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I know this may be a tough or confusing question, but I have numerous existing materials I created and reuse for a project, which were all prepared for Blender Internal.
Now, I want to start the transition to Cycles, but I've hit a roadblock. How can I transition my materials without completely starting over? Or should I just forget it and start with fresh materials?
The Python script at https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?394600-Materials-Specials-amp-conversion will automatically convert all of your materials and textures over so that they are compatible with Cycles.
The script tries to make the Cycles materials look as much like the Blender-Internal materials as possible, but I imagine you'll still need some tweaking, because of the inherent differences between the two render engines.
The new Blender 2.79 has an add-on that most people don't know about called "Materials Utils Specials" It is for converting Blender Render to Cycles. The Wiki article with instructions can be found at https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Materials_Utils
I just used it for some low poly people. I exported them from Daz as object files and imported them to Blender then changed the Blender materials to Cycles with one click. I did have some problems with the hair with some figures but not all. It did not take long to change the hair color.
