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Various Questions

Stryder87Stryder87 Posts: 899
in The Commons

So I've been making a bit of a list of things I've been wanting to figure out.  Some things I've crossed off, but some things remain.  I know a couple questions have been covered to a degree in past threads, but I can't seem to dig them up, and I know the info is buried in them, so i'm going to throw them in here and hope someone can explain these to me.

Use small words...  wink

- What is Smoothing Iterations?  What is Collision Iterations?  How are they related and how do they affect each other when adjusted?  I usually use them to try to fix poke-through, but there has to be more to it than that.

- How do you convert a 3Delight item into an Iray item?  Is it something you use the surface tool for, then the Surface Editor tab?  Applying Iray textures to something?

- omUberSurface - What setting do you adjust to change the skin colour, or it's shade?  None of the items where you pick a colour seem to do anything like that.

- AoA Subsurface - Same question as omUberSurface.

- I tend to make scenes with a lot of characters and have read that turning figures into props is a good way to make the scene render faster.  Do you load up a G2M/F (or G3M/F) and clothe them as normal, pose them, then convert them?  How do you convert them?

I had a few more questions, but I was able to figure them out, so the list, for now, is short.

So much to learn!!!

Thanks.

Comments

  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,981

    These are all really good questions, and as a fairly new user myself I don't know most of these. However the way I convert 3DL to Iray is using the Iray Uber Base shader on them. From there sometimes they are fine just like that, other times you have to go in and make some minor tweaks under the "surfaces" tab like having to lower the glossyness on clothing and hair. More often then not I just use an Iray shader on it. There are quite a few good ones in the store and even some good freebie Iray shaders that make life a lot easier when converting to Iray. 

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,846

    On the smoothing and collision, smoothing tends to make the mesh more elastic from my experience. Say you have a mesh that has some kinks in it, smoothing will fix those in many cases. Collision is a great tool and I can't imagine living without it. basically it is what is says, it sets the mesh for the object it is applied to to interact/collide with the object/figure you tell it to. unfortunately, you see vendors applying it to their outfits when I feel it sould only be used by users when needed and not as a crutch to get something to work.

    I have never used 3Delight, so can't answer any questions on that

    on the figures to props, it's been my experience it only helps a little bit with newer figures. On V4 and that generation, it made a bigger difference because of the different rigging and morph system it seems. I find textures to have more of an impact on resources than mesh. To turn a figure into a prop, so to EDIT - FIGURE - RIGGING - turn figure into prop. Do all your clothing first before the figure.

  • Stryder87Stryder87 Posts: 899
    divamakeup said:

    These are all really good questions, and as a fairly new user myself I don't know most of these. However the way I convert 3DL to Iray is using the Iray Uber Base shader on them. From there sometimes they are fine just like that, other times you have to go in and make some minor tweaks under the "surfaces" tab like having to lower the glossyness on clothing and hair. More often then not I just use an Iray shader on it. There are quite a few good ones in the store and even some good freebie Iray shaders that make life a lot easier when converting to Iray. 

    So you would be using the surface selection tool then?  I have a few Iray shaders that I bought when on sale in preparation to trying it out, but I haven't used them yet.  I'm guessing surface select, then go into Materials and find the one you want to use?

     

  • Stryder87Stryder87 Posts: 899
    FSMCDesigns said:

    On the smoothing and collision, smoothing tends to make the mesh more elastic from my experience. Say you have a mesh that has some kinks in it, smoothing will fix those in many cases. Collision is a great tool and I can't imagine living without it. basically it is what is says, it sets the mesh for the object it is applied to to interact/collide with the object/figure you tell it to. unfortunately, you see vendors applying it to their outfits when I feel it sould only be used by users when needed and not as a crutch to get something to work.

    I've always just played with them together, adjusting them both up or down until the poke-through is gone.  One thing I sort of figured out was, instead of (for instance) a jacket being set to fit to the character, change it to parent to the item under it (like a shirt).  That seemed to help with the autofit and stuff.  Not sure if that's the 'right' way to do it (if there really is such a thing).  I've also figured out lately, and really embarressed it took so long, to just turn off things that are poking through, if possible.  For example... if the toes are poking through a pair of closed shoes, just turn the toes off.  I just did that with a suit where I turned the arms of the shirt off because of poke-through.  So easy!

  • exstarsisexstarsis Posts: 2,128

    You go to Shaders to change a Surface. You may have to turn off Filter by Context. If a Shader isn't in the Iray category, it probably isn't Iray.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    To convert from 3Delight to Iray.  Select object in the Scene Tab.  Select object in the Surface Tab.  Go to the top tab where it says "Presets", "Editor", "Shader Baker" and select Presets.  In the list shown, find Default>Shaders>Iray and select Iray and then find the icon for the !IrayUberBase and choose that to convert surfaces.

    I don't know enough about 3Delight yet to try and answer any questions for that render engine.

     

  • Stryder87Stryder87 Posts: 899

    I've seen images where a character has mechanical limbs.  I'm wanting to do a scene where a character has a prosthetic leg and am wondering the best/easiest way to go about doing that.  Do you create two characters and place them over top of each other and hide the necessary body parts, or do you somehow graph it onto your target figure?  It looks very cool, but I don't know how you go about that.

     

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,606
    Stryder87 said:
    - I tend to make scenes with a lot of characters and have read that turning figures into props is a good way to make the scene render faster.  Do you load up a G2M/F (or G3M/F) and clothe them as normal, pose them, then convert them?  How do you convert them?s.

    Converting figures to props will significantly reduce the amount of memory Daz Studio needs for that figure. This may, or may not, speed up the render depending on whether or not your machine was operating close to its maximum physical memory, and was thus dumping stuff into virtual memory. If you have a lot of memory you are unlikely to see much render speed up, unless of course you have a huge number of figures in the scene.

    Remember that converting a figure to a prop has no real advantage if you want to save GPU memory and you are rendering in iRay. The info sent to the GPU (ie mesh and textures) are the same.

    Anyway, for how to do this, firstly select the figure to convert and then from the menu you select:

    Edit->Figure->Rigging->Convert Figure to Prop

    This only converts the figure, not any hair/clothing conformed to it. You need to convert them all individually, or use a script which can be copied from here:

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/nodes/convert_figure_to_props/start

     

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