Shaders

gcwolfpost

Just starting out and was wondering what shaders you would recommend for a beginner. I am thinking one for the hair and one for bodies. Anything else? Or is there a beginner one that would do a decent job for everything?

chris-2599934

Take a step back and think about what a shader is, and what you might use them for.

A shader allows you to apply a different colour and finish to a surface than the one the product came with. I think there are two main use cases:

1) To give a unique customised appearance to a product.

2) To get an older product to look good in Iray

I don't know which of those you're aiming for. Some older hair products really struggle to work properly in Iray, so a suitable hair shader product would be useful in that case. Personally, I use ith Iray Pair product from Rendo, but there are a few others here that you could use. I don't know why you'd want "one for bodies." If it's for conversion to Iray you'd be better spending your money on a conversion product like the ones by V3Digitimes

Again, with Iray conversion of older products, Iray has much better handling of glass and metals than 3Delight did, so it's often good to apply new shaders to those kind of surfaces. I like Mec4d's three volumes of shaders for metals.

For customising cloth, I particularly like this one: https://www.daz3d.com/pd-iray-shader-kit-2 .

If you're in the PC+, there are loads of useful and inexpensive shaders by JGreenlees.

There are quite a lot of free shaders available at Sharecg and Deviantart if you look for them.

gcwolfpost

Thanks a lot for the great information. This was super helpful. I will check out some of the freebies first to see how that goes.

One other question. Do you or any one else feel it's worht getting  a program like hdr light or idradiance? They seem like they maeligting a lot easier but am I missing something?

Sven Dullah

chris-2599934 said:

 Personally, I use ith Iray Pair product from Rendo, but there are a few others here that you could use.There are quite a lot of free shaders available at Sharecg and Deviantart if you look for them.

Went over there and tried to find Iray pair, no luck, would you be so kind to provide a link?

Sven Dullah

Again, with Iray conversion of older products, Iray has much better handling of glass and metals than 3Delight did, so it's often good to apply new shaders to those kind of surfaces.

Well that's true as long as you stick to the DS default shader, and the default renderer, and FYI, 3Delight is not dead;)

chris-2599934

Sven Dullah said:

chris-2599934 said:

 Personally, I use ith Iray Pair product from Rendo, but there are a few others here that you could use.There are quite a lot of free shaders available at Sharecg and Deviantart if you look for them.

Went over there and tried to find Iray pair, no luck, would you be so kind to provide a link?

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/oot-iraypair-hair-shaders-for-daz-studio-iray/110302/

and

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/oot-iraypair-hair-shader-xpansion-for-daz-studio-iray/110767/

Sven Dullah

chris-2599934 said:

Sven Dullah said:

chris-2599934 said:

 Personally, I use ith Iray Pair product from Rendo, but there are a few others here that you could use.There are quite a lot of free shaders available at Sharecg and Deviantart if you look for them.

Went over there and tried to find Iray pair, no luck, would you be so kind to provide a link?

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/oot-iraypair-hair-shaders-for-daz-studio-iray/110302/

and

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/oot-iraypair-hair-shader-xpansion-for-daz-studio-iray/110767/

Thank you so much!

DanaTA

Don't forget, you can use the iRay uber shader converter on 3Dlight textures.  It's free and does a pretty nice job.   If you look at my Christmas for the Baby Luna Sleeper, up on my site, the main promo was done with the converter, the others are 3Dlight.  https://www.dana-anderson.com/FreeProduct.aspx?pid=36  The only postwork to that main promo image was adding the text.

Dana

Sven Dullah

DanaTA said:

Don't forget, you can use the iRay uber shader converter on 3Dlight textures.  It's free and does a pretty nice job.   If you look at my Christmas for the Baby Luna Sleeper, up on my site, the main promo was done with the converter, the others are 3Dlight.  https://www.dana-anderson.com/FreeProduct.aspx?pid=36  The only postwork to that main promo image was adding the text.

Dana

Thanks, but I use the aweSurface with scripted pathtracing, so need to convert manually. I just need the textures to blow some new life into old hairmodels;)