Reality 4.2 ~ Learn It ~ Chat With Paolo ~ WIPS ~ Renders Showcase!
Novica
Posts: 23,887
Reality 4.2 (Daz Studio version) Reality 4.2 (Poser version)
IN PROGRESS
This thread spans all levels of expertise, from new users to those creating masterpieces. I'm personally starting from scratch, and it's so nice to have such support when learning a new rendering approach. Imagine my delight at emailing Pret-A-3D and Paolo Ciccone personally helping me when I got stuck with installation. He really, really CARES that users of Reality enjoy their 3D art experience. BTW, first tip for installation- if your screen resolution is wrong, you won't be seeing your options that you need to click!
The User's Guide is AMAZING and I can heartily say if you are wary or a tiny bit anxious about trying new programs, this would be the one to try. The User's Guide is supplemented with videos, so for learners who like print, you're covered, and if you like someone chatting with you and taking you through it, well, you're covered too. The videos go slowly and are superb IMO.
First, in this post and the next, I am providing, in order, links to see firsthand what the program does and how easy it is to use. I'll add to the links as I go (I know there's more, I just want to ensure the videos are done in a logical order for new users.) I will also put popular links from within the thread (an Index) so you can have a handy reference. Because the Users Guide and the videos do a stellar job of teaching you Reality, there's no need to create the wheel with a "starting from scratch" how-to. Follow my links, in order, and you'll have no problem using Reality.
The chat with Paolo, from Friday, Feb 26, 2016, begins on page two.
This thread is also for Reality renders (ONLY.) It would be nice if you would discuss your setup, even some settings- and help each other experiment with lighting. Others can make suggestions for you. ASK if you want input, and those giving suggestions, please do it kindly. We're not all Michelangelo! Talk in basic terms please. The offical Reality forum is located here, which also has a lot of information.
So Reality fans and new users, this thread's for you. To get started:
Reality 4.2 Users Guide (it has the videos linked in it, including these)
What's New In Reality 4.1 (Gives you a really good feel of the layout, etc)
Getting Started With Reality 4 (Studio Edition) You'll do this temple (or a room, whatever you have) step by step, in minutes. A VERY good one to start with.)
Reality 3 For Poser: Controlling Light While Rendering (Ignore the Poser and the version, this is what REALLY teaches you about lights) and watching this next video makes sense at this point: Using Smart IBL With Reality 4 Then go to Free Smart IBLs from HDRLabs and get your IBLs. If you want to make your own (which are faster than using a lot of lights, see below, "Making IBL From A Scene."
Using The Mesh Light Snoot (Take control of directing your light)
Other Links:
Making IBL From A Scene (instead of mesh lights, speed up render time significantly)
Cauchy and Caustics How to create beautiful caustics.
Explanation of CPU and GPU and Paolo's response to a question
Facebook page or (to avoid that annoying half page coverup until you log in) use Google+
Freebie: RealityLight Mesh Props- Floor & Curved Wall (The floor curves up into a wall and a surround-prop which provides even lighting. Also 3 mesh lights setup) (Link provided by Ademnus in May 2013 thread.)
More coming-
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Index of Thread- I'll get you to where you need to go in the posts for the main topics. The last date/page I indexed through will be listed. You should still surf the thread as I am not covering technical questions relating to specific computer setups/graphic cards etc which pertain to individuals. These topics relate to everyone. (New- DId page 7 on March 4)
Animations
Auto Linear and Linear
Blue Screen of Death How software works and why BSOD happens
Chat (With Paolo on February 26, 2016)
Create The Scene Without Rendering (Export)
CUDA Does LuxRender use CUDA or OpenCL?
Depth of Field Where to set it up
Eye Reflection Reducing the reflection
Glass Architectural, Volumetric, and Frosted rendering times, one tip
GPU/CPU/OpenCL
Graphics Cards Which brand to use, OpenCL
Graphics Cards Memory Use
Hidden Items In Daz Being Rendered
IBL From HDRLabs, what do I put in the IBL textbox in Reality Lights?
Keep UI Interface Responsive When Rendering
Making Changes How does it work in Studio and Reality if I want to change something in my render?
Materials: Auto Preset Saving your materials to re-use, and How To save the preset
Materials & Textures Defined by Paolo for Reality
Mirrors Thin Coat and IOR relationship
Mirrors Free shader for 3DL and Iray, not Reality. Use the one that comes with it.
Nodes and Explanation with GPU
OpenCL nVidia users need to get the drivers. Here's the link.
OpenCL Can you switch from CPU to OpenCL by pausing the render?
OpenCL and Macs
Refine Brush Does it work in accelerated modes?
Rendering Where do I set the rendering time?
Rendering Tip to speed up fine tuning your render
Rendering Two Or More Scenes
Samples Per Pixel Simple and Complex Scenes
Snoot: Does it render in the scene?
Stand alone version of Reality No. There isn't one.
Water IOR and Clarity At Depth
Announcement: Paolo will be here for a live chat this Friday at 8pm EASTERN TIME, Feb 26th, 2016.
If you haven't ever used Reality, you may want to go through the links in the first post so you can ask him questions. Seasoned users, get your questions ready and have fun with the technical expert! Please spread the word.
Before the chat, I think it would be nice if we could post some Reality renders for him to see. (I've only done one, I am one day into this.) So feel free to start posting anything about Reality, the thread is now open!
This was my first render (other than the temple tutorial) using three mesh lights and the IBL. I had just found the Tone Mapping section, thank goodness! This is Kendra and she is African American, hence the darker skin tones.
ISO 262.5 Shutter .530 F-Stop 6.25 Gamma 2.27
IBL 0.6978306 Mesh Side 0.3785515 Mesh Front 0.9646616 Mesh Top 3.9241898
Coordinates for the mesh lights- I'll add later. Running errands!
I have some serious questions on how to use textures/shaders in Reality. I've been over to the forums and still don't understand it. In Daz, you click on your shader, it applies itself to the dress or whatever. I can't figure out how to do this in Reality. I know there are some presets but for instance, if you use the leather preset there is only one option. which is black leather. There are a bunch of other preset materials but they all clearly go to specific items which is not what I was looking for.
Sonja- check out the Google+ link and see if those material posts help you. (link is in my first post.) I'm not that far yet (haven't read it.) Perhaps someone can help you before Paolo on Friday.
I will check them out. I have watched all the videos (I do that when I first purchase something and have been over to the forums and am just.... missing something I am sure. Need to go through the users guide again as well since its been a couple of months.
Good links Novica I think maybe I might kind of be starting to understand lol. There is another post there about saving presets that I am going to be going over very carefully as well. I can see some massive reading in my future (again). I went over a lot of this when I first purchased Reality but I didn't understand most of it. I know a lot more now and its starting to make a bit of sense. A little bit.... lol
Hi Novica.
Thank you very much for starting this thread and for your kind words about the product, the RUG--as the Reality User's Guide is affectionately called--and the videos. I pour all my care and energy in those and so it is really nice to see the recognition. Of course, the best part is to know that the educational material is useful.
Ice Dragon Art, I hear your and let me try to address your questions. Reality is designed to let the artist edit the materials.
While pre-made shaders can be convinient, the limitation of that model is that, if there is no shader that suits you, then you are out of luck. Also, the same shaders are used in several artworks and that can become obvious. I designed Reality with the goal to give every artist the ability to completely customize the materials.
Reality's materials are designed to be simpler and easy to edit by the artist, not just by the experts. That means that you might need to do just a little more work but you will get the personal result that is unique of your art. For example, if you take the black leather preset and apply it to a material and it takes two clicks to change it to another color.
By coincidence, I give a free webinar this coming Saturday, the 27th, in collaboration with Digital Art Live. I don't know if posting a link to it would be in violation of the TOS, so I don't do it. But you can find the link in our Facebook page. If you can't find it contact me via PM and I will send it to you.
Also, you might want to check my series of articles titled "Take Control of your materials" in my blog. Since you have Reality you know how to find our site. Just click on the Blog header. In the article I give a detailed description of how to customize materials.
Hope this helps.
Thank you! I will find it. I actually just read the 5 blog posts on materials this afternoon and it was definitely helpful as are your videos etc. Going to give the manual and videos another run through as well, as I said above, I am at least to the point that I now understand what's what as far as the basics go so I am hoping that more of it will stick this time around.
You read all 5 posts? My hat is off to you :) There is quite a bit of text there.
I'm not getting notifications of posts from this thread. Is this a known issue?
Since this thread is for posting images I'm adding a little contribution from my personal file:
Made with Reality. V4 with Dublin skin, untouched image, straight from rendering.
Click the gear in the upper right > click on your username > click the second gear > Edit Profile > Notification Preferences
And of course, don't forget to bookmark the thread
Thank you but the that was set a long time ago. I still don't get any reply.
Thank you, I will do that, but I thought that the notifications happen automatically when I post in a thread. The notification settings are configured to do so. Still,I don't get a single email.
I read very fast and in paragraphs (i'm a bit odd that way lol). I can read a 450 page paperback in 2 to 21/2 hours...
And this awesome one would never know she isn't a real person.
Thank you very much Sonja.
Ditto on this. :)
I don't have reality 4.2 yet. I am seriously looking at getting it. I am reading, learning, and asking questions to find out as much as I can, while waiting for some cash . lol
Hi Liana.
Thank you for your interest. Feel free to ask here, I will do my best to answer.
Cheers.
Liana, I would give you the same suggestion I gave to Sonja, consider joining us for the webinar this Saturday. It's free an it will give you a clear example of how things are done in Reality. The webinar will show practical, hands-on examples of how to achieve realistic materials. It's actually meant for people who never used Reality before.
Cheers.
Oh great! thank you so much for the invite. :)
couple of questions,
Does Reality 4.2 network render work for single images or just animations?
When purchasing, what do I get...? As in, obviously getting version 4.2.. what I want to know is am I just getting version 4.2, and no updates.. or a time limited update for say 1yr, or even till version 4.3, or 4.4, etc.. 4.9.. at version 5 I would need to rebuy?
I'm new to Daz..
All of my updates have been included and as far as I know will continue to be free. 4.2 is the most updated version and includes all previous updates as well. No idea on the animation though.
Beginner Questions:
Seems Reality really does not like "invisible" things, like clothing under clothing that has been "winked" out in DAZ Studio. I assume this is just a "feature". It is easy enough to just delete the excess things which have been winked out. Comes up mostly with clothing layers. It seems only important that you should get rid of winked out things before trying to render with Reality.
What settings in DAZ relating to a render carry over into Reality besides the camera view, pixel dimensions and aspect ratio? Do any of the settings like Bucket Size etc found in 3Delight setups get looked at? And of course the installed Mesh Lights and positions of them in the scene.
Lots of my renders seem to start with highlights blown out. And the histogram flat and barely above baseline. Any insights into what I am setting incorrectly? Is it normal for a Reality render to begin with what look like blown out highlights and then fill them in as it goes along?
I seem to get best results with channels clipped individually? any advice on Clamping methods?
Thanks in advance.
I just managed to update to 4.2.1 for DAZ and get it once again authorized. The only trick was finding the blasted order number yet again. And just broke down and upgraded to DAZ 4.9. Only took all day Monday and half of Tuesday. But it actually seems to be working. Reality had no problem installing other than finding the data it wanted to authorize my copy once again (asks for every upgrade so one has to keep the digits handy).
Reality seems to think I can do CL hardware with the Apple since it alleges to have a driver for it. But on my machine it just seems to crash Reality which is not surprising given how primative the graphics card is. This happens even in DAZ 3Delight if one tries to use hardware shadows you get all kinds of tiger stripes and garbage patterns.
Aloha
Hi MW_HNL.
I don't know what "winked out" means. Can you elaborate? About invisible things, there should be no issue but I'm not sure I understand what you meant.
Bucket sizes make no sense with Reality, those settings are specific for 3Delight. As Reality uses a completely different renderer, settings tat are sepcific to a render process are not transferable.
About the blown out images, that is just a matter of setting the exposure. LuxRender, unlike most other renderers, gives you the flexibility and power of setting the exposure of the image. If you can provide a screenshot that shows the image and the exposure settings that you used, I will be able to give you more precise informatiom.
About openCL, it is broken on Mac OS, as I explained in my "OS X users unite!" blog. Reality has no control over that, it's a matter of broken drivers being shipped by Apple. Things are a bit better with El Capitan but not by much. Reality checks if OpenCL is available on your platform, that's all that it can do. For Mac OS users, and I'm one of them, we need to use CPU acceleration.
Hope this helps.
Hi. Great questions, let me go in order:
- Network rendering, you can render anything, single frames or animations, which are sequences of frames. You can use as many cores as you want and as many nodes as you want and they can be a mix of Mac OS, Linux, and Windows machines.
- You get 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and simultaneos access to the Mac OS and Windows versions
- There is no set program about upgrades. If I spot some critical bug tomorrow and I need to post an update, generally that is free. To give you an idea, based on past releases, I released Reality 4.0, and then 4.0.4, 4.05, 4.07, 4.1.0, 4.1.1, 4.20, and 4.2.1 were all free upgrades to 4.0 users.
Hope this helps.
thanks, that really helps...
I will probably purchase this engine as all my other avenues in daz have hit walls, ie, iray server (I got into beta program) only works on quadro/tesla cards in streaming... and a few other walls with other engines..
I do however have one question that popped into mind,
hardware concerns, I would assume aslong as there is enough ram on the machine it would matter if it was a deal/quad/hex/octo core in the node?
And same for the graphics cards, as long as the scene fits it wouldnt matter? To expand on that a little, a 1gig scene should render on a 470 1.5g card as it would on a 970 4gb card?
Sort of trying to get more technical into the bones of the engine,
For a single Frame render using multi Core/GPU's .. is the scene broken up like a 3delight bucket?
This question goes to how I would utilize older hardware like my old gaming machine with 3x470's .. I'm asking because my current machine has a 970 and a 470 aqnd the 470 gets dropped alot when the scene is to big to fit in it's ram.
Thanks.
GPU rendering is always challenging. This is a tecnology that is at its infancy. Reality uses LuxRender and that renderer is designed to work with OpenCL, which means that you can use GPus from any manufacturer, as long as there is good OpenCL support for them. The best quality still comes from CPU rendering and in that regard Reality/Lux will use all the cores in the machine.
Now, Lux has optimized CPU processing and with it we saw a boost of up to 20 times faster rendering, compared to the non-accelerated mode.
For example, on my Mac I have a 12-core CPU, i7, and so each rendering session with the CPU runs 24 threads of paralell rendering. It's like having a mini renderfarm :) I can then add my older Mac, which has an 8-core CPU, for an additional 16 threads of rendering. In that way, via network, I have 40 threads running at the same time. Then I can add a Windows machine with a 4-core i7 processor, which will give me an additional 8 thread. With 3 machines I get almost 50 rendering threads.
The way Lux renders in a network is to compute light samples and then merge the samples from all the participating nodes. All nodes have to be configured in a compatible way. If you use GPU rendering then all nodes have to have the GPU cofigured to be in the same way. For example, if the main machine has the GPU as device number 1, cpu being device number 0, then all the nodes have to be the same. You can't have some machines with 2 GPU and others with only 1.
The nice thing of OpenCL is that you can use both the CPU and GPU at the same time.
I can't comment about memory size because that is depending on each individual setup and scene configuration.
Cheers.
I'm not the original person asking the question, but I suspect by "winked out", they mean making an item invisible by clicking on the eyeball in the Scene tab in Studio. Both 3Delight and Iray know that means not to render the item. Reality -- including current 4.2 version -- usually includes any item made invisible that way in its Materials list. If you don't catch it and set everything to Null, or if you don't close the render editor, go back to the scene file and delete the item (which doesn't always work), then Reality will pass the item on to be rendered in the scene by Lux.