Hi All! Underwater, or partially anyway. Is this possible to do in DS? I spent DAYS, whenever I had some free time, on this pose. It's a VERY modified version of a pose from A's Everlast set. Basically, I would like them to be surfaced, or just below the surface, and have the camera see half above and half below. And lighting as well. Don't need step-by-step, just pointers and advice on how to go about it, and maybe how YOU would go about it. I'm REALLY pleased with how the pose turned out as it looks good from any angle. I want to try to get the scene to match. Any advice appreciated.  And yes, it's Aiko 4 and Andre from M3.

Greywolf

I suspect you'd need to do two renders and join them - the trouble is that passing through the water surfaces should refract and reflect the light and D|S won't do that - you need a higher-end application that can do things like photon tracing.

Ah well. :(
Maybe Poser can do it, though I'm still going to experiment with water in DS. :)
Can Bryce do refraction? Or does pwSurface for DS have that ability? I have both,
and may just see if I can do it. The pwSurface shader DOES have reflection and
refraction settings. Maybe it's possible if the pwSurface shader is applied to the
water prop. What do you think?

Greywolf

There is a Bryce tut here

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=254&page=1

Actually, I'm having some success in DS using a cube primitive. I made each side a separate
material, used the top as the water surface, and set the transparency on sides and bottom,
depending on how deep the water is, though the back side should be opacity 100%. The
FogBox might also help with water murk. Still haven't got the surface to my satisfaction.
There are not many oceanic bump maps out there. :(

Greywolf

BTW, Poser's grouping tool was responsible for making the cube sides separate mats. :)

You may want to take a look at this render engine:

http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php

I've been using it for a couple of weeks now to expand my rendering options for D|S scenes and am very pleased with the results. It supports masking renders as one of the built in presets which would make it very simple to do the two render composite R.H. mentioned in his post.

if you are prepared for a learning curve there is www.povray.org and a utility called Poseray to convert poser and Daz scenes to povray and moray (a gui modeler that calls povray to raytrace). Povray does photons, caustics, ior, and everything you'll need.

D|S does refraction, but only to change the way things look through a refracting surface (so you can get the broken pencil effect) - what I was saying it doesn't do, and nor does Poser, is change the way the light shining through a refractive surface illuminates what's below the surface. As a result you really need two different lighting set-ups, one for below the surface and one for above, which is why I suggested using two renders and mixing them.

I wonder if D|S is ever going to incorporate caustics or no? I'm under the impression that the 3delight renderer is capable of a lot of things that are not yet incorporated in D|S, like light falloff.

I have Bryce and Carrara 6.1, but I'm stubborn. I started this in DS, and figured I'd finish it there, with a bit of trickery. Here is the first test using a remapped cube with each side a separate MAT zone. Applied the water to the top, transparented all other sides but the one facing the camera. I put that at 50% transparency. Threw in the fogbox, but you can see that didn't work due to the dim shadows on each layer. It didn't really need it, but I wanted to see how it looked. Now I need to figure out how to caustic light the scene above and below, as well as water ripples. As I said, I'm a stubborn cuss. :) I do have Poseray, just no time to learn it. So much too learn, so little time. DS can fake caustics, though I think you need the uber spotlight, which I DO have, for doing it.

Greywolf

I know the uberlight can do caustics, and if doing them in DS is similar
to Poser, then doing them will not be too hard. On water, though, if you
are doing a split view as in my other thread, you have TWO types of
caustics to concern yourself with. The light travelling THROUGH the water
surface, and the light REFLECTING off that same surface. Now, I believe
both types of caustics are very similar, but would I be correct in
assuming that the reflected light is not as bright? Any thoughts on this
from the Lighting masters would be appreciated. I have both the uberspot
and the uberpoint, though I think the spot is the better choice for caustics.

Greywolf

Not bad. I like how you got the wave roll in there.

Hmmm. So far, all attempts at caustic lights in DS have failed. Even the Uberlights can't do
them properly. It seems that without something like the Poser MAT room, DS simply can't
do underwater caustics. I'll keep trying, but I'm not optimistic. :(

Greywolf

You're a brave man trying that...I wouldn't even know where to begin.

OK, with the help of a Bryce wave terrain posted in freestuff, I exported it, took in into Modo to turn it into a 3d prop by adding a open cube to it and now have a decent ocean surface. Bumps and displacement maps just aren't good enough for close-ups. The ocean in my scene was just too smooth. This is more like it should be.

Greywolf

OK, I see what you're doing. The light reflected on the water is bright, but dimmer under water. Also, surface specular viewed from below isn't as bright I believe (?)

Underwater caustics aren't as bright as surface caustics from reflection, true, but surface
reflection fades faster the farther from the water you get, underwater caustics may be dimmer,
but the light seems to travel farther, I think, because it's direct light and not reflected light. BTW,
I've figured out how to get the uberlights to show caustics, finally. :)

Greywolf

Cool! can't wait too see what you got then!
Good point about direct vs. reflected light.

don´t dare not to tell us, what and how you did it with the uberlights ;)
way to go, great work

Finally figured out caustics on the uberlights. Simply a black and white caustics tex applied to the light colour. Sometimes the simplest solution evade you. :) A test render using the ocean surface, cyclorama with HotO texture, a ship and sub, and the caustics map applied to nine uberspots positioned just below the surface. Getting there.

Greywolf

That's starting to look pretty good! I never thought of a light map, I don't have the uberspots. I wonder if a transparent text applied to a plane in front of a regular spot would do the same thing?

Now, if only you could make an object not accept shadows. SIGH. Looks like I'll need to do a layered render. I need the shadows since the boat and lovebirds need them, but I don't need their shadows on the backdrop. :)

Greywolf

Good work on the water!

pwCatch should do the trick for determining which surfaces receive shadows. It is a commercial item but is reasonably priced so you may want to take a look at the store entry over on DAZ.

I have pwCatch, and as far as I've seen, it's for 'catching' figure shadows so they'll blend in with
a photographic background. It won't stop shadows from being caught by a prop background.
I've the solution though. I did a render without shadows, then one with just the boat and the
Lovers with shadows on. I'll mask the second and layer it on the first. :)

Greywolf

Here's a shot of the final image, before I TOONed it in my usual style, for the Gallery. :)

Greywolf