Dreamlight Tutorials
Jason Galterio
Posts: 2,562
I am looking at these two tutorials...
https://www.daz3d.com/stunning-window-lighting--daz-studio-iray-tutorial
https://www.daz3d.com/use-free-photos-as-iray-hdri-and-backgrounds
Has anyone purchased and viewed these? I am on the fence about them because I'm not sure how involved the tasks are, what tools are needed, and what the results might look like (this particularly for the HDRI).
Does anyone have some feedback or a review?
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Comments
I have the second tutorial you linked to, and I always learn a lot from Val Cameron in his tutorials. He uses Daz Studio, Photoshop, and a web browser in this tutorial to find images and turn them into HDRI's and backgrounds, for use in Daz Studio Iray renders. He shows several ways to use them, and points out pros and cons of each method. It was easy to follow along.
Thanks. I've done a bunch of Val's other tutorials, but those were much more generic in nature. These two seem more tools and task focused... So I wasn't sure if they were tasks that I would actually want to repeat. As well as if the HDRI one produced results worth the effort.
Yes, it is more like that. His tutorial "How To Create Your Own Iray HDRI's" sounds very interesting, in particular the spherical maps which have the wrap around effect. Just hope it is more Photoshop than Lightwave, the latter being very expensive.
Unfortunately the description and example images don't seem to do the lesson any services, which is why I am on the fence.
Before I purchase, I would love to see an example photo, what the HDRI looks like, then a example render using that HDRI. Then I would be able to see the A to Z of what the lesson teaches.
The description / examples are pretty vague; which is not something that sells me on tutorials.
(Especially since the idea of taking a stock photo and somehow turning it into a workable HDRI seems like hocus pocus black magic.)
I know it works though...converting jpg to 16 (or is it 32) bit in Photoshop then saving as an exr will create pretty believable lighting. I am planning on getting this tutorial because everything I have seen from him has been worth it.
That doesn't make any sense. Without further processing the exr will behave exactly the same as the jpg. No additional dynamic range is created by doing this.
That's what I was thinking... and why I was wondering about this tutorial before purchasing it.
It has been awhile since I tried it, so I am sure there is some additional processing. The point is that you can fake it pretty well. It looks great when I process images from my 360 camera and use it. Give me some time and I will dig up my file and see how I did it.
Okay, but what you are describing it quite different than what I think the tutorial covers. Since I assume that no special camera is needed... but not sure, since the description is so vague.
Oh no, my 360 camera takes unbracketed (non-hdri) 360 degree images. I was able to follow one of his tutorials and fake the hdri part using my 360 image. It should work with other images, only they wont wrap all the way around.
I would imagine the Dreamlight tutorial explains how to add a high dynamic range "sun" to the image, so you can at least get the sharp lighting and proper highlights that would be expected from true HDRI lighting. Nothing will ever get a low-dynamic range HDR to react to different exposures properly like a high-dynamic range image, but if you want a scene with about the same exposure as the original image (you aren't shooting into the sun, for example), that's less of a problem.
Of course I haven't seen his tutorial so I can't say for sure what his workaround is.
Well, I haven't seen the tutorial and I'm happy to comment on ways to hack images. You can paint a sun in Photoshop easily enough if that's where you're converting to 32-bit anyway. You can also line up a distant light along the line from the bright spot of the image to 0,0,0. This is tricky to line up perfectly if you're trying to match a real HDR, but with an LDR image it shouldn't matter as much because there's going to be no other light source that can properly compete.
I was thinking that it was probably something like you explain, which makes it fairly useless to me. Just a lot of work for something I will probably use sparingly at best.
I'd imagine that deforming the standard picture to be in the right perspective and deformation to appear correct in the render is either hit / miss or downright impossible.
Going ahead and removing these from my Wish List. I was hoping that Dreamlight would offer a little more description.
I bought it and have no regrets I was iffy about it as well
I bought it. Well worth the money.
I have returned other tutorials but I own 38 of his tutorials and never returned one. At this point I don't need a great description.
Hmm. I will need to think about it. I have plenty of Dreamlight's other tutorials and have gotten value from most of them...
My only issues tend to be with the hyperbole and the vague descriptions.
Well, those and I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of a flat low rez picture somehow becoming a workable HDRI.
One thing I guess I will say is he is very fast paced which was offputting but the tutorial was great and is helpful
Does anyone have any recommendations for a 360 camera I was looking at various ones, I seen some nice ones but they were $400+ i tried taking one on my phone but it was extremely pixelated when put in daz studio so I’m not sure how high of a megapixel camera I’ll need
I wish the tutorials came with a PDF. I'm 100% more likely to buy a tutorial that has a PDF and screenshots than video only. I don't even need a video, I follow along much better with written material than I can follow step by step.
I was interested in that tutorial too, but I Googled "How to make HDRI in Photoshop" and a ton of stuff showed up. I'll try that first, then consider the product during his next sale.
This really, really depends how many pixels you render your image, and how wide your field of view is, and whether you have DOF. For a typical FOV of about 50 degrees (I think this is close to default but someone may jump in and correct me), to render for a 1080 p widescreen, no DOF, you are going to need about a 14K HDRI to have no pixelation. For this reason, 16K tends to be a "good" HDRI size. But because these files are absolutely ginormous, and often you can get away with a slightly blurrier background, and if you have any DOF it will add blurriness anyway, a lot of people (including me) just do 8K.
I got his add models to images tutorial It's really good. I have not had much time to try it myself.
Actually a lot of the images he used in this tute are size to 1920 w, Not too big.Though those are just quick examples he showed. I didn't get his Tutorial from the daz store, though direct from his own store. Not sure if it's the same tutorial. He included all hdr and background images with it. Here is a couple quick ones using two of the images he provided. I'm not really good at it yet, though I think it looks ok for a first shot at it , maybe
You're just using the HDRI as lighting, though, right? HDRIs only used for lighting purposes don't need to be very high res at all.
This was one of my main questions... I would be far more interested in setting up pictures so that they worked as background images. Lighting function has less interest for me.
The other tutorial, the window one, looked interesting, but I had a feeling there was only going to be a small amount that would be of interest to me. As I have been experimenting with that aspect for a few years now.
Yes, only lighting is coming from the matching hdri, it's the same as the background image. He took the background and converted it to a 32bit hdr.
I got the tutorial, but am returning it as my version of photoshop doesn't support 32bit.