VDB apocalypse?

DarkElegance

https://www.daz3d.com/vdb-apocalypse

 

Bought it abit ago, excited to play with it as I have a couple of the other products.

Today, built the scene, went to find the booms and loaded what was supposed to be the "KVPA Rectangle fire". Loaded in as a large blue blob.
Went into the shaders, made sure this would be bright and fiery. Set the transparency etc...

DId a "NVIDIA" display(as I still cant spot render) and.....Nothing.
A touch confused as the other products I have of similar kind, I have not had issues with.
So went to the materials for it, doubt checked all the ones I was choosing. Tried to re-apply them.
Tried for the preview...NOTHING.
Its still showing the blue blob in "texture preview" but in "NVIDIA" or test render, nothing visible.

Go to the parameters, noted "Visible in render" is automatically off when loading. So, I click it to be visible. Test again. Nothing.

Go to "Surfaces" and...despite making sure the VDB was selected when applying the materials....it was just bog standard blue. No emission settings, no volume, nothing.

I have deleted it. Reloaded it and tried all the proper steps again. NOTHING. The materials wont apply. Nothing changes when you try and apply them

Before anyone asks:
Yes, I made sure to select the prop. Made double sure by selecting it in view port then went to the surface tab and made sure it was selected, before trying to apply material settings.
Yes, I have made sure the NVIDIA settings are what I have used before with previous VDB items. SO that I know they work. (Images in gallery to show)
Yes, I have double checked my system settings. (for the billionth time)
Yes, I made sure the prop was in the view of the camera(even if it hadnt been, the setting I had tried to apply to it for emission should have lit up the scene)
Yes, for the fourth time since starting this post, I just reached over and tried all steps again. When trying to apply material settings -nothing- happens at all.

 

EDIT: oh the joy! So I went to one of the other sets I have for explosions. Ones I have used before
https://www.daz3d.com/pyromantix--volumetric-infernos

 

And....they dont work now! The smoke loads, but trying to get it to emit light doesnt work. I went into the surface settings and ramped up the emission settings and...nothing. Just black blob of "smoke"
I have used these before and rather fond of them. Are they useless now??

I did right click on the thumbnail and do the "Update metadata" on all my "fires" but it doesnt seem to fix anything.

If these are useless now??

 

EDIT 2: I have now downloaded the files manually and installed them that way in case there was in issue in installation. But guess what? No go still.
 

EDIT 3: so, I saved the built scene and opened a blank one. NOTHING in it. Loaded the VDB apocalypse explosion. Blue blob loads. I twiddle with it. I get it to work. Test a few settings. It looked good.
I then open the scene that I was working on. Loaded the exact same prop and...nothing. No matter what I change in the KVAP VDB container, it wont show in the scene. The scene is one I have used before. In this piece
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/5029014901096448#gallery=album8912012&page=2&image=1284521
That is also one of the explosions that now won't work.  (BTW, yes I have removed the "fog" etc as I did in the first piece)

But for the life of me, I can not get any of the "fires" or "VDB" to work in the scene now. The ones used in that image https://www.daz3d.com/iray-fireworx-2 ; won't work now. Cant get them to look like explosions at all. Just black...no matter how I twiddle the emission or anything.

Richard Haseltine

You are using Daz Studio 4.22.0.1 (or later, should people look at this thead in future)?

DarkElegance

Richard Haseltine said:

You are using Daz Studio 4.22.0.1 (or later, should people look at this thead in future)?

The brand spanking new one.

Which was why I bought the newer VDB.

I have been fighting with this thing...the prop works in a blank scene. I can get it to show up. But not in the scene with the stairs etc.

I removed fog, I removed some of the lights, I cant figure this out.
 

Daventaki

I hope someone can help you. I don't have that particular product(s) but I threw a couple of different fire VDBs in a scene with the Daz3d Horse and its working fine.

Have you tried a different scene besides blank?

 

Richard Haseltine

What is the Environment Mode set to in the scene that won't work?

DarkElegance

Richard Haseltine said:

What is the Environment Mode set to in the scene that won't work?

Light is dome and scene, no matte fog, no ground fog, light resolution 512(bog standard)

 

the scene comes with multiple lights set along the stairs.

Its one of those sets by dreamlight. https://www.daz3d.com/render-in-a-box--secret-factory
So I loaded it, then added the figures, posed and tried to add the VDB.

when it didnt work as noted, I removed the fog, etc.

DarkElegance

FIXED IT!

I had deleted the fogs, but in the "secret factory" selection on the scene tab(fogs are listed separately along with the lights) there was an “atmosphere” box.
This I assume was a volume (to enhance the fog?)
I deleted that and tried again and we are not working with gas!

SO, you cant have any “atmosphere”(often used to show god rays) or "fog" to use them, apparently.

BTW I had gone and looked up vids in regards to using items like this...I havent seen this mentioned before. I am guessing if you want to use the fires/explosions you can't then have an “atmosphere” use add a smokey feel to the scene?


I guess smokey in postwork!

 

Richard Haseltine

have you tried temporarily removing the supplied fog effects> There might be a conflict there (I don't have that product to test).

DarkElegance

Richard Haseltine said:

have you tried temporarily removing the supplied fog effects> There might be a conflict there (I don't have that product to test).

Aye my post just above you, noted how I fixed it.

But a secondary problem.

I kept ramping up the render settings. Trying to get the issue fixed but...the scene rendered sharp as a tack...but the VDB was pixeled to heck!
It looked like it had been made in minecraft!

I tried everything to get it to look like well an explosion. But it kept coming out seriously blocky.

In postwork I managed to sort it...kind of. But I really wish I didnt have to go in blur, liquify to get the corners off etc.

ANY idea how to fix that?

Richard Haseltine

Have you tried reloading, incase it was one of the settings you changed while trying to solve the other issue? Mine renders smooth in a quick test, though being a complex material it takes a while to converge (lose the noise).

DarkElegance

Richard Haseltine said:

Have you tried reloading, incase it was one of the settings you changed while trying to solve the other issue? Mine renders smooth in a quick test, though being a complex material it takes a while to converge (lose the noise).

 

Once I took out the “atmosphere” cube, it was smooth going with it.
The image was rendered in the 8k site from the “presets”.  I refined it a touch and hit render. EVERYTHING else was nice and crisp(almost too crisp) but the explosion...looked like minecraft fire.
I cancelled, tried to up the settings to smooth out any artefacts/noise and ...more cubes.
It was very very pixled. In the "NVIDIA" preview, it was smooth.
But in an actual large render...minecraft fire.

So small render(preview window) It looks great.
BIG final render....minecraft fire blocks.

 

 

 

EDIT:

So this is a quick render at

3840x2160 
max sample:15000
render quality:2
Pixel filter radius was dropped down to 0.50(I kept lowering it to try and get a better render and nope)
 See corner for what I mean by massive pixeling.
as you can see the figures came out nicely(even on this quick small render)
But the VDB....nope

Richard Haseltine

I tried a 4,000 pixel square render (with just a human) and didn't get blockiness, though there is an odd planar artefact across the image that doesn't match figure, VDB, or floor plane (I had to crop and compress it to upload).

DarkElegance

Richard Haseltine said:

I tried a 4,000 pixel square render (with just a human) and didn't get blockiness, though there is an odd planar artefact across the image that doesn't match figure, VDB, or floor plane (I had to crop and compress it to upload).

In mine was the stairs and room(walls). The two figures and the VDB.
Even on smaller render it went blocky. On the full size it looked like it looked like stacked blocks.
I up'ed the render settings. I then lowered them to just the base settings when you open DS...and in the preview window on the NVIDIA preview. Looks good.
Render and it goes all blocky.

I went to the items settings. I cant see anyway to increase resolution for it(I saw a vid by a guy that does allot of DS tutorials on youtube, talking about how to fix VDB pixelation but its not for DS its done in another program).
So I am at a loss on how to fix this.

 

Richard Haseltine

Is your scene far from the world centre (the zero translation point)? What happens if you change the Instance Optimisation setting in Render Settings (to anyhting, then change it back to Memory if you have instances).

DarkElegance

Richard Haseltine said:

Is your scene far from the world centre (the zero translation point)? What happens if you change the Instance Optimisation setting in Render Settings (to anyhting, then change it back to Memory if you have instances).

After the eye issue thing, I try to get my scene "clusters" as close to, if not, on the world centre. I know that some odd things happen when you take certain objects away from it. So that VDB was just to the left on the x axis and a touch forward on the z axis But due to size, it wasnt much. I moved it just to make the downward dip section be under the figures.

YT

Did anyone find a fix for the "minecraft" problem? Just ran into the same problem and i don't know what to do. Spend some hours on the scene before i noticed this :/