Shaders and Bridging
Joe Cotter
Posts: 3,259
Which is preferred, 3DL, Iray, or when available PBR Skin. Are there any situations that would change the preferred option?
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As for diffeomorphic it converts uber and pbrskin to blender. Custom shaders will not work. 3delight has to be converted to uber before exporting by applying the uber shader preset, that's the same thing iray itself does before rendering.
Thank you :)
I forgot to ask, is it the same for the official Daz to Blender Bridge? Does it need to be converted to Iray, or does it work better if it is?
As I understand it the daz bridge doesn't convert materials it only passes textures that's another thing. Then I don't know how well it handles the various daz shaders or the custom shaders this is a question for @danielbui78.
Daz to Blender Bridge has custom shader graph nodegroups for the following Daz Studio shader materials:
Additionally it has custom nodegroups to handle IrayUberSkin, cornea/eye moisture/tears, pupils/sclera, eyelashes and hair.
Of the above nodegroups, IrayUber and IrayUberSkin have the most extensive support for shader features (Diffuse, Bump, Normal, Metallic, Dual Lobe Specular, Glossy Layered Weight, Glossy Roughness, Roughness, Cutout Opacity). However, it is still not complete compared to the options available for IrayUber-based materials inside Daz Studio. You can view these node groups by opening the link_library.blend file that is located inside AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\<VERSION>\scripts\addons\DTB\dependencies\link_library.blend and looking in the Shading mode for Node groups. Your decision on whether or not to convert to IrayUber materials prior to performing the Send To Daz To Blender, depends on multiple factors:
1. What method are you using to "convert to Iray"? If the asset has a native Iray material, and all you need to do is load that material, then that will almost always be the best choice. If you are manually creating your own Iray material and setting all the IrayUber shader settings one-by-one, then that may be the best or second best, depending on your skill level. If you are relying on a script or store-bought utility to convert materials to Iray, then your mileage may vary depending on the source material and compatibility with and quality of the converter tool.
2. What shader features are used in the source material? Many people forget that even Genesis 2's omUberSurface-based material supported Subsurface Scattering. Although DazToBlender has decent support for omUberSurface features (Diffuse Color, Diffuse Roughness, Bump Strength, Bump Distance, Normal Map, Opacity Strength, Displacement Strength, Specular Color, Specular Strength, Glossiness Value, Glossiness Offset, Velvet Color, Velvet Strength, Velvet Falloff), it does not have support for omUberSurface-based SSS or other omUberSurface features like: Secondary Specular values, Specular Roughness, Specular Sharpness, Specular Anisotropy, Ambient Color, Ambient Strength, Reflection Color, Reflection Strength, Reflection Blur, Fresnel Strength, Fresnell Falloff, Fresnell Sharpness, Translucency Color, Translucency Strength, etc. If the source material uses any of these features and you have the patience and skill to make a custom IrayUber material from the source, or you have a high quality Iray converter tool that supports these features in omUberSurface, then converting to Iray would be your best option. Similar decision making can be applied to other shaders based on the shadergraph implementation inside the link_library.blend file.
3. What is the final intended purpose for the converted assets? If you are making a mobile game, you may only be interested in Diffuse Color and maybe Opacity and Normal Map settings being transferred. If you are making a PC/Console game, then you will probably want at least Diffuse, Specular, Normal, Opacity. If you are making high quality raytraced renderings, then you will probably want a pathway where the original SSS effect is preserved or at least reasonably emulated (note that most DazStudio SSS implementations prior to IrayUber were relatively simple, so you may be able to replace the original material's SSS with a generic SSS template for Iray and get better results than the original).
This may be a lot of information to take in; I'm intending it for the entire community. Hopefully you will be able to come back and reread the information as your skills grow. Good luck with your projects.
No, this is exactly what I was looking for, thank you. It gives me a good rundown on what to look for, how much work I'm looking at in doing a transfer for different applications, etc... I've been doing this since before DAZ existed, so it's not overwhelming. ;)
(It's just that I drop in and out of working in this environment depending on what life is handing me at the moment, so have to come up to speed on a regular basis.)
Btw, I'm using RSSY's script for my initial pass on upgrading. I haven't broken down exactly what it is/isn't doing yet in detail, just did a quick upgrade/transfer then finished tweeking the results in Blender. I got good results but thought I'd ask before trying to reinvent the wheel in finding a workflow (set) that fits.
Forgot to mention, I'm doing environments mostlly with this as I've been using 8.0/8.1 chars so far. Any (people type) characters I'm planning on upgrading to 8.0/8.1 anyways if I'm still using them.
Then upgrading to PBR doesn't really do anything for exporting it looks like?
That is very useful information it would be nice to give it more visibility. Perhaps in "the daz to blender user's manual" discussion ?