3Delight Laboratory Thread: tips, questions, experiments

wowie

Sorry everyone. I noticed some problems post upload. One is a typo for the metallic fresnel, where the second specular lobe is using the first specular lobe Fresnel. Second is with adaptive sampling. I was using too high threshold for the variance. The hotfix addresses both issues.

I've uploaded a hotfix, so you should download the shader again.

Sven Dullah

@Mustakettu85

I mentioned that your shadowcatcher didn't work in DS4.7, found a possible reason...I think I loaded a set at some point that reset the vanilla gamma correction to off, and didn't come to think of that possibility when testing it the first time. New test, no problems whatsoever...sorry bout that:)

Sidenote: Now I'm suddenly unable to save my renders in 4.7. I name the render and click save, the window closes but the file is nowhere to be found. However I can save the last render from the file menu. Log file simply states "unable to save render".

Sven Dullah

Sven Dullah said:

 

Sidenote: Now I'm suddenly unable to save my renders in 4.7. I name the render and click save, the window closes but the file is nowhere to be found. However I can save the last render from the file menu. Log file simply states "unable to save render".

Hmm  Save function is working again, for no particular reason. Go figure...

Mustakettu85

Sven Dullah said:

@Mustakettu85

I mentioned that your shadowcatcher didn't work in DS4.7, found a possible reason...I think I loaded a set at some point that reset the vanilla gamma correction to off, and didn't come to think of that possibility when testing it the first time.

Yeah, no gamma correction would definitely change the output. Cool you've noticed it.

It's one of the reasons I click two presets before rendering - the first is turning gamma on, the second is actual load-scripted-rendering-with-the-right-script-and-the-right-settings preset.

GafftheHorse

Mustakettu85 said:

Sven Dullah said:

@Mustakettu85

I mentioned that your shadowcatcher didn't work in DS4.7, found a possible reason...I think I loaded a set at some point that reset the vanilla gamma correction to off, and didn't come to think of that possibility when testing it the first time.

Yeah, no gamma correction would definitely change the output. Cool you've noticed it.

It's one of the reasons I click two presets before rendering - the first is turning gamma on, the second is actual load-scripted-rendering-with-the-right-script-and-the-right-settings preset.

Is that the reason?

I find it very annoying when I think everything in a scene is about the best i can get it, then discover Gamma Correction has been switched off again.

It can be on for ages through several sessions when I check, but get reset at some point when I'm not looking.

It's like one of those pantomime acts where the front stage character puts something down and another comes out behind and moves it either mischeiviously or obliviously to much confusion when the front stage character goes looking for the prop again.

Sven Dullah

GafftheHorse said:

Mustakettu85 said:

Sven Dullah said:

@Mustakettu85

I mentioned that your shadowcatcher didn't work in DS4.7, found a possible reason...I think I loaded a set at some point that reset the vanilla gamma correction to off, and didn't come to think of that possibility when testing it the first time.

Yeah, no gamma correction would definitely change the output. Cool you've noticed it.

It's one of the reasons I click two presets before rendering - the first is turning gamma on, the second is actual load-scripted-rendering-with-the-right-script-and-the-right-settings preset.

Is that the reason?

I find it very annoying when I think everything in a scene is about the best i can get it, then discover Gamma Correction has been switched off again.

It can be on for ages through several sessions when I check, but get reset at some point when I'm not looking.

It's like one of those pantomime acts where the front stage character puts something down and another comes out behind and moves it either mischeiviously or obliviously to much confusion when the front stage character goes looking for the prop again.

Yeah it is very annoying that gamma correction is off by default. I've got used to checking and adjusting gamma for all the control maps (especially opacity) but it's just like you say, the one time you don't check gamma settings it surely will be set to off. I feel sorry for all the new users that have to go through the whole process of trial and error, (if they ever even notice something is wrong), thinking it would be pretty straight forward for DAZ to fix these kind of things. I mean it's 2019 now, raytraced shadow OFF by default is another example, enabling physically correct light fall off, well the list is extensive:)

GafftheHorse

<i> raytraced shadow OFF by default is another example</i>

Being per light settings, those bug me less.

<i>enabling physically correct light fall off</i>

I thought 3DL point lights were, and it was only Linear Point lights weren't

- Although, I actually like the manual nature of Linear Point start and fall-off settings, means I can dicker with the light zone to have every figure round a brazier or campfire circle lit.

wowie

My guess is that some scenes were made with gamma correction off, so when you open them, it will automatically turn off gamma correction.

Don't know if this helps, but you can set DS to ignore renderer settings embedded in scenes. Just check the 'Ignore' option.

As for lights, I think mustakettu's lights and mine (point/spot/distant) will always have raytraced shadows. Honestly though, I hardly use them now since I work with area lights all the time.

Those linear/non physical falloff can be useful in certain situations. In modern 3delight/Renderman/Arnold, they've been replaced with light filters, which also encompass gobo/gel lights/barn door controls.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

My guess is that some scenes were made with gamma correction off, so when you open them, it will automatically turn off gamma correction.

Don't know if this helps, but you can set DS to ignore renderer settings embedded in scenes. Just check the 'Ignore' option.

Tks for the reminder! On a side note, Have you noticed in DS4.7 (not that it matters) that scenes won't save the scripted rendering settings? It works in 4.9 though.

wowie said:

As for lights, I think mustakettu's lights and mine (point/spot/distant) will always have raytraced shadows. Honestly though, I hardly use them now since I work with area lights all the time.

Same here, hardly use anything else now for stills. AoA lights with animations and REYES.

wowie said:

Those linear/non physical falloff can be useful in certain situations. In modern 3delight/Renderman/Arnold, they've been replaced with light filters, which also encompass gobo/gel lights/barn door controls.

Looks like DAZ could update a few things if the wanted to...maybe file a ticket?

Mustakettu85

Sven Dullah said:

wowie said:

Those linear/non physical falloff can be useful in certain situations. In modern 3delight/Renderman/Arnold, they've been replaced with light filters, which also encompass gobo/gel lights/barn door controls.

Looks like DAZ could update a few things if the wanted to...maybe file a ticket?

You can stick cookies in the AoA spotlight I think, and if you want a no-falloff path-traced area light, Wowie's ones should have that setting. Which may or may not add some extra render time because it involves an extra math operation =)

Sven Dullah

Mustakettu85 said:

Sven Dullah said:

wowie said:

Those linear/non physical falloff can be useful in certain situations. In modern 3delight/Renderman/Arnold, they've been replaced with light filters, which also encompass gobo/gel lights/barn door controls.

Looks like DAZ could update a few things if the wanted to...maybe file a ticket?

You can stick cookies in the AoA spotlight I think, and if you want a no-falloff path-traced area light, Wowie's ones should have that setting. Which may or may not add some extra render time because it involves an extra math operation =)

Yup the AoA spots accept gobo filters. And you can set PT area ligths to no falloff with no noticeable increase in rendertimes, just need to adjust the light intensity scale.

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

Tks for the reminder! On a side note, Have you noticed in DS4.7 (not that it matters) that scenes won't save the scripted rendering settings? It works in 4.9 though.

Hmm, I don't exactly understand what you're saying. Do you mean the renderer changes the default scripted renderer settings or that it does not save out renderer settings you've chosen for a particular scene? I've never encountered both actually, but then again I find the scripted renderer defaults are best left alone (outside of very specific cases).

The 3delight path tracer is actually pretty smart regarding max depth (regardless of rays), though AWE does have some additional optimizations. In fact, I just added new ones to specular/reflections that speeds up rendering more than one specular/reflection lobe.

Sven Dullah said:

Looks like DAZ could update a few things if the wanted to...maybe file a ticket?

Feel free to file one.

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

Tks for the reminder! On a side note, Have you noticed in DS4.7 (not that it matters) that scenes won't save the scripted rendering settings? It works in 4.9 though.

Hmm, I don't exactly understand what you're saying. Do you mean the renderer changes the default scripted renderer settings or that it does not save out renderer settings you've chosen for a particular scene? I've never encountered both actually, but then again I find the scripted renderer defaults are best left alone (outside of very specific cases).

An example: Yesterday I created a testscene to play around with the awe adaptive sampling. Used scripted pathtracing (raytracer final) with progressive 8x8 PS. I just opened that scene in 4.7 and all the general rendersettings are saved. It also remembered I used scripted rendering, but not which script (have to select raytracer final from the list), and thus not the render option settings. Well, this was a side note, not a big thing. But I like to use for example 10x10 pixelsamples for final renders, sometimes 12x12, and like the fact that 4.9 remembers those settings;)

tudos100_f5338ffd60

I am sorry for my english! I have DAZ 3d Version 4.11.0.383 Pro Edition (64-bit) 

3Delighit shaders only white michael 8, genesis 2, genesis3, DLD Leathers, DLD Stones too.

Please help me if you can!

Thank you! 

Mustakettu85

tudos100_f5338ffd60 said:

I am sorry for my english! I have DAZ 3d Version 4.11.0.383 Pro Edition (64-bit) 

3Delighit shaders only white michael 8, genesis 2, genesis3, DLD Leathers, DLD Stones too.

Please help me if you can!

Thank you! 

You could first try reinstalling the content that is giving errors. Also check that you do _not_ run DS as administrator. 

If this does not help, you should try reinstalling DS in a different folder (sometimes something weird happens to certain config files and DS begins to misbehave in odd ways; a new folder will ensure all files are factory defaults).

Mustakettu85

Sven Dullah said:

wowie said:

Sven Dullah said:

Tks for the reminder! On a side note, Have you noticed in DS4.7 (not that it matters) that scenes won't save the scripted rendering settings? It works in 4.9 though.

Hmm, I don't exactly understand what you're saying. Do you mean the renderer changes the default scripted renderer settings or that it does not save out renderer settings you've chosen for a particular scene? I've never encountered both actually, but then again I find the scripted renderer defaults are best left alone (outside of very specific cases).

An example: Yesterday I created a testscene to play around with the awe adaptive sampling. Used scripted pathtracing (raytracer final) with progressive 8x8 PS. I just opened that scene in 4.7 and all the general rendersettings are saved. It also remembered I used scripted rendering, but not which script (have to select raytracer final from the list), and thus not the render option settings. Well, this was a side note, not a big thing. But I like to use for example 10x10 pixelsamples for final renders, sometimes 12x12, and like the fact that 4.9 remembers those settings;)

I don't remember which version began to fully save scripted rendering settings within a scene and which one began to allow us to create render preset clickies for scripted rendering. It could have been 4.8, but maybe 4.9.

This is actually why I originally made several loader scripts pointing to the same render script but with different settings. If you run a more recent DS version, you can just use the general render preset functionality, including partial presets (like, you can have a preset that only changes pixel samples or filter width or whatever - you can choose what to save in the dialogue that pops up, same as with saving any other presets or morph assets)

wowie

Mustakettu85 said:

I don't remember which version began to fully save scripted rendering settings within a scene and which one began to allow us to create render preset clickies for scripted rendering. It could have been 4.8, but maybe 4.9.

This is actually why I originally made several loader scripts pointing to the same render script but with different settings. If you run a more recent DS version, you can just use the general render preset functionality, including partial presets (like, you can have a preset that only changes pixel samples or filter width or whatever - you can choose what to save in the dialogue that pops up, same as with saving any other presets or morph assets)

With the introduction of 3DLEnvspace, it might be good to expose/create a parameter that let users choose. I looked at RIBs exported using both the standard 3delight and through your render script and the relevant coordsys transforms are a bit different.

DS

  TransformBegin  # {
    Scale 1 1 -1
    Transform [ 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0
        0 0 0 1 ]
    CoordinateSystem "3DLEnvSpace"
  TransformEnd  # }

Mustakettu

  TransformBegin  # {
    Rotate -90 1 0 0
    Rotate 90 0 0 1
    CoordinateSystem "kettuworld"
  TransformEnd  # }

Btw, this makes me really happy today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4LipM4zzw8&feature=youtu.be

Finally getting a proper and 'unified' plugin regardless of what app you're using.

 

bartolicristiano_52bc7e73bb

hi guys can anyone recommend me a nice 3delight skin to buy on the daz store ?? Thank you

Sven Dullah

wowie said:

 

Btw, this makes me really happy today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4LipM4zzw8&feature=youtu.be

Finally getting a proper and 'unified' plugin regardless of what app you're using.

Darn that cloud rendering is fast. So why is this plugin thing interesting? (For a DS user?)

nicstt

RAMWolff said:

Mustakettu85 said:

RAMWolff said:

HAHAHA  Never dealt with DOS games.  Never used DOS for everyday stuff.  Only when I needed too!  Now Linux was a different story.  I've written code for that.... YUK!  

I like Linux systems actually. I've only coded for Windows, though. 

Hmmm, what did you play in the 90s then? 

Never was into games.  IN the 90's... well that decade was about recovery for me.  I was a very heavy drinker and almost died from it.... I'm now about 28 years sober.  So I did allot of art (natural media) as part of my recovery.  I was just getting into computers then too so my first was one of those hideous Compaq computers running Windows 95... that's as far back as I go with computers.  Funny, I SWORE I would never get into computing but when I got a taste there was no going back! LOL 

Bet that Compaq tried its best to put you off though.

RAMWolff

NOPE ,just pulled me in.  After my first 3 computers I started building my own!  Now I'm too old and lazy to do that so my last 4 have been pre built by CyberPower PC but the last build was a nightmare so I may try a different company.  I liked CyberPower though, during the Black Friday sales in November they offer free shipping and a discount on the computer so I usually order new one then.... 

wowie

Sven Dullah said:

Darn that cloud rendering is fast. So why is this plugin thing interesting? (For a DS user?)

Maybe not to general users, but should be of interest to those writing shaders. Write once, deploy everywhere without manually generating custom scripts for each app is a big plus. Plus, there's that (at minimum) 100% improvement in render times which is pretty neat.

Really hoping someone would do an USD exporter for DS, plus the Hydra render delegate. Such an exporter will allow a lot more renderers to be used, not just 3delight, iray, Luxrender and Octane. Obviously there is support for 3delight NSI, Renderman, Arnold, Redshift, Prorender and even RTX/VulkanPT through NVIDIA Omniverse stuff. Probably Vray and Corona too, but I haven't seen them announce anything about USD support.

Octane and Redshift have announced Apple Metal support, while Prorender have delivered Metal support for some time now. Really the only choice if you want to use a GPU renderer with OSX.

Of course, there's really no need for GPU renderers if you have the right CPU with 3delight. Maybe something like this:

18x faster than my current CPU. Kidding aside, even the coming 16 core Ryzen 3950 will be worthy upgrade (roughly 4x) for 3delight in DS. Imagine how those will render with 3delight NSI. . Rough calculations are 1/5 the render times you're seeing on that presentation (or 5x faster). For 4K renders, you'll have roughly competitive render times in 3delight Cloud.

wowie

Alright,

Previewing the AWE Hair shader. Below are the links to the shader files (installed in your DAZ Studio application folder) and the shader preset to load the shader (installed in your DAZ library/runtime folder).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kowiLqhDBs4HgsfCk-mno2CtHpuoUoyD
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1T7ji3kKBhr2LqvqKLRLU9wwimSQGwZjQ

Updated build

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XfpiyeGeR79v9jk6tdXc0rTrdQ8FQZCu

There's some features I like to add, so this isn't the final version. But this build is in a useable state and I'm pretty proud of the render times. Feel free to post feedback/request here or in any other AWE Surface related thread.

Some notes:

• If you're seeing faceting, you will need to convert the prop you're using so it uses subdivision.
• The default samples of 128 will likely produce noise. Use either 512 or 1024 samples to get cleaner renders.
• Although you can use specular textures and diffuse/color textures, the shader is built not to use such textures. If you do want to use hair color maps, you will need to set Melanin and Red Melanin to 0 so that you'll get the color entirely from the map. You can still mix in a bit of melanin/red melanin if you want to though.
• The default melanin/red melanin value should produce a blonde hair look. If you want less redness, simply dial down the red melanin value, giving you either very light blonde with low melanin or dark brown with high melanin.
• If you want additional color controls, you can vary the Hair Color or enable Color Correction to play with gamma and saturation.
• You can also tweak the absorption levels of the root and tip independently of each other.
• AWE Hair uses the Marschner hair model. The first specular corresponds to the R lobe, while the second is the TRT lobe and Translucency is the TT lobe.
• The Translucency Strength also indirectly controls the opacity of the hair. For very complex (multiple layers) hair, enabling this will add to render times. For non focused characters, I recommend dialing this down to 0 to save render times.
• Higher melanin colors or darker hair color will render a bit faster than low melanin / light hair colors.
• If you want almost black hair, dial down hair color strength to at most 25%. A value of 0% will be unrealistically dark.
• The Hair Ramp controls allows you to essentially change the root to tip properties. You can add an offset, make the curve closer to the root or tip, or invert the direction if necessary.
• The Highlight will add some variation to the hair. The controls will likely change though. In essence, it allows you to override the melanin color for specific parts. Unlike the root to tip variation (along the v direction), the highlight control takes effect in the u direction.

I haven't tested this shader with point/spot/directional lights extensively. They should work, but I don't really use those lights anymore. Same with strand based hair. The base shader should work, but some of the features (Hair Ramp/Highlights etc) will probably not work as expected.

Sven Dullah

Tks a lot wowie:) Will be interesting!

RAMWolff

COOL.  Thanks Wowie!  

RAMWolff

Question... in the older files there are a bunch of hair presets.... how will those be affected but the new AWE Hair.dsa? 

Sven Dullah

RAMWolff said:

Question... in the older files there are a bunch of hair presets.... how will those be affected but the new AWE Hair.dsa? 

You mean the aweSurface hair presets? They are for traditional transmapped hair. This new shader is for strandbased hair.

RAMWolff

AH, OK, thank you Sven! 

RAMWolff

I renamed it then to AWE Strand Bases Hair.dsa and modified one of wowies other hair icons to go with it.  

Sven Dullah

RAMWolff said:

I renamed it then to AWE Strand Bases Hair.dsa and modified one of wowies other hair icons to go with it.  

I think it can be used on polygonal hair aswell, and of course I'm going to test it on anything