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2 Cycle(s) or Not 2 Cycle(s)...


AbnRanger
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Yeah

Sorry Don, this is an old tutorial by Andrew Price. 

Many things have changed then. 

In general, most of Andrew Price's tutorials are outdated.

See how he uses these emitters - area lights? Now, you can use any lights you like, maintaining the same quality. 

IMO, he still doesn't understand how rapidly blender is growing.  

About cycles:

A good render engine, a pure pathtracer. 

Here come the bad news. 

A pure pathtracer is not what makes us really happy. 

A bi-directional implementation is on the road map. 

We still waiting for baking capabilities. 

This is the last on this road map of course. 

This pathtracer, (octane as well) suffer from the ugly "termination" issue. It is impossible to render (decently) a low poly (with normal maps) figure. The renderer won't follow smooth shading as expected. The low poly topology will become visible between light and shadow areas. 

That said, I am a fan of this render engine. The nodes based UI is among the best I have seen. 

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Yeah

Sorry Don, this is an old tutorial by Andrew Price. 

Many things have changed then. 

In general, most of Andrew Price's tutorials are outdated.

See how he uses these emitters - area lights? Now, you can use any lights you like, maintaining the same quality. 

IMO, he still doesn't understand how rapidly blender is growing.  

About cycles:

A good render engine, a pure pathtracer. 

Here come the bad news. 

A pure pathtracer is not what makes us really happy. 

A bi-directional implementation is on the road map. 

We still waiting for baking capabilities. 

This is the last on this road map of course. 

This pathtracer, (octane as well) suffer from the ugly "termination" issue. It is impossible to render (decently) a low poly (with normal maps) figure. The renderer won't follow smooth shading as expected. The low poly topology will become visible between light and shadow areas. 

That said, I am a fan of this render engine. The nodes based UI is among the best I have seen. 

Ahhhh, that's the Michalis I know.  Always the "glass half-empty" kind of guy! :D

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Always Don, always. 

:rofl:

Do you know anything about the guys at Thea Render? They are from Greece, I believe. Was thinking about getting the render plugin for 3ds Max. Looks good, but I'd like the render to work with most tools in the host app. That's hard for 3rd party renderers to do.

 

 

http://www.thearender.com/cms/

Edited by AbnRanger
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Yeah, the one who started kerkythea is from the uni of athens. 

I used kerkythea in the past. Under SketchUp. Great renderer. 

This is all I know. 

Please check my previous updated reply. 

 

And,

check this book. 

The polish version is for free. (LOL, but I learned already some tricks, though no Polish at all) 

http://airplanes3d.net/wm-000_e.xml

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I like Thea and tested it a couple of times when it was in beta and recently. It seems a decent renderer though my qualifications for judging renderers is not of the highest rating... LOL

They now have GPU rendering for the interactive window as well, You can choose Gpu or Cpu. You add it has a plug-in but I believe it is free...

No node system, which Cycles has spoiled me too.

The staff at Thea said they solved the termination issue using a unbiased renderer for low polygon models

http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4331

 

Three render engines, Biased UnBiased and GPU, though the gpu rendering I do not think at this time supports displacement maps. SSS for the GPU is in the up and coming 1.3 version.

 

AbnRanger, I have the trial version installed, if you want to discuss the pros and cons of the program meet me at a google-hangout sometime...

 

And finally the link to features per engine. GPU rendering is more limited in it's scope..

http://www.thearender.com/cms/index.php/features/engines/293.html

Edited by digman
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but... thea render is more expensive that 3DC itself...

 

whats the point here ?

 

ask for a feature request to add plugin support for external renders ?

or ask formally to develop a new render room... using cycles or making better the actual 3DC render engine ? (without any charge to the user)

 

im lost

 

ty

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but... thea render is more expensive that 3DC itself...

 

whats the point here ?

 

ask for a feature request to add plugin support for external renders ?

or ask formally to develop a new render room... using cycles or making better the actual 3DC render engine ? (without any charge to the user)

 

im lost

 

ty

It was about Cycles...period. Until Michalis came along and told us how ugly she really was, without all the makeup on. :D Now, we're just checking out the other ladies (renderers).

Edited by AbnRanger
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Ranger

 

Do you have any news/internal mail, about future implementation ?

 

And

Cycles will be an optional internal render... keeping the old one (as BI & Cycles)

or a total replacement ?

 

ty

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Ranger

 

Do you have any news/internal mail, about future implementation ?

 

And

Cycles will be an optional internal render... keeping the old one (as BI & Cycles)

or a total replacement ?

 

ty

No, I just asked Andrew about the prospect of pluging Cycles into 3D Coat, since Blender made it available to used in other 3D apps, via a permissive license. He sounded as if they were already in discussions with the head of Blender foundation about it. With Raul having to head back to Cuba at the end of December, I'm a bit skeptical it will get done in time.

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If cycles could be implemented to 3dcoat… this could be great for many reasons. 

1. it is a matter of time for cycles to be capable to bake to UV textures. GI is great. AO is excellent 

2. Cycles loves hi density objects, we could have great fast renders of very dense objects in sculpting room 

3. Cycles can bake-render already, depth maps 32 bit exr. Ideal to create nice alphas from voxel reliefs. (parallel camera) 

4. The voxel-render rooms could become a great help for concept artists. (a competitor to zbrush on this matter, - nobody really loves the zb internal renderer) 

5. BTW, cycles supports box mapping internally. 

6. It can render billions of instances. 

7. Hair shaders. Not bad, right? But you need a hair modeler as well. 

Most importantly, cycles is under a stable rapid development, it is a BlenderFoundation project. 

Two years now, not much for the development of a render engine. 

 

@carlosan

A plugin support doesn't say much to me. We already have an applink to blender (which needs a little more attention and work). What it really needs is a template blend file, to just import your sculpt and have a setup of lights and environment.) 

After all, you can always export a dense voxel, blender And Cycles support vertexpaint rendering. 

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plugin support let the user to export scenes without need to use blender for this task

 

easy workflow for users that already had owned another render engine. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

like example:

http://www.luxrender.net/v/features

According to their Features page :

LuxRender is an external rendering program and relies on exporter scripts that export a scene from a 3d modeling program.

Exporters for major 3D packages like Maya, Cinema4D, XSI and 3D Studio are under development.

 

Because LuxRender's file format is openly documented, any skilled programmer could start writing an exporter for any 3d modeling program.

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Even at first a basic Cycles would improved the rendering quality we now have in 3DCoat...

Cycles is just the rendering engine and not Blender so how Raul would add setting up lights, nodes, materials, SSS etc... is the tough part plus what version of cuda to use or to use cuda at all... Cycles I think is written for Cuda 4... which still is a recommended version.

Edited by digman
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David,

to translate a possible 3dcoat render setup into cycles nodes is possible. 

To translate 3dcoat materials is also possible. Of course, you can add some more cycles ready made materials in the 3dcoat library. 

It is a pity though. We lose the most beautiful part of this renderer. 

Its flexibility. 

On the other hand, I'm not sure. Maybe it could work and improve 3dc renders a lot. 

 

Learn blender, just the basics. Navigation, setting up a scene, cycles node system. These parts only. 

Then export your obj and just render there. (or a 3dprint compatible format to export your vertexpainting too)

I can share with you a few templates - blend files and just import there.

Scale will be an issue, but you all know how to rescale an object. (LOL David, I know, waiting for your reply… )  

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David,

to translate a possible 3dcoat render setup into cycles nodes is possible. 

To translate 3dcoat materials is also possible. Of course, you can add some more cycles ready made materials in the 3dcoat library. 

It is a pity though. We lose the most beautiful part of this renderer. 

Its flexibility. 

On the other hand, I'm not sure. Maybe it could work and improve 3dc renders a lot. 

 

Learn blender, just the basics. Navigation, setting up a scene, cycles node system. These parts only. 

Then export your obj and just render there. (or a 3dprint compatible format to export your vertexpainting too)

I can share with you a few templates - blend files and just import there.

Scale will be an issue, but you all know how to rescale an object. (LOL David, I know, waiting for your reply… )  

I think it could be a boon to both communities. Many artists will want to render nothing more than a large still or turntable. They could use Cycles, internally, in 3D Coat to do that. But when one wants to take it further, they can take what they've setup in 3DC, with Cycles and hopefully compatible shaders/materials....maybe lighting...to Blender, ready to rig and/or animate > Render.

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@ Michalis,,, LOL, yep rescaling in blender easy, just can not forget to use Control +"A" key combination to make it real scaling... :D

 

Sure, getting nodes and all the rest can be done. It just means development time with coding it and working through the normal bugs. I am sure Raul and Andrew can do it, just if they will have the time...

 

At some time I do think it is worth the effort as a good renderer inside 3DC would make your static 3DC work be presented with better quality without leaving 3DC..

Edited by digman
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Here's a basic Cycles setup for 3dcoat users. 

 

Please use latest official blender 2.69 (http://www.blender.org)

 

Open the .blend file.

 

There is a subdivided cube-sphere like in the middle. 

Import your obj 3dcoat mesh. 

Resize it similarly to this sphere, delete the sphere (X) 

Select the 3dc obj and under material panel Do not ask for new, just click the icon and select the "BasicMaterial"

 

There is a basic light set - scene. 

Three light sources, have fun with different positions, strength or different types of lights or colors. 

I also enabled environment lighting, using a basic sky. However, you may import a nice HDRI equirectangular 32 bit map instead. 

 

 

 

The basic material setup supports:

1. A diffuse color map, I also added a Hue saturation controler for fine tuning of diffuse color. (you gonna need it if you enable SSS - decrease the value) 

(I also added bumpiness on this, just turn strength to 0 / bump node) 

2. A normal (tangent) map. Strength is at 0, it's off now, when you import your normalmap turn it to 1.000) 

3. I added a possible specular map. If it is B&W or a colored one, connect it accordingly (see the screengrab) 

4. A SSS typical node setup. It is turned off (pink color see the fac value on the mix shader).

Radius color (by an RGB node) and Scale are important factors. 

I connected the diffuseColor as SSS basic color now. You may like to use a different Texture node (and a map) for this. 

 

I hope these are helpful, 

Always a pleasure to answer your questions. 

 

There are more possible setups of course. Like importing Vertexpainted 3dc models, how to setup a boxmapped texture, how to support multiple UV maps. 

One at a time. 

BasicCyclesSetupFor3DC_2.blend.zip

post-2454-0-66704000-1384997622_thumb.jp

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Hi michalis.

 

Have testet your blendfile and maybe i am to stupid, but it wont works.

Normalmap have no effect, Speculary too.

Normalmap with bump looks ugly.

 

3d Coat

post-24378-0-57291500-1384979424_thumb.j

 

Your Blendfile Setup

post-24378-0-39163600-1384979464_thumb.j

 

Setup you have give me long time ago

post-24378-0-91370800-1384979524_thumb.j

 

Sure the last one have to adjust a little bit, but it looks much better as that you have postet above.

Maybe there is a bug in your new setup.

 

Anyway, Many thanks for sharing.

Edited by Malo
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2. A normal (tangent) map. Strength is at 0, it's off now, when you import your normalmap turn it to 1.000) 

 

Please, read carefully 

Read the screengrab I posted (with some comments on it) 

N_map is at 0 as I posted it. I had to, because if you don't apply anything as a n_texture/nmap it will become messy. 

 

Optionally, next to the normal map node there is a multiplier. Turn it to 0. If you don't mix a bump texture with n maps (yes, mixing bumps and n maps is possible in cycles) 

 

BTW, 

this is more advanced:

I forgot to support an AO map. 

Oh my. 

OK, next setup is coming soon. 

But, I bet, 3dc mixes (multiplies it with color information on the diffuse texture). This option is not really the best for cycles. 

 

 

EDIT:

It's me who should be more careful Malo,  :blush:

Apologies 

A fatal error. 

Please try the new version. I edited the previous post. 

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Thanks.

 

Looks better now

post-24378-0-69499000-1385048615_thumb.j

I have to tweak some stuff like invert green chanel on my normalmap as usual and invert the bump node too,

And i have put the Speculary into the Glossy Mix node.

 

Another test with a HDRI Image, same Material.

post-24378-0-72727800-1385048735_thumb.j

 

Not bad at all.

It is sad that SSS is not supported on GPU.

Edited by Malo
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@Malo, I still wonder why you have to invert the green channel for blender... All my normal maps from 3DCoat are applied with no corrections and load correctly in Blender... Really curious... sorry I tend to be an overly curious person at times but that is how I learn alot too... :)

 

Thanks for the Blend file there Michalis... :D

Edited by digman
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@Malo

Yeah, I forgot to mention it. 

SSS still not supported in GPU mode. 

Though I added it as an option (turned it off as you may noticed in the next to it mix node), it will conflict under GPU rendering. Better get rid of the SSS shader for GPU rendering. 

I prefer the first one you posted, without the HDRI. 

I usually ass a hdri (strength ~0.4) to help my basic lighting set up and give some life to the reflections. 

we'll discuss it on a next nodes setup. 

 

About inverting green channel on n_maps and invert of the bump map. 

I also wonder why. Never happened to me on a 3dc to blender workaround. (however it happens on a zbrush to blender - default z settings) 

Normal maps: I suggest the maya-blender compatible setup. 

Bumps: it is a B&W image, it should work as it is.

Please, check the normals / blender/edit mode/ select all/ CTRL+A. Optionally ask blender to show normals. (N panel/mesh display submenu/normals ) 

If you have re scaled the 3dc imported object, Never forget! CTRL+A / apply rotation And Scale. Apply it, even if you haven't rescale the mesh. On the N panel, on top, Rotation should be x y z = 0º Scale should be xyz=1.000

On another thread, I posted this setup, some months ago

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14895&p=98673

Normal calculations=maya

normal maps export=maya, blender

 

Thank You David! 

Hangout saved us all. 

David helped me to realize that Malo had all the rights to complain. LOL 

 

A hangOut meeting. 

This is what we should try. 

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