Lighting (3Delight / G3)
I'm having problems with (I presume) lighting.
When I try to use a Genesis 3 figure I always get horizontal hoops all over their skin. G2 models right next to them look normal.
I am using 3Delight and make sure that the skin mats I use are for 3Delight.
Can anyone help with what's causing this?
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It's not lighting. It's that G3F is using the AoA SSS shader. In the surface properties, set the scale or shading rate for the skin surfaces much lower.
Here's the manual for the shader...
http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/tutorials/AoA_subsurface_shader_help.html
Specifically the Subsurface scattering section...
http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/tutorials/AoA_subsurface_shader_help.html#Subsurface_Scattering
Look at the image on the far left...Shading rate at 64. That's the banding that occurs when the shading rate/scale are not correct for th shot.
Often it will be a process of trial and error to get the correct settings for the shot. As in the manual, the closer/tighter the shot, the higher the rate can be, but the scale and rate interact with each other, so it's a balancing act to get them set right. Setting them to low values will work in almost all cases, but slows down the render some. So finding the values that work for a particular shot will help lower the render time.
Thanks. Trying it out now...
Why can't they just give us a "work properly" button? ;)
That's like the much anticipated, but long delayed "Make Art" button...they are running into technical difficulties.
There's not really much point in using 3Delight. It was an early render engine for DAZ Studio and is fine for beginners, but it has long since been superseded by iray.
3Delight is a so-called biased render engine (meaning it bears little relation to the real world). For example, you can switch off the shadows of lights (go figure!)
Better stick to iray (which has been part of DAZ Studio since v 4.7 (i think). It gives infinitely superior results and far more quickly. Unlike the very cartoon-like 3Delight.
Iray (which appeared in 4.8) and 3delight are different - 3delight is far more flexible than Iray, allowing things like suppression of reflections and shadows, unnatural fall-off of light intensity, and outright NPR/toon rendering. It can do photoreal, though it is usually slower than Iray at that, but it can also handle some surface types better than Iray (and vice versa). PBR renderers are certainly popular, but they are not the be-all and end-all of renderers.
Really? I moved on from 3Delight a long time ago; initially to Reality and then to iray (which is vastly superior to both). My Nvidia GeForce TITAN X renders things amazingly fast (even scenes with lots of geometry and at high resolutions). 3Delight doesn't even come close.
I never managed to get good results out of 3Delight, but maybe that was due to my inexperience. I'd be interested to see any examples of genuinely photoreal images obtained using 3Delight. Perhaps you can point me to some? I don't know any accomplished 3D artists who use 3Delight.
"genuinely photoreal images"
That, of course, would be entirely subjective (and, at times, an oxymoron).
3Delight is still in very active development as is still being used in quite a few major motion pictures...so far, there hasn't been a single one that used Iray.
And just because, by default, Studio used only a small portion of 3Delight's potential doesn't mean it's not worth using. Studio is using more of Iray's potential, but by no means all of it.
Where should I be altering these numbers?
I've tried Skin, Skin-Lips-Nails, and all Surfaces. It just seems to make it worse...
Is there any way to just give a G3 figure G2 skin mats? At least they work.
A Shading rate of 4 and Scale of 0.25 should work for most camera distances...try that for all the skin surfaces. Also make sure that the Subsurface Group ID number is the same for all of them.
If you still can't get it to work and want to use the OmUberSurface on G3F, you'll need to make a preset. The easiest way is to load G2F, then select the torso material then File > Save >Shader Preset. In the dialog box expanded EVERYTHING and then go through each item looking for any that say Image. Remove any images there. Then save it.
Then select all the skin (not eyes, mouth or teeth) for G3F and click on that preset you just saved. Removing all the maps allows the normal click to apply, as opposed to needing to ctl-click.
Then after you are sure it applied and is working go to File > Save > Material Preset. Save it as the same name as the original, with OmUS added to the name.
Saving the preset worked. Thank you.
(I wish the vendors would still make G2 stuff, then I wouldn't need to go through this... )