Wendy's dumb questions thread

[wendyluvscatz]

I search the forum where possible as to not re-ask same thing over
but often cannot find an answer or a person has edited and removed his posts
so keeping my annoying questions at least to one thread

my first few for today
the live database shaders, why does my UI not allow preview but others I have seen do have previews?
emitters, how do I create a master for all my light emitters?
is there a way to resize multiple textures at once and why does it save sometimes in a scene and not others?
how do I get a hdri environment image to show in background as well as create the image based light?
instances? any luck with these in animation? I have on single figures gotten them to work with a few props and even parented emitters but in slightly more complex but not big scenes often it stops updating the geometry even with a very low texture footprint.

I appreciate any feedback, know I am an annoying noob, mostly try to figure out stuff myself but hit a few brick walls now and then.

[Elele]

howdy Wendy!

dunno most of it... and the rest might be wrong... so...
-you can set an hdr with the environment selector in the "lights" tab
-dunno if you can create a master for a specific parameter of different lights. You can use the same shader for the different lights if that helps.
-if my geometry stops updating, i click the final render button on and off (on the render window)... though sometimes that unlinks shaders (so best to save before you do)

btw i'm still on 1.1

[wendyluvscatz]

THX Elele
yes I can load the HDRI and it uses the lighting but I cannot see the image in the background
using a skydome as an emitter does not work too well either, just really looking for an easy way to add a background
giving a soft dappled indirect light using it AND having image in scene
like I would in carrara using IBL.
only thing I can do at moment is add an alpha channel and postwork it in with cinegobs keyer

yes same shader might need to be my choice
I really wanted to keep diff textures and change just the parameters but prob asking too much

thx for your help

[wendyluvscatz]

ok now I look really stupid
using a jpeg image instead of a HDRI image works as a background
so obviously Octane does not like the openfootage and other HDRI images I have

[Elele]

The hdrs work for me i think. DS Octane also comes with a couple of sample hdrs. Did you try those?
For the skydome,are the normals pointing inwards? I've used skydomes with textures as lights and it worked fine. The only annoying thing is that the light intensity affects the brigthness of the image. So I added a skydome with opacity zero for actual light, and the other skydome with just enough light intensity to see the image.

[wendyluvscatz]

yes finally got it working
it seems not all HDRI files are equal
some I had would not work others did, in fact most do I just picked the one that would not as luck has it!
so feel bit silly now

[wendyluvscatz]

the live database shaders, why does my UI not allow preview but others I have seen do have previews?

answer
because I had 1.2 not 1.5
only learnt today from a friend it is in 2.0 update as an option
I never tried as I am not licensed for 2.0

[wendyluvscatz]

well that was shortlived
could no render animation it went blank and stopped rendering altogether
on the brightside my reinstalled 1.2 has thumbnails in materials live database now

[wendyluvscatz]

I bought the Alembic exporter for DAZ studio today
is there a helpful thread on how to use it?
I got the geometry scene in and can link it to a render target in the node editor with a camera and environment and found the animation export under scripts but it does not appear to be exporting any images even though it is rendering and moving in viewport.

[wendyluvscatz]

I stand corrected
it is exporting images S_L_O_W_LY

how do I limit time rendering each frame?
cannot find setting