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I'm finally getting a variety of rocks but I have these spikes showing up - can anyone tell why this happens?
thanks
dbb
Looks like stray vertices to me.. If you Sub-D them they should go away....
Do you think it happens when change the shape or it I can the preset after assigning a different preset?
Not sure. If it's a home grown rock then you may have a stray vert there. If it's from a pack you may want to contact the maker of the pack and ask.
Are the spikes appearing on a cube or sphere primitive? If it is a sphere it is because of how so many edges come together at the top and bottom. When more than 5 edges connect to a point it is called a "Pole". This can cause a lot of issues such as UV distortion, smoothing artifacts and quickly changing normals which can then have some weird effects on displacement.
Poles with 5 edges are often unavoidable but they don't usually cause much of an issue. The are just a matter of geometric necessity when you have any geometry that branches off of another section of geometry, like arms branching off of a torso or a hand branching into fingers. I only point this out because I don't want to suggest that 5 poles are a sign of poor modeling.
However, the more edges you have come together at a single point, the more prominent the weirdness will be. In a standard DS sphere primitive I think there are 24 edges all converging into a single point at the top and the same at the bottom. This is why I suggest using a cube primitive instead. No matter how many times you subdivide a cube the most edges converging into any single point will always be 4.
Now again, 6 or more edged poles are best to be avoided in general but don't assume that is an absolute rule. For instance a sky dome would technically be better modeled in a way which avoids high edge count poles but then you may have a difficult time easily cutting and UV unfolding it to properly match spherical HDRI maps and such.
If you used a sub-d cube and got those spikes then let me know and disregard all my babbling about poles haha. :)
...apologies for bringing this thread back to life, but running into an odd issue with the Grass Shaders.
It appears that for some reason the underlying polygon structure of the surface I am applying the shader to is outlined in the grass colouration. This is resulting in unnatural looking geometric shapes (kind of like how groundskeepers can create patterns in say, a baseball field or lawn with how they mow and tend the grass) that I am unable to get rid of no matter how I adjust the shader's settings.
This issue is very apparent in a scene that I am currently working on which uses the Woodland Realms Playset 1. I notice that in the PDF tutorial there is an image which uses the WRPS2 and the colouration there looks nice and natural so I'm not sure what is going on. I tried applying the shader to a couple other ground plane sets (like First Bastion's Rolling Plains and Hilly Surround) and see a similar issue occurring with them as well. I also created a geometry shell (quite messy to look at as with this particular set one cannot just select the ground plane) but the polygon edges were still visible in the grass texture when applied to to the shell's ground surface. Applying SubD didn't work and I even took the set into Hexagon where I selected and ran the ground plane's mesh through several smoothing passes and exported it back to Daz, but still to no avail (applying smoothing directly in Daz "killed" all the plant billboards as again the ground plane couldn't be selected by itself)
So at a total loss as to what I need to do to eliminate the polygon edges showing in the grass so I can get a more natural looking colour variance.
Note: I am not online very much these days as I no longer have Net access from home and must go to a hotspot so I may not be able to reply to any responses until next weekend due to my work schedule.
Can you provide a screenshot?
I had an issue where I had white lines where the edges of the polygons were, and the workaround that was suggested to me was:
A technique which corrects this issue and also adds realism, is to use a dirt colored shader on your terrain surface then create a geometry shell of it and apply the grass shader to the geometry shell. This causes your terrain to have two layers, one for dirt and another just slightly above with the grass. This way dirt will show anywhere there are thin spots in the grass just like real life."
If you're getting some sort of "grid" using the grass try lowering the shading rate in your rendering settings. Lowering your shading rate should make that grid smaller, raising it should make the grid bigger. The way that displacement works uses the shading rate to split up part of the mesh for calculating displacement and surfaces with really heavy displacement can have seams on the edges where it's split. Lower shading rates split the mesh up into smaller chunks and allows for more detail etc, and when the shading rate is low enough to make the grid too small to see you shouldn't have those seams.
...as I mentioned I tried the Geometry Shell and still got the same effect. Was a mess as with both of the WRPSs, there is no bone just for the ground plane so you have to select the entire diorama which includes the tree trunk props, the plant billboards and the background plane. Very difficult to see what you are doing and all the other components need to be "turned off" (via the opacity channel) so the shell for them doesn't show in the rendering, a fairly tedious process.
I also zeroed the ground plane's texture and gave it a brown colour (no universal dirt shaders in my library or runtime).
...thank you, I'll give that a try tonight.
...well after two and half hours rendering, same results.
Shading rate set to highest quality : 0.010
Grass shader at default with the color variance set to 75%
Render size 900 x 900.
Below are two attachments one of a portion of the render and one of a screenshot of the same area of viewport in OpenGL.
Notice the "radiating" pattern of the polygons near the two characters on the left in the wireframe which is also quite visible in the render .
I used the base shader with 5cm blade height 5cm blade thickness, and colour variance set to 75%
What are they sitting on? Try turning Smoothing off in the Surfaces pane, if it's flat, or try adjusting the smoothing angle, if not. The 3Delight renderer copes badly with poles - vertices where many edges meet - when it is smoothing particularly.
To me that looks like what Richard mentioned, though it's a bit strange that the grass shader is having issues with that since it doesn't rely on and UV information and should be ignoring the geometry shape. Only thing I can think of would be those polygons at the poles having different normals (some normals facing out while others face in). First thing I would try is disabling smoothing if it's on, I'm thinking you don't have it enabled since I don't see any intermediary "smoothed" verts in the wireframe but if you do it's a good thing to test. Aside from that I would edit the mesh you're using so that there's no more than 4 sides going to a single vert like the examples here, and make sure the normals are all facing the same direction.
Hi there, just a thank you for such a fab product. Followed your instructions and voila! Grass! Just like and where it's supposed to be. So unlike me to get it right out of the box so it must be yous fullas who got it bang on. So happy with this.
Here is a quick render
...so turn off the smoothing in the Surfaces tab, not in the "General Parameters" one then (no smoothing is applied there). I'll try that.
the area already looks fairly flat (I positioned a camera underneath to check that) so none of the radiating polys are at different angles with respect to the X or Z axis.
Is there any way to adjust how the normals are facing (I think Poser Pro allows this but not certain about Daz)?
Not much of a modeller as I don't have stable programme so editing the mesh is out. The only other solution I can think of is placing a plane or disk primitive over the troublesome section but that is a real kluge of a fix.
..well tried all the suggestions (save for editing the mesh in a modeller) and nothing solved the issue. As a last resort I went the the "kluge" option, first using the Geometry editor to "remove" all the radiating polys (by turning off their opacity) then creating a plane primitive in the same area to which I applied the shader to as well. Had to position it a bit using the rotate X/Y axis to get it to match up but surprisingly that ended up working perfectly as the area the figures are sitting in is relatively flat.
Still would like to see some sort of fix to this so it doesn't happen with other ground plane sets.
Will upload the final image this weekend.
I FRIKKIN LOVE THESE NATURE SHADERS!
just had to be said..
If anyone was wondering why I love them...
Love that piece Fisty! Really serine!
Fisty, that is gorgeous! I bought the Variance shaders the other day and can't wait to play with them some more.
I also got the grass one and wow, I love this product! I'm going to use it a lot. I did a little write-up on Novica's thread, but here's what I came up with on an early attempt.
Awesome. The little flowers really add a lot to that.
...OK here's the scene (so far) with the fix I did. I Still see one polygon outline a bit further back but it is in the uneven area of the ground plane so I'll just have to cover it up with something.
Need to get the Variance shaders. would work well in this scene. On the wishlist.
Phenomenal renders here all. So if I get the first few pages correctly. I can just put this stuff on a primitive cube, and have a chia-pet cube of sorts. Or is it more complex to get it onto an object then just applying a surface shader?
Can I change the color of the grass to say Alien whatever stuff... Purple and Cyan Moss? :coolsmile:
Can I have lines of stuff (diffuse color map), like a soccer field.
How did I miss this.
(EDIT)
Jindi, was the flowers in the grass part of the shader, or was that another prop?
...those are from a shader set titled Nature's Variance available here in the store
http://www.daz3d.com/nature-s-variance-shaders-and-props-for-daz-studio
Hmm another for the must buy list. Thanks. The first post had me thinking this was yet to be released, lol.
http://www.daz3d.com/dimensiontheory/grass-shader-for-daz-studio
http://www.daz3d.com/dimensiontheory/rock-shader-for-daz-studio
and the bundle.
http://www.daz3d.com/dimensiontheory/rock-grass-bundle
I still need to pull out that strange substance stuff and fuss with it. So much to check out, so little time, lol.
Yes
I guess it's still possible to post in this topic. I've read these 10 pages and am thrilled at the capabilities of the Rock and Grass Shaders bundle. I haven't been able to determine here, though, how much it would increase render time in animations. I noticed a couple of comments on it taking around an hour for one image(!).
I know complexity of scene is relevant, and computer speed, etc. But if I interpret correctly the few render time comments here, then maybe it'd be unrealistic to consider using the product for animations. I'll still get it for stills, of course...
Oh, jeez, I just remembered the Look At My Hair product. Isn't that capable of most of what the Grass shader does?? That, too, not good for animations, right? Can anyone out there offer a breakdown on these issues? Many thanks!
The grass shaders shouldn't be too terrible, honestly. The nature shaders on leaves will add some with the transparency.. but those same leaves would still have transparency without the nature shader on them so it really doesn't matter. I would try it (the grass) it might be fine.
Very good! Thanks for the info, Fisty. I'm now wondering if the grass shader would be redundant if a person also had Look At My Hair, which can also create grasses. (So many beautiful choices)...
I'm sure I need the rock shader, since it's so unique. But the grass shader would depend on how much faster it is for animations vs Look At My Hair. Thanks again and Happy Holidays!
Probably not a lot different in the end look, but I have no idea about the render time difference between the two. you could always try it and return it if it's not an improvement.