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Well, I think I'm about done. Anything else you think I could adjust in this image?
Thanks a ton!
A bit small for my eyes but from what I see that worked out great. The Iray shader is pretty flexible with the right Weight Map etc.
This was a fun project! Sorry for posting so much stuff on your private thread. I got carried away... One day I will have to go back, and have a look at bump, displacement and normal maps for this render. You said they weren't really necessary, and I never looked back!
Anyway..thanks a lot!
I am currently going through some of your links on your first post. Lots of good stuff there that I am way behind on...like Uber Area lights and Uber Environment2. When got I started, I got hooked on AoA's Advanced Light set, and never really looked into Omnifreaker's stuff.
Time to get caught up!
I don't mind at all this is why I made the thread in the first place....to share.
Time for a bit of Fern Lake, Stonemason's old Castle Ruins (retextured) and adjusted water shader.
Really love the one with the robot.
Thank you
This is what the last render looks like when learning how to use the Nik set of tools given away, by Google, for free recently.
Wow, the lake with the castle is an awesome combination, butI have to say I like the original better, the "niked" one seems a bit much yellow
Thanks yeah a little over saturated but it was my first NIK test.
I was exited at first when I saw that NIK gets free but then I noticed that it would need photoshop. I would appreciate they'd make it opensource and some gentle sould makes it available for GIMP...
I am not too sure if you can install without Photoshop but I can open each tool as a standalone tool without Photoshop. Shame you didn't get CS2 when Adobe was giving it away for free a few years back as it works ok given it is only 32bit. After I installed it I noticed that each tool has a 64 bit .exe to open the 64bit version as a standalone.
Love the first Fern Lake image Szark...that really is a beautiful set. I'm trying to work out how I can afford it while it's on sale...it looks so real.
Thanks Pen
Just a quickie testing Cath's new shader pack (link below)
Playing with Jack's Iray conversion
Anderson Hall Iray Addon http://www.daz3d.com/anderson-hall-iray-addon
Beautiful, Pete, as always. I am a great admirer of your work.
I have a question that I would like you to consider, if you would be so kind. It has to do with advancing in skill using 3Delight, which a number of us are struggling with. It may be as simple as pointing us to an already existing tutorial, which I have missed along the way.
I was reading a thread somewhere recently a discussion about the default settings in 3Delight not being really optimal for the kind of quality work we are striving for. For example, one writer mentioned that the gamma correction is set to "off" by default, and even when it's on, it's set to 1. He went on to say that a setting of 2.2 is a much better default setting for many renders. That's a bit mysterious. I would welcome some elaboration.
Another writer chimed in that the default setting for white is 255,255,255, which isn't the best for a natural look. Rarely, he suggested, is anything that we encounter in our daily lives pure white like that, and needs to be adjusted. (I don't remember what was recommended...)
We've all experienced renders (our own and others) looking disappointingly "CG", and not very realistic. It's obviously not a simple "one size fits all" fix, but a combination of things. Lighting, skin tone settings, quality of materials and shaders, camera settings, render settings and any number of other factors!
But the 3Delight default settings that need attention are my main concern here.
Do you have any advice, or can you point me in the right direction to make some progress?
Thanks for considering this, and your willingness to mentor the community here.
"D"
Thanks
Give me a few days and I will get something typed up or provide links.
Great! Thank you!
I'll be watching...
I can deal with some of these now.
Gamma Correction ON at 2,20 is correct. That will give some nice results wiitn the right lighting but surfaces may need tweaking. Full 255 white Well in 3DL my opinion is that it doesn't matter too much when you have texture maps and even if just using a block colour I have never had too much problem with using full white. However the comment is true for realism so when using Iray try to avoid full white in maps and plain colours. And the same goes for 0.0.0 Black. If this confuse you more http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/43128/ just shout. It is pretty simple really.
Realism in 3DL is hard and IMHO long winded, achievable yes but first you need to understand the real world and then learn how to fake everything in 3DL. I could never get there this is why I love the included Iray engine.
Gamma correction isn't a correction to fix something but helps surfaces react better to quality lighting.
I am generalizing here as some software like Vue use a gamma correction value of 1.8. I have found that using 2.2 in DS (3DL) works for most things.
Most texture maps we have, as in the .jpeg format, have been saved at a gamma of 2.2. A photo from a digital camera in .jpeg format is the same, A .RAW format photo has no gamma correction and therefore should be so much brighter due to the cameras light sensors being so sensitive and different from human vision. Our eyes have evolved to see the world less bright than it is and a gamma correction of 2.2 simulates what we see.
What gamma correction does it to take the texture maps (diffuse only) down to a very low gamma, something like 0.45 and then back up to 2.2 when rendered.
Ths has nothing to do with gamma settings for monitors etc all that does it to make sure you are seeing more realistic feedback in what the monitor displays.
When you turn on Gamma and set to 2.2 I find the lighting needs to be lowered quite a bit. And with that this is where you really should avoid full 255 white in texture maps and block colour. In some cases you may need to darken the diffuse more too. But in quality products you shouldn't need to do much to the surfaces.
Gamma correction in DS is somewhat an approximation but you can override this approximation and give each map a gamma value. This is done via the surfaces pane where you load a diffuse map to. See attached.
In the image editor (Image 3) the value of 0.00 is what DS use to approximate GC. Change this value to say 1.8 and DS will gamma correct to a value of 1.8. But when doing this that diffuse map, no matter how many surfaces it is applied to, will be corrected. So this override it is on a per map basis and not per surface.
Any Grayscale strength maps, i.e. bump, displacement, trans (opacity) maps and spec maps for example should be set to 1.00 automatically by DS. I have seen DS treat some of these maps at a GC of 2.2 because they weren’t saved out as Grayscale but instead RGB but I haven’t encountered that issue for a while so they might have fixed it.
as for 3DL render settings there is a link on the first page of this thread here is the link anyway http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15210/ :)
Good stuff, Pete! Thanks a lot!
Yeah..I've experimented some with Iray, and there's a noticable improvement in realism. My computer can barely handle it though, with a low end Nvidia card, but I've set some to render overnight, and got some decent results.
I've noticed a lot of renders are overdone, especially floors. WAY too reflective. I just spent about 20 minutes looking at images of museums, cathedrals, castles, casinos, ballrooms, mausoleums, hotels and church interiors. Not many have super reflective floors. They're usually scuffed up, and toned down quite a bit compared to a lot of Iray renders. I need to see if I can incorporate that look into a few projects. That "less than perfect deterioration that creeps into everything eventually" look.
I kinda go back and forth between Iray and 3Delight. I'm sure my biggest problem is lack of a budget to buy quality products with decent materials and shaders. I'm a collector of free stuff and bargain basement products. But..like someone said (it may have been you!), 5 years ago, people were making top quality art with that stuff.
It's ok..I still find it a fun hobby. Glean a little bit of knowledge here and there, and try again.
Thanks for contributing a little bit! I will bookmark this thread and come back here soon.
"D"
"way to reflective" yeah that's a problem for me too, sometimes it works and sometimes is doesn't.
Dude learn how to use texture maps to re-texture freebies. You can create an account with CGTextures now http://www.textures.com/ and download a few a day. Trust me not buying a load of content is a plus. When I first started I bought a ton of content with some I will never use. Indeed just because something is free doesn't always make it crap, that was the attitude of some around here when they decide to give away DS. Blender gets a bad rap because it is open Source and free and we all know how full Blender is with cool stuff.
I have seen so many people over the years say that Lighting is key to realism forgetting about surfaces. If surfaces aren't right then no matter how good the lighting is it isn't going to happen and this is true of the reverse. I don't find 3DL surfaces hard but lighting yes. Iray is so much easier in term of surfaces and light. I have to CPU render only too but at least I have 16 GB Ram and a i7 dual core.
This sounds like some excellent advice. I already have a CGTextures account. I checked them out a while ago, but I noticed that the free textures were fairly low resolution (or maybe it was a small size) compared to the premium textures. I wasn't sure it would be worth it. I probably need to go back again and look a little closer. I know they give away a freebie a day, but I'm not sure what the size of the freebies is. It might be worth it in the long run.
Yeah, I'm starting to get a handle on the power of surfaces and shaders. This also seems like a good thing to spend time learning. And yes, good lighting is tough...in both 3Delight and Iray. At least for me.
I have an i7 Dual core too, but it's 5 years old, and I only have 8 GB RAM. My GPU is a low end Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti. A far cry from a 980! I've opened negotiations with my wife about upgrading my system. She says, "Sure. Sell your motorcycle and buy whatever you want."
I'm actually considering it...
Can you please inform your wife that making you sell your bike is husband cruelty and I will be letting the authorities know. ;)
HA!
I will!!
dHandle Destiny's Garden has been kind enough to start a texturing class here in the art studio. You may find it helpful in learning to texture. Let me track down the link for you Here you go http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/74272/texturing-with-destinysgarden/p1. ; Its pretty laid back learn as we go kind of thing.
Hi Sonja, Yes, I started out in the 2nd row in that class. I used one of Wilmap's freebies for the first project. I got the castle model, and when I tried to d/l the textures, something went wrong. The link wouldn't work or something. I forget...it 's been a couple weeks.
I did try using sharers. (er...shaders) Been meaning to get back to that and try again. But the Pens are in the playoffs, so...I've been kinda on vacation. If you recall, I panicked, and bought Filter Forge when it was on sale 80% off. Another software package to master. /sigh
Also, I discovered Renderman. I have a free educational license for Maya, which is one of the modeling programs that Renderman is compatible with. Would you believe it!!? Two MORE programs to master!! These freebies are killing me!
I'm going to have to retire soon just so I can keep up with my hobbies...
edit: to fix typos and formatting
This is why a couple of years ago I decided not to use Poser, Carrara etc etc and just concentrate on DS, Vue, Blender and Photoshop. If I was to go with a procedural texture making software I would go for Substance Designer and Substance Painter. Soon I will have Substance Painter, been saving up for it. I don't have a motorcycle to sell. LOL
just a quickie before bed. Trying to hone Iray mat conversions quickly
SBRM Birds of Prey Vol 3 - Hawks of the New World
Tree and background from Fern Lake http://www.daz3d.com/fern-lake
Light: HDRI Skies of iRadiance - Sunny Sky HDRIs for Iray http://www.daz3d.com/skies-of-iradiance-sunny-sky-hdris-for-iray
NIK Tools for Post
haha I bought it too...We can both retire early to learn all these extra bits and pieces.
Ya I sadly have no big ticket items to exchange either. At least none that my husband is willing to give up lol.