Lighting for "Return to the Enchanted Forest"

IceScribe

I need help understanding lights in a couple of products I just purchased from the Stonemason sale. I don't think it's a technical problem, I think it is just not clear if these sets are 3Delight and or Iray, and I don't know much byond setting a couple spotlights, except in other scenes in other products, I've been able to do that in either of 3Delight and Iray versions. I see no lights at all in the "Return", but I see several lights, distant and spot in the first "Enchanted Forest. 

I first bought "The Enchanted Forest Returns". It's advertised as 'standalone'. If I don't add a spotlight, it renders automatically. If I add a spotlight to the scene, the scene goes dark to black in the viewport, and renders black. Frustrated with this, I noted 2 add on products, "Iray Presets to the Enchanted Forest", and "Rays of Dreams for the Enchanted Forest". Neither of these helped illuminated the "Return", so I bit the bullet, and bought the original, "The Enchanted Forest". Well, the addons see to work somewhat, not very strongly,  in that first product, but not in the "Return".  I liked the scene choice with water in the "Return" which is why I bought that, having carefully noted it is "standalone". So I tried the first Enchanted Forest, and turned lights on and off, and it is still likely to be dim where my figure is.

I have used Iray view, shaded template view-which is necessary for placing figure, I have left all the default settings except for choosing the render engine.

So can anyone tell me why does the scene go black/render black when I add a spotlight to illuminate my placed character -in this case the recently purchased HW3D Leopard in Iray or 3Delight mats. And how to set a spotlight in these scenes?

 

Richard Haseltine

The scene went dark when you added a spot because it was being lit by the headlamp, a light that shines from the camera, while there was no real light. The main issue is that - as far as I recall - both sets are surrounded by sky domes, sphere (or hermispheres) that carry the sky image, and those are blocking the usual Iray HDRI lighting (which comes from infinity by default). Find the dome in the Scene pane (it's probably not selectable by clicking in the viewport) and either delete it or make it invisible by clicking the eye icon next to it, then try rendering again.

IceScribe

​Richard,

thank you for the speedy reply. I was able to find the skydome item in the Scene tab lower hierarchy of the scene item, to click off eye. That did permit a visible Iray viewport and render in both editions of the Enchanted forest. It did make "sky" parts of the scene transparent, but where those parts occured I think can be easily  filled post work with backgrounds, which I am used to. I've made the background layer orange to show this effect from turning off the skydome eye. The light on the leopard is just luck of the scene. But, again, thank you, because I'm satisfied with that quality. 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Haseltine

Glad it helped - you will find a similar thing with a lot of older (pre-Iray) environment sets.