Daz Studio shaders and Luxrender

marble

Hi. I am aware that shaders that are designed to work in DAZ Studio can not be expected to work in Reality or Luxus. I have products like Visual Style Shaders which I would so like to render in lux. Also just purchased the Bath Towel set for Genesis which only comes with shaders. I guess my question is: is there any way to use them or translate them for use in Luxrender?

SimonJM

It would depend upon the shader in question and the 'bridge product' involved.

Some shaders seem to 'just' apply textures and parameters whilst using the in-built DAZ shaders and those should cause no problem (currently a tiling issue with Luxus, but that will be fixed in next release). If it is a procedutal shader, other than the Uber* shaders, then both Luxus and Reality will have issues converting them (Luxus looks to have an issue with transparency maps an Uber* shaders, but I think that is fixed in the pending update).

Not had an in-depth play with Luxus as yet but it seems to handle HSS well enough, which suggests that Uber* shaders should not cause a major issue (hopefully not famous last words!). Reality has a good go at converting all the usual 'standard' shaders plus has the ability to circumvent the non-understanding of procedural shaders via ACSEL - might give you exactly what 3Delight would, but by manually setting up a Reality texture definition you would, at least, get a non-grey surface :)

MacSavers

I have a similar problem with Actual Eyes 2. They look great in 3Delight, but are ignored in LuxRender. Gonna take some time to figure out the nuances.

Khory

I have not done extensive testing yet but did get some strangeness with ubershaders on clothing in Luxus. It was making the clothing somewhat too translucent and I could see under under the clothing where it was touching the skin. I just changed it over to the DAZ default shader and that went away.

Mattymanx

According to Luxus documentation, you can use DS shaders in LuxRender via Luxus. I am not sure how much of the shaders features transfers over. The product promos also show a Luxus Brick for the shader mixer.

Reality does NOT convert DS shaders at all. It assigns Lux Render materials to the surfaces but will keep the diffuse and spec colour along with all the maps.

And I saw a thread somewhere that the 1.0.0.3 update of Luxus is now available.

marble

That sounds encouraging - I'll check for the update. I have both but my personal preference is Reality (I'm still getting all-black renders in Luxus when I follow the manual instructions to use the Luxus - Luxrender lights).

So just to make sure we are talking about the same thing here - by shaders I mean those that don't show in the OpenGL viewport. These you apply by selecting the surface and applying the shader which can only be seen in the render.

Again, apologies for my ignorance but is it the same issue with the Garibaldi hair system? Exporting to obj works but at the cost of fine detail (hair widths, tapering, etc.) and colouring. As I understand it, I can only get those things if I render in 3Delight which I'm moving away from because I love the natural look of Luxrender.