Temple of Tranquility - A request to Stonemason
Sven Dullah
Posts: 7,621
https://www.daz3d.com/temple-of-tranquility
So, with all the new Stonemason sets, the trend is clear. He only provides basecolor- roughness- and normalmaps these days. I understand that's due to limitations of IRay, but for those that want to use these sets in other applications or 3Delight he should really also supply proper height maps. In my book a well made displacement map is invaluable, and unfortunately providing this limited number of controlmaps is not selling the products to me.
Here's to hoping for some future heightmaps, as the sets are beautifully done and I would love to own them!
Sven
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Comments
Has he ever provided much more than that? I've worked with Stonemason sets from throughout his catalog,and many only have base and bump/normal maps - and some items only have base maps. If his new sets consistently include roughness maps, that's an improvement. I don't think it has anything to do with limitations of Iray; I think he just likes to keep his sets as lightweight as possible, and that's one of the reasons his sets are so popular (aside from the quality, of course.
you can always use Materialize and make your own
I have to agree. I hate getting props where the PA used every single texture slot from Substance painter which is overkill in DS and takes to many resources.
I agree with this, and to make matters worse, often some of the maps are just all black or all white.
...which is why I'm making this request.
Don't know where this came from. I'm not asking for white metal maps, am I
With limitations I meant that due to limitations of users' graphic cards when using IRay, products are designed to be as lightweight as possible, which of course is obvious. It could be argued that this is a paradox when chasing realism...
I don't expect any support from you guys, you are not willing to pay one more cent for some additional maps, that wouldn't have to be used in IRay. And Stonemason told me nobody uses heightmaps anymore, so not exactly expecting him to listen to me either. But one can always dream, right?
That said, if products had the usual pbr controlmaps(base, height, roughness, normal and maybe AO) then it would be so much easier to set up materials in any pbr-renderer.
Most of my models aren't really suited to being displaced, as you've maybe noticed I try to achieve detail using both normals and mesh, and the mesh, especialy for something like yesterdays release don't look too pretty in wireframe view, they have been heavily optimised/triangulated to allow for scuplted mesh details that might usualy be achieved using displacement(height maps). so you are already getting the detail from a height map, it's just that I've baked it into the mesh.
Different apps have different requirements for a mesh to be displaced, some like 3Delight use micro displacement and the underlying mesh can be heavily optimised, but some require an even distribution of quad based polygons,
Iray is one that requires that even layout of polys to look good, Iray also subdivides the mesh at rendertime for displacment which when applied across a large scale environment will add dramaticaly to your render times. This is why I don't use displacement in Iray..if it did microdisplacement like 3Delight then I would absolutely include and use height maps.
so with something like yesterdays release even if a height map were used and more simple geometry were used then the end result would look exactly the same as the optimized mesh I supply, I'm still putting the detail you would get from a height map into the models, but I'm then optimising the mesh to retain that sculpted detail and to bring the polygon count down to something manageable for end users. if I were relying on displacement then those stone columns for example would be presented as basic (boring,no detail) cubes with an even distribution of polys.
Displacement/height maps also need to be in 16 bit, which also adds dramaticaly to memory useage.
displacement is cool ,I think I was the first PA to ever sell content at Daz that utilized displacement..but now that most users are using Iray I have to model with Irays capabilities in mind, and I've found that modelled detail alongside a normal map for micro detail is the better method for what I'm trying to create. it is a considered approach and I'm not trying to short change anyone with what they are buying.
so, thats a long winded way of saying no, I probably won't supply height maps, But I do appreciate the feedback and hope you understand my reasoning.
attached image shows what Iray displacement looks like on an optimised(triangulated) mesh, even on the quad based mesh which was subdivided 4 times you can see shading artefacts.
anything I've made after 2016 should at least included roughness maps, or roughness and metallic depending on what I'm making,prior to that(pre Iray) I would use specular maps,I find roughness can often be a subtle effect and sometimes I can get away with using a generic map across mutliple surfaces, it's a good way of keeping render times low by only using one map for multiple surfaces where the end result still looks good.
I've seen this a lot, I bought some content from another store recently and all the maps were 16k..but they also included all the metallic maps that substance spat out..but those metallic maps were just solid black, they were doing nothing at all, it's the same visual result as setting your metallic dial to zero. yet those 16k solid black maps were still being piled into memory and being calculated at rendertime.
I understand what you meant, all I was pointing out is that the paucity of maps in Stonemason sets predates Iray's addition to DS.
I actually would be totally in favor of adding more maps, since I don't render in Iray, or even DS for that matter. For whatever it's worth, I'm converting a lot of KitBash3D sets right now, and those include height maps for everything (frustratingly, even for things that don't need them). I'm actually on your side in tilting at this particular windmill; I'm just pointing out that what you're complaining about is nothing new.
I was refering to the maps created by Substance painter, not what you needed. Stonemason himself makes the same point in his final post as I was trying to make, but he was far clearer than what I said.
Tks so much, it was an interesting read! Yup I do understand, no problem;) Best of luck with future projects, I'll always check out your new releases!
Cool! Yes I have a lot of those too:(
Wow, I thought I made a request, not a complaint! (Just kidding, it's all good)
On the plus-side, I get better at making the maps I need, trial and error, can be great fun too
All good, Cheers!
FWIW, I love the way they render right out of the box. Well, I often set up the lighting and such (not in this example though - straight out of the box reduced in render resolution), but one thing I love is that I can get Really Great results with my modest GPU without having to run Scene Optimizer to reduce out of control map sizes. They're all in a really good size range for what's needed.
Rock On! (the steam is ThePhilosopher's iReal Animated Clouds)
That is a huge pet-peeve of mine. Large single color maps that accomplish nothing that DS could not do directly from the surface tab with out maps.
...would be cool to see a user-render with a close-up of a character leaning against one of those walls, with the sun coming in at an angle, to see what kind of micro-detail there is in those normal-maps...
the models need to be made for displacement maps, but daz studio hates high poly counts. with a few million polys people start to complain so thats not an option. and the userbase for 3Delight is so small, its not worth it.
€dit: nevermind Stonemason already answered, sorry : )
No worries;)
Yes, the two main reasons I'm sticking with 3DL pathtracing is: I never run out of memory, thus never have to optimize textures, so happily using 16k skydomes and 16bit displacement maps etc. and, secondly, the micro displacement which makes it possible to make a 3d ocean out of a one poly primitive plane, with little taxing on rendertimes;)
The flipside, of course is I convert every single surface I ever render, even from 3Delight to 3Delight LOL.