Problems with Render and Advanced Render

Stonealicious

Hey Experts!

I am using Daz to create an image I am using in a package design. The imagery is AMAZING.

I am on a MacBook Pro OS 10.8.5 - 2.3 GHz Quad Core. 8GB Ram.

My goal is to create medical style male and female figures for a sports type product.

I purchased the anatomy bundle, inserted Michael 4 and posed him right where I needed. Positioned a camera and am taking the shot through the camera.

I have also purchased PoseWorks pwGhost DS4. I need to make the figure blue like the medical looking images. The effect is perfect.

I render it at aspect 9:9 pixels 4200. Saved to jpg. Makes it 300 dpi when I open and convert it to the size I need in photoshop. Took about 60 to 90 Minutes to render.

PROBLEM 1
While I am getting the exact desired effect the image is still rather lo res looking. jagged edges, staircasing. So I started to research advanced rendering, made some changes to run tests and things changed.

20 hours to not even get 10% done. WHOA! So I cancelled the render. Pulled back on the settings now PROBLEM 2 started. Nothing is rendering right at all. I have even set everything back to default and tried to start over and it will not render correctly at all. I have what looks like missing pixels and can't get them back no matter what.

Check out the attached images. I hope they explain the situation. Not sure how many I can attach.

So basically I could use some advice on getting super clean, crispy looking images for print. Then I need to know what's going on with the missing pixels.

I have faith that I'm not in too far over my head I could just use a little guidance to take this to the next step.

Stonealicious

Additonal Images

Richard Haseltine

I'm not sure what is causing the "missing pixels" - it could be a sample setting issue. High-resolution images do take a while to render - Ds renders don't have a PPI value attached, you need to multiply the desired output size by 300 (in your case) to get the number of pixels you need, then set the PPI without resampling in your image editor.

Mattymanx

Can you please add a screen shot of your advanced render settings as they are now and your surface settings for the figure please?

Thank you.

millighost

stonealicious69 said:

...
I purchased the anatomy bundle, inserted Michael 4 and posed him right where I needed. Positioned a camera and am taking the shot through the camera.

I have also purchased PoseWorks pwGhost DS4. I need to make the figure blue like the medical looking images. The effect is perfect.

From the images you posted, it looks like you need some kind of "edge-blend-effect", i.e.the color of the surface is only dependent on its orientation towards the camera. I used this simple setup in shadermixer with only a single edge-blend node, inner color dark blue, outer color light blue (see image). Since you are compositing in photoshop anyway, i do not think the pwGhost gives any advantage (although i do not have it and do not exactly know what it does, i think its main use is when you have more than one object in your scene).
Because the surface is basically smooth (no high frequencies) and the render is so large, i used a shading rate of 10. To combine it in photoshop and get a smooth edge i used 4x4 pixel samples. Render time is approx. 30 seconds (for 3000x4000 pixels).

I render it at aspect 9:9 pixels 4200. Saved to jpg. Makes it 300 dpi when I open and convert it to the size I need in photoshop. Took about 60 to 90 Minutes to render.

Save as PNG or TIFF. That gives you an alpha channel, that you can use in photoshop. . PNG gives you a premultiplied alpha, TIFF a straight alpha. With jpeg you would need to to create a mask with all kinds of problems (staircasing and such). Better invest the time to find out how photoshop handles the alpha channel.

PROBLEM 1
While I am getting the exact desired effect the image is still rather lo res looking. jagged edges, staircasing. So I started to research advanced rendering, made some changes to run tests and things changed.

20 hours to not even get 10% done. WHOA! So I cancelled the render. Pulled back on the settings now PROBLEM 2 started. Nothing is rendering right at all. I have even set everything back to default and tried to start over and it will not render correctly at all. I have what looks like missing pixels and can't get them back no matter what.

Check out the attached images. I hope they explain the situation. Not sure how many I can attach.

So basically I could use some advice on getting super clean, crispy looking images for print. Then I need to know what's going on with the missing pixels.

I have faith that I'm not in too far over my head I could just use a little guidance to take this to the next step.

Stonealicious

Millighost, This seems like the way I should have gone. When I started this project about a month ago I posted admin with samples of what I was trying to achieve and they pointed me in the direction of pw Ghost Shader. It has worked perfectly so I kept moving on.

My first renders have been AMAZING!

Ok well the problem seems to be isolated to pwGhost Phantom. Everything else seems to render fine except when I use that. Not sure why that started.

I haven't learned Shader Mixer yet and it seems pretty involved.

I was hoping someone could tell whatt's causing the lines and pixel issues. I have posted a few more.

Doing it with Shader Mixer and saving render as a tif would be the way to go. Guess I need a crash course.

Stonealicious

Hope this helps

Stonealicious

I am getting this during rendering.

Richard Haseltine

That's not an issue - it means what it says, recompiling the shader (which requires the source code, so you can't do it) might give better performance (that is speed, or memory use - not a better render - and it wouldn't necessarily be a dramatic change). It would be nice to have updated versions, but it may be being held off to avoid problems for people who haven't upgraded.

Stonealicious

ok was just hoping it might be a clue

Is there any preference file that might need to be deleted or anything like that? Something to refresh how its looking at rendering. Can't figure out why it has changed. All setting are the same from renders.

Rodrak

Richard Haseltine said:

That's not an issue - it means what it says, recompiling the shader (which requires the source code, so you can't do it) might give better performance (that is speed, or memory use - not a better render - and it wouldn't necessarily be a dramatic change). It would be nice to have updated versions, but it may be being held off to avoid problems for people who haven't upgraded.

I think all latest versions of pw shaders can be recompiled. Probably with a simple:

\bin\shaderdl.exe --recompile-sdl \shaders\pwGhost.sdl

but I think it's unlikely to fix the problem...

Stonealicious

ok so in Advanced Render Settings when I click Restore Default Settings... Progressive Rendering gets de-selected.

When that is SELECTED during render all pixels... nodes... whatever they are called are all filled in.

OMG this only took me 4 days to sort out.

Richard Haseltine

That's odd - Progressive render can be a memory hog, and shouldn't give better results in the end than a regular render (its benefit is that you get an overview of how the whole render will look without having to wait for it to complete any section). The default shading rate is 1, which is a bit high for best results - in the Advanced tab of render Settings try setting it to .2 and see if that looks better.