3Delight: Eyes randomly render white and 'Error during rendering'
amysparkles
Posts: 99
I recently began playing with 3Delight and I have to say I really enjoy working with it. I am learning a lot about lightning and texturing this way, and I find the render engine a lot less resource intensive than Iray. In a way, Iray made me lazy with lighting because all I would do is load a HDRI and/or a lighting preset. In 3Delight, I can light my scenes from scratch.
I bought 3Delight add-ons such as RSSY Iray to 3Delight texture converter, and the AoA advanced lights. They have made a huge difference.
I do encounter a number of issues though: Every now and then a texture (mostly eyes) will render completely white, whereas they rendered perfectly normal before. If I close the scene and then re-open and test render again, the eyes are back to normal. So it is like this just happens randomly for no reason whatsoever.
I also experience similar issues with an 'Error during rendering' message randomly popping up. When the message does pop up, it is always immediately after the 'optimizing images' process. Again, the issue disappears when restarting the scene.
I tested and retested, trying to find the cause of this problem but no joy so far. I have even test-rendered characters with no other props or lighting other than the camera head lamp, and still encounter these issues.
From what I can deduce, I think there is something that occasionally happens during the 'optimizing images' process which triggers these errors. But I am at a loss as to why they happen in the first place.
Does anyone else encounter these random issues in 3Delight? Is there a way to stop them from happening?
Edit: I should add that so far I have mostly rendered G3 characters in 3Delight. Sometimes the characters will have G8 textures converted from Iray to 3Delight. Though I do not think this is the issue.
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Comments
I used 3Delight for over a decade. My best guess is that it has to do with Specular Color. If it's too white then things will tend to reflect as white and washing out the base diffuse surfaces. If Specular is too light then try going with 0/0/0 black or with around a 60/60/60 gray or a similar deep shade.
The errors seem to be completely random. A shader that renders fine sometimes won't again if I close the scene and reopen it at a later time. If I then close and re-open again, the error usually disappears.
By this time I have already tweaked and adjusted my shaders to how I like them. They will render fine one moment, then will not the next.
I also notice 'optimizing images' is not constant for the same scene. For instance, I create a scene and then hit render and it will go through a certain number of optimization steps (say, 130) before rendering. If I later close the scene and render again the next day, the number of steps are different (I've had as low as 14 steps when before there were over 100). So again that's strange. Maybe the random errors are connected with that?
If I was constantly getting an error with a scene - say eyes rendering white - then yes, I would be checking the shaders you mention. But this happens randomly. They render fine one moment and then go white the next - without me changing anything in the scene. Dito for the 'Error During Rendering' message that also occasionally pops up.
I think it's a problem with the AoA SS shader, it sometimes does not compile properly. As you already noticed the fix is to restart DS, which empties the tempfolder and forces DS to recompile the shader. The AoA SSS is a pretty complex shadermixer network, and shadermixer is ...let's say not very stable;) Next time this happens you could go to the surface editor pane, select the offending eye surface(s) and check the name of the shader used in the upper left corner of the surface tab. If it's not the AoA SS shader we need to look into other possibilities. A workaround: Set up the eyesurfaces using for example the dz default shader and save as a materials preset. When the problem occurs just load your preset and you should be good to go.
As for the error message...what does it say, exactly?
After checking through the shaders that occasionally give this issue, they are indeed AoA SS shaders. So I think we have identified the cause. Ironically the skin shaders provided in the RSSY Iray to 3Delight converter seem to render the best of all. Whereas some 3DL shaders in characters I've purchased at Daz have the AoA SS as their skin shaders.
Eyes however are a different story. Iray to 3Delight always gives eyes a milky appearance and other strange artifacts, so what I did was save a material preset that I know renders fine (saving the Sclera, Pupil, Iris, Eye Moisture and Cornea), then applied that after conversion. I then just swap out the sclera, iris and pupil diffuse textures for the ones that I want. What I had not realized is the material preset I was applying also used the AoA SS shader.
However, I have now encountered another issue that I can repeat. So I think this might have been identified before so I will put it out there in case there's been a fix I am not aware of.
The problem is pattern textures with a white background will render completely white in 3Delight, no matter the shader preset. I often use tiled pattern textures (like wallpapers) for texturing clothing and props. If I swap the white background for a color that is slighty off white in GIMP, the texture renders without issue. It is really strange. Do you know why that is, and if there's a working method that does not involve color swapping in GIMP?
SS shader error is easy to fix. Open your temp folder and dig down til you find a "Brickyard" folder, delete the folder.
You could also set up your eyes preset to exclude the maps.
It sounds strange indeed, and I've never had that happen. Are you saying that a pattern with a white background looks ok in texture shaded viewport but renders pure white? Maybe post an example along with the surface- and rendersettings?
You also may want to have a look at my post about setting up the dz defaultshader for a linear workflow. It contains some general information on how to get the best results out of using 3DL. I also included a sample scene with G3F. In that I set up her eyes using the default shader, which will work just fine unless you really need SS on the sclera and iris. Setting up the ds default shader for a linear workflow
I think I just figured out what the problem is with certain pattern textures rendering as white. The issue appears to be something to do with the image jpg file itself. As a workaround, I imported the file into GIMP and then immediately exported it without changes. The texture then rendered as it should. I suspect whatever RGB color profile was used by the texture creator made it unsuitable for 3Delight. Though the original texture renders perfectly fine in iray.
A lot of the pattern textures I had been using were from the same bundle.
Thank you for all your help in resolving these issues.