3Delight Laboratory Thread: tips, questions, experiments

mjc1016 · January 2016

ZarconDeeGrissom said:

Very nice looking. And the ability to mix up the cloth types I will assume is either beyond the capability of the 'material property language', or limited only by your imagination.

The color/pattern is controlled by a map. It is the underlying type of cloth/weave that relies on measured data.

Oso3D · January 2016

Maybe a dumb question, but... I've noticed a few 3DL shaders have dual displacements, set up in various ways.

What's up with that?

Is it just two different displacements that kick in the same way, or is there some... special ordering to it, or... what? Does it vary depending on the shaders?

Shades of Life has two different displacements, and omUberSurface has Trace Displacements... are they related?

ZarconDeeGrissom · January 2016

timmins.william said:

Maybe a dumb question, but... I've noticed a few 3DL shaders have dual displacements, set up in various ways.

What's up with that?

Is it just two different displacements that kick in the same way, or is there some... special ordering to it, or... what? Does it vary depending on the shaders?

Shades of Life has two different displacements, and omUberSurface has Trace Displacements... are they related?

UberSurface "Trace Displacements", has something to do with 'tracing' the displacement of the surface for illumination to an extent. It's an (on/off) option for making Displacement maps work better for some things. It is not a separate slot for another displacement map. There is only one slot for a Displacement map in the stock UberSurface shader, unless some extra stuff was done in spaghetti land or scrips or something (if that is even possible to do).

I don't have 'Shades of Life', so I don't know about that one.

(EDIT)

If your asking about the different texture options (Bump/Displacement/normal), it's for the different texture map types, and there if you want to mix maps. Like a Displacement map for the grooves between the bricks on a wall, and a normal or bump map for the brick texture, or something like that.

Oso3D · January 2016

I actually found shades of life documentation. Apparently it's for big details vs fine details. Weird.

I know the bump/normal stuff, that's cool. Thanks .;)

wowie · January 2016

Mustakettu85 said:

This is a scenario I frankly didn't even think of in the contest of DS. I just can't see DS being used for serious VFX work that would require precise plate matching. It would need so much more than just new shaders.

Well, maybe not DS But hey, aren't we using DS just to get access to 3delight? Btw, something along my line of thinking?

https://vimeo.com/137148720

https://vimeo.com/130127830

Hhmm, they're going to do bidir path tracing?

http://www.3delight.com/en/modules/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4326&sid=c6796f61728319d9eac3448e6b4d4244

mjc1016 · January 2016

wowie said:

Hhmm, they're going to do bidir path tracing?

http://www.3delight.com/en/modules/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4326&sid=c6796f61728319d9eac3448e6b4d4244

Umm...yes. Now if they would just jump on a GPU acceleration scheme...

Did you catch this?

In both cases use quadratic decay on all area/geo lights. You may also increment the GI intensity in the renderpass, Sometimes we use 2 or 3 rather than the default 1. You should always use physically plausible shaders (3delight material / skin / glass / metal). Make sure you are in a linear workflow, with good textures and shader values and make sure you use color management.

Sounds a lot like the advice for a PBR doesn't it?

wowie · January 2016

mjc1016 said:

Umm...yes. Now if they would just jump on a GPU acceleration scheme...

Did you catch this?

In both cases use quadratic decay on all area/geo lights. You may also increment the GI intensity in the renderpass, Sometimes we use 2 or 3 rather than the default 1. You should always use physically plausible shaders (3delight material / skin / glass / metal). Make sure you are in a linear workflow, with good textures and shader values and make sure you use color management.

Sounds a lot like the advice for a PBR doesn't it?

Well, have to if you're using:

You should always use physically plausible shaders (3delight material / skin / glass / metal)

mjc1016 · January 2016

Yep...which , unfortunately most Studio shaders are not.

Oso3D · February 2016

I forget the thread suggesting area lights/meshlights, but I was inspired to poke at them again and... ...

I don't know if I was doing something WILDLY bad before, but it now seems to work like 9000x better than before. Huh.

mjc1016 · February 2016

A large part of it is speed ups in the most recent versions of 3DL, but there's also the fact that you are understanding them better. Now if we could convice the devs to turn 'raycaching' on, by default, then they'd be even better.

Oso3D · February 2016

Hrm. It keeps hanging trying to render a human figure (with omUber shader). Any items I should be looking out for? I'm trying to go through and switch off various elements to see if it helps.

Edit: Ah, SSS. Nm. ;)

mjc1016 · February 2016

It's not 'hanging'...so much as it will slow to nearly a crawl while waiting for the calculations...then maybe several minutes to hours (yeah, I've seen it wait that long) it will zoom along.

Oso3D · February 2016

I find SSS is cool, but I can set it aside for stuff that really needs that sort of effect.

I'm a little confused by storefront... is there some version of AreaLight that's improved, or is it just old clutter?

mjc1016 · February 2016

The version of the area light in the omnifreaker store is actually an OLDER version. The included in DS one is the most 'recent' (being over 4 yrs old)...basically, the only thing left that doesn't have the most recent version included in Studio, in omnifreaker's store is UberSurface2.

Oso3D · February 2016

Very confusing. :) Thanks for the help.

Oso3D · February 2016

An hour or so to render. Not terrible, considering.

http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Firelit-room-3dl-588108550

mjc1016 · February 2016

Not bad...now add a little 'bounce' light (probably increase render time dramatically with the UberEnvironment in 'bounce' mode...even with raytracing).

Oso3D · February 2016

Bounce light? Never experimented with that... I HAD been using a little uberenv with the default directional shadows thingie.

Will experiment!

mjc1016 · February 2016

Here's a quick 'bounce render without using the UberEnv...4 mins 23 seconds.

The second image is with UberEnv...30 mins 11 seconds.

I didn't bother trying to match levels or anything...just a quick test.

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

ZarconDeeGrissom said:

Progresive render mode, the setting further down are 'inactive' or whatever in that mode.
(EDIT) I think it's still 1x1 Box filter, I think. DS hasn't popped up that warning after 4.6 I think it was.

Ah yeah, in progressive mode it's fixed box 1x1 which is as close to 'no filtering' as it gets. This can be prone to artefacts on high frequency stuff.
And outside of progressive, sinc above 6x6 will "ring" like crazy.
So moire will pop up both ways sadly.
For progressive with its box 1x1, Wowie suggested manual upsampling once - render 2x/4x the size (pixel samples can be lower then) and then resize down in an image editor. Maybe this could help.

ZarconDeeGrissom said:
Getting rid of grainy reflections. 'Max Ray Depth' only controls the number of bounces, it dose nothing for the quality of the reflection.

Using UberSurface, you can add a very low blur - around 1% - and increase reflection samples. This should help. In REYES, you don't really have to go below 0.5 if your shaders are set up right.

ZarconDeeGrissom said:

Even at 25% size, there is still texture there. Yet with renders that would be completely featureless after that mipmap-thing.

And I can keep going to at least 10 percent size, and the texture is still there when shrunk with that Lanczos filter doohickey thing.

a) If you only have a texture in the diffuse and/or bump channels, you will need to adjust glossiness very carefully. The DS default shader won't let you do it. UberSurface is a bit better, but UberSurface2 is heaps better because it can do Fresnel attenuation of specular, which always happens IRL.
Using your bump in a specular strength channel should give more consistent results.
b) If you are not using gamma correction, your textures are not properly linearised, which means that mipmaps and texture filter operations (which are both inevitable) will be somewhat off. It may contribute to your issues further. This is something you will have to live with until you go linear.

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

timmins.william said:
Bounce light? Never experimented with that... I HAD been using a little uberenv with the default directional shadows thingie.

Will experiment!

For minimum impact on render times, you could try using the 'indirect light mode' and limiting the trace distance to around 50 (half a meter). The most noticeable bounce happens in this range. The UE2 colour or HDR map will still provide ambient light beyond that range.

mjc1016 · February 2016

Ok the simple GI 'bounce' light I rendered with above is by Matt Ebb and released under the MIT License...Soooo....who feels like installing a FAST bounce light shader?

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

timmins.william said:

Shades of Life has two different displacements, and omUberSurface has Trace Displacements... are they related?

Displacements can be 'layered'. So if you have two, you can use a low-freq map for 'large variations' (a heap of sand being 'wavy') and a hi-freq map for 'particles' (individual grains of sand).
"Trace displacement" means whether displaced geometry is seen by non-camera rays or not. "Non-camera" rays are transmission rays (RT shadows), diffuse rays (AO/GI), specular rays (RT reflections). In REYES (the "non-progressive" mode of DS), it's a quality control. In the raytracer, turning "trace displacement" off means you will turn it into a bump layer effectively (try playing with that switch on a noticeably displaced sphere in the "progressive" mode, you should see what I mean).
The DS default shader always traces displacement.

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

mjc1016 said:
Ok the simple GI 'bounce' light I rendered with above is by Matt Ebb and released under the MIT License...Soooo....who feels like installing a FAST bounce light shader?

Mike, don't forget to check if you have "hitmode" "shader" forced in the code. DS sets diffuse visibility to "primitive", so if you don't force it, textures will get ignored...

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

Linwelly said:

Whoop, I didn't even kow there was a person behind the fresnel thingy, well portrait I can do...

Ok I started collecting terms that are not clear. As I'm trying to get thought the old posts of the thread I will keep collecting and I guess some will be explained somewhere, so I gather what I can get and post that here and you geniusses here maybe fill the open ones. for the mini glossary (won't be so mini anymore I fear)

That would be awesome if you do make the list. We can always change the heading to 'mega glossary' =)
And yeah, in physics, when you see a particularly weird word, especially if it's capitalised often, most often it's some super smart dude's name. =)

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

wowie said:

Well, maybe not DS But hey, aren't we using DS just to get access to 3delight?

Largely yes =)

wowie said:
Btw, something along my line of thinking?
https://vimeo.com/137148720

https://vimeo.com/130127830

Almost =) The 3DelightMetal material uses the colour-to-complex-IOR approach from that "Artist-friendly metallic Fresnel" paper I keep linking to, the same I used in my stuff. As you can see, it's quite a flexible approach.
I also added thin film to RadiumFabricPlus just yesterday (the "oxide" in the Maya interface). Works very nice in DS, too. Will post a few renders when I'm on the computer. Looking at that kitty shield in the video makes me think it's worth it to add a map to thin film thickness before updating the alpha.

mjc1016 · February 2016

No hitmode in the shader...

/*
# ##### BEGIN MIT LICENSE BLOCK #####
#
# Copyright (c) 2011 Matt Ebb
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE.
#
#
# ##### END MIT LICENSE BLOCK #####

    3Delight to Blender exporter
    Primary GI light shader: 'raytrace'

light gi_raytrace(
   float intensity = 1.0;
   float samples = 16;
   float maxdist = 100000;

    float falloffmode = 0, falloff = 0;

    string envmap = "", envspace = "world";

    float __nonspecular = 1;
    )
{
   normal Nn = normalize( Ns );

   illuminate( Ps + Nn ) /* shade all surface points */
   {
       Cl = 0;

       if( intensity > 0.0 )
       {
            uniform float minsamples = samples/2;

            color Cenv;

            Cl = indirectdiffuse(Ps, Ns, samples,
                "maxdist", maxdist,
                "environmentmap", envmap,
                "environmentspace", envspace,
                "minsamples", minsamples,
                "falloffmode", falloffmode,
                "falloff", falloff,

                "environmentcolor", Cenv
                );

            Cl *= intensity;
       }
   }
}

Mustakettu85 · February 2016

Oh, right, it's still indirectdiffuse() there. I vaguely remember it could be overriding hitmode attributes by default... or not. Have you tried it with a textured setup, with grey Cs and all colour in texture only?

Oso3D · February 2016

Setting UE2 to Bounce rather than the default (occlusion direct shadows?) is definitely adding some nice subtle lighting effects, and it's having next to no observable hit to the rendering (I set Occlusion samples to 200 and, as Mustakettu85 suggested, lowered max trace to 50).

Very happy, thanks again!

Oso3D · February 2016

Here's the version with bounce light. It's subtle, but I like it:

http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Firelit-room2-588149621

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