Battle Blades metals too dark
jim_d377a9cf
Posts: 22
Newbie here, who bought Battle Blades at http://www.daz3d.com/battle-blades
The blades look very realistic and like actual steel on the store page, however when I render it, it looks like a dark blue-ish metal (see attachment). I tried playing with the shaders, but nothing seems to help. Does anyone have an idea what I'm doing wrong?
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Corrected attachment:
If it is a 3Delight render, make sure you have a full environment...as they are using reflection, you will need something to reflect Also you need to make sure that the max raytrace bounces is at least 2, better at 4.
Thank you for your reply. I rendered it with a full environment as well, and that didn't change anything. I can't find where to change the max raytraces. Shouldn't that be in 'Shadow Type'?
Even the blood on the swords look black, instead of red.
I just purchased http://www.daz3d.com/swords-of-history (render in iray) and it has the same issue.
What am I doing wrong?
Why doesn't Daz provide contact details of the creator?
Because Customer Support provides the support for products. It is one of the reasons that Vendors sign up to broker at Daz
For 3Delight the Max Ray Trace Bounces is under Render Settings > Sampling.
For Iray, the equivalent function is by default is very high and shouldn't need to be adjusted.
First, are you rendering in 3Delight or in Iray? Because the maps used to define specularity and reflectivity are very different between the two. Whichever you are using, can you give us a screenshot(s) of your render settings?
Thank you for replying Valandar, appreciate it.
I'm rendering them in Iray. My render settings are attached.
Okay, the textures for those weapons are geared for 3Delight - they were created before Iray, even if they were released after. They won't render properly in Iray, and will be, as you say, much too dark. One option would be to use the specular map as the diffuse on the Iray Uber material, then greyscale and invert the specular and use that as the Roughness, making certain the Metalness was 1.0. On the regular (wood,cloth, leather, etc0 parts, you'd use the regular map.
One thing to consider when doing Iray renders is that it takes things from outside the render window into account. For most things shiny it needs something to reflect. Usually what i do is place a plane behind the camera just white with Iray uber applied to it. That way the metal has something to reflect.
Daniel
Valandar is correct, the swords were designed for 3Delight although I've just tried and they do render fine in Iray, you just need a scene around them for them to reflect. That said, I'm currently working on an update for the set to include Iray textures.
@Valandar I believe I'm too noob to do that, but I'll see if I can figure it out.
@D.Robinson I already tried placing an environment/scene/lights around it, but it didn't help at all. The light only made it a bit shiny, but still the same rubber looking sword. I'll try a white plane as well and see how it goes.
@Merlin Studio That would be so helpful. Is that something that will take long to update?
Thank you for the replies. I sincerely appreciate all the support.
Until Merlin gets an update, try this:
1 Select the sword in the scene
2 Click the Surface tab
3. Go to Shader Presets>Iray>Daz Uber
4 If you want to keep the texture, Control Click on the UBer shader, select ignore, then OK.
5. If you want to try one the the metal textures, just double click it, then render
I have another set with a similar problem Weapons of War although by different artists. Again the metal parts look black in the viewport and when rendered in Iray (and this has been explained above). What I did for these is first select all the surfaces and go to the presets tab and apply the !Iray Uber Base shader. Then back to editor. The blades are still black as the base colour is kept from the original shader. I changed the Base Color to white and turned Metallicity to 1.0. There may be other slots that have a map and a dark colour associated with it, so turn those colours to white, too. You can also add a slight tint to the base colour (keep it a very light colour) so it looks more like bronze or some other coloured metal.
This is a rough and ready solution that probably doesn't address all the problems with the Iray conversion, but it's quick and the results are pretty fair. I used an IBL environment (only) for lighting.