Human Progress

Netvudu said:
Yes,as awesome as this render is, the fact the Chris is using Sigma 2 makes me skeptical about the flickering it will show in render.
At any rate this project is a milestone for Lightwave.
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A great focus for the Dev team to work on fine tuning Lightwave's renderer for sigma in animation and VPR. Chris's combination of SSS and spec is the best and fantastic r & d for the software. VPR should be able to render this node and it should be refined to be animateable if there are issues.
 
I'd rather they just fix the issues of penetration that skin and simple skin suffer from, as they are much better shaders and already work with VPR. I am surprised Chris got such nice results from Sigma, as it always gives me pretty awful results. He's had to fiddle on with it to get the results he has.
 
bobakabob said:
A great focus for the Dev team to work on fine tuning Lightwave's renderer for sigma in animation and VPR. Chris's combination of SSS and spec is the best and fantastic r & d for the software. VPR should be able to render this node and it should be refined to be animateable if there are issues.
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I've never seen a progressive renderer be able to render pre-passes but I suppose it's possible in some form. I agree that it would be better to refine what lightwave has already rather than creating 10 different SSS nodes.
 
did Chris or anybody else send the bug report for the skin/simple skin shader to devs? Otherwise this will be as useful as barking to the moon...
 
Quite a few SSS shaders have the same issues with single-sided geometry and also the intersecting stuff too. A shame, as it must be possible to make a shader that doesn't have these limitations!
 
Netvudu said:
did Chris or anybody else send the bug report for the skin/simple skin shader to devs? Otherwise this will be as useful as barking to the moon...
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I haven't reported it, but I'm told they're looking into some of the issues I've mentioned here.

jasonwestmas said:
...lack of definition in the nose.
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The nose is out of focus.

jasonwestmas said:
I would be surprised if you don't get flickering when you do a turntable of this. Sigma 2 is one of those prepass nodes. I never got an answer on whether or not they were designed for animation but I could never get them to not flicker (few years back) Perhaps the original sigma would render better.
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I did some quick animation tests and there was some splotchy grain in areas (as with the eyeball), but how noticeable that is at higher quality settings remains to be seen.

Tobian said:
I'd rather they just fix the issues of penetration that skin and simple skin suffer from, as they are much better shaders and already work with VPR. I am surprised Chris got such nice results from Sigma, as it always gives me pretty awful results. He's had to fiddle on with it to get the results he has.
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Actually I had to fiddle more with Simple Skin, and it still looked a bit plasticky. Sigma2 gives bumps a nicer volumetric appearance, and you can see the scatter colour in the transition from light to shade, which Simple Skin is a bit reluctant to produce. I was able to more closely approximate Arnold and V-Ray SSS with it as well. Curious to know in what way Skin and Simple Skin are superior though, besides working in VPR (and possibly absence of flicker).
 
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I was testing the Sigma 2 shader, and it kept crashing on me at the end of my F9 render... randomly each time, but around the 2nd or 3rd render check. I thought it was due to Distant lights, but was finding it was doing it on area lights too. hard to say what was causing it.
 
mummyman said:
I was testing the Sigma 2 shader, and it kept crashing on me at the end of my F9 render... randomly each time, but around the 2nd or 3rd render check. I thought it was due to Distant lights, but was finding it was doing it on area lights too. hard to say what was causing it.
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I haven't traced any crashes to Sigma2 so far - most of mine are from DP Meta Fit and Tension, and caustics (which I've been avoiding for now). Might be something different about your scene or model...?
 
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I might have got a bit carried away...


Does anyone else get stuttery playback? If so I might have to go for a lower frame rate in future.

Postmortem:

Hair clearly has a mind of its own.
Network rendering changes the F-Stop setting, limiting rendering to 1 PC.
Limited region changes the appearance of Sigma 2, as does placing objects in front of it to mask sections out (very problematic when your workflow involves a lot of patch-up renders).

(c:
 
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