AWE Shading Kit for DAZ Studio and 3delight

13468916

Comments

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    RAMWolff said:

    Here is the same render done under the updated Environment sphere.  I enabled Shadows for the Dome as things were even worse when that was disabled.  I even turned off the Exposure, which was set to 100% which REALLY blew the entire scene out.  So not sure what's going on here.... Compare this render with the one above.  HUGE difference in realism.  First render wins hands down...

     

    Hmm, I'm rendering in two DS instances atm. so can't check:) Can think of a number of reasons... When you select the awe environment (the root node) and go to lights there is an exposure slider which should default to 1 IIRC. Try resetting all parameters to default values to begin with, then select the sphere and go to the surface pane, scroll down and you'll find another exposure slider(defaults to 0 I think) + gamma(1 means no adjustment to the default 2.2, set in the render settings) gain, saturation and whatnot;) Maybe some of those settings are off? And earlier you mentioned you raised the diffuse strength for your skin to brighten it up, maybe try to lower it to 50% or thereabout, see if that makes a difference! The env. sphere looks washed out too so I think it's something with your light settings.

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    So I went ahead and installed the Genesis 2 Starter Essentials so I could start a new scene with the start up scene for AWE.  Got it all installed and I got a black render.  When I turned down the Opacity strength down I got a render I could see but isn't the whole idea of having an HDR map inputted into the Diffuse channel for this to give the scene a natural light source?  

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    Never mind.  I'm stupid again.  The engine was set to iRAY rather than 3Delight.  DUH!  LOL 

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    RAMWolff said:

    Never mind.  I'm stupid again.  The engine was set to iRAY rather than 3Delight.  DUH!  LOL 

    .....laugh

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    LOL Yea, don't go there!  lmao 

    So found that by copying the skin settings from G2F over to G8M mostly got the skin working well enough but need to tweak that some more as he's supposed to be tan (Italian character) but the eyes are a mess still.... not sure how much time I'm going to have to spend investigating how to get them looking more natural and without that weird ring around the Iris.  

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    RAMWolff said:

    LOL Yea, don't go there!  lmao 

    So found that by copying the skin settings from G2F over to G8M mostly got the skin working well enough but need to tweak that some more as he's supposed to be tan (Italian character) but the eyes are a mess still.... not sure how much time I'm going to have to spend investigating how to get them looking more natural and without that weird ring around the Iris.  

    Sorry can't help you with G8 as I don't use them, still on G1 lol. But you could try adjusting IOR on the eye surface or cornea. When I was still using the vanilla shaders/renderer I got nice results by setting IOR to1.59, worth a try?

    ETA: I recall seeing some discussion, maybe in the commons, about G8M eye problems, couldn't find it now tho:(

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    I'm sorry to be so ignorant but what is IOR as I can't find that setting under the surfaces tab.... 

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    OK, found the culprit.  It's the Global Illumination when on it creates the ring.  There are sliders just under it so I'm going to move those around to find what may decrease this affect.  

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    RAMWolff said:

    I'm sorry to be so ignorant but what is IOR as I can't find that setting under the surfaces tab.... 

    Index of refraction, it's set to 1.50 by default I think, it's almost at the top, after the base color stuff.

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    Didn't make any difference.  So not sure what to do to try to resolve that!  Need Wowie to look into that...... 

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146
    RAMWolff said:

    I'm sorry to be so ignorant but what is IOR as I can't find that setting under the surfaces tab.... 

    Index of refraction, it's set to 1.50 by default I think, it's almost at the top, after the base color stuff.

    There are three options but none are at the top.  There are:

    Subsurface Refraction

    Coat Index Of Refraction

    Reflection & Refraction button which is set to ON! 

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    OK, nothing is working.  Eyes are important and if they can't look natural then it's a no go for me.  Hopefully Wowie will have the time to look into this.  I can't waste a whole day like that.  Thanks so much for the help!  

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    RAMWolff said:
    RAMWolff said:

    I'm sorry to be so ignorant but what is IOR as I can't find that setting under the surfaces tab.... 

    Index of refraction, it's set to 1.50 by default I think, it's almost at the top, after the base color stuff.

    There are three options but none are at the top.  There are:

    Subsurface Refraction

    Coat Index Of Refraction

    Reflection & Refraction button which is set to ON! 

    image

    Not the thinfilm IOR, the next one;)

    IoR.png
    401 x 585 - 73K
    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    Hmmm, well for what ever reason those are not in the base shaders for the figure.  I see that's showing for the plane you have there but not for the human figure, at least not Genesis 8.  Not even in the hidden values!  

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    @RAMMWolff

    Would it work to simply hide the eye surface by scrolling all the way down in the surface tab and toggle camera off? Then use sclera and/or iris with IoR and reflections?

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    RAMWolff said:

    Hmmm, well for what ever reason those are not in the base shaders for the figure.  I see that's showing for the plane you have there but not for the human figure, at least not Genesis 8.  Not even in the hidden values!  

    Ok now I'm confused;) Stupid question but are you sure you applied the awe shader to the eye surface?

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    @RAMMWolff

    Would it work to simply hide the eye surface by scrolling all the way down in the surface tab and toggle camera off? Then use sclera and/or iris with IoR and reflections?

    Also could try changing the specular BRDF  (type) for the eye surface to CookTorranceClassic;)

    image

    spec BRDF.png
    297 x 459 - 51K
    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    OK, found them but makes no difference the rings are still there.  frown

    I guess if someone or Wowie can't, won't or doesn't know how to resolve this I guess my idea of including the character with an AWE shader set up is shelved... 

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    RAMWolff said:

    OK, found them but makes no difference the rings are still there.  frown

    I guess if someone or Wowie can't, won't or doesn't know how to resolve this I guess my idea of including the character with an AWE shader set up is shelved... 

    Sorry I couldn't help, I'm sure someone knows how to deal with this!

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    You've been more than helpful but this seems internal within the shader itself.  I even loaded up a fresh copy of Genesis 8 male, applied Wowie's shader for that particular generation and then set the IOR to your suggested 1.59 but still have the ring around the Iris as well as a light area around the outer sclera.  It's very strange but very off putting!  

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited October 2018
    RAMWolff said:

    Genesis 8 Male. 

    With G8, I get a shiny ring on the sclera. Here's a sclera preset from my WIP featuring Gia 8; I tried to minimise that effect, but I didn't test in that many different lighting situations. Try using it as a base.

    Somehow I can't upload things in the forum today, so I'll use my mediafire acc.

    Here's what the render looks like - http://www.mediafire.com/file/ucnrvm4u2q7hn60/awegia_nateyes_bluerlight.png

    Here is the preset - http://www.mediafire.com/file/laq3lohnn28q61e/Gia_Sclera.duf/file

    PS Hmmm okay the files uploaded to the forum, as it turns out, though I couldn't see them when posting. So the links and the post attachments are the same.

    duf
    duf
    Gia_Sclera.duf
    6K
    awegia_nateyes_bluerlight.png
    500 x 583 - 431K
    Post edited by Mustakettu85 on
  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    RAMWolff said:

    OK, found the culprit.  It's the Global Illumination when on it creates the ring.  There are sliders just under it so I'm going to move those around to find what may decrease this affect.  

    I just hope you know what those sliders are doing, right? =)

    Forgot to add that I always disable this "EyeMoisture" surface on G8; it's geometrically redundant. Just use UberSurface on it, turn everything but Opacity off (including visibility options), and set opacity to 0.

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    THANKS SO MUCH.  I'll give this a try!  

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited November 2018
    RAMWolff said:

    Uh, this newer set up blows my shaders out of the water and not in a good way.  I looked at the AWE light and it looks fine with it's settings but the renders are all coming out with some very strong lights.  I even turned off the Emitter plane... still blown out and shiny too.  My last render looks perfect, now I'm not sure what to do.  Go back to the drawing board on the skin shaders or figure out how to set up the lights within the scene for more of a normalized brightness.  Any suggestions?  

    The spheres included with the quickstart scene can be used to gauge what intensity you should use for light sources, including the strength of the environment sphere. You could go at lighting in two ways.

    1. Start with the environment sphere turned OFF and use point/spot/distant/area lights. Then turn on the environment sphere and adjust the ambient strength.
    2. Start with the environment sphere turned ON and add lights with very low intensity and adjust the strength/exposure of the lights.

    In addition to intensity/expsoure, you can also adjust the distance of the emitters for point/spot/area lights. Specific to area lights, emitter size also plays a part. Basically, at the same intensity/expsoure, larger emitters emit more total light and vice versa.

    Try to keep the white diffuse ball below pure white. I usually render out the ball, then view the color values in image editor with a color picker. The ball should be something close to 255,255,255 but not all across. These setups should give youa light setup that's consistent for all materials (metal, glass, diffuse).

    Specific to skin, this will likely vary depending on the texture used. There's a lot of suggestions but here's mine.

    Start with the generic skin material at really low diffuse strength. Use either the SSS profile of skin1 or skin2 preset, since they're based off actual measurements found here - https://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/bssrdf/bssrdf.pdf. Skin 2 tends to produce a brighter look and is the default for AWE Surface. There are times where skin1 is better, mostly on very pale skin with too much SSS baked in.

    I used 40% since that's what Pixar got when converting scatter/absorption values to albedo/mean free path

    https://renderman.pixar.com/resources/RenderMan_20/subsurface.html

    Table of scattering values

                 albedo              dmfp [mm]           ior
    apple        0.846 0.841 0.528    6.96  6.40  1.90   1.3
    chicken1     0.314 0.156 0.126   11.61  3.88  1.75   1.3
    chicken2     0.321 0.160 0.108    9.44  3.35  1.79   1.3
    cream        0.976 0.900 0.725   15.03  4.66  2.54   1.3
    ketchup      0.164 0.006 0.002    4.76  0.58  0.39   1.3
    marble       0.830 0.791 0.753    8.51  5.57  3.95   1.5
    potato       0.764 0.613 0.213   14.27  7.23  2.04   1.3
    skimmilk     0.815 0.813 0.682   18.42 10.44  3.50   1.3
    skin1        0.436 0.227 0.131    3.67  1.37  0.68   1.3
    skin2        0.623 0.433 0.343    4.82  1.69  1.09   1.3
    spectralon   1.000 1.000 1.000     inf   inf   inf   1.3
    wholemilk    0.908 0.881 0.759   10.90  6.58  2.51   1.3
    

     

    In theory, pure diffuse = 100% diffuse so diffuse & SSS = 100% SSS + ((100% diffuse - 100% SSS)  * 100% diffuse). What does that mean? Translated, you want strong enough SSS to get translucency in ears/nose/fingers with powerful light, but keep SSS from overpowering diffuse. Although it looks confusing, it's actually very simple. Adjust the diffuse input until you've found the final look. I'm using 100% SSS as an example. Obviously, you can choose a lower value.

    Here's where it gets messy. It will really depend on the brightness of your textures. I found really dark textures (for dark skinned characters) sometimes needs up to twice the strength of light skin ones. Way too dark ones can sometimes be just almost impossible to use. Vice versa, way to light (pale close to pure white, tends to look really washed out).

    There are lots of knobs to adjust final SSS contribution. The first is obviously subsurface strength. Subsurface phase (direction in iray) also plays a huge part. The literature is clear that human skin should be around 0.8. I haven't a clue on what iray uses for direction, but here's Larry Gritz explanation

    Henyey-Greenstein uses the g parameter to make scattering which primarily forward scattering (g<0), backward scattering (g>0), or isotropic (g=0).

    If you need more SSS and already have SSS strength at 100%, you can try using a higher phase value. Be careful though since it's exponential. For example, 0.9 will be way more than two times stronger than 0.8.

    You can also mix more of the diffuse texture by playing with 'Use Diffuse Texture with SSS'. This multiply SSS with whatever you use for diffuse texture, leading to a generally darker, more saturated output. This is separate to using a texture in the subsurface color/strength slot.

    Finally, if you want less SSS showing through (outside of the usual tweaking of scatter/absorption values), you can increase diffuse strength and dial down Global Illumination Exposure. I found small negative values ie -0.25, a nice compensation to adjust for very bright diffuse textures in addition to use low diffuse strength.

    Edit: Clarify skin1 or skin2 is SSS profile presets.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    Finally, if you want less SSS showing through (outside of the usual tweaking of scatter/absorption values), you can increase diffuse strength and dial down Global Illumination Exposure. I found small negative values ie -0.25, a nice compensation to adjust for very bright diffuse textures in addition to use low diffuse strength.

    Tks wowie, excellent tip!

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited October 2018

    Found what's causing the problem on the sclera.

    Left to right. Default preset with the Genesis 8 MAT. Eye moisture with Glass 3 preset, Eye moisture and cornea with Glass 3 preset.

    Actually, it's not the sclera that's the problem, but the eye moisture part (as Mustakettu pointed out). I wrongly assume the newer figures kept the mesh structure of previous figures. Rather than using the default cornea/tear preset, you should use the legacy 'Glass 3' preset for both. The way both surfaces are built isn't friendly to how AWE Surface render transmission.

    It does mean you don't get refraction from the cornea and eye moisture though.

    I'll have to see whether or not that's true for the Genesis 3 preset.

    Edit:

    After looking at the eye model of Genesis 8, the way the eye moisture/cornea is built is, well, odd. The cornea is actually joined to the eyesurface, and the eye surface fully encapsulates the eye. However, instead of a thin layer with actual thickness, the thickness spans from the front of the eye to the back. frown

    Gensis 3's eye model is different, but it seems like it produces the same exact problem in renders, but less noticeable. Since both surface are already fully transparent, you can simply just turn off transmission for both surfaces on Genesis 3 and 8.

    eye1.jpg
    462 x 600 - 61K
    eye2.jpg
    462 x 600 - 58K
    eye3.jpg
    462 x 600 - 57K
    Post edited by wowie on
  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    WOW.. Thanks for the detailed help. SO thankful.  SO it's the moisture that's causing this. Will you be issuing an official update when you've determined if it's affecting the Genesis 3 models as well?  

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    OK, read up on your skin suggestions.  AWE, from what I can see doesn't have the two skin options nor any of the others.  I have Genesis Male 8 selected using the select skin quick select (always add in the lips, not sure why the lips are left out of that, lips are skin!  LOL ) and scrolled very slowly down the list of available shader options and don't see that drop down that I see with using regular 3Delight setups.  So not sure or not understanding why you brought that up about using Skin 1 or Skin 2 options.  

    It's unfortunate that I don't have a mind for technical stuff too much, so trying to get my head around all this is a bit daunting for me.  frown

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    Hmmm, just tried your suggestion about the eye moisture.  Basically I reset all the values to default, removed the bump map and turned off the transmission.  The only thing that's active is the opacity but I'm still getting a white ring around the Iris.  

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,146

    OK, read up again.  Your suggestion to apply the glass shader worked the trick but I had to go back and turn the opacity back down.  YAY  One thing solved.  Have no idea now, again not a technical guy but glad that works!  

Sign In or Register to comment.