Iray, lighting and your workflow - how?

akmerlow

Is there a way to have it in DS as workflow that looks similar to IRL photo studio? So you have those "light" objects on scene and you change their positions logically.

By default, it never made that much sense to me with DS lights as those are some abstract entities that usually are being set up in weird places, sometimes their placement dont even matter and.. just cant get my head to work out the understanding. Especially if its like you having those infinite lights and they are basically on ground level of scene as no reason to do anything other than rotation of them..

Also those photometric lights, seems to be so much of "hit and miss" when you adjust their strength for scene. And that you dont have 1-100% scale, instead its smth like 7200K and 72000000K  setting that dont have that much difference between them.

So, could you recommend tutorials on subject or share your advice on what you do? And also, can you really organize in a such way that you can borrow advices and setups from IRL lighting/shadow approaches? (like replicating those schemes that photographers propose for promo photography etc)

 

 

kenshaw011267

I use standard photography lighting all the time, I just don't use the built in lights. Iray simply wants more light than is easily provided by those lights, in indoor images in particular. 

You do need to know enough about lights to know what light temperature is versus light intensity to DIY. The other option is to buy a set of lights from the shop, I am very fond of Skyewolf's Luminosity mesh lights.

fastbike1

You can't get hung up on trying to use real world lumen values. Otherwise typical photogrpahy lighting techniques work fine. "Mesh" lights are also not as necessary as in pre-Iray becuase the phtometric spots can have geometry, at which point they act like mesh lights.

@akmerlow "Especially if its like you having those infinite lights and they are basically on ground level of scene as no reason to do anything other than rotation of them.."

By default, lights load at the origin (0.0.0), UNLESS you make a different choice. Even from the default location you can always move the ligths by selecting them then using the translation and rotation tabs within the PArameters Tab.

jestmart

The Distant lights are a hold over from 3Delight, in Iray you would probably want to use the Sun and Sky option.

akmerlow

Thanks for replies!

I also just remembered two things now...

- i was watching someone's video on DS and found out that you can turn lights like cameras "seeing through them". Is it helpful usually?

- i just realised i nearly never use top/front/side projections in DS unlike in Hexagon or other modelling suits.. i nearly always do everything in perspective view, maybe that makes repositioning on entities less obvious to me.

fastbike1

@akmerlow "i nearly always do everything in perspective view, maybe that makes repositioning on entities less obvious to me."

Try zooming out in Perspective view to get a feel for the entire scene. Seeing through lights lets you get the exact light "fall" you want.

kenshaw011267

akmerlow said:

Thanks for replies!

I also just remembered two things now...

- i was watching someone's video on DS and found out that you can turn lights like cameras "seeing through them". Is it helpful usually?

- i just realised i nearly never use top/front/side projections in DS unlike in Hexagon or other modelling suits.. i nearly always do everything in perspective view, maybe that makes repositioning on entities less obvious to me.

On the rare occasion when I use a spotlight, the only built in light I use with any frequency, I find it very helpful to look through it when positioning it.

akmerlow

You can't get hung up on trying to use real world lumen values

I mean more that overall lumen system of those photometric lights in daz is confusing to me. Like, i place some spotlight and choosing 1500 and 150000 lumen dont do any visible difference to me. %)

Would be so much easier with 1-100% slides like on old 3delight days (?)

 

 

prixat

Are you giving the lights a size?
Having high values on a point light, is still just a point of light, it's not going to have much effect on anything after a few centimeters.

Are you lighting things far away?
For the Batman Signal you need a Searchlight in the range of 10 million Lumens. 150000 Lumens is about right for a large room.

TheKD

It's math, but it's a lot simpler when you understand the gist of the inverse squared formula. if you have a 100 lumen spotlight at 1 meter, then move it to 2 meters, it loses 75% of it's intensity on the target. It will lose 75% more of it's intensity every time you double the distance. Unless the light is close, it really needs to be cranked up to have an effect.