My recommendations for shadows:

First, it's helpful to start with the Basic FilaToon Environment, which spawns a Distant Light and Filament Draw Options.

Be sure to change Distant Light Shadow Type from None (default) to Raytrace

On Filament Draw Options, do a filter for Shadow. Up the Shadow Map size to 4096 or more (I find the default 1024 usually creates pretty blocky shadows). Shadow Cascades bumped to 4 often helps, if you have a lot of stuff going on.

Another way to improve shadows is to increase shadow smoothness on stuff in the scene.

 

Other lights are more limited, and only one distant light really works right at a time.

Point lights do not cast shadows.

Spotlights can, but you have to make sure to increase Ray Length to 100 (unless you are trying to do something fancy). Also in Light/Shadow Type, again, switch to Raytrace (unless, again, you intentionally do not want shadows cast by the light).

Spotlight geometry does not do anything to the light or shadow. The only way to adjust spotlights is brightness and angle. (If I want a point light that casts shadows, I use a spotlight with the angle increased to 180).

 

If you are using distant light, keep in mind what parts of the scene might be blocking it. You can either hide those elements or go into the surfaces and set Cast Shadows to Off.

You may also want to adjust the Ambient in the scene to something darker to make the lighting look more contrasted.

 

Look into Sickleyield's dForce SY Rigged Shadows Filament | Daz 3D to add dropshadows to taste. There are some very convoluted ways to add Ambient Occlusion, but IMO it's a massive amount of work for a quirky/limited gain. Better to fake it.

You can do something similar on your own by just making a fuzzy disk and map it to a plane, but SY's product has dforce which can help. Also remember to change PBR Masked Threshold to 1, or cutout opacity is a bit dodgy.

 

Let's see, what else. Oh, I recommend creating white planes set to cutout .1 and place them in the background to create a haze/distance effect. It helps foreground elements pop, particularly if the background is busy. I like to use 2 or 3, depending on the scene; one immediately behind the focal character, another in the middling distance, and then one way back (and big) to distinguish 'far away' haze level.

 

 

I am far busier nowadays than I anticipated. Which is probably a good thing because my DAZ+ Membership is going to expire at the end of the month, and since the yearly plans are no longer available, there wasn't much motivation to keep chasing after it. So the "regular prices" and the fact I don't have much time for this hobby anymore are probably a good thing right now. (I do have plans on getting a new laptop this year, before October.)

Anyway, the closest DS project I've done recently is a Filament render that got combined with an old AI pic, which was then slightly enhanced with KREA AI. I edited it with GIMP and Medibang Paint. Here is the basic Filament Render and the finished result. I wanted a custom album cover for a homemade playlist. (Obviously, this project was intended for my own personal use. I actually had no plans to share it anywhere, but I don't want to go too long between posts. Since I don't want to be accused of necroing my own thread.) 

I feel like I can make more ambigous edits, combining AI, DS, and possibly my own handpainting/drawing. But I don't have time for that either. 

Lovely render! And yeah, Filatoon has a lot of potential. It's really a game changer for NPR art. And the speed of Filament rendering is just awesome. It's a bummer you're not making content any more, but hopefully you'll enjoy working with Filatoon. I'm having a blast with it!

taiuri said:

3Diva said:

taiuri said:

barbult said:

A Filament render will be exactly what is shown in the Filament viewport. Remember, to render Filament, the selected render engine is Viewport. There is no separate plugin or enhanced features.

Does this apply for FilaToon too?

FilaToon is a shader type and uses Filament as the render engine - so yes, as long as you're using the Filament draw option and select "viewport" as the "Engine" you'll render exactly what you see in the viewport.

 

 

To render "Filatoon" you have to apply the Filatoon shader presets to the character and scene elements.

 

I also highly recommend using the Filatoon Environment options:

Oh! I see. Thank you, I had a lot of doubts about this Filatoon. Just a last question: the Filatoon shaders presets are free or are they commercial, or where do I get them?

The base Filatoon Shader Presets and Environment settings are free. You'll need to install and update the Genesis 9 Starter Essentials and the Genesis 9 Starter Essentials Expansion. I believe there's also another that needs to be downloaded and/or updated but I can't recall what it is off the top of my head. You can read up more about Filatoon on these two threads:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/704951/anime-toons-and-filatoon-shader-q-a/p1

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/704931/filatoon-cell-shaded-rendering-with-filament/p1

taiuri said:

3Diva said:

taiuri said:

barbult said:

A Filament render will be exactly what is shown in the Filament viewport. Remember, to render Filament, the selected render engine is Viewport. There is no separate plugin or enhanced features.

Does this apply for FilaToon too?

FilaToon is a shader type and uses Filament as the render engine - so yes, as long as you're using the Filament draw option and select "viewport" as the "Engine" you'll render exactly what you see in the viewport.

 

To render "Filatoon" you have to apply the Filatoon shader presets to the character and scene elements.

I also highly recommend using the Filatoon Environment options:

Oh! I see. Thank you, I had a lot of doubts about this Filatoon. Just a last question: the Filatoon shaders presets are free or are they commercial, or where do I get them?

All the ones that are really necessary and more are included for free in the updated Daz Studio. They were really generous with them really. You can purchase more in the store, just do a search for FilaToon. 

3Diva said:

taiuri said:

barbult said:

A Filament render will be exactly what is shown in the Filament viewport. Remember, to render Filament, the selected render engine is Viewport. There is no separate plugin or enhanced features.

Does this apply for FilaToon too?

FilaToon is a shader type and uses Filament as the render engine - so yes, as long as you're using the Filament draw option and select "viewport" as the "Engine" you'll render exactly what you see in the viewport.

 

To render "Filatoon" you have to apply the Filatoon shader presets to the character and scene elements.

I also highly recommend using the Filatoon Environment options:

Oh! I see. Thank you, I had a lot of doubts about this Filatoon. Just a last question: the Filatoon shaders presets are free or are they commercial, or where do I get them?

taiuri said:

barbult said:

A Filament render will be exactly what is shown in the Filament viewport. Remember, to render Filament, the selected render engine is Viewport. There is no separate plugin or enhanced features.

Does this apply for FilaToon too?

FilaToon is a shader type and uses Filament as the render engine - so yes, as long as you're using the Filament draw option and select "viewport" as the "Engine" you'll render exactly what you see in the viewport.

 

To render "Filatoon" you have to apply the Filatoon shader presets to the character and scene elements.

I also highly recommend using the Filatoon Environment options:

3dOutlaw said:

I just popped by, as I dropped a old render of mine into Kling AI to see if it would animate (it did, but creepy) , and noticed this Filatoon thing (apparently 3 months after y'all did).  I may play around a little with it, if I can drag myself away from POE2. 

Nice to see you back! Highly recommend checking out the FilaToon topic over here, where we've been sharing Filatoon renders and sharing tips and advice. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/704931/filatoon-cell-shaded-rendering-with-filament#latest

barbult said:

A Filament render will be exactly what is shown in the Filament viewport. Remember, to render Filament, the selected render engine is Viewport. There is no separate plugin or enhanced features.

Does this apply for FilaToon too?

crosswind said:

Fauvist said:

crosswind said:

Only 4 types of node-based Lights in a scene can be saved as Light Presets: Distance, Spot, Point and Linear Point. All of their Properties in Parameters pane are saved within a Light Preset.

In your case, there's ambient light set in Environment Settings, node-based Lights, Props formed by surface-based Emissive Light + Point Lights, etc., better separately save them as Render Settings Preset, Light Preset and Scene Subset.

Are you talking about iray?  I didn't know there were iray distant lights.

No, I wasn't. These 4 types of lights are not Engine dependent... they work in 3DL, Iray and Filament ~

Though in Iray a Linear point light is just a point light.

Fauvist said:

crosswind said:

Only 4 types of node-based Lights in a scene can be saved as Light Presets: Distance, Spot, Point and Linear Point. All of their Properties in Parameters pane are saved within a Light Preset.

In your case, there's ambient light set in Environment Settings, node-based Lights, Props formed by surface-based Emissive Light + Point Lights, etc., better separately save them as Render Settings Preset, Light Preset and Scene Subset.

Are you talking about iray?  I didn't know there were iray distant lights.

No, I wasn't. These 4 types of lights are not Engine dependent... they work in 3DL, Iray and Filament ~

Making it shader agnostic is something I wanted to do but I got to a point in development where I had sunk so much time into it that I had to decide either to completely sideline the project, carry on or release what I had.

Daz is currently my sole source of income so based on that and the fact that the vast majority of shaders in the store are Iray Uber based {and a large portion of the customer base can't even use filament) I decided to release but make it very clear what the restrictions were.

This latest round of changes has taken a significant amount of time out of my product development cycle - I'm not making excuses but just trying to be transparent, and it was necessary because having bugs in a product doesn't sit well with me.

Whilst there is a lot of value in the product as it is and I can't make any promises, I would like to revisit this at some point in the future but I really do need to move onto other projects for now, otherwise I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage or put food on the table - that is the unfortunate reality given that my store is quite small atm.

I hope you understand 

barbult said:

crosswind said:

Nope... applying a Render Settings Preset has nothing to do with enabling Iray Drawstyle. In DS 4.22, after applying a Render Settings Preset, Tone Mapper and Environment Options nodes are placed into Scene pane, and Environment path appears in Render Settings pane.

In DS 4.23, Environment path doesn't appear in Render Settings pane... even if switching to Iray Drawstyle. The only way to show Environment path by now is to swith options in Engine dropdown list.

@crosswind I removed my startup scene file from DS 4.23.1.20 for testing.

1. If I switch to NVIDIA Iray drawstyle, the Tonemapper Options node and Environment Options node appear in the Scene pane and the Tone Mapping path and Environment path appear in the Render Settings Editor tab, if the render engine is NVIDIA Iray (MDL).

Same on my side (since 4.15 or 4.16... ?) but this behavior shouldn't have had anytying to do with Loading a Renderings Preset. Why did one have to switch to NVIDIA Iray drawstyle in 4.23 before loading a Renderings Preset ?  It works all well in DS 4.22.

However, the most interesting thing is that I cannot reproduce the issue now !! I really don't know why, haha ~ !

1. If I switch to NVIDIA Iray drawstyle, the Tonemapper Options node and Environment Options node appear in the Scene pane but the Tone Mapping path and Environment path do not appear in the Render Settings Editor tab, if the render engine is Viewport).. (I didn't check other engine types). The Tone Mapper Options node and Environment Options node settings can be accessed in the parameters pane. But changing those only seems to affect the Iray preview in the viewport. In an actual render, these options settings seem to be ignored in this configuration. Even though the render engine is Viewport, the render is not the Iray preview shown in the Viewport! It appears to be something else, maybe Texture Shaded.

Also same on my side... With 3DL engine, the same thing will happen... because those paths / groups are hidden in Viewport / 3DL engine. The moment you switch back to NVIDIA Iray, you'll see them there.

What does this have to do with the inability to get applied presets to work? I am still unable to reproduce that on command, but it does still happen to me at times. I also get into situations where the HDRI applied by an Iray render preset does not change the HDRI in the Filament viewport. Sometimes it changes; other times it does not. I have wasted hours and hours trying to understand what causes these issues, and I cannot come to a conclusion. I still don't have enough data to submit a useful help request at this point.

 

I'll do more tests then...

crosswind said:

Nope... applying a Render Settings Preset has nothing to do with enabling Iray Drawstyle. In DS 4.22, after applying a Render Settings Preset, Tone Mapper and Environment Options nodes are placed into Scene pane, and Environment path appears in Render Settings pane.

In DS 4.23, Environment path doesn't appear in Render Settings pane... even if switching to Iray Drawstyle. The only way to show Environment path by now is to swith options in Engine dropdown list.

@crosswind I removed my startup scene file from DS 4.23.1.20 for testing.

1. If I switch to NVIDIA Iray drawstyle, the Tonemapper Options node and Environment Options node appear in the Scene pane and the Tone Mapping path and Environment path appear in the Render Settings Editor tab, if the render engine is NVIDIA Iray (MDL).
2. If I switch to NVIDIA Iray drawstyle, the Tonemapper Options node and Environment Options node appear in the Scene pane but the Tone Mapping path and Environment path do not appear in the Render Settings Editor tab, if the render engine is Viewport).. (I didn't check other engine types). The Tone Mapper Options node and Environment Options node settings can be accessed in the parameters pane. But changing those only seems to affect the Iray preview in the viewport. In an actual render, these options settings seem to be ignored in this configuration. Even though the render engine is Viewport, the render is not the Iray preview shown in the Viewport! It appears to be something else, maybe Texture Shaded.

What does this have to do with the inability to get applied presets to work? I am still unable to reproduce that on command, but it does still happen to me at times. I also get into situations where the HDRI applied by an Iray render preset does not change the HDRI in the Filament viewport. Sometimes it changes; other times it does not. I have wasted hours and hours trying to understand what causes these issues, and I cannot come to a conclusion. I still don't have enough data to submit a useful help request at this point.

 

crosswind said:

barbult said:

@crosswind What do you mean when you say "Environment path"? Do you mean the Environment Options node in the Scene pane, or the Environment section in Render Settings, or the Environment Map part of the Environment section of Render Settings? I have a startup Scene that contains Environment Options, Tonemapper Options, and Filament Draw Options. That Scene loads with the Environment and Tone Mapping sections in Render Settings, and the NVIDIA Iray (MDL) render engine. The default ruins HDRI is in the Environment Map. I think all that might be why I'm not fully understanding your scenario.

What I meant is the Environment section in Render Settings pane. It's officially named as Path (or Group...), isn't it ? (in ss1)  Again, in DS 4.22, after loading a Render Settings preset, I get the result in ss2. In DS 4.23, I get the result in ss3 ~~

I understand now. Thanks for the illustrations!

barbult said:

@crosswind What do you mean when you say "Environment path"? Do you mean the Environment Options node in the Scene pane, or the Environment section in Render Settings, or the Environment Map part of the Environment section of Render Settings? I have a startup Scene that contains Environment Options, Tonemapper Options, and Filament Draw Options. That Scene loads with the Environment and Tone Mapping sections in Render Settings, and the NVIDIA Iray (MDL) render engine. The default ruins HDRI is in the Environment Map. I think all that might be why I'm not fully understanding your scenario.

What I meant is the Environment section in Render Settings pane. It's officially named as Path (or Group...), isn't it ? (in ss1)  Again, in DS 4.22, after loading a Render Settings preset, I get the result in ss2. In DS 4.23, I get the result in ss3 ~~

@crosswind What do you mean when you say "Environment path"? Do you mean the Environment Options node in the Scene pane, or the Environment section in Render Settings, or the Environment Map part of the Environment section of Render Settings? I have a startup Scene that contains Environment Options, Tonemapper Options, and Filament Draw Options. That Scene loads with the Environment and Tone Mapping sections in Render Settings, and the NVIDIA Iray (MDL) render engine. The default ruins HDRI is in the Environment Map. I think all that might be why I'm not fully understanding your scenario.

Oso3D said:

Fun hair that works, with some translation, in Filament!

Pretty ♥

Richard Haseltine said:

crosswind said:

barbult said:

crosswind said:

barbult said:

I wonder if the failure to apply Render Settings Presets has to do with switching render engines back and forth between Filament and Iray.

Most likely you are correct. I did some filament rendering as well. Then I just had some tests by switching back 'n forth, Environment is back. But I still think it's a bug.

I haven't figured out a repeatable scenario to recreate the problem, either, but it has happened to me twice in the last couple days.

It's easy to reproduce the issue on my side.
1) Clear the scene. Now Engine in Render Settings pane is Nvidia Iray.  Load a Render Settings Preset. No Environment path appears in Render Settings pane.
2) Switch Engine to Viewport then switch it back to Nvidia Iray, Environement path appears ~~

Enabling the Iray DrawStyle adds an enviornment settings node, the empty scene won't have one until that or a render are done. No settings node should tie the proeprties to their default values so I am surprised it wasn't an issue before.

Nope... applying a Render Settings Preset has nothing to do with enabling Iray Drawstyle. In DS 4.22, after applying a Render Settings Preset, Tone Mapper and Environment Options nodes are placed into Scene pane, and Environment path appears in Render Settings pane.

In DS 4.23, Environment path doesn't appear in Render Settings pane... even if switching to Iray Drawstyle. The only way to show Environment path by now is to swith options in Engine dropdown list.

crosswind said:

barbult said:

crosswind said:

barbult said:

I wonder if the failure to apply Render Settings Presets has to do with switching render engines back and forth between Filament and Iray.

Most likely you are correct. I did some filament rendering as well. Then I just had some tests by switching back 'n forth, Environment is back. But I still think it's a bug.

I haven't figured out a repeatable scenario to recreate the problem, either, but it has happened to me twice in the last couple days.

It's easy to reproduce the issue on my side.
1) Clear the scene. Now Engine in Render Settings pane is Nvidia Iray.  Load a Render Settings Preset. No Environment path appears in Render Settings pane.
2) Switch Engine to Viewport then switch it back to Nvidia Iray, Environement path appears ~~

Enabling the Iray DrawStyle adds an enviornment settings node, the empty scene won't have one until that or a render are done. No settings node should tie the proeprties to their default values so I am surprised it wasn't an issue before.