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LOL Richard ! you made me smile hehe
Phil , that is the shape that make it real , I edited the materials to reflect closer PBR materials but no SSS , our brain is coded so we know what is human or not and small wrong detail will tell us the difference , skin outside is more flat and simple anyway, more specularity happening on the surface than SSS in general , and you don't need much details of the skin to recognize what is real or not , the shape is the key in first place .
Next week , can't tell the exact day as we don't do it here anymore , it is Satin 85 PBR shaders for iray .vol.4 double tread shaders .. very cool !
we can still tell that something is scanned or real , mostly on the eyes but so closer than ever before and it progress
Hi MEC4D,
As you suggested, here are two quick tips about the correct use of environment maps that I'm happy to share.
Have a nice day.
very nice, thanks
Very good info , thanks for sharing , in some cases as some of my HDRI allows you can still use DOF even with ground as in the renders below , but for that the area need to be clear like a beach sand or field or parking lot . You switch to Infinite Dome with Ground , set the ground textures for 70-100 DOF on , camera stright , since from angle even with real camera shots the ground will be always blured as the focal distance don't allow it
as you see in the Beach HDRI , the change of the focal distance works together with the HDRI as well
Infinite Sphere with ground is not perfect solution but always something to play with
@MEC4D Hi Cath, Joseph here: I have not been able to get your free HDRs (thanks!) or Gardens Vol. 1 - Megapack to appear in renders or in the Render Settings - Environment tab.
I click on the thumbnail button. A box appears for a second indicating it is loading. But the HDR image does not render with the 3D elements. With all my other HDR packs bought at Daz, all I have to do is double click to load. What am I not doing right?
Hi Joseph , I don't know why to tell you the truth, as you see here in the thread people render it as well and nobody has issues from my website and there was a lot of downloads, I use the last DS public build, what you can try is looad the scene and go into Environment Setting and see if the HDRI is there and if not try to load it manually and see it it works ( you said it is not there) so the question is , is it loaded at all, I don't know why some people have no issues other do in this case , I even moved the HDRI to Runtime in my last freebie but you said it does not load, I will like to know what is going on exactly but can't recreate the issue myself, but it needs to be fixed for all . So please try to load it manually after you click the HDRI scene and let me know and make sure the Dome is On under rendering settings
Pardon my ignorance, but how do I manually load it? After I click on it, I go to Render Settings / Environment / Environment Map and click on the small thumbnail. The list of jpegs and pngs comes up, but I can't find mec4d hdr's.
I got Gardens 4 to load, but the other four don't. I'll try re-installing.
You're absolutely right. I didn't mention it because I thought that the usage of infinite sphere with ground, which can be very tricky as shown in the attached image, deserves its own tutorial. I'm working on it.
You did right each HDRI is in own map all maps located here in their folders : My Library\Light Presets\MEC4D\HDRI Gardens vol1 , Garden 1, Garden 2, Garden 3, Garden 4 each of the folder include 2 HDRI high resolution and Low , try to find if you installed all folders with files and ket me know
Of course not all HDRI will works but with some of them you can , I wish there was other way to make the ground smaller as not always you need as much area and if the close objects are too close they can get deformed .
I found some better solution for any HDRI , but the ground textures scale is not as it should even if the background don't have any deformation and to fix the ground texture scale you need to use very high focal length at last 8 mm and use Portrait ratio render format only
Thanks Cath, I will do as you instructed once my current render (CPU only) gets more finished. After I got Gardens 4 (from Gardens Megapack) to load, I was unable to get it to load again. But I'm using Content Library / Products to load. I'll use the Poser style file/folder structure to load instead (like you suggested) and see what happens. It may be that there is some issue with loading from Content Library / Products that causes some to have issues and others (who are using file/folders) to not have them.
That is really possible, try it and let me know, I will be back here in couple hours again and try to load the HDRI from Environment Settings /Environment Map after you load the scene
I attempted to load via My Library / Light Presets / MEC4D, and the cameras loaded (as they also did through Products), but the HDR does not show up in Render Settings / Environment or in the Image Editor list box. De and re-installing now.
After re-install, the first Gardens HDR loaded right up, and it appeared in the thumbnail and image list of Render Settings / Environment, and rendered as expected. All subsequent attempts to load other HDRs in the set loaded cameras but no HDR. I suspect that I may have a product installed that is interfering with these HDRs, but there are too many (8000+) to conduct a process of elimination.
At any rate, if I quit DazStudio and reopen it, I can load a different HDR from the set. But in order to preview another, I must quit/reopen again. Maybe someone smarter than I will suss this out. But all my other mec4d.com HDRs and MEC4D freebies work without a hitch now, although each new one loaded removes the previous one from the image list.
That is ninteresting , maybe memory issues ? and each time you close the cache clean up allowing you to open another , I would definitelly report it in a ticket to the support as that is very strange behavior of Daz Studio , I don't think that other product interfering with it , here is something else on the hand , if you submit ticket to the support and let them know about the behavior they may know more what is going on as I am total green here in this case , very weird !
HDRI files tend to be very large, and as you can load the first - whichever one it is - but not the second, then it points strongly to a memory issue. Does Daz Studio have a way to clear from memory anything which is not being used? You could try loading an image with a small memory requirement into the environment (just a jpg), and then try loading the second HDRI.
In production HDRI Gardens vol2 Megapack "Tuscany Gardens" with 5 HDRIs , some quick tests.
After hours of experimentation, finally I got it ! Here's a shot using a 200mm F:5.6 lens with DOF enabled; as you can see there's no distortion at all and the scales are correct. In fact I had to adjust the scaling of the character, the finite sphere and the ground all together. Here are my settings:
But there are restrictions, if the back-scape shows something like a wall it must be perpendicular to the view axis, and as you already mentioned:
And you have to calibrate all the scalings again avery time you chage the field of view, the location of the camera or the focal length.
Cath your hdr sets look stunning, it's so nice to see you releasing stuff again :)
Very nice result ! try to use Box with Ground it works even with very tight space HDRI, of course, each HDRI need different texture ground scaling and Dome Scaling Multiplier but you will get better DOF even with cameras on angles and fewer issues with scaling , Dome Scaling Multiplier can even go to 9 %
Thank you so much ! Tomorrow capturing my favorite spots in NYC Center Park and streets of Manhattan
Just to let you know that PBR shaders vol.4 Satin - MERCHANT RESOURCES was just released https://www.daz3d.com/mec4d-pbs-shaders-vol-4-for-iray-mr
I now own a copy! Thanks hon! XO
Thank you for the support Richard ! xoxo
Straight in the cart for me, too
Awwww thank you Simon ! preparing new HDRI for the freebie of the week
In production HDRI Central Park NYC , some quick tests.