The Official aweSurface Test Track

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    WIP

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  • 3Diva3Diva Posts: 11,470

    Very cool! The horizon line is a bit sharp, you might tilt the camera angle so that the horizon line is hidden behind the vehicle. The image is looking great so far!

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    3Diva said:

    Very cool! The horizon line is a bit sharp, you might tilt the camera angle so that the horizon line is hidden behind the vehicle. The image is looking great so far!

    Thank you, really appreciate the feedback. And she needs a new jacket, with a zipper that won't distort when fitting it to Genesis1:) I have my eyes set on a couple of  G3F ones by Linday...

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    Trying to finetune my lookdev light rig and this M4 skin I picked up today: https://www.daz3d.com/last-gladiator-for-m4-and-f4 , those displacement maps are kind of nice:) Headshape transfered to G1:

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    ...another one, darn the UV-seams are visible. Ahh well...

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    @wowie

    I wouldn't mind having a fresnel strength slider;) And a question, what are the reflection- and glossiness controls for?

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    @wowie

    I wouldn't mind having a fresnel strength slider;)

    There's already a control for Fresnel. It's called Index of Refraction. laugh

    And a question, what are the reflection- and glossiness controls for?

    Viewport only controls. If you use the first specular lobe, you can actually see specular/reflection ala dsDefault material. Doesn't actually do anything when rendered in 3delight.

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

    @wowie

    I wouldn't mind having a fresnel strength slider;)

    There's already a control for Fresnel. It's called Index of Refraction. laugh

    Ahh...ok:) So lowering IoR should make fresnel tighter, right?

    wowie said:

    And a question, what are the reflection- and glossiness controls for?

    Viewport only controls. If you use the first specular lobe, you can actually see specular/reflection ala dsDefault material. Doesn't actually do anything when rendered in 3delight.

    Tks, neat;)

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    Ahh...ok:) So lowering IoR should make fresnel tighter, right?

    Lowering Fresnel would make specular at facing angles have less strength. That's why the fabric presets uses 1.35, combined with lowered specular strength.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020
    wowie said:

    Ahh...ok:) So lowering IoR should make fresnel tighter, right?

    Lowering Fresnel would make specular at facing angles have less strength. That's why the fabric presets uses 1.35, combined with lowered specular strength.

    Yep! I'm experimenting with fresnel on skin now. Testing IoR of 1.65 with a low glossy fresnel roughness to make it stronger and tighten up the effect...we'll see how it goeslaugh

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    ...so it seems to work as I thought, and of course it went over the top haha...

    I fiddled and I huffed and I puffed with the displacement settings and managed to make the seams much less noticable. Min/max ratio of -1.007/1 to be exact, and had to lower the strength a bit. Made him a set of GB brows and a bit of fibermesh stubble, and of course armpit hair, all using AWE Hair. I've found that setting AO distance to 0.001 and reflection bias to 0.1 gets rid of a lot of "shadow blotches" but it's a bit of a struggle. I know AWE Hair was not designed for those hair types but I still get better results than with aweSurface. Any tips would be appreciated for rendering body hair etc;) Now off to sort out the specular stuff...

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    Well I have to settle for this now, onwards...(progressive renders with 512/128 samples so yeah a bit noisy)

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    Played around with the environment settings. Used a daylight HDRI and 2 emitters. Also experimented with the camerabased exposure and have to say it's working properly now:) And no glowing ears:)) Spent a good amount of time tweaking the settings trying to get as close as possible without postwork. The fog is simply a cloud prop with my ambient edge blend shader network. Nonprogressive render with 2048/1024 samples:

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    ...still trying to find some AWE Hair settings that work on GB hair...some strange things going on but not sure if it's the hair, shader settings or lighting (HDRI)?

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  • Finally got round to installing the new Awe update.

    V4 using the new Gen-4 preset and Hair preset. This is Summer with Amanda hair, just an Awe Environment sphere (30-45 minute render time progressive).

    No additional adjustments.

    Need to figure out how to get a nice gem look - I thought Sveva-Lilflames Shades of Earth converted to Awe with a glass preset might work, but too glassy.

    Next up, checking out the other figure base presets.

    Is it my imagination, or is the Environment sphere light stronger?

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    Finally got round to installing the new Awe update.

    V4 using the new Gen-4 preset and Hair preset. This is Summer with Amanda hair, just an Awe Environment sphere (30-45 minute render time progressive).

    No additional adjustments.

    Need to figure out how to get a nice gem look - I thought Sveva-Lilflames Shades of Earth converted to Awe with a glass preset might work, but too glassy.

    Next up, checking out the other figure base presets.

    Is it my imagination, or is the Environment sphere light stronger?

    Nice! The hair looks a bit too transparent though, or is it just me...did you make sure the opacity map(s) gamma settings are correct = 1? Most poser mats and many 3DL mats load with gamma 0. Don't know about the environmental light strength, but it is  totally revised and so much easier to control:)

  • Finally got round to installing the new Awe update.

    V4 using the new Gen-4 preset and Hair preset. This is Summer with Amanda hair, just an Awe Environment sphere (30-45 minute render time progressive).

    No additional adjustments.

    Need to figure out how to get a nice gem look - I thought Sveva-Lilflames Shades of Earth converted to Awe with a glass preset might work, but too glassy.

    Next up, checking out the other figure base presets.

    Is it my imagination, or is the Environment sphere light stronger?

    Nice! The hair looks a bit too transparent though, or is it just me...did you make sure the opacity map(s) gamma settings are correct = 1? Most poser mats and many 3DL mats load with gamma 0. Don't know about the environmental light strength, but it is  totally revised and so much easier to control:)

    Really just investigating how the presets look without tweaking. Hey, they don't look like clingfilm wigs any more which is miles of improvement.

    I'll try them out on a few character mats and get an idea of any general balancing tweaks needed. i.e. the old presets needed diffuse strength adjusted and specular reduced. So far, it seems the Gen-4 presets look ok with no tweaks, but G2 thru G8 are going to need adjustment. I've only checked G2F, G3F and G8F on one skin each, but so far they tend to look a little 'Presidential' in skin tone, and G3F lost opacity maps on eyelashes on my only G3F test so far. On Genesis, Freak 5 looked ok, actually he looked good, too good, he looks like a pale lumpy dude, the awe preset gave him a healthy rugged complexion.

    Gamma is on at 2.2 in render settings. I was under the impression it could also be done in image editor, but one shouldn't set it in both. Don't know if I checked the Opacity maps are still in place after awe application.

    Render times seem a little longer.

    Any advice on getting the necklace to look like gems rather than clear plastic baubles - I reduced transmission to half in a test after this render and it looked closer.

  • G8F awe preset applied to 3delight Elizabeth - no material tweaks. Light, a number of AreaPT planes.

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  • khorneV2khorneV2 Posts: 147

    Hi,

    can someone estimate an average render time for a standard scene (1 character and a 3d environment for example) please ?

    My last try was quite long.

    Regards

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited October 2020

    Really just investigating how the presets look without tweaking. Hey, they don't look like clingfilm wigs any more which is miles of improvement.

    I'll try them out on a few character mats and get an idea of any general balancing tweaks needed. i.e. the old presets needed diffuse strength adjusted and specular reduced. So far, it seems the Gen-4 presets look ok with no tweaks, but G2 thru G8 are going to need adjustment. I've only checked G2F, G3F and G8F on one skin each, but so far they tend to look a little 'Presidential' in skin tone, and G3F lost opacity maps on eyelashes on my only G3F test so far. On Genesis, Freak 5 looked ok, actually he looked good, too good, he looks like a pale lumpy dude, the awe preset gave him a healthy rugged complexion.

    To determine what you need to tweak, try rendering with and without SSS to see how the set renders.

    Left Diffuse only. Right Diffuse with SSS.

    If you need to adjust diffuse strength with textures, instead of using the Diffuse Strength slider, use the 'Color Correct Inputs' in the Options - Mask Section. These controls let you tweak saturation (with over saturation protection) and gamma of textures. Playing with them will affect both diffuse and SSS inputs.

    Same as first example, but with Options - Mask - Saturation set to -0.2

    Another dial you might want to tweak is diffuse roughness. High diffuse roughness will have a more 'flat' shade, producing a more even brightness across surfaces as it gets closer to grazing angles. Here, it's near the cheek/ear area of the render.

    Same as first example, but with Diffuse roughness set to 0% (value applied in the preset is 75%).

    If you want to limit the tweaks to just SSS, tweak the 'Subsurface Absorption Color' to your liking.  I usually tweak 'Subsurface Absorption Color' in live renders, since you can actually see the changes as you render. The value to tweak are saturation (color intensity) or hue (color). If you're seeing too strong (glowing) SSS, tone down the saturation. If you want a different shade of color, adjust the hue.

    Same as first example, but with Subsurface Absorption Color set to half the saturation.

    There's also 'Subsurface Color' but I recommend using the previous first.

    Lastly, use a neutral setting - a temperature of 6500K and saturation of 0 - to set up your materials. If you use live render/progressive rendering while fine tuning materials, remember that using those mode renders less diffuse bounces compared to using the non progressive scripted renderer (using the default bounce depth limits). Tone mapping also affects the results.

    Any advice on getting the necklace to look like gems rather than clear plastic baubles - I reduced transmission to half in a test after this render and it looked closer.

    Gemstones generally have high index of refraction (>1.8), which makes them highly reflective. For transmission settings, absorption will vary depending on the size/scale of the object. When in doubt, just dial it up to the max then adjust to suit your needs. Diffuse/Transmission Color shouldn't be set to pure white.

    At 100% Transmission, refraction needs a lit/white background. As you discovered, the easiest way around this is to use less Transmission instead (something like75%). Leave the diffuse enabled and you can also boost the diffuse by raising 'Global Illumination Exposure' by 1 or 2.

    With diffuse, without diffuse, without diffuse but lit/white object in the background.

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

    About gamma settings (applies to regular 3DL, IBLM and aweSurface/scripted rendering):

    In the regular 3DL rendersettings set gamma to 2.20 and gamma correction ON. When using aweSurface/scripted pathtracing: In the scripted rendersettings gamma should be left at the default 2.20.

    Texture maps: Gamma is set in the image editor or LIE (layered image editor). Diffuse/Albedo maps should have a value of 0, every controlmap (specular-, roughness-, bump/displacement-, opacity-, difffuse strength maps etc should have a value of 1.

    When using aweSurface/aweHair shaders you can finetune diffuse gamma on a per surface basis, as wowie has explained to us:) Gamma can also be offset for the aweEnvironment (parameters/environment) and/or the environment sphere (surface settings).

    For more info, refer to the (upcomingcheeky) awe userguide or post here:)

     

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020
    khorneV2 said:

    Hi,

    can someone estimate an average render time for a standard scene (1 character and a 3d environment for example) please ?

    My last try was quite long.

    Regards

    I'm afraid that question is too generic, it all depends on scene complexity, surface settings, lighting, rendersettings, rendering hardware...

    There is this new feature in the aweEnvironment called override: What you can experiment with is enabling "override samples" and lowering the values. Setting diffuse depth to 1 or 2 will speed up rendering but there is of course always a trade off. Setting it to 1 will reduce bounced light/color bleed to virtually none. Setting Irradiance samples to something like 256 will also speed up things but you'll get more overall noise. The other method is to disable "samples override" and set Irradiance/SS samples per surface, thus optimizing your scene. Use higher samples for the character in the foreground and lower for the environment, mask the noise with depth of field;)

    Feel free to post screenshots/renders of a particular scene and someone will probably be able to give some hints!

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • khorneV2khorneV2 Posts: 147
    khorneV2 said:

    Hi,

    can someone estimate an average render time for a standard scene (1 character and a 3d environment for example) please ?

    My last try was quite long.

    Regards

    I'm afraid that question is too generic, it all depends on scene complexity, surface settings, lighting, rendersettings, rendering hardware...

    There is this new feature in the aweEnvironment called override: What you can experiment with is enabling "override samples" and lowering the values. Setting diffuse depth to 1 or 2 will speed up rendering but there is of course always a trade off. Setting it to 1 will reduce bounced light/color bleed to virtually none. Setting Irradiance samples to something like 256 will also speed up things but you'll get more overall noise. The other method is to disable "samples override" and set Irradiance/SS samples per surface, thus optimizing your scene. Use higher samples for the character in the foreground and lower for the environment, mask the noise with depth of field;)

    Feel free to post screenshots/renders of a particular scene and someone will probably be able to give some hints!

    ok thanks !

     

  • wowie said:

    Really just investigating how the presets look without tweaking. Hey, they don't look like clingfilm wigs any more which is miles of improvement.

    I'll try them out on a few character mats and get an idea of any general balancing tweaks needed. i.e. the old presets needed diffuse strength adjusted and specular reduced. So far, it seems the Gen-4 presets look ok with no tweaks, but G2 thru G8 are going to need adjustment. I've only checked G2F, G3F and G8F on one skin each, but so far they tend to look a little 'Presidential' in skin tone, and G3F lost opacity maps on eyelashes on my only G3F test so far. On Genesis, Freak 5 looked ok, actually he looked good, too good, he looks like a pale lumpy dude, the awe preset gave him a healthy rugged complexion.

    To determine what you need to tweak, try rendering with and without SSS to see how the set renders.

    Left Diffuse only. Right Diffuse with SSS.

    If you need to adjust diffuse strength with textures, instead of using the Diffuse Strength slider, use the 'Color Correct Inputs' in the Options - Mask Section. These controls let you tweak saturation (with over saturation protection) and gamma of textures. Playing with them will affect both diffuse and SSS inputs.

    Same as first example, but with Options - Mask - Saturation set to -0.2

    Another dial you might want to tweak is diffuse roughness. High diffuse roughness will have a more 'flat' shade, producing a more even brightness across surfaces as it gets closer to grazing angles. Here, it's near the cheek/ear area of the render.

    Same as first example, but with Diffuse roughness set to 0% (value applied in the preset is 75%).

    If you want to limit the tweaks to just SSS, tweak the 'Subsurface Absorption Color' to your liking.  I usually tweak 'Subsurface Absorption Color' in live renders, since you can actually see the changes as you render. The value to tweak are saturation (color intensity) or hue (color). If you're seeing too strong (glowing) SSS, tone down the saturation. If you want a different shade of color, adjust the hue.

    Same as first example, but with Subsurface Absorption Color set to half the saturation.

    There's also 'Subsurface Color' but I recommend using the previous first.

    Lastly, use a neutral setting - a temperature of 6500K and saturation of 0 - to set up your materials. If you use live render/progressive rendering while fine tuning materials, remember that using those mode renders less diffuse bounces compared to using the non progressive scripted renderer (using the default bounce depth limits). Tone mapping also affects the results.

    Any advice on getting the necklace to look like gems rather than clear plastic baubles - I reduced transmission to half in a test after this render and it looked closer.

    Gemstones generally have high index of refraction (>1.8), which makes them highly reflective. For transmission settings, absorption will vary depending on the size/scale of the object. When in doubt, just dial it up to the max then adjust to suit your needs. Diffuse/Transmission Color shouldn't be set to pure white.

    At 100% Transmission, refraction needs a lit/white background. As you discovered, the easiest way around this is to use less Transmission instead (something like75%). Leave the diffuse enabled and you can also boost the diffuse by raising 'Global Illumination Exposure' by 1 or 2.

    With diffuse, without diffuse, without diffuse but lit/white object in the background.

    @Wowie

    Cheers for the tips : colour correction : saturation reduced to -.33 diffuse saturation to -.45 , reduced subsurface absoption colour, to get this.

    Before, after.

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    awe_abby_satreddifftextsss.png
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  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    There is this new feature in the aweEnvironment called override: What you can experiment with is enabling "override samples" and lowering the values. Setting diffuse depth to 1 or 2 will speed up rendering but there is of course always a trade off. Setting it to 1 will reduce bounced light/color bleed to virtually none. Setting Irradiance samples to something like 256 will also speed up things but you'll get more overall noise. The other method is to disable "samples override" and set Irradiance/SS samples per surface, thus optimizing your scene. Use higher samples for the character in the foreground and lower for the environment, mask the noise with depth of field;)

    Feel free to post screenshots/renders of a particular scene and someone will probably be able to give some hints!

    Just adding something. I've not seen any big speed up when using less than 512 samples.

    As for setting texture gamma (accessible through the Image Editor). you can set these manually but you shouldn't need to. DS is (generally) smart enough. Well, most of the time. if I remember correctly from Parris thread:

    • Gamma = 0. DS will automatically decide which gamma to use.
    • Gamma = 1. Manually treat the image as a linear texture (strength maps or non color maps).
    • Gamma = 2.2 (or any number above 1). Manually applies specified value for texture gamma correction. A value of 2.2 is recommended since most textures comes in sRGB space, which roughly corresponds to a gamma 2.2. This is not related at all to the gamma you set in the renderer settings.

    One note: although the kit does have hair presets, you should really use a proper hair shader like AWE Hair instead.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    The worst thing about the new build is it makes me want to re-render everything I've done so farlaugh.

  • wowie said:
     
    wowie said:
     

     Thanks Wowie, that's sort of was my understanding of Gamma - not sure I'd recognise a situation where DS hadn't been smart enough though.

    wowie said:
     

    One note: although the kit does have hair presets, you should really use a proper hair shader like AWE Hair instead.

    I'm not using the other one. not the ones in the folder with base# blonde, brunette etc..

  • The worst thing about the new build is it makes me want to re-render everything I've done so farlaugh.

    I might have to, I'd saved a lot of shader presets that are probably now defunct - the auarium, the attempts at stained glass and a lot of skin presets.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    The worst thing about the new build is it makes me want to re-render everything I've done so farlaugh.

    I might have to, I'd saved a lot of shader presets that are probably now defunct - the auarium, the attempts at stained glass and a lot of skin presets.

    Yes, same here, but I think the environment sets will mostly need some light tweaking, so shouldn't be too hard. Skins...well...the old presets will atleast load all the relevant maps, will have to go from there and overwrite them with new settings I guess:)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2020

    Revisited Willow Creek. Decided to ditch the normalmaps because...well...when opening the file made with the previous awe build I have no normal map slots. Maybe should try saving as a hierarchical mats preset, apply ds default shader and re- applying the awe preset? Anyway, I made displacement maps from the diffuse textures, tweaked the lighting exposure (one sun emitter and a png converted from an HDRI in the environment. Minimal level adjustments in post:

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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
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