Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I looked at the bump maps, altering values for them had no effect, I even took them out, but still she rendered no different to how she had before. Curious!
CHEERS!
It's definitely the AoA shader, I swapped it out with the HSS and she looks the way she does in the render with the default shader.
At least we know it's the shader...
CHEERS!
I've cracked it! The scenes with the Danae textures that I was having trouble with were using an older version of the AoA shader. I took out all the MATS, loaded Anna's texture and then reloaded the Danae texture, and now she renders perfectly. Yay!! It does mean I'll have to redo all the MATS but it'll be worth it!
CHEERS!
Ta dah!!
CHEERS!
And there's very little you can control to change the appearance.
Yup that's true. But still may come out useful some day.
LOL, if I CTRL click I can bring the lips up as well, problem solved!
CHEERS!
You can export to RIB and then render it in the standalone. May help with render times. Won't drastically change anything unless you edit the RIB by hand to change shaders, RiOptions/RiAttributes, etc.
Settings - what settings exactly?
--------------------
pathtracing settings.
Thanks :)
I just redid a scene with the male textures and there is no difference between what they were with the old AoA shader and the freshly installed one. I guess it may have been an issue with the way it worked with female UV's. Oh well, less rehashing to do I suppose.
CHEERS!
The AoA sahder needs the displacement limits set to 0 if there's no displacement - this is a known issue, it's in the docs and I wrote a script to handle it (or there's a preset in the toolbox DimensionTheory made for the AoA SSS shader).
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25642/
I see, well, the problem didn't occur when I installed the later version of the shader and reloaded the textures. Maybe AoA fixed it himself.
CHEERS!
I decided to try the Marie texture, she looks good, but, I know that the US2 MAT in Photo Studio Kit will be better, as I don't doubt will the new Monique texture be.
CHEERS!
I'm looking 3Delight in Max3d.
How logical, simple and Clean are the settings.
Flat, easy to read, no fancy gradients or small letters or strange colors or one zillion places to click.
And why we don't have SSS in the base shader?
Ok, this is odd, all dates for the current AoA SSS shader predate Richard's script and yet reinstalling the shader in DS4.7 solved the issues I was having. Something somewhere seems to have gone right, but where!?
EDIT:
A little follow up, I went to my laptop, installed and ran Richard's script in DS4.6 and it had the effect that reinstalling the shader did in 4.7. It looks like the script was somehow incorporated into DS4.7 as the issue is no longer there for me and what I did definitely had the same effect as the script did in 4.6.
CHEERS!
Because the base DS surface shader is essentially the same as it was back in DS 2...or even older. There's a lot of 'why don't we haves...'.
I used to say that DS only used/accessed about 10% of the power of 3Delight...now, I think it's less than 5%.
I'm a bit jealous of what I see but you're comparing a "little" application made by a "small" company vs a Big app developed by a Big company (no offense intended). There is also the fact that DS is mostly aimed at hobbyist and must be "accessible" enough to beginners especially when the documentation is not perfect
Now I could also say that I used 3D Studio 4 back in the days it was not even "Max". Years later I forced myself to use Blender (Very difficult at the beginning) and I'm not sure I would appreciate 3DS interface anymore. I guess you cannot always satisfy everyone
Whilst revisiting old textures, I couldn't resist a mean and moody render of Phoenix 1966's Shaw. I even chose to deviate from my preferred lighting to give a UE light a go for a change. What he can be after Photo Studio Kit 2 is something I want to see....
CHEERS!
EDIT:
I know now why I like that pose so much, it was a pose very similar to that which features in his store page.
You remember the issues I was having with V6, well, I found I was using an older version. She was updated when her HD add on came out and I hadn't installed that version. Whether or not that makes any difference now I couldn't say...
CHEERS!
After looking at this thread and thinking a bit more, I've come to the conclusion that I've been using, and indeed relying on, Age of Armour's stuff far too much and actually, I haven't really been getting the kind of results I've been wanting with it anyway.
I loaded up a UE2 light set, loaded M6, loaded the M5 Dave texture (he used UberSurface) and then put Rob's textures over the top. I had to turn the SSS colour to white (obviously some tweaking needed) but after I did so, I have to say I'm really impressed with the results. I do find it funny sometimes that Daz's bright new ideas don't always come off as well as tried and true ones do. I got the AoA lights mainly as I thought they cut down render times. Well, yes they did, but, the render you see below took the same, if not less, time. I needed to spend more time in this thread and I'm regretting that I didn't!
CHEERS!
PS (Any suggestions for UberSurface tweaks so I can make this look better will be most welcome.)
Mmm, just put Bjorn over Dave, doing what I did with Rob and he doesn't look any different! LOL some you win.....
CHEERS!
I believe that integration was done by the DNA Research guys themselves (the 3Delight devs), like the Maya and Softimage plugins before that, right?
Everything they do is logical, simple and clean. It's their brand image.
pathtracing settings.
Thanks :)
There aren't any pathtracing-specific _settings_ actually. Like I said, it's done in the raytrace hider (can be enabled with "scripted rendering"), and then you just need new shaders. "Full" pathtracing would be when you are only using area lights in a special mode (then your surfaces only use the trace() shadeop to collect light from the scene - the good thing is then it's your surface who decides how finely to sample the light, so no unnecessary extra sampling that adds to rendertime); then there is the bsdf() shadeop which also does physically-based shading but is run in illuminance() loops so as to collect light from "oldschool" light sources (like spot, point, "old" area lights etc). The subsurface() shadeop can operate on the results of either.
BTW: the trace() block in the shader mixer is sorely outdated, and the bsdf() one is still half broken (Oren-Nayar is a diffuse mode, but the brick is hardcoded to see specular lights only... I filed a report about it, but apparently they forgot about it because of Iray).
I suggest you post a screenshot of your UberSurface settings, then it will be easier to give you ideas. And BTW, in my tutorial I also cover the free UberSurface, too.
Most of the credit should be given to omnifreaker. and not me. :)
edit:
Fun stuff. :)
Well, basically, the Ubersurface settings I used are those that come with the M5 Dave texture as he is the only male texture I have that utilises UberSurface, but, I'll post them for you anyway. I will add that for other textures I have to take out those maps for the SSS as nothing else I use has the same UV's and I don't know what settings to replace them with.
Now I think of it, I think I downloaded that tutorial and I'll have to have a look at it
CHEERS!
True in a way, he provided the shader, but, you are the only one that I've seen that has fully exploited what it can do. I like to have a start point when I use shaders. I used Bjorn as a start point for the AoA SSS renders and Dave for the Ubersurface ones. Photo Studio Kit 2 will give me a start point for UberSurface 2 as nobody that I know of used it in a commercial texture pack. I got tired of writing down settings all the time and then not being able to find them, or doing settings in a scene and then not remembering which scene it was. A good set of MATS that I can always turn to saves a whole lot of hassle.
Fingers crossed I can get PSK2 next week and the fun can really start
CHEERS!
SSS shading rate needs to be much lower. 4 or 8 is a good enough number for closeups and torso shot. Full body shot will depend on how far away the model is from the camera.
Mustakettu85 and I differ on SSS scale. To be close as possible to real world, it should be 0.1 or 0.2. I prefer 0.3 because it's much faster and you can get away with higher shading rate and have much flexibility (in terms of how far the object is from the camera).
SSS and diffuse is a lot trickier. In my setup, I push SSS strength to almost 100% and have it bleed more into diffuse by setting the diffuse strength lower than 80%. With those settings, you should get that SSS glow, though maybe a little subdued since you're using SSS maps. You want to make sure the typical translucent areas are more 'bright' to get that SSS effect on ears, nostrils, fingers etc and have less on thicker parts (skull, torso, limbs).
Don't know if you're using gamma correction or not, but specular color should be as high as possible. That way, you'll end up with a setting for specular strength that's very close to values used in physically based scheme (around 2,5 to 5%, without maps)..
Ok, I tried that and have posted my settings and their result below. Am I on the right track!? When you compiled the MAT files for PSK2, did you create SSS maps for the textures that didn't have them? I tried adjusting Rob who doesn't have maps and the results were disastrous!
This learning lark is great fun!
CHEERS!
I think that looks pretty nice.
I simply use Rob's skin diffuse maps and insert them into the SSS color channel. You generally have to do that for dark skinned characters. But that's probably trickier with just UberSurface and a lot easier with UberSurface2.
Oh yeah, you don't need to have opacity enabled with skin. :)
Ok, I'll give that a go, one thing I have noticed is that on Dave's head, they plugged the specular map into strength and not colour and yet on everything else the maps are plugged into the colour. Should they all be plugged into the strength?
CHEERS!
EDIT:
I swapped the head ones to what the rest were. Was that right?
Control maps should generally be use in the strength slot and not color. Just make sure they have the right 'gamma' settings (accessible via the image loading drop down menu, under 'Image Editor'). Color/diffuse maps should be set to either 0 or 2.2, while control maps (bump, specular) should be 1.