Herewith, some preliminary findings from my mad flailing at the new physically based render engine included as an option with DAZ Studio 4.8 Public Beta. Some of these are confirmed by Google, some purely by experiment this evening (Iray is Nvidia's, so it's existed since well before DAZ got hold of it, it's just not widespread yet).
My system specs on my main (not on this laptop I use for internet access):
Windows 7
Intel Core i7-5930K at 3.50 GhZ, 6 cores.
Installed memory: 64 gb
Graphics cards: 2x GTX 740, 2x GTX 980, all 4 gb cards; not in SLI.
For those who are worried, no, Iray is not mandatory, you can still use 3Delight from th
Iray Surfaces And What They Mean by SickleYield, journal
Iray Surfaces And What They Mean
I've updated and corrected this article based on DAZ's documentation. You should read that if you want more information. This will continue to be more of a "plain talk" breakdown.
Let us begin with the different types of shaders from the "Base Mixing" dropdown at the top. Choosing one of these will hide or gray out some options and reveal others.
The Iray shader behaves as though it has three layers: The "base" layer, the "metallic flakes" layer on top of that, and the "top coat layer" on top of that. It is possible to turn off the top two layers and not use their settings, but the ability to use them is a property this shader has that