The Official aweSurface Test Track

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

Hmm, found an issue...animated surfaces won't save with the scene. So if you do something more complex, be sure to render it out and don't close the scene until you're certain i'ts a keeper!

Here's an easy workaround. Create the loop with your animated properties. Once done, save shader preset(s) for each of the keyframe. That takes care of settings for each keyframe.

Next, use the pose preset to simply mark frames. Create a puppeteer dot for your object. At each keyframe, click on the dot so DS timeline will save settings for that object transform properties for that frame. Save that out as an animated pose preset.

With a new scene, you can simply apply the animated pose preset to add marked keyframes on the timeline, then apply the shader settings per each created keyframes.

It maybe possible to actually save out an animated surface properties preset, but that means creating a new preset type for DS. Probably via a script. But right now, the above process works.

Tks:) Have to look into this, good to know there is a way

Sven Dullah

Made a testrender with my "fuzzy troll" with progressive mode, 10x10 pixelsamples, 38 min. (aweSurface on the GB hair). Looks MUCH cleaner than with the old build, and renders atleast 4 times faster than with IBLM:)

Yeah, the fur needs some styling=)

 

kyoto kid

...looks really good. 38 min, not bad.  Was the fur created with Garabaldi or LAMH?

Sven Dullah

kyoto kid said:

...looks really good. 38 min, not bad.  Was the fur created with Garabaldi or LAMH?

GB = Garibaldi:) Have yet to see rendertimes with the GB shader:)

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

GB = Garibaldi:) Have yet to see rendertimes with the GB shader:)

The Garibaldi default shader will need point/spot/distant light, so it will definitely be slower.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

GB = Garibaldi:) Have yet to see rendertimes with the GB shader:)

The Garibaldi default shader will need point/spot/distant light, so it will definitely be slower.

Ok that figures:)

---

One thing about the new build I find interesting...Created a simple scene to start testing skin settings, a Genesis figure with hair and some body hair, no clothing, and an HDRI. Used progressive mode while tweaking settings, when I was ready to render I turned off progressive and started rendering with 8x8 pixelsamples, 256 SSS samples and 1024 shadowsamples. Very slow, nowhere near done after 45 min. Tried turning off things, ended up with only diffuse, no SSS, no reflections or specular. Turned out SSS was the main culprit. This seemed so odd I restarted the computer, which didn't change a thing. Finally I set everything back to normal values, enabled progressive, rendered in less than 10 min. The thing is, with the old build bucket mode and progressive rendered in roughly the same amount of time.

Another thing that has changed is the DoF bug, it has gotten worse and behaves differently. My finished render had pixelization with these camera settings:

DoF was turned on. Made a new progressive render with no DoF, was ok. Turned out Fieldstop now affects the amount of pixelization, which I'm pretty sure was not the case with the old build. My workaround has been to set focal distance to roughly half of what it should be, then increase Fstop to get a sharp render. That has worked, but apparently no longer,now the more I increase Fstop the more artefacts I get. So apparently I can't use DoF for rendering Genesis figures. Don't like to bring up this thing again, but I think it is worth mentioning. Ok I'll look into things a bit more after a good night's sleep.

wowie

Subsurface is rendered in higher quality now, so it does take longer.

Out of curiousity, I ran some test using my test scene.

Basically, enabling progressive will be faster by 25 to 30%, at the cost of some noise and slightly different output. So, if you're fine with that, you can always use progressive when rendering. Subsurface naturally is going to be longer than just doing diffuse. It can add between  30 to 50% longer render times. Still, the net effect with the new build compared to the old one is good. Up to half the render times for less noise in specular, diffuse and subsurface.

As for DOF, the shader have absolutely no control whatsoever with DOF. Whatever you're seeing is not related to the shader.

khorneV2

I did not get standard 3dl shaders with AWE lights/Shaders (renders black) without adding 3dl lighting

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Subsurface is rendered in higher quality now, so it does take longer.

Out of curiousity, I ran some test using my test scene.

Basically, enabling progressive will be faster by 25 to 30%, at the cost of some noise and slightly different output. So, if you're fine with that, you can always use progressive when rendering. Subsurface naturally is going to be longer than just doing diffuse. It can add between  30 to 50% longer render times. Still, the net effect with the new build compared to the old one is good. Up to half the render times for less noise in specular, diffuse and subsurface.

Hmm yea, the difference with SSS both in speed and quality is quite noticeable:) I also seem to have noticed, when using bucket mode, that the first pass takes considerably longer and the last pass much faster. Maybe my models just need some clothes to cover up some skin:D

wowie said:

As for DOF, the shader have absolutely no control whatsoever with DOF. Whatever you're seeing is not related to the shader.

I know I know...still, this thing really p*sses me off!

Sven Dullah

...as for creating under water ambience, well volume effects in general, placing stuff inside a sphere and using transmission color and absorption is kind of a nice cheat. I obviously have no idea how absorption works, but it is a function of distance, right? Would it be possible to implement a function that evens out contrast over distance without ending up with a black screen? .........like ending up with the transmission color or something...LOL I can see how stupid this sounds. I had a good time playing with that scene, and noticed when activating opacity and playing with various percentages, that I could kind of control how much the env. sphere shows, and how it affected the amount of light coming from the emissive plane on top. Kinda like a depth parameter:) Hmm if this is just tooo stupid, please ignore

wowie

khorneV2 said:

I did not get standard 3dl shaders with AWE lights/Shaders (renders black) without adding 3dl lighting

Thanks.

Sven Dullah said:

Hmm yea, the difference with SSS both in speed and quality is quite noticeable:) I also seem to have noticed, when using bucket mode, that the first pass takes considerably longer and the last pass much faster. Maybe my models just need some clothes to cover up some skin:D

If you want less render times when doing subsurface, try lowering subsurface weight. It may cause noise/artifacts though.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

khorneV2 said:

I did not get standard 3dl shaders with AWE lights/Shaders (renders black) without adding 3dl lighting

Thanks.

Sven Dullah said:

Hmm yea, the difference with SSS both in speed and quality is quite noticeable:) I also seem to have noticed, when using bucket mode, that the first pass takes considerably longer and the last pass much faster. Maybe my models just need some clothes to cover up some skin:D

If you want less render times when doing subsurface, try lowering subsurface weight. It may cause noise/artifacts though.

Ok,I'll see how that works:)

Sven Dullah

I just did a render with another character, same HDRI, a pretty complex OOT hair, body hair, no clothes, skin SSS 512 samples and shadow samples 1024, 8x8 pixelsamples bucketmode, same pixelsize, 20 min, which I consider normal, actually very good:) Doing a progressive render right now, and it seems to complete, like you said wowie, roughly 25 % faster. The problemscene would take more than an hour in bucket mode and 9 min some sec. in progressive. And that was with 256 skin SSS samples and another much simpler hair. So I'll reopen and maybe remake shadersettings, there must be something very wrong with it...

Sven Dullah

Sven Dullah said:

I just did a render with another character, same HDRI, a pretty complex OOT hair, body hair, no clothes, skin SSS 512 samples and shadow samples 1024, 8x8 pixelsamples bucketmode, same pixelsize, 20 min, which I consider normal, actually very good:) Doing a progressive render right now, and it seems to complete, like you said wowie, roughly 25 % faster.

Correction, it actually took a bit longer, which I'm used to, on my machine, as I said earlier both modes take roughly the same time, and progressive tends to take a bit longer. So that may be a Mac/graphic card thing?

Sven Dullah

Sven Dullah said:

The problemscene would take more than an hour in bucket mode and 9 min some sec. in progressive. And that was with 256 skin SSS samples and another much simpler hair. So I'll reopen and maybe remake shadersettings, there must be something very wrong with it...

I'll be damned! I deleted the figure from the working scene and merged the problem character, made no changes to shadersettings, just hit render in bucket mode...18 min So problem solved, and looks damned good as well. I guess strange things happen in DAZ-land, have no idea what was going on. So as it turns out, over all improved rendertimes with higher quality, impressive:) And I'm yet again utterly confused, but I can live with that=)

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

I'll be damned! I deleted the figure from the working scene and merged the problem character, made no changes to shadersettings, just hit render in bucket mode...18 min So problem solved, and looks damned good as well.

So it went from 1 hour to 18 min?

Sven Dullah said:

I guess strange things happen in DAZ-land, have no idea what was going on. So as it turns out, over all improved rendertimes with higher quality, impressive:) And I'm yet again utterly confused, but I can live with that=)

I've seen even stranger things with DS. Geometry got somehow joined into one surface/material or figures breaking up due to non-exported morph data. For other problems, starting the app and re-creating the scene solves most problems.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

I'll be damned! I deleted the figure from the working scene and merged the problem character, made no changes to shadersettings, just hit render in bucket mode...18 min So problem solved, and looks damned good as well.

So it went from 1 hour to 18 min?

Yup no problems now:) I doubled the SSS samples which added 10 min to rendertime, but in this case 256 worked just fine. I also tried 25% SS weight, but didn't really make that a big difference to rendertimes. A little more noise, no artefacts though. I also tried really low rendersettings, basically cutting all values by half, ok speeded up things a bit but looked noisy so not recommendable:) Interesting with your optimization, as you have said, going the other way and upping all the quality settings makes sense, the other way around, not so much

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

I guess strange things happen in DAZ-land, have no idea what was going on. So as it turns out, over all improved rendertimes with higher quality, impressive:) And I'm yet again utterly confused, but I can live with that=)

I've seen even stranger things with DS. Geometry got somehow joined into one surface/material or figures breaking up due to non-exported morph data. For other problems, starting the app and re-creating the scene solves most problems.

Oh, and you mentioned using regular 3DL with progressive for fast preview, I tried that, on my machine it won't render faster even with ridiculously low pixel samples, so...it was worth a try. Anyway, I've learned a few things again, testing continues:)

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

Oh, and you mentioned using regular 3DL with progressive for fast preview, I tried that, on my machine it won't render faster even with ridiculously low pixel samples, so...it was worth a try. Anyway, I've learned a few things again, testing continues:)

No. I meant using the script with and without progressive. Without the script, render times will always be slower than rendering with the script. But it can be fast enough for IPR, so you can interact with the settings as you render.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

Oh, and you mentioned using regular 3DL with progressive for fast preview, I tried that, on my machine it won't render faster even with ridiculously low pixel samples, so...it was worth a try. Anyway, I've learned a few things again, testing continues:)

No. I meant using the script with and without progressive. Without the script, render times will always be slower than rendering with the script. But it can be fast enough for IPR, so you can interact with the settings as you render.

Aah ok that explains it!

Sven Dullah

...started working on a new character, HD morphs, fibermesh stuff, 512 SS samples 1024 shadowsamples, pixelsize 1800x1440, (forumversion cropped down), 8x8 pixelsamples in bucket mode, 39 min. Thinking that's quite ok:) HD morphs do slow down rendering quite a bit. The issues with reflections and displacement really is a thing of the past

 

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

...started working on a new character, HD morphs, fibermesh stuff, 512 SS samples 1024 shadowsamples, pixelsize 1800x1440, (forumversion cropped down), 8x8 pixelsamples in bucket mode, 39 min. Thinking that's quite ok:) HD morphs do slow down rendering quite a bit.

Now do you believe me when I say I'm confident enough with 3delight CPU compared to iray even when using GPU (singular)? Especially if we have access to the OSL path tracer.

I don't know if it will render differently, but try changing subdivision method from Catmark to Catmull Clark (legacy).

Sven Dullah said:

The issues with reflections and displacement really is a thing of the past

Good to know. Though I'm still not entirely confident with the normal mapping code.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

...started working on a new character, HD morphs, fibermesh stuff, 512 SS samples 1024 shadowsamples, pixelsize 1800x1440, (forumversion cropped down), 8x8 pixelsamples in bucket mode, 39 min. Thinking that's quite ok:) HD morphs do slow down rendering quite a bit.

Now do you believe me when I say I'm confident enough with 3delight CPU compared to iray even when using GPU (singular)? Especially if we have access to the OSL path tracer.

I'd love to state that as a fact

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

The issues with reflections and displacement really is a thing of the past

Good to know. Though I'm still not entirely confident with the normal mapping code.

I haven't gotten that far yet, I need to open a number of old test scenes and have a look;) For example Stonemason's Misty River Gorge is a bitch to render, with or without normals, haven't really made it work yet.

kyoto kid

...yeah finding myself leaning back to 3DL.  

Sven Dullah

@wowie So the shadowcatcher wasn't included in the last DIM install? I need to DL the extras from the freebie thread?

Sven Dullah

Converted my old island scene to awe, took a fair bit of fiddling with opacity filters and opacity optimization values, but I think I got it sorted. Don't know if it was a DS glitch or something else, but, the island, which has an opacity map, would render semitransparent with opacity enabled and optimization at 0%, filters at default values. Just changing optimization to 90 % made it render ok. Also fiddled a lot with the foam, which is a ring surrounding the island, with an opacity map attached. And since this is a large environment I had to scale up the awe environment sphere to 5000%, so maxing out the aweEnv. exposure was not quite enough to light the scene, but then I found the camera based exposure controls Much easier than using 2 env. spheres Rendertime in bucket mode 29 min at 8x8 ps, HDRI by agent unawares, think it's just gorgeous, tks!

Hmm still some things to work on...35 min, pretty good, considering all the opacity maps;)

Sven Dullah

Ok opacity is still bugged. The island has an opacity map to make it blend smoothly with the sea bottom. I hid everything but the island, this is what it looks like in the viewport:

I claim that there is no setting that can make it look like that, it always renders with a sharp edge. I've tried a large number of settings, the edge will move around or the island will be completely invisible, but no way to make a smooth gradient. It's clearly visible in the last render of the shore.

Sven Dullah

Couple of renders with opacity settings:

 

wowie

Personally, I think using opacity map to blend the island with surroundings is ridiculous.

I've uploaded a new build with the fix. You can get it in the freebie thread.

Sven Dullah said:

@wowie So the shadowcatcher wasn't included in the last DIM install? I need to DL the extras from the freebie thread?

Yes. It's meant to be a freebie and not part of the commercial pack. You can find it in the 'aweExtras' files along with the free point/spot/distant light. There's also a port of 3delight's physical sun/distant light in the folder as well.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Personally, I think using opacity map to blend the island with surroundings is ridiculous.

I've uploaded a new build with the fix. You can get it in the freebie thread.

Wow that was fast, thank you so much!

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

@wowie So the shadowcatcher wasn't included in the last DIM install? I need to DL the extras from the freebie thread?

Yes. It's meant to be a freebie and not part of the commercial pack. You can find it in the 'aweExtras' files along with the free point/spot/distant light. There's also a port of 3delight's physical sun/distant light in the folder as well.

Ok, tks wowie! Can't believe this is happening, too good to be true!

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

Wow that was fast, thank you so much!

Don't thank me yet. I just did some code cleanup and noticed something was off with opacity. Hope that fixes it.