The Official aweSurface Test Track

wowie

pavsikakyj said:

Hi. How can I get rid of green-gray occlusion in skin tone, when using AWE surface?

When I use AWE distant light with Ubershader or PWtoon it works fine and shows awesome speed. With other AWE lights and emiting surfaces those shaders don't work.

You'd have to be more specific regarding the occlusion.

AWE AreaPT lights will not work with other currently available DAZ/3delight shaders. Only with AWE Surface and mustakettu's shaders. So, that's expected behavior.

Sven Dullah

Made a fur for the Gargoyle Hound...testrender

Sven Dullah

Zubarra test

Sven Dullah

Uhm...testing some sand textures and a simple fog layer (depth pass)

 

Sven Dullah

Wow that was scary:)) I edited my last post, opened the image properties thingy and there was a loooong story in latin. My god this site is so messed up

Sven Dullah

More experimenting, original render, depth pass and combined:

 

Sven Dullah

Damned forums, things are getting more and more messed up the more they try to fix it! DAZ stop fixing things:)))

Sven Dullah

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Sven Dullah

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Sven Dullah

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Sven Dullah

Sven Dullah said:

Sven Dullah said:

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..........

wowie

Just wanted to let you know, I've got an updated build of AWE Surface coming up.

Some things that have been changed (tentative, so subject to change):

• Diffuse with subsurface and diffuse without subsurface should be more comparable and consistent, regardless of textures used.
• Specular with the defaultt Ashihkmin-Shirley have been adjusted to match GGX output. It's slightly dimmer compared to the previous build.
• Less unwanted color bleeds with high exposure, be it scene exposure or camera exposure.
• Color Burn/Dodge can now be used to as an extra control to darken/lighten the render. This depends on the saturation and brightness of the textures.
• Occlusion have been revamped and now works limited to indirect light and doesn't affect direct light.

I will also try to finish AWE Hair and upload the finished build at the same time.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Just wanted to let you know, I've got an updated build of AWE Surface coming up.

Some things that have been changed (tentative, so subject to change):

• Diffuse with subsurface and diffuse without subsurface should be more comparable and consistent, regardless of textures used.
• Specular with the defaultt Ashihkmin-Shirley have been adjusted to match GGX output. It's slightly dimmer compared to the previous build.
• Less unwanted color bleeds with high exposure, be it scene exposure or camera exposure.
• Color Burn/Dodge can now be used to as an extra control to darken/lighten the render. This depends on the saturation and brightness of the textures.
• Occlusion have been revamped and now works limited to indirect light and doesn't affect direct light.

I will also try to finish AWE Hair and upload the finished build at the same time.

Excellent, thank you!

wowie

Testing out a DIM compatible .zip.

AWE Hair

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TY3k9Gn27ssEnsNqDoB2EhPViJU0jAFl/view?usp=sharing

AWE Surface

https://drive.google.com/file/d/154hmnGLi6xBC1Qrx3IJVnukVnfZgiCSr/view?usp=sharing

Sven Dullah

Tks so much wowie!

wowie

So, I gather those installers work? Anyway, I've made some tweaks and I'll update the files tomorrow. For one, the AWE Hair shader presets overrides textures so until the update hits, you'll have to Ctrl (Command on the Mac) + click to bring up the replace/retain texture dialog box. The hair shader should also render slightly faster with much less noise.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

So, I gather those installers work? Anyway, I've made some tweaks and I'll update the files tomorrow. For one, the AWE Hair shader presets overrides textures so until the update hits, you'll have to Ctrl (Command on the Mac) + click to bring up the replace/retain texture dialog box. The hair shader should also render slightly faster with much less noise.

Yup they installed, sorry for not being clear;) Been a bit busy dealing with RL and stuff lately. I've only tested rendering on 4.7 very briefly but looks to be ok.

Sven Dullah

@wowie

So I went to your google drive and found an awe shading kit, uploaded on the 16.12, this is the newest build I presume? But the hair shader is not yet updated? Latest version uploaded on the 11.12?

Sven Dullah

@wowie

Looks like there are some issues with the latest awe hair build, the one from 11.12. It doesn't render the opacity maps. I tested converting a couple of models, but nope. Also I get an error message about "glint strength" not being part of the awe hair shader.

Rolled back to the preview build and it's working again.

roezaka

Good day.

I have a question. How to make eyes brighter in the dark? Also how to change eye color. The diffuser does not work ...
My brown eyes are blue after rendering.

Sven Dullah

roezaka said:

Good day.

I have a question. How to make eyes brighter in the dark? Also how to change eye color. The diffuser does not work ...
My brown eyes are blue after rendering.

Hello! Which base model are you using? Do you mean brighter iris or sclera? Brighter reflections? If the cornea/eyesurface uses only transmission you could try mixing in a bit of opacity also. Make sure the "multiply specular/reflections with opacity" is OFF.

Sven Dullah

First test with the new awe build (and old awe hair), + made a depth pass with a simple fog camera:

roezaka

Sven Dullah said:

First test with the new awe build (and old awe hair), + made a depth pass with a simple fog camera:

Awesome!
Lovely shadows. What kind of lighting do you use, standard Distant light or Awe light?

Sven Dullah

roezaka said:

Sven Dullah said:

First test with the new awe build (and old awe hair), + made a depth pass with a simple fog camera:

 

Awesome!
Lovely shadows. What kind of lighting do you use, standard Distant light or Awe light?

Tks:) I pretty much always use the PT Area light shader, eithter using one of wowie's premade lights or applied to one or more primitive planes, combined with the awe environment light. In this case I just used a skydome jpg plugged into the environment sphere and a primitive plane (with the arealight shader) placed just inside the skydome for sunlight. Light fall off was set to 1 and temperature to around 5000, intensity scale 7 or there about. The larger the emitter the softer the shadows.

Btw. did you solve your eyes troubles?

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

@wowie

Looks like there are some issues with the latest awe hair build, the one from 11.12. It doesn't render the opacity maps. I tested converting a couple of models, but nope. Also I get an error message about "glint strength" not being part of the awe hair shader.

Rolled back to the preview build and it's working again.

The latest build of AWE Surface is the separate DIM package, not in the Shading Kit one.

As for the AWE Hair shader, I've not experienced any of what you're saying so it's likely a problem on your end. As for the glint strength, it's not meant to be there anymore.

It might be a problem with the preset, I think the color presets will override textures. I'll be re-uploading the corrected set in a few days. But moving forward, you really shouldn't use the preview build anymore.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

@wowie

Looks like there are some issues with the latest awe hair build, the one from 11.12. It doesn't render the opacity maps. I tested converting a couple of models, but nope. Also I get an error message about "glint strength" not being part of the awe hair shader.

Rolled back to the preview build and it's working again.

The latest build of AWE Surface is the separate DIM package, not in the Shading Kit one.

As for the AWE Hair shader, I've not experienced any of what you're saying so it's likely a problem on your end. As for the glint strength, it's not meant to be there anymore.

It might be a problem with the preset, I think the color presets will override textures. I'll be re-uploading the corrected set in a few days. But moving forward, you really shouldn't use the preview build anymore.

Hm ok, a bit confused here:) So the awe shading kit that you uploaded on the 16.12 doesn't have the newest aweSurface, but the aweSurface  and aweHair ZIP files uploaded on the 11.12 are the newest builds? Could you please provide a direct DL link to the latest ones? 

roezaka

Sven Dullah 

Your lighting option is only suitable if all the surrounding surfaces are under the awe shaders, right?

It's just that if I apply the awe shader to everything around, then the render time increases greatly. I only use it on metal, glass and leather. And for everything else - a standard DAZ shader.

Btw. did you solve your eyes troubles?

Yes I solved the problem. I've always used the "surface selection" tool and when I hovered the mouse over eye I saw only 2 surface options. I was surprised when I found a bunch of eye surfaces in the list of surfaces that were under iray shader :)

Sven Dullah

roezaka said:

Sven Dullah 

Your lighting option is only suitable if all the surrounding surfaces are under the awe shaders, right?

It's just that if I apply the awe shader to everything around, then the render time increases greatly. I only use it on metal, glass and leather. And for everything else - a standard DAZ shader.

Eh...yes that's correct. Are you saying you use aweSurface with the standard 3DL engine? Not using the scripts that tap in to the pathtracer? In that case the results will be far from optimal and rendering slower than molasses in January. (Progressive mode will actually use the raytracer but results will still be compomized). Also worth noting that the PT arealight shader is highly optimized for speed when using the scripted pathtracing. The DS standard lights will be much slower. The revised aweEnvironment allows you to adjust quality settings globally now, you can set shadow (Irradiance) samples, hairsamples (for aweHair) diffuse bounce depth and much more, making it so easy to optimize your scene for speed;)

Btw. did you solve your eyes troubles?

Yes I solved the problem. I've always used the "surface selection" tool and when I hovered the mouse over eye I saw only 2 surface options. I was surprised when I found a bunch of eye surfaces in the list of surfaces that were under iray shader :)

Oh, good to hear

roezaka

Sven Dullah

I am using a raytracerdraft script and set the "max ray depth" to 2. This gives a good speed. The basis of the lighting is my IBL master, unfortunately for daylighting I have to add UberEnvironment. I also try not to use standard spotlights, I don't really like them. Now I started to add AWE lighting as they look great on the character's skin and I don't notice any slowdown in rendering. They do not make shadows in my case, since there is almost always a wall behind the back with a standard shader (if I understand correctly).
This "not normal" mix gives the best result, speed - quality in my case ...
It would be great if aweEnvironment acted on the standard shader.

The revised aweEnvironment allows you to adjust quality settings globally now, you can set shadow (Irradiance) samples, hairsamples (for aweHair) diffuse bounce depth and much more, making it so easy to optimize your scene for speed;)

I tested it on the wall, and lowered these values, but unfortunately the difference with the regular shader is still huge. :(

Sven Dullah

roezaka said:

Sven Dullah

I am using a raytracerdraft script and set the "max ray depth" to 2. This gives a good speed. The basis of the lighting is my IBL master, unfortunately for daylighting I have to add UberEnvironment. I also try not to use standard spotlights, I don't really like them. Now I started to add AWE lighting as they look great on the character's skin and I don't notice any slowdown in rendering. They do not make shadows in my case, since there is almost always a wall behind the back with a standard shader (if I understand correctly).
This "not normal" mix gives the best result, speed - quality in my case ...
It would be great if aweEnvironment acted on the standard shader.

The revised aweEnvironment allows you to adjust quality settings globally now, you can set shadow (Irradiance) samples, hairsamples (for aweHair) diffuse bounce depth and much more, making it so easy to optimize your scene for speed;)

I tested it on the wall, and lowered these values, but unfortunately the difference with the regular shader is still huge. :(

Ok:) Quite an interesting workflow you invented. I figure there's no right or wrong way of doing things, as long as you're aware of the limitations and drawbacks, and it works for what you do. That's one thing about 3DL that I love, it's capable of doing toon, realistic and everything inbetween;) If you go for "photoreal", trying to get the same results as with awe/pathtracing using the ancient UE2 tech will not be an easy task and rendering times will for sure skyrocket.