3Delight Surface and Lighting Thread

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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:

    I see, well, it's better than nothing and they end up looking good still.

    CHEERS!

    Well it does more closely mimic what the eye should look in real life. You have to be careful though when tweaking the roughness/glossyness of the cornea/eye reflection surface. First render is without the morphs, second one is with them enabled. Since the cornea is bulging, the surface is more curved and hence, the sharper highlights.

    eye3.jpg
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    eye1.jpg
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  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    the cornea need reflect the world at last 160 degree , the morph is not as much powerful , that why I made my own , if you get it correct the front of the scene will be reflected in the eyes , every person have different corneal bulge and will reflect things different , when you set your refraction don't forget that cornea and the liquid between cornea and the iris need the right value total of n= 2.7 and not just 1.37 for the cornea , since we don't have virtual liquid the cornea need to represent both , and the effects can be very nice , I played with it years ago

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    the cornea need reflect the world at last 160 degree , the morph is not as much powerful , that why I made my own , if you get it correct the front of the scene will be reflected in the eyes , every person have different corneal bulge and will reflect things different , when you set your refraction don't forget that cornea and the liquid between cornea and the iris need the right value total of n= 2.7 and not just 1.37 for the cornea , since we don't have virtual liquid the cornea need to represent both , and the effects can be very nice , I played with it years ago

    Thanks a lot for that.
    I'll try that as soon as I get some sleep. Here's the last render of the day (for me at least).

    pfpromo3.jpg
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  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Those are beautiful renders,

    I'd love to know the full details of the lighting set up for them.

    CHEERS!

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    This Bjorn render shows what I did with the eyes, which is to follow the morphs I listed and Spyro's shader settings.

    CHEERS!

    Bjorn_Caisson_New.jpg
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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Thanks again.

    I am getting some baffling inputs though, mostly comment on colors and saturation. So I got ahead and bought a Datacolor Spyder4 Elite to check color calibration settings for my monitor.

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    the most calibrations devices focus mostly on calibrations for printing , I spend over $200 on returned it .. the printing was fine but the image on monitor horrible , so I used old school image calibration and now printing and monitors looks the same at zero cost .. the calibration devices was good for the old types of monitor but with LCD it is not simple task to get it right unless you have truly professional monitor for graphics .. but have fun!

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    the most calibrations devices focus mostly on calibrations for printing , I spend over $200 on returned it .. the printing was fine but the image on monitor horrible , so I used old school image calibration and now printing and monitors looks the same at zero cost .. the calibration devices was good for the old types of monitor but with LCD it is not simple task to get it right unless you have truly professional monitor for graphics .. but have fun!

    Well, color calibration is quite tricky since you need to target the output device. But I do agree that most are targeted at print and not a lot is for display. I was already thinking of getting one already, since I need to use it for other things as well. Of course, there's always the traditional way of doing it. For those interested, here are two links I found quite informative:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/spyder4-monitor-calibration-image-quality,3581.html
    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/calibrate-your-monitor-theory,3615.html

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    With this laptop, I have 2 graphics cards, an integrated Intel and a dedicated Radeon. I use the Intel for general Windows use and the Radeon for graphics and video. In DS I have the gamma set to 2.2 and likewise the video gamma on the Radeon. This works fine for me. Renders I do in DS now look exactly the same when I post them here.

    CHEERS!

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited April 2014

    Just finished calibrating my monitor. Got some useful info too. I was hitting the wrong gamma and there was some problems with the blue (or red/green). After calibration, there's virtually no difference in colors, but I do have to compensate for the gamma offset when rendering.

    Off course, this is done with just a colorimeter rather than a spectrophotometer. So it can still be off, though just a bit.

    I'm now targeting a gamma of 2 (well, 1.955 to be exact). Here are two renders with different gamme/gain settings. Do you think they're oversaturated or too dark? Which one do you like best? Thanks.

    2.0B_.jpg
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    2.0A_.jpg
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    Post edited by wowie on
  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited April 2014

    I like the top picture. It has more even tones.

    It would be great to see your light settings, render times, etc.

    Nice job!

    Post edited by Kevin Sanderson on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    To me, the second one looks more vibrant and is the better of the two. I will definitely be making adjustment to my new monitor, well, when I get it that is!

    CHEERS!

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited April 2014

    The first one of the last two is more realistic to me. Great work wowie

    Post edited by Szark on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Might that depend on our own calibration!?

    CHEERS!

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Could be. My monitor and PC have been set up as best I can get it and from I can tell it is pretty good.

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Thanks again for the inputs.

    My light setup is nothing special. It's simply 3 directional lights (one main light, two offset light at about half the strength of the main one). Color is 244,244,245 for all lights (they're both diffuse and specular). Raytraced shadows with 0.1 bias and softness (same value). There's also an additional 1 directional specular only light with the same color but set at 75 %.

    Main light is set at -20 degrees on the x axis and 0 on the y axis. The offset light uses the same value for the x axis, but placed at an 120 degrees offset (left and right). The specular only light is set without any rotation at all. They're all parented to UE2, so I can just rotate the UE2 node and have every light move at the same time.

    The main light strength is set between 75 to 187.5 %, depending on the amount of ambient light (I'm using UE2). For instance, if UE2 is set to 270 %, main light should be 75%. If you want darker shadows, lower the UE2 strength to 180 % and raise the main light to 150 %. Don't forget to change the strength of the offset lights as well. They're basically acting as rim/fill lights. If you don't wan them, you can turn off (should render faster).

    What else? Oh yes, UE2 settings. Color is 192,192,192, shading rate is 16, max error is 0.1 and max distance is 20. I'm using occlusion with soft shadows since I'm not using any HDRI images. Occlusion is set to 100 %, and the color is pure black (0,0,0).

    .These settings can also be applied to AoA's lights, if you have/use them. Most of the 'heavy lifting' is done via US2.

    Btw, here's some more renders. I call her Material Girl, because she's helping me figure out the right materials. :)

    MaterialGirl4.jpg
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    MaterialGirl3.jpg
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    MaterialGirl2.jpg
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    MaterialGirl1.jpg
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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    I do see a problem though. Although I have setup my monitor so red, green and blue colors have as little deviation as possible, yellow/orange is a bit off. So does her skin appear yellowish or red to you?

    MaterialGirl7.jpg
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    MaterialGirl6.jpg
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    MaterialGirl5.jpg
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  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,479
    edited December 1969

    No her skin looks fine, pretty impressive actually - the hair though doesn't look too good to be honest

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    No her skin looks fine, pretty impressive actually - the hair though doesn't look too good to be honest

    Thanks. Haven't had the chance to tweak the hair..

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited December 1969

    Wow wowie! Thanks for the settings!

    The skin looks really good, eyes, lips, too. The hair does need some work or replacing. It looks like she hasn't washed it in a week or two. ;)

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited April 2014

    Wow wowie! Thanks for the settings!

    The skin looks really good, eyes, lips, too. The hair does need some work or replacing. It looks like she hasn't washed it in a week or two. ;)

    Thanks. I find the light setup to be quite flexible.

    For instance, if I want to have the eye reflect more light, I simply rotate the specular only light till it looks right. When I use low ambient light and find the specular way too strong, turning off the specular only light helped reduce specular intensities. You can also rotate offset lights so it will lit different areas. Just make sure that they're not flooding the same area as the main light.

    Render times will vary depending on how much surface is visible, but generally I'm seeing between 3 to 4 minutes with my Core i7 4770K. I'm using progressive rendering with pretty much the default render options, which is particularly useful when rendering hair.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Here's a look at some of render with the various light. The one with the dark shadows is the main light only and the other with ambient light.

    mainlightambient.jpg
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    mainlifght.jpg
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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Here's the main light with offset lights, with and without ambient light.

    mainlightoffsetambient.jpg
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    mainlightoffset.jpg
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  • PschelfhPschelfh Posts: 261
    edited December 1969

    Here is my go at semi-realistic with 'Boris HD'.

    1 Distant light (deep shadow map / softness 50% / shadow type : raytraced) intensity 60%
    1 Distant light - same place as the former (specular only) intensity 50%
    UE2 (occlusion w/soft shadows / occlusion strength 75% / occlusion samples 128 /shading rate 0.2) intensity 90%

    Light colors slightly adapted to the background (green-ish) + some postwork.

    Peter.

    10001388_761688213864222_7349202267912542555_n.jpg
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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    A test with area lighting - using three area light plane with more or less the same configuration (one main light and two offset light at 1/2 strength). I think I like this setup better :)

    arealighttest.jpg
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  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited December 1969

    How long did that take to render?

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited April 2014

    How long did that take to render?

    Sorry didn't time that one. I think it was about the same. I did remember the time it takes for double the resolution though (1600x2080) - 7 minutes with progressive rendering.

    Edit. I render another scene with pretty much the same elements. Render time was around 2 minutes.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited December 1969

    Those are very good render times! Thank you for the info!!

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited April 2014


    You need to output a boolean when calculating the shadows and set it to 1 when there is shadow. I don't know if DS brick is made this way and I never tried to do it but that is one of the idea I'd try. I personnaly find the wording pretty clear if it is made that way


    Yup, it works. Thanks a lot! What I meant about the wording is the precise light output variable name (can't tell without source code, and I wanted it to work with basic DS lights and those precompiled dzLights). These all use "classic" __inshadow.

    I'm still not entirely successful with making the "perfect" compositing helper (with hassle-free alpha out of the box, sans the chromakey stuff), but I'm almost there. Still getting artefacts with eye geometry ghosting through transparency (i.e. only when covered), but I'll see if higher raytrace depth will alleviate that...

    wowie said:
    It's not the shine. I probably should have explained it better - it's getting the iris details to match real life eyes. I believe you need to set refraction for the cornea only and probably a bump/displacement map for the iris. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

    A displacement map would work quite well for giving the iris some extra pull. I did a displacement map to correct the whacky eye geometry of Sixus1's HER.

    I've also read that you can now paint weight maps for deformers in DS; I haven't yet tried that, but it may be the key to getting an easy deformer-based morph for iris only.

    I also like that trick of using low-ish glossiness and same map for specular colour for iris when it's highly concave; then specular does not look like specular but lights the eyes up rather nice. See the attached image...

    Other than that, eye materials are my weakest spot.



    I've got some camera/light sets that I've had trouble sharing. When I went to share it with some people the got different types of errors or they didn't work at all. I was trying to save them as scene subsets because I had a camera with lights parented to the camera and also a UberEnvironment2 in the scene. I use only DS4-64 I wonder if maybe a saved scene from 64 does not open in 32 programs or I'm doing something wrong in my saving. I can upload a set onto sharecg if some of you want to have a look; if someone had the time to help me out?

    Have you tried saving them as a normal scene? Either way, feel free to shoot whatever you want my way, I'll be glad to help. I may be slower than usual these days, though... real life.


    If you want the widest support, go with the deprecated presets (.dsa files) instead of the .duf ones. Light presets will save all light types (point,spot,directional/distant) including UE nodes.

    One word of warning... I haven't tried exporting lights as a "deprecated" .dsa in a while, but in DS3 and earlier DS4 builds this was broken... i.e. shadow information did not get saved at all!

    I save DS3 lights as .daz scenes; the .duf/.dsf "Light presets" of DS4 have always worked perfectly, but these aren't backwards compatible, of course. And the .daz scenes DS4 saves do not open in DS3.


    _________

    And a yet another warning for those who use gamma correction!

    I found that if you use the same map in two roles - for colour and for strength, which should have different gamma settings in the Image Editor (colour 0, strength 1) - even if these are different channels OR even different figures, only the last gamma setting you apply gets saved. Apparently it gets saved per-image, as its intrinsic property.

    The solution is either to make a physical duplicate of the map or use LIE to "fake" a new image (just add a new blank black layer and set it to "additive").

    So, double-check your premade shader presets if you're using any; there's a lot of pre-GC products out there plugging the same maps into conceptually different slots. Which means they are bound to render wrong with GC on.

    _________

    Stuff:
    I put together a detailed tutorial for getting 3Delight's Envlight2 shader to work in DS, here: http://www.sharecg.com/v/75671/view/3/PDF-Tutorial/Alternative-Image-Based-Lighting-in-DAZ-Studio

    The cover image for the tutorial (Aiko with blue hair) is done with Envlight2 using a free HDR map casting both diffuse and specular, but there's actually quite a lot of ways to use it with other light shaders (directional lights and "proper" occlusion and/or indirect diffuse shaders), especially if setting it to cast, say, specular only and using the fast approximation mode (when samples = 0).
    When used as the only lightsource, it's fairly good at getting nice directional shadows out of omnifreaker's Park map (from the UE2 content), for instance. Not any map will do that sort of pretty shadows even in Envlight2, though...

    ...Someone please push me to get that long-promised US/US2 SSS tutorial release-worthy. It's basically written, just needs formatting, copy editing and some pretty cover images. The final stages of polishing that I hate oh so much (cuz perfectionist persona kicks in and slows progress down to a crawl).

    __________

    PS This is a DS3 render with area lights, feat. Laura3 and the original UberSurface. The iris actually uses the default DS shader set to metallic, glossiness around 60. That likely roughly compares to glossiness of 10 in the omnifreaker's shaders.

    laura.png
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    Post edited by Mustakettu85 on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited April 2014


    I found that if you use the same map in two roles - for colour and for strength, which should have different gamma settings in the Image Editor (colour 0, strength 1) - even if these are different channels OR even different figures, only the last gamma setting you apply gets saved. Apparently it gets saved per-image, as its intrinsic property.

    The solution is either to make a physical duplicate of the map or use LIE to "fake" a new image (just add a new blank black layer and set it to "additive").

    Well. There's also another alternative - don't use the same map on different slots (control/color). :)
    What bugs me most about textures is that some control textures are set too dam dark. Makes them almost impossible to work with gamma correction enabled. You either have to edit the textures or use maxed out values for color and strength.

    Oh yeah. Fluffy blond luminous hair achieved. :)

    Render_3.jpg
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    Post edited by wowie on
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