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Just stopping by to say thanks for all the useful experiments you've been posting to the Iray Skin Settings thread, also the line-ups which continue to be fascinating. Your latest one (not yet posted in this thread) also made me laugh!
Well here is a small collection of mid-toned figures. I think I spent as much time trying to decide whom to have in this one, or the next few to be made, as it took, to find outfit combinations that was modest and still showing some of the skin color.
4009 notes. To the dismay of some, and the relief of others, this is the only lineup that will have any figures not sold here at daz. I was looking for mid tones, that there is one figure sold elsewhere that absolutely fits in here, and that bird just keeps following that other figure around, lol. Well, Neena looked a tad darker in the smart tab then here, probably due to the promo lighting, lol. Natasha is just a texture set, tossed on my failed attempt of a south American. I had used the Dragon Storm conversion script, and simply applied the resulting mats to the morphed G2F figure. This is supposedly the 'All Glamour' version rather then the guessing lite-cpu-load "All" mat. P3D Sandra, looking very much like her promos not sold at Daz3d. I figured this was a good place to have her given the overall tone of her skin. CS Karma, turned out to be a rather pleasant surprise. And yes, FW Eve and Wachiwi2, again.
5009 notes. Ignore the poodle skirt wearing disco dancing Roman off screen, lol. [Cassia, Kori, Neomi, Lin, Bambi, Ziva].
Ah yes, that's the one that gave me the smile... always a good way to start the week. Poor Natasha looks worried while Wachiwi is acting all innocent... nothing to do with me.... :)
Natasha V4 Elite was almost my very first purchase. My current go-to girl for midtones is Aneta who was new this month (from gyspyangel). She's the lucky one who has been rendered 100 different ways while I get to grips with Iray, but she is holding up well to all my experiments.
Aneta, I thought there was more... So where did she go, along with half the other stuff purchased this month, lol.
another one with no load everything from scratch icon. :smirk:
I was just sifting threw the convenient thumbnails, you, you and you...
It's time for a test. I have been happily going about my renders, probably like many new to daz studio, just using the default render settings in 3delight. This will either validate all the renders the past few days, or require them to be completely redone from scratch. So be it.
So what is the test then, well it has to do with the color and skin tone of all the figures in my lineups, and how they may or may not be effected by the default settings in daz studio. Personally I don't care whether you prefer Gama Correction on or not, the bigger concern is how or IF it effects the appearance of the figures in my lineups.
For this test, I have changed that color cube a tad, to add color variations, that should show if GC off vs on truly has a big difference in how colors are treated. The change is the addition of a string of color scale with the off-color set to 127 rather then Zero (255r127g127b, 239r127g127b, 223r127g127b, 207r127g127b, etc). Now 127 being at the midpoint in a linear scale, if it is pushed up or down, it should throw off the resulting color. So the question is, With gamma correction on, what will happen to that color. I honest don't know, I'll find out.
The vertical gray scale on the side is still devoid of a mid-gray, for space reasons, so I attempted to adjust the borders to be mid gray. It's close enough for my aging eyes, lol. Now, if the render engine dose what it is supposed to, the output of the engine, should look exactly like this scale here in this post as seen on the screen. If not, then it simply will not look like it dose on this forum webpage.
My reasons for abandoning using Gamma correction were based on other reasons not related to the final render results, as I could not see what was going on in the view-field at the time with the lights adjusted, making many things impossible to do without an IPR.
sRGB is a fairly common color space, and I never gave it any thought after reading a key bit of information (back in 1996). Input devices (cameras, scanners, etc) are supposed to apply a Gamma conversion, so the resulting image file is linear. The output device (monitor, printers, etc) are supposed to apply the other Gamma correction for that. Before getting involved with CG, all the images I dealt with in the computer, were linear base for the values (Vs0.0 or zero for black, Vs1.0 or 255 for white, and Vs0.5 or 127 for mid grey, etc). Apparently with CG that is not the case any more, and mid gray in a 24bit image is what 96 instead of 128, lol. Whatever it is, 128 or 127 is not mid gray from the sounds of things, I still don't buy that, as it is the monitor, not the image file values that are supposed to be doing that display gamma conversion.
(EDIT)
"O" and that is the other thing. The thread I was pointed to regarding using GC on, had a rather heated debate over what was the proper post-render Gamma value. I'm still not sure if it is supposed to be 1.8, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, etc, lol. To hell with that, I'll stick to the default settings I thought to myself after reading that.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/18364/P120/#555356
A quick Dry-run, using just the headlamp. It's a little on the dim side, tho the colors are still there, lol.
Yep, There going to need completely different light levels to get white to be white.
Using a single Dz light, off at an angle to prevent glair. No the light levels are not exact, tho close enough to look at the results together next to the original scale.
Yes, I did adjust the light level accordingly, and these are the JPG files directly out of Studio's Render cache folder.
Post test thoughts. I expect to get my hind side handed to me, and to be apologizing to all the PA's that I had butchered the appearance of there works. I at lest expected some offset in the linearity of the scale, tho I did not expect it to come out that close. The difference in light level from 105% GCon to 100% with GC off being the more drastic difference, the color scales look almost exactly the same.
I am even more dumfounded how some people can go off like a frog in a sock over the use of Gamma Correction after seeing this. :lol:
(Edit, and the camera settings, wouldn't fit in first post of this, lol)
Hi Zarcon
The only situation I can think of where Gamma can effect colour is the red/orange fringing you sometimes see around blown highlights.
Otherwise Gamma is all about brightness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction
Not so fast Zarcon :-P
I've got some major problems with some of the things you said earlier about GC.
My understanding (not the impression I get from others comments), is that that BMP made in MS paint, saved as a PNG file using IrfanView. Is that the Gamma value is encoded in the PNG, and thus I don't need to go in and manually set it in the scene tab. TDL make reads the header, and just knows this is a linear(x) 24bit sRGB. done deal. The comment "I should be setting it's Gamma to 2.2 then", what!? lol.
Also, TDL make, dose it's gamma thing with maps, regardless of what the setting in Studio is? At least that's what I get out of the 3delight documents over 3DL's site. Is that assumption off?
(EDIT)
linear(x), Apparently what I was calling linear, based on how I was perceiving the binary numbers in MS paint, are actually a "Vs" scale, not what I was calling 'Linear'. Doesn't mater much, Vs 0.0 is black, Vs 0.5 is mid gray, and Vs 1.0 is white. In MS paint on a 24bit color, that works out to 0, 127.5, and 255.
I was looking for an image I had made to show the discolouration, found it eventually...
The spot light has been turned very bright as the effects are easier to at the extremes.
There is a distinct edge to the blown out highlight and the yellowy tinge.
on the GC image the highlight is much more manageable and the discolouring is minimised to the brightest center.
(Incidentally notice how the hollows of the eyes are still dark in the non-GC image even though the light is so bright
While the GC image seems to make the light go farther, you won't need any fill lights here.)
Found a better image while I was searching - figure 24-5 in the nvidia article on this page:
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch24.html
So Gamma Correction On, is as I have read elsewhere great for adding that bit of ambient light that 3delight lacks without UE2, and it is far more forgiving of badly overexposed surfaces. With Gamma correction off, light levels are far more critical.
Looks like Studio 4.7 has a nifty fix for my other issue with Gamma correction on. The view-field changes when that setting is changed.
I'm still not going to say I'm thrilled by the results, lol. So the question I guess is, What the hell is going on with this, lol.
(EDIT)
I filled the scratch disk with test render scene data (TDL make crashed), and the lights are a tad bit on the bright side for GC on at 2.2, lol. It may take a bit to adjust all seven lights for the GC on levels.
(EDIT2)
And I think this last screen-cap of me trying to adjust the light back for GC on, best illustrates why I ultimately decided it was not worth it. Man is it dark in there, lol.
OK, it was not a shader bad compile. That lack of depth on some of the figures is indeed there. I only see thirteen things in this render that I like the appearance of, and it's is not the figures.
Now compare that to the daz default render, and well, I almost feel that I have wasted some more of my time on this. Tho it is not completely wasted, as I have a tad bit more confidence in my test chamber, and that color scale cube.
(EDIT)
Now to be honest, I had dome some test with just the cube way back almost a year ago when I first started. However I never did any all out renders, just Spot-renders that I didn't save. And they were not scenes with figures in them, just a cube and a light. So most of this testing is new to me, and while I am impressed with the ability to get a mat surface to look the same with both methods, The SSS and gloss settings of the figures, and the flattened appearance of the surfaces dose not impress me at all. It is an incredible amount of work to go threw with an almost pitch black view-field, to end up with a render, that must be further manipulated with post-processing just to attempt to make it look good.
This morning I finally got around to packing up that warped vase, and uploading it for others to us as they wish (CC0) for testing shaders or whatever.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/80246/view/21/DAZ-Studio/Zdg-Worped-Can-Open-Shader-test-vase
Hi are you saying that turning GC on turns your preview dark?
Is that a repeatable thing I could reproduce?
And it is also of little consequence looking at the lack to depth to half the figures in the GCon render (GCon220) above on this page. For some odd ball reason, with GC off, when I make some lights brighter, the view-field responds in kind, and the illumination level matches rather closely with the final render.
If I was not so new to studio, then flying blind would not as much of an issue. Just the flat looking figures. (EDIT with 3delight)
It's my test chamber. three Uber area lights, three spot lights, and UE2 borrowed from the 'Surfer Guy' tutorial. 7 lights for the current 8-light OpenGL card. A new card is being delivered today, so some things may change, (hoping).
Hi Z, awesome card ! Are you planning to use for 3Delight/Iray or both ? I have the GT 620, running dual 24" monitors, have not tried any gpu renders. I use 8 core cpu only.
Lookin forward to new card performance. I'm sure you'll be quite impressed.
So how dose the new card make the Studio 4.7 View-field fly... or not. A short bit back, I tried to make a 3d block diagram of a rather large computer, and the interface (ALL of it) got so much lag, it became nonfunctional for minutes at a time. Even switching between cameras, click the selector thing, a minute or so later the menu would appear, select the camera, and it would take several more minutes to switch the view over. The entire time, the Old GPU would be pegged at 100% GPU load (not the ram, the GPU).
The new card dose the same exact sluggish interface thing, and it never goes over about 15% GPU load, and the CPU is near idling the entire time. So that sluggish interface thing is NOT the GPU or CPU.
And I'm quite sure at this point, not even the CRAY Generation mainframe being drafted out here would improve that at all. :coolhmm:
8 CPUs per chip, 4 chips per MCM, 2 MCMs per card, 8 card par rack-mount unit, 8 rack-mount units per rack, 16 CPU racks. 65,536 CPUs total (Excluding the Job-Que and HPSS nodes)
Well, I've dawdled around for about a week with my computer looking like it's in life support. The only missing bit was that beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeee, lol. Well in any case, me and daz are going to have a little chat on Monday about this sound, this obnoxious the computer Power-supply just can't quite cut it like sound, lol. At least I now have a permanent set of power test ports on my sound card after this morning's fussing around. And after all that, nothing, 5.00 VDC, +/-0.00172µV from DC threw 10GHz on the scope at the sound-card. Ah, yea, taking on cosmic background radiation and winning, lol. I guess all them green dinner-mints and all that Copper, MuMetel, HDPE, and Graphite is doing it's job quite well, lol.
First off, before I kill off this graphics card's bad caps, here is a few more lineups. I was going to try to get a third out the door with these, tho prixat has a good point. I've had this card a week, and I haven't even run 3dmark, I'm slipping.
(split to get the pics in order...)
:P
green dinner-mints, what I often call "metalized polypropylene film capacitors", and they are often used alongside Ceramics disc capacitors as well. When it comes to noise in my power rails, I don't mess around.
http://www.zarcondeegrissom.org/comps/OSWguts.html
I had notes, hmm. real quick. The face-plant of all of these figures was not terribly bad with there default mats, and not all of them came with AltShaders either. So the overall face-plant of under eight minutes was a blessing this time.
Aneta and FW Nikki, for some odd reason, they were not in the smart tab, nor was there a load everything from scratch duf. So it was a load G2F, and hunt down the Face, Body and mat apply things for them.
A3D Bijou, was a gift from Daz, for being with them for a year. To be honest, I'm not sure the price I had seen in the Daz Store was correct or not, lol. If I had that kind of funds just burning a hole in my pocket at this moment, I'd get the Dragon3 Pro kit along with all the add-on packs for the fella, and not be fussing around with the SubDragonLE mats, lol. Still, a very nice addition to my run time, and I do have thoughts for her in my renders.
Pierrette, well she came out allot better with the spot renders when setting up the pose, and keeping with the self imposed rules of this set, No alterations to her default mats at all. With minimal work on the mats, that leopard-skin will not be in your renders. The outfit is also very nice as well, with a good set of mat zones for setting up shaders on the outfit.
Jas, Maeki, Yumi, and Lanying. They were from a combo kit, and that I just could not resist getting when that combo came out.
EJ Bibi vs Elven Fantasy top. I don't know why, I don't recall the top having issues with other figures, just that the wings could not be posed. I kind of guessed as to what dial positions to set the top to, to prevent the TOS violating poke-threw, even with the nipples dialed off on EJ Bibi. Good enough for a skin tone lineup.
O.K. A post that I have mixed feelings about. I had purchased LYFW SherriHD beginning of the month, to add to my growing collection of figures, and I just now Installed and went to do a preliminary spot-render of her, to make sure things had installed correctly and nothing was broken.
I walked away to top off the coffee cup, and when I came back to the desk, the Spot-render was still in face-plant. I waited for the thing to do something for a little over three minuets of total face-plant time, befor canceling the Spot-render to look for Alt mats, and to turn off HD details. That's when I discovered a dreadful reality with LYFW SherriHD. She dose NOT have any HD dials at all, and there are NO Alt shader mats.
There is absolutely NOTHING I can do about the lack of any HD dials. And making an Alternate shader, kind of requires having a render of the figure under the Exact same lights, so I can make sure I've got the mats setup properly.
[screaming in agony] Fred!, WHY!..... :-/ Lyoness, :long: :down: ... [breaks down sobbing on the keyboard]
OK, not as bad as Face-plant-goddess, lol. Still well past the three minute time I'm willing to wait if I'm not in a hurry, and don't care about doing errands around the house as I wait to be able to use my computer.
Faceplant time, About fourteen and a half minutes. Total render time, about sixteen and a half minutes.
Apparently this 4GHz 8-core CPU (no fake cores, eight real computer processor cores), is willfully inadequate, to be able to set up scenes with the new HD figures.
:smirk:
I want to know what the PAs are using. I seriously want to know what kind of computer is needed to be able to use the HD figures that don't come with HD dials and don't have Alt Shader mats available.
:coolmad:
Honestly, What kind of beast, do I need?
Yes, that is an Honest question. How many CPU sockets? How many cores per socket? How many GHz?
And while I'm at it. How many memory DCMs? How much RAM per DCM? and What speed is the ram?
PC vs Server boards for Daz3d (3delight).
Well, from my beginner experiences thus far, The 4-core 3.4GHz "Phenom II 965" was willfully inadequate for the job. A newer CPU required a new motherboard and RAM, and after all that. This 8-core 4.0GHz FX-8350 is Still on it's knees. And for AM3+, that's the end of the line, there is NOTHING with more cores and clock to go to. Not even the FX-8370 comes close to the Multiples more FLOPS I apparently need for 3delight. What to do, what to do. if only I could chuck lots of FX-8350s at 3delight, like sixteen of them or more, lol.
AM3+ PC, 8-core 4.0GHz (about $170)
vs
G34, Server, 16-core 2.4GHz (about $860)
Now just a second there! Twice the cores, at about half the clock, for over four times the price!? lol.
I'm just not seeing the price per TeraFLOPs there. However, If I want more gumption, it's either that, or an i7 that costs even more. There is no AM3+ (or AM-anything) multi-socket motherboards out there. It must be G32 or G34, IF I go that route.
(Disclaimer, that G34 CPU alone is more then what I can squeeze out of my budget with the Jeep's inspection around the corner. This is just not looking good from any angle.)
So, the question I need to look at is. Is there ANYTHING I can do, to get decent spot-render times out of this CPU. Or am I just condemned to never being able to use any of the new HD figures?
I have not posted anything in a while, so I figured I should at least give a 'Status' of sorts. I'll look into this more later tonight, as I need to bring my mother to the store, and I have a meeting tonight.
Oh, and I had been looking at possibly making PC parts for modeling in Daz Studio, attached is a sample of some PCB-trace drafts I baked up this weekend as I was digging around looking at Server boards and stuff.
Yep, yesterday was an off day, lol. I set out to make a 'Generic' DDR3 memory stick (Among other things), and I got sucked into the silly little details of the PCB. Every one seams to have stuff on this edge (draws some stuff there), and the same things between the chips (draws some stuff there and copies it across the dim), and it just went down hill from there, lol.
Now initially, all I wanted, was a simple map to put on one Primitive cube to guide me as I put a few more cubes on to make chips on a PCB. In the end, it at least looks cool as all hell, even if it would never work as a real DDR3 dim.
So, as I have a few things non Daz related things to do this evening, I'll make them 'Generic' DDR3 memory sticks after that. And no, the diffuse maps will be different from these (266x60 pixels per side, to save space for lots of them).
"O", a silly side note. Most DDR3 memory sockets are only made to handle about 25 plug and unplug cycles of the memory DIM. The old Molex 4-pin HDD power plugs could handle more at around a hundred cycles. Just a funny note considering how many times a review site may swap out dims in there preferred motherboard when testing different memory, lol.
Oh-oo-oo Yea, Oh-oo-oo Yea, The RAM. lol. Here it is, the Generic DDR3/DDR2 memory stick in the making. Looking good, and I have yet to put chips on the PCB. This is just a single Primitive cube (1.0mm x 133.35mm x 30mm) with the attached map on it. Shown front (lower) and back (upper) in the render.
Now I intend this to be in a computer with lots of other stuff, so it only needs to be recognizable as a memory stick, not a solo ungodly resolution independent part.
I did have to set the horizontal tiling to 1.01 for some odd reason??? In any case, time to make some chips.
As Eric Dolard say's, it's like being in the sweep of the radar dish on an aircraft carrier, but the carrier is probably safer as it's being pulsed.
I'm going to lock you up with that guy who makes sculptures in the eye of a needle. Muuuhahahahaaaaaa.
Nice work.
Yep, this looks like memory dims. The stuff laying on the floor was done at 4 pixels per mm, the DDR3 was at about 2 pixels per mm. It looks like that little bit of extra resolution did add significantly the the realistic factor some.
And as I look at the render, lol. I didn't quite copy some things over on the memory chip pin-outs. Duh.
(EDIT)
All fixed, and I removed the silly logos for y'all, so it can be any type of whatever. :coolsmile: