Is new content always Iray Optimized?
I'm confused about the difference between 'Iray' optimized content and content that is not. I see a lot of my materials say 'Iray' or 'MDL' and others do not. I assume any new content would be fully Iray compatible with the materials. Is this a bad assumption? Is there a way to automatically batch convert materials to Iray?
For example, there is new featured content with some really cool dinosours, https://www.daz3d.com/05-05-prehistoric. Is this all Iray materials or not? I don't see Iray stated anywhere and would be very disappointed to buy this and then find out the renders look cartoony or that I need to do a lot of work to convert them by hand.
Thanks for clearification on this.
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Yes, it's a bad assumption. Not all content is created for DS and Iray, even if it does work in DS.
Those are all in Poser format and don't list any Iray materials, so it's a rather safe bet to say they're not optimized for Iray.
Thanks. I ran into that sort of problem with some props I bought where parts that are supposed to look like metal rendered totally flat in Iray. I did figure out how to find the material groups and assign the Iray uber shader, but it was a bit of a chore the first time to figure out, with probably dozens of groups. You know, guess at a setting, render it, see what happened, go back change a setting, render again and so on. That is fine, I just wan't sure if that was what it is all about or if there is more to it? Thanks.
Never assume anything. When in doubt, check the product documentation here:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/start
You can either go through the list numerically and by name, or click on any single product, then find the SKU number from the store for the one you want. Insert that five-digit number in place of the one that's in the URL. The page that shows often has additional info not in the shopping area, and you can examine the file list to see if there are any obvious Iray-centric files there.
That's the theory. I tried several of these dinosaur products and NONE were in the documentation center. So the best thing is to contact customer support.
All this said, I looked at a few of the dinosaur models and they all appear to be targeted for Poser. Many, but certainly not all, Poser assets can be used in D|S. Exceptions to apply, and if the Poser material presets use procedural settings, they will not convert to anything useful in D|S. You will need to manually re-assign surfaces to everything.
Yeah, but assuming stuff is one of my strong suits :) With that said, thanks for the SKU index. That was helpful in finding some of missing documentation I don't see anywhere else. I didn't even know those .pdf files existed until now. I can at least try to lookup some of what is puzzling me.
Daz Studio is great is a lot of ways. The help system is probably one of the weakest points and I can see why. Artists usually learn my doing, not by reading about it. Back to assuming.
FYI I went ahead and purchased three of the dinos to get the 60% discount. I can confirm they use the "default Daz Shader" by default, but it is easy to convert to the "Iray Uber Base Shader". I don't really see that much difference in my renders and both are suitable for my needs.
In these images the skin uses the "Iray Uber Base Shader" with a few tweaks and all the other surfaces use the default shaders. The jungle, light and backgrounda are Iray.
Looks pretty good right out of the box, but obviously, there is room for some improvement by dialing in the settings and lighting.