Here are a couple of Cycles node shaders that I use when importing DAZ figures into Blender. For those not familiar with it, Cycles is Blender's physically-based path tracing renderer that became available with the 2.61 release, and has gotten betterw ith every reles

When you import a Collada file from DAZ into Blender, Blender creates materials for you based on the materials exported from DAZ, but it creates them for the Blender Internal renderer only. It does not create materials for the Cycles renderer. If you want to render in Cycles, you have to manually recreate each of your materials. I created the two node groups in the attached file to speed up that process:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ihhxkb85wqul6y1

The "Basic Skin" node group takes a number of inputs, including a diffuse texture, optional bump map, and optional specular map. All of the color inputs can take either a single color or a texture map. There are some additional controls that you can use tweak the strength of the various color/maps:

Unfortunately, Cycles doesn't yet support SSS or normal maps. Normal maps are coming in 2.65 (there's a test build available now). Once 2.65 is released, I'll update this to accept a normal map as well (there are ways to use the normal map in 2.64, but I haven't been happy with the results, so I decided not to support them).  

We probably won't see SSS until at least 2.66 and possibly not until 2.68. The "Tint" and "Under Tint" controls can be used to kinda sorta fake SSS until then.  If you don't want to use this feature, simply set their strength values to 0.

The second node group is called "Lashes". It's primarily intended for creating materials using eyelash and eyebrow transparency maps, though it could also be used for body hair or pubic hair or any similar kind of material.

To use these node groups, open the Blender file where you want to use them, then press Shift-F1. This will bring up the "Append" dialog. Navigate to the aforelinked blender file, navigate into "NodeTree", then select Lashes and shift-select Basic Skin. Click the "Link/Append from Library" button, and now the two node groups will be available in your Blender file in the node editor..

To use, create a Cycles material and open up the Node Editor. Press the "A" key to add a node, then select the Group submenu, then select either Basic Skin or Lashes. Once it's added, hook up the Surface and Displacement nodes to the Material Output, and then set any values you want. At very least, you're going to want a diffuse texture for the Skin shader (though you get okay results even without it) and a transparency map for the Lashes shader. Note: the Lashes shader expects a black and white transparency map, not one that uses alpha.

Another thing to take note of: DAZ Studio's Collada exporter seems to only export the diffuse texture for each material, even if there is a bump, specular, or normal map being used in Daz Studio. That means, if you want the best render possible, you'll probably have to navigate into your Daz Studio content folder or Poser runtime folder to find the rest of the maps. Daz Studio also sometimes doesn't export the lashes transparency maps, so you may have to dig those out manually too.

This is truly excellent, FigureSculptor. Really good to see others as excited about this new renderer as I am, even though it is but at the early stages of development. The fact that OSL has been enabled for it means exciting times ahead.

I just wish my maths and physics skills were better... they would be essential to creating materials that really work well in Cycles using OSL.

Thank you for the shaders... I've already got Antonia in Blender: will try these shaders out on her.

Quote - Really good to see others as excited about this new renderer as I am, even though it is but at the early stages of development. The fact that OSL has been enabled for it means exciting times ahead.

Since the 2.5 rewrite, I've really, really liked Blender (I can't understand the people who are still sticking with 2.49b). Though DAZ Studio and Blender are awesome programs, I find I'm able to pose and animate much faster in Blender, and I like the additional flexibility a full-featured 3D program offers.

But, Blender really was missing a good renderer. Blender Internal was state of the art back in 2004 or so. :) And integrating with YafaRay or another third party renderer is such a hassle, and you lose out on one of Blender's main advantages - how integrated everything is. Getting render layers back into Blender's compositor, for example, is a real hassle with an external renderer.

So, yeah, I do see huge potential with Cycles. With the node-based materials and OSL support coming in the next release, amazing things are going to be possible. Even as it is now, I've gotten some pretty amazing results with it and I can't wait until I can totally forget the Internal renderer exists. :)

Let me know how the shaders work for you. They're nothing fancy, but I've been pretty happy with the results given the current limitations (no SSS, etc.).