Yet another return to 3DL urge
Oso3D
Posts: 15,085
in The Commons
So yet again I find myself contemplating 3DL.
Last time I discussed this, people strongly suggested the AoA light pack. But I also keep reading references to how there are problems/it broke after 4.6 or something.
Can someone expand on that?
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AoA's light set (Advanced Ambient, Spot & Distant) have been my default go to lights since they came out and I would recomend them if you want to do 3DL renders, most of the work in my gallery uses it (not that I have huge numbers of images in there).
As for the problems with 4.6, if I remember correctly there were some issues but AoA produced a free update that fixed everything that I'm aware of.
The only thing I've noticed is that if you're using the AoA lights is that you need to remember to use the matching subsurface shader base; check out the latest image on my deviantArt account (user name there is the same as here). Nakadi uses the AoA subsurface shader base along with the AoA ambient light and one AoA spotlight.
I have used AoA lights extensively in 4.7 and 4.8, and I have never had an issue with them. I have read there is an issue with flagging and SSS, but since I rarely use the flagging functionality anyway, and generally flag the diffuse when I do (which is not broken), then over all these lights work as well as before for me.
Between 4.6 and later there was a change to some things in Shader Mixer. The AoA sruff is built in SM. They need to be updated to reflect those changes. Basically the same problems as with the cameras...but different (different SM bricks affected by the changes).
Here's one of the camera threads and Jag's fixes...in case you lost it...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/49115/aoa-graphic-art-cameras/p1
Daywalker: Are you saying AoA lights only work properly with AoA subsurface shader?
AoA ambient and spot lights are awesome. They produce stellar results and allow you a lot of control never before possible. The lights allow you to shine only on specific items based on surface settings (i.e. diffuse strength = 99% or IoR = .99). The benefit of this is that you can use one light with high quality settings to shine on important things like a face and another with low setting to shine on items where noise isn't a big deal, like hair.
I always used three ambients, one with high quality flagged to illuminate skin and clothing only. Another with lower quality to illuminate items that I didn't need quality for but had transmaps (there is a setting that if you use really low quality it messes up transmaps so you need to use "shader hitmode" which is a bit slower) and a third with low quality settings but not shader-hitmode for everything else in the scene. Then spots to get deep shaddows as desired.
It speeds up rendering immensely to be able to use high quality settings only where you need them. And they look fantastic in general.
The issue in 4.6 or 4.7 (forget which) was that the flagging got broken. It was odd, sometimes it seemes to work, others it didn't. I never did figure out what was what, but it did seem to be inconsistent. I don't recall if it ever got fixed properly as I moved on to the Iray beta and never looked back. But if I were going to render 3Delight, there's no question these are the lights I'd break out.
I never saw the situation daywalker03 mentions, I didn't have to use AoA shaders to use the lights. Seemed fine with default DAZ shaders. Maybe that's part of the fix for that broken build?
I love Iray for what it does, but I'm finding an interest in less realistic stuff. PWToon has been awesome at really stylized drawing-type renders (and FAST since the lighting is very simple).
But I want to explore the 'middle range' of semi-realistic stuff...
One big plus to 3DL over Iray is Displacement. 3DL handles displacement _leaps and bounds_ better, IMO -- between that and all the funky 3DL effects... it's very appealing.
Another advantage of 3DL is you can break the rules of physics, for example have an object that casts no shadows
They've been fixed?! Awesome! So is that an update I can just download from the product page? Or is it at a separate location? Lighting is one of the banes of my digital art-related existence.
--MW
Yes, this is a big plus.
I think what's really been tipping the balance, for me, is realizing how much displacement stinks in Iray. I like doing odd things with displacement... but having to set SubD to 7 or something and make my computer catch fire... not so much.
Though when it comes to something really subtle or intricate with lighting, I veer back to Iray.
But hey, I can do both.
I use DIM these days so I get the updates via that but they should also be on you Product Libary, checking the hstory on the last update was 8th August 2014, I assume that they are all working okay as I have not had any issues and I use them on an almost daily basis as I have never switched over to IRay. Windows 64 bit, not sure if there are any Mac specific issues.
No, It probably does work with other shader bases; my particular case seems to have been because I originally created the character in DAZ Studio 4.8 and rendered the image in 4.9. I had issues with another image doing something similar, but as far as I know, that one was using UE2, not AoA.
I'm back to using 3delight now that I can use the new Genesis 2 female base texture converter utility at rendo. I like how the gen 2 female textures render in 3delight
What I need to do is firmly avoid trying for great realism in 3DL, because I end up getting frustrated and Iray (IMO) generally does it better/faster. (Meshlights in 3DL, ugh)
A semirealistic style, though? Perfect!
This wasn't ruinously long to render, and once I get AoA lights, hopefully even better: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Bronze-statue-in-the-snow-586749302
I recall reading that AoA lights weren't working with shadowcatchers. Is that still the case? Or was it fixed?
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I realy like the look i get with iray, but it's just soooooo slow on my computer for anything of complex layout.
Great discussion! Thanks for the tips everyone. I prefer 3DL too.... since I'm still learning it :P
Yeah, I'd have to agree. I never quit 3DL altogether. Most of my fooling-arounds are in IRay, but for certain things I turn to 3DL. I've not been used to a render engine which has a hard time with darker renders as IRay does. 3DL seems to do so well with darker images, and I like that. I hope they keep 3DL and IRay in the same package for the forseeable future.