Despite the title of the tutorial, this is about a little more than vdb's and render layers. One of the most welcomed features of Unreal Engine 5.4 is how the engine now compiles shaders very fast. It's another world, mainly for those that uses a not so powerful system. Of course, the artist still can tweak the compiling process priority changing the WorkerProcessPriority variable to 0, on the BaseEngine.ini file. Also, to change the PercentageUnusedShaderCompilingThreads variable to 0, is a known way to speed up the shading compiling in Unreal Engine. But, what we have now, is really a very f ..read more

This is a direct follow up from the OCIO config file in Blender part 1. Please, read the first part in case of any doubts related to aspects of the config.ocio file or LUTS. In this second part, I'll show you how to proper organize the OpenColorIO config file to avoid to mess the default Blender configuration. In this way, it's easier to change configurations or disable the OCIO configuration, if desired. Also, it will be shown how to add the ACEScg colorspace to the config.ocio file. In doing so, the artist will have the option to use the AgX colorspace or the ACEScg colorspace, without the n ..read more

Blender 4.0 release introduced a new color space called AgX, which is very close to the ACEScg color space. The advantage to work with Agx or ACEScg is that these color spaces avoids hot spots in the final render. The treatment of intensive light and high level exposure are much better than the Filmic color space. Another great advantage is the consistency when using an OpenColorIO config file. It's easier to build a pipeline upon it and, in case of need of modification in the future, it's very easy to adapt or switch to another color space: it's only needed to making changes to the ocio confi ..read more

This is a requested tutorial. The Blender artist who is very curious and like to experiment different setups, plugins and render engines, like me, can optimize the workflow by having a specific configuration for each case, for example: I have a configuration for vanilla Blender, other to use Renderman, other to use AMD Pro Render and other to use Octane Render; without have to have to occupy my hard drive with many Blender 3D installations - I only use one. Though, this tutorial also can be used to have a specific configuration file for different Blender versions. First of all, the Blender art ..read more

Nowadays, the use of ACEScg colorspace is taken for granted in any serious VFX production. ACEScg colorspace is used not only for consistency, but it's actually improves the render quality. To know more, Slick3d.art recommends to read the excellent book CG Cinematography, written by Chris Brejon. The book is available online on the author's website , and the reader can click here to directly access the ACEScg chapter. Unreal Engine already has it's own ACES configuration and it's enable by default. However, Unreal Engine's ACES differ a little bit from the official ACES configuration. To know ..read more

In this tutorial I'll show you how to convert Blender's 3D new hair system to Lightwave 3D FiberFx. For this, I am using the Einar's demo file that can be downloaded here. Also, you can become more familiar with Blender's new hair system features by watching the developer's video here. Blender's 3D new hair system cannot be exported directly as curves like 3D artists are use to do with the classic hair particle system. To be able to export the new hair system curves to another software, the artist must select each created hair bundle (which is a geometry nodes assembly) and switch to sculpt mo ..read more

In the new Linux versions, the DotNet SDK has conflicts with NSS or ca-certificates. Different types of failures are raised in relation to a specific operation. A more detailed explanation of the problem can be found here. Compiling Unreal Engine on Linux had always been very straightforward. Unfortunately, on Fedora 36 we got the DotNet SDK conflict error. Unable to load the service index for source https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json The error message above and others are raised in the moment of the project files generation, the last step before to run the command make to build Unreal. OBS ..read more

This is a requested tutorial, then I believe that some artists might had trouble to run Houdini in the new Fedora 36. Yes, there are some issues, but for our luck, they're easy to solve. Here, I describe my steps to make Houdini run smoothly on Fedora 36. I hope this tutorial would be useful for those with need. First step: download Houdini. I am using the version 19.0.622, python 2. After the download, the artist must extract the files, of course. Here are the files and the Houdini artist must do the installation through the terminal as usual. The installation process should run without any ..read more

For whom in trouble to configure opencl in Houdini, it’s needed to write the GPU card configuration in the correct order inside houdini.env file. The Houdini artist should use the windows shell inside Houdini to query information about the available opencl devices: Menu Windows > Shell. The windows shell opened: Then, the Houdini artist should type hgpuinfo -l to list all available opencl devices in the system: The returned device list: In this example, the artist desires to use the opencl CUDA, of course. If the artist is getting error messages when querying about the Houdini opencl co ..read more

Lightwave 2018 brought a new PBR render engine with an unprecedented volume system in Lightwave's history. All new features are very nice. However, Lightwave still chokes when have to do intense computations. Of course, this is a big problem because, usually, production demands heavy scenes and intense computations from the render engine. But, there's hope for Lightwave native render engine. With some tricks, it's possible to obtain decent render times when rendering more complex scenes. One thing to do is baking the textures when using complex shading networks. Another thing is never use brut ..read more