Hi,

Yet another of 'girls in uniforms'. Pic is just a start, I'm planning to add more details. Still using the SurfaceColor3Delight together with ray-traced GI, reflection, subsurface scattering. About 15 lights with DSMs for initial lighting. Armor is also subsurface scattering, I just wanted this plastic look.
Render time for 1536*2048 was about 40 minutes on QuadCore, 4 core 3delight 3.13. Didn't bothered myself with optimizations that much, anyway.

that looks great!
could you discribe point for point your wokrflow here.
i tryed this some weeks ago and i could not replicate this lighting with vertex color only on all object, so a short list of the steps would be great.

Hi Kzin,

well it's not only workflow, there are few modifications of sl files.

First of all, the same could be done with point-based method. For point-based reflection, Ciaran already posted the mod of mia_material.sl, somewhere on 3Delight forums. Thread named "3DFS 3.0.15 is available for download" or like. But I have no patience to tweak the point-based stuff, just because avoiding the artifacts. So here is that "probe-ray in color" method.

Second, hair is still lighted solely by classic lighting, seems to be most elegant way.

Anyway, here is modification of mia_material.sl, I've used here. So it have:
1: Mentioned modification for point-based method (didn't used it, here). With enabled point-based GI, and "highlight only" mode in MIA ppg, it's possible to tweak the angle (glossiness) of point-based reflection.
2: If "SurfaceColor3Delight" hit mode is enabled, and objects have a vertex color property with exactly the same name, this vertex color is traced, instead of full shader. This is what I've used, here.
3: Drawback: it doesn't trace the "pure" glossy refraction anymore, for now I don't know how to enable both...
4: Drawback: probably doesn't works correctly in "single environment sample" mode
5: Drawback: in case of zero glossiness, it switches to 'safe mode of 4 samples" - this is 3delight default

I've used it with 3Delight 3.13, should work nicely with earlier versions too. For newer versions, I don't know.
Of course, someone could use it only on own risk. Make backup of original, first.


Basic workflow for this one (again, very personal preference, maybe I'll change this next time):

1: make a light rig that roughly covers the entire sphere
2: render-map it into environment map, through spherically mapped sphere, paint some details on env map.
3: bake classic lights into SurfaceColor3Delight CAV.
4: beauty render, still using the rig of classic lights, GI only for bounces from baked CAV, reflection both from environment map and baked CAV.

Hey this turned out great. Cloth texture and hair shading are particularly convincing.

And here's small recipe for 'specular dots' on hair, still tied to hairs (won't swim in movement). One 3d vector component is 'lengthwise hair', another is from random color ICE attribute, third actually could be zero, I think. It should work anywhere. Actually it's a bit harder to get it in 3delight, requires a pretty sharp shading rate.
Hair is mix of two hair shaders, basic with base color and very wide blueish specular ( decay about 4-8). On top of this is another, only with specular (decay about 50), modulated with fractal.
Both hair shaders have disabled transparency, additive mix is passed through Constant shader, only this one has transparency.

Cloth texture is exactly from latest ICE Knit Strand download, rendered from Knit Strand model, as vertical gradient for displacement, also as incidence to camera. 'Incidence channel' drives the color mix.

Hi,

that's a test.... well I don't know of what Between 8-18 minutes for render on QuadCore machine, 4 core 3delight. Depends on transparency level, used subsurface scattering, so on.
Finally I had to add an another point cloud for 'fine hair' on hair-skin border.

So that's a final pic. About testing, characters in front, that's how heavy render fits into my 4 gigs of RAM ( don't laugh... ), without going to scene archiving. With all knobs on,
ray-traced GI and reflection ( still using 'probe ray in color'), DOF, hair and subsurface scattering, displacement on subsurface scattering and everything else. About 40 mins for characters, 15 mins for background, on QuadCore and 4 core 3delight.

original pic

really nice rendering with all the shadingdetails, like the dispmaps und sss.
is the way you setup and render the shot suitable for animation? because you do alot of presteps before final rendering. i thought it could be a bit hard to manage in more complex scenes?

as you probably noticed, this is still image, not an animation Maybe I'll play with something else in another "scenario", "complex scene" or what not. BTW nobody with sane mind, would go with such complex character into animation, at least no one man band.

animation is my first question for things like this, because i only render animations, except some archviz stuff.
your workflow is not that good for simplier scenes i think, but it could be good for more complex shots in which you need all the details but also want to use gi, so its a trade off.