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Odd, I get no such knowledge from the article. Indeed, a simple logical interpretation, combined with known facts, would suggest the opposite.
Steve Spencer's answer to Q5:
"There is no question that DAZ Studio is our main focus. We still have plans for some of our other titles as well..."
Add that to the verdict delivered in the specially highlighted Q13 re. a Hexagon update:
"Likely not."
So, there are plans for a plurality of titles besides DS, and a big orange box with the number thirteen hinting gently that Hexagon isn't one of them.
We know the significant DAZ titles:
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/entries/22701634-Software-System-Requirements
With Hexagon gone, that leaves a plurality of two besides DS. Those two are Carrara and Bryce.
Now, of course, logic may have nothing to do with it. But it's as useful a tool as any other for interpreting that Q&A marketing piece.
And logic indicated that the dress was blue and black. ;-)
Maybe they should do like the defense contractors to build interest - Float a concept for the next generation technology with some uber-cool name, toss out hints to some far-out features, hype the heck out of it and then sell advance "Pre-Orders" to gauge interest. Then develop it with confidence...that there is anticipation.
Hmm... is that Raytheon or Electronic Arts?
Sure you could be tight lipped, but no noise is no interest...
So when asked about "Bryce", I woudl say "heck that so yesterday.... wait for "Utah 3D" in 2015, its the next generation "GPS2GPU" Global Modeling System (GMS)."
Lots of buzz words that mean nothing like that generates hype and gets peeps googling (in the drool sense of the word).
Keep checking in here. Sounds as tho DAZ has sold
the Bryce box to Schrodinger
open it up
Meow.
:)
OMG
Everything is Possible, even the Impossible. Maybe even....soon.
:P
Bryce 4 MAME64
Oh noes, are we dealing with infinite improbability again? (like what happens when you import something into Bryce from DS?)
An obvious question for me is if Daz3D decided to switch to something else besides Bryce 7 (which is what I have though I think 7.1 is out?) would the work we've done under Bryce be usable under the new tool? I guess what I am asking is whether or not Bryce uses something close to an open source format or is is purely proprietary?
I hope that makes sense?
Richard
Odd, I get no such knowledge from the article. Indeed, a simple logical interpretation, combined with known facts, would suggest the opposite.
Steve Spencer's answer to Q5:
"There is no question that DAZ Studio is our main focus. We still have plans for some of our other titles as well..."
Add that to the verdict delivered in the specially highlighted Q13 re. a Hexagon update:
"Likely not."
So, there are plans for a plurality of titles besides DS, and a big orange box with the number thirteen hinting gently that Hexagon isn't one of them.
We know the significant DAZ titles:
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/entries/22701634-Software-System-Requirements
With Hexagon gone, that leaves a plurality of two besides DS. Those two are Carrara and Bryce.
Now, of course, logic may have nothing to do with it. But it's as useful a tool as any other for interpreting that Q&A marketing piece.
And logic indicated that the dress was blue and black. ;-)
I will ask basically the same question as I asked about Bryce. Should they choose to drop Hexagon, does Hexagon use purely proprietary formats or can it be imported into other tools?
I hope that makes sense. I am on a very, very strict budget due to early retirement and really have to watch my spending. I already bought Hexagon though I have not fired it up yet. Not asking for pity but just my luck, I get the software then get sick for 6 months and am now just getting around to trying to learn. It alarms me to see 404's pop up and messages ending in 2012 or 2014.
Should I just forget trying to do anything with Hexagon and just concentrate on Bryce and Carrara?
Thanks,
Richard
If you mean with "soon" "DAZ-soon", everything can happen.
@rlmorgan - Bryce came from Metacreations over Corel to DAZ 3D and is proprietary.
I'm not certain about Hex, but since it came from Eovia to DAZ 3D, I think it is also proprietary.
Hi Richard
I am quite sure, that Hexagon uses a proprietary format, that will not be widely supported by other modelling software. That might be the bad news, but the good one is, Hexagon offers you the possibility to export your models in another format, e.g. Wavefront OBJ or Carrara. you can use OBJ in Bryce for example. And you have a neat interface to DAZ3D Studio.
I think Hexagon is a quite powerful modelling software. Of course there are even more powerful tools out there, but for me, who models for fun only Hexagon is the right choice. It would different, if I had to evaluate a modelling software for my business, because I have to earn money with it. In this case I would be careful to choose Hexagon. But luckily I have not to do so. I think, Hexagon is a very good starting point into the world of modelling. (So is Wings3D, which is even free) And for myself I am sure even in many years I will not know everything about this piece of software.
I am quite sure, that Hexagon uses a proprietary format, that will not be widely supported by other modelling software. That might be the bad news, but the good one is, Hexagon offers you the possibility to export your models in another format, e.g. Wavefront OBJ or Carrara. you can use OBJ in Bryce for example. And you have a neat interface to DAZ3D Studio.
I think Hexagon is a quite powerful modelling software. Of course there are even more powerful tools out there, but for me, who models for fun only Hexagon is the right choice. It would different, if I had to evaluate a modelling software for my business, because I have to earn money with it. In this case I would be careful to choose Hexagon. But luckily I have not to do so. I think, Hexagon is a very good starting point into the world of modelling. (So is Wings3D, which is even free) And for myself I am sure even in many years I will not know everything about this piece of software.
Interestingly enough there are some DAZ 3D PAs who do produce their products in Hex, one that comes to mind is DzFire™
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16035/
And even me, who is a complete tyro when it comes to modelling anything, managed to use Hex to cut out a door in a model which didn't have an opening door and replace it as a separate part of the model so that I could open the door. Mind you I did have a lot of guidance from our Forum Team leader, who is also named Richard. I also, like you, am not a spring chicken.
If you mean with "soon" "DAZ-soon", everything can happen.
@rlmorgan - Bryce came from Metacreations over Corel to DAZ 3D and is proprietary.
I'm not certain about Hex, but since it came from Eovia to DAZ 3D, I think it is also proprietary.
Precisely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldZIrxtK0TA
Well, blimey, now we know what Steve Spencer was hinting at: DAZ Studio now has the Nvidia iray render engine built in.
GPU accelerated global illumination - built in.
That's a game changer, methinks.
Was there an answer in this thread about Bryce? if they did Anything to that they should enable it to at least Save what was Rendered. I made the other thread about my slow boat to China renders. Well Bryce just closed Itself Again. So I've been trying to render the Same very short clip since... December. It simply can't do it. I'm going to have to stop n save every 5 frames or something.
Save save save is every Bryce users mantra.
With still renders the incremental saves have been the saviour of many a Brycer.
and yes Spellchecker saviour is spelled right.
5 frames is a bit ridiculous tho. Waiting for a full second to be rendered is expecting too much however. At least it's this one clip as I realize I'm pushing it to it's limits.
@kzerial - I agree that this is unfortunate. I'm an animation nut and I have no experience here. However, I've rendered stills that took 5 days (and nights) without issues. The important think here is that the CPU cooling works and there are no power glitches.
For certain lighting conditions, long render times are not uncommon. Even in professional 64bit apps with oodles of ram available, there are some single threaded render passes that cant be further optimized. You just need to wait as the CPU plugs away. Each frame of that Lion scene I shared above took 45minutes on a 100CPU render farm. That one animation took from just before Christmas to February to render. That said, I prefer the reliability and consistency afforded by CPU rendering.
It will be interesting to see if GPU powered render engines are able to maintain a baseline performance and consistentcy with the gpu accelerated application output (DS Iray. OToyt, IC6 etc...) as the various drivers and chipsets are updated.
When DirectX gets updated and hoist on the consumers, results in mass PC upgrades they apply many game patches and such in effort to regain optimum performance & comparability. Sometimes the publisher cannot get it working with the latest version of Directx for month's - if ever.
I agree. I grabbed the build and rendered this in 35 seconds on my GTX660. No postwork this is modified by the internal filters.
It is very like Octane, but much much cheaper!
Is that "halo" effect in the sky that surrounds the shack in a glow intentional or iray render artifact? The horizon seems to wrap unusually narrow to the center of the image.
Just an effect of the filters. They are similar to what is on offer for Octane, I'm not much of a one for filter effects myself, but I just wanted to see what would happen and if it had any impact on the render times (which it did not seem to). Essentially Iray is Octane for those on a budget. You could even dispense with the need for a GPU, but at that point, you would probably get better results if you knew what you were doing with Bryce's ray trace. The thing is, equipped with a GPU, something like Iray or Octane can provide a photorealistic solution with far less effort than within Bryce or 3D delight. Though you do run into other issues with physically based render engines...
A fancy render engine is no substitute for creativity, something which Bryce's workflow lends itself to. But in terms of brute force, GPU rendering is in another league.
"A fancy render engine is no substitute for creativity"
Good line - It needs to be repeated...
I wonder if DAZ would consider releasing the source code for Hexagon under some sort of open-source license. Ditto for Bryce. But especially Hexagon, which they have announced that they will no longer be developing.
My guess is perhaps not, if they have plans to add modeling to Studio.
It would not be a bad thing if Studio became capable of all of the things Bryce, Hexagon, and Carrara are capable of. Especially if it remained free. The new render engine is a step in that direction. As it is, I am cautious about purchasing content specifically for Bryce or Carrara. Anything I don't have an immediate use for likely won't end up in the cart. David and Horo still manage to entice by achieving results with Bryce that can't be gotten with any other cheap program, or with Studio.
Decimator for Studio is nice for coping with Bryce memory restrictions.
There will never be another interface like Bryce unless it goes open source (unlikely). For that, I expect I'll use it for some things for a long time, regardless, but recognize that it is a fading star that is not going to attract many new users.
As for the other landscape generators out there, I would not consider unless I had to generate landscapes for a living, or I had cash to throw away. Just too expensive.
Strangely enough we are helping new users regularly either in this forum or in the New Users forum. Here we also have a New Bryce User category in our regular render challenge, and most challenges there has been at least one and sometimes more than one New Brycer enter a render.
What ever happened to Susan Kitchens? Anyone remember the Bryce 5 Bible? How much of that tome is still useful for Bryce 7?
So Daz3D's headquarters is in Utah? Hmmm
My advice, keep using Bryce, but also learn to use another software program well, such as Vue, in case the worst happens.
Yes it is still pretty useful. Mostly DAZ have just added to what Bryce 5 had without much detriment to the underlying software (edit: indeed I should point out that to their merit a lot of behind the scenes work was done to update the infrastructure - that's probably not the correct term, but I'm an artist not a programmer OK). The only case where I've noticed any significant negative change is the handling of large scenes (in particular with very high resolution terrains I've noticed this) seems to be more clunky in 7 when it comes to swapping between the labs. Otherwise everything that did work, still works and quite a few things that should have worked were fixed. Which is nice.
You might find a bit of disagreement over minor things like reflection map mapping as it relates to cubes and volumetric light sources. This things got tinkered with because of other things getting fixed and some compromise had to be reached in order to get some other aspect working, like the issues with bump that were heavily documented in the now archived and inaccessible bugtracker.
@FlashGarcia - her webpage at http://www.auntialias.com/ is still up but BryceTalk is missing since some years. Most of her book is still a valid source to Bryce which I consult now and then. I don't remember everything Corel had added to Bryce for v5 but Brian Wagner - who was on the initial Bryce team at Metacreations - assisted Corel. The Tree Editor was added and a somewhat flawed version of True Ambiance.
DAZ added the Studio bridge for version 5.5, with 6.0 came IBL - which was severely flawed and was rectified by Brian Wagner who worked for DAZ for a while longer than Bryce 6.1. Bryce 7.0/7.1 was a real advancement to Bryce on which DAZ worked for 2-1/2 years. If Bryce could have made it to 64 bit, as was the intention at the time, it would be a modern program even today. Of course, there's still more potential to improve and a few sever bugs to correct like overlapping volumetrics and visible spotlights that worked in Bryce 5; and to make it work on the Mac again.
And yes, DAZ is in Utah, started at Drapper and is now at Salt Lake City. Many Bryce supporters at DAZ left the company.
A fancy render engine sure the heck compliments creativity though, not to mention speeds up productivity and allows for less limits on creativity in a given amount of time.
I think that certain people take too much pride in taking overly complicated paths to achieve their results.
A fancy render engine sure the heck compliments creativity though, not to mention speeds up productivity and allows for less limits on creativity in a given amount of time.
I think that certain people take too much pride in taking overly complicated paths to achieve their results.
It is a hobby, the challenge is part of the fun. No one is being forced to use Bryce - at least as far as I know. There are alternatives, it they would rather use those, they are free to do so. As I stated in the now closed thread. For commercial work, pay your money and buy a more efficient solution. For my hobby, I enjoy using Bryce. That doesn't mean I think everyone should do the same. You are free to express your view, but suggesting that people take "too muck pride" in their work, seem to me to be more of a criticism of character than it does of software limitations.
I like using Bryce, always have done. I don't remember when I started using it but I have stuff from 5.5. I find it easy to set up scenes, most taking an hour or two, others longer. I try to get the render time as low as I can but don't fret over it as I can carry on with something else while it renders; I can have another instance of Bryce open doing something else or I might be working and rendering in DAZ Studio in the background and checking forums in between :)
I started many years ago with a ZX Spectrum +3 on which I played games and learned myself rudimentary coding. Outgrowing that I moved to the Amiga 600 when it came out, then onto the 1200 when I found the 600 too confining. I used the 1200 for most things including 3D, Cinema 4D was the thing then and Terragen? and Vista? I think. I moved the 1200 into a tower to give me more space for extra memory and hard drive space. Unfortunately Amiga ran out of steam so I replaced the 1200 in the tower with a Windows 95 compliant main board, which is in it's fourth incarnation as two burned out and one needed to be upgraded with a faster CPU; it is due another upgrade soon as it too is getting slow :) As you can see trending isn't my thing, having the next best thing just for the sake of it, but I will move on to something new when I outgrow whatever it is I am using. I haven't reached that point with Bryce yet even although I know there are other products out there that may be better and faster.