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Robo Spider
Background CryoEnvironment No Uber on the background
In furthering my Uber Surface education I quickly set this up. I was testing myself if I really knew this. Setting up the Uber Surfaces was relatively easy and didn’t take long at all. What took time was splitting of different parts of each material zone and making new ones with the Polygon Editor Tool. The model come with seven material zones and by the time I had finished it had nineteen. The reason for this was so I had more control over the anisotropic highlights.
I even used area lighting on the eyes. I could have gotten away with Ambient only though but there was a slight difference, I got more colour bleed with Area lighting.
Light with 3 spot down lights over the spider covering the whole room, one fill near the camera set to diffuse light only pointing at the spider. One uplighting spot at floor level. Two point lights for overall background fill light, one white, one red and UE2 with IDL with soft shadows, IDL strength 30% using the softbox preset, occlusion samples 75% occlusion colour black. 4X quality Preset except Shading Rate at 1.00.
Once I got the light balance right, the scene still looked Dark so I increased the Gain in the Advanced Render Settings Pane to 1.40. Gamma Correction On and left at the default value of 1.00.
The only postwork was to add the boarder and laser beam, which was a cylinder parented to the Spider and Uber Volume applied but rendered separately by itself with the lights except UE2 on black background and saved as a jpg. This jpg was laid on top of the render in Photoshop and the layer blend mode set to Screen. Applied a little blur for the final touch.
more details here http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2765/P360/#556056 regarding surface settings if anyone is interested
Excellent work there, Szark! I love it when people breakdown their workflow like that. Makes it so much easier to learn.
Thanks Jonny yeah I like to share when and where I can.
Good to see things getting going now. I won't be studying too much till I get my new machine built, but, from what I've glanced at so far, you're doing really well.
CHEERS!
cheers Rogerbee
No worries,
I'll keep checking back to see what's what. The weather is getting warmer and my laptop isn't getting cooler, I want to make sure I have something that can do everything I need and stay running no matter what.
CHEERS!
Looks great! And have you tried leaving gain as is and going 2.2 for gamma? Here's some reading material on why 2.2:
http://filmicgames.com/archives/299
http://www.vfxwizard.com/tutorials/gamma-correction-for-linear-workflow.html
Yeah, I always use 2.2, it should be the standard setting for your monitor/graphics card. I have the Radeon I use for DS and this browser set to it.
CHEERS!
Most textures are Gamma 2.2 anyway but yes I have tried to figure this out for ages, even started a thread and the more I asked Q's the more confusing this issue became. I have tried 2.20 and everything gets washed out even with the lights adjusted, if I leave it at 1.00 then the textures become richer and darker so you can either mess with the lights more or just use GAIN.
This is my understanding of Gamma so far We see the world in 2.20, A digital camera sees the world in 1.00. Save a photo as RAW and it has Gamma 1.00 meaning too bright so I understand the need to correct the gamma. Save that same photo as a Jpeg it gets Gamma corrected. So why the need to correct the gamma if it has already been done, I just don't get this.
Mustakettu85 the first link went straight through my head without touching the sides. The second one helps a little but still does explain in plain dumbed down English. I am just not that cleaver when it comes to technical stuff like this.
Most monitors should be calibrated to 2.2, it wasn't till I did that that DS set to 2.2 looked right.
CHEERS!
so you are saying my monitor is at fault as to way the textures looks washed out when Gamma is set to 2.2 even with low light levels?
Yes, probably, if it's not set to 2.2. Check those links and see what they say.
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like I said those links mean nothing to me, it might as well be in French. I opened my NVidia Control software and setting Gamma to 2.2 washed out everything so I am now more confused than ever.
in that second link there is this paragraph
"The wood texture has been shot with a digital camera and therefore it has already a 2.2 Gamma Correction applied. This means that the wood texture's colours have been Gamma corrected twice. That's why the image looks washed out. - "
Have you tried adjusting the brightness and contrast for your monitor. I have switchable graphics on this laptop, so, when using the integrated board, the gamma is 1.0, but, when using the Radeon it uses 2.2, there is a definite difference. Search Gamma Correct on Google and see what comes up. When I get my new build together I'll be able to set 2.2 by default.
CHEERS!
I have searched and searched for a plain English explanation Rogerbee and so far I haven't found one that explains it well enough for me to understand and I have been at this for months.
No I haven't touched my Monitor at all, it is at its default settings. HPw2207 I believe is set up with this in mind
Strike that my monitor is not made well enough to get what you are saying without a Hardware calibration device.
B'vec, dear folks, pleeeeease don´t touch your monitors. Their "baseline", so to speak, is sRGB which is, for all intents and purposes, basically the same as gamma 2.2. Minor fluctuations don't really count.
The "gamma correction" utilities and settings in your monitor drivers/hardware are really best left alone unless you're confident with calibrating them. There's a utility for doing it kinda easily, http://quickgamma.de/indexen.html - but again, it takes some effort to get used to. Whatever.
Does not matter THAT much.
What consumer monitors are not (apart from maybe specific exceptions), is they are not linear. This is the only thing we should remember.
Which means: they will not correctly display the "raw" linear image coming out of a render engine.
We need to adjust the linear image so that it matches our output curve.
Which means gamma 2.2, because, well, that's the way the monitors are designed.
Why the "washed out" effect: because we give the renderer colour textures that WE believe to look right, through a non-linear "eye+monitor" system.
The render engine has different "eyes". It "sees" in linear space, which is the space where laws of physics are calculated. Light behaves according to the laws of physics. Are you following? This is important.
In order to make the colour textures look correct to the renderer's "eyes", we need to "degamma" them (aplly a 0.45 gamma correction in an image editor). Then they will look dark - to us - but perfect to the renderer. // this does not apply to strength maps like transparencies or bump because their function is different: it´s not representing realworld colour //
Then we can correct the "raw" render to gamma 2.2 and have it look much more physically correct (even if your monitor is not perfect). Without colours being "washed out".
It's called "linear workflow".
I know I haven't been able to understand what it meant, for years. So, don't feel bad, folks. I hope you will get the grasp of it if you carefully re-read the links I posted above. These two guys have the most straightforward explanations, and Hable of FilmicGames in particular has images that speak volumes.
Or you could try asking me, and I'll try explaining. I really feel this is important stuff. There is linear workflow, and there is incorrect workflow. Which requires, as vfxwizard puts it, a lot of "artistic correction".
I'm sure Pete is good at it. But what if mastering linear workflow will help you free your creativity even further?
Now, if you want to do linear workflow in DS3, you have to degamma colour maps manually. I don't mind doing it - I edit every other map anyway - but for most people, that's too much. So DAZ3D did a great thing and with DS4.6+ introduced a magic button called "GC ON". Millighost explains what it does here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/22310/#329211
Recap of that post:
Only turn gamma to 2.2 when GC is ON. Otherwise you won't get the automagic degamma.
Note: It will not alter any runtime-located textures. Don't worry. It will only call tdlmake with special attributes (I think you all know that 3Delight does not take our runtime jpegs directly but first wants them converted through its tdlmake utility, a conversion that DS has handled silently for years).
Sometimes it fails to catch some maps, though. Then, if you see that some textures are "washed out" in the render (which, in my experience, may happen when doing something to a texture shortly before enabling scene GC for the first time), you should go to that image in the shader interface ("Surfaces" tab) and open "Image Editor" (not "Layered image editor"). Colour maps that are to get degammaed should have the "gamma" silder down to 0; bump, transparency and other strength maps should have it at 1.
Another problem you might encounter is your go-to lightsets being too bright for linear space. Especially when using "artistic" spotlights without falloff etc. This might also lead you to think gamma correcting the "raw" image makes it "washed out". So you'll have to adjust somewhat, tone the light intensities down.
But if you like using lights with quadratic falloff (the "physical" one), you will be amazed.
Interesting, my renders looked off when I first set the gamma slider to 2.2 in DS, but, they then looked right when I went into my Graphics Properties for my Radeon and set the video gamma to 2.2. DS looks right and so does the browser as I set my browser to use the Radeon via Switchable Graphics.
CHEERS!
You using several graphic chips? Now yeah, that adds a whole new layer of complexity to the "eye+monitor" system.
Yeah, this laptop has an integrated Intel board and a dedicated Radeon. For all the boring Windows tasks I let the Intel do it, but, for video and graphics I use the Radeon as it gives better performance. You can't assign a graphics card to the image viewer in Windows so the renders look odd when you look at them on that, but, they look great in Photoshop and when I post them here.
Interestingly, though the motherboard I've got for the new PC build also has integrated graphics, this, however, will be disabled by the dedicated card I'm putting in. Still, in the graphics properties I'll use the same settings as I have here as I know they'll look right.
CHEERS!
Oh wow. I remember, years ago I used to make do with an Intel integrated chip on my office PC. It was a nightmarish time - I could not get it to show _anything_ remotely right. All the colours were all over the place, made even the simplest presentations look bad. Is yours as wonky?
It was till I adjusted things for the programs that didn't use it. I was stuck with an Intel on my old Dell and stuff never used to look good on it.
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Mustakettu85 give me a week to digest this and I will get back to you but I think with your help I am starting to get it. It amazes me that every time I mentioned this saying the scene gets washed out no one bothered to tell me that this would be normal. Man I had to swap out the DS spots and replace with Uber Spots, only then did I start to get somewhere. I also took the maps into PS and darken them, as I wanted a black body instead of Grey, Yes I could have changed the diffuse colour but I wanted to see the effects with leaving it 250,250,250. Infact I had to change every diffuse colour to a base of 250,250,250 and diffuse strength to 70%. I also found that UE2 even on 10% washed out the scene so I switched to GI and I am starting to get better result. Oh I must say the Area light red eyes bleed colour more with Gamma at 2.2.
You're welcome! As I said, it took me years trying to put it all together, and then there was that KobaltKween lady who is a Poser vendor at rendo or something; we somehow chatted on dA and she explained the final missing spots to me.
And yeah, default DS spotlights do not have falloff, that makes them "unphysical" and so not much useful for linear workflow. But that's those default ones that Studio creates from the menu. There is a set of lights in the "Light Presets" - "DS Defaults" folder (dzDistantLight, dzSpotLight and dzPointLight), and these are different! They are way faster than the menu-generated ones are with raytraced shadows (especially noticeable with multiple transparencies on my 32bit system at home). I don't know how they compare speed-wise with UberSpots, since I don't have those, but they also have falloff options (where applicable) and good shadow controls (individually adjustable samples etc). No gels, though.
There is a difference between gammas and I see Szark getting really confused :) lol
If you create art on your computer your monitor need to be calibrated to match the printing as much as possible
you can do that manually using windows calibration or use a special device . Most of the monitors are NOT 2.20 but simple 1.00
to have a 2.20 gamma your monitor would have a wide gamma and it is expensive one .
The gamma correction in Daz Studio is a compressor that correct the curve of the image for the best result .
if you use Gamma correction ON , your gamma should be set on 2.0 ( for the wide range )
if not the gamma should be set on 1.00 so the correction can be done for example in Photoshop
Usually the Gamma correction suppress the highlight preventing it from ( burning the colors - over-exposure ) as it is in photography
mostly all color textures are shot with gamma 1.0 and the Gamma correction ON in DS with the Gamma set on 2.0 will prevent it from overexposure especially if you use to much light in the scene
for example if you use UE2 with base light and add one more distance or spot light the image would be automatic over exposed as the power of the light will end in double , since 100% value of light usually is 1000 Wat so you ending with 2000 W straight in the face what call for Gamma correction ! or reducing in power light ..
thanks to Gamma correction ON and Gamma 2.0 the render will be compressed and overexpose reduced ending with a brilliant color and balance
so after the great render setting you print your image on paper and it looks exactly as on your monitor , it mean you did great job
if it is printed to dark or to light .. you will have to calibrate your monitor
look at the image bellow
if you see the blox from A to Z separate one by one it mean your monitor is just fine , if you see just black or white melted together it mean your monitor need calibration
http://www.photofriday.com/i/calibration.gif
that is what I call a perfect gamma
Mustakettu85 I will try those lights....there didn't work for a while so I forgot about them. Thanks again for taking the time to educate me, it has been a great help getting those final pieces into place.
Mec4D Hiya long time no speak, how's things with you these days?
I looked at the image and everything looks to be just fine so it seems I can relax on that. I can see all the subtle difference and see true black through to true white with the various scales of grey. So far so good.
Yes Printing this is why I am spending time to get my head around this and sometime in the near future I will have a poster to get printed.
I am glad I came across confused as I was, thank you for chipping in Mec4D. So in essence what Gamma correction does is balance out the look from render > monitor > to print. But also having an effect on textures look with how they react to physical based lighting. I can see the difference already in my serious of test yesterday. One thing that stands out when using Gamma correction is that the surfaces and lighting setting need changing to suit and by the looks it is a whole new way of doing things. Which is fine with me as I am a surface and light junkie. My very first render in DS I was digging in to the Surfaces pane and never stopped.
20o0 watts. Humm that would explain why the normal UE2 base washed out the whole scene even at 10%, With the GI UE2 preset no light comes from UE2 so all the light in my new scene is coming from the Uber Spot and Point lights making is easier to control.
DS does it the other way actually. Take a look at the file attached.
Here's a wiki quote that explains why there may be confusion:
"Without context, a value labeled gamma might be either the encoding or the decoding value. Caution must be taken to correctly interpret the value as that to be applied-to-compensate or to be compensated-by-applying its inverse. In common parlance, in many occasions the decoding value (as 2.2) is employed as if it were the encoding value, instead of its inverse (1/2.2 in this case), which is the real value that must be applied to encode gamma."
It's nice to see that, now and again, the folk that make the tutorials need them as much as we do. You never stop learning.
CHEERS!