Digital Art Zone

I agree 100% with Adam on this. Saturation is connected to the HDRI map which controls how much colour comes form the HDRI map.

I think… no, I’m absolutely sure (: that I’m not understanding something here.

If saturation is about HDRI map and controls color, shouldnt the reds on that first examples of 0% and 100% have some variation?
I understand what Adam said about difuse color not being changed, but there wouldnt be some influence from HDRI map on the final color with such huge change in saturation?

{}fatbear

That will depend on your HDRI map and how saturated the map is.

Take the Moon/Night time UE2 preset…..makes everything a heavy blue when rendered, lower the saturation down to 50% and do another test render and you should see how lighter the blue lighting effect is.

Szark - 27 November 2012 07:04 AM

That will depend on your HDRI map and how saturated the map is.

Take the Moon/Night time UE2 preset…..makes everything a heavy blue when rendered, lower the saturation down to 50% and do another test render and you should see how lighter the blue lighting effect is.

Yes, true, but in this case the blue is part of what we’re calling shadow (the part added by UE2 to the image). So surely changing saturation will change the blue (and also the rest of the colors, since the blue is a “layer” covering everything).

For a more productive question (:  Can we add other HDRI maps to UE2 or we’re restricted to the ones in it?

{}fatbear

The Blue light coming from the HDR/Tif map flooding the scene with blue light, 360 degrees, well spherical really. So lowering the saturation lowers the effect of the coloured light map hence lowering the colour in the scene

and also the rest of the colors, since the blue is a “layer” covering everything

yes it does generally again depending on the map used for the light

The shadowing, in the case of UE2 is Ambient Occlusion where we have a separate colour channel for that.

You can use HDR in HDR format but you will first need to convert it in to a TIf format via the built in Converter. Or purchase already formatted sets from the store.

The converter is easy to use. open it, browse to the HDR, selected, convert it. Then in the UE2 parameters go to the colour channel, Browse to the converted map and select.

One thing you have to remember the lighting will be as good as the map and some maps are bad.

Szark - 30 November 2012 05:51 AM

You can use HDR in HDR format but you will first need to convert it in to a TIf format via the built in Converter. Or purchase already formatted sets from the store.

The converter is easy to use. open it, browse to the HDR, selected, convert it. Then in the UE2 parameters go to the colour channel, Browse to the converted map and select.

One thing you have to remember the lighting will be as good as the map and some maps are bad.

Great!! I will try these too. I end using only UE2 in the default format, the others all have too intense global color. They can be great for some specific situations, but I want more “normal” HDR lights.

So one more topic to add to the immense list of things I want to learn (:

{}s

“normal” HDR lights.

When you say normal are you meaning more realistic? I here you on that. I have been thinking of buying Dimension Theroy’s Urban Light pack, not for the background or shadow catcher just for the HDRI’s. I use the HDRI’s from the Azure Skies pack. It was made for Light Dome Pro 2 which doesn’t work in DS4/4.5 and uses converntioanl lights but the pack does come with HDRI equivilents, so I use the Background (sky dome) and HDRI in UE2 so I have matching skies and lighting.

Okay… had to come back to this thread because I sort of discovered a new setting…

I have two renders here.  The lighter one is the default setting on Environment Mode: Occlusion with Directional Shadows.
The darker one is GI…

I thought UE2 WAS GI!  What part did I miss?

GI Only works via the GI Loading Preset next to the Base Icon. Loading a Base and changing it to GI in the Parameters Pane won’t work.

Szark - 03 January 2013 12:24 PM

GI Only works via the GI Loading Preset next to the Base Icon. Loading a Base and changing it to GI in the Parameters Pane won’t work.

Thanks, Szark… that finally is getting through my head

adamr001 - 08 August 2012 11:03 AM

Muon Quark asked: So I wonder what would happen if you turned down the intensity of the light and used 0% contrast. If you turned the intensity down far enough, would it make the objects appear to glow? And if you also used a high ambient setting on the object, would that help with the glow effect? I think I will have to experiment with that today.

My theory at this point: I believe you will lose the light “bounce” with a lower intensity thus reducing / removing the color bounce effect.

Okay, I found out something interesting just now.  If I lower the intensity I do, in fact, lose that colour bounce, but if I double the intensity scale, I seem to get it all back.  Have you explored that yet?

Depends what we are talikng about now..still GI?

This is part of what I know about Uber GI http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/12654/P60/#197187 and the other part is that the Uber GI itself isn’t a light source (I can’t check as my main machine is dead) But I do know for sure that it doesn’t use a HDRI map at all and therefore many controls don’t effect what the GI preset does. I haven’t fully explored GI as it takes forever to test anything but when I get a new machine I am going to expore so much more. (refering to the link above) Plus I am not sure if Max RayTrace Depth does refer to how many light bounces there are but for me it makes sense.

Re: GI mode… What GI mode in UE2 means is that it is the “bounce” calculation provided by IBL w/Direcitonal Shadows mode without the primary light cast by the IBL map (You end up with just the bounce, that’s why it says “Bounce Light (GI)”.  The Bounce Light mode should only be used when other lighting is the primary source of light in the scene. This will give you the color bouncing of objects without taking the full IBL mode render time hit (in theory anyway).

Examples coming momentarily that will make it clear I believe.

First up a simple plane, sphere and distant light…

Same thing, same scene but I added UE2 in bounce mode with the KHPark prreset…  You can see how the “bounce” has lightened the shadow cast by the raytrace distant light, lightened the bottom of the self-shadowing on the sphere (bounced light from the plane) and bled red into the area around the sphere on the plane (bounce from the sphere onto the plane).