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The date is correct. That's the updated shader. Maybe it's the support script that's still using the old build. They are the .dsa files in DAZStudio4\scripts\support\wowie\Surface
Yes that was it:) Thank You!
Oh my, that new environment light has some nice new options for sure...will be back with more stupid questions shortly
I'll update the manual/documentation this week. A lot has changed/added, so I think that warrants almost a complete rewrite.
The basics still applies though.
That would be most appreciated:)) I've been playing around a bit with that testscene I put together, and already have a bunch of questions, but I'll wait for the documentation to make your life a tiny bit easier LOL. So here's the newest (progressive) render, I really don't know if this is with the surface specified or global samples. The aweEnvironment was set to override, 1024 samples and 128 SS samples (the default setting IIRC), so I take it this means the environment settings will override the surface settings? There, I had to ask
I'm writing some info here which will likely be in the updated manual.
When you enable the override switch. all surfaces in the scene will use the override settings. The hair samples override will be used exclusively by the AWE Hair shader.
This also applies to other overrides as well (diffuse, reflection and refraction depth). For reflection, there's now a separate control so reflection depth can be tweaked separately for metals and non metals. The depth overrides are disabled by default. In most cases, the most significant override will be reflection depth. The depth override values are the best balance between quality and render times. Setting these to 0 (zero) will effectively turn off reflections/global ilumination though it will still render path traced area lights.
The hair depth value will only work in DS 4.8 upwards since hair depth only works properly in 3delight 12 (not in 3delight 11 that is used with DS 4.7).
This arrangement simplifies things considerably since you can simply set irradiance samples and max diffuse/specular depth for all surfaces, but still be able to fine tune them even in IPR/live renders.
For a quicker IPR renders or preview ones, setting diffuse/reflection depth to 1 should significantly reduce render times. A diffuse depth of 1 still produces global illumination but color bleeding will be minimal.
The occlusion settings works a little bit differently. You will have to enable the override per surface rather than per scene. This works pretty much like ambient occlusion, so in most cases you don't need to fiddle with it. It can be used to have slightly darker contact shadows.
For convenience, there's also several overrides for diffuse color (or albedo), dielectric/metal reflection. The Override Albedo switch turns all diffuse color to white, while Override Metal will turn off all dielectric specular/reflection. Vice versa, Override Dielectric turns off all metal specular/reflection.
You can also find new settings in the 'Light' section. There's now three tonemapping curves - Reinhard, Unreal and ACES. Reinhard is the old default. Unreal actually uses the same method, but with slightly different parameters, while ACES looks very different. Of the three, ACES would be best since it preserves high values better and slightly darkens low values (similar to crushing your blacks). You can also turn off tonemapping completely or control the overall strength.
There's also the new color dodge/burn settings, which only works when saturation is above 0. The default temperature/saturation settings have been changed to 5600K and a saturation boost of 0.5. If you want a neutral settings, use 6500K with 0 saturation. There's no change to the exposure settings, though there are some changes on how the settings actually work. It has slightly relaxed over exposure settings so you can have over exposure if you lower the f-stop and shutter times low enough.
The AWE Area PT exposure/intensity scale settings have been tweaked so its similar to iray's default EV value (13) with an upper limit of 16. Like before, this does not take into account the emitter size so really high EV values should only be used with very small emitters (25x25 cm or smaller). Smaller emitter acts pretty much like point/spot lights, producing well defined, hard shadows. A uniform scale such as 200% means four times the size. Vice versa, a 50% uniform scale means 1/4 of the original size. These translates to raising/lowering the EV value by 2.
Since changes to AWE Area PT setting needs a render restart, it's best to find your desired exposure using AWE Environment Light since you can do the changes in IPR/live render. Once you hit the exposure you want, you can simply convert the exposure settings used with that light as the offset needed for the area lights. Be sure to reset the AWE Environment Light exposure afterwards.
If you use Camera Exposure settings (f-stop/ISO/shutter times), just be mindful that raising f-stop and shutter times by 2 (f-stop 2 to 4, shutter times 4 to 8) means half the exposure. Raising ISO by 2 means twice the exposure.
The default f-stop value have been changed to use DS camera default f-stop value (1/22). The combined ISO and shutter time values have been selected to get a neutral EV value.
The Environment settings only affects ambient output of AWE Environment Sphere shaders. The primary ones affects how it will look in renders and visible to diffuse, specular and hair rays. The secondary ones, with the extra 'Diffuse' label, only affects diffuse rays. Best way to use it is to first tweak the primary ones, using specular/reflection. Then tweak the diffuse to avoid diffuse overexposure.
Tks a lot wowie, this is a time-saver:) This is so cool it's unreal:))
This is a scene I created with the previous awe build. I never got it to work properly, fireflies all over and all kinds of problems, so I put it on ice...now decided to test it with the new build and voila...translucency, specular highlights, SS, everything just looks so much better:))) I won't post the old version, it was a mess. Working in DS 4.9 with the new build, the firefly issues seem to have been solved, fingers crossed. BUT there is something fishy going on with the UI though. When opening an old scene "multiply specular/reflections with opacity" is turned OFF for all awe surfaces using opacity, including lashes etc. Also "multiply opacity by shape" for all arealight surfaces is turned OFF. Fortunately resaving the scene solves that. The aweSurface normal channels are messed up, the normal map slot is missing and the normal maps saved with the previous build are not loaded into the scene. And the "show hidden properties" option works the opposite way, please have a look at the attachments! Same goes for aweHair but with "show hidden" OFF you can access the normal map slot:))
Well done wowie you did it again: better quality at a much faster rate
. It will take a while to adapt to the new stuff but so far I love it
.
Edit: Made some level adjustments in post:
I can't find a Thin Mode switch.
I don't have the deep/shallow channels in the new build, see attachment. Tried toggeling show hidden but no dice.
Regarding normal maps...yeah, inserting the map into normal strength works fine, it was just a bit confusing, as I had expected a dedicated normal map slot similar to the aweHair. Still, it's a bit tedious to have to re-import normalmaps saved with previous awe builds;)
Hmm, transmission color and scale/absorbtion do nothing, as far as I can tell. Transmission roughness works as expected.
The multiply by opacity was renamed so it shares the same name as the dsDefaultMaterial. I basically forgot to do so for AWE Area Light and most likely, AWE Environment Sphere shaders. It should follow the behaviour of AWE Surface (retaining info of the previous shader).
I'll fix the normal maps assignment. I forgot that DS materials didn't link the map slot to normal strength in Shader Builder.
The deep/shallow absorption color have been removed. There's no need for them anymore.
As for absorption/transmission color, try disabling 'Use Diffuse Texture' in the 'Mask Section'. When this is enabled, metal/glass will use diffuse color/texture as inputs.
Ok, tks!
Yup that worked, great!
Trying to figure out which tonemapping method I prefer, having the ability to choose from three methods is truly amazing. Here I wanted to compare Unreal with Aces. The lighting is just an HDRI with Mustakettu's radiumcatcher. Oh btw, I used only 512/128 samples to make it quick, very little grain
.
There is a distinct difference between the two, but looks like the environment sphere ignores this setting? I know I can finetune its surface settings, just wondering...
Unreal:
Aces:
@wowie
I wanted to desaturate the skin surfaces a bit, so switched from global to override but nothing happens, is there another secret toggle hidden somewhere?
I just fiddled with diffuse/SS settings instead, and managed to tone them down a bit.
...ok found it, enabled Color Correct inputs & adjusted Base/ Diffuse Saturation:)) So what do the temperature and saturation value overrides do now?
There's actually two ways to tweak saturation for a surface. You can use the options in the 'Options - Mask - Color Correct Inputs' section which will work for the inputs. Using the 'Saturation Value' in the 'Options - Lighting'will work on the output or the surface plus lighting. When 'Global' is used, ithe value you use will be use as an offset. If you choose override, it will the absolute value and doesn't take into account the value you set via the AWE Environment Light.
For what you want to do, using the settings in the 'Mask Section' is probably best.
Ah ok, global uses the environment light, got it:) Will experiment some more...
...so HDRIs seem to work much better also, interesting:) I've avoided pure HDRI light like the plague but will have to re-consider
It works well enough in pure HDRI, but using area lights is still much better. Alternatively, use both if its necessary.
One thing I forgot to mention about saturation controls - all of them now is based of vibrance, protecting against oversaturation.
Question: Will diffuse roughness have an impact on the amount of color bleed/bounce light? How about if you increase diffuse bounce depth? Am I right when assuming the new awe build has stronger color bleed?
Setting up a new test/lookdev environment with 4 arealights. A random thought...if I use your test spheres as a reference, would it be smart to turn off tonemapping (upper luminance) for the pure white one or should I leave it at the defaults?
Regarding GI / diffuse bounce light: I spent a fair amount of time yesterday setting up some character using my lookdev rig (4 areakights + the aweEnvironment light). At some point I raised the aweEnvironment exposure to 2.5 resulting in ears, nostrils, lacrimals and mouth starting to glow. First thought was SSS, but found out reducing diffuse bounce depth makes it go away, so that atleast partly answers my above posts. I also found out that resetting the exposure and adding the same offset to the arealights will not produce the same result, although the glow issue goes away. So it looks like leaving the aweEnvironment exposure at 0 is a wise thing to do while setting up the scene.
I wanted to get the AWE Shading Kit product because I'm starting to learn how to render with 3DL. I was sad when I saw that it disappeared from the store before I could pick them up but I'm SO GLAD to have found that Wowie has decided to give the kit to the community for free! Wow! :D An amazing gift! :D
I just got it downloaded and loaded up the "AWE Quickstart Scene" that it comes with. However the scene renders like this:
Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Why does the quickstart scene render like that? All I did was load the scene and hit render, so I'm sure I didn't do any changes or adjustments to the scene that might cause issues. Any help you guys can give would be really appreciated. I'd really love to learn how to use the AWE Shading Kit! :)
Wow, cool render, never had that happen:)) Did you use 3DL scripted rendering and from the scripts menu select Raytracer Final (or draft)? If you don't find the script, make sure you installed them. Other things to check: In the regular 3DL rendersettings set gamma correction on and gamma to 2.20. If you used some toon script maybe it reset the gamma settings? Let me know how it goes;)
ETA: Did you enable (renderstyles)" cartoon" in the hidden properties? That would probably mess things up real good.
I THINK I got it figured out. I just didn't get everything installed properly. Adding the files to "My Library" was only the first step. I then I had to track down the "DAZ 3D >> DAZStudio4" folders that host the Plugin and Scripting files and get the proper files into those folders.
I managed to render the test scene, but I think I'm probably still doing something wrong. As it took nearly two hours to render (1 hour and 43 minutes) and ended up a little noisy and, to me, doesn't quite look "right":
Do I need to do like you mentioned above and use Scripted Render and "Raytracer Final" instead of regular 3DL rendering?
Yes, you access the 3DL pathtracer using one of the Raytracer scripts, don't use anything else;) And note that the quick start scene was set up for the very first awe build, so it's rather dated. Select your figure and find one of the new updated base character presets and apply it, try again!
I also strongly recommend using wowie's AWE Hair shader. The current version is kind of a preview but works well enough already;) And the new aweEnvironment has a qualitycontrol for it. I've used it on fibermesh- and Garibaldi hair also, with a bit of fiddling I seem to get better results than with aweSurface, generally. DL it here: wowie's free stuff
The nicest thing about AWE Hair is you can basically delete the diffuse textures, great for those ancient models with baked in highlights.
My trials and errors are documented here on p 34 or thereabout.
I generally just use the camera settings ie ISO for exposure. Haven't had glowing problems with ISO as high as 3600 (roughly +2.5 EV and all else at default) . But the new build does have a more relaxed over exposure protection, so I'm not at all surprised you're seeing those kind of artifacts. If you do see problems at 2.5 EV or more, lowering that to 2 or 1, then also boost your area lights by 1 should produce roughly the same result.
Remember to enable gamma correction in the standard renderer settings first. The scripted renderer doesn't have access to that setting. You can still set gamma/gain via the scripted renderer if you want to.
For live rendering/IPR, you need to use the standard renderer, but enable 'Progressive Rendering' for better performance. For final renders, always use the scripted render. You can use 'Progressive Rendering' with the scripted renderer. Generally, 'Progressive Rendering' are more prone to noise and has less diffuse depth compared to non progressive rendering.
The AWE shading kit zip file is DIM ready, so that's what I recommend you do. But if you prefer to do it manually here's what to do:
All files in 'DAZ Studio_4.5;4.x Private Build;4.x Public Build' should be placed inside your DS application folder, for example "C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4"
All files in 'Content' should be placed inside your '\My DAZ3D Library' folder or where you store your typical DAZ/Poser runtime folders.
Gamma correction and the scripted renderer have massive impact on render times with diffuse surfaces.
Ok, I'll use the camera exposure and see how it goes, tks! It will take a while to get used to all the new options;)
Thank you so much for the suggestions guys. I'll do some tweaking and do another render with it.
I love Nightshift3D's products and couldn't resist getting https://www.daz3d.com/tachyon-xlr8-motorcycle to see what it looks like with awe;) First testrender with pure HDRI light at only 512 samples/128 SS samples. ACES tonemapping and default exposure...no postwork