Dear content authors: Please continue to support 3delight
christopher-2607496
Posts: 33
I post here very rarely but I spend a fair amount of money on DAZ resources.
Lately I've noticed a trend where new props and sets and other items on the DAZ store have only Iray materials, but I don't use Iray and I know I'm not the only one. My GeForce GTX 760 can do Iray renders but it's terribly slow and I don't want drop $2.5K on a workstation that can do Iray decently, I find 3Delight's lights to be much easier to work with, I'm not going for photorealism; I like 3Delight's look and my renders usually have tons of postwork in Photoshop, and I have a massive amount of content for Genesis 2 (and I'm still buying more) and don't really feel like starting over. Unless something major happens I don't plan on going to Iray ever.
So with that in mind, I ask that you please continue to include 3Delight materials in your content. I know it's some extra work but it would make your items much more attractive to me and those like me.
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Comments
+1 on the above comment.
The short answer is that if they aren't doing so now, it's because it costs too much compared to the return.
In the meantime, there are a number of ways you can convert Iray to 3DL without TOO much problem, though opacity maps often get skipped and need to be put back in.
Some are selling iray addons to their 3DL products, this might be a solution. Sell at normal price with 3DL textures, then charge extra for iray.
I can just imagine the crying and lamentation if we vendors tried that!
"But I only do Iray renders! I don't want to have to buy the 3DL version and then pay more to get the Iray version!"
They will if you don't give them any other choice.
Doing a proper shader conversion from IRay to 3DL takes a not-inconsiderable amount of time. Things like glossiness, specular level, and reflection are calculated quite differently (physically in IRay, faked in 3DL), so that's 3 properties that have to be manually adjusted for every material zone. Normal maps, bump maps, and displacement maps also work differently. That's 3 more. Also, IRay shaders allow for more complex textures with variable tiling, layering, and blending, that 3DL cannot do. So there will be instances where even if you spend the time to get the shader right, you won't be able to easily replicate the texture itself. As with doing Poser conversions, there is not enough demand to justify spending the additional time.
Careful - the same could be said for the other way around
"3DL addon - giving you full backwards compatibility at a reasonable price"
And if vendors are making a product with Iray in mind, the 3DL would be the 'extra work' and thus need the extra cash to justify it.
(I intend to keep using 3DL alongside Iray depending on what I want to achieve - so I hope we continue to get 3DL support too)
Yes, that old adage: "Careful for what you ask for"
Depending on sales numbers from 3DL as an addon package may well prove that 3DL is not worth the time spent. 3DL might go the way of Poser support also.
I'm honestly surprised nobody has made a decent Iray -> 3DL script yet.
As far as scripts go, it doesn't look THAT hard; if I could code with a darn I'd give it a whack (but scripting is space magic, as far as I'm concerned)
There's just way to many variables, and custom Iray shaders to go from Iray to 3DL to make it a viable product.
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Well that was my first thought therefore I suggested the opposite to put things in perspective...
I tend to stay away from these products also. I feel it should be the other way around, if you want 3DL mats, then you purchase the additional mats, LOL. I have never used 3DL for any render and have only seen a few users that can make it look good
Actually, I should thank the vendors who produce Iray only products. I have had several items I was going to buy, saw they were Iray only, and didn't buy them. So thank you, you are saving me a lot of money!
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Then why not go the other way - start with 3DL and convert to Iray which seems to be a lot easier.
Because the converted 3DL to Iray is not optimal for a professional product. It is a 'quick fix'.
After Converting there would need to be hours of work tweaking to get the look you really want that Iray gives you the power to have.
As Daz PAs, we are professionals, and when we submit our products they are scrutinized to be the best available.
I bought 3 or 4 recent iRay add-ons to old 3DL architectural products & would more of them too, like the South Beach Art Deco sets and so on...
But how do you do when you create textures for both? Two completely separate pieces of work, or are some things shared?
Same texture files (usually), but two completely completely separtes pieces of work. If done correctly.
Oh, offering addons to products that were created before Daz Studio had Iray makes perfect sense. :)
But the textures do usually require quite a bit of work also (particularly for characters) so you do have the basis for the other one then, no matter which one you create.
A good product up to the standards of Daz and it's customers requires quite a bit of work for every part of the product. Creating two shaders for each figure/prop doesn't quite double the work, but it adds enough time to make a difference. Just as there have been many, many threads about why PAs don't support Poser any more, the same reasoning can be true for 3DL support. And if the product is not a Daz Original, then it is up to the PA to make those decisions. Products sold to Daz to become Daz Originals still have to have 3DL shaders before Daz will accept them.
I'm actually in the "make it a separate product" camp. I use both, though I still prefer 3DL's non-realistic look, so I like to have both. And as long as the price is reasonable - (I'm cheap, so $6-$7, max, after intro sale/PC+ discounts, preferably substantially less) I'm willing to shell out for the one that's not the default. So far, that's been mostly Iray addons, but 3DL versions (that, at least for me, don't have to match the Iray version tone for tone, realisim for realisim) would sell at least to me.
Whether there's enough market for it, that's another question. Unlike with certain other items that tend not to have enough market, converting between the two usually just requires patience and a lot of tweaking. (Except stuff like pwEffects and pwGhost. Still haven't found a good non-postwork intesive way to do those in Iray.)
Ummm Yes. You better believe it. To suggest such a thing is idiotic at best, near sighted and completely blind to your customers needs at worst.
That's not quite true...
It does hold true for the default shaders that are included in Studio, but does not hold true for 3Delight itself. The current preferred and recomended method of rendering is to use physically plausible (that's what Renderman and 3DL call PBR shaders) with a raytracer. Those shaders use the same algorithms as Iray!
So, no it's not 3DL itself, that is incapable.
I'd purchase a conversion script utility in a snap. Or even a utility that allowed you to adjust multiple surface settings all at once... like Netherworks and Dimension3d have made for Poser's material room.
Given the internal rules I generally follow to convert Iray -> 3DL aren't lengthy and cover 99% of cases quite easily, I'm not sure I'm convinced it would be hard to script.
That said, since I haven't actually done it and don't know the scripting language, I'm reluctant to state it with certainty.
But, really, it's not hard for most stuff to get decent results:
PBR Glossy/specular or PBR Metallicity with Metallicity set to 0:
Dark specular, set glossy based on glossy weight, reflectivity -> specular strength.
PBR Metallicity with Metallicity set above 0, use Reflection (raytrace) and channel some/all of glossy weight to reflection strength, glossiness/roughness -> reflection blur.
Now with translucent/SSS stuff, that I'm less clear on. But you could at least get in the ballpark with a decent script, and that's something you are more likely to be able to handle as individual cases.
The big problems come into 'these four spaceships, that giant castle, all need to be converted'
I mean, heck, just having a converter that actually copied over opacity maps would solve 2/3 of the problem. Like, a big forest with oodles of transmapped leaves. uuuugh
I hope no one takes this as a complaint I gave up complaining about daz and venders long ago.
I totally agree with OP about including the 3dlight mats with the products sold. Why do I want 3dl mats? Because I do animation and I choose to use 3dlight over Iray for a number of reasons. the main reason is my animation sets usually run 20 gigs of ram or more. I have 64 gigs of CPU ram & there is no graphic card at this time that can support 20 gigs of GPU Vram for the sets I make for my daz animations. and if I were to invest the kind of money needed to build a render farm to get the gpu/vram needed I would properly not be using daz studio anymore. I would be using a more robust software.
I don't need realism for the type still renders & animations i make & I also like the fact I can add and customize the lighting and shadows better with 3dlight than I can with Iray. and use that custom lighting to sometimes create better dramatic lighting than Iray can produce Plus not to mention the render times with 3dlight are much faster than iray. those are just a few of my reasons for using 3dlight over Iray for my use of daz studio. . Like the OP I also do not use genesis 3 because of the issues i have with cross compatibility with the many many other Daz figures I own. so I do not purchase g3 items only props and environments now days and if there no 3dl mats included i pass it over, . I made a mistake recently I bought a Superbike and Poses for Genesis 3 Female. for an animation I am working on I bought it for the bike and not the poses (the poses are useless to me.) and it turned out i did not use the bike either. because in my hast I didn't notice the bike did not include the 3dl mats.. if i would have noticed that I would have passed it over as well.. So shame on me i'll look much more carefully now. ( and yes I could have changed the mats myself.. but animation takes enough time without having to do extra texture work.
So I too ask you Venders. Please include the 3dlight mats with with your products or you can count on me passing it over. as well.. I dunno maybe you guys like limited sales, it just seems to me if you go through all that work to make the model and props sets that a little extra to include the 3dl mats would just make your products more use able & more likely to be purchased by everyone that uses daz, to me just providing Iray mats without the 3dl mats included with the product just shows me the laziness of the vebder to earn my money. I'll speak with my purse now days.
Thanks for the tips, Will !!
...[raises hand].