Halfway up the Mountain missing stuff??
sapat
Posts: 1,735
Just got this today due to the sale, and was disappointed that it's missing a ton of stuff. Link: http://www.daz3d.com/halfway-up-the-mountain
Says this on the product page:
What's Included and Features
Halfway Up The Mountain Scene (.DUF)
- Iray and 3Delight Presets
- Lightset
- Semi dome sky
- 10 Standard Camera
- 9 Simple Fog Cameras
In the zip I got today (manual download, I don't use dim), there is no lightset, no semi dome sky, no fog cameras. There are some regular cameras, but it skips some numbers like some are missing.
All that's in the library window are 2 options for loading. 1 duf preload for Iray, and 1 duf preload for 3DL. That's it, no other options. What's the deal?
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Comments
It's not missing anything accept the line in the description that said "included in scene" This was originally just a 3delight scene. Load the 3DL scene its all in there including the fog cameras you just use the drop down in Daz Studio and choose the camera. The appropriate lightset loads in the full scene. As mentioned this was originally a 3delight scene. People asked for an iray version. The iray addon was a free update. Now there is no iray equivalent to a 3DL simple fog camera, the iray version needs fog volume which is a available as its own product, and physical meshed skydomes don't work in iray because they block the sky/sunlight. These are two different render engines.
Ok, well that's super helpful, thank you so much! I didn't know it was previously just 3DL, so that's why when I loaded the Iray scene it appeared to be missing things.
So having said that, will the fog cameras work with Iray?
Are the dome and lights not in the preloads?
No Richard, not in the Iray preload. FirstBastion said those are only in the 3DL preload and I use Iray. I don't use 3DL anymore.
I guess when I bought the set and it said it had an Iray preset, I thought that all the included items were in the Iray preload, but apparently Iray was only a free addon at some point which only included materials for the actual model, no lights, no fog cameras, no dome. I wouldn't have bought it had I known the Iray was only a 'free addon' just to load converted materials, and not an integrated part of the original set. The product page doesn't state anything like that.
I bought 2 other of his sets at the same time, so now am going to try to find time to get those loaded and see if it's the case there too and that the product pages were not forthcoming about what's included for Iray. I love his stuff, but can only afford it on a sale which is why I wait to buy it. Now I find out that the other ones may not be completely set up for Iray either. I'll have to check them.
If it's not what you wanted, you can return them for a refund within 30 days - just use the support page contact form.
Right. I might do that, but will try to convert the materials to Iray before I give up. I'm just bummed that there's no fog cameras or the stuff that the 3DL came with, but I guess since they're old sets that's why they were on such deep discount and don't support Iray. Thanks.
There are steps to do fog in Iray, plus fog cameras, plus you can do it in post using a distance canvas, etc.
For what it's worth
Thanks William. I have no clue how to do stuff like that unless you know of tutorials you could point me to.
Fog:
Make a cube, apply Iray shader.
Set refraction weight to 1, refraction IOR to 1.
Set Thin Shell to Off
You probably want to have Nvidia view of camera on for this, if you can.
Set SSS distance to, oh, 50, and then adjust the SSS weight where you want. Direction leave at 0 unless you want to get super fancy. (If it's positive, the 'fog' only shows up for lights aimed increasingly at the camera. If it's negative, for lights aimed increasingly away from the camera)
That said? I would highly advise using a Distance canvas if you have Photoshop or can otherwise process EXR format files.
Canvas:
Render settings, Advanced. Click 'canvas'
Click +, you now have a beauty canvas. This is a 32 bit regular render.
Click +, you now have a second beauty canvas. Pull the menu bar thingie to switch it from Beauty to Distance. This is a 32 bit image that can be used as a mask for distance from the camera. With a little finesse, you can essentially add a distance fog using that, and play with doing various effects in Photoshop.
Wow, that's extremely helpful!
Thank you so much. I'll have to try this tomorrow. I see there is an exr plugin that works with CS2 if I need to use it.
Heh, good luck!
http://www.daz3d.com/atmocam-for-iray takes a lot of guesswork and tinkering out of the equation by placing a fog volume attached to the camera, and having a lot of setting presets.
http://www.daz3d.com/above-the-fog-for-iray-and-3delight has settings to create various fog effects.
3DL has the ability to create 'clotted' fogs/smoke, where the fog has varied density. Iray... doesn't (which is frustrating), but that second product does some tricks to help mitigate that limitation.
I only get pure white renders when using a Distance canvas. Do you have to do anything with the camera settings beforehand?
You need to use hdr toning or convert to 16 bit or something.
The data is there but you need to compress the range
I put the atmocam for iray right on my wishlist for sure! The above the fog I have, but try as I might I can't figure it out and it either renders all white or all black and has a bunch of artifact like I'm looking through cheesecloth. Very 'noisy'. Wish there was a 'how to'. But Atmocam for Iray is def cool and has lots of options too! Thanks William.