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Are most of these problems occuring with Advanced Lights placed inside meshes that represent candle or torch flames? Examine the Diffuse maps for those meshes. Are there dark spots on the maps? There are with some of the ones I own, some with solid black areas. Could those be causing the problem?
I'm still having issues with the new EZ Volume camera. Any tutorials out there for it?
You can find the basics beginning on page 5 at the .pdf highlighted below (although your path may be different).
If you've already read that, I'll see if I can find something more online to help.
John
OK here a video I found on the EZ Volume Cameras on YouTube by AoA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JGRIXmElzw
I came up empty-handed otherwise. It's probably too early in the process for users like Jabba to do a tutorial yet. And I'm still experimenting myself. :)
This certainly got me thinking. I am attempting to render Flashlight light.... (There are 5) The light was inside the flashlight, between the modeled globe and the glass material lens. They are essentially advanced spot lights, scaled down. Now I already attempted with the lens material shadow set white in AoA SSS as well as opacity 0, it did no change. I Just now attempted with the spotlights OUTSIDE of the flashlight models, it failed... then again with the Spotlights outside and the lights Not scaled down, Sadly it also made no difference.
I'm working on a big render that apart from the artifacts its actually better than I anticipated, I do not wish to post the full image though as its for a contest (was rather, depending on if I can find a solution before the deadline LOL). I'll however send it to AoA if he requests it and will PM you Tjohn if u like.
Here is a crop of what I'm seeing, the figure is out of focus but note Ive already attempted without DOF and it made no real difference other than scrambling the artifact position.
Hey you gave yourself a last name! :lol:
That almost looks like some kind bad interactions between other lights in the scene, maybe?
Sure PM me too.
PM sent. Had to send 2 due to attachment limit LOL. And Yes I did :) "Spyro" Ive only ever attained on Daz.com, every other site the name is taken, and my DA is SpyroRue. That and also the fact if you google Spyro you get The purple dragon, if you search SpyroRue, you get more of me renders instead HAHA
The scene has 11 lights. 1 of which is ADV Ambient, 5 are Volume contributors. All except Ambient light are ADV Spot Light
Interesting... I swapped the environment sphere model, from AoA's reflection environment prop belonging to Metalized Shaders, to another environment prop and most of the artifacts are gone! The remaining artifacts appear so far to be on areas trans mapped... Volume quality is 90 atm I think, might try raising it. Renders 78% atm
Aha! If you read my reply to your PM, you'll see I was thinking along those lines. :lol:
Aha! If you read my reply to your PM, you'll see I was thinking along those lines. :lol:
HAHA! Yes I just got that PM LOL It pretty much cleared most of the artifacts, I have a feeling that original environment sphere I was using was set to render in reflections but not visible otherwise. Now I'm just trying to work out whats causing the last remaining artifacts. Certainly huge improvement though. Quality 95 didn't fix the last areas. I can try 100, but giving the volume lights set to shader not primitive a shot first.
I will get this render to work LMAO!
Thanks for the link to the video. I appreciate it.
HAHA! Yes I just got that PM LOL It pretty much cleared most of the artifacts, I have a feeling that original environment sphere I was using was set to render in reflections but not visible otherwise. Now I'm just trying to work out whats causing the last remaining artifacts. Certainly huge improvement though. Quality 95 didn't fix the last areas. I can try 100, but giving the volume lights set to shader not primitive a shot first.
I will get this render to work LMAO!
Hummm.... The environment sphere does have a few unusual things about it so I will run some tests and see if it leads to more clues. The unusual things are that the normals face inward, it has no diffuse function and it also loads with a HDRI tiff by default.
What version of DS are you using? I'll see if I can install it and recreate what you are seeing there.
I don't think the quality setting is going to remove those artifacts. Suppose it is worth a try but don't go slowing your progress down by setting it to 100% quality in an attempt to remove them.
I know better than to state anything as a fact, as that is when I am immediately proven wrong hehe. However, I am fairly certain the artifacts are not due to hitmode or transparency (at leas not directly). I say thins because I was getting the effect when using plain ole, textureless spheres on a simple mesh backdrop and they only occurred when some surfaces were flagged to use different strengths of light or shadow.
You said you have flagging so that some surfaces use alt samples. The alt samples aren't set to 0 are they?
I'm really sorry about this bug. I wish I knew the cause and could fix it right away but, at this time, I am perplexed.
HAHA! Yes I just got that PM LOL It pretty much cleared most of the artifacts, I have a feeling that original environment sphere I was using was set to render in reflections but not visible otherwise. Now I'm just trying to work out whats causing the last remaining artifacts. Certainly huge improvement though. Quality 95 didn't fix the last areas. I can try 100, but giving the volume lights set to shader not primitive a shot first.
I will get this render to work LMAO!
Hummm.... The environment sphere does have a few unusual things about it so I will run some tests and see if it leads to more clues. The unusual things are that the normals face inward, it has no diffuse function and it also loads with a HDRI tiff by default.
What version of DS are you using? I'll see if I can install it and recreate what you are seeing there.
I don't think the quality setting is going to remove those artifacts. Suppose it is worth a try but don't go slowing your progress down by setting it to 100% quality in an attempt to remove them.
I know better than to state anything as a fact, as that is when I am immediately proven wrong hehe. However, I am fairly certain the artifacts are not due to hitmode or transparency (at leas not directly). I say thins because I was getting the effect when using plain ole, textureless spheres on a simple mesh backdrop and they only occurred when some surfaces were flagged to use different strengths of light or shadow.
You said you have flagging so that some surfaces use alt samples. The alt samples aren't set to 0 are they?
I'm really sorry about this bug. I wish I knew the cause and could fix it right away but, at this time, I am perplexed.
Many Thanks AoA. And no worries, these things happen I understand. Theres so many bizarre bugs that can appear so unexpectedly lol.
I have replied to your PM, and explained some details of what I found out as I worked through it all. I did find light at the end of the tunnel, and found solutions that cleared it all up. (Took allot of persistence and trial and error LOL!)
As I mentioned, here is the image with the notes on my progression.
To answer your questions here: I am using DS 4.6.3.50. The alt samples for the lights (All of them) Flagged Garibaldi to use Alt samples of 8 the shadow samples themselves were 64 at a shading rate of 16. The Adv Ambient was Diffuse only, at 256 Ao Samples, Alt at 8, Shading rate at 16.
From what I could tell from my experience with this scene is that my artifacts seemed to be linked to shaders used, or at least something set in them. Uber Surface and US2 seemed to be the common one, other than the environment prop. The #1 Pants surface marked in attached image seemed to have artifacts from the normal map, and it was the only AoA SSS shader surface that was showing some artifacts.
EDIT: Please excuse any spelling mistakes in this image, they are just notes compiled from little yellow stickies i have plastered all over my computer desk at this time LMAO
@Spyro:
The good news there is that you're left with a tiny bit of postwork (unless the competition disallows it).
Haha, well the only corrective postwork I needed to do in relation to the volume in the end was fix the opacity of the arrow fletching, with the almost blank sky behind it made it all too easy :D
Though I did correct other issues and add effects to the final thing, it wasn't related to any volume issues. Just glad I found a way to get rid of the artifacts in the particular scene lol
Thank you very much for posting your findings Spyro. I'll see what I can do about reproducing some of those conditions and maybe track down the cause.
Very nice artwork by the way!
Cheers mate :cheese:
Hopefully all this helps you find out whats going on here :)
...ran into something new. Using the EZ Volume Camera with a spotlight flagged for the volumetric effect. Also using a beam effect from HeroFX in the centre of the spotlight cone. Upon rendering, there is an unusual dark bar artefact/pattern appearing at different points in the volumetric cone of the spotlight. I made sure to set the beam effect to transparent and turned "Cast Shadows" off. the transparency plane and effect are also aligned parallel with the spotlight beam at dead centre.
Also using one Advanced Ambient and one Advanced Distant light as well as two Linear Point Lights (the latter which do not interfere with the Spotlight or beam effect),
Figuring it may have been something about the transparency map used for the HeroFX effects, I then substituted a thin cylinder primitive set to 50% opacity and 100% Ambient for the central beam and turned "Cast Shadows" for the cylinder off. However I still get the banding effect in the spotlight cone..
Without the HeroFX plane or the cylinder primitive, the spotlight cone renders fine with no unwanted artefacts
The odd thing is in another scene I created which used A couple Jepe's SpecialZ lightning effects (which also make use of transparency planes) within a volumetric cone, this didn't occur.
Would you mind posting the render? I'd like to see if it is similar to what Spyro was getting.
...I'll have to recreate the setup as I changed to an alternate scheme. Will try and post one tonight.
...apologies for not getting the sample pic rendered and posted as teh deadline for a challenge I am entering apparently was moved up by four days from what is posted on the main contest page.
That said.
Running into a bit of confusion about distance scale for the Fog Camera. Daz viewport scale is expressed in cm while the fog camera expresses distance in meters. So I am working on a scene and only want a slight bit of haze on the scene elements in the background which in "Daz scale" are roughly 25,000cm from the rendering camera. That would put these parts of the scene 250 meters away (I often reduce the size of the items in a background and use camera angles and atmospheric effects to make them appear more distant than they really are). However when I set the fog to 250 meters the effect is far to strong. Even at the maximum limit of the Haze preset (1,000m which would be 100,000cm away) it is still too strong or what I want.
For now running a render with the EZ Volume camera with the Distant light flagged at a volume strength of 0.05% and volume quality set at 67%, but it is really taking it's good natured time (40% at 50 min) compared to rendering with the Fog camera. Too many transparency maps (like the water prop which is the culprit) to use primitive hitmode. Need to run a second render through the default camera to compare and see if there is any difference.
Hi Kyoto,
The regular "Fog" camera's visibility setting is the point where things are essentially completely washed out by the fog. So a setting of 250 on the camera would completely obscure an object 250 meters away (give or take a little). Feel free to click the gear icon on the Visibility parameter and increase or remove the limits.
That is also contingent on the contrast of the contrast of the objects in the scene. For instance, a person wearing white clothing in a foggy snow scene might not be visible even with long distance fog settings.
The Fog camera and the Easy Volume camera are quite different. The Fog camera applies a wash of color over items based only on distance, regardless of light and shadow This is very fast to calculate.
The Easy Volume camera takes samples at various distances, testing to see what areas of the scene are exposed to light and what areas are in shadow. This is a much more intensive process than what the Fog camera does but gives much more realistic results.
One thing you could try is to add a copy of your main light, like the sun or whatever is providing the key lighting for your scene. Set that light to catagory__ foglight then set the camera to Accept Light Types - category__ foglight only. Then you can set that light to primitive hitmode and lower shadow samples for speed. This should render much faster while looking much the same... And you can even dial the strength of the light or use the spread angle adjustments to fine tune how much fog you want.
...thank you for the explanation.
It's just odd as the "back" of my scene (a skydome) is roughly at Z -30,000 from the camera, which would make it only 300M away. However, setting the fog camera even to 300M significantly obscures everything in the background of the scene, even elements that are closer than that. As this work is for a contest, I unfortunately cannot post any examples.
I just feel I'm stumbling somewhere on the conversion here.
As to using the Volume Camera, If I flag the "sun" (Distant Light) as the fog light using primitive hitmode, wouldn't I still get render issues with anything that uses transmaps like eyelashes, hair, foliage) that is also illuminated by the Distant light?
Yes you are right that the second, primitive hitmode distant light would give you the incorrect shadows on your scene items. I forgot to type out an important part of that 2 light trick though....
If you make that second, primitive hitmode/foglight to a very low strength. say 1% or 0.5%, then it should be so low that you don't really see it or it's shadows on items in your scene. However, you then crank up the easy volume camera's strength way up to compensate. Now you have a volume that is only calculating primitive hitmode shadows and such but everything else should look 99% correct.
That may not be the best solution in all cases but just one way you can get faster volumes in complex scenes.
...well fiddled around a bit more, including changing the fog colour slightly and ended up with pretty decent results. What I was trying to achieve was the bluish/purplish tint one sees on a landform that is a distance away across a large body of water.
I thought about using the Fog Tool but it would still probably be rendering.
Any update on the cause/fix/workaround for the issues that SpyroRue documented in June?
That issue is a weird one that happens only under fairly unusual situations. Spyro and I chatted about it quite a bit and it looks like it was due to the backdrop shader in his particular scene.
It looks like volumes (any ray marching volumes, not just mine) yield artifacts when either a shader does not have a diffuse function inside of it (Very rare) or when the advanced lights illuminate selective items (inside the volume) with different strengths through flagging. It also has something to do with those conditions and the order in which sub-d items appear in the scene.
So the simple solution is to not use the backdrop shader that comes with my glass or rock and grass shaders in conjunction with the easy volume camera and also avoid using selective light strengths via flagging like "Set light strength by surface ambient" ... Again that is only when used in conjunction with ray marching volumes. Advanced light strength flagging and the backdrop shader both work fine when not using volumes.
Last week I flew out to Utah to chat with the DS developers. I ran this by people much smarter than I am and the consensus was "That's very weird!" haha. We need to do some more tests in the 3delight stand-alone then probably submit a bug report to DNA Research.
Sorry... It's just a real head scratcher.
Thanks for that information.
So where is this update for Atmospheric effects volume camera?
I do not see a download any place.