One thing at a time! I wanted to be sure all the old Studio content has installed properly, so -- can we get Victoria 4.2 to load properly, and render nicely? Answer --
-- yes. That's Victoria 4.2 rendered in Iray, with one of the old costumes given a makeover with Iray shaders, Not bad. In fact, the low-poly models render FAST; just keep in mind that when you get very, very close to them, Iray shows up all the cockroaches. You will see polygons, if you get too close! So keep these figures for background scenes, presumably.
The next question was, since the old 3Delight render engine is exactly that, old, does that mean simpler renders -- raytrace! -- will go fast, because they're not Iray renders? Answer -- a resounding no! Not only do raytraces take about 4x longer than Iray renders, when you see the results side by side, they're disappointing...
That's still just the old low-poly Michael 4, wearing Neftis's Mon Chevalier hair (which is a Poser prop), and Xurge3D's Mediaeval Royalty costume (also optimized for Poser). So the surfaces had to be adjusted for Iray, which turned out to be tricky but far from impossible. The thing is that M4 renders up quite nicely in Iray ... in four minutes. The raytrace is cartoonish, and was at least 20 minutes, even with The Hulk running "high and hot." Hmm.
I rather think I'll be sticking to Iray from here on out. So that's another question answered. Next: how in the hell do you install all your Renderosity content into Studio 4.14, under Windows 10? I knew the answer to this for Studio 3 and Windows 7, but this is very, very different. Well, one step at a time. I installed a pile of shaders first, and it turns out, they work just fine. So far I've applied them to many props, costumes and so forth, and they look a treat:
I did the ground, the column and so forth, in shaders to make the simple old props look good. This little scene here has 10 props and four lights ... I think I've got the photometric lights worked out (bear with me; I'll write about this as we go, when I'm sure). Right now, the only thing I can pass along with confidence is the answer to this:
Where do you put third party shaders from Renderosity into DAZ Studio 4.14, to have they work properly?
Here's the file path:
C:\DAZ 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime --
After which, copy shader sets (or packs) into Runtime\Iray or Runtime\Shader Presets.
It gets more complex if you're installing props, because you need to know if the assets you're installing are DAZ 3D format, or Poser format. In the case of the Xurge3D (Poser) costume Michael 4 is wearing here, I've got it to work, but I want to check the installation process a couple more times before I quote you exact addresses. It can be bloody confusing!
More experiments to come. I need to thrash out a lot of questions about lighting, and then I need to install about 500 Renderosity items, from shaders to lights to poses to hair to costumes and props. This will take a wee while. Patience!
