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..so you would suggest not spending money on the conversion tool.
..I kind of follow that about 50%. However what happens with surfaces that use a photo texture resource. Also what if a scene has the same base surface requirements but several different types of the same material, like, iron, brass, steel, aluminum, chrome, etc? Wouldn't one would still have to convert each of those individually.
...I think i understand what this would do. So what would happen in the case of the opacity and specular parameters?
...Iray may not support RTX in the new generation GPU cards. That requires a change to the Optix acceleration routine in the card.
More here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3993836/#Comment_3993836
..and here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3995271/#Comment_3995271
hu, what, where did that creep into this, lol. the chat was about applying 3dl shader over Iray ones and how maps often get dropped in the conversion. Also I was letting Wowie know I'm not expecting works for everything flawlessly every time map script converter thing for his shader (That I have yet to even look at). SY's tool does work for the most part, it's just not a one-click wonder for a dozen reasons outside of SY's control. I don't think I had 'don't get it' anywhere in that, lol.
A script is a non-intelligent thing that requires someone to list out everything in advance of what it is expected to do. Neither SY or Wowie have a time machine or can read minds, so expecting too much is silly for some things, lol.
..,it was the mention that it (the SY converter) has "similar difficulties" compared to (correct me if I am wrong) the free conversion script. This made it sound in away like it wouldn't be of much help as a preparation for converting everything to 3DL before using the aweShader.
Apologies if I misinterpreted what you said.
I am on an extremely tight budget (fixed income) so I have to make sure what I purchase is something I actually need and will work the best.
FYI, I just got to page 8 of that thread, looks like we both got dropped, and possibly the color copy thing was worked on. It has been a while. (I thought that was maps dropping out, must have been mistaken)
Understood on the income thing, that's why I don't bother with stuff that does not say 3DL,
Kettu did link to what appears to be a free converter, I have yet to try that one myself. It may be worth a look.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/139326/irayto3delight-conversion-script/p1
if it saves you some funds, and a day of not needing to go without food, it may be worth looking into.
Apologies. confusion happens at times.
The income thing is why I don't support 3DL. ;)
The nice thing about the conversion scripts is that they contain an easily viewed list of filters, saying basically 'if the surface contains (stuff), use (blashader).'
So if, say, you have a big cityscape where the PA for some reason called all windows SOMETHING_gls, you can set up a filter for *_gls* and have it use a glass shader to convert to.
It already has a bunch of stuff set up for figures and common cases, which can save a lot of time. And if you prefer different surfaces, well, you can use it to set up your own system.
I mean, heck, I'm 99% sure you could use it to create a specialized list of filters to convert stuff to AweSurface.
...so I guess the question should be, is would the SY converter make it a easier to use the aweShader than just using the shader alone?
__________
ETA:
Looks as if my question was answered before I asked it. Thanks.
You group select them by their texture (if they share the same texture), or by reflection color/edge tint. Textures should be retained during conversion and then placed in AWE Surface equivalent slots.
Textures and values should be imported in the conversion. Just to be clear, if I went through with the plan, AWE won't import all Uber settings, just the settings which it has equivalent parameters (Uber's PBR Metalness/Roughness mode only, Specular Glossiness won't be supported). Checking the docs, the fields probably map to this arrangement.
Metallicity
Base Color
Diffuse Roughness
Translucency Weight
Glossy Reflectivity
Glossy Roughness
Glossy Anisotropy
Refraction Index
Refraction Weight
Refraction Color
Refraction Roughness
Base Thin Film
Base Thin Film IOR
Base Bump
Top Coat Weight
Top Coat Color
Top Coat Roughness
Top Coat Reflectivity
Top Coat IOR
Top Coat Anisotropy
Top Coat Thin Film
Top Coat Thin Film IOR
Thin Walled
Transmitted Measurement Distance
Scattering Measurement Distance
SSS Amount
SSS Direction
Cutout Opacity
Displacement Strength
Metalness
Base Color
Diffuse Roughness
Translucency Strength
Specular 2 Strength
Specular 2 Roughness
Specular 2 Anisotropy
Index of Refraction
Transmission
Transmission Color
Transmission Roughness
Base Thinfilm Thickness
Thinfilm Index of Refraction
Bump Strength
Coat Thickness
Coat Transmission Color
Coat Roughness
Coat Strength
Coat Index of Refraction
Coat Anisotropy
Coat Thinfilm Thickness
Coat Index of Refraction
Thin Glass
Transmission Scale / Absorption
Subsurface Scale
Subsurface Strength
Subsurface Phase
Opacity Strength
Displacement Strength
Getting this working for existing Iray mats (with the output rendering similarly) would be a huge step and could lead to widespread adoption. I would gladly pay for such a conversion utility.
On a related note, one of MDL's goals is to describe the physical properties of materials such that they render the same in different render engines. This is why it's a "material" definition language and not a "shader" definition language. I know the words "shader" and "material" get used interchangeably around here, but there is a difference. Throw in the idea of "presets" and the confusion gets worse.
- Greg
That's me who's suggesting not doing that - specifically if you are planning to use aweSurface.
You just don't need it then.
Or you could just use the surface tool to right-click one glass pane in the viewport and select its brethren by whichever parameter they share.
For someone like me, this is waaaay easier than scrolling down through the list in the surfaces tab trying to figure out if the naming means anything or not =)
I have lost count of how many times my comrades-in-arms and me tried to educate this particular community on this point... to no avail.
...agh, I just picked it up last night as Oso's response made it sound very useful. Guess I could get a store credit refund, but I will try it out first.
..interesting. That does clarify the matter. With that I would definitely not need a separate conversion tool.
So would this be an update to the original or an add on?
Most likely an update. I will have to try it first before doing it though.
Yeah, the 30 day return policy, it's a great thing.
So you could try both ways of selecting stuff - by using the convertor functionality and the visual one from the viewport. And then decide.
My first attempt at using the awe shader was a disaster. When I attempted to apply the glass shader to a character's cornea, I noticed that elements throughout my scene changed to glass. Earlier I had applied the SSS shader to the character's skin, and I think maybe it also applied to surfaces throughout the scene.
I notice that the icons for the various presets are labeled "Script" instead of "Shader" in Smart Content. Could the scripts be failing to make sure they apply only to the surfaces the user has actually selected?
I do notice that sometimes when selecting a surface zone on a character, it will have a template active ie. selecting the hip, but the 'skin' template is selected too. There are times when I apply a shader to one object, it gets applied to multiple objects. Usually this happens on saved scenes with objects that are organized into parent/child nodes. Never happens when starting with a blank scene though (only happens on saved ones).
Does this happens regardless of the presets, or just particular ones?
I'm not sure how many presets are affected. The change caused by the glass one was so dramatic, I couldn't fail to notice, but I'm not sure how I'd be able to tell for sure about the others, like SSS.
However, I can give you a little more detail about this instance when the problem occurred: I was making a new scene with a Japanese Onsen bath set which I beleive came with 3DL materials, but I did merge in a character saved with Iray materials. I applied the awe shader to everything by selecting everything in the Scene tab, then everything in the Surfaces tab, then double-clicking the preset that just says it's the awe shader. It took a while! Then I thought I would go back to more precisely define some surfaces. I'm totally sure that only two surfaces were selected in the Surfaces tab when I applied the glass shader: cornea and the one for eye moisture. But the Onsen building in the background also turned to glass even though none of its surfaces were selected.
Now, everything was still selected in the Scene tab. DAZ Studio has some kind of bug where it will sometimes show you a surface in the Surfaces tab, but will ignore any attempts to make changes to it because it isn't also selected in the Scene tab. It's a pain, so whas I do when converting scenes is select EVERYTHING in the Scene tab so that all surfaces will be both visible and modifiable in the Surfaces tab. Usually when I apply a shader or copy from one surface to another, only the surfaces I'm actually highlighting will change. This is the first time I've seen a change spread throughout the scene.
Is there a way to apply these shaders without using the script presets?
I'm not having much luck yet, but your example renders look so fantastic, I'm not giving up. Since you're here: my draft renders (meaning, I did indeed select the Draft script) are incredibly slow and grainy as compared to using 3DL with the old shaders, even in bright scenes with no dark areas. I simply must be doing something wrong. Is slow/graininess a symptom of having too little light or the wrong kind of light? Assuming I'm setting up a new scene, what's the first thing I should do to make sure I have adequate light?
With the new awe shader we now have the choice of 4 specular models: AshikhminShirley; GGX; CookTorrance; AshikhminShirleyClassic and CookTorranceClassic. In the commercial thread Kettu suggested using CookTorrance in place of AshikhminShirley and dumping the specular maps. As a general question are these different models interchangeable as a matter of purely artistic choice, or are they specifically suited to particular geometries, materials or physical accuracy? Is one better than the others? Or should I just keep quiet and try them out? :)
You could enter the values manually for one surface and make a .duf preset based off those. To see the values, I recommend opening up the .dsa presets in a text editor (Notepad or Wordpad in Windows). Scroll to the bottom of the file to find the values that will be applied.
Here's that part for the 'AWE Surface.dsa'. It basically only applies the Visibility Options and leave everything else at default.
DsActions.prototype.setMaterialProperties = function( oMaterial, oShape ){ this.m_oElement = oMaterial; this.m_sMaterialType = "DzShaderMaterial"; this.m_sMaterialName = "aweSurface"; this.prepareMaterial(); g_oPresetHelper.setTargetElement( this.m_oElement ); g_oPresetHelper.setNumericProperty( "Camera", [ 1 ] ); g_oPresetHelper.setNumericProperty( "Occlusion & Indirect Light", [ 1 ] ); g_oPresetHelper.setNumericProperty( "Reflection & Refraction", [ 1 ] ); g_oPresetHelper.setNumericProperty( "Shadows", [ 1 ] ); }Hmm, first check to see if your default render settings have gamma set to 2.2 and gamma correction set to be enabled. I had to manually reinstall everything on my PC two days ago and in the process, I found DS didn't change those settings when I used the scripted renderer.
Noise generally comes from not enough samples for global illumination. Try using 512 samples and 8x8 pixel samples to see if it improves. This needs to be applied to every non emissive surfaces, including the environment sphere (if you're not using a HDRI). If you're using a HDRI on the environment sphere and have diffuse disabled, you can leave the samples alone on the sphere.
Feel free to PM me to contact me directly via email if you're still seeing problems.
The difference between Ashihkmin Shirley/Cook Torrance and their 'classic' counterparts is that I modified the roughness ramp from the 3delight default. The primary reason is to get somewhat similar ramps regardless of which ones you're using. The 'classic' modes are there just in case you need to use the default 3delight ramp.
For most intent and purposes, GGX is the better choice, but I messed up my reference in the shader (one of the bugs I need to fix). So if you choose GGX, you're actually using Cook Torrance (and vice versa). That's why mustakettu recommends CookTorrance (for now at least).
I didn't use GGX as the default because of several factors. One being render times. From a performance stand point, Ashihkmin Shirley is the fastest to render, then GGX, with CookTorrance being the slowest. Two, it will render on both sides of the geometry even if you don't want to. Three, since I'm using DS 4.7 which has an older 3delight build, anisotropy only works with Ashihkmin Shirley. I haven't checked to see if anisotropy works on DS 4.8 and up.
You can roughly approximate GGX by enabling both base specular/reflection lobes, each with different roughness. With my optimizations, rendering two lobes of Ashihkmin Shirley will still be faster than rendering a single GGX lobe.
For now, I'd recommend sticking to Ashihkmin Shirley, at least until I've rolled out the update to fix the faulty GGX/Cook Torrance reference. If you do use GGX, you will have to make adjustments to your saved scene/material presets when the update is available.
In addition to what Wowie says about gamma correction (for which I posted a quick click-on a bit earlier in the thread):
Are you using the scripted renderer or the vanilla render settings tab? If the latter, this might well be the culprit.
Ok so I'm having some major problems with aweSurface atm. I've had this earlier when converting stuff, randomly it seems, with some magic and a lot of fiddling I have somehow got things to work but not with this one. There seems to be a conflict /bug with the arealight, emissive surfaces turn red or don't work at all.
Here is what I did:
Step 1: Loaded the recording studio room, it loads with IRay mats. Viewport looks like this:
Step2: Converted everything to aweSurface, made the ceiling lights emissive:
Step3: Loaded an area light and made sure it is visible and all that, set intensity scale and exposure to max:
Step4: Applied aweSurface to the ceiling lights to turn them off:
Step 5: Copied the room surfaces, deleted the room and loaded a new, converted all surfaces to aweSurface, pasted the previous surfaces, now the emitter started working:
Step 6: Made the ceiling lights emissive:
And as a sidenote, the walls and ceiling are black on every render(0.0.0) even though the diffuse surface is pure white. They won't be lit by any means. I even tried creating a new surface zone, no dice. Only way to make them render anything but black is applying the environment shader and make them ambient
. No spotlight will light them LOL. I've been through this now a couple of times, rebooted DS and it simply will not work. Any advice, I really could use some?
Yes. I've seen some scenes where this could happen.It has to do with how the model was made, which doesn't seem to play nice with AWE AreaPT.
As a workaround, apply the AWE environment sphere shader on the model so you could just use ambient on them. For actual lighting, use additional planes and then use AWE AreaPT on those planes (or instances). Turn off camera visibility on the AWE Area PT emitters if you would rather have the original surface visible in the render. Otherwise, just place the emitters so it covers the original surface.
OK. I think I've found a set which has the same problem. Look again at the surface setting for the emitter. On my set, it seems 'Temperature' was set to 1 after conversion, with limits between 0 and 2. This should be 6500 (K) (default value), with limits set between 1000 and 20000.
I'll make sure I'll force those two values when applying AWE AreaPT for the first time for the updates.
Tks wowie, I'll check the temperature settings and try to find a workaround;)
Inverted normals?
Sven Dullah, what happens to those walls in the viewport when you disable backface lighting in the DS settings?
I will try that, tks Kettu! And I tried inverting the normals, actually, didn't change anything.
Like, selected those suspicious polys with the geometry editor, inverted their normals and they still render black? But in the viewport they show up as lit when you disable backface lighting?
Yes I selected the polys, flipped the normals. And have yet to try the backface thing.