New Product Iray Only???
kocammy
Posts: 65
Is it just me or do a lot of the new products in the Daz shop only come with Iray material presets? I use 3Delight and don't see a lot of new product including 3Deligh material presets. Is 3Delight being squeezed out? That would be a bummer since this is a hobby for me and I'm not real interested in putting out the $$$s for a machine with the right graphics cards to run Iray effeciently. Is there a way to convert Iray material presets to 3Delight?
Am I wrong about the lack of 3Delight materials available on new products?
Thanks
Cammy
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Comments
There are alternate renderers, some of which are better than iRay.
Plus there are converter plugins.
Though really, you don't need to put down big bucks. Just look for an older GPU with a decent cuda count and amount of ram.
You can get a used 1070 on ebay for 250 bucks
Quite a few of the oldtimers still include 3DL presets, which is most appreciated and increases the chance of people like me and you buying their products;) A lot of the newcomers say it's not cost efficient, but IMO they simply don't know anything about making proper 3DL mats. And I've seen some horrible examples of so called 3DL mat presets being sold here, some even using the IRay Uber
As a 3DL user you have to be prepered to make your own conversions and presets, the DAZ originals still (mostly) have 3DL presets, but that's about all the support there is. Luckily there are people like Mustakettu85 and wowie that are in the process of upgrading 3DL just out of interest. They have released the aweSurface, which is a true pathtracer for scripted 3DL and is roughly 4 times faster than IRay with CPU rendering for similar realism. There is a commercial kit, which I recommend but you can find the aweSurface shader + a lot of other stuff for free in the freebies forum:) And, yeah, for the regular 3DL there are converters but I haven't tried them, as I do everything manually. Oh btw, the awe kit has an IRayUber to awe converter.
You are not wrong about most new products only having iray. Hopefully you are not right about Daz 'squeezing out' 3Delight, but I suppose only time will tell.
If you have the time and passion, you can either convert or retexture most sets. There are several tools that exist as Sven pointed out, but I don't have any of them yet, so I can't comment on their efficacy. There are an unknown number of people who are still using 3delight, for a variety of reasons (I usually say it's because my computer hates Iray, which is true, but the truth is the kind of art I like to do simply isn't achievable with the look of Iray. I can appreciate it, but I don't actually like it very much in and of itself. Anyway.)
You are not alone, and the tools are available :-)
https://www.daz3d.com/rssy-iray-to-3delight-converter-and-merchant-resource
https://www.daz3d.com/aweshading-kit-10-for-daz-studio
It may also not be DAZ's fault, maybe the PA chooses not to include 3DL materials. I know if I ever started selling my work here, I would not include them as I never use that renderer. Then again, I still purchase 3DL addons even though I only use Iray as I have no issues converting them.
Several PAs have indicated that they do not think it (3DL settings) is worth the investment of their time - totally understandable, time is money, after all, and they know their market. However, it makes me even more grateful when I find a vendor who does (Flipmode! I wishlisted everything!!!!!) and has even said that they still value 3Delight. My time is worth money to me, and I don't want to waste it, either. :-) I will only buy an iray-mat set if it is;
1) ridiculously cheap or;
2) so fantastically lust-worthy I must have it and retexturing is a labour of love.
(Which has saved me a lot of money, this March. Very little to tempt me.)
I don't think Daz is pushing out 3DL. You'll notice that all the Daz O products come with both iray and 3DL materials. Since Sickleyield and RiverSoft Art made RSSY Iray to 3Delight Converter And Merchant Resource, it's definitely been easier to justify not including 3DL materials (especially since some vendors want them to look the same as the Iray ones when rendered which is a huge task). The converter does a MUCH better job of 3DL mats than I can do for sure. If 3DL is your jam, I highly recommend picking it up.
Actually, of the most recent 12 DOs, none of the clothes do. (Possible some in the dragon-girl bundle, I didn't look). It certainly seems to be more of a hit-or-miss proposition, and far more so when you get into PA products. All the new DO shaders are Iray, obviously, so there is a limited back catalogue of ready-to-go shaders on Daz (and a few elsewhere, like Parrotdolphins!) and after that, you are on your own. As long as Daz carries the shaders, it's all good... but stuff does vanish, so who knows?
Problem I keep running into is thinking 'I'll totally do 3dl materials!' and then I start playing around with diffuse overlay or thin film and go... eeeenh.
LOL! I imagine, especially if you have a 'vision', working with something that doesn't look as vision-satisfying as what you've already accomplished would just be unsatisfying :-)
I am sure 3DL will simply naturally fade away, though possibly never vanish; newer PA's will have never worked with anything other than Iray, gradually everyone will be forced to upgrade machines (this is the longest I've had one last, now, I think it's nearly 3 years?)... and there will still be a stubborn, recidivist lot of us trading settings and tips in the background so we can play in our Wonderland. Oh, wait, that's kind of where we're at now...
I don't want to spend hundreds of hours, thousands (or more!) dollars and countless tears to upgrade to Iray, just so I can try to learn how to create things reminiscent of but never quite as charming as 3DL. PAs might have to (at least sometimes) just chase the money, but this is my hobby, and I want to just have fun. Besides, I'm still getting better at it!
I wonder if they realize that sometimes a person just doesn't want that utltra-real look. Sometimes the 3DL shaders and add-ons do the job someone wants.
Dana
Moved to The Commons as it's a question not a product suggestion
3Delight has had physically correct pathtracing for many many years, long before IRay... it's kind of odd that the users have to rely on other end users to make that available, DAZ has not upgraded the 3DL implementation for a very long time, it's basically the same as 2010 or thereabout when I started fiddling with it:/
AWE Surface is very similar to the IRayUber, having for example thin coat/top coat with independent tiling and so on...maybe some day a vendor realizes this and starts making some presets...well one can always dream...
Sven: The problem is that any render base takes time and effort to become really familiar with it and to maintain skills.
AWE Surface is nifty, but trying to get up to speed with it is... not a small endeavor.
I mean, I love 3dl for toon stuff, and for microdisplacement, but I've never liked any of the skin I've seen rendered in it. Ever. No, not that one, either. Or that one. ;)
So that discourages me.
Thankfully, there's no reason 3dl users can't make use of tools and adapt things to their interest (or Reality users, or Octane users, or Vue, or any number of other engines)
True that! I only discovered 3D art and Daz Studio well after Iray was already established. And I've only been a PA for about a year now, as such I never learned how to work with 3DL or to create mats for 3DL and every time I've tried I've gotten extremely disappointed and frustrated at what I was seeing. Like you, I've never seen skin rendered in 3DL where I was anywhere close to happy with how it looked.
I'm still learning a lot about Iray, but I've at least been able to get some decent results and have gotten closer to being happy with skin. If I was an artist that created environments and other non-organic objects, I'd probably be a lot less hesitant to try and delve into learning how to create 3DL mats. But since the vast majority of my products are "character-centered", it's extremely difficult for me to even consider putting in the massive amounts of time and energy into learning how to create organic materials for 3DL that would come anywhere close to being something I'd be happy with distributing to the customers.
I have a product on the way that has both 3DL and Iray shaders and to be honest: it was quite the struggle! The 3DL shaders took me way longer to get right, even though I have been using them before iray came available for DS. For a vendor it is always a toss-up if it's worth the investment of time. I wanted to offer both shaders as it felt a good prop set to experiment with and I like to challenge myself. (and sometimes regret it lol)
I'm curious for the feedback and how many people will eventually buy it because of the included 3DL shaders, but that's a hard thing to measure.
I include 3DL mats in mine - but it does take a lot of work now that I'm not as used to it. (Big thanks to Linwelly for helping me in that department lately)
I started with 3DL rendering way back when and loved it - slowly moved over to Iray once that came out (except for toons) and now I'm out of touch. So my 3DL settings only use the basic 3DL shader.
I should probably learn Awe shader or more of the Uber shader but I'm not sure what everyone has access to (I can't go including presets that need a 3rd party product that not everyone has).
Its up to the PA as to what to include in their sets and not every new PA has used 3Delight.
The first iteration of DS 4.9 included an update to 3delight version 12.0.27. I recall Iray in the 4.8 beta came out in March 2014, so 4.9 was released maybe by the end of 2014 or so. I don't remember exactly when, but I do remember there was a lot of talk about how much faster 3DL was with v4.9.
I agree that skins and hair are a major challenge, no matter the render engine:) And I'll take what you say as a challenge. Do note that aweSurface is still under development, lot of improvements in the latest version, and more to come, wowie has already managed to quadruple renderingspeed and improve quality (less noise) since the first version, so going in the right direction:)
@Sylvan, @Silent Winter, @Daywalker Design and all PA:s
Making physically realistic 3DL materials using the current implementation and included shaders/lights is not easy, UE2 is old tech and doesn't really work well with any shader, if you go for realism. So I can understand how that feels. Thus, my honest opinion is: DAZ should advertise aweSurface and scripted pathtracing more! One major reason being, those who don't have those NVidia cards can make realistic renders 4 times faster than with IRay, which is a lot.
The aweSurface is free, and making presets to share for free is allowed. So I guess making presets in a commercial pack would be ok? Actually I've been thinking about making some stuff to help people getting started, as I fully well know how much time it takes to get into something like this. I've been learning aweSurface since the release last September, and there are still a number of aspects I haven't looked into yet;)
This said, everytime I look at a product and read 3DL mats included, I get happy and atleast look at the promos and read through the description, and if I have the money and think I could use it I buy it. If the description says optimized for IRay, it really has to be something I've never seen before or extraordinary in some other way for me to purchase it. I know I can convert stuff if needed, but some of the new products don't have enough material zones for it to work in a reasonable amount of time, for example an electric prop would have only one zone and rely on emissive maps for the lights or panels, such things. Or it uses a custom shader that don't translate easily...
Yes you're right, it improved render times, but didn't improve render quality or introduce some new groundbreaking technology;) That's why I said it has not changed much since I started using it. It kind of baffles me that pathtracing has been around for so long, but not to DS users until last September. Well now we have it along with the dumbed down version. I love to be able to do blistering fast renders if I need to;)
From what I gathered the free awe surface is the basic, the full is for sale
https://www.daz3d.com/aweshading-kit-10-for-daz-studio
I'd be surprised if Daz push it at all its a PA product, it wouldn't really be fair to the other vendors to give priroity to just one PA, and they never pushed the Ubersurface 2 shader when it came out so I can't really see them doing it with this.
Personally I think twice about buying a product that supports 3dl because I wonder how much the vendor had to increase the price to make it worth it to them, and I don't like paying for something I'll most likely not use.
The shader is free, the commercial pack has some scripts and other stuff included.
I can't see it either to be honest:)
I hear you, that's why I very rarely buy new products.
I think what L'Adair is trying to point out is that 3DL has always been capable of far more than what has been implemented in the DAZ Studio interface. A lot of the features that are handled in Scripted 3DL are far more than what the average person would want to know about, hence it not seeming like there have been any updates in a significant period of time. Put another way, I believe that a majority of the updates that have been made to it since 2010 have been to support a rendering style more akin to what they added with Iray than what most people think of when you say 3Delight.I hope not too soon. ;)
Right now both 3Delight and Iray have their own strength and weaknesses, so imo it would be way too early to cut off 3Delight.
I don't think it should be cut off at all, but I am aware I am in the minority. Everyone wants things to look real - I was never a fan of photorealism. :-P I am too influenced by Romanticism, comic books, and fantasy book cover art from the nineties! :-)
Bottom line is the majority of users here are spoiled as am I. they want things done for them and if they aren't, they pass on it. I have done lots of 3D work in the larger 3D community outside of our little DS/poser bubble where you develop everything in a modeling app and create textures from scratch. You don't learn if you don't try
If a user is so invested in a certain render engine, then take the time to learn how to set up materials, shaders and surfaces. I prefer Iray, but I still tweak settings for nearly every object/figure I use in a scene and I import tons of simple .OBJs that have nothing more than a diffuse texture at times, so I have to compensate for that including making new bumps, normals, spec maps myself. IMO all this is part of the creative process
There are many more renderers out there than just Iray and 3DL and you can get a daz scene into most of them with some work. I wonder why talented coders don't develop plugins for other renderers since apparently the SDK is there for them to do so. Here are the top 25 renders for 2019 and 3DL is on the list as is Iray. I would kill for a plugin to use Marmoset, Maxwell or keyshot
https://all3dp.com/1/best-3d-rendering-software/
It's not necessarily about being spoiled (although I don't understand people who use characters out of the box... what's up with that? ;-) ) I think it's a matter a allocation of resources, and time is precious. For lots of people, this is a hobby. It isn't going to feed your kids, make a car payment, or even mow the lawn. Of course if you are spending money on it you want it to do what you need/want it to do. You may not have a lot of free time to give up to learn a new skill on top of what you have already spent in time and money. I know I feel guilty for all the time I carve out to spend making pictures, when I could be doing something useful like washing dishes, mending clothes, spending actual talking time with my family (other than musing about skin textures and light settings!) or any of a host of 'real world' projects that cry for my attention (like building a house). If I didn't feel guilty, it wouldn't be my vice, I suppose. :-D
Yes, I've heard the mantra, "If you don't build it from scratch, you're just a dilettante." Umm, yeah - it's called a hobby. (Ocasionally, also interchangeable with obsession.) However, modelling is not my obsession - the art is. I have hand-ground pigments to use for re-creating medieval art. I can do that - it's time consuming, and often expensive. However, if I want to paint a picture, sometimes what I just want is a pre-made tube of paint :-) In this case, 3DL is my preferred paints, and I will be sad if the merchant discontinues them, and I really hope they don't.
PersonaIly, am quite pleased that I have learned to do so many things in Daz with no background in 3D-art, attained new programs I am slowly learning to use, and managed to produce pictures that look kind of like what I saw in my mind's eye when I began. I do mourn for the programs I have not learned (Oh, Maya... what was I supposed to do with you?) and stared at blankly, and the techno-talk I still don't quite comprehend. I spend hours as it is to tweak every surface, and frequently make my own textures et al in first GIMP, then PS - but I have not entered the world of weird shader-webs, although I accidentally click on them sometimes in Filter Forge. I cobble shapes and freebies sourced from a dozen sites. However, I draw the line at not having fun, and I know when I'm not having it. :-) Hex made me cry, (what an aptly named program!) and I haven't had the time to even finish watching a tutorial for Blender. Luxrender was painful, and I never even got Reality to work (no, seriously, all it ever did was ask me for my registration code... every time.) I don't think that part of the world is meant for me at this time in my life, and I just can't feel bad about not being to be and do everything.
Well, that became rant-ish, my apologies! My point was I think your bottom line is skewed - it isn't always laziness, or an unwillingness to learn. It's an appreciation for tools that do what you want them to do, and save time rather than costing it on top of money, when many have endless supplies of neither.
Most artists (PA's) definitely make products to help pay bills and put food on the table. I personally have been making a living for two years now doing nothing but selling daz products. I know many of the customers also make money by producing images for stock art, books, websites, etc. Daz products can be used for commercial reasons and not just personal, and for good reason. While some purchase products and make art from them as a hobby, the focus of the topic is why PA's only include Iray and I think that has already been answered.
As stated before, a PA will look at a product they intend to sell and will usually only include what will be worth their time to do so. Making anything overly complicated or going out of their way to make a few customers happy may mean being late on their bills. The majority of artists use Iray and it shows in sales. I'm sure the majority of the ones that do use 3DL convert the materials either manually or through add-ons like stated previously by other commentors.
It seems like the argument is time and money, one does it because of that, the other wants the opposite because of that. Asking certain PA's to compromise would be doing you more than a favor, they would be technically throwing money away to get you to use their product. Products on Daz are insanely cheap compared to the rest of the 3D market so time is very precious to PA's here at daz. If you do this as a hobby though, and don't get paid for the time you put in, then why not spend more time learning than shopping? Only way to grow as an artist, hobbyist or not, is to learn new techniques, methods, and skills.
Could you provide a more detailed reason why you choose not to use Iray and some of your work that could not be done with Iray. I understand you like the painted and comic-book look but Iray is just as capable of producing such a look with products such as the Oso Toon Shader.
Herschel Hoffmeyer;
First of all - congratulations for making a living doing something which I assume you enjoy! Always a wonderful thing to hear :-) But... good heavens! I'm not asking anyone to make anything for me - nowhere did I say that! - I just was hoping that 3DL wasn't going to be shuffled off. In Daz terms, I am a consumer, not a vendor, and I made no comments about vendors. I fully understand, as I said above in my original post, that the time will come when no vendor probably even uses 3DL, so I understand why they wouldn't support it - they'd probably barely be aware it existed. Of course I prefer buying products that support 3DL - it saves me time, which I have precious little of, and it is my right as a consumer - hobbyist or professional - to prioritize my balance of time and money, just as it is yours as a creator. I hope that is now clear? Or is it the idea of a hobbyist valuing their time that you object to? I hope that is not what you meant. I almost feel like I should apologize for apparently not being your idea of a valid customer... because I don't sell my art? I didn't realize that was a prerequisite for shopping here. Or creating something in the first place. Or making a comment about something. That's a thicket of implications, isn't it?
What I am objecting to is the primary characterization of FSMC's argument is that anyone who does not simply suck it up is spoiled, or too lazy to learn anything. I do not agree, rather strenuously, in fact.
As far as Iray in particular, I think the arguments against have been made numerous times in a number of threads, but I suppose it never hurts to lay it out again, from my POV. a) Money. I would be required to invest additional money for purchasing shaders and tools specific to Iray. b) Money. I would have to upgrade my computer, as it appears to have serious issues with Iray (if I miss an Iray surface, it seems to be a 50-50 chance of crashing, or simply hanging eternally on render). c) Time - if I do not purchase the shaders to upgrade existing sets, I will have to re-create every texture. Tweaking is fun and challenging - redoing whole sets doesn't thrill me, just as I assume many vendors feel as well. d) Time - I would have to relearn a massive part of my continuing learning curve - lighting, especially, as it simply does not function the same way as 3DL. Could I? Yes I'd like to think there's enough life left to me that I could, but why should I if it isn't gaining me some kind of benefit? e) Time. I do like to integrate new tools and techniques, as I can afford them or manage to acquire skills - but if I keep stopping to reinvent my wheel I will not produce anything, and I like to make pictures, they are both my positive reinforcement and the primary motivator for everything I learn. I also disagree with the not-so-subtle notion that having a preference for 3DL, or wanting (which is a far cry from demanding) something from a marketplace or a program, means I am not willing to learn or grow as an artist, hobbyist or otherwise. If that were true, my computer would simply be a vehicle for email. I think it does an immense amount of disservice to everyone here who is self-taught to imply that because they don't like something, that it means they just aren't putting enough effort in. ... 'why not spend more time learning than shopping?'... wow. Thanks. That's a classic ad hominem attack, so I'll just ignore it and charitably assume that maybe that didn't come off the way you intended. If people didn't shop, who would you and others be selling to? I get that you don't think I'm a 'real' customer, but an argument against shopping when you make your living selling products here... seems just a little counter-intuitive.
I do not do comics or cartoons (the set of chibi-style characters in my desktop not-withstanding). That's not to say I won't ever - I like to leave my options open! - but when I say comic books I am referring to cover artists, like Vallejo for example. That's entirely my fault for not being sufficiently specific! Yes, you can run just about anything through a filter at the end, but for me filters come after my initial vision is realized. Postwork is only for something I genuinely cannot figure a way to do inside of Daz. Hence my final argument - I don't generally like the way Iray looks. Yes, there are a few pieces I've seen which almost change my mind, but... 90%+ of the time it just doesn't do it for me. Hyper-realism is not my goal, and it isn't what I like looking at for enjoyment. That's a purely visceral argument, but that doesn't make it any less true. And those maybe 10% of pieces that make Iray beautiful to my eyes, well... I can see something and admire it without being desirous - or able - to emulate them. Could I recreate the look of my work with Iray? A valid question! I would say - with heavy reservations - maybe? With a smidge of exaggerration, it might be like using a pen nib for watercolours... not designed for the purpose, but doable, in a pinch, with a lot more effort and frustration. Would it make my creative life somehow more worthwhile, to toil thusly? Clearly, I do not think so.