3Delight Surface and Lighting Thread

1568101152

Comments

  • Type 0 NegativeType 0 Negative Posts: 323
    edited October 2013

    sorry, I was trying to edit last post and double posted

    Post edited by Type 0 Negative on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969


    I wouldn't activate SSS on anything else than skin but that is your choice

    Why would that be Takeo, I use it on the eyes, nails, teeth, basically anything that SSS properties.
  • Type 0 NegativeType 0 Negative Posts: 323
    edited December 1969

    I have tried saving material presets as both compressed and uncompressed and tbis did not help me either. What is that option for anyway which should we be using?

  • Type 0 NegativeType 0 Negative Posts: 323
    edited October 2013

    I have tried saving material presets as both compressed and uncompressed and tbis did not help me either. What is that option for anyway which should we be using?

    Richard answered this in another thread, "Compress makes the file smaller by applying GZip compression. On a preset it won’t make a huge difference, but on morph assets and figure assets it can save a lot of space."

    dead skin issue resulted from the nails sss settings

    refraction and scale, messing with those settings on the nails to match the settings I had applied to the skin screwed everything up. changing the color even messes with the skin. not sure why this is but leaving the sss settings like this fixed it for me; that is the best I can do to explain I was only tinkering with the nails and somehow the nail settings caused the skin to change.

    The group still has me confused though, I have made changes to the group and seen no difference in renders,
    I think the right thing to do is leave group set to 0 for everything on the figure, in this case Dawn, making her skin, teeth, eyes, nails, etc all with group set to 0 if I am understanding correctly.

    However in this case you, I guess would need to set an additional figure, for example her bikini, if using sss, to group 1
    I'm guessing that is the right thing to do however several test renders showed no difference? I had Dawns settings all a 0 and her bikini at 0 test rendered then made the bikini group 1, test render and it looked the same.

    Am I still not understanding something?

    Important_NAIL_SSS_setting.JPG
    179 x 285 - 20K
    Post edited by Type 0 Negative on
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    Little memo : Compressing the preset or anything else is used to save space but doesn't change any funtionnality. I only save uncompressed when I know I'll need to edit some files with a text editor. Most of the time it's a good thing to save compressed

    About SSS groups, it works like this :

    All surface having the same Group ID are considered as the same closed surface and when rendering 3delight will apply the same calculations on it
    If many surfaces have the same ID but different parameters, only one set of parameters will be used. I don't know which one is chosen amoung them.

    So for all the skin, apply one ID, for eyes, apply another, for teeth, apply another, for nails, apply another (like 0,1,2,3)
    If you have many characters, each of their surface must have a different surface group ID. If not, you may have some strange renders

    If you don't want to deal with surface group then render in Point Cloud mode. It's quicker, and saves from the ID Group messing problem.

    @Szark : I don't put SSS on eyes, teeth, nails because I don't see SSS on these parts when I look at people. Translucency is visible on these parts only when you don't have anything behind and on close up renders, which is not the case most of the time. And SSS calculations eat render time so, when not needed I'll save myself from doing unecessary calculations.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Fair comment Takeo

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited October 2013

    jimzombie said:
    Hey guys. Hey Mustakettu85, didn't realise you were a regular over here.
    ... I've also been doing a lot of crazy Bouce GI stuff with UberEnv.

    Hi Jim! About as regular as a rain in the desert, actually LOL And there's some neat stuff you're squeezing out of the UE2Bounce, especially that thing with the point-cloud rendertime script... I gotta take a closer look at the script code, what if it transfers the whole GI thing into the point cloud, not just ambient occlusion?! It had never occurred to me to test the script with any IDL/GI mode.

    ...there's some funny comments to your renders over there on dA :) One thing I never understood about CG, is why people keep blaming the software, not their skills. I would say that no traditional artist would blame their paints or pencils for their inability to produce "lifelike" shading =) Good materials make for easier execution, but no expensive brush will paint by itself.



    ...you have to have some knowledge or at least a material property database somewhere to rely on.

    Hi Takeo! Yeah, that sort of a material property database is something that I'd love to see. Even if we are using "cheat" shaders. It's still great to have a less biased source to work from than just eyes.

    And what I'd also love to have is a visual chart for Fresnel effects with various refraction indices. All the omnifreaker shaders have a very weird way of controlling Fresnel and the shader mixer brick I´m not sure I found the right formula to calculate its refraction ratio input. So I'd love to have a pictorial "database" to test and calibrate them against. I have Carrara 6, but I'm not sure it does Fresnel correctly?..


    There you've done a pretty skin and for not too realistic render it's OK. But if you look for realism, then I think it's a no go unless you programmatically break the uniformity
    I've made some "almost" skin procedural shaders too.

    Thanks! And yeah, you're right, I can't imagine a 100% procedural solution looking close enough to fool people... unless there is at least a sort of a distribution map for different procedural algorithms...

    And I'd say everyone here would want to see your shaders (constantly evolving, right?), so... you should probably whip out those cropping scissors =D


    If you don't want to deal with surface group then render in Point Cloud mode. It's quicker, and saves from the ID Group messing problem.

    Soooo... so that script does enable point cloud for everything we throw at it? Or are you talking about writing pointcloud scripts of our own?


    Thanks also for posting your aoa sss settings, I saved them and will try to set them up this weekend and do some test.

    Hi! You're definitely most welcome! This AoA Subsurface is a very complicated shader, since it's so complex and has all those features... maybe a bit too complex.

    I actually have run into this whole nail issue, too - with other shaders as well. Even if all the SSS settings are totally the same, there is still a visible difference if the GroupID is different between nail and skin surfaces. It can be used artistically, though, I believe.

    Here's an example... please note the shadows that appear around the nails when they are "separate" from the skin.

    And yeah, Takeo is completely right, if the SSS settings are different but the GroupID is the same, unpredictable things may happen.

    EDIT: IIRC, at least for omnifreaker's shaders, GroupID of 0 meant that the shader would decide automatically if the meshes are the same object or separate ones. I have not used this "automatic" feature for a looon time, so I can't really say how well it works. I usually err on the side of caution and apply different IDs to different surfaces and different meshes, but this may not be necessary. I would say that the renderer will differentiate between a human figure and its clothing, even if their surfaces have the same ID...

    Just in case there are people lurking here who have never come across docs for omnifreaker's shaders, here they are again... there is some useful info there:
    http://www.omnifreaker.com/index.php?title=Products

    SSSgroupIDs_difference.png
    1086 x 800 - 666K
    Post edited by Mustakettu85 on
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969


    If you don't want to deal with surface group then render in Point Cloud mode. It's quicker, and saves from the ID Group messing problem.

    Soooo... so that script does enable point cloud for everything we throw at it? Or are you talking about writing pointcloud scripts of our own?

    Yes the DS Scripted render Pointcloud mode does the job. Just disable the Occlusion light if you don't want an additional light in your render

    Taken from 3delight Manual :
    There is no more subsurface groups: groups are implicitly declared by the geometry rendered
    and baked in the point-cloud file.

    As for my shaders, I didn't do anything since a few month. Too much work and was too tired most of the time or busy with other things. But I'm a nice guy I took the cissors and did the job and made a sort of panorama (Thanks to XnView which was very handy there)

    If you want a look at something see here and here. It's too big to post in the forum. There are various tests and got some cool accidents sometimes

    I add two renders here. The first one is one I cropped the head. Why? because with my unrealistic head morph it can distract from judging the shader. That's what I thought when I looked at it earlier. Because when I rendered it, at that time I thought it was not good. But seeing it today I think it's not so bad.

    Second one is some playing with NPR shading with Sin City cartoon comic in mind. Question for people having PWtoon : can you achieve this type of render easily?

    Render_3_53.jpg
    712 x 988 - 92K
    Render_108.jpg
    1011 x 613 - 113K
  • RenpatsuRenpatsu Posts: 828
    edited December 1969

    Don't think I got any good Noir presets for pwToon, should be doable, but I would have to dabble with it. I got quite decent Cel Shaders for pwToon (Crescent's presets). The only good Sin City style presets I got are for the Visual Style shaders.

    VisualStyleNoir.jpg
    600 x 787 - 63K
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the answer Renpatsu

  • RenpatsuRenpatsu Posts: 828
    edited October 2013

    Not really close, yet, but at least it is sort of heading in the right direction with pwToon.

    Edit: Added one more try before sleepy time :) The last try is actually the top one.

    pwToonNoirTry2.jpg
    600 x 787 - 64K
    pwToonNoirTry.jpg
    600 x 787 - 53K
    Post edited by Renpatsu on
  • RiffulRifful Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Gedd said:
    It looks like you might be linking from a general thread to a member only thread with the image link.

    Sorry about that. I didn't realize that people couldn't see it. Here's the image I was trying to link to, and the original comment I made about it.


    --------
    Here’s a render using 2 lights ( a spotlight and a softbox) with a non-SSS skin that I added the AoA-SSS shader to. The skin was originally pretty pale, but I darkened it with a dark red-brown color (and the diffuse texture) in the SSS color channel to get a more ethnic look. The base SSS settings were Skin A.

    It doesn't show the make-up, because the face is obscured, and there’s a lot of shadow, but I like how the tattoo came out with a realistic softness that doesn't look painted on, and the skin has a good sheen from the specular 2 channel.

    Artemique.jpg
    1236 x 1600 - 499K
  • Joe CotterJoe Cotter Posts: 3,258
    edited October 2013

    Very nice.

    The leather looks new as the specular is very uniform and the materials/surfaces are very smooth. Adding a cloud/noise b/w to the spec channel with something in the displacement to rough it up (besides the grain that's there) would break the leather in some if you wanted that effect. If you prefer a stylized look then it's perfect the way it is. The skin looks very nice. :)

    Forgot to mention, I really like the lighting also.

    Post edited by Joe Cotter on
  • Jim_1831252Jim_1831252 Posts: 728
    edited December 1969

    jimzombie said:
    Hey guys. Hey Mustakettu85, didn't realise you were a regular over here.
    ... I've also been doing a lot of crazy Bouce GI stuff with UberEnv.

    Hi Jim! About as regular as a rain in the desert, actually LOL And there's some neat stuff you're squeezing out of the UE2Bounce, especially that thing with the point-cloud rendertime script... I gotta take a closer look at the script code, what if it transfers the whole GI thing into the point cloud, not just ambient occlusion?! It had never occurred to me to test the script with any IDL/GI mode.

    ...there's some funny comments to your renders over there on dA :) One thing I never understood about CG, is why people keep blaming the software, not their skills. I would say that no traditional artist would blame their paints or pencils for their inability to produce "lifelike" shading =) Good materials make for easier execution, but no expensive brush will paint by itself.

    Hah, yeah I see that you are an irregular. I'm an irregular regular here. I've actually been meaning to get back to running some tests with the point-cloud and bounce settings. I've been reading up a bit about how the various GI methods, point cloud stuff, elementary shader stuff etc for 3Delight. I'm no script writer or programer, so it all makes a certain amount of sense, but I doubt I'd be able to do much with it without a hell of a lot more work. I was looking at Uber's exported code but couldn't really make much sense of how it was working.

    And yeah, it never ceases to amaze me how many DS/Poser users really have no idea how good 3Delight really is. I guess it comes down to the fact that people just don't know what they don't know, and the less you know the more you don't know what you don't know. ,,,something like that lol

  • RenpatsuRenpatsu Posts: 828
    edited October 2013

    The point-based occlusion script is really a must have for me as long as I want to render bounce light or indirect lighting. It cuts the time needed for the rendering down to a relative tiny, acceptable portion - usually in the 20-30 minutes realm compared to hours. There is a certain quality difference between the point-based occlusion script and regular 3Delight mode of DS, but that is really neglectable or can be adjusted - like the brightness/darkness of the occlusion shadows.

    In my view the point-based occlusion should probably be the primary mode of rendering and not the other way round, but I guess many don't like to experiment with the multitude of additional options and there are some mistakes to be made there (like having the simple AO light of the render script on top of UE2).

    Post edited by Renpatsu on
  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited October 2013

    Hi everyone,

    You're all so awesome because if it weren't for you, I would have never thought of using the point cloud script for anything but AO =) Hopefully I'll get some meaningful GI renders up soon...


    Renpatsu said:

    In my view the point-based occlusion should probably be the primary mode of rendering and not the other way round

    It's one of the latest additions to the DS set of tools, so I guess this is why it's "hidden" from a beginner type of user. Then there's the memory consumption issue - probably irrelevant on an up-to-date 64bit machine, but on my 32bit system I've had renders crashing because of memory required for the point cloud with high enough quality.

    Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree =)

    jimzombie said:

    I've been reading up a bit about how the various GI methods, point cloud stuff, elementary shader stuff etc for 3Delight. I'm no script writer or programer, so it all makes a certain amount of sense, but I doubt I'd be able to do much with it without a hell of a lot more work

    Yeah, same here...


    If you want a look at something see here and here. It's too big to post in the forum. There are various tests and got some cool accidents sometimes...

    You've got some impressive stuff out there! Could we hope for something like a tutorial somewhere down the line, maybe?


    ...and I got a question now.

    I was trying to wrestle with ShaderBuilder once more because I wanted to add missing cast shadows to DzAreaLights - which are fairly cool in every other aspect. But I only got confused more than ever.

    First of all, I can't seem to figure out the proper place to introduce shadow blocks (can't say I know for sure if it has to be based on "transmission", as the 3Delight docs say for area lights, or if the predefined shadow macro will work).

    Then, I don't understand how come these DzAreaLights correctly implement "Diffuse only"/"Specular only" modes if the corresponding options aren't connected anywhere in the network??

    Szark has that wonderful tutorial on area lights (here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/ ) that made me really appreciate them, especially for portraits (nothing comes close), but when it comes to UberArea lights, I really miss the "Diffuse only"/"Specular only" modes (I'd gotten addicted to them after watching this: http://vimeo.com/38180924 - things really make sense!). ShaderMixer area lights have the modes, shadows can be attached to them, but with shadows, they seem to be much slower than the Uber ones.

    So if anyone could help me get DzAreaLights to cast shadows, it would be much appreciated!

    Post edited by Mustakettu85 on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited November 2013

    Hey all,

    Sorry for not posting. I've been quite busy making http://www.daz3d.com/beautiful-bends-for-genesis-2-female-s


    The lady looks great, Wowie! As I said, a delicate flower. Now I've read you're using higher scales, it makes sense how you achieved that.
    The gentleman a few posts above is probably a bit too shiny, but I guess it's because you're using HSS which does not do Fresnel attenuation of specular... IMO it's pretty much indispensable unless you're willing to ”cheat” with a lower spec overall and a set of spec-only lights in strategic places =) A reflection map set to Fresnel also helps, but it gives a different look.


    Thanks mustakettu.

    Yup. It's the caveat of using HSS. As you said, the fresnel aware specular is indispensable. I recently upgrade my machine so I've completed transitioning to DS4.6 64 bit and US2. With US2, you don't have to have 'fake' specular lights anymore or even have different lights for diffuse and specular. That alone means less lights and somewhat faster renders.

    The transition isn't a one-to-one affair though.For one, both shaders seem to have very different ideas in implementing subsurface scale. I was using 0.75 in HSS, but found I need to use 8 with US2. I think I've finally understand how to use scatter color and absorption color. US2 SSS is indeed way more flexible.

    Below is one render with HSS (top) and another with US2 (bottom). With US2, I don't need to worry about blowing out the specular (to a certain extent).


    But. I would love to dare you. Try getting real black eyebrows or black ”goth” makeup with a SSS strength map on a single-level shader, like the HSS you're using. Make it as black as on the diffuse map. I failed at that. Can you? Please?

    Actually, that wouldn't be realistic. :) I have never seen pure black eyebrows. But I think you could do it via HSS and Layered Image Editor (or edit the diffuse map directly).

    @wowie : your last render seems better. Got to see her with a complete render with different lightnings and in ootdoor as well as indoor environement. With nothing around, it's not enough to jugde but it's a good start

    Thanks Takeo. Most of it is actually gamma adjustments. I'm using a gamma of 1.2 and gain of 1.05 (textures are not gamma corrected though).

    Have you seen these?
    http://blog.cameronleger.com/2013/04/25/first-glimpse/
    http://blog.cameronleger.com/2013/05/02/image-based-lighting/
    http://blog.cameronleger.com/2013/06/09/the-diffuse-layer/
    http://blog.cameronleger.com/2013/06/30/the-specular-layer/

    I'd love to have such a shader for DS. Add the ability to separately control ray depth on reflections and refractions and I'll buy that in an instant.

    US2.jpg
    800 x 1040 - 335K
    HSS.jpg
    800 x 1040 - 324K
    Post edited by wowie on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Btw, the hair is also using US2. I want a hair preset with some volume and translucence.

    I've posted some renders here - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/479969/

  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    @Mustakettu85 : Didn't see your response. I didn't touch DS for a few weeks too. I'll have a look to DZ area light. Don't know yet but I'll say that a tutorial is not that easy as it is mainly math and geometry. I won't make promise here

    @Wowie : hi, I've seen Cameron's blog several time in the past. The link you posted are mainly implementations of the same concept Pixar implemented in it's latest Renderman. We all wish for that :).

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited November 2013

    Did anyone noticed 3delight have updated the core limitations of the free client?
    http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php?page=3DSP_download

    3Delight Studio Pro 11
    October 2013

    Features
    Relighting: 3Delight is now able to continuously rendering scenes while accepting updates. For Maya users, this means IPR support and for Softimage users it means real-time render view updates.
    Introducing multiple-importance sampling to the trace() shadeop. This allows easy development of physically-plausible materials.
    New subsurface algorithms improves performance (up to 10x faster in global illumination contexts) and renders crisper images.
    Out-of-the-box support for MARI textures (UDIMs).
    Statistics in the multi-threading case are as precise as in the single-threaded case.
    Added support for deep EXR (EXR 2.0).

    Performance & Quality
    Ray-tracing performance has been improved to such a degree that we now recommend using the ray-tracing hider as the default renderer for scenes with highly complex geometry (instead of REYES). Users can expect gains up to 20x faster when using multi-bounce global illumination and glossy reflections.
    Ray-tracing of motion-blur, even in the most extreme cases, is not a problem anymore. Performance is such that there are no objectionable speed differences between motion-blurred and static frames.
    Ray-tracing of dense and translucent surfaces, such as hair, is up to 3x faster.
    Ray-tracer startup time has been accelerated. Space partition build has been multi-threaded and other, geometry specif optimizations, have been implemented.
    Sampling in the ray tracing algorithm has been greatly improved. This means that less samples are needed to obtain noise-free images, especially with image based lighting.
    Subsurface scattering is 5x faster when combined with the path tracer.
    Multi-threading scalability have been improved for both the REYES rendering algorithm as well as in the path tracer.
    Better multi-threading of texture reads. This can drastically improve render times when using a very large number of texture files. We measured improvements of up to 25% faster.
    Rendering dense volume clouds (region with many interior shaders) is up to 2.5x faster.
    Point-cloud writing is now multi-threaded.
    Shader compiler produces better code and is able to use up to 50% less varying variables as before. This translate to faster renders.
    Access to very large files have been improved by using memory mapped I/O when possible. This is especially useful when accessing large point-based files.
    Memory usage for very large polygonal meshes has been reduced. We measured up to 4x less memory used on some typical production scenes.

    tdlmake is 2x faster.

    Somebody post a ticket so the next DS make use of the updated renderer.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    Seen that and it was a bit discussed here : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17016/P15/

    I tested the standalone renderer and I didn't see much difference in render speed but I didn't do that much test so I can be wrong.

    Most of new features will impact maya of xi users I guess. We'll just have to wait a bit to see it coming to DS if they go on updating 3delight with new releases

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Seen that and it was a bit discussed here : http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17016/P15/

    I tested the standalone renderer and I didn't see much difference in render speed but I didn't do that much test so I can be wrong.

    Most of new features will impact maya of xi users I guess. We'll just have to wait a bit to see it coming to DS if they go on updating 3delight with new releases

    I did a quick test with the render above.

    There's a definite, repeatable improvement between the included renderer and the newer standalone. I was getting something around 2 minutes and 20 seconds with DS4 and around 2 minutes with the standalone renderer.

    Didn't try UE2 indirect or Bounce GI though. From the readme, I'm guessing most of the speedup are targeted at those scenarios.

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited December 1969

    Don't know yet but I'll say that a tutorial is not that easy as it is mainly math and geometry


    This is exactly why I'm asking =) I know writing anything meaningful is a tough and unrewarding job, but just in case you ever feel like consolidating your knowledge into some tangible form... I'd be willing to buy the result.

    And if you find out what's going on with the DzArea lights, it will be awesome!

    wowie said:

    I'd love to have such a shader for DS. Add the ability to separately control ray depth on reflections and refractions and I'll buy that in an instant.

    US2 has a diffuse roughness control, BTW. Comes in handy sometimes.

    The only DS shader right now to have separate ray bounce controls I can think of off the top of my head is AoA's Metalized Glass http://www.daz3d.com/metalized-glass-shaders-for-daz-studio - I haven't bought it yet, but the user guide looks stellar.


    wowie said:

    With US2, you don't have to have 'fake' specular lights anymore or even have different lights for diffuse and specular.

    I am using clear white speculars with tinted diffuse-only lights. I picked up this technique from here: http://vimeo.com/38180924 - and have grown into a huge, huge fan of it.


    wowie said:
    Btw, the hair is also using US2. I want a hair preset with some volume and translucence.

    For hair, I like enabling the "translucency" channel of the omnifreaker shaders and putting a lighter colour map in it. Adjust strength to taste (but obviously, you have to have some sort of a backlight on to see anything then =)) However, it tends to be a hit-or-miss effect with transmapped hair.



    For one, both shaders seem to have very different ideas in implementing subsurface scale. I was using 0.75 in HSS, but found I need to use 8 with US2.

    This is why I _always_ use the physically correct scale of 0.1 (which correctly converts internal DS centimeter units to 3Delight's millimeters - 1 mm is 0.1 cm, believe me I'm from a metric country LOL). Regardless of shader.
    It may tend to require a lower SSS shading rate (1 or lower for the omnifreaker ones, ShaderMixer-based ones can usually get away with about 4), but the consistency of results is well worth the small extra render time, to me.


    I have never seen pure black eyebrows.

    Come to Russia? =) Most people from the South here have 110% black hair, eyebrows and beards included. The Southern men have "blue" faces even when they are shaved clean... I'm not even talking about fashion - if you dye your hair jet-black (considered very glamorous for young ladies in Russia), you'd better get the rest done, too.
    Besides, there's always black makeup, like goth eyeliner, which is also hard to get to look right with SSS.


    But I think you could do it via HSS and Layered Image Editor (or edit the diffuse map directly).

    Well, what I'm talking about is retaining the black of the diffuse map. LIE, while a useful tool, is not a new layer to the actual _shader_, its image is still a mere texture within a shader channel.

    US2 is a double-layered shader, so there is an option of making a mask for the second layer (set to "multiply") and retain the black that way, but what about those times when you want to double-layer the specular? For instance, if you are doing a black-and-silver-glitter makeup? Specular layers have to be additive to be visible!

    It's easy with ShaderMixer where you can add any number of anything, but with a pre-compiled shader like UberSurface2, it's an issue.

    This is what currently got me puzzled... I'm thinking geometry shells might be the answer, but I'm not sure? Anyone with more experience?


    Example: It's a sphere primitive with a test black-and-white map applied to the SSS strength channel. The map has totally no blur.

    You can see the scatter in action. The smaller the detail, the more it is washed out. And this is with diffuse strength of 10% - so it could be considered almost black for the matter.

    It's a bad, bad feel for makeup - because it´s supposed to feel painted on! - but a superb one for tattoos. You can basically stick any random design onto the diffuse map and never worry about "blending it in" - the shader will do it for you.

    Shader: UberSurface2
    "Skin4" SSS preset
    SSS scale 0.1
    SSS strength 90%
    Diffuse strength 10%
    no other channels active

    sss_-_US2_scale_0-1_sss_str_90_colour_skin4_+_strmap_+_energy_conservation_+_ssscolourmap_just_in_case.png
    608 x 800 - 223K
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited November 2013

    Hi Mustakettu85,

    I've tried playing around with the roughness in US2. It's still doesn't came close to Cameron's shader, but yes, you can do some interesting though limited things with it. I also see there's a max ray depth for reflections, but haven't figured out what settings will avoid picking up nearby surfaces. I hate using mapped reflections.

    I'd take it the reason you're using 0.1 is based on 3delight's manual. I think that's mostly for non-skin surfaces though. You need more than 0.1 to get scatter effects on things with volume. As for shading rate, I usually have to use 1 for the sclera. Anything higher and they have noise. Skin in general is OK at 4.

    As for the black eyebrows thing, like they said. There's more than one way to do something. If using a SSS strength map doesn't work, you could also use the same map as a diffuse strength map. The cumulative effect should really be quite dark. The SSS map should use 0 (pure black) for those parts you don't want to have SSS and white for everything else.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    So I got inspired after seeing Hellboy's Skin Study - http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/12161

    After some tweaking to the setup, this is what I've came up.

    AnnaLow.jpg
    800 x 1300 - 324K
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    @Mustakettu85 : I had a little look at the DzArealight. In fact there is no shadow calculation, so it is not exactly surprising you don't have it.

    If you read the 3Delight manual you can see there is 3 ways to get shadows. But that is rather coding than math in two case (see page 134)

    1. By using transmission(), usually from a light source shader.
    2. By calling shadow() and passing ‘raytrace’ as a shadow map name.
    3. By using the automatic shadows functionality.

    Case 3 is the easiest. Just add "shadows" "on" on the light attribute in the RIB file (I made a RIB export) and you get automatic shadows. Not very controlable or pretty but that is a beginning

    Case 2 is coding a shadow() shadeop with appropriate parameters and multiply the light calculation with it.

    Case 1 is another concept where you calculate the visibility of the point shaded from the light source

    However you can spare (me?) some pain with shader mixer for what you want

    I may write the tutorial at some time but as I see it there are many prerequisite that I must explain in order to make it understandable. The first of them is knowing a bit of Renderman Rispec. Second would be shading in general and particular case of area light. A bit of RSL coding. Then how DS handles shaders

    That's a lot and I'm already afraid to write such a thing

    To begin with, I'd advice to export to RIB and play with attributes to know how it works. Read the 3delight documentation as well as Rispec to see what you can do and make some tests
    May be we should begin slowly and just make some few explanations on simple examples

    For now I give you the quick way with shader mixer in the pic below

    @Wowie : I also usually use Scale 4 for SSS and adjust shading rate (16 or below) for skin. I'm still asking myself what could be good as a workflow for DS color mapping and Gamma correction. Just if you don't know, there is a basic tone mapper and gamma correction function with i-display that you can use when rendering with a RIB and 3delight standalone. You can also view the Alpha channel with it

    Arealight_Shader_mixer.png
    686 x 522 - 19K
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited November 2013


    @Wowie : I also usually use Scale 4 for SSS and adjust shading rate (16 or below) for skin. I'm still asking myself what could be good as a workflow for DS color mapping and Gamma correction. Just if you don't know, there is a basic tone mapper and gamma correction function with i-display that you can use when rendering with a RIB and 3delight standalone. You can also view the Alpha channel with it

    Those values are similar to what I'm using.

    I use 6 because I wanted to have more color (from the SSS) in darker areas rather than relying on UE2 ambient light. Unfortunately, that will cause more redness on areas where diffuse light hit the surface the strongest. Tried minimizing the impact of redness on the scatter color values, but that only helped to a certain extent. And I don't want to use the ambient component for that.

    Yeah, a tonemapper inside DS will be a godsend. Anybody have experimented with gain/gamma and the gamma correction feature in the renderer's option tab?

    Edit

    So i tried fiddling more with the gamma/gain setting. Below is two render - the first is with the default setting (gain 1, gamma 1) and the second is with gain 0.9 and gamma 1.2.The original setup was noticeably darker with such settings. So I've boosted the specular lights and adjusted the scatter strength so it has pretty much the same color levels.

    End1.jpg
    800 x 1300 - 289K
    Start.jpg
    800 x 1300 - 320K
    Post edited by wowie on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    I think I've finally found a setting that looks pretty good.

    M6SSSStudy1.png
    800 x 1040 - 510K
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited December 1969

    Quite good Wowie. But how do these settings work on other skin textures. The result may be due to M6 skin and morph. Can you get that with your previous G2 character?

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 2013

    Quite good Wowie. But how do these settings work on other skin textures. The result may be due to M6 skin and morph. Can you get that with your previous G2 character?

    Hi Takeo,

    Top to bottom - Jeremy RR, Bjorn, Phillip, Nevio.

    As you said, each texture is different. You do need to tinker a bit depending on the luminosity of the diffuse textures. In addition to diffuse color and SSS scatter color, you need to adjust specular/bump strength values. But you can reuse most of the settings, like SSS absorption color and fresnel values.

    The Phillip and Jeremy render is done using the preset I use for Bjorn without any changes).

    There are problems with textures with overly saturated colors (usually, it's overly red). For me, it's the Angel for V4 texture. But I've managed to get the same shade (more or less) between Anna (the one shipping with the V6 HD morphs) and Anais for V4 for the females.

    You probably need to alter the SSS absorption values and quite possibly the strength of scatter and absorption colors for non-Caucasian skin. Still haven't quite figured out what looks good for darker skin.

    Jeremy.png
    800 x 1040 - 489K
    Phillip.png
    800 x 1040 - 475K
    Bjorn.png
    800 x 1040 - 505K
    Nevio.png
    800 x 1040 - 464K
    Post edited by wowie on
Sign In or Register to comment.