Hey all, a quick little progress update, was going to post this later on Saturday, but since someone asked over on Patreon I figured I'd just go ahead get it written up after work. The work project that I has kept me busy since mid-late November seems to be quieting down quite a bit over the past week or so. So it might be coming to a close soon"-ish." I haven't been provided with a time frame for when it might end, and my schedule for the next two weeks is already setup and is the same as its been since I started on this work project so it doesn't seem likely to be ending this month, but as said before maybe soon. Once I know when it will end I will make an announcement, likely in the Discord server, so join if you haven't already (https://discord.gg/jzAsznhqHN). Once I know when the work project is over I will likely pause support for an additional month so that I can use that month to get back into the swing of things.

Before we get into the main reason I was making this post. I recently found out that Iray Server is apparently now free. Which makes it even simpler for me to setup a second computer to offload rendering onto. Because before I was thinking I would need a full on windows machine with a fair bit of storage to store all the Daz assets. Well not anymore, now I technically just need a server with a bit of RAM, a high end Nvidia GPU, and a fair amount of storage to store the renders on until I can transfer them off the render system. It will still be a while until this gets up and operational, its just going to be easier now. The main thing holding it back it going to be cost. The closest GPU to my current one in terms of CUDA count is the RTX A5000, which is around $2,200, the next step up which gives me more CUDA cores so renders are faster per card is the A5500 which is about $4,500. Realistically I'd probably go for the A5000, because its cheaper so it would be easier to afford multiple of them and 2 of them would have about 6000 more CUDA cores then the A5500 for basically the same material cost and so should be a fair bit faster as a result.

But now for the main reason that I was making this post. Daz recently released an update that added omnishaders for hair (and fur), that in theory helps to make hair more realistic in terms of how light refracts off it, etc. etc. aka makes hair more realistic, and I am curious as to which of the looks you all prefer? Below are two pictures using the MC for Andromeda, one using the new omnishaders and the other is the hairs normal Iray based shader. I will likely do some more of these using the other characters since for some characters the preferences might change, but for now I only have the MC done. Admittedly the omnishaders do require some more work at the start to get them to look nice, and some hairs will probably require more work then others, but once the settings are dialed in they should be pretty set and forget, baring any major changes to how the shader works.

So, my question is, do you all prefer A or B? This is more so out of curiosity and to get some other opinions so I can't say if it will actually change anything about how renders are done.