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I'm assuming you mean decoupling the shadow and opacity pass?
I'm assuming you mean decoupling the shadow and opacity pass?
Yes of course, as well as using a Shell. These two prevent calculating caustics. So unless you don't want these or want to fake them, it's a bad idea
I'd like to have them both, of course. But since most out-of-the-box things don't come with caustics support, I'd rather have shadows than caustics. Adding caustics via the Shader Mixer means relying on the Photon Mapper brick, which is way too slow with final gathering enabled to be practical.
But I don't know if things have changed much since I last time tried my hand with Shader Mixer.
There are things that need time. If you reconsider the additionnal time needed vs a Lux render you may still be quicker
Everything with Lux takes a lot more time. :)
But the photon mapper brick takes a lot more time than comparable solutions in other renderers. Come to think of it, 3delight with Maya or Softimage are faster with photon mapping (at least with bounced lights). So I believe it's not a 3delight issue, but rather with the photon mapper brick or shader code.
You're right. I have done it in RSL and it's not that slow. The Shader Mixer is always slower than handcoded shaders from what I've seen til now. It's good for prototyping in some case or if you don't know how to code. I rarely use it unless in order to give some help
Some experiment results:
UE2 Indirect Lighting as reference. Render time: 20 minutes 20.67 seconds
UE2 Ambient Occlusion. Render time: 1 minutes 8.67 seconds
UE2 Ambient Occlusion + UE2 Bounce GI (with Kettu's script): 2 minutes 19.98 seconds
UE2 Ambient Occlusion + UE2 Bounce GI (without Kettu's script, renders the same as with the script): 41 minutes 43 seconds
I did have to change the max specular/diffuse bounce to 8, the exact value I use for raytrace depth. Otherwise, some of the refractions don't show up. Seems like the geometry shell hack have another drawback - there's no dark areas where the object(s) meet the floor.
The biggest surprise:
UE2 Indirect Light (with Kettu's script). Render time: 1 minutes 59.71 seconds
I think I've found a new favorite render setup. :)
DAZ should really think about exposing the ray cache parameters and enable it by default.
wowie, wow! What a find. I hope I have time to try that this week!
Hello Fellow Artist,
I am also trying to find a way to make my people look more real. Please help and thanks
In the picture that I posted
I went to the pane called Surface (color) and I choice for the lighting the skin option.
Then I I used:
a new distant light and as a shader I used two:
DAZ shader preset subsurface base shader, Human Subsurface base shader.
Still trying to make my people look more human this time I used distant light shining to the front at 85.1% and add Human Subsurface Base shader and Uber Volume Base Shader
Render time with IDL will depends on max trace distance and IDL mode. I was using a max trace distance of 2.5 with IDL soft shadows for the previous renders. Hence no color bleeding and the crazy speed up.
With comparable max trace distance of 20, IDL with Kettu's script is 4 minutes 8.99 seconds. IDL directional shadows with HDRI is way faster than IDL soft shadows with no HDRI.
I do think if you don't mind not having color bleeding and just want 'pure' IDL you can choose a very small max trace distance.
The renders below are made with max trace distance of 20 and the default 150. The one with the 150 max trace distance takes a bit longer at 5 minutes 0.47 seconds, You can the color bleed more clearly with the default max trace distance.
To start :
1. Use linear workflow. Than means enabling gamma correction and selecting a 2.2 gamma in the render options.
2. Set your materials with an RGB value of no more than 160,160,160. This should be the white point of your image.
3. With a white point established, you can figure out the maximum intensity of your lights.
I am starting to find Gamma 1.8 to be a nice compromise in all my images
Are you on a Mac?
nope PC. I just find surfaces and light react better with 1.8 It is nothing to do with the monitor but how I think what looks better.
From experience, a gamma of 1.8 with the same surface/light settings tend to be darker and retain more color saturation. It looks better, but can lead to incorrect lights/material setup (diffuse roughness comes to mind). I find the best compromise is to use 2.2 for setup and adjust gamma depending on the need for final renders. Another alternative is to rebalance light intensities between direct and AO/indirect light.
But I'm leaning more towards using post process for that now. Particularly since we have .EXR output support. There's a lot more you can do in post process that is simply impossible or too expensive to do in a render.
To start :
1. Use linear workflow. Than means enabling gamma correction and selecting a 2.2 gamma in the render options.
2. Set your materials with an RGB value of no more than 160,160,160. This should be the white point of your image.
3. With a white point established, you can figure out the maximum intensity of your lights.
Thank you so much Wowie I really appreciate this info. Your renders featured here are amazing.
You're welcome.
I do wish there was a more structured how-to or guide though. The tutorials I've seen so far generally comes for different apps and renderers, but fortunately they're still applicable to DS and 3delight. I just looked at the newly launched DAZ3D sale on resources and couldn't find something close.
Wowie here are two renders with the specs that you gave me, both rendered with Uber volume, and HSB and distant light.
Thanks again,
ANe
I don't use Uber Volume so I can't help there. Is HSB the Omnifreaker's human surface shader or AoA's Subsurface shader? I generally use the UberSurface2 Layered shader, but that's not included with DS (it's a separate product). But UberSurface is free and included and has some of the features.
Hi Wowie It's Omnifreakers. I have to look into the AoA one.
I suggest using UberSurface instead. The diffuse roughness won't give you any noticeable difference with the Human Surface Shader. Plus there's a lot of additional features that can be useful for some things (enable.disable shadows, omitting the surface from reflection and occlusion, and omitting them from being rendered). For example, you can make an object completely invisible to the camera, but will show up in reflection or cast shadows.
Thank you Wowie. I think I also read that you suggested Uber Enviorment 2 as a light this is what my character looks like. Thanks again for all of your guidance your knowledge has changed my art forever.
The one above was done on DAZ and this one was done on Luxrender with the same specs that you mentioned minus the USB. I stopped him after 2hrs and 19 mins.
Yes of course, as well as using a Shell. These two prevent calculating caustics. So unless you don't want these or want to fake them, it's a bad idea
I'm sorry I don't get it, Takeo, why would decoupling opacities based on raytype prevent caustics? If anything, you could even add a yet another raytype check in Oi, for "light", and do stuff to photon opacity you may not like for the look of your "camera" or "transmission" rays, but which looks best for caustics.
...do "stock" DS shaders generally even work with caustics? Unless they're shader mixer and set the photon shading model explicitly.
Speaking of monitors... I forgot, is yours calibrated? Something like Spyder would be best, but if anything, I manage to get fairly consistent results with QuickGamma on all the monitors I use: http://www.quickgamma.de/indexen.html
Yup. But as the results and render time show, I think the best compromise would be UE2 indirect light with directional shadows. You do need to plug a HDRI image though, since UE2 AO/IDL will revert to soft shadows if you don't use an image. I do wish there was some way to have the color bleeds without HDRI and a somewhat higher max trace distance, but I don't think it can be done.
Pretty satisfied so far with IDL without the color bleeds. Particularly, if render times stays about 2x of UE2 AO.
Switching back and forth between AO and IDL, I definitely prefer the IDL render. You could keep occlusion strength at 100% and have the indirect light strength at 60 to 75 %. With AO, the general advice is to set the strength to 75 %, but that means losing the occlusion where objects meet.
So, it seems ray caching works with bounce GI and IDL modes of UE2. DAZ should definitely expose that parameter in the renderer options.
One thing I'd recommend changing with your script is to have the max specular/diffuse bounce value set by the ray trace depth. Having the bounce value lower than ray trace depth needed means some refractions will not be visible in the render.
I'm wondering whether or not it will speed up the shader mixer based photon tracing too? Probably, but haven't had the chance to tried it out.
The photon mapper is a camera, and my scripts don't support "shader cameras" right now. Maybe one day, when the camera classes are finalised and there is more documentation.
If you really really want it, I could roll a "test" raytracer/GI/caustic kit - without shader mixer involved. But it will have to come after I'm done with the "big" raytracer/GI kit, I hope you understand. Or if you are feeling adventurous, we could discuss the steps you'd need to make one by yourself. Half the code is in that old "photon mapper kit" already, it would just need to be a bit "repurposed". And then some edits to lights, and a small "envlight" to "cast caustics" on the scene.
I would be happy if I could specify a single object in a scene to cast that light reflect bit. It's easy to put Uber Panels behind stuff to mimic the light bouncing off of things like wall mirrors. Things like that 'Designer Light' kind of doesn't work with the Studio demo version of caustics (The illuminated surface is NOT flat, nor is the reflective rings on the light fixture.).
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/42065
No rush tho from my end, I'm still grappling with a dozen other things at the moment.