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Precisely. By suggesting the user has the same experience with the 3DL shader under Iray it more than implicitly suggests we are not artists, but merely just pushing buttons to re-create what someone else already created.
Of course there's nothing stopping any user from manually converting a 3DL shader to an Iray shader, but that assumes a level of competency not every user has. Listing Iray materials when there are none does not help a customer determine if a product is technically suitable for them. Any reasonable person would assume the wording for the product in question means Iray-specific shaders are included, and if that's what a user is looking for, they are not getting their money's worth.
I hope my comments weren't misconstrued, and I feel badly if they were. I was trying to point out that a 3DL shader under Iray lacks the functionality to make reliable alterations in the rendered appearance -- every time the scene is rendered, the shader is automatically converted using parameter settings you have no control over. I was responding to the other poster's "if it looks good, why are you complaining?" excuse as subjective. Most auto-converted 3DL surfaces do not look good to me, and I think to a lot of people. This is why D|S has a completely different shader network for Iray to begin with, and why it's puzzling that customer service would consider duplicating 3DL shaders and calling them Iray as acceptable rationale.
Converting 3DL to Iray, the result can range from totally fine to what the heck. And unless you convert and really take a look at what the settings are, you don't know for sure if they are as good as they can be.
Like, for example, metals are _not_ going to look right until you've tweaked them. Just... no. You either need to set Metallicity up or properly set specular/glossy or use top coat fresnel. I can't recall any of that happening with autoconvert.
And while I don't expect thousands of hours and custom crafted shaders, if I'm buying content that's 'for' Iray, I expect a reasonable effort at making the shaders look as good as they can be.
Not 'eh, that doesn't stink.'
I suspect you would probably see fewer items with both sets of shaders if DAZ3D changed to require actual Iray shaders, simply because some folks may not want to learn the new render engine to figure out how to make them look the same in both.
That's fine by my, then we would at least be sure of what we are getting. I totally get a vendor not understanding or wanting to understand IRAY settings, I am still figuring them all out myself, just be honest about it.
If you aren't going to competently put out a product that does X, then... don't.
Or Daz could partner them with somebody. From what I understand, they already do that in other cases where one PA doesn't necessarily have the skills to do skin and morph and whatever.
I start to get the impression that another factor of this confusion can be found in the used terminology.
In the product descriptions as well as in the DAZ Studio material presets labeling the "render engine" and its corresponding "Shader Language" are not used in a consistent way.
-> Iray material presets that include RSL bricks are wrongly labeled as MDL.
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There are two render engines included in DAZ Studio
- 3Delight
- Iray
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There are two Shader Languages
RSL = Renderman Shading Language
https://renderman.pixar.com/resources/RenderMan_20/shadingLanguage.html
MDL = Material Definition Language
http://www.nvidia.com/object/material-definition-language.html
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3Delight uses RSL.
Iray was designed to be used with MDL.
As far as I understand it DAZ Studio Iray can render RSL with the help of an autoconversion.
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If you look at the Smart Content tab for most products you can see two sets of presets:
RSL and MDL.
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Shader Mixer Test with the Jacket of the Bachelorette Party Outfit
- In the Smart Content tab: Click on the MDL material preset of the Jacket Material 04.
- In the Surface tab: make sure the Jacket 01 surface is selected
- Access the Shader mixer by selecting Window / Panes (Tabs) / Shader Mixer
- In the Shader Mixer select File / Import from Scene
-> Now you have the Material of the Jacket 01 surface open and can see with what kind of Bricks (Nodes) the material is built.
In this specific example without any doubt all bricks are RSL.
However the material preset in the Smart content tab was labeled as MDL (!!!)
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My impression:
-> Labeling materials presets that include RSL bricks as MDL is wrong.
RSL is not part of the MDL shader language.
- If a material is created based on RSL bricks intended to be rendered with Iray the corresponding preset could be labeled as ICM "IRAY compatible material".
or any of the corresponding terms other users suggested...
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To me it matters very much if an Iray material is built with RSL or MDL bricks.
I agree with other posters in this thread that asked for precise information and labeling on the store and product pages about what type of Iray material is included.
My additional concern is that the same labeling is also used for the DAZ Studio product material presets.
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Very informative thanks.
Hey, I don't know if you knew this or not, but you don't actually have to go apply the Iray Uber Base first in order to use a shader preset for it. Shader presets call upon, and apply, the base shader the preset was saved for. Maybe that will save you a little time?
+1000 to the sentiment that if the ad copy says Iray Materials and 3Delight Materials, there had better not be an exact duplicate of the 3DL materials in the Iray folder. Saying that the 3Delight materials auto convert to acceptable results in the Iray render engine would let everyone know what they are gettiing.
Really no need to feel bad, I know that yours was a response to an earlier comment and I was in agreement with you. All I was saying is that there probably is a gulf between the skills of some members of this forum and others and I don't pretend to be one of those with the comprehensive skill set. Nevertheless, I do what I can to tinker with settings - materials for example - to make my renders look the way I want them to. I don't make any claims to be an artist, I'm just a hobbyist: I dress up 3D dolls and place them in fantasy settings. In my youth I would have been drawing amateurish cartoons in notepads but I worked for 30 years with computers and found a hobby through the technology.
The reason I started this thread is because I don't think it is good enough to assume that customers will just accept "it will render ok" and be deprived of the facilities to make it look better than just ok. Or, at least, better in their subjective view. That's why I convert 3DL materials to IRay Uber and do the best I can with that. But don't sell me DS Default (3DL) and claim that it is a separate and optimised IRay material.
I wondered about whether I needed to apply the Uber shader first - thanks for the tip. I never got around to experimenting by applying the shaders without the Uber first.
By the way, I mentioned that I was in the process of "rolling my own" with a product I bought with specifically only 3DL shaders and I also mentioned that I was using your IRay shaders. Have to say that I'm very happy with the results. Here's a couple of examples:
I'm confused by this 'no need to convert a 3DL Surface to iRay Surface with the UberIRay preset because in using iRay shaders, e.g. MEC4D's vol 2 iRay I do indeed have to apply that UberIray Preset before applying the MEC4D iRay presets or they don't successflly apply.
I think this might be the difference between applying shaders and applying a material preset. I've never had a material preset need me to first apply the correct shader. I have had it happen - sometimes - with a Shader preset. That said, a fair number of shader presets *do* also apply the correct shader. I don't have Mec4D's sets (yet) but most of the others I have do apply the shader together with the rest of the preset settings.
My experience has been that if I have an iray version of a prop in the scene and then import a non iray version into it. I can't copy/paste the shader/texture over from the iray version till I apply the uber shader to the new one.
OK, so I was sort of merging a material preset and a shader preset in my head as the same although they do seem somewhat ambiguous, a material preset must be a superset of a shader preset or shader I guess. I know I can save a material preset and it will save many shaders in it but when I save a shader preset it can have only one shader in it.
Thanks.
I'll have to give it a try, but I know I have shaders that absolutely won't work unless being applied to and replacing existing Iray materials. I've tried applying the shaders, and wondered why nothing was happening. Then realized I hadn't converted the object to Iray. As someone else mentioned, Mec4D's PBS/PBR shaders only work on Iray materials.
Not talking about copy-paste. That I agree you need to apply the shader first, but if you're applying a material or (most) shader presets directly from the materials folder(s) in your library, the correct shader is usually automatically applied.
That is true with sets that are applying complete materials - with soemthign like the Mec4D sets it is a kit, you apply the base shader, then you apply a preset that adjusts some properties to set the overall look, then perhaps another to adjust gloss or to apply a different normal map and so on - in those cases you usually do have to apply a base first as there may be different bases using the same tweaking presets.
It's not really ambiguous at all; the material preset is usually specific to the object that was selected when you saved the preset — it contains all the names of the surfaces on the object, so it won't work for another object that uses different surface names. Shader presets don't specify surface names at all — the preset gets applied to every surface you select. Note that if you only select the object but not any surfaces, nothing happens when you try to apply the preset.
Note also that you don't have to save every single parameter when you save a preset, you can select or deselect individual bits of the material or shader in the dialog with all the tickboxes that comes up during a save. This might be the cause of the presets that don't convert from 3Delight to Iray, as someone mentioned a few posts upthread.
thanks
I knew I should have clarified that there may be some exceptions. Dang it! I don't have Mec's shaders so I didn't have them to check. Basically I scrolled through all the shader presets I have installed, for Iray and 3Delight and I applied a preset to a primitive sphere. On everything I have installed, the base shader changed just by using a preset. Not saying the results were correct however, just that a result was obtained. Ammend my earlier statement to say "in most cases" and we have it.
@Marble-cheers! Thanks so much.
Sorry to go OT on the thread.
A couple of days ago, I tried to apply OOT's IrayPair Hair shader to hair with 3Delight materials. It crashed DS. And of course, I didn't save the scene before doing this, so I lost a lot of work on that character—so much so, I went a different direction. My fault for not saving more frequently, (Not the first, either. I keep a notecard in view with "When was the last time you saved your WORK? SAVE IT NOW!!" written on it.)
But it does underscore why it's important for us to make sure our materials are Iray before applying the shaders. We're taking a chance on losing a chunk of our work if we apply an Iray shader to 3Delight materials—unless it's a shader we use frequently enough to know Iray conversion is part of the process.
Which brings us back to the topic. When a customer applies an Iray Materials preset to an object, he/she shouldn't have to verify it is indeed Iray before applying an Iray shader to one or more of the material zones. Nor should a customer ever have to apply the Iray Uber Base to materials applied using an Iray Materials preset.
I think the assumption here is that Iray Material = Iray Shader, which is not always the case. The reason I say this is because Zev0 specifically calls out both Material and Shader presets in his new character Molly.
Perhaps. I personally see shaders and materials as two separate things.
I'm simply stating that Iray Materials should use Iray parameters, and 3Delight Materials should use 3Delight parameters. To call a material preset "Iray Materials" when the parameters are 3Delight is unacceptable to me, and apparently to a lot of other customers, (a conclusion I've come to based on the comments in this thread.)