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You're welcome! If you run into 3DL-trouble, just drop some lines here!
I made a volumetric shader incase someone needs one. I dare say it works better than the UberVolume or the AoA EZ camera in certain scenarios (less artifacts)
. Just download it into your My DAZ3D Library/presets/shaders or wherever you keep your stuff. It is supposed to be applied to a mesh that will work as the volume. It will inherit the color of the light(s), by default.
Here is how to use it:
1. Load/Select/Create an object (primitive cube, sphere, whatever).
2. Select it + its surface(s) and apply the shader. It will turn invisible in the viewport. (Set opacity color to anything but black if you want to see the volume object while setting things up AND don't forget to reset it to black prior to rendering.)
3. Lights can be placed inside the volume, however cameras must always be outside!!
4. I recommend using a physically correct fall off for the lights. (With standard DS point- and spotlights set falloff to 2 and add zeroes to light intensity scale).
5. Establish the light intensities you want to use in the scene first, then adjust the volume density accordingly. Note, use very small values, generally.
6. You don't want to use diffuse, ambience or specular unless you set opacity color to a non-black color. You CAN carefully adjust the opacity density (avoid negative values unless you're into NPR:)), if opacity density is set to anything but 0 you can use the scatter color to affect the appearance.
7. Enjoy!
A tip - progressive rendering will be much faster but will also produce more noise. I recommend setting things up using progressive and turning it off for the final render.
Yes the shader also works with emissive surfaces;)
This is really cool Sven!!!
Sven and others, maybe you can point me in the right direction, I need even light pretty much everywhere with no glossiness and no shadows and I am working in 3delight. I have been experimenting but I am not really good at lighting at this point so I could use some help. Thank you.
Use UberEnvironment2 with ambient (no raytracing) lighting mode. Will flood your scene with even ambient diffuse light from all directions..
Or use the AoA Ambient light with "diffuse only", that would add some more options to play with. (Flag surfaces to ignore it, for example)
Thank you. I was playing with UberEnvironment2, so this will help.
This may not be the right thread to explore this issue, but I can't find a thread I've seen in the past on it. And that thread pretty much just said kill DS and start again, but I'm hoping for more insight.
I semi-regularly get the dreaded
followed by 
on my 3delight renders. I've found no way to work around it other than "start again", which is painful as my scenes are large and can take many minutes to load and then use lots of texture maps so then take more many minutes for tdlmake to run.
Almost always, this happens at the first render attempt after start up, but I have had it happen once after a long and successful session of rendering.
Does anyone have any insights into the underlying issue and how to either circumvent it or work around it? One comment in that thread I cannot now find suggested that if you kill some sub-process of studio (through windows task manager) it turns off the "renderer already in use" issue, but I've tried killing everything I could see except the scene itself to no avail.
I can confirm that once DS is at "renderer is already in use" no log file entries are written. I haven't seen any informative log file entries for the triggering "error during rendering" event.
There is a hint, by no means certain, that if DS is left alone for a period after loading the big files, that the render is more likely to run successfully.
Happy to be pointed to a better thread if anyone can point me to it.
Cheers, Lx
Been trying to come up with something useful, but frankly I'm clueless. I've gotten that second message, ocasionally, due to accidentally double-clicking the render button. Never had to shut down DS, though. I just click ok and the render that already started will continue. And I get it if I try to render with the 3DL standalone running in the background, as there is a licencing issue. But I suppose this is not the case here? For the record...are you on Mac or PC? I'm currently running the latest DS under Mac/Monterey.
My setup is Windows 10 and latest DS 64 pro.
A fresh hint (only a hint at this stage) is that it's a page file size issue. I had another event today and was disappointed because I thought I'd bumped up my page file size ... but I hadn't. When I did bump it up I had a successful render from the get go (including the long wait while all the tdlmakes ran). "One swallow, does not make spring", but as this is something I've been encountering nearly on a daily basis on the file I'm working with ATM, I'll keep this discussion posted. Fingers crossed for more swallows.
Update after a few days of mindfulness ... seems it's not the page file size. I increased that 50% and there's no hint of memory limit issues through task manager. Seems also it's not some issue with tdlmake still running as I had one error fail after all the tdlmakes had run. But, it does seem less likely to error if I leave the first render for some time after the file has loaded. I need to get in the habit of doing a dummy render before loading the big file to see if there's some insight there.
oooohh @SvenDullah !! do you have any suggests for neutral lighting?for 3DL ?
Please elaborate:)
lighting that will evenly light my figure very little shadows .......
Ok, and this suggestion I made for RiverMissy does not work for you? Might want to add a directional light (spotlight, distant light) and tone down the UE2 a tad? Or do you want something more "artistic"?
Thank you Sven to be honest I never saw that post ........ I will try that .
Just a reminder, folks...you can use negative light intensity both for directional lights and emissives. So if you need an object that sucks light like a black hole, here is how to do it:)
Of course you don't have to use the UE2 for it to work. I just wanted to test it with UE bouncelight;) And yeah the bounce color gets inverted, confirmed
Hi! Thanks for your work! What is the latest vesion of DAZ this shaders works with? And is there a way to get it?
Hi! Not 100% sure but, since DS 3DL has not been upgraded for a long time, it should work just fine in the newest DS build.
Yup I attached the DUF file in my original post, just click it and it should download...there are also instructions on how to install it;) If it does not work, let me know!
Hi. It definately doesn't work on 4.20 and later. I mean volumetrics. And even omnifreaker emissive shaders doesn't work good. AoA lights either. I found 4.9.2.7 version on my old drive. Will try to install it.
I got this in both 4.9 and 4.21. What am I doing wrong?
I'll try it in 4.20 in a while...rendering at the moment.
Edit: You do use raytraced shadows? I see no shadows in your attachment? Or you do have a sufficient raytrace depth in rendersettings/sampling? 1 is minimum, 2 is a good number.
Had to get back 4.21 since 4.9 has no dForce. In 4.20 I experience total catastrophe with 3DL lights. See below some renders. First two made with default spot light without/with volume shader. Second two made with omniffreaker's mesh. Without/with volume shader either.
F...k. I can't get what is wrong with this forum. Images don't load
...while waiting, just a thought if you're running multiple DS builds - make sure all light shaders and plug-ins are properly installed for each DS version. If you use AoA products, lights, cameras etc, try reinstalling...
Yeah I had uploading issues yesterday, haven't tried today.
Reinstalling helped. So thank a lot. But it still looks like picture I allredy posted, except for the shadows to appear. Can you probably give a step-by-step advice for the dummy like me? What cam should I use, what options should I set in surface tab for shader. Sorry to bug you. But posibillity to get volumetriv light effect is so much wanted by me.
I'll upload some screenshots when the forum gods allow...meanwhile I can tell you I had no problems using the shader in 4.20 (a standard spotlight and UE2). How it behaves depends so much on your lighting philosofy. You probably need to set light density to a much larger number first. Or increase light strength a lot. Also, if you set opacity density to a small negative value, you can use scatter color (if opacity density is zero there is no scatter). Also a general tip, first set up lighting the way you want it before bringing in the volume;) Let me know how it goes! The size of the volume is also a thing to play with, along with the start- and end- falloffs. And remember, camera MUST be outside the volume.
Ok. I use UE2 with standart settings anf standart point light. And no matter how I increase Light density or Opacity dencity - I get the same result. Since i use cube primitive for the volume, I got rear wal of the cube scattered where the light desn't fall on it. The rest is totally opaque.
The volume shader has Opacity Color. It should be set to pure black after posing the volume prop. This simply hides the geometry. Light Density controls how dense the fog is when lit by a light. Opacity Density controls the overall opacity and is linked to scatter color, so these two can be used to design the way the fog reacts to light. If you set Opacity Density to 0, scatter is disabled and the fog reacts only to light color. Hope this clarifies things a bit.
Try a standard spotlight instead of a pointlight! The light is more concentrated and easier to work with if you set light spread to around 30-60°. Set light falloff to 2,set light intensity scale to a high enough number (10000-100000) depending on distance from the object you wish to light, enable raytraced shadows and adjust spread and softness to your liking. When you can light up your object sufficiently create the volume etc.
Add GI like UE2 lastly, it will save you time, as there is less tracing going on without it. And adding GI as a final step will help you find the right levels of ambient light, hopefully:) If you wish to use a pointlight instead that's fine, just set it up the same way as the spot. You will get a more foggy effect with a dim light bloom, as the light is unidirectional, but it is useful.
That's what I get when trying to use volume shader.
I tried spotlite and point either.
"Set light falloff to 2" - what do you mean by that?
"set light intensity scale to a high enough number (10000-100000)" - such intesity totally whites out everything
Light falloff or decay is set in parameters/light. It means, if you set it to 2, that light intensity will follow the rules of the inversed square law, i.e. physical fall off. If you set fall off to 0 the light will always have a constant intensity no matter distance. And if you use a physical light falloff and place the light at a good distance, say 10m or more, the light will not light up much, unless you scale light intensity to compensate. If you use no fall off, 100% light strength will probably be sufficient, no matter distance.
That's why I said: First set up the lighting with the intensities you need, then create a volume and adjust surface parameters and volume size to fit the scenario.
By the way, I think the Omnifreaker Ubersoft lights are broken in 4.20, I can't get them to work at all. But if you need a pointlight with soft shadows, just create a standard point light, in parameters "show hidden properties" and you'll find a greyed out shadow softness. It works:)
...so it's getting late over here, I'll be back, hopefully with some attachments tomorrow...but I think your Uberlights are broken and you are using too small a volume for the integration start- end settings?
A bit more on the matter of light decay:
I created a simple scene using UE2 and a standard DS pointlight. I only added raytraced shadows and some shadow softness because I hate sharp shadows;) And I parented a sphere to the light with "cast shadows" off and only ambient enabled, so we can see the light position.
...and the UE2 settings I used here:
Rendered with two cameras:
Light intensities work and the objects are "properly" lit. Now I just move the pointlight 4 meters away:
Rendered out:
Now I change the pointlight intensity scale from 1000 to 100000:
I'll use this scene to test some volumetrics later, meanwhile here is a test using my volumetric shader with a DS spotlight in DS 4.20: