Newbie (still...) basic lighting question
juantambor
Posts: 91
Hello - if I am trying to use a prelight set or set up my own lights - is there something I need to do in the render settings to make those lights 'active' in the render? It doesn't seem like various lighting options are making a difference in my renders. I thought i read that the the camera light automatically goes off if there are lights in the scene? Is that all through the Enviornment Mode in the render tab? if I am using either a light pacakage from the store or setting up some lights - which option should I be using there?
any guidance would be much appreciated! I am not looking for complex lighting, just trying to get the basics down for outdoor and indoor scenes.
also if anyone has a recommendation on a good lighting tutorial from the store please share. I have various in my wish list...
thank you!
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Were you thinking of supplying a link, like to your gallery or a personal web page? Or did you forget to attach a screen shot or something similar? If the latter you may still "go back" and attach a small JPEG file - click on the little gear or cog symbol towards the top right of your message, and choose "Edit". Once you do that you can choose a file to upload, or you can highlight a couple of words in your text, and you can past in a URL for folks to click on, when you re-read your message. For instance I am working on something right now, so I can highlight a link to a screenshot in my own text here, something I've posted to my "gallery". If you then click on the link, you go to the screen shot in my personal "gallery" on DAZ3D.com
Also (very important) 3DL rendering engine, or Iray? (Those two are the main ones people use with DAZ Studio.) Another one is Reality and another PROGRAM per se is "Poser" which comes in many versions.
ALSO, what exact product or scene? Some DAZ products "come with" light sets, for example Dreamlight's Canyon Extensions has a sun and sky -- literally -- and Merlin's church has a cloudy day, a sunset, and a night scene, all in 3DL. Jack Tomalin's "The Library" (which is like a room in a castle or mansion) had area or mesh lights in its original version - those can be a bit tricky. Search "mesh lights" in Google's Advanced Search, specifying "https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/"; as the site you want to look through.
For Iray I have used the IG Studio Lights set.... I find those difficult to control though as to position and intensity and so on. Great product mind you, I guess I personally have cognitive issues with respect to exactly how you make it go, for customized scenes.
thanks for your reply, I didnt think a screen shot would help demonstrate anything so I hadn't included one. I am using IRAY render, I have this issue in a few differnet scenes where the camera light is not sufficient but none have lights included. I just purchased a dream light tutorial so hopefully that will help me get up to speed on the basics...
Hi friend, in addition to Dreamlight tutorial, you should also visit Sickleyield channel, she has a lot of fab tutorials. Szark also provides fantastic reading material and tutorials. Sorry, cannot comment on store purchased lights. I and most use use HDRi lighting. HDRi lighting can be adjusted in render settings Environment or Tone mapping. Yoiu can also create lighting using primitives, etc....
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2765/time-for-sharing-what-i-have-no-idea/p1
Free HDRi lighting to get you started. If you have further questions, ask away :)
http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
All I can say is that if you create a sphere or a cone and then a Distant Light, rotating the light and lowering the intensity a bit makes things happen right away and it's a bit easier to understand. Or if you load Dreamlight's canyon set (3DL only) it's instantly a sunny day outside. With Iray the adjustments aren't so quick and easy (it seems to me)... heck, the fact you can even download global co-ordinates (sort of like GPS?) for the part of the planet that you want to simulate the lighting for suggests a lot of complexity.
IG Studio Lights for Iray *sort of* behaves as if you are in a studio (it even comes with a no-seam background for the model to "stand" on) but to me it seems that moving the lights and changing the temperature and so on is a bit hit-and-miss at this time. Some of their other sets like the "Iray Essentials Genesis 3 Male and Michael 7" seem to tackle the lighting issue from a materials or reflectivity/absorption standpoint.
Again it would help if you posted some suggestions as to what exactly which products you wanted to use, and what domes or light sources and so on.
thanks for your responses. I was out of town for a few days so just getting back. I am doing something fundamentally wrong as my renders are not changing at all despite different lights I add. Attached is a render example. I rendered this same scene with various combinations - just camera light, distant light above and 2 below as abmient, both those options with a spot light on her left cheek at different distances and intensities - they all come out the same. I wont add those other renders as they all look the same. Along with the lights not making a difference the shadows point in a different direction then I would expect from the angle of the camera when there are no lights, or when I add lights.. My newbie guess is that at least part of my problem is not knowing what I should selected in the enviornmental mode drop down under render settings - enviornments. I have no idea what Dome lighting is or how to use the enviornmental map.... I will be diving into tutorials, but any additional guidance would be much appreciated - thank you
I guess I'll share your confusion about lights.
So if you look at the Daz’s You Tube page’s vids on lighting, you’ll learn how absolutely simple adding and controlling lights are. “All you do, you’re told, is click on the light tab, select either distant or spot light, and voilà!, you’re done!
Yeah. Good to know. Looking through the store I see environmental lights, architectural lights, interior lights, exterior lights, portrait lights, photometric lights, emissive lights, gobo lights, box lights, hi-key lights, catch lights, ring lights…There are dome lights. Ski lights. Whatcha mean “click on light tab, select out of your 2 choices?? BaHaHaHaHaHa! Can you use exterior lights indoors? Does the known universe implode if you were to use architectural lights on a portrait? What’s going on here?
There is also in there talk about lights “based on Daz’s Uber Environment 2…” Which of course is? Do I need to be concerned about it?
Also, in your Smart Content Pane- lets say you load a product, there might be a light category which have lights in it to, well, light your scene, but there is also a render category which contains lights to, ah, light your scene. What’s the difference? “One is scene lights, the other render lights.” Swell; in simpleton language please? What if you choose one of the render lights, “Sunrise” and then decide you want to use “Mid Afternoon instead.” Does adding the 2nd cancel out the 1st, or add to it?
Any imparting of knowledge would be appreciated.
Thank you
Hey Geoffry - take a look at this one: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/163301/how-do-i-get-lighting-modifications-to-appear-in-renders#latest
Ok but distant light is not Iray, right? It's kind of garish, the fall-off takes a beating, lots of issues. Generally speaking I am getting the same issues as you... at the very least moving the IG Studio Light set, for Iray renders, causes very subtle changes. Still, if you go with the studio or stage lights it's more of a controlled situation, might be easier to work out the kinks sort of thing.
By the way I am getting the "hard to adjust" stuff regardless if my model is a human figure or a little dog or a giant planet... oh, well. I know that I can "adjust the spread" of my cone of light in most cases... have to keep on trying.
I have read it mentioned that distance per se is not a factor with (3DL) distant lights... only intensity and what you point them to matters, or what angle you turn them towards, relative to the model I guess (not sure).
I have never, ever pulled anything lighting-wise out of the Smart Content pane, unless it was to load a "complete" scene... some model-sets in the DAZ store contain everything you need to make a scene with one click... two examples are the Dreamlight Canyon Extensions (this is for 3DL) and the Iray Worlds "Secret Valley" set which if I'm not mistaken uses an IBL or HDRI light set or something like that. The secret valley appears to be somewhat rigid compared to the canyon extensions, with fewer interchangeable parts if you will.
One time I had trouble with one of the "complete" scenes, the Library by Jack Tomalin - either due to a bad install or moving to a new computer or some other reason. The problem seemed to right itself esp. after I downloaded an update so always check your DAZ Install Manager (DIM) for updates as these may pop up from time to time. Note that in the case of the Library a separate Iray upgrade kit is now available... generally speaking I think you don't want to mix the different kinds of lighting... if you want to turn your afternoon into sunset, I'm tempted to say do it by lowering the intensity and color of the lights, but again I'm not an expert.
If I'm not mistaken the way to answer this is that the Uber stuff is an optional kind of lighting that comes with DAZ Studio. There are add-ons as well, (again if I'm not mistaken) but one way you can have fun with this right now is to (1) use the Surface Tool to apply the Uber base for Iray, to a surface like a car say, and then (2) use one of the small range of shaders for Iray, to make your car or sphere Candy Red or metallic blue or other fun colours. Attached below, a picture of my dog "Sticky" flying the DAZ toon "ufo", and I've given the surface of the spacecraft some of the metallic blue treatment. No, I didn't dip the dog into food coloring - this was done by playing around with the color channels in an image editor.
Note that recent image editors allow you to continue to play around with modifying the lighting long after your DAZ render is done and assembled... one very easy method is to circle an area in a dark scene with the Lasso tool, and you would give your lasso a feather (fuzz) setting of "15" or "25" say. Then adjust the intensity levels which is a mix one of three settings (dark, light and midtones). If you do this to a star in the night sky for example it's going to glow, really good. See the picture of the earth below (Sticky says Happy Earth Day btw)... where several of the fake "stars" are very bright. Adjusted long, long after the fact with the levels. The earth itself is from the planet and moon set by Juice3D... I think it's only available as a bundle now but anyway mine came with a star dome which I modified with post-work. All of the lighting (ufo and planet earth) was done with the IG Studio Lights set, which may no longer be available (not sure) but it is similar to the IG Iray Stage lighting set I guess. Also this one by Maclean looks interesting to me, esp. if it's 3DL.
Generally speaking I think all these fancy Iray light sets are pretty new (only been around less than a year or so) so I haven't yet had a chance to try them out.
No, I'm asking if double clicking a new one will add to, or replace it. For example if your character has yellow fantasy eyes and you double click the red ones instead, you end up with red, not orange. It replaced, not combined. But that's not the Render Tab. I'd assume it's the same, but you know how that goes. :)
Thank you
Right... ok let me try to address this.
I always hesitate with that because for me it's not like I'm mixing per se, but I move or jump from one type of lighting to another. For me it seems to mess up 3DL a bit, when you do that so when I know I'm about to start experimenting I'll always save a "basic" version of my scene first, then I save it with "3DL" in the file name, and again with "iray" in the file name. Now I'm ready to mess around with my separate, backed-up files.
Owing to how I've... seen that changing colors is sometimes tricky, I always kind of hesitate to do what you're asking. I feel it does work most of the time, and no red and yellow in this technology or methodology (DAZ character eyes) does not equal orange. It's an interesting question, eg. are there sets that slowly mix or vary surfaces as you click along? Changing eye color is something that you could do in postwork -- but then you would likely lose any special layers or "sub-surface scattering" values or effects. I think some things like eyes, lips, fashion nails and car paint jobs are "special" in the DAZ store and they come with bells and whistles, so to speak. I'm not up on all the different software (like Allegorithmic's Substance Designer) and which ones have actual color mixing options.
I may also be missing something in the way you refer to "scene lights" and "render lights"... I'm not sure what that is and I don't think all products have it. Usually the "scenes" like sunrise or sunset that *I've* encountered are a mix of settings, mesh lights or emitters and HDRI's and what have you, that the published artist or vendor has created, and they've been gathered up into appropriately-named menu choices for convenience. Every approach is different - Dreamlight's canyon "sun" for example is relatively simple to control (that's why I am suggesting it) but if you go under the hood" with that one there must be thirty or forty different things combining to make that effect!!!
This is why I'm saying that things like the IG Iray Stage lighting may be simpler for a beginner -- just a few lights, physically it acts a lot like you have rented an empty photo studio or sound stage for the day, and you only have to play around with how the lighting appears on your Iray surfaces, say. Even better, the Maclean studio set that I mentioned above might be 3DL. Not sure... the first Iray thing I ever bought was actually Maclean's Everyday Drinks and when I tried to render it in 3DL, nothing happened! Things got better of course, once I had figured out the difference.
Above all, I think you ought to provide a lot more detail about which product(s) you want to use, and some sense of exactly where you think you might want to go with them eg. morning scene, afternoon scene, sunset, what. And are there going to be puffy clouds, leather breeches, metallic surfaces, rain or water etc.
This is what's confusing me. Maybe I should ask instead how the Render Settings Tab Works. How is my scene changed by clicking an image in there? I mean, if I click on a Prop or Environment, it loads into the viewport.But if I click on one of the Render Setting thumbs it doesn't reflect that particular selection in myviewport, but when the image is rendered, it will.
I have never encountered anything like this, eg. where it says "Willow Creek 01 Render", "Willow Creek 03 Render", "03..." etc. in your first screenshot - that is complete news to me. I don't think I have icons like that.
Looking forward to reading what others have to say about using this apparent resource that I know nothing about. Wonder if it's a product-specific implemenation of a "hidden feature" in DAZ.
Ditto the 2nd screenshot, where it says "Render-Settings --> Iray" at the lower left. Never seen that before but then again (as I mentioned) I almost never use the Smart Content pane.
On the plus side, <BLINK>I just love</BLINK> the look of DAZ models like Willow Creek, the Harpwood Trail, Fern Lake Bundle and the othe forest and trees ones. So whatever bugagoo it is you're experiencing is probably going to affect me as well, at some point. Maybe I will pick up the Harpwood Trail and see what happens.
Btw... a recap of a recent thing I was working on using Maclean's morphing terrain (with suitable Iray ground shaders) and a couple of trees from Larsen's big Chateau Blanche castle. Just simple lighting with some IG Iray Lights and when I rendered the trees to separate, transparent TIFF layers it was easy to make the front ones "light up", using an image editor - all I had to do was crank up the levels. I was pretty happy with the experiment and I moved on to fixing certain things here and there like the "broken branch" (blue arrow). And I needed to put some white spots on the dog's back!
My dog also works part-time for the local fire brigade... for that role he usually wears black spots, bwah-ha-ha.
Aha... I think you are clicking on the "Presets"... I don't think I've ever used those. Here's what's on my computer right now, and the Viewport, Preview, lighting and rendering all seem to work fine. I have clicked on the "Editor" instead of the Presets, in Render Setting.
Ok so in my scene the figure seems to be debating whether or not to take the plunge. Water is not so great in this view but that's not really important. "3333" is just a random choice for the image size. My headlamp is not on. I can turn up my max samples if I want - probably a good idea but longer render times. Under "environment" I've just gone with the default settings - no changes and because I am doing water I might want to try turning caustic "on", in "optimization"... not sure.
That's really just about it, for now. Bearing in mind that I am only experimenting and I would like to see how the ceramic tiles in the pool look, and how is the water doing etc. I'm not planning to upload this to the digital art section of the Louvre in Paris!
Nope, they're just part of that package; not under presets of any kind. I'll just muddle blindlessly ahead until my 8 year graphics course at M.I.T. begins.
Thanks for all your help Roman!
They look to me like render settings presets. As in, no fiddling required, push button and go. Each one particular to a specific camera, so clicking one will launch a render with that camera as the viewpoint with the settings defined by that preset.
So if you want to see your scene in the viewport from the perspective of the camera named in the preset, just switch your viewport perspective to that camera.
Just because they are not literally labelled preset does not mean they are for all in tents and porpoises a preset.
This was an Iray lighting tutorial I did, which explains the sliders, the settings, and walks you through an actual setup. In the second post of my Thread 8, there's a list of tutorials, tips, and references. There's another lighting tutorial on portraits, and several more.
WhoOo! Fantastic!
Thank you!!