Shaders vs Shader presets.

Hera

Perhaps a stupid Q, but what is really the difference betw Shaders and Shader Presets? All my shader(p...) have gone into these groups and they seem to work the same, to change the desired shader for a surface, so what is the difference really?

jestmart

Simply put a shader provides a way to pass texture and surface information to the render engine. A shader preset just pre sets image and values for the shader. Age of Armor's SSS shader and Omnifreaker's UberSurface are shaders and yet they are placed under Shader Presets where as DzFire' Real Paint are shader presets and are under Shaders, that is DAZ for you.

Mythmaker

jestmart said:

Age of Armor's SSS shader and Omnifreaker's UberSurface are shaders and yet they are placed under Shader Presets where as DzFire' Real Paint are shader presets and are under Shaders, that is DAZ for you.

Thanks for being sharp, relevant, and thanks also for confirming the self-reference upon self-reference Daz engineer culture.

Jaderail

A Shader Preset is FULL with no input needed from the USER. What you see it what it does from the file as it was meant to render. A Shader can be adjusted by the end user in many settings and applies at defaults. Those defaults are just a base the creator expects to be changed by the user to get the effect they need from the shader depending on lighting, textures and other factors.

Thus a Preset is READY to render at load. A Shader is NOT render ready until adjusted by the user for the image it will be used in.

Lissa_xyz

Shader: Subsurface Shader Base
Shader Preset: Subsurface Gummy & Plastic Shaders, Subsurface Toon Shaders, Subsurface Goop Shaders, etc

The shader is what makes it work, the preset is what makes the shader look pretty. lol

Richard Haseltine

Strictly a shader is a bit of code that does something, a shader preset is the thing that applies a shader. A true shader product will have both a shader and one or more presets for applying it, while a shader preset product will have only presets for some other shader (one that comes with DS or an add-on). Unfortunately some content creators label shader preset products as shaders - once my plans for world domination reach fruition their days will be numbered, and extremely painful.

vwrangler

Richard Haseltine said:

Strictly a shader is a bit of code that does something, a shader preset is the thing that applies a shader. A true shader product will have both a shader and one or more presets for applying it, while a shader preset product will have only presets for some other shader (one that comes with DS or an add-on). Unfortunately some content creators label shader preset products as shaders - once my plans for world domination reach fruition their days will be numbered, and extremely painful.

I don't suppose, when you're King of the World, you could just get them to label the whole mess as "Shaders and Presets" (or even "Shaders and Shader Presets" if they want to be specific) and put the whole thing into one place? I don't find the names as annoying as the fact that, for example, Subsurface itself is in one place, and all the presets that use it are in a different directory. Put all the presets that make use of a particular shader in subdirectories OF that shader. The split in organization makes no sense. (Yes, yes, I know, Smart Content, Categories, yadda yadda, whatever. Since I would like to drive a dagger deep into the heart of Smart Content, that don't signify.)