Question: Render is black except....

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

....the sword is rendering.  At least the blade is.  Now I'd usually say I know how to set up lights.  So either I'm missing something very basic.  Or something wierd is going on.

 

Anyway.  I set up a scene that I wanted to light with a couple point lights, and 3 spots.  Raytraced.  Looks good for a test to see if theres a problem.  And as you can guess: problem.  Everything renders black except the sword blade and a factal .jpg I'm using as a background.  All the settings look right, though theres a few new ones I don't remember seeing before.  Lights are on.  set for raytraced but nothing.  As a test.  I put a distant light in and it renders ok.  But not getting the effect I wanted to get with the spots.

Oh and just to state the obvious.  Theres not enough in this scene for the light to be blocked by something else

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

Dale

fixmypcmike

Iray or 3delight?

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

3delight.  I havent tried to mess with Iray yet

fixmypcmike

Can you post a render?  How strong are the lights?  Point lights in particular are very weak at default settings?

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

Theres nudity.  And the point lights are just being used in firepots to brighten the flames, and make shadows.  My main issue is the 3 spots that are pointing at two V4's that are plainly visible when viewed through the lights themselves.  But render as totaly black along with some trees and several pillars.  Just the sword blade is visible on the completed render.  I even tried closing Daz down and re-0pening the scene.  But no luck.

 

The spots are all duplicate settings

Illumination: On

Color: yellow

Intensity 100%

Intensity scale: 1000,  (thats a new one to me)

Spread angle: 80%

Beam distribution: 2  (another new one)

Decay: 2 (Another new one)

Shadow type: Raytraced (software only)

Shadow color: Black o,o,o

Shadow intensity: 50%

The rest of the settings are O%  And all three spots are set up the same

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

Hmm.  after thinking about it.  It doesn't matter if theres nudity if you cant see it.  So heres the render.  Theres a hot blond, topless in a battle bikini there boys.  Get a good look.

 

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

Oh,  and heres a screen partial ( gotta cut off the naughty bits) grab of what things look like under just the spots before rendering.

Salem2007

Maybe the spot lights are pointed in the wrong direction or blocked by something.  I have a hard time with DS lights----I usually start with a lighting preset and make little changes.....

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

Hi Salem.  No  theres not much in the scene to block the lights.  And you can look right through the lights like a camera by selecting them in your camera/light dialog box in the left corner of the screen.  It makes placing the lights pretty foolproof.  What you see is what you get.  Except in my current set up apparently. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion thoug

Dale

fixmypcmike

Try setting decay to 1 and increasing the intensity.

Salem2007

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4 said:

Hi Salem.  No  theres not much in the scene to block the lights.  And you can look right through the lights like a camera by selecting them in your camera/light dialog box in the left corner of the screen.  It makes placing the lights pretty foolproof.  What you see is what you get.  Except in my current set up apparently. 

 

Thanks for the suggestion thoug

Dale

A shot in the dark...so to speak. 

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

That helped.  Setting to 1, but leaving the intensity the same.  But now it seems over lit.  But at least its rendering a visible picture.  What I don't get is.  I've never had that problem before using spots.  And I assume the 2 setting is its default.  At least I didn't change it.  Might have to decreas the intensity, or change the decay to 1.5 to see if that helps.

Whats the intensity scale do?  If you don't mind my asking. 1,000.  Seems an awfully high number.

One last question on an unrelated subject.  Doesnt the forum give E-mail notices for forum replies?  pain in the rear to have to keep monitoring the forum directly for replies.

Thanks

Dale

fixmypcmike

Decay of 2 is inverse-square law, which is realistic.  If the lght is dying out too quickly, decay of 1 makes it linear -- less realistic but perhaps more in line with what you're trying to convey.  I'm not sure what the units of the intensity number represent.

To receive email notices, click the gear icon in the upper right, click your name, then click the new gear, then notification preferences -- by default email is unchecked/

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

Thanks,

 

Not sure I see the usefullness of that decay number.  Used to get better results without that.  As it is.  I had to try a decreaing scale from, 1.5, 1.25, to 1.15 before I got something that seems reasonable.  Doesn't seem over lit at 1.15.  But I may have to add more lights to get decent lighting.

 

Thanks

DaleCar_06ae99e4f4

Getting better.  And for those of you that are curious.  Heres a censored version.  If you want to see the uncensored version.  You'll have to check out my Deviant art page.  Should be up there shortly.

http://dalecar.deviantart.com

Image removed - please see http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3279/acceptable-ways-of-handling-nudity#latest

Richard Haseltine

The sword may have been visible due to a reflection map.

As far as I can tell spot lights still come in by deault with decay 0 (no falloff) but you aren't the first person recently to report this kind of behaviour.

cdemerit

I typically  don't use point lights often, other than to light a specific point, I tend to use the linar lights, as at least for now they do what I want... However on the topic of odd occurances, I had a scene where I put a handful of people disembarking from a ship, the guards were the Anubis for genesis characters, with the default dark skins, using a mixed white/brown uniform and overall I liked the light/shadows. However, I wanted a touch more light on the guards face. for some reason, his face would not light up. I even put a liniar light on his nose, cranked the intensity to 200, blowing out everything else in the scene, but his face was still a black hole, sucking in all the light... it was strange. Since he was a background character, in a single scene for a prolouge that is likely never going to be seen, I gave up and said good enough, and moved on, but it was wierd.