.

    From my own experiments I see 5 to 50 times speed increase in 3D graphics applications on MacBook Pro 13 inches with Apple M1 hardware

    while comparing with older Macs, even with Nvidia graphics card.

    I know, that iray does not support Apple M1 natively yet, but hopefully Apple will find another solution.

    Right now I am amazed by Apple M1 performance and believe me I have started my journey with the computers

    like mainframes that were using paper tape as a program and data input, Timex TS1000 with 8 bit CPU and 2 KB RAM

    and continue with all possible hardware including the latest ones.

    Nice memories. During my university studies, I have used punched paper cards to deliver program and data to the computer centre

    and got results just after a week of time. Any error and another week of waiting to get another error report or results.

    Imagine wait for the render 1 week and then discover, that some part of the scene you want in different place,

    and since you cannot see the preview of results, you need to punch cards with different contents and process them again.

    At least the corrections to the data was quite fast, if you only need to replace a couple of the cards.

    Each card could carry one line of the data or program (in Fortran in my case).

  • VisuimagVisuimag Posts: 569

    certaintree38 said:

    shadowhawk1 said:

    On a different subject - to the user who mentioned figure load times, I'm with you. I try not to complain about Studio (DAZ have enough on their plates), but if anything would truly improve my workflow, it would be improved figure (posing included) and scene loading.

    The easist work around for slow load times is to go into the data file and hide all of the character morphs you are not using for a given character. You will have to unhide them whenever you want to create a new character, but until there is a better fix it is a work around.  

    Just going to put this here, in case anyone is interested (morph hiding script freebie): https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/505201/long-load-times-this-may-help#latest

    Ah, it's less than two weeks old! Crazy how I hadn't seen it still. I've worked with other suggestions provided throughout various threads that were useful, but I was hoping for a more solid solution. This might be it.

  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,386

    Richard Haseltine said:

    AbyssalEros said:

    What bothers me the most is not the announcement and its lack of clear communication regarding any future developments, aside from the support for the up-to-date iOS, but that it seems to be just a UI-overhaul with the potential to break a lot of old stuff (scripts, plugins, etc.) without bringing any new features.
    If you take into account that DAZ just released Genesis 8.1 — at least for those people who do not bother a set-back in quality (plastic look due to the new skin shader) — despite adding a new but still buggy expression system, I doubt that DAZ 5 will bring us any new features for Genesis figures. Softbody physics and all this would most likely require a new Genesis generation. And I doubt Genesis 9 is hiding behind the horizon.
    I think the main feature of DAZ 5 is just a new UI and iOS support.
    This means, as long as you are not on a Mac, it will be primarily uninteresting.
     For me, this will mean that I stay on my stable 4.14 and pray to my gods that DAZ Productions Inc. will not mess up my library by updating assets that damage compatibility with DAZ 4.

    It seems likely that the new framework will require quite a bit of debugging 9which is no doubt part of the reason for the pre-beta release). Daz doesn't like to leak feature details too early, so they are probably not going to drop hints about the actual new features planned for DS 5 until they are nearer to showing them.

    From reading through this thread, the impression I get is that the initial release of DS 5 will feature nothing new other than the UI, the latest version of QT and support for the latest version of the Mac operating system and the ARM based M1 microprocessor. 

    As Richard has rightly highlighted, the pre beta version is likely to be extremely buggy but will be useful to show users which way DAZ is moving with regard to the UI. 

    Once the initial release is up and running then we will get the new stuff. 

    As someone who has spent almost forty years writing and maintaining manufacturing software systems, I applaud DAZ's incremental approach of "get it working properly first and then add the fancy stuff".

    Cheers,

    Alex. 

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,089

    Not sure I need the headache (without any form of compensation) to beta test a -- what is already billed as -- buggy pre-beta for the M1. Pass on that.

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