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Daz iRay Uber to Shader Mixer Bug?

omnifreakeromnifreaker Posts: 71
in Daz Studio Discussion

Hello--

I am trying to bring the daz uber material into Shader Mixer but I am unable to import and apply the iRayUberMaterial into Shader Mixer while maintaining the same appearance.

- Apply the attached shader preset (I saved dsa so I could read text values).

- Use Shader Mixer -> Import From Scene to create the network.

- Select a new material and Apply the network material (from Shader Mixer)

I have not altered the imported network in any way but when I render, the scatter (Volume) response is vastly different and I see no change in parameter values.  The parameter groups are also slightly different.

For example in this image, I import from the sphere on the right then apply to sphere on left. If I look at shader presets for these 2 they look very different when I expect them to be (or at least render) the same.  Am I missing something?  It seems I am missing some secret sauce...

 I am in DS 4.12.1.118

Thanks for taking a look!

Comments

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,846

    The issue is the "Import From Scene" function, it only works "right" if the shader you are importing was actually built in the SM to start with.
    Compiled shaders trigger an algorithm that attempts to recreate the shader in SM bricks, your own RSL shaders are to complicated for it which is probably why they are blocked from loading, the 3DL default surface shader has never imported properly since day one, breaks reflection maps and swaps min and max for displacement.
    Now it sounds like it can't handle MDL files either, which is what Iray Uber comes as, as do all the other Iray shaders supplied with DS4.

  • omnifreakeromnifreaker Posts: 71

    Thanks for he response.  If anyone has a functional Shader Mixer (.dbm) version of the DzIrayUberMaterial, please share here :).

    Thanks!

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,868
    omnifreaker said:

    Thanks for he response.  If anyone has a functional Shader Mixer (.dbm) version of the DzIrayUberMaterial, please share here :).

    Thanks!

    You'd need to ask Daz for that, it isn't something anyone else could share without prior permission.

  • omnifreakeromnifreaker Posts: 71

    Hmm.  Looks like the import does work if I import, save scene, then re-open.  Ugh.

  • f7eerf7eer Posts: 117
    Bejaymac said:

    Now it sounds like it can't handle MDL files either, which is what Iray Uber comes as, as do all the other Iray shaders supplied with DS4.

    Importing MDL into the Shader Mixer works perfectly well, if you include Nvidia vMaterials. You need to download it, and need either to change the folder the Shader Mixer points to, or include the vMaterials folder in the path the Shader Mixer already points to.

    I think it points to a horrible place: C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4 Public Build\shaders\iray

    (That's for the beta channel. Nobody should be putting data like this in the program file folder! It should be in the app data folder or somewhere else.)

    Change Shader Mixer->Edit->MDL Directory Manager->Base Paths to a folder which includes both 1) the Nvidia vMaterials folder vMaterials, and the DAZ MDL stuff, from C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4 Public Build\shaders\iray

    vMaterials is available from Nvidia at https://developer.nvidia.com/vmaterials

    I use

    D:\Public\Documents\mdl

    and it has two subdirectories: daz and nvidia.

    daz contains a copy of C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4 Public Build\shaders\iray

    nvidia contains a copy of vMaterials

    You have to be careful to update the copy of daz every time anything changes in the daz iray folder.

    I had to do all this in order to create a two-sided shader. The built-in DAZ two sided shaders don't work anymore, although they apparently did at one time.

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,846
    edited September 2020
    omnifreaker said:

    Hmm.  Looks like the import does work if I import, save scene, then re-open.  Ugh.

    Did you change the shader name in the SM, if not then odds are DS is using the Iray Uber when you reload the scene.

    The MDL files that come with DS all have a "copyright 2015" tag in them, if they haven't been altered in the past 5 years, then it's possible some of the MDL bricks in the SM have been modified since then, which would explain the odd results you are getting.

    Post edited by Bejaymac on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,868
    Bejaymac said:
    omnifreaker said:

    Hmm.  Looks like the import does work if I import, save scene, then re-open.  Ugh.

    Did you change the shader name in the SM, if not then odds are DS is using the Iray Uber when you reload the scene.

    The MDL files that come with DS all have a "copyright 2015" tag in them, if they haven't been altered in the past 5 years, then it's possible some of the MDL bricks in the SM have been modified since then, which would explain the odd results you are getting.

    THe MDL files are MDL code, not Shader Mixer networks. They can be added to Sahder Mixer via a custom briick (e.g. by drag-and-drop) which just needs inputs and a root to take the outputs.

  • erikkellererikkeller Posts: 8

    My 2 cents,

    @omnifreaker it seems (to me), that the "new shader" command in Mixer creates an Ubershader minus the displacement and some other geometry parts, but I could be wrong here.

    When creating an MDL shader using a text.mdl file, always remember to add the directory your mdl-programs are stored in to the hierarchy as @f7eer wrote already.

    Regarding the vMaterials by NVIDIA, they are great but texture based. There is so much one can do using the procedural parts of MDL.

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