DAZ Studio Pro BETA - version 4.8.0.4! IRAY

[t_3]

If you communicated with us without leaving it for months then these frustrations wouldn't build up. We don't want "chat" but solutions to the very real problems we're faced with without regular beta updates.

do you think i'm holding something back for fun or what? apparently "communication" isn't going to "solve problems". or you had a problem that could be solved by sthg. written down, then you apparently have missed to click my pm button. in any other case you probably missed the most important point: this is no trival job. things doesn't work just because you or i want them to work. on the other hand i know that nobody that isn't able to try it himself is able to understand why it is the way it is - means i don't blame you for that.

btw, are you aware that paolo needed nearly 1.5 years for an update to his _exporter_? afair he was working on it under high pressure (at least that's what he wrote) but even if he wrote a blog post every other week, it did last the time it lasted, and nothing less, so how's that? BUT if you have somebody at hand that can do it in half the time, pls bring him (or her) over, and i'm out in the very same second. it's just that easy.

ps: and that's why i get off from here at some point. i tend to think that every statement deserves and answer. and at the end of the day (which is currently being 28hrs) i have done nothing but pointless arguing...

[t_3]

Just in case you did not intentionally want to hide that information.
We really do not have any way of figuring out when and how often you are on the "hidden" forums that are exclusive to Otoy staff.

i of course wasn't aware of that. i even haven't found a place in the settings where this could be shown or hidden; so i'm sorry since that apparently was a bad idea...

[birdovous]

Personally I'm simply waiting for the official and stable v2 of the OcDS plugin to be released. Until then I'm going to be using the 1.2 as I did since it was introduced as I find in pretty stable on my system.

Of course I would like to see the v2 with all the new features being released weeks ago. But honestly, I will rather wait as long as necessary to get a stable piece of code than to pull my hair out as with the pre 1.2 versions where I needed to save my scenes basically before any action.

I just hope that when the v2 stable OcDS version is released it will be able to read and get materials even from old scenes as I still have few scenes made in pre 1.2 version where I gave up on working on as I would have to define all the materials all over again...

So yeah. If it takes another few months for the v2 to be released... so be it...

And now please allow me to crawl back and hide under my rock...

[asennov]

why do you think so

'Cause I'm tired of (re)starting Studio and working for 7 hours or so without crash looked like a miracle.

it's pretty much no wonder that the devs that actually develop studio itself are able to build sthg. tighter fitting with their hands on their own host source code, than anyone else that needs to use a crippled widely undocumented and _3_ years old sdk, which has never seen any trace of proper geo graft support, instances documentation, blah blah.

Actually, the stability of SDK is good thing, I wrote some plugins back in 2012 and never need to recompile, just copy .dll to new DS and it works. But when I developed them DAZ dev (dtamm) sent me the copy of their current (to that time) SDK when I asked him.

Most of your problems with animation, geografting, scene updates, materials etc. exist because you're doing things the wrong way. For example, if you implement the Renderer API there will be no troubles with geometry (so animation, instancing and geograft automatically work). Yes, it's Renderman-like but it's doable (see Luxus for example) and once done it will handle anything (one of my plugins produce completely dynamic geometry each frame of animation, guess how is this rendered by your plugin?). If you adhere with DSON save/load standard for materials you can use Studio's material presets and no need to invent the wheel in plugin (and no more crashes on loading previously saved scene or when copying materials between surfaces). Do DAZ devs responsible for these ?

Yes, SDK documentation could be better

apart from that, since i don't need to make a living out of this stunt, at least i'm not going to be in trouble.

Lucky you are that it's just a hobby for me. (after my last letter to Otoy you were back on forum in an hour )

since the 2.2 plugin version is now for some 2 weeks in testing it may happen every other day (this time it's also going to be an update notice in the plugin and is going to be added to the account download section);

Half a year (for me) and I'll get what meant to be 'instant access to BETA software' ? OK, competition is finally a good thing.

[t_3]

Most of your problems with animation, geografting, scene updates, materials etc. exist because you're doing things the wrong way

AH thats the reason. i was already wondering why - apart from that it is utter nonsense (sorry), especially if you don't know the octane api and what it needs.

For example, if you implement the Renderer API there will be no troubles with geometry (so animation, instancing and geograft automatically work).

i laughed. a bit. you're probably not aware that i'm in contact with daz devs, and there is simply a reason why to do things in one way and not another. for example there is simply no way to handle geo grafts over to octane the same way studio treats them (means without hefty translation).

and i definitely will never go a route the forces users to have 1:1 surfaces materials relations - and this alone makes almost everything else what you may think would work obsolete. let me tell you why: casual daz users don't do material works. not with studio, not with luxus, probably not with iray either; even in reality they have some "accesl" stuff to drop on their content. means they mostly apply premade material sets. just there are none for octane - if you like to create high end renders, you _need_ to go with material editing. and you will go insane if you can't have 1:n relationships like every half way mature 3d host provides. this single decision is crucial to every other part of the plugin.

Yes, it's Renderman-like but it's doable (see Luxus for example) and once done it will handle anything (one of my plugins produce completely dynamic geometry each frame of animation, guess how is this rendered by your plugin?).

again: you know nothing about what is needed to fit octane's needs. the render api is only and only suitable for sequential rendering and can't provide realtime updates that would be suitable for a live view in octane. apparently it doesn't matter if luxus needs to recompile the whole scene for every single change (or reality which is an exporter), but to provide realtime updates like positioning the approach needs to be completely different. and even iray does not implement the realtime renderer - i guess there might be a reason. i'm definitely not doing a gpu renderer just to let people wait 30 seconds for every change they make. interactivity is one of the key usp's of octane, and like with everything else there sometimes need to be a decison between two ways which each has it's own pros and cons. octane is about speed, realtime feedback to the artist and an interactive workflow. and also new iray is nowhere near that.

If you adhere with DSON save/load standard for materials you can use Studio's material presets and no need to invent the wheel in plugin (and no more crashes on loading previously saved scene or when copying materials between surfaces).

using studio's hardcoded renderman blackbox materials for dynamic octane materials is one of an idea. if you at least had talked about bricks i could have argued about the obvious limits; oh, and by the way, octane data is attached via dson - how else do you think it would be possible at all?

Do DAZ devs responsible for these ?

no. they are responsible for lack of documentation, lack of particular events and ordered event flow dynamics, but i won't even blame them for that, since the basic structure of the api is build around what Qt had to provide and its roots (75% of what is still there) dates back to v3 which was obviously never targeted to integrate an external realtime renderer.

Lucky you are that it's just a hobby for me. (after my last letter to Otoy you were back on forum in an hour )

and this just has nothing to do with your letter, since the folks in new zealand were sleeping at the time.

Half a year (for me) and I'll get what meant to be 'instant access to BETA software' ? OK, competition is finally a good thing.

reading this sentence i feel like giving it another intense round of closed testing...

[Spectralis]

reading this sentence i feel like giving it another intense round of closed testing...

Yes, why not punish us a bit more for being such ungrateful customers! Many of us bought this product years ago and this is still the only unfinished plugin from that era and you wonder why there's such dissatisfaction. And now that there's real competition you suddenly appear to tell us all off! If the v2 "Beta" was so far away from completion then why was it announced? Why is v1.2 still in Beta? Many people did PM you and we also posted our problems here but we were left to try to deal with them ourselves. And based on you comments here you regard this as distracting chatter which is unlikely to encourage anyone PMing you about their problems in future.

The great thing is that we now have a free unbiased renderer that's likely to be released soon so I'm losing interest or concern about when OR is finished.

[TRRazor]

Let me try and set the record straight for t_3 here as he is now obviously starting to try and justify things he has very little influence on (as he already mentioned.)
As a content developer and published artist I can say, that DAZ3D is definitely the most difficult customer I ever had to deal with in my entire professional career so far.
As you know, we've started offering some of our skin shaders through their storefront, and so far are quite happy with anything that has happened so far.

But their ways of communicating with published artists often leaves many things to be desired...
I often ask myself: "If it is like this as a "tiny" shader-developer, how horrendous does it have be for somebody developing a plug-in based on free, very badly documented software?"
I have nothing but respect for the work he's pulling off with the DAZ Studio plug-in, considering the odds he works against.
Again - we're very satisfied with our business-relationship to DAZ3D - but communication is EVERYTHING when dealing with paying customers.

I absolutely do understand, every single piece of critique you - as the customers - voice here at the boards and quite possibly in private messages to t_3.
You paid for something, and what you got is not the thing you expected - still it is best thing which has ever happened to DAZ Studio in a long while - iRay or not.

Comparing OctaneRender (and it's plug-ins) to iRay is pretty much like comparing the first shaders we published 1 1/2 years ago, to our RedSpec TGX tailored shaders out there for sale today.
It's just a completely different ballgame - although it is based on the same technology.

iRay is still in it's infant days, and since it's free, quite possibly has a bright future ahead of it. But will it replace OctaneRender?
As Otoy already said, they're not even seeing it as direct competition, to their product.
If you want to go unbiased in DAZ Studio - Octane is - and will probably be for a long time - the only solution to go with.

I'm definitely not trying to justify anything that has ever happened / or has not happened with the DS plug-in - all I'm trying is, to give you guys a little bit more insight into what t_3 possibly has to go through finally delivering to you, what you all so eagerly await.

Dude, you have my deepest sympathies, keep on going! I have a feeling it's not far anymore from now on - from one developer to the other

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[larsmidnatt]

As Otoy already said, they're not even seeing it as direct competition, to their product.

Octane is not a direct competitor to IRAY for Daz, obviously not.

But the Octane Plugin for Daz largely is a competitor to IRAY/Daz...

As I've said before, Daz users aren't really Otoys primary concern (or even secondary), we are just a fringe business. But IRAY will be great for a lot of Daz users and certainly satisfy a market of its own.

There will always be people who don't mind spending some money for the benefits the OcDS plugin will offer. I've been experimenting in IRAY, and I think it's grand. Not sure its for me though.

[Squirtle]

reading this sentence i feel like giving it another intense round of closed testing...

I assume t_3 got dragged here for damage control, so I'm surprised to see his emotionally charged snarky attitude in the conversation. I understand he's under a lot of pressure, and not everyone is cut out to talk directly with customers. They really need to get him an intern or something to help with the communication. From a customer service standpoint, the tone of this conversation is bordering on fiasco.

[Spectralis]

reading this sentence i feel like giving it another intense round of closed testing...

I assume t_3 got dragged here for damage control, so I'm surprised to see his emotionally charged snarky attitude in the conversation. I understand he's under a lot of pressure, and not everyone is cut out to talk directly with customers. They really need to get him an intern or something to help with the communication. From a customer service standpoint, the tone of this conversation is bordering on fiasco.

For me this issue is not personal. I'm not interested in whether a developer is a good or bad person. So I don't know why t_3 is being so defensive. My issue is with the length of time we've waited for a non-beta product which includes v1.xx. For me reliability and communication are part of what I've paid for.

I also think it's irrelevant when we're told that we're lucky to even have a plugin. That's a bit like a car manufacturer saying that when the car we bought from them doesn't work we should be grateful that cars exist. Despite all the problems with the beta releases I've managed to render a few animations but the operative word here is "despite" because without the support of fellow users and spending endless hours troubleshooting on my own this would not have been possible. There is no doubt that t_3 has been very helpful at times but for long periods of time he's been AWOL!

On more than one occasion someone has stated that we should be thankful that the plugin cost so little compared to the big gun renderers - well now a free unbiased renderer is available so all those things we should be thankful for after paying over $500 are now irrelevant.

Having invested $500 in OTOY products I want the OR plugin to be great. That still hasn't changed. But I've only so much patience and when an alternative appears then out of necessity I will use the one that works NOW rather than the one that might work better at some undisclosed point in the future. There's a valid expectation of loyalty and then there's taking the p**s. I think we've crossed that line and the iRAY release has brought this to a head.