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...exactly. Daz Iray also converts 3DL shaders on the fly as well. Not so when using Iray shaders in 3DL. I've both seen and used some really old content that looks fine in Iray whether the shaders are pre converted or just letting the engine convert on the fly.
...apologies, this is a free hobbyist's/enthusiast's programme we are talking about, not some multi thousand dollar professional grade 3D production software like 3DS Max, Lightwave, Modo, or Cinema4D. I have no issue with wanting to provide the best quality content available, but most who use this particular software are doing this for personal enjoyment rather than a professional living. Make it too complicated or unwieldy to use, and they will look elsewhere.
As Ivy alludes to, not all of us have or can afford extremely powerful systems. Many cannot afford large memory GPUs for rendering purposes. The horsepower needed for animating in Iray is beyond most of our means.
If anything, Iray is the "advanced" rendering engine and 3DL the basic one. To add to the cost either in time or finances for using a basic process is backwards. It would be like requiring special tools and add ons for those who only need a stock showroom car to get to and from work to accommodate those who customise their vehicles for high performance use.
I am with you and the OP on this I have seen a lot of nice items that I have not purchased because they are Iray only, and I have saved quite a lot because of it.. And that there are only a few vendors now that I will buy from because they go that extra yard and cater for us that use 3DL..
I think if a Titan X cost $100 or/and everyone here could easily convert iray mats to 3DLight no one would be crying.
Kyoto kid, I'm sure you don't want an amateur result in your works, so probably is only your opinion that DAZ Studio " is a free hobbyist's/enthusiast's programme we are talking about".
I like both 3DLight and Iray (and 3DL is complicated without a lot of training). They are differents ways for differents results. And everyone has to put in the place of the creators. For both sistems a lot of time is required. And everyone has the right of be paid for their time and work (and not only no-creators people).
* I apologize if I have offended someone
+ 1. Nvidia cards are not working with many Macs, and I won't buy a PC, plus an expensive Nvidia card, just to use Iray. This may all be different for professionals, but I am a hobbyist. After all, I think there are other ways to continue this hobby.
EDIT: Kyoto Kid, I just read your text about the hobbyist/professional question, and I absolutely agree!
BTW, I never believed that a high end equipment automatically makes better art. Imo the stone age cave paintings belong to the greatest pieces of art ever done by humans...
As folks may have noticed, I have a penchant for trying to convert X only products into the other renderer.
Most of the time it works fine. The biggest problem I run into is when you have loads of surfaces that have opacity maps, because I then have to go by hand and add the maps to each and every surface. ugh.
The other problem is going from Iray to 3DL skin, but that doesn't happen super often. (I find human skin incredibly fiddly to get to my satisfaction in 3DL)
The main reason I don't make any 3DL materials any more is that it's virtually impossible to get 3DL to render hard surfaces as good as Iray, which just makes those materials looking dull, unless you use UberSurface2 whcih then will require that product to be owned to use the product, which just will generate a lot of returns
Other kind of materials, like multiple layers of glass with lights, reflections etc, just takes forever to render in 3DL, I mean forever, if you want a result that is even close to what Iray does (and that's Iray running CPU only).
But then you're just making the 3DL conversion even more complicated and time consuming. Meaning it's even less worth it.
Missing the point...
It's not the renderer that's the problem, it's the base shader used by Studio that creates the problem, so blaming it on the renderer is not helping matters.
And yet modern cars do require special tools for the average person to be able to work on them instead of taking them to a specialist for repairs. Ask me how I know. ;) Any way we look at it, there are going to be issues that need dealt with to get the results we want.
You're right -- it wouldn't be "hard" but it would be a considerable amount of work to get the edge cases. You could certainly do it for the main cases.
It's easier to go from Iray to 3DL because 97% of Iray shaders are based on the Uber shader master, giving a lot more consistency than when converting 3DL to Iray. The other 3% is mostly the nVidia shader examples, and the odd sprinking of experimental shaders that use their own MDL definitions.
I think one problem is that there were relatively few vendors who could design a good 3DL shader to begin with. Now with the market going Iray, it's becoming something of a lost art. Any automated conversion is unlikely to look as good as the Iray version, so it could be a source of customer complaints. Not that this shouldn't stop someone from tackling this, but there are definitely diminishing returns in such a converter.
The point is that, wherever you are placing the blame, the sharers and textures have to be redone to support both renderers, and since one is used only by a minority of users, there's no motivation to support it.
I think that might be one problem people keep bouncing off... you don't need a perfect converter, or a 100% converter. Just being able to batch-convert, say, a huge architectural thing into 3DL that looks mostly right would be a huge benefit.
If I had the skills to script, and felt like running the gauntlet of getting something released here, I'd probably do it as a core converter, then something for metals based on reflection (rather than specular only), and then if I was feeling _very_ ambitious, something for skin (though I'd be inclined to just leave that to existing stuff, like Amazing skins).
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But if it's viable for DAZ (I guess it must be if they demand 3DL shaders for DOs) why isn't it for the vendors then? (just curious)
How about the needs of the customers that want 3DL? Even if they could get 3DL addons, under the current conditions they would still forced to pay for the Iray shaders included with the product which they may not want. From their point of view that would be "idiotic".
An acceptable solution for all might be selling the products with textures only, and then sell the different shaders as addons at prices that are viable for the vendors (less demand, higher price).
That could be solved by DAZ buying UberSurface2 and including it with DS. Or creating something similar.
True, but 3DL is good for a lot of other things that renders quite fast. It's often better for toons than Iray, for example, IMO.
I found it to be the other way around for me that 3dl render much faster than Iray. I get better show control with 3dl I can customize spotlight much better and when it comes to rendering.. its the amount of vram that can be used before Daz iray changes to the cpu to render because you used all the vram.. that Is when the renders really slow down.. and if you start knocking off iterations to speed up render times you loose quality to the render getting fireflys and etc.mise well be using 3dl anyway after that
I have 64 gigs of cpu RAM .But I only have 6 gigs of gpu vram. even with 2 980 cards which does not take long to exceed with expansive sets & a few characters
Not exactly; they have always required 3DL shaders for items that were intended to work in DAZ Studio as well as Poser, from what I understand, since it has been the only render engine that DAZ Studio has supported up until they added support for Iray. It may not make a significant difference to the PA doing the DO, since those are buyouts that DAZ has to make money back on.
...scene rendered in 3DL. Notice reflection in windows and hardness of the stone/metallic surfaces. Cars in everyday real life often do not look like they do in adverts or auto show pics.
I think 3DL does just fine and I didn't even use the Shader mixer or mess with RSL in this (oh, and I didn't use UberSurface as I do not have the product, but did use AoA's SSS for the skin).
BTW. this took just over 14 min to render wheras the Iray test took about 2 hours at the same resolution (and all surfaces were manually converted to Iray before rendering).
...OK I'll gve you that as I come from a different era when cars were much simpler and any owner who has a bit of mechanical aptitude could perform much of the maintenance that today can only be done by the dealer or a certified mechanic (in some cases doing your own work today can void the warranty).
To put it another way, 3DL is like the base standard no frills model "Joe Everyday" drives to work while Iray is the high performance souped up model "John Racer" takes out ot the track, yet the latter is being made easier to "handle" than the former.
OK, but why does it then make a difference economically when they sell the product themselves? Do they generally make more money on a DAZ buyout than by selling the product themselves?
Over the long term, especially when you consider potential back catalog sales? No. But Daz will pay for buyouts up front which is money NOW.
...as I mentioned (it was late so I probably didn't word it quite right) I have no complaint with vendors wanting to produce the highest quality content they can. I wouldn't expect anything less and I tend to avoid purchasing poorly modelled/textured products when I see them (and yes, there is some out there). What I am getting at is Iray is pretty much a professional grade rendering solution (it is also used by professionals who work with software like 3DS Max, Maya, and Rhino3D). However 3DL (Renderman) is capable of creating incredibly stunning images as well and I have seen many here in the years I have been involved with this.
A couple years ago, I took a portfolio of some of my work to a presentation before a panel of pro CG artists. This was about a year before Iray was introduced, so everything was rendered in 3DL. They were extremely impressed with what they saw without the knowledge that I did all the pieces with hobbyist 3D software. When I told them that, they were more impressed. Yeah there were no pictures of ultra super shiny cars or polished surfaces (well one actually did have a highly polished floor). Most did not even employ UberEnvironment GI due to the huge hit in render time it casued (used a trick learned from the old LDP2).
So yes, it is how one uses the tools that makes the difference.
As I don't have, nor can afford a GPU with tonnes of VRAM (basically a Titan-X which alone costs almost as much as the system I built a few years ago), I look for what works the most efficiently with the setup I have. 3DL in Daz has undergone a good deal of performance improvement through the years, particularly most recently. True it is not "photoreal", however as I mentioned it can still produce some impressive results. The "weak point" with Iray in y opinion is skin and grass. I have seen scenes where the hard surfaced elements look photographic, but the characters in them look like rubber dolls (my Iray scenes included). In 3DL we have a very good relatively easy to use SSS shader and skin resources that help make characters look like they visually fit in the scene. For grass there is no shader available (Vray does have one but it is not transferrable) and this is evident in outdoor scenes unless you load it up with a lot of geometry and translucency which can easily exceed GPU memory and bogs render time down even further in CPU mode. For 3DL, there is a fairly affordable grass shader that looks real, allows for a wide variety of variation, follows ground contours, and doesn't have a huge impact on render time.
Many of us (self included) are not shader artists (though it appears we have to become so) as we don't have the proper tools, resources for those tools, expertise, or time. That seems to be the only surefire means to get proper 3DL shaders for newer content.
You do have Ubersurface it comes with DS.
Speaking as a customer, I would not want to but IRay or 3DL mats as a seperate pack for new products. I can understand doing that for older products but not new ones.
Speaking as a PA, I personally have no issue including both. But at the same time I can understand why some vendors may not be able to or not want to.
UberSurface 2, which doesn't come with DS, has several features that other 3Delight sahders lack - though soem of them are in the AoA SSS shader that does come with DS.
Me too, actually, and I lament the lack of readily available "no frills" cars on the lot at most car dealerships.
Iray is why I came back to Daz and why I intend on transferring to the new G3 models. If they focused on 3delight only and made a customer such as myself have to pay more money for the ability to use Iray in products I may change my mind.
If a script isn't your thing, maybe a basic tutorial would be worth its virtual weight in gold? I'd be grateful and I think others would too. I'd love some general principles to use when converting Iray to 3DL. Up to now, my main strategy when converting textures from an Iray-only model is to simply swap in 3DL tiling shaders. That works for some things (like chrome in a motorcycle), but there are times when I'd like to still use the look of the original textures (if that makes sense).
How fast 3DL is depends a lot on the setup in my experience, but I agree, generally it's quite fast. Iray seems (to me, not sure if it's generally true) to take about the same time to render no matter the setup which is inconvenient IMO. The need for expensive graphics cards to speed up Iray is also an issue yes. To make decent use of Iray (fast, VRAM enough for semi-large scenes) I'll have to spend about $2000 on a new machine. That's quite a lot.
Well, basic tips:
Opacity maps aren't going to transfer right. So be sure to have copies or something to set Opacity properly.
I recommend US or US2, if you have it. Keep an eye on bump and displacement values, since those tend to default to -.1 - +.1
Metals are easily captured by looking at Raytraced reflections.
If you are stumped by specular (which I've gotten weird results with), I'd recommend finding a shader that's in the same ballpark and looking at it's settings. Like, you want glossy wood? Apply glossy wood to something and check the values. Or apply glossy wood and switch the maps back.
Skin is another story. I'm still struggling to get consistently decent skin.
Also 3DL seems to like really weirdly high lighting values. Again, struggling with it. 3DL seems to require a bit more unintitive learning than, IMO, Iray has.