3Delight NSI for Daz

History of NSI4DAZ

NSI4Daz (3Delight NSI for Daz Studio) is developed by J Cube Inc., an independent software engineering company based in Yokohama, Japan. We build focused, high-quality software around ideas we believe deserve to exist.

For years, Daz artists relied on the original 3Delight for final-quality renders. That generation of rendering technology was built around established interfaces and shading systems, including the RenderMan Interface (RI) and RenderMan Shading Language (RSL).

3Delight NSI takes a different path. Built around the proprietary Nodal Scene Interface (NSI), it provides a modern foundation for interactive rendering, Open Shading Language (OSL), scripting, multithreading, serialization, and extensible scene editing. Its node-based design treats scene construction and modification as the same sequence of explicit operations: create, set, connect, delete. The result is a compact interface designed for interactive updates and concurrent use.

In the meanwhile…

While NSI was being developed, Daz Studio adopted NVIDIA Iray as its primary renderer. The original 3Delight integration remained behind and was retired in 2025. Iray is built on the Iray SDK, which inherits much from the mental images rendering lineage, and uses Material Definition Language (MDL) for materials. Not every capability of the Iray SDK is exposed through Daz Studio’s integration; motion blur is one notable example. Iray’s GPU acceleration is closely tied to NVIDIA’s hardware ecosystem.

The two systems take different approaches to scene representation and shading:

Scene editing

Iray uses a scene database and transaction model. NSI exposes a compact, node-based interface of explicit edits: create, set, connect, delete.

Shading

Iray uses MDL to define the interface of physically based materials. MDL is not a general programming language, and artists cannot freely author arbitrary new material types the way they can with a programmable shading language. 3Delight NSI integrates Open Shading Language (OSL), an open, programmable shading system whose closure-based model lets shaders describe material response and emission.

Lighting

In NSI, ordinary geometry can emit light through its shader, with no dedicated light-source node required. Iray also supports emissive materials; the difference lies in how shading and scene elements are represented and connected.

These choices give NSI a uniform model for scene editing and a flexible, programmable approach to shading.

Instancing, overrides & geometry shells

NSI treats instancing as a first-class part of the scene description: shared geometry, per-instance overrides, and small edits instead of rebuilding the whole scene. That matters in Daz Studio because geometry shells (skin details, dirt, tattoos, overlays) often duplicate geometry and materials. NSI’s model makes a share-oriented path natural: keep the base mesh shared, push placement and shading through instance attributes, and update incrementally.

NSI4Daz already follows that path where possible, including mid-Live updates. Deeper shell sharing remains on the Early Access roadmap.

We believe Daz artists deserved another option: a renderer built around a different set of priorities, without requiring a particular GPU vendor, and without being limited to whatever an existing integration happened to expose. The full feature set lives on the Features page.

Enter NSI4Daz

NSI4Daz brings 3Delight NSI into Daz Studio 6, combining physically based path tracing with highly parallel CPU rendering, detailed skin and hair shading, atmospheric and volumetric effects (including OpenVDB), HDRI lighting, Physical Sun & Sky, multi-light AOVs, motion blur, depth of field, and analytical rendering of supported hair curves and subdivision surfaces. Sub-pixel displacement adds fine surface detail without pre-tessellating supported base geometry. Live IPR and Final share the same rendering pipeline, so what you tweak in Live is what Final finishes.

Optional GPU-accelerated denoising works with compatible Apple, Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA hardware, with CPU fallback when a supported GPU is unavailable. Rendering itself does not require a dedicated GPU or tie you to one hardware vendor.

Caustics depth and still more efficient geometry-shell sharing remain on the Early Access roadmap. Development and releases follow their own schedule, independent of Daz Studio’s release cycle and NVIDIA’s hardware calendar.

Why it exists

Daz Studio’s built-in renderers each have a purpose. There is still room for another approach.

• Iray delivers physically based rendering and has a mature material system. Its GPU acceleration is NVIDIA-focused, and the capabilities available to artists depend partly on what the Studio integration exposes.
• Filament prioritizes real-time physically based rendering and responsive viewport feedback rather than final-frame path tracing. It serves a different purpose in the rendering workflow.
• 3Delight NSI brings physically based path tracing, detailed skin and hair shading, atmosphere and volumetrics, HDRI, Physical Sun & Sky, multi-light, motion blur, sub-pixel displacement, and analytical rendering of supported hair curves and subdivision surfaces. Its scene model is designed around shared geometry, per-instance overrides, and incremental edits. Highly parallel CPU rendering carries the workload, while optional GPU denoising can accelerate image cleanup on supported hardware.

The result is another way to finish images in Daz Studio: a modern scene-editing architecture, sophisticated shading and geometry, and hardware flexibility, without buying a particular GPU just to hit Render.

And what about quality and performance? We’ll let you be the judge.