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...I applied the SSS shader and still it did not have much of a positive effect. I never could get the UberHSS to work as it would turn the character's skin grey.
...I needed to use the UberVolume light cones because I totally suck at multi pass rendering and compositing so I couldn't use the Volumetric camera as I had both spot and ambient lights in the scene.
Oh yeah that is fine. I'm just saying volumes in general whether they are from cameras or the uber volumes or whatnot... they are just processor intensive.
If you want to PM me a link to the character you are using over at Renderosity I will buy it and see if I can find out where the issue might be.
But if your are frustrated and just want to take a break from it I understand that too. Just say so and I will stop bringing it up.
Genesis doesn't except Gen 3 textures.
I have the character KK using but bought it from here (Daz), once this render is done I'll see what happens if I use it with your lights.
Any news on the investigation of the spotlight crashing DAZ Studio?
Nothing yet. I was just chatting with another PA who was experiencing crashes when changing color settings in custom shaders without any lights in the scene so we are wondering if it is just custom parameters in general which might cause the issue. I'll try to contact the lead DS developer in the morning and see if he has any ideas.
Oh yes you are right. Sorry I was remembering wrong and confusing UV sets with the auto fit menu. I should edit my post above so people don't follow my advice LOL!
Oh yes you are right. Sorry I was remembering wrong and confusing UV sets with the auto fit menu. I should edit my post above so people don't follow my advice LOL!
I get confused quite often, I wish you could use the Gen3 textures I've got a few nice ones that I wouldn't mind being able to use.
This render is nearly done its been over 11 hrs - uggh I knew I shouldn't have used that tail.
Did you flag the tail to use lower samples?
Scorpio - didn't you flag the tail for the advanced...lights?
Kyoto: for testrenders of one part of the picture you don't have to rerender the whole picture.
Use the spotrender tool - set it to render to new window and it will render the selected spot in the size it would be in the full render.
Activate the spot render tool.
Go to the “Tool Settings Pane”
Click the “New Window” window radio button.
Yes I flagged the tail but it didn't make a difference as I need to update the advance light. Which I am now doing.
....I did, The only reason I used the actual render in the screen shot was so I could illustrate what I was seeing at the full render size.
...the charcter is no longer available at Rendo it is now in the store here:
http://www.daz3d.com/lotus-flower
Even better :) I thought she looked familiar! Downloading now.
Okay, the only thing I am seeing is just some grain, in the form of skin pores, in the texture. I'm not sure what effect it is that you are unhappy with or how you want the result to look. Please don't take that as argumentative... I'm just trying to understand so I can help.
KK, I would strongly recommend you load up Gia/V6/Josie and take a look at their surface settings. Daz Default shader is far from my choice to use for skin. HSS and AoA SSS are my shaders of choice when it comes to skin (Some prefer UberSurface). AoASSS is my first choice for HiRes renders. When youve had a look at those gen6 characters surface settings, select all the skin surfaces on your character (whom I assume is V4) and swap the shader to AoA SSS and go through and add the values that you see in Gia/V6/Josie. (You could do this with any character you like the look of, could be a Victoria4 HSS, in which youd apply HSS instead of AoASSS, or Uber, whatever you like) If your not concerned with Subsurface, thats fine dont use SS. Specular and bump controls much more developed in AoASSS, UberSurface or HSS. The only real things I use Daz Default shader for are Glass/water/ sometimes metal but rarely. I never use it for skin. If the diffuse texture is V4 UV, Then perhaps consider using Specular and Bump textures from other Victoria4 characters. It looks to be surfacing issues, not the lights.
Everything Ive learned with shader settings, has been trial and error and looking at how PA's go about it with their published characters that I have.
Well it has been a very long day and I am absolutely exhausted. I need to get some sleep but the offer still stands, if you want to send me your scene I don't mind looking it over when I get up Kyoto.
...I applied the SSS shader and still it did not have much of a positive effect. I never could get the UberHSS to work as it would turn the character's skin grey.
I did a tutorial on UberSurface for the current New User contest. If you want, you can check in out here (or if you prefer pdf format, here's Part 1 and Part 2). To avoid having the skin turn gray, hold down Ctrl* when you double-click the UberSurface icon, then in the pop-up that will appear, choose "Ignore" instead of "Replace."
Another trick...not sure if this always works, but judging from my few experiments I think it's worth trying:
1. Load the Poser mats of the texture that you want to use
2. Find another character in your runtime that uses the same UV set and has DAZ Studio mats (ideally really good ones, and ideally the skin should look fairly similar to the texture you have applied)
3. Hold down Ctrl* and double-click on the icon to load this second character's materials--just as you would do to load UberSurface--and choose "Ignore" from the popup.
4. Now, hopefully, your figure will have the skin texture from the first character, and the DS material settings from the second character
For example, some of surreality's characters don't come with DS mats, so sometimes if I want to use one of those textures, I'll follow these steps to load the mats of her Tamesis character, which is one of my favorites.
*Or whatever the Mac equivalent is--Command, I think?--if you're on a Mac.
...I thought it may have something more to do with the shader itself rather than the lights. Your reply confirms it.
Based on the promos it appeared to be a smooth ghostly white but now on closer inspection I can see a hint of a texture.
Ran the render again overnight after changing the settings back from the extreme ones I was using. Took about four hours, partly because of the size and mainly because of the elf gun boy's hair being in one of the Uber volume cones (had the Hitmode of both the primary Ambient and the Spotlight above him set to Primitive to help save a little time).
For the render added just the base SSS shader and aimed the Spotlight on her more directly which offset any shadowing that I now realise is caused by the added texture. Still not porcelain smooth as I hoped (again based on the promos) but at least not quite as noticeable, odd that this caught the light the way it did and that it isn't as noticeable on the hands. As I mentioned the only other Kabuki/Geisha maps I have are for Aiko3 which do not transfer over to Genesis.
Probably will not be selected having submitted it this late but after all I went though, figured may as well give it a shot anyway.
Thank you very much for the assistance and dealing with my frustrations.
...don't have any of them. As I mentioned I did apply SSS to the skin. What it apparently caused the effect is what AoA mentions in his post above.
...thank you. Do you have PC access? As I mentioned I just submitted it to the October PC challenge (albeit a slightly postworked version)
I can send you the base render file if you would still like to see it without forum compression.
...thank you. Do you have PC access? As I mentioned I just submitted it to the October PC challenge (albeit a slightly postworked version)
I can send you the base render file if you would still like to see it without forum compression.
Yep I have the Plat Club :) My reason for asking for the scene file was more so I could look over the light and surface settings and see if there was a way to make it render faster and remove the grain.
...do you need a screenshot?
Not sure if you could open the raw scene file because all the paths would be different since I use a separate drive for the Library/Runtime rather than installing to the default My Documents.
Screen shots might help but would need all the parameters of all the lights and surface settings so it would be a lot of screen grabs.
I think the new DUF format is better about finding things. It might not load everything up but it might load most of the content you used which I own. It might be enough to help determine what is slowing things down.
At this point you have finished the render and submitted so it might be a bit late but, it still might be a good example to go through and see if it can't be made faster for future reference. It's up to you. If you want me to try it I don't mind.
Did you change the way AO Bias works in the Advanced Ambient Light update? I opened a scene that I had created before the update, and it did not render the same way. I resolved the issue by raising the AO Bias.
Nope, not intentionally at least hehe. Is the area that looked different near some surfaces with transparency?
...that is exactly what I;'m thinking too. I'd like to know more of what I am doing right or wrong and not have to go through all this over again.
I can send you the scenefile, though I fear the character will not load properly out since she is a mixture of Gen4 morphs (using GenX) and Gen5 characters.
I could instead just note down all the parameters for the lights I used, the two UberVolume cones, the Atmospheric camera, and skin settings for the girl in a textfile and send them as an attachment as these are the ones pertinent to the issue.
Would that work just as well? I know it will be a bit of work on my end but that way you would not be missing anything or deal with a scene that loads improperly.
Here is the original post if you would like to see the example images cdfoster posted http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/462186/
This was an issue which was perplexing because it appeared to be inconsistent but last night I was able to track down the root of the issue though I have not coded a fix just yet. As far as I can tell this only effects the Advanced Ambient light.
Keep in mind that shadows are calculated from the surface toward the light and that primitive hitmode ignores transmaps when calculating shadows. If the hair is in shader hitmode but the skin is in primitive hitmode the shadows on the skin (from the hair) will be too dark because the shadows are seeing the transparent areas of the hair as opaque.
When DAZ Studio writes a scene file for the renderer, it sets different surfaces to Shader or Primitive hitmodes automatically... even when you do not use any advanced lights. The advanced lights have the ability to override those settings so you can chose faster or more accurate shadowing through transparency.
What is happening is that the light is not always overriding all surfaces which the renderer has set to Primitive hitmode. This appears to only be an issue with the root hitmode switch on the light. When you flag surfaces and instruct the light to use Shader hitmode for those surfaces it does properly override them. That can be used as a workaround until I get the code fixed and an update out.
The reason I missed it is that I almost always use the AoA_Subsurface shader for skin and it defaults to Shader Hitmode in the renderer file so shadows onto the skin from transmapped hair calculate properly despite the bug. UberSurface and the DS default shaders do not. I will try to get a fix out soon.
This explains why a few of you have noticed the shadows from eyelashes or transmapped hair can sometimes appear a bit strange.
...that is exactly what I;'m thinking too. I'd like to know more of what I am doing right or wrong and not have to go through all this over again.
I can send you the scenefile, though I fear the character will not load properly out since she is a mixture of Gen4 morphs (using GenX) and Gen5 characters.
I could instead just note down all the parameters for the lights I used, the two UberVolume cones, the Atmospheric camera, and skin settings for the girl in a textfile and send them as an attachment as these are the ones pertinent to the issue.
Would that work just as well? I know it will be a bit of work on my end but that way you would not be missing anything or deal with a scene that loads improperly.
That could help but, if it works or even kinda works, a scene file would be easier. That way I know where the lights and volumes are placed too. Less chance I will accidentally use a wrong setting too. Even if the character shape is not the same I should still be able look it over and relay some tips on how to speed up the rendering.
I sent you a PM with my email address if you want to send it that way.
That could help but, if it works or even kinda works, a scene file would be easier. That way I know where the lights and volumes are placed too. Less chance I will accidentally use a wrong setting too. Even if the character shape is not the same I should still be able look it over and relay some tips on how to speed up the rendering.
I sent you a PM with my email address if you want to send it that way.
...OK that sounds good. Should I include the companion .png file as well?
These are incredible lights and I really want to learn how to use them better. This was probably a more ambitious project than I should have attempted, considering I only has the Spotlights for a few days and the Ambient lights only a bit longer than that (guess I like pushing the edge a bit). In spite of the skin issue, I still think it came out very well. I would never have been able to get the overall creepy effect that I did using UE. Having several falloff as well as angle settings for the spotlight is nice.
As to total time savings, I ran an experiment substituting one UE light sphere for the primary ambient light and it took about fifteen minutes just to get to 1% of the render completed. Based on that estimate the complete render would have taken a minimum of 25 hours (most likely more once it reached the Elf Ganger's hair).
The Ambient Light makes creating custom lighting environments for a setting so much more flexible than UE or the standard Distant Lights, especially for night scenes like the one I just completed. The only other lights I used in it were the two Linear Point lights, one just under the street lamp to brighten the lens, and the other to add a little fill light to the Elf Gangboy's face.