Why wouldn't my scene do the line render?

Ufloria

Hi all, I created a scene that included a daz product that rendered perfectly fine in nvidia mode but when I tried to use the 3Delight Script render mode to see what an outline version would look like the scene would not render. So I worked all day trying to solve the problem and finally I was able to do the outline render but only after deleting a very specific item from the scene. It was a sofa cloth that was hanging up the works but only in outline mode.

No idea why the cloth rendered in nvidia but not 3Delight mode. I did change the surface of the cloth by adding my own jpeg design but there were other items I did that to in the scene and those worked fine in both modes once I deleted the sofa cloth. There was no actual sofa prop underneath the cloth either, it was just the cloth. (My other throw blanket in the scene also worked fine in both modes once I deleted the sofa cloth so I don't think it was a texture issue). This is such a mystery to me and I would like to avoid this in the future. Anyone have any thoughts as to why this happened with this particular item?

Also, do I need special hardware capabilities to be able to use the Linerender9000 product? Do you think I would still have the same issue if I used that instead? I just have a standard laptop with windows 10 and no special graphics cards. Very limiting I know but I wasn't expecting to get hooked, lol.

I'm new to daz and this is my first animation/modeling software program ever. I am a simple photoshop gal teaching myself and love it. Appreciate your experience and insights.

https://www.daz3d.com/cloth-sofa-sets

https://www.daz3d.com/linerender9000

 

Martirilla

It was likely the material on the throw-cloth, rather than the geometry of the cloth itself. Try taking the texture off, and see if lineart then works.

Niether of the lineart plugins for Daz are ideal. They're old and difficult to set up and control, and need to be rendered (unlike Poser 11's real-time comic book options - try their free trial). The results from either Daz plugin are not likely to please people who actually know and read comics or children's storybooks. But to answer your question, you should be able to run them even with a laptop and a low-end GPU.

Yes, Daz has its own scripted lineart capabilities, little known and not great (compared to Poser 11) but they are in there. But.... difficult for new users to find, let alone set up and control. A lot of switches and sliders and render modes need to be aligned for it to work as intended, as it sounds like you've found. There was an introductory article to it in VisNews No. 21 recently, the publication for digital comics makers.

One simple way of doing artistic lineart is to forget plugins and scripts and.... cheat. A suitably lit and textured figure in the real-time cartoon-shaded viewport (very simple to do once you're in the full UI), big real-time render, run it through the right filter in the free G'Mic filters for Photoshop.

juvesatriani

Not sure why it doesnt work . These some basic tips how to use Line art renderer script ( default daz not Line render 9000 )

Article in DAZ blog explaining more detail . You can visit here https://blog.daz3d.com/make-comic-book-quality-cartoon-drawings-with-daz-studio/

or for brief introduction you can check this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrKXSeiGYp0

I`ve been doing experiment a lot using line render for multipass work , let me know if you need few tricks for utilizing default 3delight script outline renderer

Richard Haseltine

Martirilla said:

It was likely the material on the throw-cloth, rather than the geometry of the cloth itself. Try taking the texture off, and see if lineart then works.

It might indeed be the shader, but removing the texture won't change that. Try selecting the whole object, then in the Editor tab of the Surfaces pane select it again (to target all of its surfaces) and in the Presets tab apply the 3Delight uberSurface shader

Niether of the lineart plugins for Daz are ideal. They're old and difficult to set up and control, and need to be rendered (unlike Poser 11's real-time comic book options - try their free trial). The results from either Daz plugin are not likely to please people who actually know and read comics or children's storybooks. But to answer your question, you should be able to run them even with a laptop and a low-end GPU.

Yes, Daz has its own scripted lineart capabilities, little known and not great (compared to Poser 11) but they are in there. But.... difficult for new users to find, let alone set up and control. A lot of switches and sliders and render modes need to be aligned for it to work as intended, as it sounds like you've found. There was an introductory article to it in VisNews No. 21 recently, the publication for digital comics makers.

One simple way of doing artistic lineart is to forget plugins and scripts and.... cheat. A suitably lit and textured figure in the real-time cartoon-shaded viewport (very simple to do once you're in the full UI), big real-time render, run it through the right filter in the free G'Mic filters for Photoshop.

Ufloria

Thank you all so much for your eyes on this and responding with your kindness and generous ideas. 

The good news is when I opened a new file and loaded just the sofa cloth with and without my added my texture for testing and rendered the 3Delight Scripted mode it worked. So it seems the product itself is fine, no problems there, it’s just not playing nicely with my scene.

After restarting my computer, I reopened my scene and tried again. Outline mode works fine with the cloth deleted from my scene, daz goes straight to rendering, but with the cloth back in the scene when I go to render in 3Delight Script mode I still get an empty checkerboard window as if it did not try to render at all and that’s it.

Richard, I added an “!UberSurface Base” Shader to the cloth but it still just opened the empty checkerboard window. I hope it was the correct shader, I found it under “Presets>Shaders”. I did not see any ubersurface options when I went to “Presets>Shaders>3Delight”…btw, what is an ubersurface base for? Please explain how and when it is useful to apply one to a product, I feel I am learning something new and important from you and would like to understand better.

Juvestriani the daz blog link was very useful, thanks. I did try out the Cartoon shaded mode following the steps along with your suggestions and played with it all morning. Sadly, I continuously got the blank checkerboard window immediately, as if it did not even try to render. At least in outline mode daz attempts to render most of the items (except with the sofa cloth); This may not be a product/asset problem at all, maybe it’s an engine issue? If so, I think this is beyond my abilities to solve.

Marterillia thanks for the heads up on VisNews I had not heard of it before, will have to check it out.

It’s mind boggling. I would think doing outlines and cartoons would be simpler and faster than full nvidia renders. Feels like I’m dealing with a stubborn mule and think I will have to put this daz feature aside for now, guess I’m not ready for it yet. *sigh*

You all are so great! I am so grateful for your suggestions, especially for alternative methods of getting better outline renders, I will be checking them out for sure. Thanks tons, enjoy your creative day! :)

 

Richard Haseltine

That was the right shader preset - it appleis ubersurface, a 3Delight shader. I was thinking perhaps the surface currently had a custom Iray shader that the scripted renderer didn't know what to do with.

Martirilla

I stand corrected on one Daz plugin at least, pwToon. There are now actually a couple of reasonable recent renders from it the NPR sub-forum - which I hadn't looked at for six months. Although several have been heavily Photoshopped. By "reasonable", I mean that they could pass muster in an actual real paid-for comic.