Realistic Renders.....NOT!! 13: A new room to fill!
This discussion has been closed.
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
UberSurface is the upgraded EHSS anyway and there really isn't a huge amount of difference between the two aside from anisotropic specular and roughness settings in terms of appearance. UberSurface also comes with an option to disable raytracing and the 'Fantom' flag which can make items invisible yet still cast shadows.
Either way, UberSurface has come with Daz for a while now (since Daz 3 Advanced), and a lot of releases which use the 'EHSS' are actually flagged as using UberSurface in the Surfaces editor. I've come to accept they are one and the same thing.
uberSurface and (E)HSS are distinct shaders as far as code is concerned, so Rogerbee is correct that if the shader says it is uberSurface and not HSS it is - there is no dynamic updating as far as I know. However, MM and HoF are correct that there's no functional difference - uberSurface 2 ddi make some changes but to the best of my knowledge the bits of uberSurface that match HSS behave in the same way.
Thank you for your clarity Richard,
I still feel that a bit more clarity is needed when it comes to artists putting down in store descriptions exactly which shader their texture is using. You only have to look at the store products in New Releases to see where confusion can arise. For example, now that Age of Armour has released the SubSurface Shader, when we see 'SSS Shader' mentioned in a product blurb, is it not rightful, with nothing to state otherwise, for us to assume that they are referring to the Age of Armour shader!? I am well aware that other shaders use SSS, but, we need to know exactly which shader it is.
As customers, we need, and indeed have a right, to know exactly what it is we are buying. If we have requirements, then we have to be sure that these are met by whichever product we choose to buy. Thankfully, I am still learning about shaders, so the ones I have bought which I felt were wrongly described are still of use to me.
They are not wrongly described, which you are ignoring.
The HSS settings I used were included in DS... so that's probably the discrepancy. The HSS that the Elite uses used to be a separate product that is no longer in the store, because it was incorporated in DS and uses the setup you see now.
The uber-line of shaders has SSS in them, that's why we correctly say that they are SSS materials. The newer version in DS now has normal maps included, which was in Ubersurface 2.
If I want to say AoA's shader I'll notate it as such because it is NOT part of DS and it requires a separate download (and pseudo purchase).
They are wrongly described, if you put in the store description HSS, that acronym as far as customers are concerned stands for Human Surface Shader! And yet, when you load the texture the surfaces tab shows UberSurface. The store description should have said UberSurface presets! Regardless of what the shader was when it was being developed, it was released as UberSurface and was sold and described as such in the store!
We Daz customers can only go by what we see written down in What's Included & Features. You can't possibly assume that every customer knows what went on when the shader was being developed.
Look at this product from the point of view of a customer:
http://www.daz3d.com/fwx-koichi-character-and-accessories
Look at this line:
'DAZ Studio SSS Material Presets (.DUF)'
Does that tell you about the shader!? The customer sees SSS and, like me, they could think this was referring to the AoA shader.
Surely you can get what I'm trying to say.
The description tells me it uses DAZ's built in shaders for SSS.
Not notating AoA's shaders as such is misleading as it isn't built into DS. They are AoA's settings, not the standard DAZ settings that were bought from Omnifreaker. I've seen a few posts of people that get error messages that point to the fact they didn't install the shader, because the product was not noted correctly.
Requirements are for things that you need to run a product without error. If things are built-in, such as DAZ's SSS shaders from Omnifreaker, they aren't needed for requirements because they are set up to run out of the box... things that aren't such as AoA's shader, should be notated.
So as such, our products are notated correctly. I'm not sure why you aren't getting this, because it's tiring for me to explain.
When I got DS, I wanted to learn about specific shaders, among them was the Elite Human Surface Shader which Daz released with the original Elite textures. I bought Axel, as, the listing in What's Included & Features seemed to tell me that it used that particular shader, which it didn't!
How are we supposed to learn about using shaders when artists don't tell us properly which shader their texture is using!? If we want to buy a character because it apparently uses the shader we want to learn, shouldn't we then be told fully which shader it is actually using!?
Even Daz can't get it right:
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-5-elite-skin-texture-dave
In What's Included & Features it says:
DAZ Studio Elite Human Surface Material Presets (.DSA)
You load Dave and his shader is UberSurface!
I give up too!
See, guess I was right after all. ;)
Well I'll try, the NEW and IMPROVED UberSurface shader is exactly like the Elite Human Surface shader but with additionally functions. You seem to be getting hung up about the marketing term ELITE thinking it is better, it isn't
We can learn from shaders? I just apply EHSS to the generation 3 and 4 textures and then render the scene.
...stayed out of this for a while.
I have taken to learning the basic AoA SSS (which is free) as I have pretty much moved to using the AAL/ASLs instead of UE. This allows me to develop more complex scenes and use elements (like Nerd 3D's old Fog Tool Deluxe again) without a render process taking nearly a day to complete (and that's using 3Delight).
For example When I launched a test render the picture of KK leaping down on the unsuspecting elf gunslinger (posted a while back in this thread) using UE, only 1% of the process was complete after over fifteen minutes (and that was only a corner portion of the sky background no transmaps, reflectivity, or other effects), By my estimate it would have taken a minimum of 25 hours for that process to complete (probably longer once it got to the area with all the hair transmaps). Even with four AALs in the scene, the render process took about twelve minutes.
When I was still working in 32 bit and just using the standard Daz lights (so a render would complete without crashing) the optional US2 and HSS maps that came with some characters did not look good at all after rendering which lead me to feel they were designed to work better with UberEnvironment and UberLighting.
--just my two zlotys.
A rare "one off" I made a while back something different for *me*
...nice shiny Aikobot there.
Thanks Lux does a great job. To anyone converting to normal maps does EVERY single map in a scene need to be converted?
Back to the story
Some shiny, glassy surfaces. Rendered in Daz Studio 4.6 Pro (23 minutes 37 seconds).
...noticing the map for the ground. One of the things that bothers me about Poser/Daz outdoor sets is the lack of realistic looking grass as it always looks like it is squashed under a thick pane of plexiglass.
There are a couple realistic grass props in the store: P3DA's Pred Pack - Grass One (great for yards and "manicured" areas) and esha's Grassy Grounds Megapack.(excellent for wild areas).
http://www.daz3d.com/pred-pack-grass-one
http://www.daz3d.com/grassy-grounds-megapack
Predatron also has a Tall Weeds set as well.
http://www.daz3d.com/pred-pack-tall-weeds
As I also understand one can create grass with the LAMH plugin (though not the best for extreme close ups as all the "blades" are uniform).
Haven't done much work with Reality/Lux so not sure how these would impact render times.
I also forget that with some maps cranking the vertical and horizontal will tighten it up.I'm just happy producing quality stories. We always can be doing more just like some of the eyes in Rodger's renders.. I am also doing alot of PS collaging and post work
Nice one Artini
...yeah, I know, there are times I forget to use SSS (which I am getting better at) to make characters stand out more and only notice after I posted the render (especially to a challenge). [need a "Doh!" emote].
Thanks a lot, Bobvan.
Very nice,
I remember using a glass shader preset on a visor once and with UE it took ages to render, I wonder if, with the AAL and the shader with the diffuse set to 99% you'd still get the right effect with lower render times and no quality hit when using Primitive Hitmode!?
Oh, regarding the eyes in my G2 renders, until something better comes out I'll use the standard textures.
CHEERS!
Kyoto I tightened the map on this one
...looks much better.
And now for something really creepy......
Sleep well!
CHEERS!
Muhahahahaha nice detail
Yeah, that's Smay's Last Gladiator texture for M4, I made a material preset so I could use it on M6 and didn't need to tweak that texture at all, though I did swap out the eyes for Bjorn's, turning up the opacity of the eye reflection for that nice undead look. I must try it on a vampire.
CHEERS!
Try adjusting the eyes im lazy I would get eyes like that sometimes I just change to another one when that happens
That was the look I was going for, I wanted them to look milky.
CHEERS!
Ha but in other cases they seem a little shiny
Enjoying some faster render times