I tested something out last night. I had a DAZ Character in my Iclone library. I loaded it and noticed that you can't convert its materials to the Digital Human shader. Does this mean that the new shader will not be available to custom content? It's kind of a let down if you can only apply it to CC3 characters. I hope that's not the case. If Reallusion were to at least create a guide to creating the right maps for these shaders for custom content it would be better than not having it at all for any of your custom content. 

I'd love to be able to bring my own figures into Iclone and take full advantage of this, but it looks like something that is only available for Character Creator 3 content. I hope this is not the case forever. 

Unfortunately the Digital Human Shader is only compatible with CC3 characters. It can't be used with custom characters brought in using 3DXchange 7. However you can bring in a Daz character using Transformer and then apply the Digital Human Shader to it.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

Now that's really unfortunate. I hope Reallusion will change it's outlook on this. It's like no one at Reallusion kept in mind that people will want to create things that don't conform to what you can do in Character Creator 3. Not making the shader available for other meshes besides CC3 male/female. That means if I want to make a tail, I can't make one that will match the shader of the human I'm attaching to, so it will look like piecemeal garbage. Or if I want to import a character that you can't do in CC3 like a Satyr or a Dryad, when you render the scene, everyone with the Digital Human Shader will look fabulous, while the character you've created will look different --which is again, garbage. 



The key thing that I want to point out is that this way of thinking really crushes creativity. As an animator, I want to get the image in my head on the screen --which I want to look it's best, but when you are cut off from the best technology available or only given partial access to it, it's really disheartening. The Shader should be available for any use --not just the uses Reallusion thinks we should have. I'm not saying that you have to do it for us, but give us the capability to do it, and we can handle the rest. With all the tools available to us today, you can't honestly believe that we wouldn't be capable of applying it on our own if you show us how. The only thing you really have to do is write a guide to what's needed and stand back. 

It seems like at every turn, I am running into limitations that aren't natural when it comes to this platform, whether it be blocking access to materials in speedtrees, this, taking away the ability to replace body parts, or the lack of animation tools for animating things other than bipeds. 

I guess for now I'll just have to adjust my thinking when it comes to the Digital Human shader and only use it if I'm using CC3 characters. Still, it's very frustrating to be limited like this in taking advantage of new technologies.

Thank you for the feedback. I will pass this on to the iClone/Character Creator team.

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

i working on a female centaur and i dont need custom figures for that  

Congratulations on your effort, Wildstar. The point I was trying to make was not intended as a knock on what you can already accomplish. There are plenty of examples of inventive ways like yours that work. The point I am trying to make is that there are those of us who, for whatever reasons of or own, don't want to use a CC3 asset. There are some things that you can just not get out of a Character Creator 3 asset, and if you are cut off from the DHS, then whatever asset you create is going to look out of place. It will draw the eye in a negative way because it doesn't look like the DHS characters and will affect the overall quality of what you are trying to achieve. I don't want my scene to look like piecemeal when it's put together, so when I start a project, I take care to model what I need or texture it so that they all look like they come from the same source. If needs be, I rig from scratch and I want to be able to make the end result look as good as it can possibly get. For those people who are content to work with stock content, this isn't a problem, but it's a big limitation to anyone who wants to do custom work. There are some limitations you can't get around like speedtrees --for now. But when you engineer something for animation, the idea is that you can't anticipate how someone will want to work something out, so it's better to build tools that you can apply without restrictions rather than thinking of one particular way of doing things. For instance, I like toons but there are some limitations with what you can do with CC3 because of topology. Iclone gives me the ability to characterize a custom skeleton precisely for that reason and it's a major attractant to working in Iclone. A shader should be the same way. When you think about it, a shader's just settings and maps --so there's no reason to restrict it to one kind of asset. The thing is, the only thing they have to do is remove the restriction of being only able to apply it to a CC3 asset. If they do that, then the rest will take care of itself. Someone will figure out how to create the needed maps by the tutorial they've already posted on Youtube:



So really the only thing I'm asking for is for them to get out of the way and let me use the shader with what I want. Something even more important that someone hasn't pointed out --is that you could use this with something like a standard prop and gain even greater control of how it's rendered just by creating the proper maps to go with it, like an alien metal or a greatly detailed magical tree. What I'm saying is that they've created this thing with great potential and all they have to do is remove the limiter on it and get out of the way. The Iclone community is filled with people who can take something like this and really surprise you with figuring out new uses for it. Right now the only think stopping someone from doing this is not being able to apply the shader to anything other than CC3 Figures.

Will, could you situate the horsey back of a CC3 so that you get the shader, and the horsey?
Or do you need the full gallop, so it needs to be a full character.

I agree would be great to have Digital Shader expanded to objects and everything else.  You could see in the Youtube tutorial, the one above with the shader, he talks about the jade subsurface...
You know he wishes he could be doing it on that sub-surface dragon every rendering engine uses to display sub-surface. 

That's a limitation of the SpeedTree run-time license used for iClone and not RL's fault.

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I don't understand why that would be the case.

I would think "a shader is a shader" and the geometry shouldn't matter.

Why not let us apply the DH Head shader to a horse, or a lampshade if we want to?  Same with the Human Skin shader.  When it renders using any of our "renderers," a polygon is a polygon, right?  What am I missing?

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