My first DS render.
David Brinnen
Posts: 3,136
I figured it's about time (I've had DS installed on my PC for about eight years now) that I tried my hand at a DS render. Thanks to ForbiddenWhispers for invaluable clues, a couple of the DAZ 3D video tutorials and Zigraphix's shader mixer product http://www.daz3d.com/shader-mixer-tutorial-i which is currently free. After only an hour and a quarters head scratching and clicking I've managed to squeeze out my first DS render. I don't expect anyone will be amazed. Nor is the comparison fair since I know how to use Bryce and have learned a bit of Octane. But, as what I'm here to do is a) say hello
Hello DS users.
And b) say, that if you want to make a little model like this in Wings3D, I've made a video which you can watch here.
Wings 3D project - twisted mobius cube interlocking shape thing* - by David Brinnen
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Comments
Oh great, now I can hate you in 2 programs. lol
Are all of them DS renders? That last pink/blue one is my fave. Nice job. Really like that meaty looking whatever it is texture in that 2nd one too.
Thank you for your kind er hatred... Um,
No. First DS, second Bryce, third Octane. Sorry I didn't make that clear above. I started talking about that then got sidetracked.
It's like this, there's this marvelous little button on the Bryce create shelf that launches (and in my hands often crashes) DS. And I have used DS as a sort of glorified bulk importer, but not being really into figures, I've never really explored the render engine. I've crashed the shader mixer quite a lot in older versions. If it is prepared to play nicely in these later incarnations of the software I might have another go. Horo and I have been wanting to do something cross platform for a couple of years now, but have been thwarted by irritating little bugs in the lighting model. That doesn't mean we will just give up. We are stubborn like that. But it might take... a while... to figure things out. In the mean time, I thought I might pick the brains of and generally bother the DS community. And in return post up some little tutorials that show, those that want to, how to make little curious whatnot's in Wings 3D.
Fear not, I have nothing but love for your renders/abilities. No actual hatred involved. :D
If the top one is the only DS render then you're off to a good start. I like the look of the cobblestone style texture, but something about the reflective surface is bugging me- my eyes are having a hard time interpreting it, which could be down to some of the harsher shadows (or what look like shadows).
I tend to forget that DS itself can render a lot more than just figures. It seemed to have been pigeonholed into that role since there aren't a lot of renders posted around showing it's abilities elsewhere (outside of landscape/indoor/outdoor scenes). Such scenes like maybe just a fruit basket on a plain table. I've been meaning to explore DS outside of using posable figures, just never actually got around to doing it.
I'll be looking forward to your tutorial vids. I've always had a love for those little organic bits and pieces. I've played around with Topmod off and on, but in all actuality I tend to just push buttons and crash it rather than making anything I actually like. lol
David? DAZ Studio? Checking rivers to see it they are flowing red as Blood. Checking sky to see if stars are falling from heavens. I'll check the pig's for sprouting wings after that...
Welcome to the Dark Side Mr. Man. Umm... Wait, DS stands for DAZ Studio, not Dark Side... or so they think when they start.
Hey... Now I have used DS, I have, I've just not rendered in DS before. Here be me using DS, see, that's me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3T1uIjNkX4&list=PL790l24c49DROE86jFAMH3vKKe7-L6hgZ struggling a bit admittedly, but I did say in the comments I'd try and make more showing DS. Just taking a while longer to get to it. I've been kinda busy. You know, work, tedious everyday, getting your hands dirty work. Can't sit in front of my computer all day drinking endless cups of coffee, till I end up fat, pale, jittery and paranoid. Much as I would like to.
Anyhow, thank you for the welcome. I'll try to behave. *cough* * cough* Bryce is really fun to use... *ahem* What? What? I didn't hear anything did you?
Vaskania, Topmod. Aye, I've crashed that. A lot. Hence after playing a bit with it, I've gone back to Wings 3D and tried to figure out how to do Topmoddish things in Wings - which for me crashes less.
I think, for the above render, I didn't set this "Shading Rate" control down to a small enough value for the frequency of the displacement material. Displacement materials always seem to be a bug-bear for render engines. Interesting though. Bryce has micropoly displacement... less said about that the better - it's really broken. The bump mapping though is good. No normal mapping though... :( Octane has normal mapping :) But no displacement :S - no render engine is perfect.
Here's my only entirely Topmod created model. Rendered in DS. That's two DS renders now! Woo... And I've not crashed this DS 4.6 yet! At least not on it's own, I've crashed it over a score of times today trying to get the DS bridge to let me just shove my models over from Bryce.
Cool, glad to see you trying DS. Exciting stuff so far. :)
DS is pretty friendly and it'd be wonderful to see someone with your skill master it.
Hello!
Whatever your choice of poiso^H^H^H um, renderers, I love your grasp of surfacing. That third one in particular looks very candle-waxy, which I find incredibly elusive when I attempt it.
Thank you for the welcome Adam. Don't expect anything approaching mastery for a good while yet.
dhtapp, Hello. So yes the waxyness, that's the wonders of Octanes spectrually accurate unbiased render engine. Like anything it has strengths and weaknesses, SSS is something though it does remarkably well.
Here's another little video and a set of renders to go with it. DS, Bryce and Octane respectively.
Wings 3D project - interlocking torus knots - by David Brinnen
I can't wait to get my hands on Octane. Alas, it's a no-go on my current elderly desktop. Hopefully a new machine is in the works for early next year, then we shall see :D
These interlocking shapes are fascinating! Great renders.
I'm really digging those octane renders. The render makes the material look like a plastic/rubber like that of a baby's teething toy.
It is possible to get this effect in Bryce http://davidbrinnen.deviantart.com/art/Bryce-7-1-Pro-SSS-experiment-jade-dragon-330207657 but tricky, I gather DS now has SSS? I'm sure I saw an announcement to that effect. It is essential to get across the "uncanny valley" if you are into figures.
RaindropDrinkwater, thank you. I like simple scenes, the challenge is to make something interesting without a lot of clutter. I can really then focus on one or two elements.
dhtapp, be aware Octane needs a pretty beefy Nvidia GPU to run. So make sure your PSU is up to the task. Because I tend to be GPU and CPU rendering at the same time, and have USB microphone sucking down phantom power if I am recording a tutorial, I have a 1 kw power supply. The only snag with that is I haven't got a UPS big enough not to keep my PC running when the power browns out for a second. (which happens with depressing frequency in this forgotten backwater where I live).
The master of lighting, shaders, 3D object sculpting and various other form's of 3D even though learned in another program/programs deem's himself NEW to any form of art just because it is a different program is... well silly. After seeing just these few renders I'm so close to asking for my New User status back it's not funny. Skill in a program is learned as the program is learned, universal knowledge of the way things work across multiple program platforms and getting a new program to produce great renders on limited knowledge is another thing all together.
I'm pretty sure your a master of the art, no matter the program used. Beside's I did find wings sprouting on the pigs. Sure the FED's rushed in and cordoned off the whole place and made me sign some paperwork about what If found but.....
P.S. Keep it up. Love the thread.
Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. Well, I got up this morning feeling brave so I opened DS and had another little go. And still no crashes in the shader mixer! That is what was putting me off before and it seems to be a lot more stable now. The interface is still proving challenging. The mouse roll does the opposite of what I imagine it should. I couldn't add another spotlight without my environment lighting vanishing so I had to contend with an area light which didn't make the rest of the stuff vanish. I did manage to modify the colour of the material and the colour of the light - yeah baby steps. And for someone who makes tutorials I'm too impatient to watch those of others all the way through. As soon as I find the control I think I want, that's it. I confess to being very impressed with the number of options available in the "bricks" but confounded so far by the number of steps required to make and verify adjustments. DS like Octane seems to suffer from a lack of procedrual functions - or maybe I've just not found them yet.
Here's another wings thingy, related to this tutorial Wings 3D project - wings things with loops - by David Brinnen
First DS. Then Bryce and finally Octane.
Wings3D thing made like this.
Wings 3D project - another twisted looped cube thing - by David Brinnen
Spherically UV mapped using UV mapper.
DS Materials scavenged from Zigraphix's tutorial and lighting with the help of a ForbiddenWispers tutorial.
DS, then Bryce, then Octane. The render times were comparable in each case, although as you can see, each render engine brings a different character to the scene.
Welcome to DS, David. You have obviously bought your meticulous methods and sound understanding of shader/material fabrication with you. I have not even touched the shader mixer. Well, I poked it with a stick and ran away, to be entirely honest. In just a couple of days you've produced results that many DS users will probably never accomplish, but that's the difference between those that just want to render character scenes for a few kicks, and those that approach rendering on a more serious level.
I'll try and catch you up, but I suspect it won't be a short journey. You've got a few years on me, but I sense I have a similar enthusiasm for details and technicality.
How are you finding 3Delight anyway? And yes, it does have SSS. DS currently has this implemented as ubersurface 1/2. Ubersurface comes stock and standard with DS. There is also a new subsurface shader, but it actually does a lot more than SSS. It really is a contender for the place as the defacto shader system. I assume you can make SSS effects with the shader mixer? Or maybe you need to use the other one... the RSL(?) editor I also haven't had a look at.
Thank you Jim for your kind words of encouragement. So far I have been pleasantly surprised and just a bit impressed with the flexibility of the 3Delight engine. The DS interface has me going around in circles at the moment. But that is so whenever learning something new. It is closer to Bryce, in that there are many controls there to compensate for the lack of a robust photon simulation render engine, which is both a strength (you can do a lot of things with it) but a weakness (you have lots of controls to contend with). Octane by comparison is lean, you get all the controls you need, the light simulation takes care of everything else. If you don't understand how light works and you pick up Octane, you only have one choice, learn how it works. Octane is unforgiving, Bryce and DS on the other hand, offer many crutches to help you fix your lighting issues without resorting to a monster number crunching exercise. It is way to early to say which is best - and probably is not a fair comparison anyway - the software's don't overlap all that much. Bryce is ideal for putting together thing quick and dirty. DS has the advantage of figure manipulation, easy import of content and hair and SSS. Octane, which offers little or no help in terms of scene building in the stand alone version, is just a render engine, but what a render engine. Horses for courses - as they say. The shader mixer in DS looks very interesting to me, but before it crashed all the time, so far it behaves so that's the bit I will attempt to make friends with first.
Duly noted and gratefully accepted advice, thankee Sir! Because if there's a way to screw up and do something regrettable on a hardware acquisition, left to myself I'll find it...
The waxy octane sub surfaces look great.
Yes I am very taken with this material effect from Octane. When (and if) Horo and I manage to get to grips with DS (we are hoping to put together a combined DS and Bryce thing, content that can be used in either or both) I will as a bonus throw in some of these Octane scenes as well for those who are lucky enough to have access to this renderer. This is as close as I can get to this effect in Bryce today. Don't yet know where to start with DS. We have our work cut out, Horo's busy trying to figure out how we can achieve a high fidelity HDRI effect - I've been picking over the Shader mixer and stroking my chin.
Edit. And here I've dug out another Octane to follow. So you see, don't know yet about DS. Bryce isn't bad under the right circumstances and be prepared to wait at least an hour for a decent render. But...
Octane is sublime.
Well I've not given up yet. DS first, Bryce second and Octane third. Curiously Bryce and Octane were happy to pick this model apart into four bits, DS insisted in it being only comprised of two. I don't know why that is. If anyone has any suggestions that would be super.
I'm only counting three parts, but it could be my eyes. Are all four parts grouped with separate material zones at the time the UV map was made? Or if made of four objects did it WELD on import into DS? Welding will cause the parts to become ONE thus only one surface is created in DS at load.
Your eyes are not tricking you, the little glass loops are two objects, it's just I chose to apply the same material to them as a matter of choice. Bryce and Octane did respect their separate identities and each got custody of a material of their own. It is four objects yes, on import in Bryce they get grouped. On import in Octane they get placed in one "block" but each is supplied with a material input pin. So how do I stop DS welding my objects like this? Do I load each component on it's own? Or is there some way to prevent the weld on import?
It could be just your Import settings. But it also could be how the Obj files were saved. At this point I'm not sure. Which Import option did you use? A Screen cap would really help.
Thank you for the suggestion, that alone was enough to lead me to the answer. Although it has raised another question. The object as far as Wings and DS is concerned has forgotten the material assignments I gave it. Octane however can tell the different as can Bryce. I wonder if it is feeding the object through the UV mapper that has upset things? I will experiment some mores. Maybe I will have to bring everything back into Wings after UV mapping and reassign the materials again... I will test that.
Okay, you're making me jealous ... I had to try something in DS to see what I could do...
Ah... right, now I've lured you in, be prepared to be quizzed to death! First of all, how did you make the model? Was it Wings 3D? That's quite an organic shape for Wings. Or is there a modeler built into DS? I didn't know that there is but since Bryce has a few ways of modelling internally, I don't suppose I should be surprised to learn DS has. Next up. How did you go about lighting your scene? I've been following the kind advice of ForbiddenWhispers and mixing uberlighting, spot lighting(s) and a disc area light. I've been careful to try and make sure everything cast shadows as it should. Thanks for joining in!
Cheers,
David.
I'm guessing Groboto ;)
Ah... right, now I've lured you in, be prepared to be quizzed to death! First of all, how did you make the model? Was it Wings 3D? That's quite an organic shape for Wings. Or is there a modeler built into DS? I didn't know that there is but since Bryce has a few ways of modelling internally, I don't suppose I should be surprised to learn DS has. Next up. How did you go about lighting your scene? I've been following the kind advice of ForbiddenWhispers and mixing uberlighting, spot lighting(s) and a disc area light. I've been careful to try and make sure everything cast shadows as it should. Thanks for joining in!
Cheers,
David.
Alas, I cannot take credit for making the object. It was made by "Poisen" over at Rendo. It was an .obj set that I imported and applied shaders too.
Lighting is quite simple. It's a UE2 environment with a distant light set to be the sun. This is often the most simple lighting I do. Another method I frequently use is a disc area light sun and planar area "bounce" lights.
Sometimes I do AO on individual surfaces instead of light based AO as well. I didn't do any of that above, it's all just UberSurface Shader tweaked materials.
I wanna play too!
David, I'm definately going to try your "how to model an abstract shape" tutorials. I love them all. In all cases, the Bryce render is appealing to me the most, but you have such different materials on all of your objects that comparing them is not really fair. The Octane renders are indeeed exquisite, but really I like the Bryce renders the best.
Have you been getting to know the surfaces tab much in DS, or just mixing shaders? We could get a heck of a lot more shine/gloss out of the DS materials if that is the effect you wanted. If you were not trying to get glossy materials, what you have looks good too. :cheese:
I'll report back if I can mange to model a twisted lump of metal, heh-heh.