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Awesome:)
Color me impressed!
Thanks guys!
I forgot if we can attach zip files to forum posts?
Pretty sure I've uploade a zip here. Try and see...
I checked, and while it's possible, somehow when you save the file, its name turns into a random string. So I made a mediafire upload.
Grab the catcher package in my freebie thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4734241/#Comment_4734241
Thank you:)
You're welcome! Hopefully the documentation explains things well enough. If not, ask away (probably better in the freebie thread)
OH, forgot about the random string thing. Another strange thing about these forums I don't care for!
Thanks for the nice addition!
Enjoy =)
Well, technically I advised against moving the sphere and just use the horizontal offsets on the sphere.
Maybe there is a way to use DS script to get the horizontal offset used by the sphere and pass that into your render script. Maybe.
Anyway, just read the 3delight manual yesterday and found they've actually added a stringhash shadeop that makes it way easier to do ID masks. Only with 3delight 12 though, so it won't work on 4.7 (which is still using 3delight 11).
Haven't tried it myself but it should be easy enough to do. Read the DAZ assigned attribute, pass it to stringhash and output the value into AOV.
Another 3delight only addition is textureinfo "min" and "max". Cool idea, but unfortunately only have a small practical use since most textures available for props/figures/clothing etc comes with a white fill. But if you edit those out, it can be useful.
Side note.
Ran some tests yesterday, comparing render times with the latest build (and hair shader) between the render script with/without progressive and the standard 3delight with progressive. I didn't ran without progressive since that takes way too long. Basically, render script with progressive finishes rendering in 75% of th time of render script without progressive (around 30% faster).
What's interesting is that render times with the standard 3delight with progressive enabled isn't that slow. Render times with 4x4 pixel samples, max ray depth 16 is just a bit slower than 8x8 pixel samples with the render script. Mostly on very simple scenes though, so useable to use with IPR/live session to tweak materials/lighting.
I thought about that, but then I sketched out the functions needed and decided against it. DS being DS, its scripted rendering is fragile enough not to want to overburden it with anything "extra".
It's easy enough to add all the scene sans the sphere to a new group and rotate it, if the user desperately needs a specific lighting angle. At least DS won't throw any bugs with that. Core functionality and all.
Partly due to the box filter being fast, partly due to those undocumented under-the-hood hacks/optims I remember being discussed here once.
I thought I had said this before, but at the risk of repeating myself the decision to allocate resources to user-facing documentation would not rest with the developers.
Rob has done a great deal, off his own bat and in his own time, to provide information and pointed witticisms like this are a poor way to thank him, or to encourage him to continue his efforts.
Working on some metal shaders for a project I'm finishing up using 3DL.... I found ONE shader that actually offers a Specular Sharpening which comes in handy to catch reflections to my liking but when I apply it the tiling options go away. I found another shader that brings back the tiling options but when I apply THAT the Specular Sharpening goes away again.
I fiddled around in the Shader Mixer area but I have no idea where to even look for the Tiling or the Specular Sharpening bricks to add to the either or of the shader to give me BOTH options.
Any help figuring this out?
What shader is this? A custom shader (shadermixer network)? And do you mean sharpening actual raytraced reflections or specular highlights?
Post it here while at it;) Uhm..installed your shadowcatcher, first test, loaded your scene subset, applied the aweEnvironmental shader to the sphere, inserted the default ruins HDRI, loaded one of wowie's arealights, tried sliding the environment-arealight balance around, but the catcher plane renders black. What to start troubleshooting?
Not really a custom shader but perhaps building off a set of nodes that are available already but like I stated I seem to have to either have to choose between the old old way of tiling textures (with no live preview) and have the Specular Sharpening or I have the live tiling preview sliders with No Specular Sharpening which from my visual findings actually brings reflections in more tightly on metal and other hard surfaces!
Not sure I follow you. You're talking vanilla 3DL now, not pathtracing, right? Why not simply use something like UberSurface? A reflection blur slider with samples, zero blur equals perfect reflections. And two specular lobes, one using glossiness, the other specular roughness. Tiling is visible in the viewport. What am I missing?
Did you add the HDRI to the ground plane and adjust the Max Environ Shadow Value?
No, thought I read the instructions but obviously missed that little detail. Tks mate, will have a new go
So I followed timeoff's advice and now it's kind of working. Only it is not 100% transparent, renders slightly darker than the background, so...any further tips?
Tried adding an area light to the scene. The more I slide the shadow balance towards area light the darker the catcher plane turns.
I'm sorry :(
I didn't mean to offend Rob; you know he's something like one of my idols. But do you mean he's the sole person in charge of the basic user manual as well? Of pages like this?
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/chapters/rendering/start
If you ask me, updating these pages - like, to reflect the fact that a 100% new user would likely want to render in Iray, stuff like that - does not require a person of Rob's technical expertise. Any DS user with some experience should be able to do it.
Right back at me, I wrote documentation I thought was comprehensive but it didn't help :D
So you have the Max slider for the environment shadow - how far left did you set it? Some HDRI maps are... well... different. You may well need to go down to a few percent.
You can also lower the general shader opacity, or increase environment intensity. Try whichever looks best.
It's easiest to hide the sphere to see the alpha over those little squares and finetune until clear.
Nothing wrong with your documentation=))
Tried 25,50,75,100%
I fiddled with those settings a bit, will look into it some more. FYI The test was with DS4.7 on my laptop, would it make any difference?
You better try 20, 15, 10, 5, 2 %.
The Max slider is like that white triangle when you edit a histogram: to make your image brighter, you compress the range by moving it to the left, towards the black. Basically it says "This grey is the new white". And everything of this grey shade and lighter becomes white.
4.7 wouldn't probably make a difference - wowie uses it for development IIRC. Like, you managed to get the shader working, then you know it's compatible. Everything else is common math.
Right!
Tks!
Ok managed to find a sweetspot for the env light with a bit of tinkering. With the area light it's a bit trickier, but possible, you need to adjust the catcherplane size, the emitter plane distance and so on, as I found out, having the emitter close to the object will make light falloff make parts of the catcherplane visible;)
Tks again Kettu, turned out to be very useful indeed:)
I just did this test in 4.9 and couldn't replicate the issues I had in 4.7, so..go figure;) Here I had opacity at 100%, max shadow around 70 and trace distance at max. Rendertime about as long as it takes to roll a cigarette;)
Specular sharpenng sounds like the old 'Sharpness' parameter found in UberSurface.
The Shader Mixer brick that features this is the 'Glossy' brick. Not based off physical properties whatsoever, but can be handy to get sharp highlights or basically fake reflections of a light.
Tiling would be the 'Tiler' (not Tile') brick. I never checked if the resulting shader mixer network will allow you to see tiling parameter changes in the viewport. It should if you named them exactly the same as what dsDefaultMaterial uses.
The network for a tiled spec map would look something like this.
Hmm, a friend who studied at Aachen says her husband can do that with one hand while riding a bike.
Seriously though, environment map lookup is fast and clean. In all honesty, correcting left hand/right hand coordinate systems should be exposed in the renderer's option.