tuqueque's stuff!

Hello!

As some of you may already know, I started the idea of sharing with you some of my personal projects and products with the hope of being helpful for you and if you find them good, consider donating some bucks.

This first post will be edited from time to time to reflect changes, additions and corrections of the stuff I’ll share.

The first thing I’m sharing with you is an SSGI node I created entirely with Blender’s own native compositing nodes… No scripts, no addons.


tuqueque’s SSGI node and documentation: (version 1.2): The new 1.2 version fixes a stupid clamping problem, SSGI should be more reliable with strong, direct light… The documentation also has a couple minor changes and additions.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9-4MQo-2HDqU0p5RWZ4aXdMbXc
Cornell Box scene to play with: There’s a total of 6 scenes inside!.. 3 different lighting setups (Spot, Fire and Emit shaders) and for each setup, there’s an sRGB and a Filmic version with SSGI setting adapted to it! - Al scenes are animated as shown in the gifs below… You will have to re-bake the smoke simulation, of course. - If you don’t have the Filmic color profiles in your Blender install, you’ll only be able to use the sRGB scenes, the Filmic scenes would look weird/sort of dark.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9-4MQo-2HDqMUpjaXFMSG5CeDQ
San Miguel scene to play with: There’s 2 scenes inside, one for the Filmic profile and one for the usual sRGB one… Warning, the scene file is HUGE (~287MB) and this is actually very optimized and somewhat simplified from the original (a lot of recycled textures). You should be able to render even in a compatible GPU with 2GB of memory. All image textures are (should) be packed into the file.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9-4MQo-2HDqdEFWa2xoM0hoMnc


The SSGI (Screen Space Global Illumination) product, is a node group intended to be used inside Blender’s Cycles Compositing module to simulate what is known as indirect light, bounced light or “Global Illumination”. It doesn’t use Raytracing except for the reliance on Cycle’s Ambient Occlusion “Distance” parameter for some of its internals, everything else is worked inside the node without the use of Raytracing, just compositing nodes.

As the name states, is a Screen-Space solution, so it shares most of the advantages (speed, noiseless) and disadvantages (generally inferior quality than any “physically correct” Path Tracing solution).

Summary:
The product consists in a single node group that should be appended to the scene and connected to the proper inputs and outputs. The idea is to set Cycles’ Diffuse Bounces parameter to 0 and let the SSGI node simulate them as a compositing effect. It should be compatible with most workflows, or in most cases, those workflows could be adapted to this node.

Here’s some of the stuff that can be achieved with this node:



Plus, some animations:


http://i.imgur.com/P5OFrsF.gif

The lighting is entirely solved by the SSGI node:
http://i.imgur.com/pUGiL4v.gif

I hope you find it useful and remember, if you find it useful, consider donating a few bucks. In the included manual are the links for donations.

Over the next few days I’ll also share the Conell box scenes shown in the animations as well as the San Miguel scene!.. I need to sleep a few hours first! :spin:

Thank you very much!

Interesting. I`ll try at home.
Cheers!

Wow ! Where is the donation link :slight_smile:

Whoa! Looks very interesting. Could this be made into a GLSL shader and done in real time in the viewport?

Hmm, I get a white result? I read the documentation but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong? I’m on 2.78c


untitled.blend (1.02 MB)

Huh, weird… Let me get home in a few hours and I’ll check!

Thank you very much!
This is very good, and I just read the docs!! :slight_smile:

I had the same issue (screen going white), I was just messing around with it. I think I just lowered the GI multiplier and it went normal. I havent had much time to play with it, still trying to figure it out. I just remember on of the sliders I turned to zero and the white went away.

Hi.
It is giving that white result in official Blender 2.78c. Not in Blender from master / Buildbot

Cool stuff.

But are you using an older version of Blender?

I ask because it looks like the hue/saturation nodes break for those having problems (2.78 here)

Oh, that must be it!.. I’m still away from home, but I use Buildbot versions all the time. I’ll check, fix and update the download as soon as I get home (in about 2 hours)… Sorry for the inconvenience, not an easy one to predict, though.

Ok, I fixed the problem… Now the SSGI node is compatible with Blender 2.78c and newer!

Grab it from the first post… I also cleaned-up the file (there was some other node groups crap in the previous file, sorry for the mess, now is clean)… I also added another “tip” in the documentation and a couple more Cryptocurrencies in the donations page at the end.

In case you were wondering, Tekneek was right, the Hue/Saturation node in current Master is not compatible with older, 2.78c versions of blender… which is a shame, I had to add a bunch of stupid Math nodes to compensate for the limitations of the Hue/Saturation nodes in 2.78c. Hopefully, when the next official version of Blender comes out, I’ll get rid of those extra Math nodes, the SSGI group is already crowded as it was.

Anyway, sorry for the inconveniences, problem solved and you should be able to use the node happily!

Happy blending!

Hey there. I was on the other thread where you showed before and after shots. That really hammers home what your node group actually does. I think it needs that here too. A few images with a horizontal line going across it with the “original” on the left and the “SSGI” on the right side would show how great your work is.

Just my opinion :slight_smile:

Cheers.

Thanks for the feedback, D3Pixel… I thought about that last night and you suggesting the same, convinced me. I just updated 3 of the main images with animated gifs showing the differences between the raw render and the SSGIed one.

… One thing that I was expecting by now is some more feedback from people testing the node… Maybe with Yesterday’s white screen issue people lost interest or something… I’d be a shame, I’ve put a lot of work on this and the manual to help people get the hang of it quickly.

Anyway, tonight I’ll try to finish and clean-up the Conell Box scene to post it here as well for people to do their own tests with it if they like.

I’d like to see some feedback from people using/testing the node, though.

P.S.: I updated (again) the Documentation file, no content changes, just cosmetics. The program I use to create the Documentation (Scribus) is a little bit buggy… Anyway, Documentation looks OK now compared to the previous one).

@
tuqueque
Thank you!

I’m testing it in an interior (quite complex scene) and I still have not great (or presentable) results but I’ll post here as soon as I have something to show.
Is this node setup suitable for interior scenes anyway?

I was thinking what setting would be the best to get it “noise free”. That’s why a simple scene setting so we can compare how we can make it.

The updated images at the start are great. So, I downloaded the zip file and looked at the documentation. Nicely laid out, easy to read and great design. I read through the entire setup and it occurred to me that a simple python script that would allow users to just run the script to setup all the parameters, passes etc on their own scene would help people dive-in, dive-out sort of thing. Or just include a test scene.

So, as a quick test (I have little time) I opened the tuquequeSSHI-278c.blend file and pressed F12. Not a lot happened. So I looked at the scene and realised it is just the node group with no test, even though you included a cube in the file.

So, now I need to open one of my own scenes, read the docs and wire this up. No problem, on my lunch break so will give that a shot.

Looking at the passes, it is not clear if all the passes for Diffuse, Glossy, Transmission and SS are active. I assumed they are, so made them active on my scene.

Then I came to the import of the node group. Clicked APPEND and selected your file. Clicked “Node Groups” and had the option of a lite version and a version 1.0. Your docs so far say use version 1.0. So I appended that node tree. Did Shift+a and added the newly imported node group into the comp editor. Then wired it all up.

I continued with the documentation and now see you mention the lite version but nothing why there is a lite version? I skipped that bit.

Ok, so now I rendered an image out. It looked the same as before but took 15 seconds longer to render and was a tiny bit brighter.

AH HA, I didn’t set bounces to zero. So in “light paths” set min and max to zero and hit render. Again, very little difference. I set all bounces to 0 (diffuse, glossy, transmission etc). It now renders the scene then adds +20 seconds for the comp so about the same speed as my original.

Back to the documentation…

Looking at the explanation in the docs of 1st bounce, 1st+2nd bounce and 1st+2nd+3rd bounce images I can see a clear difference. Your node group defaults to 1.0 for all three values. So If I want to use 1st+2nd only I assume I set 3rd bounce to 0. Also note in the Node Group it is called “3th” and it should probably be called “3rd”. The range of these bounce sliders is 0…2 so is that the expected maximum a user should use? I can input a higher amount.

For node group bounces I tested:
0, 2, 2
10,10,10

The render time was the same but got some really interesting results.

I put it back to 1,1,1

I am trying to see how I can use this more effectively in my scenes but would really need to try this from the start of a scene, not after one is complete full of HDR lighting and fine tuned settings. I need to test with just a single light and go from there. Rendering time and quality are the obvious wants for me so will keep messing with it. Have to get back to work now. Sorry I could not be more in depth.

Cheers

Thanks!.. Now I have an idea of what’s going on… I think there’s a couple of things hindering your experience. The first one is my fault and I thought about it last night. Since I developed and use as my default Color management the Filmic profile, probably most of you still use the sRGB default system. That will give you sometimes quite different/weird results with default settings. If you use the sRGB (official Blender’s default), you should start with something like 0.5 for the GI Multiplier parameter and of course, the other one called sRGB/Filmic should be set to 0.0. (although you can play with higher values, something like 0.25 maybe if the scene is too bright).

The second thing that seems to be happening is that you need at least a few example scenes to see the results and settings by yourselves. Fortunately, I’m working on that and in about 4h I’ll post the Cornell Box scene. Maybe tonight I’ll also post the San Miguel scene… I’ll post 2 versions of each, one set with sRGB in mind and one with Filmic.

I’ll make some small changes and corrections to the Documentation to make clear since the beginning about the “Lite” version and other things you guys are pointing out. I think it’s necessary to clarify a few things that are not entirely clear, like: For the way Compositing nodes work and the way this node group is set, most parameters will take the same time and calculations no matter how you set them, so, if you only use “1st bounce” and set the other ones to 0, calculation time will be pretty much the same, just use all of them unless you specifically want the “look” of just the 1st Bounce.

@SunBurn Absolutely! my SSGI node should excel with interior, complex scenes!.. I’m also considering creating a videotutorial showing some use cases… If you don’t mind the accent and my slow computer, I’ll do it!

FInally, as you may already know or imagine, English is not my native language, please, feel free to point out spelling mistakes in the documentation or the node itself (thanks, D3Pixel), I’ll correct those and repost if necessary.

Thanks again for your feedback. Keep it coming!

this is pretty fast. I appended my scene mesh to “your cube scene.” And I have extensive hair and beard particles. it rendered about three times faster than when i was using straight up cycles. That is also with version 1. For me, this is outstanding for fast rough renders to guage lighting and look. I haven;t done a thorough detailed render yet though.

Hey, earlier than I thought!.. You can grab the Cornell Box blend file from the first post!

There’s a total of 6 scenes inside!.. 3 different lighting setups (Spot, Fire and Emit shaders) and for each setup, there’s an sRGB and a Filmic version with SSGI setting adapted to it!

http://i.imgur.com/P5OFrsF.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/pUGiL4v.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/yrtIdHK.gif

Al scenes are animated as shown in the gifs above… You will have to re-bake the smoke simulation, of course.

P.S.: if you don’t have the Filmic color profiles in your Blender install, you’ll only be able to use the sRGB scenes, the Filmic scenes would look weird/sort of dark.