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Need some help with AoA Advanced Ambient Light and trans maps

ModernWizardModernWizard Posts: 850
edited December 1969 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Hi, can someone help me out with AoA's Advanced Ambient Light and transmapped surfaces? I keep getting really dark shadows where trans maps are involved, even though I've flagged the surfaces to use shader hitmode.

In the attached picture, I have a single Advanced Ambient Light radius 0.0, AO samples 64, SS samples 4, AO shading rate 64, hitmode primitive, strength 150%. Any surfaces flagged with diffuse of 99% use shader hitmode and alt samples [=64].

Render settings that might be relevant: max ray trace depth 2, shadow samples 16, shading rate 1.

Any advice would be great. Thank you.

--MW

Comments

  • CyprithCyprith Posts: 41
    edited December 1969

    Hi,

    in my opinion you can't mix the primitive and the shader hitmode. I think I've tried something similar but it doesn't work. If you want transparency to look good you have to use shader hitmode in all your AoA light sources. At least that's why I've started to switch to shader hitmode for the final render.

    Greetings
    Cyprith

  • ModernWizardModernWizard Posts: 850
    edited December 1969

    Hi Cyprith. Thank you very much for your reply. Since I was looking to use the flag feature precisely to discriminate between primitive and shader hitmodes, I feel frustrated that employing them for said purpose does not seem to yield great results. At least I have an idea of what the problem is now. I rendered the same scene entirely in shader hitmode, and it took much longer, but the transmaps did come out looking better. Guess it's time for a new computer with more RAM.

    --MW

  • millighostmillighost Posts: 261
    edited December 1969

    ModernWizard said:
    Hi Cyprith. Thank you very much for your reply. Since I was looking to use the flag feature precisely to discriminate between primitive and shader hitmodes, I feel frustrated that employing them for said purpose does not seem to yield great results. At least I have an idea of what the problem is now. I rendered the same scene entirely in shader hitmode, and it took much longer, but the transmaps did come out looking better. Guess it's time for a new computer with more RAM.

    --MW


    Try a different value for flagging, preferably one which is representable in floating point, e.g. use 100% instead of 99%. Usually that works better, because the shader compares for equality, and relies on internal representation of values.
  • ModernWizardModernWizard Posts: 850
    edited December 1969

    millighost -- can you explain a bit more about "floating point?" I have all the surfaces EXCEPT transmapped ones on 100% values, so I'd like to use an alternative value for flagging which surfaces should use shader hitmode. Thanks.

    --MW

  • Scott LivingstonScott Livingston Posts: 4,331
    edited March 2015

    ModernWizard said:
    Hi, can someone help me out with AoA's Advanced Ambient Light and transmapped surfaces? I keep getting really dark shadows where trans maps are involved, even though I've flagged the surfaces to use shader hitmode.

    In the attached picture, I have a single Advanced Ambient Light radius 0.0, AO samples 64, SS samples 4, AO shading rate 64, hitmode primitive, strength 150%. Any surfaces flagged with diffuse of 99% use shader hitmode and alt samples [=64].

    Render settings that might be relevant: max ray trace depth 2, shadow samples 16, shading rate 1.

    Any advice would be great. Thank you.

    --MW


    Keep in mind that flagging affects the surfaces receiving the shadows, not the surfaces casting them. So in most cases if you are using transmapped hair, you'll need to use shader hitmode on the character's face and any other surfaces that the hair's shadows are falling on.

    Also, surfaces that use the Age of Armour Subsurface Shader don't seem to respond correctly to flagging in DS4.7 (not sure about DS4.8 beta). It's a known bug and I think AoA is working on a fix. You might need to set it up differently...have it set to shader hitmode by default and use flagging to indicate surfaces in which you wish to use primitive hitmode.

    Post edited by Scott Livingston on
  • E.BruE.Bru Posts: 180
    edited December 1969

    Strength 150% is too much and I use only alt samples for flagging

  • ModernWizardModernWizard Posts: 850
    edited December 1969

    Scott-Livingston said:
    ModernWizard said:
    Hi, can someone help me out with AoA's Advanced Ambient Light and transmapped surfaces? I keep getting really dark shadows where trans maps are involved, even though I've flagged the surfaces to use shader hitmode.

    In the attached picture, I have a single Advanced Ambient Light radius 0.0, AO samples 64, SS samples 4, AO shading rate 64, hitmode primitive, strength 150%. Any surfaces flagged with diffuse of 99% use shader hitmode and alt samples [=64].

    Render settings that might be relevant: max ray trace depth 2, shadow samples 16, shading rate 1.

    Any advice would be great. Thank you.

    --MW


    Keep in mind that flagging affects the surfaces receiving the shadows, not the surfaces casting them. So in most cases if you are using transmapped hair, you'll need to use shader hitmode on the character's face and any other surfaces that the hair's shadows are falling on.

    Also, surfaces that use the Age of Armour Subsurface Shader don't seem to respond correctly to flagging in DS4.7 (not sure about DS4.8 beta). It's a known bug and I think AoA is working on a fix. You might need to set it up differently...have it set to shader hitmode by default and use flagging to indicate surfaces in which you wish to use primitive hitmode.

    Thanks for the tips. I foresee more reading of instructions and test rendering in my future....

    --MW

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