The Official aweSurface Test Track

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  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,569

    ...some of AprilYSH's tend to be look "day to day" as well.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    If I only could get the gradient to render smooth

    I'd try the "Glow" shader found in shader builder (the Renderman Companion folder). It will at least give you plausible edge falloff.

    Wow didn't know about that, sounds like a very good idea!

     

    how's that?   laugh   Reminds me of Johnny Winter! (Sorry Johnny I love your music;) rendertime 22 min

    I was thinking actually that aquatic creatures don't need eyelashes XD Or are you going for a Homo Sapiens Sapiens-like "mystery", which IIRC most researchers like to explain away as "sexual selection, nothing else to look at here, move along"?

    Yes evolution works in mysterious  ways, especially in the CG universe. Hmm back on topic;) I tried to thin out the lashes and make them silvery white, maybe it wasn't enough, Then I got this hair idea and just had to see if that would make her more sexually attractive for us earthlings laughlaughand it doeslaughlaugh And I don't want to cover her beautiful skull shape haha.

    Nah I really have a story in the back of my head, but I think it better stay there for now. I would like to make a short movie about y'know time not being chronological and that awareness creates the universe, blah blah, that kind of stuff (the stuff we're not supposed to discuss in these forums)

    Maybe the 3Delight cloud would be an option...as you may recall, I have other projects that could use a million coressmiley

     

    Also good point, maybe I could mess it up a little with morphs and editing some maps?
     

    In theory yes, but this looks like one of 3Dream's models, either Gregoria or Marja, no? These remain looking this perfectly straight-ironed and combed-out piecey way even in their wind morphs, as far as I have seen. Let's not forget that most of the hair models we have were designed with female pin-ups in mind.

    Off the top of my head, Neftis' styles tend to be more "plausibly messy".

    Uhu, Gregoria it is. I think I'll stick with it for now. He's actually not living in the woods, just happened to lose his clothes right before I rendered him. But he IS a savage=))) But tks, I'll check neftis hair saloon:)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    kyoto kid said:

    ...some of AprilYSH's tend to be look "day to day" as well.

    tks kk have to check outyes

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    So I wanted to test my shadersettings in this interior environment, turned out the characters needed some additional lighting. Couldn't get the arealight to cooperate so I gave in and added a standard spot to simulate bright sun/starlight, hit render and went to sleep. The spot turned my alien into a jellyfish, which is cool because that's what I wanted in the first place:) But ok I'll skip the hair LOL terrible stuff...

    image

    I'm off to see if I can find a glow shader...

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    A tip! I've had problems with the awe area light shader, occationally it won't light certain props no matter what. I may have found a workaround:

    Save your material as a preset, copy the prop/figure if you have made translation adjustments (or save as a pose preset) then delete the prop/figure and reload the original from your library, apply your pose or use the paste function, apply your mat preset! That seems to do the trick.

    Example of the emitter not working

    After using the workaround

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    So I re-rendered the interior after solving the emissive trouble and deleting the alien hair, and in the name of science I'll upload that version. The emissive plane made the SSS jellyfish-look even more prominent LOL, actually it's a very cool thing that you can make things almost transparent by abusing SSS settings. Works almost like the good old pwGhost shader:)

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    So I lowered the SSS scale and phase a bit and spotrendered the skin parts

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    ... and an exterior shot...

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    I tested the reflective emissive thing, created a geometry shell for the TV, applied the glass3 preset to the screen, made the other parts invisible and voila;)

    image

    Sidenote:: The walls, well everything that was part of the house prop rendered black before I selected all those surfaces and enabled the "use face forward". Quickly tested with progressive, and it looked ok, so I disabled progressive and started rendering... it stalled at 2% done. Tried every trick in the book, nothing made any difference. Finally I hid a number of materials belonging to outside details on the house and it started rendering... fast:) Could this "eternal render " bug be related to normals or geometry? Hmm? Anyway this worked nicely, will use the technique for the spacecraft;)

    Is everything in a scene fed into the renderer even if it's not in the camera view?

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    ... another angle... rendertime 15 min

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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    Sidenote:: The walls, well everything that was part of the house prop rendered black before I selected all those surfaces and enabled the "use face forward". Quickly tested with progressive, and it looked ok, so I disabled progressive and started rendering... it stalled at 2% done. Tried every trick in the book, nothing made any difference. Finally I hid a number of materials belonging to outside details on the house and it started rendering... fast:)

    OK, I think I know what's causing the problem from your description.

    If Use Face Forward render out the materials as expected, then the model was made with normals pointing the wrong way. UseFaceForward effectively forces normal to always face the camera (in renders) and is the default for dsStandardMaterial (plus omnifreaker's shaders).

    Use Face Forward does tend to inflate render times and causes lots of problems when you do GI and reflections, which is why I expose it and leave it to users to enable/disable. Basically, with GI and reflections, having Use Face Forward enabled can lead to shading both sides of the polygon, even if it's not directly visible. Both sides can still be visible to indirect light even if it's not directly lit or directly visible to the camera. Obviously, this is not ideal. This wouldn't happen if the model was made with 'proper' thickness like the figures.

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    Is everything in a scene fed into the renderer even if it's not in the camera view?

    Everything that the rays fired by surfaces that intersect with camera rays will intersect with. I hope this sentence is human-readable =)

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    So I re-rendered the interior after solving the emissive trouble and deleting the alien hair, and in the name of science I'll upload that version. The emissive plane made the SSS jellyfish-look even more prominent LOL, actually it's a very cool thing that you can make things almost transparent by abusing SSS settings. Works almost like the good old pwGhost shader:)

    BTW IIRC pwGhost is self-illuminated, so it should be compatible with just about any shader kit out there. 

    You may want to play with jelly figures that have actual skeletons inside them. This is raytraced SSS, so... =D

    // warning: will likely take more time to render than without stuff stuck inside //

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    time not being chronological and that awareness creates the universe, blah blah, that kind of stuff (the stuff we're not supposed to discuss in these forums)

    Here goes a great idea of a fun thread =(

    Maybe the 3Delight cloud would be an option...as you may recall, I have other projects that could use a million coressmiley

    Oh yeah =) Wonder if we could do anything to somehow bring the 3Delight cloud closer...

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:
    Sidenote:: The walls, well everything that was part of the house prop rendered black before I selected all those surfaces and enabled the "use face forward". Quickly tested with progressive, and it looked ok, so I disabled progressive and started rendering... it stalled at 2% done. Tried every trick in the book, nothing made any difference. Finally I hid a number of materials belonging to outside details on the house and it started rendering... fast:)

    OK, I think I know what's causing the problem from your description.

    If Use Face Forward render out the materials as expected, then the model was made with normals pointing the wrong way. UseFaceForward effectively forces normal to always face the camera (in renders) and is the default for dsStandardMaterial (plus omnifreaker's shaders).

    Use Face Forward does tend to inflate render times and causes lots of problems when you do GI and reflections, which is why I expose it and leave it to users to enable/disable. Basically, with GI and reflections, having Use Face Forward enabled can lead to shading both sides of the polygon, even if it's not directly visible. Both sides can still be visible to indirect light even if it's not directly lit or directly visible to the camera. Obviously, this is not ideal. This wouldn't happen if the model was made with 'proper' thickness like the figures.

    tks wowie, now all this is slowly starting to make sense:)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    Is everything in a scene fed into the renderer even if it's not in the camera view?

    Everything that the rays fired by surfaces that intersect with camera rays will intersect with. I hope this sentence is human-readable =)

    Totally, no worries=))

     

    So I re-rendered the interior after solving the emissive trouble and deleting the alien hair, and in the name of science I'll upload that version. The emissive plane made the SSS jellyfish-look even more prominent LOL, actually it's a very cool thing that you can make things almost transparent by abusing SSS settings. Works almost like the good old pwGhost shader:)

    BTW IIRC pwGhost is self-illuminated, so it should be compatible with just about any shader kit out there. 

    You may want to play with jelly figures that have actual skeletons inside them. This is raytraced SSS, so... =D

    // warning: will likely take more time to render than without stuff stuck inside //

    Wow off to test the ghost shader...

    Never bothered with skeletons before, now I have a sudden strong urge, my wallet won't thank youfrown

    time not being chronological and that awareness creates the universe, blah blah, that kind of stuff (the stuff we're not supposed to discuss in these forums)

    Here goes a great idea of a fun thread =(

    Yup too bad...still allowed to make obscure renders;)

    Maybe the 3Delight cloud would be an option...as you may recall, I have other projects that could use a million coressmiley

    Oh yeah =) Wonder if we could do anything to somehow bring the 3Delight cloud closer...

    I have a good feeling about it:))

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    Never bothered with skeletons before, now I have a sudden strong urge, my wallet won't thank youfrown

    Oops sorry =D 

    You can find a number of free .obj skulls at turbosquid (and probably sharecg or rendo freestuff). To get a taste of whether you enjoy it or not.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    Testing continues... converted the https://www.daz3d.com/a-cozy-studio and rendered without any interior lighting...this set was one of the very first purchases I made back in the days;) I still like the topology and textures even if the scale seems to be a bit off. Those promos...smiley

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    Will update with a fully lit render...

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    Also converted Jackson's field by TangoAlpha, just to check render times with a lot of instancing. This one rendered in 1.5h. with raytracer final. However every original surface use normal maps, there are no displacement maps, so...will try to create displacement maps at some point;) This won't look good without adding some detail to surfaces. 1.5h is very nice btw, rendering on a Mac in Iray would probably mean 30+ h

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    And there is a strange "shadow" crossing the water, similar to the one I got when rendering US2. Have to look into it some more...

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    Turned out the displacement "bug" messed up that brick wall, so I had to adjust the min-max values. Here is a shot rendered before the fix.

    image

    Also noted that the reflection in the mirror is blurred. I used the chrome preset, which obviously did not work well. So after adjusting displacement I selected the mirror surface and set every roughness parameter I could find to zero. Made a spotrender. The wall is ok but this is as sharp as the mirror gets:

    image

    There are a couple of things that still need adjusting, but the mirror is a problem. Suggestions?

    I made a new spotrender with DoF turned off, that wasn't it;)

    image

    Note that with DoF turned off, the lamp shade in the foreground looks quit different. No translucency.

    And enabled progressive rendering, made another spotrender, made no difference.

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    And here is another potential issue. Turning off those buttons shown in the screenshot has no effect. Only the camera button works.

    image

    Turned off the awe environment for this test.

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    ... and another thing I can't explain... decanter1 looks like this even if I copy /paste the decanter2 mat (on the right). It should be dark blue but it decided it wants to be white. If I apply the DS default shader it renders black (as it should) but when I apply the awe base shader it turns white. Diffuse color is set to almost black. I tried to load the top shelf clutter prop from the library, applied the awe base, pasted the top shelf clutter mats and it turned white. I used the geometry tool to flip normals, nope, I activated "use face forward", nope. It is white, period=))))) Well atleast I can hide it with the camera button;) The decanters don't use any maps or opacity.

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    If I invert metalness and roughness it gets darker.

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    What is happening herelaughsurpriselaugh

    (aweSurface +pwGhost) x standard spotlight / (vanillarender x progressive) = surprise

    Ok so I couldn't get pwGhost to work with scripted rendering, it just renders with kind of toon style shading, 100% ambient color. But it actually works in vanilla progressive. Expect looong rendertimes if you want to try it out!

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    Started working on interior lighting. First applied the environmental shader to the light bulb. Then when adjusting the lamp shade opacity noticed this:

    Opacity 50%

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    Opacity 49%

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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited October 2018

    First the mirror. To get perfect reflection on the mirror, you need to have metalness at 1 with 0 (zero) roughness. Specular/reflection and edge tint should be pure white. Think of it as a silver glass mirror.

    Forgot to attach the test render.

    The visibility options on the light shader only control the 'surface' part of the emitter, not the actual light. Obviously, if it controls the light part, you will get no specular when reflections/refractions turned off and no diffuse when occlusion/indirect diffuse is turned off. Plus it's already controlled by the 'Illumination' settings - On/Diffuse Only/Specular Only/Off.

    For more granular control ie have a specific object not receive diffuse or specular light, it's probably best to use trace sets.

    The decanter (well, the rest of the prop actually) is probably not UV mapped properly. That 'overblown halo look' artifact is generally what happens when non UV mapped object receive specular light with Ashihkmin Shirley. A workaround is to use either Cook Torrance or GGX, or turned off specular and rely solely on reflections. The proper, complete solution would be to have a proper UV mapping.

    I'm not exactly sure what you want to do with the lamp shade. I'm guessing you want a more gradual reveal of the light depending on the opacity value?

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    wowie said:

    First the mirror. To get perfect reflection on the mirror, you need to have metalness at 1 with 0 (zero) roughness. Specular/reflection and edge tint should be pure white. Think of it as a silver glass mirror.

    Tks, I had metalness at 100, roughness at 0, spec2 at 250.250.250, so I set that to pure white as well as the edge tint, new render coming with complete light setup;)

    wowie said:

    The visibility options on the light shader only control the 'surface' part of the emitter, not the actual light. Obviously, if it controls the light part, you will get no specular when reflections/refractions turned off and no diffuse when occlusion/indirect diffuse is turned off. Plus it's already controlled by the 'Illumination' settings - On/Diffuse Only/Specular Only/Off.

    For more granular control ie have a specific object not receive diffuse or specular light, it's probably best to use trace sets.

    The decanter (well, the rest of the prop actually) is probably not UV mapped properly. That 'overblown halo look' artifact is generally what happens when non UV mapped object receive specular light with Ashihkmin Shirley. A workaround is to use either Cook Torrance or GGX, or turned off specular and rely solely on reflections. The proper, complete solution would be to have a proper UV mapping.

    Ok that's probably it, not a big problem;)

    wowie said:

    I'm not exactly sure what you want to do with the lamp shade. I'm guessing you want a more gradual reveal of the light depending on the opacity value?

    I was just baffled by the fact that 50% means no opacity and 49 means full opacity,doesn't make sense to me.

    In this new render I have turned off opacity and use transmission with roughness + translucency and that works very well.

    Another odd thing I noticed: All the light bulbs have the environmental shader applied. At first I had enabled indirect light/occlusion. I positioned all the emitter instances and adjusted intensity as needed, testrendered, then turned off indirect light/occlusion on the bulbs, resulting in an increased intensity of the light emitters. Maybe like 30% or thereabout. Not a big problem either, just curious as to why this is happening? Is it just light bounces?

    Will upload the new render when done.

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    I was just baffled by the fact that 50% means no opacity and 49 means full opacity,doesn't make sense to me.

    Probably due to the optimization level. It probably would behave in a more gradual way with lower optimization values.

    Another odd thing I noticed: All the light bulbs have the environmental shader applied. At first I had enabled indirect light/occlusion. I positioned all the emitter instances and adjusted intensity as needed, testrendered, then turned off indirect light/occlusion on the bulbs, resulting in an increased intensity of the light emitters. Maybe like 30% or thereabout. Not a big problem either, just curious as to why this is happening? Is it just light bounces?

    I think that's a proper bug. It probably is the one that causes slight darkening when you have very high intensity light very close to the receiving surface. The updated build don't have that issue, but it's not out yet.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    wowie said:
    I was just baffled by the fact that 50% means no opacity and 49 means full opacity,doesn't make sense to me.

    Probably due to the optimization level. It probably would behave in a more gradual way with lower optimization values.

    Optimization level was at zero, both filters were at zero.

    wowie said:
    Another odd thing I noticed: All the light bulbs have the environmental shader applied. At first I had enabled indirect light/occlusion. I positioned all the emitter instances and adjusted intensity as needed, testrendered, then turned off indirect light/occlusion on the bulbs, resulting in an increased intensity of the light emitters. Maybe like 30% or thereabout. Not a big problem either, just curious as to why this is happening? Is it just light bounces?

    I think that's a proper bug. It probably is the one that causes slight darkening when you have very high intensity light very close to the receiving surface. The updated build don't have that issue, but it's not out yet.

    Ok, good to know;)

    Just did a test in the other DS instance. A primitive plane, applied the base metal preset, metalness 100, base roughness 0, spec2 enabled, spec.color and edge tint pure white, spec2 roughness 0, still blurred.

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  • khorneV2khorneV2 Posts: 146
    edited October 2018

    What is happening herelaughsurpriselaugh

    (aweSurface +pwGhost) x standard spotlight / (vanillarender x progressive) = surprise

    Ok so I couldn't get pwGhost to work with scripted rendering, it just renders with kind of toon style shading, 100% ambient color. But it actually works in vanilla progressive. Expect looong rendertimes if you want to try it out!

    That was the problem i encountered. In this case, i added an AOA ambient at low levels and used the scriptered renderer. So unfortunately, there is no other method sad

     

    Post edited by khorneV2 on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    khorneV2 said:

    What is happening herelaughsurpriselaugh

    (aweSurface +pwGhost) x standard spotlight / (vanillarender x progressive) = surprise

     

    Ok so I couldn't get pwGhost to work with scripted rendering, it just renders with kind of toon style shading, 100% ambient color. But it actually works in vanilla progressive. Expect looong rendertimes if you want to try it out!

    That was the problem i encountered. In this case, i added an AOA ambient at low levels and used the scriptered renderer. So unfortunately, there is no other method sad

    Hmm only thing that springs in mind atm is to render the background with scripted raytracer, then use the render as a backdrop and render the pwGhost stuff using regular 3DL and a shadowcatcher.

     

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    In case someone needs a regular shadowcatcher, I made this very brief tut for @SaphireWild when she/he (sorry Saph) needed one. Not compatible with awe!!

     

    1. Create a new scene and load a 3DL skydome, just to cover transparent areas (not necessary, just looks nicer;)

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    This image has been resized to fit in the page. Click to enlarge.

     

    2. Create a primitive plane that will work as the shadow catcher! Select it and turn Cast Shadows off in parameters/display. Also select it in the surface tab!

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    3. Open the shadow mixer pane, it will look something like this:

     

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    4. Delete the Default Material brick on the left by clicking the x in the upper right corner! Now you should have this:

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    5. Insert the shadow catcher brick and the mix brick by double clicking them in the menu on the left!

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    6. Connect the bricks, as shown in the screenshot by clicking and dragging! Set the color in the surface brick to pure black, and set the layer in the mix brick to a value between 0 and 1, one meaning black shadows and 0 meaning no shadows! With the plane selected in the scene tab AND the surface tab, click apply!

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    7. Create a light with raytraced shadows and a sphere or whatever to test your shader!

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    8. Do a testrender and save as a shader preset! If you want, you can go to the surface pane, click the cog wheel for the layer and rename it to shadow strength or something to your own taste!

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    You can apply the shadow catcher to any object, just like any shader, like a ground plane or floor;)

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  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    Just did a test in the other DS instance. A primitive plane, applied the base metal preset, metalness 100, base roughness 0, spec2 enabled, spec.color and edge tint pure white, spec2 roughness 0, still blurred.

    Is this with or without DoF this time?

    Hmm only thing that springs in mind atm is to render the background with scripted raytracer, then use the render as a backdrop and render the pwGhost stuff using regular 3DL and a shadowcatcher.

    Or just render the ghost out with alpha and put them together in any image editor. Which will likely avoid any quality loss that DS may introduce with that backdrop thingie. I don't know how it's implemented, so I would never use it.

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