AOA Subsurface Shader Rendering
404nicg
Posts: 270
Hello all so I finally made the leap to Genesis 2 over the weekend (50% off everything was too good to pass up!). I noticed with most of the Genesis 2 characters they use the AOA Subsurface Shader. Is it just me or does that shader take waaaay longer than the Ubershader?
Are there any settings I can tweak on that to speed up render times? I don't want to ditch it completely because I do like the look of it but maybe there's some tweaking I can do? FYI : I'm still using 4.7 rendering in 3delight. Thank you
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Anybody? I my render time with a genesis 2 figure has increased x3 - x4 as opposed to Genesis. When the render gets to a genesis 2 figure it pauses for like 2 minutes before it can even start to render the skin.
Have you had a chance to look at the PDF manual
http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/16324/16324_subsurface-shader-base.pdf
Its a good place to start to see what settings do what.
What kinda lights are you using?
Do you have any HD morphs dialled? If so, HD plus sss shader takes a long time to spool.
Ahh thank you very much for this I had no idea a manual existed specifically for the shader. I'm going to peruse this as soon as I get a chance.
As far as lights, since I got the new characters I'm still trying to mix and match to see which setup I like to balance the render time vs the quality. The light set up I was using with genesis characters doesn't seem to work as well for some of the genesis 2 characters I have now so I'm still playing.
A setup I'm kind of building off of now is UberEnvironment2 with raytracing turned off (ambient mode) and then age of armour fill lights to imitate the sun and maybe a spotlight or 2 to set the scene
Do you have any HD morphs dialled? If so, HD plus sss shader takes a long time to spool.
I have a couple HD characters but for the most part the added render time on those isn't really bothersome. Render time really goes down when I load up the default skin material included with the character and change it from the AoA shader to the Daz default shader. So I'm really trying to find which setting in the AoA shader is responsible for jacking up the render time. (BTW : love your morphs )
Has anyone ever come to discover what AoA shader setting(s) drag render times to a crawl? I'd love to know as well, since I never manage to get quite the same effect from the Ubersurface2 shader as I do from AoA.
Thank you!
The AoA shader is a shadermixer network shader, and that contributes to the long rendertimes. There is a fix, you can import it into shadermixer and disconnect the opacity going into the surface brick if you use it for surfaces that doesn't have a transmap. That will speed up rendering.
ETA: There is info about this in here somewhere:https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55128/3delight-laboratory-thread-tips-questions-experiments/p1. Pretty long thread, 80+ pages:) but I saw something about that not so long ago=)
Thank you. Sadly, though, since most of the quality surfaces seem to have transmaps, I suppose it's easier just to suffer through the render times, or try to approximate the AoA look in Ubersurface, to which I've come sort of close, but no cigar yet.
You MIGHT want to consider getting UberSurface 2, which has some cool sss options.
Although personally I find sss is overrated and my approach is mostly to find an UberSurface skin I like, swap images, and then be sure to boost proper fresnel reflections instead of specular.
Wowie's super awe-shader will apparently be ready real soon;) I bet it can handle just about anything you can imagine, the interface is three pages wide=)
@wowie Hope you don't mind me posting your interface here;)
Oh, I already have it. It's my default alternative to AoA. The problem is that I can rarely achieve a satisfactory approximation of the AoA shader with it and end up settling short in favor of faster render times.
Thanks. That'd be great as long as it doesn't introduce more issues than it solves! I'd be happy with a way to achieve an accurate and visually acceptable "translation" of AoA to Ubersurface 2.
A very usefull trick, thanks !
After a lot more fiddling with an AoA to Ubersurface2 conversion, I remain perplexed. I'm wanting (at the moment) to convert Gen3F Eva's defailt A0A shader to Ubersurface2, ideally looking for a suitable one-to-one approximation in the finished product, but she continues to look sort of gray and palid. She's a fair-skinned model anyway, but in Ubersurface2, she appears vaguely "unwell". I have manipulated the subsurface, ambient, and diffuse surfaces to my wits end, but I just can't find a suitable approximation at the end of the day. Continuing with AoA is simply out of the question for me, as it brings my workflow to a near-standstill.
Basically, I'm wondering if there is a tool or technique for achieving suitable on-to-one conversions that I am somehow missing.
Not that I'm aware of, you always have to fiddle with settings when you convert from one shader to another
. It would be interesting to see some screenshots with both the AoA and the US2 version. I don't have US2 myself but am pretty familiar with the US shader. When converting DS default shader skins to US I basically plop the diffuse maps into the subsurface color slots, tint them with a light red-orange tone and decrease the diffuse strength from 100 to maybe 65-70%, then adjust the subsurface strength, usually ending up around 75-80%. They usually look pretty healthy after that
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Thank you for your kind reply.
I find that conversions from DAZ Default to US/US2 go smoothly. I do that a lot for my V4-based characters to excellent effect. My problem is in converting AoA to US2. It's a nightmarish process of fiddling that seems excessive. I'm reduced, now, to keeping the eye and mouth surfaces in AoA, and then doing what you do with the skin/lips/nails, but the result is just somehow lacking. I just can't seem to achieve that AoA "richness", but that shader is slow as molasses in January. It's completely impractical for me to use.
it is simply the effect of different maps interacting differently with various shader bases. there is no 'simple and quick' process to getting required results.
there will always be a compromise between speed and quality. higher quality results tend to mean longer rendertimes.
it tends to be a long 'tweak, render, tweak, render' etc process, and what works great with one set of textures, may not have the same results with a different set.
Well you could always try importing the AoA shader into shadermixer, disconnect opacity and save as a shader preset. Then apply it, while holding down command (on Mac), to all surfaces that don't have an opacity map. It should make a difference!
I was afraid of that. Ultimately, my dissatisfaction with the conversion I'm struggling with may cause me to have to suffer impractically long render times with AoA and make compromises in other areas.
Yes that's right of course, but the AoA SS shader always calculates opacity even if the surface opacity is set to 100%. Add that to the fact it is a shader network and you will have pretty slow rendering:) But yeah, it looks good:)
I suppose I'll have to use some other tricks/compromises like render settings. I'm back to AoA with Eva, doing some test renders of just her with one AoA ambient light. To be honest, it's hard to discern between a Draft, Proof, or Average Quality render at, say, 2000x2000. Frankly, I think most viewers would never know.