OcDS Setup v2.2 (last Beta)

[larsmidnatt]

I was only confused that no one was complaining about before as it seems to be a "know" issue.

Its new to this version of the plugin. so we are doing correct by bringing it up now.

I didn't immediately report it myself because I wanted to see if I could use the new feature, as I see it's purpose. Sometimes things seem off, but turns out I wasn't willing to adapt or I was using it wrong.

But ultimately for me I prefer the old method. Not sure if this could be a on/off feature.

[SiliconAya]

The "amount" is controlling the mix between the 2 materials connected to the mix material, if it's set to 0.85 that means it's mixing in 85% of the first material and 15% of the second material, so setting it to 1 just means you are only using the first material in the mix node and turning off the second material. Which is probably not something you want to be doing. Your material strangeness is probably caused by something else, like possibly having your kernel set to "Direct Lighting" which does not support SSS, which most of these new material conversions (for skin) now contain (this is just a guess, because I'm not having any issues).

The new material conversions are also doing a number of other things that were previously lost by the auto conversion of the DS materials, like now incorporating any normal maps used, specifically these are plugged into the 2nd material in the mix node on say V6's skin, while bump is connected to the 1st material and it now calculates the power/strength of both the normal map and bump map based on the mix amount set in the mix node, so again turning the mix amount to 1 will make your bump way stronger than is intended.

I would recommend you look for other reasons that your materials look like they do and do not change the mix amount, in the case of skin, you are turning off the gloss material, which will result in the skin having no specular at all and thus looking rather hard, flat and somewhat dead.

That is true.
The amount value was always 1 in former versions and has to be if you do not want to have some kind of transparant textures. But for that you usually use opacity.
And it works fine for some characters like Gianni for example. But on most i had these issues.

If you've been doing this, then you should never have been using a mix material in the first place. As I understand it you've been changing a diffuse material into a mix, but only using the first material (which is was setting to the diffuse material it used to be) and leaving the second material blank, which defaults to flat white, so when you've had mix amounts less than 1, it's been mixing flat white into your diffuse material. So it sounds like you've been wrapping diffuse materials in a mix node for no reason and probably slowing your renders down a little, as mix nodes make the material more complicated and thus add overhead.

[Spectralis]

The character I imported only had a diffuse material and nothing else so I'm not sure why OcDS is mixing two materials. The character uses a jpg texture which I exported from FaceGen and loaded onto a Genesis figure.

[SiliconAya]

The character I imported only had a diffuse material and nothing else so I'm not sure why OcDS is mixing two materials. The character uses a jpg texture which I exported from FaceGen and loaded onto a Genesis figure.

Sounds like it might be converting the skin settings in DS (which sound like they're probably close to blank) rather than keeping your existing OcDS materials then?

[kibbycabbit]

I'm excited about the animation and I've tried it. Can anyone explain me how to render with animation?

Drop down Render and choose Render seems only render at 3Delight. The Engine drop-down doesn't have OctaneRender. What's the proper way?

Many thanks! Can't wait to render!!

UPDATE: Oh! It's on OctaneRender panel (need to open the panel and there's "Animation" tab).. Currently rendering as I type. Woohoo!

[Hubby72]

SiliconAyas explaination is good.
And the amount slider also did not help anytime. It solves my issues with Michael 5 in any way...SSS or not. I already changed beetween direct light and path tracing but issues were in all modes.

I found another promising thing which solves thie glitches now for me with some figures.
The "Normal" field of the second material.
It is set strangly to RGB Image, but the field to select an RGB Image is empty.
Also the Value of the Power slider for that is set the 2. The silder usually ends at 1.

Settings this Normal map to Nothing removes the glitches for me.

[SiliconAya]

Normal maps are RGB images, so that's fine. As for the rest, it's quite possible that a blank normal set 'on' could cause a problem, as for the image being empty that just means there wasn't a normal map set in the Daz material, this might well be something that needs to be correct in the material conversion.

For props and sets/scenes normals are often used, for figures they're much rarer, Daz only started using them when Genesis 2 was released and not all of Daz figures do, as a general rule the more realistic figures have normal maps, while the toon ones don't, although there are exceptions, for example Ninive does, while the teen figures don't and very few PA/3rd party figures have them.

As for OcDS slider values, this is something that actually comes from Octane Standalone, the slider may only go up to 1, but they range values next to the slider name are the true min/max values you can set, in the case of Power (0/...) generally ... means 10 000 max, although there are cases were you can add a few more 0s.

[linvanchene]

I was only confused that no one was complaining about before as it seems to be a "know" issue.

Its new to this version of the plugin. so we are doing correct by bringing it up now.

I didn't immediately report it myself because I wanted to see if I could use the new feature, as I see it's purpose. Sometimes things seem off, but turns out I wasn't willing to adapt or I was using it wrong.

But ultimately for me I prefer the old method. Not sure if this could be a on/off feature.

I don't know if it could be but it would help if it would be.

IF the OcDS plugin now is able to detect bump, normal and displacement maps and make some kind of educated guess how to translate them THEN it should also be possible to provide some more options to choose WHICH 3Delight or Iray shader elements are autotranslated and which are ignored.

Examples:

- Import Bump maps: yes - no
- Import Normal maps: yes - no
- Import Displacement maps: yes - no
- Import SSS maps: yes - no
- import Reflection maps: yes - no

- create mix material: yes - no

- - -

Is the current OcDS plugin version able to detect Iray shaders allready?



- use 3Delight shaders as source for autotranslation: on - off
- use Iray shaders as source for autotranslation: on - off

Some people may actually prefer to have rather no autotranslation than one based on old 3Delight shader setup.
Other people may prefer to only import 3Delight shaders and ignore any Iray settings.

Those sliders would then help to focus work in a way that only those shaders are translated to OctaneRender materials which the user prefers.

Side Note: About the difference between using displacement and normal maps in physically baded render engines BPR

Many DAZ 3D product artists who created material setups for DAZ Studio 3Delight adopted practices used in game development and started to mix bump, normal and displacement maps on the same (!) surface.
From my point of view that practice should not be used with physically based render engines (BPR) IF the goal is to create photorealistic images.

If your goal is to create some stylized renders please keep doing whatever you want...

Nevertheless Iray was just integrated a few monts ago. It may take months or years until all DAZ 3D product artists have learned practices how to create materials that enable photo realism.

IF an object is in the foreground and you want realistic shadows you ONLY use displacement maps.

Displacement Map
Note that the shadows are placed correctly based on the sun location

If an object is in the background and you want to save processing power or memory space then you use either bump or normal maps based on which is handled better by the render engine.

Normal Map
You can observe shadows on ledges facing the sun and light parts that are facing away from the sun.
This just does not look right.

On the DAZ forum you can often observe that some people still recommend to use bump and normal maps for very fine details.
I strongly disagree with that recommendation.
If the shadows are cast wrong even in those tiny details even people without CG background will just feel that something is off.
It is exactly those tiny details that give away computer graphic images as such.

Again of course all this does not matter if you do not care about photorealism.

Just keep in mind that for OctaneRender it is not recommended to mix bump, normal and displacment maps on the same surface.
You can do it but you may get unwanted and unexpected results.

- - -

In a perfect world DAZ3D product artists would actually provide two material versions for each object:

- a hero version for close ups and objects in the foreground that uses only displacement maps (or HD morphs as alternative)
- a background version that uses either bump or normal maps.

Nevertheless as long as we are not there yet :

Any functionality to actually choose if bump, normal or displacement maps are used for the autotranslation or ignored would be a welcome addition to the OcDS plugin.

- - -

[larsmidnatt]

I sent t_3 a PM about adding the option to not automatically create displacement maps during the auto creation process. There is already a section in the plugin that lets you choose if it should creation diffuse/opacity etc maps, and it has a displacement power setting but you can't turn it off. t_3 thought it was a good idea to allow users to disable displacement, so I expect one day it will be added.

I agree with linvanchene , in particular
- create mix material: yes - no

For me, this and the displacement maps cause me the biggest issues right now.

Here are the texture options on the preferences tab. It already has some of the options we want, just needs a few more.

[Laticis]

In the Render Passes Tab - the Turn On All switch works, but the Turn Off All switch doesn't.