Dragon 3 Iray Shaders - Necessary?

Xenomorphine

So, after spending the time watching Dremalight's wonderful video tutorials in Iray, I feel a lot more confident about experimenting with that new rendering technique. Definitely recommended! But it makes me wonder about just how decent the basic Iray shader is for, say, Horse 2 or Dragon 3. Or if it would be better to just leave them as they are and let Iray try to interpret their default surfaces and materials?

For Dragon 3, this product exists:

http://www.daz3d.com/ig-iray-essentials-dragon-3

But I'm guessing it's primarily for the texures it references on the product page and wouldn't be applicable for models like Xenodreki?

http://www.daz3d.com/xenodreki-the-alien-dragon-hd

Tobor

Looks like at least some of the files are listed as material presets, as opposed to generic shaders, which are designed to work with specific material sets. 

For the shading aspect, you could experiment yourself with the settings to see if you come up with a look that appeals to you. One thing I often do is pick an existing Iray shader that has the basic look I want -- say glossy plastic -- then tweak from there. Don't limit yourself to using a shader just for its namesake. It's common to use the Iray glass or water presets for the eye surface of human characters, for example. 

It's always a good idea to at least apply the default Iray Uber shader to all surfaces, which updates the nodes list to those understood by the Iray engine. It's more efficient for the Iray engine, and with the new nodes available to you, you're able to make meaningful tweaks.

Evenios

i would imagine it would be useful ive found lately if you buy an item and really do not like it at all daz is pretty good at refunds as long as you dont abuse it ;-) so if al else fails you could get it yourself and then see if it works for you :-).  ive tried some of the other shader packs like beautiful skins and it seems to make a nice diffrence.  if you use the dragon 3 a lot......or plan too. it might be worth getting :-).

Xenomorphine

Well, I've tried experimenting with the basic Dragon 3 and Xenodreki, with and without the base Iray shaders applied.

Results... No difference, whatsoever! In fact, Iray seems incapable ot rendering the eye textures, regardless of the shader applied. So, I guess the above product is going to be necessary for at least rendering Dragon 3's eye in Iray! Strange, that.

Oso3D

With the horse, at least, I found converting and tweaking, particularly to add bump and control gloss, made a big difference.