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Basically yes, those comparisons are fairly self-explanatory.
I like this dude's Blender/3Delight bridge, seems so flexible. But apparently unreleased.
I plan to customise Matt Ebb's exporter some day, but right now I think I should start some hands-on experiments with DS plugin SDK because in the future I'll need it to implement the new 3Delight NSI API for instancing OSL shaders... it's too early to ask the DAZ support if the DS devs are ever planning to support 3DL+OSL, but somehow it seems unlikely at all.
Oh dear,
After all these years using UE2, I think only now I finally understand how the various modes work and why you need an image plugged in. Even if the image is not even a HDRI.
Chalk that up to lack of documentation.
you don't need it when you use occlusional/soft shadows (not that I would understandy why you need one for the other settings except for getting the render times up
)
Don't worry, I'm aware of those facts (without an image, UE2's occlusion/IDL with directional shadows fallsback to soft shadows mode). It's how to set UE2 bounce aka GI mode for your scene. All those tutorials on UE2 are basically just plain wrong because they didn't understand how it works.
It's ingenious and actually pretty fast considering the approaches that are available at the time. True, it is slower still compared to IDL. roughly twice the time (from 10 minutes to 20 minutes for a full HD render without any SSS surfaces). The plus - you get color bounces ala IDL, actual light bounces in the environment rather than from the ambient light as a fill light (ala occlusion and IDL mode) and retain dark areas from shadows (which you generally lost with IDL and doesn't give that uniform occlusion you get with just AO). Well, technically you can lose the dark areas too if you want to get the occlusion and IDL mode 'look'.
The most important aspect is that the (ambient) lighting in your scene doesn't come from the HDRI, but calculated using your actual scene. It works equally good on closed room interiors, situations where you generally have to use portal lights with path tracing renderers and open/outdoor environments.
4.7 or 4.9?
4.7
Here's some recent shots:
26 minutes. UE2 Bounce (GI) with your script, but raised the diffuse bounce to 4. Still some problems - noise in the shadows, blownout on some parts, wrong falloff (not using correct physical falloff on the lights).
And the AO version, both using the same image plugged into the HDRI (a pure white image)
4 minutes.
But never saw someone did something like this with DS and 3delight.
Neat =) Which interior model is it, BTW?
Shadows are always going to be more noisy. It's even how MIS is supposed to work.
Semi-OT... I don't know how common it is (I read somewhere that it doesn't happen to everyone), but I see distinct noise in shadows/twilight even IRL. Anyone else?
A mash up of Stonemason's Contemporary Living (the furniture) and ForbiddenWhisper's Cozy Kitsch Living Room. I didn't enable the blackout box, hence the light leaks.
Yes. but there's noise and there's ugly, impatient artist noise.
If I wanted noise, I would've gone and use iray or luxrender.
Kinda like partterns on paper? Yes, that's normal.
Btw,
Got some nice method of testing out SSS settings from CG feedback
Backscatter view. Cylinders are 3, 2 and 1 inches in diameter.
Man, this is just awesome - http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/showpost.php?s=26e199e1984d56f7d57a792874146c35&p=66509&postcount=598
Hmm, quite a test for your shaders, kettu.
I see... some parts looked familiar and some less so =)
Funny note: I've seen some photo editing services postprocess photos into excessive "ugly impatient artist noise" and use those for advertising their services.
Patterns very similar to ISO/raytracing noise, and moving... my brother keeps on laughing at me and saying it's impossible.
Sweet! Cones show stuff so much clearer than the bunny.
Yeah, interesting... I ran a test. There is a hint at the entry/exit points, but overall I think you need to add glossy refraction to the subsurface() result so as to get the same effect. I think it's a future project for the OSLtracer.
I think I've figured out where the fireflies are coming from. But I think you probably know already. It's basically a 'side effect' of using lights with physical falloff. Just way too much energy to be bounced around near the light (about 25 cm around it).
I was doing comparisons between DelightGIHDRI and UE2 with your PhysLights and was getting fireflies with (relatively) high samples. Switched to the old school lights and the fireflies are gone. I'll do some more tests to see what intensities the fireflies starts to appear.
The lights near the wall have low intensity so the fireflies are mostly caused by the lights on the ceiling.
Then I switched off your lights and placed point lights with different linear falloff to approximate the physical falloff. It's not as intense as the Phys light (yet), but you can see there's no fireflies (though there's still noise in the shadows - I was still using 16 samples).
Edit:
Some render time statistics. With 4 diffuse bounces, the UE render took 1 hours 18 minutes 20.30 seconds. With DelightGIHDRI, 34 minutes 7.12 seconds. Intensity/intensity scale threshold seems to be something above 7200.0%. Roughly 1/5 of the default intensity scale. Just to be clear, the fireflies don't appear when used without DelightHDRI or UE2.
Yes, you're right, they are a product of too much energy coming from what is basically a single dimensionless point in space. Thank you for testing!
What I didn't understand is why UberArea lights can sometimes create those very annoying and kinda random multi-coloured fireflies with DelightGI but not UE2 (and why my "oldschool" area lights do not). Probably there is some extra math inside UberAreas that throws the pathtracer off.
Trying to render Zahara hair. Even with Ubersurface2 and occlusion (and even specular!) off, rendering it takes a huge length of time. Any advice?
( http://www.daz3d.com/zahara-hair-for-genesis-2-female-s )
Heck, I'm trying to render it separately and composite, and even doing it as a plain black and white thing, it looks like it's going to take 20-30 minutes. What the heck.
Render and shader settings? Lots of opacity layer surfaces on top of the other like that does take a long time to render. I have Rikki hair, so I can try to see what's going on.
Most probably. He did went to the trouble of doing falloff start/end with decay rate. So technically, you can use 1/5 the intensity and raise the falloff start point to clamp the actual intensity. Although it works, I don't think that's a good solution. Mainly because you need different settings for low and high intensity lights. I'm thinking a clamp based of the intensity values is a better solution.
Now i understand the old school logic of not using physical falloff, using separate diffuse/specular and boosting diffuse strength. It's probably a compromise so you can use lower light intensities.
Wowie: I ended up using US2 and setting 'occlusion off.' I was hoping I could flag it off with AoA lights but I don't think I was doing it right.
So a 40+ min render ended up as two 5 minute renders (and maybe 30 seconds to composite). I'll take it!
For the curious, this was the render in question: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Tensor-Tam-CS-626683788
Hiya,
I have a background question. I reloaded up DAZ Studio 4.5. It runs along side of 4.9 fine. I'm using it for content creation. But of course I'm downgraded to 3Delight, which I don't mind but I'm a bit rusty with that so any quick skin tuts that you can offer up would be great.
Also, I'm a bit confused ... 4.5 picked up my 4.9 interface settings so now I have a background image that I can NOT for the life of me figure out how to turn off. LOL I'd at least like to know how to change it from what it is to something else.
Thanks so much
Rich
Hi Richard,
Not sure about "quick", but in my signature there's a link to my free stuff, among which you can find my UberSurface1/2 treatise with some recipes. =)
As for background image changing in 4.5, I never used them so I don't remember it that well, but have you looked in the dropdown menu of the viewport? The background colour used to be changed there.
Thank you... Yes, aware of the background color but I don't see a way to either turn off the image or change it.... Might be something that DAZ introduced later but then how is it being loaded as the background image? Should be a way to have control over that in 4.5.
I'll check out your links. Thanks so much!
Hmm... is there a "backdrop" option in the 4.5 "edit" menu?
Can't find one. Seems to load up with my pose scene file. So it's loading with that somehow. When I start up DS 4.5 there is no background image. I could have sworn there was a way to load a background image even back to DS 4.0 or so but I can't find the option or tool under any of the menus. Weird.
There was some sort of bug when stuff could be missing from menus...
But in the general "preferences" there is that "scene" tab where you can tell DS to ignore backgrop/colour settings saved to a scene. Have you tried it?
PS. Downloaded some file from your gallery at ShareCG... AreaK PPs.dzs. Where do I drop that file? Thank you!
That did the trick. Thanks so much! YAY!
You're most welcome =)
That would be from a mediafire link in one of the threads here. It's not a fully fledged user-oriented freebie, more like developer stuff. Ease of use not a factor here =)
On Windows, it goes here:
C:\Users\[YOURNAME]\AppData\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\ShaderBuilder\Shaders\Src\Light\*.dzs
Then you need to compile it in shader builder (in the "light" folder). It will create loaders in [yourlibrary]/Shader Presets/Shader Builder/Light
In theory, you could apply it via right-clicking in shader builder, but the problem is that the area light support scripts generated by shader builder are wrong, and two things are off: 1) the right-click applying doesn't really work; 2) (more important for non-devs) the light will not stay (!!! can't stress this enough) when you save, close and re-open the scene.
When I finally muster the strength to finish the documentation and make presets, my full 3DL RT kit (RSL edition) will go live, and it will include proper custom loaders for new area lights. But I cannot promise anything re:how soon. Real life gets in the way big time.
Oh my. OK. I may give that a try! lol
Could be. But not using physical falloff was also because of how difficult linear workflow used to be, so that quadratic falloff "wouldn't light anything" =)
Just for practice =)
Quite possibly the best choice for an NPR look. I'm the sort who excludes most transmapped hair from GI even in "photoreal" stuff.
Still need to tweak the lacrimals (and other fleshy bits).