Desert Hotel Pavement edges

Might someone be familiar with the Desert Motel https://www.daz3d.com/desert-motel ?

While not a major issue in most cases, there's a distinct edge to the transition from pavement to desert I'd like to fix.  

image

Looking in the textures folder, I see that there's a Road_Motel_ground_Alpha.jpg, but it's not used anywhere I can find. Even so, applying it doesn't help as it has a hard edge too. There's also a Height map, but it's just 8-bit solid gray, also not used.

I might just repaint the alpha to festher those spots but wondering others dealt with this?

DesertHotelEdgeIssueCropd.jpg
1590 x 1020 - 552K

Comments

  • JonnyRayJonnyRay Posts: 1,744

    Have you confirmed those issues exist even after you render? There are some aspects of rendering which do not show in the viewport. Even with Iray preview turned on.

    For instance, I don't see the seam in the road in Polish's promo image. Normally I think of Polish as a high quality vendor; although there is some obvious tiling on the road surface. So I guess it would be possible.

    If it's there in a full render as well, then adjusting the alpha should help.

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Test renders is how I found them to begin with.  Actually, on that promo image, it's not wide enough on the right to show the edge of the road, but you can still see it on the left by the Office wall. I loaded the scene & only position the Perspective view, & yes it's noticeable even with the enviro light at it's default of .41.  Load in an afternoon HDR & it's very apparent.  I'm guessing that all of the Sand Decal objects were an attempt to disguise that edge to be honest.

    It is a really nice set & I plan on borrowing some things for use elsewhere. But, there are some floating items in the scene too.  I translate most of my Daz assets into Lightwave but come back to the unaltered originals as reference, and they're in the original as well.

     

     

  • JonnyRayJonnyRay Posts: 1,744

    It's certainly possible that he was envisioning it used mostly at low camera angles where the tile borders and such wouldn't be as obvious. Sounds like something I would do in my models for sure. :)

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    That's kinda what I'm guessing too.  I'll try a custom clip map first if I can avoid tweeking the geom although that might be needed too. 

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Well, I did fix those edges with a custom trans map.

    This is still very much a WIP but thought I'd post in case anyone might actually be interested.

    My standard disclaimer is that this is convereted & rendered in Lightwave & not DS.

    I'v'e converted all pretty much all surfaces over to what's called Principled BSDF which is essentially PBR, Iray in Daz speak.  The neon is using the newish Primitive Lights.  They aren't an emissive, in fact you actually need to disable visibility for the mesh, but use the mesh as a light source.  As such, you've way more control, or at least way more accessible. In any case, the render times are a fraction of Iray.  This was in the 42 min range with semi low settings.  DS was around 10 mins at 1% using defaults. And frankly, the lighting in the product is a bit anemic.  I mean, come on that's NOT neon!

    So, ya know there's eventually going to be a flickering neon letter, and something parked in the garage area but beyond that I'm still making it up.

    image

    2ndLook_Old Desert Hotel+Lights_42m_52s.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 467K
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