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The Selfie Stick product I posted above demonstrates a very clever way to show both 3DL and Iray support, fully addressing --- at the point of sale -- the PAs responsibility of demonstrating advertised features.
I have seen many recent products where the 3DL and Iray materials are shown side-by-side in the same promo image, showing the quality of both. For things like clothing or props, these don't have to be complete scenes, any more than a geometry-only rendition of a product is expected to be a full-fledged beauty render. That's not its purpose. I don't think anyone in this thread has insisted that if a PA does a full render in Iray, it has to be duplicated in 3DL. All anyone is looking for is a reasonable example.
In the case of your slip pproduct, you already provide composite promos with untextured mannequin models. Seems quite natural to have one that shows a couple of 3DL versions, alongside similar Iray versions, for comparison. If the result is similar to what you posted above, I don't see the problem.
so...what about V4.2 for example and the old materials and shaders, can I render v4.2 in Iray without buying some whatever converters? Or will they look totally strange in Iray? Do I have to spent money so the original V4.2 will look good in Iray renders?
Cosmo: Here's a 4.2 render in Iray: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Victoria-4-Iray-555463203
I think the outfit and hair are later things, but if you know what you are doing you can make early hair still look pretty cool. Hmm. I'll try to make an example using all V4 stuff if I can.
The trick is knowing how to manipulate skins and so on.
If you had to, I THINK you could take your V4 skin, put it on a G2F, use the autoconverter to get proper Iray skins, and then copy them back. I'll try that.
Oh hey, checking over my render... it IS all V4 content: Astrid skin (Stephanie 4), Pyrit hair, and Dynamic Bodice Dress (for V4).
All of it converted to Iray and tweaked.
So, in brief... no, you don't need to spend any money. You will have to learn how to use Iray shaders to get decent results, though.
There are no specila Iray shaders in this image. I just used the Iray Ubershader or whatever it is called, I can't look as I am in the middle of a new render trying out the Bloom Filter.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/888130/#Comment_888130
IDK personally for me *who does render most of our promos* I am coming from Poser and skipped 3DL pretty much all together. I've found it difficult for me to use, understand, or do 3DL shaders well. It's why Neil has done all our shaders for DS since forever. That said, I've not had any issues at all picking up, understanding, or rendering with Iray or doing the shaders. Sometimes you don't get something and sometimes you do and this is one of those times I do.
As for affording to hire someone to then do the promos for 3DL, well I have managed to hire out so we have good 3DL mats but I can't afford to then hire out again to do promos just for that. We do include them in our threads (the 3DL promos) but at the moment I am sorry to say they don't come out near as nice for me as the Iray or Poser promos do beings I just do better with those two things. I apologize to any customer who is unhappy with us for that but I'm doing what I can with what I have to work with which atm is a limited understanding of 3DL :(
Ann, I think it comes down to a willingness to at least try. You seem willing to try, and that's all anyone can ask for.
Though I'm now squarely in the Iray camp for most of my renders, I think the concern of many 3DL users is that, at times, it looks like Daz is giving up on 3Delight, and by extension, giving up on them. No doubt that's not an accurate assessment, but appearances do matter. When many products don't even include a single 3DL render, even though the product advertises 3DL assets, it can be a cause of worry. I do know that if 3DL were removed from D|S, for whatever licensing reasons, a critical part of my workflow would be horrifically impacted. So though I'm not a heavy user, what I do use it for is extremely important.
If anything, this thread shows there are still confirmed 3DL users out there wanting to buy products, and PAs looking for a competitive edge can take advantage of that market.
I honestly don't understand how this is such a big issue. If you're advertising a product as having X available surely X should be visible in a promo renders? It's like say I've got Iray mats but only showing 3DL renders. How does that make any sense? If you're not good at rendering then would it be a major difficulty to offer a copy of the new item for some good promo renders in the engine you're not using? If I want to use a specific feature and I don't see it in the promo, I'm not buying the product. I do not have time to waste buying a product, investigating a feature and then returning it if the feature doesn't suit. It's a waste of my time and Daz customer services time. Expecting to a customer to do that indicates you don't really value the custom provided by that feature or care about the additional work generated.
Doesn't DAZ only allow 5 promos per product, unless the PA asks for more? If I'm right, then a single render would be 20% of a PA's allotment of "promo space", and two renders would be 40%, while the time spent on promos would be something along the lines of 80-90% spent on 3DL and 10% spent on the (60 to 80%) of iRay renders.
And "subbing out" that work to another person, while maybe could produce good results, would only serve to reduce the revenue stream for the PA. Subcontracting the work out always needs to be considered carefully. At times it may be worth it, but most times it's more expensive and increases the complexity of your business.
It seems to me that the PAs, as the ultimate entrepeneurs in this arrangement with DAZ, are already deciding how to do their promos. 3DL is not the winner here, and it's just a business decision.
A few people posting isn't demand unfortunately, not when the forum is a smaller part of customer population and most PAs that do iray promos already have seen not including the renders have absolutely no adverse effect on sales. As it doesn't affect sales, I'm doubting the situation will change; and your best bet is to request renders in their commercial threads.
It isn't such a big issue. Before Iray, there were a lot of big sellers that were rendered using Poser and had not one 3Delight render, and no one complained and this included a lot of Genesis 2 items. It really comes down to presentation and that's really what sells over anything else. Even one of my big sellers that I partnered with another PA contained nothing but Poser renders and still sold. It had included 3delight shaders but weren't included in the promos.
Agreed, plus sometimes the promo images appear to me to be very stylized.
Time is also a factor...surprisingly (while others have the opposite results) it takes me about 10 minutes to render a promo in Iray and it takes me 2 hours to 36 hours in 3DL (admittedly my settings are high in 3DL though) but comparing my 10 minute renders do look better from Iray (to me) than my 24 hour 3DL ones :( What that means for me is I can render more angles, more views, show more pieces in the time it takes for me to do 1 3DL render. Some people have render farms and multiple computers so they can render promos on one and work on another but I don't I work on the computer as I am rendering or render overnight. Anything longer than that that is a resource hog and then Im just sitting and waiting and getting nothing done which is a time loss. That could be another reason why some are picking one over the other. IDK I can only speak for me.
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Speakin of buisness decisions and customer feedback. I would like to point out, the change in my buying pattern had a lot to do with this topic.
I see the points the PAs made in this discussion. But as a hobbyist, my freetime is also precious. Buy a product, testing if it works and return it in case it doesn´t work? Thats not an option!
But now I´m looking forward to the day when the promo situation gets revamped too. ;-)
Candidly I could care less one way or the other about promo renders. I do not buy for that reason. I set up products I buy to be used in multiple programs whcih always require tweaking any way. If it is a texture based or even a shader based item it will work in most all renderors with the proper tweaking and applying the appropriate shaders. For me personally I like seeing the IRAY renders as I prefer unbiased render engines for the best possible quality.
It was never the point of this discussion to exclude the iray renders. It was the point to include 3Delight renders again. ;-)
To exclude 3Delight Promos is one of the reason why my buying pattern has changed. There is reason to believe, I am not the only one.
"I have heard pa's aren't allowed to use 3delight in promo art. I wouldn't be suprised."
Again.. DAZ does not tell us we are not allowed to use 3delight. They can and do refuse promos they don't think will help sell the product but they do not tell us which render engine to use. Some PA's are more comfortable and successful with Iray renders and some with 3DL just like anyone else. I'm not sure where you heard that malarkey but who ever told you that was telling you wrong.
I agree that advertising a feature, should be demonstrated.
I'm going to illustrate my point using a product I haven't bought; I'm a fan of IRAY, just to clarify.
This product, http://www.daz3d.com/aniston-for-genesis-3-female-s, is the sort of product I would normally buy; she is suntanned, as a number are, so that was a minor point against her.
However, the way the promo images were presented has resulted in me not buying; it's a character, so I'm interested in its skin textures. The best image, number three, is somewhat close up of the character, yet the main content is clothes; I don't care about clothes I am not purchasing them; they are not part of the product.
Similarly, if 3delight is part of the package, then I expect it to be demonstrated; I rarely use it, but it is included as a feature, so I check out the promo images of 3delight - I like to see what is possible with it, becuase if for some reason I can't use IRAY, I want to know what is possible; my skills may not be up to it, but that is NOT the problem of the PA; their problem (if you like) is presenting all features of a product in as positive manner as possible.
I'd already bought the dark skin package; it's really great and covers what I need. But yeh, it is bad that after all the posts, if the product's sales were low.
People just might have misunderstood this post a while back:
Regarding the last comment by Male-M3dia, I would like to mention that there have been many, many discussions about promos and their labelling long before Iray ever was an issue. No, there wasn't an outcry over every single item in the DAZ shop, but this is an old discussion we're having, just with new parameters.
As I mentioned before, the last conversation was over Poser promos, but generally not over 3delight. No one really considered those shaders until genesis was used. They were generally buried in the "content" directory separate from the runtimes and eventually the base shaders were used along side the poser materials in runtimes. This was probably because HSS and Ubershaders were items you paid for instead of them being included in DS4 now, thus adoption was really low.
(I think DS3 had an earlier version of the ubershader for use, but it was missing the SSS settings and not many products used it besides the DAZ originals)
I know I can get decent renders in Iray, but lighting setup for a 3DL render can take longer than is practical if you're trying to do promos. For characters, this is particularly bad, since any changes in the lighting between 3DL and Iray (especially in a composite render), can change things in ways that look really bad side-by-side. Couple that with the difficulties inherent in 3DL (like Ann, I went from Firefly to Iray and mostly skipped 3DL), and you get a huge snarl.
Everyones taste in art is different. Since the introduction of Iray I've bought a lot less, and I haven't found the Iray promo art looks that great for the most part or helps e to make a buying decision. So what may look good to others isn't very helpful or look great to everyone. Since I'm a 3delight user knowing what an item looks like in both is helpful. Especially during sales when items aren't returnable.
HSS was free with the ELite textures, and after a while was free with DS. uberSurface was free with DS from its release (presumably before uberSurface 2 in June 2011). uberSurface (and HSS) have always had SSS.
As I said, you had to pay for HSS to get it as the Elite textures (I think Stephanie 4 had it too) weren't free and not everyone had it, thus the adoption of it was low. The free version of ubersurface did not have the SSS settings in the beginning, when I tried to provide those shaders with my gen 4 products those settings simply weren't there unless you installed the paid version. As a result the poser settings could use the SSS maps in our material shaders, but not so with HSS/ubershader. Those shaders were eventually provided free around 2011 (which was around the time of genesis) and they included the parameters to plug in SSS maps.
Beyond that, the reality was there was no real push to use ubersurface until the "split" where PAs and vendors began digging into DS to make their products look good, rather than just start in Poser with the shaders and perhaps add default shader settings for DS.
The discussions I had in mind were those about whether or not to label promo pictures, not about shaders. :D And that has been a topic many times before Iray. Just that it was about 3Delight / Poser, not about Iray / 3Delight. But the problem stays the same, do you show people what they're gonna buy or not? It's kind of similar to the nudity question, of course.
It would help tremendously if each product had a gallery of images produced by those who actually bought the product, much like is seen at renderosity. In many cases the images could come from the art galleries, with the stats and data on how the image was made. I find this a great help in choosing a product.
Would this help here... ? Probably.
I was speaking of promos as well, and it was still about the lack of Poser promos. The answer regardless will be what will sell the product the best.
It also quite often was about the lack of 3Delight promos. Or of proper labeling to tell the two apart.
What sells a product best, obviously, is kind of hard to tell beyond a general gut feeling on the side of the PA's, based on their experiences. And, of course, whatever sells a product 'best' still may not necessarily be the fairest way to treat the customer. Hence discussions.