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Hmmm.
Would be interesting to know when these spots show up as black in the viewport: before or after flipping the normals...
Yeah, I'll take a closer look asap. Funny thing I forgot to mention btw, the Iray mats rendered out, they were just totally reflective.
Ok so I tried turning off backface lightning, made no difference. Just to clarify, the walls and ceiling look right in the viewport, they just won't render anything but pure black. Oh and I tried once again flipping the normals, no cigar. Yeah I can replace the problem areas with primitives and make it work but it would be nice to know what is causing this;)
Since I don't have that set, I don't know for sure. I was mainly focused on the emitters. The redness is usually caused by temperature values getting clamped to 0-2. Inverted normals may cause problems with emitters, but enabling two sided emission should take care of that.
Try resetting all shader parameters for the affected surface. Fastest way to do this is by selecting the surface then select 'Currently Used' to see values that are not using default values.
Uh ok I'll give it a shot, tks!
Trying to imagine what sort of topology mishap might be doing this and failing... I don't have this set unfortunately. What I've seen render black were always clearly inverted normals. I've seen other topology errors, but they generally render "weird" not black.
Hmm I hate to say this but there is definitely something weird going on with aweSurface. There must be a conflict hidden somewhere in the components, I just cannot pinpoint it yet. Another example:
I loaded the Watts building by Nightshift3D. https://www.daz3d.com/the-watts-building Opened the surface pane and started converting all materials. When done, I loaded one of wowie's emissive planes. It did not work. I loaded a standard spotlight, worked as supposed to. Deleted both the emissive plane and the spot, made the lightbulbs emissive with the aweArealight shader, that worked. Applied the aweSurface to the bulbs to turn them off. Loaded an emissive plane, did not work. Well it sort of worked, as it showed up in the reflections. It also lit part of the set, some furniture and props that load with the set, but not the main building. So I copied all the materials, deleted the set and reloaded it, converted to aweSurface and pasted the mats, voila the emissive plane worked. So I positioned the plane, made a number of instances and got the ceiling lights to work as expected. And darn it looks nice;) But this is becoming a problem now
What's going on?
(I'm sorry this was not very scientific, I know I know;) I'll do my best to find a way of isolating the issue)
Or maybe it's just bugs with newer DS builds. What version of DS are you using?
4.9 and 4.10 beta, have 4.7 installed on a laptop, will try that to see if it makes any difference;)
Watts building;)
I started a aweSurface discussion/testrenders thread in the arts forum. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/284366/the-official-awesurface-test-track
There is a Mac version of 3Delight standalone IIRC; it may be worth it to try and get into the habit of rendering to RIB - since it does solve certain unusual bugs that happen when rendering to that DS window.
Can I ask some basic, probably stupid questions about lighting 3DL?
My experience with 3DL is very minimal. Some months ago I wanted to see if it rendered faster than Iray, to make it more practical for animation, so I loaded up a "Lost World" set and tossed in a minotaur, then rendered under both engines. Iray finished in two minutes, but 3DL was still at 0% after 14 minutes, so I figured I was done with that. Now I imagine my test was bad, that I probably needed to do some material conversion in order to avoid choking 3DL.
Now I'm experimenting again. I loaded the Subterranean Pool and then used RSSY's Iray-to-3Delight converter on it. When it finishes, there are no Iray materials left, but the scene is completely enclosed, and it renders very dark. Now I'm trying to add light to a completely enclosed scene.
The first thing I wanted to do was make a mesh light, but I can't figure out how. What I would do in Iray is add a plane to the scene and make it emissive. I can't find an emissive preset for 3DL (which may be because I don't know where to look), and the shader I'm using, omUberSurface, doesn't seem to have settings for emission. I tried ramping up the Ambient setting, but apparently that makes the surface react as if it were lit. It doesn't actually emit light that could strike other surfaces.
(I haven't moved to the awe shader yet because I don't know how to use it, and AFAIK it doesn't mix well with other shaders in the scene, so I'm dipping my toes in 3DL instead of taking the plunge.)
After being unable to create a mesh light, I moved on to the lights offered in DAZ Studio's toolbar. I added a spotlight right next to my character in the scene and cranked up its intensity. This made no difference whatsoever in the render. It was as if the light wasn't even there, or as if it were outside the building or otherwise completely blocked. Then I deleted that and added a point light. That did make a difference in the render, adding the faintest bit of light! I couldn't crank it up high enough to be worth keeping, but I was glad to see my efforts produced some slight effect! I deleted the point light and tried again with the spotlight, and this time it also added some light. I can't make it very bright--it's more like a single candle than a spotlight--but it is a start.
How do you light 3DL? Is it possible to create a mesh light?
..yes by using and Uber Area Light.though it is a bit tricky compared to an Emissive shader in Iray.
Yes 3DL to IRay converts on the fly, not the other way around. IRay mats render highly reflective in 3DL, will render forever...
Ambient in the default "vanilla" mode with the vanilla 3DL shaders will not emit light as you said, combined with some GI (global ilumination) like UberEnvironment 2 in bouncelight mode will actually emit light. But that is hard to control and IMO old tech and slow.
What you want to do is load a primitive plane or something else with as low number of polys as possible, then select it in the scene tab and surface tab, then go to your library/light presets/Omnifreaker/Uberarea light and doubleclick to apply the shader. Then tweak settings in the surfacetab. Don't recall exactly but you need to enable ambient if you want it to glow. You can also turn shadows off for it if needed, ormake it invisible to the camera but not reflections, all kinds of stuff. What you probably want to do right away is up the shadow samples from the default 8 to atleast 64, probably more, to get a grain free shadow.
There are other solutions, one being the Reflective Radience3 by Marshian. This can also simulate bounce light and has some nice options. But it is obviously built on the old tech UE2 so its rather slow.
You can of course select the emissive surfaces for the pool and apply the area light shader to them, but that will most likely render much slower(more polys) than using primitive planes. You can also use the Omnifreaker light disc found in the same folder.
Hmm the standard DS light load with weird settings, first you need to turn shadows on (raytraced shadows) in parameters/light. Then you need to adjust light fall off, IIRC it defaults to zero, constant, no fall off, try setting that to 0,02 or something (that's spotlights I'm talkin about now;) Set light intensity to 100 or more, then adjust light intensity scale until you get what you want. Oh and shadow bias defaults to 1 (1cm), set it to 0.1!
Note that you also need some sort of global illumination as this is a biased renderer. (With aweSurface all this works pretty much like in IRay, you really don't need to think about it). You can do it the oldschool way and load as many distant/spotlights you need, turn shadows off for them and "fake" light bouncing that way. That WILL render fast, but it is very far from realistic. VERY far LOL.
Or you can use the AoA advanced lights that produces ambient occlusion and render fast, look ok. I use them a lot when making animation. Or you can use the IBL-Master by Parris, that also uses AO for global ligting (works together with IRay, you can load an IRay render preset, switch to 3DL and the HDRI will be synced with the environment render settings. Or you can load an HDRI into the IBLM env. sphere, switch to IRay and the light direction and so on will be the same.
Probably a lot more options I forgot, this is a complex issue, not easy to cover in a few lines;) Basically, I don't think you can produce realistic stuff faster with 3DL than IRay if you have a nice nVidia gpu, but if you dont, then this is definitely an option. Just shoot if you have more questions
If I had to make that pool usable for animation in 3DL I would go for the AoA lights, so many possibilitys to optimize rendering speed and the AO looks ok and renders fast too.
Then there is the render setting thing, lot of optimizing can be done there;)
@inkubo
Forgot to mention in the above post, to get light in your scene you could start by loading the UE2 environment, found in light presets/Omnifreaker. Set it to ambient mode, insert a jpeg or hrd of choice,set light intensity to 50%. Now you have an environment light that doesn't use raytracing but acts as a global "fill light" and will reflect the environment, however there is no shadows or AO in this mode. Combine it with DS spotlights for ceilinglights, adjust lightspread, shadow softness and other parameters for the spots. This will render very fast, it's not realistic, but it's certainly possible to make it look descent. Fiddle with the UE2 settings when your spots work as expected. You can adjust the environmental contrast, strength and saturation, use color to tint it and so on. And you can use additional fill lights as many as you need. And if you need more realism, set the UE2 to ambient occlusion or some other raytracing mode, or delete it after you set up your scene and replace it with some other alternative mentioned above.
...here is a scene where I applied the Uber Area light to a window to create a mesh light. It took a bit to get the sampling correct and then get enough luminosity to actually produce a light source.
I like that
..thanks. it also did take a bit longer as well.
..here's another.
The two lanterns the metal flutteryby's tail, and lights on the front of the building.
Nice! You should post them in the "Show us" thread
Thank you for all that information! :-) I didn't use any distant lights or uber environment because the scene is completely enclosed, so I figured all that light would be blocked. Have I misunderstood how these things work?
Distant lights will be blocked, that's correct, unless you turn shadows off and use it as a fill light. UE2 will work.
Example of using the AoA distant light as a sun and the AoA ambient light for GI:
Using the AoA ambient light as GI indoors. Ceiling light is a caustic spotlight created in shader mixer.
And finally using IBLM indoors with a home made gray gradient made in GIMP, an area light shining through the door opening and a AoA distant simulating sunlight
Before you start, here is what you should do: turn gamma correction on and set the DS output value to 2.2. Otherwise you will never get correct shading.
Here's a small DUF preset that does just that: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4002596/#Comment_4002596
I enjoy using PWToon. Sometimes I want more of a toon style coloration, and I experiment with DZ Toon shaders. And then, inevitably, I go what the hey when I notice DZ Toon shaders... don't cast shadows.
Is there a product that mostly works like DZ Toon but, you know... casts shadows?
Maybe this? https://www.daz3d.com/pwcatch
So, this could actually happen after all.
Unfortunately, the parameters between iray Uber and AWE Surface don't necessarily have the same outcome. In this example, I have to move whatever Translucency texture/value to SSS strength. The transmitted measurement distance to Subsurface scale. SSS Direction will have to be flipped. Whatever map used for the top coat color will have to be moved to specular 2 strength, unless there's a map on uber's glossy color. Translucency color and transmitted color will have to be ignored since iray SSS mono will simply just look way too different when used with AWE Surface scatter/absorption values.
For metal, metallicity should be transferable as is, but transferring the material type needs additional step of enabling 'Use Diffuse Texture' on AWE Surface.
Surprising, glass may transfer the easies since it's just IOR and refraction weight, which translates to IOR and Transmission in AWE Surface. Thin walled should roughly translate to Thin Glass.
What 3Delight settings will give me a grain free but faster render? I've been playing around with the gaussian setting but it's not doing it. I also played with the Gain settings set to lower but that just makes things go very slow and can't even scroll on Fb without everything locking up for long moments. No wonder folks like iRAY better. I really want to get this figured out as the scripted 3DL seems to go a little faster but not by much and I'm not happy with the overall look of the render from that option.
You know, while it's designed for Iray, https://www.daz3d.com/resource-saver-shaders-collection-for-iray is potentially useful for 3DL, too; you can simplify and get rid of extraneous maps, then convert to 3DL.
I'm also enjoying using RSSY Iray > 3DL for skins, even if I have a 3dl skin already. Specifically, RSSY Iray > 3DL preset for figures uses UberSurface, while many skins use AoA ... and personally, I prefer UberSurface.
Just some weird roundabout tips.