Iuvenis_Scriptor posted at 3:39PM Wed, 25 November 2020 - #4405035

I assume this process will work for G1-3 figures as well.

Great tip. Thanks for the write-up. I had a problem this week trying to use Genesis Male Genitals. Neither G1 or G2 would transfer over from DAZ with their testicles in tact! Upon review of the pz3 files that were created, both files strangely omitted any geometry for the testicle actor. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but I can't help suspect it was done on purpose to foil those of us who like balls. Anyway, I used this method to create G1 and G2 male genitals with testes. The files that are created here still have some DAZ artifacts floating around in them. It appeared to just be meta-data fields. But I'm not really sure.

ghostship2 posted at 6:49PM Fri, 06 November 2020 - #4403633

@braefell I think PHBSDF is borked at the moment. I get same error that I get with anisotropicbsdf with the triangles all over the mesh.

Roger that. Thanks.

Been having a bit of fun exploring the new cycles. Here's my attempt at shader conversion. Principled Hair seems promising, but I am having some issues with render artifacts. It looks a bit like gelatin or sugar-candy here. As always, I am super impressed by what others are able to create.

FWIW, and for others who might not know how to do this. I reproduced a scene with Gen 2 Male and ran through some shader experiments. In DAZ, export G2 Male, export jeans as conforming, export shoes as conforming. In P11, store character morphs and to a pose library. In P12, load G2. Apply stored pose. Load jeans and shoes, and confirm to figure. Copy morphs from G2 to jeans (wait for close to eternity for dialog to popup) and just select the morphs that apply to the lower body that are set on. (It would be nice to have a script help identify which morphs are set, to help with this process).

I used principled shader for skin and jeans, and for hair i used a 80/20 mix of principled hair shader /principled shader. Still tweaking here. Bump is too strong and I would prefer a little more specular for this scene. I am confused by SSS shaders and still looking for guidance here. Any pointers would be appreciated. I found one cycles tutorial with a complicated 3 SSS node setup representing the different layers of skin. In that tutorial he had an alpha map that affected the strength of SSS, and that worked well enough to paint a map for the ears to give them SSS strength.

The principled hair shader is producing strange reflection artifacts. It seems to be related to roughness, and requires more experimentation.

But... The point being it seems easy enough to be able to reproduce at least what I had. My next experiment is to work on a more complicated set of scenes with more complicated G2 bends. I can't stomach the DAZ interface enough to know what G2 bends/features I am missing using this workflow. I just like the variety of pre-built characters with easy customization morphs.

On the subject of toon shaders. NIghtsong, published a series of 2 and 3 tone shaders on Runtime DNA. There was a black-and-white option, she called noir shaders. I don't see them offered any longer. They allowed integration of transparency and color maps. She still has a presence here and she can be contacted at mwilliams@worldhavens.com. Attached is an example. I decided not to use, and went firefly and then superfly instead.