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if it's too bright, turn down the lumens on it. I would also put a spotlight inside the cone to help direct light to Godzilla.
I used the same technique in a scene I'll post here in a minute (it's on my PC at home)
The headlights for the motorcycles were done using the primitive cone method.
The issue seems to be with Godzilla. in the normal light setup of the scene, he's nicely lit and looks great. But put any lights directly on him, like this searchlight I'm trying to replicate, and except for his claws and mouth where the heatray is glowing he is solid black.
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/436376/
There's the image (finally)
I'm definately no expert on skin settings, but maybe one of the sliders is off for Godzilla and his skin is soaking uptoo much light or something.
Just a thought. Have you looked through the spotlight to see if it is actually pointing at and illuminating Godzilla?
It might help to think of a search light beam as 2 separate things
The round circle of light that hits objects and
a barely visible cone of light leading to it.
use any point light to create the round splash of bright light then add a cone
that is shaded with a 'light effect' shader...adjust intensity as needed.
not a perfect or easy fix...but a fix
Yes. I've spent a couple hours to get the first one pointed in a straight line from the "physical" searchlight prop to his head. The searchlight is up on a hillside and is above his head, and about- in scale - 500 to 100 scale feet away. I have cheated the spotlight forward to where the beam is shining directly in his face and is pretty close to him. I also narrowed the beam to only be on his face.
That's what I am thinking. I tried the smooth plastic shader, hopefully it works. I need a skin shader, but it has to work with the tiled, heavily bumped and displaced skin texture. the Uber Iray human skin shader ruins the texture setup.
Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. I thought the image was black, not Godzilla.
What skin settings are you using on him? It might be worth looking at the skin settings, and add a bit morereflection, or even slight self glow.
It's a custom setup using bumpy concrete as a texture and displacment( set fairly high), and a scale texture for the bump, also set fairly high. I had the matte setting applied, but have switched to Iray smooth plastic, hopeing the slight shininess will reflect the light. If I can't get a beam of light I'm prepared to render the thing with just the environment and building lights, darken it up and add the searchlight beam in PS. I have done that before but it looks kinda meh to me.
The latest attempt is producing... Interesting results. Not at all what I wanted, but quite interesting, in a good way. Hopefully I can post it later tonight.
Greetings,
Plastic and Skin are 3Delight shader settings, not Iray; if you're seeing those, your surface is being converted to Iray at render-time and you have less control over it.
-- Morgan
I know. I converted it to the Iray smooth plastic shader I have. I have both 3dlight and Iray shaders for that. I was just using default 3delight settings fo the skin cos I didn't know much about Iray when I got back into this last year, but have been learning.
UPDATE: FINALLY GOT A GODRAY! I parented a cone to the spotlight again, but I applied the US3 fogbox shader to it(and added the fogbox to the scene.) And it's a Godray! I may tweak it cos it's blue, but that could be due to the massive blue tint right where Godzilla is. That might be from a light I put by his backplates to make them lit some so I can better add the glow fx in PS. The smooth plastic shader is making a BIG difference. His skin looks just shiny enough to suggest the scales and keloid scars, but isn't plastic looking. and the reflections on it from the lights look great! It's still rendering, so I can't post it yet. But as soon as its ready I will.
yup, search light 2 parts, the light and a cone, good job :-)
I think of stuff like that because I was a builder in 2nd life way back so you had to be
very creative with your limited resources
Had to reset my Iray render settings. I'd boosted alot of them to get higher quality renders, but the downside being this particular shot takes FOREVER TO RENDER. Was 18 hrs in and only 3%!
STILL trying to get a good render. >.< I had the US3 fogbox working nicely, then the cone I made the Godray with ended up not working well when I had to reposition it due to interference from the heatray. Then that threw off totally the look of the fogbox. Got rid of it, and trying the Godray props again, but I just cannot make then work, even follwing the directions EXACTLY! All I keep getting is a huge white glowing prop, even though all the shaders and stuff are applied.
Got a way figured out. I remove the Godray prop from it's spotlight, and take a plane, copy/paste the prop's translation setting to the plane and adjust it so it is facing the camera. Delete the Godray prop, and apply a Real Lighting shader to the plane (I used the Monitor screen). Then I applied to the Emission Color the color texture I wanted from the Godrays textures, and applied the transmap of the same texture to the cutout opacity. Adjust the size of the plane to be appropiate for a searchlight and the brightness to where the spotlight it is just in front of is making most of the light, and VIOLA! It's not what I wanted, but it's working. Once I get the thing dialed in where I want it I'll post.
Yay :) can't wait to see the pic
HERE IT IS!! Took some tweaking, and I may tweak it further before I get to this scene in the fancomic, but I have a workable searchlight beam prop! I just took a plane, used the Real Lighting Monitor shader, used a Godrays texture and transmap, played with the scale and brightness, and there she is! The main thing to work on now will be getting the spotlights to light up Godzilla more where they will ultimately be shining on him in the final scene.
That worked out pretty well.
Yes it did! Once I get the brightness really tuned, and the spotlight lighting Godzilla a bit more, I'll be ready for when I get to this part in the fancomic.
you could probably fake it with a 2nd spotlight towards the end of the god-ray to shed more light on the specific area of Godzilla you want to light up more
I'll try that when I go back to this to finish prepping it for use. I honestly need a break from it for a while, though. I've spent all my free time this past week trying to get a searchlight (even dragging my GF into trying to helping me try to figure out this crap last night :P) that I'm ready to tear out my hear, what hair I have. :) I will come back to this in a week or so.
Glad I found this thread. I had some simular questions about lighting. I'm still a little confused, but I learned some things I didn't know before, The last image you posted looks awesome, although I'm still a bit confused how you got there. Big Godzilla fan.
It really isn't hard, especially if you have the Godrays props. https://www.daz3d.com/epic-props-godrays-volumetric-light-for-iray
The godrays props didn't wanna work for me, even when I followed the instructions to the letter. So, after messing with it, and my GF paying around with the Godrays(she isn't really into Daz, but she loves to help me with stuff), she took a plane, and applied the textures from a Godray prop to the plane, and positioned it next to the spotlight for the Godray(the Godrays are props parented to a spotlight, so she hid the prop part). It wasn't really working, but it showed much more promise. So I used a Real Lighting shader on the plane (monitor screen), and reapplied the Godray textures. Then we tweaked the brightness of the plane and spotlight(which still needs more tweaking frankly), and there it is! Searchlight. The downside being its a flat plane, so the light actually hitting anything is totally depending on the spotlight, so it's gonna be a bit of work to figure that part out.
I have done this a few times so I know it works So If it was me , I properly would cheat a little and use a older product called, dreamlight fx spotlight and convert it to Iray mats using the daz uber shaders and change the spotlight settings to photometic (point) settings ..Poof instant searchlight beam in Iray if you want it for 3dl then just follow the dreamlight directions
Stage FX Beams
I don't have any of the godrays products or the atmosphere cam (in my wish list). I do have Terra Dome 3 that has atmospheric effects. I'm wondering if I can get that light effect with a spotlight and those effects? I'll have to try it. Would I need to do anything special to the spotlight?
Here's a tutorial I found usful for that: https://www.versluis.com/2017/04/how-to-use-spotlights-with-nvidia-iray-in-daz-studio/
Thank you.