PAs: What shaders do you use in your sets?
Scavenger
Posts: 2,674
in The Commons
I'm wondering, for PA's who do props, scenery, clothing, what shaders do you use? Are there some good merchant resouce sets you like? Do you just build your own and go from there? Is everyone starting from scratch and learning the same things over and over?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Iray Uber, NVidia chrome, and uber surface usually.. or did you mean shader presets?
Edit: oh, also fond of NVidia's flint glass too..
yes..presets if used?
I like the Nvidia shaders for cars.
Daz iray uber for most everything else
So these?
Can they be used in products? Can the installed Uber?
What I'm looking for, I guess, is I'm about to enter the exciting world of PAdom, and I seem to be re-inventing a lot of wheels, and am wondering if there are some tool kits or stuff out there in common use so I spend less time figuring out how to make red paint look like red paint and more time painting.
You are definately allowed to the Iray Uber shader (and all of the shader preset in the Daz Iray folder) as a base for any presets. It comes with Daz Studio, so everyone has access to it. With the 3 modes you get, Metal/Roughness, Specular/Glossy, and Weighted, there is not much that you can throw at it that it can't handle. I've only seen a few products (like maybe 3)for Iray that didn't use the Iray Uber base, and those were very specific cases. We don't have a tool kit other than what is included with DS, and whatever programs have made their ways into our workflows.
So there you have it on the shaders. Now making texture maps to put into the appropriate slots in the shader is a whole 'nother ballgame...
What are you working on?
Why couldn't they be used? They're just settings for existing scripts, not the scripts themselves, and they come with D|S. Except in rare cases (I think Slosh has come up with some hair-specific shaders for his UHT2 product) what others use are simply presets for the already existing shaders. The Daz Iray Uber shader is such a brilliant work of art, despite its horrific complexity, it does an excellent job of providing just about everything you need. There's not as much need to create a shader from scratch.
I would say, though, that it's probably not a nice thing to take someone else's preset, fiddle with it for a bit, then call it yours. At least for anything sold commercially. There are some car paint shaders (in particular) in provided free on ShareCG. You'd have to check the license if they allow any use, or restrict redistribution (as-is or derivative).
Currently, I'm working with an existing vendor to convert their old/poser content into new Daz/Iray content. Eventually, I'll likely do some products all my own.
Right now, I'm doing a lot of "I need to learn how to mix the paint" rather than go to the art store, buy the paint, and focus on how I want to apply the paint to my canvas, if you take my strained metaphor. :)
Well that's my point exactly. At what point is it looking at what others have done and building my own vs, as you say , "fiddling with it for a bit". If I look at a Lil Flame shader to see how they do velvet, then make my own maps and settings I learned from Lil Flame..how does that differ from plugging in my own maps to the Lil Flame one and changing the settigns? I'm trying to do right and play straight, but if there's something out there folks currently use that help them by pass this quandry, that's what I'm looking for.
(as for the car shaders you mention, I've talked directly with the artist on those to get clarification on usage. The Vendor I'm working with doesn't want to add other people's maps to their products...making new maps isn't an issue for me, but where's the line between my maps being idealogicaly similar, to my maps being copies?
I'm trying to do this the right way, but also the smart way.
I see where you are coming from, and it can be a fine line. Here's the thing though, there will come a point where your original work will be similar to what some else has already done. There are only so many variations on how to make sugar cookies. Most recipes call for a pound of butter, 3 cups of flour, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, baking powder, vanilla extract and an egg. The same thing applies here. There are only so many ways to make convincing fabrics, and the maps and the settings are going to be similar from one product to the next, one vendor to the next. There is a super big chance that my velvet bump map will look a lot like yours, and that is because we are both working off of the same real world influence, and velvet looks a certain way. Jeans have a specific weave. So do t-shirts and chambray shirts.
"Where's the line between my maps being idealogicaly similar, to my maps being copies?" - If you make your maps from scratch, they are not copies. As such, even miunte differences in the maps is going to cause the ideal surface settings to change, so you are totally covered. Idealogically similar is going to happen, no matter what you do.
The fact that you are asking the questions is proof that you are already working smart, and that you are conscientious. Keep it up, but don't over think it.
Now who wants cookies?
Yes, we're allowed to use the nvidia examples for shader presets and matfiles, someone already asked and was answered a while ago, DG. I use them a lot for gemstones and shiney metal. The two I use regularly don't have any texture map input though so they don't work for all gems and metals, so I use Uber for those. If you do use one of those examples that has a texture in it, replace it with your own texture map.
I want cookies...
I asked Daz3D about the Nvidia shaders before I submitted the Amenazador 2 and its kin and was given the green light. They are the same ones Nvidia gives away from there own site and allow for commercial use. Also, since they are installed with Daz Studio, everyone has them so using them is no different then using the Iray Uber shader. The orange peel layered shaders are nice. They do car paint really well imho
But to answer your original question, Scavenger, for things that aren't jewelry I almost always start with the base preset from Fabric Basics for Iray, set the tiling to 1x1, set whatever specular settings I think are closest to my end destination, then rip out the texture and normal map it starts with and plug in the textures I've made for that object. Then test and tweak, and test and tweak..