Advanced Ambient, Spot & Distant Lights [Commercial]

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Comments

  • RiffulRifful Posts: 0
    edited October 2013

    This is my first render result with it. Theres a fairly strong pale blue AAA in the room, and a distant light acting as a sun outside. I'm trying again with new settings now that I have a slightly better sense of how it behaves, but it is definitely very cool!

    Edit: Added my second test, a little closer to what I was I was aiming for. This one has two AAAs, a dimmer one and a brighter one, plus the sun light. Still playing....

    The first one is a bit washed out, but usable lighting. The second one is great! nice highlights, and good contrast without losing detail in the shadows. If I may ask, what was the placement and basic settings of the second shot?

    Oh yes, loving this... here's my first test render - one distant light, two advanced ambient lights

    Good job Jabba. Very soft lighting without washing out.

    Post edited by Rifful on
  • StorypilotStorypilot Posts: 1,660
    edited December 1969

    Very nice one, Jabba!

    You are absolutely right about the sun shadows. Was mostly ignoring the settings for the sun while I figured out the AAA, but yes. Also I think the transparency maps on those windows may be softening them even further

  • StorypilotStorypilot Posts: 1,660
    edited October 2013

    cjdean said:

    The first one is a bit washed out, but usable lighting. The second one is great! nice highlights, and good contrast without losing detail in the shadows. If I may ask, what was the placement and basic settings of the second shot?

    Thanks, cjdean. There's one AAA placed more or less in the well under the mech's "chin" that is tinted slightly blue at 20% intensity and a falloff range of 50m. Then there's a brighter AAA near the floor of the walkway just behind the man, 50% intensity, shorter falloff of 20m. I left the other settings at default I believe, as I sort it out.
    Lastly, the sun is a regular raytraced distant light pointed through the window toward the man's back, 120% intensity.

    Post edited by Storypilot on
  • JabbaJabba Posts: 1,458
    edited December 1969

    Thanks - I've detailed my light settings on my dA page in case anybody might find them useful... http://fav.me/d6p8hwk

  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited October 2013

    Thanks for the support everyone and it is great to see the great renders. Sorry to hear about the manual download not showing up. Hopefully DAZ can fix that soon.

    Supercope said:
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/index.php?&ACT=50&fid=4&aid=91257_10DNkqBLyiX2H9Vpp8eL&board_id=1

    Sorry to go off topic a bit, but what are the clothes (especially the jeans) and shoes in the above promo? Thank you!

    The product looks awesome, BTW!

    Those are from 3dUniverse:

    The shirt is the Boat-Neck T that comes with Kimberly http://www.daz3d.com/kimberly-for-genesis-accessories
    The Jeans are from the Jason accessories http://www.daz3d.com/jason-for-genesis-clothing
    Shoes are Amy's http://www.daz3d.com/toon-amy-for-genesis-accessories-1

    I really like that whole line of clothing he did for Genesis... and the characters too. The clothing looks great with his characters but also works wonderfully for everyday, non-toon people.

    Post edited by Age of Armour on
  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,629
    edited December 1969

    I've been having some fun with this today.

    Full-size version: http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/art/Tickets-Please-405213885

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  • katfeetekatfeete Posts: 247
    edited December 1969

    Ok, this is just a quickie -- redo of a panel I'd had trouble with a few weeks back -- but so far I am really liking these lights. I haven't even messed with the falloff or half the other settings but the flexibility is incredible. Which, given that I don't need from lights what most people seem to, makes me very very happy.

    Oh, and the speed is great. Render time three minutes six seconds for this one, which is a tenth what I could get out of the Uberlights the few times I used 'em. :P

    Thank you so much!

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  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    StoryPilot and Jabba nice images both.

    I think for those who haven't gotten it yet, I would prioritize its features this way so people can judge what's most important to them and how to distinguish between this and UE.

    1) it does everything UE does and more

    2) This light has a radius meaning you can fade the light out so deep corners, for example, aren't as brightly lit as areas closer to view (or to a real or imagined light source).

    3) You can place it anywhere and have more than one in your scene with each having different properties. As Jabba did with a bluish 'fill' under the thingy and a golden light on the other side of the window.

    Well, you might think you can do the above with a point light but this light has ambiant occlusion and, further, also has the following....

    4) You can set each light to have certain properties controlled by the surfaces it touches. I set up an 'Alternate Samples' for Occlusion setting to areas I flagged with a 99% Diffusion Strength (which was about the only feature I made use of in my first try). This is great especially for areas where the applied shader has no. There is MUCH more to this area as well as other features.

    HTH

  • SloshSlosh Posts: 2,391
    edited December 1969

    Certainly there is going to be a learning curve with this light set, but I have never been disappointed with anything AgeOfArmour has made, so I am completely onboard with this product. Unfortunately, my first render did not have "magical light perfection" because I just used it out of the box. I know, I know, magical lights was not promised, nor should it have been assumed.

    I will spend a bit more time trying each setting and following along with the manual and post an update on how great I know it is. Thanks, AoA!

  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    How fun Katfeete :) I'm really glad to hear that the lights are rendering quickly. That was the main intent of the project. There were so many times when I wished I could add more lights to my scenes without everything slowing down so much.

    Thanks for the overview Spit. One correction I need to point out, in fairness, is that Uber Environment does have a few features the advanced ambient light does not. UE has image based lighting, directional AO (when using an environment map) and indirect lighting.

    Although, as several people have already illustrated, the advanced ambient can be used as an environment/sky light, it was mostly intended to be a light for illuminating select areas of the scene. So they have some similarities but the Advanced Ambient Light and UE are really meant for two different purposes but should be complementary.

    Thanks again everyone.

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Oh well, congrats to everyone that can get these to work.

    Looks like Friday is the wrong day to get an error. Have a good weekend and hopefully the rest of us will join you shortly.

    One last thing, why wasn't the manual put into a PDF?

    CHEERS!

  • araneldonaraneldon Posts: 712
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:
    One last thing, why wasn't the manual put into a PDF?

    The manual appears to be all on one page, so if you're using a decent browser (like Firefox), you can save the page (images included) for offline viewing. I don't know whether there are elements that don't save (like videos).

    Having a downloadable copy of the documentation might be a good idea. I don't like PDFs as they aren't ideal for reading on screen.

  • Lissa_xyzLissa_xyz Posts: 6,116
    edited December 1969

    Rogerbee said:

    Oh well, congrats to everyone that can get these to work.

    Looks like Friday is the wrong day to get an error. Have a good weekend and hopefully the rest of us will join you shortly.

    One last thing, why wasn't the manual put into a PDF?

    CHEERS!


    It was.
    My Library/ReadMe's/17031_advanced-ambient-light.pdf
  • SpitSpit Posts: 2,342
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the correction, AofA! That was a major brain f*rt on my end.

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania said:
    Rogerbee said:

    Oh well, congrats to everyone that can get these to work.

    Looks like Friday is the wrong day to get an error. Have a good weekend and hopefully the rest of us will join you shortly.

    One last thing, why wasn't the manual put into a PDF?

    CHEERS!


    It was.
    My Library/ReadMe's/17031_advanced-ambient-light.pdf

    Oh good! I'll get that when I can eventually download it. I prefer to be offline when I'm reading manuals.

    CHEERS!

  • Age of ArmourAge of Armour Posts: 437
    edited December 1969

    Certainly there is going to be a learning curve with this light set, but I have never been disappointed with anything AgeOfArmour has made, so I am completely onboard with this product. Unfortunately, my first render did not have “magical light perfection” because I just used it out of the box. I know, I know, magical lights was not promised, nor should it have been assumed.

    I will spend a bit more time trying each setting and following along with the manual and post an update on how great I know it is. Thanks, AoA!

    Thanks Slosh,

    Yes, there is definitely a learning curve. The light is useful out of the box for it's unique mix of being like a point light/skylight but the real usefulness will come with learning the lighting control settings.

    Once people become accustomed to it, I think the most commonly used feature will be the per-surface shadow quality control for hair or other transmapped and slow rendering items.

    I was working on a complex scene the other day and tested it with and without optimizations. Almost every surface had raytraced reflections, there was volumetric atmosphere and, additionally, Nerd3d's Fog Tool Deluxe. Without the light optimizations the render took over 3 hours. After changing the lights to Primitive Hitmode and flagging the fog tool for lower sample rates it rendered in 40 minutes. Of course learning when to use the optimizations will take a bit of experience with the light.


    One last thing, why wasn't the manual put into a PDF?

    The installer includes one I believe. Also the docs page has a downloadable PDF of the guide. You can find the download near the bottom of this page; http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/17031/start

    The user guide was originally made as HTML because it is cross platform, lighter weight and easier to update. But many people do prefer PDF so one was included on the docs page. The layout is not quite as nice because of page breaks and such but it does have all the info.

  • RogerbeeRogerbee Posts: 4,460
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for that, as you may have read, I don't have the DIM and want to wait for a manual download.

    CHEERS!

  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,316
    edited December 1969

    Ohh some very nice results.

  • NiffgorNiffgor Posts: 43
    edited December 1969

    sioc said:
    I opened the zip (DIM) and installed it manually: the DAZ Studio_4.5 part in the program folder and the content in My Library, now I got them in Light Presets - Age of Armour - Ambient Light. And I re-imported the metadata and it appears in the smart content lights category.

    That did it!
    Had no options to contol he light settings - with that hint it works now. Thanks a lot! :)
  • Daniel BarnettDaniel Barnett Posts: 389
    edited December 1969

    nachtmahr said:
    sioc said:
    I opened the zip (DIM) and installed it manually: the DAZ Studio_4.5 part in the program folder and the content in My Library, now I got them in Light Presets - Age of Armour - Ambient Light. And I re-imported the metadata and it appears in the smart content lights category.

    That did it!
    Had no options to contol he light settings - with that hint it works now. Thanks a lot! :)
    I'll have to try this because I'm not getting any controls for falloff or much else!

    Hope your solution work!!
    Thanks!
    dbb

  • Daniel BarnettDaniel Barnett Posts: 389
    edited December 1969

    dbbdaniel said:
    nachtmahr said:
    sioc said:
    I opened the zip (DIM) and installed it manually: the DAZ Studio_4.5 part in the program folder and the content in My Library, now I got them in Light Presets - Age of Armour - Ambient Light. And I re-imported the metadata and it appears in the smart content lights category.

    That did it!
    Had no options to contol he light settings - with that hint it works now. Thanks a lot! :)

    I'll have to try this because I'm not getting any controls for falloff or much else!

    Hope your solution work!!
    Thanks!
    dbb
    Tried to manually install and I'm not getting any falloff or any other controls described!
    dbb

  • Lissa_xyzLissa_xyz Posts: 6,116
    edited October 2013

    These might just get me to use Daz Studio more.

    I have a 'moonlight' blue fill (zero radius) on a low intensity, a low-radius white over her, and a low-intensity blue set to just the water surface (that 99% diffuse lock is really handy). There's also a low-intensity blueish distant to help bring out the flooring a bit. No post, just a crop of a bigger render (it originally had a sky and some desert visible).

    Character/clothing is Semiramis at Rendo, Hair is SAV Alpha at Rendo, and the set is DM's Fantasy Bath from here. The background you can just barely make out between the openings in the wall is from the XT Worldbase Lushlands with the Desert xpack (all of his default lights have been removed from the scene).

    What I do wish for though is a visible 'zone' sphere for the radius in the viewport. I utterly suck with distance/measurement, always have.

    /edited to add in original full render

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    Post edited by Lissa_xyz on
  • FirstBastionFirstBastion Posts: 7,375
    edited December 1969

    Any rendered images showing how it handles trans mapped hair? and the associated render times to render that hair?

  • KatteyKattey Posts: 2,899
    edited December 1969

    This is ridiculous. It has been more than 24 hours and I can't access my manual download :/

  • glaseyeglaseye Posts: 1,305
    edited December 1969

    Same here, no DL links for manual download

    (And no, I do not use DIM on my standalone/not connected to the internet, render system.....)

  • TJohnTJohn Posts: 11,020
    edited December 1969

    dbbdaniel said:
    dbbdaniel said:
    nachtmahr said:
    sioc said:
    I opened the zip (DIM) and installed it manually: the DAZ Studio_4.5 part in the program folder and the content in My Library, now I got them in Light Presets - Age of Armour - Ambient Light. And I re-imported the metadata and it appears in the smart content lights category.

    That did it!
    Had no options to contol he light settings - with that hint it works now. Thanks a lot! :)

    I'll have to try this because I'm not getting any controls for falloff or much else!

    Hope your solution work!!
    Thanks!
    dbb
    Tried to manually install and I'm not getting any falloff or any other controls described!
    dbb
    If you can add one of the Advanced Ambient Lights to your scene:
    Select the light in the Scene panel
    Open your Parameters panel
    You should find the controls under Light, Occlusion and Lighting Control as seen below.

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  • Daniel BarnettDaniel Barnett Posts: 389
    edited December 1969

    tjohn said:
    dbbdaniel said:
    dbbdaniel said:
    nachtmahr said:
    sioc said:
    I opened the zip (DIM) and installed it manually: the DAZ Studio_4.5 part in the program folder and the content in My Library, now I got them in Light Presets - Age of Armour - Ambient Light. And I re-imported the metadata and it appears in the smart content lights category.

    That did it!
    Had no options to contol he light settings - with that hint it works now. Thanks a lot! :)

    I'll have to try this because I'm not getting any controls for falloff or much else!

    Hope your solution work!!
    Thanks!
    dbb


    Tried to manually install and I'm not getting any falloff or any other controls described!
    dbb
    If you can add one of the Advanced Ambient Lights to your scene:
    Select the light in the Scene panel
    Open your Parameters panel
    You should find the controls under Light, Occlusion and Lighting Control as seen below.
    I was able to get the controls for the Adv. Amb. Light after adding a "ShaderLight" to the scene. I'm not an advance user yet so I do appreciate your advice!!
    dbb
  • katfeetekatfeete Posts: 247
    edited December 1969

    Any rendered images showing how it handles trans mapped hair? and the associated render times to render that hair?

    Both the hairs in my render were transmapped. The settings I ended up using on that light were Primitive Hitmode with AoA samples at 256; the hair was flagged via 99% Diffuse and told to render using Shader Hitmode and Alt Samples, with the sample set to 64. Total render time was 3 minutes.

    (Side note: this is what I mean about the flexibility. My light requirements are weird because I'm generally rendering for a 700 x 900 comic page with each rendered panel being 1/3 to 1/6 of that size. I need a lot of light or people complain they can't tell what's going on; I particularly need light on people's faces, so the expressions show up. Getting faces properly lit without blowing out the scene is always tricky; panels like this, where I'm trying to create a slightly shaded background and still have clear faces, are a real bugger. With this render I was using a second light flagging the kids' skins and using the Add Ambient Light option to get nice clear faces. Being able to do that is just... it's blowing my mind, it really is. :D )

  • Kevin RyeKevin Rye Posts: 392
    edited October 2013

    This is really nice, so worth the $8 bucks.

    This is still a work in progress, so bare with me.

    The first image is with Uber2, I then swapped it out for the AAL kit and set the radius to 0. I bumped the brightness to 120%. I really like the way it's looking so far, and this is with no additional lights or any further tweaking. I do have to tweak the glossiness on V4 coming out of the pool. Somehow she looks way shinier with AAL than with Uber2. But so far, I think this light set is going to look amazing.

    UPDATE: Completed image added. Dollars to doughnuts, Advanced Ambient Light is the best thing I've purchased for DS.

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    Post edited by Kevin Rye on
  • JabbaJabba Posts: 1,458
    edited October 2013

    I seem to be having a bit of an issue with the flags... if i set to not illuminate a flag, ambient light doesn't seem to be illuminating anything (testing with default settings apart from the flags - hair being the 99% diffuse, Genesis character set at 100% diffuse).

    Also tried "use alt samples" for flagged items... the flagged items do use the lower shading rate but rest of scene was not being ambiently lit at all, but I expected anything unflagged to render at main shading rate.

    I need to go grocery shopping, so maybe missed something in my rush to do this before going out - I'll be trying again later tonight.

    **edit** turns out I was just rushing too much earlier - I had put "Set Light Strength With Surface Ambient Strength" on, but getting results I was expecting when I set it to off.

    Post edited by Jabba on
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