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3Delight Surface and Lighting Thread

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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited March 2015

    Rogerbee said:
    That they do, what were they done in?

    Oh, Just DS. :)


    You were right about the gloss. Oddly, on Swidhelm's Alien, if you want more gloss, you dial it down on the shader. 5% is as low as I dare go. Looks better though. I added bump and normal maps to enhance the detail.

    This is the closest I've come to how it looked in the promo renders, though I bet I could do more with UberSurface 2

    Yes. A low glossiness covers a larger area of the surface. If you use normal maps, then the surface have much more information to calculate and thus more varied highlights. Normal maps are somewhere between bump and displacement when used to simulate how light interacts with bumps or micro surfaces.

    If you're still using UberSurface, try enabling reflection (either mode). The reflection will honor fresnel settings and normal maps. You'll get a very 'wet' effect with a strong enough reflection. To tone it down on areas you don't want, use the fresnel (higher values, less reflection). To get that wet look, use low falloff with a very sharp one.

    Looks odd on humans, but it'll awesome on that alien (or any other wet/glossy creatures).

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  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited March 2015

    Had a play, and with raytraced reflections and fresnel I came up with the look below. Takes more than twice as long to render, but I think it looks good.

    CHEERS!

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    Post edited by Rogerbee on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Just got PSK2, typical of Daz not to include you till the last day! So, the fun begins!

    CHEERS!

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited March 2015

    Well, I've been playing around with PSK2,

    I couldn't get on with the area lights, they wouldn't load properly for some reason and to be honest I wasn't that impressed with them as a whole anyway. So, I went to your other light sets and settled on Set 3. I've never seen Rob look better and I don't want to change a thing with the skin, it's dead on! I will admit to swapping out the eyes for my Glass Eyes as I still like them better than any I've seen. I darkened the diffuse colour on the background too as the lights were washing out the previous colour.

    All in all though, I am VERY impressed with your work

    CHEERS!

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    Post edited by Rogerbee on
  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:

    It's the Envsphere...it's got some real funky geometry...I think it's negatively scaled.

    Yes it is one weird sphere. And I don't even know if it actually matches the environment calls in the UE2 and UberSurface shaders - and those are definitely trying to compensate for the rotated coordinate system. Try writing a simple reflection, using trace() with "environmentmap" to pass a map to it and "environmentspace" set to "world", or even via the environment() shadeop: you will see that what DS thinks is "up" is not where 3Delight thinks it is. And while you could "fix" the environment() call by doing stuff to the vector, you have to get the coordinate system right when using trace(): https://mustakettu85.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/live-and-learn/

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Had a go with Lee, you made him look really good, but, he's still not my favourite Asian texture. Maybe Lee 6 is better, but I haven't got him yet.

    CHEERS!

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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:

    All in all though, I am VERY impressed with your work

    Thank you. Rob have always been my favorite since the day I laid eyes on him.

    Btw, I haven't uploaded a readme for Photo Studio Kit 2 since DAZ lost it during QA process. There will (finally) be one when I do the update (should be soon).

    You'll notice the fresnel & specular settings (except for strength) are the same for all MATs. For general skin (Caucasian), Phillip and Bree should do fine. As I noted before, all you need to adjust when using them as a base for other texture sets is the specular and fresnel strength. Set specular strength to 100% if you want to use specular maps and adjust fresnel until you've found the specularity you want (should be similar to the others).

    You can use Rob and Marie as a base for dark skin characters. In addition to the above step, you'll need to insert the corresponding diffuse textures (face, torso, limbs) in the subsurface color slots.

    For other skin shades, you can use the other MATs. They mainly differ in diffuse and SSS settings. I think I've used something like 4 SSS profiles in general. The 1st diffuse were made to be as neutral as possible and as close as possible to an RGB value of 160,160,160. For the 2nd diffuse, I kept the strength constant and vary the luminance in the color levels instead. The ratio between R,G and B is constant with all MATs. This is done mainly to balance the amount of baked in lightness/subsurface scattering in the textures and to have more diffuse that's not tied to SSS.

    Unfortunately, Phillip's inner mouth surfaces are still using the old settings from an older set. A quick fix is to select those surfaces (lacrimals, gums, inner mouth, tongue and teeth) and apply either of the M6 profiles (Ctrl+Click so you'll see options to apply changes to selected surfaces and retain the existing textures). Don't forget to change the UV layout.

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited December 1969

    Mustakettu85 said:

    Yes it is one weird sphere. And I don't even know if it actually matches the environment calls in the UE2 and UberSurface shaders - and those are definitely trying to compensate for the rotated coordinate system. Try writing a simple reflection, using trace() with "environmentmap" to pass a map to it and "environmentspace" set to "world", or even via the environment() shadeop: you will see that what DS thinks is "up" is not where 3Delight thinks it is. And while you could "fix" the environment() call by doing stuff to the vector, you have to get the coordinate system right when using trace(): https://mustakettu85.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/live-and-learn/

    Which is why I generally stayed away from using UE2 as an IBL. For a 'proper' render, you should probably use a HDRI that is as neutral as possible just the sky and ground. Since I've learned you need to IBL to have all the bells and whistles, I make do with turning down saturation and contrast.

    And also have a proper environment to be reflected. :)

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited December 1969

    wowie said:

    Which is why I generally stayed away from using UE2 as an IBL.

    Yup =) This is why my UE2-based lights are called "Fantasy" lights and use those non-realistic colourful maps without directional sun =) Like, you could turn those maps upside down and nobody would really notice much (have you ever been to Jupiter? The locals say the light is just like that there in summer! LOL)

    ...Something I found today: this paper is ten years old, but could be helpful still (and definitely educational). "A Field Guide to BRDF Models" by S.Westin, H. Li and K.Torrance

    http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/pubs/2004/WLT04b.pdf

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited March 2015

    wowie said:

    Thank you. Rob have always been my favorite since the day I laid eyes on him.

    Btw, I haven't uploaded a readme for Photo Studio Kit 2 since DAZ lost it during QA process. There will (finally) be one when I do the update (should be soon).

    You'll notice the fresnel & specular settings (except for strength) are the same for all MATs. For general skin (Caucasian), Phillip and Bree should do fine. As I noted before, all you need to adjust when using them as a base for other texture sets is the specular and fresnel strength. Set specular strength to 100% if you want to use specular maps and adjust fresnel until you've found the specularity you want (should be similar to the others).

    You can use Rob and Marie as a base for dark skin characters. In addition to the above step, you'll need to insert the corresponding diffuse textures (face, torso, limbs) in the subsurface color slots.

    For other skin shades, you can use the other MATs. They mainly differ in diffuse and SSS settings. I think I've used something like 4 SSS profiles in general. The 1st diffuse were made to be as neutral as possible and as close as possible to an RGB value of 160,160,160. For the 2nd diffuse, I kept the strength constant and vary the luminance in the color levels instead. The ratio between R,G and B is constant with all MATs. This is done mainly to balance the amount of baked in lightness/subsurface scattering in the textures and to have more diffuse that's not tied to SSS.

    Unfortunately, Phillip's inner mouth surfaces are still using the old settings from an older set. A quick fix is to select those surfaces (lacrimals, gums, inner mouth, tongue and teeth) and apply either of the M6 profiles (Ctrl+Click so you'll see options to apply changes to selected surfaces and retain the existing textures). Don't forget to change the UV layout.

    I've had a play around a bit more, and apart from Bjorn, I did find the Caucasian textures a wee bit uninspiring, more down to the original artist than you I suspect as I've never found many 'go to' texture sets for the guys. I loaded Neo over Rob's MAT and that I really liked. Apart from Bjorn, what is a really nice Caucasian texture? There must be one or two out there somewhere....

    CHEERS!

    PS (What are you updating?)

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    Post edited by Rogerbee on
  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616
    edited December 1969

    ptex is still a 3Delight only feature, I've been reassembling Pixar's 'Toad King'...

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  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    He's brilliant, tell me more!

    CHEERS!

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616
    edited December 1969

    The files are available in a zip at the bottom of this page: http://renderman.pixar.com/view/ptex-textures

    Does anyone know how to emulate the layered shader setup in Renderman?

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Oh, it's Renderman, not DS.

    CHEERS!

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Wowie, I noticed something with the Bjorn MAT, you didn't put a colour map in the Subsurface Colour like you did with Rob. Was this intentional or merely an oversight? Below is Bjorn with the maps in.

    CHEERS!

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  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:

    Oh, it's Renderman, not DS.

    CHEERS!

    That render was 3Delight but I'm trying to get closer to the Renderman shader, It's built up with several layers using the alpha of each texture as a mask.

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    I see, shows you what it's really capable of that's for sure.

    CHEERS!

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited March 2015

    Found another great texture, the old M5 Elite Dave. If only he came with a range of facial hair....

    CHEERS!

    PS (Light set 2 is better!)

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    Post edited by Rogerbee on
  • Takeo.KenseiTakeo.Kensei Posts: 1,303
    edited March 2015

    dinopt said:
    Here's the closest I've come in my quest for metal surfaces.

    One is the straight render, the other is after compositing and post work.

    For the cars body, I used red in the diffuse channel, glossiness at 75%, specular at 100%, a metal bump map in the bump channel at 100% -.3 & .3 in the positive & negative channels, and reflections at 30% with a white color.

    Rendered out in 3delight using UE2 with an HDRI map that matches the background.
    Render time was about 3 minutes.

    For the composite, I layered the rendered car image over the background in after effects for post.

    If you look at the background image, you can see the car was accurately reflecting the environment, which is great, but the odd thing is that UE2 flips the HDRI map horizontally when it imports in into Daz, which is why the car is flipped in the composite. This causes the drivers side to be on the wrong side of the image.

    I've tested this with several hdri maps I've found online, and it does it with every single one.
    It's very strange.

    Anyhow, as far as the cars body surface looking realistic I'm closer but not quite there.

    *EDIT: I should have turned the headlights on.

    Good one. In the case of metallic and architectural objects, I think it is better to use Iray rather than 3delight. Don't know if you tried it but you can use the metallic presets which give a good result. Quick Example below. With Iray you automatically get reflections and light from environment and the shadow is also done by the renderer


    Mustakettu85 said:
    wowie said:

    Which is why I generally stayed away from using UE2 as an IBL.

    Yup =) This is why my UE2-based lights are called "Fantasy" lights and use those non-realistic colourful maps without directional sun =) Like, you could turn those maps upside down and nobody would really notice much (have you ever been to Jupiter? The locals say the light is just like that there in summer! LOL)

    ...Something I found today: this paper is ten years old, but could be helpful still (and definitely educational). "A Field Guide to BRDF Models" by S.Westin, H. Li and K.Torrance

    http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/pubs/2004/WLT04b.pdf

    I don't think that the original problem has anything to do with the UE envsphere which is off and there is a correction for that somewhere
    I rather think it has something to do with the coordinate system being Right or Left handed and all renderers use one or the other. Thus you must know it and correct your map in consequence depending on what you want. There is no such option to do that inside DS but you can still prepare your map correctely with Tdlmake. There is an option to flip the map (flips and flipt ) and a mirrorx option... didn't test them but one of these should do the trick

    One of the origin of the problem may be that Rman renderers place the origin at the camera and not at the presumed center of the world. There is also the fact that you must carefully choose your space coordinate as there is not only one.

    It's pretty sure the envsphere is off. The lighting in itself shouldn't be. It only lacks the reflections and specular. (And yes you must be carefull about DS up is Y axis)

    And now for something completely different...

    Muskettu and I had a conversation the other night about the support scripts for RSL (3Delight) shaders and how the Daz scripting docs are not very clears, especially when translating some of the Attributes into something that DS can actually understand, without throwing a hissy fit over syntax errors.

    Well, the end results were that Muskettu cobbled together the proper scripts to get a 'standard' 3DL volumetric shader that I'd been trying to get working, for a while. FastFog is an RSL2 shader, which means, it's more 'modern' than most of the other volume shaders . That means it can take advantage of the more modern features.

    Now on to the specifics...

    FastFog, out of the box, is set up to use light categories...same thing that makes AoA's lights and shader faster. It's also got some pretty simple controls. It's an 'interior' type sahder...it needs to be attached to geometry, not a camera.

    Now, I don't have AoA's lights...so I'm a bit short on lights that have an 'exposed' category feature. The DzSpot, DzPoint, etc in Shader Builder have it, but it's hidden, by default. They also have shadow problems (like they are 'off'...as in 'not connected' off...not switched off), and for some reason I tried the 'traditional' edit fixes and couldn't get them to work, so I bypassed all of that and brought in the 3DL 'standard' spotlight. It has the category feature (SB wants to hide it, by default, but that's easy to 'fix). Also, to have controllable shadows, you'd need to slog through all the DS scripting that involves...not too difficult, but more work than is needed, because it be very easily to have shadows 'hardwired' on...which for a volumetric/fog light is exactly what you want...

    So, this combination...the 3DL 'standard' spot and FastFog will render this 800x800 with GI lighting (EnvLight2), with occlusion 'on', in about 2 min 20 secs on my machine. Without occlusion it comes in at 2 mins 8 sec and without EnvLight2 (just the spot), it comes in at an astounding 22 seconds!

    UberVolume takes a lot longer than that.

    Not sure about the speed. I tested many delight shaders including Fastfog in the last few years and I didn't noticed it was really quicker. There is some code optimisation for spotlights and that could have been unnoticed if I used other light type. It also depends on your shader settings. If badly configured, Ubervolume can sure be slow.

    The files are available in a zip at the bottom of this page: http://renderman.pixar.com/view/ptex-textures

    Does anyone know how to emulate the layered shader setup in Renderman?

    To get the same inside 3delight you'd first need a vector displacement shader which we don't have inside DS. Then for the layered shader, the Ubershaders are layered shaders but not the same as renderman. And not Physically Based. It should be however possible to write an equivalent shader. Without code writing it may be feasible to do a layered shader with Shader Mixer provided SM supports PTex

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    Post edited by Takeo.Kensei on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    LOL! I should actually take back what I said about lacking good Caucasian male textures. I remembered another good one, David 5. This is my baked version, but, I do aim to get Slosh's D5 UV so I can use the real deal.

    CHEERS!

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  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited March 2015

    The D5 UV was half price, so, I thought 'Why not!?'. So, with a D5 UV I can do proper versions of David 5, Dean and Neo, yay! For now I've just done David 5.

    CHEERS!

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    Post edited by Rogerbee on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    If you are using the sphere for a background or providing an environment for reflections, any writing will be 'mirrored' because the sphere is turned inside out and rotated which basically means it is also out of sync with the 'world' coordinates...both DS itself and what 3DL thinks are the 'world'. Basically that is one reason it's so hard and many thought that IBL didn't exist in DS for so long.

    Every attempt I've seen to make a 'sky'/'world'/etc dome/sphere has some sort of alignment issue....

    And I think the problems are compounded by the surface shaders used on the the sphere...basically all that is needed is a color/texture map and a visibility option. and a way to actually align it to the 'world'.

    Here is the EnvSphere with a 'new' shader applied (3DL defaultsurface) and negatively scaled (-100%..to turn it inside out, again) and rotated around the x-axis by 180. Then I applied the new shader. The the light is Envlight2.. This looks to be the best alignment I've seen yet, at least in this direction...I haven't checked the angle from the horizontal yet.

    The second image is a quick render, inside the sphere...notice the writing is correctly oriented...

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  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited March 2015

    Oops...forgot to spin the sphere 180 on the Y-axis, too. I put a different HDR in, one with a strong sun and noticed that it wasn't quite as aligned as I thought it was...but...now.

    Also, these are done with the default 3DL...not the RT GI script or with progressive on...that seems to cause a different alignment problem. The pointcloud and photonmapping scripts seem to be similarly aligned to the 'standard' render...

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    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited March 2015

    Rogerbee said:

    Wowie, I noticed something with the Bjorn MAT, you didn't put a colour map in the Subsurface Colour like you did with Rob. Was this intentional or merely an oversight? Below is Bjorn with the maps in.


    You generally don't need to insert a color map in the SSS slot. I wanted a profile that's can be applied to other textures. Inserting a color map (or using a subsurface scattering map) would mean the profile is somewhat tied to a particular texture (or UV set).

    Of course, you're free to do so if you like. If you do, it's a good idea to compensate by raising the color levels a bit (to have the same general luminance levels). The adjustment will likely be different for each texture set.


    PS (Light set 2 is better!)

    Well, that depends on what you're going for. :) For general usage, the balanced option is the one to use. But sometimes you want darker shadows or more indirect, diffuse light, which is what the others are for.

    Plus you can always turn off or tone down the strength of the offset lights, depending on your scene. The general rule is pick a light style as a base, then adjust the light intensities to fine tune your lighting. In case you don't know, you can freely rotate around the distant light named 'Highlight'.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited April 2015

    Ah, I see, it's a guide and not a rule, that's fine, you were just laying the foundations with PSK2, I get it now. Same with the lights. That's cool.

    CHEERS!

    EDIT:

    Son of a gun!! It was lucky I bought everything I wanted yesterday, everything I bought is now NOT in March Madness!! If I'd waited till right now, which was my original plan, I would have had to pay full price! Sometimes my impulsiveness pays off!

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

    Rogerbee said:

    Son of a gun!! It was lucky I bought everything I wanted yesterday, everything I bought is now NOT in March Madness!! If I'd waited till right now, which was my original plan, I would have had to pay full price! Sometimes my impulsiveness pays off!

    Well, I hope they're worth it. I know I spent a bit way too much yesterday too. :)

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    They are,

    Among my purchases was Boris by Smay. I quickly stuck your Nevio MAT on him and he looks good already. I also bought Brock for F4 as it's a brilliant texture and it'll look incredible with one of your MATs, it's the same texture that Hellboy used for that skin study and he used UberSurface2 on it.

    I also tweaked the backdrop using settings from that Gia tutorial and that looks much better too. Results below...

    CHEERS!

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  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,838
    edited December 1969

    ...wow, he'd make a good looking Anatoli (Leela's main bodyguard).

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    You wait till you see him with the Brock texture,

    You may have noticed that I've been spending more time in this thread than I have in mine, well, here I'm honing my skills and then I'll post the results in my thread.

    CHEERS!

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited April 2015

    I originally wanted to have a lightset that works for both indoor and outdoor scenes. However, fully enclosed indoor scenes was out of the question (no sunlight coming in). So I transferred the strength of the distant light I was using as sunlight to the various linear point lights acting as fake bounce lights.

    The scene is FW's The Central District Subway Station. I've converted most of the surfaces (if not all) with my various US2 MATs.

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    Post edited by wowie on
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