Shader Mixer- How to undock it, Other Questions

Richard Haseltine

Size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it - you need enough pixels to show at least one repeat of the pattern in enough detail to look of a piece with the rest of your textures.

Applying another material will clear the shader - you cans ave a minimal shader preset solely for the purpose of resetting the shader if you like.

DollyGirl

Novica said:

Lonnie- You helped immensely, not only me, but probably to quite a few people who were wondering the difference. All last night I was using Shader Mixer making neat bricks (yep, figured out some of it!)

Your quite welcome Cathie.

Novica said:

Uh oh though- I think I made a BUNCH of dbm's- I used the Shader Mixer File>Save and they weren't applied to the surface. No wonder they weren't showing up under presets in Content Library! (If I read that right? They'll only be in Shader Mixer? I just went in to Shader Mixer, and at least they are all THERE, thank goodness, lol) So darn it, I have to turn these all into dufs.

Clarify for me- the duf's are shader presets, the dbm's are shaders, right?

Yes you read that right. Yes they can only be seen by Mixer. You can think of them that way. As you get more familiar with the software you will find that they all are shaders. It is just that DAZ Studio must have them in the duf format to use. Shader Mixer must have them in the .dbm format to use. Except that DAZ Studio has a bridge that allows a shader to be transferred to Mixer through the option of "From Scene".

Novica said:

Here's one question: where the options exist to select granite, marble, checker- I'd like to be able to have more options there to tweak- like when you have checker and mess with the horizontal/vertical etc-

Those options, Textures, are called bricks by DAZ Studio. If you are familiar with writing computer code then what they are are routines that you can call when you want certain things to happen. Inside of them are equations, variables, inputs and outputs. They are kind of like calling a subroutine in a program. They contain a lot of information that would clutter up your window so we just bundle them together and give it a descriptive name, like granite. The shaders you made last night are similar. You just did not create the bricks or added them to your Custom Brick list.

so one question is- when you buy shaders, I assume those do not show up in Shader Mixer do they? (You know, like when you add a figure, they show up under Actor?)

You are correct. You usually don't get the dbms. What you get are the .dufs and maybe a set of files that you have not been made aware of yet. These files are the actual code that 3Delight needs. When DAZ puts the render input deck together it references these files. If you are interested in looking at the files (because they are text files with funny extensions) they are located in your Program Files/DAZStudio4 directory. Look for the shader directory and the scripts directory. You will find things like omnifreaker shaders, Uber shaders, the default shaders and any of the special shaders like pwToon and such. The .sl files are 3Delight files and when you look at them you will know why you have Shader Mixer to help you make your shaders. the .dsa, .ds and .dz files are the instructions for DAZ.

Or are we limited to just the options already in Shader Mixer?

No you are not limited. I would suggest that you take a tour inside this thread to see just what can be done with Shader Mixer.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/42/
Shader Mixer is not the only thing that DAZ offers under Window -> Tabs there is something called Shader Builder. You know those bricks, granite, marble, and such, well you can use this tool to build your own. Shader Builder helps you create all of those files I pointed you too in Program Files/DAZStudio4.

There's no way to put an image into Shader Mixer?

Well I am assuming that what you want to do is have your image show up on the surface of the object. You do this by going to the brickyard, expanding the texture subdirectory and clicking on the Image Map. Once the block is in your shader you can hook it up to what ever you want to. So if you want an image in your squares of your bikini you can use the Image Map and attach it to the checker brick and have an image instead of just a color. Checker brick will accept color so that means images so it should work.

Hope I didn't muddle you up to much.

DollyGirl

Novica said:

And how do I get the Shader Mixer effect turned OFF in surfaces, say, if I want to take off the checkered surface map and use my own pathetic (lol) 24 bit image in Diffuse? I can't find a way to get those checkers gone! (and there's no Diffuse to even put IN an image and override.) Geez, I'm learning a lot these past two days- (thanks folks!)

What Richard is saying is apply a different shader. We use material and shader interchangeably sometimes. Old Poser habits.

Novica

Before I read the most recent posts, (apologize, don't want to lose my train of thought) is that I am finding some really interesting problems- you know the error message I got with the jpg 32 bit CMYK? Well, now I am getting it with the RGB too- the exact same message- BUT IT IS SPOT RENDERING. Even though it says file not found, blah blah. Didn't get that on the first RGB one- and everything is the same setting.
So what the heck? Oh well, as long as it's working.

Looks like I found a good gravel or stone, lol- not exactly what I had in mind for a bikini. Looks completely different from the sample square.

Novica

Dollygirl- not muddled at all, very clear- thanks! I had already gone to that thread, and watched the videos/read up- that's how I got to where I am. But it's a good reference for everyone. I'll go take a look at putting my image in the Shader Mixer later tonight and see what I can do with that.

I'm so excited! *Smile*

Novica

Have a question about the Surfaces tab- I've created patterns (jpgs changed over to pngs as they seem to hold the 24 bit color better than the rgb's)

I know the bump makes it appear the surface is changed, while displacement actually does (right?) but how do those two work together when you're using an image in the diffuse channel? Should you have equal amounts of each? I don't see that much difference when I add displacement, if I'm already using the bump channel. Hope I'm making sense, it's 6:30am and I have to get some sleep. Back later today- appreciate the help.

Carola O

Richard Haseltine said:

Size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it -

.. Well Richard... this could certainly be taken out of concept *grins teasingly*

And sorry, just couldn't help to tease a little *smiles and offers fruitsallad as peace offering*

JimmyC_2009

I know the bump makes it appear the surface is changed, while displacement actually does (right?) but how do those two work together when you’re using an image in the diffuse channel?

You need to put your image in the Bump and Displacement channel as well to see a difference.

jestmart

Bump and displacement relate to the diffuse channel only as a way to enhance the illusion of 3D. Example, take an image of a rough stone block wall, applied only to the diffuse channel of a plane the wall wont look very good when not viewed directly head on. Add a displacement map to raise the faces of the block, sink the joint/grout lines and generally add unevenness to the plane. Add in a noisy bump map to give the stones some roughness and the illusion of a 3D wall is complete.

Szark

I think what most newcomers, including myself, struggle with is seeing the relationships between all the surface channels, diffuse, bump spec etc where there is none only in effect of what jestmart said. Nearly all the channels work separately and not dependent on each other to make the whole. Uber Surface is good this way as it has an On/Off toggle for each channel. This is not to say though the some channels don't have an impact on each other as sometimes they do. Take SSS for example, to get a good balance of SSS you need to lower the Diffuse strength and sometimes adjust the colour so the SSS shows to better effect, simpley put.

DollyGirl

Novica said:

Have a question about the Surfaces tab- I've created patterns (jpgs changed over to pngs as they seem to hold the 24 bit color better than the rgb's)

I know the bump makes it appear the surface is changed, while displacement actually does (right?) but how do those two work together when you're using an image in the diffuse channel? Should you have equal amounts of each? I don't see that much difference when I add displacement, if I'm already using the bump channel. Hope I'm making sense, it's 6:30am and I have to get some sleep. Back later today- appreciate the help.

Novica,
Here are a couple of tutorials that I have found help me understand the workings of displacement and bump. As to why you are not seeing much change when applying bump and displacement that could be a number of things. Once you have gone through the tuts maybe you can ask your question again in a different way.

MacClean's tut
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=44578 To see the pictures in this one take the first part of the link http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/ and add this portion of the exposed image link such as "postimages/origimage_1_651073.jpg" to it to see the picture. The link should look like this http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/postimages/origimage_1_651073.jpg.

Jonny Ray's tut
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/tutorials/textures/misc-text56 Unfortunately these pictures do not seem to be available any more and Jonny's zip is also gone. At least I can not access them. The zip was a copy of the grey scale image Jonny used in the tut. The images were of spheres with the Jonny's map applied. You can still follow along by using something like the image attached or using MacClean's image.

Hope this helps you understand bump and displacement better.

Novica

Thanks- I'll take a look later today. (Have out of town company.)
It's in my art studio thread, but here's what I'm playing with. The navy blue top and terra cotta plant are the "before" pictures, and the other one is with my patterns. I really increased the bump and displacement on the pot and limited it on the shirt so it wouldn't have a gravel, stiff appearance.

In one tutorial, the person put the image in the ambient and specular too, so I'm still exploring. I'll take a peek at what you've listed (I'm sure I"ve seen some of it, but been awhile!) then see what I get with fiddlin' around. Thanks!