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...eventually I'll have to tackle Blender's shader builder but at least they have a plethora of tutorials.
I prefer Carrara's shader building system, much more intuitive but useless outside that particular software.
UV Mapping is an art unto itself. Chris, over at Hivewire, posts his progress when making stuff and posts the UV's before and after and it truly is an art!
I loved the Carrara shader building system, that what it was back then and things was more intuitive as you said , PBR brings back the old system again but we are still dealing with all the stuff that is not made for , people tend to make stuff looking more difficult as it really is . For example you have simple Base Color, Reflection ,Roughness , Normal , Bumps and Displacement , it don't need clumpy shaders to make it works, but in many cases old programs can't afford to make the changes and adjusting the old shaders to work again with the simple new system . Not many people bother with DS shaders at all as there is no guide to it , however it has a huge potential to do more . The base shader in DS for iray include 3 system shaders all together so you can't go inside and just change things that easy , best way to build your own but again no all programs use Metallicity shaders , but the future going to change it , a lot of big productions use so many programs for various task as no one program at this moment can do that all work, Blender trying to change it and it is on it's way but it will ends in so much informations that one person can't handle it already. You will have 2 options, become a walking Wikipedia of Blender knowing everything but can't do anything with it, or you become an Artist that uses a small portion of it to create some dissent Art .
I seriously missing the time when we all where on the simple path , now we running for Albedo Values as a simple textures are not good enough , back in times we had not proper light and need the extra compensation of light bake into the maps, now we have to reverse it and start all over again.
And if you want realistic models prepare to subdivide it to at least billions of polygons to get the details you need to be extracted. I watched a presentation the other day from the modelers of the Lion King , it was insane ! the simple rock have to be subdivided to insane levels , cut in many sections to make it happen since Zbrush limitation is only 50 millions of poly before model lose it's UVs and that was not enough for the details , and after watching it , you open DS and you need to forget everything you just watched and learned to move forward in peace of mind. It is hard to live in 2 time lines at the same time if you know what I mean .
That is true, it take the most time ,especially if you want the model to be used with your own textures and random shaders you don;t even own.
...I have enough issues with 4K textures (and I don't even have any 4K displays), but now some PAs are moving to 8K which totally chokes my system. dForce has become the norm for pretty much any new clothing but on my old tech, takes way too long to run a sim (which I find seriously impacts the workflow). G3 (which I stopped at) has pretty much been forsaken for G8 (couldn't justify the cost of "retooling" all over again given the minor improvements over G3, particularly as I had finally got G3 to the point where it works for my needs). This is why I decided that the only way to continue to supply what I need for my illustration work wile keeping it more compatible with my older rig, I had to get into modelling.
Wish I could afford the latest Marvelous Designer, as like the Carrara Shader system, I find it much more intuitive for clothing creation than standard polygon modelling as it approaches the process from a clothing designer's and maker's perspective (I used to work in theatrical costuming).
As to specialising tasks. I remember Pixar having to create software and build a system specifically dedicated just to developing the hair for the character Merida in the film Brave. When you have the deep pockets, you can do that.
you have a waaaaaay better computer than me BTW
and yes 8K textures in DAZ studio at least are a problem for me
not Carrara, Carrara loves them and hates the DAZ sized geometry instead
...I do? Mine going on 8 years old. I've made what upgrades I could but it's still DDR3 1333 memory (24 GB) and is topped out at a 6 core CPU (Nehalem/Westmere era Xeon at 2.8 GHz). It was a total "beast" when I first built it, but then we only had 3DL and UE for global illumination in Daz. It was great for that and Carrara, but once Iray showed up, it became a slug as I didn't have a capable GPU card for rendering (only 1 GB of VRAM) so was forced to do so on the CPU.
The Titan-X I added is dedicated to rendering as it only has one "standard" DVI port (all my displays have the same) so it doesn't come into play for the viewport or dForce.
I could focus more in the details than the 8K resolution to begin with . The 4K maps are not even used to it's full potential , the same was with HD .. if you remember , but bigger don't mean always better
I would use 8K for the body to fix the scale issue with the face as it looks horrible in close up renders since the body has 2 time lower resolution than the face , I think my leather sofa has less bumps than the lizard neck of M8 with a baby smooth face . Now 8k will not gonna fix it when used on both surfaces, it gonna be the same .
MD is a half of the story, you need other programs to make it proper , it is only good for the base , no proper topology for proper rigging and is best to use with d-force what you try to avoid , the best thing done with MD are edited outside not coming straight from the program unless you are in need for silky nightgowns lol
The amount of work I had to put in was for me not worthy the time, better to do it from zero, it was faster but that is just my own opinion , I can do real clothing from pattern too but that is different scenario.
...yeah "visualising" say how a shirt goes together in a polygon modeller just seems so alien (which is why I primarily have been focusing on "hard edge" modelling that only requires rigging for doors, windows and other mechanical parts). Anything that's is to be "soft" and flexible (like a piece of clothing) requires more complex rigging along with JCMs to fit the character and move properly with poses without distorting or tearing.
I have a very old version of MD (too old to upgrade from) and yes have been aware of the "paper thin" material. Form what i understand, the latest versions have addressed that.
Unless I somehow could afford a new, more "State of The Art" system, dForce is pretty much off limits (just as Uber Environment was when I was still working on a 32 bit notebook) as it is just too rough on the older tech. This is also why I have never explored 3D animation either, even though I previously worked with traditional cell, multi plane, and flat animation over 30 years ago. When it took sixteen and a half hours on this same system to render a simple five frame motion blur (3DL with UE using an HDRI environment with the only geometry being the character, hair, clothing, and a motorcycle), that pretty much ended any further forays into animation. I could'nt even imagine doing it in Iray.
I came into 3D with a lifetime background and training (nearly 50 years) in the traditional art media and that tends to be the perspective I approach developing scenes in. I was doing detailed drawings by the age of 6 and by the time I entered high school, was put in a fourth year art class in my first year and left alone to "experiment". I have done some semi-pro photography so I am able to grasp the basics of photo real rendering, but not all the minute details when it comes to characteristics of surfaces and the hard physics of lighting (I dropped from the "Iray Skin" thread a while back as it just got way too "nit picky" technical when they started talking about light absorption and scattering properties of the various epidermal layers). I never had to worry about that when I painted in oils or watercolours (or even taking a photograph). Knowing what I needed a surface, skin, or lighting to look like just sort of came intuitively through observation and study.
In a sense it sort of felt like transitioning from playing and composing for the piano, to the electonic music medium in its early analogue days where everythiing was done with oscillators, patch cords and multi track layering.
That is the way of dynamic clothing , you create them in MD from a simple plane and are great for simple materials like silk or cotton , after that you need to work it out outside MD to get precisely what you need, in short another tool in your pipeline .
I started at 5 with traditional art media and had my photography dark room at 14 and in between 1996-98 I switched completely and did not touch oil brushes since then again and in 2000 was the last time I bought a film for my camera as I switched to digital photography .
for the last 22 years there is always a tread regarding skin that never ends , I figured out already what you can do in DS and what you can't 5 years ago, and nothing progressed since then , it is in the stage of rubber as it was in many other major programs before . People focus on the inner layers forgetting the top surface and that to achieve you need micro displacement or it will never work or act the way it should, I created sample synthetic skin to show it back then and how it works so if someone is trying to convert Ballon into human skin good luck with that. I remember setting up a skin so detailed that can be rendered in zoom x 300 times to almost the look of an electronic microscope, after I saw a great medical documentary, but to make it proper in full body would take tremendous amounts of time and work and that was not worth the effort . That is the reason why 3D film production artists use billions of polygons to extract the details in displacement maps to make it work. Otherwise you will always end with a Balloon with bumps that will not work proper in every light situation. I have too much back work load at this moment to even go back to people figures but soon I will , if course it will not possible to achieve the full potential before DS choke on me but it will looks good even with less resolution , but before that I will need to cut Genesis in small section to work on that, other way the face will never match the rest since it will always have greater subdivision than the body , ending in sharper details when sculpting and for that job everything need to be on the same level of density , later in DS the subdivision level can be adjusted proper to each surface and things will works fine. It gonna be interesting new approach and I am sure with a great result, and for the SSS you need density maps to begin with as mathematical values are worthless in this case , we still dealing with a Balloon and for the best of the best result you will need skeleton , muscle tissue and good skin dynamic simulation but that is beyond our reach in DS and I should noy even mention that. We can replace skeleton and muscle with density maps for SSS and it will do the job, it is going to be a great new adventure for the winter months .
And you are right about the electronic transition here, but we slowly went back to the basics , many years were lost on things that never worked out the way everyone was hoping for as people realized it was the wrong approach . As I always said, beauty is in simplicity , simple is beautiful, but we forgot how to see, I was trained in traditional art media to understand how light and color works, how to paint stuff properly and not mathematics so I see stuff differently around me and I approach the issues differently . And if I come across mathematics ideas I convert it into a simple explanation based on observation as I have a good eye, that is the way my brain works , and as good as I was in math in early school times I always prefer biology and it fascinates me until today.
Remember the story when Einstein found out that Gravity was not a force , by imagining a falling man from the roof with his tools falling with him at the same time and speed? kinda crazy for a genius right? The mathematics did not resolve the question, simple thinking did , he just needed to prove it in mathematical formula to be taken seriously about his idea by others that stick their heads in values forgotten how to see and observe .
I am not a genius and can't compare myself here, but I like my "puzzles" and problem solving issues doing my own simple way, we are unique and not working all on the same wave ! That's the reason many people don't get me , but trust me the noises are good, just find the right frequency to catch it !
Now time for my bedroom sofa set , it needs nice wrinkles in displacement/normal maps, so I can share with you the first part of the freebie as we move forward ! nothing spectacular about it but I learned some stuff on the way to do better work in the future as I am planning to do some 3D reconstructions of NYC Center Park as it has some magical places not many people saw.
...apologies for taking this discussion off the tracks.
Had crippling arthritis not taken away the ability to work in the traditional art mediums (as well as music), I never would have looked into 3d graphics to continue with visual art as a creative pursuit. The difference was the highly complex, technical and even mathematical aspect of the medium compared to what I already had learned and knew how to work with for so many years. Yes, it is a different thought process, but sometimes I feel the numbers distract from the pure creative process I had been used to for decades. When I applied paint to canvas, I didn't have to be concerned with values for luminance, albedo, metallicacly, IOR, subsurface scattering, or displacement. It was taking what I could see with my eyes and applying that to paper or canvas with the tools I had.
I really admire what you and other PAs do. I wish I was not in my later years when I first came into this as shaking old ideals, concepts, and habits is a lot harder
sorry about that but at last you still can create something , I know great traditional media artists that switched to digital media like my old friend Martin Murphy , he started with Poser ended with Industry Light and Magic , he was also the box logo creator of the Metacreation Poser 4 , his oil paintings are amazing but his digital work speak for itself , you can see some of it here https://vimeo.com/347850451
I remember the day he was moving to Lucasfilm I think 1999 , he was so excited! I and his best move ever
But my point is that the most people leading in the industry were traditional media artists to begin with as they have a knowledge that mathematical values can't replace .They know how to see the world!
I was watching this morning the new MD introduction and I was very surprised how it evolved since last time I used it , finally they have remesher for the proper topology so a lot more can be done than before, I may try the demo if they have one and see , also different fabric material simulation and stuff created with it was other than paper clothing , after watching couple of tutorials I was sold, huge difference, I may change my opinion about from what I saw as now you can indeed create clothing that will works in both simulation and regular rigging for posing and animation, they step up their game.
I was thinking about the 8K textures for the figures, if you apply 8K to a model and put it next to a house that have 4K textures , the house will looks blurry, scales affecting the resolution, so updating the model figure you will need to update everything else as well or it never will match, the fact that Iray filter blur out around 30% of the sharpness of actual texture to blur out the sharp edges of the geometry ,what is the point , it is different when you using a UV's with scaled islands in one texture map or compensate the body resolution with 8K to the face at 4K, other than that I see no point at this moment , one 8K map have at last 90MB , now displacement will have at last 250MB with this progress we will need soon RTX 3090 to run simple scene with Iray . Other thing is that you don't need even 4K textures when things are not close to the camera , appreciate high and low resolution additional material settings should be included because not always you need it, and if you are limited to VRAM in high populated scene as many of you create it is crash guaranteed , DS is not ready for this step yet and people with low VRAM gonna suffer most, back to CPU rendering I guess.
That is huge difference in using 1 x 8K texture on a single model vs 10 x 8K on a single model , you gonna be short in VRAM in no time , the same for Environment , 8K environment maps produce the same light that 1K maps, and 16K environment maps don't looks sharper than 11K environment maps and when using standard 50-65 mm portrait camera lens focal you need 1k environment map with DOF not 16K, since the background will get sharper at 36mm and below as it works with real camera lenses , the point here is that huge maps are not always needed as it slow down the system and take precious resources for no reason but wrong thinking.
..that is why I wish I could afford a personal peroetual licence for the newest update of MD, but it's nealy 500$, a huge expenditure foon my budget.
Some people are able to make the transition more smoothly than others. I tend to fall into that latter boat.
Why you don't go for the monthly subscription ?
...at 50 USD per month that's still too expensive as I am on meagre a fixed pension (my rent alone is just over half my monthly income). In nine months time I would have paid as much into it as for the perpetual licence which I would have indefinitely (and would give me a generous discount on upgrading to a new version if I wanted to).
Also not very fond of software by subscription.
Well time for saving then , no other option, the subscription is ridiculously high even for the annual subscription, I pay $33 for all Adobe softwares per month and they have great software in the package for all kind of stuff, from graphics, 3d , animation to web design.
...not easy to do when you barely make it month to month.
I guess there is another reason for celebration that you finally got hands on new viewport preview in. DS, it is a great move , finally don't need to run Iray every second when setup my new shaders , it take time to get used to it , but I play with it for a while and very happy about that, of course it is a draw mode not full rendering mode so many light and shadows info will not show up, but anything better than the ancient OpenGL
You may experience different look in the viewport with my specular based shaders, since I use top coat Fresnel for fixing some shader issue with lost of energy while rendering with Iray and it is still not fixed until today.
I made some comparisons early in time to test stuff out with Metallicity shaders to see if my other PBR filament corresponding with DS and it was indeed proper result.
It is of course not full render engine but the results are pretty accurate without running my cards for hours , saving on the power while setup stuff
I can't save either, I just make compromises at this moment , not easy times ! limiting myself to things that are really necessary
...PMing to get things back on track here.
oooooh yes we need Filament shaders
I am loving it on my old computer without a graphics card
Filament Shaders are the proper PBR shaders especially Metallicity based shaders works and looks great , as it works based on reflections as everything around in the real world is shinny !
To make it easier , since we working with Specular based shaders for so long, in creating metals the Specular map become the Base color and the Glossiness map inverted become the Roughness , it is easy to set up in DS when converting old shaders maps to Metallicity shader
For Metal turn the Metallicity value to 1 , Plug specular color map to base color and plug Glossiness under roughness and using image layer option in DS invert it to negative and you good to go in a seconds
you should have a similar preview under Filament draw style and Iray as I did with my old 3DL helmet above as I was little early in time with PBR maps before Iray arrived so easy to convert.
For non metal surfaces always turn down the value of Metallicity to 0 and do the same as I mention above but in place of specular maps what are gray scaled for no metal surfaces plug the Diffuse maps under Base Color and invert the Glossiness maps to use under Roughness .
Good thing about it is that you don't even need to leave DS for that or have any Photoshop skills at all .
I am so happy about the Filament viewport , that was a great move , happy you guys finally can play with it too, it saves time and power and no more guessing where your environment directions are.
I was setting up many shaders blindly for hours without the need to run Iray for check , don't remember when it was so quiet at my workstation
of course it is not full Filament Engine so you don't have the full potential of it but great replacement for the ancient OpenGL
I wish there was reflection. from other objects in the scene and not just IBL light , but that would request you to run the graphic cards again so what's the point of a Draw style viewport ? we have Iray for that!
Personally I think it is great improvement so practice and get used to it
I want your opinion
I created material for testing out the settings , please tell me what material from A ,B and C looks most close to the original Material , of course the original material have slightly different lighting , just look quickly and choice your option , A B or C +
I really appreciate your help
Thanks in advance
click the thumbnail below for higher resolution
I think Filament C+
Looking at the Iray versions, I think Iray C+ looks closest to the original. They all look great, though!
Dana
Thanks Wendy
Filament C+ and Iray C+ have the same material, but a good choice , I think the same
I just wanted to be sure , because it is hybrid material
A is Specular shader, B is Metallicity Shader and C is Metallicity shader + Glossy map from Specular shader to control proper the reflectance on oxidated parts vs metal parts, it should be not there since roughness maps should control this but Metallicity shader don't works correctly and it is very much visible when you use combination of surfaces like that.
Below pic of the original calibrated PBR and C+ from Iray that looks most accurate as no Specular or Metallicity shader looks proper even with a proper maps that looks correctly in any PBR engine outside DS , so I am not crazy here or splitting a hair in 2 , I just want to figure out the proper settings for combined materials so it works in any light situations in or outside DS .
Thanks Dana , they can all work, but I try to get the proper look as it should be so it works in any light , what the point of PBR when a material type don't looks the same or even close under different light right?
below pic with C+ and total different HDRI enviorment still the same type of material so I guess I figured it out now what was missing and that is odd , the reason I never used Metallicity shader in first place as it never looks correctly in Iray with combined materials since day 1.
...I'm still on the 4.12.0.47 beta which has been extremely stable, more so than the general release so haven't played around with this yet. Not sure about updating to ver 2.54 as the change log mentions that a newer Nvidia driver is required which doesn't show up in the list for my Maxwell cards on their site so I'm not sure if it is compatible.
I use Maxwell cards and the last Nvidia driver works fine with Iray and the cards, how else I could render ?
You are missing all the fun with Filament PBR .. I go through all versions since 0.47 and did not experienced major issues or crashes , actually removed all general releases and use only Beta for more than 2 weeks already since Zbrush get confused where to send models and opening wrong version so I got rid of the other and not regretted it yet. I crashed only once with 2.51
Filament PBR viewport works only on 64bit Windows at this moment
NVIDIA TITAN Series:
GeForce GTX TITAN X
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