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Shader Mixer and Uber products

Ongoing MomentOngoing Moment Posts: 78
edited July 2012 in Daz Studio Discussion

I am getting into the shader mixer to see the nuts and bolts behind lighting and materials. I watched tutorials about building materials and shaders in 3D max. It is not a one to one translation, but it helps you understand the theory, architecture and objectives in building shaders. I am a 2 month newbie and the non documentation issue is really killing me.


So I go over to Studio 4 and the Daz Default Shader architecture is essentially very easy compared to the video I just watched. So I want to look at say my UberSurface Bricks and it won't load. UberEnvironment is the same thing. I highlight the shader and hit load current shader, choose light (even tried material) and nothing loads. Ugggg, so frustrating. Uber is essentially the main shader extension to access higher level rendering options for Daz studio. What gives?


Does Studio 4.0 have this capability? Am I missing something, like the architecture is not built off of the shader mixer but somewhere else that is not accessible? Or am I missing the mark as to what Uber products do?


Grateful3D

Post edited by Ongoing Moment on

Comments

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    davidscameracraft said:
    I am getting into the shader mixer to see the nuts and bolts behind lighting and materials. I watched tutorials about building materials and shaders in 3D max. It is not a one to one translation, but it helps you understand the theory, architecture and objectives in building shaders. I am a 2 month newbie and the non documentation issue is really killing me.


    So I go over to Studio 4 and the Daz Default Shader architecture is essentially very easy compared to the video I just watched. So I want to look at say my UberSurface Bricks and it won't load. UberEnvironment is the same thing. I highlight the shader and hit load current shader, choose light (even tried material) and nothing loads. Ugggg, so frustrating. Uber is essentially the main shader extension to access higher level rendering options for Daz studio. What gives?


    Does Studio 4.0 have this capability? Am I missing something, like the architecture is not built off of the shader mixer but somewhere else that is not accessible? Or am I missing the mark as to what Uber products do?


    Grateful3D

    Hi, if I'm not mistaken Über was created by aPA initially the file is probably encrypted. If you save ShaderMixer files with an encrypted format you won't be able to open those either.

    I know how you feel about the lack of documentation...: (. I had planned on writing up tutorials for some of the networks that had been posted but with starting anew job this year I just haven't had the time.

    If you look at the links in my sig it will lead you to some of. The threads created on ShaderMixer when it first came out. You may need to change some of the links to access the old threads to include IIRC forum archive in the URL . If you get stuck just ask in the forum and I'm sure people will help.
    Cheers
    Pen

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    ...and it doesn't help that the Shader Miixer functions have changed a little too since DS3. Every tutorial I try to follow works with me pulling my hair out. You should look and compare the old Glass Shader and the New one in DS4.5 RC2. There seems to be more bricks in the new one.

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,886
    edited December 1969

    3rd party shaders (they come with .sdl files) can't be opened as they are copyrighted, on top of that they weren't built in the ShaderMixer, so there is nothing in them that it can use to generate the required bricks.

  • Ongoing MomentOngoing Moment Posts: 78
    edited December 1969

    "3rd party shaders (they come with .sdl files) can’t be opened as they are copyrighted, on top of that they weren’t built in the ShaderMixer, so there is nothing in them that it can use to generate the required bricks."


    Ahhh, so you are saying that Uber is software driven and is not represented by the shader mixer routine. It is a specialized software routine. Do you know what it accesses? The rendering engine and or the computers hardware?

    Will have to look at the shader mixer tutorial and see if I can figure out how to build some Subsurface Scattering and velvet skin effects. But I am afraid without proper docs it might be like spitting into the wind.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,711
    edited December 1969

    Strictly, even the default shaders aren't being read - it's just that they have equivalent bricks and DS knows how to convert to Shader Mixer. We were told that other shaders could, in principle, do the same but so far none of the addons have brick equivalents.

    Saving a Shader Mixer shader as .dsb won't stop it from being loaded into Sahder Mixer once it's been applied, as far as I know.

  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    davidscameracraft said:
    "3rd party shaders (they come with .sdl files) can’t be opened as they are copyrighted, on top of that they weren’t built in the ShaderMixer, so there is nothing in them that it can use to generate the required bricks."


    Ahhh, so you are saying that Uber is software driven and is not represented by the shader mixer routine. It is a specialized software routine. Do you know what it accesses? The rendering engine and or the computers hardware?

    Will have to look at the shader mixer tutorial and see if I can figure out how to build some Subsurface Scattering and velvet skin effects. But I am afraid without proper docs it might be like spitting into the wind.

    In fact the only difference between Shader mixer shaders and others is that DS4 has the source code of the bricks somewhere (don't ask me where I don't know). This gives users the ability to build their own shaders which are compiled at rendertime. From what I've read it uses a feature called co-shaders if I'm guessing right

    UE or other 3rd party shaders are already compiled and you don't have the source...so no brick in shader mixer. Now if you want to understand shaders, I'd suggest to read renderman documentations after you're done with shader mixer tutorials.

  • Ongoing MomentOngoing Moment Posts: 78
    edited December 1969

    "I’d suggest to read renderman documentations after you’re done with shader mixer tutorials."


    That was such a great idea. Thanks for suggesting it. I won't be coding shaders anytime soon but reading the documentation really gives you a complete insight into what the foundation of shaders are doing.

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    Szark said:
    ...and it doesn't help that the Shader Miixer functions have changed a little too since DS3. Every tutorial I try to follow works with me pulling my hair out. You should look and compare the old Glass Shader and the New one in DS4.5 RC2. There seems to be more bricks in the new one.
    Haven't had chance to look at shadermixer much recently been too busy with work...I'll have to check it out.

    They did change a number of things when it came out of beta, a number of the bricks changed their names I know. I wish I had more time so I could write some proper tutorials for some of the networks that people have created. I keep meaning to do the networks Yacoma and Age of Armour provided(I've gotten permission to do so from both of them) I just haven't had time...: (

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    Strictly, even the default shaders aren't being read - it's just that they have equivalent bricks and DS knows how to convert to Shader Mixer. We were told that other shaders could, in principle, do the same but so far none of the addons have brick equivalents.

    Saving a Shader Mixer shader as .dsb won't stop it from being loaded into Sahder Mixer once it's been applied, as far as I know.
    When I released the cat fur preset there was a way to save as an encrypted file format this may have changed since as that was when it was in beta.

    I remember a conversation with Adam (or someone) about the different formats as some of the testers had problems with one of the formats.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,711
    edited July 2012

    Yes, DSB and DSE are version tagged and so wouldn't open in an older version of DS. But I thought the network could still be read into Shader Mixer once applied to a surface.

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    Yes, DSB and DSE are version tagged and so wouldn't open in an older version of DS. But I thought the network could still be read into Shader Mixer once applied to a surface.
    It was my understanding and I could be wrong that it couldn't but from the conversations I had at the time I was under the impression that it would allow pa's to release presets without worrying that someone would pinch their network and release something similar.

    Sorry if I'm taking this thread off topic...

  • NeilV_1NeilV_1 Posts: 442
    edited December 1969

    Pendraia said:
    Richard Haseltine said:
    Yes, DSB and DSE are version tagged and so wouldn't open in an older version of DS. But I thought the network could still be read into Shader Mixer once applied to a surface.
    It was my understanding and I could be wrong that it couldn't but from the conversations I had at the time I was under the impression that it would allow pa's to release presets without worrying that someone would pinch their network and release something similar.

    Sorry if I'm taking this thread off topic...

    I had this understanding as well so that if you wanted similar capability to a PW shader you would need to work them out from scratch your self rather than dissecting the shader. This was what seamed to stop any similar shaders for DS 4 until DAZ brought out most of PW and compiled them for DS4.

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