life expectancy of shader mixer shaders

sriesch

What is the life expectancy of shaders created via the Shader Mixer tab?

I haven't really dived into shaders in DAZ Studio yet. I know DAZ Studio file formats have changed in the past, and I have purchased a shader package for a much earlier version of DS that unfortunately got left behind and is no longer useable, so I'm a bit leery of investing significant time in creating any. However, I'm wondering if I do create them via the Shader Mixer tab, if file formats change, will I be able to easily regenerate them in the latest and greatest format every time without much trouble since I have the original brick arrangement saved, or is that also something that's likely to change again?

mjc1016

As long as bricks don't get dropped they should be fine.

Of course, since they do rely on premade bricks, which are pretty much standard rsl functions, you could 'translate' them...not sure if there is an easy way to do it, though.

DollyGirl

I found that from Studio 3 to Studio 4 they redefined the DAZ surface default brick and now it does not function the same way. If you use Shader Mixer then I would avoid using this brick. As mjc has said the other bricks are pretty standard. For those shaders that have their own sl files Studio does try to convert them to the new format but this does not always work. Using Mixer is the safer avenue to take just don't use the DAZ Studio premades like the toon shaders, the default surface brick, skin shader bricks and such if you are concerned with surviving from one version to the next. Realize that if you use the Mixer then the structure of your shader can be viewed by all. It is because of this that some of the commerical shader vendors use Builder instead so that they can make the bricks not show up in the Mixer. If you create shaders in Builder you still have access to the source code and you can recompile your brick fairly easily. Unless Pixar goes wild and changes the standards on us and code language changes.

mjc1016

Dollygirl said:

If you create shaders in Builder you still have access to the source code and you can recompile your brick fairly easily. Unless Pixar goes wild and changes the standards on us and code language changes.

And that hasn't happened in the time its been around...yeah, they've tweaked, added and refined RSL over the years, but the core is the same and even ancient shaders can still be compiled and work.

ReDave

@Sean Riesch: the only brick that changed fundamentally was the If-then brick. You also couldn't save a shader with the SSS brick in DS3. That's it for the changes I remember. There is new behaviour for Refraction in 4.5 (I didn't check in 4.0, it may have been there too). I haven't tried the toon brick in a very long time. I don't remember changes in the DAZ Default brick, but I know I haven't been paying much attention for several months.