AWE Shading Kit for DAZ Studio and 3delight

Kevin Sanderson

wowie said:

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).

What a wonderful idea!

RAMWolff

Question about making an object illuminate.  How does one go about setting that up?  I want to make a more simplified shader set up that I can just click on and have just the inputs that are needed to make a light bulb with various lighting strengths.  I've hidden all the SSS inputs since I don't think those are needed for light bulbs.  I've hidden other various inputs but as I scroll down I don't see much in the way of those sorts of inputs.  I see Luminence Upper and Lower values but not sure if Transmission is what I want to play with or no?? 

If it's possible to JUST have a list of inputs that will cause an object to become a light source I can go from there figuring things out... I think!  LOL  Lighting has never ever been my friend when it comes to 3D stuff so I'm used to just buying light sets to get by but now that I'm making stuff to sell I guess I need to learn... I'm OK with iRAY and good with 3DL but those are lights, not shaders mostly but AWE I'm in new waters here and have very little clues as to what I can look at to possibly make that happen.  

Thanks so much

Richard 

 

wowie

RAMWolff said:

Question about making an object illuminate.  How does one go about setting that up?  I want to make a more simplified shader set up that I can just click on and have just the inputs that are needed to make a light bulb with various lighting strengths.

Use the AWE AreaPT light shader. If you need to mix diffuse and emission on an object, then use the AWE Environment Sphere. You'll need to use a mask that controls ambient strength though.

AWE AreaPT also will not emit light when applied to object with subdivision. For those, use the AWE Environment Sphere shader.

With AWE AreaPT, the more complex the emitter object, the longer the render times. It starts somewhat slowly, so you can probably get away with adding a bit poly at first. If I recall, using a sphere primitive of 12x12 incurs negligible impact. This isn't applicable to AWE Environment Sphere.

RAMWolff

Hmmm, I have an object that was premade by someone else ... This is what the bulb looks like in wireframe mode... See below.. 

 

RAMWolff

Didn't have any luck with the set up scene and converting it from iRAY to AWE... just gave me a blank render window when it as done so something went wrong.  Merged in the AWE starter scene and since there was just the HDR map lighting the iRAY scene there were no lights to mess anything up. I applied the Gino skin to G8M, converted all the items like the chair using the cloth shader you provided, metal Copper AWE to the metal parts like the chair legs and the lamp base and the mirrored background wall, to just the border.  Not sure how to make a mirrored surface using AWE so just used the Awe surface to convert and then used the Utility "Reflections ON" script and then hit render.  Nothing... blank render when done.  *sigh*  

 

wowie

RAMWolff said:

Hmmm, I have an object that was premade by someone else ... This is what the bulb looks like in wireframe mode... See below..

I think you can still use AWE AreaPT on that. It's not super complex by any means.

RAMWolff said:

Didn't have any luck with the set up scene and converting it from iRAY to AWE... just gave me a blank render window when it as done so something went wrong.  Merged in the AWE starter scene and since there was just the HDR map lighting the iRAY scene there were no lights to mess anything up. I applied the Gino skin to G8M, converted all the items like the chair using the cloth shader you provided, metal Copper AWE to the metal parts like the chair legs and the lamp base and the mirrored background wall, to just the border.  Not sure how to make a mirrored surface using AWE so just used the Awe surface to convert and then used the Utility "Reflections ON" script and then hit render.  Nothing... blank render when done.  *sigh* 

Send the scene to me, if possible.

RAMWolff

Let me try my thing first.  I'm not starting from scratch but I'm going to use my previous AWE scene with Gino already in it and bring the rest of the props converted to AWE and merge them together.  

RAMWolff

OK there is a bug I guess.  I'm trying to convert hair from iRAY to AWE and the opacity maps are not moved from the iRAY Cutout Opacity map input to the AWE 3DL Opacity Strength input!  YIKES! 

wowie

RAMWolff said:

OK there is a bug I guess.  I'm trying to convert hair from iRAY to AWE and the opacity maps are not moved from the iRAY Cutout Opacity map input to the AWE 3DL Opacity Strength input!  YIKES! 

For proper conversion, don't apply the hair preset directly. First apply AWE Surface using the 'AWE Surface.dsa' preset. This converts iray uber into AWE. Run the "AWE Transfer Uber.dsa" afterwards. This will copy the values/maps to AWE's equivalent fields.

RAMWolff

Seems like some odd steps to get something converted over though.  Why not have a conversion script that just converts to AWE and moves the trans maps to their proper channels all in one go?  

RAMWolff

Also, how does one make a mirrored surface, reflections .... I've tried all the scripts provided and my back wall with mirrored surface set up is not reflective at all.  The metal surfaces are giving me more reflective feedback!  LOL Thanks.  

Sven Dullah

RAMWolff said:

Also, how does one make a mirrored surface, reflections .... I've tried all the scripts provided and my back wall with mirrored surface set up is not reflective at all.  The metal surfaces are giving me more reflective feedback!  LOL Thanks.  

Just use base metallicity at 100, base roughness 0. Turn off diffuse or, if you need it to look old and dusty, set diff strengt to maybe 50%. Then you may have to decrease metallicity slightly. Make sure specular2 is on and strength 100, set roughness to 0 for a very sharp reflection.

RAMWolff

OK, I'll try that when I get home from work tonight.  Thanks! 

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

Just use base metallicity at 100, base roughness 0. Turn off diffuse or, if you need it to look old and dusty, set diff strengt to maybe 50%. Then you may have to decrease metallicity slightly. Make sure specular2 is on and strength 100, set roughness to 0 for a very sharp reflection.

You don't have to actually turn off diffuse. That's just me being overly cautious. If you want to have a slight diffuse, it's better to use a texture mask for metalness. The parts where it's less than 1 (pure white) should be a mix between metal and dielectric. With zero (black) it will be totally dielectric. The shader will apply diffuse and dielectric specular accordingly, as it should with any PBR workflow shader.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

Just use base metallicity at 100, base roughness 0. Turn off diffuse or, if you need it to look old and dusty, set diff strengt to maybe 50%. Then you may have to decrease metallicity slightly. Make sure specular2 is on and strength 100, set roughness to 0 for a very sharp reflection.

You don't have to actually turn off diffuse. That's just me being overly cautious. If you want to have a slight diffuse, it's better to use a texture mask for metalness. The parts where it's less than 1 (pure white) should be a mix between metal and dielectric. With zero (black) it will be totally dielectric. The shader will apply diffuse and dielectric specular accordingly, as it should with any PBR workflow shader.

So for a dusty mirror you should make a white metalness map with some grey to black speckles and set diffuse to 30% or along those lines? Probably use same map for one of the spcular lobes?

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

So for a dusty mirror you should make a white metalness map with some grey to black speckles and set diffuse to 30% or along those lines? Probably use same map for one of the spcular lobes?

Just one map, into the metalness slot. Both base specular/reflection lobe will automatically follow. Here's a nice, free texture resource - https://texture.ninja/

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

So for a dusty mirror you should make a white metalness map with some grey to black speckles and set diffuse to 30% or along those lines? Probably use same map for one of the spcular lobes?

Just one map, into the metalness slot. Both base specular/reflectin lobe will automatically follow. Here's a nice, free texture resource - https://texture.ninja/

Tks!

RAMWolff

OK, that works sort of .  The only way I can get the scene to light up nicely though is that the ESphere "Visible in Render" in Perameters needs to be ON. WIth it off the scene renders black.  I keep running into this issue so not sure what's going on with that.  I did just delete the extra lights in the scene, which you mentioned I should just change to a different shader type in your email to me wowie but I decided I wanted to light this with the ESphere.  Now what I did to add some extra light is take the lights from the lamps and applied the ESphere shader to give me more options so my next question is what values under Surfaces control the brightness of the light source?  Here's the basic settings. There are ALLOT more but I think the main settings are hopefully in these three panels.  GOD there are allot of settings!  LOL 

 

wowie

RAMWolff said:

There are ALLOT more but I think the main settings are hopefully in these three panels.  GOD there are allot of settings!  LOL

Intensity, intensity scale and intensity scale offset directly controls the amount of emission. Both intensity scale and intensity scale offset is added, so they're interchangeable. The amount of actual emission will be proportional to the emitter size, so keep that in mind. Each increase in intensity scale/intensity scale offset doubles the energy.

RAMWolff

Thanks so much! 

RAMWolff

OK, seems I had some more mistakes in my set up.  I have loaded up JUST the NEW aweEnvironment with the parented sphere.  So I was thinking that the default set up would give me pretty much a nice render but seems to render very dark.  I do NOT have any additional lights in the scene.  The Ambient in the old set up was set to 200%, this one is set with limits on to 100%.  BUT now there are other controllers like Exposure.  That does lend to additional light in the scene.  While it's great for that it does seem to blow out the background sphere imagery from the HDR file I have loaded in the Diffuse channel so not sure if Exposure is the way to go for illuminating things better.  

By default, wowie has the skin diffuse set pretty low... so it tends to make the skin look darker but even with the skin diffuse strength turned up to almost 100% it's still rendering very dark. 

I'm investigating further but if anyone has some suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong THIS TIME (LOL) please post.  

Sven Dullah

RAMWolff said:

OK, seems I had some more mistakes in my set up.  I have loaded up JUST the NEW aweEnvironment with the parented sphere.  So I was thinking that the default set up would give me pretty much a nice render but seems to render very dark.  I do NOT have any additional lights in the scene.  The Ambient in the old set up was set to 200%, this one is set with limits on to 100%.  BUT now there are other controllers like Exposure.  That does lend to additional light in the scene.  While it's great for that it does seem to blow out the background sphere imagery from the HDR file I have loaded in the Diffuse channel so not sure if Exposure is the way to go for illuminating things better.  

By default, wowie has the skin diffuse set pretty low... so it tends to make the skin look darker but even with the skin diffuse strength turned up to almost 100% it's still rendering very dark. 

I'm investigating further but if anyone has some suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong THIS TIME (LOL) please post.  

If you raise exposure for the aweEnvironment light(parameters pane/light) and NOT the environment sphere, it won't affect the background, only geometry:) And I just discovered you can use the camera based exposure controls to further boost light intensity, which is a VERY NICE feature

I agree with you about wowie's settings, for skin I tend to start with diffuse at 50-60%, and SS strength at 75%, and go from there.

I'm sure wowie has a more accurate explanation though

RAMWolff

Thanks so much

Another thing I'm running in to and he's emailed me telling me to adjust this and adjust that for the skin but I'm not seeing ANY difference.  I even turned OFF SSS and still see no change in how the the skin is rendering.  I even recreated the entire scene from scratch and still having issues with the skin tone settings.  I don't want to change the tone in Diffuse and I certainly don't want to change it on the maps themeselves since they work fine in normal 3DL and iRAY but I can't get ANY sort of a tone to the skin to change.  I'd tried, literally, every color input and yes, I make sure the on/off buttons are turned to on each time.  Do a test render and same exact skin tone.  My set up is very basic.  Just getting the light from the aweEnvironment, that's it.  So not sure what to think about this new issue.  Kinda funny and kinda annoying as I'm TRYING to get Gino ready for the store but want to give a nice AWE based render.  BUT now I'm seeing the skin settings are not cooperating with me at all no matter what I try so either something internally is broken, turned off by accident or something on my end but I can't figure it out.... 

The settings are mostly put back to default for the SSS as I don't want to forget to be at a base, esp for the color. Again, I've tried changing EVERY color value except for the Diffuse, with no change in the skin tone so not sure what to think.  I've even done crazy colors like pure blue and green and yellow... nothing changes in the test renders.... Weird!  

 

Sven Dullah

RAMWolff said:

Thanks so much

Another thing I'm running in to and he's emailed me telling me to adjust this and adjust that for the skin but I'm not seeing ANY difference.  I even turned OFF SSS and still see no change in how the the skin is rendering.  I even recreated the entire scene from scratch and still having issues with the skin tone settings.  I don't want to change the tone in Diffuse and I certainly don't want to change it on the maps themeselves since they work fine in normal 3DL and iRAY but I can't get ANY sort of a tone to the skin to change.  I'd tried, literally, every color input and yes, I make sure the on/off buttons are turned to on each time.  Do a test render and same exact skin tone.  My set up is very basic.  Just getting the light from the aweEnvironment, that's it.  So not sure what to think about this new issue.  Kinda funny and kinda annoying as I'm TRYING to get Gino ready for the store but want to give a nice AWE based render.  BUT now I'm seeing the skin settings are not cooperating with me at all no matter what I try so either something internally is broken, turned off by accident or something on my end but I can't figure it out.... 

The settings are mostly put back to default for the SSS as I don't want to forget to be at a base, esp for the color. Again, I've tried changing EVERY color value except for the Diffuse, with no change in the skin tone so not sure what to think.  I've even done crazy colors like pure blue and green and yellow... nothing changes in the test renders.... Weird!  

 

Hm from a quick glance at your settings I notice that SS phase is at 0, try setting it back to 0.82 which I think the default value is now. Does that make a difference? It should!

Also, not directly related to SSS, but try setting diffuse roughness for skin surfaces to 50 or more. I tend to use 100% for (typical DS 20-30y) female characters, and decrease it to 50% for a more "weathered" look.

RAMWolff

I THINK it's helping.  I'm doing some test renders.... BRB 

RAMWolff

YUP, makes a huge diff... so Phase.  Must remember that.  Thanks so much Sven!  

Sven Dullah

RAMWolff said:

YUP, makes a huge diff... so Phase.  Must remember that.  Thanks so much Sven!  

Ok good

wowie

Basically this.

• Set up your scene wide exposure controls. Use the camera based exposure to limit the amount of maximum exposure.
• Raise the actual exposure to some high value. I usually just set it to the max. The actual exposure will be limited to maximum exposure set by the cameera based exposure controls.
• Set your temperature / white balance for the scene (using AWE Environment Light) and add the appropriate offset to your lights (AWE AreaPT).
• For skin, use skin 2 preset as a starting point.
• Phase or direction should be at least 0.8. The default value is 0. Iray uses a different convention, using negative value for more backward scatter. AWE uses positive values.
• Personally, I use 100% subsurface strength and balanced out the diffuse to match. The idea is that most of the resulting look will be from the subsurface. Your mileage may vary.
• Subsurface scale will be different depending on the figure/object scale, but something around 0.1 to 0.2 looks right for DAZ figures.
• Diffuse color texture is already accounted for so you do not need to use textures in subsurface color or strength. The only exception if you need to use a texture mask for certain areas (brows, hair scalp etc). I usually just use diffuse color filter in the subsurface options. Using textures with less than white will dim the subsurface output.
• To vary or color correct the resulting diffuse/subsurface, change the subsurface absorption color as I laid out in the tips and tricks.

One last thing, bump/displacements will render differently if you use DOF. Most of the time, what looks OK without DOF will be stronger when DOF is used.

RAMWolff

Thank you.

SO I've searched for entries in both PDF's you have for AWE for Backside.  Seems when I load up my glossy maps in those channels and choose a light skin tone I get a noticable change in the skin tone when rendering.  Care to elaborate on what exactly Backside does as I can't find anything on it.  

Thank you! 

RAMWolff

Also, a teeny tiny annoyance occurs with the rendering window.  I don't experience this with iRAY so wondering if there is a setting you can enable in a future update so have the rendering window stay on top rather than fall to the back of DAZ Studio.  My cursor automatically goes to the rendering dialog and when that happens the rendering window itself is pushed to the back.  It's just an annoyance but if there is an easy fix for it I'd like that!