Jack Tomalin 'The Library' textures a bit rocky in 3DL?
Roman_K2
Posts: 1,229
I tried rendering "The Library" in DS 4.8 using 3DL... generally speaking it all looks awesome but after a couple of tries I realized many of the objects are looking a bit rough... in particular the surface of the wax part of the candles, and the covering of the seats kind of looks like stone or concrete. Also for me the candles are not lit and the table lamp(s) in not turned on. It's all very atmospheric but I noticed in the "Jack Tomalin Appreciation..." thread that other people are getting much softer renders overall, and really nice seats so is there anything straight off that I'm doing wrong? Also where is the product wiki for this, again? On my hard drive the string "tomalin" does not appear.
I should recount my experience with Nerd3D's "Cave System" which is no longer in the DAZ catalogue. I bought CS and was reasonably intrigued by it, but successive bad installs and scattered assets caused me to miss the product-specific shaders and things that were included in that one, with the result that for literally two years my flowstone surfaces and other "limestone cavern" things weren't up to snuff.
I installed "The Library" with DIM by the way.
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If you click the information symbol (letter i in a circle) in DIM it will take you to the readme, which is here: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/13467/start
It does look like it's getting the wrong textures. I don't have it to check. Are you sure you're using the DS version (.duf files)?
Let me look into this, if it's not some quirk of 4.8 it could just be your render settings etc.. bear with me :)
It seems to render ok here.. so I'm going to hazard a guess you increase the shading rate. Under Render Settings, Shading Rate.. try setting it to 0.1.. that's what I use, but obviously it will increase render times. You can experiment with increasing it to 0.5, which will be grainer, but quicker..
What lights are in the scene?
That almost looks like UberArea or UberEnvironment with too low of a samples setting to me.
Ok no biggie as I say. If I can get to the product "wiki" or packing list then I might be able to compare what's SUPPOSED to be showing up in the content library, and what I have which FWIW seems a bit spare - no cameras for instance, no materials or shaders (that I could see) and "Lights" is empty.
I'll try rendering again with the "0.1" setting as suggested. Btw I have a green parrot to go with that avatar outfit, (see treetops in top left of main photo) so if you're ever in Toronto, Canada...
Uh, let's see... Candle_Point_L and "R", Fireplace_Point and a whole lot of "HeadLamp Blocker" stuff. Who knows maybe I did swipe the touchpad over the Uber Environment assets, I don't know... (bit of a funky touchpad, using a large Avery label to make the plastic less slick and glossy)
Sorry about the messy furniture in my TL btw... I was just trying a quick render.
Headlamp blockers are signs of Area lights being used...look for the actual arealights and look at the sample settings.
I'll keep it in mind for the next rendering attempt... there seems to be at least a bit of a logic bomb or slip-up with this because the download page in my accounts CLEARLY says to refer to the "product wiki".
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/13467/start
Ok, that helps!
Now I notice that everything is governed by a "core installer". Not sure what this object (core installer) looks like.
I know I'm making progress because after clicking on most of the "Pre_" (pre-load?) items there are now four "lights" items where before I had nothing. I wasn't sure which "Pre_" things to click on but it seemed that I could live with only one fireplace going for the time being.
However although the room appears brighter, my initial renders are all black. Does this mean I have to adjust the values of each and every light in the room??? Not sure what the relationship is between something like the physical lamp on the table, and the light that radiates from the lamp on the table? Moreover even though there are lots of physical lights in the room, the Lights Editor only shows blockers and would I like to add a light? That seems awfully complicated for what I am trying to do.
The next funky thing that seemed to happen is: clicking on the landscape painting brings it up all right, but by default it appears really huge and it's positioned on the floor right in front of the fireplace. Reminds me of an electronic white board at a seminar or something.
You can see the painting facing towards the left, way at the back of the room... it's smack dab in front of the fireplace... is it intended that the user chooses his own spot to "hang" the painting? I suppose that for the scene that I have in mind the little dog is a business magnet and he's relaxing after dinner in formal attire as so, and the painting could "hang" over the fireplace... for this bit of storyboarding I'm using low-res files from several days ago; my latest render (with two attempts at light) looks like it's going to be an overnight deal.
Roman
P.S. Whupps, I must have cranked that sample render to a higher resolution than I thought... but the candle and lamp are definitely from my early renders; they resemble stone or concrete. My latest render has been going for over an hour and it's still at 1 percent so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.
1: This set uses Area Lighting (mesh lights) http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/ and have a sample rate of their own
2: Render settings shading rate should be lower than 0.50 say around 0.30
3: these lights take longer to render than regular lights...a lot longer.
Oh-oh... lots to learn there, looks like. Will read off-line... in the meantime I'm a bit surprised that the "light presets" don't give me more than I am getting though. There is no light coming from the table lamps say. Specifically in the case of "The Library" do you click on just ONE light preset (of the four that there seems to be) or do you click all of them?
Another puzzle: when I look at manual download instead of just going for DIM straight off, there seem to be THREE choices??? I wonder which one I got? Maybe it's time to go back and just take the legacy one?
For 4.8 you want the DS version...
It seems to be getting better; I'm now trying to figure out the lights. In this quick outtake from a test render (it took over an hour to get this far) the main curved object is the top of a lampshade. The lampshade now has a burlap or papyrus "tooth" to it, although it remains unlit.
I tried a few more renders and using any of the preset lights continues to give a sort of rough concrete look. Using a few regular lights mostly gives a better result but I've encountered a new wrinkle: the items in the Everyday Drinks set by Maclean seem to be Iray-only??? This is a first for me, or at least I don't know how to control the colors, surfaces and textures.
Example: a bottle chosen at random from "Everyday Drinks" and placed on the table in the library shows up green in the DS preview window, and it seems to want Iray. Selecting the surface and forcing the basic "glass" shader on it make the glass transparent? I don't get how the "liquid" in the glass or bottle is supposed to work - there's no OBJ file to import separately (that I could find) and no JPEG for the texture.
Sorry I didn't see this post sooner.
Yes, Everyday Drinks only has Iray materials. It states clearly on the page - 'Compatible with: DAZ Studio 4.8 or higher. Iray materials only - 3Delight materials not included.' I discussed my reasons for using Iray in another post (Vendors - We don't all use Iray), and basically it was because I wasn't happy with the results in 3DL. But that doesn't mean to say you can't convert the materials to 3Delight. It's just a question of how realistic you want your renders to be.
Re the liquids - Almost all the glasses and bottles have morphs to tilt/lower the liquid. You don't need a separate .obj or texture - just go to the Parameters pane and use the morphs.
Hope this helps.
mac
Thanks it was a sort of a spur of the moment thing - bing! idea! Want drinking glasses/ok these look good! Checkout shopping cart... oh, no!!!
I'll play with it a bit more of course.
World's slowest "Jack Tomalin The Library" render newbie reporting, summer 2016... I just noticed that some people are doing real well with "The Library". Like this hot render here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1340741/#Comment_1340741
I noticed "The Library" seems to be back in my DAZ Install Manager download queue... what's up with that, I wonder? See attached screen shot, the red arrow. Ahh... going over the read-me file again, at the very bottom it indicates certain "legacy files" have been removed... must be why it up for re-downloading... never seen anything like that before. Wonder if the business of the removed file(s) affected, and/or continues to affect, us slow-pokes at the bottom of the render food chain.
Also, at the very bottom of the read-me file, which I accessed by clicking on the "i" symbol in DIM, there is a link to "technical support". For me it comes up Error 404, file not found.
Ciao for now... keep up the good work... hope this helps.
The Library came back into DIM (a little while ago, actually) because legacy files were removed, and because files were rearranged. (If you go into the Scenes and Materials directories in Content Library, you'll see that they both now have 3Delight subdirectories.) Why, you might be wondering, were the files rearranged?
Well .... http://www.daz3d.com/the-library-iray-addon
Which is what the person used in the image that you linked to. The addon came out at the end of May.
Kind of a first time, for me, to have a sort of "update" to a product, via DIM. Wouldn't it have been better to send out an e-mail or something.
Btw I noticed that the lights in "Rural Chateau II" seem have have similar... names, in the Parameters pane, as the old ones in 'The Library". I guess they are mesh lights as well? I didn't seem to get any "stone" like effects when I tried the set in 3DL just now, but then again I didn't load the entire scene... what's especially missing here is the drapes. But it does look a lot more like the promo pictures, than I got with "The Library".
Ok, much better results after "updating" The Library towards the end of July 2016... whatever has been done in the updated version works for me! Only problem was this 3DL render took 4.5 hours, and this was for a relatively small image. I have post-processed one of the hanging lights and I tried improving one of the candles.
Not wanting to waiting 4+ hours for the next test, I used the first render as a background plane to throw in a few low resolution props. On these items the cast shadows are obviously not correct but anyway...