Help Please - Eyes Rendering Black or Pixilated
3Diva
Posts: 11,744
Hi! I'm fairly new to 3D. I've only been using Daz Studio for about 5 weeks. I've recently discovered an issue with some of my characters renders - some of the characters eyes render black or really dark or very pixelated. I THINK it might be just the older (G1 and Victoria V4) characters, but some of the older characters are ok (like base V4.2 is fine, but some of her characters aren't). There doesn't seam to be any rythme or reason for why some of them have messed up eyes and others do not. It also seams to effect some Genesis 1 characters. Here are three renders I did with multiple characers in each (these are full renders, not stoped early):
Stephanie 5's eyes are dark and grainy and yet in the same render "Riley for Stephanie 5" is fine. Base V4 is fine yet Joanie for V4 is grainy. Alesia for V4 is fine.
Again Stephanie 5's eyes are weird while Aiko 4's eyes are just GONE. Lilith 6's eyes are fine. I have very little G2 or G3 characters but the ones I do have seam to be fine. This seams to be mainly a G1 and V4 issue (but again, base V4 is fine and some of the characters for her are fine, but others are jacked up).
Genesis 3 male and female both have fine eyes, as well as Lilith 6 (I believe she's G2?) having fine eyes, but Genesis 1 renders eyes that are pixilated/grainy.
I'm rendering with Nvidia Iray with default render settings. No shaders or anything applied - just default everything.
I'm new to all this stuff and could really use some help. Most of my characters are the older G1 and V4 characters and they seam to be the ones effected by this. I don't really have much for G2 or G3 characters so if I can't get the characters I do have working right I'm in a bad place. Any help you guys can give me will be much appreciated! :)
~Tracy
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Comments
Spend some time in the "Surfaces" tab and try to see what's different in how the textures are being applied to the surfaces for the different characters.
I don't know what version of Steph I have (maybe 3?), but she renders fine for me.
Not sure what's going on with the pixellation, but for the dark eyewhites, Steph's eyewhites and irises are on the face texture (on my version of Steph).
It looks like your eyewhites surfaces are not using the correct (or ANY) texture for the diffuse surface.
In your pix it looks like all the pixellated irises are using the same (incorrect) texture. Choose a different iris texture and see if that makes any difference.
After you get the correct textures assigned to the surfaces, you should be able to save as material(s) preset.
Thanks for the reply, Thor. I've tried comparing the different surfaces between the "ok" eyed characters and the "jacked up" eyed characters but can't seam to find what it is that's causing the issues.
Your version of Stephanie is definitely different than mine - if you have 3 that's a couple gens older than the version I have.
They all have the right textures (the default textures they came with). So they aren't using incorrect textures. I've also tried changing the textures but it doesn't do anything other than change the eye color (doesn't get rid of the grainy/pixelation or darkness.
This has to be something to do with the settings, not really a texture map issue I think. I just have no idea what it is as I'm just too new to Daz Studio. I have a feeling it has something to do with some of the older characters' surface settings not being compatable with iray - I could be wrong of course. It's really driving me nuts as it effects a good number of the few characters that I have and right now I can't use them at all in my renders. I've even tried loading a good eye character into the scene and selecting the eyes surfaces on it and "copy selected surfaces" and pasting the surfaces to a character with the jacked up eyes. It doesn't work, it only changes the eye color - not the pixelation and darkness.
It's actually quite difficult to be sure as the example images are too small, but what you call "pixelation" looks like render noise to me. That means that those surfaces have not had sufficient samples to resolve clearly. There are a number of possible causes, such as the surface not getting enough light (you will often see noise in areas in semi-shadow). However, in these cases it looks to me as if the problem eyes are using SSS shaders and the eyes that are fine are not. That means swapping texture maps won't make any difference—it's the shader settings that need to be changed. What you refer to as "default" doesn't necessarily mean they are all going to be the same as every product's shaders will be different.
One thing you could try is to load two figures, one with the shaders that look right and another with the noisy looking ones. Then in the Surfaces tab use the copy function on the good looking ones and then paste them to the noisy ones on the other figure. This will also copy the maps, but you can restore the originals from the map lists in the appropriate slots (you will need to note what the original maps were called first). You will probably need to do this for every one of the eyes surfaces. It's rather fiddly but it should work.
I've done quite a lot of conversion lately of 3Delight shaders to Iray on older figures. It's a pain but if you want to use Iray there's no way round it. There are a number of products to help with this, however.
Do make sure that you are converting all the surfaces uses the Iray Uber shader preset. The difference may not always be obvious, but if you don't do this they will be converted anyway by the Iray render process, but you will have no control over how this is done and it will take extra time every time you render.
The conversion makes a guess, based on what the current shader is...and for the Daz Default, those guesses are often fine...not the best but not completely out of the ballpark. But for omUber and AoA, those guesses may be more 'wild'...at least that's what my experiance has been. And forget about any true custom shaders, as the guess will most likely completely miss the mark.
And something that you can do...to speed the process up a bit. Save out some shader presets. Unlike material presets, shader presets are usable on anything, not just the same 'surfaces' as the material presets are. This allows you to apply them to anything. Yes, you would need a separate one for each of the main eye parts, but then after you have a set of uniform eye presets, you could then consolidate them into generational material presets (G2F and G2M/G3F and G3M...and so on). Also ctl-clicking allows you to keep the original maps.
Tracy,
First of all, thanks for the heads up on the Steph 5 bundle.
I installed her and immediately ran into this eye issue.
To fix the eyewhites:
Start by loading a new Stephanie into a blank scene. I believe this loads the Michelle materials, which has the eye problem.
Quick fix: Go to Surfaces > 5_Sclera
... and set "Refraction" to Off.
This will bring back the eyewhites immediately...
But as Hiro and mjc mention, it might be better to apply the Iray Uber shader to the entire figure first. If you do this, the refraction setting for the Sclera is in a slightly different place:
In the surfaces tab, click Genesis to select all surfaces. Go to Shader Presets in your content library and under Iray > DAZ Uber
double click !Iray Uber Base to apply it to the entire figure.
Now go to surfaces > 5_Sclera > Base > Glossy > Refraction
... and set Refraction Weight to something less than 0.60 (the lower you set it, the "brighter" the eyewhites will be 0.00 - 0.50 looks pretty good)
This will bring back the eyewhites for all of the Michelle eye variations as long as you don't quit Studio. You should be able to save this as a material preset at this point.
Stephanie 5 with Michelle Eyes 02, IRay Uber base shader applied to figure, and Sclera refraction weight set to 0.00
22 minutes to render.
Ahhhh Thank you so much, Thor!! :D This makes me very happy! I really appreciate you taking the time to let me know how to fix this. I'm looking forward to using the figures I wasn't able to before because of this eye issue. This is going to expand my character base by quite a bit!
*does happy dance ...in my chair* lol
It works! I went to Sclera and turned Refraction Active to off and that fixed it right away! No more demon eyes!! Yay!! :D
Thanks again, Thor! This was hugely helpful! :)
Would anyone care to help me please? I've been using Daz only about a week and I'm having this black eye issue from time to time. I have read countless forum threads and tried everything. I have set max path length to -1 and also tried 10, I have repositioned the figure to 0 0 0, I have checked the surfaces and shaders. I have tried to turn refraction off for sclera but it's lowest value is 1.0 despite Thor saying above that one should be able to set it to lower than 1.0. I'm attaching a screenshot. Thanks in advance...
Please ignore the yellow skin, she's not supposed to be human.
I managed to fix the eyes, not by figuring out what went wrong mind you. But I figured I'd leave this here in case it helps anyone. I saved the pose preset, shape preset, etc, loaded the figure in as a doppleganger so to speak, and applied the presets to it, and then deleted the original. The doppleganger's eyes are fine, so clearly I must have clicked something surface-wise on the original that screwed her eyes up. Either that or some kind of glitch.