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New to Daz Studio. I have questions.

drzapdrzap Posts: 795
edited June 2017 in Art Studio

I've been playing around with my gf's Daz installation to evaluate its suitability for my movie project.  I was able to assemble my first scene in a reasonable amount of time.  My first takeaway:  It seems that animation is Daz's weak point.  It's a little tedious compared to other packages (granted the other packages aren't free)  and Two:  I have a lot to learn.  So here is my first of many questions.   I have attached my scene below.  Is there an easy way to make the character's sword glow (like a light saber) inside Daz Studio?  Are the camera settings connected to real life optics or should I just view them from the context of within Daz Studio?  My background is filmmaking and I find the renderer's responses to the camera settings a little puzzling.  But maybe it's because I am unfamiliar with the software.  Finally (for now), is there a log file that provides info such as how much Vram a render is consuming and how long it took to render?  This information is vital in planning for production of the final render.  Thanks in advance for your help.

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Post edited by drzap on

Comments

  • zombietaggerungzombietaggerung Posts: 3,645
    edited June 2017

    I can answer one of your questions. You can make the blade glow; by first making it's surface emissive under the Surface Settings and changing the color temp and brightness; if rendering in Iray. Bloom will also make glowing things look better in Iray, the settings for that are under Render Tab --> Filter 

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    Post edited by zombietaggerung on
  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795
    zombietaggerung said:

    I  can answer one of your questions. You can make the blade glow; by first making it's surface emissive under the Surface Settings and changing the color temp and brightness; if rendering in Iray. Bloom will also make glowing things look better in Iray, the settings for that are under Render Tab --> Filter 

     

    Thanks. I saw the glow setting in the Iray tab.  Can I choose which objects will glow or does the glow depend on the materials I put in the scene?

  • zombietaggerungzombietaggerung Posts: 3,645
    edited June 2017
    drzap said:
    zombietaggerung said:

    I  can answer one of your questions. You can make the blade glow; by first making it's surface emissive under the Surface Settings and changing the color temp and brightness; if rendering in Iray. Bloom will also make glowing things look better in Iray, the settings for that are under Render Tab --> Filter 

     

    Thanks. I saw the glow setting in the Iray tab.  Can I choose which objects will glow or does the glow depend on the materials I put in the scene?

    If you mean the Bloom settings, those will effect the whole scene. Unless you do spot renders of the things you want to glowing more and then composite them together.

    For example in this render of mine, the neon tubes on the wall are emissive and I used these Bloom settings: Threshold 10k, Radius .035, and Brightness .80. The best part about bloom is that while the render is going, if you want to adjust it, on the far left of the render window there is a little tab and if you click it, a panel opens up where you can adjust the Bloom, render samples, render time, and some of the camera settings.

    Edited to add: You can make pretty much any item emissive, if you set it's surface to be thus, but the bloom will make emmissive things look more realistic.

     

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    Post edited by zombietaggerung on
  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795
    zombietaggerung said:
    drzap said:
    zombietaggerung said:
    Edited to add: You can make pretty much any item emissive, if you set it's surface to be thus, but the bloom will make emmissive things look more realistic.

      

    Got it!  Thanks.

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    edited June 2017

    I think @zombietaggerung just about said everything about the bloom.  It's pretty much one of those things you just have to play with until you get the look you want.  If you find, you need to do a spot render, make sure to go to the Tools Tab and choose Spot Render in the tool list.  You'll have two options. The default is to just spot render and leave it in the DS viewport.  Spot renders are great for seeing how a small section of your render is going to look.  For compositing in a 2D program, you want the Spot Render in its own window so choose the New Window option in the Tool Tab.  That will give you a window with you spot render with a transparent background when you save the spot render as a .png file.

    If you don't have the Tool Tab as one of your panels, right click on your panel (where all of the other tabs are) and add it.  I've included some screenshots to help you locate things so you can find them.

    To add a tab to the pane, right click on the pane's sidebar and select your desired app:

    To access the hidden menu during a render, click on the little bar in the center on the left side of your render:

    Hidden render options:

    For spot renders to be composited in a 2D program, make sure to choose New Window in the Spot Render tool:

     

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    Post edited by Knittingmommy on
  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795
    Knittingmommy said:

     

    If you don't have the Tool Tab as one of your panels, right click on your panel (where all of the other tabs are) and add it.  I've included some screenshots to help you locate things so you can find them.

    To add a tab to the pane, right click on the pane's sidebar and select your desired app:
     

     

    I just did this and...surprise   So many tabs!crying  I'm going to need a bigger boat!    Thanks for the assistance.  Maybe it will save time to just do the special effects in a program like After Affects.  I just wanted to know how easy to do things like this in Daz.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,073

    1)  Welcome aboard!

    2) KnittingMommy, thank you for those tips.  Had been wondering myself.  Very helpful.

    3)  Needing a bigger boat!  surpriselaughyes​ - the user interface will get better as we get used to it.  Notice the use of "we."  I am trying to switch over to Studio as well. 

    4)  Animation - It does seem like a lot of the Daz Studio focus is for stills, so I will be following along to get your assessment of the usefulness for your movie project.  But the proportion of store contents and forum discussion could be misleading, so please share your thoughts as you explore the actual tools available in the software. 

  • ValandarValandar Posts: 1,417

    As for the light saber, there is a way to "cheat" a glowing blade, and it's been around for a long time.

    Instead of using a large cyllinder, an "asterisk" of flat planes are used, with a transparency and emissive map. A great example can be seen on the "whip" of the character Helix 5, by Sloshwerks ( https://www.daz3d.com/helix-5-for-genesis-3-female-s ):

    And the energy blasts from my own Blast Power ( https://www.daz3d.com/blast-power ):

  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191
    drzap said:
    Knittingmommy said:

     

    If you don't have the Tool Tab as one of your panels, right click on your panel (where all of the other tabs are) and add it.  I've included some screenshots to help you locate things so you can find them.

    To add a tab to the pane, right click on the pane's sidebar and select your desired app:
     

     

    I just did this and...surprise   So many tabs!crying  I'm going to need a bigger boat!    Thanks for the assistance.  Maybe it will save time to just do the special effects in a program like After Affects.  I just wanted to know how easy to do things like this in Daz.

    Funny!  :)  I don't load up all of the tabs.  Usually, I just have opent the ones I use for every render and then I open others temporarily as needed.

     

    Valandar said:

    As for the light saber, there is a way to "cheat" a glowing blade, and it's been around for a long time.

    Instead of using a large cyllinder, an "asterisk" of flat planes are used, with a transparency and emissive map. A great example can be seen on the "whip" of the character Helix 5, by Sloshwerks ( https://www.daz3d.com/helix-5-for-genesis-3-female-s ):

    And the energy blasts from my own Blast Power ( https://www.daz3d.com/blast-power ):

    I have not tried that, yet, but it's on my list of things to experiment with because I haven't seen any tutorials on how to do this.  If I figure it out, I'll be adding that to my list of tutorials on my thread.

  • Worlds_EdgeWorlds_Edge Posts: 2,142

    Thank you for that tip about setting the spot renderer to a different window @knittingmommy  I always thought when people advised using the spot renderer as a 2D fix they meant you then had to copy/paste the rendered spot!  

  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795

    And the energy blasts from my own Blast Power ( https://www.daz3d.com/blast-power ):

     

     

    That blue blast is what I'm looking for.  But that seems like it will be a lot of trouble to animate.  At least I know it can be done.  Thanks everyone for the input.

     

  • ValandarValandar Posts: 1,417
    drzap said:

    And the energy blasts from my own Blast Power ( https://www.daz3d.com/blast-power ):

     

     

    That blue blast is what I'm looking for.  But that seems like it will be a lot of trouble to animate.  At least I know it can be done.  Thanks everyone for the input.

     

    Actually, it wouldn't be THAT hard to animate - that particular shape has different "electric" patterns on each of the planes, so moderately slow rotating along its axis and it would look like the electric bands are pulsing and charging.

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