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Comments
Like the concept overall. Does the AO portion take advantage of point cloud calculations or would you have to use a point cloud capable light (like UE2 or the "simple light" of point cloud script) if you want to use those?
Here's a question I haven't seen asked. Do these lights play nicely with subsurface scatter, or is that something I would still want a standard DS direct raytraced light for? I tend to use an UberEnvironment / Raytraced direct light combo a lot so I'm curious as to which lights it plays best with.
The images I've seen look tantalizing, but can the lights themselves cast shadows, or is that simply being done by additional lights in the scene? If your subsurface shader is anything to go by, these lights may be my next must-haves but curious minds will always pry.
I see no bloom effect.
I have not tried UE2 yet as i dont normally use it and the same goes for the SSS Shader though I can tell you there is a setting in the light concerining the SSS shader.
Bloom effects are done in camera which the standard DS cameras are not set up to do. I do have AoA's cameras which I forgot about and could have used his z-depth camera or the fog one perhaps.
My last image was just a quicky out of the box. Normally I would spend a lot more time and effort to make everythign look good but I wanted to see what it was able to do with out surface tweaking. Normally to mimic global illumination I would use a dome of 40 distant lights that dont cast shadows. I have used such a set up for years but always in conjunction with pwSurface2. I was not attempting to be very artistic
i dont have time to post more images with it today since I have my own work to do and its perhaps best to leave it to AoA to show off how well he uses it since his images look so cool.
To show the difference in the Julie image of using the 40 distance lights vs just one AAL with AO active, feel free to compare these two images: (both scenes use the same 3 spot lights with only one casting shadows)
Looks great AoA, looking forward to it!
Like your cameras this seems to be a very useful addition.
I`d wish Daz would buy out your stuff and integrate it into DS, so I could use it eg. for light sets on commercial products.
Oh, and nice to see you used the bath with the roof taken off, always hoped someone would do that ;)
The loader is in DUF format so DS4.5 or higher. I haven't tried the light in DS3 but I suspect it would not work properly in DS3, sorry.
OK, I didn't think it would. Was just wondering if it would work in DS 4.0 Pro, but obviously not.
This looks really cool. The ability to turn it down or off for hair could save me lifetimes. One question: It works with ubersurface, does it work with ubersurface2?
Its a light. it will work with any surface shader
It is a new light made from scratch. It does not use UberEnvironment.
I've tried to use the advanced ambient by itself, or maybe with just one DS distant light, when it comes to posting here or images used in the product shots. The aim is for fair advertising of what the light actually looks like. However, the light is definitely intended to be used along with other lights.
Below is a example where I used only the Advanced Ambient Light (4 of them) but the final image would have been better if I added a point light also. There are 2 lights in the back for the torches, one for the lantern and another for the moonlight.
If this image weren't for an advertisement I would have lit the scene the same except I probably would have turned the ambient light in the lantern down to about 25% it's current strength and added a point light in the same place so that the lantern cast some slightly harsher shadows.
Though, as the image sits, using only ambient lights, you can see how the light looks and how different areas of the scene can be illuminated with several Advanced Ambient Lights of different colors and strengths.
Note that my volume camera was used also to give the scene some atmosphere.
...so basically this is sort of what the old LDP did. Simulate area lighting without the use of IDL?
So when does it come out?
I think is the kind of thing that would make Paolo, the creator of the Reality plugin, faint :D And I don't mean that in an insulting way (to either side), it's just so cool, how there are so many different ways to achieve certain effects in 3D.
Two effects that I have been after for a while now are; caustic lighting for underwater scenes and bio-luminescent lighting. I know Reality can turn any object into a light or rather an object that casts light and creates a shadow and lux takes care of the rest. I would like to do that in studio. Two examples are Jelly fish and the glow on the tron costumes and vehicles. A material set with an ambient map set to high works but it has no bloom. The advanced render options in studio has a way to add caustics to a scene but I really have a hard time finding my way around in there.
It should. However I'm embarrassed to say that I did not test it with US2. For some reason I kept thinking the Ubersurface included with DS was US2 but I guess it is actually US1. Yeah, I should know better :red:
There is something important to note though: The light will Illuminate any surface but some shaders will not respond to the "flags" to use different settings . Shaders made with Shader Mixer (other than the AoA Subsurface Shader) and the Look At My Hair shader do not react to flagging. This is simply due to the way the shaders are written/generated. I'm continuing to experiment with various scripts to see if I can find a solution so all shaders will work with flags.
The images I’ve seen look tantalizing, but can the lights themselves cast shadows, or is that simply being done by additional lights in the scene? If your subsurface shader is anything to go by, these lights may be my next must-haves but curious minds will always pry.
Your method, using a distant light with an ambient light will work well.
These images were all done just like you described but using the Advanced Ambient light (earlier version) instead of UberEnvironment.
http://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/r/promo4_1_13.jpg
http://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/o/toonpopup2.jpg
http://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/o/toonpopup1.jpg
If I may say so myself, the ambient light works very well with the AoA Subsurface Shader ;) An earlier version of this light was way was used in almost all of the base shader and toon skin shader promos.
As mentioned in my previous post the light works well with other lights in the scene but can be used as a stand alone light. Here is a render using only the Advanced Ambient Light (3 of them with the exact same settings except each has different quality settings for speed) and her skin uses the AoA Subsurface Shader.
Agree that the use of the point cloud is not as intuitive as a regular occlusion 3Delight, however, I couldn't imagine doing an UE2 IDL + AO render without point cloud, as the speed increase is quite tremendous from my experience. Anyway, will have to think about this, but yeah, I got very used to using point-based occlusion.
The more I hear the more i like - really looking forward to this!
Also good to finally learn the lighting for the SSS promos, quite a few of us had been wondering about that :)
Can you be a bit more specific what this "flagging" is? From the documentation page it looks like it tries to read the shader parameters from the surface and to guesses somehow if the diffuse value is 99% (amongst other things), but how does it do that? Does it read the "diff_value" from a surface to check if it is 0.99? (e.g. that would work for UberSurface, but not for dzmatte).
For a light shader that interacts with the surface shaders (as your ambient light does), i think it is important to describe exactly how this interaction works, so the shaders that people create can be as compatible as possible.Otherwise we would end up with a bunch of shaders where only some of them work together. That would be especially undesirable for a shader that is supposed to be used in conjunction with other shaders (like your ambient does, as you wrote above).
(Note that the part below is not something you need to know in order to use the light but it is helpful for shader developers or those who are curious.)
The light reads tokens and attributes in the RIB file that is sent to the renderer. These tokens are the internal variable names of the shader and are often different than the parameter name seen in the DS UI.
For instance the DS default shader's "Diffuse Strength" token appears in the RIB as
and in Ubersurface as . Because of this the light looks for either of these.The trouble comes in when trying to read Shader Mixer generated tokens because they are always different and change every time a shader is loaded in Shader Mixer and edited. For instance, the token for "Diffuse Strength" might be
one time and another. This makes it too unpredictable to have the light hard coded to look for those variables.I'm experimenting with DS scripting to see if I can't workaround that issue. If I can get the script to work I will try to update soon after. I can't promise I will be able to find a solution though.
I love your Roman Bath set Flipmode! Lots of props and great textures! I adjusted some of the surfaces to have raytraced reflection. I don't know if what I did is historical but I liked the look. Here is a larger re-render.
...this pic has pretty much sold me. This is more like the quality I was able to get with the old LDP plugin, which I much prefer over UE and IDL as they can tend to wash out shadows too much.
Would love to see this and the atmospheric cameras used together in a large city scene.
Pretty much sold me too. I too would love to see the light with atmospheric cameras. I myself intend to do allot of large urban renders in the near future. I also am curious to see how well it can illuminate interior rooms, particularly with bouncing light. One of the killers for an interior set which is fully enclosed with walls roofing and flooring is the absence of bouncing light in DS, and I never liked the idea of using an uber environment since it illuminates everything (as KK mentioned, washes out shadows too much) and while I am learning about the shader mixer method of creating IDL and so on, I know Garibaldi Hair will severely impact the IDL/caustics render
Also AoA cheers for the info in reply to my question on Bouncing light, I really cant wait to get my hands on this Adv Ambient light!! :cheese:
It just hit me what LDP stands for haha. I didn't recognize it when you mentioned it before. That is why I didn't reply earlier. I was waiting for the answer to come to me. Evidently I am getting old because my memory is just shot hehe.
Light Dome Pro is something I haven't used. I read the product description when it was released but I guess I didn't realize exactly where or how I would use it. Maybe it has features I wasn't aware of. I'll have to check it out.
Although from my posts it may not sound like it, I really do have a huge library of DAZ products hehe. Between trying to keep up with all the updates and changes to DS, 3delight, Carrara and Poser, as well as my failing memory, I appear to be missing a lot of cool stuff LOL!
...unfortunately the original LDP and LDP2 (which I used a lot) have not been updated for any version of Studio4.
There is a new version that was recently released (LDP-R) but instead of being simply a Daz Studio Plugin (as the original version was) it now also requires Photoshop to create the various lighting and atmospheric effects.
There is an update coming out with gimp support.
...but this works totally within Daz Studio which for me means a more streamlined workflow.
It doesn't have to be an either/or decision... it will be perfectly possible to add Advanced Ambient Light to the LDP-R setup, either by swapping out certain lights or as additional lights (additional light option not in current version, but is supposed to be in a product update, albeit no idea if this will be at same time as GIMP support or at a later date).
But even so, best to learn how to use Advanced Ambient Lights on their own first before getting too avant garde with the experimentation :lol:
...I just plan to use them the within Daz Studio to in effect ,create my own sky/light dome sets.
Yeah, it'll be great for that, and I wonder how it'll compare render times etc to stuff like UE2
I'm probably going to sound very silly.. but anyway. This Looks pretty damn a must have, though I kinda wonder if it is hard to learn to use it? I normally create the lgiht set I use for each scene (if a serie of renders of the same scene (just slightly different, like my Hurting serie, or the two tiger scene in weekly and monthly) I sometimes changes small things within the light set up)
I tend to play around with UE2 for the ambient, but has had a LOT of problem with certain scenes where I simply don't get any shadow from the other lights. Other than that I mostly use Distant Light and Spot Lights or Point lights (and some scenes with only spot- or point lights)
*tilts head* I guess I simply want to know, for osmeone who experiment a lot with the light set up, is this as easy to use as it is to use distant/spot and point lights? Or is it more complicated (as the lightdome Pro set seems to be, never tried it but it seems a tad bit to complicated for me :) ) ?
I only say
Hold that thought (for about a week). I won't say more in someone else's thread. :)
Like this ? ? ?
Same scene as before but most surfaces use pwS2 plus there is a Fog camera with DOF. Fog is set to 5000m. AAL is set to 25000m.