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Render settings helped. Hair seems to be getting reflections on front as would expect.
For mouth, checked as suggested and went down every setting on the tab until discovered velvet was empty with color as pure white. Adding SSS file for lips and toning down white to 192-192-192 seems to have helped. Lipstick still seems too heavy but my eyes are tired. Hopefully your suggested tweaks will work now. : )
You might have the hair. I removed hat & decorative feathers from “Liberty Hair” by Emma & Jordi. Think they can still be found via Poser Content that takes you to Gumroad.
Great, looks like you're back in business
Velvet.. not sure what you did there, as Velvet is not part of aweSurface?
SSS: Do note that SSS uses the diffuse color by default, if the SSS color slot is empty, and the "Use Diffuse Texture with SSS" slider is 100%. Set the slider to 0% and it will only use the SSS colors you pick in the SSS color fields. Also, it's easy to desaturate/change gamma on the diffuse color with the "Color Correct Input" button or the saturation/temperature/tonemapping overrides sliders, leading to less SSS saturation. So, unless you go for a special effect, there should be no need to use the SSS color maps (typically less saturated albedo maps). SSS strength maps (grayscale RGB), on the other hand, can be useful. Using less saturated SS scatter/absorption colors is another option;)
Another thing you may have not noticed: Always render through a camera with DoF enabled to see the fulll effect of bump/normal/displacement. If you don't want camera blur, just set the F/stop to a large number. Without DoF, you need roughly double the bump strength values, as they are "estimated differently" and so the result may vary. Accordingly, specular highlights/reflections/shadows might look a bit different.
Normalmaps: Wowie said not to use them, but kindly provided the option and made them atleast somewhat useable. If you use them and get black artefacts at grazing angles, reduce normal strength till they hopefully disappear. And always check the image gamma value in image editor. The normalmap is a color map so should have a value of 0. For some reason, every time I convert from Iray and check, they are set to 1, go figure... and IF I use them I usually start with a normal strength of 20% or so. I think this is due to IRay needing insane numbers to display height. Y'know, bump strenght in the 10000% range
Tks for the info on the hair!
Thanks. Apologize for the misunderstanding. Before installed the missing hair .dll files, had gone back basics with ubersurface2.
Converting everything to AWE seems painless enough. Render time when add hair tho. Woah! Big increase
Anyway, best wishes & thanks again for all your help. Fun playing around with all sliders.
Uhh sorry about that
& Happy Rendering!
No need for apologies. You really helped! I'm not very organized or methodical so my posts probably difficult to follow. 0_o
FWIW, going to try a car next. If memory serves correct, I could never get glass or water to look right when first joined in... 2018?
More digging through archives & "tips & tricks"
Hopefully AWE surface will make transition much easier. That was a nice Aston Martin you did. "How did he do the glass" ; )
What a coincidence, I just found the Mercury Coupe in my runtime, didn't know I owned it or how it got there, but working on a conversion right now:)
For the car windowglass I probably used ThinGlass with some Base thinfilm dialed in, and GGX specular BRDF with close to 0% roughness...but you could use just opacity, maybe paired with a coat layer if you want to give it some color, should be the fastest option. The opacity option won't use light refraction, so don't mix it with transmission or you could get weird artifacts;)
Be looking forward to seeing what you do with the Mercury. On my wish list now. :)
In fumbling around, at least automotive glass isn’t black. Headlights could use work in being a more reflective so your tweaks will come in handy.
Towards the end, decided to have some fun & mess around with a possible Stephen King version.
Anyway, best wishes on the Mercury & thanks for the link.
Ah yeah, she's a real beauty:))
OK. Another dumb question. (BTW: still trying to learn my way around in Ubersurface2 before going to AWE-Surface.)
This might be good setting for deep water, but what settings should I look at to get the water light a lighter blue and more ‘clear’ for an outdoor pool? (The diffuse & bump maps are the same file. Bump is RGB? They’re from “Zedicus Luxury Pool” -- if helps
Lights use 1stBastion’s Skydome (fb-cgt-SkydomeClearBlue.jpg) UberEnvironment2, distant lights, and an AoA spot to bring out the sphere near bottom of pool.
Hopefully water and then maybe I can actually do a scene in 3DL. : )
First, I don't have the Ubersurface2, so will have to guess...
The two things I can see from your settings that would contribute to the deep blue color are the combination of specular color and raytraced reflections (that would reflect the skydome color), since diffuse is turned off? What if you ditch the map in specular color and use it instead for opacity color? The shader doesn't seem to have a dedicated refraction color?
I'd argue that specular color in this context should be used only for metal, which takes on the color of the surface, not the light?
Bump/displacement: If there is no proper map, other than the diffuse map, atleast use LIE to make a copy with the proper gammavalue of 1. Or, better still, take it into your image editor, desaturate it, save it as an RGB(grayscale) 16Bit png and, preferrably, use traced displacement instead of bump,
Let me know how it goes! Generally speaking, for water, there should be no or very little diffuse contribution, so yup, leave it off;)
Took myself the liberty of testing water using UberSurface...
So picked a random pool and checked the ds default settings for it, I suppose you couldn't get it more wrong than this:
Added an AoA distant light and UE2, and a sky, (and a TRex), set the pool walls to a generic gray (removed blueish map), converted dz default poolwater to UberSurface, removed maps. used refraction with opacity color:
Changed opacity color to aqua:
The water topology is not flat here, so didn't bother with heightmaps...
My point being the water will not have a color of its own (maybe a little greenish), it will be a mix of reflections and the pool walls/floor surface.
Dunno if helpful but...you're welcome
Thanks for shots of water settings. Couldn’t get them to work but tired. Been a busy day playing with 3DL.
Since it was on sale, picked up RSSY's Iray to 3DL batch converter. Tried it on servco gas station with mixed results. Glass was white & garage doors hi-gloss green paint. Think I tweaked one of them before real life interrupted. My Car Paint from a subset. Meh.
Tried a different converter (from rendo) on G8M. Maybe desaturate lips? Ladies might be easier since can pass of as lipstick, but very little room for error with guys.
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Ready to go and play with water when decided to add actors to the scene. All of the versions I have of DS do *not* like 3DL or version of omnifreaker I'm using.
"Files/DAZ3D/DAZStudio4_Version4_20/shaders/omnifreaker/displacement/omDispStandard2.sdl' uses a different interface version. Automatic conversion was successful. It should be recompiled for better performance.
3Delight message #46 (Severity 1): The subsurface() shadeop should be specified with an "irradiance" channel for correct rendering and better performance when using global illumination. (in shader 'brickyard/{407f8e5c-3a9b-4708-b5e5-799ff1fe7c1d}/shader_Surface' on object 'shapematerial_Arms_3023_875')
Greek to me. In plain English it means the render effectively hangs at 51%. Leave it two minutes or twenty-- no progress that I could see.
So... Try AWE-Surface. Does indeed make a difference!
Water’s not perfect but at least it's about the color & opacity I’d expect. Not sure technical term-- aberration for how water distorts things? Actors out of focus & using DoF so probably mistake. Very late here.
Still a fun day playing with sliders and seeing “What’s this one do?”
PS: like the T-Rex in the blood soaked water. No more neighbors ‘borrowing’ the pool without asking. : 0 !
The settings were probably far from optimal, especially the specular settings, didn't give them much testing. The main point is: Use a tad opacity color with refraction, no diffuse. You may want to desturate/adjust image gamma for poolwalls/floor diffuse texture(s).
Not bad, overall! Thinking maybe lighting is too uniform, as in too much GI? Could be related to metals (and bright white surfaces) looking slightly over-exposed? FWIW;)
Lips look good to me, but you could maybe play with imagegamma/diffuse strenght to see if it makes a difference?
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Shouldn't be too much to worry about, if successful? Are you sure you have installed the displacement2.sdl (if there is one) in Omnifreaker's shaders folder?
Did you get this only on arms? Was that with UE2, if so which lighting mode? Not that I can decode this message, but I believe it means you would have to import the shader into Shader Builder, make the necessary changes to the SS code/setup, then re-compile it? Maybe PM someone like Omnifreaker himself or wowie (yeah I know, not active here for a long time), or ask Richard H, or contact DAZ/ file a ticket?
Few things to consider: Does it hang using progressive mode, i.e. the raytracer? Does it hang if turning off SSS? Does it hang with GI turned off? What other lights are in the scene?
Right, here goes: Opacity with awe should be used only for non-refractive surfaces, not for water or glass with thickness. You need to use Transmission at 100% (which will disable diffuse contribution automatically), with the proper IoR (1.33 or so), and use transmission color with absorption to design the amount of saturation, Transmission roughness, if needed for murky water etc. Transmission shadow for colored shadows. Aberration simulates wavelengths refracting like in a prism, so will alter hue-values and will add to rendertimes. so not necessary for poolwater.
Two ways of using a color map for transmission: Drop it into transmission color OR use the diffusecolor as transmission color when "Use Diffuse texture with Transmission" is checked.
Still, I don't see any reason here to use a color map;)
Other things to consider: Turning off visibility for shadows and/or indirect light occlusion to shave off rendertime, and turning on Opacity at 100% strenght with NO map inserted, and having the "Multiply spec/reflections with Opacity" disabled. This could make it easier for diffuse rays to find the camera, without messing up refraction.
Exactly:D
Reworked pool to a sort of white gunite with gray 'noise' maps in spec & same in bump. Hopefully can find a plane that has some gentle curves to it or just try my hand with mesh grabber or dFormer. Opacity & water fun. I'm stubborn I guess. Like messing with these things. :)
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Good observation about gas station. Where is the sun? The car would have a shadow under it. Easy to see once someone else points it out.
Probably wise to have outdoor test environment. Did anyone ever offer 3DL freebies or environment products? Searched for 'desert' and 'southwest' environments but if results came up at all, they were iray.
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Will try suggestions on Steven. He's wip as testing the rendo product. Needs more a suntan maybe
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Traced skin errors and it crashing to AoA skin on G8F which makes no sense. AoA worked fine on g3 & g8. In pool scene though, hid everything until finally just V8 variant using AoA skin. 51% complete in 2 minutes, then a large number of errors about body surfaces and 'brickyard'
Test M8 variant. He renders fine in about 4 min. It's using Uber-skin. Change G8F skin to Uber-skin. Renders fine in about 4 min. Save and make rest of the sv]cene visible. Renders in 20 minutes! Wierd but at least it works & no errors. L )
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Anyway, look forward to playing in the water so to speak. Whether uber awe-surface.
Enjoy week
Ok so it was the AoA SS shader, that kind of makes more sense, since my experiences with Shader Builder-created shaders (the OmUber product line, awe) is that they are very stable. The AoA SSS is a shader mixer network, which is quite the opposite:D. Next time you run into trouble with it, maybe re-loading the mats (originals or your saved presets), or re-starting DS will force the AoA mats to be recompiled...
Tks and likewise...hoping for a creative one
Another go at glass and car paint. The scene has a sun now! Problem is glass, chrome & paint aren’t reflecting the environment sphere. Hopefully easily corrected mistake.
Environment .hdr comes out as a mask. "Visible in render" and "visible in simulation" are checked, so now sure what I'm missing. In render's tif image, have to copy original layer in PS and add black background to get the scenery behind the tree.
Other issues too of course. Fender reflections look like paint scratches. Some chrome reflections come out looking like noise. Maybe I'm my own worst critic.
Some things to play around with tho. : )
Nice improvement!
If you're using the env. sphere that is parented to the UE2, could be a glitch...try toggle off/on the various visibility buttons, or ditch the sphere and use a regular skydome or wowie's env. sphere (without the awe Environment light). Make sure the dome has "cast shadows" turned off. Apply UberSurface to it, load the sky texture into Ambient Color, set strength to 100% and Ambient on. For viewport visibility, also load the texture into diffuse color but turn diffuse visibility off. Also turn off opacity, specular, reflections etc.ambient occlusion and Accept shadows. You want only ambient, and raytraced reflections! If Fantom is enabled, it will still reflect but render invisible. Also make sure your surfaces use raytraced reflections.
Noise: Be careful with bump strength on metals and glass. For blurred reflections you might need to give them more samples.
Thanks for the advice. Hopefully a reliable outdoor environment will help with pool scene too-- anything that reflects.
Odd that DS will revert the UE2 sphere back to "not visible in render" & have to check each time open file. Maybe better luck with AWE or ds default.
As I've said before. You're very patient. Hadn't expected topic to last so long.
Oh, I thought we were just getting started
Heh. Yes, just getting started and some of the tutes (Szark?) go back to DS 4.5. : 0 ! Done playing card$ with nvidia tho (I say that now...) Two GTX bricks on my desk as reminders.
Anyway dome settings seem to have gotten better glass. Many thanks. Outdoor test environment for water and other things now.
Not sure if windshield just this particular prop & way it’s angled towards sky or glass still needs tweaking. At least it's not black or completely transparent. Different car to check and then probably play with water.
Enjoy weekend
You too! Nice looking car paint and dude:) Something's not quite right with car windows? "Multiply spec through opacity" is off, as should be? Or just too opaque?
Switched from Uber2 to shader mixer. Seems to have helped. Am tempted to go into nerd-speak since read some technical stuff last night. Better not. ; )
So keeping it short, glass reflecting in back where towing rig is close but not sure about windshield & door glass. Nothing for it to reflect except dome & it’s too far away?
Another picky point if try to use truck’s paint settings & just change the color on different vehicles. Tone down reflective paint’s highlights? Will have to find some photos. Maybe paint does reflect almost perfect white depending on angle?
As always thanks for help in sticking with me on this. Quite a few variables and learning what’s going on behind them fun too.
Hm...maybe inverted normals on the car windshield and door glass? Regarding the car paint.. need to find a good balance between reflection strength and Freznel settings. I guess it's quite possible to over-expose reflections at grazing angle with "wrong" Freznel values..just some shots in the dark here, good luck, you're almost there:)
Thanks. I'll need it. Glass seems Stubborn. Won’t bore you with details, but flipping normals on glass-- maybe too easy a fix.
Meanwhile, favorite PA for classic vehicles has a new release & did quick IRay ‘out of the box’ render-- make sure installed correctly. Same optimized gas station subset in iRay. Car's ‘thin glass’ Iray not reflecting much either. ??? Depends on the angle? Anyway, will be a good practice to convert new product to AWE-Surface (paint) & UE2 environment. I haven’t given up on AWE hair. ; )
Water some progress? Maybe I’m easily impressed but how do you know these things? Guess that’s years of experience that you’re willing to share.
Hamfisted 'make it myself' surface topology for water plane, but your ‘recipe’ worked. No texture files, just water plane, pool surface and dome environment.
Maybe it's just the angle, as you say, but often when I run into trouble with surfaces not behaving like expected, it's to do with bad normals or topology. Two "easy" ways of testing the car glass: Use the geometry editor and select the offending parts (right-click brings up more selection options, like select connected polygons,) then use "invert/flip selected normals" (from memory) and testrender. Or, much easier, use the AoA SSS shader, which has a built in option to change the normals direction. If that makes a difference, do it permanently by using the geometry editor.
Progress indeed:)
Well, to some extent, learning by doing, but mostly by having asked the same questions you do, and much much more, by people that actually know what they're talking about
Yup, now you only need a good ripple displacement map (preferrably tileable) and fine tuning your light levels and you're good to go! If the waterplane survives converting to SubD, you'd get smoother reflections/refraction.
Not many left from 3D Lab topic. Guess people move on.
Will try your suggestions.
Site having time-out / technical problems again? Better be quick.
--Best wishes
Yeah, that precious bandwidth going to waste...
, although I don'ts see any adds atm, fingers crossed...
Still here or blew this place off? I don't see them on iPad using Duck Duck Go, but support those who do and wouldn't share renders + clickbait with friends. Do business, etc.
Was going to ask about IoR -- one article shows blender's shader with IoR limited to one slot while another, 'redshift' has >1 place.
https://www.cgdirector.com/ior-index-of-refraction-list/
Macht nichts
Here for now, but that can change, depending much on how DAZ decides to treat their customers in the near future...
And your question was?
ETA: On the other hand,having been noticed I've been put on pre-moderation again for god knows how long, I think they can stuff it somewhere, I don't feel very welcome here anymore (for a long time)...but we'll see how it goes, drop me a PM if you run into 3DL-trouble & Stay Safe;)
Don't know what that is. They are doubling down? None of my business of course.
A moot point then about how light being bent (refraction?) is handled in US2.
Take care of yourself & enjoy life. Will take you up on PM if stuck.
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Kind regards and thank you again. Not just for your help, but for your time when you could just as easily been doing something else