Problem with the Dark Elves

Hera

They look fantastic in the promo, but...

http://www.daz3d.com/dark-elves-for-genesis

for me, they don't exactly become dark, on the very contrary, upon render the Genesis character turns all blinding white, almost as if she's totally white ambient. That after adding a few distant lights in the scene. I don't understand a thing what's going on, the textures and stuff look all normal to me...

I'm running DAZ 4.6.0.18 and the original settings coming with this product.

The hair and her dress and jewellry and all that jazz looks perfectly normal, it's her skin that's completely blindingly white.

Lucynsky

Wow, cool!

Try turning the lights down a bit. Then maybe check the gloss?

Richard Haseltine

Are there any error messages (in the progress dialogue, but that tends to be hidden behind the render, or in the log (Help>Troubleshooting>View logfile) immediately after rendering? If thiss et uses the new SSS Shader and you didn't download and install it (it's free with DS, but a separate item) then you would get odd results.

Hera

I've got this shader, downloaded it when 4.6 was brand new, I don't know if it has been updated since.

http://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-shader-base

And I've got an error message going like this:

Rendering image
3Delight message #45 (Severity 2): S2069: the interface of shader 'C:/Users/Linda/AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/shaders/brickyard/{407f8e5c-3a9b-4708-b5e5-799ff1fe7c1d}/shader_Surface.sdl' is invalid
3Delight message #45 (Severity 2): S2051: cannot load shader 'brickyard/{407f8e5c-3a9b-4708-b5e5-799ff1fe7c1d}/shader_Surface', will use 'defaultsurface'
Compiled C:/Users/Linda/AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/shaders/brickyard/{c7f58d11-88a1-41e7-8ae2-b724de864cb9}/shader_Surface.sdl...
Created RenderCacheBlock
Saved image: D:\Y\render\r.png ]

I keep getting these more or less all the time but they have never mattered anything so I've just kept on disregarding them - until now.

fixmypcmike

oops, already discussed

Hera

[edited due to post above being edited]

IgnisSerpentus

The SSS used in combo with uber enviro can yield some hot spotting and blown out color. It came up in testing, actually, but it doesn't always occur. Check that the lights don't have specular. You can also turn down the SSS Strength and see if that helps.

Edited to add: It looks like the error is saying DS isnt seeing the shader at all. But Im not a DS guru. Perhaps a reinstall of the shader may help?

vwrangler

IgnisSerpentus said:

Edited to add: It looks like the error is saying DS isnt seeing the shader at all. But Im not a DS guru. Perhaps a reinstall of the shader may help?

I've had that issue with Subsurface and a couple of other newer shaders. For some reason, under various circumstances -- frequently, but not always, involving Uberenvironment -- the shader flatly refuses to load, if I'm interpreting the error messages correctly. No idea why. When that happens, you get the glowing white character where the texture should be. There doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it.

If you retexture the character with Studio Default, Human Surface or Uber Surface, in the same scene and file, everything will be fine. Put a different Subsurface texture on, the same thing happens in that scene. It also seems that once it happens in a particular scene or file, you're never going to get it to stop happening in that scene/file. If you really need the character to have Subsurface, or if that's the only option for the character or shader, all you can do is to build a similar scene in a separate file and hope that you don't repeat whatever it is that made that happen.

It's also completely random when it hits. The last time, I had a character using Subsurface in a scene, did a render, everything was fine. Then I realized that I had something out of position, fixed that, re-rendered the same scene and BAM! glowing white character.

IgnisSerpentus

vwrangler said:

IgnisSerpentus said:

Edited to add: It looks like the error is saying DS isnt seeing the shader at all. But Im not a DS guru. Perhaps a reinstall of the shader may help?

I've had that issue with Subsurface and a couple of other newer shaders. For some reason, under various circumstances -- frequently, but not always, involving Uberenvironment -- the shader flatly refuses to load, if I'm interpreting the error messages correctly. No idea why. When that happens, you get the glowing white character where the texture should be. There doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it.

If you retexture the character with Studio Default, Human Surface or Uber Surface, in the same scene and file, everything will be fine. Put a different Subsurface texture on, the same thing happens in that scene. It also seems that once it happens in a particular scene or file, you're never going to get it to stop happening in that scene/file. If you really need the character to have Subsurface, or if that's the only option for the character or shader, all you can do is to build a similar scene in a separate file and hope that you don't repeat whatever it is that made that happen.

It's also completely random when it hits. The last time, I had a character using Subsurface in a scene, did a render, everything was fine. Then I realized that I had something out of position, fixed that, re-rendered the same scene and BAM! glowing white character.

Yeah, Ive had something similar happen a couple times, where it rendered white like that. I just closed out DS, reopened everything and it was ok. I thought it was just some weird hiccup. But AFAIK, I didnt have any scenes saved where it corrupted, so I couldn't say if reloading will fix it in that scenario.

Hera

vwrangler said:

It's also completely random when it hits. The last time, I had a character using Subsurface in a scene, did a render, everything was fine. Then I realized that I had something out of position, fixed that, re-rendered the same scene and BAM! glowing white character.

For me too, it's completely random. I got the elf to work today, in a new file. I'm also having the same problem with the goop shaders, they come and go at random.