IRAY Wood Shaders
Jason Galterio
Posts: 2,562
I put together some IRAY Wood Shaders and posted the ZIP file on my Deviant Art account: http://jasongalterio.deviantart.com/art/IRAY-Wood-Shaders-682657192
There are 92 shaders in the collection, broken up between natural wood shaders and plank wood shaders.
The shaders are free to use for both hobby and commercial projects. All I ask is that you provide any feedback you might have.
Thanks!
Comments
Thanks for that, always looking for some iray wood shaders. I see you used displacement maps, I thought they didn't work so well in Iray and Normal maps were better?
You're welcome.
I've heard similar things, but I didn't have any issues with the Displacement maps. In fact, I thought they worked much better than the Bump and Normal maps.
I am hoping to hear some feedback on the package soon, to be honest. I am working on some Brick / Tile shaders so anything I could have done differently would be helpful.
Thanks. It wil be this afernoon before I can install it to test. :-)
Thanks!
Displacement works great until you're trying to apply it to some floor that's a single polygon... ;)
Ah, I am going to have to try that. The bump maps are included, but don't have nearly as good a dramatic effect.
I'm getting an error when I loaded the first one. I don't have that product. I also had to rearrange folders into the more standard setup - like putting these into the Shader folder in my content.
The displacement looks okay on a simple cube test, I did a quick Normal map online to compare. Left - out of the box, right with Normal map.
Heh. The error message gives away what model I used to set up the Shaders. It isnt needed for the Shader, so I will fish out the references and remove them. Shouldn't be a big deal, I left most (if not all) of the Shaders .dufs as uncompressed.
Once I finish that, I will upload a new ZIP file. I am glad this was caught now, I can weed out similar errors from another shader package I am currently working on.
I left the Normals out to keep the package smaller. Now I am not sure if that was the right idea. Maybe just a couple of Normal textures that can be applied independantly would work. Something for me to think about.
thanks
Fixed the bogus reference, which should remove the error message. New version is posted here:
http://jasongalterio.deviantart.com/art/IRAY-Wood-Shaders-v2-683028128
Hi,
one question (to the folder's hirarchy):
Where should the folder "Iray Textures" be placed?
Normally Textures is a subfolder of Runtime. And Textures contains all the "Author"/"Product" (sub)folders with their corresponding texture maps.
Hi,
Yep,
you need a very highly detailed geometrie for Displacement being usable in iRay. That's the big lack of iRay!
And yes: Displacement is way better compared to bump or normal maps.
But now the later versions of DAZ (Iray) block the usage of too detailed geometry. - Since DAZ 4.9.3.166.
Technically you should be able to put the "Iray Textures" and "JasonG's Textures" directories anywhere you want. I put "Iray Textures" on the top level only because that is how I have my runtime organized. (One directory for Iray compatible textures, another for 3D Delight textures.)
The only directory that has to remain where it is is the "Runtime" directory and all of it's subdirectories. This is where the textures are located that the Shaders will look for.
Everything under "Iray Textures" should only reference items in the "Runtime" directory, so there should be no cross references between the Shader links.
For anyone interested, I am looking for some volunteers to take a look at another Shader package I have been working on. The details of the package are here: http://jasongalterio.deviantart.com/journal/Looking-for-Volunteers-683554875
The package is mostly done, but I would like some other eyes on it before I finalize things. This way I can avoid the reference error the first version of the Wood Shaders had.
I will retexture one scene for you if you like and render it. I have the Deco scenes (and some others too). However, I have a 5 year old laptop with only 4 cores and Intel HD Graphics 3000. That means it only supports up to DirectX 10.2, not DirectX 11 meaning (I think but am not sure) it can't do fancy DirectX 11 things like displacement or tesselation. Correct me if I'm wrong.
However, if my PC can't do those things it might be better for you as it will test your product for customers that have old HW, like me.
PM me a message if you want to to retexture an architecture scene using your product.
Äh OK,
perhaps I got something wrong.
OK - now I got it.
The content of the folder "Iray Textures" belongs below "Shader Presets" of the DAZ standard content library structure.
Hi. Thanks for the offer!
I don't think I need anything that extravgent. I was just hoping for someone to poke at it a bit and see if anything unforeseen happened. Giving some comments on the usability would be helpful as well.
However, if you aren't really using Iray, I am not sure if the package would be useful to you. I didn't really make either of these with 3D Delight in mind.
That being said, I did try to keep the memory impact low with this latest batch, so it might actually be functional for you.
I only use iRay, however my computer only supports DirectX 10.2 which I think means it does not support tesselation which seems to me is the same thing as displacement. Of course with these overloaded meanings displacement and tesselation might well be different things. Tesselation is supported in DirectX 11 and higher. iRay and CPU renders still does plenty even without nVidia cards and DirectX 11.
I can poke around in your product for a few hours if you like. PM me if you want.
For anyone else interested, the preliminary Shader package is available here:
http://jasongalterio.deviantart.com/art/Jason-s-DAZ-Textures-Bricks-684074294
It is fully functional but I am holding back on saying its complete, until I have a little feedback. There are a lot of different shaders configured into it and I just wanted to see how user friendly it was and if I was missing anything.
Hey Jason, I am just now setting up a render & I installed both your bricks & wood shaders.
Everything is clear & east to read. I put the Runtime folder in my DAZ runtime. I put the presets you made for both in a folder I created called JasonG in the DAZ Presets folder.
Problems:
04-Metallic Flakes - image for preset icon is missing and then in each of the folders for the 04-Metallic Flakes is missing the the 5 preset icons for Pattern 1, Pattern 2, Pattern 3, Pattern 4.
All other Presets icons are preset and clear to a person that has a little experience at modifying the settings in Surfaces tabs for various models
It's excellant.
Now to render 'City Roads' - I left part of the roads with the original texture but I change the center intersection to a paver pattern using your brink displacements. Not sure what DAZ / iRay / DirectX 10.2 can do with displacement but I will tell you in a bit.
OK, the render is running and I have definately confirmed that tesselation (aka displacement) is a DirectX 11 or OpenGL 4.0 feature or above. So my DirectX 10.2 machine cant' do that.
That said, the render still looks good, just not as realistic. And a added bonus is, duh on me, way I can't get my DAZ Studio realistic render attempts as realistic looking as others can theirs.
The shader set is easy to use, nice selections of options and caused only a minor warning in the DAZ Studio log about reducing the detail in my deslected displacement level because the level I chose was too many polygons. It reduced from 6 to 2 but as I said DirectX 10.2 can't do displacement anyway but the DAZ log doesn't mention that for some odd reason.
Hey! Thanks for trying it out and the kind words.
I was kind of concerned about the non-Iray use, so your experiences don't surprise me. I may try fiddling with it a bit to see if I can make them work without the Displacement. It has been so long since I used 3D Delight that I just about forgot about it.
I will take a look into the issue with the Metallic Flakes as well, thanks for the catch on that. Either the files got dropped out of the ZIP file or their referenced location accidentally moved.
In any case, I hope the color portion of the pack will be of use. That works no matter which renderer you are using and was the most time consuming part of the exercise. Figuring out all of the color codes, making the color swatches, figuring out which colors to include... etc. etc.
Hey Jason,
Well I am still using iRay, not 3DL, it's just that not all the iRay features are supported on my GPU (Intel HD Graphics 3000).
Here is what the test render looks like. I think I will redo to entire City Roads scene in iRay materials.
Ah, gotcha now! That makes sense then... I might be able to do something with a normal image to effect the changes that the Displacement maps do. I didn't do that before because I was under the impression that a Normal map would involve more processing than the Displacement, but I could be wrong.
Nice image... Are those using the brick / tile shaders of mine? It looks like it, but I didn't want to assume. And this is precisely the kind of image I had in mind for them. I was having trouble with larger surfaces and wanted to come up with something that didn't use an Image map to keep the processing impact low.
Yes, the grey bricks in the middle are yours and the blueish ones are the original.
You probably could just create a preset that moved the displacement map to the normal map or bump map slot & then have a set of strengths and such as your displacement map does. Most DAZ products still use bump and/or normal maps because support for displacement is still spotty.
So seriously simplifying things here...as more does go into it than this. Normal maps, similar to bump maps create a fake effect, which means they are not really displacing the mesh but more so affecting the way the light, render engine and camera view the texture. Displacement maps require more processing and will slow older machines down when rendering in iray because they will actually displace the mesh to whatever effect they were designed for. Tessalation as I understand it is like a layered extreme version of that which is why it generally will not run on older machines. That does not mean displacement requires DirectX 11 or that it won't run on older machines as my old windows 7 (updated eventually to 10) machine would do displacement mapping and iray rendering. It was just incredibly slow, very bogged down, and would not allow me to do anything else while I was rendering a scene (the more items in the scene the worst it would get).
From what little time I have to expirament with them Jason, the shaders look like they behave fairly well.
Iray displacement affects the vertex postitions of the mesh directly. It does NOT do any subdivision. This is why Iray displacement requires a very dense mesh to work right. 3DL/Renderman does it via the shader itself, creating microfacets and shading along those, to generate the actual shader output.
Normal maps perturb the normals of the mesh, giving the appearance of added mesh detail where it is not actually present.
Tesselation is a form of subdivision, present in AMD cards. It is used by the fixed-pipeline render to improve curvature and shading on the fly. It is not inherently part of DX11.
You are confusing what the specific brand of card does to improve appearance with what the Iray system does. It doesn't work that way.
Tesselation is a DirectX 11 feature, although discrete video cards, of which I have none, have had that capability before DirectX11 was available.
Sub Division...I was trying to remember that word and somehow all my brain would come out with is layered...which is not the same thing. I never said anything about TessalIation not being a feature, I said Displacement was not and was trying to point out that Displacement and Tessalation are not the same thing. HPhoenix explained it all much better than I did and so thank you.
What I was trying to get across is that older machines can and will use displacement mapping even in Iray, but depending on video card, processor, and over all power of the machine - it tends to bog them down and make them slower at rendering. Then again older machines are just generally a little slower and work a little harder to do physics based rendering anyway.
OK, so then there should be a displacement in the example image I rendered even though it is CPU iRay render only. I will change the grout/mortar color to be a light color and render again twice - once with and once without displacement.
Thanks very much for clearing up that they are different. I searched yesterday and the day before on Google but couldn't find a reference explaining.