Will's Tips

dracorn

Knittingmommy said:

dracorn said:

I just picked up AoA's Rock Shader - do you think that will work well with Taradome in 3DL?

I like this set but they make it really hard to get the darn thing installed.  The grass/rock bundle which I bought that includes everything will install through Connect.  But it won't install the actual shaders.  Those you still have to install through the separate packages through DIM!  There aren't any Connect files.  It took me forever to figure out how to get the things installed so I could use them.  Connect makes the appropriate folders for them but just doesn't install the shaders in the Connect Library just all of the props and sets so when you load them up DS gives out errors that it can't find shaders and all of the rocks and grass are completely devoid of any textures.  The shaders themselves need to be installed in the Public My DAZ Library.  It's very frustrating.

Turns out that I bought them separately, because first Grass Shader went on sale, and then I finally picked up Rock Shader.  They installed for me just fine - but I used DIM. 

dracorn

timmins.william said:

Absolutely. I've done it. It's great. :)

If you look in my freebies, I have a 3DL 'snowcaps' shader that, with geometry shells, let's you create additional layers of shaders. Note that with a rock shader you have to be careful or the bottom layer will poke up through your geometry shell, and also you may run into issues with geometry load -- 3DL can groan with too much geometry.

Another approach you can do with TD3 is combine with grass shader (if you have it). Again, make a geometry shell, but this time lower it and reduce Y scale a little. That way, you have a geometry that's flattened a little bit, and the grass will poke through most toward the bottom, then shorten and 'disappear' at higher elevations.

 

Thanks, Will.  I need to visit your freebies.  Where is it located?

Secondly, I have not made a geometry shell.  Are you copying the general Terradome geometry here and then flattening it?  I'm not sure how to do this.  I have been trying to gather all your tips for Terradome but may have missed some things.  I also have DA Let it Snow, AoA's Grass Shader and Nature's Variance (plus a whole lotta plants).

Oso3D

Duh duh duh. I meant to link where I had it: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106626/will-timmins-procedural-shaders/p3

Toward the end.

Re: flattening: My suggestion is to create a geoshell (so that any morphs you may decide to change later are inherited), but you can actually modifiy geoshells' translation, rotation, and scale.

Copying the azone would also work. Either way, though, you are doubling the size of that zone.

Let it snow might also do it, I forget if it lets you rework the 'snow' texture.

 

Knittingmommy

dracorn said:

Knittingmommy said:

dracorn said:

I just picked up AoA's Rock Shader - do you think that will work well with Taradome in 3DL?

I like this set but they make it really hard to get the darn thing installed.  The grass/rock bundle which I bought that includes everything will install through Connect.  But it won't install the actual shaders.  Those you still have to install through the separate packages through DIM!  There aren't any Connect files.  It took me forever to figure out how to get the things installed so I could use them.  Connect makes the appropriate folders for them but just doesn't install the shaders in the Connect Library just all of the props and sets so when you load them up DS gives out errors that it can't find shaders and all of the rocks and grass are completely devoid of any textures.  The shaders themselves need to be installed in the Public My DAZ Library.  It's very frustrating.

Turns out that I bought them separately, because first Grass Shader went on sale, and then I finally picked up Rock Shader.  They installed for me just fine - but I used DIM. 

Ah, I got the bundle way back when I first started.  It has bonus stuff in it that was hard to resist that doesn't come with the Grass or the Rock shaders by themselves.  The bonus stuff install through Connect.  The shaders themselves are DIM only.  You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure out that you needed to install everything separately!

 

 

dracorn said:

timmins.william said:

Absolutely. I've done it. It's great. :)

If you look in my freebies, I have a 3DL 'snowcaps' shader that, with geometry shells, let's you create additional layers of shaders. Note that with a rock shader you have to be careful or the bottom layer will poke up through your geometry shell, and also you may run into issues with geometry load -- 3DL can groan with too much geometry.

Another approach you can do with TD3 is combine with grass shader (if you have it). Again, make a geometry shell, but this time lower it and reduce Y scale a little. That way, you have a geometry that's flattened a little bit, and the grass will poke through most toward the bottom, then shorten and 'disappear' at higher elevations.

 

Thanks, Will.  I need to visit your freebies.  Where is it located?

Secondly, I have not made a geometry shell.  Are you copying the general Terradome geometry here and then flattening it?  I'm not sure how to do this.  I have been trying to gather all your tips for Terradome but may have missed some things.  I also have DA Let it Snow, AoA's Grass Shader and Nature's Variance (plus a whole lotta plants).

Will does great and crazy things with Geoshells.  I'm still learning how to use them and everything I know about them came from Will. 

dracorn

timmins.william said:

Duh duh duh. I meant to link where I had it: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106626/will-timmins-procedural-shaders/p3

Toward the end.

Re: flattening: My suggestion is to create a geoshell (so that any morphs you may decide to change later are inherited), but you can actually modifiy geoshells' translation, rotation, and scale.

Copying the azone would also work. Either way, though, you are doubling the size of that zone.

Let it snow might also do it, I forget if it lets you rework the 'snow' texture.

 

Found it, thanks!

I see your links are for Iray shaders - do you have other 3DL shaders too?

I just noticed the "even beterer" in your signature block - he he.  I'm sure it's been there for a while - sometimes I have a delay in my observation skills.

Oso3D

I have some 3dl shaders I've been poking at. At some point I hope to put it together as a free something.

Just, you know, it's all freebies so it's mostly whatever strikes my obsession of the month.

Oso3D

One issue is that there's already a bunch of amazing procedural stuff for 3dl, like the rock shader. It solidly fills a lot of what I'd work on.

dracorn

Will - I used your tips in the Terradome 3 thread for rendering with 3DL, and wow, it looks great!

A Zone:
Used Badlans 002 shader, then converted it to 3DL with AoA's Subsurface shader.  Flipped Pre SSS-Post SSS to on, set Displacement Strength to 100% with Max at 50, Min at -50.  Specular glossiness 20%, Specular 2 Strength 20%.  Set the tiling to 20/20.

B Zone: 
Used Desert 002 shader, converted to AoA's Subsurface shader.  Pre/Post SSS on, Displacement 200% with max/min at 25/-25.  Tiling set to 20/20.

Sky:
Skies of Economy for 3DL, default light settings for the sunset. 

Dude, you rock!

dracorn

I was trying to get the Pro HDR skies to work with 3DL, so I took Skies of Economy and loaded the .hdr files into the skydome to see what would happen.  Interesting in that the sky rendered in 3DL, but the landscape was white, even though I used 3DL materials in the same file as above.

So I pulled the .hdr files into Photoshop and converted them to .png and that worked.  I'm going to have to pull up my Dreamlight lighting tutorial and learn more about HDR lighting and fiddle with it some more because I want the advantage of HDR lighting.  In this render, the light color is manually chosen from the color picker. 

The .png file renders the sky lighter than the .hdr file.