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that is what I meant wowie a disc and a plane are the same, a flat mesh with no edges, no thickness...by flattening a sphere you are creating and rounded edge, a bevelled edge is probably a better term
Did some experiments today, mostly trying to setup non-skin materials.
Thanks to mustakettu85's trick of using a geometry shell to cast shadows, I can finally have something that looks like real glass. The problem is similar to hair - how to properly cast shadows when you have both opacity and refraction. With hair, I 'fake' refraction by setting up up the material for the shell to allow some colored shadows.
My glass material have a different problem. I want a very clear looking glass with refraction but if I upped the opacity, the glass gets murky. Upping the opacity color didn't help because it's already at pure white. So I simply make a geometry shell, set it to cast shaodws and fantom to enabled after making sure the real object doesn't cast shadows and the shell didn't have any offset.
Someone will have to pester AoA about updating it, then. As is, it's a nifty and cool AO shader, and that's basically that.
The biggest change is the SSS, which may sometimes produce artefacts with the GI cache on. But not always; I think it's related to the geometry somehow. I've seen the artefacts on Gen3 figures, even SubD'd, but not on Genesis... Old shaders are doing fine (they aren't "physically plausible" by design, but with enough patience, they can simulate realistic materials well). For non-closeups, I find that even the ancient "skin" mode of the venerable DS default shader can give nice results with GI (de-reddening the diffuse still needed).
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I'm also attaching my take on the "Fiery Genesis" scene. It uses a sphere primitive to help with GI bounce (this is why the background looks different - and the camera finally has something to really DOF against, heh), raytraced shadows on lights (I put dzLights in and changed them around), full throttle SSS on skin (the lip shine is not the best, but I got bored, sorry), etc. All the materials are plain UberSurface. The hair is excluded from GI, but the transmapped collar is not. It's one of the slowest parts of the render. Anyway, it's 23 minutes on a quad core, what with five diffuse bounces, soft raytraced shadows through transparency, SSS, that collar, etc. I could share the file, if anyone wants. Don't try it with the REYES hider, though =)
I think it is also possible to do this with the hit mode adjustments of AoA's lights, though I haven't tried it. As you said, it's just a matter of modifying the shadow pass to ignore opacity settings.
As for causitcs, the way it's currently implemented via shader mixer is very limited. Caustics color shouldn't be set by the camera, it should be formulated from the light and the object's material. Then we can get something very interesting effects. I'm thinking it may even be able to do dispersion quite nicely.
It's an obvious improvement. :)
Yes :) I have been actively working on some environmental and bounce lighting setups. Right now the indirect lighting part is faster than Uber but the environment/HDRI part is not so I want to work on it more.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/27675/P1425/#642344
It gotta be possible to set up caustics the way you want in shader mixer, but - first of all, the very idea of a "network" gets too unwieldy once you're past anything basic; and then, having no source code for those "bricks" quickly gets old as well. I don't do shader mixer caustics at all.
This network I have on the geometry shell of the bottle is pure oldschool fakery =) It has the "edge blend" brick controlling the transmission ray opacity, a colour multiplier, and the surface itself is invisible to the camera rays, which avoids artefacting. Which also means, unfortunately, that deep shadow maps won't see the shadow effect, since their rays are camera rays.
You'd need a separate shader only active in shadow pass to target them, but I have not yet tested how reliable this is within DS.
Anyway, again, throwing together very simple networks like this is where shader mixer excels. But anything more complex is best done via shader builder and render scripts.
As for dispersion, yes it's possible, but with a lot of work still - dispersion is an inherently spectral effect, and currently we only have 3-tuple colours supported by 3Delight (like "RGB" or "HSV"). So there's a lot of fussing around required. Check out how one guy did it for another Renderman-compliant engine... http://forums.odforce.net/topic/4196-glass/page-4#entry29332
UPD: and more info here, re:actual raytracing - http://forums.odforce.net/topic/4196-glass/page-3#entry28925
In all honesty, I am too lazy to be bothered with doing anything to get proper photon-mapped caustics sorted out right now. I'm hoping the DNA team is going to come up with something amazing for the path tracer soon...
Oh yeah, and I want an update to the built-in 3Delight =) I wrote a shader testing the array output of "glass-ggx" distribution of trace(), which compiles fine in the standalone, but not in DS...
Haha, thanks =) I wonder why those tutorial scenes haven't been updated. Even REYES can do much better than the output of those. They're more like a disservice to the whole DS+3Delight combo.
I got a request for the Fiery Genesis scene, so here it is!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/65ximaz18sg65xr/Fiery_Genesis_-_Radium_version.duf // make your own icon =) //
Bear in mind that unless you switch UE2 to AO and dial down max trace distance, it's best rendered with the raytrace hider and GI cache on, otherwise it's slooooow. Actually, soft raytraced shadows on the hair and collar are also slooow in the default hider, and depth maps look horrible on distant lights! So at least try using the "progressive" mode.
Here is the post with my instructions on making a render script to use the raytracer with GI cache, in case someone missed them (scroll down, the instructions are in the comments to the code beneath the photon mapping kit):
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21611/P495/#642793
And this small addition:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/21611/P570/#650436 - not relevant for this scene since it does not use deep shadow maps, but just in case.
I also recommend using a better text editor than the Windows Notepad for editing scripts! Windows Notepad can mess up linebreaks somehow. I use this one: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/v6.6.7.html
I always think it is possible, though it does require some hardcore level coding. But then again, I think it's also true for other renderers. You simply need a more accurate optical model.
Well, if you look at the renderer options included, you'll see they sometimes don't even use gamma correction or set the gamma to 2.2
Updated my glass MATs. I think I've finally understand how omnifreaker implemented refraction. I compared the result of his shaders with the DS default shaders and saw that enabling refraction always makes the glass edges too dark. So I did some more experiment with the 2nd layer specular/reflection combined with fresnel to lit those areas up.
Renders with and without geometry shell as shadow caster. Reflective glass, refractive glass without reflection, base clear glass without reflection.
Thank you again! Your Fiery Genesis looks very good.
I saw that shadow maps error, severity 2, last night, but it still kept working. I'll have to try your fix.
The Hider script is really fast on some stuff with no Bounce GI UE2 (so no GI)... some scenes in under 4 minutes on an AMD 8350 8 core CPU using http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=sublime+illumination Full Spectrum Florescent preset. I'll have to re-render and post some as I didn't save them but it looks interesting and may be a big time saver for animation. I still suck at light placement, and more other things in Studio, but I'm getting my head more around it.
Might want to look at this:
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-lighting
And thank you for that link, Wowie!
Here's Barefoot Dancer rendered with Kettu's Hider Script (I haven't tried the shadow maps fix yet), using the Sublime Illumination Full Spectrum Florescent lighting preset plopped in (I didn't tweak lights to get the glint reflection back in her eyes)
Buckets 16
Max Ray Depth 2
Shadow samples 8
Render time on an AMD 8350 8 core CPU/16 GB Ram
3 minutes 35.61 seconds
Same settings for Fiery Genesis (the old tute file, not Kettu's new one), again no tweaking to get the glint reflection back in her eyes and a render time of 57.9 seconds.
I like how her skin looks with no tweaks.
No real GI for both as I was using the default UE2 Occlusion/with shadows.
Your scenes look lovely! And it's interesting to know about Omnifreaker's refraction - if it does get dark at the edges, then it must be internally implemented as respecting actual Fresnel laws...
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I saw that shadow maps error, severity 2, last night, but it still kept working. I'll have to try your fix.
The Hider script is really fast on some stuff with no Bounce GI UE2 (so no GI)...
You're welcome, and thanks! And yes it will be faster whenever there is complex raytracing.
And if you're looking for more light sets to study, I have some in my freebies thread (see the signature for the link). Dead simple in their makeup, but quite versatile.
I do believe so but I still wish he documented his shaders better. It's like having all the tools but not knowing how each are tied to each other. So, it's not just entering an IOR value and expect things to work. You need to tweak the specular and fresnel to match.
Now that I understand them, I do appreciate the flexibility though. With his shaders, there's more flexibility to achieve certain materials that is simply not possible with other shaders.
Precisely.
Another test shot.
I did have to upped the ray trace depth to 8 to get all the refractions showing. Rendered in about 3 and half minutes with my 4770K. Still need to tweak the settings on the cork and corkscrew. There was a time where I didn't think such scenes is possible with DS.
That is not the case. The camera in shader mixer just activate all needed requirements for photon mapping. The rest is handled by materials and light. Photon mapping is the only way right now for Caustics
@Kettu and wowie : nice renders both
Well, I'm talking about this example here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwCHxSTlOQo
I know there should be a way to use the colors from the material, but I think more setup is needed. Of course, the example is meant to be simple since it was meant to show that caustics is possible with DS, just not how to set it up accurately.
Speed testing continues. Using Kettu's Hider Script with his version of Fiery Genesis - Radium... tried one with The extra GI sphere and one without. UE2 was set to Occlusion - Soft Shadows instead of Bounce GI for both renders.
One without GI sphere rendered in 3 minutes 2.3 seconds.
One with GI sphere rendered in 2 minutes 58.98 seconds.
Max Diffuse Bounce Depth 2
Max Specula Bounce Depth 1
Bucket Size 16
Max Ray Depth 2
Shadow Samples 8
Everything else default
I like the bottom one. I think it has more 'dynamic' between lit and shadowy areas. Plus just some hints of specular. They are too dark though.
And two with the UE2 Bounce GI enabled... one without Kettu's GI Sphere, the other with the GI Sphere, again using Kettu's version of the Fiery Genesis using Dz Lights.
Settings the same as above.
UE2 Bounce GI but no GI Sphere
Rendered in 5 minutes 40 seconds
UE2 Bounce GI with the GI Sphere
Rendered in 6 minutes 47.49 seconds
Pretty fast in DAZ Studio for GI!
Yep, Wowie, they are a bit dark. I haven't fiddled with Gamma yet. The last one with all the GI is probably the best. The lightest seems to be the first one. When they render, she is coal black until the beauty pass hits, but they could work in a movie type setting. I was watching the film "Looper" last night and it was shot outside and indoors. All the indoor shots are dark like the renders.
Ah yes. I suspected as much.
Wowie, here's Kettu's Fiery Genesis - Radium with Gamma set at 2.2... all other settings as above.
Rendered in 6 minutes 45.19 seconds, AMD 8350 8 core/16GB Ram using Kettu's lighting setup with Dz Lights, and UE2 Bounce GI and Kettu's GI sphere.
Yup, I designed the lighting for gamma 2.2. I should've mentioned this, but I forgot because it's my default setting =)
Looked the two images (my original and this one of yours) over side by side, and they support my observation that in many cases, two diffuse bounces is visually enough, particularly when the key element of the image is lit directly.
Yep. It matches mustakettu's render. Thanks for the render times. Judging by your machine specs, it would probably take about the same time on mine.
Thanks, Kettu and you're welcome, Wowie!
Here's a basic test animation... took a couple hours to render 24 frames, at around 6 minutes 30 seconds per frame. Looped the resulting 1 second several times.
http://youtu.be/ILsR443OhOE
@Kettu : no problem.
Nothing worth seeing. I didn't find the ones with the genesis; I don't think I saved it as it was just a test but I found a 4K render. This one took 25 min if I remember correctly
As the original is 7,5 Mb in jpeg I reduced it to quater size to post here
Neat! Is that a lens flare or?..