Well I've had it trying to solve the Poser 8 hang problem so I'm switching to DAZ Studio. I'm a complete noob in this app so I was wondering if you could answer a fewquick questions.

1. Do ppl generally use the built in renderer or are 3rd party renderers better and more commonly used.

2. I'm used to Poser's Material Room. Where do you create custom shaders in DAZ?

The built in render of Studio, 3Delight, is equivalent to Firefly. Many users have started using LuxRender via my plugin, Reality. This option gives you freedom of choice at a very reasonable cost. The materials are defined in the Surface tab, specifically you want to look at the Advanced section of that tab, where you find all the settings for the Shader. If you need more control you can then look at the Shader Mixer in the tools menu, for a nodal system. If you use Reality then the plugin own's interface has the definition of the physically-based properties for Lux's Shader. Good luck.

Thank you for yor reply.

LuxRender looks interesting. I'll play with 3Delight until I max out its capabilities.

Does LuxRender support Normal Maps as well? That would be a real bonus if it did. Well does it handle GI/Final Gathering?

Studio tabs can be enabled/disabled, the surface tab seems to be disabled in your case, probably something that is set up for new instalaltions. Go to the View/Tabs menu, select Surface, when the popup window shows, grab it by the header and drop it in the left or right panel, depending on your preference.

Regarding Lux, it's a physically-based renderer, which means that light is always calculated based on mathematical models of real light. Things like indirect lighting are always active because that's how it works with real light, which makes lighting a scene with Reality much simpler than with biased renderers because you need fewer lights and the ones used work in a very predictable way. Lux at this time has displacement maps based on subdivision but no normal maps. I'm sponsoring the addition of that code by offering some money for incentive to the developers of Lux, I'm waiting for a reply from there. Some code has been alreadu developed, we now need somebody to finish the job, hence the monetary "incentive" :)

Cheers.

Wait to purchase Reality. I haven't had it work yet. Keeps crashing.:(

I will be glad t help you sort out the issue if you give me more details. Thanks.

Dont know what the issue is. I will create a scene, go to reality and it crashes..

Maybe my scenes are too large for Reality to handle?

I doubt it but there is really not enough information for me to debug this. So, let me ask you some questions to narrow down the possibilitis. First of all, what OS do you use? Mac OS or Windows? If the latter, what version? 32 or 64 bits? Next, what versio of Studio do you use? Are you running Reality 1.0 or 1.01? Lastly, have you tried the procedure outlined int the Reality User's Guide for testing a scene? Namely, add one V4, nude, no hair, one light, either the sun or a mesh light. Nothing else. Now call Reality and see if it comes up. If it does, click on the Reander button. There is no reason for your crash u less there are unsupported elements in your scene like UberEnvironment, Uber Rea light, spotlight or objects with special Shader. All these issue have been addressed in the upcoming Reality 1.2 but with 1.0x we can generally isolate the troublesome elements. Please follow the above steps and let me know. Thanks.

WinXp 32 bit

Daz3 Advanced

Version:  1.0.8.12

V4 naked with 1 distant light (sun)..Ok it is rendering now. So far 20 min and not done. A full scene would take days...:(

Scene I tried to render did contain background.jpg.  Was advised previously

that the program cannot read it...

Vitachick, as mentioned in the "Reality User's Guide", Lux will never stop rendering. There is no idea of "completed" in Lux, you stop the program when the image has reached a level of quality that is satisfactory. Please look at the Reality User's Guide PDF installed in your Studio3/docs directory. LuxRender works in such a different way from biased renderers that you need the information in the guide. Ten minutes spent reading the Guide will save you hours of trial and error. Plus, the way Reality/Lux materials work is different enough that you cannot draw parallels between the Studio system. Without the information in the guide you will not be able to take advantage of all that Reality offers to you.

Nevertheless I'm glad that there are no issues and that the program runs on your machine.

All the best.

Have you tried reducing the Render Bucket size from 32 to 16 or even 8?

That went a long way toward solving my Poser crash problems. Also, Poser is a RAM hog, I found after I went from 4 to 12 GB, Poser 8 started finally started playing nice?

I use both P8 and DS3. IMO, the Poser render engine is miles ahead. DS3, however, is fantastic for Animation--and the Puppeteer is superb for developing subtle variations on existing poses. Or not so subtle variations!

Good luck. 

The bucket size has no effect. I tried that. I don't see how RAM could be an issue if all I'm doing is clicking OK on a dialog box.

I can see RAM being an issue in rendering or the number of polygons in a scene. But right now my scenes are entirely empty.