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OMFG tl155180!!!
I had no idea that environment backdrop thing even existed. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH
Thank you!
You and me both! I knew there was a backdrop setting somewhere, but before today I had no idea what it did.
Just been playing with the 'Saturation' setting in Render Settings > Tone Mapping as well - very handy for toning down the excess colour intensity that occurs when one uses sun haze.
...I just used a royalty free photo, made a large plane that filled the entire viewport from the angle I would render at, then applied the photo image to the plane as the Diffuse Map. You need good, large, high resolution images to do this though. The photo image I used in the bus stop scene was 3264 x 2448. The plane also needs to be the same aspect ratio of the photo image otherwise the image will be distorted.
Oh, and BTW this method does not work if you are doing a sunset/rise scene with the sun as part of the background photo as the plane will cast a shadow over the scene. Also be careful of any objects that might cast shadows on the backdrop plane. In Iray you cannot "turn off" shadows like in 3DL. I actually had to position the helicopter so that the shadow it cast was hidden behind the red haired girl,
That's doing it old school, KK. How it was done before we had fancy skydomes, HDR or render compositing.
As for the shadows cast on the sky, cranking up the ambient (or emitter for Iray) color to 100% white (or at least enough to where you stop seeing the shadows) should help, as well as killing any glossiness to avoid specularity. If it gets blown out too easily, you can counter that by darkening the image in a photo editor or with the diffuse color.
Seems like there's got to be a way to make an object not cast shadows with Iray. Perhaps even set it (I don't remember offhand where to set this in Studio) before switching shaders or don't switch the background's shader to Iray and let the renderer sort it out.
LightWave has multiple ways to pull this off, including setting exclusions in each light or turning shadows off on the object, but that probably doesn't translate to Iray. At work on lunch, otherwise I'd fire up Studio and check it out.
One way that can work is replacing the sun or distant light with a spot, (make sure falloff is off/infinity/farther than the distance needed) then make the BG plane massive and put it with the spot in front of the "sun" part of the image and move both of them out by enough distance that the spot is acting on your objects like a distant light would.
...yeah, but when you need a specific backdrop setting, most skydomes/HDRIs can't fill the bill as they are fairly generic.
You need a background in London? New York City? Tokyo,? Zagreb? You still have to do it the old way.
I wasn't knocking it at all. :) Good to keep old methods handy, sets us apart from the kids who only know the latest version of everything.
When it comes to sky-domes and such, I honestly haven't a clue, because of where most of my renders take place, lol. It's either a sky-dome made by the Scene's PA, or I have just slapped a Photo on a plane outside a window. It's why I keep taking pictures of that pond, to build up a year-round collection for windows.
I fussed for about two seconds with that backdrop thing on the camera in Studio 4.6, and discovered it kept the image centered regardless of where the camera was aimed. Ditched that in favor of a plain I could position properly regardless of where the camera was, and haven't looked back since.
Yeppers. I've actually used photo backgrounds in LightWave quite a bit. It's very useful for multi-layered renders, to go easy on the CPU. Downside can be the need for multiple plates, if you're either animating or showing multiple angles. Many of my backdrops have been other things I've rendered, though, like a star field, so I don't have a problem rendering additional angles for both scenes.
I'm about mid-range between the real old-timers and newbies, in my day job as a sign maker. I don't paint or do pinstriping, but I started with plotter-cut vinyl letters and now work more in wide-format printing and CNC. I find in most fields, it helps quite a bit to have a broad arsenal of skills. Job security really counts, the last few years.
If I needed the sun moved, it was as simple as moving the spot light that was faking the sun, lol.
The ToTW ref is regarding the render in the First post in the second 'Show us your Iray renders'.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54734/
Sky-box made ambient with the emissive shader, and a Photometric spotlight for the sun, it was simple.
... a spotlight has a different light and shadow character than the Sun. For one the shadow vectors are different as they are not parallel. Second, the light quality is different as well, when I substituted a spotlight for the sun, the effect looked fake like a bad Hollywood film.
Haven't had enough time to play with it yet, to speak to the quality, but as for being parallel, I'm talking big distances, i.e. megameters. (Mm) If Studio is in centimeters, that'd be 100,000,000+. At that distance, approaching reality, the shadows are parallel enough to look nearly the same as a distance light given no falloff and the same shadow settings. They can actually be more accurate than a distant light if set up well.
The Iray sun is probably automatically adjusting color, size (blurry shadows) and other details as the sun approaches the horizon, so that would lead to a different look from any other kind of light.
Crazy question...does Iray have a moon or any light if you set the time to night?
As far as I know the only way to avoid having items cast shadows is to use the Progressive, rather than Photoreal, render mode - the shadow 9and AO) passes are available in the list of Canvasses (render passes) in the Advanced tab of Render Settings then.
In the Render Mode group in Render Settings>Editor.
...but Photoreal is one of the main reasons to use a physics based rendering engine. Wouldn't switching to just Progressive make it render more like 3DL?
...I just used a royalty free photo, made a large plane that filled the entire viewport from the angle I would render at, then applied the photo image to the plane as the Diffuse Map. You need good, large, high resolution images to do this though. The photo image I used in the bus stop scene was 3264 x 2448. The plane also needs to be the same aspect ratio of the photo image otherwise the image will be distorted.
Oh, and BTW this method does not work if you are doing a sunset/rise scene with the sun as part of the background photo as the plane will cast a shadow over the scene. Also be careful of any objects that might cast shadows on the backdrop plane. In Iray you cannot "turn off" shadows like in 3DL. I actually had to position the helicopter so that the shadow it cast was hidden behind the red haired girl,
The only advantage to this method over plopping the image in the backdrop (in the environment tab) is if you want only part of the image showing in the render (large sized plane so that not all the image is in view). Otherwise use the environment tab. Oh, there's one more advantage to your method--if you want to tilt your scene the backdrop image on the plane will tilt as well but it still must be head-on or the image will distort.
Introduced in 4.7 is the ability to set your render aspect ratio to that of the background image (from the menu in the environment tab) so that eliminates a common problem or at least makes it easier to fix. (I still miss my alpha channel though. But you can't get that with an image on a plane in the scene either.)
Sorry, I was firmly using the wrong word - it's Interactive that's the alternative mode to Photoreal. As I understand it, it is still physically based but not unbiased so it allows some cheating of reality (such as turning shadows off). Interactive is also meant to be faster than Photoreal.
Anyone figured out an effective way to create light diffusers or reflectors?
Theoretically, it should be possible, but I've found, at least in Luxrender, it's just easier to use mesh lights and scale them up to a fairly large size, than try and make a diffuser.
As for reflectors...you could model some geometry and make a mirror material...but again, I find it easier to just use a scaled direct light source.
I'm fairly confident that it will be similar in Iray, but I haven't tried it yet.
IES profiles and the lights they attach to can do both without much fuss...the fuss is finding the right profiles to use.
Seems like a mirrored surface with a colored noise image for a bump or normal map would work for reflective materials. Just make it really really fine, for things like photo lighting umbrellas. If the surface is grainy enough, it should diffuse reflections properly.
Whenever I render in Iray using a backdrop image I'm left with a thick black line running along the top of the image. Does anyone know why this is, or how to prevent it from occurring please?
Is this only with one image? Possible black line you hadn't noticed in the image itself?
How are you using it as a backdrop? In the Render Settings / Environment, on a plane primitive, with a Cyclorama or similar set?
If it's one of the latter two, could it be your camera is showing above the back top edge of the object? If yes to the object and no to the camera angle, are you using any surface tiling or offset options?
The way the Emmiter shader works has me super confused. When I use them It renders black. Ive tried scene only. Dome and Scene. They never emmit light no matter what I do. I've been messing with settings for 3 hours now trying to figure it out. The spot lights dont do nothing. I'm not sure how to light my scenes.
I followed this step by step tutorial by SickleYield and all I get is a black scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5FZ5gS9v50
It's like, pitch black, with a few white specks here n there.
I'd suggest turning on Nvidia view when playing with lighting and emitters (it's a lot faster than test renders). Just shut it off if you need to move objects (IME, it makes things choppy and unstable)
Might want to make sure the camera isn't in or behind an object. Sounds obvious, but I've been bitten by that.
In Render Settings > Tone Mapping, bump ISO up to 800. That should be a good reasonable exposure level even for fairly dim scenes.
I usually select most emitters and step up luminosity by adding a zero until I get noticeable light. With emitters, I've sometimes needed 15 million or other absurd levels before I get reasonable light.
And what of the distant lights and spot lights? Are they of no use in iRay?
Nevermind. My scene had a dome. Enchanted Forest. If anyone is familiar. So how does one get the light in iRay to pass through the dome? I tried cast shadows off. It had no effect.
It won't — the Cast Shadows switch is a 3Delight feature, it doesn't exist in Iray. Everything casts shadows. The only way to allow an Iray light to pass through something is to turn down Opacity or use a transparency map.
There have been a few mentions in some of the Iray threads (maybe even way back at the beginning of this one) of setting the dome itself to be light-emitting, but I can't remember offhand how it's done.
It won't — the Cast Shadows switch is a 3Delight feature, it doesn't exist in Iray. Everything casts shadows. The only way to allow an Iray light to pass through something is to turn down Opacity or use a transparency map.
There have been a few mentions in some of the Iray threads (maybe even way back at the beginning of this one) of setting the dome itself to be light-emitting, but I can't remember offhand how it's done.
Ah ok. So it works like reality. Where there is no such thing as illusions. Its either there for realz or its not. Gotcha.
Is there a users guide I can read? I need to know what I'm doing here. hehe
Regarding light dome:
You can use the image as an Environmental map, creating environmental light. Unless the image is made for it, the results may not be satisfying.
Use the image in the backdrop, painting it behind everything. (Backdrop is a tab off of the Scene items to the left)
Make the dome a light emitter -- put the dome map in Emission color and maybe also Luminosity. As far as I can tell, this is functionally like Environmental map, but you might have some finer control over it.