Material Method

This option controls how the plugin generates materials. The BSDF method creates a complicated node tree which attempts to mimic IRAY materials as closely as possible in Cycles, even for characters with complex materials such as Victoria 8. The material can also be rendered in Eevee, but the results may be less faithful.

The Principled method is centered around the principled node. It usually works better with Eevee and render times may be shorter. Cycles can also render such materials, but the result may not be identical to what you get in DAZ Studio.

Here are the corresponding node trees for the Face material.

[Node tree generated with the BSDF method] Node tree generated with the BSDF method

[Node tree generated with the Principled method] Node tree generated with the Principled method

The default value of the material method depends on the active render engine: BSDF if the engine is Cycles, and Principled if the engine is Eevee.

In Blender 2.7x, there is a third material method, Internal. It generates materials for the Blender internal renderer and can thus not be used with Cycles.

Refractive Method (1.6.1 only)

To illustrate how the Refractive Method setting affects the material, we consider the Victoria 7 cornea, which has both opaque and refractive components. Note that the main material method must be set to Principled for this option to matter. If the main material method is BSDF, a BSDF node group is generated for refractive materials too.

Material Method = Principled, Refractive Method = BSDF

If the Refractive Method is Second Principled, a second principled node is generated for the refractive part of the material. Material Method = Principled, Refractive Method = Second Principled

If the Refracive Method is Reuse Principled, the original principled node is used for refraction and the opaque properties are lost. This can be useful if you want a simple material that can be easily modified.

Material Method = Principled, Refractive Method = Reuse Principled

Note that for a purely refractive material, which does not have any opaque channels, the two last method result in the same node tree.

Hair Material Method

Hair BSDF: Node tree with the Hair BSDF node. Works with Cycles only.

Hair Principled: Node tree with the Hair Principled node. Works with Cycles only, Blender 2.8x and later only.

Principled: Node tree with a Principled node. Works with both Cycles and Eevee.

Viewport Color

This option determines the color of the meshes in the viewport. It does not affect renders, but is only an aid for working in the viewport.

• Original: Use the base color in DAZ Studio, without textures. This is usually white for all materials.
• Random: Use a random color for each material. Useful if you need to see where different materials apply.
• Guess: Assign a color based on the name of the material. The colors are the Skin and Clothes viewport colors in the import options.

Here is Aiko imported with different color choices:

MATERIAL METHODS. by Alessandro

BSDF. This will use bsdf nodes to mimic iray as faithful as possible, only works with cycles. You can render with eevee but screen effects and skin materials will not work due to eevee limitations.

EXTENDED PRINCIPLED. This will use the principled node for the base material, plus bsdf nodes for enhanced effects not supported by the principled node, as translucency or dual lobe or daz shells for example. The materials will work fine both in cycles and eevee, but due to the principled limitations the conversion from iray is approximated and you may have to fix some materials, especially skin materials.

SINGLE PRINCIPLED. This will only use a single principled node, thus enhanced effects not supported by the principled node are not available, as translucency or dual lobe or daz shells for example. But this is good to export to game engines via fbx or gltf or obj since these formats work better with the principled shader.

unused textures. In the global settings there's "build unused textures", that you can use to import all the daz textures even if not used in the shader. This helps to fix materials by hand if needed. It's most useful with the single principled mode.

sss skin. In the global settings there's "sss skin (bsdf)", that you can use to force sss for skin materials with the bsdf method, this is faster to render and compatible with eevee, but will mostly require to fix the skin material by hand, it is usually enough to tweak the sss value to get something better.

Please note that eevee can't render volumes as cycles does, so if you use BSDF with eevee you will get a squared approximated volume around the figure. To fix this you can use sss skin.

alternative sss. In the global settings there's also "alternative sss" that's a different method you can try, this was contributed by Midnight Arrow.

note on material conversion. The shaders imported from daz studio are converted from iray and in general may not be the best solution for cycles. The point is we need to convert iray features that cycles doesn't support or does in other ways so apprxomations are done. While the conversion quality is generally good, especially for bsdf, for best results you can replace some materials with native cycles shaders if you need to.

UNSUPPORTED SHADERS. by Alessandro

Also, and this is very important, the importer does convert only specific iray shaders, that are commonly used for G3 G8 G9 figures and props. There's some support for 3delight shaders used in G1 G2 and old V3 V4 assets. There's no support for custom shaders created by PAs. When you import the scene you will get a warning message if unsupported shaders are found, in this case you can convert them to uber before exporting by applying the uber shader in daz studio.

Please note that when you render a G1 G2 figure in daz studio this is exactly what iray does, that is, it applies the uber shader before rendering. So this way you will get in blender the same conversion daz studio does.

steps:

1. in daz studio select all items and materials to be converted

2. apply the uber shader

You can check the shader name in daz studio to see if it's a custom shader or a standard uber. Usually custom shaders are provided by PAs for specific purposes as skins or hair, these will not import fine in blender, if we import a custom shader then the addon will show a error message, reporting the custom shader name and the affected materials.