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Just how many samples? With REYES (no progressive rendering), I generally find you need at least 0.02 shading rate and 128 occlusion samples to manage noise. If you're rendering with progressive, shading rate is ignored, but occlusion samples should roughly be the same. Built-in lights will use the shadow samples you've set in the renderer options. I think AoA's have their own settings, so the one in the renderer settings is ignored.
OH, dear God. No.
Falloff should always be set to 2 so you get physical falloff. If you want to fake bounce light, use an ambient occlusion light. Or use a diffuse only spotlight.
Not as populated as your scene, but on my i7-4770K, this one renders in 8 min 17.91 secs at 8x8, 1280x720 with 2048 irradiance samples. No lights, just path traced GI from the environment sphere in the background. My Intel HD Graphics have trouble in the viewport on a scene with more than 8 figures, though 3delight renders them just fine.
1080p will likely be something like 25 minutes.
Responding to the thread title, not with a tutorial, but a way to get more out of lighting in 3DL. I didn't have time to read this whole thread but still wanted to contribute. This is my product so let me know if you have questions. The commercial thread is here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/153946/reflective-radiance-for-3delight-commercial/p1
https://www.daz3d.com/reflective-radiance-for-3delight
IIRC they have their own shadow samples settings, but I've never figured out what the shading rate for those spots does...
Yeah, that's one thing I love about 3DL:)
Looks interesting, I'll look into it. I Did some additional testing and AoA lights turned out to be quite good, but what I'm actually missing are emissive shaders and I can see your product has them :)
FYI, the OmUberarealight shader is included with DS, content library/light presets/Omnifreaker/Uberarealight/Uberarealight base
With AWE Surface, everything with ambient is basically emissive. The only thing that's missing from DAZ default shaders, omnifreakers or others are intensity/exposure.
Thanks @wowie I tried to use your freebie shaders but can't get them to work , too complicated for a noob like me I guess :D
Besides, I tried the UberAreaLight and Ubersurface shaders and I came up with two things:
I couldn't emulate an actual 'emissiveness' or 'glow' with them. Their ambient settings when turned on, almost completely covered up the original texture even despite tweaking them down to like 10%. The uberarea light actually emits light but that's not entirely my point. I'd like it to emit some sort of "scattered glow" (not sure on how to describe it)
I attached a file to show what I mean. I have a "barbecue" with hot coals and I want it to emit an orange glow like shown in the picture :)
I tried to apply both shaders by selecting the hot coals surface and double clicking on "UberSuffaceBase" or "UberareaLight Base".
Here's my 5 second tutorial:
1) AoA lights. The default lights are terrible, the uber lights are OK but not really suited to indoor scenes.
2) Some good render presets. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/16085/render-profiles-for-daz-studio-4-5/p1 are amazingly useful and I've actually never needed to tweak them at all. Want a fast render to see how your lights look? Push a button. Want a high-quality final render? Push a different button. It really is that easy.
3) 3DL shaders are always a solid investment if you want a particular look for something. There's a million of them and I think they're terribly underrated. In this age of iray they're usually pretty cheap too.
4) Learn to photoshop for special effects and such. Some things are really hard to do Daz but very easy in post, and vice-versa. Ron's brushes are all excellent and a good starting point. Like your glowing coals - I'd give them some ambient in DAZ and then use Ron's bokeh and light brushes for the glow.
I think this my best SFW render that shows what you can do with just Photoshop and DAZ store content using 3DL.
Thanks for the tips, I already use AoA's lights :) About the brushes - I can't really afford photoshop, any good ones for GIMP? And about the million shader - where do you buy your shaders/presets? Everything on the DAZ store seems to be for Iray.
Photoshop is $10 a month if you get their photography plan. I don't use gimp, I have Krita but it's better for drawing and painting and Photoshop is better for postwork but you could get it to work I'm sure.
For shaders (and everything else) I suggest using Google to search the DAZ store. I've never gotten good results using the search option on the site itself. Just search "DAZ <whatever you're looking for>" and Google will find it 9 times out of 10 as the top result, if it exists.
Did you insert the diffuse map into the ambient color slot?
Applied the Uber arealight to the flames. Plugged the diffuse map into ambient color, same map into color, which means emitted light color. Enabled fall off, otherwise the light would spread with the same intensity infinitely. Made sure shadows are active, disabled accept shadow, as they don't need to have shadows cast onto them. Upped light intensity to 2000. Since in this case the flames are a flat plane with normals pointing outward, they only emit light in that direction, fixed that with a linear pointlight as teh screenshot illustrates. For simplicity I didn't add any other lights to this example.
Why do you think so?
GIMP is free, and as I understand it most of the brushes work in it.
Emissive surfaces with aweSurface
Thanks Sven! Gosh I would never figure out I have to copy the diffuse map into ambient slot !:D These renders with awesurface look amazing, I have to learn how to properly use them finally :D
Yea, that's what these forums are for, 3DL documentation is pretty non existant, so we need to help eachother out;) And tks mate!
By now, I would think you can probably write a whole step-by-step tutorial for it.
With a little help from all my friends
If you ever make one, contact me immediately :D
Hi, I am looking forward to start rendering with 3Delight and IBL Master, while I have some issues with GPU as I am not using NVidia graphic Cards. But I got stuck with my final renders using 3Delight + IBLM, it sill not working properly, and turned out rendering far from Iray result.
Hi! If you can be a bit more specific about your issues maybe someone can help;) Bear in mind that the IBLM is basically a very nice light shader that makes it easy to work with HDRIs, with correct light projection, as opposite to the UE2 that turns the world inside out, as to speak:)) What IBML does NOT do is pathtracing with physically plausible color bleed etc. So you cannot really expect to have similar results to IRay. Still it's a useful tool, renders fast and reflections look nice. However, if you want to do physically plausible pathtracing with 3DL, you need to tap into the built in pathtracer. For that you have to use scripted rendering and dedicated shaders. The DS standard shaders won't work well, if at all. Some links, in case you want to take a closer look: (The scripts and shaders can be downloaded for free from wowie's googledrive.)
aweshading-kit-10-for-daz-studio /awe-surface-shader-a-new-physically-plausible-shader-for-daz-studio-and-3delight/p1
awe Shading Kit User Guide
awe Surface user Guide
wowie's free stuff
Link to the IBLM commercial thread, lot of info buried in here.
_ interesting subject _
Hi everyone, I also experienced the same problem when rendering a scene using 3Delight engine.
Beforehand, I would like to show you all couple of pictures:
1. A rendered scene using 3delight:
2. Rendered scene using 3delight with Uber Environment 2 (following the steps as discussed above)
3. Rendered scene using Iray engine.
Well, I still got an issue when rendering using 3delight as it is sill looks "flat", I really hope you guys can guide me to render using 3delight, so the result will be close to as if we render using Iray engine.
Thank you all.
Others' opinions may well differ (I've seen some stunning renders from people using the UE2) but in my opinion you can only come close by utilizing the 3DL pathtracer = aweSurface and scripted rendering.
I said:
However, if you want to do physically plausible pathtracing with 3DL, you need to tap into the built in pathtracer. For that you have to use scripted rendering and dedicated shaders. The DS standard shaders won't work well, if at all. Some links, in case you want to take a closer look: (The scripts and shaders can be downloaded for free from wowie's googledrive.)
aweshading-kit-10-for-daz-studio /awe-surface-shader-a-new-physically-plausible-shader-for-daz-studio-and-3delight/p1
awe Shading Kit User Guide
awe Surface user Guide
wowie's free stuff
Regarding your renders:
1 I guess that is one standard spotlight with shadows disabled? If you use standard DS lights in 3DL you need to turn on raytraced shadows, they are off by default. You do it by selecting the light and go to parameters/light/shadows and turn on the RT shadows.
2 So here you have only the global illumination/ indirect fill light that is what the UE2 does. It has several modes. The fastest is ambient, meaning no softshadows or raytracing at all. The one you would need to use is the last one, bounce light. That actually produces "plausible" color bleed, and is the closest you can get to a pathtracing effect, using the DS standard stuff. Prepare for long render times:) The UE2 is just a fill light, you need more direct lightsources, like spots, pointlights etc. OR you can use the OmUber Arealight shader on things like light bulbs, well emissive surfaces, that will increase the realism at the expence of rendertimes.
Lastly: Always make SURE you use 3Delight shaders on EVERYTHING in your scene, IRay will convert 3DL shaders on the fly, 3DL will NOT convert IRayUber to proper 3DL shaders, you need to do it yourself either by using included RSL presets, converting manually or using a conversion script.
Hi everyone, Sven Dullah, mwasielewski1990.
Wish everyone here in good health.
Well, short story, I experienced the same problem with mwasielewski1990. It took too long to render using Iray engine in DAZ Studio. So, i need to find a way using 3Delight engine.
Beforehand, I'll show some pictures.
1. Render using 3Delight;
2. Render using 3Delight with Uber Environment (I followed the some steps mention above, but I can't find these - load sky dome, bounce light mode, and indirect light to 200%)
3. Render using Iray engine.
I really hope that someone here can guide me to render an image using 3Delight so that it will look as if I am using Iray engine. I think that it is possible after I following the discussion here.
I believe that this is the right place to find the solution for this, I also tried using aweShading Kit 1.10 and i got super confused, i don't know how to apply it on a scene.
Thank you all.
Well I can certainly try to help you set up that sofa scene for 3DL and the UE2. But I repeat: If you want results similar to IRay you will have to use aweSurface. I can help you with that also if you feel like you're up to it. It involves learning to use the aweSurface shader, which is similar to IRayUber in many aspects. You apply the shader to every surface in the scene, just like any other shader, by selecting the object/figure in the scene tab AND the corresponding surface(s) in the surface tab, then double clicking the shader icon to apply it.
So, for setting it up with the UE2, start by using the settings I seem to have posted, using the occlusion with soft shadows mode. Check that all surfaces are using 3DL materials, render and post it here, I'll have a look and we can go from there;) Also post your render settings, would be helpful.
Ups, it seems that I post my concern twice, I am sorry for that.
Actually, I am not so familiar with all the terms used in Daz Studio. Here comes my noob questions, I hope you dont mind answering it.
1. What do you mean by utilizing the 3DL pathtracer = aweSurface?
I understand it as "I can't get the best result close to Iray if I only use standard light available in Daz. Thus, I need aweSurface to make it works"
2. I still confused of what is shaders did and how to apply shaders on my scene? is it some preset in UE2?
Sure, I am working on it and I'll post the pictures later. (another noob question, how to check the 3DL materials?)
It will be so helpful, if you could guide me using aweSurface, I am looking forward it. I've learned the manual before, and got super confused, but I'll do it again. Perhaps you don't mind for further question.
I'll do my best to introduce you to awe, will be back with some pointers later, but need to know if you purchased the commercial pack (awe Shading Kit) or if you installed the free shader and scripts?
So I rendered a scene, but still looks the same with pale character, and flat environment (couch, lamp, etc).
Below here are the setting I used (first render):
- Rendering using 3Delight + UB2 with Occlusion soft shadow (Picture 1)
- Added distant light with intensity I reduce to 35.6% because i think it's too bright, I still can't find sky dome to be loaded (Pic 2)
- added normal spotlight above the character.
- Render settings (Pic 3)
- Rendering result. (Pic 4) - 21 minutes.
_____________________________________________
Setting for second render (Pic 5)
- Rendering using 3Delight + UB2 with Bounce light
- added distant light, still don't know how to load sky dome
- Rendering result (Pic 6) - 2 hours.
I probably missed couple of settings you have mentioned before, what do you think?
I also want to ask you regarding surface and shader, should I aplly shaders to all the materials in the scene (sofa, side table, lamp, paintings, etc), I am a lil confused about it. You mentioned above that I need to Check that all surfaces are using 3DL materials, I can't recognize whether it is a 3DL or Iray materials. (Pic 7)
I am sorry for this spamming, sending you many pictures,
Thank you for understanding.
No worries, we'll take it step by step:)
So found the product, https://www.daz3d.com/cottage-living-room. Don't have it, but the product description says "Optimized for IRay" and there is no mentioning of 3DL materials presets, so it needs to be converted to either DS standard 3DL shaders for use with the UE2, or aweSurface base shader for use with scripted pathtracing.
Let's start with the basics. The primitive sphere here has the DAZ default shader applied to it. The name of the shader will be in the upper left corner of the surface pane. You find all these shaders in your content library/shader presets as shown in the screenshots. In the second screenshot I navigated to shader presets/wowie/aweSurface, doubleclicked on the AWE Surface script to apply aweSurface to the sphere. Sidenote: These are all scripts but they are applied exactly like any shader, by having the object AND the surface(s) selected and double clicking the shader (or script) icon.
Now, some thoughts regarding your screen shots:
1. Settings look ok, but pure white at 100% intensity is probably way too much and will wash out everything, try a dark to mid gray or reduce intensity to 25- 50%. Remember this only serves as ambient fill light, and you will need other lightsources to create depth.
2 Shadow type for the distant light is set to off, which is the default. Set it to raytraced shadows, or it will not work. Do note that when you turn shadows on, the light will not light up the interior, it will shine through any opening though (windows with transparent glass). So to light up the interior, use spotlights or pointlights instead, positioned properly inside, corresponding to lamps, light fixtures etc. Then use a distant light if you want sunlight to shine into the room.
3 Render settings look fine. Gamma correction on and gamma at 2.20 is crucial, especially when using awe and scripted pathtracing.
4 Yeah, a distant light with no shadows in combination with IRay shaders will give you that kind of result:)
5 & 6 The UE2 bounce light mode needs some light to be bounced around, the distant light probably washes out the effect in this case. I recommend using the occlusion w soft shadows when setting up the scene and additional lighting, then switch to bounce mode, finetune, and do the final render.
7 Yup, IRay only, some shaderwork needed.
...to be continued...