I have done some limited conversion from Blender to Daz, like when I needed the Chinese food containers in Amanda's last Chapter. The problem is, if I'm using anything procedurally generated in Blender, I wouldn't know of a simple way to get it into Daz. Plus, having spent so much time now using Blender's node system, I find IRay's shaders to be more confusing and cumbersome than ever.
Share Gloss Inputs....share with what? Dual Lobe Specular Weight? What the fuck! And maybe I'm stupid but I've never gotten Anisotrophy working correctly in Daz. I know it all makes sense, but it's not intuitive. I also like having the ability to manipulate my maps' intensity and levels using color ramps in Blender. In Daz I'd have to open photoshop, make the changes, and then reload over and over again to fine tune. The thought gives me a headache.
Just so that I'm clear: my thought was how you might optimize your release schedules while maintaining a migration path to a fundamentally different graphics platform. The thinking being that you'll necessarily want to keep putting out releases on Daz while developing the Blender assets towards reaching a critical level that enables gradual cutover.
For Daz-based assets, while you get releases done in Daz you might make a goal of, say, doing at least BASIC conversion for each scene object and character to Blender before shipping that release (at least, for those assets which will be used again in future releases). This way, you have the basis for creating future releases in Blender from those objects, still needing to fine-tune their materials in Blender after basic conversion to Daz via the plugin, object export, etc. It gets you on the path but saves time from waiting for perfected materials conversion, rigging setup and so forth up-front. This prioritizes releases over conversion to Blender.
Yes, this puts a natural lag between the time you put out a next release using Daz and when you can fully Blenderize the related assets for future releases, but my assumption is that you'll reach a critical mass of essential, converted objects after only 2-3 more Daz-based releases. At such a point, future work could concentrate on Cycles material conversion, rigging preparedness, scene lighting, render settings and Blender-based posing, at the very least - all while still cranking out Daz-based releases using the same assets you have initially converted to Blender.
So, it's a gradual cutover consideration. Concentrate on just . . . Lupita, for example. And the few rooms in which we've seen her thus far. She might be a great example of related objects to fully convert and pose + render in Blender for upcoming releases, where her scenes might be coming from Blender and others still from Daz. Hopefully, the transition between scenes in terms of look and feel wouldn't be too jarring, but that cutover and comparison will need to happen at some point, anyway - making it gradual, per scene-related elements could give you a path forward without adding too much delay between actual releases.
Then you might look at the next set of characters + supporting scene elements to Blenderize and compose fully in Blender, scooping effort away from the Daz side to Blender a bit more with each release, on a per-scene basis.
If a scene could benefit from a Blender-derived prop, then just export it as .OBJ with materials (not procedural, just textures) to Daz and throw some of the many Iray shaders at them initially. Leather, metal, whatever. That can be quick to apply and tweak in Daz' Surfaces tab, without needing to deal with their node editor. When you later want to use that same object in Blender, at THAT point you fully materialize it there and maybe use the plugin to help with initial conversion, too.
I just feel that might be more manageable and allow you to switch gears on some decisions - such as materials you derive, how to best do lighting, render settings, etc. - as you gain more Blender experience in the real world, on a schedule of your own. Plus, it still allows for releases to come out on a decent basis.
This gradual cutover will take longer to become fully Blender, but the advantage is your ability to learn from practical experience and make course corrections with each new Blender scene that gets out the door in an otherwise Daz-led release, plus both you and we get more frequent releases.
I'm not being your project manager and it's likely you have all this thought through already, just thinking out loud.
