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Well UE is a thing of the past, that was my point. Awe beats UE by miles both regarding speed and quality, is much faster than IRay on CPU, so you can't really compare a modern pathtracer with old tech GI in my opinion. But yeah this discussion belongs to another thread
...the test was straight across the board actually, Iray was at a disadvantage as I didn't optimise the textures but used the same 3DL textures. Iray is optimised for GPU rendering. in CPU mode yes, it is slower, though to get high quality results for most users with 3DL, UE is necessary and then yes, Iray both come out to have about the same performance for the level of quality. From what I have observed, using Awe surface requires a lot of effort and time optimising textures and lighting to get the best results (I've been following the thread) . Granted I've seen some great results (even commented on them), however, there still appears to be issues with render artefacts that are difficult to resolve which are not prevalent with Iray.
My tests were made on a system that has a two generation old 4 GB Maxwell GPU on my scene assembly which is actually better suited for 3DL.
I don't care either it is 3delight or something else. I just need speed for my work (generated custom images to blend with other images using photoshop or similar software). And till now 3delight is several times faster. Thanks to 3delight, otherwise my 30 minutes work would take hours or weeks, really not practical for my purpose (most of the times).
Well, fair points I guess...yeah using aweSurface is definitely not a click and render process. But that's the curse of being a 3DL user. Soon there will not be any premade 3DL materials available for new products. And in my darkest moment I see DAZ going 100% nVidia
...(which is when I bid farewell)
The good thing for aweSurface users is: wowie is actively working on improving the product. Everytime he has released an update, he somehow has managed to more than double rendering speed with even better quality. The next official update will be a major one. AND he's making SBH shaders also:) And, if you've been following my thread, you know he's planning to release a simpler version of awe, for users that don't have the interest to tinker with advanced settings:) So the future of scripted pathtracing in 3DL looks bright:)
Haven’t really been following it, but how is the Iray (MDL) to aweSurface conversion going?
- Greg
TBH, not sure, I'll raise the question;)
Well my thread is a testing ground to help track down issues, one could debate wheter it should be public or not.
Thanks for checking, Sven - I know you're very involved. Seems like a Iray Uber -> AWE conversion makes more sense than a DAZ default 3DL -> AWE conversion, no?
- Greg
Absolutely:) I'm certain wowie is aware of that. The standard 3DL shaders convert very well, in general.
Not only from a usefulness prespective (since most products in the store come with Iray mats), but also from a technical standpoint since it's PBR.
I was converned about 3DL in DS going the way of the dodo back when Iray was first introduced. That was April of 2016 (IIRC), and yet here we are more than 3 years later . . . so that's promising!
- Greg
Is there still a commercially available 32-bit version of Windows?
Windows 10 Pro and Home come in 64 and 32 bit versions, no idea about Enterprise but duck-duck-go etc should give you an answer.
...I actually have Awe Surface (purchased it about a week before the HDD crash that took all my work with it, I also bought the Iray to 3DL converter around the same time was well). I have yet to play around with them as my primary task at the moment is rebuilding all my characters and scene elements that were lost.
As you may recall I was extremely impressed with how fast GI rendering was with Paris' IBL Master, and felt I was approaching the quality I could get with Iray. Crikey an average of 12 minutes, for a scene that took hours in Iray on the CPU. I figured with AweSurface I could actually get there. Then lurking in the AweSurface thread and watching/reading about the experiments made me wonder. I only have an old LGA 1366 6 core Xeon in the main render system and an LGA 1150 4 Core i7 in the assembly system. For 3DL the more and faster CPU cores you have the shorter the render time.
Unfortunately as it currently stands my systems are now better optimised for Iray with a Titan-X in one and 4 GB Maxwell 750Ti in the other. If I need to optimise shaders of older content to improve render time, I can do that with a single click (just apply the Iray Uber Shader to everything in the scene and then rework individual materials as needed). When a character proof takes between one to three minutes to render that's a big benefit to the workflow (I also can now work in Iray View Mode).
To get higher core counts and better clock speeds for improving 3DL performance, it would mean having to either find a Dual socket server board to run two high core count Xeons or switching over to AMD Zen architecture, either of which means effectively building a new machine (admittedly, the beauty of the AM4 socket, is that if you need to to upgrade to a newer Zen CPU [except Epyc], you don't need to go out and get a new MB like you do with Intel, the downside, it requires going to a "OS by subscription" that is loaded with junk features and twice a year feature bloat updates I don't need).
I do agree it is very disappointing that so much new content is Iray only. At least (for now) most Daz originals, the base figures, and some hair content still offer materials for both engines. Stonemason and Jack Tomalin also include 3DL shaders and lights as well.
I'm inclined to put that observation down to the prevalent use of uberenvironment based lights for any complex lighting in Daz 3Delight. If a 3DL render is going to get bogged down on a bit of scene for hours (and seemingly, hours and hours and hours), it'll be doing it under uberenvironment lights.
Attached image was a 1 minute render (twice the size or more, seven minutes which is still OK) using both IBL Master Music Hall HDRI (from HDRI Haven) and AoA Ambient light and 2 AoA sportlights. Gamma was off (no real colour difference with it on, and much more adjustment would be needed to get the shadows the same).
The nice thing about iray is the light spreads itself across and throughout the scene like butter warmed in a pan, the bad thing about Iray is it's hard to stop the light seeping everywhere of it's own accord. Light in 3DL is more like butter from the fridge - you have to work the knife to get it across the whole of the toast , but you can clump it on where you want it and it stays.
Sven, I respectfuly beg to differ. In many cases, I have found that in order to produce the same types of effects in 3DL that I am able to acheive in Iray, I did indeed need to create different texture maps. What we are ale to do with the Uber Iray shader, especially in regards to diffuse overlay, metallicity, and image editor instance tiling, is not easily reproduced using the 3DL shaders that ship with Daz Studio. As far as I am aware, and will admit to being wrong about this, those shaders are dzDefault, UberSurface, and AoA SSS. Also, one must consider that even if the texture maps are usuable in both render engines, two sets of material presets are still required.
I don't think one needs to redo the internal maps (bump, normal, etc) when rendering under 3DL but to get similar results is really about lighting in the end. There are so many solutions out there these days, including AWE, to get 3DL close to iRAY. The only issue with basic 3DL is that there is no Normal map strength control slider, which kinda sucks but then again there is Uber and AWE that gives you that.
These are early skin promo renders for my Gino character. I was able to get pretty good results using 3DL but again lighting plays into that as well. There is an AWE and iRAY render for comparison.
Ok, you know these things:) Just saying I don't think I own a product that has separate maps for IRay and 3DL.
True! Which is why converting to 3DL mats is not always a walk in the park. AweSurface can use metallicy maps, though.
Yep!
Sven, so glad you took my post as intended, as a polite disagreement and not a bash in any way. I was attempting to do My Fabrics of Asia shader for both Iray and 3DL, and when I realized I would need to make 2-3 3DL mats for each preset to get the sme look as the Iray presets, I got overwhelmed and dropped the idea.That may be why you don't see such things. I suspect others may have dropped the idea too.
Sven and RAM, you both mention the AWE shader, and it looks good, but it doesn't to my knowledge come included in the lights and shader package that is free for Daz Studio. Is that correct? I've always used UberSurface when I have to do 3DL mats, even though UberSurface 2 has better funtionality, like a built in layering system, but I never like to have a third party shader be a required product to use my textures.
I can understand that;) After all, working with pathtracing is quite different from using "hacks" like ambient occlusion, that both AoA ambient, IBL-Master and UE2 utilize.
Here are a couple of links:
aweshading-kit-10-for-daz-studio /awe-surface-shader-a-new-physically-plausible-shader-for-daz-studio-and-3delight/p1
awe Shading Kit User Guide
awe Surface user Guide
The thing is, 3Dl has had pathtracing long before the introduction of IRay, just not available in the DS implementation. So wowie and Mustakettu85 took on the task of unlocking this feature for end users, and aweSurface is the result. It uses a script for calling the pathtracer, which for now is the only way of accessing it from inside DS. So this is not something that DAZ has been involved in, as far as I know, although they could have done the same many years ago, in which case things may have looked a bit different;)
Long story short: The shader is free, the scripts are free. The commercial pack includes a number of presets (metals, dialectics, glass, SS settings etc.) But the shader is not included in the DS default resources, so... makes it harder to include presets for aweSurface. Maybe some day...
AWE is really neat, but it’s kind of it’s own thing; embracing AWE means giving up a number of cool 3dl shaders that otherwise makes it appealing.
But another way of looking at it is it expands the range of options of things you can do with 3dl.
Yup that's correct. You can't for example use fog cameras, you would need to make a product similar to Marshian's products. But you can use for example pwGhost and pwEffect, which is nice
. And all the DS standard lights and AoA distant and spotlights work with it. The ambient light is not necessary, as you get GI/ambient occlusion for free.
On the other hand, it is possible to create true volumetric shaders, for example, we'll be getting there, I hope.
wowie said the IRay to awe script is working;) I haven't tried it, gotten used to doing everything manually, but will give it a try:)
Do you have any details (or another thread if that's already being discussed somewhere?)
To me, there's a huge difference between an albedo vs. diffuse. Thw 2 are not interchangeable and doing so messes up conversions in both directions.
Good news! Thanks, Sven. If you could post your results, that would be great.
- Greg
https://renderman.pixar.com/resources/RenderMan_20/atmosphereAndInteriorShaders.html
It should be possible using ray marching...but I'm pretty sure it's not that high up on wowie's to do list atm;)
...did you ever try Nerd3D's Fog Tool Deluxe III?
Also does AoA's Grass Shader work with AweSurface or do you need to use geometry which will likely slow rendering down?
Actually I did. It works (kind of), but takes a bit of fiddling with translucency settings etc;) No, the grass- and rock shaders don't work...but I've managed to make tileable displacement maps to create grass in a similar fashion. Or GB/SBH of course.
...thanks, I just became tired of "Poser" grass that looked as if it was squished down flat under a plexiglass sheet. That was always the bane of doing outdoor scenes before AoA's shader was available. There were a couple geometry based grass products, but they slogged render time to a crawl and some couldn't be used on irregular/contoured surfaces. Also some of the tile based ones looked too "uniform," nice for a level well manicured suburban lawn, but not convincing in other settings.