Everywhere iRay...
brainmuffin
Posts: 1,268
in The Commons
It is bad enough there is no longer new content with Lux shaders Reality can use, but now there some only support IRay. Not all of us are on NVidia equipment. How easy is it to convert these to either LuxRender or 3Delight?
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It wouldn't be very easy I'm afraid. There is a script that changes a shader from 3DL to Iray but not back again.
Laurie
Bummer. Shaders and materials seem to be going toward Iray only these days...until the next shiny object comes along...until DAZ supports Linux, my chances of moving to NVidia cards is 0.
There are some guiding principles. If you can select a similar 3DL shader and apply it, and use the same maps, you can get pretty close.
Like, if you have a metallic Iray object and convert it with a metallic 3DL shader, you can tweak it pretty nicely.
The problem is that doing so is a bit time consuming; it rather depends on how many surfaces you are converting.
I tried to render an iRay scene once in 3DL without conversion (back for some if it) to 3DL and all I got was 2D black silohuettes when I rendered.
...we really need a script that goes the other way. Being on a fixed income, I don't have the resources to build a new system to support state of the art high memory GPUs.
I thought about writing a script going the other way, but 1) I know almost none of the relevant coding stuff, and 2) it'd be a huge amount of work I don't enjoy for no pay. Enh
I keep hoping someone more script savvy will tackle it.
That said, the following steps, while a little more labor intensive, do the job in many cases:
Use a similar shader with the general right look. Duplicate the object, convert new copy to similar shader. Set diffuse color, bump, displacement, maybe Normal (if it has that). Probably done at this point.
Otherwise, duplicate the object, new copy apply Daz shader or UberSurface or whatever. Set texture maps. If it's shiny, glossiness 90%, specular strength 100%, specular color light (195 or higher if it's REALLY glinty). If it's stone/wood/skin/etc, a safe choice is glossy 20%, specular strength 25%, specular color medium/dark gray.
For metals, use Reflection (raytraced). Set reflection color to glossy color (if there is any). Metallicity x 100 -> Reflection strength. Glossy roughness x 100 -> Reflection blur.
With Daz Shader, pick a light model that's appropriate. Plastic/Metal/whatever.
Obviously, if you have something like Winterhall with several billion different surfaces, this is a time-consuming task. But, then, stuff like this often is. (I mean, even IN Iray, I often find myself compelled to go through a lot of surfaces to tweak things)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but prior to Iray, everything available from DAZ used only 3DL mats. They've never released anything with Lux shaders.
There's nothing special about Iray mats that prevent Reality from converting them. The only difference is how Iray and Lux render materials, and that's where some adjustments may be necessary to get the results you want.
I took the liberty of rendering two material balls using each engine's native Gold metal shader preset. The Gold on the Iray ball is from the DAZ Uber preset. The Gold on the Lux ball is from the Metal preset in Reality. I've done nothing with the shader itself, and the only lighting I used comes with each image's scene file. As you can see, Iray and Lux render the same metal quite differently.
EDIT: Deleted attachments to avoid any confusion with updated comparison a few posts further down.
To best compare them you would want to set up a scene with the same ball and use the same HDRI map for lighting.
I think that is because Luxrender computes metals in a different way as the shader setups for Iray. Metal has IOR (and each kind of metal a different one) and yet the metals in Iray don't use an IOR. Luxrender also includes other physical components in its metals that Iray either doesn't even have nodes for or that are not included in the generic metal shaders included in the Iray shaders folder that comes with DS.
Laurie
There are several IOR settings in iRay's Uber shader, are you saying iRay does not use them?
Good point.
With these images, I also made sure to use the same tonemapping:
Film ISO: 200
f-stop: 5.6
Iray and Lux use different methods of setting the level of exposure. Lux uses Shutter speed while Iray uses a combination of Exposure Value and Shutter Speed. Changing one setting in Iray automatically changes the other, so I used the following settings to get as close to the same level of exposure that I could for each render:
Exposure Value in Iray: 24.50
Shutter Speed in Lux: .050
This is how the Gold metal renders in each engine, based on what the programmers thought Gold metal looks like.
...I think the Lux image looks more accruate from what I've seen in RL.
Well from the gold coins i've collected you get different colors of gold depending on what they alloy the gold with and how much of those other metals they use. Pure gold, well gold like the Australian gold nugget I bought so not really pure as it's liable to have copper and silver in it, is much closer in color to the Iray render.
I haven't seen any place on the uber shader to set IOR for any reflection other than the top coat (which most clean, shiny metals wouldn't have). The only IOR I've seen is for thin film on metal flakes, thin film on top coat and on a refraction. Not on a fresnel for a metal shader. But there is for a Luxrender metal material. That is not to say that one can't build an MDL metal shader using fresnel IOR values for metals in Shader Mixer. I don't KNOW if you can do that because I know nothing about MDL shader language ur Shader Mixer. But I do know a bit about the inner workings of the text file material settings for Luxrender because I used to write them out by hand when Snarlygribbly was working on Pose2Lux for Poser (long before Reality came to Poser). But on the Iray uber shader there is no IOR setting for a metal, per se. And as much as I loooove Iray, I will agree that metals at least, look better in Luxrender to me than they do in Iray ;).
Laurie
The more pure gold is, the yellower it gets. 18k gold is much yellower than 14k which has a weaker, less saturated color. Even white gold tho has some yellow. If you put it next to silver you can tell the difference immediately. Of the samples shown by Nyghtefall, the Iray shader looks closer to 14k and the Luxrender shader closer to 18k. Probably due to there being more copper in 14k, which will turn the color more red than 18k would be.
You can do a more realistic fresnel metal effect using nothing BUT top coat, though.
It's not completely accurate, as far as I understand it, but... closer.
I'll have to give that a try sometime :)
Laurie
I was wondering that because I have an old 2 Ducat gold coin from Bern and it is much yellower than the gold nugget, in fact it looks almost greenish in some lights.
Yes, pure gold is very yellow ;). Think Tuntankamun's mask LOL
Edit: I tried the "top coat only" method of trying to do a metal and nothing turned out really well. For instance, the IOR on the uber shader doesn't go below 1.00 (for instance, gold is IOR 0.47 and silver is 0.18). When I turn off limits and put the IOR where it should be, I get artifacts. And it doesn't look very good. As far as metal goes, the uber shader presets for metals are your best bet for now (or custom shaders that you bought). Platinum is over 2.00 IOR and Copper is about 1.10 IOR, but even those didn't look right. Too bad. Might be something that Nvidia changes down the road or maybe, being a render engine geared toward games maybe, they think that the metal looks good enough (and it usually does).
Laurie
Everything about the Luxrender seems blue-shifted compared to the Iray render. If you compare the white bevel along the base, it too is bluer in Lux than in Iray. These applications are interpresting the hdri very differently. This could come down to some inconsistency with the type of camera, such as kodak or sony or whatever. Is it possible to test this again making sure that not only are the exposures setting consitent, but the type of camera simulation as well? If so it'd very helpful.
I have only seen IOR on top coat. Mec4D's metal shaders do use top coat for metals and IOR, and they also use frensel. These are top notch shaders (IMHO) and do create some very nice looking metals.
While I do use Iray now, I must say
If not using Iray is simply because of video cards, you can still render in Iray using CPU (Which I do 99% of the time anyway as my scenes go beyond my 4GB limit)
If it's due to simply wanting to use another render engine, then yes someone, somewhere needs to come up with a conversion script for these engines :)
I made my Iray procedural shaders to help with Iray.
Since they don't use texture maps, you can squeeze even rather larger scenes into rather cheap cards, and I'd argue you can capture a LOT of what you want to do with them.
In my case not having a good enough GPU isn't the issue (although I don't). Many people find Iray lighting and materials more intuitive (and I'm sure that's especially true if you have real-world lighting experience, e.g. photogrtaphy, cinematography, stage lighting), but for me 3delight lighting and materials are orders of magnitude more intuitive. Every time I've tried to use Iray in a case where I thought Iray would be able to handle it better than 3delight, I've ended up wasting many hours and eventually giving up and going back to 3delight. So unless the products I have can do exactly what I want out of the box, I have zero confidence that I'll be able to tweak the lights and materials. I barely have any time to render as it is.
I'm sure they are, but since I don't have them, I have no idea how they're set up, if they're based on the uber shader or custom shaders. The promos look like her metals are multi-layered and I would expect them to have top coat if that's the case, but I was talking more straight, jewelry style metals like the examples given earlier in the thread. For those, using top coat only doesn't look so good, especially with that great big round artifact right in the center of the object when the IOR is set below 1.00. In that case, the metals included in the Iray uber shader folder look better, so those are the way to go. I did mention above that those and any that you've bought are very likely better than any metal one could get with just a top coat and IOR setting on the uber shader.
Here's a more thorough comparison of the Gold metal shader. First, let's recap. This is the Iray version that comes with DAZ Studio.
Now let's load Reality.
This is a straight conversion of the shader in Reality. I've done nothing else. Reality didn't quite know what to do but pick up the Diffuse color and apply a Glossy mat to the ball, so we've got a few options we need to consider.
First, the shader is a type of metal, and I want to keep it that way. Thankfully, Reality has a built-in material type called Metal. Just right-click the mat for the ball and ring, select Metal, and I'm done. Reality has now identified it as a Custom Metal by autoatically checking the appropriate box while keeping the Diffuse color, and applied other pre-programmed settings to define its appearance. At this point, I could just leave it alone and render.
Or, I can try making it look like the Iray version. Time to play with the Horizontal Polish under Custom Metal. It's currently preset to 9500. The reflection in the Iray version is pretty clear, so I need to increase the number. After a few tests, 9900 looks as close to the Iray version as I think is reasonabe.
Lux Version
Iray Version
Now that we know how to simulate the Iray version, let's make the HDRI's details in the Lux version really pop and by maxing out the Polish at 10000.
Nice...
Let's try one more thing. Switch to Reality's Gold metal preset, and it's just two clicks away from what I've done. Uncheck Custom Metal, and select Gold.
Max the Polish at 10000, and...
18 carat Gold with a mirror finish. Beautiful!
For extra kicks, here's the Iray version with Glossy Roughness set to .23.
And with Glossy Roughness at 0.00.
The renders above are a rudimentary example of how each engine renders the type of Gold metal they were programmed to simulate, and how to customize Iray mats in Reality. All that's needed is patience, familiarity with the available options, and the desire to experiment. It is by no means a streamlined process, but it can be done.
Enjoy!
...yeah but with a yuuuuge increase in render time. If I wanted to keep dealing with that I may as well go back to Reality/Lux, as at least I can close the scene and even shut the Daz programme down to free up more CPU and memory resources once the scene was sent ot Lux.
..however I am not that impressed with procedural shaders. IMO, they look like poorly done Poser shaders I've seen on freebies from years ago.
I've pretty much decided that Iray is the equivalent of the gov't deciding to make the switch from analog to digital, and I'm expecting that sometime in the future, we'll find that older stuff simply isn't going to work anymore, or that it will become a headache to continure to work with.
Iray became a thing some months after I got Daz, and my computer could handle it, so I've tended to use it exclucively, however I have a lot of content not made with Iray in mind, and a majority of the tuts out there are for Daz vers. that didn't have Iray, so I'm finding that it's still useful to know non-Iray styles of lighting and the like. And it would certainly be nice to use Reality 4 at some point in the future.
Have you tried to render in iray on CPU only? It is not that bad. In my opinion is faster, than in 3Delight especially if you render some hair.
You do not need to wait in iray, until the render complete. Most of the time, you will get a decent image much faster (even with about 30% of completion).
I'll do it all the time, when I do not have access to the computer with Nvidia card.