Translating DAZ Shaders?

[Spectralis]

Is it worth buying new DAZ shaders? Do they make a difference to how Octane Render translates them? Also can OR translate layered shaders in DAZ using the LIE system for example? I was interested in these products but wasn't sure if they work with OR:

http://www.daz3d.com/grass-shader-for-daz-studio

http://www.daz3d.com/skin-builder-for-g ... 2-female-s

[SimonJM]

I suspect OcDS would not cope well with them as they make use of a lot of 'internal' shader mixer stuff to get their effects.

[Spectralis]

I suspect OcDS would not cope well with them as they make use of a lot of 'internal' shader mixer stuff to get their effects.

Ok thanks! Are there any DAZ shaders worth buying that OR could translate?

[SiliconAya]

I'd say no. No DS shaders will work or look anything like correct in Octane. It's not even capable of copying across basic things like spectral maps at the moment, I'd have to say 9 out of 10 materials that should be glossy and have a spec map are converted as diffuse instead, hair being a prime example of this.

However anything created using LIE in DS is absolutely usable in OcDS, you just need to select the resulting .tif file it creates as the map you want to use (it'll show up in OcDS, an easy way is to select a map to use under the "By Object" section, the latest map.tif created using LIE will be listed). Zev0's Skin Builder, OOT Hair Blending and the recent Instant Makeup are all LIE based products that should work fine and I've used the first two without issue.


(As an aside I don't think doing anything more than basic material and map conversion would be worth it at this point, or ever, it would require a huge amount of development effort to do any kind of remotely good conversion and would probably still come up lacking quite often, proper Octane materials would always be better. I think using stuff from the LiveDB and possibly changing the maps to what you want would be much easier/better solution).

[Spectralis]

Thanks SiliconAya, I'll experiment with changing shaders in OR. It'll save me a lot of money not buying the latest and greatest DAZ shaders though. I'll also check out how LIE works with OR.

[SimonJM]

If what you end up with on the material surface uses the DAZ default shader or variations of the HSS and UberSurface (I think!) you should be good. What is termed a Shader (as opposed to a material) is 'just' a material definition that will apply to any surface. A material setting will only apply to a surface that has the correct named surface.
I'd suspect that so long as your end result has properties with names that OcDS expects to find (Diffuse map, Diffuse colour, etc.,) the it will read those values and apply them to the Octane material. Needless to say that may end up a total mess!

[Spectralis]

Because I'm not very experienced with the whole material/shader dimension I tend to trust OR to translate this which it seems to do very well in most cases. I was wondering if buying more DAZ shaders would expand the variation and improve the quality of those shader/material translations but I don't think I should mess with things I'm not sure about especially when OR seems to handle it pretty well.