IBL Master not displaying the dome in IRAY mode
denisnormandin
Posts: 154
I have made a number of successful renders with IBL Master and IRAY, but all of a sudden, the dome does not show in the viewport eventhough the render setting for environment 'Draw Dome' is on.
I have tried to change the 'Environment Map' HDR image, but it just won't show. You can see in the screen shot that in the main Viewport set on 'Texture Shaded' there is a landscape visible through the back barn door. But in the AuxViewport set to IRAY... there is nothing.
So what happened (or what did I do) since my last scene that worked fine?
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There is no image attached to your post ;-)
[normal Iray] Dome is visible in renders. A spot render should show it as well.
Oups...
Well, I didn't actually solve the problem, but I found a way around it.
I saved everything in my scene except the IBLM as a subset, made a new scene with only the IBLM in it, and imported my scene subset into it. It works.
Well, almost. I have probably screwed up something else without knowing... and obviously not knowing how to undo my mess since I have no clue how I did it in the first place.
Now, all my HDRIs (the many I've tried anyway) come out with a strong bluish hue.
Is there a way to reset default values on the IBLM and (or) the Environment Map?
I got around that problem in a very similar way I did for the non displaying background situation.
I saved everything except for the IBL Master control as a scene subset, then I opened the last scene I had made where the dome looked all right and saved it without making any change to the IBLM controls. It appears that this has restored the parameters of the IBLM because when I reopened it in a new scene, the colors were all right.
I'm sure there must be a better way to do it, though.
But... I'm not through experimenting with IBL Master, and apparently, not through running into problems.
One of the promises of the IBLM is that I should be able to easily go from rendering with Iray to 3Delight... Not so easy apparently.
The main reason why I never used 3Delight is because I could never figure out why the hair and scalp come out white or grey while the rest of the image is OK. Well, the same thing apens with IBLM.
Plus, the dome has vanished again, and there is no 'Draw Dome' in the 'Render settings' when using 3Delight.
So, I'm lost again...
I'm not an IRay user so not sure what the problem is. But as @Catherine3678ab pointed out the dome isn't visible in preview by default, you need to render it out. Regarding 3DL the dome should be visible as long as you have loaded an HDRI into IBLM and the environment sphere is set to visible (the eye icon in the scene tab or parameters/visibility).
Replying here to your question about IBLM and 3DL in your other thread.
You can load an HDRI with IRay as the selected renderer in the environment section OR (for both IRay and 3DL) by selecting the IBLM control sphere and loading it into base color, as shown in screenshot 1. They are in sync, so if you rotate the controlsphere the dome orientation in the rendersettings tab will follow, or altering the dome orientation in rendersettings will rotate the control sphere.
The HDRI will also automatically be inserted in the IBLM environment sphere that is used in 3DL to display and render the dome. The dome will be visible with 3DL as the selected renderer and visibility ON for the env sphere, see screenshot 2:
Finally, when rendering in 3DL, make sure you set gamma correction ON and gamma 2.20, see screenshot 3:
Bear in mind that IRay does a fairly good "on the fly" conversion from 3Delight materials, the other way around not so much. This simply means you can easily render a scene set up with 3DL shaders in IRay. To render IRay materials in 3DL you really need to know how to convert them to proper 3DL materials.
ETA: To rotate the dome DON'T rotate the environment sphere, use the control sphere!
Hi Sven,
I have followed all the instructions to the letter, but the dome's hdri environment is still not showing.
There must be something I am still doing wrong, I just don't know what it is.
(And for another unknown reason, all of my other images are uploading fine but the one of the actual render just doesn't go through)
I really don't know either. Your screenshots seem ok. Which DS version are you running? I'm still on 4.10 here, but I haven't seen any mentioning in the forums about broken compability with the latest build, so...maybe some kind user could test it for us? Have you tried restarting DS and load just the IBLM into a new scene? It should automatically load the default "Ruins" HDRI and it should be visible in the viewport by default. I know, I'm just shooting in the dark here;)
Did you use a special character like / or & in the image name? Not long ago I rendered a black and white image and named it xxxxxx b&w, wouldn't work
.
I'm using DS 4.12.1.118 Pro edition.
And yes I was uning '&' in the file name, so here it is. finally, a smaller jaypeg version of the render, but enough to se what's going on, or rather, what is not...
Still would like to know if you see the dome if you load IBLM into a n empty scene.
My first thought on seeing the rendered image is that the problem may be shaders. When a render pops out pure black or pure white, changing the shader applied to the object can work wonders. To keep the texture images on, hold down the Ctrl key and select ignore.
Also, with 3Delight domes, selecting a different 'what to render' option in the Iray render settings [i.e. maybe scene only] helps.
Thanks Catherine,
I don't know about the shaders or the 'What to render option' in Iray, I couldn't find that.
But I used the same 'get around' solution as previously described. In other words, I took the long way home, but it got me there. I again saved everything but the IBL Master Sphere as a scene subset and I started from scratch with only the IBL Master, loaded my HDR image for the dome, merged the previous scene subset, and voilà!
I still have some issues to work out, but at least I'm getting somewhere.
First render in Iray: There are some artifacts on the forehead (easy fix on any photo editor), the relation between the foreground and background lighting are not quite what I want but not bad.
Second render in 3Delight: The dome background is there! Yeah! All lights are too 'daylight' for the dawn ambiance I am looking for, so I'll have to find out how to tweak that. And I woul also like to light the neon enclosures on the cealing of the barn.
Third render in Iray: I was able to remove the forehead artifacts (photo editing) and to light the neon enclosures after adding the right Uber shader, they are not quite bright enough for now, but juste a few adjustments and spot renders should take care of that. There is also some light artifacts on the ground (in the barn), I can again 'despeckle' or 'remove noise' with my photo editor, unless there is an easy fix in the Iray settings for that.
Now, what I'd like to do (because I really like the way the textures come out in 3Delight) is to change the relation between dome background lighting and foreground lighting in 3DL to get close to the feeling (light temperature) of the Iray renders. And also, lite up the neons. The vocabulary in the 3DL controls is not the same as that of the Iray environment.
Any advice to make my tweaking easyer, Sven or Catherine (or anyone else)?
Good to see you're making progress! I will leave the IRay related stuff to someone who actually uses it;) So the focus is on the 3DL render.
There are several ways of adjusting the temperature of the 3DL Environment dome and the IBL light. Unfortunately IBLM does not have a temperature or tonemapping control so you will have to adjust the color in the surface tab for the env sphere and in parameters for the IBLM light.
First I want to point out a "feature" of the IBLM that I don't like much. The surface of the environment dome by default has "diffuse active" ON. In my opinion this should be OFF by default, since otherwise the IBLM light will affect the appearance of the dome. Atleast you should be aware of this fact so you can choose the right approach for your IBLM renders;)
I picked a neutral HDRI and a primitive sphere with a pure white color to show you what I mean. The IBLM light is at default settings:
The env sphere diffuse active ON:
The env sphere diffuse active OFF:
As you can see, the white sphere looks the same but the bright areas (waves) of the dome are overexposed with diffuse on.
As to your question...you can tint the light color of the IBLM light by selecting it and going to parameters/light/color. Pick a slightly yellow/orange color to make the light warmer. It will effect everything in the scene that gets hit by the light's diffuse rays. Accordingly, if the env sphere diffuse is ON it will also appear warmer. If diffuse is OFF you can select the env sphere and tint the ambient color to your liking, probably just copy the color of the light.
Here with diffuse off and the IBLM light slightly warmer: (255,240,220)
Same but env sphere diffuse active ON:
I suspect the diffuse is ON in your render washing out the dome with diffuse light.
To make the neon light fixture emit light, select the light tube surface with the surface selection tool (to make sure both the object and the surface are selected), head over to your content library/light presets/Omnifreaker/UberArea Light and apply the UberArea Light base. Adjust the light settings in the surface pane. For physically correct light activate shadows and fall off. Up the samples to 128 or 256 or 512 until you get rid of the noise. Adjust light strength...add zeroes until you get the desired result, probably around 5000 to 20000:) Ambient just makes the surface appear to glow so set it to almost pure white, maybe slightly blue.
And one more thing about the IBLM light: in your scene the trace distance is to low, the light does not see the building. If you want the HDRI to behave like in the IRay render set trace distance probably to 10 000 or 20 000. This is important since otherwise the IBLM light will most likely wash out the light from the neon lights.
Thanks for all that Sven,
The Defuse on/off tip is easy to implement and I am trying a 3DL render with slightly colored IBLM Light to see the result.
As for:
"Activate shadows" ... I don't see that anywhere. Can it be a function that was renamed or phased out for something else in DS 4.12 ?
Same for "Up the samples to 128 or 256 or 512 until you get rid of the noise" ... Are you talking about my Iray render? Because again, with 3Delight as rendering engine, I can't see that anywhere.
P.S.: Here is my 3DL render, not bad. I'll have to experiment some more to get it right and lower the background landscape's light while keepint the foreground pretty much at this intensity.
I still haven't found how to light my neons under 3DL. Works fine in Iray with the UberArea light, but not in 3DL.
The title for this thread indicates that you were trying to render in Iray. Some options exist for Iray that do not exist for 3Delight. Reverse applies as well.
The ability to have or not have shadows is a 3Delight option. Whether or not ground shadows are made is an Iray option.
For "any" shader when being applied to a model, if one first holds down the Ctrl key to then apply the shader, the pop-up options appear.
Ok, how to apply the OmUber AreaLight shader:
I created a primitive cylinder representing the neon light, and a groundplane, to make the cylinder emissive I navigated to the UberAreaLight base icon in the content library. The cylinder still has the default shader applied, see screenshot:
After doubleclicking the icon the AreaLight shader is applied.
With the cylinder still selected I went to the surface tab and activated fall off, checked that shadows are active, adjusted samples, turned on ambient and set the ambient color, turned off accept shadows because it is not needed, same with diffuse. Settings as follows:
And loaded IBLM with the default HDRI and rendered:
I agree it is a bit confusing:)) Apparently the OP wants to combine the two, which I recall was one of the sales arguments at the time of release. Well, jumping back and forth between the two renderers is not that straight forward but can be done.
Sure is confusing. Glad you're able to provide good guidance here.
Thanks a bundle Sven!
I'll have to do some experimenting, but you sure have been extremely helpful.
You're right, I should probably have started a new thread when the topic took a turn to 3Delight.
Oh no, how the thread went is okay ... just took me abit to realize that a turn had been made back to 3Delight. I was actually trying to edit one of my posts when the forum went down yesterday so it got left as is.
Almost a full day and many renders later, I'm finally getting to manage my way around those tools.
Here are a few results.
1- Rendered with Iray
2- Rendered with 3Delight
3- A mix of the two via photo editing (I can't say 'Photoshoped' because that is not the software I use) ;)
---
P.S.: My list is wrong, 1 and 2 have actually uploaded 2 and 1.
Interesting, tks for sharing:)
A few thoughts on the 3DL version:
Generally it has lower exposure then the IRay one, you could probably raise the IBLM light intensity quite a bit.
The bump- or displacement strengths for the ground and concrete floor are a bit over the top, 3DL handles those things very differently (and in my opinion better) than IRay. I've seen IRay bumpstrengths in the thousands, with 3DL you'll get artefacts with such values, there is rarely any need to go past 100% (of course depending on the min/max values).
The thing that bothers me is the almost absolute lack of specular highlights on the skin, hair, nails and eyes. It could be the way the mats are set up or the IBLM light settings. When rendering in 3DL you could try adding/adjusting the specular 2 strength and use a fairly high roughness. If you get grain you need to add specular samples, it´s all done in parameters/light. Granted, if the skin doesn't have specular strength enough, it will make no difference.
If you want assistance with setting up skin etc in 3DL, maybe start a new thread;)
Happy rendering
Thanks again Sven,
I see I have a lot to learn about both Iray and 3DL. The one thing I liked better about 3DL was actually the texture on the floor and foreground. In Iray, they appear painted, not textured. But though it seamed a bit too much, I liked it better than the too flat appearance of the Iray. Is that what you are telling me that could be fine tuned via bump or displacement strength? There are so many parameters that I have no clue what they are for.
You are also referring to specular strength... I wish there was a tutorial or a pdf that lists (in laymen terms) what they all mean. I tried looking for such help file, but only found material that seamed to be aimed at people who already knew what it was all about, like explanations from one rocket scientist to another.
Anyway, for now I'm only rendering scenes to be used as models when I decide eventually to pick up my bruches and canvases.
But I'd still like to get better with this tool (DAZ3D), it only feels like the developers' moto is "why make it simple when you can make it complicated".
That takes a tole on my creative process.
I have a few projects that would require a lot more work to learn the bolts and nots of this medium before I can consider starting them.
When I find the courage to start that... I will certainly have many more questions
Both IRay and 3Delight use three methods of creating depth, normal, bump and displacement. Normal- and bumpmaps will only create an illusion of depth (by adding shadows according to the controlmaps) while displacement actually alters the geometry. By the looks of it I'd say the ground uses displacement. If you like it it's all good but you could try selecting the ground surface and decreasing displacement strength by half to see if you like it better;)
Specular highlights are what make a surface appear shiny or glossy. The smaller and tighter the highlights the more glossy it will appear, think glass, polished metals, plastic. On the opposite side we have rough surfaces like fabrics, rocks, sand. Nails and lips should be more glossy (less rough if you will) than skin. It's a complex subject so let's just say you control the appearance of specular highlights by adjusting specular strength and glossiness (higher values resulting in smaller highlights/ glossier surfaces) or roughness (higher roughness resulting in larger highlights, rougher surfaces). I'm sure someone else could explain all this much better than me, so I'll leave it at that for now:) I figure Google is your friend here.
I know what you mean, believe me:)) And it's no simple task trying to learn how to use two renderers at the same time.
Just shoot when you're ready