LineRender9000 [FAQ]

24

Comments

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    Apologies for the late response, but here are some tips.

    1. Set the Color Ids for the materials you'd like to have distinct lines for. In the above picture, it's pretty clear her jacket, skirt, shirt, and skin have the same color id. Setting different color Ids will give distinct lines between those objects, which I believe is what's desired.
    2. Raise Line Edge Threshold for the Fresnel reflected v pass to 0.40 - 0.50. There are "too many" lines on the face for this reason.
    3. Lower the Line Thickness for the Fresnel reflected v pass. The thicker lines on the face are also making it look a bit "noisy". I would try 1.5 - 2.0 for this.
    4. Enable 'Use Color id materials' on the Fresnel reflected v pass. It shouldn't make a big difference other than render speed.
    5. To get crisper lines, make sure Pixel samples are set to reasonable values. I suggest enabling 'Use raytracing' if it is not currently set for all passes.
    6. For distinct lines between the legs, that's a more difficult issue. I typically get by with dialing in the Fresnel reflected v pass to do a good enough job, with Shadow opacity cam filling in the gaps, so to speak. In this particular picture, you could set the legs to different color id values because the "seam" at her torso is completely covered by her skirt so it should work as expected. Unfortunately, this isn't a solution for all / most frames.
    7. It looks like you're not getting any usefulness from the Shadow opacity cam at all. Make sure there are lights in the scene that are casting shadows. I typically composite the Shadow opacity cam outlines and main render together to get crisp shadows (vs using just one or another). One of the nice things about that approach is that you can adjust the effective lighting contrast of the scene in post and only render once.

    Here's an example toon panel I've done semi-recently with similar settings: 4 passes as you describe above, just lower line thicknesses and raytracing / pixel samples mainly. I composite in GIMP (photoshop clone) instead of using the composite cam, but it shouldn't matter to get the basic look right.

    I'd definitely recommend looking at the intermediate files, because it's much easier to see what's going wrong for one specific layer at a time.

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  • bicc39bicc39 Posts: 589

    Daz is still selling this???

  • AtiAti Posts: 9,130
    bicc39 said:

    Daz is still selling this???

    https://www.daz3d.com/linerender9000

  • bicc39bicc39 Posts: 589

    Unfortunately I have it. did not believe they were still peddaling it.

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    bicc39 said:

    Unfortunately I have it. did not believe they were still peddaling it.

    Did you sort out the installation issue? Still happy to help you with it. =)

  • bicc39bicc39 Posts: 589

    As you told me at the time, installation and getting product to work not your problem

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

     

    bicc39 said:

    As you told me at the time, installation and getting product to work not your problem

    I remember that conversation. I gave steps to manually install in my first response to you (which should have completely resolved the issues that you reported) 31 minutes after you posted in the thread mentioning you had issues. The same instructions are in this very thread. The user manual also has a section on where the files should be located. I'm sorry you were (are) offended, but I have spent quite a bit of time providing support and documentation for this product, a significant portion of it directly in response to requests for assistance.

  • djigneo said:

     

    bicc39 said:

    As you told me at the time, installation and getting product to work not your problem

    I remember that conversation.

    The one where you told a customer "This isn't a tech support thread" as if you were offended he would bring up a problem when you were trying to promote your product?

     

    bicc39 said:

    Unfortunately I have it.

    I thought you returned it? smh you two.

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    djigneo said:

     

    bicc39 said:

    As you told me at the time, installation and getting product to work not your problem

    I remember that conversation.

    The one where you told a customer "This isn't a tech support thread" as if you were offended he would bring up a problem when you were trying to promote your product?

    Yep, not my finest moment. I'm not proud of what I said, and I'm not trying to cover it up nor justify it. This is my first product. In those early days of product release I was (naively, apparently) thinking I could just talk about features and how to use the product. (You know, because the PA agreement makes it pretty clear that DAZ 3D provides tech support, not me.) Call me rude if you like, because I was (although I did directly answer the question alongside my snide comment), but don't claim I haven't been active and helpful. The internet never forgets, and every so often painful reminders come up about the few times you didn't spend enough time editing your forum posts.

  • djigneo said:
    djigneo said:

     

    bicc39 said:

    As you told me at the time, installation and getting product to work not your problem

    I remember that conversation.

    The one where you told a customer "This isn't a tech support thread" as if you were offended he would bring up a problem when you were trying to promote your product?

    Yep, not my finest moment. I'm not proud of what I said, and I'm not trying to cover it up nor justify it. This is my first product. In those early days of product release I was (naively, apparently) thinking I could just talk about features and how to use the product. (You know, because the PA agreement makes it pretty clear that DAZ 3D provides tech support, not me.) Call me rude if you like, because I was (although I did directly answer the question alongside my snide comment), but don't claim I haven't been active and helpful.

    I never would, you are and have been.

    djigneo said:

    The internet never forgets, and every so often painful reminders come up about the few times you didn't spend enough time editing your forum posts.

    Don't I know it.

  • FenixPhoenixFenixPhoenix Posts: 3,083
    edited December 2017

    I'm gonna butt a bit in here (alla Kenya west hehehe), but... maybe it's personal or maybe it's a cultural thing, idk. But frankly I read @djigneo's comment and I didn't find it rude at all. If I had that problem and he'd said to me: "This isn't a tech support thread. Also, installation stuff should be going to DAZ support. But I'm a nice guy so here we go:" I would've just smiled and thanked him. Then again, it's probably due to the fact that I work in a field where clients expect me to know psychology, design, advertising, programming, counselling, his/her dreams, etc hahaha so I feel his pain when he points out that the responsibility of dealing with the tech aspect of installation doesn't lie with him. Yet, he did respond and that says a lot about his character :).

    PS: I love this product. It has saved me TONS of work!

    Post edited by FenixPhoenix on
  • bicc39bicc39 Posts: 589

    A bit of clarification required. On the two days after purchase of this item I tried to get it to work, to get it do something, anything.

    In desperation tried creatve ways of installing it to no avail.

    After the great support given by vendor, applied for and obtained a refund (understand was not the only one).

    Money refunded by daz, however was never fully able to completely uninstall it. The name would turn up in registry scans etc

    Like an albatross around my neck.

    Finally looked upon it as divine way of reminding me of the fact that although the majority of items sold here are of great value,

    there are still odious and unsupported items that manage to seep through.

    Also underlines great refund policy here.

    One other point worth mentioning, this paricular thread did not exist at the time of the products "debut"

    Appears problems were such as to require a FAQ thread.

    Appears vendor had to trouble himself with issues after all....a lot of them

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    Huh. It's a shame you had such problems! I find this one of my favorite products in the store and I'd be VERY upset if they removed it.

    Checking it out to see if anything broke recently...

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    This took about 25 mins. Could work it more, maybe do it larger and clean up a few bits. Or maybe use PWToon to simplify the colors, not sure.

     

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  • bicc39bicc39 Posts: 589
    edited December 2017
    Oso3D said:

    Huh. It's a shame you had such problems! I find this one of my favorite products in the store and I'd be VERY upset if they removed it.

    Checking it out to see if anything broke recently...

    Boils down to how much you want it, will it contribute to your workflow, how muct time and effort you are willing to devote.

    Most products sold by Daz are fairly straighforward and after awhile easy to install, by the numbers.

    Then there are other products ( in my experience mostly scripts). Because of their small size and the time spent on them by the vendor, obstacles are put in the way of the customer for piracy protection.  License, serial , registration


     Unfortunately these somewhat complex items also suffer from another bigger obstacle.

    The vendor assumes that the customer is equally knowledgeable of the new product. After weeks, months of development  the instructions are considered an afterthought. In fact, in some cases the vendor who at this point has your money considers it an insult that you ask how to install his product.

     In regards to this product, confusing instructions for installation, and although I did not get that far, further use,

    Over a two day period I wrestled with this product for a few frustrating hours. Being a somewhat proud person, took a lot to

    have to suurender and ask for help.

    And then being told in effect, got the money not my problem was the icing on the cake.

    Congrqatulate the people who use this product and got it to work. Wish you the best of luck with it.

    For my part will never purchase another item sold by this vendor

    Mod Edit :- To separate the quote from the actual post.

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    @bicc39 I appreciate you taking the time to add some context and clarifications. It helps bring things into perspective. I'm sorry I came off as rude. You go a little far with saying the product is "odious and unsupported" though, because in your case it was simply installed incorrectly.

    You make a lot of good points about complex products, especially scripts, and especially documentation. To mitigate this complexity I had 5 beta testers for over 3 months before releasing the product, who caught many issues berfore release. For what it's worth, there have been no bugs reported for LineRender9000 since it's release over a year ago. This FAQ is answering questions that came up and were worth an "official" explanation. For the most part, they're not questions about how to use the product, but rather about the many things that touch this product, such as render times, render scripts, image files, differences between this product and product X. Installation certainly came up a lot as you pointed out. I think you were the first of many, and since this product has items that need to go into the DAZ Studio install folder, it's not as straight-forward as most products are to install (since most products just get dumped into the Content library, although DAZ Connect / DAZ Install manager does install it correctly).  I'm not sure what an average refund rate is for a product on the DAZ store, but LineRender9000 to this point has been less than 1.5%.

     

  • bicc39bicc39 Posts: 589

    No longer matters... best of luck.

  • I got another question to ask, regarding LineRender9000.  Is it possible to do renders for specific body parts or wardrobe only and not the full figure including wardrobe?

  • matthewheislermatthewheisler Posts: 2
    edited April 2018

    Not sure if this thread is ancient history or not but I have a question:  

    The manual said  a null node called  "LR9K Render Settings" would appear in the scene tab after clicking 'save' in the auto-render box.  I guess this lets you save your camera pass settings as a scene subset so you don't have to dial them in every time?  Is it actually there but I'm not seeing it?

    Great product by the way!  

    EDIT:  Nevermind, the settings were the node called "LR9K color toon"

    Post edited by matthewheisler on
  • Also, does anyone know if there is a surface setting (like colorID) to make the LR9K cameras ignore a surface completely?  Say you were using this in conjunction with PW Toon and wanted to only keep the PW toon lines on one specific surface and not have LR9K lines on it?

  • I'd like to ask, is LineRender9000 compatible with the 32-bit version?

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    Also, does anyone know if there is a surface setting (like colorID) to make the LR9K cameras ignore a surface completely?  Say you were using this in conjunction with PW Toon and wanted to only keep the PW toon lines on one specific surface and not have LR9K lines on it?

    @matthewheisler I think if the surfaces / nodes are invisible in the pass, LR9k won't draw lines. It's a little more work, since you'd have to set up that pass individually, but that would be a way to do it.

     

    JonSea31 said:

    I'd like to ask, is LineRender9000 compatible with the 32-bit version?

    @JonSea31 Yes, it is.

  • Are there any video tutorials on how to use LR9K? Thanks.

  • Sfariah DSfariah D Posts: 26,263

    I got a better computer since my first post in this thread.  Can I render the same scene with this and then with iray and combine the renders in photoshop?  Or does the shaders have to be different since this is 3Delight and iray uses different shaders than 3Delight, right?

    sorry if I missed the answer if already answered?

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    I got a better computer since my first post in this thread.  Can I render the same scene with this and then with iray and combine the renders in photoshop?  Or does the shaders have to be different since this is 3Delight and iray uses different shaders than 3Delight, right?

    sorry if I missed the answer if already answered?

    Yes, you can render with this (3Delight) and iRay and composite the renders together. In that case I would suggest sticking to iRay shaders, as most of the line outputs that LineRender 9000 outputs do not depend on the shaders.

     

    Are there any video tutorials on how to use LR9K? Thanks.

    None that I have created.

  • DkgooseDkgoose Posts: 1,451

    I think this product is great, haven’t figured it out completely though and haven’t used it recently, but after seeing a render done with this with Sakura I wanna try figuring out the settings for the cartoon style :) 

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    dkgoose said:

    I think this product is great, haven’t figured it out completely though and haven’t used it recently, but after seeing a render done with this with Sakura I wanna try figuring out the settings for the cartoon style :) 

    Thank you very much. I've actually started development on some related cool stuff, but don't want to give anything away before its time.

  • EurocoinEurocoin Posts: 301

    Does this product work on the current version of the studio?

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    edited June 2018
    Eurocoin said:

    Does this product work on the current version of the studio?

    Yes. (as of 4.10)

    Post edited by djigneo on
  • tkdroberttkdrobert Posts: 3,543

    Hello, all.  I finally got this product after having it in my wish list for some time,  It comes highly reccomended by the NPR commuity.  I tried it out last night, but I didn't have a lot of time.  I couldn't get it to work.  I do have experience using 3Delight scripted mode to create outlines but not with this product.

    I tried using the Edge Blend camera, but I got no lines when I rendered.  I tried playing with the line width and threashold, but nothing.  During my 1st attempt, I had the wrong camera selected, but I tried several times with the Edge Blend camera selected.  I even read the maunal's quick start guide and couldn't get it to work.  Both the scenes I tried to render had already been created.  I didn't have time to create a new sceane.  In my 1st sceane. I was trying to render a mecha that is mostly white, but has textures,  I used pwToon on that (Cresent's free cel-shaders).  The background was transparent.  I tried to change the color ID's, but that didn't seem to work.

    Unfortunantly, I won't have time to play with this again until Wednesday and I won't have much time then.  I hope have any serious time, until Saturday night or Sunday.  Hopefully, I can figure out what I'm doing wrong.  I'll try reading up on the Google page linked on the 1st post, but if anyone here can identify the problem, I'd greatly appreciate it.

    Also, I've never rendered using more than 1 camera.  How do you get them all to point that the same thing, the same way?

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