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Yes I know - but KK mentioned Ubersurface not Ubersurface 2
OK, so if you want money now you have to bite the bullit and include 3DL shaders.
Mysterio-hold down the Ctrl button when you apply your 3Delight shader preset, a pop up box comes up, and select Ignore Maps. That will keep your orignal maps in most of the relevant places. (Unfortunately Opacity maps are ones that usually get lost, so you may have to reapply those.)
OK guys, comparison for you here. We are looking at the fabric in these examples, and not the skin. Iray render with Iray materials including metallic flakes/Iray materials rendered in 3Delight letting the program auto convert it/A quick 3Delight conversion. To get the gold circles to show up as gold in 3Delight, I'd have to do a whole new set of diffuse color maps, instead of just using a black and white mask for the metallic flakes. I wouldn't find the converted settings to be "good enough" to put my name on. In fact the 3Delight render of the Iray surfaces looks better to me than the converted one (except for the glossiness.) If I was going to sell twice the amount of product by doing full 3Delight materials, I would do it. My experience tells me the sales numbers "might" get an additional 10 units sold. Keep in mind, it isn't just making new maps, it is also saving double the amount of presets, and rendering double the amount of thumbnails.
I truely understand the complaint of the original poster, and all those that agree. Honestly, I'm not witholding 3Delight materials just to be mean or spiteful. I'd like to make things everyone can use without fussing with them. I had to convert Poser materials to Daz Studio for years. I know what is involved. The fact of the matter is Iray does things 3Delight can't do without major time put in, and the sales numbers do not justify the additional time.
The responses to this post didn't mention something I think is important. Maybe I'm ignorant and have missed something, but I feel like I need to speak up. I'm running on an Nvidia Geforce GTX 680, and unless I'm pushing resources pretty hard, I usually don't find Iray renders take that long. I know that a -60 vs. a -80 can represent a wide gulf for certain generations of cards, but I used to get really long render times before I set the Iray optimization settings that I think most people seem to assume everyone knows about. I wondered what was up with this for the longest until I stumbled across a post in here that mentioned it.
So, nothing against 3DL at all or your preference, OP, but before you assume you have to go big or go home, I just want to be sure that youve set your optimization settings properly. Anyway, maybe you already know about it and I'm being dumb, but I sometimes get frustrated more by the things that aren't being said because it's assumed common knowledge or people are so far advanced in their tech that they don't realize that you should be able to achieve decent results with that card. Who knows? Maybe you're doing a lot of things in your renders to really push the engine, but it didn't sound that way and I'm not going to assume that you are.
Not exactly. That only applies to Daz buyouts. It is straightforward spec work. They still require 3Delight materials, so PAs can either take it on those conditions, or leave it. On brokered items, the majority of us are finding that we are not getting double the sales when we do double the work of supporting more than one render engine, be it 3Delight or Poser. So for brokered items, biting the bullet and doing 3DL mats is not money NOW, but money NEVER. I'm very sorry, but that is just the reality of the situation. The majority of the buyers at the store do not post in the forums, and they want Iray.
I am in full support of those that express the desire for products to support their desired render engine. It is with the greatest empathy that I explain why it is not possible for myself personally to comply.
I have in fact found that recent 3dl materials are often pretty shoddy and the Iray versions sometimes render better. And I noticed that the Corbin '3DL' materials is a single click converter of some sort that says 'choose all options first....'
Yes I agree I thought it was just me. But I did noticed in daz 4.9 that 3dl does render much darker and has darker shadows as well forcing higher lighting values..But to me as some that creates animation . that is a blessing. alot of my scenes require clear dark atmospheres in the final renders which are much easier to accomplish with 3dl in animation than Iray with out getting fireflies. or being to dark . not to mention try setting up a custom spotlight with a color filter in Iray & compared it to 3DL Raytrace and you will get much faster render times with better shadowing control imo , and have yet to archive Volumetric lighting in animation in Iray. But I can with AOA lights. But I do chalk that up to my in experience with Iray too. I do like to with with HDRi in Iray though and that has some promise for future use in my animated projects.
The Corbin materials preset, like the DS 4.8 legacy preset that some characters have, will be a preset that was saved with values but no maps - the equivalent of holding down ctrl/cmd while applying a standard preset and selecting ignore for maps, but without the need to use a modifer.
One of the main things about UberSurface 2 is that it would be no problem to handle that metal flake gold on the swirls. It's a dual layer shader...so using the mask would still work.
And even with the free UberSurface, it's still a matter of masking: the same mask goes into reflection strength, and an inverted version (LIE can do it) goes into diffuse strength to approximate energy conservation. If you want the golden parts to be more foolproof, you go with the mapped reflection - those blurred oldschool kinda maps are tiny and easy to whip up in any image editor (even actual HDR maps for extra brightness - Krita can do them for free), and basically you only need to make one and tint the colour multiplier later to approximate different metals.
And then, there is always shader mixer which may be buggy and cranky, but can handle simple "oldschool" shader manipulation like this quite well. As long as you remember not to connect "image" bricks to the shader opacity unless you do require an opacity map.
Hi DestinysGarden Thank you for taking the time to explain how you try to stay with in your sales figures to us. it was very thought out and well explained. I appreciate a honest answer compared to just because.. I do have one question? Does sales projection your talking about take in account for continuing future sales as well? or are those consider like bonus sales after the product has been well after its release. I ask because alot of people, myself included try hold off & wait for a product to be reduced in price before buying it not always But because, for budget reasons or, pay periods ending on bad time on product release date and other reasons. so the possibility of your Items sold would be on going would they not? Or is that projected in another type sales figure i'm not understanding? if you had a PA flash sale or something would that also not bring in more revenue for older products? I am asking to try to understand better . I know sometimes sales maybe not what you had hope or planned for. but isn't a sale a sale? ... I'm trying to understand why 10 extra sales for the extra days work for the 3dl mats would not be not worth the effort in the long run ? maybe I am looking at it wrong. I can see if your not intending this products to generate you any more revenue in the future after its release that would be understandable . is that how you pa's look at your products you put out after its release? I'm just trying to grasp getting the products out faster with less options is more important than catering to the future customer base with more options to your product. I am sorry if my English is not that good and you can not understand what I am trying to understand in advance .
And all this would take extra time for what? About 10 to 15 extra sales? And only if they are at discount.
Example:
Product full price: $19.95, %40 discount: $7.98, Minus Daz's cut : $3.99. Total recieved for (let's say 15 sales): $59.85. Now lets say it took an extra 8 hours to do this conversion from Iray for a product (probably longer with tweaking and such) That's $7.48 per hour (or less when discounts are higher!) Minimum wage is $7.25.
So why would I want to work for 23 cents above minimum wage, when I could use that time to work on a new product?
Hi DraagonStorm Thank you for your clear explanation. I have a better understanding now... I may not agree with it because I still say you will be still generating sales with a product long after its release. maybe not great money but something better than nothing long after a product has been released.. not all daz users are Tec-Savoy in converting textures you don;t mind passing by those customers? , some users have concentrated our skills else where in the daz software other than converting textures, and do PA no longer consider daz other software that does not use Iray such as bryce or carrara as potential sales any longer . Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions I appreciate your comment and explanation . Thank you
Hi! It's almost 3 AM here in Moscow, Russia (where minimal wage is muuuch lower BTW, but prices aren't that much lower), so I didn't specify whom I was actually writing for. My apologies.
The vendor's job, as far as I'm concerned, is to provide quality meshes and quality textures, and actual materials are the artist's domain.
I was writing this for those users who beg vendors to provide materials for this or that renderer without realising that they already have everything they need to roll their own materials for each and every renderer they happen to prefer. And it's not an arcane science.
For years, I've been writing stuff trying to empower hobbyist users and encourage them to take their renders into their own hands. If anything, when using premade stuff, it's the closest you can get to really making a statement.
The only thing I would personally ask from content stores and vendors are wireframe renders of the meshes, so that the customer could assess the topology quality before buying. =)
Well I fully understand if PAs won't do extra work for nothing, so no problem with that. Personally I also prefer Iray for most things but in some situations 3DL just work better IMO. I was just joining this discussion to see if there was a way to make everyone have what they want. I believe this is always possible in life if you just think out of the box. :)
Personally, I have been giving doing a script to convert Iray to 3DL for months.
But everytime I start giving it some real thought I keep coming up with issues that I KNOW, will be complained about. And I don't want to put out a product that will kinda work, but still needs a lot of tweaking. I'm not even sure if it pass DAZ's QA. If you read the steps outlined by timmins.williams there's a lot of 'human opinion' and tweaking used to make the 3DL shader work.
I'm one of the old fogeys still using 3Delight as a) it's easier on older machines and b) my goals for rendering are modest, but I understand that Iray is becoming the new standard of quality and PAs want to maximize their time focusing on that. Do I like that situation? Not necessarily. But it is what it is. Now while I certainly appreciate (and will likely buy) a product that has options for both, I'm not going to be bothered if it's Iray only. Again, it is what it is.
That would be awesome, & that would solve a lot of issues with me and would be most helpful to a lot of people. I love your animated pro texture script , and i use your pose convertor script for Victoria 4 to Genesis and Genesis 2 Female(s). all the time. I also use your Metal Magic Overlays script all the time. I own a lot of your content and would love a texture converter script for iray to 3dl
DraagonStorm: If you released a preliminary freebie that at LEAST did as good as the current + copied over opacity maps right, it'd be a massive service to the community.
(I suggest 'freebie' for a simple starter thing because I know there's this weird energy barrier to making something salable, both on a personal feeling of making it 'good enough to buy' and from convincing Daz to sell it)
Converting from one shader to another is a never ending struggle that never has a perfect solution
@ Ivy - the bulk of sales on any new item takes place in the first 2 days. I'd say probably about 80-90% of all the money one is going is make on a new item happens in that time period. Marketing has been doing an excellent job bringing attention to back catalog items, and I do sell a few of each of my older 3Delight items every month, so I do realize there is still some small demand for them. PAs definately do rely upon back catalog sales for supplemental monthly income, and the larger your catalog, the more money it generates. New releases are the things that pay the bills though. The thing is, it is hard to justify spending almost twice as long to make one product, for the potential few extra sales it will maybe generate now, or down the line.
@ Mustakettu and MJC, yeah I am familiar with UberSurface 2. It is my favorite 3DL shader and what I used for my own renders when I had time to make them for fun. I don't like to use it for production though because I dislike requiring other products if it can be avoided. I'm also very familiar with the free UberSurface. I think all of my 3DL shader presets use it, except for the one I made in shader mixer. I shall give my above example a try with UberSurface, but I'm still not sure I'll be able to replicate the look as easily as with Iray.
Mustakettu - good luck with your tutorials. In a perfect world, every surface in every render would need to be adjusted for whatever lighting is used in each scene. It is unavoidable that some things the end user will have to adjust on the spot, and that is just the nature of the tools we have.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to explain how this work I have a better understanding . I always thought a sale of a item were on going even after the release just reduced. But I can see what you mean now about hitting your sales marks for the first few days. Unfortunately the route of supporting one type mat over another is going to leave me out of the Iray only user path, for a lot of products. I may not be happy seeing the 3dl support going away. 3DL is a primary render engine for my type work i do with daz studio. I do use Iray. just not for animation creation. and i do change mats to reduce weight size and a few other things its just much faster for me to convert 3dl mats to iray than Iray to 3dl. so there is a script niche to fill here if anyone is ever cleaver enough to come up with a conversion for iray to 3dl mats I'll just have to deal with it and I guess I'll have to start looking for alternative but at least now I now have a much better understanding where PA's are coming from. I really appreciate you taking the time. and not just push me off like some others people have. I can see your point Its like me working on a animation for month and months to entertain people hoping for a good viewing and sell some ads and end up never make anything off my efforts. so yes I can defiantly understand where your coming from trying to hit sale projections .again thank you for explain it to help me understand.
the iray materials are also a right pain when exporting to other apps as maps go missing so a script of any sort to just preserve maps going to DZdefault would be a godsend.
It's not just creating an item(s), but also rendering time, Q&A with DAZ, and marketing and upkeep. That's way more than a day.
It looks like this might be just a labor of love.
Quoted from Sickleyied's DeviatArt page on taking commisions, this gives you the scale of a succesful product: "Compared to spending that 20 hours making something I know will sell 200 copies in my DAZ store, plus catalog sales, I literally can't afford to do most commissions."
We could only dream of sales of a 1000 units :( A very successful release for a majority of us is around 300 during the new release period. And then afterwards maybe 2 or 3 each month of the product unless at a deep discount.
Yep, most of them go 'I wish'...while not usually in the 15 range, for most it's no where near 1000 and for many, that 1000 point is not reached for a long time...some products in the catalog, several years or never.
If the default 3DL shader were 'modernized' and included the functionality of US2 AND many of the generally not touched features/functions of 3DL it would be much easier to do.
And really, while the type of shaders that Studio uses still work in 3DL, they are not 'current'. And, they are also much slower to render than they could be! Studio doesn't even fully support importing RSL (Renderman Shading Language) 2 shaders (Shader Builder balks at it and spits out errors and refuses to compile them). So all the support scripts (what's needed to get them to show in the GUI and be able to change values) have to be coded by hand to get an RSL 2 shader working. And 3DL has moved beyond RSL 2 and fully supports OSL (Open Shading Language...it's supported by the likes of Arnold, V-ray and Cycles, so those shaders could be ported)! And with the OSL/'physically plausible' shaders, one could create a 3DL shader with inputs matching (and what those inputs connect to and function like) to the Iray inputs (or very darn close).
...a PDF tutorial please.
My environment products will continue supporting both the 3DL and Iray renderers for the forseeable future.