Iray items in 3Delight - How?
Stryder87
Posts: 899
I'm wanting to pick up a couple of the dragon items and was looking at getting the gorgeous Olde Village House to trigger the discount (http://www.daz3d.com/olde-village-house), and saw it was Iray only. After curling up in the corner to weep profusely for a while, I seemed to recall in a few scattered threads in the past where some had said Iray items may work fine in 3Delight.
Can someone explain how you would go about changing an Iray product to 3Delight usable? I'm going to assume you would be changing the surfaces somehow, but... well... how? I'd be more willing to purchase some of the beautiful new releases that were labelled Iray only if I knew how to convert them. I know it was mentioned that sometimes it won't work, but a lot of times it will.
Since I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person wondering how to go about this, can someone give me a "For Idiots"-type rundown on what I would need to do to accomplish this? Screenshots are wonderful too. 
Many thanks (because you guys are awesome)!!
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Comments
Its a simple enough process, though most likely time consuming.
You'll need to apply 3Delight compatible shaders to each and every surface. Use either the Studio Default shader, or UberSurface. They will probably need some tweaking. Ctrl-Click should give you the option to retain images.
I've not personally done this, but it ought to work just fine if you have the patience necessary.
The Iray shader *does* render in 3Delight, if you have a version of Daz Studio that has the Iray shader. Results can be mixed on how good it will look or how long it takes the program to convert the surfaces, but it does render.
I guess I should mention I'm still using v4.8. I'm not planning to upgrade until all the complaints about things not working right in v4.9 die down a lot more and I'm done with a few scenes I have on the go in case something screws up.
It was my understanding that there was no on-the-fly conversion to 3Delight from iRay as there is from 3Delight to Iray. I realize that's not exactly what you are saying...but I wouldn't expect much, personally, rendering an iRay shader via 3Delight.
I will, however, concede, fan-boy that I am, that you may very well know better/more than I.
It isn't a matter of knowing more, it is more a matter of pushing the render button and see what happens. Pardon my sloppy handwriting, but here are some test renders I did in an attempt to get consistent results between the two render engines. Heh, I'm still working on that part. DS 4.8 will render the Iray shader in 3Delight, but again desirable results may vary. My tests have found that anything with the metallic flakes or top coat do not translate at all well.
She's right. Iray shaders do render in 3Delight, with varying results. I do it all the time. I also convert Iray materials over to 3DL materials all the time as well.
Here's an example, using Polish's Urban Assault Rifle - it comes with Iray materials only. I did not bother to convert the materials over to 3Delight, because they render pretty nicely in 3DL just as is. I only render in 3Delight because my computer, frankly, can't handle Iray. At all. And I'm not about to go buy a whole brand new machine just for one render engine. I'm also still using 4.8 as well.
And here's another example - Blake's clothing (at the sink) were originally all Iray shaders/materials. I adjusted the shirt and pants to 3Delight materials.
Yes, select the object(s) in your SCENE tab.
Now, go to the SURFACE tab.
Select ALL surfaces on every object you are converting. (Multiple surfaces can be selected by holding down the CTRL key while clicking)
Then go to your CONTENT LIBRARY tab.
Find the folder where all of the default DS shaders are contained.
Select "dzDefault" or "skin" or "matte" etc, whichever one you want. (Alternatively, you can use Subsurface or Ubersurface if you prefer.)
Once that's done, you will the need to go back to the SURFACE tab and most likely adjust the settings on the shader (whichever one you chose) to your liking.
My best suggestion, though, is to see how it renders with the Iray materials on it, first. Some things look just fine that way, others don't, but it can save you a lot of work if you test it out in a quick render to see how the Iray materials of a particular item look under 3DL first. I very often render Iray shader/material objects in 3DL without making any adjustments at all. I also, however, have plenty of Iray items where I have made my own 3delight materials because they didn't look so good in 3DL without the conversion of the materials being done. :)
So, test it out, every item is different. Some of the materials work just fine in 3DL, and some don't, and converting them over isn't hard, just a little time consuming and requires patience.
I was doing screen grabs as Seliah was posting, so I'll put them up too.
Have the item selected in the Scene tab AND the Surfaces tab.
Find the shader you want to use in your content library.
Hold down the CTRL key when you double click it. New box comes up and Images section select Ignore.
I see a problem with this particualr set. It has no bump maps, only normal maps. 3Delight can use normal maps, but they are either on at 100% strength, or off. There is no middle ground. Here is a 3DL render with the wall surface converted as shown, but the floor and chair are still using the Iray shader. I'd like to turn the bump strength down, but since there are no bump maps, and Normal is either "on" or "off" I would have to pretty much use a different set of shader presets to use this room in 3DL. This is a really good example of mixed results.
I have no idea how many sets are being released with Iray only materials that are only using normal maps and not bump maps too. I use both. The good news is there are a ton of 3Delight shaders here in the store, and I'm sure there is something suitable.
Hope that helps.
Awesome renders for reference! Great info as well. I picked up the building and will see how it turns out.
You guys are awesome! Thanks for all your input.
I just wanted to clarify - 3Delight CAN use normal maps, yes, and while the default (dzDefault) shader only has "on/off" as an option... if you have Age of Armour's Subsurface shader, you can always apply the AOA SSS to the materials. SSS can be turned on or off, and this WILL let you adjust the STRENGTH of the normal map's input at the same time. I use this frequently with items that come only with normal maps.
By turning the "Subsurface Off-On" to a value of 0.00, you will not have any of the SSS related increase on render times, and yet you will be able to control the strength of the normal maps via the "Normal Map Strength" slider.
I use the AOA_Subsurface shader very frequently for this sort of purpose. :)
Thanks for the screenshots guys. It's really helpful to see it like that!
Question Seliah... what's the armour that the character in your first screenshot is wearing?
It's Peacemaker for M4 at Xurge3d
Thanks Seliah. I did not know that AoA's shader did that with Normal maps, as I don't use it much. The Daz default 3DL shader and Omnifreakers omUberSurface does not have a strength slider but AoA's SSS does. So there we are and Iray materials can be more usable in 3DL than I thought. Pick your shader accordingly and have fun.
Stryder -
Yes, FSMC is correct. I auto-fitted the V4 version of the outfit to G2F for that render. I still use lots and lots of my old legacy content. :) Sorry I didnt' see your question sooner. I can't ever figure out how we're supposed to get notified of responses posted on threads we're participating in, and I have to go digging to check threads for any responses later.
DestinysGarden -
Yep. I actually recently picked up a pack of Iray shaders. One of the less expensive ones, because I'm curious to see how much or how little of it I can make use of. I just don't have an Iray capable rig, so I'm very, very used to bullying Iray items into doing what I tell them to do. :) I'm glad it helped. AoA's SSS shader has lots and lots of good uses.
The only niggle about normal maps in 3delight - I don't know if this is true of Iray for above-stated reasons - but in 3delight with normal maps, they will not tile. So if I load a texture onto, say, a cube, and set the horizontal and vertical tiles to 5x and 5y respectively, and I have a normal map plugged in, the normal map is NOT going to tile with the diffuse maps. If there's a way to get it to tile in 3delight, I haven't found it yet. So we do have that one restriction (as far as I know), but other than that... heck, I vastly prefer to have normal maps over bump or especially displacement. I hate displacement with a passion when it comes to character skins - it makes dressing the figure a massive headache! LOL
I just double checked, and the Daz Default 3Delight shader definately does tile normal maps along with the diffuse and the others. You are correct and the AoA SSS does not. Image Editor to the rescue.
To get forum thread notifications, click on the star on the thread's header and it will turn yellow and that should do it.
I do not know if it would help but here is the link to a free shader in the RMP freebie area: Hide iRay Surface
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/hide-iray-surface/75432
I have not tested it but it is perhaps useful...
I've tested it. It is based on the Iray Uber shader and all it really does is turn down the cutout opacity of your selcted surface(s) to 0%. Sort of handy if you have multiple things in your scene selected and want to make them all invisible in one go.
Ah-hah. Learn something new every day! Thank you very much. I never thought to check the Image Editor to address the tiling, for some reason. :) So, it was the SSS shader that wasn't tiling it... that explains why I thought 3DL wasn't tiling them at all, because I end up on the SSS shader for most of my objects. LOL
Thanks for the tip on the notifications, too. Much appreciated!
This might help too. I also can't render in Iray but I have a few iray models that rendered soooo slow in 3delight, so I selected all the items, went to the surfaces tab and changed the 'base mixing' from the default metallcity to 'weighted'. Then I loaded up a decent light set and rendered and it was super fast. I didn't have to mess with replacing the shaders or anything and the render looked like the promo image I bought it for (well, close enough for me!). Don't know if it'll work for every iray item but again, I have quite a few and this worked great for me every time. :)
Thanks all for this very, very helpful thread!
I have yet to look into scripting for Daz, but it's hard not to note that the Iray Uber Base can be saved to the scripts menu (got that suggestion from SickleYield) so I'm guessing that scripting would be the way to go if you wanted to automate your Iray-to-3Delight conversion somewhat. Can anyone confirm this? Can a script be written that will reverse sort image maps to the appropriate slots in the Daz Default Shader? That seems to be the only problem I've had with jumping back to 3Delight for, say, using my AoA Atmospheric Camera. I don't seem to be getting all the maps even though I've ctrl-clicked to apply the dzDefault shader.
This looks useful...