Quote - kerwin wrote

Quote - While we're on the subject of technology, what about shader tree/map compatibility with poser?   For me this has been near the #1 reason why DS4 has trouble with existing Poser content created by 3rd parties (including some DAZ brokered artists)

If I'm clear about what you are asking, it'll probably never happen, because as I undersand it, all render engines read shaders differently, even Renderman based ones like Firefly and 3Delight. The best you could hope for is something to convert or approximate them as Paolo does with Reality between D|S and LuxRender. Kevin

An approximation as you suggest would eliminate a huge amount of work at certifying content for DAZ.   Right now when you load a stock piece of Poser content (CR2 format) into DS4, you get a very poor interpretation (mostly the maps and some basice settings.)   Frequently items come in with additonal very wrong settings (yes, I've filed bug reports) such as setting "glossy" to 100%.    I'm not such an idealist that I'd expect 100% compatibility, but I think it is safe to say a bit more could be done to improve that compativility and increase the amount of content that works out of the box with DS4.   For end users with large libraries of non-DAZ content (for set pieces and props, for example) this would reduce the effort of employing that content in DS4, thus easing the transition (of those users who want to transition) to DS4.   I think we can all agree it would be beneficial to both DAZ and its PAs if there are more users on DS4 since that is the ideal platform for Genesis (today.)

For content creators, better shader mapping means that it's easier for us to offer support for both platforms, rather than deciding to create a custom set of shaders only for DAZ (using their proprietary shader tools and nodes) or choosing only Poser's proprietary shaders and nodes.   My question is intended to elicit (from DAZ) what their official positionis on this, since there has been precious little movement on shader translation between Poser and DS  in the past ferw years.

Good shader building in either product is time consuming.   Tools that even reduced that work by 50% could increase product compatibility.   I've considered my own shader translater between P9 and DS3A/DS4 but the minimal documentation, and the dependence on plugins for some key services (ubershader, for example) creates risk barrier for a commercial product to do the translation.

Cheers!

-K