Digital Art Zone

I do know about Lux as I have used BlendLux...Blender and Lux which does the same as Reality a bit. But with my computer I can't do big scenes.

Let me retract the info about Global Illumination and ambient surfaces as it is not working like it used to in my testing just now. Area lights work though. Sorry about that. That will teach me to test first before opening my mouth. Off to test some more then make a bug report if needed.

What do you mean by 'area lights'? Daz only gives me 4 types of lighting, and the shader based UberEnvironment. The only other lights I have are specific to Reality.

DS3 and DS4/4.5 have always had mesh based lighting called Area Lights...there are found under Daz Studio Formats/My Library/Light preserts/omnifreaker/Uber Area Lights right above UberEnvironment 2 in the Content Library Pane.

You can use any mesh for a light source providing the normals are facing the right way. So on a newly loaded sphere thr light is projected outward. You can adjust the light, fall off, shadow colour and intensity all from the surfaces pane.

OK the UE2 GI preset works with Ambient Surfaces as light sources but to be honest for the render time being sooooooooo long I would stick with Lux.

But I am happy to get some info together on Area Lighting but again with my computer Area lighting takes a long time to render so I can explain the functions just not show it visually very well. Area lighting is my favourite lighting by far for the softness it produces. Plus we can fake things a lot more with Shadow colour and intensity controls and fall off.

hi

Weird, I don't seem to have those area light presets. I'll have to double check to ensure I installed everything :D

Ok here is how to make light using surfaces and UberEnvironment 2 Global Illumination (GI) Preset that is included in DS3/4 and 4.5. Warning do not attempt this if you have a lower powered computer or if you don't want to wait days for the render to finish. This would be true for Lux on my system. The rendered image below took 3 hours at that small size and it still came out a little grainy so I reckon 4 hours. And all there is in the scene is one Cube and Sphere. Anyways for those you may want to try it or have a computer than can achieve these advanced features read on.

In the image below I refer to Super Sampling...this is when the shading rates are lower than 1..1 being one sample for each pixel....meaning the render engine calculates the surface properties once per pixel. With many of these lights with Indirect and Global lighting need more sampling to reduce the grain. Using a sampling rate of .10 we are sampling each pixel 10 times...here I used 0.01..100 samples per pixel and it still has a touch of grain left.

All In did here was load a 10 mtr Cube and a 1 mtr sphere. Camera inside the cube..left the surfaces of the cube as loaded, the sphere changed the diffuse colour and ambient colour and strength and that is all.

Loaded UE2 GI via the preset. Now if you load the normal UE2 and switch it to GI in the parameter pane this isn't going to work...you must you the preset.

Tomorrow if I get a chance I will show how Area lights work.

HeraldOfFire - 19 December 2012 04:53 PM

Weird, I don't seem to have those area light presets. I'll have to double check to ensure I installed everything :D

this is where mine are

dune411412 - 19 December 2012 04:49 PM

hi

boo

Szark - 19 December 2012 04:33 AM

Do you know Daz Studio has primatives? As in primative geometeric shapes...I used Spheres.

I have no idea what primatives are. There are still a lot of menu items and tabs that I have not figured out yet, but I'm getting to it.

Szark - 19 December 2012 04:56 PM

Ok here is how to make light using surfaces and UberEnvironment 2 Global Illumination (GI) Preset that is included in DS3/4 and 4.5.

So THAT'S what those tea pot icons are for. LOL.

Primative geometric shapes I leant about in my first year of school, aged 5. Plus I came to Daz Studio via the modeling route then feel in love with making images,

Anyways I was going to get some info together about Area Lighting but alas my day has not been kind to me again. I did get an example rendered last night but I haven't typed anything up or taken screenshots etc etc. All being well tomorrow.

As for what the tea pots are...noticed the second icon labled "Help", great place to start for anyone learning this stuff.

I don't really get into Christmas but if I did I think this would be enough.

All I want for Christmas is a big hug.

Candace is spending the holidays with some very distant relatives...

No background yet (which makes it look odd). The composition is probably not so good (I read but didn't apply--yet--the advice in this thread about the rule of thirds,etc.).* This render is sort of a proof-of-concept piece, but as such I'm pleased with it so far.

The cast, from left to right: Australopithecus (custom-dialed Genesis character, with Homo Erectus for V4 skin), Homo Erectus M4, Candace for S5, Mec4D's Neanderthal for Genesis, female Neanderthal (custom-dialed Genesis character, with Chablis skin). Those of you who remember my August entry are probably thinking, "There he does with the anachronistic Neanderthals again...!"

Looks like everyone else's renders are progressing nicely!

*Those tutorials did come in handy for this one I just completed, but I didn't think it fit with this contest: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2395705

Before I spend hours, does anyone seriously want to learn about Area ligthing?

As lighting is a key point of any good render, I'd find it very useful to get as much information as I can.