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Well to tell the truth it is not entirely correct to compare cycles with iray that way. The fact is that most daz assets use the iray uber shader, that's a general purpose shader designed to mimic most materials. To get full access to the iray features you need to deal with the shader mixer where you get nodes the same as cycles does. So the equivalent of the uber shader in cycles is the principled shader, where you get a single shader designed for anything. But there's a difference. The uber shader can do both pbr and non-pbr aka specular materials, whereas the principled shader is only designed for pbr materials.
Now you can force diffeomorphic to only use the principled shader so you don't have to deal with nodes. Just turn off the auto material method and select the principled shader both for opaque and refractive materials. This produces less accurate results for materials conversion because the principled shader can't do non-pbr materials. But it is much easier to edit and fix it yourself.
Some of what you say is, I think, discussed in relation to the original subject of this thread. So the point I was making about shaders, nodes, etc., being a big and complex subject is valid. That's not to say that good images can't be produced without ever going near the DAZ Studio brick system (or that awful images can be produced even with an in-depth knowledge of the same). Not committing to learning that big subject in its totality is still a long way from the "make art button" approach which is the impression I was getting from some of the comments.
Getting back to Blender, I would still like to see a good series of comparison renders using IRay and Cycles, produced by those familiar with both. I'd love to be convinced that the same (or better) quality is possible for a similar investment of time and effort (assuming the basics of both engines are understood).
Would this be only for Windows users? I'm using a Macintosh. If it would include the Mac OS, I'd be very interested. (I have read the entire thread.)
For now, yes it would only be for Windows.
But I will open source the custom Blender build so that anyone can decide to build Mac version for themselves (and distribute it)
Theoretically, it should work on Mac, provided:
Misc notes:
@marble I did some tests for materials conversion at diffeomorphic. All the materials in the basic G1-G8 packages convert quite fine at this time. While there may be issues with chromatic sss and dual lobe depending on the settings, so you may need to fix them in V8 and other characters. Of course when @JClave will commit his project we will get a perfect match with iray, at least for the uber shader that's what's used by daz assets anyway.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz-archive/issues/123
@JClave Thank you Jessub for the news, please keep us up to date with your progress.
With respect, @Padone, as far as I cen tell, there are no comparisons there. All the images are from Blender, right? And all are grainy and rather "flat" with respect to skin tones and details. While these images might be good for making your message clear in that discussion, they are not really intended to show off what Cycles can do - rather they show what the importer can do, not so?
What I'm getting at is that the images you have linked would be fine as a starting point. Just as when I load characters into an IRay scene. Once the scene is assembled I set about lighting it and tweaking the materials until I think it looks good enough to render. I'm pretty sure that it is possible to reproduce images of a similar quality to some of the better IRay renders (I've seen some on DevArt but the majority seem to be IRay renders) but I have not yet reached the tipping point where the payoff of switching to Blender for my scene renders is great enough if I can still use IRay for the same scene. When it becomes technically or financially prohibiltive to continue using IRay (i.e. when DAZ Studio scenes require RTX technology with at least 16GB VRAM) then the payoff for learning Cycles and the dreaded node system will be compelling.
No, they are always in pairs for comparison, first iray then cycles. The light is the default daz studio hdr and the images have the purpose to test materials.
@wolf359 I guess this will happen when pascal will be deprecated by iray .. so not too soon.
Now that Daz studio characters can be imported into Blender this is a worthwhile pursuit. I am finding that the translation of skin tone and hair using the latest Daz to Blender bridge lacks continuity. The characters look so much better in Daz. If they were to translate perfectly into Blender it would be a total game changer.
Is there any updates to this project or is this something Daz to Blender can do? It seems like this would be useful to beginners like me who are interested in learning Blender.
The project's dev decided not to pursue it. But Diffeomorphic is really very good at converting materials from DS/Iray to Cycles.
For the subject matter, Diffeomorphic which has been always improved can do pretty good job , even the latest DTB can also do it well.
Besides, your really don't have to pursue "100% same Iray effect" in Blender. Instead, make your unique renders with Cycles based on the converted Daz Assets / Scenes in Blender.
The thrill of exporting a scene to another app is, to find out, if that render engine gives better results to this scene.
In case of an app like blender, the benefit would be to fix or add scene elements right away.
I don't see much sense in exporting a DAZ- Iray scene to Blender Iray then.
That's a very simple question to answer; the results you get will depend upon your colour management settings in Blender. If you use the same settings as the Diffeomorphic creators then most materials look very similar, if not then your materials will look very different. In addition some materials do look very different in different lighting conditions, just as in real life, so you need very similar lighting with some items.
Oh, and to add; personally I don't try to reproduce the results from DAZ Studio, because with only a little work I can get far better results from Blender that render in a fraction of the time. This is not because DAZ Studio and iRay cannot produce good results though; they can. Human minds are all different, and some of us will find it easier to get the best results out of DAZ Studio, while others — like me — will find it easier to get the best results out of Blender. Both require study and effort, and if you're lazy you will not get the best results from any 3D software.
The great thing about buying from DAZ is that you can use DAZ Studio if that suits your way of thinking better, or you can use Blender if that suits your way of thinking better. Choice is good.