Digital Art Zone

For lighting tips let me point you to this Thread. It is the Lighting contest we had for New Users. It is full of tips and tuts.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/1201/ I will need time to find the Reflections tut’s. That is done with settings in surfaces. Give me some time for it.

I don’t have the time right now to dig out links for you but lighting is a huge subject and it all depends on your questions. Spot lights, Distant lights (acts like the sun as in the terms of the light coming from the same direction. No matter the translation the light will light in the direction of rotation), Point lights (light that comes out from a single point in a spherical direction). Area lights (more commonly know as mesh lights) and GI (Global Illumination), Fake GI and GI with IDL (Indirect Light).

Raytrace shadows are more accurate and take longer to render as opposed to Shadow Maps where the shadows are pre-calculated before rendering and take less time to render. But when using Reflection and refraction then Raytrace is best.

Reflections only work when you have “Max Ray Trace Depth” (found in Advanced Rendering setting) set to 1. If you want a reflection of a reflection then set it to 2 and so on. True reflections are reflection then come from props and scereny in the scene itself. Fake reflections can be achived by pluggng in a texture reflection map into the Reflection colour channel and with this you can get away with using 0 for “Max Ray Trace Depth” (found in Advanced Rendering setting) and therefore reduces render times.

Hehehehe… Szark, my buddy. New Users, less techno if ya can. More, they have no idea what your talking about. Think like you need this help from day one. Your UBER experience is showing.

LOL I was making a point on how huge the subject is and that we should take it slowly. But yes I admit I got carried away.

HI Jailrail, thank for the link and I shall go right now and start my education on beginners level with light settings much appreciated.
Woooow Szark now that is a bit of Info there great little start that down the road I shall need to look into when I have the basics of lights and what they can do thanx again guys.

Let the education begin

Have fun wiibb. Tell anyone you run into that class is open and we would be happy to see them.

Sure will Jaderail

Hi guys,
Jaderail I was trying to mess about with the light setting last night with my rendering and was getting all different kinds of renders
However I did follow your settings on a few occasions the one that you done a tutorials for. I was struggling to see were the lights were and could only see them when I was moving them (( like the shadow on the ground - is there a way to make the actual light-source more visible so it is a lot easier to see were it is moving and what direction it is pointing in? ))

Apart from that had a great time just playing around with the settings so here is my first official uploaded render to Daz3d.
All criticism welcome good or bad as this is the only way I am going to learn more, mistakes are a great learning curve with life.

Thanx for you time guys.

Hi wiibb…

There are a few ways you can see where your lights are pointing…

One is to select a light in the Scene tab and you should then see a reference cone in the viewport window coming from the light. You can adjust the size (spread) of the cone in the Parameters tab for the light.

The other is to look through the light itself… In the drop-down list above the viewport camera cube, the one where you choose Perspective or Camera, select your light and your view in the viewport will now be looking through the light itself.

You should also see circles in the viewport, those represent the spread of the light your looking though.

Both ways make it very easy to point and position the lights in the scene.

Hope this helps…

Hi niccipb thank you and yes this sure will help myself with the next render I attempt, it is very much appreciated your input with my little problem.
//Handshake

I hope you have a great day.

Your very welcome… I help when I can

Actually need to go to bed… very late and morning and work are looming

Have fun…

Hi guys, looking for some advice from you, I have come across this on the net and just wondering if it will help me with Daz and lighting @
http://preta3d.com/make-your-own-reality/

It will only help if you have the Reality plugin for DAZ Studio.  It has recently been updated, and it works in version 4.5.

Reality prepares DS scenes for the Luxrender engine, and as it is an unbiased renderer, the results are very realistic.

Hi JimmyC, thank you for the info I did go to the daz store but I could not find that plug-in.  Would you know were I can read up on it a little more and also possibly purchase it?
Thank you

I see this alot, folks thinking Reality will help with their lighting. IMHO I wouldn’t touch Reality until you have more knowledge of lighting and surfaces. The PA sale is on next month. If you can pick up Dreamlight’s Light Master package when it goes on sale (if it goes on sale I should say). It will help with learning the fundamentals and that is all you need to start to understand CG lighting.