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OK, Thanks Estrella for holding those color scale cubes for me, lol.
Here is the big pain in my back, and the thorn in my foot. Looking at the mirror ball, it is clear that the upper front soft-box light is reflecting off the floor, and yet, there is almost nothing illuminating Estrella's chin from below. I had added that lower soft box, to try to mimic the reflected light off the floor, however it is just completely at the wrong angle for that. Also, the UE2 is not exactly mimicking the environment, lol. While that touch of color on the walls is nice, it is not exactly consistent with the color of all the lights. I had added the UE2 to try to get some ambient light going, and it is now well past time to try to make that ambient light match the environment.
white walls and ceiling, and a highly polished floor. I didn't have a single UE2 map for anything like that when I first made the test chamber, precisely the Polished floor bit. Almost all of the UE2 maps I had were outdoor ones, and they all had a dark ground. If I can get a proper map going correctly, I can remove that lower Soft-box that I never intended to be in my test chamber to begin with. The view in the mirror ball in this render is almost exactly what I first wanted for my test chamber, tho I'm still undecided if I want just the two soft boxes or four (one along each wall at the ceiling).
Now, thanks to some posts in a UE2 thread, I got an idea of the coordinate mapping for UE2 (including the 35 degree offset as well), I think. The UE2 sight said something a tad confusing for making maps work with TDL-make, that has me confused as to what is the mapping for UE2. So I'm off to do some tests.
Estrella is being such a good sport while I adjust the UE2 ambient maps, lol.
By default, the Surferguy UE2 was spun at a angle, and that threw me for a bit, lol. Centered all the XYZ stuff on that, and thing started to get better. I'm still not sure on that 35 degree offset yet by the way some shadows are falling, tho things are progressing nicely.
(EDIT) Looks like that 35 degree offset is either not with what I'm using, or it has been fixed since January 9th. My brief test shows my Ambient map should be fine with XYZ rotations all set to zero in my chamber. That done, back to working on the 'Ambient' map.
Alright, the work is far from done, however here is the progress I managed so far.
I took a simple 1:4 vertical sliver camera and paned it around 90 degrees of the chamber with nothing except the soft box lights going. Then I stitched them together, and started testing brightness levels with that stitched map in the UE2. I'm not done by a long shot, tho at least I'm starting to have something that looks promising.
It's been a long day, see y'all on the flip side.
Morning, or evening y'all. I decided after some rest, that when I did the first pan, I had made a mistake, resulting in the somewhat flatness appearance of stuff in the chamber. I had turned the entire box into a simple pure white box with no reflection or gloss at all, and as such, the floor was to evenly light. In reality with polished floors, allot of the light is from a reflection rather then it all being scatter off the floor. So I set the floor back to it's usual settings without the style maps to capture the reflected soft boxes. I'll blot out the direct panels later on while making the map, leaving just the ambient scatter and the reflection. I may or may not mix the new map with the old one, I don't know yet.
So this is what a crude stitching together of pan shots looks like. It dose not need to be perfect at the seams, as it will be blurred to make the UE2 map. I took five 100x400 pixel renders at 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5, and 90 degrees. Then I chopped 25 pixels off each side of each render, in the Paint program on the right, and stitched the result together in the Paint program on the left. From here it's just a copy-n-past/flip to make a 360 of the room.
Then its setting the brightness and contrast to some arbitrary value I don't know yet. blotting out the upper panel, blur, test, etc. Many steps, tedious, with allot of results thrown out to repeat the process with deferent brightness/contrast values, lol.
And as mentioned, Adjust, test, repeat, lol.
Eventually, I'll get to the point of "Color picking" the rendered color scale cube to make sure it is in the 250-255 range on the white, and not over exposed (By checking the mid-scale color RGB values).
Well, I had fussed with the lights a tad, and now there off a bit, lol. I had the two Uber-lights at the same light settings, tho they were not exactly evenly placed. I changed that, and that fussed with the light level at world center. At least there both the same. I also played with a texture for there appearance in render, and ditched it after a few test renders.
(Uber-LED-Test pic 2003)
The Uber lights are huge, and there is no tile option for the diffuse/specular/ambient appearance channels. So the map would have to be much larger then the 512x4096 pixel that I tried to look good at even 1080-size, lol. I did fuss with the non-textured levels a tad, and I like the new look in render.
(Wall backing 02010)
I also played with a displacement map to try to give the RF absorbing panels a bit more realism. That turned up some very interesting aspects with Displacement, and I'm not sure yet just how it's effecting render times (I keep fussing with other stuff, like setting the 'samples' of both soft boxes to the same value of 48 instead of the back one at 32). It looks cool tho, so that may be a keeper, possibly. I still need to do some ram tests without other stuff running.
(wall backing closer view 02013)
So, What dose the revised chamber look like, Not much different, lol.
Yes, a small crew has gathered to gawk at the revised test chamber in progress, lol.
L-to-R, MicroraptorDR, FW Eve, LY Lennox, FWSAZ Jiana (FWSA Siblings, and Olympia 6), EJ Estrella, and ArchaeopteryxDR.
egh, this UE2 map thing is starting to really get to the tedious part, not to say a bit on confusing side, lol.
I decided with the moved soft boxes, I'd go back to adjusting brightness levels. This time the way I first did for the chamber. The color scale cube at world center, at about the height of Genesis head (X 0, Z 0, Y 150). Camera set looking dead at the center of a corner, and render... Get the three sides really close, then look at the opposite corner, lol.
So, needles to say, the nice looking map, is not so nice looking any more, and the back of the cube is extremely over exposed, lol. That is when I get into trouble trying to dim the light back there. What I thought was the back of the map, isn't acting like it at all. I'll take that as a hint, that I've been at this for way to long in one sitting, and need to "Take 5", lol.
(EDIT) I may possibly just have a bad angle, over exposure from glare effect from the back panel, possibly.
Took 5, then started stabbing at it again, and I think I almost have something resembling consistency. 251 to 253 on the top, front, and sides. All three spot lights at 15% intensity, and the Soft boxes at 100% intensity. The bottom of the cube is not over exposed as well.
Now, if I could just gang it all to a single dimmer, that would be cool, lol.
As for the overexposed back of the cube, That's the next thing to look into. I tried dimming the edges of the UE2 map (left and right edge), and that only made the front of the cube darker. That's completely inconsistent with the lat/long nature of the map, so something has got to be scrambled somewhere. Further more, The front and back Soft boxes are exactly the same (light settings, and distance from world center). There are two spotlights illuminating the front and one side of the cube, yet only the Halo spotlight is shining on the back. So the back should be dimmer then the rest, not over exposed. I tried changing the camera angle, moving the Halo light, and nothing other then consistently over exposed. I'm stumped as to why that is happening. Dimming the UE2 intensity to about 65% is the only thing that fixes that. So I guess I need to redo the map to compensate.
(EDIT Midnight hour Update.) Well, It looks like I'm making something resembling progress. Only the 7th retake from scratch of the UE2 map, lol. Speaking of maps, Thanks 3dcheapskate for posting these maps, I am indeed using two of them combined as a guide of sorts in adjusting the problematic sides.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/299329/#Comment_299329
Ah, yea, the back of the cube is indeed that bad, lol. Whit point of that map zone dropped to 32 from 255, and I may need to take it further after adjusting the other sides. The front is just copied out for now, so I can adjust it later on. I'm still working on the top vs side at the moment.
This smells like victory, lol.
I've lost track of how many days this took to get to this point. Better balanced lights, ditched the lower Uber panel, and best of all the back of the cube is no longer over exposed. I suspect the velvet and SSS of figures will be a tad more agreeable without the UE2 blasting it from the back, as a theory that's been brewing in my mind after discovering that bit about the UE2 map UV stuff. More on that later, as I have a few tests in mind to verify that.
In lue of the number of lights (soft boxes and spotlights) illuminating each face of the cube, I could not be more pleased with these results. All that remains now, is to do some tests at a few other angles to be sure nothing is over exposed, and then to cobble it all together into the proper folders to share the thing.
Alright, the above map had some issues, and I got the light just a tad to even to show fine textures, lol. I also have doubts about the altitude that I did the first run of renders from, so I dropped it down to Y150 instead of mid ceiling height. I retook the pans again, at ten degree intervals this time, to get things a tad smoother.
Ive also been trying to figure out how to distort the vertical view from the Studio camera into something closer to that of a lat-long map. I gave up trying to figure out how to do that in GIMP (yes I know exactly how to do it in PhotoDeluxe, IF I felt like putting XP back on this computer). It's a simple spherical vertical stretch, hmmm, can I project it some how using Studio, lol
This is just a first test of the 'apparatus' before any adjustments of any kind. However the results look really good I think, even If I got the ambient map settings off a bit.
Before (Half the original size)
After (Full size attachment).
Well, I'm off to give this a shot, and see what UE2 levels may possibly work now.
Oh, this 1440x720 test chamber UE2 map is CC0, enjoy and have fun.
The darker side of redoing lights, lol.
L-to-R, FW Eve, FW Phoebe, and Fw Darc (not fully dialed in).
I decided to take a break from that UE2 map expedition, to pack up a project from the past.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/82613/view/21/DAZ-Studio/Staff-Of-Render-Hell
I gave it one more try for Iray maps, and Iray just can't do this thing. This is not a Greek Parthenon fluted column, it's a simple cylinder with inset "helical strakes", what the hell, lol. Whatever, moving on.
I took a small stroll yesterday, to look at ships. I found some that looked really good intended for Lightwave, tho I've yet to import any into studio (studio and Hex cant read the files direct, and I'v yet to try some converters).
I did find some that also included OBJ files, and I'm checking them out now, to get an idea how things may go. First attempt is a Gundam ship that was free. From the looks of it, someone spent allot of time making this thing. Unfortunately it only has a single zone, and it's made from triangles. The triangles are wrecking havoc with Studio's surface illumination (the off shading everywhere), and the single map zoning is far mor difficult for me to make a good texture map for it (especially given I don't have a UV map to start with). My heart isn't broken over this model, it was something to try, moving on (I have allot of ships to try).
Alien Spaceship concept, this thing is cool looking. It kind of reminds me of that Altaran weapon from SGA (Lagrangian Point satellite). The one McKay had some bad luck with, lol. I'm not sure about the UV mapping, tho it looks like it may possibly be useful if a UV map is possible at all for it, it would still take some work to flesh it out. Again, it was something to try, moving on.
The above two ships do not come with image maps, that studio can read (the Gundam doesn't have any at all that I can see in the zip).
Agh, I need to make some copies and run to the Post office (retirement paperwork), brb. T.B.C.
"Brazilian Spaceship Southern Star, Estrela do Sul", this thing is cool looking. And dose it have zones to work with, I am impressed. I almost forgot, this has innards for doing stuff in. I'll have to give this a more in depth look later on after looking at the other stuff, it looks like it has potential. No maps included in the doubled up zip, just the OBJ.
Cassini Probe, oh boy. The geometry looked breath taking, until I put a map on it. The entire thing is mapped to a single pixel somewhere, This is just completely useless in Studio. "Next!", lol.
Same goes for this thing called "Freighter". Useless UV mapping for Studio.
"Space Station 4" This is a really nice little model. It includes some maps to dress it up, and the UV mapping appears to work good in Studio. using the normal or bump map, it may be very easy to paint new maps at 4k to add some detail to this really nice OBJ. It is still a single map zone for the entire thing, so that limits just how fine the detail can get. I think this is a keeper.
warship 000.blend (I'll need to look up the name, I think I messed up the zip file name). It looks like the 'normals' are inverted on part of the right side of the ship (the black part), and the zones are mapped to a single pixel, that is not good. It came with a blender file, so if you know how to use that you may be able to fix that, I don't. The geometry otherwise looks good, I just can't use this thing.
"Space Frigate 6", another nice looking one. With maps that can be used as a template.
I'm not going to do any more today from this batch of stuff. It is clear that not all stuff will work in studio (even with the OBJ option), and that has given me what I need to know for now. That site has some incredible looking models, and yet some others have turned ot to be useless. There is another site I've been pointed to, I'll check that out next. And I've been eyeballing a few Trek sets for some time now, I may go and look into that as well.
Be aware that converting models for use in DAZ Studio is not a simple matter. Each application is different and there is no universal standard. There is no simple answer for converting any of them. Some will be easier than others and some will be very difficult. In short, converting models for use in DAZ Studio crosses paths with content creation. The downside is that you dont have the fore knowledge of what was done during the modeling stage.
That was about what I got from that experiment. 3 good ships, 3 useless ones. And I don't know the first thing about Blender, so fixing it is in another universe from mine at this time.
Also, the other two sites are making me hold off till later on. I guess that puts a "so so" end to this for now.
Trek sets it is I guess. I'm looking at an engine room, and a Sick Bay. I've been given many assurances that those Poser products do work in Studio, and unlike the ships from that other site, there not at heart attack prices (hundreds of dollars, omg), lol. Seriously, there appears to be a bit of a sale on the Trek sets, at under twenty dollars, I think that is quite reasonable.
Not sure where you could get a sickbay or engine room for free thats already converted to DS or poser. I know Foundation3D has a few sets but they are for LW or Max. I do have a holodeck (voyager style) and a corridor kit if you need them. Please click the red link in my sig.
I don't remember whom it was, tho some one was showing off there work in a trek thread here at daz. and I started asking about it. At the time, Studio wasn't even in the searchable options at 'Vanishing Point', it is there now. So I've been eyeballing the sets for some time, doing allot of window shopping in a way.
I still haven't a clue what I would use the trek sets for in a scene yet. I just want to essentially walk around a bit and check out the place, look at the consoles, star out the window at the FTL waves (oh wrong show, lol), etc. So the (voyager style) hallway kit may be a good thing to grab.
So, I got the TNG sick bay, and engine room. I also just got a set of 2270 uniforms. Some time ago I did get some other stuff for a different outfit, that I never got to try out. This is going to be a good mix of, generations, lol. I can imagine some trekkies are going to be having wrong timeline spasms over this combo (myself included), lol.
Luxus notes to self.
The add surface is not a right-click in the surface tab. it is that menu icon top-right in the tab pane.
I was just checking out some new stuff, and decided to throw some random dials. Well, I think I'm saving this random set of shaping dials.
"V7 RebeKelly", as in Rebecca and Kelly
http://www.daz3d.com/kelly-for-victoria-7
http://www.daz3d.com/p3d-rebecca
The skin mats at the moment are Kelly's with the diffuse cranked out to lighten the skin tone a tad (I'll try a few other options as this is pushing that one set of mats to far on the palms).
Also used.
http://www.daz3d.com/endless-summer-ponytail-for-genesis-3-female-s
http://www.daz3d.com/abigail-outfit-for-genesis-3-female-s
http://www.daz3d.com/slide3d-100-hands-for-genesis-3-female-s
Fabric Basics Iray, in 3delight. In what engine!? 3delight, lol.
http://www.daz3d.com/fabric-basics-mix-and-match-for-iray
Well, just a quick look at two random 'Texture' presets with the "02 Brown 1" color preset applied. Not even converting anything to a 3delight shaders, just hit spot-render using the Iray shader in the presets. This was just a quick "Dose it work at all" test in 3delight.
Now honestly, this would probably be a face close up whit a small bit of collar showing, at possibly 4k resolution. Because of the complete lack of polygons of this test vase, it normally wrecks havoc with some shaders, and this is looking really good I think (smooth shading on the vase curves and all). I'll try this at a different tiling to check that out next. 4x tiling from the preset folder.
For those among us, that just can't resist the urge to grab maps out of the folder and place them at will in different surface tab channels, this shader has, lots of maps to pick and chose from.
Now in honesty, there are still some things that don't work exactly the same in 3delight with the Iray shader (Reflection for one). So I'll need to try the Glitter and Shine options to see what that dose (in both the 4.8 and 4.9beta Studio versions). I do know, the mirror ball I sometimes use, needs to be done with a shader explicitly for the render engine (LuxRender, Iray, 3delight, etc). So some options may not work the same, not to say the results won't be good for something else unexpectedly. Just some things in the Iray Shader do not translate over in the 3delight engine properly, without converting the surface over to a 3delight shader first.
Yea, as expected, this is with the 'Metallic' of 'High' set on both of them. It's not all bad tho, the one on the left (Knit Plain V) at 2x tiling here, reminds me of Office chair fabric.
Yea, no Metallic gloss or glitter with the Iray Shader in 3delight. If you have this shader set, I don't think there is anything keeping you from taking the maps and dropping them into a 3delight shader yourself for your renders. I'll experiment with that next, this was just a first look at the shader in 3delight. Now the fun begins.
Colors, I almost for got that. The Iray shader base color options work nicely as is in 3delight.
And no, that is NOT all the color options. It's more like a tiny sampling of them.
Just a quick test render. Normal map in the Daz Default shader on the Left, Texture map used as bump in the middle, and the Iray original right. Oh, this is still 3delight.
Same as above, with a different texture in the Diffuse channel, tiling set to 2x2.
Now that looks good, however I sould add color to that.
I decided to change the vase on the right from Texture-map in Bump over to Displacement. Just to see what happens.
Yea, I could have made the Bump/Displacement min/max a tad more pronounced on the right vase, however it is there. On to the next experiment.
The glitter uses metalic flakes which 3DL doesn't have so that won't work at all.
I kind of figured that may be the case (I hadn't looked at those settings in the surface tab yet). I had experimented with making a few maps to fake glitter in 3DL for rocks, and that just never came out with speckles as brilliant as the real thing (mica, granite, etc). There is also a cool fingernail shader for Poser (or was, it was an old set when I discovered it) that is similar to the Iray shader, in that it uses a script to produce the glitter effect instead of maps. The other difficulty with 3DL and glitter, is getting the speckles to be the right size, independent of the tile setting of the surface. Many are quite happy Photo shopping there renders, and it is easy to add glitter or noise in Post Processing, so they would not be worried about dull glitter speckles.
As for shiny settings, The AElflaed's Fancy shader has some really nice gold/silver presets. It would be easy to add color to those, or even mix these maps with that shader. The big downside is how 3DL dose reflections off a rough surface, the bump/displacement will need to be backed off allot on the strength. Case and point, with the same exact Normal/Displacement settings as above. Also it may be better with a darker Diffuse then this first test.
The normal maps are also quite strong on some of the maps, since Iray has the normal strength slider I didn't worry about it but 3DL doesn't.
Our Lune Nails product has a 3DL shader with glitter, and a partial preset to apply it over other things.. That one's done with a noise map. It's not as cool as Iray's metalic flakes but it's acceptable.
I'll need to look at that Lune shader then. although I think your normal map (LDFbcBscs_KnitV_Nor) is making a fool of me, that is starting to look like speckles in that render (left vase). It would be nice to be able to have a render stop prematurely on some surfaces and keep going everywhere else, lol.
However, things change when a progressive render nears completion, lol. I upped the Displacement min/max on the right vase from +/-0.1 to +/- 0.25, and added a slightly different version of the texture map to the specular channels on both vases (Byz2H in Diffuse, Byz1 in Specular).
There is a cloth that I have tried to mimic for a really long time now, that the left vase (the one with a Normal Map) is starting to resemble here. I have doubts it would still have those nice white speckles in a regular render with a really fine grained Shading Rate (something to test when I don't need to use my computer for some time).
Wow. I just had to try a color picked from some cloth, and do a larger spotrender. Byz1 in Specular, same Normal/Displacement as above.
A little bit of a Status on colors as I'm on my first cup of coffee. Reflection in the OmUber is slow (hour per spot render, instead of five min with reflection off), and thus my progress has not been fast paced. When I turn off the reflection the spot renders go very fast, tho it also changes the color significantly because of what I'm experimenting with. So it may take a bit of time to cobble up a large collection of choices for myself (and to share the settings for others).
So, what about those colors. I decided to stop just throwing random color values at the color selection window, and go with more realistic colors sampled from photographs. Ah, from where, just a quick search for "Cloth Color" will do. I sampled a few pixels from each of three spots in each photo, and averaged them together for 'diffuse' ambient illuminated, Velvet illuminated from a glancing angle, and Specular. I then rounded up/down to the nearest multiple of 8 and gave it a try. I'm not worried about missing colors yet, as the values can be rotated around from each original to give me the rest, akin to a "rotate right with carry" on the RGB values (R to G, G to B, B to R). I still haven't sampled a Yellow or Orange yet (Gray, black, pink, etc).
As for that reflection experiment, I had located that 'Glitter' map in my CL from the "Lune Nails" (LDNailsShaderGlitter.jpg), dropped it into reflection strength, and ran a few tests as I was looking at different cloth colors and brightness. The following is all with that reflection glitter on. With the Normal map (left vase) the glitter is almost there, however with bump of displacement it is somewhat lacking. I'm not sure 'Reflection was the best choice for that given the render performance and results, so I'll try the Glitter map in a Specular channel next.
Oh yea, that went much faster. Now I need to look at the rest of the Specular (1 and 2) settings to figure out what is best for what. And as you can see, it's a bit dimmer then the 'Sky blue' in the former Post. Hmmm.
So random thoughts as I do test renders on the Specular settings.
Why OmniUber or AoA shader instead of the Daz Default. Velvet, even individual cloth fibers have a velvet to them, and the DazDefault dose not have a 'Velvet' that I could locate. So the results will almost always have a hint of Ceramic or porcelain with the Daz Default shader. And as I'm seeing with my own experiments, the OmniUber and AoA shaders don't always have a drastic increase in render times, IF the settings are used sparingly (Only what is needed to mimic the surface in 3Delight, turn the rest "Off").
I'm doing test renders at the moment, and the only settings that are turned "On", is Diffuse, Specular1, and Velvet. The renders are starting almost instantly with No face-plant, and there running to completion really fast with the OmniUber Shader.
Another funny note to self, lol. If I'm using the Vertical weave bump/normal maps, I should probably use the Vertical texture maps as well, lol.
I'm starting to get really bad shading bands from the geometry of the vase, so I guess I'm fumbling in the wrong direction. Rrrrr, what is that obscure setting that just made life so much better, "Trace Displacements" (On). That made a drastic improvement to that deep shadow bottom left on the vase.
This is a very nice black, inspired by my shower curtain. It's got that hint of red in it, and a nylon gloss of sorts that shimmers. It's not exactly like other black cloths. It almost reminds me of something. A shade of black so deep your eye just kind of slides off it, and it shimmered when you looked at it, Oh, wrong show, lol.
What makes AoA and 3DL Uber take so long is the SSS primarily, translucence with Uber adds a little time but not the insane face plant time of SSS.. so if you avoid SSS you'll be fine. Uber is still a bit faster than AoA and handles reflection much better. The addition of the extra specular channel and velvet is why I use Uber for almost everything, I only use dz default for eyes, really, but it depends on the situation.. if I'm not going to need those extra two settings I'll leave it on dz default just to gain that minute amount of render speed. Right tool for the job and all that.