that when you import some DAZ content into Carrara (like the First Class Stateroom, for example) the shaders come in screwed up?  Consistently I find extreme highlights which must be removed, even on cloth surfaces (which look ridiculously plastic until fixed).  Furthermore, on many shaders the bump is turned up to some ridiculous max of 350 or 500.  This happens all the time.

I usually go through and fix everything once, then save the object or scene in my objects for later use.  It's still a pain, though.

One other thought while I'm on the subject.  Has anyone else made the highlight changes and noticed that you can open the color picker and just click on the current setting (don't move it at all) and the extreme highlight disappears leaving a normal looking shader?  This seems strange.

All thoughts welcomed on this subject.

Klebnor mit Schlagsahne

Some of it has to do with differences in the way the shading engines work between Poser (for which DAZ content is built) and Carrara. Bump values are calculated globally (with reference to the world coordinates) in one, and locally in the other. Likewise, there's a different engine for calculating highlights between the two.

Converting between the two shading systems is problematic at best. I don't know anyone who's satisfied with the conversion, but there's no good way to create a universal importer that will work on all content.

A lot of DAZ content has the same shader information repeated for multiple material zones, too, which you may want to consolidate. For example, when I import Victoria 4.2, I get 29 shaders. If I tell Carrara to consolidate duplicates, that gets reduced to 14.

Might be nice if they added some controls that would let us, individually, add conversion values for shaders (like, always reduce bump to 5% of the imported value) because no two people are going to use the same values.

The best thing to do, I've found, is to bring your content in, tweak the shaders, then save the content back as a Carrara file, and use that file in the future.

The color picker opens at flat black, regardless of the color setting of the subshader. So when you click on it, it resets the highlight subshader to something like zero.
I don't mind tweeking the settings, but find with my system that I only get accurate settings when I have my anti-alias set to (at least) "good". Anti-alias "none" or "fair" gives a shader that is very different than the final render on "good" or "best". I assume that it is a result of my screen and graphics card, but haven't compared with another system.
An hour spent tweeking the settings while on "fair" anti-alias is a total waste of time. I have relearned this lesson several times. {insert pout here}

Thanks to both of you.  The consolidation of shaders thing is new to me, but I have observed it where an identical shader (named differently, usually sequentially) is assigned to similar objects in a scene.  I was fixing one shader, and applying it to the other similar material zones.  Consolidation will definitely speed this up.  Is this under the edit menu?

I agree on the concept of a universal bump change.  I think it could be a universal percentage, or a percentage of the current value (say 10% of 500%, yielding 50%).  In some situations applying this to all shaders would be less disruptive than setting all to one fixed number.  Either way, one would have to do a lot of manual tweaking anyway.

Thanks again - anyone else have any tips on fixing shaders?

Klebnor

Yup... I think it was a new feature they added in the 7.1 update, so it's not been in there very long.

Awesome! I hadn't noticed the consolidation feature. That will so save on file sizes!

I'll have to look to see if it's in 6 Pro-I've been deleting out the extra friggin' shaders.  Snicker

Quote - > Quote - Consolidation will definitely speed this up.  Is this under the edit menu?

Yup... I think it was a new feature they added in the 7.1 update, so it's not been in there very long.

Good to know!

If you find that you consistently use the shader consolidation feature (I do it on every scene) you might check out another new feature.  Go into preferences>common file load settings and check the box for "Consolidate shaders on load".

Automation!

Klebnor