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Lights & Shaders throughout 3D Coats rooms.


LJB
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I Have to post on This cos I feel its the biggest disconnect in the whole app at the moment, and im sorry to say its really effecting the way I use the application, as i truly beleive it could be done differently.

Currently I find the entire process of Sculpting/retopology/texturing severely let down by inconsistent Lights/Shaders. Now I posted about these lights before but a couple of people here said they liked having the same Lights in Vox room and Paint rooms. I get that, but heres my problem. Everything is drastically different from room to room. I believe its more to do with the shaders, But simply using the default shader for both voxel then then texturing room still provides different results. Please see my pictures.

Now the only way I can remedy this inconsistent look currently is to change the lights in paint room to compensate, and here is another problem. I change the lights in the paint room enough to get a good pallette match to the actual colours I'm painting with (Which in my eyes is essential) and the alterations are reflected in the Voxel room, making things incredibly dark, so the balancing match begins. Lights settings are remembered on reset of application to boot. See pics.

So My question is What can be done to correct this, and am I just overreacting here, everybody seems to be getting along just fine as is. I personally think its a big disconnect and for this reason I'm not using 3d coat to texture things. I don't like to play balancing games and have to alter settings every time I go to work from room to room, I have better things to do with my time.

What I beleive should be done to address it, is something along the lines of consistent shaders from room to room and indepedant lighting for Texture Room and vox room.

I hope people see this problem I'm having and understand my annoyance.

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Are you talking about the fact that the materials, appear highly specularised in the paint room, because I thought, that was a bit wierd. I just chose, a simple skin tone colour and it was like extreme bright sunshine on the model, adjusting the lights sort of seemed to work but not that well.

I didnt really stick with using it to paint probably for that reason.

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Thank you for the quick address Andrew the Default shader is looking great so far. I know its going to be tricky with other shaders. But currently we only have the one material in the paint room. Would this unlock possibillity of other shaders in there also. If so that would be a big Positive step forward, and bring 3D Coats rendering potential up even further?

Again Thank you for speed at addressing this issue.

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Thank you for the quick address Andrew the Default shader is looking great so far. I know its going to be tricky with other shaders. But currently we only have the one material in the paint room. Would this unlock possibillity of other shaders in there also. If so that would be a big Positive step forward, and bring 3D Coats rendering potential up even further?Again Thank you for speed at addressing this issue.

It would be great to have selectable shader models for the paint room. Combine this with the ability to assign paint layers to "PaintSamplers" that can be accessed from glsl/hlsl code. Then we can have custom channels (luminance, color spec, etc.) :good:

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I would also find it very useful to have independent light settings for voxel and paint rooms. I frequently use a low direct light and high ambient light for the paint room while that will not work for the voxel room.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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"everybody seems to be getting along just fine as is"

Not everybody, I'm trying to see what's right in this app not what's wrong.

If I start complaining with what's wrong in my mac installation, I'll not stop. Some people will start to be offensive anyway. I learned my lesson by the hard way. I'm not so young :huh:

So I'll not complain for a 'silly' lighting problem.

I'm so happy with voxel modeling.

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Edit:I made some test with default shaders and I get exact correspondence with default shader and Ambient set to zero,I get exactly like Andrew's screenshot on this page.

I dont know why it does not work for Leigh...maybe it depends on Graphic card or something.

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Here how it looks like on my side:

Right yes there is a match now with the Shader colour bake which was not there b4 2.8 but I think the problem is deeper than that. If you set the Default Voxel shader color to 255,255,255 just change the palette colour in the paint room and the Vox Default will follow. Then bake and we get a match & you think were fine and dandy until we try and paint the thing white in the paint room. Then its back to B) Just try it and see what you get?

So I guess what im saying is the shaders dont make sense. Setting the colour to white is clearly not making the base shader white. The problem is we only have access to one shader in the paint room yet we have several in the vox room? Now if i set the base colour of a shader toi be 255,255,255 I expcet that to be the highest end of the spectrum as i paint it what Im seeing as are others is when it actually comes to painting stuff everything is Way too bright.

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Right yes there is a match now with the Shader colour bake which was not there b4 2.8 but I think the problem is deeper than that. If you set the Default Voxel shader color to 255,255,255 just change the palette colour in the paint room and the Vox Default will follow. Then bake and we get a match & you think were fine and dandy until we try and paint the thing white in the paint room. Then its back to B) Just try it and see what you get?

So I guess what im saying is the shaders dont make sense. Setting the colour to white is clearly not making the base shader white. The problem is we only have access to one shader in the paint room yet we have several in the vox room? Now if i set the base colour of a shader toi be 255,255,255 I expcet that to be the highest end of the spectrum as i paint it what Im seeing as are others is when it actually comes to painting stuff everything is Way too bright.

I have a hard time understanding your issue..english is not my native language and even if it sometimes doesnt look like it I dont understand 3DC that well...

so here is what I understand:

When you paint pure white on a layer you would like it to look like no changes happened because you already setted pure white in your shaders?Is that it?

You tell yourself I've already setted 255,255,255 so why when Im painting am I getting such a more brighter result?Is that it?

If that is your issue my answer is :

Well, a painting layer of pure white somehow adds up to the pure white of the shader already displayed so it is why it is much brighter....I guess. :blink:

If that is not your issue...well...I dont understand.

Im still new to texturing.In fact Ive never textured a single model in 3DC yet.

I hope Andrew at least understand and is able to fix it up for you. :pardon:

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The problem is amplified when switching shaders cos in reducing the primary light in the opaint room to compensate for this over brightness when we switch back to the Vox room for sculpting and say switch to the clay pictmap shader everything is very Dark indeed. So That is why i suggest giving these type of shaders their own light or having Different light for different shaders. The problem is they Do require different lighting and thats the inconsistency here. Not to harp on but its like in ZBrush what they did was give each shader its own light and compensate so that each material is of consistent brightness.

With a standard default If I set it to white and go to paint it I should not be able to higher than its base otherwise It will become a distraction to try and manage things. This is what is causing the problem more so than the voxel colour bake.

When painting its important (to me at least) to have a good palette match on a default shader. Currently there is not without changing lights which in turn effects other things, We are painting thinking everything lighter than it actually is. see shot.

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@Artman, Sorry you replied when I was replying so i missed that. But yes you have it exactly. If I set the base of a shader to White then I should not have a compound effect when adding white. If i set it to another colour then Id understand it going white But white on white going WHITER?. That is what is causing the annoying light alterations. When you get to texturing in 3d coat and see how bright things get when working in mid tones and adding highlight then you'll experience the problem first hand.

I just hope that Andrew can see what i mean, I hope maybe others can too, and maybe better articulate the problem maybe. I hope things are not so different in the Vox and Paint room shaders that this over bright.

But hey here's the thing if the rest of you guys out there who use 3D Coat are happy to work and texture like this and change the lights over and over then Leave it like it.

@Michallis 'Silly' yes but colours can be quite off when actually painting. I too love voxel sculpting, I'll get off my high horse. :blink:

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Last Usability example then I stop posting on this.

First shot shows direct painting of white 255,255,255 in a lighting environment that consists of no ambient and primary 70. White from palette is over bright and detail is obscured hampering accurate texturing for light areas.

Second shot shows that indeed the clay pictmap shader we all love is nice and workable at this light setting.

Third shot shows Painted surface with 255,255,255 at lighting No Ambient and primary 45, this achieves a pretty close pallet match whilst keeping details visable.

Forth shot illustrates that using the Primary light set to 45 with No ambient, the pictmap clay shader now becomes quite a lot darker. whereas preferable is lighter.

This should illustrate the shader/Lighting issues and explain why i switch out lights from room to room?

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Ok, if I understood you right then essence of the problems is that even if object color in voxel and paint room look exactly the same they are still different from color from palette. This problem has solution, I will describe. If it is OK I will make changes.

Now paint room is 1.6 times brighter then default shader in voxel room. I can make default & lamblight shaders 1.6 times brighter in voxel room and then you will get:

how it looks in voxels = how it looks in paint room = color in palete

But it will lead to one slightly negative issue - default shader will become brighter 1.6 times in voxel room, so in general all other shaders will look darker if they will be used together with default shader (because of you will correct general lightness).

So, if it OK, I will make all this easily.

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