Quote - 30 samples doesn't take that long to render. I was doing test renders with just James (the clothed figure, changed his shirt to red), about 600 by 400 in size, and it was less than a minute to render.

Rendering with DV=0 and SV=0 won't save any time. Even if it did, compositing in post would be impossible - you need to add the Gather effect, so you'd have to make everything else BLACK in order not to double it, which then would make it Gather nothing at all.

Yeah I see what you mean about compositing is no good here ( didn't occur to me at the time). I did a gather-test render yesterday with 30 samples and final render settings and it took about 15 mins.  My machines not too fast though. It took about 5 min with just primitives thrown together to look like a head and neck and a shirt. 15 min is a-ok with me but if I had a full scene that takes an hour or more I think I'll pass on it. I need to play with this some more thanks for helping out I really appreciate it. :)

Quote -
On thing that might help you debug: Turn off Diffuse_Value and Specular_Value (set them to 0), temporarily. Then  when you render, you'll ONLY be seeing the results from the Gather. You should see a red glow near the sweater.

Hmm If I did this would it decrease rendertime? Probably not but If so Im thinking maybe I could do two renders save them as png's and composite them together in photoshop.

Hi BagginsBill,

Thanks for replying back. I will try that out. At least 30 samples wow. I don't think my machine or my patience will like that . I rarely render at full settings( takes too fricken long) and I think they need to be at the highest settings to get that many samples although I could be wrong on that. Artifacts Im not to concerned about . I can always postwork it if it's not too bad. I really just want a fairly rough effect of this that I can clean up later in an image editor. Looking forward to the tutorial. Whenever you can get around to it is fine. Yes that was me posting about it on CP. Im BJ there.

Thanks for the link Anton. I was aware of that thread before but had forgotten about it. Thanks
for reminding me it's on my to do list as are many other things. Probably too many lol.

Thankyou too replicand.

Cheers,
JB or BJ

> Quote - > Quote - Thanks for that information, fibbits. > > > > No doubt, the technology involved will improve with time.  I'm not planning on buying one -- as I don't play video games often enough for the investment to be worthwhile. > > > > I haven't even read any Harry Potter novels, or seen any of the associated movies.  Much less played a Harry Potter video game.  > > > > But it's still attention-getting technology, nonetheless.  It'll be interesting to see where they go with it down the road. > > > > You think *that's* attention getting tech?  What about the vibrating Harry Potter broomstick?  Really not kidding.

Is this the article your talking about. Lol

Hi BagginsBill I posted this on the forums at CP (Im BJ there) in the Image tribute thread after I saw your post with that new ghoul preset Thanks. I would have posted in the developers forum in the V4 UCFS thread ( to get your attention faster)but this thread seemed more relevent. 

From the Apollo forum/ Image tribute to Anton and Apollo thread at CP

"Hey thanks BagginsBill. Hopefully you will see this post because I have few nice suggestions for your shader that would make it even more versitile.

1. I would like the ability to control nail color and maybe specular for it.
   Now since Apollo already has a nails material group no mask map would be needed.

2. I would also like the ability to control nipple color. This one a mask map
   would be needed but the good thing is it can be made easy by anyone. Even
   myself ( I freely admit Im no texture artist but Im pretty good at post work so I know I could make one.)

So what do you think? Is it possible we might see this in an update. Id pay $

That and a Big Pdf manual compiling all your tips on various subjects at Rendo,RuntimeDna etc. Id pay extra $ for that.Lol

Really there's so much good info out there and Im trying to learn but it's sometimes hard to find and there's not enough time in the day. Most of it is over my head but the more I read and experiment the more it sinks in."

Anton would you consider releasing those shiny skin materials you posted on cp a while back

Im very interested in textureless node setups

Maybe include with part 4

I noticed CP was still down. Hope the forums aren't wiped when they come back. 

Now that would suck there's a lotta good stuff in there.