Need help with AoA's Advanced Lights

marcussrjbates_b1589f87c6

Good Afternoon (or whatever time it is wherever you may be), 

I've been following a breadcrumb trail through the Forums hoping to reduce the render times for items using transparency maps in 3Delight...on advice located elsewhere I have purchased Age of Armours Advanced Lighting Bundle and installed...unfortunately I'm a bit of a noob and have no idea what I'm doing with them...the User Guide is way too vague and assumes prior knowledge I just don't possess.

I can set them up and use them as an alternative set of lights, don't get me wrong...but I can't get my head around how to divide the surfaces correctly. 

My example: I have a scene containing Hermes Hair and Mythos Collar and wrists, which slows to a crawl when rendering these three specific items. I'm aware that the Advanced Lights let me divide the scene, allowing "flagged" items to be rendered with different sample rates, what I don't understand is the "flagging" system...in my niavety I'd hoped there would be a nice simple dropdown menu that included "Transparencies" as an option.

The Diffuse Strength, Ambient Strength and Index of Refraction options don't make any sense to me, and the Garibaldi Hair Shader option seems to have disappeared from the face of the planet (I found the homepage, but the link to the Daz store gives a "Not Found" result, and doesn't seem to be available to purchase/download any more).

So how do I make use of the products advanced features in relation to hair? Don't the vast majority of items have a Diffuse or Ambient strength of 100% (or 0%), making these two flags next to useless (I'll admit I don't understand what purpose Index or Refraction serves)? Can I make use of these 3 settings to flag my hair and fur (say, by resetting Ambient/Diffuse strength on the required items to, say 99% and having the flag target that)...or is that just me being dumb? Or do I need to get hold of a copy of Garibali Express to "flag" the items I need, and if so is it still available, and Daz 4.10 compatible?

A lot of questions I know, but I'm guessing essentially it's really just one question, prompted by my ignorance...anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.  

 

 

Richard Haseltine

You select the surface whose behaviour you wish to modify and you choose a property to act as the flag - such as Diffuse Strength - and set it to 99% instead of 100%, then you tell the Advanced light to use that property and value as it's flag and what to do differently with the flagged surfaces in the light settings.

marcussrjbates_b1589f87c6

Richard Haseltine said:

You select the surface whose behaviour you wish to modify and you choose a property to act as the flag - such as Diffuse Strength - and set it to 99% instead of 100%, then you tell the Advanced light to use that property and value as it's flag and what to do differently with the flagged surfaces in the light settings.

question

Ah...so it wasn't such a dumb idea then? It did seem the obvious solution, but I just wasn't sure...thank you!