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Probably never used anything but the default DAZ Studio shader. In that regard, I'd love to see an iray render where diffuse roughness is always set to 0 (lambert).
Try getting something realistic with that.
If you mean an image editor, i don't know about free ones - probably Cinepaint - but that's a Mac only app. As for post processing tools, both NUKE and Blackmagic Fusion (both have free versions) supports deep EXR. There's also Natron (https://github.com/MrKepzie/Natron) which is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS. Haven't used it though.
That really was some great info, thank you both for sharing it really helped me out, I've been messing around with a glass window in Iray and noticed some funny-business with the thin-wall settings, modeling it with z-depth as opposed to a plane seems to have solved it. I have to see about reproducing it in 3DL
@Wowie, those stonemason renders look great, not just the glass, but all of it.
I don't know how you did that, but that looks amazing.
Full Access to 3DL?..,,,
A thought just occurred to me.....with the upcoming Morph3D venture, Daz is pursuing cross-platform compatibility.
The Morph3D site explains:
"Previously DAZ 3D content has been in formats or created in a way that made it difficult to use in many 3D programs and in realtime engines. We are taking our years of experience and putting it towards creating a new, versatile, and powerful figure platform, along with its own library of compatible content that retains the high quality of DAZ 3D and will work in realtime engines like Unity and Unreal as well as professional software like 3DS Max and Maya. Our aim is to make our platform compatible with as many creation pipelines and software suites as possible."
Maybe I'm being optimistic, but doesn't that sound like we're going to have backdoor access to the full-blown, no holds barred, 3DL??
Provided you have another program with 3DL, based on the claim of cross platform compatibility with Daz/Morph3D products, it sounds like there is a possibility we will be able to set up our scenes in Daz using 3DL optimized shaders/materials, and export them to Maya to be rendered in the full version of 3DL.
I'm sure it will involve some hoop-jumping (if it's even possible).
Any thoughts on that?
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Here's some quick glass renders I was working on and getting really strange results with until I read what Wowie and MJC wrote. These are Iray renders, but they may be of interest regardless.
They were all rendered under the same settings, using an HDRI, an interior ceiling light, and the identical "Glass Solid Clear" Shader on the Window Glass.
(1) I did today, the glass is modeled with z-depth as Wowie described. **"Thin Wall" is set to off, although there was no difference when rendering it with Thin Wall on.
(2) is a control render with no glass (should've made this #1, duh....)
(3) is a flat plane with "Thin Wall On". It looks somewhat plausible, but the reflections are questionable, and it somehow doesn't feel right, like there is no weight to it.
(4) this was the real mind-boggler that was driving me Batty all last week. I had Thin wall set to "on", but that caused everything in the scene on the opposite side of the glass to shift to the left side of the frame?!?!.....it literally looks like I moved everything on the X and Z....I still can't explain why that's happening, but it must have something to do with the shader faking the depth of a glass window from a flat plane.
Also, render times were not affected by the different settings. Each image rendered about 1min 33s. I point this out because I was open to using a flat plane with "Thin Wall: On" if render times were faster, but they weren't.
It seems like modeling glass with depth is the way to go.
Nice comparisons there!
Dino, that glassware was rendered with Mustakettu's glass shader...it's part of the shader pack she is working on. It's also using a single spot to enhance the 'sun' of an HDR image (both for lighting and backdrop/dome texture). All the glass is modelled with thickness...and I tried to get that thickness as accurate as I could (yeah I measured some glassware and used those numbers when modelling).
Nicely done modeling those glasses, they came out great. Kettus shader seems awesome, that's pretty impressive, she knocked it out of the park with that one.
The only thing right now, that's giving me fits, is caustics...no matter which shader I use, I can't get transmitted caustics. Reflective are no problem. It's just something about my system and the caustic maps and I haven't been able to figure out why it doesn't work.
My guess is that's the refraction. Try fiddiling with the IOR and see if that changes things.
It's the physically correct way, I tell ya!!
I'd say the shaders are very different, so it's probably best to just start from scratch. The 3delight default material for Maya is pretty powerful and you can always make your own via Hypershade.
You can already bring in a lot of into Maya, be it as a static prop or through Alembic. Figures are always a problem, since the weight mapping is different. G3 does away with DAZ specific weight mapping, but that means importing all the correctives and turn them into blendshapes.
I made a topic in the technical forum about creating motion blur relative to camera movement. Perhaps an expert in this thread can help me out? In short, I want the background to blur as I move the camera with my character, but I don't want the character to blur.
But you already have it. Just export to RIB and render in the free 3DSP. =)
Of course, the catch with 3Delight is having an exporter that supports up-to-date params which will free you from editing the RIB by hand, and up-to-date shaders. This is the system I'm working on, built through DS scripting an´stuff.
Love the models, Mjc! The new glass shader blows that one out of the water... the only issue is me not being able to write a real volume for absorption yet. So liquid-in-glass, when it's modeled the right way (normals out at the interface), it doesn't look right. But maybe I will find a way around that... Empty glasses are a breeze.
Well, those who always set reflectivity to 1, they could well add this to their arsenal LOL
I didn't find it in Natron, but maybe I didn't look well enough. I keep forgetting that Nuke has a free version, thanks for reminding! And then, the Blender compositor could also support deepEXR in theory... it's pretty good.
Oh dear God!
Reflectivity at 1? When are people going to learn do things the right way, with ANY renderer. Must be the same people that keeps forcing bump maps rather than proper glossiness/roughness maps.
Hmm, there's no easy way to do it with DS. In other apps, you generally have a motion blur switch in the object properties parameters. The only hack I know would be to keep the camera and character still, but move everything else slightly.
Well, that's what I wound up doing. It's a hack job, to be sure, and certainly not something that would work for complex animations, but there it is. I also learned that using a bit of motion blur gets rid of the grid on the sky dome, which was visible in this scene at first. Since we likely won't have motion blur relative to camera movement ever implemented into the DAZ Studio version of 3delight, I'm looking forward to seeing how it will be done in Iray eventually. Until then, 3delight is still the way to go for motion blur, such as it is.
Edited to add an image with some lens flare, courtesy of GIMP. (And then I see that the "sun" position is ever so slightly off, but what's done is done. ;)
Oh, Just found John Hable's new blog.
http://www.filmicworlds.com/
And just to avoid confusion about reflectivity or just specular in physically based rendering, here's a very nice post he made:
http://www.filmicworlds.com/2014/02/24/physically-based-specular-for-artists/
Kettu, this post - https://interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/an-educational-normalised-blinn-phong-shader/ - have some info about anti aliasing.
It doesn't help the situation much that the default DAZ Iray character presets use that value for skin.
Yeah, thanks, I've read that one. Thankfully 3Delight handles that stuff automagically... when the settings make sense, of course =) That "classic DS" 6x6 sinc filter will ring like crazy whenever there's contrast. Even with high pixel samples.
I find that 10x10 samples resolve even difficult DOF rather nicely now (with Catmull-Rom at 2x2), and don't take that long to render in the newest versions.
A very cinematic feel to the shot! Lens flare looks alright.
Been busy and sick these past few days. But got some work done, fine tuning and revamp some settings.
Here's a look at the revised skin, teeth and eyes settings. Still working on the hair.
Makes me wonder why DAZ are not making use of the photo ressources that the old Elite Skins were based on to create new Genesis 3 skins. They were so great and one has to assume that DAZ still has them. Well, maybe it's a legal thing...
So sorry to hear you've been sick =( Me too; the weather has been crazy here lately.
I love the eyes in these shots in particular!
Hi Kettu,
Thanks for the heads up on the updates. Haven't had time to test them out.
Some more test renders.
Autumn mood, very cool!
I've been trying to make car paint, too. Need to find a decent freebie car (preferably on the vintage side) before I post anything, though =)
[LINKS] Free Auto Models: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/623/links-free-auto-models/p1
I'd say the Shelby Cobra I posted awhile back is the best one. Very smooth/logical topology, but not a polygon hog, The glass is properly modelled (with thickness), headlights have actual reflectors, though the blinkers don't.
There is a problem with the CR2 though I think, I kept having Duplicate ID errors when opening a saved scene with it. Loads just fine on a fresh, new scene.
Thank you Wowie, proper glass is great. Hope to post some renders after the weekend.
Some study of water. IPR shots, with and without trace displacement. IPR makes it possible to turn off surface displacement but retain ray tracing results. The effects of tracing displacement is clear - with it, you can see rays hitting the bottom of the pool from the displaced water surface.
What I haven't quite figured out is how to get the greenish blue tint right. In those shots, I actually tint the walls and bottom of the pool to be slightly greenish. Unfortunately, that means those surfaces above the water gets tinted too. So it's incorrect.
The alternative was to use green diffuse with some greenish opacity color for refraction on the water The end result is similar, but the pool steps now have a slightly green tint. Since diffuse tints the water uniformly, this isn't correct either. It should be less noticeable on the shallow parts.
Any thoughts on how to get proper water, be it in a glass (with very little absorption) and large bodies of water (like a pool, lake or oceans)?
Glass tends to be a tad green from the angle of refraction vs the glass molecules (Akin to the affect of light passing threw the blue Nitrogen atmosphere of Earth and Pluto). Water tends to be less green unless there is algae in it. Also I think some pool chemical kits have a Blue die in them, I think.
What you have there looks really good. Even if you had to 'fake it' by tinting the pool basin rather then the diffuse/refraction color of the water.
EDIT. Attached, regardless if AoA/Omni/Daz/other shader.
Thanks Zarcon.
I'n going with the diffuse trick, since it is self contained so you don't need to fiddle with other surfaces. With about 5% opacity, you can also add things like translucence to it. Tint, no tint and no diffuse enabled. Water in the glass is the same preset with no tint.
Opacity color??? Now I'm asking myself all kinds of odd questions about swimming pools. I don't recall seeing blue water under a stormy gray sky, tho I never took the time to think about that at the time. How much of the blue color of the water in a pool, is because of the color of the pool lining, or the color of the sky?
What you have there looks real wowie, and yet the intense blue pool from the former post looks more appealing.
Both come into play, and in addition water clarity affects the color. I have seen swiming pools painted a bright turquoise blue, which makes them look more far more postcard-like then they would look if they just had plain grey cement. If you go someplace like Hawaii where you can see the ocean where there is a white or light-colored sand beach going into the water next to a black lava flow, you can see the water gets that crazy postcard-like light blue effect ONLY where the sand is, and is very dull in comparison where the lava is underneath.
I have also visited the ocean a bunch of times and realized that on a cloudy grey day, the ocean is kind of grey-blue and dull, but on a sunny day at the same spot the ocean is dramatically super blue.
For water clarity, if you go to Crater Lake, which is one of the clearest lakes there is (I think originally based on how far down into the water you can see a white dinner plate submerged on a rope), the water looks so blue you think it is fake. I actually DID think the pictures were faked with increased saturation until I visited it in person and it really looks like that, as if somebody had filled the lake with blue dye in addition to water. I forget the details, google for them, but letting the sunlight get deeper increases the blue color, and water cleanliness (lack of algae, silt, etc.) of course lets the light get deeper.
Here's a good example what a large body of water looks like. Deeper parts will be dark blue, while shallower parts tend to be bluish green. Really shallow parts generally shows the bottom rather clearly.