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I wouldn't call it "procrastination". Look at it the other way: you have _renders_ to finish. Those amazing renders of yours. If I had that sort of artistic talent, I'd probably be much less interested in tech stuff.
So that's kinda like GTR, I see, thanks. GGX is basically GTR with the "tail" parameter set to 2.
And unless DAZ made a mistake on their wiki, the build is still 12.0.27 - it's listed at the very bottom of this page: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/new_features/start#section492
I have looked through relevant DS changelog sections and found no reference to a further update.
Oh, missed that tooltip note on the '3delight' text. About 70 builds and 7 months behind.
So, basically no change. Again, I'm not surprised.
Still need to tweak the eyes.
edit:
Forgive the cross posting, but here's the updated eyes.
Still need to test these settings across textures though.
Beautiful! Eyes are always a challenge.
Those eyes look fantastic, wowie! Long live (hopefully) 3Delight!
- Greg
That's AMAZING
So I've been noticing, lately, with 3DL displacement I'm seeing holes in the mesh.
Is this a new problem, or something I hadn't noticed earlier?
Edit: Additional testing, it seems I'm having problems only with progressive rendering, and only with certain exotic shaders. For example, I was playing with creating a 'noise displacement' shader.
It's possible that the actual displacement is eceeding the displacement bounds - if so that may well be in the log file, and be fixed by editing the bound values on the root displacement brick as I recall.
Is there any special way to copy a shader onto a new object other than shader mixer?
There's a neat custom shader someone has, I'd like to use it on other things... but copy/paste obviously doesn't work, and it doesn't fully appear in shader mixer.
Try saving out a duf shader preset?
Outside of what Richard says about adjusting displacement bounds in shader mixer, the "progressive rendering" mode of DS also switches to the raytracer, which, in my experience, is less forgiving than REYES regarding "imperfect" displacement setup.
Aaah, thanks for the info. It explains another thing I just noticed...
Doing pwtoon, progressive off is way faster! buuuuut a lot of details are lost. Aaah.
Try decreasing shading rate and/or increasing pixel samples. Shading rate is the most important control in REYES.
I am at the moment trying to experiement my way through the combination of UE light and subsurface shader. What I was wondering about is the the group ID for the subsurface. What is its use and how does it affect my render? I changed it up and down without having the impression anything changed at all. What I read was surfaces with the same subsurface should have the same group ID but when I made a new surface on a part of my little sphere and altered other setting (of the subsurface) it didn't change anything if I chose the same or different Group IDs for the different surfaces. From the documentation http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/16324/16324_subsurface-shader-base.pdf I took it that what has the same group Id will be handled as belonging together. So one place should influence the other right? That means it is just my decision to name one surface this ID and the other one that? Does that make any sense?
and then one more question, from the documentation I noticed that there should be presets to the subsurface shader, but all I have is the base. Is there a product I missed? probably this one? http://www.daz3d.com/metalized-glass-shaders-for-daz-studio
Yes, it is your decision, just make it wisely =) Basically, group ID prevents mistakes in the SSS calculation, telling the renderer, for example, that these polygons are teeth, these are gums, and these are lips. It may be possible that things look okay when the group ID is set to be the same, but it's not guaranteed.
I can't unfortunately recall what problems exactly could result from bad group ID settings (I have been using my custom shaders exclusively for quite a while, which feature "new" raytraced SSS, so I forgot a lot about troubleshooting "normal" DS shaders).
Besides, I was never an expert on AoA Subsurface - it has a huge drawback actually: rendering speed will tend to be slower (sometimes a LOT slower) because it is a shader mixer network, and shader mixer generates bad attributes when the Opacity of the shader is connected to a colour.
I have used UberSurface and UberSurface2 with great results, and in my freebies you can find an extensive PDF "treatise" on how to set up those two shaders.
Metalised Glass is a different "shader" (a shader mixer network AFAIK, same as the Subsurface one). I don't have it, but it may be subject to the same shader mixer problem. On the other hand, it may have some optimising features. I hope others will chime in who have used it.
Here are various AoA Subsurface preset packs from the store:
http://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-gummy-plastic-shaders
http://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-toon-shaders
http://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-goop-shaders
http://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-toolbox
And 3Delight Studio Pro free version (with a generous 8 core licence) has been updated to version 12.0.99!
http://www.3delight.com/en/index.php?page=3DSP_download
SSS group IDs generally tells the renderer to use the same SSS settings for all surfaces sharing the same ID. Simply changing it does not affect a render.
One case where you want different SSS group IDs is to have different SSS shading rates per object, although they are using the same SSS settings. For objects very close to the camera, you can get away with higher SSS shading rate while for those farther away, you need lower SSS shading rate.
As for shading rate values to use, if you see artifacts, either speckles or patterns, the shading rate is too high. Rule of thumb - for skin on figures, 8 is good enough for torso and head closeups, 4 for knee to the head and 2 for a full body.
If you have surface with different SSS settings sharing the same SSS group ID, the renderer will apply the SSS settings of the first object the render bucket hits.
And if you have something like zigzag set for the pattern that can result in rather strange things happening...
Also 2 characters, with different SSS settings but the same ID can result in the 'white out' that can happen with the AoA shader.
Thanks a lot for the feedback. Playing around with Subsurface is actually fun and now I understood what to do with those artefacts. The settings of shading rate and shading scale was something worth learning!
Here is a lttle experiment with using the same and different Group IDs for different surfaces. Now I need to find a rendertheme to use that in... going to mangle some of my props with that.
I assume that whiteout effect is what happened to the pink colour in the left sphere?
I've found that SSS scale values (plus the scatter and absorption scales in Ubersurface2) plays a role in what SSS shading rate you can get away with. Finding the right balance between the four is quite tricky. Lower SSS scale generally needs low SSS shading rate values. I debated with kettu over using very low SSS scales for skin (she recommends 0.1, while I prefer something between 0.25 to 0.375).
Think of SSS scale as the 'master' dial of how much translucent you want the object to be. Setting it higher (above 1) will get you that wax look (more translucent) and setting it lower gives a more plastic or skin-like look (less translucent).
Personally, I don't want to use very low SSS shading rates, so hence the choice to go with slightly higher SSS scale. That allows me to use higher shading rates, so the precompute pass doesn't take too long (generally around 2 minutes for my usual tests). The catch is that with higher values, you need to have pretty high scatter and absorption strength to avoid the wax look. With lower strength values, you can still end up with wax looking surfaces/objects. Setting it way too high will give you shading rate artifacts. Eventually I've found using no more than 20 for the higher value (can either be the scatter or the absorption) works best for me.
Unfortunately, I think outside of Ubersurface2, there's no currently available shaders that allows you to change the SSS scatter behaviour (forward scatter or backscattering). UberSurface2 allows you to boost the backscatter so you can still have strong backscatter even with very low SSS strength, scale and/or scatter/absorption values.
For a no texture SSS approach to skin, these color values generally work (use a color picker of your image viewer/editor to get the actual values).
From https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000534910-how-to-use-subsurface-scattering-volumetric-absorption-and-scattering-
There are color values for other on that page. For omnifreaker's shaders, scatter color needs to be the inverse of the color above (it's transmission, rather than scatter color).
Thanks Wowie, that looks like an interesting read.
Regarding the shading scale and rate I found that it matters as well if you go for pre or postSSS. I think when using post, which I prefer on natural skin, you can get away with a higher shading scale as that wax look doesn't get through as much as in PreSSS. I still have to venture into changing the absorbtion an scatter values. The only time I took some advendture into that, this guys skin happened ... Now I'm probably able to understand what I did there
Surface Shader Speed. Well, I didn't dig much further into that. I got distracted, and I kept getting the same result, over and over and over again, lol. It's almost like comparing the different flavors of BSD, lol.
(If your Not righting your own shader code, and staying with 3DL built in to Studio). Diffuse, Specular/glossiness, Opacity, Reflection, and Refraction are on all the shaders, the basics.
Daz Default, fastest shader on the planet with the basics, not all that much for extended options at all.
omUberSurface, A bit slower for the basics with more adjustability, however if you need more options it has some stuff.
AoA, OMG this thing is slower then Continental drift, yet it has more options and you can do way more in spaghetti land (If you can figure it out without getting lost or tangled up).
I posted a chart or two somewhere, with render times of various basics on a simple cylinder. I was initially trying to figure out what setting makes HD figures with AoA mats so impossible to work with, yet I was never able to get that simple cylinder to face-plant as devastatingly as an HD figure, even with the same mesh poly-count on the cylinder. I even tried zoning the cylinder, with no measurable change in results at all.
Ubersurface 2, I don't have it, it costs money. Also you can not just share settings with others, as they will also need to purchase the shader to make the settings work. So it is not exactly a distribution (Product or Share) friendly way to go. LAMH and Optitex at least have a 'Free' version to make some stuff function, is there similar for Ubersurface 2?
P.S.
No, I have not caught up with the former dozen or so pages of posts I missed here... yet.
In that order, yes. I know I irritate some on this thread when I refuse to go from DazDefault to Omni for some extra setting on a background prop. It dose come down to just how much render time do you want to devote to the stuff in your scene. Dose glass need all the volumetric tricks of AoA, when it is in the distant background of a render, it depends is the best I can advise.
Glass done with Daz Default. (got to run, appointments to keep.)
You really can't discuss speed and benefits without 'the stuff' or the features each shader have. You can get a glimpse of what UberSurface2 has to offer with UberSurface, which if I remember correctly is bundled with DS (the package is 'Default Shaders and Lights).
Benefits
Features
Only with US2:
Cons.
Of course, all this is moot if you feed the wrong values to it, which quite often is the case. More so if you don't use linear workflow, which unfortunately, accounts for 95% of DAZ Studio users (since DS doesn't enable gamma correction by default).
As Wowie says, and I feel it has to be reinforced, UberSurface (either of them) will often speed up your renders because of occlusion override. Many hair props and certain transmapped clothing items can be made way more manageable by using this, without any significant loss of visual fidelity.
Also the ability to turn raytracing of displacements off - if you're using REYES ("non-progressive"), you will get the mesh outline displaced correctly, but the render will be faster at the cost of correct shadow/occlusion/reflection shading. Again, it's on a scene by scene basis: a tradeoff.
Avoid using AoA Subsurface (or any other shader mixer networks with an image/colour plugged into opacity and not a numerical value slider) unless you absolutely have to (or remove the opacity image/colour brick) - using an image/colour brick in shader mixer opacity means the surface will always trigger shader code on transmission (RT shadows) and AO, even if it's a solid object.
Maybe if you flag these surfaces in AoA lights and specifically tell the lights to use "primitive" hitmode, they will take care of this, but - too much hassle IMO.
I'd say no. Think of US2 as a superset of US. What you can do in US can be done in US2 pretty much the same way. Of course, that hardly makes use of US2 features that are not present on those earlier shaders. You can use the US2 upgrade preset to convert surfaces from HSS/US to US2 (and retain the maps and most of the settings). Personally though, I don't use that workflow anymore. I find most available presets are made without linear workflow and have really odd settings (ie specular maps in the specular color slot).
Now I start from scratch, using my material library and the scripts to transfer maps/textures.
So when things don't render the way it supposed too, I can be pretty sure the maps are the culprit.