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Well I'll be damned....
MUCH better, MUCH faster. So much fiddling....
Your the best, thanks again. Now I gotta figure out the SSS for getting the ears more translucent and get the hair shaders set up better... still see some white fireflies but that will be easy compared to all this! LOL
Glad to help, yeah I know, so much to learn...
You know this was a workaround and not a solution, right;) My guess is the facial hair, something needs to be changed for the surface, you could try another specular BRDF type or even disable reflection and specular completely for the facial hair just to see if that was it.
I think I have reflection turned off. I don't know anything about the BRDF stuff. I don't even know what it stands for so I just leave those sliders and inputs alone! LOL
Currently I'm working on the skin shader a bit more. Liking it too but yea, still can't seem to figure out the translucency settings!
I think I may have found a way to boost translucency. Hve to test it out first though.
Edit:. Ah, sorry my idea didn't work. So no change in that front.
Thank you. Oh and I have a solution for uploading my beta so I'll let you know when that's ready to go. Looks like I'm changing ISP's as Sonic is just not up to snuff for my needs any longer so looks like I'll be moving over to WAVE!
Here is Gino looking allot calmer now that he's good to go.
OH and I did slide back to using the more simplistic 3DL shaders for the Brows, Scruff and Lashes... rendering times were the same so looks like these will work fine for the Gino pack!
Hi @wowie ! I'm quite new to DAZ and I was suggested to look up your new product. I just read this manual:
http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/55819/55819_awe-shading-kit-user-guide.pdf
but I'm still having second thoughts about buying it. I'm a complete noob at rendering, and if possible, I'd like you to answer a few of my noob questions :D
1) I just somewhat figured out how to use UberEnviroment combined with spotlights that come with DAZ. But from what I read in the manual, your product comes with a standalone set of lights? Are they as easy to use as the regular one that ship with DAZ?
"AWE Environment does not come with any HDRI textures, so you will need to plug a HDRI texture into the surface of the environment sphere." - gosh, what does that mean, and what is an HDRI texture and what is this sphere for? O_O
2) Is this product useful if I don't know what subsurface maps are and such? Is this compatible simply for pluggin in to any prop and the messing around with the settings?
3) do you plan on making a video or picture tutorial (for complete noobs) on how to use this? :)
Short answer.
Dont use any other light such as UE2, AoA Advanced Ambient or any other point/spot/distant light. They're simply not needed and unnecessarily add to render times. If you want to use AWE Surface to its fullest lighting potential, stick to using path traced area lights and surfaces with ambient enabled.
Now here's the long answer:
Unlike previous shaders, AWE Surface (which you can get for free) does its own GI. This means you don't have to use any ambient light to get ambient occlusion (like with UE2 and AoA's Advanced Ambient Light) or indirect lighting/global illumination (with UE2). But you do need some illumination in the scene.
Although the existing point/spot/distant lights or even the new point/spot/distant light that is available in the freebie thread can be used, AWE Surface will render 2x faster with path traced area lights such as RadiumAreaPT (available on the freebie thread) or my own AWEAreaPT. Hence the new standalone set of lights. These are more modern mesh/area lights, so they're applied to objects/props as a surface shader. As such, you need to restart renders if you need to adjust the light properties. Other properties to note with path traced area lights is that they can't be used on objects with subdivision, so you need to use basic polygon props/objects with this shader. Also, the less complex the prop, the faster the render.
Another source of illumination is ambient surfaces. Any ambient surface in the scene will automatically 'emit' light when you use AWE Surface. So what I did for the commercial pack is to built an environment sphere with ambient enabled. When this environment sphere is used, objects in the scene with AWE Surface will be 'lit' by this sphere. HDRI textures is basically a 360 degrees photo of a scene, pretty similar to what you can see with 360 degrees Google's Streetview. When you use a HDRI texture on the environment sphere, the renderer will recreate the lighting for that scene as if you're in the same spot as the camera was when that 360 degree picture was taken. That's why it is also called image based lighting.
One of the biggest headache I found when working with UE2 was getting the HDRI texture to line up properly. With the environment sphere and AWE Surface, I no longer have this issue. I can view the HDRI in the correct orientation inside the viewport without rendering. Likewise, with area lights I can simply make them big or small to either get a softbox or a spotlight, adjust intensity or placement/distance depending on what amount of exposure I want.
Yes. Subsurface maps are generally unnecessary with AWE Surface.
You can still use them to control subsurface intensity though. For example to achieve something that RAMWolff wanted, you can paint a map with white on parts of the object you want stronger effects and black where you don't want any effect. Neutral grey or any value inbetween will allow some subsurface effects.
From - https://blenderartists.org/t/approximating-translucency-with-inverted-ambient-occlusion/652859
You can also use color to tint the subsurface differently on some parts. Once that's done, you can use this map inside AWE Surface's subsurface color or strength texture slot.
AWE Surface can be used with just about any prop. It does make some assumption that the prop is 'properly' made though. For example, in the real world everything have some amount of thickness. Unfortunately, not all props are made this way. For those props, you will need to manually toggle a feature of AWE Surface so those props will render properly.
Been planning too, but I haven't got around to it yet. Mostly busy with updating the shader and adding in new stuff. Some people prefer a document, though I personally found videos can sometimes be better at explaining the workflow process.
If you're on the fence, I suggest getting the freebie first: Play with it and feel free to ask question in that thread or here.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/277581/awe-surface-shader-a-new-physically-plausible-shader-for-daz-studio-and-3delight/p1
is there a simple way to emulate/fake ambient illumination
Not sure what you mean, have you tried using the environment sphere with no map applied to it? Or did I miss your point totally?
Two way I can think of. Well, three actually. The first two relies on breaking physical plausibility.
Since ambient lighting is just basically diffuse lights with lots of bounces, I usually just raise the exposure on AWE Environment. With a large enough emitter and a small scene/environment sphere, it will create the same fill you get with both of the previous methods.
I got the aswers i was looking for thanks !
OK. I think I found out what the deal is with Genesis 8 eyes. I was troubleshooting RAMWolff's Gino when I noticed I couldn't get any type of reflection/specular highlights, no mtater what I do. The only way I can get any sort of highlights is by turning on opacity. Once that's done, I tried re-enabling transmission and of course, the black spots shows up. No matter what settings I used, they simply won't go away.
So I sent the model to Hexagon and tried pulling out the eyes out of the head to see if something in the head was messing around with the render. Didn't help, but I forgot to turn on subdivision again and then I noticed the dark spots changed shape. OK. Then i guess it must be a geometry issue, since subD changes geometry. I sent the model to Hexagon again, selected the eyesurface and pull it out slightly so it slightly bulges outward. Re-render things in DS and the black spots are gone.
It does look like the cornea and eye moisture polygons of Genesis 8 are placed too close together for the default bias used by 3delight. The easiest workaround would be a morph to slightly bulges them outward, though I don't know how this would behave with closed eyelids (at the moment).
Edit:
OK. Worked out a possible solution in the shader, by adding a 0 (zero) bias to transmission. Hey, would that make AWE Surface "unbiased" ?
Hahaha quite a story:D Seriously it's not only 3DL that has problems with G8 eyes, I've seen numerous threads on the subject lately. Don't know if the Iray problems are related, but lots of people are having issues. Anyway, nice workaround wowie! And skin looks nice too:)
I think Riversoft and Sickleyield's Iray to 3DL converter gets rid of a ring around the eyes problem, too. I've seen it before... the eyes render fine in Iray but have a problem in 3DL. Never could get rid of it on my own. Also noticed it in a realistic eyes pack -- https://www.daz3d.com/rssy-iray-to-3delight-converter-and-merchant-resource
You have figured out another solution, wowie!
Promo pic from the converter product
You mean the meniscus/tear? The problems most likely caused by the same issue. Anyway, why do it with a morph when you can just adjust bias in your lights or shader. I haven't noticed it until now because I never actually rendered out Genesis 3 or 8 in 'proper' 3delight.
On other renderers, you can probably adjust the ray epsilon. Speculation on my part, but I think they're calling it that because those renderers are supposed to be 'unbiased'.
I decided to rework the skin settings since the updated shader changes a lot of things. Just finished updating the character MATs and some presets. It was just a funny coincidence find the problem and fix with G3/G8. Found a bug, fix another, then fix the original bug.
Yeah, I was trying out a character in 3DL because when I eventually get to rendering, I need motion blur, and it's not available in the DAZ version of Iray, but it is in 3DL. The character only was designed for Iray.
Is that my Gino skin? Looks like a really nice reflection. Funny, in my set up, which seems weird to all that's looking over Gino right now, most of what works for me doens't work for them... LOL I must be really weird in how I have my set up going or something is amiss in my DAZ Studio! LMAO
Looking forward to your updates for AWE wowie! Thanks for your help so far. Oh and by the way there are maps for SSS in the folder for Gino but I probably don't have them created properly to have the dark and light where they would give more of a translucency to ears and what not..
Interesting article!
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3MAYA/Subsurface+Scattering+Material+|+VRayFastSSS2
No. It's the default texture that came bundled with the figure.
Don't worry. I'm in the process of updating the presets for the commercial shading kit anyway. Gino was actually beneficial since it led me to a way around that cornea/eye moisture problem.
I think I've found a very nice scheme to cover setting up diffuse and subsurface that cover most (if not all) skin tones. Just testing it out right now with all the different texture sets that I have from Gen 4, Genesis, Genesis 2 and Victoria/Michael 7 and 8. It's simple, easy, robust and most of all, consistent and makes use of proper subsurface scattering profiles.
I haven't tested the preset on Gino though.
Posted some tips and tricks in the first page.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/280441/awe-shading-kit-for-daz-studio-and-3delight-commercial/p1
Just need to add thumbnails to the Uber to AWE conversion helper script.
Edit: Added clarification for subsurface. The color used is subsurface absorption color.
Fabulous! thanks again!
Thanks also for the added Tips and Tricks in the second post. I've saved all the new info out in a RTF file. VERY HELPFUL!
Very handy tips there Wowie, thanks!
Finished this today. Basically, a procedural pattern used as a mask, built into AWE Area PT shader. You change the shape by changing the number of sides, the size or blurriness of the edges. I limit the number of sides to be above 3. To get a nice looking sphere, use 24 or upward. You can also set it so that it changes opacity. It will be applied to both side of the emitter.
It isn't tileable or affected by the tiling scale/offset controls.
This should allow using a simple plane to approximate emitters with complex shapes (ie circle).
This will be very useful