Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Humm... So that grainy surfaces aren't flagged right? Just asking to be sure they aren't using the Alt Samples setting. Shadow Samples is the spotlight equivalent to AO samples in the ambient. Keep in mind that Shadow Samples in the render settings will have no effect. You should only need to turn the spotlights shadow samples up if your using soft shadows.
Another thing to maybe try is to turn off Adaptive Sampling, especially on the spotlight. On the spotlight it really only looks good when the samples are really high. Adaptive sampling works a bit better on the ambient light and people also tend to use higher samples for AO than directional light shadows. This is why it is off by default on the spot but on for the Ambient.
...actually the skin and hair are flagged to not be illuminated by the primary AAL (otherwise her face hands and hair appear too "bright") using Diffuse setting of 98% as the flag. Her Clothing is flagged at 99% diffuse so as not to be illuminated by the Spotlight directly in front of her. Adaptive sampling on all the lights is turned off . When I set the shadow samples to 128 (same as the AO setting for the Ambient light) the grainy effect persisted. I then bumped them up to 256 and the effect still did not disappear. Everything else, her clothing, the katana, and her eyes render clean without any graininess so it has to be something to do with the way the maps of the skin and hair are reacting to the lights.
The Skin Map am using is from the Lotus Flower character for V4. The Hair is Pure Hair Timeless (which is for Genesis)
I am using an UberVolume cone on the light over the fellow with the gun to create a more localised fog effect, however that isn't causing the graininess either as I ran a render test with it turned off and there was no change.
This is perplexing for I feel I have exhausted all the options available.
...update, ended up applying SSS and while it helped a bit it didn't fully eliminate the issue which is still noticeable in the full size render. What I find odd is the elf fellow with the gun renders perfectly and he is under both the main ambient and an advanced spotlight with the same settings as well as a Linear Point Light for a little fill lighting on his face.
Switched the flagging on the main ambient off and trying again though it will require having to readjust intensities of the two spotlights on the girl's face so she isn't over lit.
I PM'd the PA over on Rendo (where I purchased the set before it was offered here) to see if there were any shader updates that I may have missed.
Been trying to get this scene completed so I can submit it to the October PC Challenge but this issue has been one huge time sink.
KK what have you got the shading rate set to on the lights?
...OK on the spotlights it is 2.0 for all with subsurface samples at 128 (as I am using SSS)
On the Ambient lights (I take it that is the AO shading rate?) all are ate default of 16 with AO samples of 128.
I also reset the skin diffuse value to 100% and turned off the flagging for the main ambient light.
Try turning the shading rate down and see if that helps.
What are your render settings?
...On the ambient lights?
My render settings are:
Ray Depth 2
Shadow Samples: 16
Shading Rate: 0.2
everything else is at default
Yes sorry on the ambient lights.
I also usually have my render settings shading rate at 0.1 for final renders and my shadow samples at 24 or higher.
...made the changes and it is still occurring. The only thing I can think of any more it that it's the skin map itself. It is a Poser based shader but I've never seen it render so poorly until now. As I mentioned I PM'd the PA over on Rendo to see if there was ever a Daz shader update released.
Try reducing Ambient Light shading rate down to 4 or less instead of 16 - usually a shading rate of 4 with sample rate of 128 produces high quality.
If that doesn't work, I'd suggest some screen grabs of your settings would make it easier to assess instead of trying to stab in the dark.
Agree with Jabba. I don't think its the texture I have that one and have no problems with it. If you are concerned that it ha something to do with the Poser shaders not being read correctly by DS and messing things up apply the DS default shader to the skin and try that.
...I have the shading rate at 1 (as low as it can go) on the ambient lights and set to 0.2 on the two spotlights aimed at the character each with shadow samples set to 24 (same as in the render settings).
Bit of a pain to post screenshots as this is on the workstation, not the notebook which I am accessing the forums with.
...there is no Daz Default shader for this product that I can find (it would be in the Daz3D/Studio3/Content folder which then should appear in my Library/Studio3 folder in the content library tab). All I seem to have are the Poser shaders. In the Readme, it mentions that it was not tested in a Studio. This is the original version sold through Rendo not the one in the store here.
The strange part about this when I've used this map in other scenes in the past, it looks fine, just not this one. I've even used it on the same character.
couple of things - your render settings have nothing to do with the light settings - remove them from your comparisons, they're just cluttering the issue (but obviously the render settings are important for the final quality of the render as a whole). Also, it's not a UE light so while the UE settings are valid for UE lights, they've got nothing to do with how to set up an Advanced Ambient or Advanced Spot.
The softer you have the shadow setting of your light, the higher the shadows samples need to be set at to avoid noise, which is why I suggest 128 for shadow samples - you've indicated the spot is set to 24 samples, boost it to 128 before trying anything else.
Also, you sound like you're throwing an awful lot of lights into the scene and not fully sure which one is doing what - switch off all the lights and render them one at a time. Once the culprit has been isolated, look at its settings and adjust accordingly.
...well three of the ambient lights are behind the character and each has a designated light radius set with falloff so they should not be having any affect on the skin map (used for illuminating the background set). The only ambient light that hots the character is the main one (30% intensity) Only two of the four spotlights are aimed at the character in question the other two point straight down and are far enough away that sh is not in their light cones. The two Linear Point lights have the "Falloff End" set well before their effect would reach the character I'm having difficulties with.
The Uber Volume cone between the camera and her is set to 374 steps with 0.05 step size: Density 0.0004, Strength 60 Detail: 10, Scale: 12, and Contrast: 18. However even with this turned off or rendering though a close up camera which is out of the cone's effect, the issue is still noticeable.
Went ahead and increased the shadow samples for the two spotlights to 128 and will run another test.
....OK, after checking all the lights and settings, then making the adjustments to the shadow samples for the two spotlights, the graininess on the face and forehead is still there.
I also just received a response from the PA and there were no shader updates released for Daz Studio so out of luck there fro any Daz Default shaders.
This has now one on for almost three days concerning this on issue. I must have logged more than twelve hours time alone just performing test renders and still getting the same results.
Here is a screenshot of the character's face from the full size render in progress and closeup of the shader in OpenGL mode for comparison. Notice that the shader surface is very smooth and shiny with little to no bump.
The UberVolume cone was turned off for the render.
Odd that the graininess isn't apparent on the hands which are lit by the same two Spotlights and Ambient light.
Click on the first one to expand (best seen against a darker background).
Assuming you've now established which light is causing the problem, check the shadow or occlusion parameters for the Hit Sides... if showing as "both", trying changing to "front".
But that'll be my last stab in the dark. Without sight of settings used, there's little more I can suggest that won't be repeating myself.
Thanks Jabba101 your tutorial 1 and 2 helped a lot in explaining what does what.
This was my result after knowing what each thing was for!
Background is created using an Advanced ambient light to light up the background plane. and 1 ambient light to light the figure and 2 advanced spotlights 1 specular and 1 to assist the ambient light in lighting the figure.
Hi Kyoto Kid,
I'm not understanding from the render you posted. I can't see any grain in the face except maybe a little from compression in the thumbnail.
I do see there is a lack of specularity though. You might check to see if the surface has a specular map or a glossiness map and remove them. The DS default shader is particularly sensitive to glossiness maps; So much so that it is very difficult to make a gloss map that won't just make everything nearly matte.
I'm not sure what effect you are trying to improve but quite willing to help. I'll need some clarification though.
...thank you , with all the settings changes, I'm now looking at 57% complete after just over seven hours and thirty minutes. I feel like I'm in the realm of a Reality/Lux render. This is not supposed to be with these lights.
...oh, and her skin still looks grainy.
...there is no Daz default shader for this skin map. I already asked the PA about this.
The character's skin is supposed to be smooth white in colour with a little gloss. I'm getting a rough almost pixelated quality in the render in spite of all the changes I've made. I think what it boils down to is the shaders are not compatible with the Advanced Ambient/Spot Lights.
I'm just disappointed it took me over three days to discover this. So much for submitting it to the PC challenge. (the only way I can afford new content is to win challenges and contests).
I wanted to make reference to to my Halloween video here, talking with AoA a bit about it a little while back he mentioned posting it when it was ready. His spotlight and ambient light basically made the video possible, I'd started with just the ambient light with DAZ Defaults and went to using the spotlight when it was available. Was it not for the speed improvements these lights provided I really don't think the video would've been ready in time for the holiday, if it was I would've had to cut corners in many other places and wouldn't have been as happy with it as a result. Using the flagging to produce different sample rate and shading modes for transparent surfaces made a huge difference, placing normal point lights inside of a lamp with glass housing is exponentially slower and shader hit mode would've made my grass take forever to render. So I wanted to give thanks to him and let others know how much this sort of thing can help a project.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/31548/
Happy Halloween everyone!
Humm.
Well, this is a little hard to explain but what I mean is that the shader being Poser based gets interpreted and DS applies DAZ Studio's own base shader code which is the Default DS Shader. Now that is making assumptions and maybe some new feature was added that I haven't noticed, which happens a lot actually :)
So there is the default shader code and then there are presets.
Presets tell the shader what the settings should be, like Diffuse Color 255,255,255 or Specular Strength 75%.
The shader code tells the renderer how to calculate those settings like TotalDiffuse = DiffuseStrength * DiffuseColor * (the dot product of the light position and the surface normal);
Now different shader codes can take the same input value and give different results. Using the example above for one shader, another shader could maybe use TotalDiffuse = DiffuseStrength * DiffuseColor * (the dot product of the light position and the square root of the surface normal); Which would give a more matte/rough appearance to the diffuse if I am remembering correctly hehe.
So the important thing to remember is that, even if there is no DS mat preset for a surface, DS will always (I think) load the default DS Shader code onto the surfaces then try to adjust the settings to best match what it thinks the Poser surface was supposed to look like.
Auto shader translation is like French poetry translated into German... The words say the same thing, but it just isn't the same LOL!
So with that said, if there was a glossiness map in the Poser version and it looked good, DS might have read that and tried to get the same effect by loading the glossiness map but just failed miserably based on how gloss is calculated in the default shader code hehe.
Now I'm still not seeing the graininess but you shouldn't need to turn setting up so high as to be in the Lux render times. I'll send you a PM. Maybe if you can send me a preset of the scene lights I can look them over and see if anything stands out which would cause graininess.
...well right now I'm looking at 8 hrs and 45 minutes with 58% complete and a deadline of tomorrow to submit this.
Because I am on such an incredibly tight budget since being laid off from my job last spring (with no prospects in sight) I need to score on what contests I can to add to my 3d library and toolbox. I was hoping to submit this to the PC October Challenge but if I kill the render process now I can basically forget it. There are a lot of really good submissions this month so I have to do the best I can to feel I have a chance.
It is now 00:30 where I am so I don't have a lot of time left.
...nuts, more than an hour and I've only gained 1%. I hate it when I have a really nice idea and the software/hardware fails me. Three days wasted for nothing.
Killed the render.
I give up.
Yeah that definitely does not sound right. I don't think I have had any renders take that long in years hehe.
The big thing to note is to avoid setting the shading rate on any of the lights to 2 or less unless it is a light with a low sample count. At a shading rate of 2 or less you lose a lot of the speed benefits from max error and adaptive sampling and such. It is just how things are built into the renderer and allowing of approximation speedups.
...without doing so though sacrifices quality which is what I have been dealing with in this scene. I think it comes down to the shader and the fact it doesn't work well with these lights. Unfortunately there are no other Daz based shaders of this style I can use. The only other "Kabuki/Geisha" styled ones I have are for Aiko3 which cannot be translated to Genesis.
Yes but I think there must be something else wrong because most of my renders are only taking 5min to an hour and I'm using whole scenes where everything in it has raytraced reflections. And I am not having grain issues... well maybe a little on the walls of this scene.
I'm doing one that's already run 10 hrs and has about another 30 mins to go, its the milHorse 2's tail, it just takes forever.
And I only have a light weight machine.
KK why can't you apply either AoA's SSS shader or Uber shader to the character, they both work with anything you might have to fiddle with the settings but its usually worth it in the end.
...in the last three days It went into the early morning hours (once until 04:00) running test render after test render trying to find a solution.
I went and lowered all the shading rates back to the default values just to get this thing done.
...makes me wish I never got arthritis as in the old days, I could have painted this by now and had time to spare.
Oh yes. There will be differences based on hardware and scene complexity but nothing in Kyoto's image strikes me as something that would be that processor intensive except maybe the volume. Volumes eat up a lot of cycles. I'm working on improving volume speeds but it is going to take a while before it is ready for prime time.