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It's a complex shader so you'll have to go little by little, totally understandable!
Regarding the aweSurface user guide - I have it in front of me now and it has a long list, covering all the properties. It has 31 pages.
hmm yeah i'm looking at that document too
oh hmm, because you said that you're not allowed to share modified versions of the maps, and so i was wondering if you could teach me how to properly convert the surfaces of the Shaded Haven. and this is related to some of your demo render scenes looking pretty good
and sorry where's the specular lobe located
and also, do the values of Specular 2 Strength and Specular 2 Roughness affect the result even if the setting is RD 0
and sorry one more thing, in the Surfaces Editor menu, what's the difference between Specular 2 and Reflection 2
i'm guessing that Specular 2 is for Specular 2 Strength and Reflection 2 is for Specular 2 Roughness
for example in this awesurface render i'm really digging the photorealism of the walls in the background
I tried this render, and I think most of the surfaces look fine, but i think that the planters and the fountain look a little off. And I guess the fountain is probably the worst offender lol
Don't know how to respond, really... to me the whole scene is properly converted. I have no desire to spend hours or days trying to make this particular scene look awesome, that I leave to you. I tried to explain to you that this scene is very aged, it is not set up for a PBR workflow, or even a linear workflow, for that matter. It does not have all the controlmaps that a PBR metallic roughness - workflow requires. (typically roughness maps, normal maps, displacement maps, specular maps, bump maps) I can't take on the task of teaching you how to create them, you need to find tutorials online, or ask someone else. Still learning the trade, myself.
I can't possibly know what kind of resources you have available, so I provided you with a very simple sunny outdoor type light set with a generic FLAT blue sky color. The result is rather flat, obviously. Replacing the generic color with a good sky texture would be the first step towards a more dynamic looking render. Change light direction, change light temperature, change intensity, add lights, in short, experiment!
Still, I have the feeling you want to turn it into an indoor scene, which it is not. Maybe put it aside for a while and just play around with DS primitives, like I did in those demo renders? As I told you, there were no maps whatsoever involved, just the default aweSurface with various generic diffuse colors. I had my reasons to use a spotlight, which I explained to you, but suggest you use wowie's lightpresets instead (The arealight planes and the aweEnvironment light, which always should be present in your awe scenes.)
There are two specular lobes, specular 1 and specular 2. Or you could call them layers or channels. Specular 2 is your primary spec. layer, enabled by default, with a roughness value of 1% and a specular strenght of 100%. Each layer has their own dedicated roughness- and strength sliders + buttons for turning on/off specular highlights and reflections separately. (and slots for inserting specular- and roughness maps, anisotropy controls accepting maps). Roughness/Strength sliders will affect both highlights and reflections equally. In a PBR workflow, both specular and reflections should be enabled. BUT 3DL, being a biased renderer, allows for usage of only highlights or only reflections, should that be required. To clarify: Reflections are just that, reflections in a mirror, in metals, in shiny surfaces, whereas specular highlights are a way of simulating very high intensity reflections stemming from lightsources like the sun, light bulbs etc. If a light source's specular rays are bouncing off a glossy surface and seen by the camera, you'll get a bright highlight on that surface. This feature (having separate controls for highlights and reflections) can be useful in many ways. Example: You have a background forrest with a million glossy leaves. Using only highlights but disabling reflections can cut rendertimes significantly. Or you have a car with a high gloss paint = very sharp reflections, but want the highlights to be rougher, use reflections only with a low roughness on one lobe and specular only on the other lobe with a higher roughness. Or you can simply blend two types of roughness/strength by blending the spec1 and spec 2. Be careful though, as they are additive.
oh i see, and is it that Specular 2 is for Specular 2 Strength and Reflection 2 is for Specular 2 Roughness
oh i see, so do the surfaces in your Shaded Haven scene behave identically to the primitives in your series of demo renders
and which directions does the aweEnvironment light send light in
also, how do i modify your outdoor blue sky spotlight
No! In the above post I just said: Roughness/Strength sliders will affect both highlights and reflections equally.
English is not my native language, so I'll try to put it differently: The Specular 2 layer, which is used to add reflectance to surfaces, consists of two componenets:Specular and Reflections. These two can be turned on/off independently with the on/off buttons. Both components share the specular strength and specular roughness values, set for Specular 2.
No! They don't look the same, do they...
It does not emit light, it's a master controller for the lights in your scene (see its light section), the environment sphere (see its environment section) and qualitysettings/samples/overrides (see its overrides section).
There is no spotlight. There's the environment sphere, with the generic blue color, parented to the aweEnvironment light. You select (in the scene tab) the sphere and change settings in the surface editor. The diffuse color slot is used to load textures (skydome images). It uses wowie's EnvironmentSphere Shader, which is a simple ambient emissive shader, so it emits light by default. (You can turn it off by disabling occlusion/indirect light)
The direct sunlight comes from an emissive plane, parented to a pivot point, which you rotate to change the light direction. To edit the light from the emissive plane, select it and make your changes in the surface editor.
ah i see, thank you, i get it now
and regarding the three statuette render by wowie, how do you think one can achieve the realistic look of those walls in the background
Find yourself a nice indoors set in the store and convert it to awe, Light it according to your needs, find the right camera angle and hit render
.
Jokes aside, I don't know what he used, but it's a nice render, he obviously knows his own shaders;)
oh i see, i think i get it now
and so the surfaces in your SH scene don't really behave identically to those primitives, how should i modify them such that they behave near-identically to the primitives?
and in order to achieve the photorealistic look of the background walls in wowie's three statuettes render, you suggested converting an indoors set to aweSurface, and i think you've already done that for your SH .duf?
oh haha
though do you think that you'll be able to achieve a similar photorealistic look with wall surfaces
I guess what you mean is how to restore the surfaces to the aweSurface default state? Select all surfaces of the Pergola, remove all maps, alt/option-click on a parameter to restore to the default value, repeat for each parameter I altered, the altered values should be white, while default values are grey. Or maybe check "Currently used" in the surface editor...should display every parameter I altered.
Or go to File/Create/New Primitive/primitive plane (or whatever you wan't to use). Select it in the scene tab AND in the surface editor, apply aweSurface, save the surface as a shader preset, apply the shaderpreset to all the surfaces of the Pergola.
What I meant was wowie used a set I'm not familiar with, but it looks like an appartment type of set. It certainly isn't a Pergola with open architecture and bright sunshine coming in...
PS: You really need to get familiar with the basic functions of DAZ Studio...tons of tutorials out there...
oh i see. so i guess that the primitives in your series of demo renders were in the aweSurface default state?
and usually what were the parameters which you altered, and what kind of maps are you referring to, is it like bump maps, normal maps (controlmaps, roughness maps, displacement maps, specular maps etc.)
and if you wanted to achieve a similar photorealistic look like the background wall surfaces in wowie's render, what kinda settings would you apply to the surfaces
Correct! Except for the diffuse colors. The default color is pure white RGB255,255,255)
Can't recall exactly, spec2 strength and roughness, bumpstrength, displacement strength...you need to examine the scene yourself. Yes, diffuse color maps in particular, if you want untextured surfaces. Also make it a good habit not to use extreme values like pure white or pure black, as there are no such in real life or in a PBR workflow. I'm sure wowie mentions it somewhere in the userguide.
Well, assuming it's wall paper and not a painted surface, I'd start with wowie's fabric preset and go from there, basically set IoR to something around 1.3, specular strength 25% with a 50% roughness and a GlossyFresnel roughness of about 70%?! A painted (but still rather matte) surface would have a slightly higher IoR and smaller roughness values. Also, I'd probably want to add a diffuse texture atleast, with a pattern or some color variation, preferably tileable. Probably also a height/bump/displace- or nomalmap to give it some depth.
and sorry how do i apply aweSurface to a new primitive
and do you mean that i should remove diffuse color maps in particular if i want untextured surfaces
and i'm not sure about assuming whether its a wallpaper or a painted surface, let's say that you just want to replicate the look of the background walls as seen in the three statuettte render, what kinda settings would you apply to the wall surfaces
To add to what I said, find wowie's AWE Shading Kit presets in your Content Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE Shading Kit. Find the aweSurface icon, double click it.
What I said!
Look, I don't want to repeat everything I say, endlessly. I suggest you start reading my posts more carefully!
PS: I don't mean to come across as rude, just wish you would check out some tutorials on how to use D/S basic functions like applying shaders, textures etc. Hope you understand!