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Shader Mixer Lights and Cameras

evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
edited December 1969 in Daz Studio Discussion

So, the old stuff is hard to parse and in some cases outdated.

We seem to have some confusion in terms across platforms with things like Indirect Light.

Could we possibly get some real explanations of how to use/create shader mixer lights and cameras? I am very interested in exploring the possibilities, but with not even any real clues (apart from the way old examples provided with Studio 3), where the hell does one start?

Start with a question: how does one use the Indirect Diffuse brick from Functions > Lighting > Environment? One would assume that it needs to be hooked to either a light or a camera, but it has no root settings so where would one connect it? Or perhaps it is one of those unique floating bricks -- but if that is the case, how would one access its parameters?

Another question: what does Sample Mode do? I can't see a difference in any test I have tried.

Comments

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    edited December 1969

    oh, and what's this:

    3Delight message #43 (Severity 1): R2377: automatic photonmaps enabled but no lights cast photons
    3Delight message #3 (Severity 2): T2040: 'dzglobalmap' not found (in shader 'brickyard/{e0768d86-772f-4755-a26a-f1f8dbc4f66e}/shader_Indirect_Light__Camera_' on object '')

    Indirect Light Camera, according to the YouTube video Advanced Rendering Part Two, is supposed to be simple. I'm thinking that this little nugget makes it not so simple anymore, because I don't remember seeing this in 4.5. Certainly might explain some of the oddities I have been seeing.

  • millighostmillighost Posts: 261
    edited December 1969

    evilded777 said:
    oh, and what's this:

    3Delight message #43 (Severity 1): R2377: automatic photonmaps enabled but no lights cast photons
    3Delight message #3 (Severity 2): T2040: 'dzglobalmap' not found (in shader 'brickyard/{e0768d86-772f-4755-a26a-f1f8dbc4f66e}/shader_Indirect_Light__Camera_' on object '')

    Indirect Light Camera, according to the YouTube video Advanced Rendering Part Two, is supposed to be simple. I'm thinking that this little nugget makes it not so simple anymore, because I don't remember seeing this in 4.5. Certainly might explain some of the oddities I have been seeing.


    Did you create a light source with shader mixer? For some reason the normal light sources (created with Create->New Distant Light and so on) do not cast photons, which results in the error. Creating a light source with shader mixer works; does not have to be complicated, just a simple root brick of a light source suffices.
  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    edited December 1969

    millighost said:

    Did you create a light source with shader mixer? For some reason the normal light sources (created with Create->New Distant Light and so on) do not cast photons, which results in the error. Creating a light source with shader mixer works; does not have to be complicated, just a simple root brick of a light source suffices.

    Yeah, I had read that elsewhere. But its NOT noted in the video, and I swear I got different results with 4.5 vs 4.6. I'm going to do a comparison render later with regular vs shader mixer lights to see the difference.

  • millighostmillighost Posts: 261
    edited December 1969

    evilded777 said:
    So, the old stuff is hard to parse and in some cases outdated.

    We seem to have some confusion in terms across platforms with things like Indirect Light.

    Could we possibly get some real explanations of how to use/create shader mixer lights and cameras? I am very interested in exploring the possibilities, but with not even any real clues (apart from the way old examples provided with Studio 3), where the hell does one start?

    Start with a question: how does one use the Indirect Diffuse brick from Functions > Lighting > Environment? One would assume that it needs to be hooked to either a light or a camera, but it has no root settings so where would one connect it? Or perhaps it is one of those unique floating bricks -- but if that is the case, how would one access its parameters?

    You can connect it into a surface. There are 3 bricks (Ambient Occlusion, Occlusion, and Indirect Diffuse) which do more or less the same, which is: looking around from a point on the surface, determine what is visible and creating a color from their surroundings. The Indirect Diffuse brick is the one with the most features (does return colors instead of black/white values for example), but it is also the slowest. Apart from that you can use it as a better version of occlusion.
    You could also use it in a light source (like you could do with most lighting bricks), but it is of limited use in a camera. Actually it might help to not think of camera shaders as shaders at all. Lights and surfaces are shaders because they exist as objects in the scene, but the camera is not a real object. Instead in DAZ Studio the "camera shader" is more used like a big box of things that should go into the renderer, but are not attached to a specific object. So Atmospheres, Imagers and Photon Mappers are thrown into the camera just because each scene conveniently has exactly one.

    Another question: what does Sample Mode do? I can't see a difference in any test I have tried.


    I do not know if that is used for the indirect light camera at all. It is useful with area lights which 3delight simulates by a bunch of little pointlights which are averaged. They might be averaged before the light hits a surface or after a light hit the surface, the distinction between these two is made by the Sample Mode switch, perhaps indirect light behaves in some regard like an area light, so this switch is included? But i do not know.
  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for that millighost.

    I am wondering if I learned more about Renderman, would that knowledge would transfer to shader mixer/builder? Or are these tools too far extrapolated - 3Delight to Studio to shader apps in Studio.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    edited December 1969

    Odd that I do not get the above error on Win7 32bit. Same camera shader.

    Only happens on Win7 64 bit.

  • millighostmillighost Posts: 261
    edited June 2013

    evilded777 said:
    Thanks for that millighost.

    I am wondering if I learned more about Renderman, would that knowledge would transfer to shader mixer/builder? Or are these tools too far extrapolated - 3Delight to Studio to shader apps in Studio.


    Some things are transferable and some things are not (as you might have guessed). Some things that are transferable can only be transferred by digging through a pile of javascript (pointclouds for example), so understanding renderman alone would not suffice. For the things that are easily transferable (e.g. surfaces and lights) it does not really matter if you learn about them via shadermixer or renderman. So i would say if you want to understand how renderman or 3delight works, learn it, but if you only want to learn renderman to understand shadermixer better, it will be not worth the effort. It is a bit like learning linear algebra to understand poses better. It will help, but it will be overkill.


    Odd that I do not get the above error on Win7 32bit. Same camera shader.

    Only happens on Win7 64 bit.


    I got that with the 32 bit version running in wine (i think it is comparable to a windows xp). So at least it is not the 64 bits' fault. The warning stopped when using a shadermixer distant light.
    Post edited by millighost on
  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    edited December 1969

    The error was my bad, using a photon mapper brick when I didn't need one.

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,465
    edited December 1969

    Anyone know how to create a camera that does both Fog (volumetrics) and indirect light?

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