Tutorial Uber Area Lighting: The Basics

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  • Jay Jay_1264499Jay Jay_1264499 Posts: 298
    edited December 2013

    Ah fantastic thanks Pete!

    I shall give this a try tomorrow. Thanks again for your time in looking at my issues! Very much appreciated

    Cheers

    Jay

    Post edited by Jay Jay_1264499 on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    No problem, let me know how you get on. Good luck. :)

  • Jay Jay_1264499Jay Jay_1264499 Posts: 298
    edited December 2013

    It worked!

    I can't thank you enough. Thank you for all your replies Pete and help.

    This is going to be fun now!

    Update: Thank you also for those Fall Off settings. Brilliant stuff


    Cheers

    Jay

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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Sweet result AngryChair

  • ssweetessweete Posts: 115
    edited December 1969

    is there a way to limit how far out the light is cast from the obj?
    in this case im actually using a human figure as the light source following the tut in this thread.
    but i dont want it to light up the whole wall just a half foot or so around the figure.
    can this be done? if so how?

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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Yes in this post http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/#211165 in the Section under Fall Off...how the light falls off to nothing after a set distance. 100.00 would be 1 meter. Lowering the fall off end distance will also reduce the visible effect so you may need to increase the light intensity.

  • ssweetessweete Posts: 115
    edited December 1969

    ok i'll try playing with it more, as i didnt get a difference when i did....lol
    at least i finally got her to glow..
    thanks

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    How did you get on ssweete?

  • Kat_KatKat_Kat Posts: 169
    edited February 2014

    Ok, my question is a bit of a mix of uber area used on a surface and using shaders in conjunction.

    I have a figure, I have made a geometric shell copy of, to which I made a transparency map with angelic script on to simulate the effect of it being on/under her skin then used pweffects to ghost it/fade it, I am now trying to apply uber area lights to either the same geo shell to give it a glow (Not just glow, as that takes ambient, but to emit light through just the sigils) which I do not know I can do without mixing shaders or if it is possible at all. Or secondly make a second shell offset just underneath the first and cause the glow to leak through just the sigils... I am getting stumped at this point, I think I have managed to make the shell an uber area light, but it does not seem to be shining on anything I put near, when I try to select the shell and apply one of the presets under area lighting such as the intensity it tells me the geometric shell is not an uber area light, though in the surface tab I do have the options for intensity and color and falloff etc.

    Right now when I get the shell within the shell and try a test render it is rendering black even with fathom and not visible in render turned on and the second shell marked not visible and not accept shadows, the sigils are still visible.

    Best thing I want is a mix of the pweffect of the sigils and a glow from within, but if I have to choose, I will choose a glow and I can just ramp down the opacity. I can post the first step I have in the new user help thread and once I am back from work a few more examples.

    Edit: Ok, rereading I realized I had deleted the head block and had no other lights in the scene...so apparently Daz assumed no lights, so rendered it all black. added just a random flat plane, turned the skin to a splotchy mess but I can figure that out later.

    I am still not sure if this will achieve the effect I am looking for after all this lol, but I now know how to do transparency, work with layers in gimp, apply uber area base to items, work with geo shells, work with textures, so definitely a good experience.

    The whole effect I get just does not seem to actually glow even with ambience enough, looking for a smoky fluorescence, like an ember even. or plasma. May have to look into sss for some splash into or onto skin, maybe go back to the layered image editor idea to place it into the skin layer for this

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  • kitakoredazkitakoredaz Posts: 3,526
    edited December 1969

    Hi talas I may need szark help too.
    I find some difficulity when I apply Uber Area light for Figure geometry shell, surface group.
    (not apply all surface group)
    then hope to check other guys and szark advice,,aboug color map ^^;

    in my pic1, I applied " forhand surface group" (shell) to UberAreaLight base.
    other part shell keep opacity zero

    then to glow symbol, I use Ambient color property as orrange then apply opacity map for symbol.
    so that the symbol only grow orrange.(diffuse strngeth 0, color 255,255,255 to only ambient color work)
    then set light color to illuminate.

    and I turn invisible all other LIght sets, there is only UberAreaLight .
    (and I added another shell to apply pweffect,, I sometimes used Volume light shader)

    at fist glance it seems work, I set dark pink color to see illuminate Light color.

    but as you know, about uber light illumination,
    opacity map has no meaning. it only work about glow ambient color (and diffuse)
    now my figure illuminate by both forarmes mesh . not by left arm symbol only.

    then I added same opacity map (grey scale, symbol color=white, other part black)
    on the Light color prooerty,, set Light color keep white,,it will be multipled,,
    I expect it only illuminate the symbol of leftarm

    But How I adjust it,, I think, there is no illuminate ^^;
    and I can not find why it can not illuminate with color map.

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  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited February 2014

    Fall off is the important setting for Uber Area light. It will need a good high fall off setting. So turn it to Fall Off active ON and the Falloff END pretty high... And yes you will need a Mask on the other forearm if on a arm. LIE is perfect for that.

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  • kitakoredazkitakoredaz Posts: 3,526
    edited February 2014

    HI,, jaderlail thank you.
    then,, I know Fall off setting. I hope to adjust it ^^ (I checked already)
    So that I hoped to illuminate only the symbol at first.
    not the surface group all I applied UberAreaLight shader.

    about my test ,I check off fall off at current. so that it should be illuminate .
    then gederlail, can you find the reason why my pic2 can not illuminate @@?
    Hope test with geometry shell.
    (then I know, we may need not use to achieve the effect by geometry shell
    or not need necessarilly illuminat by the symbol mesh ^^;
    but I hope to know color map how work. if it work with geometry shell or not.

    to use color map, I may select only mesh which I hope to illuminate I believe.
    is it miss understanding?

    mm,,, Fall off Active need?
    I may try it again. I simply stoped fall off to test easy.

    Post edited by kitakoredaz on
  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Hmm... I never experimented with it on a Geo-Shell. I'll give it a very close look when I get up. I'm close to my sleep time but this one has me thinking so I will play with it when I get up. I'll post my findings when I give it my best shot.

  • kitakoredazkitakoredaz Posts: 3,526
    edited February 2014

    thank you advice,, but, if fall off Active "off",,,I think,, illuminate ,not be weakend by distance. (so that I setted it off )
    anyway tried the setting, but it seems not work about this problem,,

    if I remove Light color map, (it fit current UV and the left arm positon, I made it by LIE and copied,then tried with tiff, jpg, png all ^^;)
    suddenly my figure illminate by Forhands,,,,,

    where is problem about my color map ><;)</p>

    =====================
    Ah sorry,,, good night ^^; yeah,, I hope to change my living place. now days,,

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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    I am here, sorry for the delay, having a bad time with this broken big toe.

    I will try and get some help together today some time.

    Thx Jad for helping out there.

  • Kat_KatKat_Kat Posts: 169
    edited December 1969

    I have managed to make the geo shell emit light using uber area lights, so really I do not know if going farther afield in your tutorial thread with my questions of combining shells within shells with an uber area light and trying to make it shine through a second shell with a second shader set and delving into layered image editor and sss is exactly on topic within this, I may move back to the thread I started and continue there if you would like Szark.

    If that is better, kitakoredaz you are more than welcome as we are both working on almost identical things, and Szark and Jaderail have both been in there at least once.

    It is up to Szark, he is the creator of this thread of course.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    I understand what you want and it will take me some time to get it all tested but in the meantime for a light (any light) to shine though a mesh is for the mesh to have translucency engaged in the AOA Subsurface Shader Base. But with the nature of area lighting getting a more controllable direction of light is hard at best.

    Also when doing these types of small effects the light intensity might need increasing more than you think. I am about to have my evening meal after that I will get DS4.6 fired up and see what can be done.

  • Kat_KatKat_Kat Posts: 169
    edited February 2014

    I am working on the finishing bits of a render on which I think I have it working, but I am not sure if it what I am seeing is an odd result of using the uber light on a plane that has so many angles, the effect Jaderail mentioned many pages back about it aligning with the axis of the scene or just some odd interaction with the double mesh within a mesh setup with two different surfaces, I will post it soon. With my few thoughts.

    Edit, ok, for some reason the light seems to come from below the level of the script at almost impossible angles. Whether the mesh is offset in front of the mesh with the pweffect shader or not, I am thinking because the geo shell has so many angles it will take a huge sample rate to correctly calculate?

    Some light seems to go straight down (not shown Edit: You can see a little on the thigh, may be reflection, but the primitive orb is set to daz basic matte) almost out through the groin even though no light was applied to that area.

    The reason for the double mesh, which is beginning to become moot, was for the ghosting/fading effect from the pweffect. Which can still be seen if you look closely in an almost sparkle effect in the script with some points brighter than other.

    I am almost sure the light is actually coming from the area of the text because if I do bend the model backwards the angle does change in relation to it, at least it seems to, leaving the hips unmoved.

    I was thinking the low angle of the light was because the torso map of course wraps down to part of the hips but I have been careful to only select torso when making the uber light.

    That's about all I have...lol

    Edit: Guess I was wrong, this is with the uber light shell inside the pweffect shell. I actually get the exact same result with it lightwise oddly, just the text itself becomes harder to see and make look decent. Don't quote me on this last edit, spent the last four hour changing things over and over and starting and restarting from scratch so many times I have lost count, I do know changing which was inside which did not really effect how the light behaved, it came out at really odd angles.


    Second image, I did nothing else but make a figure, a shell, select torso, make it an uber area light, change the color and intensity, add a primitive, change the primitive material to daz standard matte and render. same result as the other...So, it is Uber doing something odd with the geo shell, seems to be emitting low or something not from the whole torso. So it is nothing to do with anything else I am doing....Lol, should have remembered Occams razor.

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    Post edited by Kat_Kat on
  • kitakoredazkitakoredaz Posts: 3,526
    edited February 2014

    Talas maybe it is what I have seen. UberLight cast lay from each vertex, not one direction like direction light
    but the shell with uberlight lay direction seems odd for me too.(when I use usuall plane or another mesh, I have not felt
    such difficulity,, to adjust lighting area,,)

    When I test them,, I planed to illuminate only around face of Actor by LeftArms symbol lay.
    then move his Arms around face to accept lay and tried to adjust fall off end, but I could not adjust well.
    then planed to apply color map on Light color, as same as opacity map.

    if my way is correct, the leftArms symbol only emit lay. but I could not find any emittion with color map.
    though I change intensity 100% to 500, 1000,but no. maybe it emit but cast lay to somewhere,, I think,,^^;)

    I now plan to test after my real working,, (I need to work hard more to play with DS,,^^;)

    1 change shell Forarms (Uber light part,)(As for me, the left hand arms) as real mesh obj with UV,
    and check them how it work,,

    2 test with shell lips surface group, which may be more easy to check direction.^^;

    3 add another small plane mesh with opacity on the symbol, then apply UberLightshader for it only.
    (just to glow the symbol, we need not use uberlightshader, so that we can remove the shell I think,
    but I really hope to check light color map with shell how work^^;)

    and Jederlail ,Szark thank you much to try to help me,,

    I checked talas and herald topic, because I sometimes tried same thing
    for volume light shader with shell1 and Uber light with shell2 to illuminate full body and make more ghost like effect.

    but not think to add symbol . if light color map with shell work well, there seems more usage ,, I think.
    then it is good excecize to understand color map of uber light, so that I believe our quesiton
    si one of Uberlightshader , not out of topic,%-P(hope so,,)

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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    talas said:
    I have managed to make the geo shell emit light using uber area lights, so really I do not know if going farther afield in your tutorial thread with my questions of combining shells within shells with an uber area light and trying to make it shine through a second shell with a second shader set and delving into layered image editor and sss is exactly on topic within this, I may move back to the thread I started and continue there if you would like Szark.

    If that is better, kitakoredaz you are more than welcome as we are both working on almost identical things, and Szark and Jaderail have both been in there at least once.

    It is up to Szark, he is the creator of this thread of course.

    I don't mind where you want to discuss this. I am just having a hard time at the moment personally which is making it hard to fully understand why you have a pweffect shell in the first place. I can understand you wanting to keep the skin shader intact and you are wanting the text to emit light, so I can see a shell being helpful in doing this but as I pointed out on page one, post one, image one, area light rays are omnidirectional. Meaning you have very little control on the direction of light. Then on top of this fine areas (like your text) don't seem to emit light as a single polygon plane which I do find strange as the area you want to emit has many polygons which I would have thought would make for a better emission.


    I did think you could make a transmap of your text, say 128,128,128 grey for the text and 255,255,255 for the background. Place this map in to the Opacity channel for the torso.This will make the skin fully opaque and make the text semi transparent. You could possibly use the same map in the translucency channel of AOA SSS Shader base which will make the text semi translucent. Then place a light (linear Point Light) inside the figure and see if that does the trick

    I haven't texted anything yet, pain was that bad last night I took a couple of pain killers and went to bed. You do have my interest perked to see if this is possible but form what has been happening with Area lighting lately I am not sure if it is broken or just not cut out to do this type of thing.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Szark said:
    You do have my interest perked to see if this is possible but form what has been happening with Area lighting lately I am not sure if it is broken or just not cut out to do this type of thing.

    From my investigation into working on an alternate area light shader, and from information about how Luxrender handles mesh/area lights, the more simple the geometry the better it is for use as a light source. The 'best' is a single, unsubdivided poly...

    You can see some of it if you use a simple plane. A plane with no divisions has a different appearance than even a plane made of just 4 quads...and as the number of polys increase the light behavior changes, too. Also, smoothing does some strange things with the shader...it almost appears that the light shader ignores the smoothing and gets emitted from the individual flat faces.

    So something that is as complex as a shell and that will be smooth shaded is going to have several things that will be working against easy setup/use of a 'standard' area light.

    The one on the left is a single quad, the plane on the right is 4 quads. They are both the same height, same distance from the center axis. They both have UberArea on them, default settings, except intensity, which was dropped to 50% on each. There are some differences, but they are subtle, in this example.

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  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    I have heard this before but with me not having a certain backend knowledge I had no idea if it was true or not. This make sense with the weird lighting we get when using certain meshes. Thank you so much for popping in mjc and adding to the knowledge.

  • Kat_KatKat_Kat Posts: 169
    edited February 2014

    I am sorry to hear of your pain issues, anything broken is never fun. Take your time, nothing is as important as ones health.

    The reason for the pweffect shell, which in my renders is not as apparent as I have been working more on the light than the visual effect is using it to give the text a fading ghost like effect, a misty fading in and out look, not all visible across the torso at once. I am not the best at pre or post work. Second reason for the double shell is at least to my limited knowledge I cannot use pweffect on a single shell and also turn it into an uber light, it is one or the other. I am beginning to think the simplest solution to this would be to do that in pre or post. But this also helps me learn more about working in daz.

    If and when it works or does not work and I have to look elsewhere I can turn to pre or post work.

    The text is already a trans map, so I will work on different configurations from your suggestions.

    Trans on the torso itself maybe with the torso itself as an uber light, and only a single shell outside with the pweffect. Or as you suggested, the linear light and try my first stabs at the aoa sss shader base and so on.

    Thank you so much for the help so far, you have given me more options to try and more place to look. Worry about this problem once you get yourself better.

    Post edited by Kat_Kat on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Ok cool as I thought you want to keep the skin shader intact and use Area Light. Did you try PWeffect one the figure itself with the text in place and just use the Shell as an area light, well just the torso part of the shell. Either way you will run into the same issues of what mjc just covered in a few posts above.

    Yes some effects may be have to be done in post as Daz Studio isn't either capable of no one knows how...yet.

    As for Area lighting many of us have called for a area light and full shader to be combined whether that is possible I have no idea..

  • kitakoredazkitakoredaz Posts: 3,526
    edited December 1969

    Ah,, mjc, now I find almost samething with testing for other purpose,, then actually when I apply sub-D for mesh,
    it seems cause more strange effect,,then I return to default simple mesh, and give up to use it shell
    (or simply use to illuminate full body shell but may cause some strange effect I think,,)

    then,, now I concentrate to solve one quesiton,,
    the Light color map is for what puropse?

    because I test with so simple sean, to divide one uberlight mesh Rght and left (black and white)
    then hope just turn on Right room, turn off Left loom.

    1 is just add map for Ambient. it is reasonable.

    2 is add same map for light color,,

    but It seems not work well (very strange for me,, and it is not about samples or render setting problem )
    I change gamma correction off, but the wire effect seems caused by my black and wite image,,
    applied to color,,, why it cause such effect ?

    And Szark take care,,,hope you recover your helath,,:down:

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  • Kat_KatKat_Kat Posts: 169
    edited December 1969

    Well, linear point, trans, sss aoa and transparency=perfect. Last thing is me trying to get the ghosted/faded marbled effect but I am so happy 3/4 of the way there.

    That worked perfect, shouldn't take too many lights since they are hollow since my concept requires any exposed skin to have a lot of the script on it as well as more complex sigils.

    So thank you everyone. :)

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  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited February 2014

    After a little more playing around you can compensate for some of the problems caused by complex geometry by upping the UberArealight samples...but it comes at a cost of increasing render time. And, if as I suspect, you need to use 1024 samples to overcome something a complex as torso geoshell, then that would be a very dramatic increase...


    Yes, the UberAL docs do mention that 3D geometry needs increased samples...but I never really realized how much it affects things or that the complexity has that much of a bearing on it.

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Well I see you folks went ahead and discovered what I did. It is doable to a point but not exactly what we wanted. The only way I came close to the effect I was after was to PolyGroupEdit a new material area on the mesh that was CLOSE to the shape (Tattoo) I applied. That of course depends on the mesh under the tattoo so close was the best possible. I think another method or shader itself will be needed for this.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:
    Yes, the UberAL docs do mention that 3D geometry needs increased samples...but I never really realized how much it affects things or that the complexity has that much of a bearing on it.
    you and me both.
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Jaderail said:
    I think another method or shader itself will be needed for this.

    Something I've been toying around with for a while...with very little success.

    One of the problems, especially for tattoos and skin adornments, is that I can't come up with an adequate method of preserving all the advanced features of the skin shaders...well, at least the Ubersurface. I haven't tried with the AoA shader (it maybe a better base, anyway).

    Doubling the geometry/adding extra geometry does have several ways of achieving a 'glow', some that cast actual light into the scene and others that just 'glow'. This includes making/using an area light (UberAL, for example)...but as we've seen in the last few posts it's either very costly (I cancelled the 1024 render I was doing as after 2 hrs it was only at 5%..while the low sample render was under 2 mins...) or you end up with odd lighting/artefacts/more trouble than they are worth geometry manipulations.

    Using a point light, embedded inside a model, works...unless there is 'leak'. Then you will have light leak out at odd places. And even with a linear point, control isn't all that great.

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