The Official aweSurface Test Track

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    Just did a test in the other DS instance. A primitive plane, applied the base metal preset, metalness 100, base roughness 0, spec2 enabled, spec.color and edge tint pure white, spec2 roughness 0, still blurred.

    Is this with or without DoF this time?

    Sorry forgot to mention, yes it was with DoF, fieldstop was ridiculously high, 500.

    Hmm only thing that springs in mind atm is to render the background with scripted raytracer, then use the render as a backdrop and render the pwGhost stuff using regular 3DL and a shadowcatcher.

    Or just render the ghost out with alpha and put them together in any image editor. Which will likely avoid any quality loss that DS may introduce with that backdrop thingie. I don't know how it's implemented, so I would never use it.

     

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    Just did a test in the other DS instance. A primitive plane, applied the base metal preset, metalness 100, base roughness 0, spec2 enabled, spec.color and edge tint pure white, spec2 roughness 0, still blurred.

    Ah, OK. I see what you're getting at. You want very sharp reflections. I did put a limit so the roughness doesn't go to 0 (zero), which would mean perfect reflection. Easy enough to fix.

    The minimam value was 0.001, but using 0.0001 did the trick. Chalk another change for the update. FYI, you probably won't see any specular highlights from point/spot/distant light with such low roughness.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:
    Just did a test in the other DS instance. A primitive plane, applied the base metal preset, metalness 100, base roughness 0, spec2 enabled, spec.color and edge tint pure white, spec2 roughness 0, still blurred.

    Ah, OK. I see what you're getting at. You want very sharp reflections. I did put a limit so the roughness doesn't go to 0 (zero), which would mean perfect reflection. Easy enough to fix.

    Great tks, I suspected something like that, yup no perfect reflections in the real world but IMO you could lower the limit a bit;)

    wowie said:

    The minimam value was 0.001, but using 0.0001 did the trick. Chalk another change for the update. FYI, you probably won't see any specular highlights from point/spot/distant light with such low roughness.

    yes

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    Either way, folks, my pwGhost works just about perfectly with scripted rendering - there's no reason why it would not! Maybe there's something off with your ghost settings, Sven?

    This is a simple cube-with-inverted-normals for a room, the walls using the "rough" aweSurface preset and a mid-blue diffuse colour; one aweEmitter with exposure 2; and all the presets of pwGhost one by one...

    At 6x6 pxs, each render takes under 3 mins on my laptop, with DoF.

    ...and ghosts don't really cast shadows, do they? But they can light up their surroundings (pwGhost's self-illumination is traced by aweSurface quite nicely, as you can see).

     

     

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    Either way, folks, my pwGhost works just about perfectly with scripted rendering - there's no reason why it would not! Maybe there's something off with your ghost settings, Sven?

    This is a simple cube-with-inverted-normals for a room, the walls using the "rough" aweSurface preset and a mid-blue diffuse colour; one aweEmitter with exposure 2; and all the presets of pwGhost one by one...

    At 6x6 pxs, each render takes under 3 mins on my laptop, with DoF.

    ...and ghosts don't really cast shadows, do they? But they can light up their surroundings (pwGhost's self-illumination is traced by aweSurface quite nicely, as you can see).

     

     

    That looks nice, I wonder if the beta broke something for me, as I noticed it doesn't apply to anything, works ok in 4.9 but I'm getting error messages (#blabla severity1).

    Good to know, will try to reinstall!

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    This  is great news! Finally installed the awe Kit on my laptop with DS 4.7 and doing a test now with pwGhost, works!!!

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    A render with interior lights, ended up using 14 emissive planes + HDRI... I think the lamp shades are pretty close to what I had in mind, although they could use some minor adjustments, as well as some other things. The biggest problem is the mirror, I'm sure the upgrade will solve it;) No other problems with converting this set really, the books and one of the slippers on the floor had black spots before I enabled the "use face forward". And there's a bit of grain, which should be an easy fix by upping shadow samples.

     

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    mh60 blackhawk, converted with no issues;)

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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,083

    ...is that the old Blackhawk? 

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018
    kyoto kid said:

    ...is that the old Blackhawk? 

    Yup, never used it before. Having fun breathing new life into my old runtime as part of testing and learningsmiley

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    HDRI by @agentunawares, thank you so much!

    rendertime 28 min

    image

    had to enable "use face forward" for the Dystopia cityblocks to avoid black spots

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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,083
    edited October 2018

    ...that's pretty cool.

    I have all those models.

    The Dystopia buildings look really nice, Never seen them look better.

    Can't wait to get up and running again as I have the AweShader in my Product Library ready to Download and install.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    kyoto kid said:

    ...that's pretty cool.

    I have all those models.

    The Dystopia buildings look really nice, Never seen them look better.

    ... and all I did was apply some presets and adjust the window reflections:)

    kyoto kid said:

    Can't wait to get up and running again as I have the AweShader in my Product Library ready to Download and install.

    Am so looking forward to seeing what you come up withsmiley

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    This  is great news! Finally installed the awe Kit on my laptop with DS 4.7 and doing a test now with pwGhost, works!!!

    And should work in the 4.11 beta too, since it's what I'm using =)

    The messages the pw shaders throw are generally about interface version mismatch. Nothing really serious but if they could be recompiled, they might be a bit faster. I'll try digging out Takeo's old script to try and recompile them, but there's a chance they were compiled in a way that includes no source and hence does not allow recompiling to happen.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    This  is great news! Finally installed the awe Kit on my laptop with DS 4.7 and doing a test now with pwGhost, works!!!

    And should work in the 4.11 beta too, since it's what I'm using =)

    The messages the pw shaders throw are generally about interface version mismatch. Nothing really serious but if they could be recompiled, they might be a bit faster. I'll try digging out Takeo's old script to try and recompile them, but there's a chance they were compiled in a way that includes no source and hence does not allow recompiling to happen.

    Yeah those error messages always seem to slow down things a bit. Don't get that with 4.7 tho. I'll re install to see if I can get it to work in 4.9 / 4.10beta, just haven't had the time yet;) After I installed the beta every AoA product and a number of other things stopped working, haven't sorted everything out yet.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    It seems like the AshikmhinShirley BRDF doesn't work properly, I got weird artefacts when converting some Dystopia cityblocks for a night time render. I added some vehicles with headlights reflecting in the groundplane/asphalt and spent several hour trying to figure out why I got "strings "of light crossing the street,similar to the black "shadows" in my US2 conversion. When I swapped the specular  BRDF on the asphalt for GGX everything looked fine. So I wonder if these issues are related? Haven't had time to check with US2, but will ASAP. Anyway I'm glad I found the reason, was climbing the walls for a momentangrylaughOvernight render going... keeping fingers crossed everything is ok;)

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    It seems like the AshikmhinShirley BRDF doesn't work properly, I got weird artefacts when converting some Dystopia cityblocks for a night time render. I added some vehicles with headlights reflecting in the groundplane/asphalt and spent several hour trying to figure out why I got "strings "of light crossing the street,similar to the black "shadows" in my US2 conversion.

    "Strings" of light - maybe it's the anisotropy? Did you expect anything like the top-down reflections in the photo on the left - https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/car-part-longevity/headlights-last1.htm - but got them spreading out horizontally?

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    After I installed the beta every AoA product and a number of other things stopped working, haven't sorted everything out yet.

    I'd say this is weird, but my 4.10 installation decided to stop launching a few weeks ago out of a sudden, without me doing anything really, so nothing is weird in DAZland anymore =D

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    It seems like the AshikmhinShirley BRDF doesn't work properly, I got weird artefacts when converting some Dystopia cityblocks for a night time render. I added some vehicles with headlights reflecting in the groundplane/asphalt and spent several hour trying to figure out why I got "strings "of light crossing the street,similar to the black "shadows" in my US2 conversion.

    "Strings" of light - maybe it's the anisotropy? Did you expect anything like the top-down reflections in the photo on the left - https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/car-part-longevity/headlights-last1.htm - but got them spreading out horizontally?

    Yup like the pic, not  anisotropy, I tried adjusting that, made no difference, wish I had taken a screen shot. There were these normal looking reflections + an area of highlights similar to those weird shadows in the US2 render, just they were not dark but white. All I know  is changing the spec BRDF solved it;)

    I'll upload the (hopefully) working render when I get to my DS machine, and maybe a screenshot of the artefacts.

     

    After I installed the beta every AoA product and a number of other things stopped working, haven't sorted everything out yet.

    I'd say this is weird, but my 4.10 installation decided to stop launching a few weeks ago out of a sudden, without me doing anything really, so nothing is weird in DAZland anymore =D

    I hear you:) Re-installing the AoA stuff solved it so I expect doing the same with pwGhost will do the trick.

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    All I know  is changing the spec BRDF solved it;)

    I'll upload the (hopefully) working render when I get to my DS machine, and maybe a screenshot of the artefacts.

    Ah okay. Just remember aa of yet "GGX" means Cook-Torrance, and the other way around =)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    All I know  is changing the spec BRDF solved it;)

    I'll upload the (hopefully) working render when I get to my DS machine, and maybe a screenshot of the artefacts.

    Ah okay. Just remember aa of yet "GGX" means Cook-Torrance, and the other way around =)

    yes Tks for the reminder:)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    Ok so here is the Dystopia render...laugh

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    I stripped down my Dystopia scene as much as possible, hid everything outside the camera, deleted all instances of the skycar, applied the environmental shader for the Dystopia lights insetad of using the area light shader, changed the shader for the headlights on the car to the environmental shader and used 2 emissive planes instead, disabled the "use face forward" for everything, set Irradience samples to 128 for everything. Started testing the specBRDFs one by one for the asphalt. Here are screenshots for each BRDF in scripted progressive mode: (Tried to time it so it would reach the 75% mark)

    image

    image

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    image

    image

    Then I tried without progressive, started with AshikmhinShirley BRDF and got the eternal render issue. Tried next one, same thing... selected everything in the scene and changed the BRDF to CookTorrance and it started rendering...fast! Completed in just over 30min.

    So my conclusion is that some of the spec BRDFs don't work properly, and that my previous issues are related to the specular type. As a sidenote, it seems the look of the guys in the car vary depending on which BRDF is being used. The panels and leds in the car are using the environmental shader. I feel that there is indeed a bug hidden somewhere, which affects the arealights and the env shader and how they interact with eachother and that this is somehow linked to the specular function.

    Here is the stripped down version with CookTorrance, it's a shame, GGX would have looked so much better in this case(and I know GGX is actually CookTorrance LOLOL).

    image

    So I guess I'll go back to my original scene to see if it would render if I change the BRDF for everything, fingers crossed...

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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited October 2018

    Oh by the way, those white streaks in AshikhmhinShirley and Classic only appear when using progressive, they are much less visible when render is completed, atleast I think so, did a couple of spotrenders.

    UPDATE: I was wrong again... non progressive mode, setting anisotropy for the asphalt to 12.5% made the streaks appear again...

    image

    No anisotropy:

    image

    But my original scene with the modifications I made is rendering now, so lesson learned;)

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  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    I feel that there is indeed a bug hidden somewhere, which affects the arealights and the env shader and how they interact with eachother and that this is somehow linked to the specular function.

    The only way they interact is via trace(), so if there's a bug, it is most likely something about the hardcoded Ashikhmin-Shirley BSDF. You're on a Mac, so who knows, maybe it's a Mac-specific issue. And then there's the thing with the built-in 3Delight version being three years old. Have you tested this scene against the 12.5.9 standalone?

     

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    I feel that there is indeed a bug hidden somewhere, which affects the arealights and the env shader and how they interact with eachother and that this is somehow linked to the specular function.

    The only way they interact is via trace(), so if there's a bug, it is most likely something about the hardcoded Ashikhmin-Shirley BSDF. You're on a Mac, so who knows, maybe it's a Mac-specific issue. And then there's the thing with the built-in 3Delight version being three years old. Have you tested this scene against the 12.5.9 standalone?

     

    Hmm no I haven't done that. Probably should...

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

     You're on a Mac, so who knows, maybe it's a Mac-specific issue. And then there's the thing with the built-in 3Delight version being three years old. Have you tested this scene against the 12.5.9 standalone?

    I guess it wouldn't hurt to file a feature request to update the current 3DL implementation...

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited November 2018

    angrySo here we go againangry

    I'm in the process of testing skin settings and wanted to render a simple portrait with a HDRI + an area fill light...running out of ideas on how to solve this. There were other areas with the same issue. The bump maps are fine, I've examined them closely. Same maps are inserted in the displacement channel.

    No bump, no displacement:

     

    image

    Bump strength 0.001%

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    Displacement 0.001%

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    Displacement 30%

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    Displacement 30% with base level resolution

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    Also tried with progressive mode, looks the same. And tested with different spec. BRDFs.

    Bump at 30% small size render to see if that would make a difference:

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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    @wowie

    If I understand correctly, you have been testing your stuff in DS4.7 altogether? Would it be fair to assume this could be one reason there are issues when using newer versions of DS with your product? Did the DAZ devs ever test this product properly with different versions and platforms? It's easy to say it could be a Mac issue or it could be a DS bug, frankly I don't care what kind of bug it is, I just know that in this moment on my IMac 2015 with DS 4.9 and with 4.10beta I'm having problems. You and Kettu have solved many of them or we have found workarounds, which is great. It just feels like I'm on the wrong platform here;) Would it be wise to just sit tight and wait for an update, or is there something I can do to help? (That would be finding problems not solving them=))

    Yea man, I know, this is a complex shader and wow I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the work and passion you've put into it, jawdropping stuff! Just want you to know! Love itsmiley

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited November 2018

    Ok so after some more testing I've come to the conclusion the problem is with the raytracer.

    Here is the skin in (almost)all its glory with aweSurface and raytracer final, HQ rendersettings:

    image

    Here the DS def shader version of the skin and IBLM lighting, same HDRI( - an area fill light), 3DL Reyes render version

    image

    If I enable progressive with Reyes the issue is there again.

    As I'm writing this I'm trying to render the aweSurface version in reyes but nothing happens, sorry Kettu I know I promised never to do that, but in the name of science...smiley, well it's actually rendering now but veeeery slowly, I'll let it progress for a while...

    ...aborted the render, wouldn't have looked pretty anywaylaugh I wonder what to do next.. go to sleep maybe...zzzz

     

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