3delight tests

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Blob StrokesAuthor: Anto Matkovic
Here's a small ICE compound used to generate these 'blob-strokes'. I had something like this before, but I really wasn't so excited by the speed of generation. Now with 3delight, it's definitely feasible, updates are performed immediately. The compound creates particles on curve list, evenly distributed, count is relative to particular sub-curve length (still, you'll need to take care of curve re-parametrization). It's also able to perform 'write on' on one-after-another subcurve (by sub-curve, or normalized by sub-curve length). In short, you can 'draw' 3d strokes with it, by animating the slider value. There are a few additional parameters. [..] contd. under si-community link

local backup: Emit Blobs From CurveList.xsicompound
3DelightAuthor: dna research
v4.0.41 updated Feb 21st 2015. 3Delight is a fast, high quality, RenderMan®-compliant renderer designed to produce photo-realistic images in demanding production environments. The renderer was introduced to the public in the year 2000 after being used for more than a year as the sole renderer in a sister production company. It is now widely used and earning a reputation as a benchmark in rendering technology. [..] (cont'd on product page)

DNA research recently released the 4.0.41 upgrade along with making the free license now support up to 8-core CPUs. Highlights from the changelog: Volumetric Smoke and Shards Any shader as light source projection Exposure, Gamma Controls Mesh Light support ESC to stop render. Last year's big 4.0 update introduced features such as: support for deep EXR files Native MARI textures support Improved sampling of environment maps Added the physically plausible 3Delight Material "Continuous rendering" is now enabled by default Up to x2 acceleration in hair/fur rendering Memory usage is down 30% when using the path tracer Skin shader for 3Delight for Softimage Motion Map property is now supported

A list of movie project rendered with the 3Delight renderer. As mentioned the product is free of charge for the first 8-core license. Additional quad-core licenses are available for 400$ each and unlimited multi-core licenses for 900$ each. Yearly support and updates 190$/290$ resp.


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jgjones
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by jgjones » 22 Jul 2011, 23:01

That was it... having the 3Delight "Quality" property applied, with the subd threshold set to zero. Many thanks!

I hope they will improve their implementation of CSG... it can be really handy at times. Being tied to a parent / child arrangement is very limiting, and they need to have a way to independently control the look of the "cut" surface, for starters.
Mathaeus wrote: Hi,

as far as I can recall (didn't played with CSG since this scene), setting XSI geo approx to more than zero, or using a Renderman subdivs ( 'smooth subdivision threshold' on zero), made it to work as expected.
Anyway, here is the thread in 3delight forum, about CSG and related stuff. There is also a link to XSI model I've created for these CSG renders.


cheers

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druitre
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by druitre » 30 Aug 2011, 18:40

Hi, Mathaeus: thanks for this thread, lots of inspiration to finally go and tackle 3Delight. I'm finding it a much easier renderer than MR in some respects, although I'm just beginning and still have lots of stuff to find out. Like, for instance:

some pages back, you show some examples with GI and more than one bounce.
Mathaeus wrote:Hi,

That's a some kind of ICE photon mapping. For picture on top, I've added ICE point cloud for additional bounces. Finally it's rendered together with only one classic light + point-based color bleeding. It's very basic for now, but it doesn't requires almost any additional scene preparation (baking to maps, so on). Whole rendering process takes about 7-10 minutes on 2 core 3delight, on 1365x768. ICE part is just non-simulated, immediate ray-casting, no any dart-throw sorting or other advanced stuff. Particles are aligned to surface normal and default, one-side color bleeding is used, so algorithm catches only a 'far-away' ones.

Image

Image
You explain how you did that - but could you please explain it again, in a more detailed manner? It looks very interesting but I dont understand how it works, at all. And kH2 Emit Photons compound - is that a public one? Or something you made just for this test? In my kH2 pack, there is no such compound.

thanks,
Jasper

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 30 Aug 2011, 20:46

druitre wrote: You explain how you did that - but could you please explain it again, in a more detailed manner? It looks very interesting but I dont understand how it works, at all. And kH2 Emit Photons compound - is that a public one? Or something you made just for this test? In my kH2 pack, there is no such compound.
Well it's not public compound. Not because of some rocket science behind it, more because it's much more a toy, instead some robust rendering solution. Basically, it creates particles (grid type) on some surface (this is a 'light source'), perform raycast along normals of emitter, moves the particles to 'hit point' on another geometry, aligns particles on normals and push them slightly. In next iteration it emits clones and perform the same procedure, but this time direction is slightly random. And so on.. Particles have a constant material, with exponential falloff along traveling length.

I think there is a tutorial by Pooby, that describes pretty much the same technique.

In latest 3dl versions, it won't work in the same way - in these times, point-based color bleeding in 3dl was only 'front side', now is 'both sides'. Now, you'll see bright spots on geometry, where particle is. It also intruduced a tons of other problems: too much gathering in the corners, problems with details, problems with moving geometry (as it had not enough points for uniform emission), problems with this and that. Then, solutions, and solutions for problems caused by solutions :)

However, I think 3dlight team lead talked about implementing the 'mixed' GI solution, photons (instead my particle toys) and point-based color bleeding at the end.
So, I think you have a two options:

1. bother 3dl team to implement photons + point based color bleeding.
2. join the Vray beta list, in the meantime.

cheers

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druitre
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by druitre » 30 Aug 2011, 21:47

Thanks for the reply. I checked out Pooby's tutorial when it came out and also found some other examples of people 'messing around in ICE' to create raycasters/FG/Photon emitters.

http://www.ambient-occlusion.com/2008/1 ... ice-xsi-7/
http://www.vimeo.com/1400523
http://vimeo.com/groups/ice/videos/26510869

All of which looks interesting. Maybe it will lead to fast render solution done entirely in ICE?

And I'm already bothering the 3Delight team, on their forum :). They are pretty active there, by the looks of it.

cheers, Jasper

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 08 Oct 2011, 23:43

Hi,

a few renders showing a new feature introduced in latest 3delight (for now, 3.0.15), ability to use photon-mapping for multiple-bounce point-based global illumination, as well as photon casting from environment image. I've rendered these pictures with 4 core 3delight, on QuadCore machine. Only out-of-the-box shaders were used, except mia_material modification from here. Modification allows to use MIA "highlight only" mode as a point-based glossy reflection with any cone angle.
For photon-casting from environment, it seems to be enough to have a render-pass environment image and allowed photons in global render settings.

This one is a two-bounce photon cast from environment, plus "classic" sunlight, environment is plain white. About 9 million photons, baking shading rate 4. About 5 minutes for render the 1280x720.

Image

... and this one has an additional area light on the floor, for exaggerating the bounce effect. Subsurface scattering and various point-based glossy reflections too. About 5 million photons, baking shading rate 4, 15 minutes for rendering the 1280x720.
To speed up the baking stage, I've used separated render pass with very low area light sampling. Sunlight is actually a pair of directional lights with shadow-maps.

Image

1280x720 pic

As usual for point-based baking, there is a "baking-camera", able to see the whole model. I've just copied the main camera and moved it back.

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 13 Oct 2011, 20:11

Hi all,

This one is test of solely indirect lighting on subsurface scattering, hair.. All light is coming from bounce card, which has a white lambert plus some incandescence. Standard light is pointed outward, it's there just to initialize photons. No environment texture.
It's a kind of experiment, probably is easier to use a bunch of classic lights for direct lighting. For now there is no reflection on hair.

Anyway, 3dl seems to consider the indirect lighting for subsurface scattering as well. So, skin material is a an usual layering. Single 3dl subsurface, MIA material for diffuse shading and glossy reflections. Reflections are 'real' of course, no specular highlights. I didn't played with textures so much, there is just one skin texture, no any color correction or something. MIA material is a modification mentioned in post above. I've also disabled subsurface scattering in mia_material.sl, just to get it cleaner for tweaks.

I've added ray-traced AO on floor, for stronger contact shadow.

First picture is a 1-bounce photons plus point-based color bleeding, next one has a 2-bounce photons and color bleeding, last is color bleeding only. Render time on QuadCore machine, 4-core 3delight, is about 4 - 7 minutes on 1280x720 px. Render time highly depends on shading rates in final render, like global shading rate, subsurface shading rate, point-based shading rate. Here's 1 for global shading rate, 2 for subsurface scattering. Baking shading rate, count of photons, doesn't seem to add some significant time.

high res picture

Image
Last edited by Mathaeus on 13 Oct 2011, 20:55, edited 1 time in total.

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Rez007
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Rez007 » 13 Oct 2011, 20:30

Thanks for posting all of these pictures with the nice description on setup and render times. I always look forward to seeing what you put up next, eventhough I don't always comment myself. Your work definitely makes me want to look in 3DL, hopefully, I will have some time here soon to do just that. Thanks again.

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CiaranM
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by CiaranM » 13 Oct 2011, 23:40

Nice renders.
As for multi-bounce photons, they look great. But, I have a hard time reducing flickering in animation. I'm not sure which parameter is the key to reducing flickering (global shading rate, GI shading rate, num photons...). Any ideas?

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 14 Oct 2011, 00:29

CiaranM wrote:Nice renders.
As for multi-bounce photons, they look great. But, I have a hard time reducing flickering in animation. I'm not sure which parameter is the key to reducing flickering (global shading rate, GI shading rate, num photons...). Any ideas?
Nothing smart that I know, except the standard method to use as much more of standard lights, or blurred environment images. This seems to be the same recipe everywhere.... I guess because standard light gives an wide uniform signal, instead of 'dots'.

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CiaranM
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by CiaranM » 14 Oct 2011, 00:50

Mathaeus wrote: Nothing smart that I know, except the standard method to use as much more of standard lights, or blurred environment images. This seems to be the same recipe everywhere.... I guess because standard light gives an wide uniform signal, instead of 'dots'.
Yeah, I've been using area lights for my tests. I'll drop in a point or sport as the photon emitter and see if that helps....

j3st3r
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by j3st3r » 14 Oct 2011, 10:19

Hey,

Anybody has idea how to create fluffy or soft hair with 3delight?

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 14 Oct 2011, 20:04

j3st3r wrote:Hey,

Anybody has idea how to create fluffy or soft hair with 3delight?
Perhaps something with transparency and a lot of classic lights with deep shadow maps, Let's say something close to page 3 of this thread, but with much more than two lights. Hair in latest image I've posted, this is rendered only by indirect lighting, so it has this 'deep underwater' look.

AFAIK, "classic" light rig with deep shadow maps is a much faster to render. For example, when using about 8 - 16 shadow-mapped lights instead of bounce card, without point-based stuff, render-time for latest image is about 1 min.

btw you can add depth-of-field too, it's really fast in 3dl.

j3st3r
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by j3st3r » 18 Oct 2011, 16:42

Hi there guys,

I've got an issue, posted it on 3delight forum as well, but I need urgent resolution, so I post it here as well.

I need to render a hair to texture. I've unfolded the mesh based upon the UV using Matheaus deform by UV compound (works great, hats off). I wanted to render the fur with 3delight, but failed.

I use the Hair Shading shader

I'd appreciate any help,



Szabolcs
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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 18 Oct 2011, 18:32

hi Jester,

I've already posted the all what I know :) on 3delight's forum. In short, my bet goes for some kind of gradient-mixer, out of control... I sow before something like these dots on hair tips in wrong color. But I wasn't been able to reproduce this in v 3.015.

good luck

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sant0s
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by sant0s » 21 Oct 2011, 08:58

Hi Mathaeus,

the render with the bouncing card as only light source, wow! So much depth in it. Still learning how to get a good light setup with classic lights and always need to tweak to get a nice result :)

Btw, you said, reducing flickering on hair can be done with more lights? Becouse ill try to keep as less lights as possible, 3-5 maybe ^^ Do you mean more lights with no shadows?
I always try to reduce flickering by tweaking samples and resolution of shadow maps and also 1-2 lights with shadow only. So i get rid of these black spots and very less noise.

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3delight tests

Post by Mathaeus » 21 Oct 2011, 10:42

sant0s wrote: Btw, you said, reducing flickering on hair can be done with more lights? Becouse ill try to keep as less lights as possible, 3-5 maybe ^^ Do you mean more lights with no shadows?
No, I tried to say something like "as much wider surface area, lighted by direct light, in case you want some bounces". Nothing about hair...
Anyway, I really *hate* recipes. This thread is meant to be a some kind of reference, nothing more than that.
Just me, if I wouldn't be able to get the consistent workflow in let's say one weekend or week.... I'll try to play with something else.

About flickering of shadow-maps with animated hair (or any else tiny geometry), there is an old trick, to use a low-res geometry as shadow caster. I think some old hair plugins for 3ds Max had this built-in, under the hood. In ICE-3delight combo, that would be a copy of point cloud, with lower count of strands but higher strand size.
Once you set your desired shadow-map resolution, set the shadow-map as sharp as possible, set strand size high enough to get a consistent shadow (that is, recognizable lines). Then, blur the shadow-map, set some significant shadow bias, render the 'shadow' pass.. In beauty pass, use already rendered shadows, this time on point cloud with high count of tiny hairs.

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