What if Blender could seamlessly render Iray materials?

algovincian

I would pay for this as well.

- Greg

Hurdy3D

JClave said:

gerster said:

My fear is that at some point you'll lose interest in maintaining the Blender fork and we'll hang in the same version forever.

I'm also interested in using Blender features... better water and cloth simulation e.g.

If it's only the about the cylces render engine, why not write a cycles plugin for DAZ?

If writing a renderer plugin for Daz was as easy as writing a couple of script files.. hah

I'm not sure if you know of a renderer plugin called Reality. It allows full Daz integration to Luxcore renderer.

The developer for Reality recently open sourced the plugin and one of the reasons was that, it was too much maintenance effort keeping up with Daz updates.

By being totally separate to Daz studio, this eliminates the potential maintenance issue and also upfront development effort required.

 

You shouldn't have to worry about me abandoning the custom build cause of the following reasons:

1. It will be open source. Just like Diffeomorphic plugin which has several contributors besides Thomas who is the original creator. No one's stopping anyone from taking over maintenance.
2. I have a high stake in this. Because this will be an essential app for my upcoming NPR engine. So if people don't want to use this custom build anymore, that's a bad news for my NPR engine too.

Ok... thank you fro the clarfifaction.

What is a NPR engine?

 

JClave said:

FSMCDesigns said:

cycles may be a bit more effieient than IRAY, but since posers Superfly is a version of cycles, I'd rather go with something else.

Superfly is based on Cycles build that's at least a few years old. Since then, Cycles improved a lot and the following features can beat Iray when it comes to performance

• Smarter AI Denoiser
  • analyses Albedo and Normal pass as well as Beauty pass, unlike Iray.
  • This means you need a fraction of samples in Cycles vs Iray and get about the same quality render
• Microdisplacement
  • apparently can be used to save VRAM requirement up to 88% for sculpted assets such as Daz HD contents

OT: My main motivation to use cycles over iray would we the better light bouncing.

Peter Wade

I'd be interested. My system struggles to render Iray scenes of any complexity. I haven't tried Blender yet so I don't know if it would be any better. If the plugin is fairly low priced, or if there is a demo version I could try to see how well it works then I would love to try it.

TheKD

What is a NPR engine?

I think it means not photo real. 

Also, I would he highly interested in this fork. I always end up giving up out of frustration after a few months of fiddling, every time I try to get daz people looking good in other programs. I fall back to iray, because it's not much fiddling around, compared to when I was trying to bring daz people into houdini to use their amazing render engine for example. In DS, all the fiddling around I really have to do to make some art is compostition and lighting. Sure, some fiddling, but I don't have to go mess around with shaders, making sure textures are plugged the right place, and their gamma is set right and all that other stuff lol. 

Like gerster, one of the main reasons I ever try getting daz people into houdini blender ets, is so I can use them with the powerful tools in other programs such as the physics. With houdini mantra render engine was also a big factor, I could do ridiculously large renders in the same amount of time I could do a normal sized render in DS. Cycles, I don't know a whole lot about, I messed about, but it was after my houdini phase, and I really didn't give it much of a care once I figured out I was going to have to do a boatload of fiddling to get people into it anyways. No sense pissing myself off if it turned out to be better than iray, since I can't use it anyways lol.

lilweep

I would rather have something that will allow full use of blender features and not just the renderer.

marble

JClave said:

• Microdisplacement
  • apparently can be used to save VRAM requirement up to 88% for sculpted assets such as Daz HD contents

Does this mean that it is possible to export DAZ HD to Blender? I  thought it wasn't.

As for your proposal - count me in! I have struggled with Diffeomorphic and perhaps I am too used to getting my renders how I like them in IRay and have no idea how to do the same in Cycles. Anything that eases that switch from IRay to Cycles is welcome, especially since - as I mentioned in my PM to you - I am totally intimidated by the Blender node system.

wolf359

lilweep said:

I would rather have something that will allow full use of blender features and not just the renderer.

The only way to access the Full features of blender is to use blender itself.

AllenArt

FSMCDesigns said:

nicstt said:

I'd pay money (good money) to use a different renderer in Studio, especially Cycles and/or Eevee; materials for one work with the other, by design.

You and me both. I have tried exporting scenes to render in Vray, Maxwell and even Kerkythea which is free but it is such a hassle setting up materials. cycles may be a bit more effieient than IRAY, but since posers Superfly is a version of cycles, I'd rather go with something else.

Trust me when I tell you that Superfly is a very CRIPPLED version of Cycles. So, if you're judging Cycles because of Superfly, the two are not even in the same ballpark ;).

Laurie

wolf359

AllenArt said:

FSMCDesigns said:

nicstt said:

I'd pay money (good money) to use a different renderer in Studio, especially Cycles and/or Eevee; materials for one work with the other, by design.

You and me both. I have tried exporting scenes to render in Vray, Maxwell and even Kerkythea which is free but it is such a hassle setting up materials. cycles may be a bit more effieient than IRAY, but since posers Superfly is a version of cycles, I'd rather go with something else.

Trust me when I tell you that Superfly is a very CRIPPLED version of Cycles. So, if you're judging Cycles because of Superfly, the two are not even in the same ballpark ;).

Laurie

IIRC "superfly"cannot even preview render in the poser viewport like the real cycles. :-(

Padone

JClave said:

I plan to open source this custom Blender build for other interested developers to contribute

I guess Thomas of the diffeomorphic plugin will be seriously interested. Actually materials get converted to cycles bsdf nodes by empiric formulas, and the result is not always the same as iray, especially with sss or "advanced" materials. If a custom iray uber shader can be done using mdl in cycles it will be a revolution. I didn't even think it was possible since afaik cycles is based on osl.

Padone

Just to let you know that @JClave seems to be going to start it .. I guess contributors are welcome. Of course this will be a revolution.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import-daz/issues/7/convert-shader-brick-materials-from-daz

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Although I've had very good experiences with the Diffeomorphic plugin itself together with BlenderKit, I would still pay for this on day one.

lilweep

I fully support this, but if someone could ELI5 what it does and how to use it upon release that would be much appreciated.

Padone

Here's an update from Jessub Kim to anyone interested.

I want to make it clear that the MDL feature I'm working on won't support OpenCL mode in Blender, therefore it won't support AMD cards.

The only hardware options would be CPU and either Optix/Cuda due to the fact that MDL SDK only compiles MDL scripts to those bytecodes (besides HLSL which would mean writing a whole new renderer)

Midnight_stories

I think it would go off like hotcakes on the blender market !

or even hit them up for a bit of funding !

Paintbox

I would definitely pay for a better bridge product to Blender. Interesting work! 

TheMysteryIsThePoint

marble said:

JClave said:

Padone said:

Just to point out that the diffeomorphic plugin DOES materials conversion for both cycles and eevee. It works fine for most iray materials. Actually it has some issues with sss and dual lobe specularity. These features are implemented but it's not a perfect match. Then things may improve if anyone is interested to contribute.

So would you say material conversion is 80%+ accurate?

I'm confused with some people saying the conversion is good and other people (like @marble) saying the conversion is not accurate at all.

If someone could clarify why there's such disparity in opinion, that would be much appreciated.

I have to add the disclaimer (as I have elesewhere) that I am not experienced with rendering in Blender - neither cycles not Eevee. So @Padone clearly has a jump start on me there. However, from my limited experience, to claim that Diffeomorphic conversion works out of the box would be a dubious claim at best. After following advice from @Padone and others I did not get close to the IRay quality with Diffeomorphic and Blender Cycles. Subjective, yes but try it yourself and see if you agree. I still find the Blender node system intimidating and I remain doubtful whether the investment in time or effort to learn it would be worth the potential gains. Right now my two priorities are a) to avoid dropping back to CPU which is a frequent and frustrating occurrence for me in DAZ Studio 4.12 and b) to render a scene quicker with similar quality. People claim that the out-of-core feature and the denoiser in Cycles (being so much better than IRay) suggest that both of my priorities may be met.

@marble This book may be just what you need. I'd really like to see you satisfied with your renders with Cycles, and this book really de-mystified a lot of things for me.

Cycles Encyclopedia

 

marble

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

marble said:

JClave said:

Padone said:

Just to point out that the diffeomorphic plugin DOES materials conversion for both cycles and eevee. It works fine for most iray materials. Actually it has some issues with sss and dual lobe specularity. These features are implemented but it's not a perfect match. Then things may improve if anyone is interested to contribute.

So would you say material conversion is 80%+ accurate?

I'm confused with some people saying the conversion is good and other people (like @marble) saying the conversion is not accurate at all.

If someone could clarify why there's such disparity in opinion, that would be much appreciated.

I have to add the disclaimer (as I have elesewhere) that I am not experienced with rendering in Blender - neither cycles not Eevee. So @Padone clearly has a jump start on me there. However, from my limited experience, to claim that Diffeomorphic conversion works out of the box would be a dubious claim at best. After following advice from @Padone and others I did not get close to the IRay quality with Diffeomorphic and Blender Cycles. Subjective, yes but try it yourself and see if you agree. I still find the Blender node system intimidating and I remain doubtful whether the investment in time or effort to learn it would be worth the potential gains. Right now my two priorities are a) to avoid dropping back to CPU which is a frequent and frustrating occurrence for me in DAZ Studio 4.12 and b) to render a scene quicker with similar quality. People claim that the out-of-core feature and the denoiser in Cycles (being so much better than IRay) suggest that both of my priorities may be met.

@marble This book may be just what you need. I'd really like to see you satisfied with your renders with Cycles, and this book really de-mystified a lot of things for me.

Cycles Encyclopedia

 

Thanks. I have to say that I am not sure that I still have the powers of concetration to study a 340 page book on a render engine. My attention span gets shorter as the years pass. I guess I learned to make resonable pictures using IRay because I had no choice. Before that I learned to do the same with Reality/Luxrender also because I had no choice (other than 3Delight which I never cared for). So if I am to use Cycles, there will have to be a compelling reason and that would be something like being priced out of the IRay market with GPU demands reaching the 2080ti level or greater.

Maybe this shorter alternative might be a good place for me to start (but I would still need to learn that damn node system): https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/cycles-shader-encyclopedia

Disappointing that the subject of this discussion is also limited to NVidia but I suppose Cycles can help NVidia users too with OOC capabilities.

By the way, I'd still like to see a few examples of what others consider to be acceptable renders using diffeomorphic and Blender Cycles. I've seen a few which, TBH, didn't impress me but maybe I've been looking in the wrong places.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

I use Diffeomorphic just for materials, and apply them to a figure I import via Alembic.

I think I used all of the Diffeomorphic converted materials, except for the skin. The skin was a combination of Paislee's bump and specular maps with Skinbuilder 8 diffuse and SSS maps, with just a little bit of tweaking on the strengths. It's an extremely simple setup that got me what I wanted. All the eye materials, for example, I didn't change at all.

It looks a little orange/red because there's an animated candle lit chandelier on the ceiling, and the relatively low light hides some detail, for example she looks much older in normal light as her sunken cheeks and crows feet really pop more, but these are editorial things. My point is that there may be subjective things that you personally would change, but Diffeomorphic gets you pretty close, where anything that you want to change can be done with just some basic knowledge of how the node system works.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

marble said:

Maybe this shorter alternative might be a good place for me to start (but I would still need to learn that damn node system): https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/cycles-shader-encyclopedia

Actually, I had never seen Andrew's explanations. I like 'em... the Encyclopedia is kind of over-kill, I admit. But it is all in there.

Good luck with whatever you decide, but I do think that your aversion to Blender's node system is rather irrational; it's well designed and intuitive, it's flexible and fun to try things, and the payoff is very rewarding when you get exactly what you were looking for.

marble

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

marble said:

Maybe this shorter alternative might be a good place for me to start (but I would still need to learn that damn node system): https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/cycles-shader-encyclopedia

Actually, I had never seen Andrew's explanations. I like 'em... the Encyclopedia is kind of over-kill, I admit. But it is all in there.

Good luck with whatever you decide, but I do think that your aversion to Blender's node system is rather irrational; it's well designed and intuitive, it's flexible and fun to try things, and the payoff is very rewarding when you get exactly what you were looking for.

I'm sure you are right about the node system but I find it daunting. Maybe the way my mind works - if I see a node with maths expressions I want to turn and run. And when I see tutorials and they say - add this between this node and that node - how is anyone supposed to guess what that intermediate node will do? And there are dozens (hundreds?) of them! Seems to me that experts doing tutorials assume a level of expertise in those who are following the tutorials.

It has taken me years to figure out combinations of parameters in the IRay surfaces tab and I'm still a novice. The Blender node system looks far more complex and I probably don't have that many years left to figure it out.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

marble said:

I'm sure you are right about the node system but I find it daunting. Maybe the way my mind works - if I see a node with maths expressions I want to turn and run. And when I see tutorials and they say - add this between this node and that node - how is anyone supposed to guess what that intermediate node will do? And there are dozens (hundreds?) of them! Seems to me that experts doing tutorials assume a level of expertise in those who are following the tutorials.

It has taken me years to figure out combinations of parameters in the IRay surfaces tab and I'm still a novice. The Blender node system looks far more complex and I probably don't have that many years left to figure it out.

Marble, did you look at the node set up I included? For many cases, it need not be any more complicated than that. There are no math nodes, and only one intermediate node. If you had a specific question I'm sure several of us could clarify things for you, and you'll be getting results like you want, in no time. Come on in, the water's fine :)

Padone

@TheMysteryIsThePoint Don't forget that daz is basically selling premade content to play with. I guess that makes the customer choice. I mean, if one comes to daz in the first place it's probably because he/she doesn't want to fiddle with parameters and/or too much learning, they just want something that works fine out of the box.

Then I do like using blender with daz assets because this expands so much what you can do with them, especially for animation and effects where daz studio is very limited. But again this comes at the cost of some learning and fiddling that's probably not what daz users want.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Padone said:

@TheMysteryIsThePoint Don't forget that daz is basically selling premade content to play with. I guess that makes the customer choice. I mean, if one comes to daz in the first place it's probably because he/she doesn't want to fiddle with parameters and/or too much learning, they just want something that works fine out of the box.

Then I do like using blender with daz assets because this expands so much what you can do with them, especially for animation and effects where daz studio is very limited. But again this comes at the cost of some learning and fiddling that's probably not what daz users want.

@Padone Deep down, I know that you are right. It's just that I can feel his frustration in his posts.

wolf359

Blenders shader node system is central to it's renderer..... Those unwilling /unable to use it, should not attempt to use blender for rendering IMHO. ...my new Genesis 2 /FBX to blender pipeline won't involve any third party single point of failure plugins.... I LOVE the powerful Blender node editor.

marble

Padone said:

@TheMysteryIsThePoint Don't forget that daz is basically selling premade content to play with. I guess that makes the customer choice. I mean, if one comes to daz in the first place it's probably because he/she doesn't want to fiddle with parameters and/or too much learning, they just want something that works fine out of the box.

Then I do like using blender with daz assets because this expands so much what you can do with them, especially for animation and effects where daz studio is very limited. But again this comes at the cost of some learning and fiddling that's probably not what daz users want.

That's a wee bit condescending. Nothing I produce is "out of the box". I'd just rather spend my time on the aesthetics than the techie details - and I am a techie myself having spent a long career in computer hardware and network support before I retired. The point is that if I can produce a nice picture using IRay then I am less inclined to learn the Blender node system (which may or may not be as daunting as I imagine). That is not to say that I don't spend time tweaking IRay to get just the look I want. I certainly don't load a couple of Genesis figures and props and press the "make art" button. I do object to the technical snobbery that sometimes passes for informed comment here.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

marble said:

Padone said:

@TheMysteryIsThePoint Don't forget that daz is basically selling premade content to play with. I guess that makes the customer choice. I mean, if one comes to daz in the first place it's probably because he/she doesn't want to fiddle with parameters and/or too much learning, they just want something that works fine out of the box.

Then I do like using blender with daz assets because this expands so much what you can do with them, especially for animation and effects where daz studio is very limited. But again this comes at the cost of some learning and fiddling that's probably not what daz users want.

That's a wee bit condescending. Nothing I produce is "out of the box". I'd just rather spend my time on the aesthetics than the techie details - and I am a techie myself having spent a long career in computer hardware and network support before I retired. The point is that if I can produce a nice picture using IRay then I am less inclined to learn the Blender node system (which may or may not be as daunting as I imagine). That is not to say that I don't spend time tweaking IRay to get just the look I want. I certainly don't load a couple of Genesis figures and props and press the "make art" button. I do object to the technical snobbery that sometimes passes for informed comment here.

In his defense, it is confusing when in one breath you say that you were interested in Blender, and are a techie, but on the other hand, a 5 node setup is "daunting"... I think that has more than one person scratchings their heads. It also seemed kind of strange that you consider the aesthetics as separate from the techie details. How else would you tweak a render in the absence of your "make art" button? A few times, you've expressed that you find it daunting, but there's no evidence that you have even tried anything other than clicking the import button, and hence, I think, @Padone's comment. Another thing that strikes me as strange is that you're OK with tweaking IRay, but a nice graphical interface where you can easily visualize what affects what, is daunting?

marble

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

marble said:

Padone said:

@TheMysteryIsThePoint Don't forget that daz is basically selling premade content to play with. I guess that makes the customer choice. I mean, if one comes to daz in the first place it's probably because he/she doesn't want to fiddle with parameters and/or too much learning, they just want something that works fine out of the box.

Then I do like using blender with daz assets because this expands so much what you can do with them, especially for animation and effects where daz studio is very limited. But again this comes at the cost of some learning and fiddling that's probably not what daz users want.

That's a wee bit condescending. Nothing I produce is "out of the box". I'd just rather spend my time on the aesthetics than the techie details - and I am a techie myself having spent a long career in computer hardware and network support before I retired. The point is that if I can produce a nice picture using IRay then I am less inclined to learn the Blender node system (which may or may not be as daunting as I imagine). That is not to say that I don't spend time tweaking IRay to get just the look I want. I certainly don't load a couple of Genesis figures and props and press the "make art" button. I do object to the technical snobbery that sometimes passes for informed comment here.

 

In his defense, it is confusing when in one breath you say that you were interested in Blender, and are a techie, but on the other hand, a 5 node setup is "daunting"... I think that has more than one person scratchings their heads. It also seemed kind of strange that you consider the aesthetics as separate from the techie details. How else would you tweak a render in the absence of your "make art" button? A few times, you've expressed that you find it daunting, but there's no evidence that you have even tried anything other than clicking the import button, and hence, I think, @Padone's comment. Another thing that strikes me as strange is that you're OK with tweaking IRay, but a nice graphical interface where you can easily visualize what affects what, is daunting?

I understand your confusion and I have tried to explain. But here's another go:

Way back when I was using Reality and Luxrender, I decided to try Blender instead. I watched some tutorials on the node system and got nowhere - I just found the whole method unintuitive (you obviously find the opposite). Reality and Luxus had a form of surfaces panel which suited me better so I stayed with that method. So I do have Blender and I use it for other things (mainly morphs and the video editor). Since then I have tried both TeleBlender and Diffomorphic in comparison to IRay and have been disappointed. As for evidence that I have tried ... I posted some efforts to a thread on the subject in which you and @Padone were involved:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5095591/#Comment_5095591

The point about aesthetics vs technology: some people seem more concerned with the workings of a process rather than the results. I've seen images posted here from "experts" and I have to say that many of those images look pretty awful to me. Perhaps that's subjective but the resulting image has to look good to me. It seems their much vaunted technical expertise has not done much for their aesthetic appreciation, IMHO. Unfortunately this "one click art" accusation is often bandied about by these same "experts".

Postscript: Perhaps what I find daunting is the amount of time it might take to learn Cycles and the node system well enough to produce similar quality to the IRay renders I am happy with at the moment. It has taken me a long time and a lot of tinkering to figure out the IRay surfaces and that panel happens to be something I feel comfortable with. I just know it would take at least as long to be equally happy with Cycles results but, hey, I might be forced down that route anyways if the cost of IRay becomes prohibitive.

AllenArt

I have never been a fan of nodes, but if they're taken in very small chunks, they're not too bad and after awhile you get a feel for exactly what they're doing. This is from a person that used to nearly cry in Poser's material room....lol.

Laurie

Silent Winter

I've been getting familiar with Blender's node setup lately. After a few tutorials, I'm comfortable with what goes where. If it's just plugging maps in and varying their intensity/interaction, it's quite simple once you've got the hang of it. Making whole procudural textures can be a bit more daunting but I've followed tuts while understanding what's going on, even if I couldn't make it myself from scratch.

Like anything else, it's a question of having the time and making the effort to practice. (having the time being the bigger hurdle for many).

I still render in DS, even if I could render some things in cycles since I know DS better.