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I think I may have fixed it by adjusting the displacement levels and tiles.
I will post a screen shot tomorrow
So, I'm waiting on my new mic before I do more video tutorials, but I've done a journal tutorial on lighting and skin setup for newbies. This stresses adapting your existing assets instead of making a lot of new maps, so it won't look as good as for e.g. anything Mec4D has ever done (she is amazing), but it can get the newcomer away from that "dead corpsey skin" look that so many first PBR renders have.
Find it here: http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Making-of-Kasper-On-The-Beach-538259868
Okey dokey I have spent the last few days trying to find answers without success so it is about time I asked.
Apart from the obvious differences between PBR Metallicity/Roughness and PBR Specular/Glossiness what is the best to use as it states in the Docs that PBR Metallicity/Roughness does dielectrics too. So I have to ask what is the need for PBR Specular/Glossiness.
Also it states in the docs that Top coat should always be white. What if I say I have a bees waxed wood surface, bees wax isn't white. What is the wax is coloured dark, shouldn't the Top Coat reflect the colour of the applied substance?
I'm not sure I can explain..But I do know that swapping between the two will have a big impact on the shine you get with some surface set ups.
I think that wax on wood may be one of those A"exceptions that prove the rule". I've also been wondering about silks which often don't have a white sheen.
I'm not sure I can explain..But I do know that swapping between the two will have a big impact on the shine you get with some surface set ups.
I think that wax on wood may be one of those A"exceptions that prove the rule". I've also been wondering about silks which often don't have a white sheen.
With silk I would use the glossy color, though. Not that I'm saying yes or not to the docs, I haven't experimented.
Yeah Khory I have seen the differences between the two shaders, gloss wise. I was just wondering why they included PBR Gloss/Specular and the other seems to be an all round shader.
SickleYield that is another thing that stumped me as the docs say to keep the gloss colour white for realistic effects.
The picture is wrong. It was actually at -0.5 in the render. I've updated the tutorial and pic to reflect this - thanks for the heads-up!
Really stupid simple tip for converting materials:
Glossy weight .5, Glossy color 192 value gray, glossiness/roughness (depending on which PBR) .5.
Then adjust from there.
(A lot of conversions set glossy weight to 1/roughness 0 and it looks weird. Also, white gloss color is unrealistic and can blow out the exposure of a lot of things)
The picture is wrong. It was actually at -0.5 in the render. I've updated the tutorial and pic to reflect this - thanks for the heads-up!I've run into another confusion. The text says "The only things I did to change the positions of maps was to add the bump maps to the Top Coat and Top Coat Bump channels for Templates 1, 2 and 3." I'm not sure which channel you mean by the first "Top Coat". In the picture, I can't see a map in any Top Coat channel except Top Coat Bump. Also, why a greenish color for Top Coat Color, and did you have to turn off limits to set Top Coat Weight to 2? My slider only goes to 1 otherwise.
Make sure you have the latest version of Studio. It lets many limits go to 2 by default without turning limits off.
You can't see the maps' icons because multiple channels are selected that have different maps. I left that because I didn't want to get in trouble for anatomical details that might be visible on the maps (pubes, etc.).
The top coat has a slot for "Top Coat Color" at the beginning of the layer settings, and a slot for "Top Coat Bump Map" further down. I did not turn it greenish, that's how it transferred from 3Delight, and I wanted to make as few edits as possible for the tutorial. The DAZ docs say top coat color should always be white or gray; I'm actually not 100% sure it can even see colors in that channel (I haven't found doc on that specific thing yet) because it didn't seem to make a difference to the final render.
I'm running DS 4.8.0.56 Beta, the latest as far as I know, but Top Coat Weight slider limit is 1 for me. A mystery. I can use the gear icon to turn off limits, so no problem.
I don't think the tutorial mentioned how you converted to the PBR shader in the first place, before you tweaked it. Did you apply the Uber shader or did you apply the DAZ optimized skin material as your starting point?
I'm running DS 4.8.0.56 Beta, the latest as far as I know, but Top Coat Weight slider limit is 1 for me. A mystery. I can use the gear icon to turn off limits, so no problem.
I don't think the tutorial mentioned how you converted to the PBR shader in the first place, before you tweaked it. Did you apply the Uber shader or did you apply the DAZ optimized skin material as your starting point?
I started from the Uber shader. I prefer to convert setting by setting instead of using the optimized skin material.
I've made some progress using Canvases, and posted a mini-tutorial in a journal on my deviantArt page. For easier access though, I'll post it here as well.
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* Click on your Render Settings tab. There should be three sub-tabs: Hardware, Canvases, and Cloud [BETA]. Click on Canvasas.
* Make sure there's something in your scene and check the little Canvases checkbox right above the + and - buttons. Those + and - buttons will light up, click on the + to add a "Canvas1 Beauty" layer.
* You'll see that you get some new options down below where you can name the canvas, choose the type, and more.
* Click on the + next to the Node Lists section at the bottom of the Canvases sub-tab. Give it a name, like "Node 1" or whatever.
* Click on the really small little [...] box to the far right of the new node you created. A new window will open where you can select the scene elements that you want included. For a nice example of how this works, choose a clothing item that a character is wearing.
* Make sure "Beauty" is still selected from the Type ("Beauty" basically means "normal render") and in the Nodes drop-down, now choose your new node.
* Click on the Editor tab and the Canvases side option on the left. Make sure the Active Canvas is set to Canvas1 (or whichever Canvas you want rendered if you have more than one). Render the scene (this will not work with a spot render).
* You should get a render showing only the items that were included in your Node.
* When you want a normal 'full' render, just turn Canvases off using the checkbox in the Advanced -> Canvases tab like you did at the very start. Your Canvases will be retained so you can turn them back on again if needed.
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Thanks so much SnowSultan!
That isn't the sub-tabs on Render Settings. It's the sub-sub-tabs (labelled in light medium grey text on medium medium grey background — this really needs to be fixed, DAZ) on the Advanced sub-tab of Render Settings. I thought you were describing something in the new Beta until I spotted those almost impossible to read sub-tab labels.
You're welcome RAM, I hope it can be helpful!
Haha, and if I had called them "sub-sub-tabs", would they really have been any easier to find? At least it's an iota of information on that feature. ;)
I've found I can use a jpg image of a sky in the environment map. Is there any way to get an idea of where features such as clouds will end up in the render? As near as I can tell, rotating the dome is a complete guess.
I wrote about rotating HDRI images and visualizing them in quarters in a journal here, maybe it can be of some use?
http://snowsultan.deviantart.com/journal/Old-school-HDRI-lighting-in-Iray-523712116
I think that gets me pointed in the right direction, thanks.
I love this thread. Finding out about so many new features of ver 4.8. I love Daz3d and Iray. Made the investment of a new video card, 970GTX , and the output is simply stunning. I find myself learning the Iray shading and lighting schemes faster than I did than with dLight. A lot of it has to do with all the great tips people are posting here an din the rest of the forums. I have just one problem. My 4 year old computer is too slow. I need a faster processor and more ram. 16 GB just isn't enough for some for my scenes. The debate becomes do I got with a high end 4th Gen Intel chips or one of the mid tier 5th Gen. 32 GB minimum of ram.
I think that gets me pointed in the right direction, thanks.
No pun intended?
I do have one quick question, hopefully it's something that's been covered before. I remember reading that if you're rendering part of a large scene (like a Stonemason or Faveral environment) and you don't want to wait for light and shadows to be calculated for the entire environment, you can place planes or other primitives to block light from traveling too far. However, this also bounces light around and can lighten the area you want to render. Is there a way to place walls that will not bounce light but still limit the calculations that the system has to do?
I'm rendering tests of a small interior with sunlight coming through a window, but it's taking much longer than expected and I wonder if there's something I can do to keep the renderer focused on what's seen through the camera. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Really? I'd heard that enclosed environments actually slowed things down. Do skydomes really only lag because of their big textures, then?
Hi,
I have seen a few posts about the water shader(s). Would it not be better to use a shader with Absorption?
Example: Just 2 simple cubes.
First pic, large cube with default water(Dispersive), and 2nd cube passing through the large cube(water shader)
2nd pic, this time large cube using shader with Absorption.
Interesting, but more detail is needed; where are you getting that absorption feature from? I don't see a surface parameter for that anywhere once I've applied the water shader. Which shader are you applying to the water cube, and how are you modifying it?
With Iray it is recommended to use hdri image as environment and don't draw dome. With that gigantic mesh dome generating light will slow your render to a crawling. Well, if you have 4 quadro card it will be no problem.
Also the light produce by good hdri image is better than gigantic dome light.
You can try to use section nodes (Create - New Iray Section Plane Node...) to cut off parts of the scene outside camera focus. But I dont know if render calculations stop when they hit the section node or they go on but part of the scene is simply not shown in render.
One thing I'd really like to know about iray: how do you render human figures (say good old Genesis) so they'll look like they're gleaming all over with grease or sweat -- you know, with high specularity? I tried playing with the 'top coat' settings, thinking it refers to the simulation of a thin layer of liquid covering the skin. No good. I know it can be done -- I've seen at least one example. But how is it done? What are the settings? Any advice will be appreciated, thanks!