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The results of all that work. With the hair from scratch items, I had to make it go into the smart tab manually. The color presets just magically appeared there in the proper place (once the proper metadata was put in).
The culmination of all that work in the former three posts, and rereading that guide multiple times.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/20018/
Now I just need to remember how I saved these color presets to begin with, so I can do up the workshop stool with colors. that was many cups of coffee ago, lol.
Material preset it was, lol.
After making some green moccasins to go with the Faylinn Outfit, I still had to do a bit of "Contend DB editor" work. Namely remove that "Unassigned" category, and add the proper one.
(EDIT)
Thanks so much Fisty for making the different parts, different surface zones. I used different shades of green on my "Gray-scaled" map, from the original mats. AKA not something I can share. Tho I can explain how to do it with a simple editor.
1) find the original diffuse color map.
2) open it in an image editor, and convert it to a gray-scale image.
3) save it back into that folder with a new name.
4) load the shoes in daz, and go to the surface tab.
5) click the little picture under diffuse, and change the image to the gray one you made.
6) click the color select box next to the diffuse image, and pick a color... and done.
7) use a "Material Preset" to save the combo, if you want to use it again elsewhere.
Been busy, mostly finding lost stuff in the CL. loading, saving as DUF in My Library (Daz side), and encoding Metadata is easier, once the proper settings is figured out. The biggest time consumer is finding the stuff that loads the sets, not the color mats, lol.
I just noticed a bad square effect with some lights interacting with a shader. I was unsure at first if it was just the Phoebe leather shaders by Fisty, or a bad setting with a light somewhere.
The squares seam to scale in size proportional to the shading rate, very bad if I want to do quick mid quality renders that otherwise don't need day-long render-time shading rates..
I have narrowed it down to the "Overhead Glow" light from the "Surfer Guy Lights" from the tutorial. There dose not appear to be a setting fro a block size or anything in the default settings. So my temporary solution will simply be to not use the light from now on. The uber Panels seam to be exceptionally well suited to the task, when a point, sphere or spot light wont do the trick.
I have reproduced the artifact here with a plane sphere instead of an outfit collar, Using the Phoebe shader black leather preset. With the Overhead Glow turned off, the steps go away entirely at any Sample-rate setting. Here arer Sample Rates of 0.5, 1.0, and No OG at 1.0 :coolhmm:
For a quick recap, this was All the settings for that Overhead Glow light, before it's removal. If it is going to make chunky surfaces out of perfectly good shaders, it is, fired.
Questions I don't know the Answers to, yet.
So the question is, what dose this do that other lights cant?
Cant I just use a uber sphere light instead, with falloff turned on?
Would a Uber Panel across the ceiling be better, or would the angle to the floor cause bad washout effects?
Serena Show Girl bundle, and XTech Dreadlock Ponytail.
A surprisingly good looking combo with there stock color presets. The orange band on the dreadlocks ponytail, came with the Xtech hair.
http://www.daz3d.com/xtech-dreadlock-ponytail-for-genesis-2-female-s
And yes, that is FWSA Serena HD. There is a bundle that dose not include the Xtech hair.
http://www.daz3d.com/serena-show-girl-hd-bundle-character-outfit-and-hair
Mirroring a pose.
For quite some time, I wanted to have a left handed archer, etc.
http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/art/Settings-For-DS4-To-Mirror-Pose-284750244
Yes the Shift-Y works.
However for some 'Caned' poses, like the night elf archer pose. There are hidden angles or something that don't get flipped exactly. Still it is far better then nothing to work with. Ignore the skirt, I was rather hasty to try this. There are a few other options in that window, I have yet to try, one of them may work.
Swap sides, not left copy to right, lol.
It may be that the pose uses the PoseControls on the figure root as well as the local transforms. The Pose Controls won't be swapped.
I had it copying left to right, not swapping them. it was my bad.
Been fussing with getting a surface to not just block light, but reflect it somewhere else. No luck as of yet, and I don't expect to without faking it. That implies me calculating out where the light is supposed to be reflecting off to, instead of the computer doing that for me... Come on Daz, you can reflect light, can't you, lol.
There's a problem with your "Ring Platform", lol.
O.K that was probably to complex for a first try. Time for a simpler test, a much simpler test. two other lights to try still.
The plane is 8ft in size, and tiled with a gray graph paper of sorts only on the diffuse box.
The pillar is 2in x 2in x 4ft. Black diffuse, White Specular, 100% reflection strength.
The dzSpotLight set to 64 shadow samples, 0.10 bias. (EDIT, forgot to mention, Yes Ray-trace shadows. I don't use any other setting, I don't like "leopard skin" surprises.)
As Spock has quoted, "Fascinating". Time to get some minds onto this one. I need to know where the light is reflecting to, not guessing and faking it.
Hmm, not the light. Found the DG Jell lights, and tried the menu light as well. Same result, no reflection of the light, just a shadow.
Time to look at the surface doing the reflection, or not doing the reflection. "To Reflect, or Not to Reflect light".
Hi Sieur Z!
I just saw your thread, and all the things that you are observing here seem well... normal. So I made some tests on my side with a plane, a pillar and a cone. I just used another pattern on the floor. Well everything seems to correspond to the laws of ray tracing, I don't see any particular abnormal behavior. I don't know if I already told you but basically I'm a physicist specialised in light and matter interaction at all levels including the visible photometry and colorimetry. I only mention that now in order underline the fact that I'm really sure of what I'm saying since I spent years "ray tracing" several hours a day, and seeing visually how rays behaved (using this : http://www.optis-world.com/products/software/speos-LM-OW.html almost everyday).
And all I see here really looks physically correct. So I tell to myself that maybe I don't understand what the issue you mention is, or maybe you just expect something which is not supposed to happen under this specific test conditions.
The spot sends rays with an angular repartition defined by the user. Outside of the light cone there is not light. Inside the propagated light cone, you have two areas : the one which will be directly sent on the plane, and the one sent on the pillar. The pillar being 100% Reflective, no light ray can go through it meaning that in the shadow projected by the pillar on the floor, there is no incoming ray. No incoming ray in the shadow means no exiting ray too, so no light can be reflected out of this shadow, since there is no light "at all" there...
Physically, only regarding reflections there are two main families of reflection, the diffuse ones and the specular ones. They take into account the surface quality (the size and density of surface defects). In practice in compugraphics, this is divided in a diffuse component, a BRDF (or specular) one and a reflective one, which is not 100% rigorous since everything should be gathered in one single huge BRDF model, but well practical and efficicent to simulate reality anyway : DAZ is just splitting the different components of reflection in 3 separate independant sub-components (diffuse/specular/reflection).You can also add an ambient component, often an easy way to compensate the lack of ambient light in virtual scenes.
Now watching your images, I have the feeling that maybe you search to see the shadows less dark. What happens here is the famous "lack of environment" (objects or lights) in 3D scenes. In reality, light is coming from everywhere, from all the directions. There are several solutions to "correspond to" that.
The thing is that if you use diffuse elements surrounding your scenes, this is not really efficient because the diffuse reflections dilute the power in the 2Pi steradians in front of them, and since you are using only a small solid angle of the scene, there is a huge loss if information in the system (this is why reverse ray tracing is some softwares is so interesting), meaning that you might have to launch millions of rays to catch only a few ones.
I guess this is why, in DAZ, the diffuse light sent by one surface is not visible on an adjacent one if is is only diffuse. This is close to what happen when working with perfect diffusers in real life. In DAZ you can add a ray component in the shader mixer to see some rays, but you then have to increase sample cone and samples to begin to see it, this in not cool and efficient. So approximations must be made. In DAZ, for this I guess the fastest way is to use the existing tools provided to fake "globally" the presence of a surrounding environment.
For this the fastest and most efficient solutions rely in "ambient or equivalent" components. You can for instance add an ubersphere with a small ambient component or just increase a bit the ambient component of the elements of your scene. For instance, when you increase the ambient of your floor, it will behave just as it is was receiving light "uniformly" from a surrounding envirnoment (this is the famous 'lacking' light in 3D) and was reflecting it back "uniformly". This is fake, but the 3D is a fake representation of an environment...
I'm gonna stop here because I'm not sure that I'm not "out of your issue", but if it is the case the fastest solution is ambient components, light or on materials.
I put you some images here of what I tried to do...
Now a few more test on diffuse surfaces. Here the test scene, on the right a 100% diffuse and nothing else plane, in the middle a very powerful spot pointing only on this plane, and facing it the "recuperation" plane. Now if the recuperation plane is diffuse alone, we won't see anything, so I shadered mixed the diffuse to add a ray tracing (then clamped) after the diffuse.
Conclusion : the "diffuse" surfaces reflect light backwards, but on the secondary object (the plane facing) you need a real reflection to see it, you will have nothing neither using specular, nor diffuse, but rays yes.
You see a focused of defocused reflection depending on the sample cone you chose but even with 512 ray samples this is so noisy when defocused.
All was made shadow dept max.
I think it tends to confirm that diffuse reflects light back in space, but the energy is too diluted over the 2 pi sr solid angle so that it is not exploitable. This is my feeling about that. Ambient lights of any type are your friends. :)
thanks very much for the tests, and bringing up that "add a ray tracing (then clamped) after the diffuse." bit. something to look into, if that is the only way to have a mirror in daz reflect light from a light, and not just other illuminated surfaces.
That last render gives me some hope. would changing the surface on the right in that test into a mirror have different results?
I was thinking more like an Optical Table (laser sand box) of sorts, more then a bathroom mirror. Your first set of tests show that daz studio duplicates shadows perfectly, as you noted. However that mirror would not just absorb the light it is blocking, it will reflect it some where else. It is that somewhere else that the light is reflected to that I am interested in. Where is the mirror reflecting the light to? Or two mirrors for that matter.
I realize that I am probably asking to much of daz studio, to say, "this surface" will reflect light to illuminate other surfaces, not just images of other illuminated surfaces.
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/42066
Thank you, I will be quite buisy till Monday, pleas have a good weekend.
In closing, The making of "strange substance undergarment armor", lol.
I think something got lost in translation from my end earlier, I'm sorry. I'm Hoping a pic can portray what my lack of spelling can't.
direct illumination, yes daz can.
shadows, yes daz can.
indirect illumination off of a mirror, I don't know how to make Daz Studio do that.
DAZ Standard Lights are stupid by default. :-)
My guess to add more realism and get the desired effect you will need the Uberenvironment in addition to your Spotlight.
Set the Environment Mode at least to Bounce Light. => http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/5320/#67937
Environment Mode set to Occlusion or Indirect Lighting should also do the job.
Soft Shadows when there is no Image Map applied to the Uberenvironment.
Directional Shadows when there is a Image Mape applied to the Uberenvironment.
If you want light to bounce you can try using the caustic tools in Shader Mixer or you can use Reality or Luxus to send to LuxRender (or use Octane and its plug-in). Using GI bounce in uber Environment may help somewhat but won't give true bounced light.
Time is short this morning. I must leave shortly for a Wake, Mother-In-Law.
Thanks for the link MN, Very good point, and adamr001's render looks far better then my results. I had quickly tried briefly with the more complicated scene, to get rings of light on the ceiling from the light fixture with UE2, and failed. I tried again with that Mirror-Pillar test to no avail. It is probably my settings, Or I'm asking to much of Daz Studio.
Using the Menu lights, Uber lights, DzSpotLights, or even the "IDG Luminous Fae - Dual Layer Gel Lights for DS", Makes no difference at all. The light is refusing to reflect off of the pillar to make a patch of light opposite to the shadow.
Now using the light over my stove, My clipboard with some graph paper, and a mechanics mirror. I can show you exactly what the "Mirror-Pillar test" should look like, almost exactly (minus the handle part of the mirror, and it's shadow).
Now my 5 minutes of fun this morning has taken over 30 minutes to do :coolsmile: , I must run :down: . Chat later y'all. Life is to short, not to enjoy.
(EDIT 27Oct2014 06:48UTC, Finally got a chance to label the pics)
F.Y.I.
It is with my deepest regrets, to inform you. That after a considerable battle fought by Suanne Allen and the Hospital staff, against pneumonia, repeat heart attacks, weakening muscles, and other complications of MMD1. A battle that raged on in ICU for over a month and a half. The most difficult and unimaginable decision was finally made at 6pm on Tuesday October 21 of 2014.
My parents divorced, and my father married Suanne back in 1994. They enjoyed checking out yard sails, restoring miscellaneous furniture items, and collecting various trinkets to decorate the house with. The decorating bit was mostly Suanne, as my father was more into recording studio stuff then how to dress up a living room. Tho I thought it was fine full of expensive equipment, or lots of pretty things collected at yard sails and made to look good again after some work.
I will return later tonight. Richard Haseltine, that looks good, till I failed to copy the surfaces over to another scene. Is there a vid to show how to set up that Caustics thing? (EDIT, and can it work with multiple reflective surfaces?)
So sorry for your loss, ZDG.
My condolences to you and your family! :-(
Thank you all. I think I'm doing O.K. This time, unlike with Jeff (BBHG) and Joel (FreeClyde). I'm more worried about my father. I mostly just didn't want y'all to think I was just blowing you off, as I've been rather busy. To busy to install Hexagon and learn the basics, to busy to be more active with the RRRR contest, to busy to finish the Darth mall horns. And Friday threw now, I just didn't have time to go threw Kadix's posts, and try to comprehend everything in that set of posts. I'm sorry I have not been around more.
It is Monday, it is a new day. A chance to try to ketch up.
Recap Part1.
Kadix #192. Direct light, shadows, and ambient ‘lacking’ light.
Thoroughly agreed, and confirmed by the "Mirror-Pillar test" and the "Ring Platform light fixture". UE2 dose a really good job of adding that Ambient ‘lacking’ light component to a scene.
Kadix #193. "ray tracing (then clamped)"??? hu??? how?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/701026/
That is way more then just the Surface tab stuff... isn't it? It must be. Is that in the "bump and displacement map inverting" spaghetti-land?
Another reason I am so happy with Amazing skins. I don't need to fuss with spaghetti, just turn a few dials and render.
Recap part2
Missed making a post on Thursday. I tried in absolute stupidity to save the surface settings (Shader preset) of the Daz logo in the demo scene, and apply it to the Pillar that had drastically different simpler settings.
Obviously it didn't work, as that surface is somehow connected to the second camera, and another plane over the visible floor in the scene. It must require some Spaghetti magic of sorts to make it work from that one render angle alone. It dose not work from anywhere else in the scene, I did try that.
Attached settings for the different reflective surfaces between the two scenes. Simple Mirror-pillar vs Spaghetti magic settings. I somehow managed to break the chrome finish on the demo, it now loads up black, oops. :red: I really broke it well, lol. Looks like an uninstall to fix that.
Well, I was under the delusion that I could just let DIM pour Hexagon into my computer for me. :blank:
Time to go to that forum, and find the install 101. Especially if this is anything like DIM forgetting where the Daz Studio content folders are.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/categories/65/
??? or do a Google search for that I guess. :ohh: (EDIT, never mind that, Linux only!? yea right. New thread it is.)
Installing Hexagon 2.5 on win7 64bit, for the Technically Challenged.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/48053/
And I have to manually type in that code that appears longer then some cypher-key access codes. I hope I don't inadvertently set off the Curvy Maya Blender in the Light Wave Nuke Silo, lol.
Well not much done with Hex last night, and I still need to label the screen-caps in that other thread. I did fuss with some Daz Studio Primitives while looking at what Hex stuff is where in the interface.
The "Generation" mainframe. Just an intellectual exercise from years ago. After the first test renders, I was quite impressed with how Epic the thing looked. Looking at the outline on graph paper is one thing, rendered, it really is just chin-dropping. As if it is saying, I'm not just another cluster, I am in the big guns league.
I was going to completely enclose the beast in panels, tho after finishing covering the cable-ways, it just screamed "stop right there".
- CPUs & RAM left, Chip-set per se in the center, and HPSS local caching on the right.
- Gray rack Units are the "Compute Stuff" units, purple rack units are the distributed "Local Power Converters".
- Complete enclosed AC Cooling system with direct liquid secondary coolant to each component. AC-to-Liquid house coolant heat exchangers are under the floor. The air in the room dose NOT cool this Mainframe.
- VAPS 1kX, Variable Architecture Processing System, 1024bit RISK. A minor twist on the Kurzweil VAST with ALU/FPU units instead of oscillators and effects.
(EDIT, yes the shape was inspired by DNA. Preteen sims of the time were a daunting workload for the then "TOP500" machines.)
It's B.C. (Before Coffee). I noticed an update filter threw when I was going for the Hex install, for the Dark Elves product. I honestly have no idea what it is about, tho I am curious as it was shortly after a thread about the Time it takes to show "First Pixel" for adjusting lights and stuff. I had mentioned Dark Elves there as on my old computer, it took over an hour at the lowest render settings possible "To show first pixel". The new computer is much faster, tho it still takes forever when I just want to know if a light needs to be nudged up/down more in brightness.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/47663/
Well, I'll look at that today. And wonder if such a beast of a Mainframe could really make that first pixel appear quicker with such shaders, lol.
Another render as I know there are people out there that like to see there computers, well, naked. :coolsmirk:
Yes I yanked some of the cross members from between the racks, to lower the poly-count, as there not visible with the racks filled.
Yellow - Power, Orange - Fiber optic conduits, Red - Hot return coolant, Blue - Cool supply coolant...
I almost forgot this, after Hexagon crashing, and messing with trying to move Bones in the View-Field in Daz Studio (What am I missing madcatlady? I can move the end points, but the bones don't move, lol.).
The Generation Mainframe. More Guts, and More naked... :coolhmm:
I need to stop there, as the object count, or the Poly-count is really slowing down the View-Field in Daz Studio. Sory, the Boot-Control/Service-Control-Modals will simply need to be in a separate scene with the DEG units (Data Exchange Grid. hub/switch of sorts), IF I ever get around to modeling them in 3D.
Got Hex not to crash. On to the next thing (For re-rigging skirts). The bones are not moving for me. When Wendy grabs one of them things to move the end-points, the bone stays between them. I try that and it stays in place. I can move that red-end-point anywhere in the scene, and the bone dose not stay with it, WTH!?
(EDIT)
"O" one other thing for things like keyboard trays and drawers. I see options for independent XYZ rotations, and scaling weight-maps. No Transits?
Well minimal success thus far. I figured out that If I change the "Rotation Order" from XYZ to YZX, the child bones stack end to end instead of being off at horizontal. I still cant get the things to go off at an angle by moving the end-point around. (I Found an appropriate emoticon at least. sherv.net)