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Definitive guide to shaders (specifically building your own)

AabacusAabacus Posts: 407
in Daz Studio Discussion

I'm baffled by the shader builder aspect of Daz. I have watched and understood the available tutorials but I'm having difficulty translating that into reality.  

Example: I'd like shader that looks like water that has had a paintbrush rinsed in it. So it's that cloudy inside a liquid look. I'm assuming some kind of SSS shader but lord if I can figure out which block I need.

Does anyone have a recommendation for some documentation? Teach me to fish! (Please. Thanks.)

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 109,675

    For Iray or 3Delight? I'm not sure that would be possible in Iray, it might (to my tenuous understanding) be possible in 3Delight using soemthing like the ray marcher - but then you would need lots of bricks to generate the pattern of the dispersion, probbaly including a chunmk of raw data for them to work on. Knowing how to assemble a shader network is the easy bit - you then need to udnerstand the engine itself, to know what is possible, and to break what you want to achieve down into processes that can be implemented.

  • AabacusAabacus Posts: 407
    Richard Haseltine said:

    For Iray or 3Delight? I'm not sure that would be possible in Iray, it might (to my tenuous understanding) be possible in 3Delight using soemthing like the ray marcher - but then you would need lots of bricks to generate the pattern of the dispersion, probbaly including a chunmk of raw data for them to work on. Knowing how to assemble a shader network is the easy bit - you then need to udnerstand the engine itself, to know what is possible, and to break what you want to achieve down into processes that can be implemented.

    I was hoping for some Iray options. Maybe I could do multiple layers? or fake it with a volume that's wrapped in something? I don't know. Just taking a guess at this point. This is just a personal project so I have to timeframe outside of personal interest. Thanks for the thoughtful post though. It helps me understand what I'm working with.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500

    Is it possible to create shaders for IRay in Substance Designer? I don't have it but have often thought it might be a useful addition, especially if I get more into Blender too.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 109,675
    marble said:

    Is it possible to create shaders for IRay in Substance Designer? I don't have it but have often thought it might be a useful addition, especially if I get more into Blender too.

    Yes, the MDL can be loaded into a custom MDL brick - as long as it's placed in the directory DS is set to look at via the Shader Mixer pane Edit menu. It does, as I recall, need soem support libraries from SD too so the result isn't stand-alone and can't be distributed as a DS shader (the sbar file could be shared with others who have Substance Designer, and they could thene xport the MDL for DS).

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